Christoph Niemann on the importance of inefficiency
dept-of-research-and-development:
A nice interview with Christoph Niemann about his studio and process:
Sometimes you look at something and you think, that is awesome, and then the next day you look at it and you are horrified. Sometimes I do something three times over and think, this is terrible, and then I go back and find there’s some strength in there. You need the second day to realize the strength in something. On the one hand, I wish I didn’t waste so much time, but on the other, I really try and savor the inefficiency. I can be efficient with my work day and technology and everything, but one thing you must not – and cannot – be efficient with is creating. Once you start thinking about what works faster or better, you start ruling out mistakes, and that’s really awful. So I really try to be as inefficient as possible.
Emphasis mine. Also, of course, love what he says about keeping regular hours, and knowing you’re only going to get so much done:
Over the years I realized: I always knew that you can only get so much creative work done in a day, but now I feel like I’ve perfected this system so well that it’s dangerous if I mess with it. I mean, an all-nighter? Stupid. Working in the evenings? I suppose sometimes you have to. But you pay the price the next day. I found keeping a rhythm of five days a week with perhaps some e-mailing on top is really the most I can do.
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