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Don't Try: Bukowski's Secret Sauce For Success
Obsession always beats discipline.
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TODAY’S MENU
💊 Don’t Try: Bukowski’s Advice For Creatives
🎥 So You Wanna Be A Writer
📚 You Are What You Read
💡 This Is How You Become An Idea-Generating Machine
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Bukowski’s Secret Sauce For Success
I’ve been getting lost and found in the beauty of obsession lately.
Turns out obsession, like most of the finest things in life, isn’t as bad as my parents, society, and the media made it out to be.
Hear me out.
I’ve spent over a decade trying to become a more disciplined person hoping to find the meaning and fulfillment self-help gurus had sold me.
But I was wrong. They were wrong.
I didn’t need to become more disciplined. I needed to become more obsessed.
I’ve learned obsession always beats discipline.
Why?
Because discipline is forcing yourself to do, and obsession is forcing yourself to stop.
“Don’t Try”
In 1994, the world-renowned writer and poet Charles Bukowski died of leukemia and was buried in a Los Angeles cemetery underneath a tombstone that reads: “Don’t Try.”
The two words succinctly summarize Bukowski’s philosophy of art and life.
But what the f*ck does that mean?
In October 1963, Bukowski recounted in a letter to his friend and author John William Corrington how someone had asked him, “What do you do? How do you write, create?” To which he replied:
“You don’t try. That’s very important: ‘not’ to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It’s like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like its looks you make a pet out of it.”
A strength of obsessions is patience. The obsessed is impatient with action but patient with results.
But Bukowski’s advice is deeper than just waiting for the right moment.
In 1990, Bukowski sent a letter to his friend William Packard and reminded him:
“We work too hard. We try too hard. Don’t try. Don’t work. It’s there. It’s been looking right at us, aching to kick out of the closed womb. There’s been too much direction. It’s all free, we needn’t be told. Classes? Classes are for asses. Writing a poem is as easy as beating your meat or drinking a bottle of beer.”
The key to living a good life and creating great art is to simply stop overthinking and be yourself.
Or is it?
In 2005, Mike Watt (bass player for the Minutemen, fIREHOSE, and the Stooges) interviewed the poet’s wife, Linda, and asked her to decrypt Bukowski’s message.
Watt: What’s the story: “Don’t Try”? Is it from that piece he wrote?
Linda: See those big volumes of books? They’re called Who’s Who In America. It’s everybody, artists, scientists, whatever. So he was in there and they asked him to do a little thing about the books he’s written and duh, duh, duh, duh, duh. At the very end they say, is there anything you wanna say, you know, what is your philosophy of life, and some people would write a huge long thing. A dissertation, and some people would just go on and on. And Hank (Charles Bukowski) just put, “Don’t Try.” Now, for you, what do you think that means?
Watt: Well for me it always meant like be natural.
Linda: Yeah, yeah.
Watt: Not like…being lazy!
Linda: Yeah, I get so many different ideas from people that don’t understand what that means. Well, “Don’t Try? Just be a slacker? lay back?” And I’m no! Don’t try, do. Because if you’re spending your time trying something, you’re not doing it…“DON’T TRY.”
At 49 years old, after decades of writing, Bukowski left his job at The Post Office with not a dime in his pocket to fully surrender to his obsession.
In one letter, he shared…
"I have one of two choices – stay in the post office and go crazy ... or stay out here and play at writer and starve. I have decided to starve."
For the next 24 years, Bukowski would write nearly 60 books and thousands of poems.
Bukowski was a different type of creative animal.
I’m not telling you to quit your job to go all in on your creative endeavors.
What I’m saying is …
Don’t try. Obsess.
Find the thing you cannot not do and do it until you have to force yourself to stop.
I’m obviously obsessed with the creative process and learning from the world’s greatest minds—an obsession that transports me to your inbox every Tuesday with new ideas, insights, and stories. The same obsession that’s allowed me to build an incredible community of creatives and thinkers like you.
As always, I’d love to hear from you.
What are you obsessed with? Just hit “reply” to this email and let me know.
