I draw great inspiration from watching people work– especially in the knowledge sector.

We know what practicing the violin looks like. But it is hard to come by authors, comedians, and creatives not just discussing their process but documenting it.

We were lucky enough to get two beautiful process videos this year that allow us to peak behind the scenes. One from Hasan Minhaj and one from Ryan Holiday.

In this video you can actually see Hasan building his new show that just released on Netflix, The King’s Jester. He walks the audience from notebook to story boarding into small, experimental shows, then the editing process.

When asked what he hopes people would get out of this video he said, “The other 23 hours of the day. People generally just get to see you that one hour on stage. Just to show those other aspects of what it means to be a creative person.”

This is Ryan Holiday’s process of writing his recent book, Discipline is Destiny, over the course of two years.

I love how he includes the frustration, the overwhelm, and even the chats with his agent and editor. This shows not just the creative process, but the emotional fortitude it takes to work on something at this scale.

Both Hasan and Ryan are working daily on projects that are years in the making– not weeks, not days. These are projects that may define their entire careers. They aren’t trying to fix what isn’t broken, but their work is creative. When they sit down to work, the bare minimum requirement is that what they are doing doesn’t just reproduce what they have done in the past but instead builds on an important–must be communicated–thesis and does so in an original way.

Oh, how I wish we had something like this documented in the Suzuki teaching community. For now, I’ll remain grateful that we have writers and comedians of this caliber documenting their creative work.

I hope other teachers derive the inspiration from their videos as I have.