In Praise of Repetition

“Life is about reps” – Arnold Schwarzenegger

In modern times, to repeat oneself is seen as bad. But in truth, isn’t life about repetition?

For example:

In working out, inevitably doing more repetitions (and increasing the weight) is a good thing, which will lead you to becoming stronger and putting on more muscle mass.
The more you repeat going out and shooting photos, the better! You learn via repetition, judging your photos, then going out to shoot again (an iterative approach to photography).
The benefit of re-reading texts, films, or things you’ve already read/consumed. For example, I re-watched Ghost in the Shell [original anime], and I enjoyed it 5x more this time than I did the original time! Furthermore, with philosophy, I find more benefit re-reading a person’s philosophical book several times than just reading a bunch of people’s text once. For example, better to re-read a single author many many times, than to read just 1 book from many others.
Re-visiting old places: To gain depth, we must re-visit old places. For example my recent trip to Mexico City — I’ve been there 3-4 times now. Every time we go back, we have even a DEEPER appreciation of the place. For example, we’ve now become regulars at MEROMA (one of my favorite restaurants in the world and Mexico City), and now we are on first-name basis with the owners (Mercedes and Rodney). It is great– we get special “hookups”, and we feel like family. The same goes to finding a few cities you really like, and re-visit!
Repeating your creative act: Do you drink coffee everyday (or several times a day)? Of course. Perhaps we can treat photography the same way; just keep doing creative stuff all day, everyday! Picasso apparently made (on average) 1-2 art works a day until he died. Can’t we do the same?

CREATIVITY

Re-discover your inner-child like PICASSO:

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