It's a terrible, incurable disease, that causes severe male pattern boldness

and the obsession to make pictures day after day.

As a person that has to do this on demand,

coming up with ideas on demand, I had to come up with a special process.

My work pretty much has to do with bringing a lot of interesting assignments to the studio

to keep me busy, to feed my obsession,

I have a way to execute them,

and I have a way to get them out to keep my clients happy.

Now, this middle process, what we call the creative process

doesn't only allow me to look like a short version of Wolverine

or dress up like a fifteen year old heavy metal fan,

but also requires a very specifically developed thought process

that will be delivering for me time after time, day after day.

Let's go through a little bit of an explanation of what inspiration is.

And usually people, inspiration is understood as a beautiful,

glorious golden light that comes down to us through

divine intervention that stimulates our braincells,

brings beautiful moments of clarity,

where we can come up with ideas we could never come up with before,

but unfortunately, maybe could never come up with again.

I could not count on such a process.

Number one, skin cancer from the light exposure,

since I have to do it day after day and also this is not a process

I could control and I need it time after time.

So by observing myself through the years, as I was not egocentric enough,

discovered the time and the place where thought

and especially good thought that I am interested with,

came up from the head you are looking at on the top of my shoulders.

I had to find out the time and the place, where these ideas came on

and these two things are very intertwined in a way that you can almost

not separate them. But they are also separable,

'cause you need to know how to follow your process

and know when not to follow your process.

So, I for example found out that if I split the day into two,

the early part and the second part, I'm much better coming up

with ideas on the second part, especially before I go to sleep.

I brush my teeth, I wear my stripe pyjamas,

I kiss my wife goodbye and I start getting into the zone.

Just before Morpheus takes me to dream land,

I can relax and pace my brain and pretty much do whatever I do at work.

I take assignments that have different subject matters,

I equalise visual symbols to them and then I make an omelette out of them.

That's pretty much it. So the clarity of that time

helps me chose the right symbols for the right meanings

and use them to work.

Now, a lot of people ask, "How do you remember a good idea next time in the morning?"

and the truth is if the idea is good, you remember it.

If it sucks it dissolves in your dreams.

I also pretty much can follow the mental steps

that brought me to this idea and pretty much come up with the same idea

or hopefully a better one.

Other places that I'm good with ideas is the shower.

So there something going on with water,

and after I'm done with conditioning all of these hair, shampooing

and scrubbing, the water cascading down on me,

just freeze up my thought process.

If you don't come up with an idea

when you are in the shower, anyways I jump out,

I can always use a shower, you get cleaner anyway,

so it's a win win, even you come up with an idea or not.

I also know that I'm good with ideas in transit.

I love sketching on a plane, I love sketching on a train.

I love sketching when I'm in danger of being bored,

'cause for me that's the number one enemy, right after the IRS.

Now, I spoke to you a little bit about my process

from the inside to the outside, I'll speak about the outside to the inside.

I'm an angry and jealous guy.

It doesn't show, but that's the truth.

But I've learnt to use all this anger and jealousy

to people and projects and shows that succeed.

Bottle it up, take it to the studio, make notes,

call some people and make it work for me.

I took things that they were eating me up inside

and I've used them to my advantage and I remember

that a lot of years ago after a terrible Sunday morning

in the Chelsea galleries in New York, I picked up the phone

and I called my agent and I said "Les, we need to get me a show,

if other people's shit is called artwork, so is mine."

His answer was, "I thought you'll never ask"

and that pretty much spearheaded my career in exhibiting.

Now, next on is that I can't come up with ways

to not only have the inside to outside, the outside to the inside,

but find ways to break through thinkers block that happen to everyone.

When I'm stuck, I love doing dishes.

It's an amazing process that only clears up the table

but it also within a few minutes transforms a dirty pile of dishes

in a sink in front of you, through using your hands,

that is a very physical kind of experience, into a beautiful stack of clean plates, sparkling

and I have found out that the physical process

and result in the physical process, cascade into the mental process.

So if I have big problems in the studio and I cannot resolve them,

you will catch me dusting and just cleaning up something around me,

hoping all of this will get inside and it will free my mechanism.

Now, another cornerstone to my thinking process is human contact.

Especially, human contact in the morning, not only by my wife,

but also going out and having breakfast with mentors,

one of my big secrets, teachers or people that I really admire

that I keep in touch and I keep in touch with my mentors

in Greece, in Israel and in New York City,

due to geographic proximity of course.

But breakfast or morning coffee is very different than an afternoon coffee,

different than lunch and different than dinner.

There is no social agenda to it, everybody has to go to work after the breakfast,

so there is only a limited time in front of you and as relaxed as you are,

you know you have to make it count, because you got other places to go.

So I would definitely advise that.

Now, taking all of the results from my thinking process

and doing nothing to them or nothing with them

or nothing for them or nothing about them, is completely pointless.

I met a Russian man, an older Russian man

quite a few years ago that told me, "Listen up young man"

solid proof I was young once, "in order to become an expert,

in order to become successful, you need to know everything about something

and something about everything and even though it did not sink in right away,

while walking back to the studio, it made perfect sense

to be as good as it gets in one slice of an industry or create your own industry,

but also surround it with a great framework of knowledge

of what's going on around you and history,

in order to be able to take all this peripheral information

and drop it into your specialite process and specialized knowledge

in order to renovate it, time after time,

in order to make it interesting.

Now, the issue of work and how do we become a specialist

in a subject, no matter what that subject is.

Very early on, 'cause I'm the kind of person

that worked very hard, I'm the person that studied overnight.

I'm not the person that saw something and immediately could respond.

I'm the person that needs to do the homework,

and for me that's only pretty much the teachable way to get somewhere.

I'm a big believer in the ten thousand hours of practice in order to be an expert,

and you will hear this from guitar players that put the hours,

you will hear it from animators that tell you their ten thousand bad drawings in you

and as soon as you get them out the good ones will start flowing.

And here is where my students, especially on the graduate level,

will ask me, "But Victor if you work so much," and in order to save you some thought,

ten thousand hours is about 1,14 years, is about 460 days

and it takes 7 to 10 years to apply without going crazy.

So my students ask me, "How do you know you've worked too much, is there such a thing?"

I said, "Yes, there are signs, as soon as blood starts dripping out of your eyes,

you know you overdid it, take a fifteen to twenty minutes break

and go right back into it, 'cause you're not done."

As far as work goes, here comes my definition of talent,

'cause people say "Well you are an artist, anyways you would have to do it."

Talent to me is what gives you the patience to practice what you like,

in order to become a specialist.

And here is where everyone can use that formula.

You think, -- and we spoke about the thought process --

you come up with ideas, you zone on the talent or talents you might have,

and then you start intensively working on them.

And you will find out within a week if this is not for you,

you jump on something else, you jump on something else.

It's a pretty simple process in order to get somewhere.

I will give you one more quote here about the issue of work and luck,

because they are so interconnected, the more you work, the luckier you get.

There is absolutely no speckle of doubt in my mind.

And perfect practice works in such a way that made Bruce Lee say,

-- and that's a martial arts wisdom for you --

"I am not afraid of the man that has practiced a thousand kicks,

I'm afraid of the man that practiced one kick a thousand times."

Now, in order to take advantage of this ten thousand hours,

because when I'm talking about ten thousand hours,

we all know that during our lifetime, we will drive for ten thousand hours easy,

that doesn't make us a Formula 1 driver, for most of us, way far from it.

The ten thousand hours only work with constant target assessment,

I don't really know what that means,

but I read it and it sounds cool, expert guidance and instant feedback.

I hope that makes sense.

Now, increasing your productivity

and really taking advantage of all these hours

that you are going to put into this one thing

that will become your ticket to push anything you like forward,

is matching the perfect task with the perfect time.

I told you I'm better with thinking on the second part of the day,

on the first time of the day. I'm very good with doing robotic,

automatic work that would drive me crazy on the second part of the day.

I have a pretty cruel schedule.

I wake up at 5.30 in the morning,

as you see not a lot of beauty sleep has been invested in this face.

I make my tea, I go upstairs and I just get the studio ready,

so I can sit down and retouch my photographs.

I can mix my photographs, I can finish them,

I can colour them, but I could never do this on a different time of the day.

I got a good time for making phone calls, I have work to be doing on my computer

while I'm talking to people.

It's funny after half an hour, forty five minutes conversation

people go, "I'm gonna let you go back to work"

and I'm thinking, if I was not working I would be doomed.

So, I will take a break from one task and do another task,

take a break from here and go there, get on the phone,

mix and match them into a fairly specific way.

So, all of my hours are completely effective.

Brainless, manual labor doesn't get anyone anywhere.

The labor needs to be productive and effective.

Now, that is the fire department motto, "If you are not early, you're late."

Νow you'll say "Viktor, being punctual is really not news to us"

but I have to tell you that punctuality is kind of starting

to eclipse from our world.

And that means only one thing, that punctuality will not disappear,

it will be respected and paid for more and more and more.

I know that if I don't get on the train fifteen minutes before the half hour

that I thought it's going to take me to get somewhere,

especially if I haven't been there,

if I don't send my files a day early, an hour early,

I'm not going to have internet connectivity.

I know this, when I need it, technology will let me down

and I need to find a way to circumvent this,

And that's very important, when you live in a deadline