The secret to your book project can be found in Helsinki’s central bus station.

In Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman quotes Finnish-American photographer Arno Rafael Minkkinen and his 2004 commencement address at the New England School of Photography.

Minkkinen’s speech “The Helsinki Bus Station Theory: Finding Your Own Vision in Photography” is worth reading in full (available at James Clear’s website). In it, Minkkinen talks about how to pursue artistic originality – something recent graduates are understandably anxious about as they leave study and try to develop their creative identity.

I found myself quoting Minkkinen (via Burkeman) recently when talking with a friend about their book project, and why it’s so important to pursue good work, even – or especially – when confronted with speed bumps.

In time, you will begin to see a difference

Writing a book is hard. I’ve said that before. Anyone who’s been part of the Better Book Project knows that, too.

It’s not necessarily difficult to come up with the Big Idea, or plot out your audience’s course from starting position to some transformed final state. But writing is often hard. A constant creative push to draw fresh sentences thousands of times, abuse them through the self-editing process, then send off a small piece of your soul to be weighed by your editor.

It’s here that Minkkinen appeared, for me. His speech is about being original, and the need to follow your creative route beyond the familiar. But I interpret it here instead, or additionally, as a lesson on persistence.

The buses that depart from Helsinki’s central bus station all follow the same route out of the city, tending to stop at the same stations. The first few stations are going to be familiar enough – after all, it doesn’t matter what bus you’ve taken, you’re still in the CBD.

But after some time, they diverge, taking different routes. The #19 goes to a western suburb; the #6 goes to a different city.

The advice I gave to my friend was this: In the early stages of a book project, we can imagine ourselves as one of those buses, feeling like we’re in familiar territory for a while. As we approach the third, fourth, fifth stop, we suddenly feel like the journey hasn’t been worth it; we’ve spent all this time, and we’re still in town!

The urge to get off the bus and take a taxi home rises. We’re uncomfortable. We haven’t seen anything new or gotten a great story out of it.

Instead, to bring your ideas to full fruition, we should follow Minkkinen’s suggestion: Stay on the fucking bus.

Leaving behind the familiar

In Minkkinen’s bus analogy, it’s not surprising that you aren’t persuaded in the first leg of your journey. Nor are you particularly exploring any new territory. The streets are well understood. For the writing journey, this is the safe ground of planning, mapping out, gathering your IP.

Only if you stay on the bus, and leave the city streets, do you find yourself in the otherwise unknown. You start exploring new creative grounds. When you’ve worked for a while on a project, you start to see a difference in yourself and your thinking. You’ve left the central city and have entered new, exciting territory. You discover something fresh, and start to appreciate how far you’ve come.

There’s an old saying that ships are safe in port, but that’s not what ships are for. It works for buses too (just transpose it to the local transport centre, why not). Thought leadership will make us uncomfortable precisely because it asks us to pursue ideas in ways others haven’t. And that bravery comes with rewards: being able to return and show others what you’ve learned – and then lead them on the same path.

Potential thought leaders striking it out on their own often find themselves unable to overcome their first hurdles – precisely because they don’t have a support network of peers to support them. We’ve had great success in our thought leadership programmes including the Better Book Project for this reason: if you want to fast, go alone – but if you want to go far, go together. After all, that’s what buses are for.

If you’re prepared to get on the thought leadership bus, then let’s talk. We’re ready to see more passionate change-makers leave their mark on the world – and you could be one of them.