Making a small piece of art isn’t necessarily hard, especially if you’ve done it before. Making a small drawing might take a few hours. A first draft of a short story might take an afternoon. Creating an interesting guitar riff—a few minutes.
How long it takes to finish a tiny work of art will depend somewhat on our skill. But more important than skill, is focus. How fast we finish things often has more to do with how distractible we are.
The gift in this experiment is not the artwork at the end of it. It’s that we realise just how unfocused we are. But focus can honed. And making a tiny piece of art is one step towards better focus. It is a way to build awareness, a way to exercise our mindfulness muscle.
Eventually, finishing things become easier.