Category: Creativity
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Discovering the work that needs to be made
I’m finally making good progress on the second draft of my next book. It feels good enough to actually discuss—and much less fragile than the first draft. To be precise, it actually feels more like the first draft of the book that it was actually meant to be. “Every block of stone has a statue…
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Building a body of work on self-acceptance
Generosity is at the heart of all creative work. It’s about giving. You can’t give what you don’t have. And if you don’t accept yourself, you can’t give much of yourself either. “Abs are made in the kitchen, championships are won on the training ground, and a sustainable body of creative work is built on…
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Creative energy: Generative mode vs. explosive mode
When I told a good friend of mine I wrote a blog every day while I worked a full-time job, they responded, “I don’t know how you find the energy.” I actually generate energy from writing the blog every day, I tried to explain. If I didn’t write the blog every day, I would have…
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Reconsider your definitions
One of my clients was a co-founder of a company that had raised $60 million in funding before they signed on my editorial studio to work with them. We met to discuss the project, and it went well—they liked the strategy and were ready to kick off. Towards the end of the meeting, he wanted…
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To minimize overthinking, set and adhere to a time constraint
Doechii made her mixtape, Alligator Bites Never Heal, in a month. She says, “If I sit with art for too long, I start to overthink. Then you start over editing. Suddenly you can find yourself with a completely different picture. That’s why I set a hard time limit. I told myself: ‘Whatever I get done…
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Leaders trust people, not AI, to be accountable
You trust a person to deliver on a promise because they’re incentivized to. If somebody doesn’t do their job, they risk losing their income. If they lose their income, they will feel pain. The incentive creates accountability. AI doesn’t feel this pain (yet?). While they’re capable of doing many things, one of its few shortcomings…
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If you’re embarrassed by your early work, that means you did it right
Anybody who does anything worth doing knows how difficult it is to get through the early work. While you have great taste, your skills aren’t at the level you need to match it yet—so you make work that falls short of your vision. It feels mildly embarrassing at the time, but as the years go…
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You won’t think your way out of overthinking
Overthinking—making and updating plans, gathering information, talking to people—is only useful for protecting you from the pain of reality and the hard work it takes to learn. It is not useful if you actually want to achieve your goal. What is useful is doing. Because you’ve already thought so much about it, you probably aren’t…