Category: Creator Confidential
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It’s never too late
Ke Huy Quan, on restarting his acting career at 49: “For the longest time, I believed that I didn’t like acting anymore, until I started seeing my fellow Asian actors succeeding. I go: ‘Wow, time has changed. We are getting not just very stereotypical roles but meaningful roles, meaty roles.’ It wasn’t until then that…
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Printing lottery tickets
Here’s something that’s difficult to be honest about: Positive outcomes can’t be entirely designed or engineered. Sometimes they need exploration, discovery, and curiosity. These projects probably won’t have clear payoffs or immediate expected value; in fact, most of the time, they won’t. But with each project and insight, you’re also opening up new possible futures…
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Unblocking creativity with motivation and incentives
When I write every day at my blog, I only write things I’d write for free, which means it’s for fun. When I tried to write every day at Medium, I was writing each article as an instrument to make money. Even though the end result might sound the same—I’m writing every day—the experience is…
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Making a movie
Let’s say you’re working a full-time job and, over the past year, have been inspired by something you learned about your family or your friends, or something that you experienced. You decide you want to make a movie. How would you approach it? Would you brave against the odds of the traditional film system, and…
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“Why don’t we also…?”
The extra step sounds simple enough. It’s two words. It’s high leverage. People think it’ll bring a ton more value to the process. And it will! Except, of course, if you can’t make that step happen. “Get published.” “Pitch publications.” “Meet influencers.” Even if there’s an opportunity to work together, things stall. At best, collaborations…
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Simple technology and elbow grease
A little bit of personal beats a lot of personalization. I’d be willing to bet that a trained salesperson who built rapport with you will be more effective than an abandoned cart email, even though the latter is most scalable. A salesperson might take photos of the items you told them you liked, and send…
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Good is good enough
Doing something well is very different than doing something perfectly. In many cases, good is more than enough to get you started in the direction you want to go. If you need to do something perfectly in order to achieve your goal, your process isn’t tight enough yet. Something’s missing.
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Again, and again, and again
One of the simplest, and most challenging, ways to enlist luck on your side is to try again. I’m not saying to repeat yourself in exactly the same way, or to be nagging and annoying. I’m saying to give it another shot. Do another art show. Write another blog post. Send another email. In Twelve…
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Pay for information
I bought a lot of books in my 20s, and I wish I spent more money on learning. For example, I wish I gained more information through courses, paid for greater access to private groups (and gaining proximity), and went to more conferences. Asking to grab coffee with people is nice, but you really start…
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Exploring vs. exploiting
Specificity and focus are praised in our culture. For good reason, of course—in some cases, specificity helps us get to the finish line, and focus enables us to actually get things done. Sometimes we really are spread too thin, ineffectively juggling between several projects and subsequently making meaningful progress on none of them. Last year,…