-
More art, less stock
If you want to elevate your work, one simple way is to find a piece of art to accompany it. Not another free stock image. There is plenty of great art in the public domain. Here are three good places to find them: Public Work Openverse Artvee
-
Keep your promises to yourself
When you tell yourself that you’re going to do something, you need to get it done. A good promise usually fits into some patterns. Here are three, amongst may others, that work for me (that I’m writing in second person): A friend of mine once wrote, “How you do anything is how you do everything.”…
-
Is time on your side?
Is your business position getting stronger by the day? Is your advantage growing? Do you feel more comfortable and relaxed? Are you spending more time doing the things you want to do? Are you getting tangibly closer and closer to your goal? Or are you paranoid about when the current sales contracts end? Are you…
-
Avoid sitting with rejection
In 2007, Katy Milkman was in the middle of her doctoral degree at Harvard when she got bad news. Her manuscript, which she’d worked on for two years, was rejected by the journal she had submitted it to. She wasn’t sure what to do next and consulted her academic advisor, Max Bazerman. Bazerman assured her…
-
Staying in practice
I’ve written about how confidence emerges from competence, and how it’s helpful to build confidence on a foundation of practice. These two posts come to mind when I watched Ryan Leslie’s recent Tiny Desk concert: Almost a decade after he pivoted away from a conventional recording artist career and into a more business-oriented one (including…
-
Find people who need the best idea
The trailer for Thor: Ragnarok closes with Thor bracing himself for his opponent. He finds out that it’s his fellow Avenger, the Hulk. Thor screams in relief and celebration, “We know each other! He’s a friend from work!” That was one of the best lines in the movie, and it wasn’t in the script. It…
-
Three good ways to let go of expectations
I was recently speaking about Creative Doing at a workshop, and had suggested that participants would be better off lowering their expectations for what their creative work would do for them. One participant responded by asking, “What are some good ways to let go of expectations?” Three prompts come to mind for practicing letting go…
-
What can you demo?
At some point in the future, you’ll probably need to help someone understand something you want to do. For example, you may need to pitch an idea to someone. A great way to think about this is to build a demo—the closest approximation to your idea that you can make with a few resources and…
-
Make another option
A nice way to think about making something new is simply to show up to the marketplace with a new option. That thing you’re making is just an option for the customer that happens to express what you want. If people happen to like and buy your option, that’s great. If they don’t, that’s fine…
-
Unscheduled and flexible
When I recently started a new newsletter, Three Thought Starters, I originally intended to send an email out every Sunday. I was very excited, because I’d been planning to put a newsletter out for months. Things were coming along nicely, and my subscribers received the first few issues very positively. After a few weeks, I…