I’m a creative, so I know well the pains of a creative life.
Impossible expectations, relentless self criticism and, above all, the paralysing grip of fear—the lizard brain.
We deny it’s fear though. It’s easier to make up excuses that deny the existence of fear, than it is to admit to the terror of exposure by putting our work, and by extension ourselves, out there.
Our most common stalling tactic is, “It’s not good enough.”
Seth Godin is right—shipping matters above all else.
The person who ships, and fails, the most, wins.
Now the tricky part of this is your concept of ‘winning’—success.
You can fuck yourself up by not acknowledging, examining and addressing an unconsciously preconceived or culturally programmed idea of success.
I used to believe that success was defined by money and eyeballs.
Now I have a much simpler aspiration—to love what I do and create, and to strive to do my very best at both every day.
“What about money?” you ask.
Let me put it this way.
If you want to create amazing work, you need to:
- Focus on your creative output. Every. Day.
- Slog at your creative process. Every. Day.
Every creative starts out with shit work.
The only way through is via sheer perseverance and the slog of practice through repeated shipping and failure.
There’s no escaping it. Practice makes perfect. Talent is interesting but ultimately irrelevant if you never ship.
Now, if you don’t love your creative process or output, you’re going to be hard pressed to get from shit to amazing.
I won’t lie. Sometimes you have to scratch money from the equation, at least at the beginning for some, and for others, the possibility of forever.
It depends on what you want.
If you are focused on money and attention, like it or not, you’re not focused on what matters—your craft and what it takes to get from shit to amazing.
I struck money out of my writing late last year and experienced an incredible change in both my creativity and productivity.
- Fear and criticism decreased.
- Commitment and productivity increased.
- Clarity and inspiration skyrocketed.
Freed from the self-imposed constraints of fear and ego, I was finally able to view my work from a realistic and pragmatic point of view.
Today, I love my 48-hourly, self-assigned deadline to publish a post here every other day. I find it easy to sit down and write for the sake of honing my craft every day.
Not all my posts are sterling. That’s not the point. The point is to ship and to learn and improve from the repeated process of shipping.
You need to ask yourself:
- What do I really want? A tangible result I can work on, or a constipated dream that frustrates me?
- What is success to me? Does it encourage or inhibit my ability to do the work and ship?
- Do I love what I create? Enough to create it for its own sake, even when imperfect?
- Do I love my creative process? Even when it’s hard? Or do I fight with it and have to force myself unwillingly and unhappily?
- Do I make excuses to avoid the daily discipline of practice and shipping?
Here’s a little pamphlet by Seth Godin entitled Ship it to get you started.
