The Arc of the Practical Creator - More To That

With the advent of blogs, social media, YouTube channels, and other distribution platforms, you no longer had to rely on gatekeepers to attract people to your curiosities. Your uniqueness became an asset, not a liability. And as more creator-friendly tools were introduced into the landscape, it expanded your ability to make money doing something yo... See more

Patience is only possible when you have the requisite headspace to cultivate it, and having your financial needs covered is absolutely critical for this.

This is because you’re now on the Great Plateau. It’s the flat place in the arc where you’re actualizing your creative potential, but are not seeing the practical results of that effort. The customers aren’t pouring in, the audience isn’t growing, people don’t seem to care. The energy invested doesn’t align with expected outcomes, and this situatio... See more

The Renaissance gave birth to some of the greatest artists humankind has ever known: Leonardo Da Vinci, Titian, Michelangelo, the list goes on. While their talent and skill was undeniable, what was equally important was that they had the mental capacity to explore their work in great depth. In order to do this, their attention needed to be free fro... See more

A Practical Creator doesn’t view a boring job as a dead-end endeavor, but as an active patron of their creativity. In the same way that wealthy families support the financial needs of their favorite artists, the same could be said about you and your employer. You exchange your time for money, which is then used to purchase the clarity of attention ... See more

In the first stage, to be patient is to accept this tradeoff: You are exchanging a majority of your workday for money, which buys you the freedom required to spend the minority of your day on your creative endeavor.

But when determination, patience, and progress blend together, something amazing happens. The shape of the Great Plateau begins to change, and what was previously the flatness of despair shifts into an incline of hope. People really start to care, your audience regularly reaches out, and a viable career path emerges.

This means that a significant time delay must be introduced between the expenditure of effort and the arrival of rewards. This goes against everything we’ve been conditioned to experience, so we often give up on our creative pursuits well before they’ve had the required time to catch people’s attention.

Schopenhauer once said that humanity is defined by our tendency to restlessly strive , but I think he was only partially right. Striving is in our nature, but it doesn’t mean that it’s restless.