Show Your Work

Those are the 10 ways to share your creativity and get discovered.

They’re also the ten chapters of the book.

Now let’s take a quick look at some of my favorite Big Ideas!

Have you ever read the obituaries?

I don’t do it daily but it’s certainly an incredible way to be reminded of just how precious and fragile life is.

Thinking about death may not be on the top of your list of things to do but, as Todd Henry says in Die Empty (see Notes), the death rate *is* hovering at 100% so we might as well embrace the fact that our lives will end and decide that NOW is the time to start living.

Here’s how Todd encourages us to make today the day: “Imagine for a moment that you will have a guest accompanying you throughout your day tomorrow. This person’s task will be to follow you around from the moment you wake up until the moment you fall asleep. They will take copious notes about your schedule, how you interact with your family and friends, how you engage in your tasks and projects, and your mind-set through it all. Once the day is over, this person will spend the next few days processing their observations, draw conclusions about your motivations, and compile their notes into a book about you that will stand as the definitive record of your life and work.

How would you act differently tomorrow if you knew that your actions and attitude on that one day were going to be a permanent testament to your life? If you’re like many people to whom I’ve posed this question, you would probably get up a little earlier, pay extra attention to your family and the barista at Starbucks, be fully vested in every meeting, be meticulous in every task, call up an old friend for lunch, reconcile with an alienated colleague, and generally wrap up loose ends.

Next I ask, ‘How does your imagined behavior compare with how you are actually living your life today?’”

Try that. It’s HUGE.

Two things here.

1. There’s no such thing as an overnight success.

Reminds me of Dave Ramsey’s gem in EntreLeader (see Notes): “If you can find someone who can stay on mission, on task, with focused intensity for an entire decade, I will show you someone who is world-class in their chosen area of endeavor. They are likely a national brand, or will be. In his great book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell writes that one of the keys to unusual heights of success is spending ten thousand hours of practice at your chosen craft. The Beatles spent countless hours playing at summer festivals before you ever heard of them; Peyton Manning, widely regarded as one of the best quarterbacks to ever play football, has been known for his work ethic since he was a child. I just won my first Marconi Award, which is essentially the Academy Award for radio, and afterward counted up that I have been on the air over ten thousand hours. Remember, you work your tail off for fifteen years and you are suddenly an overnight success.”

2. It’s ALL (!) about putting in one good day after another. Day in and day out. Consistency over intensity.

As per our last Big Idea, TODAYIS THE DAY.

How can you make today a masterpiece?

Here’s to putting in a decade’s worth of diligent, patient, persistent hustle en route to becoming an overnight success. :)

Hah. That’s awesome.

Feedback from people who care about us and our work = Great.

Feedback from people outside of that circle? Not so much.

Brené Brown gives us some wisdom on this in her great book Daring Greatly (see Notes). She tells us: “Going back to Roosevelt’s ‘Man in the Arena’ speech, I also learned that the people who love me, the people I really depend on, were never the critics who were pointing at me while I stumbled. They weren’t in the bleachers at all. They were with me in the arena. Fighting for me and with me.

Nothing has transformed my life more than realizing that it’s a waste of time to evaluate my worthiness by weighing the reaction of the people in the stands. The people who love me and will be there regardless of the outcome are within arm’s reach. This realization has changed everything.”

She also quotes her friend Scott Stratten, author of UnMarketing, who tells us: “Don’t try to win over the haters; you’re not the jackass whisperer.” <— I laugh every time I even think of that line. :)

Steven Pressfield adds some wisdom on dealing with envy-based criticism in The War of Art (see Notes). He tells us: “The professional learns to recognize envy-driven criticism and to take it for what it is: the supreme compliment. The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had the guts.”

And, we’ve gotta remember that, as Seneca tells us, the worse a person is the less he feels it. His/her criticism is really just a reflection of their own pain/frustration with themselves.

Back to you: How can you optimize your relationship to the critics in your life?

P.S. Remember that this works BOTH ways. As Pressfield says: “If you find yourself criticizing other people, you’re probably doing it out of Resistance. When we see others beginning to live their authentic lives, it drives us crazy if we have not lived out our own.

Individuals who are realized in their own lives almost never criticize others. If they speak at all, it is to offer encouragement. Watch yourself. Of all the manifestations of Resistance, most only harm ourselves. Criticism and cruelty harm others as well.”

Love that.

Why do so many great creators (from Woody Allen, Hemingway, Stephen King, Scott Adams and countless others) create every.single.day?

Simple: Momentum is our friend.

We need to build it.

And we need to sustain it.

We need to starve the trolls and FEED Mr. Mo.

Let’s use the mojo from one project to light up the next.

Here’s to chain-creating!!

Austin tells us we need to “Go away so we can come back.”

We need to turn our working/creating brain off so we can come back fresh.

We can do that in the form of a macro sabbatical where we actually take a whole year off a la academics who often do that once every 7 years (think: Sabbath!).

And…

For most of us, that’s not going to happen any time soon.

(Laughing as I type that and thinking about how different my life is these days vs. when I took my year-long sabbatical in Bali nearly 7 years ago. :)

So, let’s create micro sabbaticals!!!

Jim Loehr calls it “making waves”—where we deliberately bake in recovery throughout our days.

In A Mind for Numbers (see Notes), Barbara Oakley tells us our mind works in both “focused” + “diffuse” mode and reminds us we need to use BOTH if we want to optimize.

She tells us: “One way to think of the diffuse mode is as a base station when you are mountain climbing. Base stations are essential resting spots in the long journey to difficult mountaintops. You use them to pause, reflect, check your gear, and make sure you’ve got the right route picked out. But you would never confuse resting at a base station with the hard work of getting to the top of the mountain. In other words, just using your diffuse mode doesn’t mean you can lollygag around and expect to get anywhere. As the days and weeks pass, it’s the distributed practice—the back and forth between focused-mode attention and diffuse-mode relaxation—that does the trick.”

#1 diffuse-mode base camp trick?

SLEEP. (Yes, sleep.)

It’s where a TON of magic happens. Other great ways to make waves include heading to the gym, taking naps, a bath or shower, going for a walk or hike, reading, etc.

Your favorite?

How can you make that a bigger part of your days as we bake in micro sabbaticals?!

That’s from the 10th and final chapter: “Stick Around.”

There’s NO WAY we’re going to create all the impact we want if we keep on stopping. We need to persist. We need to stop stopping.

Can you see the magic of taking a long-term view and vowing to play all the way through?

Let’s do that.

I. LOVE. That.

Reminds me of Confucius. In The Analects (see Notes), he tells us: “The Master said, He does not mind not being in office; all he minds about is whether he has qualities that entitle him to office. He does not mind failing to get recognition; he is too busy doing the things that entitle him to recognition.”

What can youdo to make yourself more worthy of being followed?

Seriously. What’s the #1 thing you could start doing today?