The Practice: Shipping Creative Work

“Do what you love” is for amateurs. “Love what you do” is the mantra for professionals.

The first thing is making exactly what you want, for you. And the second thing is making something for those you seek to connect and change. Pursuing either is fine. Pursuing both is a recipe for unhappiness, because what you’re actually doing is insisting that other people want what you want and see what you see.

Creativity is a choice, it’s not a bolt of lightning from somewhere else.

Being accepted and admired by your specific audience is another sort of good—and for most of us, this is actually enough.

working in anticipation of what we’ll get in return takes us out of the world of self-trust and back into the never-ending search for reassurance and the perfect outcome. We believe that we need a guarantee, and that the only way to get that guarantee is with external feedback and results. It draws our eye to the mirror instead of the work.

“You have two options,” she told Rolling Stone, “You can stay the same and protect the formula that gave you your initial success. They’re going to crucify you for staying the same. If you change, they’re going to crucify you for changing. But staying the same is boring. And change is interesting. So of the two options,” she concluded cheerfully, “

Isn’t that what we’re here to do? To do work we’re proud of. To put ourselves on the hook. To find the contribution we’re capable of. The only way to be on this journey is to begin. But there isn’t a guarantee. In fact, most of what we seek to do will not work. But our intent—the intent of being of service, of making things better, of building some

Ship creative work. On a schedule. Without attachment and without reassurance.

The practice is not the means to the output, the practice is the output, because the practice is all we can control.