This is indeed a difficult problem. Many artists give up because it is just too excruciating to wait until critics or galleries take notice and pass judgment on their canvases. Research scientists drift away from pure science because they cannot tolerate the long cycles of insecurity before reviewers and editors evaluate their results. So how can they experience flow without external information about their performance? The solution seems to be that those individuals who keep doing creative work are those who succeed in internalizing the field’s criteria of judgment to the extent that they can
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