Creative Calling: Establish a Daily Practice, Infuse Your World with Meaning, and Succeed in Work + Life

by Chase Jarvis

You’ve got to do the verb to be the noun.

If you’ve ever wondered how the most seasoned pros manage to juggle all these functions, the answer is: a calendar.

The reason it started to work? I was working.

Don’t fake it till you make it. Make it till you make it.

Deconstruct other people’s methods. Emulate the different elements. Analyze those parts to see which ones work for you. Then put the winners together and Repeat with the new formula.

In the martial arts, every student, no matter her rank, is reminded to approach learning with a beginner’s mind. Thinking in terms of some mystical perfect endpoint is an obstacle to growth. Learning is a continual, nurturing, fundamental life process, just like—and deeply entwined with—creativity.

Mastery begets mastery.

“To strip failure of its real emotional consequence is to scrub the concepts of grit and resilience of the very qualities that make them both so important: toughness, doggedness, and perseverance.”

Stay hungry, stay humble. Keep doing the work.

Hang your painting on your own damn wall.

Success is fleeting; failure is never permanent.