The Practice: Shipping Creative Work

by Seth Godin

The magic of the creative process is that there is no magic

It’s so much easier to say, “It’s just me.” It’s simply what I felt like creating. Because then we’ll ignore you. And then you’re off the hook.

It’s not that Gil’s songs are better than yours, or that Hemingway’s writing is better than yours. It’s that they shipped their work, and you hesitated.

Of course, at first, all work is lousy. At first, the work can’t be any good—not for you and not for Hemingway. But if you’re the steam shovel that keeps working at it, bit by bit, you make progress, the work gets done, and more people are touched.

There’s plenty of time to make it better later. Right now, you...

As a company grows, the number of meetings grows even faster, eventually reaching a point where so many meetings are taking place that paralysis kicks in.

the real reason is this: Meetings are a great place to hide. Meetings are where we go to wait for someone else to take responsibility. Meetings are a safe haven, a refuge from what might happen.

Over the last two decades, network TV executives held meetings where ideas went to die.

Build streaks. Do the work every single day. Blog daily. Write daily. Ship daily.

Show up daily. Find your streak and maintain it.

Talk about your streaks to k...

Seek the smallest viable audience. Make it for someo...

Avoid shortcuts. Seek the most direct...

Find and embrac...

Seek out desirable di...

Don’t talk about your dreams with people who want to protect ...

In December 2014, French musician Joël Roessel discovered something of monumental interest to vegans everywhere: you can take the water that’s left in a can of chickpeas, called aquafaba, and turn it into foam . . . and then use it for whipped cream and other concoctions.

Assertions are the foundation of the design and creation process. You can assert that a poem will help a teenager feel less lonely. You can assert that launching a conference on Ethereum will be useful and profitable. And you can assert that it might be worth asking a certain kind of music fan to listen to your new song.

Jones turned her patents (she had more than any other woman of the 1800s) into the Women’s Canning and Preserving Company, which was 100 percent owned and staffed by women. In the first three months, they shipped 24,000 orders.

We talk about ego like it’s a bad thing. Egomania is a bad thing. It’s the narcissism that comes from only seeing yourself, from believing that you are immortal, invulnerable, and deserving of all good things that come your way. Or the feeling that all the art is for you and for you alone. But ego? Ego is required for us to find the guts to make an assertion. What right do you have to speak up and offer to make things better? What right to imagine that you have something to contribute? What right to plow through the process, from helpless beginner to floundering mediocrity to working professional? I think you have every right. In fact, I think you have an obligation. That’s why we share our planet with you. Because we’re counting on you to make an assertion and to contribute your work to make things better.

An assertion is not a statement of authority. Managers have authority, so they don’t need to make assertions; they simply make announcements. But as a creative, you lead without authority. Instead, you rely on the wisdom of your insight and the desire you have to accept responsibility.

In fact, there were two key differences between great competitors and good ones: Skill. The best swimmers swim differently than the ones who don’t perform as well. They do their strokes differently; they do their turns differently. These are learned and practiced skills. Attitude. The best swimmers bring a different attitude to their training. They choose to find delight in the parts that other swimmers avoid.

Cultural standards and normalization have enormous power over whether we choose a practice and how we find the guts to commit to our work.

Most of the famous painters of the Renaissance came to Florence for a reason as well. When you’re surrounded by respected peers, it’s more likely you’ll do the work you set out to do. And if you’re not, consider finding some.

In a couple of sentences, these two men—idols of mine—had wiped away five years of doubt.

“You can choose anyone and we’re anyone” is not a useful way to earn customers, patrons, or supporters.

When we think of an artist we admire, we’re naming someone who stands for something. And to stand for something is to commit.

first, each of us must choose. Choose the skill we’re going to assert to the outside world.

Ultimately, the goal is to become the best in the world at being you. To bring useful idiosyncrasy to the people you seek to change, and to earn a reputation for what you do and how you do it. The peculiar version of you, your assertions, your art.

Isn’t it possible for the culture to normalize goal setting and passion and curiosity and the ability to persuade? It can.

Are you aware of what the reading (your reading) must include? What’s on the list? The more professional your field, the more likely it is that people know what’s on the list. The reading isn’t merely a book or journal, of course. The reading is what we call it when you do the difficult work of learning to think with the best, to stay caught up, to understand. The reading exposes you to the state of the art. The reading helps you follow a through line of reasoning and agree, or even better, challenge it. The reading takes effort. If you haven’t done the reading, why expect to be treated as a professional?

The line between an amateur and professional keeps blurring, but for me, the posture of understanding both the pioneers and the state of the art is essential. Skill is earned.

Good taste is the ability to know what your audience or clients are going to want before they do. Good taste comes from domain knowledge, combined with the guts and experience to know where to veer from what’s expected.

The shortcut, available to almost no one, is to simply create for yourself. If what you like and what the client likes are always in sync, you’re in great shape . . . but almost always, over time, they drift apart, and so we end up with Liberace or Lou Reed. It’s still creative work, but the clients fade away.

Brian Koppelman, the renowned screenwriter and showrunner, has seen more movies than you have. He may have seen more movies than anyone I’ve ever met. And that’s not merely a sign of passion. His understanding of what’s come before gives him the platform and the standing to help figure out what’s going to come next.

Growing up, I read every single book in the science fiction section of the Clearfield Public Library. From Asimov to Zelazny, all of them. Ten years later, when I launched a line of science fiction computer games, the domain knowledge opened the door to understanding what might work.

The point is not to copy, but in fact to avoid copying. Our best commercial work reminds people ...

Creativity doesn’t repeat itself, b...

The peculiarity is specific and consistent.

It’s not duplicative or repetitive. But it rhymes. Just about every frame shows the fingerprints (and idiosyncrasy) of its creators.

We’re under short-term pressure to remove all identifying marks. But in fact, the work that stands the test of time and finds its audience is filled with...

without constraints, we’re left with no tension and no chance for innovation or surprise.

All creative work has constraints, because all creativity is based on using existing constraints to find new solutions.

Susan Kare was given 1,024 squares. That’s it: 32 × 32, a simple grid. Using graph paper and a pencil, she created the personality of the Mac, and based on her innovations, every computing device you’ve used over the last few decades. She built the first popular bitmap fonts, the tiny little folders, paint brushes, and smiling faces that we associate with using a smart device. Someone might have seen the limits and whined about the lack of color or resolution. Susan, acting as a professional, saw the limits of 1,024 squares and smiled, because she knew that boundaries create a platform for important work.

It would have been easy to lift the constraints, but the very tension the discomfort caused created the energy the band was looking for. And the record spent more than two years on the charts.

The first instinct the generous creative may have is to ask for an extension. To insist on more colors, more leverage, more time. To rail against the boundaries that fence us in, because if we just had a little more wiggle room, then we’d really be able to do something magical.

But . . . some of the most important work goes on in live theater, a room with no retakes, no special effects, and a tiny budget. That’s because it’s constraints that enable us to create art. Art solves problems in a novel way, and problems always have constraints.

It’s dark and cold outside the box. But the edge of the box? The edge of the box gives you leverage. When you find the edge of the box, you’re in the place that has scared away those that came before you. It’s from this edge that you can turn the constraint into an advantage, instead of an excuse.

The original Monty Python TV show was hamstrung by constraints. It was short, it had a tiny budget, it had nothing but an ensemble cast, it was shot in black and white, and it had virtually no promotion. But, in fact, the very thing the show had going for it was the constraints. Because expectations were so low, the cast and writers had very little oversight. Precisely because no one was expecting very much, they got away with quite a bit. The same thing happened with their biggest hit movie. The budget was too small, the sets and costumes were laughable, and the ending appears to have been made up in the editing room. And that’s why the coconuts worked. Have you ever noticed that big-budget comedies are almost never funny?

The change we seek to make can feel small indeed, but it all ripples. One record, one interaction, one person . . . it might be enough.