The Practice: Shipping Creative Work

by Seth Godin

Responding or reacting to incoming asks becomes the narration of your days, instead of the generous work of making your own contribution.

It might be that the most generous thing to do is to disappoint someone in the short run.

Generous doesn’t always mean saying yes to the urgent or failing to prioritize. Generous means choosing to focus on the change we seek to make.

When you own your agenda, you own it. That means you’re responsible, without excuses about why you might be hiding or explanations about why you’re busy.

Reassurance is simply a short-term effort to feel good about the likely outcome. Reassurance amplifies attachment. It shifts our focus from how we persistently and generously pursue the practice to how we maneuver to make sure that we’re successful. We focus on the fish, not the casting.

Hope is not the same as reassurance. Hope is trusting yourself to have a shot to make things better. But we can hope without reassurance. We can hope at the same time that we accept that what we’re working on right now might not work.

If you are using outcomes that are out of your control as fuel for your work, it’s inevitable that you will burn out. Because it’s not fuel you can replenish, and it’s not fuel that burns without a residue.

Resistance focuses obsessively on bad outcomes because it wants to distract us from the work at hand. Resistance seeks reassurance for the same reason. Resistance relentlessly pushes us to seek confidence, then undermines that confidence as a way to stop us from moving forward.

When you’re doing the work for someone else, to make things better, suddenly, the work isn’t about you. Jump in the water, save that kid.

But what about the professional software engineer? She writes a line of code, compiles it, sees if it works. A bug isn’t personal. It’s another bit of data. Adjust the code and repeat.

For art to be generous it must change the recipient. If it doesn’t, it’s not working (yet). But realizing it’s not working is an opportunity to make it better. The practice is agnostic about the outcome. The practice remains, regardless of the outcome.

“It’s not working (yet).” That’s the only reassurance you truly need. There’s a practice. The practice is proven, and you’ve embraced it. Now, all that’s needed is more. More time, more cycles, more bravery, more process. More of you. Much more of you. More idiosyncrasy, more genre, more seeing, more generosity. More learning. It’s not working. (Yet.)

People don’t know what you know, don’t believe what you believe, and don’t want what you want. And that’s okay. It’s impossible to be appropriately generous to everyone. Because everyone is different.

Part of the work involves leaving the safety of our own perfectly correct narrative and intentionally entering someone else’s.

And so, there’s the challenge of embracing the gulf between what you see or want or believe and what those you’re serving see, want, or believe. Because they’re never the same. And the only way to engage with this gap is to go where they are, because those you serve are unlikely to care enough to come to you.

The tech innovator has to be okay with leaving behind the laggard who’s still using a VCR. That’s okay, because the work isn’t for them.

“It’s not for you” is the unspoken possible companion to “Here, I made this.”

That’s okay. Great work isn’t popular work; it’s simply work that was worth doing.

If there are only non-believers, the reason is simple: you’re not seeing genre the way others do.

As William Gibson has said, “The future is already here—it’s just not very evenly distributed.” Every cultural change follows precisely the same uneven path.

There’s a significant gap between what the market buys and what some consider worth engaging with. It’s easy to get confused by hits, but a hit might not be your goal.

Selling is simply a dance with possibility and empathy. It requires you to see the audience you’ve chosen to serve, then to bring them what they need. They might not realize it yet, but once you engage with them, either you’ll learn what’s not working in your craft or they’ll learn that you’ve created something that they’ve been waiting for, something that is filled with magic.

Sales is about change: turning “I never heard of it” into “no” and then “yes.”

But learning to sell to other people is the single best way to learn to sell yourself on the work, on your journey to producing something good or even better than good. The juiciness lies in the objections, in seeing the gears turn, in hearing someone persuade themselves that they love what’s on offer. Ultimately, a successful sales call results in enrollment.

Enrollment is acknowledgment that we’re on a journey together.

Being hated by many (and loved by a few) is a sign that the work is idiosyncratic, worth seeking out, and worth talking about.

Our desire to please the masses interferes with our need to make something that matters.

The practice demands that we seek to make an impact on someone, not on everyone.

We’re always falling. The good news is that there’s nothing to hold onto.

Becoming unattached doesn’t eliminate our foundation. It gives us one.

No one owes us anything. Or, if they do, it’s in our interest to act as if they don’t. Believing that we’re owed something is a form of attachment. It’s a foundation for us to count on, a chip on our shoulder for us to embrace whenever we feel afraid. No one owes us applause or thanks. No one owes us money either.

Gratitude isn’t a problem. But believing we’re owed gratitude is a trap. The feeling of being owed (whether it’s true or not) is toxic. Our practice demands we reject it.

Art is the human act of doing something that might not work and causing change to happen. Work that matters. For people who care. Not for applause, not for money. But because we can.

We can begin with this: If we failed, would it be worth the journey? Do you trust yourself enough to commit to engaging with a project regardless of the chances of success? The first step is to separate the process from the outcome. Not because we don’t care about the outcome. But because we do.

How can any of us be certain? And yet, how can anyone who cares hold back?

If the problem can be solved, why worry? And if the problem can’t be solved, then worrying will do you no good. SHANTIDEVA

The time we spend worrying is actually time we’re spending trying to control something that is out of our control. Time invested in something that is within our control is called work. That’s where our most productive focus lies.

For some of us, though, on the hook is the best place to be. It’s on you. It’s on me. Our choice, our turn, our responsibility.

Show us your hour spent on the practice and we’ll show you your creative path.

A professional is not simply a happy amateur who got paid.

Leaders make art and artists lead.

Money supports our commitment to the practice. Money permits us to turn professional, to focus our energy and our time on the work, creating more impact and more connection, not less.

Those people will eagerly pay, because what we offer them is scarce and precious.

Better clients demand better work. Better clients want you to push the envelope, win awards, and challenge their expectations. Better clients pay on time. Better clients talk about you and your work. But finding better clients isn’t easy, partly because we don’t trust ourselves enough to imagine that we deserve them.

You earn better clients by becoming the sort of professional that better clients want. It’s lonely and difficult work. It’s juggling—throw and throw, and one day, the catching will take care of itself.

Who are you trying to change? What change are you trying to make? How will you know if it worked?

It might be possible to please everyone, but courageous art rarely tries.

We seek to create a change for the people we serve. The most effective way to do that is to do it on purpose.

That’s how widespread change always happens. First from the source, but mostly from the sides.

First, find ten. Ten people who care enough about your work to enroll in the journey and then to bring others along.