The Practice: Shipping Creative Work

by Seth Godin

the parts you can’t control.

We’re a community of critics and tweakers and tinkerers.

get a pencil.

The only way to get through the steps is to do the steps.

Generic is a trap, but genre is a lever.

There’s plenty of time to make it better later. Right now, your job is to make it.

Find your streak and maintain it.

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

Find your cohort. The generous ones.

The challenge, then, is to have one superpower.

Fortunately, it’s now possible to easily outsource many of the things you’re not very good at, so that you can simulate a level of sanity and professionalism to the outside world.

You’ll need to trust that this process makes it possible, and trust that you’re the one to do it.

it’s vital we acknowledge that we can unteach bravery and creativity and initiative.

You can learn to learn.

It’s absurd to go to a book group meeting and opine about a book you didn’t read.

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.

Creativity doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.

But 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.

That’s because it’s constraints that enable us to create art.

Art solves problems in a novel way, and problems always have constraints.

Have you ever noticed that big-budget comedies are almost never funny?

The practice is its own reward.

only the effort is under our control. The results are not.

you are in charge of the change you make in the world.

the only way to know it’s an edge is to cross it.

If You Had Tomorrow to Do Over Again, Would You?

You have everything you need to make magic.

Go make a ruckus.