The Practice: Shipping Creative Work

by Seth Godin

Being creative is a choice and creativity is contagious.

“One of the problems with art is that it is self-anointing: Anyone can be an artist by simply pointing to themselves

Art is the generous act of making things better by doing something that might not work.

We’ll sit back and wait to be chosen instead.

That might be because we’re waiting for it to arrive. We’re expecting it to choose us. We think the conditions have to be exactly right, since any deviance from them will cause it to evaporate.

Decisions are good even if the outcomes aren’t.

“I am _______ but they just don’t realize it yet” is totally different from “I’m not _______ because they didn’t tell me I was.”

But the only way to have a commitment is to begin.

Artists actively work to create a sense of discomfort in their audience.

“This” is not a wishy-washy concept. It’s concrete and finite. It didn’t used to exist, and now it does. This is peculiar, not generic.

These four words carry with them generosity, intent, risk, and intimacy.

Kiasu is the Hokkien word for “the fear of being left behind” or not getting enough. It’s a common affliction, not only in Singapore, where the phrase originates, but around the world. Far more than FOMO, it’s a grasping insufficiency that drives many people forward.

Of course, kiasu is actually about fear and insufficiency. And it couldn’t exist if we trusted ourselves enough to know that we’re already on a path to where we seek to go.

Our work exists to change the recipient for the better. That’s at the core of the practice.

What about your project, your gig, your organization? Who’s it for?

Once you can put yourself on the hook to commit to who you are serving, you can find the empathy to make something for them.

The hallmark of the unmindful is to react, to lash out, to spend time with no purpose or measure.

Your audience doesn’t want your authentic voice. They want your consistent voice.

Not sameness. Not repetition. Simply work that rhymes. That sounds like you.

Someone who has committed to rhyming with what they did yesterday.

The education-industrial complex has grown up around the idea that no one has the ability to create useful work without a certificate.

If we’ve been seduced into needing a credential to do the least credentialed art—improv—it’s fair to imagine that it’s endemic to our narrative.

Saturday Night Live doesn’t go on at 11:30 p.m. because it’s ready. It goes on because it’s 11:30.

It’s fine to experience regret when we abandon a sunk cost. It’s a mistake to stick with one simply because we can’t bear the regret.

your work to want to know what it rhymes with, what category it fits in, what they’re supposed to compare it to. Please put it in a container for us, they say. We call that container “genre.” That’s not a cheap shortcut; it’s a service to the person you’re seeking to change. Generic work is replaceable. A generic can of beans can come from any company, because they’re all the same. But genre permits us to be original. It gives us a framework to push against. Shawn Coyne has written brilliantly about genre. Not generic, which is boring, but genre, which gives your audience a clue as to what this work

No, 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.

Creativity doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.