The Practice: Shipping Creative Work

by Seth Godin

Learn to juggle. Draw an owl. Make things better. Without regard for whether it’s going to work this time. The practice will take you where you seek to go better than any other path you can follow. And while you’re engaging in the practice, you’ll honor your potential and the support and kindness of everyone who came before you.

At the heart of the creative’s practice is trust: the difficult journey to trust in your self, the often hidden self, the unique human each of us lives with.

For the work we’d like to do, the reward comes from the fact that there is no guarantee, that the path isn’t well lit, that we cannot possibly be sure it’s going to work. It’s about throwing, not catching. Starting, not finishing. Improving, not being perfect.

When we ship our best work (at least our best in this moment), we have a chance to turn it into art. And then we have a chance to do it again. It’s a form of leadership, not management. A process without regard for today’s outcome, a commitment to the journey. You were born ready to make art. But you’ve been brainwashed into believing that you can’t trust yourself enough to do so.

committing to an action can change how we feel. If we act as though we trust the process and do the work, then the feelings will follow. Waiting for a feeling is a luxury we don’t have time for.

Often, though, the story is based on lowered expectations, the seduction of compliance, and the avoidance of failure.

Grow up in a home with low expectations and it’s possible you’ll begin to believe them.

If you want to change your story, change your actions first. When we choose to act a certain way, our mind can’t help but rework our narrative to make those actions become coherent. We become what we do.

Good processes, repeated over time, lead to good outcomes more often than lazy processes do. Focusing solely on outcomes forces us to make choices that are banal, short-term, or selfish. It takes our focus away from the journey and encourages us to give up too early.

A lifetime of brainwashing has taught us that work is about measurable results, that failure is fatal, and that we should be sure that the recipe is proven before we begin. And so we bury our dreams. We allow others to live in our head, reminding us that we are impostors with no hope of making an original contribution. Our practice begins with the imperative that we embrace a different pattern, a pattern that offers no guarantees, requiring us to find a process and to trust ourselves.

The practice has nothing at all to do with being sure the work is going to be successful. That’s a trap. The guarantee requires industrial sameness, recipes that have been tested, and most of all, the fungible labor of the disrespected laborer. If anyone can do it, then we’ll just hire anyone.

The very nature of innovation is to act as if—to act as if you’re on to something, as if it’s going to work, as if you have a right to be here. Along the way, you can discover what doesn’t work on your way to finding out what does.

Confidence is a feeling we get when we imagine that we have control over the outcome.

if you need a guarantee you’re going to win before you begin, you’ll never start.