Creativity Archives - Page 3 of 12

Why Everyone Should Write

April 7, 2020February 28, 2024 Nik

If you’re reading this, you know how to write. And even though you picked up both in elementary school, right now, you’re likely doing too much of the former and too little of the latter.

You might write sales reports, shopping lists, and birthday cards, but none of those are really productive, are they? They’re just necessary. Ironically, all the most productive forms of writing aren’t necessary at all — but that doesn’t make them less important.

Everyone should write.

Why? So you can get rich and famous and build a personal brand and attract millions of readers? No. Everyone should write because writing imposes discipline on your thoughts and emotions.

One Day, You Will Be Enough

April 6, 2020September 25, 2023 Nik

I don’t know why you can’t let go. Why you have to keep pushing. I know it upsets you. Deeply. Why do you love excellence so much? Why can’t you be normal? Just chill out. Just for a month, pretend work doesn’t matter. Wishful thinking, that is. Of course it matters. Deeply.

You’ve gained a lot from it. You can look back on so much. Every time you do, you’re proud. You know you’ve come far. You just don’t look back enough. You should turn around more. All this reaching high, falling down, it messes with your neck and back. Stay on the ground for once, will you? Ha, as if.

To Stay Creative, Remember to Breathe

April 5, 2020February 28, 2024 Nik

“I sometimes disappear for weeks or even months at a time. When I do this, I’m not abandoning my work or being lazy. I’m just trying to breathe.”

So writes Matthew Inman, creator of the web comic The Oatmeal, in a post titled Creativity is like breathing. To explain the analogy, Inman writes: “When you make stuff, you’re exhaling. But you can’t exhale forever. Eventually, you have to breathe in. Or you’ll be dead.”

If You Only Write Listicles, You’ll Never Be a Great Writer

March 11, 2020February 28, 2024 Nik

After writing my first three blog posts, I decided it was time for an experiment. Something new. Something bigger. I would create the ultimate guide on using Google to find what you need.

I dove in. 1,000 words. 2,000 words. 3,000 words. By the time I hit 5,000, I decided to turn it into a book. I spent a week writing it. It came in at 14,000 words and over 200 screenshots.

The information was great. The examples solid. When I put it on Amazon, I sold zero copies. Of course. I had no idea about covers, descriptions, and marketing. But I’d written a book. I’m proud of it to this day.

My Google guide was a fluke. I didn’t plan for it. I had an idea, got excited, and ran with it. Still, the experience taught me an important lesson early on:

If you don’t break your own patterns, you’ll never be a great writer.

When Will You Sacrifice Good for Great?

March 9, 2020September 25, 2023 Nik

“It took a long time to blog like me.” I’ll never forget that sentence.

By the time Seth Godin dropped it in a 2016 interview, the man had written over 6,000 blog posts, publishing daily for nearly 20 years. Every time I hear him speak, I question why I do what I do.

I love writing. I want to be great at it. But I also want to ensure I can keep doing it, even if that means not doing it some of the time. And so I hedge. I diversify. I put my hands in more and more honey pots until one of them is stuck. Stuck in an average project, stuck in a new income stream, stuck trying to squeeze out another 10% gain. Of course, I’d need that hand to master the next 1% of writing. But it’s stuck so I can’t — until I let go.

If You Can’t Do Big Things for Yourself, Do Small Things for Others

March 8, 2020December 14, 2022 Nik

Your latest article flopped. Your boss criticized you in public. Your income is 30% down from the last month. It hurts, doesn’t it? To give your all and still fail. It happens to the best of us.

In moments of intense frustration, the weeks when nothing seems to be working, it’s easy to see each missed swing as a third strike. Can you ever recover? How will you come back from this?

The truth is simple and undramatic: You have a good meal, go to bed early, and show up again tomorrow. Except death, there are no third strikes in life. You’ll never have to go to the bench. You swung the bat and missed the ball. That’s all that happened. Nothing more, nothing less.

Most of all — and this is one of the best lessons you can teach yourself — hardly anyone noticed. The world doesn’t need you to be great just yet. We’ll get through the day without your grand achievement — just like you.

This isn’t to say your mission isn’t important or that you shouldn’t keep up the fight, it’s simply a reminder that, yes, it’s okay to be successful tomorrow.

There’s a story about Larry Page and Sergey Brin that, in the early days of Google, they were happy about small user numbers. “Good. Our product will be better tomorrow. Let people find us then.”

In Twitter’s first office, there was a big, upside down sign. It read, “Let’s make better mistakes tomorrow.”

Of course, right now, you don’t want to think about mistakes. You don’t want to think about tomorrow. You want to wallow in your failure. You want to steep in it like a teabag, but we all know what happens to tea that sits too long: it gets cold, bitter, and devoid of the energy it’s supposed to bring.

So what else can you do? You can take a deep breath. You can remember the world doesn’t revolve around you. You can forget yourself for a while and do something for others.

Answer your friend’s voice message from five days ago. Hold the door for someone at the grocery store. Buy flowers on the way home. Or ice cream. Or frozen pizza. Whatever makes your partner, kids, or neighbor happy.

Scan your inbox for a simple question. Instead of a one-liner, write a five-sentence response. You’ll get a beaming “Thank you!” back. Donate to your friend’s fundraiser. Their cause can use ten bucks. Recommend a good show to a colleague. They might return the favor at lunch.

When you can’t do big things for yourself, do small things for others.

It’ll take your mind off the monumentality of your task. Like that first gulp of air after being underwater, it’ll put you at ease. Then, it slowly morphs into a warm, fuzzy feeling.

Most of all, it’ll remind you: That big thing you want to achieve for yourself? It was never about you in the first place. It’ll be the result of serving others.

We look at people who make others shine and call them ‘great.’ We most respect folks who elevate others. Who step aside, time after time, and pass on the credit. The more spotlights you point towards those around you, the more we’ll love you in return.

Steve Jobs didn’t give people a new phone — he made them into pioneers, photographers, and folks with good taste. That’s why we loved him. Not because he invented some device.

Long before he was “Steve Jobs,” he too had many bad days. The latest demo crashed. The board fired him from his own company. I’m sure that, more than once, he wanted to quit. “How can I come back from this?”

But then, eventually, Steve remembered there was one more thing to do. One more task to take care of. Why aren’t the fonts perfect yet? How can we make initial setup easier? Which click can we do without?

Steve Jobs obsessed over details because it allowed him to keep going where others would have quit. It was a brilliant coping mechanism. No matter what disaster had happened, if he could get this one thing right, he still had a chance to make someone’s day.

Steve was a visionary. His commitment to innovation was remarkable. His greatness, however, rests on a million acts of service. Tiny, near-inconceivable ways of elevating the users of his products. By pushing him towards those acts — if only as a distraction in the moment — his worst days contributed as much to his success as his best ones, if not more.

If, one day, we tell your story like we tell his today, we might say the same about you. For now, remember that it’s okay to be great tomorrow. You may have failed, but it’s never too late to get back in the game.

If you want to do something big, do something small for others. True greatness is about making others shine.

What’s Your Best Thought Today?

March 5, 2020February 28, 2024 Nik

What’s your best thought today? You should write it down. Maybe not for the world but definitely for yourself.

You can put it in a diary. Or on Twitter. You can flesh it out and turn it into an article. Scribble it on a scrap of paper. Put it in a jar. 30 days, 60 days, 365 days later, take it out and look it over. You can remember. You can ask questions.

Why Are You Doing What You’re Doing?

March 3, 2020September 25, 2023 Nik

When I first dipped my toe into the world of tech, self-improvement, and online marketing, I did so out of fear.

I was terrified of an imagined, dystopian future in which I sat in a cubicle next to a huge glass window, overlooking a beautiful metropolis from the 40th floor, yet dying of boredom as each second seemed to pass slower than the last. Nothing about this future was real, and it never would have had to be, but it still scared the shit out of me — so much so that I actively started running away from it.

For the next few years, most of my career decisions were driven by that fear.

Reach High and Hope You Don’t Fall

February 25, 2020September 25, 2023 Nik

Yesterday, I went bouldering for the first time. Finally, the source of many scrawny-kid jokes in high school turned into an advantage. I’m 5’7″. I weigh 136 lbs. I’m neither tall nor strong — but my power-to-weight ratio is excellent.

I can easily do 50 push-ups or pull myself up some ledge. As it turns out, this kind of balance is exactly what you need when you’re trying to go from one set of tiny knobs to the next on a six-foot slanted wall.

After some basic, first-level trials and picking up the rules, I managed to climb some second- and even third-level problems. That’s nothing compared to expert climbers gliding up the impossibly-flat-surface elements of a level 12 wall, but, for a beginner, it’s not half bad. Still, my arms got tired after about 90 minutes, and it was almost time to go. Almost.

Diversification vs. Focus: The Hardest Tradeoff for Entrepreneurs

February 18, 2020September 25, 2023 Nik

The toughest, ongoing challenge I have as an entrepreneur is the debate in my head about what I should focus on.

Should I start another project? How much time, attention, and energy should I commit to X over Y over Z? Is it time to shut down one of my ventures, bundle my resources, and bet big on one thing? Or need I diversify more?

Besides being hard to answer for any given time frame, asking these questions is a project all on its own, a project that also takes time and energy, both of which could be spent on making actual progress at any one thing.

I don’t claim to have definitive answers, but I’ve learned a lot from my own decisions and mistakes in diversifying and focusing over the past five years. I made a long-term bet on a website that now generates a full-time income. I shut down my writing course after it made $20,000. Most of all, I think about what the word ‘balance’ means for an entrepreneur every day.

Below is a collection of my most formed ideas on the subject. I hope they’ll help you figure out when to quit and when to stick — no matter how many times you’ll have to do it.

Category: Creativity