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The Practice: Shipping Creative Work

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The Practice: Shipping Creative Work

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A genius is the one most like himself. THELONIOUS MONK

Realer than real, truer than true. STEVEN PRESSFIELD

The practice is not the means to the output, the practice is the output, because the practice is all we can control. The practice demands that we approach our process with commitment. It acknowledges that creativity is not an event, it’s simply what we do, whether or not we’re in the mood. Sculptor Elizabeth King said it beautifully, “Process saves us from the poverty of our intentions.”

For most of us, that pattern was set a long time ago. We chose to embrace a story about compliance and convenience, the search for status in a world constrained by scarcity.

It is a persistent, stepwise approach that we pursue for its own sake and not because we want anything guaranteed in return.

process that takes us where we hope to go. This practice is a journey without an external boss. Because there’s no one in charge, this path requires us to trust ourselves—and more importantly, our selves—instead.

The Bhagavad-Gita says, “It is better to follow your own path, however imperfectly, than to follow someone else’s perfectly.”

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.

As John Gardner wrote, “The renewal of societies and organizations can go forward only if someone cares.”

When you choose to produce creative work, you’re solving a problem. Not just for you, but for those who will encounter what you’ve made. By putting yourself on the hook, you’re performing a generous act. You are sharing insight and love and magic. And the more it spreads, the more it’s worth to all of those who are lucky enough to experience your contribution. Art is something we get to do for other people.

Skill is not the same as talent. A good process can lead to good outcomes, but it doesn’t guarantee them. Perfectionism has nothing to do with being perfect. Reassurance is futile. Hubris is the opposite of trust. Attitudes are skills. There’s no such thing as writer’s block. Professionals produce with intent. Creativity is an act of leadership. Leaders are imposters. All criticism is not the same. We become creative when we ship the work. Good taste is a skill. Passion is a choice.

Practicing how to throw. Getting good at throwing. If you get good enough at throwing, the catching takes care of itself.

Our work is about throwing. The catching can take care of itself.

For the important work, the instructions are always insufficient. 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.

Being creative is a choice and creativity is contagious.

Art is the work we do where there is no right answer—and yet the journey is worth the effort. We might make art with a keyboard, with a paintbrush, or with our actions. Mostly, we do it because we lean into a practice, trusting we have a shot at making a difference. We do it without a guarantee, with simply a practice we’ve chosen to commit to.

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

Your work is too important to be left to how you feel today.

Waiting for a feeling is a luxury we don’t have time for.

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.

If we condition ourselves to work without flow, it’s more likely to arrive. It all comes back to trusting our self to create the change we seek. We don’t agree to do that after flow arrives. We do the work, whether we feel like it or not, and then, without warning, flow can arise. Flow is a symptom of the work we’re doing, not the cause of it.

The trap is this: only after we do the difficult work does it become our calling. Only after we trust the process does it become our passion. “Do what you love” is for amateurs. “Love what you do” is the mantra for professionals.

Lost in this obsession with outcome is the truth that outcomes are the results of process. Good processes, repeated over time, lead to good outcomes more often than lazy processes do.

The world’s worst boss might very well be you. Because the most important boss whom each of us answers to is ourselves.

You would never work for somebody who treats you the way that you treat your self.

A good decision is based on what we know of the options and the odds. A good outcome happens or it doesn’t: it is a consequence of the odds, not the hidden answer.

Just as a good process doesn’t guarantee the outcome you were hoping for, a good decision is separate from what happens next.

Decisions are good even if the outcomes aren’t.

Reassurance is futile—and focusing on outcomes at the expense of process is a shortcut that will destroy your work.

Requiring control over external events is a recipe for heartache and frustration. Worse, if you need a guarantee you’re going to win before you begin, you’ll never start. The alternative is to trust the process, to do our work with generosity and intent, and to accept every outcome, the good ones as well as the bad. Yes, you’re an imposter. But you’re an imposter acting in service of generosity, seeking to make things better.

The only choice we have is to begin. And the only place to begin is where we are. Simply begin. But begin.

The truth is simpler: If you want to be a leader, then lead. If you want to be a writer, then write. “I am of service” is something each of us can choose to become. It only takes a moment to begin. And once you begin, you are.

There’s nothing magic about being eleven years old. Except that it’s easier to develop an identity when you don’t have to walk away from one you’ve already developed.

“So far” and “not yet” are the foundation of every successful journey.

Trust is a commitment to the practice, a decision to lead and make change happen, regardless of the bumps in the road, because you know that engaging in the practice is better than hiding from it.

We develop trust over time. Our interactions lead to expectations, and those expectations, repeated and supported, turn into trust.

Trust earns you patience, because once you trust yourself, you can stick with a practice that most people can’t handle.

At some point, the professional has to bring home the fish. That’s the fuel that permits the professional to show up each day. But the catch is the side effect of the practice itself. Get the practice right, and your commitment will open the door for the market to engage with your work.

“Process saves us from the poverty of our intentions,”

The world conspires to hold us back, but it can’t do that without our permission.

Selling can feel selfish. We want to avoid hustling people, and so it’s easy to hold back in fear of manipulating someone. Here’s an easy test for manipulation: if the people you’re interacting with discover what you already know, will they be glad that they did what you asked them to?

Artists have a chance to make things better by making better things.

A scarcity mindset simply creates more scarcity, because you’re isolating yourself from the circle of people who can cheer you on and challenge you to produce more. Instead, we can adopt a mindset of abundance. We can choose to realize that creativity is contagious—if you and I are exchanging our best work, our best work gets better. Abundance multiplies. Scarcity subtracts. A vibrant culture creates more than it takes.

Our culture is like that village. Ideas shared are ideas that spread, and ideas that spread change the world.

The easiest way to go through life is to let life go through you.

The same is true for learning. True learning (as opposed to education) is a voluntary experience that requires tension and discomfort (the persistent feeling of incompetence as we get better at a skill).

Discomfort is the feeling we all get just before change happens. But this new form of hospitality—of helping people change by taking them somewhere new—can make us personally uncomfortable as well. It might feel easier to simply ask people what they want and do that instead.

Problems have solutions. That’s what makes them problems. A problem without a solution isn’t a problem, it’s simply a situation. Solvable problems are usually solved by surprising, non-trivial alternatives. If an obvious solution from an obvious source could have provided an answer, it would have happened already. Instead, it’s the unlikely approaches—the odd combinations that come from diversity—that often win the day.

Without your specific contributions, our diversity of approach and experience fades away.

“Here, I made this.” To trust yourself enough to ship the work. Of course, it might not work. That’s built into the process. Do it anyway. And then do it again. If you care enough, it’s worth doing as many times as it takes.

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.

Once you choose which subgroup to tell your story to, which subgroup needs to change, this group becomes your focus. What do they believe? What do they want? Who do they trust? What’s their narrative? What will they tell their friends? The more concise and focused you are at this stage, the more likely it is that you’re actually ready to make change happen. Empathy again. The practical empathy of creating work that resonates with the people you seek to serve.

Once we know who it’s for, it’s easier to accept that we have the ability and responsibility to bring positive change to that person. Not to all people, not to create something that is beyond criticism, but for this person, this set of beliefs, this tribe.

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.

It turns out that the believers are tired of being ignored and they’re eager to cheer you on.

We’re hiding because we’re afraid, because we don’t see the world the way the person we’re working with does.

Maybe the fear of a new technology is sufficient for someone to hesitate and wait until the neighbors go first.

The process of shipping creative work demands that we truly hear and see the dreams and desires of those we seek to serve. After understanding what our people want, we have a choice. We can build with empathy and work with their dreams, or we can choose to move on, to determine the vision is not for them, and to make something else for someone else. To cause change to happen, we have to stop making things for ourselves and trust the process that enables us to make things for other people. We need the practical empathy of realizing that others don’t see what we see and don’t always want what we want.

But just because we can’t be sure doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

Intentional action demands a really good reason. Find a who, make an assertion, and execute your work to deliver on that promise. You can’t find a good reason until you know what you’re trying to accomplish.

Instinct is great. It’s even better when you work on it.

We do our best work with intention.

This is a practice. It has a purpose. I desire to create change. The change is for someone specific. How can I do it better? Can I persist long enough to do it again? Repeat.

There is nothing authentic about the next thing you’re going to say or do or write. It’s simply a calculated effort to engage with someone else, to contribute, or to cause a result.

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. We make a promise and we keep it.

Determine who it’s for. Learn what they believe, what they fear, and what they want. Be prepared to describe the change you seek to make. At least to yourself. Care enough to commit to making that change. Ship work that resonates with the people it’s for. Once you know whom it’s for and what it’s for, watch and learn to determine whether your intervention succeeded. Repeat.

If you’re headed to graduate school to get a master’s, you might be better off spending those two years actually doing the work instead.

This desire for external approval and authority directly undermines your ability to trust yourself, because you’ve handed this trust over to an institution instead.

By ignoring excuses, regardless of how valid they are, they’ve managed to get back on track and do their work. The truth: if a reason doesn’t stop everyone, it’s an excuse, not an actual roadblock.

If your story isn’t working for you, you can find a better one to take its place.

Getting rid of your typos, your glitches, and your obvious errors is the cost of being in the game. But the last three layers of polish might be perfectionism, not service to your audience. Failure is the foundation of our work.

But the only way to find something new is to be prepared (or even eager) to be wrong on our way to being right.

Every creator who has engaged in the practice has a long, nearly infinite string of failures. All the ways not to start a novel, not to invent the light bulb, not to transform a relationship. Again and again, creative leaders fail. It is the foundation of our work. We fail and then we edit and then we do it again.

All of us have a narrative—one about who to trust, or what’s likely to happen next, or how to do our work. The practice reworks our narrative into something that helps us get to where we seek to go.

Our narrative informs our choices, our commitments, and most of all, our ability to make a difference in the culture. It’s the frame we use to interpret the world around us.

It’s hard to get blocked when you’re moving. Even if you’re not moving in the direction that you had in mind that morning.

Play to keep playing. Each step is movement on a journey that we can only hope will continue. The infinite game has no winners or losers, no time clock or scoreboard. It is simply a chance to trust ourselves enough to participate.

“No” is our attempt to regain control, but it means we’ve abandoned the process as we chase an outcome instead.

Not because it’s perfect. But because it’s 11:30. We promised. The process, not the outcome. That’s the heart of our practice. Good process leads to good outcomes.

When you’re consistent in who it’s for and what it’s for, you can claim the high ground and clearly say, “It’s not for you.”

Sunk costs are real, but sunk costs must be ignored.

You are not your work. Your work is a series of choices made with generous intent to cause something to happen. We can always learn to make better choices.

We don’t write because we feel like it. We feel like it because we write.

Write more. Write about your audience, your craft, your challenges. Write about the trade-offs, the industry, and your genre. Write about your dreams and your fears. Write about what’s funny and what’s not. Write to clarify. Write to challenge yourself. Write on a regular schedule. Writing isn’t the same as talking, because writing is organized and permanent. Writing puts you on the hook. Don’t you want to be on the hook?

Determination of the will opens the door for us to trust ourselves enough to actually find the words.

External success only exists to fuel our ability to do the work again.

The internet brings uninvited energy, positive and negative, to the work we set out to do. It opens an infinite spigot of new ideas, new tools, and new people for the project.

If you want to create your work, it might pay to turn off your wi-fi for a day. To sit with your tools and your boundaries and your process and nothing else. There is time to engage with the world after we do our work, but right now, we fill the cup and we empty the cup. We sit and type and then we type some more.

Flow is the result of effort. The muse shows up when we do the work. Not the other way around. Set up your tools, turn off the internet, and go back to work.

Desirable difficulty is the hard work of doing hard work. Setting ourselves up for things that cause a struggle, because we know that after the struggle, we’ll be at a new level. Learning almost always involves incompetence. Shortly before we get to the next level, we realize that we’re not yet at that level and we feel insufficient. The difficulty is real, and it’s desirable if our goal is to move forward.

The commitment, then, is to sign up for days, weeks, or years of serial incompetence and occasional frustration. To seek out desirable difficulty on our way to a place where our flow is actually productive in service of the change we seek to make.

We continue to focus on process, not solely on outcomes. If the process is right, the outcome will inevitably follow. Chop wood, carry water. Anchor up. “Yes, and.” Ignore the parts you can’t control.

Instead of saying, “I’m stuck, I can’t come up with anything good,” it’s far more effective to say, “I’ve finished this, and now I need to make it better.” Or possibly, “I finished this, and it can’t be made better, but now I’m ready to do the new thing, because look at all I’ve learned.” This is the story of every human innovation. This is the story of every good idea, every new project, every pop song, every novel. There was a bad idea. And then there was a better one. If you want to complain that you don’t have any good ideas, please show me all your bad ideas first.

Instead of focusing on a masterpiece, ask yourself, What’s the smallest unit of available genius? What’s the bar of music, the typed phrase, the personal human interaction that makes a difference?

And thus the idea of morning pages, of typing up everything that comes to mind, or the “yes, and” of improv. Each of these tactics is a way of persuading the other half of our brain that we’re actually capable of doing this work on demand. We promise to ship, we don’t promise the result.

  1. Genre, not Generic The world is too busy to consider your completely original conception. The people you bring your work to want to know what it rhymes with, what category it fits in, what they’re supposed to compare it to.

Genre is a box, a set of boundaries, something the creative person can leverage against. The limits of the genre are the place where you can do your idiosyncratic work. To make change happen, the artist must bend one of those boundaries, one of those edges. Generic is a trap, but genre is a lever.

Transformation begins with leverage. And you get leverage by beginning with genre.

Before we can begin to make it different, we have to begin with what’s the same. Humans and chimps share almost all the same DNA. More than 98 percent is identical. What makes us not a chimp is the last little bit. That’s all you need. The smallest viable breakthrough.

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.

A Roundup of Tips and Tricks for Creators Build streaks. Do the work every single day. Blog daily. Write daily. Ship daily. Show up daily. Find your streak and maintain it. Talk about your streaks to keep honest. Seek the smallest viable audience. Make it for someone, not everyone. Avoid shortcuts. Seek the most direct path instead. Find and embrace genre. Seek out desirable difficulty. Don’t talk about your dreams with people who want to protect you from heartache.

“If I take this and do that to it, I’m asserting that something useful will come of it.” Assertions are the foundation of the design and creation process.

The practice demands assertions when there are no guarantees.

Assertions are the generous act of seeking to make things better. They’re half a question. “Perhaps …” is the unstated word at the beginning of every assertion. Before you find an answer, you’ll need to make an assertion.

Too often, we wait until we’re sure we’re right. Better to begin with an assertion. And then find out.

An assertion is a promise. A promise that you’ll try. A promise that you’ll ship. And a promise that if you fail, you’ll let us know why.

Often, we begin by simply making an assertion to ourselves. It might be too soon to invite the audience into our studio. But the act of claiming the assertion begins the cycle of better.

What are the implications, ramifications, and side effects of what you plan to do? What are your contingency plans? What will happen if it works? (And if it doesn’t?)

When you’re leading people who are engaged in the work, the follow-up questions shouldn’t be seen as skeptical or lacking in trust. In fact, it’s the opposite. These are the questions of co-conspirators, of people enrolled to go on this journey with you. If, “any questions,” receives no response, you need to earn more enrollment and make your assertions more clearly.

And culture is a conspiracy. It’s the voluntary engagement of humans in search of connection and safety. Your assertion begins a cultural shift, because it’s an invitation for coconspirators to join you.

Organizing a conspiracy is fuel for your art.

Attitudes, of course, are skills, which is good news for all of us, because it means that if we care enough, we can learn.

Find this cohort with intent. Don’t wait for it to happen to you. You don’t need to be picked—you can simply organize a cohort of fellow artists who will encourage themselves.

The challenge, then, is to have one superpower. All out of balance to the rest of your being. If, over time, you develop a few more, that’s fine. Begin with one.

When we think of an artist we admire, we’re naming someone who stands for something. And to stand for something is to commit.

We can teach people to make commitments, to overcome fear, to deal transparently, to initiate, and to plan a course of action. We can teach people to desire lifelong learning, to express themselves, and to innovate.

You don’t have to like their work or agree with their assertions. But you need to know who they are and what they’re saying. 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.

Good taste is the ability to know what your audience or clients are going to want before they do. Good taste comes from domain knowledge, combined with the guts and experience to know where to veer from what’s expected.

Creativity doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.

Finding the constraints and embracing them is a common thread in successful creative work.

Some Favorite Constraints Time Money Format Team members User trust Materials Technology Regulation Physics The status quo

Constraints and your dance with them are part of the practice.

Trusting yourself doesn’t require delusional self-confidence. Trusting yourself has little to do with the outcome. Instead, we can learn to trust the process. This is at the heart of our practice. We can develop a point of view, learn to see more clearly, and then ship our work (and ship it again, and again). We don’t do it to win, we do it to contribute. Because it’s an act of generosity, not selfishness, we can do it for all the best reasons. The practice is its own reward. Trusting yourself comes from a desire to make a difference, to do something that matters.

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

No one can possibly do a better job of being you than you can. And the best version of you is the one who has committed to a way forward. Your work is never going to be good enough (for everyone). But it’s already good enough (for someone). Committing to a practice that makes our best better is all we can do.

Elements of the Practice Creative is a choice. Avoid certainty. Pick yourself. Results are a by-product. Postpone gratification. Seek joy. Understand genre. Embrace generosity. Ship the work. Learn from what you ship. Avoid reassurance. Dance with fear. Be paranoid about mediocrity. Learn new skills. Create change. See the world as it is. Get better clients. Be the boss of the process. Trust your self. Repeat.

  1. You’re Not the Boss, but You Are In Charge You are in charge of how you spend your time. In charge of the questions you ask. In charge of the insight that you produce.

And then to go beyond the edge, because the only way to know it’s an edge is to cross it. As the artist George Ferrandi said, “If you have to ask ‘should I keep going?’ the answer is ‘yes.’”

Life is on the wire, the rest is just waiting PAPA WALLENDA* Are you on the wire? (Or are you just waiting?)

The path forward is about curiosity, generosity, and connection. These are the three foundations of art. Art is a tool that gives us the ability to make things better and to create something new on behalf of those who will use it to create the next thing. Human connection is exponential: it scales as we create it, weaving together culture and possibility where none used to exist. You have everything you need to make magic. You always have. Go make a ruckus.

The magic is that there is no magic. Start where you are. Don’t stop.

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