How can I become more creative and generative?
I've asked myself this question over and over again for years. I've studied influential people I admire. I've read books and blog posts and watched lectures on creative career building. I've jumped into the deep end of creative pursuits time and time again with some success - but I desire to do more. Something compels me to become prolific in the way that Benjamin Franklin believed that his industriousness was core to his spiritual duty to humanity. I want to be known as a prolific creative, not for the sake of stardom, but because being known is a byproduct of doing remarkable things that positively impact people's lives. It's boldly sharing my story and works with the world to enrich my craft of creating value for people while feeling compelled to work day in and day out regardless of fame or fortune.
I've admired many people who exemplify what I'm getting at. Pieter Levels doesn't use fancy web app frameworks and even hard-coded webpages for Nomad List until they are big enough to justify doing it. He wrote code straight to .php files and pushed it to his server. For years, Seth Godin wrote blog posts every day, no matter what, which led to accumulating work overtime that was compiled into longer-form essays and best-selling books. Casey Neistat used everyday moments and camera equipment that nearly everyone has on their phones to publish a daily vlog for almost two years, and now he has one of the most subscribed channels.
If I asked Socrates how he would navigate the modern idea maze, he would encourage us to share our thoughts and ideas openly. He would see the internet as the ultimate medium of testing our knowledge to gain wisdom and distributing what we produce to attain fulfillment and virtue.
So, I've determined that the only way to "be" the creative person I strive to be is to remove the friction between my creative efforts and the world and make a daily practice of it. I do not need a strategy, channels, systems, or more experience to share my creativity. One of my superpowers is building building systems and finding tools and techniques to optimize work. It has also proven to be one of my greatest weaknesses because I can easily spend more time optimizing my systems for creativity than time spent creating. I will benefit from having better systems than most people, but I need to jump straight to building in public. For me, that's writing and editing directly in my website's content management system for posts like these and using X.com to share smaller posts about things I'm learning and experiencing in real-time. Then, over time, I can repackage my smaller chunks of work into refined work for X, LinkedIn, newsletters, YouTube, and any other distribution channel.
I have many unanswered questions to explore openly here. Which of my interests and creative pursuits should I share? How do I develop and improve my authentic voice and writing style? How can I make this a sustainable practice? I won't wait for the answers to those questions to begin.
So, this is me building in public and bringing you along for the ride.
