Review

If you’re creative and struggling to get stuff done this is book is the one. It’s a reminder that you don’t have to wait for inspiration, you’re not beholden to that magical force, you have control.

Now… I’m off to work out how I can periodically send these notes to my future self.

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Key Takeaways

The 20% that gave me 80% of the value.

• Ship Creative Work.
• The magic is that there is no magic. Start where you are. Don't stop.

Approach Creativity With Professionalism

• You are creative because you ship. Ship work on a schedule, without attachment
• You earn skill through hard work. Skill is rarer than talent.
• Work is investing time in what you can control. Worry is the opposite.
• You can earn better taste, judgement and capabilities.
• Be consistent, even at the expense of authenticity.
• Focus on better practice, on consistency and longevity
• Learn your field. Study the greats, read the classics.
• First become the best in the world. Make a super power. Outsource the rest

Share what you've made (Here... I made this)

• It only counts if you share.
• Sharing helps you learn from feedback
• Hiding because you're afraid is worse than rejection
• Don't protect a special idea. There will always be more.
• Consistent practice builds self-trust. Helps you share.
• We can't control or measure confidence as its a feeling. Don't let it hold you back.
• There is never enough reassurance. It's futile.
• Overcome resistance by shipping to be generous
• Overcome resistance by consistently practicing which builds self-trust
• There are 100x more critiques than creators.
• Promise to ship. Don't promise the result.
• Work is never good enough for everyone, but it's already good for someone

Focus on the few, not everyone

• Find 10 people who care enough to enrol in your journey and share your work
• What do they believe? What do they love doing?
• Create for your audience. Don't worry what 'everyone' thinks'.
• Balance empathy with "its not for you"
• We have to be able to say 'It's not for you' and mean it
• Be more and more specific.
• Don't sacrifice your point of view to attract the masses
• Great architects need to secure great clients to do great work. It’s part of it.

First do the work. The identity and the passion will follow.

• You become what you do.
• You can only identify your calling or passion, after doing the hard work.
• Doing in front of others will cement your identity.

Now is the best time to start

• Start where you are. Begin.
• Do art to make a change, to help others.
• We all have more leverage than ever before.
• Don't wait to be picked.
• Practice improves your work. Credentials don't.
• Conditions will never be perfect. Start.
• Everyday doors shut on the better tomorrow you imagined. Take your chance.
• Roadblocks stop everyone. Excuses stop the faint hearted. Know the difference.
• There's a tradeoff between polishing and sharing. Polishing is overrated.
• Don't start with a masterpiece. Make something small and share it.

Practice consistently. Don't wait to be in the mood.

• Creativity is a choice. Don't wait for inspiration. Practice and it will come.
• Don't wait for perfect conditions. Practice in all weathers.
• Learning to work without flow induces more time in flow.
• Writers block is an internal narrative. Write badly to get unstuck.
• Asimov typed daily. He got to 400 books because typing turns to writing.
• Just as batting practice is practice, writing everyday is practice. Professionals don't stop.

Failure happens. Detach from the outcome. Improve your practice

• Practice as if the journey is the goal.
• Improve your practice. Don't worry about the outcomes.
• If its not working yet, just add more cycles
• Consistent practice brings improvement, which helps you trust in the process
• Art is doing something that might not work. Failure is part of it. Don't try and make success certain.
• Bad ideas unlock good ideas. Bad ideas are essential
• Do you. Everyone else is taken. Don't sound like everyone else to avoid criticism
• You create narratives about the world that inform your choices. But are they accurate? Are they helping you achieve your goals?
• The game is infinite. No scoreboard, no winners and no rules. Ship to contribute not to win
• Find and embrace constraints. They help create art.
• Low expectations mean low oversight and more freedom

Deep Summary

Longer form notes, typically condensed, reworded and de-duplicated.

Trust yourself

• Ship = because is doesn't count if you don't share it
• Create = Don't be cog. Be a creator. A problem solver. Be generous, lead by making things better, by producing a new way forward.
• Work = It's not a hobby. Professional approach. The muse is not the point, excuses are avoided and the work is why you're here.
• Creativity is the result of desire.
• Desire to find a new truth, a new way to solve a problem or serve someone else.
• Creativity is a choice, not a bolt of lightning from somewhere else.
• We can practice embracing the process of creation in service of better
• The practice is not the means to the output, the practice is the output, the practice is all we can control.
• The practice demands we approach our process with commitment.
• Creativity is not an event, its what we do, whether or not we're in the mood
• "Process saves us from the poverty of our intentions" Elizabeth King
• Make things better. Without regard for whether its going to work this time.
• The practice will take you where you seek to go better than any other path you can follow.
• While you're engaging in the practice, you'll honour potential and the support and kindness of everyone who came before you.

It's possible

• Others have done it
• We just need to find the courage.
• We can do that by understanding the forces that hold us back
• The practice can open the doors

The pattern and the practice

• Most of us bought into an industrial system, that promised us prizes in exchange for doing the prescribed work. We chose compliance, convenience and status. We didn't do the work we wanted to.
• There's another way.
• Just relentlessly focus on the practice.
• Not for prizes, for its own sake.
• It might not work but its worth pursuing.
• Seek to change. Seek to make things better.
• The creative journey doesn't repeat. Its unique.
• You must provide the creative contribution and leadership. Nobody is in charge. You must trust yourself.

Search. Seek to find how you can change the world

• Most of us are searching for something
• Followers aren't searching. They're complying.
• Leaders seek to make things better
• Art
• the act of doing something that might not work
• something generous that will make a difference
• personal self-directed work to make a change
• We all have more leverage than ever before
• You've created art before. Do you care enough to do it again?

Put yourself on the hook (its the generous thing to do)

• In Turkey, you can buy a 2nd loaf of bread to hang on a hook ready for people in need
• Choose to produce creative work, you're solving a problem.
• Put yourself on the hook. Share. Give your contribution. Spread your idea.
• Art is something we get to do for other people

Finding a practice (truths about practice)

• Our creative heroes and change makers used the practice
• They taught us that:
• Skill is not the same as talent.
• Good process leads to good outcomes
• Perfectionism has nothing to do with being perfect
• Reassurance is futile
• Attitudes are skills
• There's no such thing as writers 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

Learning to juggle (learn to throw, the catching will look after itself)

• To learn to juggle. You first learn to throw. Don't even worry about catching
• If you try to catch, you'll be out of position and the whole thing falls apart
• It makes people really uncomfortable to watch a ball hit the ground and not to catch it
• 15 minutes later we try throw/throw/drop/drop. Then throw/throw/catch/catch
• the last step is to add the third ball
• Our work is about throwing, the catching will take care of itself

How to draw an owl

• Step 1: Draw 2 ovals and a line
• Step 2: Draw the owl
• No one learns to ride a bike from a manual. And no one learns to draw an own that way either

Being creative is a choice

• Don't wait to be picked. Don't wait for your calling.
• You don't have to believe in magic to create magic.
• Mode the process on successful creatives who came before
• Being creative is a choice.

Art: the act of doing something that might not work

• Art: the act of doing something that might not work
• Without guarantee. It's just a practice that we've committed to

Perhaps you can make some art

• Art is creating something that can change someone
• No change, no art
• When we ship our best work, we have a change to turn it into art
• You were born ready to make art.
• Art is the generous act of making things better by doing something that might not work

Creativity is an action, not a feeling

• We can't do much about how we feel
• We can always control our actions
• Your work is too important to be left to how you feel today
• Committing to an action can change the way we feel. Feelings will follow.
• Waiting for feeling is a luxury we don't have time for

We become what we do.

• You have an internal narrative. If you have low expectations you'll start to believe them
• If you want to change your story, your actions come first
• Act and your mind will update its narrative
• We become what we do.

Flow is a symptom

• Distractions fade
• Narrative backs off
• Directly engaged in the work
• For many, it appears too rarely
• Don't wait for it to arrive
• Condition yourself to work without flow and you're going to spend more time in flow
• 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

It's time to find your voice

• There is a method, but there are no steps
• There is a strategy, but the tactics don't matter
• There is a process, but it doesn't always work
• The practice always works better than anything else.
• Start where you are

Finding your passion

• Passion is a choice
• Only after we do the difficult work can something 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

Outcomes are the results of process

• Outcomes are the results of process
• Good processes, repeated over time lead to good outcomes more often than lazy processes do
• We allow others to live in our head. Reminding us that we are impostors with no hope of making an original contribution.
• You can't decide to paint a masterpiece. You just have to think hard, work hard, and try to make a painting that you care about. Then, if you're lucky, your work will find an audience for whom its meaningful

The worlds worst boss

• You may be the worlds worst boss (to yourself)
• You would never work for somebody who treated you like you treat yourself
• Recognise the good work that you do
• Raise expectations of yourself
• Give yourself a break when you fail
• Trust yourself, trust the process.

An aside about decisions

• there's a gap between good decisions and good outcomes
• the outcome is just a consequence of the odds
• reassurance is futile - focusing on outcomes at the expense of the process is a shortcut that will destroy your work

There is no guarantee. Focus on learning, seeing and improving

I feel like an imposter

• You often feel like an imposter. Your best work often involves doing things that you haven't done before
• There's no manual, no best practices, no rule book.
• Along the way, you'll find out what doesn't work as well as what does

Imposter syndrome is real

• Confidence is not the same as trust in the process.
• Every Olympian is confident, but most of them don't win
• If you need a guarantee you're going to win before you start, 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

Start where you are

• The only choice we have is to begin.
• You can't be a best selling author, without first being an author, without first being someone who writes
• Simply begin. Don't think about the end result, just focus on the process.
• That commitment is completely under your control, even if the end result can't be
• The only way to have a commitment is to begin

Who you are (and what you do)

• We are easily confused by I am
• If you want to be leader, lead
• If you want to be a writer, write

You should have a big pile of discarded work

Dave Grohl's Mom

• A lot of great musicians started early
• There's nothing special about starting when you are eleven
• It is easier to form an identity though, when you don't have to write over an existing one
• The practice doesn't care when you decide to be creative. It only matters that you do decide.

Toward a daily practice in service of your identity

• Morning pages can unlock you.
• Do something creative each day, you're a creative person
• Creative people create.
• Do the work, become the artist. Instead of planning, simply become. Acting as if, is how we acquire identity
• Writing is ta universal solvent for creatives.
• You can do it in private. But you will find so much juice if you do it in public
• Doing in front of others will cement your identity.
• I wrote this. Blog everyday, it's easy, it's free, and it established your identity long before the market cares about who you are and what you do.

In defence of magic

• If you knew how it was done, if you saw all the practice, you'd lose interest in the trick

Trust the process - gives you patience

• Trust is commitment to the practice.
• Engaging in the practice is better than hiding from it
• Trust is developed over time. Trust is earned by coming through difficult moments
• As you engage in the practice, you will learn to trust the practice.
• That trust allows you to be patient

The poverty of our intentions

• In any given moment, the world isn't perfect.
• Conditions aren't right.
• The practice can save us in those moments.
• In this moment, we need to focus on just the next step

The practice is relentless

• The career of successful creatives is a pattern of small bridges. Each just scary enough to dissuade most people.

Generous

• Selling can feel selfish, as we want to avoid hustling someone. If the people you're interacting with discover what you already know, will they be glad that they did what you asked them to? (then you're not hustling)
• To avoid criticism just sound like everyone else. Do that and you're echoing and hiding
• You're allowed to sound like you, everyone else is taken
• Hoarding is toxic. Isolates you from the people who need you the most
• A scarcity mindset creates more scarcity. You isolate yourself from encouragement and progression
• Adopt a mindset of abundance. Exchange your best work with others, so your best work gets better
• Holding back is not better than getting rejected.
• When was the last time you did something for the first time?
• Everyday it feels like doors are shutting on the better tomorrow we imagined. Don't be a victim though. Take your chance, speak up and contribute
• Art doesn't seek to create comfort, it seeks to create change
• Learning requires tension and discomfort (the persistent feeling of incompetence as we get better at a skill
• Learning requires tension and discomfort
• Look to create discomfort in others, its the feeling that comes just before change happens
• Problems have solutions. A problem without a solution is a situation
• If an obvious solution from an obvious source could have provided an answer, it would have happened already
• Unlikely approaches often win the day.
• Here... I made this.
• I... because you made it
• Made... because it took effort, originality and skill
• This .. its concrete, finite, it didn't used to exist, now it does
• Here... this is a gift
• These 3 words carry generosity, intent, risk and intimacy. The more we say them, and mean them, and deliver on them, the more art and connection we create
• 3 Simple ways to create with more focus, energy and success
• Embrace the fact you can - trust in the process
• Focus on the few, not everyone
• Bring intention to your work.
• Hiding is pleasant. Its easy to coast through life that way. But you're killing so much creativity if you do that. Once you trust yourself though, hiding is not an option
• Standup comedy: the tightrope is high, it hurts when you fall
• You need to continually show up and say "Here... I made this"
• Spend the whole day hitting balls back and you'll never end up serving. It might be the most generous thing you can do is to disappoint people in the long-run
• When you own your agenda, you own it. You're responsible, without excuses about why you might be hiding or explanations about why you're busy.
• Reassurance is futile - Everything is going to work isn't true. Doing something that might not work, means it actually might not work
• Reassurance is helpful for people who seek out certainty. Certainty isn't required. Certainty undermines everything we set out to create.
• Hope is trusting yourself to have a shot. We can hope without reassurance.
• The fear of falling behind. FOMO. KIASU. We've amplified the feeling of scarcity to encourage people to comply. To get them to buy more stuff.
• Kiasu is actually about fear and insufficiency. Couldn't exist if we trusted ourselves enough to know that we're already on a path to where we seek to go.
• Confidence is relative - Confidence is a feeling, and feelings are difficult to measure and control. We don't have to be a victim to our feelings.
• The practice is a choice, its something that with discipline we can always choose. The practice is there for us, whether or not we feel confident. Especially when we don't feel confident.
• Resistance is real. "The war of art" by Steven Pressfield. An emotion that will conspire to block us, undermine us, or, at the very least, stall us in the pursuit of work that matters.
• Resistance focuses on bad outcomes
• Relentlessly pushes us to seek confidence, then undermines that confidence
• Generosity helps, focus the practice on helping somebody else.
• Understand the risks at the start of the process. Don't seek reassurance. Seek useful feedback
• The practice is agnostic about the outcome. The practice remains regardless of the outcome
• The essence of your art isn't that it comes from a place of rare genius. The magic is that you choose to share it.
• It's not working (yet). All you need is more time, more cycles, more bravery, more process, more learning
• Positive people are more likely to enjoy the practice. Don't waste time experiencing failure in advance. If we can be positive about the practice, the outcome will take care of itself
• Of my 7500 blog posts, 50% are below average. Failure is part of practice.
• People don't know what you know, believe what you believe and don't want what you want.
• We have to be able to say 'It's not for you' and mean it
• We also need to have some empathy, and bridge the gap
• The golden age of TV arrived with cable. When shows weren't made for everyone. You don't create a hit by trying to please everyone
• A component of practical empathy is not to be empathetic to everyone. It's not for you... is a companion to "Here... I made this"
• We can't create work for everyone. There's nothing wrong with the non-believers. Embrace them. Don't create for them. I
• Don't create banal work for everyone
• Don't create work just for yourself
• Make work that matters to someone
• Start on a journey
• If there are only non-believers, its not as good as you think it is.
• Make something for you, make something for those you seek to connect and change
• Don't chase perfection. The numbers are stacked against you. Just produce work that you're proud of.
• Selling is a dance with possibility and empathy.
• Our desire to please the masses interferes with our need to make something that matters. The masses want mass entertainment, normal experiences, and the pleasure of easy group dynamics. We have plenty of stuff that pleases the masses.
• Ship work for other people. Recommend competitors.
• The process is about learning how to make more art, better art more courageous art
• If you knew you were sure to fail, what would you do?
• The outcome is not the driver of the practice
• If we failed, would it be worth the journey?
• The first step is to separate the process form the outcome.
• Your practice takes you to a room. With different rules, expectations and challenges. Seek out this experience of uncertainty, to place yourself in the room where you will create discomfort.

The professional

• Worrying is the quest for guarantee.
• Time spent worrying is time spent trying to control something that is outside of our control
• Time invested in something we can control is work.
• Reassurance is futile. We need infinite amount of reassurance delivered daily to build up our confidence. There will never be enough.
• We can learn it, and we can do it again.
• We don't ship work because we're creative, we're creative because we ship the work
• Skill is earned. Learned, and practiced and hard-won. It's insulting to call a professional talented. Many people have talent, only a few care enough to show up. To earn their skill. Skill is rarer than talent. Skill is earned. Skill is available to anyone who cares enough.
• Put effort into practice and you will be rewarded with better. Better taste, judgement and capabilities.
• In the words of Steve Martin: "I had no talent. None"
• Where is your hour? If you want to get in shape, an hour a day for 6-12 months is what it takes. Where is your hour?
• Show us your hour spend and we'll show you your creative path.
• Ship creative work on a schedule without attachment and reassurance.
• Money supports the commitment to the practice. Don't give it away for free.
• When you're generous with your work you can earn trust and attention. People will en-roll and eagerly pay.
• The masses aren't the point. Don't sacrifice your point of view to attract the masses.
• Great architects need great clients. Being a great architect requires the professionalism to do the hard work and get better clients.

Intent

• Who are you trying to change?
• What change are you trying to make?
• How will you know if it worked?
• Find ten people first. Who care about your work to enrol in the journey and then bring others along
• Be more and more specific.
• Who arae they? What do they believe? People who like things like this will love what I'm doing
• It's not for everyone. Once we know who its for its easier to bring positive change to them
• Don't worry about what everyone things. Only be worried what your target thinks. You have to walk away from the others.
• We're hiding because we're afraid.
• Build empathy and work with people we want to serve
• What is this element of our project for?
• Everything has a function
• We have to ignore the outcome. But there's a difference between good work and not-good work. There's a point to our effort, a change we seek to make. It's not just doing whatever we feel like. We must dance with that feeling.
• Mindfulness demands intention. Doing the work without chatter, or fear. The purpose is to follow the process. The purpose makes it clear what we must do.
• How to embed the practice
• This is the 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?
• Your audience doesn't want your authentic voice, they want your consistent voice
• Consistency is the way forward. Not sameness. Not repetition. Simply work that rhymes. That sounds like you. We make a promise and we keep it.
• You invent you don't discover something.
• Intentional action has simple elements
• Determine who it is for. Learn what they fear, believe and want
• Be prepared to descrive the change you seek to make. At least to yourself
• Care enough to commit to making the change
• Ship work that resonates wiht the people it's for
• Once you know whom it's for and what it's for, watch and learn to determine whether your ijntervention succeeded
• Repeat

No such thing as writers block

• Its a myth, a choice. If the story you are telling yourself isn't working. Change it.
• Polish is overrated. Work should have no typos, glitches or errors. However, the next 3 layers of polish don't serve you or your audience.
• Aretha Franklin demanded to be paid upfront for gigs. As she was black, getting paid later often meant never. So she used to bring her handbag on state (with the money for the gig)) so she could keep an eye on it
• We have a narrative about how the world works. It informs our choices. Question your narrative:
• Is it aligned to what's actually happening in the world?
• Is it working? Is your narrative helping you achieve your goals
• It's hard to get blocked when you're moving
• We don't play the infinite game to win. No scoreboard, no winners, no losers. The act of creation isn't about finding scarcity that belongs to you. Share it.
• In improve. No is a killer. When energy comes to you, the answer is always yes. Improv keeps moving. There's no writers block. There is no ego. There is no control.
• Saturday Night Live doesn't go on at 11:30pm because its ready, it goes on because its 11:30pm.
• Most criticism is useless or harmful. Criticism should be about the work not the creator. Its useless because most critics are unskilled and ungenerous.
• A generous critic understands your work, the intent, the time and speaks up, to help you take them to where you both want to go. Helping you learn. Say thank you.
• 1000 true fans. Kevin Kelly.
• Sunk costs. Any hour you've spent on work is gone. Its a gift from your past self. You are not bound to continue it, or use it. You can walk away from it.
• Its hard to be flexible, unblocked and open to feedback when you're defending the work you've already done.
• Chop wood and carry water. Do it without commentary or drama
• Set up your tools, turn off the internet and go back to work
• Desirable difficulty is required for us to up-skill and move to another level
• 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 involves incompetence.
• Batting practice is practice. Writing everyday is practice. You're never done.
• You don't need more good ideas. You need more bad ideas. There was a bad idea. Then there was a better one. Don't complain about not having good ideas. Show me the bad ideas first. Befriending your bad ideas is a useful way forward. They're not your enemy. They are essential steps on the path to better.
• There's a million people who are happy to critique something. People who are willing to pick up the pencil and make something are scarce.
• Promise to ship. Don't promise the result.
• Protecting your perfect idea? This isn't your only shot. There's no perfect idea, just the next thing that you haven't shipped yet. No one is keeping you from posting your video, from blogging every day, from hanging your artwork.
• Tips and tricks for creators:
• Build streaks.
• Talk about your streaks.
• Seek the smallest viable audience
• Avoid shortcuts
• Find and embrace genre
• Seek out desirable difficulty
• Don't talk about your dreams with people who want to protect you from heartache

Make assertions

• Egomania is a bad thing. Ego is required for us to make assertions.
• Assertions are half questions. Before you find an answer, make an assertion

Earn your skills

• The Mundanity of Excellence. Studied swimmers. Ideal because... There are clear levels, performance is easily measured, there are no external factors, there's a large and varied population of competitors
• People at higher levels didn't train more (hours)
• People at higher levels had the same number of friends
• There is no talent differentiation. Nobody was born swimming fast

The two big differences were:

• Skill - They had different strokes and turns. They learned and practiced them
• Attitude - They found delight in parts of training that others didn't like
• Start by developing one superpower
• FedEx super power is speed. Don't use them to transport fine art. That's OK. They had to commit to achieve speed, its their strength, it wins them more than it loses them.
• You can outsource the things that you're not great at.
• Be the best in the world (at being you). Earn a reputation for what you do and how you do it.
• Teach people to:
• Make commitments
• Overcome fear
• Deal transparently
• Initiate
• To plan a course of aciton
• desire lifelong learning
• express themselves
• innovate
• Do the reading. Expose yourself to the state of the art. It helps you follow the through line, agree, or challenge it. The reading takes effort. Get the reading list of essentials and study the greats in your field
• Good taste comes from domain knowledge. You understand the genre more than the fans do.

Seek out constraints

• Find and embrace constraints. They help create art.
• Low expectations mean low oversight and more freedom
• Constraints: Time, Money, Format, Team
• Constraints: Materials, technology, regulations, status quo
• Dancing with constraints is part of the process
• Trust yourself. Ship to contribute. Not to win.
• Your work will never be good enough for everyone. It's already good for someone though.
• Elements of the practice
• Creativity is a choice
• Avoid certainty
• Pick yourself
• Results are a by-product
• Seek joy
• Postpone gratification
• Understand genre
• Ship the work
• Learn from what you ship
• Avoid reassurance
• Dance with fear
• Be paranoid about mediocrity
• Create change
• Learn new skills
• See the world as it is
• Get better clients
• Be the boss of the process
• Trust your self
• Repeat
• Story about going into a room to brainstorm business ideas. Every time they entered the room the process was triggered.