Podcast: Download (Duration: 13:01 — 18.1MB)
There is a lot of advice out there: 10 ways to do this better, 100 ways to optimize your clicks for likes, the best videos have this one thing, successful creative professionals do this first thing in the morning, you get the idea. There is always some mold that we need to conform ourselves to in order to fit in and “make it.” In this episode of Getting Work To Work, I talk about the importance of customization and why it’s a necessary component in my life, work, and creativity. I also share six thoughts on how you can customize your creativity and work to build your creative practice:
- Seek wisdom. Read and listen to what people are writing about and saying, then apply what works and ignore what doesn’t.
- Don’t make any changes that contradict who you are, what you want to say, and the work that you want to produce.
- There is no one-size-fits-all advice for making it as a creative professional. Yes, you have to work hard, but you also have to experiment and try new things. The power of customization is unlocked in both success and failure.
- Understand what you are seeking in your work, then customize your life and work to accommodate those desires. We often shape our life to fit our work, but I want to shape my work to fit my life, which fuels my creativity and curiosity, then impacting my work in a positive manner. A virtuous cycle.
- We must do the work to understand who we are and what we have to say. I believe that the best creative work is rooted in knowing what we bring to the table: who we are, how we work, and how we engage with the world and others.
- Finally, customization can help us unlock the purpose of our work. By customizing how I speak about my work and how it impacts my clients, it reveals the purpose of my work not only for clients, but for myself.
In Reach: A New Strategy to Help You Step Outside Your Comfort Zone, Rise to the Challenge and Build Confidence, Andy Molinsky writes: “What’s particularly nice about customization is that it puts the power back in our court. Often, when facing difficult situations outside our comfort zones, we feel powerless. However, knowing that we have the power to tweak and adjust and alter the situation to our liking—within reasonable limits—is quite an empowering idea.”
Show Links
- Reach: A New Strategy to Help You Step Outside Your Comfort Zone, Rise to the Challenge and Build Confidence by Andy Molinsky
- Support Getting Work To Work on ChrisMartinStudios.shop!
- Sign up for my weekly newsletter: The Curiosity Lab
