An Audience of One: Reclaiming Creativity for Its Own Sake - Hardcover

Rao, Srinivas

 
9781101981733: An Audience of One: Reclaiming Creativity for Its Own Sake
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1101981733 ISBN 13: 9781101981733
Verlag: Portfolio, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

The creator of the Unmistakable Creative podcast makes a counterintuitive argument: By focusing your creative work on pleasing yourself, you can increase your productivity, happiness, and (eventually, paradoxically) the size of your audience.

Creating for your own pleasure--whether you're writing a novel, composing songs, or painting a landscape--can seem pointless. It's tempting to focus on pursuing money and fame, rather than the process itself. But as Srini Rao warns, creating then turns into a chore that can harm your self-esteem and suck the pleasure out of life, rather than being a source of joy.

Rao, host of the podcast The Unmistakable Creative, argues that we should counter this thinking by intentionally creating art for ourselves alone--an audience of one. In this book he shares the fascinating true stories of creatives who took this path, along with actionable tips and the research of creativity experts. You'll learn, for example:

  •  How Oprah's intentional focus on her own work rather than the opinions of everyone else catapulted her into one of the most popular talk shows of all time.

  •  How being process-driven can not only help you produce more work, but can make you happier outside of your creative time.

  •  How to put together a creative "team of rivals" whose feedback can help you hone your craft and filter out useless feedback.

By playing to an audience of one, we can find more happiness, increased productivity, and a greater sense of community.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Srinivas Rao is the host and founder of the popular podcast, the Unmistakable Creative, where he's interviewed over five hundred creative people. Former guests on the show include Seth Godin, Elle Luna, Tim Ferriss, Gretchen Rubin, Simon Sinek, Adam Grant, and Danielle LaPorte. His self-published book The Art of Being Unmistakable was a Wall Street Journal bestseller.

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Writer Karan Bajaj's mother was a schoolteacher and his father was an engineer. As is common in Indian culture, he was supposed to become either a doctor or an engineer. He said, "For the first twenty-two years of my life I didn't think at all, I had no independent thought at all of who I wanted to be. I was just following the path that was laid out in front of me, which was get into engineering college, then business school, and become an engineer." But he started writing ten years ago at age twenty-eight, and published his first novel at twenty-nine.

In 2013, the film rights for his second novel were optioned and he signed a book contract for his third novel. Despite many people encouraging him to pursue his passion for writing in light of his success, he has kept his day job. He feels it is his dharma, or calling, to be in business. He told me in our conversation that not tying his passion to money was one of the best decisions he ever made. He said, "It's been very liberating for me to answer my deepest questions through my writing. I never write for my niche, my industry, my audience, my platform. In a sense I think that's been the reason for the success of my writing."

Bajaj's story is exemplary of the possibilities that open in our lives when we're willing to embrace creativity for its own sake rather than external recognition. The creative process-not the result-is the source of our happiness. We feel the joy of being so immersed and engaged in what we're doing that we lose track of time. We experience moments of creative daring, beautiful magic, and the unexpected surprises that show up along the way. Fortunately, our commitment to and belief in the process is entirely in our control. We can decide to show up, sit down, and create. If we listen to the process of creativity and stay attentive, it can be our gateway to meaning.

The Downside of Rewards over Process

Paradoxically, when we're excessively focused on potential rewards rather than the process, the product suffers.

If a podcaster is thinking about the potential downloads while conducting an interview, the quality of the interview declines. They're no longer present, conversations come across as canned, and they end up trying to sound impressive as opposed to inspiring or informative.

If an author is thinking about reviews and bestseller lists while writing, the quality of their books declines. It places their focus on elements of creative work that are completely out of their control. What makes a great piece of writing great is an unwavering commitment to the craft, not the prize.

If a musician is thinking about their potential Grammy Award while recording an album, the quality of the music suffers. They try to live up to other people's expectations and their work ends up feeling forced and inauthentic.

Somewhere in the middle of 2014, all of my work started to become about feeding my ego and getting external validation. I wanted the approval of my mentor, my audience, and the world at large. All I cared about was our bottom line. In that process the work I loved turned into the job I hated, and what had once been one of my greatest sources of joy was making me miserable.

We must learn to let go of our attachments and expectations if we're going to derive satisfaction from our work and create art that we're proud to put our signature on.

When we value product over process, we depart from what psychologist and author Carol Dweck calls a growth mind-set. With a growth mind-set, you believe that you can continue to grow and learn. With a fixed mind-set, any perceived flaws or strengths are seen as permanent. We believe our well-being is determined entirely by what's out of our control, and our motivation and effort all begin to dwindle.

Because of the rapid pace at which we can go from idea to execution in the digital world, this is an all too common occurrence for people who start creative projects on the internet. When an enthusiastic start doesn't translate into an overnight success, people give up on their creative work. They don't give their efforts enough time to experience any visible progress and inaccurately conclude that they lack the necessary creativity or talent. They overlook the fact that nearly every "overnight success" is usually years in the making.

When we focus on end results, we essentially defeat one of the main benefits of creative work: to derive joy from the work itself. Our well-being fluctuates based on the outcomes. If temporary setbacks appear permanent, any effort appears to be completely fruitless.

On the flip side, when we focus on the process, we see opportunities for improvement. Opportunities for improvement elicit action, effort, and enthusiasm. It's in "the thousands of days of trying, failing, sitting, thinking, resisting, dreaming, raveling, unraveling, that we are at our most engaged, alert, and alive," says Dani Shapiro, memoirist and author of Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life.

By sticking with the process, we also increase the likelihood of a favorable outcome or product.

Here's an example: When our content strategist, Kingshuk Mukherjee joined the Unmistakable Creative team, his first major assignment was launching an interactive online course. Everything from the final product to the marketing and sales was based on his recommendations, but he had little control over the outcome (revenue generated from the launch). Reflecting on the launch, he said:

You're taking on a new project and your results will dictate how much you get paid. Now, the more time you put into it, the more you have to lose. A bad outcome means not only will you not get paid, but you'll lose all the time you invested. So there I was writing three to four versions of a landing page, a bit more than I've ever taken on before. If I thought about how bad I need to nail the final version, I'd choke-I wouldn't perform at all. So instead, I looked at "What do I have to accomplish RIGHT NOW to make this project a win?"

He focused on the process and ultimately ended up with a successful outcome (an increase in revenue).

The process is in our control. The process results in progress, which in turn increases our motivation. External outcomes, on the other hand, are not. And if the only measure we have for our success is the external outcome, and we don't see it materializing, we're likely to give up or just get bored with the work.

If you see your creative work as a chore, an obligation, or solely as an item to cross off your to-do list, the work will feel that way to you and anybody who interacts with it. On the other hand, if you see your work as a gift, a privilege, an opportunity to share the truth of what's in your heart with the world, that's the experience you'll have with it. Same work, different perspectives.

For example, in 2003, Frank Warren, who had started a small business called Instant Information Systems, was in Paris when he had a powerful lucid dream about three postcards he had bought that day. Purely as a creative experiment, he was led to print three thousand anonymous stamped and self-addressed postcards, blank on one side. On the other side he listed some simple instructions to "anonymously share an artful secret they've never shared before." He handed them out to people randomly on the streets of Washington, D.C., not knowing what to expect. The idea went viral, and Frank started receiving postcards from thousands of people from around the world. "In a weird way, the secrets give me strength," he said in an interview on Mediabistro.com. Today PostSecret.com is the most visited advertisement-free site in the world with more than 200 million visitors. In addition to having no ads, no products can be purchased on PostSecret. As the absentee owner of Instant Information Systems, Warren has no need...

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Verlag
Portfolio
Erscheinungsdatum
2018
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1101981733
ISBN 13 
9781101981733
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
224
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Portfolio
https://www.wetones.co.uk/

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