An Audience of One summary

These days, there’s a lot of pressure to monetize your creative efforts. But creating for the sole purpose of money isn’t only unsatisfying, it’s often unsuccessful since there’s no strong personal vision being put forth. When you create for an audience of one, you’ll not only be happier, you’ll be increasing the chances that your work will ultimately attract a lot of fans.

Now, you might be thinking, isn’t that a paradox? Yes it is, but that doesn’t mean it’s false.

There are three primary ways of unlocking and embracing your creative side, and they’re all about listening to yourself and what’s around you. More specifically, there are three forms of listening: listening to yourself, listening to your environment and listening to others. All of these steps will allow you to bring more of yourself to your work and make it that much stronger.

There are different ways of listening to yourself, but the first step is to trust yourself and what you have to say.

Another important aspect of listening to yourself is listening to what your body has to say, since a healthy body goes hand in hand with a healthy mind.

Think of it this way: Being creative is about being productive, right? And to be as productive as you can possibly be, consideration needs to be given to your overall health and well-being.

After listening to yourself, it’s time to listen to your environment. This isn’t just about putting up some inspirational posters on your wall; it’s about your entire environment, including its sights, sounds and smells.

So let’s start with the physical space around you.

There’s a good chance you’ve already read one or two reports warning you about the productivity-killing distractions of modern technology. But few of us are going to be throwing our phones away anytime soon, so the question remains: What can be done?

Fortunately, there are a variety of steps you can take to cut distractions from your life.

Just as checking your email every five minutes is a bad habit, there are good habits you can use to boost your productivity.

One method is to use what’s known as a certainty anchor. This is a ritual that can help bring stability to your day, even if things around you are chaotic. Let’s say you have the ritual of brewing a cup of coffee and putting on your headphones before sitting down to work. This act of coffee and headphones will immediately bring focus to your mind; it signals that it’s time to work.

Once you’re practised at listening to yourself and your environment, you can learn to listen to others.

As already mentioned, it’s important to stay true to your voice and create for an audience of one (yourself), but this doesn’t mean you should cut out all outside voices altogether.