Try Blinkist to get the key ideas from 7,000+ bestselling nonfiction titles and podcasts. Listen or read in just 15 minutes.
Start your free trial
Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
Reclaiming Creativity for Its Own Sake
If you have strong creative impulses, you might feel torn between the desire to stay true to your personal vision and the wish to create something with wide appeal.
Let’s say you recently talked to someone about a creative project – a book, say, or a painting or a new app – and the person’s first response is to give you advice on how to make your creation as audience-friendly as possible.
This sort of advice may be well-intended, but the truth is that you’re bound to be unsatisfied and ultimately unhappy when you create with the expectations of others in mind.
If you’re preoccupied with critical reviews, financial rewards or audience accolades, you’ll almost surely be miserable, since these are all extrinsic motivators – that is, they’re all responses that you have no control over. The ultimate results of your work, including how many people think it’s a masterpiece and how many find it boring, are not up to you, so you’re only going to be setting yourself up for disappointment by focusing on extrinsic motivators.
Furthermore, if you give in and change your work in an effort to make your work more “appealing,” you’ll likely regret these compromises to your true vision – especially if the advice doesn’t pan out and you don’t get those results you were after.
The greatest rewards of creativity are having a vision and then turning it into a reality. This is a process you control completely, and it’s one that comes with tremendous satisfaction and happiness in and of itself.
David Bowie repeatedly warned against doing work for “other people” and stressed the importance of remembering why you felt the personal urge to create in the first place. Bowie didn’t create to be famous; he created to better understand himself and to “do something artistically important.”
Or think of Daft Punk. The dance-music duo is so indifferent toward fame that they hide their identities behind costumes. And they’re so uninterested in monetary rewards that they spent their paycheck from a 2006 Coachella appearance on the performance itself, so that it could be the coolest show possible.
Ultimately, the real reward of having your creation be well-received is that it can make it easier for you to continue creating. And when you’re in it for how satisfying the creative process is, then there is no better reward than being able to keep doing what you love.
An Audience of One (2018) takes readers on a deep dive into the day-to-day life of the creative mind. Author Srinivas Rao uses his own life experience, as well as plenty of wisdom from other artists and creatives, to explain why there is little happiness or satisfaction in a life spent trying to please others. Rao offers practical and scientific evidence that shows how a rewarding creative life is all about embracing the process and being true to your own vision rather than the expectations of others.
The ultimate paradox of creative work is that what you create for an audience of one is much more likely to reach an audience of millions.
It's highly addictive to get core insights on personally relevant topics without repetition or triviality. Added to that the apps ability to suggest kindred interests opens up a foundation of knowledge.
Great app. Good selection of book summaries you can read or listen to while commuting. Instead of scrolling through your social media news feed, this is a much better way to spend your spare time in my opinion.
Life changing. The concept of being able to grasp a book's main point in such a short time truly opens multiple opportunities to grow every area of your life at a faster rate.
Great app. Addicting. Perfect for wait times, morning coffee, evening before bed. Extremely well written, thorough, easy to use.
Try Blinkist to get the key ideas from 7,000+ bestselling nonfiction titles and podcasts. Listen or read in just 15 minutes.
Start your free trialBlink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma