Published on December 15, 2021

The Practice: Shipping Creative Work

Disclaimer: This is not a book summary but rather parts of the book I highlighted while reading the book. I don’t believe that a book summary does justice to book as a whole. If these notes intrigues you, imagine what reading the whole book would do?

The practice is an intentional act of service. It’s work we set ourselves out to do. It’s work directed by curiosity, generosity, and connection. It’s work that we trust ourselves enough to stick with, lean into and learn to do better. You have a practice if you ship work with regularity, actively participate in the system and treat your work as a professional would.

Trust your self

The practice is a step a way from compliance and convenience (which marks the spirit of modern work) to pursue work for it’s own sake and not because we want anything guaranteed in return. Forget everything you know about passions and talents, a practice is about skills and attitudes. We don’t have to wait to be picked and we don’t have to standby hopping we will feel our calling. If you don’t have a practice yet “You can adopt a practice” if you care enough to do it and trust your self to commit to a process of showing up and doing your work.

You are going to feel like an imposter. How could you not feel so? There’s no manual, no proven best practices, no established rulebook. The very nature of our practice is to act as if we are on to something, as if it’s going to work.

Begin. Actions creates habits and habits will brake or make the practice. Before you are a “best selling author’, you are an author, and authors write. Write.

If you want to get in shape, it’s not difficult.
Spend an hour a day running or at the gym.
Do that for six months or a year.
Done.
That’s not the difficult part.
The difficult part is becoming the kind of person who goes to the gym every day.
It’s the same with finding your voice. The tactics, the writing prompts, the kind of pencil— none of them matter compared to trusting your self enough to be the kind of person who engages in the process of delivering creative work.

Generous

You have the right to remain silent. But I hope you won’t. || Our world is long on noise and short on meaningful connections and positive leadership. || Any idea withheld is an idea taken away. It’s selfish to hold back when there’s a chance you have something to offer. || Embrace the fact that you can, focus on the few and bring intention to your work. The practice demands that we seek to make an impact on someone (but not every one). It requires you to see the audience you’ve Chosen to serve, then to bring them what they need. They might not realize it yet, but once you engage with them, either you’ll learn what’s not working in your craft or they’ll learn that you’ve created something they’ve been waiting for. Don’t insist that other people want and see what you see.

Choose to make work that matters a great deal to someone. Develop an understanding of genre, work to see your audience’s dreams and hopes, and go as far out on the edge as they’re willing to follow.

The Professional

A professional is not simply a happy amateur who got paid.

It’s insulting to call a professional talented. She’s skilled, first and foremost. Many people have talent, but only a few care enough to show up fully, to earn their skill. Skill is rarer than talent. Skill is earned. Skill is available to anyone who cares enough. Put yourself on the hook, in the position where you can get blamed, or fired for what you did (or didn’t do). That’s where the learning happens.

You know what to do. You’ve done it before. Simply do it more than once, do it often enough that it becomes your practice.

Don’t be a hack. A hack reverse-engineers all the work, barely getting by. The hack has no point of view, no assertions to be made. You can be an amateur, but as an amateur your work is only for you. Strive to be a professional, to have a practice. To show up when the muse isn’t there, to show up if you don’t feel like it.

Ship creative work on a schedule. Without attachment and without reassurance. The best work and the best opportunities go to those who are hard to replace. The ones who are likely to be missed.

In the hundreds and thousands of other people trained in your craft chose to see a different pattern for your work. Invent, create and challenge the status quo. Produce work that invoke awe or wonder.

Being a professional means selling. It means getting better clients and better clients are demanding. They demand more rigorous deadlines, but they also pay more. They demand extraordinary work, but they are more respectful. And they demand work they can proudly share with others. You earn better clients by becoming the sort of professional that better clients want.

Lousy clients are lousy for a reason. They don’t want better work.

Intent

Our intent matters. It’s not merely a job. It’s for something. What change do you seek to make? Why bother speak up or take an action if you are not seeking to change someone or something?

Who is it for? Someone, not everyone. Don’t try to create something that is for all people, or beyond criticism. Create something for this person, this set of beliefs, this tribe. Once you know ‘the who’, you can find the empathy to make something for them.

Your audience doesn’t want your authentic voice. They want your consistent voice. Not sameness. Not repetition. Simply work that rhymes.

No such Thing as Writer’s Block

It’s a story we tell ourselves in our minds. And stories change. It’s hard to get blocked if you are moving. Even if you are not moving in the direction that you had in mind that morning. Every one who creates feels resistance. Everyone who is seriously engaged in the deep effort of inventing and shipping original work feels the fear.

Certainty is an elusion. The uncertainty is the point.

Credentialing is a Roadblock. The system established credentials to maintain the consistency of our industrial output, but over time, they’ve been expanded to create a roadblock, a way to slow down those who would seek to make change happen. Earning a piece of paper doesn’t mean that you care. Take the opportunity to engage in the long process of earning genuine expertise, in service of making a change.

If you want to create our work, it might pay to turn off your wi-fi for a day. To sit with your tools and boundaries and your process and nothing else. There is time to engage with the world after we do our work; but right now, we sit and type and then type some more.

Flow is is the result of our effort. The muse shows up when we do the work. Not the other way around. Set up your tools, turn off the internet, and go back to work. Sign up for days, weeks, or years of serial incompetence and occasional frustrations.

Build streaks. Do the work every single day. Blog daily. Write daily. Ship daily. Show up daily Find your streak and maintain it. Talk about your streaks to keep honest. Seek the smallest viable audience. Make it for someone, not everyone.

Make Assertions

Earn Your Skills

If you’ve not done the reading, why expect to be treated as a professional?

Facts on getting better: There is no quantitative difference in training. There is no requirement for social deviance. There is no talent differentiation.

  1. Master your Skill
  2. Cultivate a superior attitude

Being the best is about our belief in possibility and the support of the culture around us.
Look for the cohort. Cultural standards and normalization have enormous power over whether we choose a practice and how we find the guts to commit to our work. When you are surrounded with respected peers, it’s more likely you’ll do the work you set out to do. Find this cohort with intent. Don’t wait for it to happen to you. You don’t have to be picked.

Seek Out Constraints

Constraints create the possibility of work. Constraints enable us to create art. Art solves problems in a novel way and problems always have contraints.

You can’t think outside the box. It’s dark and cold outside of the box. But the edge of the box? The edge of the box give you leverage.

Elements of the Practice

Where do Ideas come from?

All the good ideas must be taken by now.

There was a bad idea.
And there was a better one.
If you want to complain that you don’t have any good idea, please show me all your bad ideas first.

Ideas rarely come from watching television.
Ideas come from listening to a lecture. Ideas often come while reading a book. Good ideas come from bad ideas, but only if there are enough of them.

The book and the author: The Practice is a book from the bestselling author Seth Godin. The Practice is a roadmap to the journey taken by every artist, writer, maker and entrepreneur.