Clarify your definition of success

Over a decade ago, I joined Lifehacker to work as a writer. The job required me to pitch and write three short stories per day, and two longer essays per week. While that’s a huge quantity of posts, the actually challenging part was finding stories that hadn’t already been covered by Lifehacker. All the easy and obvious stories had been written. Every day, I would pitch a dozen ideas, and barely three would make it through. It felt like my work was hanging by a thread. A couple of months in, I finally pitched and wrote a hit article. I shared more about that experience in my speech at CreativeMornings. Here it is below: Even from this small taste of “success,” I learned two lessons: Lifehacker’s quantity driven business model was not sustainable for writers and media companies. I wasn’t set up to build any expertise in a specific topic. It was best for me not to spend too much energy on it, and instead focus on building depth and longevity. “Success” felt totally empty because the…