Creative contribution

Awards and sales performance are the easiest ways to measure creative work. They also frame the creative process as a competition. There are winners and losers in both, and it focuses on results. This isn’t a useful frame for actually making something you want to make, which is what being a creative person actually means. Instead, shift your focus to the process. Measure your creative work by your contribution. What can you give? Who can you help? Where can you offer support? In The Courage to Be Disliked, a fictional philosopher character explains, “It is through labor that one makes contributions to others and commits to one’s community, and that one truly feels ‘I am of use to someone’ and even comes to accept one’s existential worth.” Creative contribution is the guiding star. The rest of the metrics are just noise, useful for marketing, but not very useful for actually making stuff. The post Creative contribution appeared first on Herbert Lui.