Archive of posts from June 2022

Do you have great taste?

Here’s what great taste means, and how to get it:

Great taste is seeing what people want, before they want it.

Seeing what people want requires understanding those people really, really well.

Understanding them that well requires caring enough about them to want what’s best for them, all of the time. Care is the only way you’ll stick with them for long enough.

Caring for others requires a decision. To say “Yes!” to those people, and “No!” to the others. To show up for them, to give them your protection, interest, time and energy. To know them, to know what they know, to know what they love and fear.

So.

How do you get great taste?

You decide to care.

Last year, my wife Kezi and I lost someone.

It was one of the most painful experiences we’ve been through.

And following a bunch of complications, we almost lost her in the process.

During this time, we took a break.

Did some soul searching.

And we’re going to make some profound changes to our business because of it.

Why?

Because life is short. Too short. Far too short.

Don’t wait for loss as an indicator to stop wasting time on things that do not matter.

A smart investor has rules for their investing.

But what about the rest of life?

Dollar cost average your skills: If you don’t continue to ritually invest in your skills, those skill investments may lose value. The more skills you want to have, the more you need to practice all of them.

Dollar cost average your relationships: If you only invest in relationships while they’re good, you’ll sell out every time one gets tough. Relationships that matter to you deserve investments even when the candles are red.

Dollar cost average your vision: Vision is not a stablecoin, it can fluctuate violently in clarity and enthusiasm. Hold onto it and see it through by buying into your vision every day, especially when you feel bearish.

We need you HODLing your skills and buying every dip in vision that comes your way.

We can’t wait to see what you’ll achieve.

I don’t like being called talented.

And neither should you.

Here’s why:

Talented means you came out of the box with skills you didn’t have to work for.

Skilled means you came out of the box like the rest of us, and worked for those skills.

Talented is also restricted to things people can see, like copywriting or animation.

But there are so many more skills worthy of our attention:

The skill of showing honour: appreciating others even when you disagree with them.

The skill of seeing possibility: seeing that things could be better without skepticism.

The skill of empathy: recognising that people don’t know what you know & that’s okay.

The skill of learning how to learn: making the whole world of skills available to you.

The skill of decision-making: the ability to forgo sunk-costs in favour of what’s best for us.

The skill of saying no: knowing that something may be good, but there’s something better.

I’m very skilful. Talented, not so much.

When I sit down to write, I usually don’t know what I’ll write about.

But the act of sitting in the studio, opening Apple Notes, staring at the river and asking my mind for topical lessons to share with subscribers, is where the writing comes from.

The discipline of showing up: Same chair, same keyboard, same ambient music. Creating the habits that facilitate new ideas is more important than the ideas themselves. With the discipline, more ideas are always available to you, even if you don’t yet know what they are.

The structure to scope thought: Constraints help creativity, so knowing what sort of things I’ll cover helps a lot. What I’m working on… How to use art/tech/code/media to improve the world… Philosophical takes on business and life… Making learning fun… having topics to work with helps focus the creation of ideas, even if you don’t yet know what they are.

The commitment to do it again tomorrow: Letting it be known to myself and to others that we’ll be doing this again tomorrow, is a superpower for improving the two previous steps. To yourself, because you’ll anticipate it and prepare for it subconsciously. To others, because you’re the kind of person who keeps promises.

The first step to most things is commitment. Not clarity, not funding, not connections, not skills.

Commitment.

What’s healthy creative passion?

The ‘healthy’ part comes from identifying the things that cause unhealthy behaviour… and destroying them:

For me, it can be the fear that someone will let me down at the last minute (it happened enough times over the years!) which has led me to be slower to deploy teams at activities in case it happened. But this led to healthy habits: creating SOPs for everything. Because ‘luck’ hadn’t been on my side, I hardened the process to eliminate the need for ‘luck’ to appear. It’s also why I’m so enamoured with reliable, loyal people!

For you, there may be other areas where unhealthy behaviour lives…

It could be taking too many things on at once in fear of things taking to long (thus making everything take longer).

It could be tardiness in response times or clear communication because you’re so slammed (thus making others trust you less due to your seemingly-unknown status).

Whatever it is, it pays dividends to identify where unhealthy habits exist in your pursuit of meaningful, creative work. Making those areas healthy will equip both you and your work to thrive in ways you had only imagined.

If you’re a creative in 2022, you probably use a lot of tech.

Your strategies, ideas, plans, sketches and writing are probably on a machine.

I write all my blog posts are in Apple Notes. My art is all on local hard drives.

But you know what isn’t on a machine?

The memories:

When I’m exploring new characters, I do it on paper. My paper memories of how personalities were born are priceless, and old avenues sometimes birth new ideas while looking back on them.

When I’m exploring new strategies, I do it on paper. My paper memories remind me of how the slower pace of handwriting slowed my thinking, allowing me to digest each thought more divergently. There’s no backspace, so old ideas are available for rediscovery later on.

When I’m developing new habits, I do it on paper. My paper memories immortalise my commitments and skipped days in ways an app you uninstalled years ago never could.

If you’re not making paper memories, you don’t know what you’re missing.

Peace and Possibility go together.

From a real sense of peace comes the ability to let creative energy thrive, revealing possibilities and opportunities that were previously either invisible or out of reach. The bigger the peace, the bigger the possibility.

Impatience and Impossibility go together.

From a place of impatience, all we see is what’s in our way as we work to displace what lies ahead. The thought of making a great body of work or deeply investing into your family feel impossible when all you can see are problems.

If we feel peace isn’t an option, it thus means we’re being impatient.

Find peace first, to find what’s possible.

Yesterday we touched on how creative energy is 99% waste, in pursuit of the 1%.

I’ve been pondering those numbers since writing it, being reminded of Sahil Lavingia’s remark (paraphrasing from a video I don’t have a link to) that 99% of work on developing entrepreneurial projects is waste, too.

A number reflecting perhaps the number of ideas that will amount to little or nothing. Or the tests that will fail. Or the false-starts. Or the setbacks. Or the betrayals.

And yet the 1% is enough to make up for it all.

This is true of new ventures and new venture capital. It’s true of sketches for an animation and lines of code that will continue to be in production in five years. It’s true of the positive response rate you can expect to receive in your cold email campaign.

99% is wasted.

And it’s a worthy reminder to not stress about those setbacks, failures, false-starts or betrayals.

The 1% is worth it.

Creativity and productivity are opposites.

When you’re focusing on creativity, you’re exploring divergent ideas, many of which will not work, in order to find new paths and opportunities previously unseen. It’s “unproductive” –99% of this time is wasted.

When you’re focusing on productivity, you’re optimising for utilisation and efficiency, which improves output but leaves little room for divergent thinking,

Both are good. Both are useful. Both are opposites.

To be creative, we need to be at peace with effectiveness exceeding efficiency.

To be productive, we need to be at peace with travelling linear paths marked by creativity from another time.

We benefit far more from both by letting them be opposites: by letting creativity feel inefficient, and by letting productivity feel uninspired.

Does saying “Yes” more often help us achieve more things?

Too many yesses to conversation make a no to thoughtful reflection.Saying no to the occasional walk alone to learn more about yourself is a choice.

Too many yesses to smartphone distractions make a no to picking up that book. Saying no to learning far more and growing from it is a choice.

Too many yesses to email make a no to writing a blog post. Saying no to creating and publishing creative work is a choice.

We don’t achieve more by saying “Yes”.

We achieve more by saying “No”.

I like asking hard questions. Especially on weekends.

Your mind germinates on them, then gifts you with a plan of attack on Monday.

Consider challenging your creative pursuits with some hard questions this weekend:

What’s the point in doing this work?

Does the work matter?

Is the journey toward making it work worth it?

Would those you serve with this work miss you if you stopped the work?

What one thing could you change that would double the effectiveness?

What one thing could you change that would double the fun?

Treat yourself to some hard questions. Your future-you will thank you on Monday.

What could you achieve if you could bend time?

Can you change the past?

Yes… by reworking your habits of today, you change the story others tell themselves about who you are and who you must have been in order to be that way.

Can you change the present?

Yes… we can transform ourselves and our creative pursuits in an instant, with a decision, coupled with the resolve to keep it.

Can you change the future?

Yes… by keeping the promises made in the present.

While physicists and philosophers ponder whether or not time (one thing sequentially following another) exists, causation (the act of agency) persists, and with it we can shape our lives and creative pursuits into whatever we choose.

So… now that you can bend time, what will you achieve with this in mind?

Old too, not too old:

In 2013, Slack launched with the desire to replace email (which began in the 70s). Now, they exist together. Email’s decentralised, open nature may have seemed old-hat to some, but its resilience makes it a lifeline of connection. Proprietary platforms have come and gone, yet email remains. Old too, not too old.

In 1996, “Three Dirty Dwarves” and “Tomb Raider” were both released. One with beautiful 2D sprites, the other with low-poly 3D graphics. At the time, the latter was preferred for its technical advances, and the former dismissed for being ‘old 2D style’. Now, only one of them has aged well, and the former is truly appreciated. Old too, not too old.

Today, your industry is probably evolving and going through similar transitions, some ideas coming into favour, and others falling out of it. Embrace what’s coming. But don’t throw out the past. Old too, not too old.

Keep building.

When the markets are down, many people quit. But not you. These are the times to prepare for what comes next, to be considered ‘lucky’ when spring follows winter.

When it’s not cool anymore, many people move on. But not you. You weren’t riding on the coat-tails of passing trends anyway, you were building something that stands on its own feet.

When it’s hard to build, people stop building. But not you. Competition not being fierce is not a market disadvantage, but a perfect storm to take your fair share.

It’s only hard if you decide it is because of what news outlets and opinions of others would have you believe.

Keep building.

Some ideas are great. But without great people working on them, they never become reality as envisioned. The market is full of good ideas with terrible execution.

Some people are great. But the market isn’t full of people both eager and prepared to do what it takes to produce great work, making executing on great ideas even harder.

But when you bring great ideas and great people together, sparks fly.

These are the bodies of work that matter.

These are the products we remember.

Are you pulled forward by your obsession?

Many don’t understand why Zuck is going all-in on the metaverse. He understands that technology doesn’t need to have its use cases all figured out for it to have potential, and his obsession with connecting people with technology pulls him there.

Many don’t understand why Budnitz moved from a successful toy-making business to NFT toys too. He understands that art has a new medium, and that his obsession with elevating the work of indie artists pulls him there.

Perhaps many don’t understand what you’re building right now. But there’s a vision that drives you, an obsession that pulls you there.

It makes a lot more sense, to a lot more people, when you understand your obsession and share that with the world. They’ll be able to connect the dots from there.

We all have access to information, so little-known tricks and memorisation skills aren’t what define our creative potential.

We all have access to technology, so special equipment and tooling aren’t what define our creative potential.

We’re all connected to the great connector that is the Internet, so proximity to select networks or individuals aren’t what define our creative potential.

So what does?

Us.

Our ability to focus, to decide, to commit, to care.

We all have access these abilities.

We need only choose to embrace them.

Have you mastered your tools?

Awesome.

Try another.

We learn more than we realise when we try new ones:

A writer that uses Google Docs thinks in documents, one that uses Scrivener thinks in manuscripts.

An animator that uses Flash thinks in symbols, one that uses Harmony thinks in nodes.

A developer that uses VIM thinks in documents, one that uses VSC thinks in trees.

A designer that uses Photoshop thinks in slices, one that uses Figma thinks in artboards.

Master your tools… but consider trying others too, just to feel your mind working in different ways. You might find it does wonders for the way you approach your work with your weapon of choice.

A mentor once said to me, “If you don’t do it, someone half as good and half as nice will.”

I think he’s right.

If you don’t take the principled stance of protecting your customers from market opportunists, a great pretender will do a fine job of assuming that role instead. The benefit-corp world is full of countless examples of this, to the detriment of market trust.

If you don’t create with a fiduciary responsibility to bring maximum ethical freedom of choice to those you serve, a walled garden will emerge in its place. The social media and metaverse spaces are great examples of this, to the detriment of creators and consumers.

If you don’t put your ideas out into the world regardless of whether or not they’re a “roaring success”, the market will be reduced to engaging marginalised or lesser options in your absence.

Will you do something about that?

Home runs aren’t special because they happen all the time.

They’re special because they don’t.

Which leads us to want more of them.

The problem starts when we expect every project we produce, every tweet we write or every sales call we attend to result in a special outcome.

It breeds the hesitancy to step up to the plate that holds us back from hitting a home run at all.

The only way to hit more home runs is to at bat more often.

The tweet-after-next may go viral.

The project-after-next may be the one you’re most proud of.

The call-after-next may change your life.

Keep swinging.

Know what’s a hugely underrated soft skill?

Survivability:

Survivability means everyone else on the team may drop the ball… but not you. Not because you have the most skills or the best memory, but because you don’t allow them to drop on your watch.

Survivability means a dozen curve-balls may come at once… but you deal. Not by yielding to unfair demands, but by stepping up to lead a path forward when nobody has a map.

Survivability means markets may change, products may EOL, and accounts may move on… but you’re still standing. Not because you’re lucky enough to be one of the few remaining seats, but because you know how to survive any market conditions.

Survivability means a project or event may seem destined to fall apart… but you’re there. And everyone involved knows exactly what that means.

Survivability is a skill.

A very rare one.

One worth nurturing.

How’s that project you’re working on going?

We’ve heard people say (or say ourselves) that things always take twice as long as we expect them to, and cost twice as much.

What are these ‘things’ and why does it happen?

1: Things we didn’t dignify with the time and investment they deserved in the first place in order to ensure their success. Important things deserve more of our protection than our best-case estimates can provide.

2: Things we didn’t dignify with the focus and attention they deserved in the first place. Doing four things at once because you think you can squeeze them all in means you’re gambling with their outcomes should anything not go exactly to plan.

3: Things we didn’t dignify with the quick death it deserved in the first place. Dawdling through bodies of work that never needed to happen in the first place trades effectiveness for productivity.

They only take longer or cost more than expected when we don’t modify our expectations to include the dignities our projects deserve.

Why are you creating what you’re creating?

We think we know the answer…

…Let’s test that:

If a life goal changed today, what does that change in your work? Most of us don’t check our goals or their composition as often as we should. It affects what we make.

If a family loss would occur next week, what does that change in your work? We check how we spend our time when faced with things like mortality. It affects what we make.

“Why” can become stale and two dimensional if we don’t bend reality a little to see it in 3D.

By increasing the quality of our questions, we increase the quality of our lives, and the quality of what we create.

Overwhelm hits ambitious creatives.

It strikes when we have many messes, but no order.

And how we deal with it matters, whether it’s at work or at home:

If control isn’t present, bring order. Building our understanding of what we control (our minds) and what we cannot (everything else) allows us to focus our affections on things that truly matter, protecting them from the rest.

If control isn’t present, bring order. Order allows us to focus on one thing at a time, creating our best work with calm.

If order isn’t an option, have fewer yesses. This brings us again to doing one thing at a time, creating our best work with calm.

If having fewer yesses isn’t an option, we get overwhelm. This is where we end up if the above two options return false.

Now we see the decision tree, we can deliberately avoid creative overwhelm, or deliberately allow it into our lives.

The choice is ours, from now on.

Progress is slow. That’s why we don’t really notice it. It could be progress in a skill we’re developing, but the slowness puts us off. It could be progress toward a bigger guy, but the slowness doesn’t give us a milestone event at which we should choose change.

Setbacks are fast. That’s why we always notice them. It could be failing at a course, or discovering you’ve been doing something incorrectly in your skill development. It’s a minor thing, really, but we make it big because it’s fast. Similarly on the health example, sudden changes tend to jolt us into action and/or regret.

We succeed when we treat progress like we do setbacks, and setbacks like we do progress.

Introduce a little slowtime into your week. You’ll be amazed at what you discover.

What makes a brand… a web3 brand?

Is it when there’s an NFT? No. Solana is a web3 brand and has no NFT. Plus, plenty of NFT projects are insular, non-collaborative, and ‘web2 brands in web3 clothing’.

Is it when it has any kind of on-chain asset? No. The Matrix made an NFT (remember?) and The Matrix is not a web3 brand.

Is it when it collaborates with / builds on other brands? Close! But no. OpenSea is a platform… but so is AWS. Metamask brings lots of experiences together… but so does Super Smash Bros.

So what makes a brand a web3 brand?

Independent, collaborative force-multipliers.

I’ll explain…

AWS (Amazon Web Services) brings things together linearly. It unlocks new experiences, but only with itself, and not peers at the same layer.

Super Smash Bros does the same thing, but on top. It unlocks new experiences, but only atop its own infrastructure, and only at the time of launch.

Facebook’s metaverse has the same problem. Meta’s plan for the metaverse isn’t much more ‘web3’ in spirit than Super Smash Bros is.

For me, ‘web3’ means independent movement around infrastructure layer and experience layer. Your assets can bridge base layers and collaborate among top layers at will. And the brands that make them are fiercely open to inclusive collaboration.

A web3 brand understands that we’re stronger together than apart… That having freedom of movement around the aforementioned grid makes every block better… That it’s not your brand vs my brand. It’s your brand multiplied by mine, multiplied by tomorrow.

That’s the approach I’m taking to the web3 brand I’m involved in building right now.

I’m excited to share more about it with you.

And I hope more web3 brands embody the spirit of what web3 is capable of. For brands, for people, and for the change we each seek to make.

When everything is good and getting better, doing well is par for the course.

Employers employ to keep up with demand. Employees need not be great, just present. Optimism is in the air, and buying decisions are easier.

When everything is bad and getting worse, you have to be strong to survive.

…Like like a bear.

Employers learn who really have their backs. Employees need to be (or become) valuable. Pessimism is in the air, leaving the bears to generate their own optimism for the benefit of those they’re in business to serve. These are times where we learn who the bears are, and who was only here for the free lunch.

Bear markets don’t sound so bad when you’re a bear.

How do you make hard things work out for you?

Give them a cool minute longer:

Hard projects are hard in the short-term. People don’t do hard projects, or avoid them, because of this. But for those who can give it a cool minute longer, they realise progress becomes geometric.

New skills can be tough to learn, especially without a guide. People don’t develop new skills because of this. But for those who can give it a cool minute longer, they realise things start to click.

Saying no to the wrong work, so you can say yes to the right work, can feel scary. People don’t do it precisely because of this. But for those who can give it a cool minute longer, they realise what opportunities can now say yes to because of it, that they would have otherwise had to decline due to the wrong commitments.

Just a cool…minute…longer.

5 billion people use the internet today.

0.0002% of 5 billion is 10,000 people.

Most business owners and creative people would be afraid to niche down to 0.0002%.

“Think of all the people we would turn away!”

“How could I run a business on such a small number of people?”

What if you had 10,000 people who loved your work, bought your works, and shared with their friends? 0.0002% is all it takes.

What if you only need 1,000? That’s only 0.00002%!

Yours is a slice of 5 billion, and we’re all here online, today. Don’t be afraid to focus.