What I Wish I Knew: “Navigating the geography of a creative life requires a compass — not a map”
“Good people are better than talented people” + the 24-hour rule (Issue #300)
Welcome to day two of “Wish I Wish I Knew” week, where we’re sharing everything we’d tell our past selves if we could go back in time. Today, we’ve got a brief but worthwhile addition to yesterday’s topic (career wisdom) from a slightly different angle: Srinivas Rao’s list of 40 things he wishes he’d known about building a career as a creative person. Rao is the host and founder of the Unmistakable Creative podcast. He’s interviewed over 1,000 creative people — actors, recording artists, novelists, cartoonists, and more — about how they built weird, wonderful careers that don’t follow established tracks.
The lessons he shares on Medium don’t just apply to a “career,” they apply to all creative pursuits (“career” or otherwise).
One lesson Rao wishes he’d known when he was struggling to create something that would matter to people? Great work always begins with “an audience of one.” Try to make something you actually love, which takes a willingness to be honest with yourself (and lived experience about how it feels when you’ve made something you’re obsessed with vs. not).
Also, and I really appreciated this one: How you measure success can radically change how you feel. If you’re using an external benchmark (especially a quantified one, i.e. number of fans, likes, or shares) you’ll always be unsatisfied (Rao calls these “resume values”). If you’re instead trying to live up to “eulogy values” (i.e., having an impact on people’s lives in ways that are deeply felt and can’t be quantified), you’ll probably feel much more fulfilled.
That’s just the beginning — you can read more from Rao here.
🧠 What you wish you’d known…*
- Robert Roy Britt, editor of Wise & Well on Medium, lists everything he wishes he’d known before taking a corporate job. For example: “Good people are better than talented people.”
- Karen McLaughlin pens a letter to her 44-year-old self, wishing that someone had given that person a wakeup call about what midlife had in store and urged her to “keep up with the prehab exercises, the core work, the stability and mobility drills.” (Humans tend to age most dramatically in our mid-40s and early 60s.)
- High-school counselor Carol Caruso advises her past self to “enact the 24-hour rule when possible” because most things aren’t as urgent as they seem.
*If you have a list of wisdom to share for your past self, publish on Medium and use the tag “What I Wish I Knew.” We’ll feature more of these later in the week!
👂 A dose of practical wisdom
“Being good at something is not about being right the first time. It’s often about being confident enough to let go of ego and be receptive to other people’s contributions.” — Ben Nolan, “What improv comedy has taught me about content design”
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Edited and produced by Scott Lamb & Carly Rose Gillis
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