Creators: How to Make Legacy Work and Why it Matters More than Ever
The importance of legacy-level work, even if store-bought tastes better
This story is more a parable. It’s a discussion of the relationship between craft and legacy, with little to do with cooking and everything to do with legacy. If you wish to leave a legacy with your work, keep reading.
Recently, we had guests at our house for family dinner — with extended family from across the country. The house was abuzz with activity, from cleaning to food prep.
My wife was tasked with a large batch of red sauce (east coast-speak for tomato sauce), using a family recipe handed-down from grandmother, to mother, to daughter — with little tweaks between generations.
Our diced tomatoes were expired and we were out of time. I had to run to the store for pre-made, jar sauce — blasphemy, I know. But all went well. We got high-quality jar sauce and it tasted great. But there was something missing without the added love from the homemade recipe.
One could argue (not me, of course) that the store-bought sauce tastes better. With teams of chefs and chemists interviewing thousands of test subjects. The perfect ratio of each ingredient goes in the store-bought jar, versus Grandma’s pinch of this and just a little of that.
The HUGE difference is there’s no legacy behind the store-bought sauce.
Sure, there’s cute marketing story on the back of the jar — of how the recipe was lost in a steamer trunk for 100 years, only to be found by a wild pack of dogs and resurrected by the great-great-great granddaughter of it’s creator. But those messages don’t fool us.
We don’t sit around the table sharing stories of the billion dollar company on the jar. We talk about Grandma. We share the old stories, repeated for hundred of meals together. We share the good times and bad — all sparked from this little piece of legacy, hand-written on a recipe card.
Your legacy may be more important than your current work.
So, whether you write, code, invest, cook, or paint — you’re building a body of work. This is your life’s resume, unfolded before you. Your legacy is an encyclopedia of your craft. And it matters. We have much to learn from you if you’ll let us.
What we leave behind lasts much longer than our living work. We’re only on this earth, doing our best work, for a good 40 years, with an incline and a decline at either end.
I wrote a story of life’s impermanence here:
What’s the big deal with legacy?
We’re pre-wired to appreciate the new and exciting. We’re bombarded with novel ideas everywhere we look. This drug is better than last year’s drug. This phone is better than last week’s phone. If you follow this new diet, your old diet will look like a dinosaur.
Legacy is more important than we give it credit.
As we chase the new and shiny we leave behind this flotsam of gold. For those of us who know where to look, we thank you. But for the average bear, many legacies are lost forever.
Not all work is worthy of legacy. Maybe you’re not satisfied with your current vocation, because it leaves little room for fulfillment. Legacy work is important and shouldn’t be discounted.
Here’s a story I wrote about changing work when your work isn’t satisfying:
It’s a question only you can answer.
How do you want to be remembered? How long do you want to ‘live?’ How much of you work do you want to live on in perpetuity — to help others learn from your bloodied knuckles, hurt feeling, and triumphs?
Legacy isn’t about leaving a single secret to the universe.
We build our answers from tiny bits of wisdom, plucked from here and there. From each person’s legacy we might glean one pearl, but that’s enough. If I can gather one priceless pearl from your life’s work you left a legacy worth remembering.
If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write something worth reading or do something worth writing — Benjamin Franklin
Today we’re going to save your life
Your ‘living’ life is on you, my friend. I can’t help with that today. This story is about saving your life, as in, preserving your life’s work — the legacy you leave for us to enjoy and benefit from.
Your legacy can take any form.
My grandfather’s chili recipe is as much a legacy as your data transfer algorithm. There’s scale to everything. Not all our legacies will scale equally and neither should they. We keep family recipes in the family, because it’s more special that way.
The degree to which you want to share your work is a personal decision. Some people leave explicit instructions (as Mark Twain did) not to release certain work until many years after death. But this isn’t about the logistics of the work.
You can scale your work as big as you wish.
Your legacy can become the store-bought sauce. And if your story is real and genuine, we’ll cherish your work no matter how big you get. There’s also value in small batches — putting a cap on size — releasing 1,000 doodads per year and never more, while only increasing the price.
We live in the era of bespoke everything. I can measure my body with my phone and have a custom, tailored suit made just for me, for less than $200 US. That’s amazing. There’s no legacy in that, but it’s a true wonder. The legacy is with the tailor who makes one suit at a time and meets each customer, photographs them, and learns a little about their history, cataloging the suit to the person. This tailor can charge $10,000 per suit.
What makes a legacy?
I’ll attempt an answer here. My answer will be different than yours, but I hope this gets you thinking.
A legacy:
- Helps us think
- Helps us grow
- Helps us live better
- Helps us live longer
- Helps us feel better
- Helps us love harder
- Helps us work smarter
- Helps us become more free
- Helps us find peace
- Helps us be braver
- Helps us be better
Nowhere on this list does is say a legacy helps us make more money for us or our employer. Money’s never a goal, it’s a bi-product of doing our best work — the work that matters most.
Sometimes I wish Maslow had legacy at the very top of his hierarchy of needs. There should be a beacon above all-else. Once we’ve satisfied everything else, it’s time to leave behind our biggest gift for those who come after us. I believe this is a critical need.
How to leave a legacy
Depending on what you create, your legacy may be your physical work. If you write, you leave behind your books, research, and stories. If you paint, build, sculpt, or sew — there’s a life’s worth of things for others to preserve, remember you by, and learn from.
What if your work is more esoteric?
Maybe you’re a deep thinker, a mathematician, or a great friend. What if your work isn’t tangible? Record it somehow. If you don’t like to write, make a video or audio. Preserve your best stuff on your own platform or media. Sure, social media platforms are a handy way of cataloging life, but we don’t own those platforms.
Make it easy for those who come after you to discover your legacy.
This isn’t about a last-ditch note to scratch-off as you breathe your last breath. This is about chronicling your work as you create it. Catalog your life. Publish your life. Record your life. We don’t care what you ate for dinner (unless we do), or what color socks you wore.
We want the little gems.
Your ability to curate your best work is just as important as leaving the legacy in the first place. Ever have to clean out the attic of someone who died? It’s a terrible project. Not only do you have all the emotions tied to the person, but you’ve got to sort through a life of junk and decide what to keep and what to toss.
Do the heavy lifting for us.
Say, hey, this is the stuff I want to leave for you. This stuff over here, my bottle cap collection and my obsession with used gum — pitch all that. But this stuff — in this box — here’s my legacy. The box is metaphorical. Your box is whatever you want to leave for us. Maybe it’s a single thought. Maybe its a computer file or song.
Whatever your legacy, we’re here waiting for it. We need it to help make us better versions of ourselves. We’ve all got something important inside of us — one gem to save a life. We need yours. Don’t leave us without sharing. Your recipe will save a life.
We’re waiting for you.
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August Birch (AKA the Book Mechanic) is both a fiction and non-fiction author from Michigan, USA. A self-proclaimed guardian of writers and creators, August teaches indie authors how to write books that sell and how to sell more of those books once they’re written. When he’s not writing or thinking about writing August carries a pocket knife and shaves his head with a safety razor.
This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by +445,678 people.
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