Your life journey is not about finding yourself — it is about creating yourself
You are living in an age of creative renaissance and you need to crush it
We are living in one of the most interesting times in history.
If you have a laptop, a cell phone, and an Internet connection, you can instantly become an entrepreneur and build your own company.
Information is abundant and free. You have access to all the world’s knowledge at your fingertips.
You can teach yourself anything that you want. You can master and teach any field. As you learn new things, you can share your passions, curiosities, and creations with the world.
You do not need capital. You can use imagination to create your own creative assets and share them with the world. You can use your imagination to bring things that are fresh and exciting to the world.
Here is my manifesto for thriving in this new world where curiosity and imagination are the biggest tools and weapons.
Hereby, I call it ‘Fahri’s Manifesto for Surviving and Thriving in the Digital Wonderland’:
“We are living in a digital economy where attention matters the most. Attention is the new gold — it is the most critical, cherished, and sought after thing. We are witnessing a new gold rush on social media. Whoever captures attention rocks this new crazy world. I call this crazy world ‘Digital Wonderland’.
In the Digital Wonderland, manufacturing curiosity, surprise, humanity, and virality has become one of the most strategic success factors for individuals and companies. Master storytellers will thrive and shine in Digital Wonderland. You need to tell your own stories, create your own personal brand, and connect with your own fans and tribe.
You might be wasting long hours in the Digital Wonderland. In fact, this is not waste at all. It is a blessing. You are following what is most interesting, wonderful, and refreshing for you. Time spent for learning, experimenting, playing, and exploring is never wasted.
We humans are not machines of productivity. We are organisms of curiosity.
We are not optimised for efficiency and productivity. We should leave these goals for artificial intelligence. Machines, robots, and algoritms will handle these.
The world needs your creativity, imagination, and curiosity. In the Digital Wonderland, you can create new worlds and universes. You can be a super-hero and amplify your unique strengths into super-powers. You can create your own adventures and games you wish to play. You can pursue pure play and fantasy. You can cultivate fierce and fearless imagination. You can express your quirkiness, weirdness, and originality. You can connect unlikely fields and domains. You can create your own brands, products, services, and even avatars. You can reclaim your childhood creativity.”
Fahri Karakas
The Age of Creative Renaissance
The industrial revolution is over. Traditional education is dead. The career ladder is broken.
We live in crazy times. We live in what Taylor Pearson calls ‘Extremistan’. The worst thing you can be in Extremistan is to be mediocre.
You cannot be mediocre. Reinventing and disrupting yourself is the only way forward.
A digital revolution has occurred where each individual is now an entrepreneur and an artist. Companies work in virtual networks and remote work is the order of the day. We do not need huge scales of economy, organisation charts, hierarchies, factories, standardised exams, or large production floors anymore. We do not need cable TV, mass-market and broadcast advertising anymore. We are now experiencing a borderless, democratised, digital world where each individual can have a huge impact.
We live in a world where ideas can change people’s lives. This means all of us can create our own game. Indeed, creating your own game has never been so crucial. You can now design games, create our own blogs or podcasts or YouTube channel, or raise funds on Kickstarter. You can write a book and share your voice with the world. You can create your own lifestyle brands on wellness, health, productivity, or creativity. You can create fresh and exciting digital products (training, courses, experiences etc.). You can use crowdfunding to kickstart your ideas and projects.
19 Suggestions for Professionals and Individuals to Thrive in the Age of Creative Renaissance
We have entered a new era: ‘The Age of Creative Renaissance’.
To perform well in this new era, you need to invest in your imagination.
Here are my practical suggestions to do this:
1.Hunt for the most interesting stuff. Spend time every day for learning new things that excite and surprise you. Be a hunter and learner of most interesting things.
Provide yourself more opportunities for pure play, exploration, and adventure. Similar to Bill Gates’ think weeks, schedule time in your calendar for learning and exploring new things. Remember: Time for playing or exploring is not wasted time.
2. Be obsessive in following your passions and curiosities. For example, I recently became obsessed with Mars:
3. Invest in yourself and your learning every day. This is the biggest investment you can ever make.
4. Be an autodidact: A self-taught person individual who initiates and manages his/her own learning and reads voraciously. Assume responsibility for your own learning. Go out of your comfort zone. Learn outside your discipline. Think and act wider. Education as usual is dead. Long live lifetime learning!
5. Be a polymath: An individual whose knowledge spans a significant number of subjects, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems. To be a polymath, expand your horizons and read books from diverse disciplines. Be greedy about your learning. Read widely and diversely beyond disciplines. Read at least 100 books every year (which means 2 books per week).
6. To solve the wicked problems of the 21st century, you need to think beyond borders and disciplines. Cross boundaries — there are no borders. Play the long-term game. Imagine that you are running a marathon. Below is the new success equation:
Ask Right Questions + Follow Your Interests + Intense Curiosity + Continuous Learning + Imagination + Passion
7. You need to design multiple lives and multiple careers for your future. You are not cut out for just one job. Your imagination is without boundaries — why do you limit yourself to one job or one career? Think about where you will be after 10 years. Act according to that vision. You can be as big as your dreams and ambitions. So, dream big dreams, be specific in your vision and capture your wishes and desires in your diary. Here is how to design 4 careers for your life:
8. Try to master the mental models of different fields and use them to develop a holistic perspective and make better decisions in your life.
9. Live exponentially and compound yourself for the long term. When you are setting your goals, always leave an open room for X objectives(unknown goals). X objectives are goals that you cannot see right now. They will emerge as you navigate uncharted territories. How can you compound your skills and assets for the long term?
10. Design your life by surprise. Leave more room for flexibility, serendipity, exploration, and adventure. It is not easy to scare yourself and set yourself new challenges and adventures. In order to do this, you must get out of your comfort zone. You must set sail to new horizons and explore your own blue oceans. If you do this, you will be rewarded. You will be happier.
11. Forget the career ladder and start creating your own assets. Remember: Imagination and asset creation are linked very closely. Imagine and create your own game. It is never too late to follow your interests, curiosities, and passions. Show up for creative work and use random prompts or anchors to get going. Start small — small is beautiful.
“Forget the Career Ladder. Start Creating Assets.”
Mark McGuinness
You need to establish a system of creativity to create your own assets:
Consistent Small Actions + Smart Moves + Hard Work + Play Your Game
12. Watch holistic and futurist films or TV Series that will expand your mind to new possibilities (such as Black Mirror). This means science fiction. Here is my favorite list of mind-expanding movies — watch them all if you can.
13. You need to astonish and amaze yourself every day. You can use improvisation to increase adventure and quality in your life. Try to apply automated writing, drawing, doodling, story-telling, ideating, designing, creating, dancing, and singing in your life.
14. Try to set up your dreams and aspirations for multiple domains in your life. You can use this hexagon model and exercise to do this.
15. You can get inspiration from 100 different people and 100 different fields. And then imagine you are a farmer and you are growing 100 creative projects: Let 100 flowers bloom!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qnmr/episodes/player
16. Do not take yourself so seriously. Embrace and celebrate your own weirdness.
17. Create your personal poster and manifesto. The world needs interesting, unique, weird people — like you! What kind of a super-hero are you? How will you help other people? Brainstorm ways to amplify your strengths.
18. Provide yourself challenges to get out of your comfort zone. These challenges might be entrepreneurial, artistic, professional, mental, emotional, spiritual, physical, or creative challenges. Look at 65 fascinating challenges Richard Branson set himself for his 65th age. Design your own challenges and adventures now. What will be your next adventures?
19. Take more risks — it is OK to look stupid and try out new things. Change is always frustrating and uncomfortable, but it is the only way forward. You need to embrace failure . J. K. Rowling was rejected by at least a dozen publishers before she was able to publish Harry Potter. Star Wars was rejected by many major studies until it became a household brand and franchise worth 70 billion dollars. Do not expect any short term rewards or returns. Do not be discouraged by failures and rejections. Celebrate your failures and use them as learning opportunities. You need to develop more grit and resilience to get back up after a failure.
Remember: This is a marathon and you are playing the long game. If you really want to get lucky in the long term, you need to provide yourself more opportunities for failure.
I loved writing this article — it was one of those roller-coaster writing experiences I had after midnight.
You know sometimes you lose your sleep and you seem to have a thousand ideas on your mind — it was one of those nights.
What is the best solution for such insomnia? You just dump your brain — just like I did here:)
I hope you enjoyed this tour as much as I did:)
Sincerely;
Fahri