Your Only Job As a Creative Is To Show Up
Reframe what it means to work and let showing up each day guide you.
There are a lot of things you could be doing as a creative.
Maybe, it’s updating your website or LinkedIn. Perhaps, it’s figuring out the latest tactics and lifehacks that would boost followers on Instagram. Maybe it’s something else.
But just because you can do those things, doesn’t mean you should.
If you’re a creative — meaning, you do creative work for a living — your only job is to show up. That should be your goal and ultimate KPI.
You Are Not an Employee
It took me a while to realize it. I am still partially struggling with this.
When I had my first job at my father’s company, I would come to work at 9 AM sharp and leave at 5 PM sharp. I got paid to sit for 8 hours and scroll Facebook. Sometimes I even managed to get the work done.
Today I am not an employee anymore. I am a free creative, doing projects on my dime and time. And yet, I feel guilty every time I don’t “work enough” or put in the “average” number of hours. It’s hard to get rid of this damaging mentality.
But creatives need to realize an important truth: nobody pays you to “hustle.” You’re getting paid — with money, attention, or anything you desire — to show up for your audience.
Where This Comes From
It’s not entirely our fault. It’s the school’s fault.
For 12 years, we were put in a room from 8 AM until 4 PM, and had to “do the work.” Then we had our free time, which you could spend however you like. After five days, you had 2 to yourself (if you didn’t have extracurriculars, of course).
The school system, largely created for the world of factory workers, conditions the young mind to a 6–8-hour drudgery each day. No wonder that after so many years of brainwashing, we feel obligated to continue following this ritual.
Your Only Job Is To Show Up
When you’re a creative or an entrepreneur, making things, writing blog articles, building businesses, recording podcasts — you’re not getting paid to have your butt in place all day. You’re not getting paid to have a green dot in Slack, showing that you’re “available” (read: “available for interruption”).
You’ve got an audience — whether its customers or people who read you on Medium. You’re getting paid to show up. Remember the promise you made to them when they clicked “subscribe”?
Keep it.
Getting Rid Of the Non-Essential
With each month, I get more and more emails from aspiring Medium bloggers. They write and ask me for advice such as
- “What should my formatting be?”
- “Where to find the best publications?”
- “How do I get curated?”
And while all of these things are important, they are secondary. They are the 20% in the Pareto Principle.
The 80%, the “meat,” the most important thing that you can focus on as a creator, is to show up.
Types Of ‘Showing Up’
Showing up is different for everybody, depending on what kind of creative you are.
For example, I “show up” each day with something valuable to say on Medium. Sometimes, I have to sit for 2 hours, making the article perfect. Other times, it can take me 20 minutes to write an article. Still, a whole day of research and reading books, watching videos, and compressing knowledge into something my audience can easily understand.
Employees also make money by showing up. But they are paid to show up and sit. Maybe do some work. Maybe get a coffee, and discuss the latest news by the watercooler.
Creatives are paid to show up and create. If you have an audience — of any kind — you’ve made a promise. Your job now is to fulfill that promise, indefinitely.
For someone who works on a novel, it might mean spending 2 hours each day writing. For a podcaster, it might mean working towards publishing a new episode each week.
The timing — i.e., weekly or daily is irrelevant. The format — i.e., how you show up is also irrelevant.
Don’t focus on the tactics. If you write with Stephen King’s pencil, you won’t write like Stephen King. Focus on the essential: just show up.
Does This Mean Quality Is Irrelevant?
I’ve written a bunch of pieces about the importance of “shipping” your work. Most people responded with, “Does this mean quality is irrelevant?”
But when Seth Godin quoted Steve Jobs with “real artists ship,” he didn’t mean that you should make a flyer on Canva in two seconds and send it out. No. You have to spend time perfecting your work like it’s the only thing it matters.
When we say that the most important task of a creative is to “show up” or “ship,” we mean that she can’t allow the pursuit of perfection to interfere with publishing her work. Once she’s done everything she can, she has to click “submit.” Otherwise, to quote Hemingway, “all of it is not worth a damn.”
Internalizing Your Goals As a Creative
If you look at most modern self-help, psychotherapy, and Cognitive-Behavioral-Therapy (CBT), you can trace its roots back to ancient philosophy. Mostly, stoicism.
Stoics had many great tools for self-improvement — it was their version of “self-help” before self-help was a thing. Marcus Aurelius (Tony Robbins of ancient Rome) left a whole diary of such tools in his Meditations. One of the most impactful tools, which most of us can resonate with today, is goal internalization.
It’s pure gold for a creative, like you.
When you “internalize your goals,” you shift focus from the external to the internal. You don’t care whether your book is published, whether the article goes viral, or whether you make money with your work. All you care about is following Neil Gaiman’s advice, “making good art.”
Most creatives are vulnerable. They rely too much on other people’s approval and want their work to be valued immediately. Unfortunately, that rarely happens. Not at first. Creatives who achieved success early are simply lucky (somebody had to succeed early, and they did, but that doesn’t have to do anything with you).
To avoid frustration and making the one mistake that kills 90% of beginning writers, bloggers, and entrepreneurs (i.e., quitting too early) — internalize your goals.
The easiest way to do that? Focus on showing up each day.
When Does This End?
As in, “When can I stop showing up and just sit back and relax?”
Never.
Patience is the key to success as a creator. The most successful Medium writers took, on average, 18–20 months of daily showing up until they “made it.”
But then, that’s what you signed up for. You made a promise. In the world of content abundance, breaking a promise is fatal. A creative life is a life of continuous interaction with your audience.
Who Should You Show Up For
The fundamental idea on which Kevin Kelly’s “1,000 true fans” model lies is that not all people are the same. The difference between a “true fan” and a mere follower is enormous. One will drive 30 miles to get a signed copy of your latest paperback; the other won’t even remember he followed you.
To succeed as a creative, you need to be specific. There’s no practical sense in trying to be loved by everyone — not in life, not in the creative sphere. Instead, focus on being loved by the few people who matter. Choose your niche and target it. Treat different people differently.
Think of it as darts. Your “niche,” your true fans are the red dot in the center. Target them, and the rest will follow.
Reframe What It Means ‘To Work’
If you’re serious about becoming a content creator, you must forget everything you learned in school. Not the basic stuff, like what 2+2 is, but the subtle stuff — like, how you work.
You don’t do creative work by putting it on a calendar. Not necessarily, although discipline is a great way to “invoke the Muse.”
You do creative work by letting go of unnecessary formats — like, having to be in a certain place, at a certain time — and focusing on what’s truly important: showing up each day with something better than yesterday.
By simply focusing on showing up regularly, you’ll learn a lot about yourself, your craft, and what your creative life is.
Focus on showing up, and let it guide you.
