Your work is not for everyone.
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Notes
Practical empathy requires a selectiveness.
- The contemporary painter must ignore those who want a classical still life. The work is not for them.
- The tech innovator must ignore the person still using a VCR. The work is not for them.
“Here, I made this” implies “It’s not for you.”
There’s nothing wrong with the nonbelievers. But to court nonbelievers is to focus on external validation. It’s impossible to do important work that everyone loves.
- You can choose banal—indifferent or mediocre and thus “no one bothers to dislike it” (but no one loves it).
- You can choose to work only for yourself. Rare, and also not collaborative.
- You can trust your self:
- Choose to make work that matters to someone. Develop an understanding of genre, work to understand the audience, go as far as they’re willing to go. “Choose to be peculiar.”
- Choose to commit to the journey, not any single engagement.
If you’re on a journey that doesn’t cause a spark, you may need to make better, braver work with more empathy.
“Combined with your commitment to the practice, it’s inevitable you’ll produce an impact. If you care enough.”
Thoughts
I’m always nervous about “inevitable.” The notion that it might not work—central to Seth’s idea—is that nothing is inevitable. I mean, if you put “yet” on the end (it might not work yet), then perhaps inevitability is implied. But if that’s certain, then “it might not work” doesn’t really mean anything.
That said, it’s unnecessary pessimism (and not really what I feel) to point that out. I guess since I don’t yet (after two months?) clearly know what the practice or journey is, I don’t really know what success or failure looks like.
For one thing, I think I still want to define success or failure based on the product—on the “single engagement”—rather than on the journey and practice. I don’t know how to define it otherwise, even though I agree that this attitude is a way of seeking external validation, and even though I agree that’s not a useful thing.
For another, I’m still not sure what journey or practice I want to move towards.
In fact, this is probably the bottleneck. I’m approaching retirement, which will enable me to focus as much time as I want on whatever it is that I choose. I know that I love music again, that I want to build skills that I’ve never really built, to write and record songs, and so on. I want to make things, as I used to (only, one hopes, better…). But I’m not sure how seriously I want this. I don’t know how much this is just me wanting to do shit, and how much is me wanting to make a difference.
That, of course, feels lazy, selfish, and disconnected…. I guess what I’m learning here, from Seth’s book, from his insistence on generosity and on changing someone, etc., is that I need to make a choice. Do I want to trust myself, or not? Do I want to create banal work (please, no!)? Am I willing to go solipsistic (part of me actually says yes to that…)? Or do I want to make a difference?
I think what I fear is this: if I decide I want to make a difference, will I be able to do the work I want to do?
This series is meant to capture my thoughts as I work through Seth Godin’s The Practice. It’s a book with over 200 (very short) chapters, which I hope to work through and, I further hope, to implement over time.
If you’re interested in more of Godin’s ideas, or my thoughts about them, you can check out this collection of posts. Note that if you’re more interested in the former, you should probably get Godin’s book and read it yourself; my notes will be both incomplete and idiosyncratic, and my thoughts will relate to my own experience.
But if my thoughts resonate with you, or if you think I’m just silly, I welcome your comments.