Why Try To Get Out Of Your Box, When You Can Use What's In It?
Quick note about my earlier post. It’s fair to read the comments if you follow two rules.
1. Read the comments that are helpful. Skip the ignorant ones.
2. Do not read the comments on your own work unless you can handle being intentionally torn down.
I got turned on when I saw Krugman’s NYT’s post, “Profits Without Production.”
I thought to myself, “Finally, he sees it too!” Alas, while I am sure he would agree with me, he sees profits without production in a different light.
Nevertheless, since you cannot read what I thought he wrote. I’ll write it.
It wasn’t until the start of the industrial revolution that “production” became mechanical, void of emotion, and downright dirty. Prior to the industrial revolution, to “produce” held power. Anything that was produced contained a bit of the person who produced it.
Production took hands (many of them), impromptu thought power, and personal insight (not mechanical). There were technicalities before there was anything technical. Then, once the industrial revolution hit, “production” took on an entirely new meaning.
It’s as you can expect, recall, and still see industries trying to continue. During the industrial revolution production was being carried out by robots, assembly lines, programmers, and chain reaction contraptions. No grit, no personality, and no heart. The only connection was between two wires. Profits came from faster production. As a result, the process to creating goods was a stale, monotonous, banal one.
Now, though, we’ve entered the post-industrial revolution which has – I don’t want to say returned, but has reconditioned “production” and given it an all new meaning. Production has maintained its sense of efficiency and multiplicity while involving the human spirit, a person’s passion.
This post-industrial revolution is the collaboration of the assembly line and creativity. However, not in the sense that one piece of creative work is repetitively created, rather, art (whatever your art may be) is continuously created, day in and day out.
For me, I write something different every single day. Alisa Toninato, instead of molding a typical metal pan over and over, sculpts something different, again and again. Now, those who are profiting the most (financially and internally) are those who have salvaged the key parts to production, but, generally, tossed the industrial revolution concept away.
Profits don’t come from production, they come from the interaction created from making more art. And making more art comes from doing enough weird things until they get noticed.
Stay Positive & Potatoes Pototoes, I Suppose
Garth E. Beyer
Photo credit
Those who have said that content is everything, to focus on content first, that content matters most were partially wrong. Wrong, mainly because information is already infinite. Content is already there and all blogging is about is presenting information in an original way.*
What makes a successful blog is not so much the information you provide as how you provide it. Yes, of course it needs to be valuable information, but do you present it in a blunt, matter-of-fact way? Or, how about presenting it in a comedic, captain obvious way? Or, be extremely passionate. Or, express your message in 10 words or less.
Anyone can deliver, but how you deliver means everything.
*The restructuring of information is often misinterpreted as content creation. No. Content is already there. Restructuring is about show, not tell.
Stay Positive & Not What, But How
Garth E. Beyer
My writing doesn’t resonate perfectly with everyone who views it. I have dozens of very close friends that never read what I post. I have family that – and I can say this because they won’t read it – doesn’t care that I write or what I write.
I’ve overcome this, but I do know how it can sometimes hurt. A lot. When those you think care so much about you, don’t get involved with your passion.
One of the myriad admonitions I’ve learned about writing is that there are people you wish would read it that don’t and there are people you wish wouldn’t read it and do.
Remind yourself of the long tail. It helps.
Stay Positive & HT To Those Who Don’t Force Themselves To Read It
Garth E. Beyer
That’s the biggest problem for the members of the creative class – there is no one there to tell you what to write on, what to create, who to connect with, how to develop a tribe or when to launch a product.
Sure, you can read suggestions on a blog, watch a tutorial on YouTube, or follow Wiki’s how-to list, but that is the opposite of what defines you as part of the creative class. The toughest part is meant to be self-assigning work – creative work that matters, I might add.
Creativity, by my definition, is interaction with ambiguous results. There is no one there to tell you exactly how to interact or specifically what the results will be – it’s up to you to set the goals, to trailblaze your way to success, and discover what works best for you.
No one tells me to write every day or to interact with 10 people a week on Twitter or to repeat the process of consuming > producing > sharing, I simply do it because not doing it doesn’t lead me to become the creative person I want to be.
When you stop looking at your creative actions as optional, it’s as if you don’t even need anyone there to tell you.
Stay Positive & Be Your Own Boss
Garth E. Beyer (sure, you will think your boss is an asshole at times, but at least he delivers.)
Running it by someone who might not understand is waste of your time.
Sure, you may get some variant input, but no serious support.
Instead, follow the motto: run with it and review.
Talk about your work after it’s shipped, not while you’re working, not while you’re creating, not while you can be manipulated by poor forms of criticism.
“Talk about what you have written, by all means, but do not read from it while the work is in progress. Every gratification procured in this way will slacken your tempo. If this regime is followed, the growing desire to communicate will become in the end a motor for completion.” Walter Benjamin, One-Way Street
Stay Positive & Until It’s Shipped, Follow The First Rule Of Fight Club
Garth E. Beyer
