Pursuing the creative career of your dreams is a luxury. While CEOs can fail forward with million-dollar parachutes, we’re out here bootstrapping companies with duct tape and dreams. Welcome to the creator economy—where we’re not just creating media, we’re creating livelihoods from humble beginnings. I don’t envy the ones who have a different experience. I think there’s something beautiful, challenging, rewarding, and spiritual about building something from scratch.
Transforming an idea into a reality unlocked something powerful for me the first time it happened; I realized I could do it again and again and again. And the only difference after the first attempt would be money and experience, not my ability to believe in myself or whatever is trending on social media. If you’re reading this, you’re probably curious about when the journey of building gets sweeter. When the challenges start to feel like champagne problems instead of huge obstacles. So this article is for you.
The creator getting it out of the mud. The one who didn’t inherit a LinkedIn network or a trust fund. The one who sees and hears the seemingly endless symphony of: “There has to be a better way.” There is. And it starts with throwing out the hustle bro playbook entirely. You can’t trade just one aspect of your life for one aspect of someone else’s, you must commit to completely redefining what success looks like for you and your journey. Your concept of success will likely change over time, so let’s focus on what the rest of the year looks like.
I’m not under any illusions about what I’m asking you to do. The “Great Lock In” sounds cool in a social media post, but may require us to practice a version of productivity that is much less pretty and polished (Slow Productivity) in the process of dealing with the very real emotional toll many of us may be feeling in this very moment (myself included). It won’t be sexy, it won’t be flashy, but the progress will be real.
Career confusion is a luxury problem. People from less privileged backgrounds don’t always have the option to be confused; they need a job immediately. The ability to seek meaning in work is itself a privilege. It’s worth using wisely.
— Alex McCann
Creativity, duct tape, and dreams
What if—and hear me out—you created less but better? What if you stopped trying to be everywhere and focused on being somewhere that matters? The hustle culture industrial complex (I just made that name up, and I’m standing by it) wants you chronically online, perpetually productive, and permanently exhausted. The algorithm rewards quantity, but life rewards quality.
In order to achieve one of my big goals by the end of the year, I had to be honest with myself about what my capacity was. I’ve been deeply inspired by Simon O’s book, Energize, where he talks about understanding your natural energy cycles. I’m taking my own advice here. I’m pulling back on my podcast production to focus on writing, growing, and monetizing my newsletters. Any videos and films created in pursuit of that goal are secondary. It hurts; but I know that streamlining my focus doesn’t equate to accomplishing less.
When it comes to productivity, energy really is everything. You will notice that those who have high energy can get more done in days or weeks than many will get accomplished in months or even years.
— Simon Alexander Ong
Notice when your energy peaks and protect those hours like they’re made of gold—because creatively, they are. For some, it’s the quiet pre-dawn. For others like me, it’s the midnight witching hour when the world sleeps and ideas come to life. Track your natural creative cycles for two weeks. When do ideas flow? When does editing feel effortless? When do you solve problems that stumped you for days? Build your creation schedule around these patterns, not someone else’s “morning routine” gospel. Normalize rest periods. Fields need to rest to produce crops. So do brains. Nature doesn’t bloom year-round, and neither should you. The pressure to produce constantly isn’t just unrealistic—it’s unnatural.
In the economy of attention, mediocrity is bankruptcy. Social media algorithms change weekly. Quality endures for decades. While everyone else is focused on hacking algorithms, build craftsmanship instead. Quality isn’t just about the final product—it’s about quality thinking, quality research, quality relationships, and quality execution. It’s a practice, not just an outcome.
Make one thing so good people can’t stop thinking about it. Then make another. Repeat until you’ve built a body of work that speaks for itself.
— Shaan Puri
The world doesn’t need more content for content’s sake. It needs more creators who care deeply about what they make (that rhymed, you’re welcome). It needs you, operating at your highest level, not spread thin across platforms and purposes. So the secret sauce you’ve been looking for that makes everything easier? Doing less better, working at your natural rhythm, and obsessing over quality. Your creativity is the duct tape that holds your dreams together.
 | A guest post by
|