What is Your Skill? What is Your Thing? What is it That You’d Do For Free?
10 creative finds, thoughts & ideas that will change your life
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New Format 🚨: I’m experimenting with a new format… Fridays (today) are dedicated to “The Rundown” - a weekly list of inspiration, resources, thoughts & ideas worth sharing. Tuesdays are dedicated to longer letters on the intersection of creativity, spirituality and entrepreneurship.
Hey Everyone,
It’s been a great week of writing, researching and pushing new creative boundaries. I’m in the middle of new designs for the apparel, writing my first book, learning how to make a home studio so I can do more video (for you video folks out there, you’re incredible…this is no joke but I’m learning lol) and finding new ways to share with all of you.
The Rundown — Here’s what I found over the course of this week that has helped me, inspired me or gave me some creative pushes…
- On “Saying Goodbye to Traditional Work” & Building a Portfolio Career… piecing together “multiple passions, interests and types of work” to form a “portfolio” of businesses & income streams rather than having one full-time job.
Anna confirms and reiterates more of this concept that you can “architect” your path in a multitude of ways and “she wrote out seven steps to start one thing and build momentum from there.” This is very aligned with what I’ve been promoting with The Niche Is You for the past 3 years… to double down on our gifts and talents and earn from them different than what the “system” offers us.
“Our job is to make the ideas we talk about after 8pm become a reality when we wake up in the morning.” (Virgil Abloh) - I often get these creative bursts at night, which I’ve been told happens because we’re in our deepest, relaxed state. Whether they came from personal reflection time or great convos, the goal is to take that energy into the morning during peak productivity hours. See, I need the sleep for optimal health and overall life performance, but I don’t want to lose the feeling I get from my ideas…
Solution - I keep a daily calendar to which I map out work, life, creativity and everything in between. I usually only do three 2-hour deep work sprints each day… Sprint 1 is for executing my creativity, Sprint 2 is for executing revenue and business, Sprint 3 is for executing admin and community/ecosystem work. What I come up with the night before, I automatically input into my first Sprint for tomorrow or any of the first sprints that week. Why? So I can remember exactly what I come up with from my flow state, write them down as steps and then implement without having to remember from scratch. I’ve been doing this a lot more lately and you should try it. Need help with your calendaring? CLICK HERE
Tyler the Creator — What is your skill? What is your thing? What is it that you’d do for free?
“Be ready to think nonlinearly. Even with a solid outline, some of the best creative decisions came from completely departing from the original plan… Creativity requires being ready to explore unexpected directions.” (Anne Laure of Ness Labs) —
Some of my best work came from unexpected occurrences, by accident or the things I was least expecting… me writing a simple article and post on the concept of the niche is you 3 years ago, starting a podcast (my first) I had no intention of growing which turned into 8 million downloads, mocking up a logo for the graphic designer of a major brand only for the mockup to become the final version that’s now seen at their events all over the world & hundreds of thousands each year, a random podcast guest who flew in, recorded, had lunch with me, became one of my closest friends and have been working together ever since… You just never know… you’ve got to be open to the unexpected, pleasant, nonlinear surprises.
“Chase mastery, not status.” — I recently did a podcast titled, “Your commitment to the idea has to far outweigh the validation for doing it” (Apple, Spotify) — this is exactly what I mean by that… instead of the validation, status, titles, metrics or popularity, chase the mastery of your gifts… this will give you life and ultimately create the one you deserve.
“I’m just making things with my friends for people.” — @rosegardencreative on Instagram is a perfect example of how new business models are being created to leverage multi-talented individuals, in multiple locations, without sacrificing joy and their art. When I had my digital agency (2020-2023), I operated out of this type of model and it was awesome. You don’t have to do it all alone… you can team up with anyone from anywhere and make cool stuff together. That’s the brilliance of the Internet age…
Reminder — I think you absolutely know what to do. You’ve just been convinced that you don’t.” (Roberto Ponte)
In short… follow your intuition… no matter how “surrendering” it is, it’s guiding you.
Current Read — Show Your Work by Austin Kleon
This book in 6 sentences:
The beginners have all the advantage cause they can show the process
People are more interested in your journey than your final product
Publish your work so people can find you
Share what inspires you (like I’m doing with this weekly letter)
it’s okay to make money from your work, but do it in a way that aligns with your values
Creativity is a long-term game. Keep showing up, sharing, and evolving your work.
What’s Your Obsession? — Can you bridge the gap between getting lost in the joy of your passion versus not doing it for what it can get you. Podcast Episode on this → (Apple, Spotify)
Playlist — Chill House set in a Cafe | ft. Nariki | Moonstruck cafe — A great list of Chill House to work to… great for creating, designing, writing, computer work.
If it doesn’t come bursting out of you… don’t do it.
That headline is a quote from the great writer, Charles Bukowski. If it’s one piece of advice I can give you this week is to dive deeper into the areas of your life that you are wanting to birth new ideas out of. Don’t dismiss them.
I’m not saying you have to immediately build an entire empire around them, but you should take time to genuinely investigate those interests and document your findings. May this Friday’s Rundown give you some inspiration to do so… it’s certainly what’s helped me this week.
Have a great weekend and see you next Friday!
Matt
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Excellent! Thank you! :)
This post is 🔥 so many excellent takeaways here! Thank you for this!