When a child sets out to create a picture for Mom with paint or crayons, the child does not form a focus group to solicit opinions on what to paint. The child does not ask for permission to create his art. The child does not solicit feedback from a beta group midway through the process. And the child does not care if the parent even needs or wants a painting. The child creates it, completes it, hands it to Mom, and says “Here, I made this” and walks away.
A child may paint hundreds of pictures or build hundreds of block houses, and none of them may be very good. But the child does not care. He creates for himself, not because someone commissioned him to create, or because someone asked for a nice drawing of a tree, the sun and a dog. Children create the works, hand them in, and then move on to the next one, knowing the next version may be better than the last one.
Mom may marvel at the creation and claim that it is the best painting she has ever seen, as parents frequently do, but the child is quickly off to create something else new, and the last masterpiece is forgotten. The child does not pass the picture around to the neighbors to see how many “likes” he can get. He does not solicit comments online or ask his Instagram followers to rate the work on a scale of one to five stars. Creating art is for the child, and no one else. And children always feel free to create a lot of art.
As young people we are filled with a sense of wonder, possibility and creativity, but over time, we often lose that recklessness and pride of creation. We get older and attend school where there is a right answer and a wrong answer to every problem. We work at jobs where we are handed a manual that outlines our responsibilities and the correct and most efficient way to complete these tasks. We are not asked to create new business “art”, or color outside the lines. We wait for permission to try a new and novel way to do things, and we may wait for new tasks to be assigned to us.
Most people do not create new innovative work without permission or direction, as it is assumed that there is tremendous risk in rocking the boat. What if I get fired for not doing the exact job assigned to me? What if I am seen as an unmanageable free spirit? What if I create something and everybody hates it? These imagined risks and fears tend to stunt and extinguish the creativity and imagination of most employees.
But in this heavily technology-focused world, we must consider what we all do for a living. In the old days, our economy was a factory-based or farm-focused engine. A worker showed up at a factory, used a machine to crank out widgets for ten hours, and then went home. But in our new economy, any job in which you can be handed a manual which lays out the exact steps to take to create and finish a product or task can and will be eventually outsourced to a machine or someone far away who will do it for a cheaper price than you charge for your labor. If the specs and tasks of your job can be precisely written down, then the job will eventually go away.
So, what will we get paid good money to do in the future? All the tasks that cannot be easily identified, written in a manual or shipped away. Skills such as leadership. Creativity. Thoughtful marketing. Design. Connection with other people. Scientific discovery. And problem solving. But works in these valuable areas will not come with an invitation to the party. No one will knock on your door and ask you to think outside the box. You will not be given specific direction on what to create. You can’t focus-group your way to greatness. And you can’t wait for someone to ask you to paint a picture. You need to paint it yourself, based on what your style of art is. And then hand it to the world saying, “Here, I made this”.
Not everyone will like what you create. But enough people, or the right people, might. A painting may have been created before, but not by you. At some point, we all need to create what we ache to create, and then bravely hand it to the world saying, “Here, I made this”.
Author’s note: While the words above are mine, they are influenced by the voluminous work of thought leader Seth Godin. I highly recommend Godin’s blog, at https://seths.blog. Godin has posted his thoughts about life, business and marketing every day for more than 20 years. And he keeps himself humble by slyly noting, “Half of all my posts are below average”. Some of his thoughts are short, and some are long. But there is no venue on the site to comment, rate or discuss his posts. Godin is not concerned with what you think about his art. He creates his word painting every day and says, “Here world, I made this”. And then he moves on.
