Maintaining creativity:

How hard is it to maintain creativity?

It’s hard to try and produce things for the sake of being creative.

No matter what, you have to be you.

You have to continue to walk your path and speak your truth. No matter how insane or crazy some of the things you say may seem, your view of the world is just as important as anyone else’s view of the world.

It doesn’t mean your view is superior to anyone else’s, but it’s just as good as there’s. Why should most of the world listen to celebrities or people on the news when they’re just as flawed as everyone else? People we hear the most are not the smartest.

Read something recently about how the smarter you become, the more you realize you don’t know. The more you don’t know, the more you get scared speaking your mind. A lot of smart people don’t share their opinions for fear of being wrong or upsetting the status quo.

Remember, the ones who change the paradigm are often beginners. Experts are so stuck in their ways that they sometimes have a tough time seeing the forest from the trees. They’re so stuck in the details every day that they can forget to take a step back and ask basic questions.

Be a beginner in all aspects of life.

Attack subject areas from first principles. Without understanding the basics, you can’t understand the complexities. There are a lot of complexities in the world since we live in a multi-factorial system, but life often boils down to simple concepts. People try to sound smart by throwing in jargon and words that most people don’t understand.

Get back to the basics.

Often the most creative thing can be something that seems so simple to you. The world is built for creatives. It’s built for people to share their gift with the world. That can come from painting abstract art or designing billion dollar buildings or building rocket ships. 

The world is built for the creatives and innovators. The rebels. The ones who push the boundaries of what people think is possible.

We saw Richard Branson visit the edge of space today aboard Virgin Galactic. Talk about an incredible achievement. Richard’s a great example of a creative and innovator.

He’s a builder. He’s a guy who understands that if you really want to change the world, you have to build. You have to do something other people don’t think is possible. You have to solve problems other people don’t even know they have.

Through that process, you will face tons of difficulty. Failure is the price for signing up. But what is life without failure? Without learning from your mistakes? Without discovering yourself by pushing the boundary of what you thought was possible?

You have to show up every day and do the work. The work is what matters, not the outcome. As long as you strive to do something great and continue working on it every day, a little bit at a time, you’ll eventually get there.

Work compounds just like money. The more effort you dedicate to working on problems for a long period of time, the more you’ll be rewarded.

Right now my goal is how do you become a powerhouse creator?

I wrote another blog post on it (here) but have some more ideas to add.

Can add a biotech VC course on learning biotech and sell that.

Can add multiple podcasts under one umbrella.

One in each different language. One for French, Spanish, Portugese, Hindi, Mandarin, etc.

One on strictly VC.

One for your writings.

One for interviews.

Kind of like what Bill Simmons created with the Ringer.

It will take a few months to set up but I’m hoping I’ll have that once AMC and Gamestop squeezes.

The interesting thing with doing all of this again and again is you never know what could hit. As Mark Cuban said in his book, all you need is one.

Quality is subjective, quantity is not.

Produce work over and over again for years at a time and eventually you’ll get good at it. This is all an experiment for myself to see what hits and what doesn’t.

Go with the wind. Be like water.

Take asymmetric bets, because that’s all this was. By starting writing, the only downside was I had hundreds of pieces of content that no one read. The upside is I might’ve predicted history and may have found the next part of my life.

Don’t worry about maintaining creativity, just do good work.