Rational Creatives #13
Do things that can't be measured
Hello friends,
Welcome to another edition of Rational Creatives!
I’m very excited about this week’s issue. I struggled a lot to write it, and I’m glad I was able to finish it on time (in one of those moments of despair, I thought I wouldn’t).
Today I’m gonna cover:
Great curators don’t borrow
How to beat procrastilearning
Paul Graham: master essayist
Do things that can’t be measured
So, shall we?
Great curators don't borrow
11 weeks ago I read for the first time Gaby Goldberg's Curators Are The New Creators essay. I remember it well because I mentioned it on the second issue of this newsletter.
This week I stumbled upon it while decluttering my phone's browser (never closed the tab where I first read it), and decided to reread it. As it usually happens, I realized I had failed to grasp some important ideas the first time around. I was also able to connect Gaby's thoughts on curation to other ideas I had encountered since then. As a result, this week I've spent a lot of time pondering the role curation plays both in the creative process and in audience building.
Gaby does a great job at explaining why we're experiencing a raise of curators, how they can shape the future of media, and the ways they can monetize their good taste. Yet, she doesn't touch on an important aspect of curation: how it affects your creative process and how it can help you become a better creator.
Curating other people's work forces you to make your consumption more active. If you want to stand out and be taken seriously by your audience, you can't just speed read and skim through it. You need to put in the time and the effort to analyze, understand and simplify other people’s work. Thus, curating high-quality content fuels, nourishes and refines your own creative process.
In an interview with Playboy in 1976, Cameron Crowe asks David Bowie if he considered himself an original thinker. Mark his words: "Not by any means. More like a tasteful thief. The only art I’ll ever study is stuff that I can steal from."
Was it a coincidence that he was one of the most influential and innovative musicians of his time? I don't think so.
By studying and curating other people's greatest works, you're collecting diverse materials, wisdom and inspiration that combined will serve as the foundation for your most remarkable work.
Like great artists, great curators don't borrow — they steal.
How to beat procrastilearning?
Last month, my friend Jun and I jumped on a Sunday morning Zoom call for a cross-fit writing session. It was my first time doing such a thing. But Jun, who had done a couple of them before, set it up and guided me through the whole process.
After two hours of switching between focus writing and feedback breaks, we had turned our scrappy outlines into decent drafts. Before wrapping up the call, we agreed on finishing our pieces and maybe even publishing them the next week.
A few days ago, 5 weeks after the call, Jun published his essay Procrasti-Learning (I haven’t published mine yet). In this short but powerful piece, he reflects on his journey as a creator to realize he had been self-sabotaging his efforts to produce content in a counterintuitive way: by learning.
As a creator, it turns out, your biggest obstacle is not your competition. Neither is it your lack of skills or your lack of an audience — all those are relatively easy to solve. The actual problem lives in your head: it's you.
To succeed, you'll need to set up support systems that protect you from yourself. Your inner critic, your irrational fears, your tendency to procrastinate — those are the real obstacles.
At the end of the essay, Jun reveals his secret. He shares the effective strategy he has used to tame his inclination to procrastilearn. I won't spoiler you, though. Do yourself a favor and read it.
Paul Graham: master essayist
I haven't read as many of Paul's essays as I'd like to, but I've read enough of them to know that he's an excellent writer.
His essays are clear, concise and insightful. And even though he usually writes about big topics, his writing is always accessible and easy to read.
Of course, I'm not the only one who thinks that. Ellen, who is a writer, poet and writing coach, agrees with me.
In fact, after hearing four different people praise Graham’s writing, she decided to figure out what his secret sauce was. So she teamed up with her partner and mentor Dr. Jaworski to analyze his essays. After careful dissection, they found the six things that separate his delightful writing from the rest of us:
He writes about a clearly defined, core idea in each essay
He knows how to recognize his bad ideas
He illustrates abstract concepts with concrete examples
He knows how to create rhythm in his writing
He assumes you’re a smart reader
He’s serious about his writing rules
In What Makes Paul Graham a Great Writer?, Ellen explains every one of the points above in a clear, concise and insightful way (like Paul himself would). Both instructive and fascinating, this is one of the best essays I’ve read in a while.
Do things that can’t be measured
There’s an infinite value to things that can’t be measured.
Picture by @Zacong
As a culture, we’re obsessed with metrics and data.
We’ve found ways to measure and quantify almost everything. And to an extent, that’s ok. In many ways, progress depends on that. We couldn’t do science, for instance, without measuring things.
But we have taken it too far, both in our personal and professional lives, to a point where we don’t do things that can’t be measured anymore. And if we do, we desperately look for ways (arbitrary ways) to do it anyway.
We count likes, followers, calories, steps. We measure revenue, intelligence, productivity, innovation. And, in the process, we often lose sight of the things we were initially aiming for — the important things.
How do you measure the love you feel for your partner or your family? How do you measure the satisfaction of mastering a new skill? How do you measure the joy that you get from doing the work you’re passionate about? How do you measure kindness, justice, curiosity?
You can’t. And you shouldn’t try neither. But that shouldn’t stop you from pursuing them.
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Good one. Enjoyed reading it.