Creativity Isn't Hard Work

I'm writing thirty posts in thirty days. This is number twenty-one.

I’ve known a lot of successful creative people, and I’m tempted to say that they don’t work hard, because that’s sexy and provocative. But it’s not quite right, although many don’t work as much as you might think. What’s more precise is that what they do isn’t hard work, which is to say, what they do is work, rather than labor.

We all intuitively grasp this distinction. Work can be fun, although it isn’t always. Labor is never fun—it’s trying to break a rock with a toenail clipper in the desert. Work is something you undertake by choice. Labor is assigned to you by some threat of violence. Occasionally, we must labor, but we avoid it as much as possible.

If it feels like labor, you’re probably forcing it. Perhaps you are going after a fake ambition that was memed at you by the evil memeplex. Or perhaps you’re trying to do something original, which is a trap. Try, instead, doing something inspired by what’s most obvious to you specifically. Note that if you find something obvious, that’s because of a whole mess of your own concepts, memories, and associations that are unique. Obviousness is built on particularity. Therefore, if you explore what’s obvious from your perspective, you will often end up with what’s least obvious to others.