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Prepare for pain
“Art (a creative project) is the kind of marathon where you cross the finish line and instead of getting a medal placed around your neck, the volunteers roughly grab you by the shoulders and walk you over to the starting line of another marathon. This is why I asked you about your motivation. This is why intent has such a large impact on your ability to persevere and survive. Because you will be tested. Not once, but repeatedly.” – Ryan Holiday
Producing great work comes at a great price. Make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons (it’s going to be harder than you think).
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Define the purpose BEFORE you start
“Great, successful work rarely starts as a solution in search of a problem. Lasting resonance requires something more than novelty: It needs an earnest person attempting to find a solution to a common problem.” – Ryan Holiday
Start off the creative process by asking: What purpose will my product serve in the world? How will it provide value to the people who buy it?
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Forget what everyone else is doing
“I’m always wary of any description that resembles “It’s like ______ but with ______.” I’m wary of it not only because it’s inherently unoriginal, but also because, again, it forces the creators to compete with the very dominant entity they are supposedly improving on.” – Ryan Holiday
Don’t use the competition as a benchmark. Go in a different direction and make a product only you can make.
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Don’t hide in a cave, hire an editor
“Nobody creates flawless first drafts. And nobody creates better second drafts without the intervention of someone else. Nobody.” – Ryan Holiday
Allow people to see your work early in the creative process. It will be scary, but necessary. Work made entirely in isolation will be valuable to just one person: yourself (everyone else will find it too convoluted and confusing). An editor helps you eliminate the good but non-essential components of a product.
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Revise again, and again, and again…
“The buried insights found in those other great works were not put there on the first pass. Work is unlikely to be layered if it is written in a single stream of consciousness. No. Deep, complex work is built through a relentless, repetitive process of revisitation.” – Ryan Holiday
Triple the amount of time you spend polishing your product. You won’t regret it.
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Don’t rush it
“In the way that a good wine must be aged, or that we let meat marinate for hours in spices and sauce, an idea must be given space to develop. Those who think that can rush their way to that finish line— or have complete confidence they will get there without breaking a sweat— end up disappearing just as quickly. It takes time and effort and sacrifice to make something that lasts.” – Ryan Holiday
Adopt the long view. Spending an extra three days to get your product right won’t seem excessive three decades from now (when your product is still talked about).
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Perfect the pitch
“Nothing else will matter— the quality of your product, the strength of your marketing— if the premise and the pitch of the product are wrong.” – Ryan Holiday
The quality of your pitch will depend on your ability to explain your product in one sentence. Ryan Holiday used this sentence to explain his book on Stoic philosophy to the public (who knew very little about stoicism): “This is a book that uses the ancient formula of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius to teach people how to not only overcome obstacles but thrive because of them.”
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Launch as loud as you can
“Anyone planning a launch has to do is sit down and take inventory of everything they have at their disposal that might be used to get this product in people’s hands. Stuff like: Relationships, Media contacts, Favors they’re owed, Potential advertising budget, Resources or allies (“This blogger is really passionate about [insert some theme or connection related to what you’re launching].”)” – Ryan Holiday
Most products need to reach a tipping point of sales (critical mass of people), to become a perennial seller (ex: new books typically need 10,000 sales before achieving sustained growth). Try to reach the tipping point as fast as you can. Concentrate your efforts around a narrow launch window.
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Hard work only gets you so far
“No matter what we have heard from our parents and internalized as part of the American Dream, hard work does not trump all. At the very, very top, the world is not a simple meritocracy, and it never has been. As Nassim Taleb puts it, ‘Hard work will get you a professorship or a BMW. You need both work and luck for a Booker, a Nobel or a private jet.’” – Ryan Holiday
Just because you put in the hard work and made a great product, doesn’t mean it will be a perennial seller. A perennial seller requires luck to succeed. But you won’t you be able to make a perennial seller without hard work.
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If it lasts, it will continue to last
“(E)very day something lasts, the chances that it will continue to last increase. Or as the investor and writer Nassim Taleb has put it, ‘If a book has been in print for forty years, I can expect it to be in print for another forty years. But, and that is the main difference, if it survives another decade, then it will be expected to be in print another fifty years. . . Every year that passes without extinction doubles the additional life expectancy.’ (this is called the ‘Lindy Effect’)…Think of it as compound interest for creative work.” – Ryan Holiday
Amazon book link: Perennial Seller