Tag / work

by Nathan Coumbe

Take the pressure off

Seth Godin said something in his podcast “Pizza & Sushi, Joy and Mediocrity” that really resonated with me today. One of the listeners asked him a question about whether he should find a job while he pursues his art or just dive straight into creating. I’m paraphrasing his answer here, but in essence his response was that sometimes less-than-ideal work allows you to create your art unhindered.

Let’s think about this for a moment: what if the only source of income, of survival that you had was your reliance on producing your art, of developing your craft? How much pressure would that put on your shoulders? How stressful would your art, that thing you love to do so much, become if it was the only difference between feeding your family and going to bed hungry? How generous and authentic would your art be if it was the only thing keeping you from losing your home?

There are plenty of creatives that I know who would be just fine eating beans and rice and living in a van. For some of them, that is the life. But for me, with debt to pay off, a roof to keep overhead, and a wife who leans on me (and I on her) for financial support, it is too much stress.

So get a job.

Do something, anything, to keep the wolf away from the door. Drive for Uber or Lyft; deliver pizzas; wait tables; work in retail. It will not be glamorous, and it might be boring and tedious to the creative mind. But it isn’t forever, especially if you start down a path to your dream job.

If you can take the financial burden off of your art, whether it is visual art, speaking, music, theater, or writing, it will be that much easier for you to produce meaningful work. You’ll also learn a lot of useful skills you might not otherwise gain working on your art, such as leadership, communication, planning, business skills, and countless others. You also will make a lot of contacts with other people who might someday benefit from your art.

More than anything else, you’ll worry less about survival and focus more on creating and making the world a better place for us all to live.

Again, I am not advocating working in something you don’t want to do forever; I certainly don’t plan on doing that. So get to work, make some money, and make your art without worrying about where your next meal will come from.

If you would like to start down the path to your dream job or start your own business, I recommend going through the 48 Days to the Work You Love Seminar and joining the 48 Days Eagles group, a community of creative, like-minded individuals supporting each other in finding and creating work that is meaningful, purposeful, and profitable.

by Nathan Coumbe

You can’t expect crops if you didn’t plant seeds

It seems rather absurd to imagine a farmer standing out in his field, scanning the horizon, scratching his head, and wondering why his crop of corn didn’t come in. It’s rather obvious why…

He didn’t plant any corn in the spring.

Why do we think the same rules of farming don’t apply in our personal and professional lives? We expect a raise or a promotion without putting in any extra work or without doing anything extraordinary to earn it. We ask for a big gig or a huge project but don’t have a portfolio of work backing us up to show that we can handle it.

This is very similar to a message in one of my previous posts about preparation for the unknown opportunities that come our way. However, this is about the things that we know we want and are actively seeking out.

If you are a part time freelancer, you may have to create some work on your own time outside of your day job in order to back up what you say you can do. If you want to move up into management, you’ll have to start leading and developing other people before you get a leadership or management position. They don’t give you the role and then have you show that you can do the work; you have to start showing and doing in order to get the role.

We cannot ask for benefits, rewards, and extra responsibilities if we have not put work that shows we deserve them and/or can handle them. Employers and clients just don’t work that way. You still have to earn it.