A few years back after one of my more impassioned lectures, a young buck in the back row raised his hand. “I understand what you’re saying about taking risks in your career, but I’ve got rent to pay.” he said.

I was shocked by his defeatist attitude, saddened at how the practicalities of life had already beaten this young creative soul down so that his biggest ambition in life was to pay rent.

Gone was adventurous youth. This kid was no longer the hero of his own life, willing to face his fears and slay the dragons that kept him from his reward. He was already sheepishly waving a white flag out the window of his mini van.

“What’s your name?” I asked. “Thomas,” he said.

“Thomas, here’s your tombstone: Here lies Thomas, he would have done great work, but he had to pay the rent.”

“Here lies Thomas, he would have done great work, but he had to pay the rent.”

Which brings us to my point: Everything you desire in life has a price and you have to be willing to accept that price. If you desire to do great work, it will cost you. Likewise, security and comfort will cost you. If you want a luxury apartment with a wrap-around sectional couch in leather with stainless steel legs, it will cost you.

But here’s the thing: I’d rather be exhausted striving for excellence than churning out work that succeeds merely because it offends the least amount of people. The cost? The fear of financial uncertainty. But I willingly accept this cost because it allows me to follow my path and craft the type of career and lifestyle that I want and need. There are things that I will not compromise on, including my sanity, happiness, time with my family, spontaneous travel with my son, and creative control in the work I choose to take on. If I fail, I will fail on my own terms, doing what I love.

Taking a creative risk and stepping off the status quo treadmill requires bravery. It demands embracing risk, and fighting the good fight to face your fears of financial doom without bailing at the first sign of discomfort. The discomfort is just a test. It’s a test of your commitment and enthusiasm—a test of your endurance and how much you want it.

If I fail, I will fail on my own terms. 

It takes creative courage to make these hard decisions about your life and career, and to do what is in your heart. It takes gigantic cojones to serve your vision of a creative life, not blindly following the practical advice of your parents or friends.

Creative courage means not being content to let your Gift rot while pursuing a path that others have prescribed for you, creeping along in the safety of a status quo life. It means refusing to join the ranks of those around you bragging about their lack of commitment to their lives. It means having the bravery to leave a job that chafes or saying “No” to a high-dollar marketing client that you don’t actually believe in.

There are times when you need to re-tailor an ill-fitting life. These are the times that will define you—the moments you seek out your dragons and slay them when they rise. This is the courage to be creative.

Business writer Tom Peters once said, “A career is a portfolio of projects that teach you new skills, gain you new expertise, develop new capabilities, grow your colleague set, and constantly reinvent you as a brand.”

At the heart of expanding your social graph and reinventing yourself is an unquenchable desire to learn—a mindset that stays fluid and facilitates personal growth. It is the learners, those willing to open their minds and augment their skillsets, who will be poised to succeed in the future.

But how do we foster this desire to learn? Don’t we all want to learn? Who ever says, “I really hate learning new things?” Yet, in the midst of searching for security and comfort, I think we often lose sight of what’s important and enter a sort of tunnel vision that can lead to stagnation. After a long day at work, Netflix sounds more seductive than spending one or two hours diving into a book that challenges you to think deeply about what you do and who you are.

That said, complacency does not beget success. In today’s networked age, companies and jobs rise and fall in a matter of months. That thing you do? There’s now an app for that, for free. Or there will be soon. That job title of yours could change next week. When thinking about our careers, no one is safe.

The concept of getting and holding a job in one industry for decades is outmoded, a byproduct of the industrial mindset. Nowadays it’s not unusual to hear of drastic career changes like a CPA becoming a yoga instructor or someone leaving a job that they had for a decade to pursue their art. These transitions are not only difficult, but they require a mindset that helps the individual be flexible and motivated.

The concept of getting and holding a job in one industry for decades is outmoded, a byproduct of the industrial mindset.

By embracing a student-like mindset and learning to turn self-education into a daily habit, you can hone your current skills and develop new ones while enriching your mind. Then, when the time to adapt arrives, the transitions are less bumpy.

Here are some ways to ignite and sustain a passion for learning:

1. Start with heroes from the past.

“I must use these great men’s virtues as a cloak for my weakness.”
—Michel De Montaigne

Having heroes gives you something to live up to, a higher standard. You can pick someone in your field and always point toward them. “That is what they do in times of self-doubt” or “That is what they do every morning to make sure they get their work done.” It’s not about constantly comparing to make yourself feel unworthy or unproductive, but rather using a model of aspiration, something to motivate you to find your own rhythm and exert a bit more effort.

Many of my heroes aren’t alive, and if they are, I have not met them in person (yet). Their teachings are laid out in books, interviews, and articles, and their quotes are scattered throughout my notebook. Whenever I have moments of confusion or self-doubt, I re-read quotes or passages from these books to center myself.

Wouldn’t it be great to have a mentor that slaps your hand when you reach into the cookie jar or someone to say, “Hey, I’ve been in this situation before, here’s what you should do?” Truth is, you may never get this kind of mentorship, and waiting for someone to pick you is the same as waiting for something great to happen. But you can actively choose your heroes, study their work and journeys, and identify the specific elements that make them great and utilize those lessons in your own life. What’s more, you can learn who inspired them and expand your knowledge from there.

2. Take advantage of free educational resources.

“How can you squander even one more day not taking advantage of the greatest shifts of our generation? How dare you settle for less when the world has made it so easy for you to be remarkable?”
—Seth Godin

Technology has transformed us into excellent gatherers of information. From books, podcasts, blogs, online courses, and tools that provide access to whomever you’re trying to connect with, you can study any subject. The access to tools that can bolster our desire to learn is incomparable to any other time in history. Picture your great-great-grandparents learning that you have access to all this information. They would likely be stunned that you didn’t spend all day reading and learning.

Picture your great-great-grandparents learning that you have access to all this information. They would likely be stunned that you didn’t spend all day reading and learning.

As an experiment, I started drawing in December 2013. My first thought was, “I should take a few electives at my university” but one course would have cost me close to $1,000. Instead, I searched online and found a portrait-drawing course for $20 on Skillshare. I went on YouTube and searched for “Drawing 101 tips” and studied the videos I found relentlessly. I followed artists on Instagram, studied their sketches and watched their time-lapse videos. I emailed a few artists and asked questions. I purchased books and skimmed through them. But above all, I did the work. The knowledge that I obtained from these various sources improved my mindset and methodology.

The tools and platforms that facilitate self-directed learning are growing by the day. Websites like CreativeLive, Skillshare, and Khan Academy provide content that is invaluable to our education. It’s easy to overlook the value of the tools and options that we now have compared to 20 years ago. Take advantage of them.

3. Explore unrelated subjects.

“Creative insights often occur by making unusual connections: seeing analogies between ideas that have not previously been related. All of our existing ideas have creative possibilities.”
—Sir Ken Robinson

Say you’re a graphic designer. Why not study something like Greek architecture or fashion? Or let’s say you’re a fitness coach. Why not study public speakers or read biographies on famous sports coaches?

One of my favorite joys in learning is studying seemingly unrelated subjects and then connecting them to my interests. Knowing that my mind is being exercised to connect the dots, even if it’s a subject that’s unfamiliar, allows me to unearth new insights and develop a richer understanding. It helps with cross-pollinating ideas, exercising creativity, and exploring the edges.

If you find yourself devouring the same kind of information constantly, change it up. Dive into subjects that you’re unfamiliar with and extract insights that have potential for connection. It may not be important now, but who knows what frontiers will open up. Lifelong learners collect dots, but they are even better at connecting them.

4. Make learning a habit.

“Education is what people do to you and learning is what you do for yourself. You’re not going to be on top of mountain all by yourself with a #2 pencil … What we need to learn is how to learn.”
—Joi Ito

A desire to learn is a fruitful asset that will fuel you throughout your life. Without this unquenchable desire to grow our understanding of ourselves and the world around us, we stagnate. We become comfortable with what we know and may feel that there isn’t anything else to learn. Of course, that kind of thinking is poisonous: there is always something that we can learn that will improve how we lead our lives and do our work.

Learning isn’t everything, however. On top of all these practices, it’s also important that we engage, discuss, and experiment with the knowledge that we obtain.

There is always something that we can learn that will improve how we lead our lives and do our work.

In the words of the Roman Stoic philosopher, Seneca, “If wisdom were offered me on the one condition that I should keep it shut away and not divulge it to anyone, I should reject it. There is no enjoying the possession of anything valuable unless one has someone to share it with.”

Learning is the lifeblood of a fruitful career. And it’s available to you right now. It’s neither a personality trait nor a gift. It takes humility to admit that we have much to learn, but this realization can be a catalyst to the kind of lifelong learning that helps us improve, thrive, and contribute in a way that is deeply meaningful to ourselves and others.

How to Take Control of Your Quest for Learning

Organize a group study with co-workers or friends

Everyday I try to engage in a conversation that explores or questions the things that I’ve learned. How is it useful and why? How can I apply it to my life? Why do I find this important or useful? What are the elements and what am I failing to see or understand? You can do this with anyone. Carve an hour out of your day to simply discuss something that you learned or found interesting. Get weekly drinks or host dinner parties with people you respect. Share a passage of an article or an idea that challenges your current beliefs. See how other people think about it so you can expand your thinking.

Apply what you learn

Reading information prepares your mind, but are you actually utilizing it in your daily life? When you read something that can improve your work, do you apply it and experiment? Learning is about improving the way you live and how you make decisions. It would be foolish to collect knowledge without implementing it.

Question everything

My friend sent me a funny meme, and I replied with a quote that I had saved in my notebook. But for some strange reason, a part of me wanted to research the quote I was sharing. I never had that urge before, but I’m glad I did. Thirty minutes later, I found out that the quote wasn’t even true—the actor never said it. How did I find out? She clarified it in an interview, and that interview was on the second page of Google. Weigh everything. Do some research on your own. Keep asking why. Take the individual parts and examine them, try to understand how each part functions and supplements one another.

Share what you’ve learned

After I finish works, I write about what I’ve learned on my blog. It’s a way for me to practice connecting the dots, to examine my pattern of thinking and my level of comprehension. I can take the information gained from the work and connect it to other notes that I have saved. You don’t have to share it publicly if you don’t want to. You can keep a journal for yourself, sort of like an archive of your own thinking. The purpose of this exercise is to be aware of how you’re thinking about a subject, and to find the weak spots that need attention and development.

Keep a commonplace book

Right now I can slide my thumb across my phone, tap on Evernote, and access an archive of all my learning. From quotes, anecdotes, metaphors, studies, and links to videos, I have an organized database of knowledge and wisdom. This is my favorite tool for self-education.

Whenever I highlight something in a book or hear an amazing story in an interview, I write it down, along with the author’s name, source, and page number. I write one or two sentences before the quote stating what it is about and what other subjects I can connect it with. The idea is that you want to have something that is immediately accessible and organized. If I’m having a bad day I can search in my file under “Dealing With Adversity” and have a wide range of perspectives and solutions from a variety of thinkers. It’s like having all your teachers and mentors close by.

How about you?

How do you stay hungry for learning?

Bill works his 10 hours essentially without stopping, juggling tasks at his desk and running between meetings all day long. He even eats lunch at his desk. Sound familiar?

Nick, by contrast, works intensely for approximately 90 minutes at a stretch, and then takes a 15-minute break before resuming work. At 12:15 p.m., he goes out for lunch for 45 minutes, or works out in a nearby gym.

At 3 p.m., he closes his eyes at his desk and takes a rest. Sometimes it turns into a 15- or 20-minute nap. Finally, between 4:30 p.m. and 5 p.m., Nick takes a 15-minute walk outside.

Bill spends 10 hours on the job. He begins work at about 80% of his capacity, instinctively pacing himself rather than pushing all out, because he knows he’s got a long day ahead.

By 1 p.m., Bill is feeling some fatigue. He’s dropped to 60% of his capacity and he’s inexorably losing steam. Between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m., he’s averaging about 40 percent of his capacity.

By 1 p.m., Bill is feeling some fatigue. He’s dropped to 60 percent of his capacity and he’s inexorably losing steam.
It’s called the law of diminishing returns. Bill’s average over 10 hours is 60 percent of his capacity, which means he effectively delivers 6 hours of work.

Nick puts in the same 10 hours. He feels comfortable working at 90 percent of his capacity, because he knows he’s going to have a break before too long. He slows a little as the day wears on, but after a midday lunch or workout, and a midafternoon rest, he’s still at 70 percent during the last three hours of the day.

Nick takes off a total of 2 hours during his 10 at work, so he only puts in 8 hours. During that time, he’s working at an average of 80 percent of his capacity, so he’s delivering just under 6 ½ hours of work – a half hour more than Bill.

Because Nick is more focused and alert than Bill, he also makes fewer mistakes, and when he returns home at night, he has more energy left for his family.

It’s not just the number of hours we sit at a desk that determines the value we generate. It’s the energy we bring to the hours we work.

Human beings are designed to pulse rhythmically between spending and renewing energy. That’s how we operate at our best. Maintaining a steady reservoir of energy – physically, mentally, emotionally and even spiritually – requires refueling it intermittently.

It’s not just the number of hours we sit at a desk that determines the value we generate.
Work the way Nick does, and you’ll get more done, in less time, at a higher level of quality, more sustainably.
Create a workplace that truly values a balanced relationship between intense work and real renewal, and you’ll not only get greater productivity from employees, but also higher engagement and job satisfaction.

There’s plenty of evidence that increased rest and renewal serve performance.

Consider the Federal Aviation Administration study of pilots on long haul flights. One group of pilots was given an opportunity to take 40-minute naps mid-flight, and ended up getting an average of 26 minutes of actual sleep. Their median reaction time improved by 16 percent following their naps.

Non-napping pilots, tested at a similar halfway point in the flight, had a 34 percent deterioration in reaction time. They also experienced 22 micro sleeps of 2-10 seconds during the last 30 minutes of the flight. The pilots who took naps had none.

There’s plenty of evidence that increased rest and renewal serve performance.
Or consider the study that performance expert Anders Ericcson did of violinists at the Berlin Academy of Music. The best of the violinists practiced in sessions no longer than 90 minutes, and took a break in between each one.

The best violinists almost never practiced more than 4 ½ hours over a day. What they instinctively understood was the law of diminishing returns.

The top violinists also got an average of more than 8 hours of sleep a night, and took a 20-30 minute nap every afternoon. Over a week, they slept 16 hours more than the average American does.

During my 30s and 40s, I wrote three books. I sat at my desk each day from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., struggling to stay focused. Each book took me at least a year to write. For my most recent books, I wrote in a schedule that matched the great violinists – three 90-minute sessions with a renewal break in between each one.

I wrote both those books in six months – investing less than half the number of hours I had for each of my first three books.

When I was working, I was truly working. When I was recharging – whether by getting something to eat, or meditating, or taking a run – I was truly refueling.

Stress isn’t the enemy in the workplace. Indeed, stress is the only means by which we can expand capacity. Just think about weightlifting. By stressing your muscles, and then recovering, you gradually build strength. Our real enemy at work is the absence of intermittent renewal.

Keep learning

Take the time to study upcoming technology and understand the implications for your field. It is better to be ahead of the curve than left behind.

Experiment

Even if you do not fully understand the new technology, give yourself some technical exercises. Hands on learning is always more effective than theory alone.

Embrace new challenges

Explore what the new technology can do, what it can’t do. What are the constraints? What are the new capabilities?

Find inspiration

Be influenced by technological innovations. Respond to it, explore it, see how you can make it your own.

Innovation in technology will continue to develop at an ever increasing rate. If you don’t learn to adapt, your job may become obsolete.

It seems like common sense: a larger reward encourages a greater effort. So if you need to inspire a person or team to strive harder, an obvious tactic is to offer more money. Reality, however, is not that simple.

Even the mere mention of money can be enough to change our mindset: It has the power to make us more selfish and competitive, while also putting some useful social contracts on hold. Meanwhile, large financial rewards transfer challenges that would have been pursued for passion or creativity’s sake into emotionless financial exchanges.

Let’s explore an example: Suppose you have been writing a book in your spare time. The project is a labor of love, something you’ve always wanted to do.

Now imagine that someone reads your draft when it’s halfway finished and writes you a check to finish your book. The project now becomes your full-time job. This may seem like a good thing on the surface, but it immediately changes your perspective of the work. Your principal reward is now financial. It’s something that must be done, and there are other people now relying on its outcome. Creatives who take their hobbies and side projects pro are familiar with this phenomenon.

So, what happened? The effect of monetary incentives on people’s behavior is tricky to predict and can often be counter-productive. Science has revealed some unforeseen consequences of getting cash involved, both with individuals and teams.

The effect of monetary incentives on people’s behavior is tricky to predict and can often be counter-productive.

Money Subverts Our Morality

Consider a study published in 2000 by Uri Gneezy and Aldo Rustichini about the effects of fines on parents’ tardiness when picking up their kids from day care. The day care made a new policy that went something like this: Arrive late to take your child home, get slapped with a fee. Despite the fines, the number of parents arriving late gradually increased, in many cases doubling.

Why? The parents now knew that the fine was the worst that could happen if they arrived late. Before the fines were put in place, a desire to avoid the guilt of keeping their child and the school’s staff waiting motivated the parents to show up on time. Now, the parents were effectively paying for an afterhours service. By introducing money into the equation, the day care centers undermined an unspoken agreement built on social trust and good morals.

Think how this same switch could impact your relationship with your work. When you slack on a passion project, the victim is your creative satisfaction, which automatically drives you back to the grindstone. After all, your creative fulfilment is sacred. By contrast, slack on a paid project and it’s tempting to see the loss only in financial, not moral, terms. It becomes a job you didn’t complete, a simple monetary transaction you choose to forgo for some downtime.

Money Skews Our Perception of Time

In the 1970s, researcher Edward Deci had volunteers complete puzzles, but only paid some of the participants. On a later testing day, those who’d been rewarded financially were told there’d be no more payments. They and the other volunteers were then left waiting in a room with puzzles.

Those paid earlier now left the games untouched and grew bored. Meanwhile, the volunteers who had previously completed the puzzles just for the challenge spent the time happily playing more puzzles. What happened? The paid participants would have been “working for free” had they picked up a puzzle (i.e. not a good use of their free time), whereas the unpaid participants continued to see the activity as entertainment.

Researchers have also shown that thinking about how much you earn on an hourly basis can change the way you feel about time. Sanford DeVoe and Julian House specifically showed that people prompted to think about their hourly wage were less able to enjoy downtime, such as listening to music. After all, when you make $10 an hour, two hours of music listening will “cost” you $20.

Thinking about how much you earn on an hourly basis can change the way you feel about time.

Money Makes Us Lazy

Money gets even messier when you involve a collaborative group. In some circumstances, higher financial rewards can actually undermine team performance.

How? Imagine a team of three designers working on a new magazine. Each person conducts their research and, in turn, proposes designs for the magazine’s front cover.

Pretend you’re the client and you offer the designers a large fee dependent on good results. This is where a phenomenon known as “incentive reversal” comes into play.

The promise of that large fee convinces the first designer that she can relax a bit, confident that the other team members will pick up the slack. She thinks she can freeload on the effort they’re bound to invest to obtain that large fee. Except it doesn’t work like that. In reality, later contributors are likely to respond by slacking themselves. This is how the promise of a large team fee backfires.

The same problem doesn’t occur if the fee is modest. Now, the first designer reasons that if she doesn’t put in a good effort, the others will probably relax, too, because it won’t be worth their time to work extra hard for a modest reward. Thinking this way, it’s not in the first designer’s interest to slack off because then the rest of the team will too, and no one wins. So the first designer works hard, and the rest follow suit. This is how a team actually ends up working harder in the context of a modest fee.

Although, the promise of a big reward hypothetically means it would have made financial sense for later contributors to compensate for the early slacker, that’s not how people actually behave.

All this is not to suggest that money doesn’t have some real motivational benefits. After all, no one has ever paid the rent in “passion.” Rather, we should be aware that the introduction of more money is not a cure-all and can sometimes exacerbate problems instead of solving them. Treasure your passion projects and think twice before introducing money into the mix. Once money is involved, it’s nearly impossible to go back.

Those who stop and listen connect with their customers and fans on an emotional level, putting themselves in the service of others. They gather data before getting started (and keep gathering long after they start), ensuring that there is no wasted effort. The big benefit? These people now have the fuel to push pass the relentless friction that arises from bringing something original into the world. It is much easier to push through your creative blocks when you can actually visualize what your audience needs. But more importantly, you’ll make stuff that people actually want.

Empathy in Practice

If you spend time observing and talking with people who use your product or service, fantastic creative ideas start to appear. Also, features you once thought were critical become irrelevant as your audience tells you what their true emotions are behind the decisions they make. None of this happens in front of a whiteboard in the comfort of your office.

Placeport

At Placeport before we write a line of code or sketch a wireframe we have conversations with the people who will be clicking or tapping on the things we’re looking to build for our clients. We focus on asking tons of simple open-ended questions and listen for people to reveal their hopes, anticipations, fears, and annoyances around the ideas we are working on.

None of this happens in front of a whiteboard in the comfort of your office.

To organize what we heard from these interviews, we rely on a tool called an Empathy Map to help us identify common patterns from these conversations. We write down the answers on post it notes and organize it on the map. This helps us get a birds-eye view of what users and customers want.

The fun part is the right column, which holds all types of ideas that we never would have dreamed up had we not spoken with real people. This is where the creative breakthroughs start to sprout up and we simply focus on generating a large quantity of ideas at this stage of the process.

Next, to tie all these conversations into something everyone can execute against we work with our team and client to draft a fill-in-the-blank Mad Libs-type statement. It usually goes something like this: “(User) needs a way to (solve a problem) because (they have this pain or desire).”

The “because” part turns out to be a really big deal. We find our entire team aligning around this insight. We’ve now connected with these people as friends and as human beings, and are committed to creating something together to make their lives better.

MailChimp

A great example of empathy at scale comes from the email marketing company, MailChimp, who considers empathy core to their brand and product.

According to Aarron Walter, head of User Experience, the reason is simple, “When everyone can create very quickly, what is it that will distinguish your product or brand from the rest? Caring for your customers. In order to do that it requires you to think from their perspective.”

When everyone can create very quickly, what is it that will distinguish your product or brand from the rest? Caring for your customers.

Walter says that front-end designers make it part of their process to watch customers perform essential tasks on their platform. But, remember, you’ll need thick skin. “I think that requires a bit of humility,” he says, “because it’s not always a good message you get from customers.”

Making Creative Work Fun

As creatives, adopting this empathy-first approach has some unexpected personal benefits as well. Having an empathy-first mindset helps you push through the inevitable creative roadblocks. It’s not about creating a portfolio piece. It’s about helping the people you now know solve their problems using your unique skills. Working this way, with real people in mind, is much better than staring at a blank canvas or whiteboard and giving it your best guess.

However, be forewarned: working in this user-first way is quite humbling, as many of your assumptions brainstormed in euphoria around the conference table tend to not hold up to this type of inquiry. After all, a critical voice was missing.

Be forewarned: working in this user-first way is quite humbling.

Using this mindset, you can avoid the heartache of wasted time by capturing what people want early on before you are overly vested. After all, we’re not creating for screens or faceless crowds.

As Maya Angelou once said, “At the end of the day people won’t remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel.”