Boundless #57: Wholeheartedly Ship With Care
Boundless #57: Wholeheartedly Ship With Care
Politics vs. Creativity & Creativity vs. Unknown
June 29th, 2019: Greetings from Connecticut! I’m off for the next two weeks, taking advantage of my company’s unlimited unpaid vacation policy and exploring New England with Angie. I hope to see some people at the events in Boston or Hartford!
Join Me: Boston July 16th-17th + Hartford July 23rd
Boston: July 16th @ 3pm: Solpreneur Meetup: Are you self-employed, freelancing or a remote worker? Come join our session to connect & share ideas.
Boston: July 17th @ 6pm Take The Leap To Self Employment Workshop: Stephen and I are using this as an experiment to work together. We’ll do hands on activities as a group to help you take a similar approach to reimagining your path.
Hartford: July 23rd @ 5:30pm in Hartford: I’ll be doing a live workshop with people about starting podcasts and writing in public.
For the NYC friends - check out friend of Boundless Jeff Hittners 8-week after work Purpose X accelerator program. I wish I had signed up for something like this ten years. ago.
#1 Politics Or Creative Projects?
For the Americans on here, the political race is kicking off even earlier than ever. Here is my call for the people that have those inner creative projects. What if you skipped the “keeping up” with the race and put that time into something you’ve always wanted to work on?
I’m happy to help you get started. Hit me up!
#2 Wayfinding & Creation Speed
A good friend Jonny Miller just launched his podcast Curious Humans. I was pushing him to launch for a while because I knew it would be awesome.
My own approach to creating tends to default to the ship first, fix later approach. However, after seeing Jonny launch his podcast after a year, I’ve started to appreciate a different type of approach and thinking about how I can embrace it in my work. I would call this the wholeheartedly ship with care approach. Think Robert Caro planning out a 5-part Lyndon Johnson book series in 1982 and still working on it to this day.
This approach may take longer and be counter to the Seth Godin mindset of “SHIP IT!” but it opens more of a window of seeing that magical creative spirit alive within the work.
You can see it in his long and beautiful write-up of his conversation with David Whyte as well as his other interviews so far. My favorite episode so far was the one he recently launched with Austin Louis, a recent graduate from Wayfinding Academy - an alternative to the current education paradigm.
As you’ll see from Wayfinding’s creed - it fits quite well with what I think the education options of the future will look like:
We believe there’s more than one way to do life.
And one definition of success is not enough.
Too often the choice posed is what college to pick.We FIND the freedom to choose when we quiet the voices of others’ expectations.
Learning emerges from curiosity. Education should stoke it, not cure it.…
🧠They read the whole creed on the episode…definitely check out the episode and others here
#3 Austin Kleon On Creativity
I loved this podcast with Austin Kleon, author of a book I haven’t read yet but want to read called “Steal Like An Artist.” Here are a couple thoughts that jumped out here:
“professional success…you get a style and run that to the ground and turn that into a cash cow and don’t change…and let that run endlessly, which is the opposite of personal growth, which is you’re always learning, you’re always growing”
I felt this before I left the consulting world. I had become pretty good at consulting and it seemed like the whole world was pushing me down a path to start extracting rents for my skill. While everyone around me used the word learning all the time, it seemed obvious that learning had nothing to do with what everyone was doing.
“creative work runs on uncertainty, it runs on not knowing what you’re doing…there’s a confidence in uncertainty, I have a confidence that I can figure it out”
Terrifying at first, but a feeling that I’ve become more comfortable with. When I started my podcast I felt like a fool, but now many of the things involved with the process seem second nature and the challenge is finding ways to increasingly challenge myself in new ways.
#4 Misc 🎊
I’m teaching a live cohort of my Think Like A Strategy Consultant course, kicking off August 5th. Join here.
I moved my Boundless Reads newsletter over to substack as well. Subscribe here.
🔥 Take The Three-Week Self-Employment Challenge over at BoundlessU
💬 What questions are on your mind? Join the conversation in the Boundless slack community
☕ Interested in Working with Paul? I’m setting up some in person half-day coaching sessions with clients in June and July.
🔨 Get access to the Boundless toolkit and tools for self-employment here
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