#56 – 19 May 2023

Welcome to My Creative Calling!

Last week we explored those career detours and how they come to shape us.

My mind went to the Apple cofounder Steve Jobs as I recalled some of the unconventional detours he described in his brilliant Stanford commencement address.

Why the focus on Steve?

It sounds strange, given I never met him, and he was known as a notoriously difficult person. Still, I resonate with Steve’s passion for great work. And he’s become a “virtual mentor” through all the content I have consumed on him.

I read Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve maybe ten years ago, and it changed me.

I couldn’t get enough of it while listening to the audiobook in my car. It’s a long book — 25 hours of audio — but a rollercoaster life story for anyone interested in creativity and entrepreneurship. Back then, I would make up excuses to go for long car drives, out of my way, purely to listen to the magic and tragedy of Steve’s life.

Have you ever done that with an unexpected joy, you stumbled upon?

For me, there is something special about driving and audio.

I still feel many of the lessons from the book and think of them today.

But my life’s changed since that first read.

Back then, I was a dreamer trapped in my corporate cubicle.

It seemed there was no hope of getting out.

But now I am actually taking action on my dreams as a creative entrepreneur  — something Steve would have admired!

How is this relevant to you?

This week I did something different with a deep dive into Steve, looking for lessons to help us as creator solopreneurs. 

I read the new book – Make Something Wonderful: Steve Jobs in his own words. You can read it for free from Steve Jobs Archive.

And I recommend a fantastic podcast on Steve by David Senra on the Founders podcast.

So me being me, I started writing about the golden nuggets I discovered. 7,000+ words later, I had drafted up an epic on the wonder of Steve Jobs.

So I’ve decided to break it into themes and spread it over three weeks:

1. The creator journey
2. Creative business
3. Death as a motivator

Let’s get into it.

What I Learned From Steve Jobs Part 1: The Creator Journey

Career detours later become gifts

Steve Jobs is a fascinating story of someone who benefited from a non-linear life path. 

He not only built one of the world’s most successful technology companies, Apple but also led Pixar to the success it became in the movie business.

A few pivotal points after college significantly influenced his later career. Although at the time, they may have been considered a waste of his precious time when he could have been starting his career.

This resonates for me as someone worried I had wasted the first ten years of my career. 

But I am gradually finding meaning there as I chart this new territory.

Here are 3 of Steve’s detours:

1. Take a free class

Steve took a calligraphy class after dropping out of college. He followed his curiosity and audited the course even though it would not count towards his degree: 

I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. 

It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

Steve Jobs

I love how he sneakily took a class for fun. The “smart” thing to do would be to move on. But he was hung around and followed his muse.

This freedom is what learning should be — not forced, but following natural intuitions. 

It’s exciting when it’s this way.

You know the classes in school you “had” to do. But then there were the electives you wish you could do more of.

For me, it was painful as I dropped art and technology to focus on mathematics and chemistry. 

I wish I had the guts back then to follow my intuition. 

But then, maybe I wouldn’t be here right now, writing to you from this perspective. 

Jobs continues:

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. 

But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. 

And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. 

If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.

That’s almost hard to believe how a little college dropout detour could later influence the world through computers!

It shows how a curious detour can make a huge impact.

2. Take a trip

Another detour after college for Jobs was a trip to India, which influenced him in many ways, but perhaps mainly through leading him into Buddhism:

Jobs’ love of simplicity in design was honed when he became a practitioner of Buddhism. 

After dropping out of college, he made a long pilgrimage through India seeking enlightenment, but it was mainly the Japanese path of Zen Buddhism that stirred his sensibilities.

Walter Isaacson

We now see this beautiful simple love of design shine through in every Apple product. 

They were the first phone to have one simple button on the front. Remember what mobile phones were like before? 

They were terrible. 

Remember the old Blackberry phone — with a tiny screen and million buttons? 

Smartphones were complicated.

Not so “smart” at all.

And the opposite of beautiful and simple. 

But jobs brought simplicity to everything he impacted. Here are a few examples:

• He cut back 70% of Apple’s product line, leading to massive success in 4 main products.
• He wore the same style of black turtleneck and blue jeans every day. 
• The Apple retail store’s unique minimalist design with no lines or checkouts. 

Is there a trip from your life that changed your perspective or worldview?

For me, it was my time living in London. This adventure broke me out of my Australian shell and opened me up to new possibilities for what work and life could be:

• Work could be creative and fun
• You didn’t have to wait until retirement to travel
• You didn’t have to live for the weekend to enjoy your life.

3. Take an interest in artists

Finally, Jobs was influenced in his formative years by the great artists of his time, one being Bob Dylan. 

He loved how Dylan had a rebellious nature, countercultural values, and an ability to continuously reinvent himself and stay relevant in the long run.

This was played out through Job’s own life as he was forced to reinvent himself after being fired by his own company. And what an epic reinvention it was — more on this later.

But one of the most extraordinary things I admire about Jobs is his ability to merge art with technology. 

Computers and tech were boring machines before he came along.

But he turned them into beautiful machines. 

Here is a brilliant quote we can all take inspiration from as creators:

It all comes back to what you consume.

Consume great art

I was forced to go to humanities lectures—it seemed like every day. I studied Shakespeare with Professor Svitavsky. 

And at the time, I thought these were meaningless and even somewhat cruel endeavours to be put through. 

I can assure you that as the patina of time takes its toll, I thank God that I had these experiences here. 

It has helped me in everything I’ve ever done, although I wouldn’t have ever guessed it at the time.

Steve Jobs

Do you consume any great art?

This doesn’t necessarily mean classic art like Renaissance paintings, but art in any form —music, books, poetry, or technology.

I remember I had a University professor in business who encouraged us to read Jane Austen.

“If you want to write well, read Jane Austen”, he would say.

I kind of laughed it off at the time.

But now I can understand and appreciate what he was doing for us at the time.

Great literature inspires us to do great things. 

Pity I was “too cool” to take that wisdom onboard back then.

But now, as a creator, I seek artists that speak to me. 

I recently started reading classic literature and poetry. 

Sounds a bit wanky, doesn’t it? Lol! 

But it works! There is a reason they go down as “classics”. 

Do you seek out and learn from the best creators?

Part of the magic of Jobs is he brought in influences from unexpected places to create something new.

True creativity. 

So why tell you all of this?

I hope it raises some feelings about how all these “silly detours” you have taken may not be so silly. There may be tremendous meaning there that you have not uncovered yet. 

Stop beating yourself up for taking those little detours.

As Steve Jobs famously said, you can only connect the dots by looking backwards. 

Connect the dots in your life

You haven’t lived a boring life. 

You have vast experience to draw from.

You just need to look at it differently.

Rich Roll captured the whole thing perfectly here, how venturing off the traditional path becomes our source of strength:

It’s so hard to see when you’re at that age, how important that sort of goofing off time is.

Because it does feel like squandered time when your peers are kind of escalating up the corporate ladder, or what have you. 

And there’s an inherent tension or conflict between the incentives of our modern, developed world, which aren’t pushing us in a certain direction to become productive, independent financially and contributory. 

But ultimately, the most interesting people that have the most to contribute are the people that took that less beaten path and went deep into exploration and spent the time in rumination and experience to come out of it more robust, and with a set of seemingly not connected skills, that somehow later in life all congeal to make them truly the only person who can speak to a certain issue or an expert in a field that nobody even thought would be a field.

Rich Roll

Powerful stuff. 

Choose the less beaten-path. 

Become a master of your own field.

But how do we begin?

Well, you can start by making something wonderful.

Make something wonderful

There’s lots of ways to be, as a person. 

And some people express their deep appreciation in different ways. 

But one of the ways that I believe people express their appreciation to the rest of humanity is to make something wonderful and put it out there.

Steve Jobs

What is “something wonderful”?

Obviously, it’s subjective.

What is wonderful you may not be to me and vice versa.

But that’s the point.

And that’s how you discover the gold.

You make the wonderful thing you would love to see in the world!

Something for me is this newsletter — I am bringing together a collection of insights and wisdom that helps me move forward not only as a creator, but as a human navigating this world.

I was lost and lacking meaning.

But the newsletter became a vehicle to express my appreciation to the rest of humanity. 

So what are you creating?

Or what could you create?

What could be a wonderful thing for you?

One of the best decisions I made in the last few years was to move from content consumer to content creator.

There is something deeply meaningful in following our interests, making things and putting out something important to the world as our gift to others. 

You may never meet those “others” you impact, and that is what makes it so special. 

You have no idea how much love and effort I put into these newsletters. But that’s not the point — effort for effort’s sake. No, it’s developed into a passion. And it’s my gift to you. 

But to get to this point, we must overcome that initial fear of failure.

Don’t be afraid to fail

One of the things I always tried to coach myself on was not being afraid to fail. 

When you have something that doesn’t work out, a lot of times, people’s reaction is to get very protective about never wanting to fall on their face again. 

I think that’s a big mistake, because you never achieve what you want without falling on your face a few times in the process of getting there. 

I’ve tried to not be afraid to fail, and, matter of fact, I’ve failed quite a bit since leaving Apple.

Steve Jobs

Let that third sentence sink in — you never achieve what you want without falling on your face a few times.

Yep.

And it’s beautiful.

It’s growth.

I used to hate failure.

I was so scared of it and avoided it at all costs.

So I played it safe.

But guess where that led me?

To be an even bigger failure!

I was miserable and not looking forward to the next 40 years of my life.

But somewhere along the way, things changed, I think, through the influence of the virtual mentors I surrounded myself with. 

I heard Derek Sivers say recently on the Tim Ferriss podcast that some of his most impactful mentors had been Tyler Cowen, Seth Godin and Tim Ferriss.

There was one catch.

None of those three knew they were his “mentor”.

Whenever Derek was stuck in life, he would journal on what advice he thought one of those mentors would give him.

This is a powerful process that I used over the years.

You don’t have to “know” someone to receive mentorship. Just consume their content. 

Your virtual mentors may be dead

I learned so much good advice from Marcus Aurelius’ journal, for example, and he lived around 2,000 years ago!

I realised more was possible than the shitty existence I was living. 

I worked hard on upgrading my mindset.

I started following my own compass. 

I stopped daydreaming and started taking action.

Things changed.

I now felt empowered.

I was no longer ashamed of failing and saw it as a necessary step toward greatness.

But this change required a leap of faith. 

I needed to learn how to trust in the unknown.

Embrace the mystical 

Be aware of the world’s magical, mystical, and artistic sides. 

The most important things in life are not the goal-oriented, materialistic things that everyone and everything tries to convince you to strive for. 

Most of you know that deep inside.

Steve Jobs

I always thought this side of things was “woo-woo”. 

I switched off and ignored it whenever something like that came up. 

The accountant in me only believed in logic and what we could objectively count.

My eyes would glaze over when someone mentioned manifesting, the law of attraction or the universe.

“Here we go again…”

But then I realised, hang on, life is a total mystery. 

We don’t 100% know what happens before we are born or after we die. We don’t understand consciousness or the inner workings of the mind. Science is continually updated as new breakthroughs arrive. 

So why do we walk around pretending we have everything figured out?

Fear.

Fear of the unknown. 

So given that we don’t know for sure, what can we do?

Follow your intuition

Whatever it may be, I bet many of you have had some of these intuitive feelings about what you could do with your lives. 

These feelings are very real, and if nurtured, can blossom into something wonderful and magical. 

A good way to remember these kinds of intuitive feelings is to walk alone near sunset—and spend a lot of time looking at the sky in general. 

We are never taught to listen to our intuitions, to develop and nurture our intuitions.

But if you do pay attention to these subtle insights, you can make them come true.

Steve Jobs

I can confidently say my life improved once I started trusting my intuition. 

There is deep wisdom pre-packaged into our body, mind and soul.

But we have to start listening to it.

It’s hard, though…

Those close to us are quick to shut down our intuitions.

They think they know what’s best for us:

“Stick to your finance career. It pays well”

Yeah, but my intuition was telling me otherwise.

I knew I had a greater potential.

Jobs used an example where he said you could just imagine Albert Einstein’s parents telling him to “get a real job”. But instead, he was working a low-level office job with minimal demands so that he would have the capacity to work on his ideas at night. 

Our work can zap our creative potential if we are not careful.

Be mindful of the true cost of your current work.

That led to me cutting back on my accounting side gig. 

It was leaving me depleted and uninspired. 

So what to do when venturing off the path?

If you’re off-track, come back to creativity

If you don’t have any of these feelings, called dreams, then you’re in trouble. 

Before you “spend” four or more years of your life going in a direction your heart may or may not want you to go, you need to recapture them.

Steve Jobs

That’s something I realised in life.

When we are off the path, we stop being creative.

That’s part of why I am so big on following your creative calling!

You can always choose to be more creative. 

And it will change your world.

• Start journaling each night on what you learned or noticed that day.

• Take photos of what catches your eye.

• Make idea connections.

And this was a massive breakthrough for me when it comes to those creative connections:

You have to have them to connect them. 

Creative people feel guilty that they are simply relaying what they “see.”

Steve Jobs

That was me recently. 

I started feeling guilty for being more of a “curator” in my work on this newsletter. I was pulling together the ideas and insights of others who inspire me, and then adding my own spin on them.

I felt unoriginal or like I was “stealing” as they weren’t my original quotes or insights.

I was just relaying what I saw.

I felt pressure to create my own concepts and theories.

This tweet from Justin raised some emotions inside me:

The best, most prolific creators aren't the ones who curate information within their field.

Curation has its place, but it’s low hanging fruit.

To truly stand out, you need to advance information + understanding through your own unique insights, theories, & novel perspectives.

— Justin C Scott (@iamjustincscott) May 7, 2023

I can see that truth and feel the calling to become a more prolific creator.

I didn’t want to be the “low-hanging fruit” guy.

But a turnaround would take more time and effort than I have right now.

Creating concepts is hard!

I was left feeling confused with dread.

But then it all changed…

I had recently asked if any of my subscribers would be willing to do a testimonial to help promote my newsletter.

And one thing that struck me was how several people said they loved how I weaved together other people’s quotes and insights with my own.

I couldn’t believe it.

I had dismissed my whole work as “not valuable” as I was drawing on others who had already done the heavy lifting.

But this is a myth.

Sure, they may have started the idea, but I have added much of my grunt work on top. And that should not be so easily dismissed.

We are always drawing from others. Nothing is created in a vacuum.

And now I had proof, validation that people loved my curation.

It’s funny how we often can’t see our value. 

But our gift is in what we notice.

The things that catch our eye may not catch others’ eyes, and vice versa.

So that’s how that creative curation can become valuable to others.

And I realised this curious curation is a stepping stone to becoming that more prolific creator. 

Much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.

Steve Jobs

We need to keep pushing forward on that creator growth journey.

Feed your creativity

To be a creative person, you need to “feed” or “invest” in yourself by exploring uncharted paths that are outside the realm of your past experience.

Seek out new dimensions of yourself—especially those that carry a romantic scent.

Steve Jobs

We need those inputs to maintain our creativity:

• Books
• Video
• Podcasts
• Living life

But we also need that space to reflect and connect ideas, to determine which ideas have the “romantic scent” we should hone in on.

We explore these little paths without a guarantee that they will lead anywhere.

But one has no way of knowing which of these paths will lead anywhere in advance. 

That’s the wonderful thing about it, in a way. 

The only thing one can do is to believe that some of what you follow with your heart will indeed come back to make your life much richer. And it will. And you will gain an ever firmer trust in your instincts and intuition.

Steve Jobs

It comes back to that belief or faith that it will all work out.

But you have to be taking action.

Things will come together.

Those dots will connect.

I’d rather take that chance than the opposite:

[Many people] find what they believe to be safe harbours (lawyers and accountants), only to wake up ten or fifteen years later and discover the price they paid. 

Steve Jobs

That was me!

I’m the accountant who woke up 15 years later and realised the price I paid.

Don’t be that guy!

Don’t make that same mistake. 

If you know, you know.

But I am learning those failures aren’t so bad in the long run.

Being fired wasn’t so bad

I was basically fired from Apple. 

And that was really hard. 

So I’m sure I learned a lot from that. [Audience laughs.] 

I did. I did learn a lot from that. 

And as a matter of fact, there would have been no Pixar if that hadn’t happened. 

Life’s funny in this way. 

Sometimes your greatest strengths are your greatest weaknesses. 

Sometimes your greatest ad­versities, you learn the most from. 

I don’t know.

But there wouldn’t be a Pixar if it hadn’t been for that. 

But life is funny, you know? 

I never would have thought I’d end up back at Apple, but here I am. 

So it’s a circus world, and you never know what’s around the next corner.

Steve Jobs

I don’t think people appreciate how much Steve’s work impacted our lives today, at least in Western society. 

He saved two giant companies from the brink of extinction. They went on to influence a generation:

• Apple, with the products like the iPhone
• Pixar, with animated movies like Toy Story. 

But the Pixar part wouldn’t have happened if he didn’t get fired from Apple.

And the iPhone part might not have happened if he didn’t get fired from Apple.

Crazy world, right?

It reminds me of that Chinese parable of the farmer, where he goes through a series of good and bad luck events, which turn out to be the opposite over time.

The lesson is that you can never tell in the moment if something is “good” or “bad”. 

Life is more complex, and it is impossible to see what the future will bring. 

Enjoy the ride!

Reflection

Think differently. Fuel your creative inspiration like Jobs did:

• Take a class
• Take a trip
• Take an interest in the great artists

How can you start to choose the “less beaten path”? Learn to trust your intuition.

What is “something wonderful” that you could make for the world?

What is a past failure of yours that later became a blessing?

Who are your virtual mentors?

How can you be more creative in your daily life?

A quote to ponder

Don’t be a career. 

The enemy of most dreams and intuitions, and one of the most dangerous and stifling concepts ever invented by humans, is the “Career.” 

A career is a concept for how one is supposed to progress through stages during the training for and practicing of your working life.

…

Make your avocation your vocation. Make what you love your work.

Steve Jobs

What happened this week 

I’m designing a system around my newsletter and content creation process. 

I need better systems to free up the weekly capacity to action my podcast plans around busy family life.  

More on this later.

Another thing — I’ve been collaborating on a (well overdue) logo design update to look more professional. 

Final thoughts 

Today’s writing background music was the Coastal Drive playlist on Spotify.

If you enjoyed this newsletter, please share it with a friend, and if you haven’t already, sign up here or below.

It would be great to have you on board!

Cheers!

Matt K. Head