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Motivational
7 Common Misconceptions About Finding Your Purpose
7 Common Misconceptions About Finding Your Purpose
Finding one’s purpose in life can sound like a deep and complicated task. To make matters more convoluted, you’ll probably have beliefs that were foisted upon you since childhood, either by your parents or other adults.
Following your passion by finding your ‘why’ or purpose is something pretty much every human being aspire to, because it promises a life of fulfilment because you re truly doing what you want to do.
By the way, if you are serious and want to learn more about finding your why, check out Follow Your Passion By Finding Your Why. This is a premium level training that takes you through each and every step of finding your purpose and benefiting from it. You can check it out here.
The truth of the matter is that finding one’s purpose is a simple process of thoughtful introspection. Once you dispel the misconceptions and lies that surround this topic, you’ll find things much simpler.
Let’s look at the common misconceptions…
You Have To Create It
You don’t have to create your purpose. It already exists. You just need to find it… and you’ll only find it by asking yourself introspective questions about what makes you truly happy and fulfilled.
We live in a world where self-help gurus will tell you to ‘hustle and grind’ so that you make millions and live up to your full potential.
But what if that’s not what you want? What if you only want an income that’s comfortable but you want more free time to volunteer and make a difference to your community.
Then that might be your purpose. Your purpose is determined by your feelings and desires. Not goals or external influences.
Everyone Only Has One Purpose
Different people are born with different talents and desires. Some people may be good writers and sing well too. They may excel at both talents and they’ll need to choose one that they feel they were ‘born to do’.
You’re not only given ‘one purpose’. Your purpose in life may change as your belief systems change. What you thought was important once, may seem trivial now.
For example, you may have loved surfing before and felt that it was your purpose to ride the waves and become a surfing instructor. However, a trip to an African village may have made you feel blessed and suddenly now, you think that surfing is no longer that important.
You’d rather volunteer and help the less fortunate in the village. You get more satisfaction and a sense of achievement that you never had before. This could be the missing piece in your life.
Your purpose is closely linked to what you feel is important to you and what motivates you to get up daily and get going with enthusiasm.
Some ‘Callings’ Are Better Than Others
Measuring your purpose against other peoples’ achievements is a pointless and depressing endeavor. You may be a painter who creates magnificent works of art. But if you compare yourself with a doctor who saves lives, you may feel like painting is trivial in comparison.
However, what you fail to realize is that your art brings joy and wonder to many people – from the person who buys your art to everyone else who gazes upon it.
No one purpose is better or more rewarding than the other. All that matters is that you do what’s right for you.
It MUST Be Your Job
Your purpose doesn’t have to be your job. A lady may be a waitress at a café, but feel like her purpose in life is to raise well-balanced children who grow up to be successful adults.
On the other hand, another lady may be more career-oriented and feel that her purpose in life is to grow her company so that it positively affects thousands of lives while making millions of dollars in return.
Your purpose is not tied to dollars and cents. It’s not your job, your career or your achievements. It’s more subtle than that.
It Requires Immense Sacrifice And Pain
If you need to struggle and force yourself to sacrifice for it, it probably isn’t your purpose. Very often, when you discover your purpose, there will be a sense of excitement and ease to it.
The work may be hard, but you’ll willingly do it because it’s what you want to do. There may be sacrifices involved to achieve your aim and meet your purpose BUT you’ll handle the hurdles with grace.
Discovering and following your purpose in life is a pleasant process and while it may be challenging, it shouldn’t be depressing or cause you to despair.
You Need To Be Religious
Purpose doesn’t have anything to do with your religion. While millions of people claim to have discovered their purpose in life after ‘finding God’, this is not a necessity.
Finding your purpose is a personal journey towards self-discovery. You can go the spiritual route, or you can self-reflect and do some journaling until you realize what it is you truly want to do. Therein lies your purpose.
It’s A Non-Profit Endeavor
You don’t need to be a solitary monk eking out a meagre existence on the mountain top just to be on purpose. You can be a millionaire too and still feel like you’re following your calling.
For example, a successful plastic surgeon who makes millions may truly love what he does. He enjoys enhancing his clients’ appearances and seeing the happiness and increased confidence in the patients once they see the results.
By helping others, the surgeon feels like he’s living with purpose. Since plastic surgery requires a high level of skill, he charges accordingly and his wealth is a by-product of his efforts.
You can follow your purpose and make a lot of money at the same time. There’s no rule that says you need to be broke to be on purpose.
And this training proves that!
These 7 misconceptions are just the tip of the iceberg. There are many others out there.
What’s most important is that you realize that discovering your purpose is a journey that’s done inside you – and has nothing to do with the distractions/expectations of the world outside you.
Once you understand this, you’ll find your purpose and shine.
“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.”
– Pablo Picasso
As you probably already know, having a strong mindset is critical to any attempt to finding your purpose and passion and staying focused on them, so click on the featured resource below to get a free report on how to develop a strong mindset. Download, it read and take action 😊
Is Your Self Doubt Due To Your Previous Failures?
Is Your Self Doubt Due To Your Previous Failures?
How many times do you think Thomas Edison failed in his attempt to bring light into our lives by inventing the lightbulb? Likely, he failed more times than we can count. Imagine how he felt when he worked so hard (during daylight hours or by candlelight) to find something that worked, came so close each time – and then failed with each attempt.
Then, finally it happened. One path Edison took led to the invention of the lightbulb and all other attempts were forgotten. We’ve been bathed in iridescence ever since. Edison and other successful entrepreneurs have all suffered from self doubt but trudged on through the lack of confidence to make their dream a reality.
Think about the times in the past (even as a child) that you’ve persevered through disabling doubts that you could do something, only to find out that it wasn’t within your grasp even though you gave it your all.
Either you shrugged and went on to something else or withered away in self-pity that prevented you from possible future successes. Virtually every successful person in the world has failed many times before.
It’s doubtful those failures are even remembered because the success is so bright that they aren’t visible. Online entrepreneurs are highly susceptible to self doubt. There’s so much to learn and so many ways to go about each venture that it may seem overwhelming – especially to newbies.
Rather than wasting time stewing over each failure and making yourself miserable, make a firm decision to move on – and then do it. Begin on the new project immediately by setting short and long-term goals and really dig deep into how you’re going to ensure it’s a big success.
Each success will spur you on to the next project – and the next, until you have some firm accomplishments under your belt. Next time a failure happens, you can focus on the successes you’ve had to break the cycle of self-doubt and begin again.
Before you begin a project or new venture, think about all of the possible scenarios that can happen. Make sure you include the worst-case scenarios along with the rewards that will happen when you succeed.
After you face your fears of “what if,” you can use those fears as challenges. Looking at fears as challenges rather than obstacles can only help boost your self-confidence and help you begin to see success in your future rather than failure.
Use Every Failure As An Opportunity To Learn And Grow
Most of us don’t think of failures as opportunities – but successful entrepreneurs know the secret to turning the knowledge learned in a failure into opportunities for growth and success.
Kids learn about winners and losers at an early age and may be taunted when playing sports or about the dismal results of a test. Some take the “loser” label and define their future self worth with it and are reluctant to take risks, while others become more determined to show everyone that they can win.
We hate the way failure makes us feel, but when we realize it’s not the end of the road and we have time to come back as a success, failure can actually be a learning experience.
What you learn from failure is invaluable to your future success. A close analysis of what went wrong with the failed idea or venture can help you make sense of the situation and learn lessons that will make you a true winner.
You may have to dig deep to find the reasons for a failure. Did you devote enough time to the project and were you prepared for the results? Could the failure be one that’s out of your control or could you have changed something along the way to strengthen the outcome?
Every failure can be turned into a unique opportunity to grow and learn – and every success might be detrimental to future successes. It’s a contradiction that’s difficult to understand unless you’ve experienced both the opportunities in failure and the dangers in success.
Being honest with yourself is the first step in turning failures into opportunities and learning experiences. Blaming failure on others or making excuses can only serve to dig you further into a state of denial.
When that happens, you don’t learn anything. If you don’t use your failures to find flaws in your thinking or how you managed a product or venture you’re likely doomed to failure.
Learning from past mistakes is a trait that every successful person on this planet has profited from. Remember, that every failure you experience shows that you tried. If you never fail at anything, chances are you’re not trying hard enough to succeed.
While none of us seek to fail, the process of life and how it works condemns us to some failures along the way. Your success will come when you seek to learn how you failed and figure out what you’re going to do next time to ensure success.
Trying To Predict Success Sets You Up For Failure
Some of us tend to doubt ourselves right out of future success with “what if” predictions we make. It could be named the “what if” syndrome. It’s when you’re mired in self doubt so much that you begin to imagine and predict obstacles and outcomes that aren’t even there.
The “what if” syndrome is especially prevalent after you’ve hatched up a brilliant idea for an online project that’s going to make you lots of money and help your fellow entrepreneurs.
You’re sure everyone will love it and want it. Then, self-doubt sets in and you begin to think of all of the reasons why it won’t succeed. You walk on the shadowy side of your ability to make things happen and talk yourself down or out of even trying.
You were so excited about the idea at first and it fired up your creativity to a point where you could hardly wait to begin. That lull – somewhere between the excitement of the idea and taking action to make it happen – is where self doubt takes root.
You may begin to think of past failures and how they made you feel or become highly sensitive to the fact that you’ve never endeavored something like this before. If you keep thinking about past failures or what “might” happen, you may come to a point in the project where a big wall is placed in your path.
Since your self-doubt has already been growing in your thoughts, the wall may seem insurmountable, and you simply give up. Just another failure to think about next time you have an idea.
Or – you can take another route – one that doesn’t ensure success, but that at least gives you a chance. Rather than giving in to self doubt, trust yourself and try it again. You’ve likely practiced this scenario many times before in your life.
Some attempts may have failed, but you’ve probably succeeded many more times. Bring a new attitude into the mix and think positively rather than giving in to the hauntings of past failures. Also, bring in positive people to surround you who encourage, rather than discourage you.
Don’t compare yourself to others whose successes may be greater or more profitable than yours. You may even learn from their stories of success. They’re bound to have had failures along the way – and overcame them rather than feeling defeated.
When you find yourself become mired in self doubt about your future success, mute the negative voices by focusing on the positive and living in the present moment rather than projecting yourself into a future of unknowns.
Whatever you want in life will require discipline to achieve and being able to reframe failure is a small part of that. And if you want to know more about harnessing the power of self-discipline, then check out the featured resource below for a free detailed report; download, read it and take action 🙂
Stop Procrastination In Its Tracks And Get Your Time Back
Stop Procrastination In Its Tracks And Get Your Time Back
We’ve all heard the quotes when it comes to procrastination. ‘Don’t put off till tomorrow what you can do today’ or ‘Action today can prevent a crisis tomorrow’… and so on.
Yet, millions of people procrastinate daily. So why do we not do what we know we need to do?
The answer is simple. When you view a task as unpleasant and tiring, your mind immediately starts cooking up excuses to prevent you from being in discomfort. This is your self-preservation instinct at its finest.
Your mind is trying to protect you. While this is good when it comes to dangerous situations, for the most part it’s unnecessary and actually holding you back.
Knowing how to act is crucial to avoid procrastination. If you keep procrastinating, your work will pile up and your schedule will become a mess.
You won’t reach your goals or meet your deadlines. It’s impossible to have work-life balance when you’re always playing catch-up. So, here’s what you need to do to stop procrastinating…
What’s The Plan?
Make a list of ALL the things you need to get done. List them in 3 categories:
- Urgent
- Important
- Others
Get the urgent matters out of the way ASAP, then focus on the important tasks and finally clear the other tasks as and when you can.
Do You Have 2 Minutes?
Many times, you may feel like you’re not in the mood for an activity. This could be exercise or writing or cleaning your house, etc. Whatever the activity is, your mind is already making excuses for you to avoid doing it.
You’re thinking of skipping the workout. Or maybe you’d rather organize the folders in your laptop than write that blog post you need to.
Clean the house? Pfft! You can always do that next month.
Your mind NEVER lacks excuses and they’re all very plausible and highly convincing. Quite frankly, we usually don’t need that much convincing to procrastinate.
So how do you beat this problem?
Simple. Just give yourself 2 minutes to do the task. Tell yourself that you’ll just exercise for 2 minutes or clean the room for 2 minutes. It doesn’t matter what the task is. Just aim for 2 minutes.
You’ll often find that once you get started, you’ll usually go on for 30 minutes to an hour or longer.
It’s always the initial step of getting started that’s the most difficult. 2 minutes tricks your mental resistance because writing or exercising for 2 minutes is not as intimidating as doing it for 30 minutes or an hour.
Employ this technique whenever you catch yourself about to procrastinate.
Shorten The Deadlines
Parkinson’s law states that, “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.”
What that means is that if you give yourself 3 days to complete a job, you’ll take 3 days. However, if you gave yourself 8 hours to do it, you’ll rush and get the job done.
So, giving yourself shorter deadlines will help to motivate you by lighting a fire under your butt to get you moving. You can’t procrastinate when you have a deadline that’s approaching really fast. You’ll get the job done quicker than you thought possible.
You Get Motivation After, NOT Before
One of the cruel twists of life is that very often, you get motivation only after you’ve completed the work. If you wait to be motivated to do a task, you’ll be waiting a long time.
However, if you just go ahead and do it, you’ll gain some self-satisfaction and feel productive. Now you’ll have the motivation to quickly complete the next task and so on.
It’s this momentum that will keep you going and you gain self-confidence and a new-found respect for yourself. Now you’ll be truly motivated to keep up your winning streak.
Start doing first, and the motivation will come later – and you’ll not even think of procrastinating once you’re on a roll.
Avoid procrastination at all costs and know that it doesn’t change anything other than cause your responsibilities to pile up. Life begins outside the discomfort zone. Challenge yourself to get started today and right now.
And now you have mastered procrastination, let’s look at how you can use automation to make even more use of the time you have.
Automating Or Batching Tasks To Aid With Time Management
One of the best ways to increase your productivity and free up more time for leisure will be to automate your recurring tasks or outsource them. This could be done in a variety of ways.
Bill Payments
One fantastic strategy to stop wasting time at the bank will be to have your bill deductions automated. You could plan things out in such a way that money from your account is automatically deducted towards your outstanding bills.
Online banking is all the rage these days and yet thousands of people queue up at the tellers just because they’re not ‘tech savvy’ and don’t wish to learn something new.
If you’re working from home or you’re a busy entrepreneur, it’s these automated tasks that will save you precious hours and also prevent any hassles in your workday.
Chores
Instead of washing dishes by hand, you could use a dishwasher. Instead of drying the laundry on a line, you could use a dryer. There are many machines that will help to simplify your chores.
You could also create a roster for your kids where each one gets a specific chore to complete daily. It could be doing the dishes or vacuuming the house or one of the many daily chores that threaten to suck up your time.
It would be wise to hire a professional to do time-consuming tasks that can be tiring. One very good example is mowing the lawn. Rather than sweating it out and spending an hour pushing your lawn mower, you could easily hire a pro to do the job.
They’ll do it in a fraction of the time for a small fee. The amount you pay for the service will be worth every cent because your time is worth much more.
Emails And Work-Related Tasks
If you’re an online entrepreneur, there are tons of email management software and other tools that simplify your job. You can queue emails for an entire week that are set to be sent at a specific time and day.
The same applies to other activities such as scheduled blog posts, social media posts, etc. Automation is a time saver that you absolutely must use if you wish to be effective.
Which brings us to the next point…
Batching Tasks
Batching your tasks is without a doubt one of the best productivity hacks ever. So what is batching?
For example, if you’re planning to write 10 articles, batching will mean doing the research for all 10 articles at once. Then you’ll outline them all.
Once you’re done, it’s time to write them all. By batching your tasks in this way, you’ll be more productive and move at a faster pace. It’s similar to the type of labor specialization you see in factory product lines.
This principle applies across the board. Write all your emails at once. Schedule them at one go and so on.
Instead of doing each task from beginning to end and then repeating the process over and over, batching will save you countless hours in the long run.
Use the methods above to manage your time effectively. Time management is life management. The better you are at it, the more time you’ll have for yourself and the activities you really want to do.
And remember, one way to beat procrastination is to stay focused and many people struggle with this. If you want to learn more about staying focused, check out the featured resource below for a free detailed report; download, read it and take action 😊
Keeping On Top Of Your Mental And Emotional Health
Keeping On Top Of Your Mental And Emotional Health
Saying that times are challenging these days would be a gross understatement.
With the Covid pandemic, political polarization, lockdowns, vaccine mandates, people losing their jobs daily and untruthful media juggernauts dividing the people over issues – let’s just say, times are stressful.
They really are… and millions of people are feeling it. They’re weary, worn down and in a state of numbness. Their mental and emotional health has taken a beating.
The good news is that you can remedy this problem and maintain your sanity in a world that seems to be growing increasingly insane by the day.
Here’s how you do it…
Find Your Triggers
The first step to healing yourself will be to find out what’s getting you down.
Are you unhappy at work? Is it the news? Or is it the constant vitriolic debates on social media that’s aggravating you?
What’s important is to know what’s eating you.
Even overthinking can be a problem – and the first step is knowing what’s causing you distress.
Avoid Those Triggers
As simple as this sounds, people are not rational and fail to do it. Millions get stressed out watching the news which is always polarizing and stirring up fear. It would only make sense to stop watching this drivel.
But people don’t.
Like a deer caught in the headlights, they keep consuming the news content put out by the networks who have hidden agendas of their own. As a result, they get more stressed out. It’s a vicious cycle that never ends.
Eliminate ALL triggers that are causing you mental and emotional anguish.
Do A Digital Detox
A 3-to-5-day digital detox will do wonders for your mind and soul. When you don’t watch TV or use your phone, you’ll immediately be reducing the amount of stimuli your brain receives and processes. As a result, you’ll calm down.
Recently, Facebook (Instagram and WhatsApp too) was down for a day. Millions of people reported feeling better for that day when they couldn’t access their social media.
They got a brief respite from all the stimuli. Instead of understanding how beneficial this was to their mind and soul, the masses mindlessly got back on social media the very next day when the platforms resumed operations and started discussing why the ‘blackout’ happened.
It never ends. Until you realize that less is more here, you’ll be a victim and be swayed by the daily issues the world is ranting about. Step away from the noise.
Like Max Lucado said, “A man who wants to lead an orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.”
Turn your back on the social media crowd and your life will become a symphony. Or at the very least, it won’t become a stressful cacophony of social media talking points.
Avoid Stimulants
While your morning coffee is fine, you’ll want to avoid energy drinks and other stimulants to keep you going through the day. Caffeine dependency is a very real problem.
It causes anxiety and when you’re not loaded up with caffeine, you feel lost. Over and above that, any alertness you get from caffeine is temporary… but it generally leaves you feeling worse after the effects wear off.
Since the half-life of caffeine is about 5 hours, many people still have caffeine in their system when its bedtime. As a result, they can’t sleep well and wake up groggy and stressed out. Avoid caffeine after 1 PM.
Stay Healthy
We all know what we need to do here. Eat clean and in moderation – and exercise 4 to 5 times a week. It’s so simple in concept but so difficult in practice.
A good diet and regular physical activity are 2 of the best forms of self-care any individual can undertake.
Want to feel better mentally and emotionally?
Then look after your body well.
Manage Your Fear
However bad things may be, fear helps no one. Like author, Robin Sharma says, “Being scared is part of being alive. Accept it. Walk through it.”
Fear of death. Fear of Covid. Fear of what others may think about you. Fear of being unemployed. Fear, fear, and more fear.
Don’t let fear control your life. Tell yourself that you’re resilient and will get through anything. You’ve come this far, haven’t you?
Well, you have what it takes to go all the way. Focus on your goals and where you want to go – not fear.
De-Stress
Massages, yoga, aromatherapy, walks in the park, watching a comedy, going to the zoo or an amusement park, etc. are all forms of stress relief.
What matters here is that you do what works for you. Break the monotony in your life. Do something fun. Very often, people get trapped in a mundane cycle of work and mind-numbing entertainment such as reality TV.
What you really need is a change in your daily life. Something that takes you out of your normal routine and helps you break through the grey fog of inertia and unhappiness.
Doing something that’s fun and not what you normally do will be akin to letting rays of sunlight break through the dark clouds in your life. You’ll get a ‘breather’ and be able to shift your mental state. This is priceless.
Help Others
The author, Robert Ingersoll, once wrote, “We rise by lifting others.”
An excellent quote with an eternal truth – when you help someone else, you will feel better.
You’ll feel like you’re making a difference in the world, and your actions just might make someone else believe in the goodness of people. This belief is in short supply these days.
Ideally, you’ll want a hands-on approach such as volunteering at a homeless shelter or even a pet shelter. Doing good will make you feel good.
Buying a homeless person a meal will not only help them but will make you feel much better than donating your money to a faceless organization.
Sometimes, you’ll even find good conversation among people who have fallen through the cracks of the system. That said, you’ll want to be cautious in your approach too.
Your mental health and emotional health are intertwined. How you process information is just as important as how you emotionally react to it. It’s imperative that you be aware of this.
Feed your mind positive information. Where your attention goes, your energy goes.
If your attention goes on social media and reading hateful comments, you’ll be stressed out and become spiteful too. Your mind and thoughts be clogged up with drama, debate, and disinformation.
If you spend your time reading good books and helping yourself to progress in life, you’ll feel a sense of achievement because your life feels more purposeful. That’s how you look after your mental and emotional wellbeing.
“You can’t have a positive life and a negative mind.” – Joyce Meyer
Whatever you want in life will require discipline to achieve and maintaining a healthy mental and emotional balance is a small part of that. And if you want to know more about harnessing the power of self-discipline, then check out the featured resource below for a free report; download, read it and take action 🙂
Focus On Intent To Help Control Creativity
Focus On Intent To Help Control Creativity
If you’re creatively inclined, then you probably enjoy most of your time coming up with ideas, but you’re likely less intrigued by the serious business side that requires a lot of focus and monotonous work.
Any creative projects require these aspects to become full-fledged products or ideas, as annoying as it may seem. Don’t panic when it comes time to set aside your creativity, because you will get back to it.
Instead, just focus on your intentions with the creative idea and work to bring it to reality. While ideas certainly have merit, they’re not particularly useful if they’re never put into action.
Often times, putting them into action can be a tedious process, but it becomes worth it to see your creative endeavor brought to life, able to accomplish the goals that you had in mind when you thought of it in the first place.
For example, if you came up with a great infographic to inform people about a topic that you’re passionate about, it wouldn’t get very far as a simple idea or rough draft. A completed product that was shared and spread online would be able to actually inform others and spread your knowledge, but it’s going to take work.
You’re going to have to do research and cite sources, make it look nice, and go through the work of getting it to be spread and shared around. These are tedious things, but since your intent was to spread knowledge to begin with, it makes it worth your effort.
You might also want to create something with the intent of generating some income for yourself. It might be something like designing logos for up and coming companies or making physical products that people can buy on websites like Etsy.
The thought process is fun when you get to utilize your creativity, but then comes the actual process of bringing it to reality. Gathering materials, stocking your inventory, shipping purchases – all of these things can be a hassle.
Regardless of whether or not it’s a pain for you to do, your intention was to make money. The only way for you to do that is to give them an actual product. Very seldom will people pay good money for the concept of something that they’ll have to actually create themselves.
Instead, they’re more interested in purchasing a completed product, something that they don’t have to put any more work into. That’s where your effort to backburner your creativity comes in handy.
Engage In Digital Minimalism To Maximize Creativity And Focus
While technology and all of the gadgets we have today are certainly useful and can help you work more efficiently, they may also be dragging down your creativity and focus.
Whether it be a ton of distractions on all your devices or the fact that you might be using them as a crutch, they can sometimes do more harm than good for your creative flow and ability to focus.
In these situations, it’s best to put all of the tech down and just focus with the bare essentials. It’s almost like a palate cleanser. While you spend hours and hours writing on Word documents or drawing pictures in Photoshop, you can just as well get it done with a good old fashioned pen and paper.
It might not be as efficient, but it helps in ways that you might not anticipate. The best thing to do when attempting this is to separate yourself from as much technology as possible.
If you can go out to your backyard or to a park with just a pen and paper and get your work done, then that’s great. If, for emergency reasons, you need to have your phone on you, that’s fine – just make sure you’re not using it to get distracted.
Otherwise, you shouldn’t be listening to music or watching anything, and preferably it’s somewhere outside where you can really absorb the sights and sounds of nature. When you don’t have the distractions of technology, from constant alerts to easily accessible entertainment, you might find that you’re able to be much more focused.
You’re there with only your own work to do, and otherwise you have nothing to really focus on. If you’re having trouble focusing, this might be a great way to get you back on track.
In terms of creativity, technology is very helpful, but it can start to become more of a crutch than a tool. If you know that you can always reference random guides online and draw inspiration from all kinds of other designs, then you may start to lose your creative edge.
By isolating yourself from all of that, you’ll be able to use your own pure creativity to create something entirely unique, without the reliance on all kinds of other sources. You should always look at technology as a tool – a means to an end.
It’s an amazing tool that you can and should take advantage of, but sooner or later, you’re going to reach a point where you’re becoming overly dependent on it, at which point you need to take a break and reassess.
Has Your Demand For Productivity Intimidated Your Creative Vibe?
Productivity is often stressed above all else in businesses today. It’s the best way to put out product after product, which typically results in the highest profit yield. However, productivity isn’t everything.
You need to be able to put out something that you’re proud of, something original and creative, and too much focus on productivity may stifle that, leading to some rather negative consequences.
There are many companies that would rather put out as many products as possible instead of making high quality products a priority. There’s a balance to be found between the two.
You obviously can’t release just one small product every year, but you also can’t be rushing so quickly that you’re not putting enough effort into things. Once you start to rush through your projects without care, you’ll start to slip.
One of the major drawbacks about being overly productive is that your business partners or clients may start to notice that you’re focusing on quantity over quality.
If they’re used to receiving quality products from you, ones that are made with much love and care, they’ll be pretty sour once they start receiving a ton of mediocre work.
At that point, word may start to spread, and you can actually end up losing business. Creativity takes time. That is a fundamental part of business – it doesn’t just come out of thin air.
It takes time and care for you to develop an idea fully and to polish it to near perfection. You can’t take all the time in the world to get it done, since you naturally have certain deadlines to meet, but you can put a bit of extra time and effort into it to get it just as you’d like, to make something you’re proud of.
Extended periods of time spent pumping out as much as you can without any true creative input can actually hurt you in the long run as well. It might get you some short term sales, but it’ll start to fall off.
Creativity is like a muscle. It needs to be exercised frequently in order to grow and develop as well as stay healthy. If you’re not spending some time honing your creativity over a certain amount of time, it will start to degrade.
Eventually, you’ll be left without the same degree of creativity that you had before, and it can be difficult to get back into your flow when you need it. Instead of focusing on pure quantity, make sure you’re actually putting some heart and effort into the things you produce.
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