more great advice from
10 reasons why pursuing your creative work is actually highly productive (+ not selfish or self-indulgent) by Justine Musk
5. and knowing who you are allows other people to know you better.
We all want to connect. We all want to be recognized for who we are (and not the car we drive, the clothes we wear, the title on the business cards we do or don't hand out). But how can other people - including your friends and loved ones, including your own
- know you, the way they want and need to know you, if you don't express those deeper parts of yourself?
We are what we make. But are we making the right stuff?
6. which means you have a stronger personal 'brand'.
God, there's so much about personal branding these days. You're a brand, I'm a brand, soon even the family dog will have a brand. But all the douche-y associations with branding (bad branding) aside, the reality is that other people will react to you, choose or ignore you according to the mental imprint they form of you. Being known for something that you do (and are good at) outside of the way you earn your living can make your 'brand' more memorable.
Who would you rather talk to at a cocktail party: an accountant, or an accountant who moonlights as a jazz pianist?
When I was 17, I spent a year as an exchange student in Australia. I lived with four different host
,which means I had four different host 'fathers'. One had a passion for bonsai. He was often in his greenhouse, nurturing his remarkable little trees. Of all the people I met that year, twenty years on he's the one I remember the most (along with this crazy Belgian girl who liked to get us into trouble, but that's a different kind of blog post).
When I was a teenager, my own passion for fiction writing paid unexpected dividends when my school nominated me for a four-year scholarship to a highly competitive Canadian university. I had an erratic academic record (let's just say that I did not have perfect attendance). I wasn't valedictorian (the thought inspires laughter). I wasn't much of a joiner (the one time I tried out for and made a sports team, I quit when I discovered that all the mean girls were on it).
What I did do, was: write novels. And other things. I had so much practice under my belt that I'd gotten rather good at it. "Justine," my guidance counselor told me, "that's going to set you apart." And it did (I was one of a handful of students chosen from across the country to get this scholarship.) It was, I realize now, my first lesson in the importance of differentiating yourself- which, in today's cluttered, noisy, post-consumer society, is not just important but necessary.
7. It opens you up to new people, ideas, and connections.
As Michael Margolis points out in his speeches and courses on 'brand storytelling' (ie: how you present yourself through your bio or your 'about me' page), your interests allow people (including, say, the potential employer interviewing you for
) to find points of connection. Your passion allows you to open up new conversations with people, which brings richness and diversity into your life.
A less-than-obvious benefit of this has to do with the importance of weak ties. (Strong ties are your relationships with family members and close friends; weak ties are acquaintances, people you know only passingly.)
Sociologists have discovered that most new information (like the kind that would help you in a job search) comes to us through weak ties. People inside the same networks tend to know the same stuff. It's by linking - however casually - to people outside your usual habits, places and routines that you open yourself to new influences, new facts and forms of knowledge. This could end up changing
(or introducing you to your life partner).
8. It makes you creative in other areas of your life, including your regular work.
Creativity thrives at the intersection of different disciplines and perspectives. The way to seem like a freaking genius is to take ideas from a field totally alien to your own, and find ways to adapt and apply them. Creativity, after all, is finding the unexpected connections between things: combining and recombining old ideas until you come up with something - original.
In the book THE MEDICI EFFECT, Frans Johansson suggests that the best way to stimulate the kind of creative insight that, you know, changes the game (what exactly is 'the game', anyway?) - is to educate yourself in a second discipline, something other than what you already do or what you're already known for.
When you pursue your creative work, you might regard it as something you're doing strictly 'on the side' - but you're opening the door on a dimension of ideas that just might find their way to the center of your life. In a good way.
9. It's good for your brain.
Dude, learning something new is so good for your brain. It's like the old saying goes: Use it or lose it. The brain turns out to be far more plastic than we realized. It changes and grows according to the experiences we provide it. Developing a new skill(set) forces the otherwise-lazy brain to form new neural pathways that keep you sharp as you grow older (and older). One of the best ways to stave off Alzheimer's? Learn a new language. Or a musical instrument.
Your brain will thank you.
10. It makes you totally sexy.
I mean, c'mon. Being passionate about something - anything - lights you up with the kind of energy that attracts total supermodels. (I swear to God.) Which doesn't necessarily mean that they'll sleep with you. But they're more likely to consider it. Or at least to consider considering it.
You know what I mean
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