Saurabh Mithal

Writer, Teacher, Career Coach, Mentor. Work website: passionatelycurious.in I write a daily blog at https://blog.passionatelycurious.in

Where are your customers?

And if you aren't there, where are you exactly? Nothing else matters. Not investors, not networking, not anything else. You need to be where your customers are, understanding their needs and building products to fulfil those needs. That's it. That's what an entrepreneur does.

Trust Your Self.

There's hardly anything to be gained from doubt in creative work. It only slows down the work or makes us do sheepish work. It doesn't help us or the people we are doing the work for. What helps is showing up as your best self, your

Neither too high, nor too low.

As professional creatives, we have to be consistent with our work. And the biggest challenge in being consistent is how to handle our emotions. We generally focus on handling emotions coming out of rejection: when our project doesn't work the way we want it to or when we

Your best work is the one only you can do.

Yes, there are job descriptions on spec, and yes, we have been trained to saw off our edges to fit into them. And yes, we might even be congratulated when we get "selected' in such a generic role. But soon our individuality will feel suffocated, the same as

For granted.

The human mind, by default, focusses on what we don't have or where we lost. It doesn't spend much attention on the wins we have earned. It's good to look forward and focus on what you want next or where you are going towards,

Spaceship or traffic?

You choose. Just don't expect that you'd reach the moon while stuck driving in traffic. PS. #700

The belly of the beast.

Steven Pressfield introduces the belly of the beast in his book Do the Work. When we are making progress towards our goals, when we are taking action and moving forward, when we are finally feeling that we are getting somewhere, we get struck by lightning. It happens with every creative

Hard-found resources.

Here are the select most effective resources that I have found over the last 10 years that have helped me level up as a creative. I wish I could have known about them when I started. Lesser known books and other learning resources: 1. This is Marketing by Seth Godin

Leaders initiate.

Yes, it's tempting to wait for someone else to send you an email. That's why we keep checking our inboxes all the time. But, I believe, we can achieve a lot more if we become comfortable with sending emails instead. Sending emails is a lot different

Focus on throwing, not catching.

Seth Godin talks about learning to juggle in his book, The Practice. The trick is to focus on the throwing and not lunge to catch the ball. If we become comfortable with dropping the ball, the catching will take care of itself. That's the nature of creative work.

Creative or productive?

Are we in search of ideas or are we implementing them? Both need very different environments, mindsets and practices. Creativity loves novelty, boredom, lack of activity, wavering mind, making mistakes, trying things out, unfamiliar circumstances and so on. While productivity seeks familiarity, repetition and routines. If you know what you

Ignoring the other voice.

The voice of the critic, the forceful voice of Resistance. The biggest trick it plays is the illusion that it is coming from you. But when you listen carefully, you would realise that the auto-pilot voice is not coming from you. It's providing its commentary on its own.

Creating space for possibility.

Naval Ravikant talks about taking action that would lead to increasing the surface area of luck. Steven Pressfield talks about putting your ass where your heart wants to be. Possibility happens when we create conditions for it to happen.

Instead of "Just do it", "Merely do it."

Seth Godin talks about this in his book "The Practice". When we are working on a creative project, emotions and fear make our journey tedious. It seems like driving a car with the handbrake up. A lot of energy goes into countering the emotions but it doesn'

One win a day.

Can we focus simply on getting one win by the end of the day? This would change our perspective when we are making our to-do list. The question then would be: Would completing any item on this list count as a win? It would push us to find the actions

When self-doubt stops you from solving problems.

As entrepreneurs, we are always on the lookout for problems and innovative ways of solving them. But many times, even when we see both, our self-doubt stops us from taking action. Some of the things it says: "it might not really be a problem that other people face"

Setting milestones in projects.

There are some projects that get done in a day, some even get done in hours or minutes. But most projects take multiple days or weeks to complete. The challenge in working on long projects especially when you are working alone is that it is easy to get lost along

Patting your back!

As Seth Godin puts it, we may very well be the world's worst boss. No matter what we do or achieve, the boss in our mind focuses on what's missing. The way to become a better boss is to build the skill of being empathetic towards

Changing the status quo or maintaining it?

Maintaining the status quo is a busy job. It eats up time, energy and attention and the urgencies never stop coming. Changing the status quo is different. It requires us to do less, to focus on the difficult actions that will bring about the results that we seek. A lot

Ship something. Keep moving.

Energy needs movement. Whether it is within atoms, or in space, things keep moving. Nothing is stationary. Nothing is settled. Change is the only constant. Get busy living or get busy dying. - Shawshank Redemption.

Putting yourself out there.

Whether it is our career, health, relationship or anything else, the more we put ourselves out there, the more likely it is that we make progress toward our goals.   It's not easy. It's definitely not comfortable. But it's the path that leads to the

Chaos, not order.

When we seek to pursue our creative ambition, we seek order, clarity, and certainty. But that's exactly what we are not going to get. Instead, we will get chaos, excitement, surprise, delight and whatnot. Possibility is very different from certainty. You can have one or the other, not

Pursuing multiple goals.

It's tempting to strive to reach multiple goals at the same time. It gives us the illusion of progress. The most likely symptom of this is that we are busy all the time. But this is hardly effective. In terms of input, there is a lot of work.

Get something done.

Ugly done is better than perfect in progress. When we take action, when we make something live, we put ourselves on the hook. There is tremendous learning there. The more we do that, the better things become. It's easy to fall into the trap of planning and organising

Eventually.

Eventually is not a time-frame. It’s a way to procrastinate on your dreams, on your ambitions. When you put your desires on an eventually timeline, you are not taking action. “I will do it, eventually.” is a safe place to hide.