George Kao argues that fluctuating inspiration is normal ("distance" provides perspective) and that creators should keep a consistent rhythm of creating rather than abandoning scheduled work when inspiration fades. He recommends using captured ideas even if they feel less fresh—pick the least-uninspiring idea, trust audience feedback and market testing to judge quality, and prioritize disciplined output over relying on novelty. The talk closes with brief credit to influences (Derek Sivers, Austin Kleon).
Chapters
What if you capture an idea and then the next day or the next week you look at it again and it's no longer inspiring for you, or you think, ah, maybe that's not a good idea, right? That's normal. That's called distance. Creates perspective. You know, we always feel brilliant when a new idea comes to us and then three days later we're like, yeah, maybe there's a, there's more evolution or marinating needed for that idea to have more development, right? So just know that it's normal. You know, remember the evolution of the mind playing a trick on itself. Anything new seems important or brilliant or life changing, right? Whether it's from you or from somebody else, so. Or tends to have more of that energy. Now, however, you have to also be aware of the tendency for your resistance to creating. So what I mean by is this, you maybe you captured some, some content ideas and then the time in your calendar comes to say, write blog post or make a video or something like that, and you look at your content ideas, you're not really inspired by any of them or as much as you thought you would. Now you have a choice. You can either, well, you can of course, either take off and not create your content, which is far too common. And this is where I think is the resistance playing a trick on you. Or you can create content on whatever is inspiring you today. The problem with that is it's a novel idea and novelty is an illusion. Rather, I should say novelty has the far greater emphasis on, on brilliance than it really should. And so if, if you're inspired about something today, sometimes it's good because if, especially if you're making a video, you could have that inspirational energy, that might be good. But I find that I much more trust capturing the idea first and then working with it later. So even if I have some idea today, I'm going to write it down and I'm going to go with one of my older ideas. You might say, so George, I don't, I'm not inspired by any of my older ideas. And here's what I would tell you. Pick the one that you are least not inspired by, or pick the one that at least gives you a little bit of inspiration and still create. Because if you say, well, George, I'm not inspired today, I know the calendar says create, and maybe I've already figured out the least suboptimal time to create or the most optimal time to create. It's like, yeah, I've tried the morning, I've tried the afternoon, I've Tried the evening. I've settled on the afternoon. Or I settled on the morning. Fine, great. And the calendar says create, but you're not inspired by any of your old ideas and you don't have anything new. And maybe you want to practice not acting on a new idea right away, which is good practice, especially for those of us who tend to go like this, like this, like this very easily. Right? To work with an old idea is a good discipline, really is. And I'll tell you this very important, you are not the best judge of your ideas, especially when it comes to creating. The best judge of your ideas is your ideal audience member, your ideal client, reader, viewer, listener. That is the person. Those are the people who ought to be telling you, that was profound. Or yeah, I didn't really get that. Okay, that changed my life. Or can you say more about that? Because for us, many of our ideas, especially the ones that are no longer fresh, no longer inspiring, it's because we've already integrated it so much that it's obvious to us and yet it could be amazing to somebody else. And so my recommendation, my prescription for you is to stay with the rhythm of creating. Creating content, creating, offers whatever it is you're creating. Stay with the consistent rhythm of creating and don't trust your lack of inspiration. Remembering that so much of inspiration and brilliance, that's just evolution, human evolution playing tricks on us, illusions. And all we do is we can only really judge the quality of our content with plenty of perspective, looking backward to go, wow, that was our body of work. We could look, say that was the body of work in the past year. That was the body of work in the past quarter. Which one of these pieces did the best? We use data from social media, for example, to tell us what made an impact. We don't go, well, I didn't really like that, or I thought that wasn't that brilliant. I mean, how many times have I didn't think some. I thought something was obvious. But I'm staying with my discipline of creating. I'm like, yeah, I guess I'll talk about that. It's kind of old for me, but I'll talk about it. I guess it's my least non inspired idea right now. Okay, I'll talk about it. And then people go, oh my God, it changed my life. I'm like, really? I did? Okay, all right, you see what I mean? Like, like that's true for you too. You've integrated so much and you, you, you've, it's become so normal for you to think about that idea, that or that example or that exercise or that way of looking at things that you just, whatever. It's an old. And then it changes people's lives. So all we are called to do is stay with this rhythm of creation and to pay attention to the illusion of our evolution. Saying, this is brilliant or this is not brilliant. No, we don't, we don't know. I am often saying, I don't, I don't know. I'm a content agnostic. When it, when it comes to content, I'm an agnostic for sure. I don't, I don't know if it's going to be good. So I'm just going to stay with my rhythm of creating because that's staying with my integrity of what I plan for my purposeful work. And then I'll just go with whatever is the whatever idea I want to pick. It's not super inspiring, but I'm going to go with. And let myself be surprised because oftentimes also, I don't know if you've noticed too, you have this brilliant idea I'm going to talk about today, I'm going to write about today. And you put it out there and then all you hear is crickets. And you're like, why didn't people find this as life changing as I am finding it right now? Why? Well, it's because of the illusion of novelty. You find it life changing because this idea came to you or you, you finally like, integrated like 54 of your experiences. And only three of those experiences were conscious. You integrated the other 51, not unconscious. Like you even know how to tell those stories. But all of those experiences led up to this moment. Oh, my God, this is amazing. Oh, my God. I never saw it that way. And you, you talk, you tell it out there. And maybe you were able to only tell three of those 54 stories that try to connect the dots, but your audience is like, I don't have those other 51 experiences you have. It's not as brilliant as you think it is. So this is why we just can't assume about the quality. The quality is not. Quality comes from quantity of testing in the marketplace. That's how we find quality. So let yourself. All we can do is just say, I am a creator, which means I have a rhythm and a joyful discipline of just continually creating. That's my job. That's my purpose. That's what, that's how I discover the intersection between my peak experiences, my trainings, my learnings, and on the one hand, and what the world finds most impactful for me at this time. That's how we discover the intersection between our passion and their passion or their needs for, for our, for our presence right now. So stay with the rhythm of creating and let that surprise you. All right. Hope that helps. Yeah, the, the, the, the, the phrase obvious or obvious to us, amazing to everybody else came from either Derek Sivers who has, he's amazing. I mean, if you look at sivers.org s I v e r s s I v e-r s.org he has like amazing book notes on dozens of books and he's, you know, blog posts and he's really brilliant. Either Derek Sivers came from him or it might also come from Austin Kleon. Austin Kleon K L E O N Anyway, I don't read that many books and it's been a long time since I've read books. Like I just read like social media posts these days. But those two are definitely worth following up with.
