George Kao argues that creators should detach from outcome expectations and set time limits on their work. He's made over 1,000 creations by keeping a regular rhythm and treating each piece lightly, even continuing through illness.
I want to share with you an intuitive, or rather counter intuitive truth. It's become intuitive for me at this point, but it was counterintuitive for me for many years as a creator. By this point, I have created over well over a thousand videos, over a thousand pieces of writing, I have launched over a thousand products and packages and offerings. And this is the counterintuitive truth I've had to learn. I am not a reliable judge of my own creations. I don't know about you, but I have noticed that I can put a lot of time and energy into something, into a piece of content. I think of it as a work of art. I could put a lot of effort into creating an offer and launching and hoping. Oh my gosh, this is so good. I spent so much time and energy on this. A lot of people are going to buy and then, I don't know. Sometimes I am quite disappointed at how little engagement there is with something I thought was brilliant. And other times I lightly put something out there and I'm shocked at why people think this is amazing or the fact that they do. And so over the years I have developed a practice of going like this. I don't know, you know, there's that emoji I want you to look up, look up this emoji of the person going like this, right, the I don't know emoji who knows emoji. And this has been so important for me to learn and I have to keep reminding myself of this. And then here, reminding you if it's helpful to you as well, is the more energy and time you spend on creating something, a piece of content, an offer, your website, clarifying your niche. The more time and energy you spend on it, the more invested you become, sometimes with money, but oftentimes with your attachment to what the results should be. The more you become expecting that, well, there should be reciprocity, all this effort and energy. The universe is supposed to respond in kind, to say, well, yes, thank you for working on this for 10 years. Of course we're going to give you a flood of business or flood of engagement or whatever it is, the more lightly. However, on the other hand, the more lightly we create something and put it out there, the more we can practice. Well, I don't know. I created this thing lightly and naturally. I don't know if the universe and the world and the market and my audience is going to respond in droves of appreciation and gratitude and engagement. So this is really like a practice for life too. Not not only for business, but it's. This is practice everywhere. Create lightly. Practice Creating lightly. Practice letting go of. I don't know if it's going to work or not. I don't know if anyone's going to buy from this fancy funnel I've created. I'm antifunnel, but that's for a separate video. You can look that up from me, but I don't know if this thing I create lightly. Boundary your time when it comes to creating anything. A video, an article, a website, a webpage, an offer that you're launching. Boundary your time to say, I'm not going to spend more than this amount of time, because I don't. I have this idea. I think it might be really good. I think it might be helpful for people. Let me put it out there as lightly as I possibly can, and then I'll see if the response is really good. Well, then I will tweak and improve that and then share it again. But. But I really don't know. Let me not spend 15 hours creating this thing. Let me spend, if possible, 15 minutes creating it. But, okay, an hour and a half creating it and then releasing it out there. Boundary your time. Like, I always boundary my time. And the other key takeaway is I keep to a rhythm of creation and publishing. I. I am not a reliable judge of my creations, but I am a reliable creator. Okay, that's the key distinction. I am a rely. I'm reliable at showing up again and again and again consistently, regardless of rain or shine, regardless if I'm sick or if family is visiting or I'm visiting family, or if some trauma happens, I need to take care of it. Regardless. Regardless. Regardless. Regardless. I show up and create when I Recently, in the last six months, I have been bedridden twice. Like in bed. I had to be in bed for a week at a time. One time it was the stomach issue. One time it was a foot infection anyway. And both times it was still during my schedule of creating and I just sat in bed and I made a video. Some of those videos actually did pretty well. Okay. I'd been maybe a different energy when I'm sitting up in bed. Maybe I should do that more often, I don't know. But I also take breaks, but my breaks are planned. I take breaks from creating, but those breaks have already been planned throughout the year, which is nice, because then I can take vacations, I can plan trips. I can plan to do certain bigger errands and take care of things in the city or whatever. But when it's not a planned break and I'm here during my regular season or schedule of creating, then I do not let anything stop me. So, long story short, and I'll end the video here, practice a few things. Practice creating lightly. Practice saying, I don't know if this is going to do well, so therefore I will create lightly. Because you really don't know. Okay, so many factors in the world you don't know. And the less you invest in creating something, the more objectivity you have to say, well, I don't know. I'm going to put it out there and let the market tell me whether this thing is impactful or not. So practice creating lightly. Practice letting go of what what should the outcome be. So hopefully practice boundary your time in creating anything that's part of creating lightly, and then practice a regular rhythm of creating and publishing. Just like your body is healthy, when you have a regular, your body has regular rhythms, right? You're so glad that your heart beats regularly and your breath is happening regularly. Whether you're thinking about it or not, whether you're sick or family is visiting or whatever, your heart's still beating regularly. Your business needs that too. Your business. The heartbeat of your business is the regularity of creating and publishing content and offers. Don't let any week go by unless you're taking a break that week to create and publish regularly for the health and the sustainability of your business. Just like your body has regular rhythms and just like nature has regular rhythms as well. I hope this is helpful. I hope this inspires you to once again detach from expectation of outcome and reattach yourself to the reliability of creating and publishing. Thank you for watching. Thanks for joining. Joining me on this journey.
