Set a Mission

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Updated November 3, 2022

You’re reading an excerpt of Creative Doing, by Herbert Lui. 75 practical techniques to unlock creative potential in your work, hobby, or next career. Purchase now for instant, lifetime access to the book.

Commercial success and acceptance are both outside of your control. Aiming at those goals would be like trying to aim at the wind, instead of trying to ride with it and have it fill your sails.

Rather than succeed commercially, set out to do something for yourself. It could be as simple as trying to have as much fun as possible. As renowned record producer and recording artist Pharrell Williams says, β€œAs long as I concentrate on the fun, it usually turns out cool. It’s when I become too worried about how it has to be, that’s when God spends a lot of time chuckling at me.”

Maybe you are setting out to express or expose some sort of truth, or to discover it, and to figure it out. Or you’re just trying to refine your techniques. Whatever it isβ€”make it an internal mission, and not an external one.

Another way to say this is to develop a through-line for your current project. The through-line is at the heart of your project. In his class for Skillshare, author and restaurateur Eddie Huang likens a through-line to a thesis, and describes the through-line for his restaurant Baohaus driven by the truth, β€œNo one would kick you out, call the cops, or serve you shitty 7-Eleven pressed Cubans.”

On a trip to Japan, Momofuku founder David Chang stumbled upon an insight. He writes in Eat a Peach, β€œI could eat extraordinarily well in places that weren’t punishingly expensive.” Later on, he adds, β€œThe way people ate in train stations, shopping malls, back alleys, and strip malls in Asia was superior to the way we ate in upscale New York restaurants.” This insight would be the through-line for Momofuku: β€œThat was the big idea: leave everyone walking out the door of Momofuku happy and surprised and glad to have spent their money.” The rest of the themes we identify with Momofukuβ€”innovative food, the decor, the service, and everything elseβ€”were driven by this simple through-line, the heartbeat of Momofuku’s restaurants.

If you’re struggling through this, don’t just write one mission (or through-line) down. Write everything down that comes to mind, without thinking too much about it. At this stage, it should really just be a single sentence. Write down 100 sentences, 100 missions. If it takes more than a couple of hours, you’re thinking too much. Allow the mission to emerge from the quantityβ€”let yourself be drawn.

After writing 100 missions, if you still don’t have anything, re-read them, and pick the ten that resonate most with you. Make the case for each of them, by answering some of these questions:

  • Why is this mission important to you?

  • What idea or experience inspired you to take on this mission?

  • What will the world look like after you accomplish your mission?

  • Can you imagine the world without you accomplishing your proposed mission?

  • Who or what does your mission serve? Who or what will your mission honor?

These questions are merely starting points for you to explore your ten most resonant missions. From there, pick one. (If you’re feeling really stuck, you can enlist the help of a friend and make the case against each oneβ€”to start eliminating missions. Or, if you’re feeling spontaneous, roll the dice.)

Eventually, you may be able to even boil it down to a single word and hang it above your worktable.

⬌ Or flip this prompt: Sell Out

Ignore the Stats

Everyone creates for different reasons; some of us might do it to be seen, read, heard, or felt. And while this deep connection can be incredibly rewarding and meaningful, the pressure of increasing expectations, social engagement, and sales that often represent it can crush the joy out of creativity.

Before author Mason Currey published his Daily Rituals series of books, he says in an interview with me, β€œI had, literally, 12 readers for like a year and a half. It was just my coworkers and my family.” His first book, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, has now been reviewed over 17,000 times on Goodreads.* When I asked artist Shantell Martinβ€”who has 250,000 followers across YouTube and Instagramβ€”about her analytics, she said, β€œI don’t pay any attention to that stuff.”

β€œThe most important thing I can tell you is to relish writing in obscurity,” author Michelle Kuo said to me in an interview. β€œI feel that I was the happiest as a writer when I was in hiding, when I was invisible, when I was secretly writing, stealing away portions of time at work, or writing on scraps of paper, or forming sentences in my head on the commute. That was a time before I had published really anything and before I even thought my writing would become a book, I was just trying to organize or to create order in my emotional life.”

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