There is often a gap between your effort and the recognition of your work.

This week, three tips on getting the work done, even when you don’t see immediate success.

One to help you be brave.

One to help you focus.

One to help you be brilliant.

Brave: Create from a “place of power”

This week, my friend Lionel forwarded an essay from George Saunders in which he answered a question from a reader who was concerned that their work was not “successful” in the way they wished. They were doing the work, but it wasn’t giving the results they wanted.

The entire essay is worth a read, but this particular passage stood out to me:

You’re talking to a person at a party and his or her attention is elsewhere, annoyingly. How do you get their attention back to you, and then hold it? For me, that’s the essence of my approach to writing. When the world says “meh” to something I’ve written, I try my best to think of this as a gift; as the world saying, “You are not writing from your most powerful place.”

What does it mean for you to work from your “most powerful place”?

Focused: Don’t fall into the efficiency trap

This week’s Daily Creative episode features an interview with Oliver Burkeman, author of Four Thousand Weeks. He says that the constant pressure to deliver / produce / hit expectations can cause us to slip into the “efficiency trap”, which means spending our life trying to squeeze as much productivity out as possible.

Here’s Burkeman, from the episode:

You're never going to feel like you're done. Email is a really obvious example if you get really good at answering email. I have discovered this from times when I have been really good answering email. You just get tons more email because people reply to your replies and you reply to those replies. You get a reputation for being good at answering email and more of your life migrates into email. You don't get any. You don't get through your email. The process of trying to get through your email generates more emails.

Instead, Burkeman suggests that we intentionally seek to find joy in moments of our life, and that we focus on the wildly important things that we need to make progress on rather than dying a death by a thousand paper cuts.

Do you feel like your days are just about “pushing through”, or are you making progress on what’s important to you?

Brilliant: Bloom Late

In a fascinating article in The Atlantic, David Brooks argues that late bloomers aren’t just people who got their break late in life. Their later success is due to something else:

Why do some people hit their peak later than others? In his book Late Bloomers, the journalist Rich Karlgaard points out that this is really two questions: First, why didn’t these people bloom earlier? Second, what traits or skills did they possess that enabled them to bloom late? It turns out that late bloomers are not simply early bloomers on a delayed timetable—they didn’t just do the things early bloomers did but at a later age. Late bloomers tend to be qualitatively different, possessing a different set of abilities that are mostly invisible to or discouraged by our current education system. They usually have to invent their own paths. Late bloomers “fulfill their potential frequently in novel and unexpected ways,” Karlgaard writes, “surprising even those closest to them.”

What unique skills or attributes do you have that may not conform to what’s expected?

This Week:

Identify what it means for you to operate from your “place of power” in your work.
Set aside time each day to make progress on things that matter, not just that make you feel efficient.
Identify some unique qualities you have - “rough edges” - that are an acquired taste. How might they serve you later?

And, finally:

If you enjoyed this newsletter, my new book The Brave Habit is a practical guide to making brave decisions every day in your work. I hope you’ll read it. (You can download a few sample chapters here.)

Your turn to lead:

Do you know someone who might find this email helpful? Please forward it to them.

Todd Henry

teaches leaders and teams how to be brave, focused, and brilliant. He is the author of seven books, and speaks internationally on creativity, leadership, and passion for work.

TODDHENRY.COM

Todd Henry

BFB: What if others don't see how valuable your work is?

Brave: Create from a “place of power”

Focused: Don’t fall into the efficiency trap

Brilliant: Bloom Late

This Week:

And, finally:

Your turn to lead:

Todd Henry

BFB: Are you ever finished?

BFB: I learned a valuable lesson from my razor. (Yes, really.)

BFB: I (accidentally) almost walked a marathon