Seth Godin - The Practice Of Shipping Creative Work | Modern Wisdom Podcast 241

Imposter syndrome is the feeling of being a fraud, of being unprepared. Why did they pick me? Who am I to show up and do this? More and more people would come up to me and say, "How do I get rid of this?" And they're surprised at my answer, which is, "Not only can't you get rid of it, you shouldn't want to, because it's the sign that you're healthy. It's a sign that you're doing good work." Because if you're trying to invent the future, of course you're an imposter, because you haven't seen the future yet. It's not here. You are acting as if. You're putting something into the world that you cannot be as qualified to be as someone who's a street sweeper, 'cause the street sweeper swept that street yesterday. They know they can do it. There's no imposter going on at all. But if you're imagining that people are gonna be moved or changed or influenced by what you're about to do but you've never done it, you're an imposter. So when it shows up, the answer is, "Thank you. Thanks for letting me know I'm onto something. Here I am, doing this work and feeling it." The same way, you run a marathon, you better get tired, 'cause if you don't get tired, you're not trying hard enough.

(wind blowing) What is The Practice?

Well, there are only two kinds of successful people in the world. Um, what they have in common is that they've solved interesting problems, that they've shown up and made something better, that they did something original, something important. Maybe they did it by waiting for the muse to touch them, by getting picked, by somehow getting permission. But more likely, in my experience of talking to lots of people from every line of work, is that they have a practice, that they show up on the regular, that they have a way to see forward to produce this work even when they don't feel like it, especially when they don't. And so I wrote a book about this process of shipping creative work, and it counters so many of the myths that people have about, what does it mean to even be creative? What does it mean to do this work you're proud of?

What are the biggest misconceptions or the things that most people get wrong about creativity?

Well, they think that you need to be in the mood, that it happens when you find flow, that, uh, all criticism is the same, that writer's block is real, that the muse, uh, can be summoned. A whole bunch of things that put it outside of you, that turn it into some sort of gift or talent. No one talks that way about plumbing. No one talks that way about most of the things in our life. Why do we talk that way about this important thing? And it's 'cause we're afraid.

Yeah. Uh, I recently had your friend, Steven Pressfield, on the show, and I see a lot of parallels between The Practice and The War of Art and Turning Pro. Is that, w- were you influenced by him when writing this book?