One of my closest friends once gave me the worst advice I could have ever asked for.
During one of our calls, he said to me I was going down the wrong path by pursuing writing.
I think of that moment often. Hearing a friend suggest I might not be cut out for what I wanted to do felt like a punch in the gut.
It hadn’t occurred to me before, but stepping away from medicine meant starting from scratch. If I wanted to make things work, I had to take back control of my life and not let the perception of others affect me any longer.
That conversation and the decisions that followed led to many of the wins I’ve experienced in recent months. So today, to kick off The Diary of a Creative Entrepreneur, I’m going to show you exactly how you can do the same.
Quick heads up, this edition will take 6 minutes of your time. If you prefer a faster read, stick around for the upcoming editions of How To Write and How To Sell.
The Wheel of Life
If you’re getting directions from Google Maps, apart from your destination, you also need to know your current location. Similarly, to put together the individual pieces of your life, you need to first know what you’re working with.
The first step of this protocol is to map out four fundamental life components and rank them on a scale from one to ten: health, wealth, hobbies, and relationships.
- Health includes your emotional, mental, and physical well-being.
- Wealth is what you do for work, and your overall career satisfaction.
- Hobbies are activities that are fun and ones you do by choice, such as writing, playing a sport, or taking your pet for a walk.
- Relationships are all about your connection with family, partners, and friends.
If you’ve ranked yourself close to ten in all four areas, well done. However, if you’re like me or most others in the world, you might find that the scale is tipped in the favour of one or two specific areas.
It’s completely normal to not have everything figured out. I knew I was doing well in terms of work, but this exercise made me realize my success came with sacrifices to my health and relationships.
Take some time with this and try not to gloss over the details. Be honest with yourself. Write everything down. That includes your strengths, your limitations, and everything in between.
This is going to give you a big-picture viewpoint of your life and also help align your desires into specific categories for improvement.
The Mission Statement
There have been many times in the past two years when life just seemed to take over.
No matter what I tried to do, I fell into prolonged ruts and phases of perpetual dissatisfaction. I felt stressed and reacted impulsively. I tried to address anything and everything that was happening around me, rather than being proactive and doing what I knew needed to be done.
The problem had a simple root cause: I didn’t have a north star. My actions were sporadic and grounded in passion rather than precision. I needed purpose. I needed something that would guide my decisions and justify my priorities.
It was around this time I came across the concept of creating a mission statement, and trust me when I say this, this changed everything.
A mission statement is nothing more than a reference point that guides you when you feel lost and when nothing seems to make sense. But building one takes time. It demands a level of clarity and introspection that most people are not accustomed to.
But if you’d like to create one, here’s my advice:
Set aside one hour to answer the questions below and simplify your answers as best as possible:
- What is truly important in my life?
- What would I like to be and do in my life?
- What are my greatest strengths?
- What are my talents, possibilities, and true potential?
- If I had unlimited time and resources, what would I do?
- What are my deepest priorities?
- Who is the one person who has made the greatest positive impact in my life?
- What must I do to nurture my most important relationships?
- What kind of person do I wish to become?
- What have been my happiest moments?
- How do I want to be remembered?
These answers, once put together, will act as a personal manifesto that you can access at any time. When you feel yourself drifting into autopilot, you’ll finally have the guide you need to get back in control and steer your ship.
Show Up
If you asked me about the one action that has been the greatest determinant of success, I would without question say it has been simply showing up.
You see, results never come easy. Shortcuts simply don’t exist, and with the rise of social media, our approach to life is now rooted in instant gratification.
You cannot just show up when the timing feels right or when you’re in the perfect mood. You need to show up when nothing makes sense, especially when you don’t feel like it.
Creators hold themselves to the highest standards. When content or design fails to meet expectations, the usual result is a deep sense of dissatisfaction. I’ve caught myself with that feeling and wanted to give up more times than I can remember. Not because I didn’t enjoy what I did, but because I simply couldn’t make sense of the madness.
The only absolute certainty I’ve realized is that showing up improves your surface area of luck. Showing up gives your work the structure it needs to build on. Instead of focusing on the numbers (something that you have little to no control of), place your focus on your skills and your body of work.
The first time you publish something, nothing happens, and potentially nothing will happen until the hundredth time. But what if you kept going? What if you let go of your fixation on quick results and embrace your role as a creator? Not just of one excellent thing, but being prolific and creating many imperfect things?
Showing up consistently is what helped me land my role as the creative director of a startup, and showing up consistently is also what allowed me to fall in love with the process, rather than the promise of the results.
When in doubt, always show up.
Build a Rock-Solid Routine
Whilst working on countless different projects in recent months, my schedule had become chaotic, to say the least. Irrespective of the chaos, there has been one crucial principle I’ve stuck by: managing my day efficiently and starting it out with creative work.
For example, I know I have daily Swedish classes between 1 pm to 4 pm and I also have a meeting at 5 pm. Those are non-negotiable. So if I want to get any writing, design, or business-related work done, I have to prioritize it as soon as I wake up.
That means no phones, no notifications, and no access to the outside world. If I want to improve the quality and sustainability of my work, I know I have to preserve those key hours of focus and peak mental energy. This is the premise of being intentional with your time. Because you can do anything, but not everything.
It doesn’t matter how productive you are or how well you allocate your time. You, just like everyone else, have a limited amount of energy each day.
The best way to approach creating a routine that works for you is to emphasize subtraction rather than addition. Know your most productive hours, your workspace setup, and your priority tasks for each day. Trust me when I say this, once you have a crystal clear routine, it eliminates decision fatigue and helps you take back control of your time whilst focusing on the work you love most.
Focus On What You Can Control
Think back to the start of the pandemic a few years ago. People did not know what was happening. There was a raging sense of panic and widespread misinformation. For many of us, this was a time of justifiable stress and division.
But once the dust settled, things made sense. We now know the cause, the effects, and the consequences. Some failed to grasp this uncertainty. Others found peace by focusing on their immediate environment rather than the magnitude of the global event that was far beyond their control.
That’s why I believe in the philosophy of focusing only on what you can control. When an obstacle arises in front of you, don’t jump to react. There are aspects you can influence and many others that you cannot - so your first move should always be to take a step back. Get into the habit of practicing acceptance, especially if the circumstances that surround an obstacle are beyond your control.
A couple of weeks ago, one founder I got in touch with really liked my work but told me it wasn’t what they were looking for at the moment. I’d put a lot of time and effort into this project and was obviously devastated. But in time, I came to terms with their decision. I showed up, gave the best representation for my work, and accepted I had no control over the situation. In the past, this would’ve spiraled me into a spell of anxiety, but this time, things were different.
We’re taught to think that an obstacle signals a problem. The fact, however, is that being placed in positions of uncertainty and discomfort is the clearest indicator of personal growth. After all, everyone fails on the road to success. But what separates the winners from the losers is what happens after that failure arises.
Thank you for reading today's newsletter.
I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing.
Be on the lookout for two more emails this week: How to Write and How to Sell.
See you then.
Dr. Pranav