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An Audience of One

Reclaiming Creativity for Its Own Sake

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An Audience of One

By: Srinivas Rao, Robin Dellabough
Narrated by: Srinivas Rao
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Summary

 The creator of the Unmistakable Creative podcast makes a counterintuitive argument: By focusing your creative work on pleasing yourself, you can increase your productivity, happiness, and (eventually, paradoxically) the size of your audience.

Creating for your own pleasure--whether you're writing a novel, composing songs, or painting a landscape--can seem pointless. It's tempting to focus on pursuing money and fame, rather than the process itself. But as Srini Rao warns, creating then turns into a chore that can harm your self-esteem and suck the pleasure out of life, rather than being a source of joy.

Rao, host of the podcast The Unmistakable Creative, argues that we should counter this thinking by intentionally creating art for ourselves alone--an audience of one. In this book he shares the fascinating true stories of creatives who took this path, along with actionable tips and the research of creativity experts. You'll learn, for example:

  • How Oprah's intentional focus on her own work rather than the opinions of everyone else catapulted her into one of the most popular talk shows of all time.
  • How being process-driven can not only help you produce more work, but can make you happier outside of your creative time.
  • How to put together a creative "team of rivals" whose feedback can help you hone your craft and filter out useless feedback.

  • By playing to an audience of one, we can find more happiness, increased productivity, and a greater sense of community.
 Career Success Creativity Employment Motivation & Self-Improvement Personal Development Happiness Career
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In a world where we are overwhelmed with other people's content, Srinivas Rao encourages us to step away from all the noise and develop a creative practice of our own. He reminds us of the intrinsic rewards and deep meaning that this can bring to our lives. Srinivas is a writer and podcast host whose work I've admired for over 3 years - I find many of his ideas to be really helpful. Two examples I particularly loved from the book are: thinking of 'presence as a pathway to getting ahead in your career' and the suggestion that 'whatever our creative habit is, we can decide whether it is a day of learning or a day of performance' (a quote in the book from Thomas M. Sterner, also a guest on Srinivas' show, The Unmistakable Creative).

Thought-provoking as always!

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