I was recently in line at a grocery store and overhead one of the people in line say something about doing your best. That got me thinking about all the times in my life where I was asked if I was doing my best. As if my best was something that mattered. As a child, I think I was told that so I could learn the lesson of trying hard no matter what the results. Sometimes even if you do your best, you might not get what you think you deserve, but knowing that you did your best is enough.
As a creative person, I am not sure that my best is the measure of success. My best as judged against what standard? Sales? Size? purpose? Money? Should I setup my creative live for an arbitrary goal that is ever shifting and moving?
In this week’s podcast, I take a look at the impact of what doing our best can mean on our creative practice and examine some other possibilities for how to thing about the work we create and how we judge ourselves in our creativity.