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4 Comments

1. 

   Well, I long ago gave up on the idea of making money off creativity. And you know, it takes the strain out of it somehow – I can just do what I want and enjoy myself. And I find that actually very comfortable. At least the thing I like doing doesn’t have anything to dampen its enjoyment. God knows, I’m doing enough things I *don’t* like, so that’s a plus. On the other hand, I totally understand your considerations, but as it goes with these things – you’ll only find out afterwards what works and what doesn’t, and more often than not you’ll have no clue whatsoever about why it worked.

   1. 

      I think it was Mark Twain who said something to the effect that the surest way to get someone to hate an activity they used to love is to pay them to do it.

      I don’t really agree with that, though.

      I’ve had jobs where I woke up in the morning and said to myself, “Wow! I can’t believe I’m paid to do this!”

      And I’ve had jobs where I watched the clock all day and couldn’t wait for it to be over. (The last one of these was over 20 years ago, thank God!)

      Most of my career has involved getting paid for creativity, and, most of the time, I’ve been pretty happy with it.

      I guess it’s just nice to have a change of pace every once in a while. Do something in a new medium, or learn something new. Or maybe just take a vacation. 🙂

2. 

   What has been found (and known for a while now) is that rewarding people for creativity does not work. Have a look at this TED video: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

   What happens quite often is that people who are creative want to make a living out of being creative so they seek to get a job or create a business being creative. However, because rewarding people for creativity makes them less creative, their work becomes harder and less creative, and they enjoy it less and less.

   In terms of psychology, they have traded an intrinsic reward (that is self motivated) for an extrinsic reward (external motivation), as creativity and enjoyment of work is dependent on intrinsic motivation, this is where the problem lies.

   So the solution to the problem is to find a balance between seeking reward for your efforts and enjoying what you are doing.

3. 

   nice article and i suggest that you first start with what you love and throw your passion into it

   and patience, after all, over night success are often long in the making (Alex haley and Roots – about 19 years to reach success)

   great article and good food for thought =)