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0 pointsFFRefresh3y ago0 comments

You're focusing on how socially valued your creative work is (and how it ranks relative to others), which is an external factor. I tend to find that if you justify doing creative work on whether it'll be better/more interesting than others or you think it'll increase your status somehow (popularity/wealth), it's not as fulfilling and you'll probably never create anything.

What I find more fulfilling is creating for its own sake and for myself. Completely abandoning the thought of whether what I'm making will have utility for the whole world and I'll be lauded for it. Creating things that I find interesting, and also abandoning the view whether others will find it as interesting or high quality. For me, I've realized that I feel more fulfilled if I'm doing/creating more and consuming less. The mere act of doing/creating something in of itself is the end I try to seek.

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Jensson3y ago

> Creating things that I find interesting

But I don't find the things I create to be interesting, that was my point. To me things aren't interesting just because I create them, but that seems to be the case for you, you think that the things you create are interesting somehow, I don't understand that.

Do you mean you find it interesting to learn how to create things? I can agree with that, but once I've learned to create something then I don't see why it would be interesting anymore. That feeling ends very quickly once you've created a few things and understand how to create most related things. If you have programmed games, web, low level and ML at a professional level there isn't much more fun things to learn in programming, and so on. And you get there very quickly if your goal is to learn those things and not to make the most money you can. And even learning more domains and more things gets boring after a while, as the process isn't that different between learning different things.

FFRefreshOP3y ago

I think there a few aspects to whether something can be 'interesting' to me with regards to creation (i'm probably missing some):

1. Is the broader topic/activity interesting to me? (interesting in of itself, not for the other reasons listed below)

2. The act of doing is interesting to me in of itself (as opposed to consuming)

3. The act of growth/learning/getting better is interesting to me

4. How good the output of my creation can/will be

5. How will the output be socially valued in a way beneficial to me (whether status/wealth/whatever)

I will say as I've gotten older, I've started to really decrease focus on #5, as I've found it to be the most empty for me (not to say I haven't achieved success there, but it's just a never-ending treadmill when you compare with others).

I try to really focus on #'s 1-3, as they give me the most joy.

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