You are born alone. You die alone. The value of the space in between is trust and love.
– Louise Bourgeois
The most important metric for creative work: resonance
I love this essay on how people in creative businesses measure their worth and found that many of the ideas apply to people who don’t regard their businesses as “creative” too.
From https://www.densediscovery.com/issues/267
“Most people who do creative things have at some point wondered what ‘success’ looks like and how to measure it. Sure, money can be a powerful motivator, but pursuing a creative career just because it pays will eventually feel hollow.
“I find that people in creative pursuits want to be able to look back on their work and feel a sense of growth and self-actualisation. We don’t always want to admit it, but external validation is also a huge source of motivation, perhaps even more so than money.
“Rob Hardy (see also DD208), whose writing explores the intersection of business, creativity and self-fulfilment, uses resonance as a way of gauging whether his creative work is on the right track. He splits it into two broad categories:
“Internal Resonance: How did it feel to write and publish this? Did it make me feel alive, both intellectually and somatically? Did it feel like something no one else but me could have created? Did it feel true to who I am, and who I’m becoming? Did the content of this writing matter to the deepest parts of me, beneath all of the cultural stories about who I think I should be and what I should do?
“External Resonance: How did people respond? Did I strike an emotional nerve? This goes beyond easy, legible metrics like pageviews or social media likes, or even comments, which are at best hazy approximations of external resonance. It’s about looking for signals that something genuinely MATTERED to one or more humans, and elicited a response that’s out of proportion with the average digital interaction. Lots of likes is an okay-ish signal. Lots of comments is a clearer signal. A small handful of comments or private replies from people saying they’ve never felt so seen or understood by a piece of writing — that’s the kind of thing I’m trying to discern and quantify here.”
“I think Hardy is on to something. Looking back on my own work, creating something of lasting value and substance is ever so important to me. That’s especially true of the work that went into print magazine Offscreen. And my gosh, I lived for those heartfelt emails from readers or meeting readers at events and hearing about how that little magazine influenced their views and even careers.
Hardy sums it up well:
“Understanding these two metrics matters more than anything I’d find in a traditional analytics dashboard. What I’m optimizing for isn’t growth, certainty, or control. It’s not the maximization of short-term revenue, reach, or influence. Instead, I’m chasing connection — both with myself and with others. I’m trying to design an infinite game, where I spend my days working on things that bring me alive, hence the internal resonance score, and connecting with a relatively small handful of true fans, hence the external resonance score.”
“To remind myself of this all-important metric, I have a simple but powerful trick. When I receive a kind, heartfelt email from a reader, I add it to a folder titled ‘Confidence Boost’. So whenever self-doubt strikes or I’m in a creative rut I consult that folder to be reminded of what really matters: connection. — Kai”
