The Creative Work

When Effort and Outcome doesn’t correlate

The creative work is a peculiar thing. Writing, painting, composing music, making YouTube videos — all of them are using the creative juices in your brain to, well, create something that you can call your own.

What I have learnt through starting to write, is that:

Effort ≠ Outcome.

There are times when you spend a lot of time brainstorming on a topic, an idea that is super thrilling and you think it is going to be your best work you will put up. You do tons of research and sourcing, finally finishing that article, song or YouTube video, and then you put it up.

1 like. 2 likes.

Okay, it’s going up!

12 likes. In a week.

Wait, that’s not right! I put in a lot of effort into this. I shared it on Facebook, Twitter. I kept my ideas simple and relatable, it should be getting way more likes(or views) than this!

This is the creative work.

It was never about effort. The only effort you need is to go out there and create it. There are times when you just wanted to rant about something and wrote about it. And it got way more likes than the other work that you really worked hard on. There is a whole confluence of disparate factors that lead to the success of a piece of work, and

effort plays only a small part.

Timing

Timing is the glitch in the rigged game, the flaw in the equation, and it plays a huge role. Because it is a game of chance, and there is no way to determine the perfect timing. Sometimes you posted on the time when most people are using the app, and they saw it, and so you will have a large number of audience for that work.

Sometimes you posted when most people(that your work appeals to) are asleep, and when morning comes, your work has already been drowned out by the dozen others.

When you posted your work, it could be just the time when a certain famous person on the platform stumbled upon it, and gave it a like or share, so his large number of followers will see you content and that can lead to them also supporting your piece of work.

Sometimes, the conditions are so right that it just blew up, with no particular reason other than the timing.

Case in point, the Norwegian brother band — Ylvis. Prior to their rise in fame on the global stage, they are already producing a smorgasbord of great music and videos. However, they received a project to make a song about foxes which they find stupid and would be a horrible failure, but little did they know — that “stupid” song about What Does the Fox Say shot them to an international sensation. Even if they have several greater work than The Fox, the self-judged “worst” was their most popular.

You are never a good judge of your work

Every article, every video, every song, every artwork you make is special to you because you breathed life into it, infused your essence into it. It is a part of you. However, there will be certain work you like better than others, I’m sure, but that does not accurately reflect what the audience feel about those pieces of work.

All you have to do is to make one, post it up, and let the world see it — that was the whole point wasn’t it — to share it with the world, and see what they have to say about it.

Yes, it is unfair sometimes that the effort put in isn’t reflected in the outcome but it is something we, as content creators, need to deal with positively. This doesn’t mean we should all stop putting in you best effort in making a thing, but instead

expect and accept that it might not be as big of a hit as you think it would.

Be humble and lower your expectations, that way, you can avoid a lot of disappointment. Enjoy your process of doing it and the things you’ve learnt, because as long as one person gave me the 💚, or drop me an encouraging comment, I know that my job is done, and it was worthwhile.

Create on.