Beyond Your Body of Work (GWTW773)

Getting Work To Work

Earlier this week, in my paid newsletter for Getting Work To Work, I was reflecting upon the question: How is your body of work holding you back from experimenting with risky creative ideas and exploring new directions? No matter how long you’ve worked on your craft, you inevitably amass a body of work. The apparent measure is quantity, but you can also look at quality with an eye toward growth and outcomes. But the more I think about my body of work, the more I wonder if it’s a hindrance rather than a help. What does it communicate to a potential employer or client? How can it hold you back by morphing from what you’ve done into a statement of being on-brand, not to mention consistency? Questions aside, I want to explore what to do if you feel stuck and need to take a creative chance beyond what you’ve done before.

Four ways to inject creative risk and experimentation into your creative journey:

1. Reexamine your systems and processes.
2. Identify playing-it-safe behaviors and how you can counter them with small creative risks.
3. Imagine your creative future based upon what you are doing today.
4. Seek new partnerships and collaborators.

Show Links

• Getting Work To Work on Substack
• Midjourney prompt for episode art: creative risk and experimentation, body of work, portfolio, creativity in the style of dadaists –ar 16:9