Owning Your Cognitive and Creative Freedom
Starting today, I will focus on regaining my cognitive and creative freedom as an Entrepreneur. This means that instead of treating personal projects as side projects, they will be what I dedicate my time to daily. Over the next year, I will work with a group of people to launch small products as part of a tribe we are calling Tiny Factories. We are all writing about why we need to make this jump, and you can read more about the other team members, Tomo and Weiwei. Please keep reading for my take on why now is the right time to jump!
Growing up, the notion of a job requiring me to invent new things sounded fantastic. Because invention required exploration, which guaranteed I would learn. Especially as a kid, I always wondered why things worked the way they did. So when I discovered a designer's job was to design all the things I was questioning, my path became clear. As my interests matured, Design was the best available path and was a way to start regaining my creative freedom.
As I advanced in school, it quickly felt like the point was to game the system and convince the teachers I knew what the textbooks said down to every word, even if there was no understanding of the why or how. So, the older I got, the less exploration; thus, learning took place. So, it wasn’t until college that my creativity was reset. Now, I could start inventing again with this newly found lens of design. And in doing so, understand how the physical and digital worlds could blend. It was a safe place; in fact, there was almost no connection with the natural world at all other than two internships. But even those felt safe, and it wasn’t until graduation that I discovered how little creative freedom I had.
Eight months after graduation, any sense of creative freedom was snuffed out again. Every contract I signed stuck me into a little box and told me to focus on one task. But what the last three years ultimately showed me is that all the designers I was inspired by weren’t just designers but Entrepreneurs. They built companies around their products, and today, it feels like that has all but disappeared as many design teams move in-house. But for me today, I’m regaining my cognitive and creative freedom permanently. For me, announcing Tiny Factories is the first step in making that a reality. Our team will be working on shipping a product a month for the following year. We will create a community and eventually fund other indie makers along the way. So, with my design experience, I’m excited to begin working with Tomo and Weiwei full-time.
If any of these thoughts interest you, I would be delighted to hear why, and even if they aren’t, I would still be interested. Feel free to message me on Twitter.