One life-defining philosophy for your work

The best part of meaningful work isn’t finishing it.

It’s losing yourself in the flow of creating.

You know that feeling. You hit a big milestone and instead of wanting to celebrate, you feel a little lost, or deflated, or not really excited about succeeding.

It’s because a part of you wishes it could go on forever.

Because the justification of trying to put something of value into the world is in the act itself to create.

Like the justification for writing a book.

The real desire isn’t to have written, but to be writing. To be swept up in the current of energy, ideas and the challenge of articulating the ideas inside of your head without getting distracted, frustrated or lost.

Or the justification for building a startup.

It’s not in ringing the market bell, popping champagne after a big funding round, or even the exit for most founders.

It’s in the late nights shaping an idea from absolute dirt.

It’s in the sketches, the prototypes, the experiments and the conversations around coffee, soft-pitching to everyone you speak with about how you’re going to change the world.

In the process of meaningful work, you don’t conquer anything except the resistance inside of you that is holding you back from creating.

And once you can move through that resistance, the act of creating becomes the reward.

The act itself justifies the desire.

And the core desire is flow.

That is the only purpose. Not to find the peak euphoric experience of “succeeding”, but to stay in flow.

You keep moving forward only to keep on flowing.

Work, at its best, is art. A living act of self-expression.

And to me, the only philosophy worth holding onto is this:

Meaningful work is not about getting to the end. It’s about giving yourself to the flow of what it is you desire to create.

Much Love,

Cory Firth
Creator of One Minute Weekend

Let’s work together!