Two passionate people, I’m pretty sure.

How to revive your passion.

Passions eb and flow. They are a nomadic best friend who crosses your path and captures your love for delightful 6 month, 2 year, 4 year periods. They are passing fancies.

I’m not afraid to admit it now, but of course I was then — in July of last year my passion for my work had faded entirely. I was stirring in pools of challenge and disappointment. I had over-hired and over-committed — so I was over-worked. Things were moving from month to month — but that’s all they seemed to be doing.

I thought to myself: “Where are we even going with this?” “What’s the point?” “Is it worth it?”.

I was stressed for sure. But daytime television and self-help books have taught me that stress isn’t doing too much, it’s doing too little of what you love. Honestly, despite my apprehensions about that phrase (it feels a little American Dream-y to me), I think that was exactly the case.

I was meandering through My Media Creative’s day to day without a sense of purpose. This was for three reasons:

1. There was too much client work to focus on the future. I was just focused on getting through the day.
2. I hadn’t inhaled enough inspiration to see a future I was excited about.
3. Honestly, we had achieved our most recent purpose. We always wanted to hire a full-time team of around 10 people and work with nationally recognized nonprofits. We had a team of 9 and that was our exclusive client base. It may not have felt that way, but we were living “the dream”.

I knew I needed to revive my passion for my work — because I felt too connected to it. I never seriously entertained the thought. It moved across my mind but never found a home there. In conversations with my parents or partner, the idea would touch my lips — but always be followed by a helpless “I can’t”.

It felt truly helpless to be honest. Not that I wanted to keep going — but that I MUST for some reason.

So, I thought, if I MUST— then I should figure out how to be inspired by it every day.

The first thing I did: take a f*cking vacation. Life changing. Four of the most impactful days of my life.

But then I jumped in to solving those problems I mentioned earlier:

1. Too much client work.

I started to discover My Media’s purpose in little cracks in my schedule. In walks to my girlfriend’s place, or conversations at work. Over like 6 months, the future vision of My Media began to emerge in my head. A collection of disparate ideas started to fit together like a puzzle in my mind. Sometimes I would write things down, but sometimes I wouldn’t. Every little while I would stumble on true epiphanies. I would talk through it. Think through it. Then, I might write it down.

I call this survival of the fittest creativity. It’s a method I deploy very consistently (it requires a shit ton of time, capacity to keep things in your memory, and willingness to re-present your ideas a million times).

Basically, I’ll have an idea — then I’ll explain it to someone. Then I’ll explain it again. Then again. Then at least 15 more times. Every time that I explain it a new connection can be made. Everything superfluous is eventually shed. By the time you’ve explained it 20 times — I’ve got a very well-packaged concept in my hands.

So basically, my solution to the first problem was to sit with the ideas for months. 6 months. Constantly talking them through. Thinking about them. Writing them down.

Until…one day, I was asked to figure out our purpose on a white board. In one second I wrote down the three “Whys” and the three “Hows” of My Media’s next five years. It was a moment of epiphany that reflected David Ogilvy’s approach to great ideas (I’m paraphrasing for clarity):

Learn everything you can about a subject. Think it over endlessly. Then turn your brain off. Only then will a great idea will leap out of your subconscious.

We still continue to work on strategies and such. But we’ve got guiding principles — and I’m fricken inspired for sure.

2. Inspiration.

Creativity is an inhale/exhale. Most of the work you do happens in the inhale. It happens in reading as many books, listening to as many albums, and consuming as much of whatever you make as possible. It consists of getting inspired and educated. Learning is creative life-force. I wasn’t doing enough of that.

Now, though, I am. It’s dope.

3. New goals.

It’s true, we had defined and achieved a specific image of success. But now, what was success going to look like? It looked very different from this perch. It looked like scaling the impact of our work to focus on mobilization. It looked like strengthening our core business so that our employees could feel secure and empowered at work. It looked like a future where we lived happier, less stressed, more impactful lives.

And how did we decide on that image? Well, honestly, we plucked it right from the edge of oblivion. We saw the darkest version of running this kind of organization and we decided that we would do whatever we could to run the other direction.

So, as we wrap up our strategy planning and FY2021 I’m super excited to share with my team and all of you our priorities.

It’s an odd journey — but damn if it isn’t fun.