Didn’t your mother ever tell you that “Sharing is Caring”?
Well, it is pretty important to share with other creative professionals. It helps to broaden horizons and to keep you on your toes.
But, this is quite the opposite of what most creative professionals will tell you. Creatives are like magicians, rarely revealing trade secrets and clinging to their workflows like a baby to the proverbial bottle.
This is BAD. This is the exact reason why so many newcomers/recent graduates have such trouble breaking into the business. No one will hire you without experience, and you can’t gain experience until someone volunteers to let you into their inner sanctum.
It wasn’t the long hours or massive amounts of time spent working in Photoshop, Final Cut, After Effects, or Cinema 4D that truly set me in the right direction. It was the creative professionals that shared some insider info, which put me into a different mindset.
Don’t get me wrong, the crazy amount of dedication I had put into learning the programs was necessary, but if I hadn’t gotten the right tips to put me in the right direction, I would have wasted a great deal of time.
My rationale is this. If you are a creative professional who is never sated with knowledge, and continually learns more and applies it to their craft, you will always get better at what you do. If you decide to teach someone what you know, they will still have to catch up to the point where you currently are.
As long as you continuously strive to better your game, you will never feel inadequate because you will pay less mind to competitor’s skills and more on your own. This industry is hard enough to make it in on its own.
It doesn’t need any help from poor sports with insecurities. I understand the feeling of wanting to protect what you’ve been working towards, but no one can do what you do best. Be true to yourselves.
Here are four things that I’ve learned from people in my time spent in the creative industry:
- Never stop consuming knowledge. When people rest on their laurels, they become complacent. Complacency breeds insecurity.
- Share that knowledge. It will never hurt you to share knowledge if you continue learning yourself. In it, you will help others as well as inspire loyalty from their peers.
- Exercise that knowledge. Always be experimenting. Failures are learning experiences.
- Work collaboratively with others. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. By surrounding yourself with others, you can pick up habits that improve upon your weaknesses.
