Resources for the Disciplined Creative
The published writer scolds the erratic painter, “you should be more disciplined about your painting. You hardly finish any work, and move on to the next one. And you don’t even publish your art, how can you even call yourself an artist?”
This is the conversation I have with myself. I was a published writer (articles, books and a song!), but my “painting” was no where to be found. Yet I would doodle more than I’d write.
This section is a collection of resources that helped me, and now help countless other creators, on how to:
– find more discipline for their creations
– build a brand online, so their art gets “published” and is taken to the market!
I have almost 300 videos on YouTube around these two subjects. And countless articles. That’s a lot of content. So I have tried to put the guides, the tools, the workshops, the articles together on this page. Hope this helps, yes?
Most articles are in English, most videos are in Urdu.
These are hand-picked, proven, field-tested material that has been shown to work! I wish you all the best! Do join our community if you want regular updates when such content is added!
Productivity for Artists (Creatives, Creators)
How to structure your self to produce more of what you want to produce!
Two Ways to be Passionate About Your Work
“Do what you love,” “Do what you are truly passionate about.” This type of advice gets thrown around a lot. But how on earth do you become passionate about something? Imagine a scenario where you love your work. When your work doesn’t...
Finding Limits
“Know Your Limits. Then Ignore Them.” Complacency should be treated as a sin. It has cost me years in lost time and hundreds of thousands in lost revenue. It doesn’t matter, I say. But I say that because I am good at justifying things to myself. We...
Why I Can’t Have What You Have
“Luck is when opportunity meets preparation.” Let’s travel through time. This is the 60s and computers are still these big, room-sized machines. A young teenager finds them fascinating. He and his friend try to borrow time on mainframes. He is from a...
Sitting Still
For a lot of people, meditation is when you do nothing. I think they miss the point. Meditation is stillness. It is allowing the torrid rain of thought to fall unhindered. To test and to find purpose. Ideas are generated, nurtured and destroyed. All authority is...
On the Improvement of Self
Want to be a better person? The first thing we do is try to change ourselves. Change our habits. We start with the man in the mirror. Make promises. Resolutions. Commitments. Things start moving. A few days into it perhaps, you feel good about it. Then a small hiccup...
Your Desires Vs Your Duties. And the Winner is…
We sit at our usual table. I sit with my questions, he sits with a coke and a smile. I ask him about his plan of extended travel to the other side of the ocean.“I am almost ready. The tickets are on their way ,” he says.He has been saving money for it...
Building a Brand and a Business for Artists (Creatives, Creators)
Discover the fundamentals of brand building, how to go about creating your community of “1000 true fans” and building a meaningful, high-impact online business for yourself.
Job, Career or a Calling
There are three ways to look at our work. Either we think it’s a job, it’s a career, or we think it is our calling. And at least one of these categories is very, very bad for us (no prizes for guessing which one though). +++ There was a study done by Dr...
The Job and The Struggle
Recently we talked about identifying our job. We also saw how we can ritualize the work: show up everyday for our job. My job is to write. To design. To solve problems. Not necessarily in that order. I do it every day. I must. That’s my decision. I have also...
The Milk Distribution Case Study is now Live!
After weeks upon weeks of writing, the case study is now ready! Alhumdulillah. Click here to read the sales page (and if you can find this useful, I hope you will buy this). I started my own milk brand here in Lahore back in the early 2000’s, when the...
Simple, Not Easy
I recently had a discussion with Yasir Nisar over a cup of warm tea and hot samosas. Yes, tea and samosa. Yasir is a professional photographer here in Pakistan. His pictures can sell upwards of 50,000 rupees each. Each. His calendar for the next few months, by his own...
A Word of Advice on Words of Advice
A lot of people share and keep sharing Steve Job’s Commencement Speech at Stanford. The official video released by Stanford 6 years ago, has so far garnered 18 millions views. It’s a great speech. If you haven’t watched it, you must. A lot of people...
The New Language of Starting A Business
He was leaving the next day and I hadn’t visited him yet. The night before his flight back to San Franscisco, I joined him at his aunt’s house for dinner. My family and his family were there. Sitting around the dinner table. His mother wanted him married,...