How To Manage Multiple Creative Interests (3 Strategies)

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I’ve never been happy with just one creative practise.

It feels too constraining, like I’m not properly feeding my soul.

Maybe you’re like this too: You have multiple creative interests or passions, and one is just not enough.

Different things fulfill you at different times.

And if you’re forced to focus on just one thing for too long, it can turn it and you cold.

You run out of energy, you lose interest for it, and it feels like you’ve actually lost your creative spark altogether. Or at least this has been my experience.

If this is the kind of person you are, you need to be able to explore those multiple creative passions, somehow.

For me at least, doing this has meant I can contribute more and better stuff to the world.

It’s easier to get things done and I feel like I’m fully utilising my potential—or a lot more than I otherwise would. Plus, I’m way more creatively fulfilled.

And maybe this is the same for you.

Maybe you know how much better you could feel, and how much more could offer the world if you could explore more creative paths.

But it often doesn’t feel like life is set up to accommodate that.

We have to make money. We have responsibilities. We have things that take up our time.

And it seems like there are a lot of ‘rules’ we have to follow if we want to get anywhere decent with a creative practise—especially if we’re trying to make a living with it.

In my world of work, which is helping creatives get moving with their careers online—especially social media—common advice is super constricting.

• “Focus on one thing only.”
• “Niche down.”
• “Don’t confuse the algorithm with different post types.”

So between that and life being life, it’s easy to become confused about what to focus on…

Or to worry that giving attention to other creative interests will mess with our main thing and ruin our chances at having a decent career.

We often end up feeling like we have to settle for a lot less than what we want, because ‘that’s just how it works’.

But this hurts. Not everyone gets this, but when you genuinely care about multiple things, not being able to do them can be soul-destroying.

So, is there a good way to deal with this?

If you have multiple creative passions and you care deeply about them all, is there a way to give them all the love they need, while still being able to make a living with your creativity?

That’s what we’re going to talk about today.

There are three major things that have helped me better navigate this mess, and we’ll be covering all of them.

We’ll also talk about some common concerns around this stuff, and problems I see creatives face when they try to go down this road of exploring multiple creative interests.

So I hope this gives you some insight or ideas that’ll help you make better decisions about creating a more fulfilling and creatively inclusive path for yourself.

These are just my own experiences and thoughts, so take them with a grain of salt. But hopefully they can help in some way.

Let’s start at where creatives get tripped up when they’re trying to go down this road.

Are you a frozen or split creative?

In the last 5 years I’ve been mostly working with creatives online who are musicians first, but I’ve had plenty of conversations with all kinds of creatives who struggle with this multiple passions thing.

There are two major roadblocks I see repeatedly:

#1: The Frozen Creative

The first is a super messy head that stops creatives from taking action.

The creatives who struggle with this are severely lacking clarity and don’t know which passion or passions they should prioritise, because everything is super important to them.

They’ll often find themselves stuck in their heads, going around in circles trying to figure out the best path forward.

And if it’s gotten really bad, even when they do have brief moments of clarity, they aren’t enough.

The answers they come up with aren’t satisfying enough to get them out of their funk.

So even if they do come up with a plan, they find it super hard to stick to it.

In my own experience, when I’m in this messy head situation, I find myself searching for an ‘aha’ moment that’s so big it jolts me out of my slump and into action.

But when my head is that messy—when I’m so unclear on what I want or what I should do—it never comes.

I can never just think my way out of it.

Everything is too cloudy, and I can’t get truly excited about anything.

If you’re like this too, you’ll know how easy is to end up frozen.

You can’t get anything done, and it’s not because you’re lazy. It’s because you’re so cloudy.

You’re looking for that major ‘aha’ moment that will solve everything, but every time you get close, you feel like you’re betraying yourself—like you’re leaving your other interests behind, and so you’re leaving parts of yourself behind.

It makes it hard to act in any real way or to get any real direction, even if it looks obvious on paper. 

Annoyingly, it’s that inaction that’s keeping you stuck and stopping you from having real direction.

We’ll come back and talk about this more later, so if this is relatable for you, stick around. But for now, let’s move onto the second major problem I see:

#2: The Split Creative

You might be the type of creative who does act, giving yourself full permission to follow the path of multiple creative passions, and actually showing up.

You give a bit of your attention to everything, hoping it’ll satisfy your creative needs… but you’re still not happy.

Because this path also often comes with a big problem:

Your attention is so divided between everything you’re trying to do that you don’t get anywhere with anything.

This isn’t so much a problem if you just want to play around with different creative mediums and that’s it.

But if you have specific goals with one, some, or all these pursuits—like making money, getting to a certain skill level, or building a fan base…

Reality is gonna kick in pretty damn quickly if you’re not giving them enough attention.

The lack of practical progress will convince you these pursuits aren’t realistic for you, that they’re not worth it unless you can pour tons more love into them.

And you might find you either give up and feel terrible…

Or try to go harder on everything, burn out, and feel terrible.

I’m not saying you can’t make this work and that people don’t do it.

But if you lack proper direction, focus, and planning that’s suitable for you, it’s probably going to feel impossible.

Are we confined to focusing on one thing?

So, neither of these situations sound great, right?

And sometimes it doesn’t feel like we’ve got any other option. We just have to pick our sacrifice and suck it up.

I’ve heard this message a fair bit too.

Sometimes it comes in the form of “you can do anything, but you can’t do everything.”

Other times it comes in the form of “we all want to multiple things, but we can’t. Stop being a baby, just pick something and get to work.”

And there’s for sure wisdom in that.

One thing is for sure: If you’re struggling with either of the two major problems we just talked about, you can’t keep going down that same road and expect it’ll all work out.

Because it probably won’t.

It’s important to accept that—if you’re frozen and don’t know what to focus on—trying to think your way to clarity isn’t likely going to work.

And it’s important to accept that—if you continue to try to juggle multiple interests without clear direction and/or a better, more personally suitable plan—you’ll probably end up dissatisfied with your results.

I’ve learned the hard way that, truly, no one is coming to save you.

No doubt we need more focus and direction here, and it won’t come if we don’t make an intentional change.

But does that mean we’re confined to focusing on one thing, even if it feels like a personal soul-destroying betrayal?

Or does it mean accepting we’re doomed to fail if we decide to try to take on multiple creative interests?

I don’t think so.

I don’t think it’s so black and white.

And if there’s one thing I’ve learned from working in the creative industry for almost 10 years, it’s that there are usually more answers than what we typically get fed.

A truly happy and fulfilled creative produces magic.

When you’re set up to be your best, the work you do and what you can offer the world is infinitely more powerful and valuable.

And if you want that for yourself, you want to do truly great work and build a life you love, I don’t think settling for what feels like half a fed soul is going to cut it.

So, with that said, I’m now going to take you through three things that have massively helped me with navigating this.

Everyone is different, so these might not apply to you in the same way, or at all.

And again, these are my own experiences—I’m wrong about things all the time, so keep in mind I’m not trying to tell you the ultimate right way for you.

But I hope they help.

Take them in, and if you like any of the ideas, experiment and see if they might work for you and your situation.

#1. Creative skill stacking.

Ok, thing number one is what I call creative skill stacking, and this is what I’ve tried to do in my own creative career as much as possible.

Creative skill stacking is finding a way to combine your multiple creative interests into one overall creative project that brings you maximum enjoyment and fulfillment, and helps you achieve your goals.

The idea is that you get to explore multiple creative interests in a way that leads to practical outcomes, making it sustainable and filling you up in all the ways you need.

And this could work a bunch of ways—how you go about this depends on what you’re trying to achieve. 

You might have one primary creative pursuit that you can enrich with your other creative interests.

Or you might want a career or project or presence that’s built around you, and your multiple creative interests all contribute to that.

Using myself as an example, the way I’ve been able to combine multiple interests into one thing is through building my online presence which is based around the ways I can help other creatives.

For example, I love:

• Writing
• Music
• Making videos
• Designing stuff
• Exploring and sharing ideas and inspiring
• Learning and building things
• And I’ve been experimenting with animations lately too which are super fun

So I’ve tried to bring as many of my own interests as possible into this:

• I get to write every day—writing is the basis for all my content
• I get to talk about ideas and help with things I’m interested in
• I often turn my writing into videos, which involves making animations and designing stuff
• I talk to and work with musicians regularly, and I bring my own music into my online presence where I can, like sometimes under my videos.
• And I get to build things—products and tools and just the business overall

Incorporating all of this stuff is pretty damn creatively fulfilling, as long as I talk enough about and help enough with things I truly care about.

And if I ever feel like I’m not diving into one thing enough, it’s not too difficult to turn that thing up for a while without compromising everything else.

For example, sometimes I just want to write more, and I don’t want to use my time to make the animations—so I’ll just put out text-based stuff.

Or sometimes I want to spend more time levelling up a skill, like say design.

I can usually find a practical use for that within the business: Maybe to level up the look of my content, or through building product pages, or maybe the animations.

It’s not perfect, but for the most part it’s great.

Think about this for yourself: How could you bring your multiple interests together under one umbrella?

Maybe you do a similar thing to me, but maybe not.

Maybe you’re a straight up artist who makes amazing music and loves to write and paint and share your thoughts or something.

Continuing on with the building an online presence thing, could you bring all your interests together somehow?

• Could your artworks compliment the music in a promotional way?
• Could your music compliment the artworks in a promotion way?
• Could you have an Instagram or YouTube channel and a newsletter or Substack so you can take advantage of sound, visuals, and writing?

You don’t have to do this on the marketing side of things.

You could simply make art that incorporates multiple creative interests if you wanted, like a visual and audio project.

Or you could do both—why not?

It’s really helpful on the marketing side because not only does it make it more enjoyable, but it can make it much more effective.

It’s totally up to you though—this is your path.

And with a bit of thought and experimentation, you can find a way to make this work for you.

Your through line.

Ok, so what about if you want to do this but you don’t really have a clear direction?

Maybe you have multiple creative interests but you’re not sure how to bring them together in a way that anyone would actually care about.

It’s simpler if you have one main thing—because you can build yourself up based on that one main thing.

But how do you properly market yourself when you’re stacking multiple creative interests?

There are lots of different answers to this, but one thing that’s really helped me is to define a ‘value throughline’ for my online presence.

This is something that ties everything you do together that provides clear and repeatable value for others and gives them an obvious reason why they’d want to follow you over the long term.

Even if you want to share a mix of visual art, music, writing, and anything else, if you can find a good way to tie all that together, you’ll have more direction with what you put and how.

So try to answer this:

When it comes down to it, what are people really getting when they follow you?

Sure, they’re getting music, or art, or writing, or whatever…

But how would they explain to their friend why they should check you out?

• Is it because you have an inspiring creative lifestyle?
• An attractive personality that lights them up?
• A string of beautiful art that all falls under a theme, even across multiple disciplines?
• Do you motivate people?
• Do you provide fresh insight and ideas? Is it your brain people follow you for?
• Or something else?

You don’t have to think like this, but it’s really helped me, and I think it can give you a lot of clarity if you need it.

If someone can say “Ah I just love seeing Jessica’s posts come up because they always brighten my day”, or…

“Every time John shows up on my feed, I learn something new”, or…

“I love Allen’s Instagram because visiting it makes me feel like I’ve gone back in time 50 years” …

Then you’re in a good place.

And as long as you’ve got this ‘value throughline’, you can do whatever you want.

You can build your online presence with art, music, writing, videos, whatever, and it makes sense.

Again, this is not mandatory, but it might help if you’re unclear.

Also, if you’re worried about the ‘niche’ thing—like not having a clear enough thing people can follow—this kind of takes care of that.

The niche can just be you if you want it to be.

And if you think about it like that and you have a ‘value throughline’, you’re good.

By the way if you don’t feel like you’d have anything to offer in this way, you’re not sure what your ‘value’ is, and you’d like me to make something on this, let me know.
I was going to anyway, but if you’re interested let me know so I’m more motivated to do it 🙂

So that’s creative skill stacking.

I know this solution isn’t for everyone.

Maybe you want to go down a different path, where you want to keep things separate and this path just won’t work for you.

That’s totally fine. This is just one potential path.

And maybe this next one will be better suited to you…

#2. A main focus + room for more (structure and freedom)

The second thing you can do to manage multiple creative interests is to:

Decide on a main creative focus > dial that in and get it working really well for you > and then free up time for pursuing other creative interests in a more relaxed way.

Like creative skill stacking, this path is about sustainability, but it’s also about balancing stability with creative chaos and freedom. 

The idea here is you have one main creative focus that you’re much stricter with and that provides you stability (whether that means financial stability or steadily improving at your craft or something else)…

And that strictness and stability allows you the space to explore other creative interests in a much more relaxed way.

This is how it works in an ideal world at least (which we’ll talk more about soon).

It’s like ‘paying yourself first’ with your favourite creative practise:

• You have your one main thing that you do—ideally you have a dedicated time slot for it every day.
• Then after that it’s whatever goes. You can work on whatever you want.

Maybe music is your main focus (the thing you do consistently that has a dedicated time slot) …

And once you’ve ‘ticked that box’ for the day or week, you’re free to explore anything else you want.

Maybe on Monday after music you feel like writing.

Maybe Tuesday it’s something else.

The point is you’re free to choose.

Creatives need structure and freedom.

I really like this as an idea because it’s helped ground me as a creative person.

Your soul needs both structure and freedom, and if you want your creative interests to be a huge part of your life, I think it’s handy to find this balance within them.

From what I’ve seen, it’s not a good idea to have zero structure and stability.

That seems to lead to one or both of the problems we talked about earlier:

• You might become an unclear mess and get frozen
• Or you might not get anywhere with anything.

But we also don’t want to have too much structure and no freedom, because that can cause problems too.

If you’re too constrained, you might end up unhappy, narrowing your mind, and you might end up producing terrible work because your heart’s not truly in it.

Again, this has just been my experience, so take it with a grain of salt.

But if you feel like you need balance, this second approach is supposed to help with that.

And when you can properly dial in your main focus, it can be really powerful and freeing.

So, this is what I do (when I’m at my best which isn’t all the time):

I will almost always get up and write first thing in the morning, whether it’s something to do with work, for tidying up my head, or just purely for the fun of it.

Most of the time those are all interlinked anyway.

I’ll usually spend the first half of the day just writing or building off of that writing—maybe turning it into videos or incorporating it into a product I’m working on or something.

And because I’ve had a lot of practise dialling in my mornings, I’m usually productive with that time.

This strictness also frees up the second half of my day.

After lunch—if I want—I can work on whatever I want.

• Sometimes I might sit down to play the piano.
• Other times I write more or play around with animations.
• Recently I’ve been learning the super basics of how to code, which is something I never thought I’d hear myself say.
• Or sometimes I just read, or chill, or whatever.

The point is it’s loose. The second half of the day is free and relaxed.

And because I’ve had that focus and strictness in the morning, it doesn’t feel wrong.

I get to ‘play’ without feeling guilty, or like I’m not doing enough.

Not saying you should automatically feel guilty when you don’t show up how you’re ‘supposed’ to—but this feels good overall.

So, if this kind of thing is possible for you, I highly recommend it.

BUT I realise you can poke all kinds of holes in this.

This is far from perfect in many situations, and in some cases it’s not doable—not with how I’ve laid it out so far.

So now I’d like to go through three potential concerns or questions you might have around this that might be relevant to you.

They are:

• How do you choose which main thing to focus on?
• If you’re going to do this, what is your schedule supposed to look like, and how could it work if you have a job or other unmovable responsibilities?
• What if your main creative focus requires a lot of extra energy—what if it takes up too much time? How do you work in other creative interests around that?

These are all things I’ve been asked in one way or another, and while I don’t have perfect answers to them, I’d like to at least offer some perspective that I hope will help.

So first, how do you choose a creative focus if everything matters to you?

How do you choose a creative focus?

I don’t think there’s one answer to this, but I think a good place to start is by asking what you’re trying to achieve.

• Is your main goal to make money with your creativity in the very near future? Because if so, I would highly recommend you prioritise something that has the potential to actually make you money without running you into the ground.

• Is your main goal to just create more and better stuff and feel creatively fulfilled? If so, I would prioritise the thing that energises you the most, the thing that you can work on for longer stretches of time and in various states of mind.

• Is your main goal to build something strong, lasting, and fulfilling long term? For example, if you make music, do you want to also get that out into the world successfully and build a big fan base? Because if so, that requires a lot of extra work, and you’d probably do best to prioritise that. 

What I’ve found a lot is that creatives can usually pick a main thing that ticks all three of these boxes, or at least two.

You might have something that’s most important to you, it’s just that you don’t want to totally bail on the other stuff, so you get all mixed up.

Totally fair—but maybe you don’t have to bail on the other stuff.

Maybe you just need a bit more direction.

Maybe you need a good balance of structure and freedom, so things don’t feel so impossible.

You might not get your answer for what to focus on just by asking these questions.

Maybe you have multiple creative interests that tick these boxes.

Or maybe there’s another factor I haven’t taken into consideration here.

So if you’re still not clear after asking these, I recommend you just do a bit of experimenting.

The cure for a lack of clarity can often be action.

You don’t have to have something figured out before you start moving. That thinking probably contributed to you getting stuck in the first place.

Let go of needing to have it all sorted right now.

Just do something.

Inch forward and see how it starts to loosen you up and illuminate a path.

Whatever you feel like doing, whether it’s music, art, writing—whatever—just start doing something and see what happens.

You might find that by exploring music with more freedom and less judgement this is what you’re supposed to focus on.

Or you might find it’s not super important that you concentrate on that right now.

They say experience is the best teacher right?

And if you know taking this small action is productive in itself—because it’ll help you get clarity—you can (hopefully) do it without worrying so much about wasting time or getting stuck.

So ask the questions we talked about, but also when in doubt, just mess around and keep it in the back of your mind that you’re trying to figure out what feels best to you.

Ok, let’s talk about the schedule now.

What does your schedule look like?

If you do have a good amount of control over your schedule and you want to try this structure / freedom thing out, what should your schedule look like?

Or even if you don’t have much control—like you have a 9-5 and/or other unmovable responsibilities—how are you supposed to make this work?

If you have more control over your days, I highly recommend you dedicate the first half of your day to the strict stuff (the main focus) and the second half to the freedom side (where you do whatever you want).

I’m much sharper in the first half of the day than the second, and I think for most people this would be the ideal setup—if it’s possible.

But it might not be for you.

And maybe it’s not even ideal for you.

Some creatives are night owls, and their best stuff comes out at 2 in the morning.

If this works better for you, fine.

Maybe you flip your day around.

I have a really hard time recommending you stay up so late because a good sleep schedule is super important to me…

But you might not care about that or need to worry about that.

What I think is most important is you have an ideally non-negotiable space in your day or week for your main focus.

That’s how you maintain that much needed stability while also being able to explore.

It can be night or day—as long as it’s mostly always there.

This way you increase the chances of actually getting somewhere with your main thing.

And even if your day or week doesn’t go as planned, you’ll be more likely to stay on track and not fall back into messy-head land (because you have a clear priority). 

If you have multiple tasks to do repeatedly for one creative focus, split your time up:

• Maybe for the first 2-hour block of the morning you’re making music
• Then maybe you go for a walk or exercise or have a break
• Then the next 2-hour block is for marketing stuff
• Then lunch, then you’re done with your main focus.

That’s just an example, but hopefully you get what I mean.

What about if you have a job or other unmovable responsibilities that make it much more difficult to do something like this?

This is where it gets hard.

I don’t know your situation.

I don’t know if you’re younger or older.

I don’t know what your job is like, what your life is like, or what other responsibilities you have.

I fully acknowledge that you might hear what I’m saying and go “this guy doesn’t know my life at all—I would never be able to make this work.”

You simply might not have the time or energy for it, as much as I wish I could give you the perfect solution, I don’t have it.

But we know that in these situations, things aren’t going to be perfect, and you will almost definitely have to compromise somewhere.

And I think the best thing to do is aim to keep moving you in the right direction.

Just keep nudging forward and ideally improve your situation over time.

Ultimately, we want you to be able to implement the ‘ideal world’ schedule.

But until then, we’ll just have to do the best we can.

Maybe right now you can only find an hour or two a day to give to your creative interests.

The most important thing in this case is to give yourself a non-negotiable space for your main creative thing.

This could look like anything:

• Giving yourself an hour or two before work for your main thing, and then (if you can) messing around with other interests after work.

• Or you might flip that.

• Maybe hour 1 of your main focus time is used for the actual craft and hour 2 is used for the marketing side, if that’s something you need to think about. Then if you have any time around that you can put it towards another creative interest.

• Maybe on Monday—Friday you work on your main thing, and you let yourself mess around with other creative interests on the weekend. Or vice versa.

• Maybe you do your main creative stuff first thing in the morning and marketing stuff for that main creative thing after work. Or flip that.

• Or you might—for now—have to just focus on one thing until you’re in a situation where you can do more. It’s not ideal, I know, but maybe it’s the only real option.

I really think it comes down to you.

Know yourself as best you can, know your most important goal(s) and figure out how you’ll most effectively use your time.

When you have super limited time, it’s honestly really hard if you care deeply about multiple things.

But again, I think just making sure you have that non-negotiable space for your main thing should be the priority.

Then dial that in as best you can so you can increase your chances of being able to explore other interests as well.

I’m hesitant to go any further with like detailed scheduling here because I don’t know you—but I hope this can at least get you thinking.

What if your main creative focus requires extra energy?

Staying in this difficult area for just a little longer: What if your main creative focus requires a lot of you?

Working with musicians a lot, I know just how much can go into building a music career.

The online presence part alone is work, and that’s only one part of it.

What we’ve talked about so far doesn’t fully take into consideration the many other things you might want or need to do.

• What about being able to practise enough that you get really, really good at your craft?
• What about the actual creation or recording process?
• What about getting gigs, marketing, rehearsing, and everything else?
• What about the necessary admin work?

If your goal is to build something strong, lasting, and ultimately lucrative around one main creative interest, and you are multi-passionate, it is crucial that you face reality.

You are going to have to ask yourself some serious questions, like:

What’s really important to me right now? What do I really want?

You probably won’t be able to come up with an ideal solution right away.

But you might be able to come up with something that isn’t horrible, and hopefully over time you can make it better and better.

There are three things worth talking about here to help you navigate this messy situation, and this also applies to if you have a 9-5 and/or other responsibilities.

These things are…

• Delegation and/or building a team
• Having a rock-solid plan for your main creative thing
• Using your marketing to fit your other creative interests in

Delegation / Building A Team

I don’t know heaps about this side of things, because I don’t have a team or outsource anything and it’s not an area I’m strong in.

But it is worth mentioning.

There are some things I don’t think you should outsource.

For example, I would never get someone else to create my content or write my emails—at least not if I wanted to continue putting out the kind of stuff I’m putting out now.

Those are deeply personal to me, and I think it would kill the appeal if someone else did them for me. Plus, I enjoy it.

That might not be the case for you, but there will be some things that you just know you need to do.

That’s not necessarily everything though.

In many cases, outsourcing or building up a team to help you level up is a great idea.

For example, if you need to create a lot of content, hiring a videographer and/or an editor who can help you on a regular basis could be a super smart move for you —if you find the right one(s).

Filming and/or editing content can be super time and energy consuming, and if you don’t enjoy it or know what you’re doing, it could be better to get some help there.

Or it might help having someone else find and book you shows or get you opportunities, so you can concentrate on other stuff.

Or anything repeatable that doesn’t require a truly personal touch is potentially worth outsourcing.

Some musicians I consult with have teams they couldn’t survive without.

It’s not weird for an artist to have an editor, videographer, booking agent, manager, sometimes coaches for various things, maybe a small label behind them or PR team, and maybe more.

Like I said, this isn’t my strong suit, so I can’t offer much more here.

But if it makes sense and is doable for you to get other people on board, it could help you stay on top of your main creative focus and free you up a little to explore multiple creative interests.

Just make sure you’re not diving into this stuff too early and paying for things you don’t need right now.

Having a solid plan for your main creative thing

Ok, another thing that will help you to no end if your main creative focus requires a lot of work is actually having a good plan for achieving your goals with it.

This sounds obvious, but I cannot tell you how many creatives I speak to who have a ton of different interests and no real plan for any of them.

When you have a good solid roadmap for your main creative focus, you’d be surprised at how much more you can get from your efforts.

It’s so easy to waste hours, days, weeks, months, or even years on guesswork and irrelevant action.

One of the main things I help creatives with is their social media presence, and of all I’ve spoken to who can’t get it to work, 99% of them don’t have:

• A way to produce and put out great, authentic stuff on a regular basis
• At least one reliable method of driving traffic to their channels
• A decent understanding of the fundamentals of content marketing.

If you make great art, music, work, whatever it is, and you get these three things sorted, you’re likely to see some movement.

But they don’t get these sorted.

They—understandably—get caught up on details that don’t matter all that much. Things like…

• The latest trends
• “Viral hacks”
• Post times
• Hashtags (yes, still today)
• And constantly comparing their like, view, and follower counts to other people.

They’re wasting a lot of time, and it’s not their fault.

This shallow but shiny stuff is what marketers push all the time: The newest magic button that’s finally going to save them.

When in reality they mostly need a good, clean, simple plan that focuses on the handful of fundamentals, and the creativity and willingness to build their own path from those fundamentals.

It’s not as straightforward as this, but the point I’m making is once you’re focused on the right stuff and you’ve got a proper plan, you can make a lot more progress in a lot less time.

I’m only talking about the social media part of your creative career here, but if you’re currently spending, say, a few hours a day only on social media…

You probably don’t have a good plan.

And you could probably free up a lot more time to explore other creative interests.

This is an area I’m strong in, so if you’re interested in getting help from me with this stuff, feel free to have a poke around my website and see how I can help (click here) 🙂

Bottom line: A good plan will likely reduce how much time you have to spend on your main creative focus each day / week.

And that may mean freeing up some space for messing around with your other creative interests.

Ok, let’s move on.

Using your marketing to explore other creative interests

Another way you can explore multiple creative interests—even if your main focus takes up a lot of energy—is to use the marketing for your main thing as a reason to bring in those other interests.

This is like what we talked about earlier: Creative skill stacking.

I don’t want to repeat myself too much, but this is essentially what I’ve done, and for the most part it’s been great.

When it comes to marketing, there is almost definitely a way to leverage your other creative interests to advance your main thing.

Not only does it make sense to attack your marketing through multiple mediums, but it can also be a huge advantage.

An artist who also writes, or a musician who also knows how to film great stuff has a lot of power when it comes to marketing.

It could help you produce more highly palatable stuff and stand out in this noisy online world.

If you have a main creative interest that takes up a lot of time / energy, I would strongly consider bringing your other interests into the marketing of your main thing.

Ok, so far we’ve talked at length about:

• Creative skill stacking—combining multiple creative interests into one “project”
• And having a main focus and then bringing in your other creative interests around that (in various ways).

These two things—I hope—will give you plenty to think about and experiment with.

And there’s a good chance if you’re multi-passionate, what you want will change over time.

You’ll have patches where you lose interest in certain things and become more interested in others.

You’ll also probably go through times where everything you want isn’t possible in the moment.

You might have to compromise and change your approach to better fit certain times in your life.

That’s ok.

It’s important to understand that it’s a dance.

Embrace that as part of the deal and just go with it.

And you can use what we’ve talked about today as a guide on how to navigate it whenever you feel like you’re getting lost again.

Remember, our goal is to get you moving in the right direction—not to have everything be perfect right now.

Over time, you can keep inching toward a better situation, a better life.

And eventually, you’ll realise how much more possible it is for you to have a great relationship with your creative interests.

Ok, so I promised you three major things that have helped me navigate this, so let’s talk about the last one now.

It’s not really a ‘strategy’ but more of a reminder. 

I want you to incorporate this into your ‘direction’ to keep you on track and help you have a better time.

So thing number three is to…

#3. Actually give yourself the choice to do whatever you want.

I’ve found for myself and for a lot of the creative people I’ve worked with or talked to, not feeling like you have the choice to do what you want (like pursue multiple creative interests) is one of the biggest pain points.

And I think bringing choice into it can help a ton with making all this more manageable.

I know some people say structure is like the enemy of an artist (in ways).

But most creatives I know are ok with structure and discipline and rules… as long as they’ve got some choice in it.

If you feel forced to play by the rules, you’ll resist them.

But if you give yourself the choice to not have to play by the rules, you’ll probably be ok with playing by the rules (at least a bit).

In my own experience, when I have the freedom to choose, I actually end up creating rules for myself.

I want some structure and some rules.

If I tell myself I’m allowed to jump between creative interests and mess around and not have this super rigid structure or a main focus…

I end up creating one. And it feels much better than if it was forced on me.

By taking back the control, giving yourself the choice to do what you want to do, you free yourself up to see what you want more clearly.

And usually that’ll involve some sort of built-in want to make progress.

So not only do I think giving yourself the choice to do what you want helps you create a better situation for yourself…

I also think it increases your drive to improve in a healthy way.

It’s so much easier to motivate yourself to improve at and develop something you actually care about, and that you’ve chosen.

You want to be better. You want to see how far you can go with it.

When you feel forced to do something you don’t fully want to do, it’s been my experience that eventually you’re going to hit a wall.

And if you don’t care enough to try and get over it, you probably won’t.

So, when you find yourself stuck, and even when you’ve got options like what we’ve talked about today but they’re not satisfying enough, remember:

You always have a choice.

If your soul is screaming at you to just do whatever creative thing you need to do in the moment, let yourself do it.

Because it could be that giving yourself control is all you need to see things clearly again.

And it could even be that letting go of ‘having’ to do something is exactly what you need to do that thing.

Maybe it’ll naturally lead you into back into a good balance of structure and freedom, of commitment and noncommitment.

And there is for sure a balance here.

If you’re the kind of person who naturally jumps from thing to thing but who doesn’t usually end up committing to a path more seriously after a while… be careful of that.

You might be the kind of person who needs to exercise a bit more discipline.

Be real with yourself here.

Or you might be the opposite.

You might be the kind of person who never lets yourself do anything.

Maybe you’re someone who has tried to force yourself into a box and be consistent with a certain thing and you’re hitting a wall over and over…

And maybe freeing yourself up could be exactly what you need to get moving again.

Like I said, it’s a dance.

You’ll probably need different things at different times.

But if you get stuck with this stuff, again remember: You always have a choice.

And I really think that alone will do a lot for you.

Ok, I hope this has been helpful, insightful, something.

I know there are probably still a lot of unanswered questions…

But if you could take away only one thing from this, I would hope it’s the understanding you can most likely get more direction with this and get yourself in a better situation—not perfect, but better.

Finally, if you’re a creative who’s interested in getting help from me, you can check out my website (here) where you’ll see how I can do that. I have a bunch of different things available.

Thanks so much for reading and talk soon!

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