Master These 3 Steps to Succeed as a Creator in Today's Fast-Paced Economy
The best creators utilize the same three-step process to craft compelling stories
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If you’re a writer, musician, podcaster, or other creator, your work is simultaneously easier and harder than it’s ever been.
It’s easier because you can access cheap and convenient equipment that allows you to record audio and videos, publish articles, and live stream talks to anyone in the world with a few clicks.
But it’s also harder than ever because you’re competing with every other bloke in the world with an iPhone or a $50 podcast mic—and you’re doing it at a time when attention spans are shorter than ever and people are so juiced up on dopamine and 10-second reels that it’s hard to stand out from the crowd.
The Attention Economy
"A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention." -Herbert Simon
The quote above comes from psychologist, economist, and Nobel laureate Herbert Simon. Way back in the 1960s, Simon looked at the decreasing attention spans (even back then) and coined the term “attention economy”: the idea that consumer eyeballs are a valuable resource that companies and creators are trying to capture and monetize.
Simon predicted that as more information became available, the competition for human attention would get even more intense.
Cue the rise of the internet, social media, streaming services, video games, smartphones, and apps—all of which are trying to get every Joe Schmo and Jane Doe to watch a few extra seconds that can be converted into a few extra pennies.
So if you’re a creator, you need to figure out how to create great content that will actually help people and keep them coming back for more.
The 3 Steps of Modern-Day Creation
“Almost every idea you have is downstream from what you consume...The person who creates better information flows gets better thoughts.” -James Clear
Over time, I’ve realized that the best content creators are essentially all operating from the same three-step process:
Learn: They relentlessly soak up new information from books, podcasts, YouTube videos, articles, etc. They’re lifelong students who love learning new things.
Curate: They freely share their best discoveries with followers. They have a discerning eye to know which stories, quotes, data, and information will help people most. They’re the sieve for the vast amount of information on the internet. They point toward what you should pay attention to, and their recs are gold.
Simplify: They whittle complex concepts into insightful takeaways. If they read a dense philosophical tome from Kant, Descartes, or Socrates, they make it more approachable—so approachable that you may even muster the courage to check out the source material for yourself.
Each level of this 3-step pyramid builds upon the previous one. You need to be a high-performance learner (e.g., read a lot) to be able to curate the best lessons, and you need to be both a fantastic learner and curator to simplify the themes of a topic down to its essentials.
As you climb up the pyramid, each level gets more rare and hence, more valuable.
Let’s break down each step and explore how to improve at each one:
Step 1: Learn
"At the highest levels, learning isn't something you do to prepare for your work. Learning is the most important work. It is the core competency to build. It's the thing you never delegate. And it's one of the ultimate drivers of long term performance and success."
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One of my favorite novels is Steven Pressfield’s The Gates of Fire, which tells the tale of 300 Spartan soldiers holding off millions of Persian warriors in the Battle of Thermopylae. But my favorite line of that book isn’t from a battle or badass warrior scene. It’s a throwaway line about a mentor named Dienekes.
In describing Dienekes, Pressfield says:
“As all born teachers, he was primarily a student.”
That’s exactly what you need to be as a creator. If you want to teach, you need to be a super-powered learner. Or, in the words of film director James Cameron, "Before you can radiate, you need to absorb.”
Learning is a core part of your job as a creator. It’s the foundation of the pyramid.
3 Ways to Become a Better Learner
Choose several mentors—both dead and alive. I have a few mentors in my life, but some of the most important ones are people I’ve never met, including authors like
, , and . Soak up the work of the people who inspire you most.Ritualize your learning process. If learning is important to you, you’ll need to carve out time for it. And contrary to popular wisdom, that doesn’t mean you have to have some ridiculous 5 A.M. routine. For me, my learning time is every night between 9 P.M. and midnight, when my wife goes to bed and the city sleeps. It’s my most productive time of the day. Choose the time that works best for you.
Find a read-it-later app. I realized a couple of years ago that I didn’t have a great process for reading articles. If a friend texted me an article that inspired them, I’d often forget to check it out unless I read it in the moment (which often wasn’t possible). Then I started using Glasp, which has been a game-changer. Nail down your process for saving articles and videos to check out later.
Step 2: Curate
"When it comes to what we writers do, I like to apply an observation by D.T. Niles: We are like beggars who try to show other beggars where we found bread. You have to get only a few pages into this book to realize that I quote a lot of people wiser than myself. I mean a lot of people. I'm unapologetic about this. It's occurred to me many times over the course of writing this book that maybe I'm not really a writer. I'm a teacher or middleman. I take the curriculum of other people's knowledge and I pass it along." -David Brooks, The Second Mountain
The next step of the creation process is curating the best information. If you can reliably share information that benefits your readers, you’ll build a cadre of loyal followers and subscribers who know your recommendations are gold.
This requires a discerning eye because you need to know what types of tips, stories, quotes, or information can help others most.
One of the ways to develop this skill is by constantly talking about what you’re learning. Pay attention to what makes others’ ears perk up, then write about those topics.
For example, if I talk to a coworker or friend about something I learned and they get excited about it, I jot that down in my personal knowledge management system so I can write about that topic later.
“A book should be an article before it’s a book, and a dinner conversation before it’s an article. See how things go before going all in.” -Ryan Holiday
Great writing doesn’t require brilliance or the proverbial favor of the gods. It requires you to become a relentless observer of the world around you (life experiences, conversations, books, etc.) and a conscientious cataloger of that information.
3 Ways to Become a Better Curator
Find a personal knowledge management (PKM) system that works for you. I’m a huge fan of Obsidian, which is an app that allows you to save notes, stories, quotes, and anything else you want to access later. Platforms like this also allow you to tag entries so you can quickly find them later. (For example, to write this story, I pulled up my entries for the tags #learning, #attention, and #simplification. That gave me dozens of notes to build the skeleton of this article.)
Dwell upon ideas for an unreasonable amount of time. Journal about what you’re learning, go on long walks to think, and prioritize a few hours of alone time here and there. Personally, I take a weekend “solo retreat” twice per year to get away from the distractions of technology, work, and home. I use that time to journal, go on hikes, write, and reflect on what I’ve been learning.
Watch for the topics that people struggle with. I train employees as part of my job as a Learning & Development (L&D) Director, and one of the things I constantly ask people is, “What challenges are you facing?” The more you know people’s challenges, the more you’ll develop an eye for what type of information to pass along to your readers, listeners, and viewers.
Step 3: Simplify
"An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way." -Charles Bukowski
Once you’ve learned an important lesson and curated which aspects to share, you need to simplify your explanation to make the topic more approachable for others.
One of the all-time greats at simplifying complexity is author Malcolm Gladwell.
As one example, Gladwell popularized the “10,000-hour rule” in his book Outliers—an idea that comes from the research of Anders Ericsson. I’ve also read Ericsson’s book, so I’m familiar with his research, but I prefer Gladwell’s version.
Why? Because Gladwell knows how to whittle a concept down to its memorable bits.
Some people denigrate Gladwell for making things too simple, but I’m thankful for his work because he’s the author who got me into nonfiction. Gladwell’s books helped me realize nonfiction didn’t have to be stuffy and academic. It could be full of life and fascinating stories.
Academia often exhibits a contempt for those who simplify its hallowed theories and principles, but simplification is a necessary tool to help readers understand.
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex. It takes a touch of genius...to move in the opposite direction." -E.F. Schumacher
If you want to stand out from the crowd, you must become a masterful simplifier.
3 Ways to Become a Better Simplifier
Talk about what you’re learning. I read over 70 books per year, and my wife jokes that she also reads those books by proxy because of how much I talk about them. The first time I explain a book, the explanation comes out all choppy. But by the second or third time, the lessons begin to crystallize. I learn which parts to simplify and how to explain the more difficult concepts. The same will happen to you the more you discuss what you’re learning with others.
Use analogies and metaphors. Authors Chip and Dan Heath give the example of describing a pomelo. If you were describing a pomelo to someone who had never seen one, a good explanation would be something like, “A pomelo is basically a supersized grapefruit with a very thick and soft rind.” This explanation works because it’s visual and connects to concepts the audience already understands.
In the beginning, sacrifice some accuracy. Then fill it back in. This aspect of simplification makes people uncomfortable. By definition, simplicity means leaving some things out. And that’s okay! You sometimes have to start with a simpler explanation that is 80 percent correct, then explain the remaining 20 percent after the audience understands the gist.
To stand out in today’s fast-paced, entertainment-driven, dopamine-starved culture, you need to master these three steps:
Learn: Become a super-powered learner who soaks up tons of new information
Curate: Pay attention to which concepts resonate most with others
Simplify: Find the core of the idea and cut out everything that’s unnecessary
Mastering these three steps will help you craft compelling concepts and stories that your audience will remember.
Yes, this is the prescription Bobby.