Engines at the ready

If you work in media, there’s a chance that one of your ultimate goals is either A) write a book, B) win an award, C) start your own business, or D) get famous enough to the point where they make a Spotlight movie about you (I mean, no judgement, live your lives hunnies).

But there’s also a chance that your #goals don’t fit neatly into one of those categories — maybe it’s not a book, but a killer newsletter. Maybe it’s not an award you’re after, but a way to change the industry for the better.

Whatever it is (and maybe it’s something that hasn’t even been invented yet!), it might help to think of your work as an “engine,” as this blogger & podcast host Linda Holmes writes in a Everything You Make Is An Engine. The post is from 2016, but for an industry that continues to reinvent itself every other quarter, it’s a smart way to think about what you create — not necessarily a “thing” to be sold on a shelf, but as a source of power for others.

Our fave graf:

“The best example I can think of is Saturday Night Live, about which I would say that it’s an incredibly uneven television show on the whole across decades, but it’s one of the most important engines in the history of American comedy. It generated power, but then it also took that power and used it to make other things go – and while that’s related to the show itself being good, it’s a slightly different thing."

What are you making/doing that’s gonna turn into an engine? And who will it (em)power??

Like Deez Links? Forward this to someone else feeling weirdly motivational today thanks iced coffee!!!