Over the weekend I realized an important lesson: many people are chasing the by-product of success and neglecting the substance along the way.
It's everywhere. Musicians, founders, creatives. They get attracted by the lifestyle, the fame, the status, the influence. And off they go chasing this.
But the ones that made it never chased these things as the primary pursuit. Rather, those things naturally came to them by focusing on the substance: making better things.
In our Instagram world we're bombarded with illusions of success all day long. And many people obsess over curating a self-image that portrays those byproducts.
But whenever such a person enters a room, everyone knows immediately that they're not it.
Stop chasing the byproducts of success. Start chasing the substance of your work as a creative.
Everything that doesn't help you make better things is a distraction.
The byproduct of the substance will come naturally in its time. Chasing this as a primary pursuit is meaningless.