Creativity for Personal Development: Practice / Performance

It’s officially that time for Juxtapost. You know the phase, the one that comes for every creative project after the early rush of inspiration and possibility. After the first few wins, the encouraging comments, and the satisfying sense of starting something new. Now that we’re already six posts deep and the novelty has started wearing off, the questions start creeping in.

Is this worth it? 

Am I spending my time well?

Does anyone really care whether or not I write these articles?

I know I’m not the only one who feels that drift from excitement into doubt. Most creators hit it sooner or later. You start something with the hope that it will resonate - maybe even really take off. Then, when you start analyzing the results, your enthusiasm wanes.

That’s why I wanted to write this one, as much for me as for you, to remind myself that Juxtapost was never meant to be a performance. It’s meant to be a practice. A place to reflect, to experiment, to connect with ideas that matter to me first, whether or not they land with an audience.

Rick Rubin, in The Creative Act: A Way of Being (yep, the same book that inspired my Experimenter / Finisher Juxtapost) says, “In terms of priority, inspiration comes first. You come next. The audience comes last.” In various interviews, he’s further explained that when you make something truly for yourself, you’re actually doing the best thing you can for the audience, because the work comes from a place of authenticity rather than performance. That’s the kind of work people feel, even if they can’t explain why.

So, I thought this week I’d share two of my best tips for maintaining focus and momentum for using creativity as personal development.

1. Don’t perform it at all

One way I try to keep that perspective is by creating space for purely personal creativity. That means having outlets like a private sketchbook, a journal, or even a garden that never make their way to social media or any public space. No audience, no metrics. The point is to train myself to be satisfied with the internal validation of creating something I value for me first. It’s not about hoarding my work; it’s about preserving a private place where the joy comes entirely from the doing.

I want to reiterate this in another way:

When you create only for yourself, it’s as if you’re training a very specific muscle - one that, as it strengthens, allows you to recognize your own value more and more without the need for external validation.

2. Keep the main thing, the main thing

The second tip is about goal-setting. Make sure that you have a healthy and clear tool, a measuring stick, for you to use to judge the value of what you're creating. And I think this looks like setting crystal clear goals and vision for something from the start.

This has been essential for how I approach Juxtapost. From the start, I set a clear vision that this series would be first and foremost a tool for personal development. I wanted to write regularly, to get my thoughts out of my head and onto paper, and yes, to share them - but sharing was a bonus, not the point.

I also wanted Juxtapost to be a low-stakes way to practice other skills: establishing a writing habit, experimenting with AI-generated imagery, using scheduling tools I’d fallen out of the habit of using, and honing a publishing workflow. Because I set those intentions early, I have a healthy measuring stick for success. If a post gets two likes on social media, I can still call it a win, because nothing in my original purpose had to do with vanity metrics.

The likes are nice, but they’re not the reason I’m doing it.

When you practice for the right reasons, performance becomes something you can choose rather than something you chase. And that’s when the balance between personal growth and public sharing starts to feel less like a tug-of-war and more like a natural flow.

So when that inevitable middle-of-the-project doubt arrives (and I know it will) I can return to this reminder: I’m here for the practice. If it resonates with others, that’s a gift. But even if it doesn’t, the work has already done its most important job: shaping me.

Next Steps:

🧠 Think about it - What’s one creative outlet you could keep completely private, just for yourself, as a way to focus on internal growth?

💬 Talk about it - Have you ever set a clear intention for a project that helped you push past slow growth or low engagement? I’d love to hear your story. Leave a comment or reply to one of my emails.

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