I mean, let’s not beat around the bush.
It’s an awkward, uncomfortable, turbulent time of growth and exploration where we experiment, rebel, and push the boundaries as we decide who we’ll become. We make our share of mistakes and execute horrendously poor judgment along the way. With each mistake, our view of the world and our place within it becomes a little more nuanced and self-aware, but it’s a slow, painful, often embarrassing process that most of us are glad to have put behind us.
Except… We haven’t.
Sure, our bodies may have developed past the gangly, acned teenagers we once were. We’ve gained experience, worked jobs other than the McDonald’s drive-through window, and maybe even married and had kids. While we might be surrounded by the trappings of adulthood, however, adolescence exists in many areas beyond simply the social and biological.
Of particular importance to us as creators is navigating the adolescence of our work. Most of us don’t even realize it exists or that we might be in it, but until we move through it and reach maturity, we’re not going get the results we’re chasing.
The Traits Of Adolescence
In many ways, our work’s adolescence mirrors our own. When we first start creating, we’re well aware that the work we’re doing isn’t all that good. Like toddlers, we’re finding our feet, playing with the basic building blocks of our craft, and doing our best to piece them together. With some dedicated practice, our work quickly improves in both quality and originality, and before long, we may even develop the confidence to start sharing it with the world.
But while we might have outgrown childhood, there is still a significant gap to cross before we reach maturity. This gap is adolescence, and it’s where many creators get stuck, unaware that they’re suspended in a state of arrested development.
In adolescence, we can write grammatically correct essays, produce tightly edited podcasts and film videos that rival the technical quality of the biggest YouTubers. But while we’re slowly adopting the accouterments of creative adulthood, our immaturity still shines through in ways we might not realize, but others certainly do.
While our work may be technically sufficient for our medium of choice, the ideas behind the work lag behind. They’re awkward, gangly, poorly thought out, and inarticulate, if not outright incoherent. Frustrated by these gangly ideas, we spend a good deal of time remixing and repurposing what we’ve learned from others, keeping our own insights in the background, and adding little to the conversation ourselves.
As if transported back to high school, we’re hyper-aware of what everyone else is doing, measuring our work against theirs and avoiding going too far out on a limb from the norm. Though we might have new and interesting ideas, we spend most of our time creating work similar to what’s already proven to be successful for others.
We jump from fad to fad, chasing every shiny new tool and growth hack the way we might have chased the latest clothing trend. But much like the right brand of jeans didn’t instantly grant us membership into the cool clique, these hacks never deliver us the results we seek.
If we want to fulfill the potential of our work, it’s essential that we move past this stage. Luckily for us, we’ve successfully navigated adolescence once and can apply the same process to find our way through the adolescence of our work, hopefully with less awkwardness, embarrassment, and acne.
Getting Past The Growing Pains
The defining attribute of adolescence is a lack of experience. This means the surest antidote is to gain as much and as varied experience as you can.
Much like it would be ridiculous to expect a 14-year-old to commit to a university major or future career path, it’s ridiculous for us to commit to any niche, medium, format, or even topic while working through the adolescence of our work.
A productive adolescence is about experimenting broadly, keeping our options open, gathering and synthesizing information about where we have the greatest opportunity to contribute in a meaningful way. While we might be clear on the topic or niche we want to operate in, the mediums we use and the formats within those mediums should be experimented with liberally in order to find our fit.
The time will come to commit and double down, but not until we’ve thoroughly explored and experimented with the available options.
While the defining outward attribute of adolescence might be lack of experience, the internal driver of this phase is a yearning to discover who we are as individuals and find our place in the world.
In our teenage years, this meant leaving the nest and establishing our identities as separate from our parents, often rebelling outright against them. With our work, our adolescence is about moving past our teachers and mentors, developing our own unique perspectives, approaches, and styles, and building on what we’ve learned.
As we mature, we find our voice, expand our vocabularies, and develop defendable opinions. We move from passive absorbers of information to offering valuable additions to the conversation happening in our field. Yes, we’ll make various gaffes, missteps, and blunders as we start speaking up, but these are not the mistakes.
The only real mistake we can make in adolescence is not speaking up, not asserting our views, not experimenting, and exploring the world that is open to us. This process, while uncomfortable, confusing, and at times even embarrassing is the only way through to maturity.
But here’s the thing about adolescence. No matter how awkward, gangly, or uncomfortable in the moment, if we keep moving forward, it ends.
In fact, there comes a point where the growth can simply no longer be contained and the butterfly that’s slowly been developing under wraps bursts from its cocoon.
We emerge more confident, more centred, more sure of the place we and our work occupy in the world.
Adolescence might be frustrating, but it’s a natural and unavoidable phase of life, one we must all travel through. What’s more, it’s when we truly become ourselves. I think that’s something to be cherished.
Adulthood will come soon enough. But until it does, live. Explore, experiment, break the rules and rebel. Create with abandon and above all else, don’t forget to have fun with it. That’s what being young is for, after all.
Explore how to navigate a creative life that matters
This article originally appeared in my weekly Creative Wayfinding Newsletter. Each issue is the product of a week of work, and contains something not available for sale.
A fresh perspective, a shot of encouragement when you need it most, and maybe even some genuine wisdom from time to time.
Each week, we explore a different facet of the question “How do we navigate the wilds of creating work that matters?”
It’s something I’m proud to create and I’d be honoured to share it with you.
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