If your goal is to become an Olympic sprinter, it’s easy to measure the gap between your current ability and the level you need to be at in order to make the Olympic team.

In less than 5 minutes, you can pull up not just the qualifying times for the previous Olympics, but the results of all international competitions over the past few years.

With that information in hand, you have a benchmark to aim for and judge yourself against as you train. You might be able to sprint 100m in 13 seconds–an impossibly fast time for the average person–but if the threshold to qualify for the Olympics is 12 seconds, you know exactly how much more time you need to shave off in order to close the gap between your ability and your goal.

Gaps like these exist in our work too.

The problem is that unlike sports, which are so easily and regularly analyzed and quantified down to the atomic level, the gaps keeping our work from reaching larger audiences are almost entirely invisible.

I think I’m a pretty decent writer, for example. But how do I judge the gap I need to close if I want to write a book that gets read by hundreds of thousands of people?

Should I improve my grammar? Increase my word count? Compress my word count? Aim to write for a 5th-grade reading level? All of the above? None of the above but something else entirely? Is my writing even the problem or is it something else?

If you don’t know what to look for, it’s hard to find these gaps in the first place, let alone close them.

We can be sure, however, that these gaps exist somewhere for all of us. But our lack of awareness about where exactly they are gets us into trouble.

If We Can’t See a Gap, Does it Even Exist?

When we can’t see our gaps, we come to one of two conclusions.

1. The Gap Exists, But is Near-Invisible

If we’re lucky, we correctly assume that there must **be one or more gaps somewhere that we just can’t see.

This attitude is helpful as it assumes ownership and control of our situation. But it doesn’t help us actually close the gaps in question.

Without being able to see where our gaps exist, we’re left shooting in the dark. We might invest considerable time and energy into improving ourselves and our work, but it’s entirely likely that a large portion of that investment is put toward improving things that don’t really matter.

At best, we guess right a percentage of the time and slowly close the gaps. At worst, we guess wrong and waste our time and energy while leaving the gaps untouched.

When we know exactly where we have a gap, we can use it as a North Star. We can focus our effort on closing the gap and watch our results improve as we do. Without a known gap as our guide, however, we lose forward momentum and begin to drift sideways.

Without a reference point, we also lose any definitive sense of progress. Without a sense of progress, it’s only a matter of time before we lose all motivation to keep moving forward.

2. There is No Gap

The other conclusion we might draw when we can’t see our gaps is that there are no gaps at all.

This conclusion kicks off a vicious downward spiral.

If no gap exists between us and the people at the top of our field, what motivation do we have to keep improving, after all?

Unaware of the hidden gaps separating us and the creators at the top of our field, we might look at their work and naively say, “I could do that.”

In the world of podcasting, Joe Rogan is a classic example.

Listening to his show, it might seem like all Rogan is doing is sitting down, pressing record, and then talking for several hours straight. His episodes aren’t highly produced, and he doesn’t appear to take a particularly rigorous approach to interviewing. There’s almost nothing in the show that appears to demand a particularly high level of skill.

Unaware of the gap, countless podcasters have used Rogan’s show as the inspiration for their own “two dudes chatting” style shows and become frustrated when they find success of any kind (let alone $100M Spotify deals…) hard to come by.

This lack of awareness of the very real (if hard to see) gaps leads to bitterness and entitlement.

If we can’t decipher a difference in skill, knowledge, or experience between us and those at the top, the easiest explanation is to assume that either they got lucky, or the system is rigged against the little guys like us.

Both of these explanations are utterly destructive to our creative aspirations.

They let us off the hook, giving up all agency and control over our situation and all but guarantee that we will neither close the gaps nor achieve our goals for our work.

How to Spot the Gaps in Your Work

Spotting the gaps in our creative work is hard.

Part of this is due to what writer David Perell calls the Paradox of Creativity.

“Your work is done,” Perell shares, “when it looks so simple that the consumer thinks they could’ve done it, which means they won’t appreciate how hard you worked.”

But while the gaps in our work may be difficult to spot, they’re not impossible.

The biggest challenge keeping us from identifying the gaps in our work is limiting the scope through which we look for them.

The first (and often only) place we look when judging the gaps between ourselves and others whose success we’re trying to emulate is skill. It’s true that there is often a considerable skill gap that needs to be closed in order to get to where we want to be. But there are also other more subtle gaps that, while they may be harder to measure, may be essential to close in order to achieve our goals.

I think of these gaps as falling into one of two categories.

Linear Gaps

Linear gaps are those that are closed additively.

We narrow these gaps brick by brick, building on top of our existing foundation until the gap is closed.

Examples of linear gaps worth addressing include:

• Skill
• Network
• Experience
• Mindset
• Knowledge
• Trial & Error
• Quantity & Quality of Ideas

Linear gaps are fairly easily addressed.

The simple solution to closing the gaps related to skill, experience, and trial & error is to do more work. To increase our knowledge, we can study. To broaden our network we can reach out to more people to set up coffee chats.

With linear gaps, a given input of effort results in a tangible–often immediate–result. This makes progress easy to track and motivation easy to maintain.

Other gaps are harder to address directly, however, and the results take longer to materialize.

Compound Gaps

Unlike linear gaps, compound gaps are closed exponentially.

This means that despite a constant input of effort to close these gaps, there is an (often substantial) lag time before we begin to see these gaps shrink in a meaningful way. Once the results catch up to our effort, however, the gaps slam shut quickly.

Examples of compound gaps include:

• Audience size
• Budget
• Time
• Habit
• Instincts

The challenge presented by compound gaps is not that they’re particularly difficult to close. Instead, it’s that we don’t understand their exponential nature.

We get frustrated by compound gaps because we think they should behave linearly, with consistent effort equaling consistent results. When we input effort without seeing results, however, we lose all sense of forward progress, and with it, the motivation to keep working.

Understanding the nature of compound gaps, however, we can recalibrate our expectations.

An extra 10 subscribers, 30 minutes in our week, or $50 in our monthly budget might not feel like much. But these incremental improvements are proof that the gaps are indeed closing. Given time and continued attention, these modest gains will compound into much more significant returns.

The trick is to keep chipping away even when the results are slower than we’d like.

Establishing Your Benchmarks

Once we have an understanding of the types of gaps separating our work from the level it needs to be at, we can study others to establish our benchmarks.

When identifying the gaps we need to close, it’s helpful to study a cross-section of creators.

This will likely include the creators who are at the top of our industry or niche, but it shouldn’t be limited to them.

Study successful creators in a variety of niches, industries, and mediums, always asking, “What do they have that I don’t that allows them to be so successful?”

Some of our observations will be helpful and some won’t.

Many creators are successful because of their unique personalities. One conclusion we might draw is that we should attempt to emulate their personality traits. The better insight, however, that we should lean further into our own personalities.

Some gaps may be hard or impossible to determine with any certainty.

How do we measure the quality of someone’s creative instincts in comparison to our own? And while time and budget are more easily measurable, they’re typically not easily observable from the outside.

The point of this observation isn’t to establish mathematically precise benchmarks, however.

Instead, our goal is simply to become aware of all the contributing factors to creative success so that we can work to close those gaps and improve our odds of achieving our goals around our work.

Simply understanding that these gaps exist provides a logical explanation for why we haven’t experienced the success we might feel our work deserves, and lays out the roadmap for getting there.

Closing Your Gaps

Once we understand where our gaps exist, the final step is to close them.

This is a straightforward process, but not a quick one. And it presents two challenges:

1. Deciding which of our many gaps are most immediately pressing to address.
2. Knowing how far each gap needs to be closed.

While we might have major gaps in one or two areas, we likely also have dozens of other gaps that will need to be closed–or at least narrowed–in order to reach our potential as creators.

One option is to start with the gaps that are the largest.

Eliminating or reducing our greatest deficiencies is probably the quickest route to raising the overall average of our work. But our largest gaps often aren’t those that are most pivotal to the success of our work. As such, they prevent a convenient place to hide.

If we’re not careful, we can spend the majority of our time narrowing up our supporting gaps around the periphery, while ignoring the smaller, but critical gaps that will have the greatest impact.

Core vs Supporting Gaps

Of all the gaps we each have, there are a small number of critical core attributes that the ultimate success or failure of our work hinges upon.

These core gaps are likely small.

The attributes and skills associated with them form the foundation of our work and we’ve likely invested significant time into developing them. As a result, we’re likely already performing well above the average person in respect to them.

But like the Olympic hopeful who can run a 13 second 100m sprint, when it comes to these core attributes, above-average often isn’t enough.

I’m confident that I’m an above-average writer. Maybe even well above average.

My writing is good enough to have attracted more than 1,000 people like you who subscribe to receive this newsletter every week. But is it good enough to attract 10,000 people? 100,000?

For a long time, I thought it was. Recently, I’ve become convinced that it’s not.

The reason I overlooked the gap in my writing is the same reason we all tend to gloss over the gaps in our core attributes.

Our Core Gaps Hit Close to Home

Our core attributes are closely tied to our identity.

We have pride in these abilities and receive regular praise and validation in response to them. Admitting that these attributes aren’t enough feels like admitting that we’re not enough.

To protect our ego, we ignore them.

We focus our effort on the gaps that don’t hit quite so close to home, but in doing so, resign ourselves to the category of creators who are solid but unspectacular at what we do.

If we’re serious about reaching our potential as creators, we need to have an honest conversation with ourselves about whether the skills and attributes we take so much pride in, the ones that feel as though they’re apart of us are really good enough to take us where we want to go.

For most of us, I would suggest that they’re not.

Fortunately, the hardest part of closing these particular gaps is accepting the fact that they must be further closed in the first place.

It took me more than one year and 300 blog posts to come to terms with the fact that my writing wasn’t where it needed to be to get to the next level. I resisted it for months, and went through the frustration and entitlement, feeling like my writing deserved a larger audience than it had.

But it didn’t.

Once I accepted that, closing this gap has become one of the most fulfilling aspects of my life.

I love thinking about writing, after all. I love studying it, learning about it, practicing it, and improving it. Closing the gap is not a chore, but something I look forward to every day. The reason, I think, is that by closing this gap in particular, I can feel myself finally making meaningful progress toward my larger goals around my work.

Narrowing our supporting gaps is necessary. But it’s hard to overstate the power and leverage that comes with being truly exceptional at our craft.

How Far to Close Each Gap

The final question when it comes to addressing our gaps is how far each gap needs to be closed.

Within ten minutes of studying a cross-section of creators we admire, we’ll have compiled a list of dozens of gaps, many of them significant. Should we try to close all of them? Is that even possible?

Every gap we narrow will help us progress and raise the overall average of our work. But closing all our gaps is impossible.

Instead, it’s worth focusing the majority of your time and energy on closing 3-5 major gaps and more slowly address other gaps as they become relevant or necessary at different phases of your career.

Personally, the gaps I think each of us should spend significant time addressing are the following:

• Idea generation – Good ideas are the basis of all creative work. And having a lot of ideas is the best way to have good ideas.
• Writing – At some point, most creative work involves some form of writing. The better your ability to write, the better your work, marketing, communication, etc.
• Quantity of Work – Every successful creator’s body of work is like an iceberg. The exceptional work we see above the surface is supported and kept afloat by the much larger mass of work below the surface, most of it not that good.
• Network – Growing as a creator is an order of magnitude easier when you have people around you who understand your goals and can support, challenge, and champion your work. Essentially, this means making friends with other creators doing interesting and related work.
• Craft – Whatever your craft, being exceptional at it makes everything else easier.

Addressing these specific gaps is the fastest way to level up as a creator. The bonus is that closing these gaps has a way of spilling over and narrowing other gaps as well.

Always Be Closing

Luck certainly plays a role in creative success.

But it’s not the thing keeping us from joining the upper echelons of our craft. When we’re feeling frustrated, unsure of why our work isn’t getting the attention and recognition we feel it deserves, it’s worth looking for the unseen gaps we haven’t yet addressed and bringing awareness to them.

Awareness of our gaps holds the bitterness and entitlement at bay and provides us a clear, logical path forward.

This process of identifying and closing gaps is straightforward. But it’s no quick fix.

Closing our gaps is the work of a lifetime. As we close our gaps and level up, we enter new circumstances and set new goals that present new gaps to be closed.

On top of the tangible gaps within our power to close is one additional gap over which we have the power neither to resist nor to hasten.

Time.

While we may not have any control over it, this gap, above all others is worth remembering regularly.

Time is the final gap, closing linearly but compounding exponentially all the other gaps we’ve managed to narrow.

When in doubt, it’s hard to go wrong by doing what you can to close the gaps you’re aware of.

Then give it time.

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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.

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