How many strategies have you subscribed to help you achieve one goal or another, only to quickly discard them in favour of something else?

If you’re anything like me, the list is both long and wide.

These strategies promise to help us grow our audiences, email lists, or businesses, hit New & Noteworthy with our podcasts, and improve our productivity. Regardless of the goal, the pattern plays out the same way every time.

We approach each new strategy with a sense of optimism, and in some cases, even certainty, that this new strategy is the one that will take us where we’re seeking to go. Soon enough, however, that strategy is lying crumpled, and discarded on the floor, having been tossed aside for a new tactic promising a quick win.

The problem isn’t that these strategies don’t work as described.

It’s that we approach these recipes to success without considering the ingredients required or whether or not they suit our individual tastes.

If we want to be successful in any pursuit, we need to understand that all recipes are merely starting points from which to adapt and experiment.

Working With What You Have

I recently spent 5 days at an Airbnb while in town for a friend’s wedding.

By dinner time on day 4, I had reached the end of my limited supply of groceries. The most substantial ingredient in the near-empty fridge was the carton of eggs which had already formed the foundation of lunch and breakfast.

I cracked two eggs and began frying them before returning to the now even emptier fridge.

Two jars stocked the shelf. One salsa, one pesto. After a moment’s consideration, I reached for the salsa having already had pesto on my lunchtime bagel-egg sandwich.

Having depleted the fridge of its meager resources I turned to the similarly sparse pantry. Nothing to go with eggs, except…

My eyes landed on the box of Breton multigrain crackers.

“Multigrain crackers aren’t that far off from tortilla chips…” I thought to myself, an idea taking shape as I removed the eggs from the stove and assembled my very DIY chilaquiles.

It wasn’t fancy, but given the limited ingredients, the meal wasn’t bad.

To be honest, this surprised me.

My typical style of cooking (if you can call it that) is far from experimental.

I can’t confidently take stock of the ingredients on-hand and whip up something delicious at a moment’s notice. When I cook, it requires a careful following of the recipe, reading and re-reading each line to ensure the finished dish comes out correctly.

When I get lucky it does.

To me, the idea of experimenting in the kitchen is intimidating.

Cooking has always felt like a sacred art form, best left to people who actually understand the relationships between different flavours and ingredients, the tools and techniques of the trade, and generally understand what the hell they’re doing.

ie. Not me.

And so I’ve stuck to the recipes as printed, and left the customizing and experimenting to the experts.

We often approach our work with the same mentality.

Each Result Has Many Potential Recipes

We tend to imagine that there are a finite number of “recipes” for growing an audience, launching a course, building a business, or achieving any other goal we have in mind.

And recipes do exist.

For almost any pursuit imaginable, there are one or more tried and true paths to achieve the desired result. Many people use these recipes to great effect, and it’s easy to get swept up in the hype when a new strategy takes off.

The problem is when we think that any one strategy is the only way to achieve a certain desired result.

Website pop-ups, welcome mats, and lead magnets are proven to improve your email list conversion rate. But many newsletters grow to tens of thousands of subscribers without using any of these tactics.

Cold outreach, whether by phone, email, LinkedIn, or Facebook helps many people grow their businesses. But if you, like me can’t stomach the thought of it, you’re probably not going to get results.

Regularly guesting on podcasts is a reliable strategy to grow your own show. But so is doing cross-promotions with other podcasters. Or focusing on the SEO of your website. Or advertising in niche publications. Or any number of other strategies.

Rarely, if ever, is there a single strategy that works equally for everyone.

Recipes Must be Tweaked to Taste

Like recipes, we need to remember that any specific strategy we subscribe to in our work is just one possible interpretation.

Your grandmother’s famous spaghetti sauce is different from the version being served at Olive Garden, which is different again from the sauce being served at Da Vittorio in Sicily. A quick search of Google turns up hundreds more recipes for the sauce, which are, of course, only the recipes that have been documented and posted online.

It would be ridiculous to suggest that any one of these recipes was the one and only sauce that “works”.

At best, any recipe or strategy provides a starting point from which to tweak, according to our own tastes and available ingredients.

Don’t like one of the ingredients the recipe calls for? Get rid of it.

Have an excess of another ingredient on hand? Find a way to incorporate it.

Want more spice? Add to your taste.

The results of our experimentation aren’t always perfect.

But over time, as our tastes, instincts, and understanding of the ingredients improve, we’re able to tweak our way to recipes that work far better for us than the original ever did. What’s more, the process becomes more enjoyable.

Make the Process Enjoyable

As prescribed, many strategies call on us to do things that are outside our existing skillset, comfort zone, or even moral boundaries.

Even if we choose to extend ourselves to accommodate the recipe, pursuing these strategies often feels like we’re pushing a boulder up a hill.

Much like we’re unlikely to stick with a diet that consists entirely of food we have to force ourselves to eat, so too are we unlikely to stick with any strategy in our work consisting of a process we have to force ourselves to implement.

In many cases, however, we can choose to simply substitute these ingredients for our existing skills, knowledge, and superpowers. When we do, the process becomes one we easily maintain long enough to achieve our desired results.

Over time, we often find ourselves returning to the same ingredients again and again.

In doing so, a cuisine of sorts emerges, consisting of all the skills, perspectives, and tastes we’ve found to work for us in the past, remixed to suit a variety of situations and goals.

Develop Your Creative Cuisine

I’m unlikely to develop any sort of personal cuisine around eggs, salsa, and Breton crackers.

But I’m realizing that the ingredients I use to produce and grow this newsletter are already showing up in the rest of the work I do, and slowly my creative cuisine is forming.

Whether you realize it or not, so is yours.

The ingredients you use might be identical to the original recipe, or they may be heavily modified. You might play with the measurements, preparation, cooking time, or any number of other variables. Over time, you may choose to forgo the recipes entirely and simply work with the ingredients you have on hand.

These amendments might be made to accommodate the ingredients at your disposal, your personal tastes, or those of your audience.

Just remember that if you don’t enjoy the finished meal and the process of preparing it, others are unlikely to as well.

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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.

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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