One of the great challenges of doing creative work is knowing whether or not you’re on the right path.

Big ideas take time and iteration to work through the derision and dismissal that often accompany their early stages, before gaining curiosity, interest, and acceptance.

But worthless ideas–quite rightly–might also garner derision and dismissal, making it hard to judge which variety of idea we’re currently working on.

This means it’s essential to develop our ability to decipher the signs that we’re on the right track.

Too often, we take our queues from the most obvious metrics.

We see views, downloads, likes, and follows as the ultimate indicators of quality, when in fact, they’re simply indicators of attention.

A better indicator of whether or not we’re on the right path is impact.

Not impact on a large scale, across communities or the world.

But impact on the one to one scale.

Human to human.

Has your work changed even one person in a meaningful way?

Do you mean a lot to a small number of people?

Have you ever been thanked by your followers for the work you’re doing?

These gestures and achievements might feel small when they’re few and far between, but they’re the clearest signs you’ll receive that you’re onto something.

If you can resonate strongly with a few, chances are you can do the same with many.

Find the few and change them.

Then repeat.

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