Trying not to care
Lately I’ve been trying to make myself not care too much about the results of my work.
It’s fun to see the numbers go up, to see that more people follow, to see that more people read my content, to see the number of money I make increase each time I post something. It can motivate anyone and it can bring you happiness.
I’m not going to begin telling you about how receiving attention is not important and how it won’t increase your happiness. Because it does, and it always will. If it wouldn’t, a lot of people wouldn’t write, or post art online, or make videos, or do anything creative.
But caring too much about those things can ruin the pleasure of work. It can easily demotivate you whenever you don’t get what you think you deserve for your time. If all you focus on is growth and nothing else, it’s easy to lose motivation when you begin to stagnate.
You might even get to the point where you search for ways to make people follow. You begin going to each person’s article and ask them to follow you and like your work in the comment sections. You might begin to spam people on different websites, desperate to get one more view and one more like.
No one likes those people. No one likes when someone’s too needy, and I think that’s a good way to describe the type of person who would do anything for a bit of extra attention on their work — needy.
Your articles eventually begin to suffer, because you try more and more to write about things that people are interested in, and if you don’t like to do it, you become negligent. You make mistakes, but you don’t care. You repeat yourself, but you don’t care. You write about the same things that everybody else writes about in the same format, but who cares? If you receive a bit of attention for that, the sacrifice is worth it.
I’ve been there, and it’s not a pleasant place to be in. The more you do whatever it takes to receive attention, the more you risk to lose all your passion for whatever it is that you do. It’s not worth it.
So just write for the sake of writing. Write about what’s on your mind and the things you give a crap about. And sure, look at your stats and at the people who follow and celebrate when you see that others are interested in what you create. You deserve to feel proud!
But do not fall into the trap of doing anything for the sake of attention because at that point the value of what you do can easily go down more and more each time just so that you can see those numbers go up.
