Read time 6 mins
Greetings, friend!
We are born in a social arena.
Our first and foremost mission in life as we grow: to impress.
Impress the father. Impress the teacher. Impress the friends. Impress the girl. Impress the boss. You get the idea.
This pursuit turns us into a chronic people pleaser or an impression machine as I like to call it.
How it begins
Growing up as an impression machine, we build a hard-coded belief that our main job in life is to impress.
If we can't impress people, we’ll get nowhere.
We internalize this belief. And then everything we do or acquire has a layer of impression — whether its our work, skills, style, ideas, looks, clothes, cars.
Let’s call it impressionism.
Impressionism limits us
Caring too much about the impression of our work or ideas, we become too self-conscious.
This harms our ability to come up with new and fresh ideas. If we judge our work too early, we are more likely to give up on it.
The idea is to never think about how a specific work of craft or art will be received while creating it.
For example, Stephen King wrote a piece for a sports magazine in college. When he turned it in, the Sports Head cut several stuff and gave him one piece of advice.
“When you’re writing the first draft, you’re writing for yourself. You are telling the story to yourself. When you edit it, you are doing it to tell the story to others. Hence, while editing, you cat everything that’s not the story.”
Stephen probably took the advice. And so should we, with a twist.
Our goal is to realize 👉 we wear two hats.
Creator: No thinking of marketability while you wear this hat.
Marketer: Cut everything that don’t fit or won’t resonate.
As long as you mix these two jobs, you’ll be in trouble and judge your work.
Impressionism & self doubt
It’s so simple and makes a lot of sense, right?
The problem is, unlike Michael Angelo or Albert Einstein, we’re all stuck in an impression job.
Our first instinct (or worry?) is—would it get traction on social media? Would people like it? Does it have the potential to go viral?
Most things don’t go viral and that disappoints us. So we never get to the production level of a pro who keeps churning out average work everyday.
And in the world of social media, our imposter syndrome or self doubt overpowers our creative instincts.
But why…
Impressioninsm turns us into rats chasing after chuckles, when the cheese is rotting inside our dens: our body / mind.
Whatever art, craft, sport, or field we choose to keep ourselves busy in life with gets tainted by impressionism.
For example, when you paint for first time, you don’t paint for sake of painting. But to impress yourself.
If it passes this first checkpoint, you take it to others and see if it impresses them. If 5 people are impressed, you then you start accepting that you can paint.
Is it not injustice? 🤔
Social media & Chaar Log
Social media is the gladiator game of impressionism.
More impressions you garner, more success you get in terms of social capital, money, or fame.
For example I’m writing consistently for eight months now, can I call myself a writer? TBH, still not sure.
Why? Somewhere in a corner of my heart, I still believe getting a book published, or an award, or getting noticed is when I can call myself a writer. But, again, that’s wrong.
Impressing people shouldn’t be our goal.
For example in the Southeast Asian culture, there’s a thing called “Chaar Log.”
Whenever a kid tries something absurd or out of the box, parents would say: “What will four people say…”
Mirza Ghalib
Would Mirza Ghalib ever continue writing his philosophy in poetry if he had thought like us?
The man never got published as a poet during his life. But he kept writing.
Post-death, his friend got his material published and that gave birth to the phenomenon of Ghalib, which still warms hearts of his admirers globally.
So why do we think of traction instead of just doing it.
Side note: If you struggle to come up with great ideas. Keep creating bad stuff until the good comes. Julian Shapiro has a mental model for it, which he calls the creativity faucet.
What else can you do
Staying away from social media really helps. Not sure if you’d agree, but in my opinion, social media is good at trapping us in a comparison cycle.
That’s the reason I quit Twitter & LinkedIn recently. If you try to build an audience for the sake of building an audience, you burnout, tireout, or boreout.
We all know the usual advice: "Do it for yourself. Not others."
Or "don’t do it for money, power, fame. Do it for fulfillment."
Now, the biggest dilemma I have encountered is how do you get yourself from being an impression machine for 30 or more years to being a self-satisfied person.
Someone asked Seth Godin once, how did you build a blog so powerful?
"I just wrote & published everyday.
Even if nobody read it, I'd still be doing it."
— Seth Godin
How to not be an impression machine
Minimal Viable Impression
Practice making the minimal viable impression necessary to achieve your goals.
Instead of striving for universal approval, focus on delighting only those who truly matter in a given context.
Self-Validation
Each day, write down one thing you're proud of or grateful for about yourself, unrelated to others' opinions.
The 5 Whys Technique
Whenever you find yourself doing something primarily to impress others, ask "why" five times in succession to dig deeper into your motivations.
This helps you uncover the reasons and can lead to more authentic choices.
Circle of Control
Differentiate between what you can control and what you can't.
Let go of the need to control external factors, like how others perceive you. Realize that you can't control others' opinions.
Adopt Minimalism
Simplify life by decluttering both physically and mentally. Reduce the number of commitments, possessions, and distractions.
Minimalism helps you focus on what truly matters to you. It trains you to not seek external validation.
That’s it for today!
Hope this letter inspires you to get rid of the impression cycle and do more creative work for your self.
Thanks for reading till the end. If you found it useful, consider sharing it with people who will magnify, love, or learn from it.
Cheers,
Hassaan - Reply anytime!
P.S. Song of the week 👇