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Welcome to Recalibrating! My name is Callum (@_wanderloots) and this newsletter is an experiment to track my journey into self-employment while pursuing a path of self-actualization. In this Entry, we are going to continue from last week on the second level of Maslow’s Hierarchy. If you missed the part one, please see Recalibrating Entry #6: Financial Security and Mental Safety
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Where We Left Off Last Week: Structuring A Creation System
Last week, we considered how to achieve the seemingly paradoxical combination of financial security and mental safety by looking at Level 2 of Maslow’s hierarchy for guidance.
To achieve this balance, I proposed two major goals:
- Generate sufficient income to satisfy my needs (food, debt, mortgage, retirement savings);
- Structure a habit and task system that enables me to consistently build income to a level that meets my needs without burning myself out.
Last week we focused on goal #1. Let’s move on to goal #2 ✨
Note, the workflow I provide below can be applied to your life, I merely use mine as an example. After reading this Entry, I encourage you to reflect on the various components of my proposed system to see how they apply to your own life. If you journal about it, perhaps that note will form part of your second brain 👀 more on that later.
Structuring My Creation System
Goal #2: Structure a habit and task system that enables me to consistently build income to a level that meets my needs without burning myself out.
Before getting into the structure of my proposed system, let’s consider the last part of the goal: “without burning myself out”. It can be helpful to problem-solve backwards by looking at the solution to establish a foundation of non-negotiable components.
Instead of asking “how can I avoid burnout”, I asked myself “what burns me out?” By identifying causes of burnout that affect me personally, I can structure the foundation of my system to avoid these burnout risks. So, what burns me out?
- Doing tasks (spending time and attention) that do not match my values (not enough fulfillment);
- Stressing over income generation (financial insecurity);
- Overworking in the efficiency culture and the attention economy (not enough rest, doing for others).
With these burnout indicators in mind, I can now move towards the remainder of the goal: building income through a structured system.
Putting it all together, I came up with the following solutions:
- Do fulfilling tasks that match the ever-changing state of who I am;
- Reflect on (analyze) these tasks to identify where I am creating value for others;
- Constrain the “work” through my system to limit being overwhelmed (burnt out).
Solution #1: Natural Self-Expression
To identify a mental model that works for my creation system, I can again work backwards. Instead of thinking: “what can I do to make money in the creator economy”, ask: “what am I already doing naturally that could be reframed in a valuable way for others?”
The Creator Economy thrives on authenticity. The best way for me to assess what could be valuable for others is to identify what I am already doing to bring value to myself. Creation should inherently be something that is for yourself first.
Self-expression is one of my best indicators of self-value. By looking at how I am already expressing myself naturally, I can identify tasks that I perform (acts of creation) that do not burn me out. These acts of creation do not burn me out because I feel driven to perform them regardless of whether other people are watching.
The type of creative act does not matter. We are not looking at the final form here, merely at what types of activities operate to regulate my behaviour in a mentally/physically healthy way. In other words, the existing actions of self-expression I am already performing should be filtered through the lens of Maslow’s Level 1 (Physiological needs) to ensure that they do not also contribute to burnout.
Framed another way, what are my personal pillars of creation? There is no right answer to this question. For myself, some topics that come to mind are: mindfulness, reading books, making art (photography, videography, animation), writing, journalling, travelling, experiencing stories (movies, shows, fiction), etc.
Each of these activities involves a level of experience that I have nurtured over the years through natural self-expression, building knowledge and expertise. I perform these actions because they add value to my life, not because they add value to the lives of others. That said, I have intentionally developed various skills knowing that they are valued by others, so external value can be a consideration when deciding which skills to learn. The point is that the learning should be primarily for myself and, if applicable, secondarily for others.
Solution #2: Self-Reflection and Analysis
Now that I have identified the acts in my life that bring me value, I can reflect on how that value can be transformed into information that others value as part of my Creation System. Bloom’s Taxonomy below provides a system for processing information into knowledge, knowledge into wisdom, and wisdom into creations of original work.
Bloom’s Taxonomy
The goal is to classify learning stages from remembering facts to creating new ideas based on the acquired knowledge.
The idea of Bloom’s Taxonomy is that learning is a consecutive process. Before applying a concept in real life, we must understand it. Before we understand a concept, we must remember the key facts related to it.
https://www.valamis.com/hub/blooms-taxonomy
In other words, the creative act itself provides an outlet for my knowledge, helping to generate wisdom (knowledge that impacts my actions). Mapping my Creation System within Bloom’s Taxonomy can help me reflect on my creations (working backwards from the output) to identify the pieces that went into it. These pieces can be analyzed to identify knowledge that may be valuable to others.
However, when I take my knowledge and share it with others, it is not received as knowledge, it is received as information.
Knowledge is something internal that we build within the confines of our own brains by processing information we have consumed. Information comes from an external source (ingested) and can be converted (digested) into knowledge. Because knowledge is internal, it is difficult (if not impossible) to burnout by reflecting on our own knowledge. However, we can (I often do) experience information overload.
Think of knowledge as simplifying the connections between information points (nodes) we have already consumed, while information is increasing the complexity by consuming more. If we have not given ourselves time to digest the existing information into knowledge, eating more is only going to make things worse.
When we take our own knowledge and put it into a format for others (creation) we want to do so in a way that provides enough information that people see the value of what we are doing, but not so much information that it overwhelms them.
As someone who has expertise in many areas (physics, engineering, law, intellectual property, patents, photography, travel, etc.), this balanced expression of knowledge is something I am constantly working on (if you are ever confused by my explanations, please let me know so I can try to simplify for everyone 😌).
Once I have reflected on the knowledge that went into a particular creative act, I can start to break the knowledge into information to be shared with others through my Creation System. This sharing act (publishing) brings us back to the Creator Economy.
The Creator Economy and 1000 True Fans
Now that I have reflected on the actions that bring value to myself and the knowledge that led to those actions, I can start to consider how information may bring others value as a result of those actions.
The only way to know what is actually valuable to others is to share information and measure the response. For example, publishing this newsletter each week has opened a dialogue with my family, friends, and strangers online. People let me know what resonates with them, what they found helpful. This feedback is incredibly valuable to me, as it lets me know how to recalibrate the structure of The Recalibrating Newsletter in a more impactful way.
As I continue the act of publishing (newsletter, social media, website, etc.), I will continue to foster a community of like-minded thinkers and people who appreciate my artistic expression. In other words, fans of my work.
However, let’s not forget my second burnout cause: stress over finances. This work to generate fans comes at a cost of my time and attention. Accordingly, at least some of this time and attention should be monetized so I can reduce the stress of finances in my life. How can I make “enough” to live my life while meeting my basic needs?
The answer: convert fans into True Fans. Originally presented by Wired editor Kevin Kelly in 2008, a True Fan is someone who will buy anything that you produce. If you have 1000 True Fans and each of them pays you $100 a year, you will have earned $100,000 that year. I recommend reading the article, it’s not that long.
Taking a step back from the language “anything you produce”, we can introduce different tiers of True Fans as people who will buy some of what you produce every year (e.g., Casual Buyers). The less each person pays you, the more True Fans you need to generate $100,000 a year. On the flip side, the more each True Fan pays you, the less fans you need (see 100 True Fans by a16z).
A little paid by a lot of people is “enough” for me to meet my needs, satisfying my financial insecurity burnout indicator.
Tying 1000 True Fans into the knowledge conversion process of Bloom’s Taxonomy above, I can identify valuable information and sell that valuable information online to my True Fans. I can leverage the power of the Internet to build my True Fan base globally while generating intellectual property.
In other words, the content that I publish online (my intellectual property) can be forked into two paths: a free path and a paid path. Fans follow the free path and True Fans follow the paid path. The paid path has more value, while the free path is more accessible.
One of the most successful paid paths is the Paywall model, made popular by Patreon. In this model, some content is free, but paid subscribers get access to bonus content that is not available on the free path. The True Fans are investing in the creator because they receive value as a result of that investment. There is also the “buy me a coffee” model, where, instead of paying a monthly subscription, True Fans can tip the creator as a sign of appreciation for their efforts.
Either way, there are financial models for the creator to earn a living from their creations. Over time, as the True Fan base grows (1000 True Fans at one True Fan per day would only take 3 years), the creator’s business can become increasingly sustainable and lucrative.
Solution #3: Building a Sustainable Creation System
Now that we have a way of generating value for ourselves through our Creation System (primary value) and generating value for others while getting paid (secondary value), we can consider the final aspect: constraining my output so that I do not burnout.
Playing as a creator in the game of the Creator Economy or as a Knowledge Worker in the game of business, either way we have to be careful to avoid burnout. Both economic systems rely on the Attention Economy, which monetizes your attention.
Participating in Social Media and corporate work leech our attention so that businesses can convert our attention into money. How can we participate in either or both systems without burning out?
There is no right answer to this question. Each person will have a different system that works for them. The point of this exercise is to make you aware of problems and identify my solutions so that you can infer analogies for your own life. Personally, I have found mindfulness to be the most useful tool for kickstarting this process.
I have tried the Social Media route over the years, but found it to be quite dissatisfying. Sure, there is an ego boost when your post gets a lot of likes, a dopamine hit that lasts a few minutes, but there is not concrete and longterm value creation. Building an audience is a great tool to connect with fans, but to build a sustainable system, there needs to be conversion into True Fans.
The solution? Start by accumulating assets that generate longterm value first and build your audience along the way, not before, and not after.
Build a system that increases in value as each piece is added to it. Create intellectual property (accumulating knowledge through writing, painting, coding, photos, etc.) and begin building an online repository that will increase in value over time. Consistently publishing to this system will increase your personal brand. Remember this quote from last week?
As a creator, the business is you. Your personal brand and distribution of data dictate how the world perceives and values your creations. Your personal brand is your portal into the digital economy, leveraging the intellectual property you have created to monetize your dreams. You can compound this creation over time, building trust with your audience and credibility for your brand.
Next, consider how to make the timing sustainable. Can you create these pieces once a week? Once a month? The more frequently the pieces are created, the faster they will accumulate, compounding over time.
Algorithms
An important consideration for the question of timing is the algorithm. Think of the algorithm as a Tamagotchi . To keep it alive, it needs to be fed within a certain period of time.
Social media (Instagram, Tiktok, Twitter (X?), etc.) typically benefit from daily posting. However, YouTube, Blog websites, and newsletters are happy with weekly posting.
To me, a weekly commitment is much more sustainable than a daily commitment. Accordingly, I decided to take a step back from social media to start focusing on a newsletter. I wanted to use this newsletter as practice for telling the story I wanted to tell, without the pressures of a daily algorithm, while building credibility with fans over time.
Weekly posting provides accountability for myself to stay on top of my thoughts and creations, while slowly building my IP online. Even better, I can always uses these newsletters to as a foundation from which to expand my knowledge sharing in the future. I also am able to practice with my Voice, building confidence in my public self-expression (building Esteem).
Newsletters also allow for the generation of a valuable asset: emails. Emails are decentralized, which means that even if SubStack dies one day, I will still have my fans and my True Fans. The same cannot be said about other social media formats (“followings”). More on the value of decentralized creation here.
A newsletter can be any format, it does not have to be long-form writing. It could be sharing a weekly edit of a photo, a poem, or a piece of code. The point is to practice putting something out there to engage with fans, build community, and assess the impact of your online presence. Each published post is a “drop” onto the Internet, providing you with an opportunity to measure the impact and analyze how to monetize the value of your creations and knowledge.
Think of the newsletter as an exercise in Atomic Habits to Build A Second Brain. Additionally, building a consistent dataset of your own creations (IP) provides an opportunity for leveraging your second brain to train AI models to do work for you 👀
Next Steps: A Fork In The Road
Now that we are starting to get into the specifics of intellectual property, AI, and second brain building, I will be introducing a fork in the Recalibrating Path.
I will continue to write this free newsletter each week (the main storyline), which will continue to share my knowledge and wisdom. However, in line with needing to make sufficient income to live and creation now being my full-time job, I will begin introducing paywalls to some types of content.
I will announce when the first paid piece of content is available. My current plan is to share some concepts for free, but paywall the “how-to” specifics of building my system, turning the system into a business, leveraging artificial intelligence, and leveraging intellectual property.
Next week, let’s get into passive income and AI: how can you use your system to maximize the impact of each weekly “drop” while using the measured data from that impact to recalibrate your system? Stay tuned ✨
P.S. I could use your help! If you are interested in the paywalled content topics, can you please let me know? I want to structure the format in a way that is the most impactful to my readers. Any feedback is much appreciated, either through the Substack App Chat or by sending me an email. Thank you 😊
