If You Are a Content Creator, You Must Be Prolific to Succeed

Pablo Picasso was one of the greatest painters ever. He created masterpieces of artwork. Famous ones include Guernica, Les Demoiselles D’Avignon, and The Old Guitarist.

But Picasso never became this master artist overnight. Yes, he had the talent to match, but it took a lifetime of constantly creating art to get there.

In short, Picasso created over 50,000 pieces of art in his lifetime.

Were all of them good? Nope.

Were all of them sold for hundreds of millions of dollars at art auction houses? Hell no.

In fact, more than 90 percent of his work was never successful creations. But the 10 percent that was successful, made him world-famous.

Albert Einstein was also one of the greatest scientists in modern history. His discoveries of the theory of relativity are still used today by astrophysicists.

In the academic field, research papers take a massive amount of work to get done. It can take a whole lifetime to write a single scientific research paper.

Einstein wrote 240 papers in his lifetime.

Were all his papers great works? No. Only a handful made a major impact. Those that did, turned his whole life and career around.

Thomas Edison filed over a thousand patents for inventions.

Sounds impressive right?

However, the majority of Edison’s patents never made him a dime. Does it matter? Not at all. Because the few successful ones were enough to make him a huge fortune.

Richard Branson owns/co-owns about 400 companies as of the time of this writing. Are all of his businesses successful in turning profits? No way.

The majority of them are not. But a few ones do make him a ton of money.

These people above are all in different fields — arts, science, tech, and business. Yet they all share the same traits.

No matter what domain you’re in, you have to become a prolific creator.

The one thing that stands out among all the successful people is, they’ve created more work than the average guy in their fields. They are considered great because they’ve done more than most others have done.

Sheer productivity is the way of virtually all great creators.

When you look at the works of the most successful artists in history, you’d be tempted to think the most creative works were ones the creator worked on for years. Carefully crafting and fine-tuning until they got the masterpieces that changed everything.

While most of them did take copious amounts of time to create works that defined their brand, it usually wasn’t the case. Some of the greatest works created in art, music, tech, etc took a lot of time. Some didn’t.

Most often, masterpieces and successful inventions came about as a result of creating small amounts of work that never got any recognition. Out of this unrecognized work, great works emerged.

Research shows that creativity and volume are actually quite synonymous.

Professor Dean Simonton at UC Davis, after studying the works of successful creators over time suggests that sheer volume was indeed responsible for most of their success.

He discovered that for all creators in all fields, the most creative works are generated by the most productive creators. The ones who created the most work in their lifetime were actually deemed to be the most creative ones.

Therefore, lifetime quantity turned out to be a pretty good predictor of creative quality. This tells us one simple fact. Those who create the most in their fields usually end up becoming the most successful.

· The most successful authors are usually those who’ve written more books than other authors in the same genre.

· The most successful musicians are those who’ve written and recorded more songs than other musicians of the same genre.

· The most successful entrepreneurs have started more businesses some of which did well, others that failed. They’ve dared to take more risks than most other entrepreneurs.

If you want to become really good at what you do, you have to become a prolific creator.

Create more than your competitor. Create more than the average guy in your field and you’ll surely find success is inevitable.

Here’s why you have to be a prolific creator.

Each day you wake up and create new work you take one step towards mastery. Your brain finds easier ways to get the same amount of work done in a shorter time. You become more efficient. Faster. Better.

Like James Clear says;

Each time you do something, you cast a vote for the person you want to become.

Similarly, each day you create more work, no matter how small, you take one step closer towards mastery.

Every time you create a new drawing or painting, you get closer to being the next Picasso.

Every time you work on your business, you take a step closer to being the next Branson.

Every time you write another Medium article, you get closer to being a top writer.

Therefore, to increase your odds of being more successful, you need to create more. Becoming prolific is the surest path to becoming successful.

You’ll have to create a lot of crappy work at first.

Will all your work be good? Hell no.

Actually, most of your work will be mediocre.

Some of the articles you’ve spent hours and hours doing research and writing will never get read by anyone.

Some of the songs you’ve spent months writing and rewriting will never become hits.

But the worst thing is to feel frustrated and give up.

The prolific creator must at all times keep the 80/20 rule in mind. Only a tiny percentage of the work you do will ever become successful.

And that’s ok.

All you want to do is increase the tiny number of one’s work that becomes great — the 20%

If only one song out of ten you record becomes a hit, then it makes sense to record a hundred songs. That way, you stand the chance of having 10 hits. And believe me, any singer with 10 hits in their portfolio is usually a successful singer.

The point is, you don’t need much to become successful in whatever field you are in.

It takes only a few hit singles to be a legendary musician.

You need only one or two New York Times best-selling books to be considered a successful author.

A single investment has the power to turn your life around.

One viral article online can bring you massive opportunities; from book deals to magazine interviews.

Robert Kiyosaki has written about 15 books. But he’s best known for one book, “Rich dad, poor dad”. And that one book has brought him an infinite amount of opportunities in his life and business.

Paolo Coelho has published about 20 books but which is he known for? “The Alchemist”.

It takes just one massive success to turn your life and career around. And what are the odds of having that one big hit? Well, the easiest and surest way is to have tons of average hits.

Every average hit draws you closer to a massive one. The goal is to stay prolific, keep creating.

To wrap up

Your only goal as a creator is to keep creating. To keep going.

Creative work can be compared to building a massive house that never gets done. You keep building that house each day you wake up. Rain, sun, hail, or snow, you keep pushing.

The true creator knows his work is never finished. Picasso created art right to the day he died.

There’s never a finish line to cross. You never say your work is done. Keep creating good work and hopefully, you’ll be considered one of the greatest.

And even if you’re not, keep on creating.

That’s what real artists do.