💡✍️ADN #137: Build A Career You Would Fight to Protect

If you won’t fight for it, you’re building the wrong world.

If you won’t defend your career when it’s questioned, if you won’t double down when it’s tested, if you won’t stand your ground when it’s easier to walk away, then it’s not worth building.

Great careers aren’t accidents.
They’re battles.

You have to care enough to protect what you are building.

If you won’t fight for it, don’t waste your time pretending anyone else will either.

SYSTEM: Build With Ownership, Not Optionality

• Only commit to projects you believe in deeply.
  You can’t halfway care your way through the hard parts.
• Expect resistance.
  Any career worth building will get tested internally and externally.
• Tie it to something bigger than ego.
  Protecting your work is easier when it’s rooted in meaning, not just ambition.

CHECKLIST

❑ Would you defend your current work if someone questioned its validity?
❑ Are you willing to outlast the boredom, doubt, and resistance that’s inevitably coming?
❑ Are you proud enough of what you’re building that you would protect it under pressure?

If not, it’s worth giving a hard look at whether the world you’re building is worth your time and effort.

REMEMBER

If you won’t fight for it, you won’t finish it.

Build deep roots.
Stand firm through the storms.

ACTION STEPS:

• Write down why your current project, career, or mission matters beyond “it’s cool” or “it could work.”
• Test yourself: If no applause comes, would I still build this?
• Tighten your focus: eliminate projects you wouldn’t fight for and double down on the ones you would.

You’re not just building work.

You’re building a world worth protecting.

This is a crucial component of your artist development.

Knowing that what you are doing is something no outside opinion will derail because your vision for it is too clear to be swayed.

See you next Sunday,

Neil