“A Hard Day’s Night took less than 15 hours from idea to finished record. More Than a Feeling, from Tom Scholz and Boston, took five years. Each pleased their audiences. One is not 1,500 times more valuable than the other.
Sometimes, work that requires effort leads to scarcity, and that scarcity can increase its value. But not always.
And just because we put in effort does not mean we deserve the audience to reciprocate with a similar amount. Seven years to write a Ph.D. thesis but a professor on the committee might spend an hour reading it. The student’s effort is not related to the committee’s.
The mythology of creation seems to beg us to calculate the effort when computing the value. But in practice, buyers rarely do.
If the creation is what the audience needs or wants, it actually doesn’t matter how hard it was to create, or who or what created it.” -Seth Godin
“When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.” -Steve Jobs
“Hard work guarantees you nothing, but without it you don’t stand a chance.” -Pat Riley
Nobody cares how hard you worked on the thing you made. It’s not their job to care.
They only care about the thing you made.
But you, the creator, should very much care. You owe it to them and to yourself.
If not, why even do it in the first place?
