The Most Efficient Way To Successful Creative Production

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The most efficient way to successful creative production is 1) building rock-solid fundamentals and then 2) leaning into creative projects.

This worked out really well for me in math: I self-studied pretty much a full undergrad curriculum during high school and then leaned into research projects/internships towards the end of high school / beginning of college, and I even worked full time as a data scientist during college, and all that combined with my experience in math education set me up perfectly to help build Math Academy. More details/links in my bio.

During college I also leaned into music production projects, but the key difference was that I skipped step 1 of fundamental skill training, and that really limited what I was able to creatively produce. I made some progress, produced some stuff that I thought was cool for a relatively untrained amateur, but it just wasn’t anywhere the level needed to make a career out of it.

In hindsight I wish I had trained music the way I did math: prioritizing structured training first, then goal-oriented pursuits with economic value second, and relegating free play to a distant third – or better yet, folding it into creative approaches within those goal-oriented pursuits.

More info on my music page.

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