Six, and the art of staying in the game

February 14, 2025

In the summer of 2017, I inserted a wrapped room at the hotel conference in Edinburgh Fringe to view the opening of a new musical (in my wife’s brother’s recommendation). Frustrated beside 90 more: Most of the cast friends, the condition of the atmosphere feel like a night at a theater performance.

Cues missed, the band didn’t have time for almost the whole show, and the set didn’t exist. Despite early afternoon, all was drunk: my steady Saxophonist memory, lost in time, and doing all, and doing most of the lyrics.

Despite the riot, the strength and quality of what I have heard is amazing. Songs are easy to catch, and every now and then I find myself looking for Spotify or YouTube to see if something is recorded and released.

After a few years, the more I forgot it, until I found a poster for the London show. Then New York. SIXThe music that I was about to hear that saxophone, now one of the most successful in the 21st century: winning for five Olivier Awards for the best original score, and still running on Broadway and West End.

Lucy Moss and Toby Marlow wrote it for ten days during the Easter at Cambridge. In ten days, they did not change their own life, they did the kind of blockbuster success with many artists, writers, and musicians who spend life.

It is the rotting truth of success in the creation: effort has nothing to do with the consequence.

But this is not an awesome arts: this kind of not-reason now determines the entire economy.

As Rick Rubin placed it:

“Sometimes you make two things and think they are the best things you’ve ever done. One of them connects to the world, and the other is not – all we can do is hoping for the best.”

Drores of researcher next It’s called A “Non-Linear“Economy, where both products cost the same to be, but a flop while others have millions. A song has been housed over the month falls; a track written in 15 minutes describes one Career. It may seem like a foreign world, but PoldeG believes it will all live in a while.

Of usual, this non-dynamic line is referred to creative industries. The film studios, printing houses, and recording labels spread their stakes widespread, knowing that most projects crash and burn. A graphic from the penguin random antustrust of the hous house describes this fluent reality.

But the poleg argues that today’s economy is working on the same principles. Invalid assets – not physical – now reign (in 1975, 83% of S & P properties appear; by 2020, that number fell by 10% only).

The result, an economy built on intellectual property, where most things resemble the musical opening I stumbled into almost a decade ago: blockbuster or bust.

A turry smith’s turry, the annual letter of the Superstar Fund Manager’s fund gives us a sense of what it looks like in practice.

Last year, almost half of the returns of the S & P 500 only from five companies: Nvidia; Apple; Meta; Microsoft; and Amazon. In Germany, the non-linear economy even starter: a company, sap, driving 41% on return to Dax Index.

This is a fancy looking out with no signs of slowing, meaning unless you have a job involving physical work (no one can make your own a part of a non-linear economy.

Why is this thing? Because, unlike six, making a blockbuster rarely lasted ten days. For a more ordinary timeline, see nominees in grams year.

Brat, the album that inspired Charli Xcx on a new level of fame, was his fifth album, who went out ten years after his debut. Sabrina Carpenter is also a member of the fifth album club, while Picpell Roan’s debut album, released this year, includes tracks that were originally recorded almost five years, before any attention.

Three artists, whose music has just reached many audiences this year. Pay price: A joint 33 years of work.

This is the nature of an unanimated economy: years of work with little reward, until success comes in a sudden collapse. It is an acute difference in consistent, linear rewards of the 20th century corporation – better job titles, additional responsibilities, and salary increases.

Anyone who starts with anything new with its taste. Here is Netflix Founder Marc Randolph, which sounds like Rick Rubin:

“Traders’ development such as Geology: 99% occurred at 1% of the time. Between breakthroughs, long time of apparent silence. Patience,”

Think of those who work for years to become experts in their field, invisible and uncelebrated, only for something unexpected – a war, a natural disaster – to propel them into the spotlight. In times, their following skyrockets, it shows TV, and their subscriber counts exploded.

This is the breach of time to count, but if it happens almost impossible to predict.

The challenge, is, how to adapt. Grateful, the artists have long struggled with it, and we can learn from them.

Here is the Secret: In a world where the effort and outcome is determined, the key is to optimize for the game stay. Do what you will be happy to do each day, even if no one knows it.

If the result of prediction is impossible, the best strategy is the number. The more reps, more experimental, the more intentional shots – better the possibilities of a collapse. Not everyone will land, but the only way to guarantee the failure is to stop making.

The first five albums on Sablina Carpenter flew, but he continued to go because he loved music.

Or taking historians Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook. They spend the years of writing history books, moderate hints are best, until podcasting, a format is not at the beginning, suddenly they are made famous.

This mantra – that quality and consequence is different, and that is good – describes those who have succeeded in non-linear fields.

It is difficult, because the opposite taught us: to sell what we love for certainty and strength. The idea of ​​following your dreams often loses the enthusiasm of western society: doctor about singer, painter lawyer.

That means a linear economy, where a stable, thoughtful path will be reached. But if that’s economic retreat, if you don’t enjoy what you do every day and results aren’t sure, you’re dangerously done.

This is a more difficult world, one where failure is more common. But I truly think most of us, because we obey it in some ways.

Some of the things I have written do this all over the internet. Tens of thousands of views, shared and revised thousands of times. Some lost no tracking. They all have the same good for me.

I am terrible to predict what the soil is and what is not, so I keep writing and make it as far as I can. About the result, I never cared. I just like writing.

This, I think, what are the right Moss and Marlow – not just about practices or ways, but a philosophy of work itself.

Focus on self: even a new song, play, or a wild idea for a musical part of Henry VIIII’s six years.

Because in a blockbuster or bust world, the only thing that matters to keep the game.

Aled@ashore.io

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