Richard M.

Thoughts on creativity in art, work, & life.
▸ Embracing Creativity™
⩥ Building @4CreativeWheels

[Richard M. @RichardtheMutts]

21 Creative Threads That Will Help You Create Better Work and Evolve As a Creator:

[Jason Fried @jasonfried]

My favorite essay from The Manual.

There are a lot of things you can practice in life, but the more you practice this, the better off you’re going to be in nearly any situation.

https://t.co/DouNO91k6K

[Mitchell Hashimoto @mitchellh]

I can’t stress enough how little an idea matters compared to the agency of the people executing the idea.

I have had the privilege of knowing and sometimes even working with some of the most successful people (by various metrics).

The difference between mediocre and excellent work and outcomes is predominantly one of agency.

In practice this means: they dont wait for things to happen to them they go out and make things happen for them.

They don’t wait for someone else to do something, for someone to teach them, for someone to give them the path, etc. They just go out and find a way to do it.

I think the single biggest superpower these people have is the realization/belief that the world around them is completely mutable. Most everything that happens is because a person made it happen.

I used to tell people to look around the room you’re sitting in. Look at everything. Every noun. It almost all exists because a person willed it into existence. Nothing is stopping you from doing the same.

I see people online all the time dismissing someone else’s success because “I had that idea first” or whatever. I mean… yeah? If so then the difference is… you. So a bit of a self own whenever I hear that.

Number one tip: act with agency.

[Erik Torenberg @eriktorenberg]

Inspired by a conversation with a friend considering leaving:

There are either three paths:

1. You’re on the right path.
2. You’re exploring something that *could* be the right path.
3. You’re on the wrong path.

The best way to get on the right path is to leave the wrong path.

Which looks to other people like not being on a path.

It invites a lot of judgment, questioning — why haven’t you found your path yet?

Whereas being on any path feels safer to others. No one questions it, not to your face anyway.

Even though you know it’s not the right path. And thus, even though it looks like you’re on the right path, you’re the furthest thing from it, and you’d be closer to the path if you were on no path, even if that feels like a setback because it’s going from certainty to uncertainty. It’s actually a step forward because you’re creating space to find the right path.

A lot of people try to turn the wrong path into the right path. But It’s so much easier to find something great then turn something from bad to great, or even OK to great.

For those uncertain about whether a path that feels mixed can turn into the right path. Ian Rogers has a good line in the Dialectic podcast: “if the cat is bigger than the shit, keep the cat. If the shit is bigger than the cat, get rid of the cat”.

If you need someone to change behavior — in jobs and in relationships — it’s likely a recipe for unhappiness, since it’s out of your control. Especially if they don’t want to change the way you want them to.

(Of course, if you’re a reoccurring reason why your paths continuously feel wrong, you’ll need to work on those because you’ll carry your patterns on your next path.)

When I asked you if you would still be on this path in a few years, you definitively said no. OK, so now you’re definitely leaving, it’s now just a matter of when. Why not leave sooner? What’s keeping you? Often the fear of judgment, fear of change, fear of not the unknown, fear of letting someone down (which is inevitable either way), fear of picking something or someone and it not being the thing,

Well, yes, you might pick the wrong path again, but you’re also on the wrong path now, so what do you have to lose? It might take picking the wrong path a few times before finding the right one.

People rarely regret leaving the wrong path too early, just like people rarely regret firing someone too early. If you have a long string of very short paths, that’s one thing, but usually people feel when they leave something that they could have left it a while ago.

If anything, more people regret not trying more paths, taking the time to explore and learn more about themselves in the process. People spend way more time in the wrong path (which invites learning of its own kind, to be sure) than they do in the wilderness, exploring things and people that could be the right path.

There are all kinds of illusions and delusions that trick us into seeing the wrong path as the right path — our comfort with any path vs no path, other people’s comfort with us on any path vs no path, the “what if x y z can change”, the “what if no other path is better than this path,” the “what if it’s actually me that’s allergic to paths and therefore I’m the problem and I’ll always be the problem so I might as well just stay here…”

Being in truth with yourself about what you feel and what you want is the only practice that can help you and navigate and discern what path you’re on, and then summon the courage to leave it in order to find the right path for you.

[dodford @dannymcmahon]

A project from the heart, coming soon

[Richard M. @RichardtheMutts]

@dannymcmahon I feel my man Andrew. Losing your mother after you've watched her suffer is heart-wrenching. It sucks. But yeah, to grieve deeply is to know that you have loved deeply. I'm looking forward to watching this piece! And I hope you're doing well.

[Richard M. @RichardtheMutts]

This week’s issue is about why the belief in possibility is creative and important for creation. Drawing on outliers alongside breakthroughs such as planes, we examine how leaning into life’s default state of uncertainty lets us expand what is possible.

https://t.co/fqaat40rqn

[Richard M. @RichardtheMutts]

This is the way.

[Kpaxs @Kpaxs]

How to train your agency, starting today?

1. Make one "uncomfortable ask" per week
2. When you catch yourself saying "I can't because…" finish the sentence, then challenge every word
3. Solve one problem you'd normally outsource to fate
4. Reach out to one person "above your league"
5. Ship something before it's ready

[Richard M. @RichardtheMutts]

Reminder to self.

[signüll @signulll]

if you make things ppl genuinely value, often the world has a strange way of paying you back. sometimes with money, but also with attention, access, friendships, & opportunity. i call this the osho effect.

e.g. i’ve never asked anyone to subscribe to my substack or x, yet thousands have. even writing here has created relationships & experiences i never could’ve planned. we’re also releasing a fun product for ios 27, & hopefully ppl find value in that too.

i find it strange when ppl try to map every outcome, you just don’t need to. you just have to make things, put them into the world, & let it marinate.

[dravisha @dravishaa]

I promise you, this will make you stop and think about how to become the best version of yourself, today.

(This has been on my mind since a few weeks, glad I finally penned it down.) https://t.co/0neJjSJXVn

[Startup Wisdom @StartupWisdom_]

.@bhorowitz on what betting on yourself means:

"Congratulations on betting on yourself, because that's what this is all about. There are going to be many times when you question that bet and question that belief — but that gets you nothing. The doubts are going to be there. Ignore the doubts. And the worst doubts aren't the ones people put on you — it's the ones you put on yourself. Every entrepreneur has them.

I spent a lot of time with Mark Zuckerberg when he was 22 years old, and he had tremendous doubt about whether it was going to make it. Everybody has that. It's not what you feel, it's what you do. You're going to feel scared — if your guts aren't boiling, you're not even trying at this thing."

[Nabeel S. Qureshi @nabeelqu]

A bad pattern I see people falling into at work is starting with an AI generated [document/slides/artifact] and then saying they'll refine it from there. If you start with slop you just end up with more slop, and it's very hard to fix.

The first version matters a lot.

[Jason Fried @jasonfried]

It's just way more fun to be hopeful. Look up, try new stuff, like more things.

[Richard M. @RichardtheMutts]

I've had this thought about how words are essential to creativity since November, 2025. I've finally published the piece.

"The Simplest & Most Influential Creative Assets" is now live.

https://t.co/IEejFD69nu

[maja 🔭🍒 @majamediaco]

before you write well, you must write poorly. no one comes out a hemingway, except perhaps he did, who has his teenage drafts?

this apprenticeship is not especially fun for anyone involved, neither reader nor writer, except perhaps for the writer who still enjoys the clumsy release of expression because they have not yet learned what it means to be good. at first, everything is blurry. this sentence sounds better than that one, but you cannot yet say why. taste is still tuning itself.

then, if the young writer keeps reading and writing, paying careful attention to every word, this, not that, they may slowly acquire a sensibility of discernment. this is a gift, but it comes with its own pains. the writer returns to their old work and cringes. how did they not see these obvious failures of perception earlier? all those unnecessary flowers and words suddenly reveal themselves, previously and painfully out of sight. they did not yet have the eyes to see.

but every terrible paragraph had its purpose, and each one sharpened the blade a little further. the writer had to write badly to develop the sensibilities that might eventually allow them, one day, to write well.

when we encounter the finished work of a great writer, we mostly see the polished blade. we rarely see the years spent clumsily forging it, the layers of careful revision, or the gift of being read by a supportive yet cutting eye, one capable of seeing clearly and generously passing on the accumulated, generational knowledge of excellence.

[smoothie @shedrinkswater]

We romanticise writers as these purely imaginative beings, as though they are inventing entire worlds from some abstract creative ether, when in reality, most writing is just the self undergoing translation; a writer is rearranging their wounds, memories, humiliations, longings, obsessions, private mythologies, suppressed desires, childhood distortions, and unprocessed grief into something that can finally stand outside them and be looked at, which is why good writing feels intimate even when it is fictional, because the details may be invented, but the psychic material is always personal, and somewhere beneath the imagination, there is usually a real ache trying to show itself as art

[Richard M. @RichardtheMutts]

Well, that's an interesting perspective. I've never thought of it that way.

[David Senra @davidsenra]

.@DHH says successful founders have a moral obligation to buy a Ferrari:

“You have an obligation, if you sell a product or service and you make a lot of money on it, to put that money back into the system. Send some of that money to the craftsmen of Italy to create you a beautiful Ferrari.”

“I think that's a good part of capitalism.”

“We want to better our lot and some of that is material, and there's no shame in that whatsoever.”

“We would not have Ferraris to pine for if no one bought them. And who can buy them? The people who've been successful in other parts of business.”

“Therefore it is your moral obligation to buy a Ferrari if you do really well (or Lamborghini or Pagani or whatever floats your boat).”

“You should be sending this forward. This is how we get to have nice things.

“Not everything can just be boiled down to needs. Man needs more than just bread to live. We need beautiful Ferraris, even if we don't own them.”

[Naval @naval]

Don’t sell anything you wouldn’t want your children to buy.

[Richard M. @RichardtheMutts]

@brettdash_ Look at Brett, man. So inspirational. 👌👌 Congratulations on your wins so far! And wishing you all the best for what lies ahead!

And indeed indeed, f*ck it, create it. 🫡

[Richard M. @RichardtheMutts]

@brettdash_ @siftsy As someone who has been in such comment sections, I would say that the insights are spot on, especially the ring-chasing one. lol
I'm curious: does it work on Reddit as well? I'd say Reddit is pretty underrated when it comes to such data & even when it comes to this discussion.

[Richard M. @RichardtheMutts]

@brettdash_ "Crazy, right? Yeah, I know the founder of Siftsy," she said as she discussed with her colleague the useful data they gathered on their ICP using Siftsy. 👌