Turn Your Career into a Work of Art→

Gianpiero Petriglieri for Harvard Business Review Blogs:

First, you need a foundation of knowledge and skills. You can't be Picasso if you can't handle brushes. Second, you need to use those skills to express something that is both deeply personal and that resonates with an audience.

Success in art is not just making a living, or being famous and acclaimed. Those are consequences. Success is moving and being moved. It is opening vistas. Unsettling the status quo. Peeking beneath the veil of convention.

Making art is not an artist's job. It is an artist's life. This is why it is exciting. But it also creates anxiety, and second-guessing. Putting your passion on display can be scary. How do you know what is your true passion? What if your work is ignored, derided or misunderstood?

...​ being able to turn your career into a work of art, to thrive and lead with passion in a world in flux, requires finding a space, and I mean both a psychological and social space, where what you do is tied with who you are and what people around you care about — a community where commitment feels enabling, liberating, rather than just constraining.