While exploring my relationship with music this year, I’ve thought often about the alignment/misalignment of the value you create, the money you make by creating value for others, and the time you spend creating value.
In my teenage years, I was convinced that the optimal relationship among these three ideas was to specialize in creating one type of value for the world, to only choose a type of value that people would pay money for, and to spend all of your time devoted to creating that one type of value. My mother, a passionate venture capitalist, had taken such a route for her own life. She would often tell my brother and me how much she loved her work, and she encouraged us to pursue what we love and make that our life’s work.
With time and different life experiences, I’ve realized that this framework doesn’t fit the place where I currently am in life. For one, I have learned that I want to create multiple types of value – I want to do work that makes a difference, and I want to support and enjoy time with the people I love, and I like having hobbies outside of my primary work. For another, I’ve learned that value and money are not always simultaneous, and that it’s possible to create significant value without making huge profits.
In the music industry, the contrast is stark. I’ve been moved to tears time and again by powerful songs and pieces, indicating just how powerful the value of music can be, yet I candidly don’t pay for most of my music, because most of it is available for free online. (I do contribute to specific artists, but the number is few, and the bar is high.)
Nine months into this exploration, I know for sure that there is something in the space of music, stories, and people that is the value I want to create. I also know that my technical academic background and work experience is in high demand and low supply, and that using those skills is a much straighter path to supporting myself financially, at least until I grow my creative skills further. So it looks like the value I create, the money I make, and the time I spend will continue to be misaligned for awhile.
Thank you to Nick for introducing me to Dana Fonteneau’s work and perspective, which inspired me to write this post.