Who's your public persona?

Your time and attention are your most valuable assets. Be deliberate about how you use them. Think long-term. But don't think how your real, authentic self would use them. Authenticity is overrated.

If you're anything like me, you want to do much more than you have time for. To separate the things you want to do from the things you decide to actually work on, create a persona for your creative work. This persona is not you, though it might share your face. But if you want to build something larger than yourself, by definition, it can't be about you. If it would be only about you, it wouldn't be larger than yourself. Then, instead of simply doing things you find interesting, the goal of you creative work is to get to know this persona.

Start to ask questions about it. Make the answers up. Test them. Let the persona be the person you want to hire for the promotion of your work. Is the answer you gave helpful for that? If not, come up with a different, better answer. Repeat this process each day, ad infinitum.