Legendary music producer, Rick Rubin, advises that in order to create at the highest level, your audience must come last. This is true (maybe even especially) if you care about how the audience experiences your work. Instead, he advises, allow your natural creativity to bubble up and out of you and into the world.

Rick’s dictum applies with equal force to every aspect of what we do. That’s because we’re all creators – of our careers, our businesses, our relationships, our art, and our lives. In each of those spheres, we have an audience. And if we over focus on that audience instead of giving birth to what’s inside of us, we’ll limit the quality of what we put out into the world.