Make your own map

Here’s why you should actually be praying that there’s no map to take you where you want to go:

If there’s a map, you won’t be the first person to use it. And if by some miracle you are, others will follow that same map after you do.

When multiple people follow the same map they are fungible. If you are fungible, the only differentiator is price point which is a race to the bottom.

If a number of people can do what you do, you are by definition replaceable. When you are replaceable you don’t have much job security and will be compensated accordingly.

As a result, if we are headed somewhere professionally where there is already a map we must do so with our eyes wide open. Even if we follow the map perfectly we may very well not like what is waiting for us.

So we have to make our own map. Sounds great, right?

But there’s a problem.

If you don’t have practice doing it, making a map is hard, uncomfortable and can be terrifying.

When we follow someone else’s map and don’t like where it took us, we can get mad at the map. Or at the person who made the map.

When we make our own map and don’t like the results, the only person to blame is staring back at us in the mirror. That’s the scary part.

Think of any project where you make the map, big or small, like opening a physical store.

When you open your store in someone else’s building and over time grow to not like certain aspects of that building, you can blame others. Why would they not put the main door on the front of the store? Why is there not more storage space? Why would they make the overhead sign so small?

But when you find a completely empty lot and design and build your own store, it’s all on you. Not the ideal location? You chose it! Space too small? You designed it!

The exact same thing applies to starting your own thing. Get a teaching job where the faculty meetings are tedious and pointless? You can judge the powers that be and roll your eyes at the bureaucracy from the back of the room. Partner with someone on a business or a project and the meetings you have aren’t efficient or productive? That’s on you and you are one of the few people who can do something about it.

That’s why it is so much scarier to make your own map, to build your own building. When you ask to speak to the manager you are talking to yourself!

The store analogy is also why there is not one correct answer to questions like “What should I put on my website?” or “What goes in my bio or resume?” That’s like asking “What’s the best location for my store?” What are you selling? Who are you selling it to? The answer to questions like this are always unique to the person or business.

When there is a “correct” answer to questions like these, or when we act as if there is, that means there’s already a map made and as I’ve already mentioned above, that’s a problem.

But there’s another problem.

Guess what almost none of us learned how to do in school? How to make our own map!

With very rare exceptions, every class, from kindergarten through graduate school, has to tell you precisely what you need to do to get a good grade before the class starts. The teachers are literally required to hand you a map. It even has a name. It’s called a syllabus.

If you are diligent about following the map you will get a good grade. That’s the deal. Follow the entire map on the schedule that is laid out and you will get an A, which is the main goal of the vast majority of students I have taught over the years.

The problem is that doesn’t do much to prepare us for doing any meaningful work once we are no longer in school.

(And this goes without saying, but there are some incredible teachers who manage to train students to be creative and draw their own maps even within the confines of being required to give those same students maps. But they are awfully rare in my experience as a student and a teacher.)

I don’t say this to drag school! I say this because it is possible to excel at school for a couple of decades and never develop the single most important skill needed to succeed in the world today: making your own map. Just about every person I know who has succeeded in blazing their own path in the music business realized at some point after graduation that were was a lot of things they were never taught in school and made a plan to figure it out on their own.

When the amazing Amanda Gookin started the Forward Music Project, she was not handed the equivalent of a syllabus with a checklist that said do these things on this schedule and your project will get traction and have an impact on the world. John Mackey was not told do X then Y then Z and your band music will resonate deeply with many people. Aaron Dworkin was not told how to turn The Sphinx Organization from a great idea into an actual thing that is having a profound impact on the world.

None of them had a map. If they were given one, none of them would have created art that has impacted the world so profoundly because others would have already done it. They made their own maps. Ideas are the easy part. It’s executing them that is so difficult. That’s why you need your own map.

So to sum it up, if you follow a preexisting map you won’t have much job security or make much of an impact. And making your own map is so scary because you will have no one else to blame if it doesn’t go well and because none us have much practice in making our own map until we take it upon ourselves to start doing it.

So start today!

Your first few maps won’t be nearly as good as your 20th map. That’s the way it works for everyone! But you have to have a 3rd map in order to get to a 20th map.

The world desperately needs more people like you to make your own map. Good luck!