Sustaining is creating

Sustaining an idea is hard. It is the mid-summer, sweaty work of keeping the garden verdant and free of weeds. It's not the first level of dreaming, or the second level of planning or the act of launching.

It's the ongoing, 11th and 12th rounds of inspiration within an established system. It's the 100th night of playing your hit song, yet keeping it fresh. It's contributing what might be the 32nd award-winning headline in a long-running, award-winning campaign.

If the idea of your coffee shop is witty posters, hip staff and excellent baked goods -- you soon transition from being new and distinct and catchy to being reliable. The effort of creativity has to shift, from the monumental and rare to the subtle and persistent. From "one, big" idea to an ongoing stream of consistent output.

In Vedic philosophy, you move from Creativity to Maintenance. But let's be clear: the act of maintaining is highly creative.

This is the work of iteration -- knowing the fundamental truths of an idea, then recombining and scaling the core over and over, creating fresh perspectives. That core might be a design system, a tagline or positioning statement, or a consumer insight.

This is the work of consistency and craft -- how you build upon an established premise. It is weathering new circumstances. It is the practice of clarifying more and more truths, yet leaving open the possibility of evolution.

This is the work of the infinite -- of publishing, of careers, of laws and policy, of scale. We would be wise to ask, "How long do we see this idea sustaining?"