I want to tell you about a studio day I don't often talk about.

A few years ago I spent three days on a painting that wasn't going anywhere and then, on the fourth morning, it suddenly did. Something resolved, not the problem I'd been working on, a different one I hadn't known I was asking. I stayed in the studio until the light went. Made dinner. Went to bed.

The painting was never shown anywhere. It didn't sell. I never posted it. Three people have seen it in person, maybe four.

And it was one of the best days I've had as a maker in the last decade.

I've been thinking about why that is. Why that day felt like the work in a way that more visible days sometimes haven't. And I think it comes down to this: on that day, I wasn't making for anyone's response. Not even mine, exactly. I was just following the problem.

The question I've been wondering about lately isn't whether my work matters. It's a harder one underneath that: Who did I start making for, and when did that change?

There's research on this already and it actually has a name.

In the 1970s, psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan began studying what they called the "overjustification effect." The finding was counterintuitive and a little uncomfortable: when people who intrinsically enjoyed something like making, playing, solving problems, were given external rewards for doing it, their enjoyment dropped. Not immediately. But over time. The reward colonized the motivation. The thing they did for its own sake became a thing they did for the return. You may have seen this play out in your creative practice too.

This has been replicated widely, including in studies with artists specifically. And it explains something I've noticed in myself and in every maker I've worked with over the years: the creatives who lose their joy fastest aren't usually the least talented. They're often the ones who got noticed early and quietly built a practice around being noticed.

The algorithm didn't invent this problem. It just industrialized it.

Your nervous system is exquisitely attuned to response. That's not weakness, that's how we are wired. But the invisible cost of organizing a practice around response is that the practice begins to hollow from the inside. Slowly. Until you sit down to make and find that the question will anyone care about this? has arrived before the work has.

That arrival, that's the thing worth paying attention to, I think.

I've been experimenting with something I'm calling a "witness of one."

Before I start a session, I ask myself who I'm making for. Not abstractly. Literally: if this work never leaves the studio, if no one ever sees it, will I still have wanted to make it?

Some days the answer is clear. Some days it isn't. The days it isn't are useful data. Not cause for shame. Just honest information about where my attention has drifted.

I'm not arguing for making in total isolation. Audience can matter. Some of my best work has come directly from conversation, from a request, from the presence of someone I was trying to reach. Context can sharpen the work. But there's a difference between making that is shaped by relationship and making that is driven by the need for approval. One enriches the work. The other eventually consumes it.

The question who is this for? doesn't have one right answer. But for most serious makers, the most honest version starts with: me. My curiosity. My need to follow this question wherever it leads. Everything else is downstream of that.

→ Read more about building a sustainable creative practice on the blog, Living by Making

Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a line I've returned to for thirty years.

In Letters to a Young Poet, he tells his young correspondent to ask himself "in the most silent hour of your night: must I write?" The whole letter turns on that question, not should I, not will people want to read it, but must I. The deep necessity. The thing you would do whether or not anyone responded.

Rilke was writing to a poet. But he was describing every serious maker I've ever known. The ones who last aren't the ones who received the most attention. They're the ones who found the must and stayed close to it, even in the seasons when the world wasn't watching. It’s is those who notice and embrace that burning “thing” inside that won’t let you rest until you create.

That's not romantic advice. It's practical. The must is what gets you back into the studio when the last thing you made went unnoticed. It's the thing that outlasts every dip in engagement, every season of invisibility, every moment when you wonder if any of this is worth it.

A practice for this week, and it's a small one:

Before you sit down to make, write one sentence in answer to this question: What does this work do for me, independent of anyone seeing it?

Not what you hope it will do for others. Not what it might demonstrate about your skill or your vision. What does the act of making this thing give you in the making of it?

Clarity? A way of thinking through something you can't think through otherwise? A kind of presence? Connection to something you care about deeply?

You're not looking for a grand purpose statement. Just one honest sentence. "It keeps me company on long mornings" is a better answer than "it expresses my creativity."

Write it down. Then make the thing.

 If you're working through questions like these, what you're making for, how to rebuild a practice that feels like yours again I put together a short free guide called The 7-Day Arrival Practice. Seven small practices for makers who feel scattered. Each takes under five minutes.

Download Here → 7-Day Arrival Practice

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Thank you for being here.

The question of whether your work matters is real, and I'm not going to tell you it doesn't need answering.

But I think the truest version of the question is smaller and closer than we usually make it: does this work matter to the making of you? Not to your career. Not to your audience. To the person who shows up, follows the question, and comes back to the studio next week.

If the answer is yes -- keep going. Even when no one's watching. Especially then.

If you want to read this later or find other issues, you can find them here on the Living by Making Blog

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