How Many Ideas Are You Hiding?
How Embracing Creative Risk Can Set You Apart in Your Academic Journey
“Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy.” — Paul Graham
As academics on the tenure track, we often feel caught in a cycle of publishing, teaching, and service. The pressure to meet expectations can leave little room for creativity or experimentation.
But as I reflect on my own journey, I’m reminded of a childhood love I nearly lost: art.
Growing up, I spent hours sketching the people and worlds that lived in my imagination. My dad, a model car enthusiast and sketch artist, would sit with me and my brother at our kitchen table, lost in the same creative flow. Those moments taught me something powerful:
The magic of watching something emerge from nothing.
Yet, somewhere along the way, I stopped creating for myself. Maybe it was the fear of standing out or the weight of expectations. Like so many of us, I locked my creativity in a drawer, convinced it wasn’t “productive” enough.
I now realize how wrong I was.
Creativity is not a distraction from our professional goals—it’s the very thing that makes us indispensable.
Why Sharing Your Art (and Ideas) Matters
Academia often feels like a carefully structured race, where the path to success is paved with predictable choices: publish in familiar journals, teach with tried-and-true methods, and steer clear of risks that could raise eyebrows.
But what if this focus on “playing it safe” is holding you back from becoming the scholar you’re truly meant to be?
The tenure track is demanding, no doubt. But it’s also a unique opportunity to shape your field—and your career—by sharing ideas that challenge conventions and push boundaries. Creativity isn’t a distraction from academic success; it’s an essential tool for standing out, building your intellectual brand, and inspiring change.
Below are three actionable strategies to help you embrace and share your creativity, each paired with a practical example tailored for someone navigating the tenure track.
1. You Were Born an Artist. You Were Trained to Be a Worker.
Ask a classroom of six-year-olds, “How many of you are artists?”
Almost every hand will shoot up.
Ask the same question to college students, and you’ll get far fewer. By adulthood, we’ve been trained to value security and prestige over creativity and exploration. But as Paul Graham warns,
“Prestige is like a magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy.”
For those of us navigating the tenure track, it’s tempting to stick to the well-trodden path: publishing in “safe” journals, teaching in “safe” ways, and researching “safe” topics. But this approach can leave us unfulfilled, wondering “What if” or “If only.”
Creativity, like a blank sheet of paper, invites risk. It also opens doors to insights and opportunities that can transform your work—and your field.
Actionable Strategy: Start small but deliberate. Commit to a single “risky” project—a conference proposal, an interdisciplinary collaboration, or a creative twist on a syllabus. These calculated risks can refresh your approach and lay the groundwork for a more fulfilling academic journey.
Example: If you’ve been curious about integrating creative writing exercises into your law class, try incorporating one assignment where students write their own hypothetical fact patterns and problems. After class discussion, ask them to refine the hypothetical and question prompt. Consider presenting your experience at a teaching workshop.
Take a chance. Write that unconventional article. Teach that innovative class. As Miles Davis said,
“If you hit a wrong note, it’s the next note that you play that determines if it’s good or bad.”
Why is it so important to embrace risk?
Before diving into why creativity matters, I want to remind you that if this resonates with you, you’re not alone. Unlocking your creative potential in academia can feel overwhelming, but it’s a journey we can navigate together.
In The Tenure Track, we explore how embracing innovation and originality not only fuels your academic career but also challenges conventional boundaries, leading to breakthroughs you may have never imagined.
Are you ready to tap into your creative potential? Subscribe for actionable strategies, inspiration, and insights that will help you unleash your genius and elevate your work.
2. We Value Unique Voices, Not Replaceable Labor.
As Seth Godin writes in his book Linchpin,
“The competitive advantage the marketplace demands is someone more human, connected, and mature.”
Organizations—whether universities or industries—don’t thrive on workers who just follow instructions. They thrive on individuals who bring fresh perspectives and take initiative.
This is especially true in academia.
If you want to stand out, your contributions must go beyond producing research that fits neatly into existing paradigms. You need to ask bold questions, draw interdisciplinary connections, and take risks that others shy away from.
Actionable Strategy: Build your intellectual brand. Consider how your research agenda tells a story about your values, voice, and vision. Are there themes or perspectives you can lean into to make your work distinct? Share your process through guest lectures, blog posts, or even short talks at department meetings to amplify your voice and showcase your creativity.
Example: If your research focuses on food justice, host an informal lunchtime seminar to share how your work ties into current policy debates. Use the session to spark interdisciplinary conversations that might inspire collaborative projects.
When you create and share your art—whether that’s a groundbreaking paper, a compelling lecture, or an innovative research project—you make yourself indispensable. You move from being a worker to being a thought leader, someone who changes the way others see the world.
3. Art Doesn’t Belong at the Bottom of a Desk Drawer.
As a child, I created art for the joy of it. But I rarely shared my work.
I let fear of rejection keep my drawings locked away, starving for an audience. It wasn’t until years later that I understood:
The value of art isn’t meeting someone else’s expectations.
It’s about helping others see the world in a new and beautiful way.
How many of your ideas are locked in a drawer right now? How many papers, projects, or teaching innovations have you sidelined because they felt too risky, too unconventional, or too unpolished?
Actionable Strategy: Create a low-stakes platform for your “drawer ideas.” For example, use a blog, Twitter/BlueSky thread, or informal faculty presentation to test out these ideas. Sharing them in smaller, less intimidating contexts can help you refine and build momentum for bigger projects.
Example: If you’ve drafted a paper that feels too unconventional for a traditional journal, consider presenting it at a smaller conference or publishing it as an online essay. The insights you gain can help you improve the ideas and identify where it might fit in a more robust form.
As tenure-track academics, we face countless demands, but we also have unique opportunities to shape our fields. Don’t let the fear of failure or rejection keep you from sharing your most creative ideas. The world doesn’t need another safe article or another standard syllabus.
It needs your art—your unique voice, perspective, and insight.
Unlock Your Creativity
As I reflect on those childhood afternoons at the kitchen table, I’m reminded that the spark of creativity never truly fades—it’s always waiting for us to return.
So, here’s my challenge to you: carve out one hour this week for a “creative sprint.”
Use this time to draft a bold idea, experiment with a fresh teaching approach, or revisit a project that’s been sitting in your drawer. Let yourself imagine freely, without the weight of expectations or the fear of imperfection.
How will you share your art this week?
Because when you do, you contribute more than a publication or a new course design—you breathe life into your field, inspire others to take risks, and remind yourself why you chose this path in the first place.
Becoming Full,
P.S. As always, thank you for reading this week’s issue of The Tenure Track. If you found this article helpful, I encourage you to share it with a colleague or friend who might benefit from these insights. Together, let’s continue to build a supportive and creative academic community.