To start with, Lee says simply sharing your work can have a huge impact.

Even
if you’re self-conscious about the work, Lee says it’s an opportunity. Personal
work showcases the power of storytelling in a way a client project can’t, he
says. “When you’re doing professional work, your main objective is to sell
something. With personal projects, you’re not really trying to sell something.
There’s a personal story behind that journey.” He’s found that people are
interested in this because it’s more engaging; he’s even gotten job offers out of
it.

Draw inspiration from anywhere. Then give it structure

When it comes to actually developing ideas, Lee has a few suggestions. First, draw
inspiration from the world immediately around you. For Lee, that’s his surroundings, current
events, and his family (he’s been spending a lot of time with his wife and young kids during
quarantine). “One of the most important strategies to me is to constantly observe my
thoughts,” he says, “and really hang on to the first idea I had and execute it.” No need to
force something; just pay attention when you’re out and about. What do you notice? And
when an idea strikes you, sketch it out or make some notes before you forget it.

Second, apply some work principles: create a brief to come up with a more concrete concept.
What’s the target audience? Project objective? Give yourself some guidelines for the creative
process. “A lot of people love to talk about ideas,” Lee says. “More often than not these ideas
don’t turn into any action or tangible thing. I couldn’t put more emphasis that ideas are
nothing in the end; doing is everything.”

Simplify: It doesn’t have to be life-changing

People tend to think of side projects as big undertakings, like writing a book, developing an
app, or starting a business. But that’s the wrong tactic, according to Lee. Why put yourself
under so much pressure? “My approach is a lot more simple than thinking about something
that’s going to change your life or make you money,” he says. Rather, Lee approaches
creative projects as a way to express his feelings about whatever’s happening in the world.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of
life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover
that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to
practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the
marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut
a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms,
and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and
publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able
to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a
strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily
concluded that it is the chief end of man here to "glorify God and enjoy him forever."

Thoreau went into the woods to live a bare, spare, and essential existence... no modern
conveniences to help him make things easier, no creature comforts to lighten his load. He
went into the woods to learn what it meant to really live this life as it is, free of all the man-
made accouterments that take the life out of life. Put in a more modern way, Thoreau wanted
to live without the remote control.

His idea was that all the things we have concocted to make life easier for us to live, at the
same time take the substance out of living, the morrow out of the bones. If you turn on the
water spigot and water comes pouring out, you don't have to pump it yourself. But it is in the
very act of pumping the water yourself, that you feel the weight and substance of the water.
In your hands, in your arms.

If things got tough for him, so be it; experience the toughness. If winter winds chilled him to
the bone, so be it; feel the cold... know it from within. Thoreau went alone into the woods to
learn how to live the way his maker intended to live.