3 Reasons Creative People Don’t Do Well in Corporate Jobs

3 Reasons Creative People Don’t Do Well in Corporate Jobs


Corporate America can be a confusing place for creative people to navigate, especially after four years of unsupervised life in college, where most young people take the time to explore.

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After most college students are thrust into the working world, post-graduation shock kicks in. All of a sudden creative minds are expected to quietly cohabitate with cube-mates and, somehow, flourish inside a 4×6 pumice-colored box.

For creative people cube life can be a real drag, and Elite Daily‘s Catherine Santino shares three big reasons why.

1. Routines can drive us crazy. Santino says there are plenty of people who are completely content to settle into one routine and stay there. “As someone who used to commute through Penn Station every day, I witnessed men and women traveling to the same job, on the same train, at the same time for so many years,” she recalls. “I was doing it right along with them, but the thought of continuing that for the rest of my life was enough to make me want to scream.”

Many people crave stability, leading them to cling to a “good job,” regardless of their lack of passion and excitement for whatever it is they do for 40 hours a week. But for creatives, ignoring passion and purpose is difficult and they usually find a way to shine through.

2. We can’t separate work from life and we don’t want to. “Creative people’s work isn’t the thing that allows them to have lives—it is their lives,” says Santino. Usually creative people do what they do for a living  because they love it, not because of the money.

Some creative types feel that work and life are both rooted in relationships and have no clear line of separation. Furthermore, in order for creatives to produce interesting work, many pull from personal places that resonate with an audience. The idea of clocking in and out has the potential to metaphorically box in creative minds and it doesn’t make much sense to creative people to “schedule” their creativity.

3. We’re always thinking about the bigger picture.“Creative people tend to think about their lives in a broader sense, rather than focus on the small details,” says Santino. “Questions like, ‘Am I doing enough?’ and ‘Am I working to my full creative potential?’ are constantly clogging our brains.”

Day-to-day tasks can sometimes seem a bit trivial to creatives in comparison to the big picture. That doesn’t mean the details aren’t important, but the larger idea is always in the back of their minds, distracting them from their cube-life work.

To find out more about creative people and their anti-9-to-5 spirit, visit EliteDaily.com.


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