Everyone online is yelling at you to niche down.
Pick a thing. Focus. Specialize. Own the corner of the internet no one else dares to touch.
But what if that’s the worst advice for you?
Here’s what they don’t tell you: your niche isn’t something you go looking for. It’s something that reveals itself—but only after you’ve put in enough reps.
When you’re just starting, everything feels like a distraction. You bounce between skills, tools, topics. You’re not lost. You’re learning your range.
Your niche will only reveal itself when you’ve built a body of work that can speak back to you. That’s the real feedback loop. And it takes time.
Trying to “find” your niche too early is like trying to write your autobiography before you’ve lived past 15.
This morning I listened to Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, a neuroscientist, who said something that stuck:
Your brain is wired to your body. You can’t just drop your brain into another human’s skull and expect to see.
It hit me.
Your perspective is hardcoded to your biology and your experiences. You’ve inherited your worldview—your “cultural wiring”—from everyone you’ve ever observed. How your mother talked about money. How your teacher reacted to failure. How your first boss gave feedback.
That inheritance shapes what you notice, what you fear, what you chase.
So if someone gives you a perfect blueprint for how they found their niche, it won’t work for you—unless you also had their body, their parents, their heartbreaks, and their search history.
Good luck with that.
We’re not machines. We’re fluid. We respond to life in motion.
So instead of following a guru’s niche-finding map, you need to set up the terrain so the path reveals itself.
Here’s how:
Condition One: Set up for sustained repetition.
Want to write? Set a chair, a desk, and a screen in one spot. That’s your cave. That’s your dojo. That’s the place where ideas go to meet themselves.
Condition Two: Set a time or a sequence.
You don’t need a strict routine—you need a consistent ritual.
I write after I drop my son to school and eat breakfast.
Sometimes that’s 10am. Sometimes it’s 1pm. Doesn’t matter. The sequence holds even when time doesn’t. Life happens and that’s ok. The ritual helps you recalibrate quickly and stay on track.
Condition Three: Accept that the process will surprise you.
I rarely know what I’m writing until I’m halfway in; sometimes it only makes sense at the end.
Force it, and you’ll freeze.
Flow with it, and you’ll find something worth saying.
Let the work show you where it’s trying to go.
Condition Four: Understand your fuel.
Some people can output endlessly. Others need inputs to connect the dots.
I need to consume to create. Podcasts, books, weird YouTube documentaries. That’s my creative protein shake.
When my tank runs low, I lose the spark—not the ideas, but the energy to connect them and make them matter.
Know your fuel. Respect your rhythms.
Platon, one of my favorite photographers, uses the same light, camera, and setup every time.
Why? Because when you remove decisions, you create space for focus. He says that by keeping his tools consistent, it allows him to focus on the message.
Our bodies are designed for energy efficiency.
Every micro-decision—where to sit, what tool to use, what to name the file—burns fuel.
Automate the start so you can go deeper once you begin. Once you can get through the first five minutes, then momentum works for you, not against you. Remember a body in motion wants to stay in motion, while a body at rest wants to stay at rest. A passenger jet burns the most fuel during takeoff.
Finding your niche is a lot like building a fire.
You don’t search for flames—you set up the right conditions: dry wood, oxygen, a spark. Then you strike the match and trust the process.
Your niche isn’t what you do. It’s what keeps showing up in your work.
It’s the pattern that emerges when you’re too busy creating to notice you’ve become consistent.
Do the reps.
Set the scene.
Let your work talk back.
That’s where your niche has been hiding all along.
