Speaker 1: One of the ways that we feed the bad wolf
Speaker 1: is by telling ourselves the lie that, well, I've got
Speaker 1: tomorrow right, I'll just wait till tomorrow, I'll start it tomorrow,
Speaker 1: I'll do it tomorrow. Welcome to the one you feed
Speaker 1: throughout time. Great thinkers have recognized the importance of the
Speaker 1: thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or
Speaker 1: you are what you think, ring true. And yet for
Speaker 1: many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: and wolf. Our guest today is Todd Henry, founder of
Speaker 1: Accidental Creative, a company that helps creative people and teams
Speaker 1: generate brilliant ideas. He regularly speaks and consults with companies,
Speaker 1: helping people develop systems and practices that lead to everyday brilliance.
Speaker 1: His latest book is Die Empty. Unleash your best work
Speaker 1: every day. Thanks for joining us today, Todd. We're we're
Speaker 1: happy to have you on the show. Thanks Eric, It's
Speaker 1: it's great to be here. So I want to first
Speaker 1: start off and just say how much I genuinely enjoyed
Speaker 1: your latest book, Die Empty. It was There's a lot
Speaker 1: of great stuff in that, and a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: that we end up sort of coming up on this
Speaker 1: show again and again, so I'm looking forward to, uh,
Speaker 1: talking a little bit more about that. But very nice work.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Yeah, it's uh, you know, writing a book
Speaker 1: is is kind of it's a long, laborious, painful process,
Speaker 1: so uh, you always hope that people can get something
Speaker 1: out of it, because at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: you don't want to have written it in vain. So
Speaker 1: it's always encouraging to hear somebody say, hey, I read
Speaker 1: it and I got something out of it. That's really
Speaker 1: encouraging to hear. Thank you. Yeah, I definitely read it
Speaker 1: and and got a lot out of it. I really
Speaker 1: enjoyed it. So our podcast is based on the old
Speaker 1: parable where there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson
Speaker 1: and he says in life there are two wolves inside
Speaker 1: of us who are always at battle. One is a
Speaker 1: bad wolf and he represents hatred and greed, and the
Speaker 1: other is a good wolf, which represents kindness and love.
Speaker 1: And the grandson stops and thanks for a second, and
Speaker 1: he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says,
Speaker 1: the one you feed. So I'd like to start this
Speaker 1: off by asking you what does that parable mean to
Speaker 1: you in both your life and your work? Yeah, so
Speaker 1: as as I consider that parable, I mean, I really
Speaker 1: think about the role that um really I think desire
Speaker 1: and comfort play in the life of anyone who wants
Speaker 1: to do great work, or wants to accomplish something or
Speaker 1: build something, or at value, you know. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think we all, regardless of whether we're intentional or not,
Speaker 1: we're all building a body of work. We're building, we're
Speaker 1: creating value just by virtue of our presence on earth,
Speaker 1: value of some sorts, right, And you know, I think
Speaker 1: that the question that we have to ask is am
Speaker 1: I building the kind of value that I want to
Speaker 1: point to later and say yes, that represents what I
Speaker 1: care about, that represents something that I really believe in,
Speaker 1: Or are we building the kind of value that's there
Speaker 1: by default at the end of the day, we do
Speaker 1: what's easiest, we do what's most comfortable. And I think
Speaker 1: really in in in that parable, I hear that battle
Speaker 1: between um, the desire to do what you know to
Speaker 1: be right, to do what you know will stand the
Speaker 1: test of time that will prove value that will be
Speaker 1: valuable to other people, and the law of comfort, the
Speaker 1: law of of apathy and self centeredness and all of
Speaker 1: those things that I think anybody would point out objectively
Speaker 1: and say, well, that's the wrong path. And yet that's
Speaker 1: the very seductive path think for many of us, because
Speaker 1: it's easy just to kick our heels up and rest
Speaker 1: on our laurels instead of asking on a day to
Speaker 1: day basis, what's being called out of me and what
Speaker 1: can I contribute to the world today that will be
Speaker 1: a value that will stand and that can point to
Speaker 1: at some point in my life and say, yes, that
Speaker 1: represents what I believe to be true. And uh So
Speaker 1: when I hear that parable, that's really what comes to
Speaker 1: mind to me is am on a day day basis,
Speaker 1: am I feeding that desire to create value, to build
Speaker 1: a body of work I can be proud of or am.
Speaker 1: I am I feeding the side of me that craves
Speaker 1: comfort and stagnancy and um, an easy life, because I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people who chase an easy life,
Speaker 1: when they get later in their years, they say, what
Speaker 1: have I done. I've I've abdicated my contribution for the
Speaker 1: sake of a little bit of comfort, you know, And
Speaker 1: I think that the price of regret is incalculable. And
Speaker 1: in those cases, Yeah, there's a there's a lot in
Speaker 1: what you said there. And one of the themes that
Speaker 1: sort of I noticed over and over in your book,
Speaker 1: and I think it's interesting, uh, is you talked about
Speaker 1: comfort and um, you know, when when we hear the
Speaker 1: parable and we say the good wolf for the bad wolf,
Speaker 1: you know, it's fairly dramatic. The bad wolf is is
Speaker 1: greed and hate. But but also, you know, you talk
Speaker 1: a lot about about comfort, you talk about the road
Speaker 1: to mediocrity, um, and and how so maybe that that
Speaker 1: that choice isn't as apparent to us day to day
Speaker 1: as we think it is. So one of the things
Speaker 1: I thought was really interesting was you talking about how
Speaker 1: people arrive at mediocrity. Could you share a little bit
Speaker 1: about about your thoughts on that, Yeah, So this word mediocrity,
Speaker 1: if you if you pars it into its original language,
Speaker 1: it comes from two words medius and ochres, which mean
Speaker 1: middle and rugged mountain. So to be mediocre means to
Speaker 1: stop halfway up a rugged mountain. It means to stop
Speaker 1: halfway to your objectives. You're halfway up, you see the objective,
Speaker 1: but you stop for some reason. And there are there
Speaker 1: are many forces I believe that can cause people to
Speaker 1: to get stuck in that place of mediocrity. But all
Speaker 1: of those forces, I believe are the results all the
Speaker 1: all of the forces are forces that we can feed
Speaker 1: and I think signify. In this paralilel, they signified that
Speaker 1: the bad wolf or hay in many ways UM. And
Speaker 1: I labeled them in the book di Empte. I labeled
Speaker 1: them UM the seven deadly sins of mediocrity, because I
Speaker 1: do I believe they're they're deadly. They're deadly to us emotionally,
Speaker 1: they're deadly to us mentally. UM. I think that they
Speaker 1: cause us to become stagnant and apathetic and to abdicate
Speaker 1: our contribution. And I also put them in the order A, B, C, D, E,
Speaker 1: F g UM, not just to be cute, but because
Speaker 1: I thought there would be more memorable that way, right. UM.
Speaker 1: So they are aimlessness, boredom, comfort, delusion, ego, fear, and guardedness.
Speaker 1: And I think if you feed any one of those things,
Speaker 1: whether it's through a willing aimlessness about your work, refusing
Speaker 1: to ask what battles you're going to fight, UM through
Speaker 1: the lull of boredom instead of being fiercely curious. You
Speaker 1: allow boredom to take root in your life. If you
Speaker 1: feed comfort at the expense of growth, if you feed
Speaker 1: delusion at the expense of self knowledge, if you feed
Speaker 1: ego at the expense of confident adaptability, if you feed
Speaker 1: fear at the expense of finding your voice, or if
Speaker 1: you fe feed guardedness um at the expense of staying
Speaker 1: connected to others and having others and you don't to
Speaker 1: speak with you. If you feed any of those forces,
Speaker 1: they're gonna grow in your life, and they're gonna eventually
Speaker 1: result in medias ocres halfway up the rugged mountain because
Speaker 1: you're not realigning yourself on the day to day basis
Speaker 1: and feeding and feeding the good wolf, right, the good wolf,
Speaker 1: which would be those those practices I believe that can
Speaker 1: keep you UM focused and moving up the mountain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and about mediocrity. I'm gonna read something you wrote because
Speaker 1: I thought it was really good. Uh. You say, no
Speaker 1: one charts a course for mediocrity, Yet it's still a
Speaker 1: destination of choice. It's chosen in small ways over time,
Speaker 1: and those tiny, seemingly inconsequential decisions accumulate until they result
Speaker 1: in the state of crisis. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that is in you know, runs through your book over
Speaker 1: and over also, is it's about the small daily decisions
Speaker 1: that we make, the small daily actions that that add
Speaker 1: up to a life that's either worth living or one
Speaker 1: that's not right. Yeah, And you know, I think we
Speaker 1: lose sight of that. I think we look at the
Speaker 1: big thing that we want to do, whatever that is.
Speaker 1: We look at the big delta, the big change that
Speaker 1: we want to create, and I think we fail to
Speaker 1: realize that that big delta is made up of a
Speaker 1: lot of little delta's, a lot of little changes that
Speaker 1: have to happen along the way, little choices about where
Speaker 1: we put our focus. Our assets are time and our energy.
Speaker 1: May I tell people your fate determines your fate, right,
Speaker 1: your focus, your assets, your time, your energy. So where
Speaker 1: you put those four things at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: determine the kind of change, the kind of small delta
Speaker 1: that you create today. But I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people become paralyzed when they look at that big thing
Speaker 1: that they want to do. They want to launch a business,
Speaker 1: or they want to write a book, or they want
Speaker 1: to change an industry, or they want to whatever it is.
Speaker 1: Um I think it's easy to become paralyzed instead of
Speaker 1: stopping and saying, wait a minute, what does that mean
Speaker 1: for me today? What would excellence in my life and
Speaker 1: my work in adding value that little delta? What would
Speaker 1: that mean today, not tomorrow, not the next day, but today.
Speaker 1: And if you put enough of those little deltas together,
Speaker 1: it will add up into something big. But you don't.
Speaker 1: You don't. Nobody sets out the launch of business, nobody
Speaker 1: sets out to write the book. It's about what you
Speaker 1: do today. But where you put your focus, assets, time,
Speaker 1: and energy, grets. You and Ruben said what you what
Speaker 1: you do every day matters more than what you do
Speaker 1: once in a while, right, And I think that's a very,
Speaker 1: very wise philosophy. I think that it's very important how
Speaker 1: you choose to spend those everyday little increments of focus, assets, time,
Speaker 1: and energy. Yeah, that that has seemed to come up
Speaker 1: a lot as we've as we've gone through this show.
Speaker 1: One being you know that it's you've got to do
Speaker 1: more than just think action is really important. And the
Speaker 1: secondly the saying I use a lot is a little
Speaker 1: bit of something is better than a lot of nothing.
Speaker 1: You know that that doing something is better than sitting
Speaker 1: around thinking about doing something really grand. There was another
Speaker 1: thing in your book that I really enjoyed, because every
Speaker 1: time I've heard it it sort of rubs me a
Speaker 1: little bit the wrong way. It's that saying out there
Speaker 1: that nobody on their deathbed ever regretted spending an extra
Speaker 1: day at the office or another day at work, And
Speaker 1: you sort of talk about why you don't necessarily agree
Speaker 1: with that that phrase. Could you elaborate, Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I think people like to say this. They say, well,
Speaker 1: nobody ever laid onto death bed wishing, oh if I
Speaker 1: only had another day at the office, Right, they regret
Speaker 1: other things? Well, I don't think that's true. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people that I have met later in
Speaker 1: life have expressed deep regret about not having treated their
Speaker 1: life with intention, treated their life with purpose. And by
Speaker 1: the way, when I talk about work, I don't just
Speaker 1: mean your job. I mean your job is the most
Speaker 1: physical manifestation of your work. But your body of work
Speaker 1: is comprised of any place you had value. So it's
Speaker 1: it's how intentional you are about you know, obviously your job,
Speaker 1: but also your family, your friends, how you treat the
Speaker 1: barrista at Starbucks, how you spend your money. Right, all
Speaker 1: of those things comprise your body of work. It's the
Speaker 1: thing that you're building, how you develop yourself mentally. You know,
Speaker 1: all of these things comprise your body of work. And
Speaker 1: I think people are unquestionably regretful of the way that
Speaker 1: they spent their life later in life, because they realized
Speaker 1: they took the path of default. They took the easiest path.
Speaker 1: They said yes to whatever was in front of them
Speaker 1: instead of asking what do I need to do to
Speaker 1: really continue moving up the mountain, And so they settled in.
Speaker 1: And for some people, that decision happens maybe a little
Speaker 1: bit later, maybe they get to age, you know, forty
Speaker 1: fifty years old, and they say, you know, I think
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna cruise it out the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna kind of settle in. I've worked hard,
Speaker 1: I'm going to enjoy the fruits of my labor. And
Speaker 1: you know, then twenty years later they realized I've basically
Speaker 1: spent the last twenty years of my life phoning it in,
Speaker 1: you know, cruising. And so I think that this oversimplification
Speaker 1: of nobody ever wish for another day at work. It
Speaker 1: really it bothers me because I think we are wired
Speaker 1: as human beings to derive meaning from the value that
Speaker 1: we create. We're wired to derive meaning from our work. Um,
Speaker 1: we're wired to derive a sense of identity from our work.
Speaker 1: Doesn't mean we are our work, doesn't mean that our
Speaker 1: identity is what we make. But I think what we
Speaker 1: make gives us a sense of purpose and identity and place.
Speaker 1: I think we're biologically wired for that. So I think
Speaker 1: it's oversimplification. And honestly, I think it's kind of, um,
Speaker 1: a little bit naive to say people don't regret having
Speaker 1: spent not having spent their their life and their work
Speaker 1: with more purpose. And the other thing you said in
Speaker 1: the in the book, and I agree with around this topic,
Speaker 1: was that the other problem with that that argument is
Speaker 1: that it divides your life into pieces that you've got
Speaker 1: your life and then your work over here and and
Speaker 1: does away with the scent the idea that your work
Speaker 1: can be satisfying and gratifying and meaning. Work is not
Speaker 1: a bad word. Yeah, that's that's exactly right. I do
Speaker 1: think that there's a, um, there's kind of a war
Speaker 1: on the word work in our in our culture, especially
Speaker 1: in Western culture right now, there's an idea that work
Speaker 1: is bad, is inherently bad, um. And we we there
Speaker 1: are all these books and I mean there are some
Speaker 1: very good books. Obviously they're they're really good books, but
Speaker 1: I mean their books like The Four Hour work Week
Speaker 1: and some of these others that almost you know, that's
Speaker 1: not at all what Tim Ferris was saying in the book, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, the guy works very very hard, right, Um,
Speaker 1: But it's almost it feeds this idea that work is
Speaker 1: a bad thing in our culture and we should do
Speaker 1: as little of it as possible. And I just completely
Speaker 1: disagree with that mindset because I think that, um, I
Speaker 1: believe that we all have not just an opportunity, but
Speaker 1: we have a responsibility to contribute value, to use whatever
Speaker 1: we've been given and use whatever sphere of influence we have.
Speaker 1: Our platform. We have to create value for those around us.
Speaker 1: You know. Victor Frankel said that the statue of liberty
Speaker 1: on the East coast should be accompanied by the statue
Speaker 1: of responsibility on the West coast. Right this idea that
Speaker 1: with liberty comes responsibility, comes the need to use that
Speaker 1: liberty to the service of others. Um and so in.
Speaker 1: Victor Frankel, also in Man Search for Meanings, said that
Speaker 1: everything changes when we stop this is a paraphrase. Everything
Speaker 1: changes when we stop asking the question what do we
Speaker 1: want out of life? And we start asking the question
Speaker 1: what does life want out of us? And I think
Speaker 1: that that's really the philosophy that we should be we
Speaker 1: should be taking. Sometimes that's gonna mean having maybe having
Speaker 1: to do things that we would prefer not to do,
Speaker 1: but in the end, I believe it's the path to
Speaker 1: a more gratifying life and work experience. We uh, We
Speaker 1: had an interview with a gentleman who wrote a book
Speaker 1: called Prisoners of Our Thoughts and he was a student
Speaker 1: of Dr Frankel. So it was we've we've explored his
Speaker 1: Victor Frankel's work a fair amount. So it's it's great stuff.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you, um, you talk in the book
Speaker 1: a little bit and you define There's there's two things
Speaker 1: that sort of go together, and I'll use them both.
Speaker 1: One is defining your battles and the other sort of
Speaker 1: understanding what your unique contribution is and how that might
Speaker 1: be different than what anybody else could do. Can you,
Speaker 1: um tell us more about that? Yeah. So, I think
Speaker 1: some of this is tied up in the concept that
Speaker 1: we often call passion, right, passion for work. And I
Speaker 1: think Eric that we we often misuse and abuse that
Speaker 1: word passion because we use it to mean anything that
Speaker 1: I'm mildly interested in. I think one I think that's
Speaker 1: one of the ways we we abuse is it. Um?
Speaker 1: So you know, I'm passionate about ice cream, I'm passionate
Speaker 1: about my work, I'm passionate about my wife, I'm passionate
Speaker 1: about the Cincinnati Bengals, right or whatever. Um. Anybody could
Speaker 1: clearly see those are different things, and you know, different
Speaker 1: levels of meaning. They're the word passion. The word passion
Speaker 1: in its root language comes from the word to suffer, right, um.
Speaker 1: And I think it can be valuable for us to
Speaker 1: reclaim that understanding of the word passion when we talk
Speaker 1: about passion for work. What work am I willing to
Speaker 1: suffer on behalf of Am I willing to go in
Speaker 1: a little early four, I'm willing to stay a little
Speaker 1: late for I'm willing to put more of myself into
Speaker 1: because it means so much to me. I'm committed to
Speaker 1: an outcome that transcends my day to day tasks. The
Speaker 1: other thing I think we often do when we confuse
Speaker 1: this this term passion, and especially when we think about
Speaker 1: defining our battles, is, you know, I think people often
Speaker 1: think that passion for work means that I am in
Speaker 1: love with the tasks that I do every day, that
Speaker 1: I have to feel this sense of rapture every time
Speaker 1: I fire up my laptop. Oh joy, I get to work,
Speaker 1: you know. And and the reality is that nobody feels
Speaker 1: that way. You know. We get glimpses of people feeling
Speaker 1: They're like, I have probably about as much latitude to
Speaker 1: craft my days as anybody could in their work. I mean,
Speaker 1: I largely I direct myself. I create my own projects
Speaker 1: that create I basically live off of the value that
Speaker 1: I create for for clients or in the books I write,
Speaker 1: or whatever it is. Um and I can choose whatever
Speaker 1: work I want to do. And there are a lot
Speaker 1: of things that I do that I don't like. I
Speaker 1: don't like the task themselves, but I love the outcome.
Speaker 1: I'm passionate about the outcome of freeing up creatives to
Speaker 1: to be more of who they are, to bring more
Speaker 1: value to to their work. And so you know, that's
Speaker 1: that's just one example. I mean, another thing I don't
Speaker 1: like writing, I can't. I mean, I've written two books.
Speaker 1: I'm in the middle of writing a third book right now.
Speaker 1: I don't like to write. You know, It's just kind
Speaker 1: of a weird thing for an author to say. But
Speaker 1: but books are the best way for me to communicate
Speaker 1: a message. And I'm so committed to the outcome that
Speaker 1: I endure the work of writing, right um. And so
Speaker 1: you know, I think all of us have to ask
Speaker 1: when we're talked about defining our battles, what is the
Speaker 1: outcome that I am committed to. What is the thing
Speaker 1: that the line that I draw that I say not
Speaker 1: on my watch, This is not going to happen on
Speaker 1: my watch. I'm gonna stand in the gap. This is
Speaker 1: what I'm fighting for. It's my through line, It's the
Speaker 1: thing that connects all of my activities together. UM, and
Speaker 1: I think that once we come to terms with what
Speaker 1: that is, and it's it's probably not a job, it's
Speaker 1: probably not an activity, it's probably not a career or
Speaker 1: a career set. It's probably some that transcends all of
Speaker 1: those things. And once we identify what that is that
Speaker 1: we believe that we're is being called out of us
Speaker 1: that battle, it completely changes the game. Because I could
Speaker 1: do what I do. I mean, and I have done
Speaker 1: it in various settings, right. I've done it through what
Speaker 1: I'm doing now, I've done in other jobs. I do
Speaker 1: it in other spheres of my life, in relationships with organizations.
Speaker 1: I volunteer my time to do it with people, right Because, um,
Speaker 1: once you identify that through line, it becomes sort of
Speaker 1: the thematic the thematic thread for for your life and
Speaker 1: for your work. Um, and so I think it's important
Speaker 1: for all of us to stop and ask those questions,
Speaker 1: you know, what battles am I fighting? What? What? What
Speaker 1: is so important to me that I'm committed to the
Speaker 1: outcome regardless of the consequences. There's Uh. You say in
Speaker 1: the book that there are three things that people need
Speaker 1: to go through in order to sort of die empty,
Speaker 1: which is a great book title. UM not. It's strikingly
Speaker 1: close to my co hosts latest memoir, which I think
Speaker 1: was Die Empty, Screaming and Alone. UM no better. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's hope not. Um. But you talk about and you
Speaker 1: talk about needing to do mapping making and then meshing. Um,
Speaker 1: and then you go on to describe people who only
Speaker 1: do one or two of those things. So if you
Speaker 1: could first describe for us what it is mapping, making
Speaker 1: and messing, then I want to ask you a couple
Speaker 1: of questions about what happens if you do one and
Speaker 1: not the other. Yeah. So, so we tend to, you know,
Speaker 1: we tend to think of work as this giant, uh,
Speaker 1: sort of conglomeration of this mess of activities and tasks
Speaker 1: and plans and goals and strategies and all these things.
Speaker 1: But really you can, if you, if you really look
Speaker 1: at the work you do, you can kind of parse
Speaker 1: it out into three discrete buckets. Now they're not clean buckets,
Speaker 1: I mean, some things transcend one bucket or the other. Um,
Speaker 1: but you can kind of generally categorize work into three
Speaker 1: separate buckets, the first being mapping and mapping is planning,
Speaker 1: it's strategy, it's sitting down making lists, doing strategic plans,
Speaker 1: figuring out what you're going to do. So it's planning
Speaker 1: what it is you're going to do in order to
Speaker 1: be successful. The second kind is making and this is
Speaker 1: probably what most of us get paid for. It's checking
Speaker 1: tasks off of lists. It's doing the things that you
Speaker 1: planned during mapping phase UM And a lot of people
Speaker 1: when they when they think of work, they've think of
Speaker 1: really those two things, mapping and making. I plan and
Speaker 1: I do. I plan and I do. But there's a
Speaker 1: third kind of work that we often neglect, especially when
Speaker 1: things get busy, and this is what I call meshing.
Speaker 1: Meshing is all of the work that ties your work together.
Speaker 1: It's things like we just talked about defining your battles,
Speaker 1: figuring out what is the thematic thread of my life
Speaker 1: and my work, and how can I build more of
Speaker 1: my mapping and making around that thematic thread. It's things
Speaker 1: like developing yourself intellectually, things like setting goals and making
Speaker 1: sure that you understand um where you're headed with your
Speaker 1: work so that you're not aimless. It's things like developing relationships,
Speaker 1: building into relationships. So it's all the work between the work,
Speaker 1: and those are the things that often get lost when
Speaker 1: we get really, really busy. So for example, let's say
Speaker 1: you're really great at mapping and making, but you're not meshing.
Speaker 1: And this is where a lot of people, I think,
Speaker 1: get off the rails when things get busy. We're planning
Speaker 1: and we're doing. We're planning and we're doing, but we're
Speaker 1: not stepping back to look at our life and say,
Speaker 1: where am I going? Where is all this taking me?
Speaker 1: Am I still even working on the right problem? Um,
Speaker 1: they're not developing themselves mentally, they're not sharpening their skills
Speaker 1: and growing. I call this profile of the driver. Um.
Speaker 1: The driver is the person who's very nose down. They're
Speaker 1: getting a lot done. And drivers tend to be very successful.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you probably experienced this in various work settings
Speaker 1: you've been in. Drivers tend to be very successful, especially
Speaker 1: early in their career, because they're very driven, the very ambitious.
Speaker 1: They get a lot done. They take a lot of
Speaker 1: their broad shoulders, but they're not and so because of it,
Speaker 1: they get out ahead right, But they're not doing the
Speaker 1: little things to continuously develop themselves, to step back and
Speaker 1: redefine the problems, to think about their work systemically and strategically,
Speaker 1: and so oftentimes they end up making really great progress,
Speaker 1: but they're not making strategic progress um, in their life
Speaker 1: and in their career, and so so they can kind
Speaker 1: of get off the rails. So they have to focus
Speaker 1: on meshing as well if they want to be effective. Now,
Speaker 1: my personal inclination, UM is that I tend to to
Speaker 1: map quite a bit, and I tend to mesh quite
Speaker 1: a bit, but I sometimes struggle with the making part
Speaker 1: of it. Um. And uh, this is well, I actually
Speaker 1: flow back and forth between this one another. This is
Speaker 1: this is what we could call the dreamer, right, the
Speaker 1: dreamer of the people who have big plans. They have
Speaker 1: a lot that they want to do, and they're great
Speaker 1: at developing themselves, developing their skills, and but they're they're
Speaker 1: not actually getting around to doing the stuff that they're planning,
Speaker 1: and this is a real problem. Um. The one that
Speaker 1: really kind of eats my lunch on a regular basis
Speaker 1: is is another profile that I call um the drifter.
Speaker 1: And yeah, yeah, yeah, and so the drifter, uh, is
Speaker 1: really great at making and they're really great at meshing.
Speaker 1: So they're getting a lot done and they're meshing, but there,
Speaker 1: there's not really. They lack the conviction of a strategic plan, right,
Speaker 1: so they don't understand where all of it is going.
Speaker 1: So they tend to bounce from thing to thing, to
Speaker 1: thing to thing, the thing, whatever shiny new project comes along,
Speaker 1: our new idea comes along, they get it going, and
Speaker 1: then they hit what Scott Belsky calls the project plateau,
Speaker 1: where they, you know, a shiny new project comes along
Speaker 1: and think, oh, that looks more exciting than what I'm
Speaker 1: working on right now, So they jump to the next project.
Speaker 1: And so they tend to leave a bunch of half
Speaker 1: finished projects in their wake. Um. And that's that, Frankly,
Speaker 1: that tends to be where I, um, I I really
Speaker 1: struggle as well. Um. And and so the the the
Speaker 1: challenge there is, I think a lot of times you
Speaker 1: need accountability, you need relationships, um, you need deadlines for
Speaker 1: for projects. You know, you need people breathing down your neck.
Speaker 1: I know that's I've had to bake that into my
Speaker 1: life and into my work in order to make sure
Speaker 1: that I actually finish what I start, because otherwise I
Speaker 1: will bounce some thing to think the thing because sometimes
Speaker 1: will lack the conviction of a strategic plan UM. The
Speaker 1: final profile, the most desirable is the developer, and that's
Speaker 1: when you're mapping, making and meshing um effectively. And that's
Speaker 1: I believe where all of us want to be long
Speaker 1: term in order to continue to do our best work.
Speaker 1: How did you arrive in the in the spot you
Speaker 1: are as far as um? You know, the Accidental Creative
Speaker 1: That book was both of the books sort of tied
Speaker 1: together about how to do your best work targeted at
Speaker 1: creative professionals. What was your background that sort of led
Speaker 1: you to this message? Yeah? So, um all, I always
Speaker 1: tell people everything that I write about comes from painful experience. UM,
Speaker 1: you know, painful personal experience. So, I mean, I've done
Speaker 1: a ton of research obviously, but a lot of it
Speaker 1: is um the result of my own experiences and then
Speaker 1: interviews with other people who have had similar pain similar
Speaker 1: experiences and what they've discovered to be true. So um,
Speaker 1: back in two thousand five, I was leading a team
Speaker 1: of people. UM. For for several years before I was
Speaker 1: leading a team of people, we were really struggling. We
Speaker 1: were working a ton um. I mean, you know, seventy
Speaker 1: hour week kind of work, and U'm just just doing
Speaker 1: crazy stuff to try to create value. And I started
Speaker 1: asking some of my creative director friends at organizations, hey,
Speaker 1: how do you keep your team healthy in the midst
Speaker 1: of this? And they looked at me like I had
Speaker 1: three heads, What do you mean keep them healthy? I
Speaker 1: mean we just burned through people and bring in a
Speaker 1: fresh crop, right. And I'm like, well, doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: the right solutions that you know. Um, it might be
Speaker 1: organizationally expedient, but it doesn't seem like the best way
Speaker 1: to really build a loyal team and help people produce
Speaker 1: their their value and um. And so I started doing
Speaker 1: a ton of research about how are people doing this effectively? Um?
Speaker 1: And then I created a podcast in two thousand five
Speaker 1: called The Accidental Creative, and the idea of the podcast
Speaker 1: was really just to share some of the things I
Speaker 1: was learning about, UM, how teams seem to be most healthy,
Speaker 1: how they seem to function most in the most healthy way. Um.
Speaker 1: And then I also was doing some freelance like idea
Speaker 1: generations and freelance creative work as well at the time,
Speaker 1: and so some of these teams that would bring me
Speaker 1: in to generate ideas or do other things um. Slowly
Speaker 1: but surely, they started saying Hey, UM, this would be
Speaker 1: great if you could come help us to generate ideas.
Speaker 1: But you know that podcast episode about the role of
Speaker 1: fear and organizations. Could could you just come and spend
Speaker 1: an hour talking with our team about that? Okay, sure, um,
Speaker 1: And so over time that gradually became more and more
Speaker 1: of the thing I was doing, and I realized, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is probably the place that that I need to be.
Speaker 1: So I actually I launched my business and was still
Speaker 1: doing ideation work UM, but more and more just working
Speaker 1: with teams to help them talk about the dynamics. Because
Speaker 1: we're really great about talking about how we do the work,
Speaker 1: but we're not great at talking about why we're doing
Speaker 1: the work and talking about the process of the work.
Speaker 1: So you know, we we were very good about objectives
Speaker 1: and deadlines and systems and all of those things, but
Speaker 1: there are a lot of intangibles that happened in the
Speaker 1: midst of that, especially when you're dealing with the uncertain
Speaker 1: environment of creative work. We have to solve problems every day,
Speaker 1: and when you have to do it on demand. So
Speaker 1: that's really, um where my work UM really directed me.
Speaker 1: It was it was more because clients were saying, hey,
Speaker 1: can you come talk about this? And that then fueled
Speaker 1: the research, which then, you know, a couple of years
Speaker 1: later led to the first book, and then you know,
Speaker 1: a couple of years after that led to the book
Speaker 1: Die Empty. So um, but by the time I wrote
Speaker 1: the second book, I had you know, many many years
Speaker 1: of experience, um, working with teams. But then also, um,
Speaker 1: you're really just kind of delving into some of the
Speaker 1: real key pain points for people who are trying to
Speaker 1: create value and people who want to create value, but
Speaker 1: they just seemed to continue to hit the wall and
Speaker 1: they can't seem to surmount the wall. Great, what could
Speaker 1: you give? Uh? You talk a lot in your book
Speaker 1: about that regular practices, you know, you you say that
Speaker 1: you know, incorporating certain practices into your work can help
Speaker 1: with these things. Are there any that somebody could listen
Speaker 1: to this podcast and then go and do You've got
Speaker 1: a couple of recommendations of simpler things to start with
Speaker 1: that that might help people to do their best work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I'll just I'll give you one first of all,
Speaker 1: because this is the one that I started with in
Speaker 1: two thousand one, UM, and that really became the the
Speaker 1: core practice that transformed my life, my career, the way
Speaker 1: that I saw all my my role in the marketplace,
Speaker 1: all of these things came really from this core central practice.
Speaker 1: And it's not something that, um, you know, I wish
Speaker 1: I could say something that is going to completely blow
Speaker 1: people's minds, but the reality is, most of the things
Speaker 1: we need to do, we already know, we just aren't
Speaker 1: doing them. Um you know, it's common sense, is not
Speaker 1: common practice, and it's not what you know, it's what
Speaker 1: you do the matter. So the thing that I found
Speaker 1: been the most transformative of my life and the life
Speaker 1: of the people I work with is building time into
Speaker 1: your life on a daily basis to stop to read,
Speaker 1: to absorb stimuli, to commune with great minds, to to think, um,
Speaker 1: to study, and then to process what it is you're reading.
Speaker 1: So if you do nothing but build an hour into
Speaker 1: your morning, so get up an hour earlier, spend half
Speaker 1: of that time reading some something that you think is
Speaker 1: going to be relevant to your work, and then spend
Speaker 1: a half hour writing, processing, thinking about what you just read,
Speaker 1: how it applies to the work that you're doing. It's
Speaker 1: gonna it will radically change how you approach your work,
Speaker 1: and it will radically improve your ability to come up
Speaker 1: with ideas in the course of your work. UM. Joseph
Speaker 1: Campbell I wrote about this in and Die Empty. Joseph
Speaker 1: Campbell had this concept he called the bliss station. And
Speaker 1: the bliss station is uh the place in your life
Speaker 1: where you do nothing but feed your soul. You read
Speaker 1: books that inspire you, um, you look at art that
Speaker 1: inspires you. You know. He said, everybody in their life
Speaker 1: has to find their bliss station. They have to find
Speaker 1: that place in their life that they go where they're alone,
Speaker 1: where nobody's judging them, nobody's looking at them, but they're
Speaker 1: just doing whatever it takes to feed their soul, to
Speaker 1: feed their mind, to develop themselves intellectually, to develop their curiosity.
Speaker 1: So I believe that if there's if people listening to
Speaker 1: this do nothing but that one practice, build uncompromisable time
Speaker 1: into your life to study, to think and to write
Speaker 1: and to process um, what you're what you're learning. It
Speaker 1: will transform your life and your work. I think that
Speaker 1: process part is particularly key, right. I think we're in
Speaker 1: a we're in a time in civilization where we just
Speaker 1: so many of us, as as professionals of different sorts,
Speaker 1: are always sorbing this blog article, that blog article, this podcast.
Speaker 1: But it's that processing time that I know I'm guilty
Speaker 1: of missing, right, just bringing more in, bringing more in,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't really add value unless I find a
Speaker 1: way to integrate it into my life. And that that
Speaker 1: is a matter of slowing down and not bringing more in,
Speaker 1: but doing more with what comes in. Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: exactly right. And uh, you know Keith Ferrazzie, who I
Speaker 1: interviewed for the book The Accident and Creative, so that
Speaker 1: he spends an hour of processing time for every hour
Speaker 1: of reading time that he does, because you think, so
Speaker 1: processing is is as important as the reading, and it is.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're not stopping to think, you might
Speaker 1: as well not be doing anything. I this for me,
Speaker 1: that principle became clear to me. I think it was
Speaker 1: maybe a couple of years after I built this practice
Speaker 1: into my life and I suddenly I was reading a
Speaker 1: book that I checked out from the library and at
Speaker 1: the point I was reading, I don't know, like seventy
Speaker 1: eight books a year, ninety books a year or something
Speaker 1: like that, and um, I was reading a book and
Speaker 1: I thought, boy, this sounds this, this all seems vaguely familiar.
Speaker 1: To me, boy, where have I where? Somebody else said
Speaker 1: something and I realized I'd already read the book. And
Speaker 1: I was about halfway into it before I realized I'd
Speaker 1: already read it. And I thought, if I'm rereading a
Speaker 1: book and I'm just now halfway in and I'm realizing
Speaker 1: I've already read it, I'm obviously not thinking about and
Speaker 1: applying the things I'm reading. So I slowed down my
Speaker 1: reading and I built in processing time so that that
Speaker 1: wouldn't happen to get you know, because I want to
Speaker 1: make sure that anything that I'm putting into my mind
Speaker 1: is useful to me um and can be can be
Speaker 1: leveraged in the course of my life, might work my relationships. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that we're getting near to the end of
Speaker 1: our time. Is there anything else you would want to
Speaker 1: add that we have not covered related to either the
Speaker 1: book or our overall theme. Yeah, I would just I
Speaker 1: would say, you know, the about a decade ago. Um
Speaker 1: I was in the meeting and and um uh. The
Speaker 1: guy who was leading the meeting asked the question. He said,
Speaker 1: you know, what do you think the most valuable land
Speaker 1: in the world? Right? And I'm like, well, I don't
Speaker 1: know Uh, you know, everybody starts throwing on guesses. Um,
Speaker 1: the oil fields of the Middle East, right, or the
Speaker 1: diamond minds of South Africa are all these things. And
Speaker 1: he said, I I believe the most dialable land in
Speaker 1: the world is the graveyard, because in the graveyard are
Speaker 1: buried all of the unwritten novels, all of the unlaunched businesses,
Speaker 1: all of the things that that people said, I'm going
Speaker 1: to get around to that tomorrow. I'll start that tomorrow.
Speaker 1: And they pushed it, and they pushed it into the future. Uh.
Speaker 1: And one day there tomorrow's ran out. They reached the
Speaker 1: book end of their life, and all of that value
Speaker 1: was buried with them dead in the ground. And I
Speaker 1: think one of the ways that we feed the bad
Speaker 1: wolf is by telling ourselves the lie that, well, I've
Speaker 1: got tomorrow, right, I'll just wait till tomorrow, I'll start
Speaker 1: it tomorrow, I'll do it tomorrow. And we push it.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's because of comfort or because of apathy or
Speaker 1: aimlessness or boredom or whatever it is, but we push
Speaker 1: it into the future. And so that day I went
Speaker 1: home from that that meeting, and I wrote two words
Speaker 1: on an index card and I put them on the
Speaker 1: wall of my office and put them in my notebook,
Speaker 1: and they've been the defining ethic of my life for
Speaker 1: the last decade. And those two words were die empty,
Speaker 1: because I want to know at the end of my life,
Speaker 1: if I have not laid my head down with all
Speaker 1: of my best work still inside of me, you know
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna get everything out. Nobody gets to do that.
Speaker 1: I hope I die with more ambition, more hopes, more
Speaker 1: dreams than I had the day before. But but I
Speaker 1: want to lay my head down knowing I've lived my
Speaker 1: life by design, not by default, that I have done
Speaker 1: everything I can in my power to get the things
Speaker 1: in my life out of me that were most important
Speaker 1: to add value to the world around me. And I
Speaker 1: want to die empty of regret, but full of satisfaction
Speaker 1: for a life well lived. So, if if I could
Speaker 1: wish anything for the listeners of this show, just be
Speaker 1: purposeful today. Don't wait until tomorrow. Don't abdicate your contribution.
Speaker 1: You have not only the opportunity, but the responsibility to
Speaker 1: bring whatever is inside of you into the world so
Speaker 1: that others can share in that value. Well, that is
Speaker 1: an absolutely stunning way to end. So uh, Todd, thanks
Speaker 1: so much. I enjoyed the book. UM, I enjoyed this
Speaker 1: interview a lot, and UH look forward to talking with
Speaker 1: you more in the future. Thanks so much, great, Thank
Speaker 1: you her, Okay, take care. You can learn more about
Speaker 1: this podcast and Todd Henry and our show notes at
Speaker 1: one you feed dot net slash Todd