Speaker 1: The big catch with a creative business is that the
Speaker 1: more successful you get, the more it can feel like
Speaker 1: a chore instead of a passion. But what if there
Speaker 1: was one thing you could do to ensure the passion stays.
Speaker 1: Ben Shuri is head chef and owner of multi award
Speaker 1: winning Melbourne restaurant Attica, a restaurant that has been featured
Speaker 1: several times on the world's Top fifty Restaurant list. With
Speaker 1: all of this success and all these projects, Ben has
Speaker 1: definitely found demands on his time, and yet he still
Speaker 1: manages to keep that joy and passion with his creative work.
Speaker 1: But how exactly does he do this? Welcome to How
Speaker 1: I Work, a show about habits, rituals, and strategies for
Speaker 1: optimizing your day. I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imber. On
Speaker 1: today's quick Win episode, we go back to an interview
Speaker 1: from the past and I pick out a quick win
Speaker 1: that you can apply today. In my chat with Ben,
Speaker 1: he reveals his simple process for ensuring the passion stays
Speaker 1: in his creative endeavors.
Speaker 2: I think for me it's essential, and I think this
Speaker 2: is for any person that's had a small amount of
Speaker 2: success in any kind of business or any walk of life,
Speaker 2: an evocation is to keep continuing to return to that
Speaker 2: original love and almost sort of in a way that
Speaker 2: you know, the more successful you become, the more distracted
Speaker 2: you can get. And we all know this, and the
Speaker 2: more things that are demanding our attention but are actually
Speaker 2: dragging us away from the thing that we did that
Speaker 2: brought us the success in the first place. So for me,
Speaker 2: it's about returning to cooking constantly and cookings what has
Speaker 2: made me successful. And of course the demands on my
Speaker 2: time are so many now, from poc casts like this,
Speaker 2: to requirements of staff, to running a company with forty employees,
Speaker 2: to all of the other things that I do in
Speaker 2: my life, have a family. I need to keep returning
Speaker 2: to cooking. So it's about finding new ways to return
Speaker 2: to cooking and not just staying in the format, which
Speaker 2: was I turned up at the restaurant at nine am.
Speaker 2: By ten am, I'm cooking now. Sometimes I can't cook
Speaker 2: at ten am. Sometimes it's not till twelve. Sometimes it
Speaker 2: doesn't allow enough time to see an idea through in
Speaker 2: the rest of the day till five when the service
Speaker 2: starts in the restaurant. So sometimes I need to work
Speaker 2: on the idea at home, or the idea starts off
Speaker 2: in the home kitchen as an idea for a dinner party,
Speaker 2: and then it eventually makes its way onto the outer communia.
Speaker 2: So in the last three years that's sort of how
Speaker 2: I've evolved that process. But I've realized fundamentally that thing
Speaker 2: that brings me the most joy in the thing that
Speaker 2: I need to protect is cooking and my ability to
Speaker 2: do it. And of course I'm going to come back
Speaker 2: to that idea of the more successful will you become
Speaker 2: the hard redded is to do the thing that made
Speaker 2: you successful. So I always remind myself of that and
Speaker 2: I think it makes me feel really good as well
Speaker 2: to be able to go.
Speaker 1: You know what.
Speaker 2: I know, there's one hundred emails there, there's an Instagram
Speaker 2: post you've got to do, there's a meeting, somebody needs
Speaker 2: your help, and external of the restaurant. But I do
Speaker 2: need to cook today and I need to make that
Speaker 2: time and get organized to do it. Another thing that
Speaker 2: helps me hugely is having a lot of interests and
Speaker 2: different interests than your occupation or what your passion is,
Speaker 2: because it opens you up to a different world. And
Speaker 2: so whether it's travel or listening to music for me,
Speaker 2: or skateboarding or art or whatever it might be. It
Speaker 2: doesn't matter, really, it's just about having a different sort
Speaker 2: of experience with a different group of people.
Speaker 1: I love that. I don't know if you've heard the
Speaker 1: theory around I shape versus T shaped people. It used
Speaker 1: to be talking about quite a lot in innovation circles,
Speaker 1: where you've got your I shape people that are experts,
Speaker 1: have deep expertise in one particular area, and then you've
Speaker 1: got your T shape people that have that xpertise that
Speaker 1: but then they've also got the top of the tea
Speaker 1: where they've got that breadth of like different interests outside
Speaker 1: of that main interest. And when I was and you know,
Speaker 1: the research would suggest that T shaped people are quite
Speaker 1: a bit more creative than I shape people, which kind
Speaker 1: of makes sense. And when I was reading Uses for
Speaker 1: Obsession and just learning about all these different areas that
Speaker 1: you've gone so deep in, it's like, no won day
Speaker 1: you're so incredibly creative. I do want to ask about
Speaker 1: music because that's clearly a passion, and I love that
Speaker 1: you actually created Spotify and playlists that go with the book.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. How does music help with your creativity and
Speaker 1: what I mean by that, Like, you know, I've spoken
Speaker 1: to various creative people around how they'll use music to
Speaker 1: get in a certain mood for whatever it is they're
Speaker 1: trying to create. How does it help, I guess, boost
Speaker 1: your creativity when it comes to cooking.
Speaker 2: Music's kind of everything, you know, it's a soundtrack for
Speaker 2: my life, and I'll soundtrack my life and almost every
Speaker 2: moment always to music in the kitchen as well. It's
Speaker 2: a way that traditionally chefs have sort of lifted their
Speaker 2: energy at the end of the day, right before service.
Speaker 2: I write about that experience. It's almost like a sporting
Speaker 2: team in the locker room before going out into the pitch.
Speaker 2: The last hour before the restaurant opens. We amplify ourselves
Speaker 2: as we set up frantically for the first guest arriving
Speaker 2: at six o'clock with music, sometimes quite intense music, very
Speaker 2: loud music. It's something that happens with or without me,
Speaker 2: you know, in fact, mostly without me. You know, I'm
Speaker 2: mostly an observer to the kitchen using this as a
Speaker 2: mechanism to get themselves in the right headspace. So at Ataka,
Speaker 2: there's you know, a joke that it has the most
Speaker 2: stereos of any restaurant in the world. This is pretty
Speaker 2: much a stereo in every room, so every person in
Speaker 2: the organization can be listening to music if they want to.
Speaker 2: You know, I just can't imagine creating without it, really,
Speaker 2: you know, I think it's such a useful tool, and
Speaker 2: I always feel so indebted to artists. Another sort of
Speaker 2: very cool kind of fact in restaurants is that, especially
Speaker 2: creative restaurants, it attracts a lot of musicians, and so
Speaker 2: we get to serve and cook for musicians and sometimes
Speaker 2: become friends with them, especially touring musicians, and that's such
Speaker 2: a beautiful thing. I would say that sometimes it creates
Speaker 2: fair bit of nervousness with the playlist in terms of
Speaker 2: will they like it, And in fact, sometimes you know,
Speaker 2: famous musicians come and their music might be on the playlist,
Speaker 2: and I almost feel bad about that because I don't
Speaker 2: want to make them feel uncomfortable. But it's the greatest pleasure,
Speaker 2: you know. I think it's such a gift music.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed this quick Win episode with Ben.
Speaker 1: If you would like to listen to the full interview,
Speaker 1: you can find a link to that in the show notes.
Speaker 1: If you like today's show, make sure you get follow
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Speaker 1: How I Work was recorded on the traditional land of
Speaker 1: the warrangery people, part of the Cooler Nation