0:00

Hi everyone, this is Todd Henry. My new book,

0:02

The Brave Habit, is available now wherever books are

0:04

sold. In paperback, ebook, and audiobook. I

0:06

think it's my favorite book I've ever written. And a

0:08

lot of people are telling me it's their favorite book

0:11

as well. I think you're going to like it. So

0:13

check it out wherever books are sold or

0:16

at thebravehabit.com. Now,

0:18

on with the show. Once

0:22

upon a time, in a remote village, there

0:24

was a young archer who worked tirelessly to

0:26

master his craft. From a

0:28

young age, he practiced rigorously to become

0:30

so skilled, so accurate, that he eventually

0:32

surpassed even his master. Unsatisfied

0:34

to stop there, he decided to leave

0:37

his small village in search of a

0:39

new master, one who could hone and

0:41

perfect his abilities. From town

0:43

to town he roamed, yet he was

0:45

met with disappointment after disappointment. After

0:48

years of searching, he nearly surrendered, until one

0:50

day, when roaming the forest, he noticed an

0:52

arrow lodged into the center of a target

0:54

affixed to a tree trunk. It

0:57

was a perfect bullseye. Impressive.

1:00

Journeying on, he found another, and

1:03

another, and another, until

1:06

there were too many to count. In

1:08

every direction, he was surrounded by

1:10

perfectly placed arrow after perfectly placed

1:12

arrow. Finally, he

1:14

had found the master he had been searching for

1:16

all these many years. He

1:19

sprinted as fast as he could to the nearest

1:21

village and begged every passerby, Please,

1:23

I must reach this master,

1:26

one greater than I. Upon

1:28

kneeling at his newfound master's feet,

1:30

he made his request. Good sir,

1:32

your skills are unmatched. Please reveal

1:34

to me the secret of your

1:36

technique. The master replied, Well,

1:39

it's quite simple, my son. I

1:41

first fire the arrow, and then I paint

1:43

the bullseye around it. When

1:49

it comes to ideas, it seems like some people

1:51

just know how to hit the center of the

1:53

target time and time again. They

1:55

consistently strike brilliance. How

1:57

do they do it? Are they cheating?

2:00

Or are they just really that good? And

2:03

how can mere mortals like us become

2:05

masters of our craft too? On

2:08

today's show, we learned the secret to coming

2:10

up with more ideas and better ideas not

2:12

just for now, but for years

2:14

to come. This

2:16

is Daily Creative, my name is Todd Henry.

2:19

Welcome to the show. The

2:26

sun is shining, the smells of

2:29

hot dogs, peanuts, and America's favorite

2:31

pastime are in the air. It's

2:34

the bottom of the ninth and the home team

2:36

is trailing by one. With

2:39

two outs and a runner at first, the

2:41

batter steps up to the plate. But

2:44

not just any batter, a record setter. Unfortunately

2:47

it's just not the record you're hoping

2:49

for. This

2:53

particular batter holds the record for the

2:56

most strikeouts in a single season. At

2:59

the moment you need the best, you're stuck with

3:01

the worst. Strike

3:03

one. Strike

3:10

two. Strike... It's

3:12

a high fly ball to center field. It's

3:17

called cold run. As

3:21

the game-winning runner rounds third and heads

3:23

for home, the crowd baths in the

3:25

glory and euphoria of the miracle they

3:27

just witnessed. Only it wasn't necessarily as

3:29

miraculous as you might think. In fact,

3:32

a lot of fans expected nothing less

3:34

from this particular batter. Because

3:36

even though he's the worst, he just

3:38

so happens to also be the greatest

3:40

of all time. In

3:44

1923, Babe Ruth broke the record for

3:46

the most home runs in a single

3:48

season. By

3:50

the end of his career, he would amass 714 total home runs. They

3:55

don't call him the Sultan of Swat, the

3:57

great Bambino for nothing. But in that

3:59

same season he won the home run title

4:01

he broke another record. In 1923

4:04

Babe Ruth struck out more times than

4:07

any other player in major league baseball.

4:09

In fact by the time he retired in 1935 he

4:11

held the all-time strikeout record

4:13

with 1330, a record that would stand for nearly 30 years

4:15

until it was broken

4:20

by Mickey Mantle in 1964.

4:23

The greatest home run hitter of the

4:26

entire first half of the 20th century

4:28

struck out nearly twice as much as

4:30

he sent it over the fence. Do

4:32

the math. At three pitches per

4:35

strikeout that's nearly 4,000 swings

4:37

that came to nothing and

4:39

that's not just counting all the at bats

4:41

where he got a strike but didn't

4:43

strike out likely thousands more. Baseball

4:46

is a funny sport it literally takes

4:48

thousands upon thousands of swings just to

4:50

get a few hundred home runs and

4:53

if a player has a batting average of about

4:55

300 they're going to the hall of fame. Two-thirds

4:58

of the time you step up to the

5:00

plate you don't even get a hit and

5:02

you're considered one of the best to ever

5:04

play. Well the

5:06

truth is creative work is a funny

5:09

sport too. It's tempting

5:11

to look at all of the home runs of

5:13

other players in the league and forget about all

5:15

the strikes it took just to land

5:17

one arrow on the bull's eye to

5:20

mix metaphors. If you

5:22

want to do brilliant work there's no way around

5:24

it. You have to take a lot

5:26

of swims. The question is

5:29

what's stopping you? Overthinking.

5:31

If we can get as quickly

5:33

as we can from imagination to action

5:36

we get farther with the idea all

5:38

of those things we do to talk

5:40

ourselves out of ideas don't have time to

5:42

take hold. That's Becky Blades.

5:44

She's the author of Start More Than

5:47

You Can Finish, a creative permission slip

5:49

to unleash your best ideas. I

5:51

am good at starting things. I lamented

5:53

and had a lot of shame about all

5:55

these things I didn't finish perhaps

5:57

because I ran a creative business.

6:00

I had a marketing firm for

6:02

many years and I had learned

6:04

to put value monetizing and putting

6:07

value on creative time so whatever

6:09

didn't get used seemed like a

6:11

waste. If you listen to

6:13

last week's episode, this is a theme that

6:15

comes up over and over again in creative

6:18

work, over optimization. One

6:21

of the negative side effects of quote,

6:23

billing time is that any time that

6:25

isn't directly billable looks like a waste.

6:28

By the way, I'm not naive, sometimes

6:30

that's exactly what it is, but that

6:32

system has a way of conditioning us

6:35

to fixate on avoiding waste instead of

6:37

pursuing brilliance. Avoiding

6:39

strikes instead of swinging for the fences.

6:42

The net result being that we think long

6:44

and hard, often too long and hard about

6:46

whether or not we should start something. Will

6:49

it be worth it? Is it a good idea? What

6:52

if it's not? How can I justify

6:54

the investment? Why should I choose

6:56

to work on this idea over that idea? But

6:59

one of the biggest, most problematic questions we

7:01

use to justify not taking action is this.

7:04

Why would I start something if I'm

7:06

not absolutely certain I could or even

7:09

should finish it? This

7:11

is such a dangerous question if for

7:13

no other reason than it's one of

7:15

the questions that sounds strategic. The

7:17

fact is so many of us

7:19

sacrifice our best ideas on the

7:21

altar of responsibility. We hear

7:23

the voices. There they go again. Why

7:26

can't they be more disciplined? When are

7:28

they going to grow up and finish what they started? I

7:31

went through in an introspective time.

7:33

I actually counted my unfinished work.

7:35

I did a self-analysis and then

7:37

I came to understand that my

7:40

ability to act on my ideas

7:42

is really an amazing strength. I

7:44

studied old masters. I studied

7:46

old composers and really

7:49

one example would be Mozart

7:51

who didn't have a better hit

7:53

rate than any of his contemporaries. He just started

7:55

more music. So

8:01

the archer in the woods had more bullseyes because

8:03

he shot more arrows. Babe Ruth had more home

8:05

runs because he took more swings. As

8:08

a result, do you have a lot of

8:10

strikeouts? Sure, a record-breaking amount. But

8:13

he didn't hit more home runs in spite of

8:15

his strikeouts. He hit more home runs because of

8:17

them. Talented people

8:19

need to take more swings.

8:22

I've finished a lot of things, but

8:25

it really occurred to me that in both

8:27

our creative work and life, saying

8:30

focus on the finish and finish is

8:32

planned and don't take on more

8:34

than you can finish does not make us

8:36

finish more. It just makes us start less.

8:39

What if you took this seriously? I mean,

8:41

what if you stop putting all the value

8:43

on the finish and instead saw the start

8:45

for what it really is? What

8:48

if you had permission to start as many

8:50

things as you want, guilt-free, no

8:53

judgment? One system I

8:55

recommend is to start starting something

8:57

every day to try to get

8:59

a feel for how easily some

9:01

ideas come out of you and

9:03

how you recognize that an idea

9:05

doesn't have legs and kind of

9:08

use a system that's easy for

9:10

you. I have a wild idea

9:12

system. I'll write the big audacious

9:14

wildest idea and what problems it's

9:16

solving and then go into

9:18

what would that mean for me? How

9:21

much joy and passion does that give me? And

9:23

usually in about 30 minutes, I can

9:25

realize that, oh, this sounds fun to

9:27

talk about, but at this stage in

9:29

life, I'm probably not going to do this.

9:32

But here's the fun thing. We're really talking

9:34

about honoring our ideas. As I think you

9:36

wrote in one of your books, we are

9:38

not always meant to finish

9:41

every idea we come up with. Some ideas

9:43

are meant for the universe. We

9:45

can hand them off. Also, you think about

9:47

the fact that some of the biggest ideas

9:49

in history were never finished in a

9:51

person's lifetime. The cathedrals, the

9:54

research was not finished by one

9:56

person in one lifetime. So sometimes just

9:59

starting. is the joy, is the

10:02

exploration. We don't have

10:04

to get all our gratification from the

10:06

trophy and the finish. You

10:09

can hear my full interview with Becky Blades

10:11

where she explains her process for starting more

10:13

than you can finish in

10:15

the Daily Creative app at dailycreative.app.

10:21

So let's say you're someone who's willing

10:23

to throw caution to the wind and

10:25

start more, finish or not. Is

10:28

that all it takes to punch your

10:30

ticket to brilliance, notoriety and industry accolades?

10:32

Well, probably not. On

10:35

a chilly morning, December 17, 1903, near the dunes of

10:38

Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, two brothers

10:41

changed the course of human history.

10:44

Orville and Wilbur Wright were self-taught inventors and

10:46

visionaries who refused to believe that if God

10:48

wanted humans to fly, He would have given

10:51

them wings. For years,

10:53

they poured over the work of their

10:55

predecessors and tinkered in their bicycle

10:57

shop where they'd been quietly engineering the

10:59

impossible. As the

11:02

Wright Flyer, a fragile fabrication of

11:04

wooden cloth, sat on the dunes

11:06

poised for takeoff, Orville

11:08

sat poised to man the

11:10

world's first successful flight of

11:12

a heavier-than-air aircraft. The

11:14

first flight lasted 12 seconds and covered 120

11:17

feet. Later that day, Wilbur

11:19

took his turn. Back and

11:22

forth they went, making four flights in

11:24

total, the longest lasting 59 seconds

11:26

and covering 852

11:28

feet. It was

11:30

the start of something big. Orville

11:33

and Wilbur had grit, determination, vision,

11:35

courage and perseverance. But you know

11:37

what they didn't have? A pilot's

11:41

license. Write the book you

11:43

need to read right now. Like whatever book you

11:45

need or like whatever book you need to write,

11:47

like write it right now. Don't think, oh

11:50

you know I'll get a few years under my

11:52

belt and then I'll sit down and write it.

11:54

It's like whatever's calling to you just write it

11:56

right now. That's Austin Kleon, author of Steel Like

11:58

an Artist and a lead- giving voice on

12:00

Thriving as a Creative Pro. I

12:03

was about to write a book right before the pandemic

12:05

hit. And then I was like, oh,

12:07

I can't do it now. The pandemic, oh, my kids are

12:09

home, you know. And like, if I

12:11

had just sat down and wrote the book that I need

12:13

to read right then, it'd be here. And

12:15

I'd have done my future self a

12:18

favor and all my readers a favor

12:20

too. You know, so it's like that

12:22

thing, like, I feel like I'm grateful

12:24

to that dude back then for putting

12:26

down Steel like an artist and being

12:28

unafraid, you know, being unafraid because now

12:30

I'm very afraid. Like, I have a lot

12:33

to lose now. There's just something really powerful

12:35

about that. If there's one thing we're all

12:37

good at, it's coming up with sensible reasons

12:39

why we shouldn't do something. No

12:41

matter how determined you are to start starting

12:44

more today, don't be surprised at how easy

12:46

it is to convince yourself to punt to

12:48

tomorrow. My advice to you, start

12:51

more and act now. And

12:54

as you do, you'll discover that there are

12:56

plenty of things you started that you're not

12:58

going to finish. Congratulations, because you'll also find

13:01

many more things that are worth persevering for,

13:03

especially if you embrace what I've personally found

13:06

to be the key to pursuing brilliance, creating

13:09

in parallel. It's

13:11

an inevitable consequence. The more you start, the

13:13

more you'll have going, even if you choose

13:16

not to finish most of it. For

13:18

a lot of us, that's unsettling because it

13:21

feels like we're dividing our attention and undermining

13:23

our productivity. You chase two

13:25

hairs and you catch neither. And

13:28

it's not that you can't create sequentially like

13:30

that. I call that chain smoking. There's like

13:32

an ember of the last thing that used

13:34

to light up the next one. And that,

13:36

you can sail through 10 years doing that.

13:38

You know, that's like how Joni Mitchell says

13:40

she works. She says, you know,

13:43

whatever I didn't cover, whatever weird

13:45

thing popped up in the last

13:48

album that didn't feel finished or

13:50

addressed. That's what I used to light

13:52

up the next one. So again, it's

13:54

not that you can't create sequentially chain

13:56

smoking style as Austin calls it, but

13:59

also give yourself permission. to create in

14:01

parallel. This concept came up

14:03

in my conversation with Andy J. Pizza,

14:05

illustrator and host of the creative pep

14:07

talk podcast, as well as a New

14:09

York Times bestselling author. I

14:11

was asking about how do you know what

14:13

book to write? And I loved your answer

14:16

of like, well, you don't have to just

14:18

write one at a time. And I think

14:20

that gets at a real cultural myth, this

14:22

idea that you need to be working on

14:24

your next album and whatever that album is,

14:26

or your next song, or whatever it is,

14:28

like, you know, you're on the assembly line,

14:30

this piece goes on to that piece, that

14:33

piece, and there's a very strict order. Whereas

14:35

it was kind of revolutionary to start

14:38

thinking about it the way that you

14:40

were describing where you don't have to

14:42

just pick a book and write it, you're

14:44

probably going to do a few. Personally,

14:49

this is how I create, I

14:52

write multiple books at once over long periods

14:54

of time and fits and starts, no pun

14:56

intended. Some may say that that's

14:58

not the right way to do it, but it works for

15:00

me. So if you need someone to

15:03

tell you it's okay for you to work that way as well,

15:05

I'd be happy to be that voice. In

15:07

the end, the goal is to start more

15:09

and take action. So any advice that makes

15:11

it harder for you to do that, maybe

15:14

not such good advice. Do

15:16

what works for you. But

15:19

there's one thing we haven't addressed yet,

15:22

which is sustainability, not the save the

15:24

planet kind of sustainability. I more so

15:26

mean sticking with it. It's

15:29

one thing to start more and act now,

15:31

but doing that for the long haul means

15:33

avoiding some of the common traps that sideline

15:36

us. In other words, what

15:38

do you watch out for as you fight to keep

15:40

going? Tim Robinson

15:42

recently won a Golden Globe for his show,

15:44

I Think You Should Leave, a

15:46

sketch comedy show known for its not

15:48

safe for work humor and all around

15:50

absurdity. Not that he's recommending

15:53

you check it out, but Andy J. Pizza is

15:55

a fan. One of my

15:57

favorite skits from there is something that he

15:59

did. and wrote on Saturday Night

16:01

Live. He was a Saturday Night Live writer.

16:04

It made it to air. It was on one of

16:06

the shows, on one of the biggest shows in the

16:08

world. And guess what? He

16:10

just basically did it again. Almost

16:12

verbatim. He didn't even, he didn't

16:14

star in the Saturday Night Live one, so he's in

16:16

the actual skit in this one. But

16:18

guess what? No one cared.

16:21

No one knew. Anybody that did

16:23

know, like, hey, that's the same

16:25

skit, felt amazing to be a

16:27

super fan. That's like, oh man,

16:29

you're never gonna know that that's actually a

16:31

skit that he did, that he wrote for

16:33

Saturday Night Live. And so yeah, I try

16:35

to embody that, like, look, no one's watching

16:37

me that close. That's what I know. No

16:40

one cares to that degree. And that frees

16:42

you up because, first of all, you can

16:44

explore. Second of all, you can repeat yourself.

16:47

Third of all, you can just

16:49

make huge mistakes because nobody's paying attention

16:51

to that degree. ["The

16:54

Star-Spangled Banner"] One

16:57

of the biggest problems that will make you want

16:59

to stop before you've even started is the fear

17:01

of public perception. Not just the

17:03

perception of you as someone who starts more

17:06

than they can finish, but the perception of

17:08

the work you're creating once it leaks out,

17:10

and it eventually will. What

17:12

if they don't like it? What if

17:14

it feels too imperfect? What if it

17:16

feels too familiar, too similar to something

17:18

you've done before? But letting that stop

17:20

you is tragic because frankly, it's all

17:23

bark and no bite. Believe

17:25

it or not, the world has better things to do

17:27

than to obsess over your every move. Honestly,

17:30

no one's watching that closely. They've

17:33

got far too many other things vying for their attention.

17:36

If Tim Robinson can recycle an idea

17:38

for an audience of millions in an

17:40

attempt to simply keep going, keep producing,

17:42

surely that's permission for you to

17:45

take a deep breath, relax, and

17:47

press publish. And

17:49

as you do, pay special attention to what

17:51

Andy calls the ideas that won't leave you

17:53

alone. All too often,

17:56

we stop working simply because we're just

17:58

not sure what to keep working on. With

18:01

so many new ideas sprouting up, indecision gets

18:03

the best of us. He

18:05

says there's a way to overcome that indecision

18:07

and to identify the ideas that are worth

18:10

sticking with. If it doesn't

18:12

let me go, if I can't

18:14

get enough conversation around it, when the

18:16

passion for the idea outlives the amount

18:18

my wife will talk to me about

18:20

it or, you know, my friend, if

18:22

we go to the bar or go

18:24

to the coffee shop or whatever and

18:26

I'm like, okay, they're done with this? Not.

18:30

I need more. That's

18:32

usually what I have to focus on and

18:34

my book Invisible Things is a great example

18:36

of that because it just would not let

18:38

go. And so, you know, 10 years later

18:40

the picture book comes out because it just

18:43

wouldn't let me. It just wouldn't

18:45

let me give it up. Some ideas are like

18:47

trick candles on the top of your birthday cake.

18:50

Just when you think you snuff them out, they

18:52

reignite. Take that as a sign.

18:55

Those may be the keepers. And

18:57

though I wish I could tell you how to anticipate

19:00

those ideas and plan accordingly, you just never know where

19:02

they're going to come from. But don't

19:04

let that stop you. You're jumping

19:06

from one thing to the next,

19:08

not knowing exactly what's going to

19:10

come next and leaning into

19:12

that not knowing. Ozan Verl

19:15

is an award-winning professor and

19:17

best-selling author. He's an

19:19

expert when it comes to creativity, innovation,

19:21

and critical thinking. He's

19:23

also a rocket scientist. If

19:25

anyone was smart enough to know what's next, it's

19:28

Verl. Yet, he says, life

19:30

is more of a jungle gym, not

19:32

a ladder. There's a quote

19:35

from Rumi that I love. He

19:37

says, as you start to walk

19:39

on the way appears. The implication

19:42

being that the way is not going

19:44

to appear until you actually start walking.

19:46

I think so many people want to

19:48

see the precise destination and want to

19:50

know all of the twists and turns

19:53

with perfect clarity and perfect information before

19:55

they even start walking, which means they

19:57

never move, which means the status quo.

20:00

those decks. But life ends up

20:02

lighting the path ahead only a few steps

20:04

at a time. And as you take each

20:06

step, you go from not knowing

20:09

to knowing, from darkness

20:11

to light. And the only way

20:13

to know what comes next is to start

20:16

walking before you think you're

20:18

ready. I

20:21

hope that you walk away from this episode

20:23

with the courage you need to take more

20:26

swings, to fire more arrows, to put more

20:28

work into the world. Don't

20:30

be afraid to start more than you can finish.

20:34

Make the thing that you need, as

20:36

Austin Kleon suggested. As Andy

20:38

J. Pizza told us, work in parallel because

20:40

you never know which idea might take off.

20:43

And pay special attention to the ideas that

20:46

just won't leave you alone. Finally,

20:48

as Ozan Veral encouraged, recognize that

20:51

the road often will not appear

20:54

until you begin walking. So,

20:56

get started. If

20:59

you'd like to hear full interviews with

21:01

Becky Blades, Austin Kleon, Andy J. Pizza,

21:04

and Ozan Veral, you can find

21:06

them in the Daily Creative app at DailyCreative.app. And

21:10

listen to Andy J. Pizza's podcast called

21:12

Creative Pep Talk, where I was

21:14

a recent guest. On

21:17

next week's episode, we're going to talk about

21:19

creating well with others because that's a critical

21:21

part of our process. If

21:23

you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating

21:25

or review wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps

21:27

others find the show. Or

21:29

subscribe to the app at DailyCreative.app,

21:32

where you can get full interviews,

21:34

daily episodes, courses, and

21:36

much, much more. Daily

21:39

Creative is produced by Joshua Gott, who's

21:41

also our chief story architect. My

21:43

name is Todd Henry. Thanks so much for

21:45

listening. Thank

21:51

you.