549 - This is How Sensitive Creative People Make Big Changes with Eric Zimmer

22:32Creative Pep Talk:So there's the external thing. So if I don't exercise, then I'm not going to get the outer benefit that I wanted. And that's important, right? But there is an internal thing that's happening. And when we don't believe in our ability to change, it deeply erodes our self-trust. And the problem is that that makes everything harder because what we know about motivation is it tends to go up when we feel good about ourselves and confident about our ability to change. And it goes down when we feel bad about ourselves and we doubt our ability to change. So that's partially why I talk about little by little because it's a way to start to rebuild that trust.

23:15Creative Pep Talk:And when you do something that you said you were going to do, you feel good about it. And there's a slight boost to motivation and that there's an upward spiral and there's a downward spiral with this game.

23:27Eric Zimmer:Yeah. And I, the first thing I thought was, uh, making promises to yourself that you maybe know you can keep like, rather than trying to make giant promises and that gets to the little by little thing. Exactly. Yeah. I totally relate to that. And it is essential when I'm going months where I'm saying, I want to do that. I want to eat this way or I want to drink less or I want to do whatever it is. And I'm consistently breaking those intents. My confidence just plummets.

23:59Creative Pep Talk:Yeah. I often use an example of like, imagine you're trying to build a meditation practice.

24:03Eric Zimmer:Yeah. And you set out to do 30 minutes a day and you do it three days that week.

24:10Creative Pep Talk:Yeah. Versus you set out to do it and you say, I'm going to do five minutes a day, but you do it every day. Mm-hmm. From the outside, you'd go, well, option one, you got 90 minutes of meditation. Option two, you got 35 minutes of meditation. You're better off doing the first. But I don't think so.

24:30Eric Zimmer:No.

24:31Creative Pep Talk:Because in the first scenario, you're only going to think about the days you didn't do it and how you failed. Yeah. And you're going to feel worse about yourself. So it's going to be harder to do it. And eventually that downward spiral, you will abandon it. The other approach is, okay, I did five minutes. I feel good about it. I do that for a little while that becomes steady. Okay. If I want to do more now, I try for 10 and you build from there and, and you build confidence in yourself as you go.

24:59Eric Zimmer:Yeah. And the other thing that, uh, I wanted to point out was I love what you said about there is when you're taking actions that are aligned with your values. yes, there is a future outcome that feels good. Yep. But noticing that inner reality that's a positive feeling is so key. And I've noticed that too, where if I have, if I find that sweet spot between this is small enough to know that I can do it and large enough to where I'm seeing some positive growth, that inner feeling of alignment can grow pretty fast. Yes. And that's really essential for me. Another thing that you said that I thought was really powerful to point out was you, by getting really familiar with your values, things that you've decided are important, you named adventure as a really top priority.

25:59And I just think for me, there's something about recapturing the good core that maybe

26:09Eric Zimmer:even led to an addiction. Like maybe at the heart of this, there wasn't something evil or bad. Once you got it out in the open, you'd said, no, I just, adventure matters to me. And that doesn't, there's not just one answer for how to satisfy that value either. Yeah.

26:27Creative Pep Talk:A hundred percent. I mean, I think my addiction in the beginning was all about feeling alive. In the end, it starts to become about numbing pain because the shame is so overwhelming and all of that. But in the beginning, it was all about, it made me feel more alive. And that's what I realized about adventure. I feel most alive when I'm out doing something where I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know where I am. I don't know how to do it. That's where I feel most alive. And so our values don't have to just be a list of like all the droll things in life that we think we should do. It should emanate from who we are and my values are going to be different than your values, but it's okay to have values that are about what makes you feel most you.

27:21Eric Zimmer:100%. So you talk about it a different way, not just wolves, also an elephant. Could you maybe explain that metaphor because it was really helpful for me.

27:31Creative Pep Talk:Yeah. It originally is sort of a Plato type analogy that was redone, I don't know, 20 years ago by Jonathan Haidt, the social psychologist. And it talks about that we all have like an elephant and a rider. And so if you imagine your conscious - In your brain. Yeah. Like if you imagine your conscious self is like a rider on an elephant with the reins. And he's the one who's, or she is the one who's trying to steer the elephant. The challenge is ultimately if the elephant wants to go left and it really wants to, it's going to go left. The rider isn't not going to pull on the reins and make the elephant go the other direction.

28:15Creative Pep Talk:That's our subconscious self, our emotional self, everything that's swirling down underneath. And the point of it is that what we want to do is get the elephant to want to go in the direction that the rider wants. And this is some of what we've been talking about. It's about recognizing, oh, that feels good. Like one of the biggest breakthroughs for me for exercise, and it's not that I don't face resistance because I do, I have no idea why as constantly as I do, Yeah. But a big unlock was it feels good. It may not feel good at the exact moment, even though I've learned to train the elephant even on that, but I feel great right after.

29:01Creative Pep Talk:So that's an elephant thing, noticing that, like, oh good, that feels good after. That's what the elephant wants. The elephant wants to feel better. So when the rider is like, I need to exercise because I want to get my cholesterol down and I want it 30 years from now, the elephant doesn't care. The elephant could care less, right? The elephant wants to feel differently. And so if we can get the elephant wanting to go in that direction, and a lot of that is reinterpreting the way we think about these things.

29:31Eric Zimmer:Yeah. And it feels relevant to a lot of values stuff is connected to where you ultimately want to go, how you wanted to have lived your life, that sort of thing. And that the writer's thinking about, this is where we're headed. I'm trying to get to the town over there. And the elephants wants to feel good now is just seeing things that are in front of it. And it's like, oh, I actually want to go off the path and go this way. Yeah.

29:57Creative Pep Talk:There's a great looking fruit over there and there's a good looking elephant over there. And there's a, you know, yeah.

30:03Eric Zimmer:And I think you're absolutely right that even at the times where I wasn't getting the health results that I thought I should be from running or lifting or whatever, the thing, if I can remind myself of, this is what keeps you happy. This is what makes you feel stable. This is what helps you beat depression. Those immediate, just acknowledging. Yeah. Cause I think my, for a long time, the battle was lost because there was from in my twenties, I definitely thought one wolf was bad. The elephant was bad. Right. How do I just take that out of the equation? Whereas the key ends up being like, hey, you actually do want to go this way.

30:48Eric Zimmer:The stuff you want is also this way.

30:51Creative Pep Talk:Yeah. A hundred percent. And we got to be careful not to turn our desires into a problem.

30:58Eric Zimmer:Yes.

30:58Creative Pep Talk:Now, Eastern philosophy talks a lot about this. And I've been most influenced by Buddhism. I've done a lot of study in Zen and it starts, the Four Noble Truths start with the basic idea that the cause of your suffering is because you want things. You become attached to, you cling to things. So there's a way in which that makes desire a problem. And I think that is a problem. Yeah, we do. Because desire is the energy. It's some of the fuel. And so desire is not the problem. problem. Desires that are misaligned with who we are become a problem. Desires that we focus on to the exclusion of other things in life that are important become a problem.

31:44Creative Pep Talk:But desire itself is not. It is part of the human condition. It feels deeply wired into me. And so yeah, how do we learn to use the energy to point us towards what matters most to us?

32:01Eric Zimmer:I love the way that you framed that. And it's one of the things I really like about Jungian analysts when they talk about, they use a term that you probably feel like you've heard, you have heard it, but it's not used in the way that you think it is. They use the term libido, not just in the sexual desire, but just desire as energy. Yeah. And I have noticed you kind of gave language to something that I've noticed in the past couple years, something that I've really struggled with. Sometimes I'll kind of get a sense of these are my values. This is how I want to live. And really, I'm probably overdoing it, over aspirational, also letting other people's values determine who I should be.

32:45Eric Zimmer:And what ends up happening is I crowd out all desire. And I even, most of the time I can't sustain that just because I can't. But even if I can, sometimes I'll sustain it for a week, two weeks, a month, two months, and all of my energy for life, my zest for life is gone. Yeah. And that's a scary place to be, especially as a creative person where you need that generative energy. And it's a delicate balance because when I'm tapped into that, if I am a slave to the desire to the elephant, it feels like productivity because I'm going from this idea to that idea and this idea and everything. It's so magical when you get, when you really let that thing fly, it can feel very energizing because of that connection.

33:36Eric Zimmer:But yeah, you know, we know where it goes if you let that take the reins, but yeah.

33:41Creative Pep Talk:Well, and you, but you've learned to some degree that your, even the way you just described that, when you said like, when I let desire go, your desire in that case is moving you towards things that you value, creativity, right? Whereas in the past, your desire may have moved you in profoundly unhelpful ways. I'm sure it still does some of the time, but yeah, I think, I think we, we have to be careful not to lose that. There's a study I quote in the book and I mean, I wrote, I mean, books take so long to come out. I wrote some of this stuff like, you know, a year and a half, two years ago. So I don't remember it exactly.

34:17Creative Pep Talk:But it basically says they're, you know, they're starting to study people that become excessively focused on their goals only is that those people start to show a lack of ability to be flexible, to enjoy life. Their relationships often suffer because they're so rigid about what they're doing. And so that's not what we're after.

34:42Eric Zimmer:Yeah. I know there are all kinds of, everyone has capacity for creativity. There are all sorts of creative people. In my experience, they tend to not struggle with that as much. Now I have definitely got into times of my life, definitely where I have been like that. I only highlight that because I think Like I could see myself using that as fuel to do whatever I want to do. Like, yeah, let's not be rigid here. Right. But I've been, I have had seasons of my life that were like that. Just ask my wife. She'll tell you when, you know, I got really obsessed with my diet, really whatever it is, you know?

35:19Eric Zimmer:So, yeah.

35:20Creative Pep Talk:And we're trying to turn ourselves into that. That's part of the problem also. True. Yeah. Very true. That's what we're trying to do.

35:26Eric Zimmer:We think that would be the ideal. Yeah.

35:28Creative Pep Talk:It's part of the reason that I think as a culture, we became obsessed with. Maybe we still are. Maybe it's fading habits. It's why Atomic Habits sold a billion copies. It's a good book, but it tapped into something. Right. And what it tapped into was that's what we want. We want doing all the good things in life to just become automatic. I no longer have to wrestle with it. I no longer have to think about it. I don't have to struggle with it. I go to the gym as easy as I put on my seatbelt. That's not how it actually works in life for most people. For most people, yeah. And we could go into the scientific reasons why most of these things we're talking about don't become habits, but that's what we think we want.

36:12Creative Pep Talk:We think we want all this stuff. And there is such a thing as momentum. Momentum is worth having. It is far easier for me to exercise tomorrow because I exercise today, right? That's just a truth. Yeah, true. It builds energy. But for me, exercise is never something that's just ever become automatic. And I've been doing it regularly for a long time. It's just not automatic. So we would like a life where we don't wrestle with and struggle with these questions, but that's not life.

36:43Eric Zimmer:And I often say that everyone has different brains and especially people that are diagnosable neurodivergent people. I say you might have a manual engine in your head. You might not have an automatic. Some people have, seem to have more capacity for that than others. I don't.

37:05Creative Pep Talk:That's such a great analogy.

37:06Eric Zimmer:I don't. I am very much like, and this is why I always say to people like conventional ideas around habits are do the same thing the same way and it'll become automatic. For me, I do the same thing the same way. It'll become the bane of my existence and prison of my own. Right. That's. Yeah. Yeah. And so for me, I have to do the same thing a different way. I have to keep it interesting. And I've heard you say this too, like instead of I'm going to do rock climbing every time, you say, I'm going to move. Yeah. And I can get really creative with what that looks like. Yeah.

37:38Creative Pep Talk:I think early on with things, specificity and repeatability is good. because the other problem that us creative folks have is that we'll take forever figuring out what to do. I'm going to move my body today. Well, does that mean yoga? Well, what time is that yoga class again? Yeah, but I don't really feel like getting in the car. I'm going to go do a strength training but then the gym, do I have to shower afterwards? I mean, this goes, it can go on and on and on. So there's a place for Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I go to the gym at 8 a.m. Sure. As a starting point for most of us. Yeah. Because it allows us to get momentum, right?

38:26Creative Pep Talk:Specificity is important because ambiguity is the mother of a lot of procrastination. Yeah. So there's a place where that starts. Now, for me, with enough momentum, I can be, my goal is to move my body and I can be very flexible in how I do it. And then it'll start to get a little wobbly. At which point I then might go, okay, let's, you know, bike Monday, Wednesday, you know, I'll tighten things up. But if you look at my exercise career, you'll be like, the guy's done boxing. He's done rock climbing. He's done strength training. He's done biking. He's done running. He's done hiking with a pack.

39:06He's done yoga.

39:08Creative Pep Talk:He's, he does Pilates because yeah, I'm like, I need something. Okay. I'm bored with that. Change it up. That's boring. Let me try something different.

39:17Eric Zimmer:It feels a little bit like a concept that I'm always blabbing about, which is plotting versus pantsing in writing. But you see this everywhere. And I'm so inspired by Curb Your Enthusiasm, striking this balance, that TV show. where they have an outline. So I know this is where the episode's going, but they don't have a script. And so they make up how they get their scene to scene, but they know where they're trying to go. And for me, it can look like, because like you say, this is a huge obstacle. If I wait, I'll just, I just have to move. And then it's so open, so indecisive that I end up losing myself in the potential of doing something.

39:58Eric Zimmer:Whereas it could look like if I'm planning meals, instead of saying Monday we're having this, Tuesday we're having that, Wednesday we're having this. I say, here's three meals we know we're going to make Monday through Wednesday. You can pick whichever ones you want to do when you get there. One question I had was, how do you make space for the changing the plans, the desire? How have you reoriented yourself towards desire? I thought it was funny that in the book, one of your biggest reoccurring distractions is solitaire, which I just thought was so funny.

40:40Creative Pep Talk:So ridiculous. I mean, I'm so glad I've never tried like Grand Theft Auto or something. I might be a drooling zombie. I do.

40:48Eric Zimmer:I love video games. Yeah. But I thought that was really funny. Like, this is your outlet.

40:54Creative Pep Talk:There's a slightly sad undertone to that. Is there? There is. There is. I have almost no memories from my childhood.

41:01Eric Zimmer:Oh, really?

41:02Creative Pep Talk:But the one clear memory of my mother is her sitting at the table for hours playing solitaire. Oh my gosh. So it's ironic or it's poignant in some weird way that that ends up being the thing.

41:16Eric Zimmer:Yeah. Is it on the computer or is it cards for you?

41:19Creative Pep Talk:It's on the computer. Yeah. And it's interesting because I have not played solitaire now at all for seven or eight months. Because I realized something when I was in England this summer. I never want to play solitaire except one time. And it is when I sit down in front of my computer and something gets hard. I don't feel like I want to get up and walk away or I'm in that semi-fugue state where I can't quite tear myself away. I just realized it never occurs anywhere else. so i was like this is just like it feels like habit energy it just feels like there's this one particular thing i feel like this i do that yeah yeah and most of the time for years i have managed it by setting a blocker i'll be like all right i need to work for an hour set the blocker it's not like i'm playing solitaire six hours a day but on days where i'm where i'm not feeling great or struggling i mean i could lose an hour hour and a half to it yeah which i just don't have to spare on something that really adds no value to me.

42:27Creative Pep Talk:I'm perfectly happy to spend an hour, hour and a half screwing around, but I want to screw around in a way that's actually edifying. Right.

42:35Eric Zimmer:Yeah.

42:36Creative Pep Talk:So I would use a blocker, but I just finally decided like, that's it. I'm going to try and starve this thing out. But it's funny. It's still, I haven't played in seven months. Every once in a while, I feel it stirring. And at that point I go back out. And at that point I go back out and I set the blocker for 24 more hours. Most of the time I don't need it. But I think that's a really useful idea to take home also, which is that we don't want to rely on just our self-control or our willpower. Which is a theme in the book. Yeah. We want to rely on that as little as possible. The moment I sent that blocker, I've made my life easier.

43:19Eric Zimmer:I feel that deeply. And for me, that idea is really, really powerful to just be aware of, I think a lot of us think in terms of getting to where we want to go, it is down to self-control and just acknowledging that's one component and it's a limited component to getting where you want to go. Yeah. I mean, I think if we gathered the world's leading behavioral scientists into a room and asked them to agree on one thing, I think this is the thing they all might agree on, which is rely on self-control, willpower, whatever you want to call it, as little as

44:00Creative Pep Talk:possible. They'll argue for nine months about what self-control actually is or what willpower is, but they will all agree, like, don't rely on it. Yeah. Because it's a limited muscle. Some people have more of it. Some people have less of it. I think you can develop more of it, but don't do it. So in my case, the solitaire blocker makes it easier. Now, of course there are ways to get around all that, but that friction is enough for me. But I used to play with this with clients, coaching clients all the time. I mean, I had one guy tell a story in the book who had a little bit of a online porn thing.

44:37Creative Pep Talk:Yeah. I wouldn't call it an addiction. It just, but for him, it was outside his value system. Wasn't aligning. It wasn't aligned with it. I'm not making any judgment on what anybody wants to do for him. It was outside his thing. His wife would go to sleep. He'd go back out. He'd get on his laptop. He would do it. He would feel bad about it. So we started by saying like, well, let's, let's make it a little harder. Let's log you out of your laptop. Well, that didn't quite do it. Made a little bit harder, but he was happy. We, where he eventually ended up was when we put the, when he put the laptop in the car before he went to bed, that was enough.

45:11Creative Pep Talk:The thought of having to get up, go out, go down to his car, come back up. And so in general, the rule would be, if you're trying not to do something, make it as hard as possible to do it. Just introduce as many points of friction as you can. Find where that level is that works for you. That works for you. He still exercised some self-control in that situation, but you recognize had to use a lot less of it. And if you want to do more of something, get rid of all the friction points, make it as easy as possible to do. That will minimize to a certain degree, the need for self-control or the need for as much of it.

45:52Creative Pep Talk:We always do need it. There always is a choice point. We are at choice points where we decide to go left or we decide to go right. And knowing how to navigate those is important, but we want to come to those choice points as well-armed as we can.

46:07Eric Zimmer:Yeah. And so this isn't a perfect analogy because like you say, you are utilizing it quite frequently, but I like thinking of it a little bit more like this is your spare tire. Like this is something you, or this is your backup energy bar in your backpack. It's not what you're planning on eating. It's not how you're planning on doing, getting to where you want to go. So this kind of gets at another concept in the book that I found really useful. When you're at your computer and you're about to play solitaire, you're probably trying to write this book, trying to do something that you want to – that you really want to do.

46:43Eric Zimmer:And you feel yourself saying, I don't want to do that.

46:46Creative Pep Talk:Yeah.

46:47Eric Zimmer:And we all feel like that.

46:49Creative Pep Talk:Yeah.

46:49Eric Zimmer:Lots of our responsibilities or lots of the things that we've decided to do, when it comes time to do it, we don't want to do it.

46:56Creative Pep Talk:Yeah.

46:57Eric Zimmer:what's the little shift that you make there? Yeah.

47:00Creative Pep Talk:I mean, it goes back to the elephant, right? I, I try and change that wording, right? So let's say it's write the book, you know, it's time to write the book right now. And what I want to do is anything else. Yeah. There were some moments like that. Instead of saying, I don't want to do it. I don't want to do it. I change it. And I say, I do want to do it, right? I'm trying to bring the elephant online. I do want to do this deeply, truly. It's what I want most. I just don't feel like it. And for me, that distinction is really helpful. I know some people have said, I've worked with a lot of clients.

47:36Creative Pep Talk:Some are like, eh, I don't know. But for some people, it's this huge unlock. Because feel like it, I immediately go, oh, that's a mood. That's just a transient thing moving through. That's not that important. I want to. I want to. Now I'm at less of a battle with myself because if we are constantly in a, I don't want to, but I'm going to make myself mode with things. It's hard to win that game.

48:04Eric Zimmer:And it's all willpower. You're just tapping into that self-control.

48:07Creative Pep Talk:It's hard to win that game. But when I'm able to rephrase it, which is why you could say, I, uh, I want to, I just don't feel like it. You can also, the question is, you know, what do I want most versus what I want now? I remind myself, what I want most is a book. And I'll spend a second. I'll think about like how good it's going to feel to have a book. Okay, I've tapped into what I want most. What I want now is to play solitaire. That has zero value to me. Now, I'm not saying I win that every single time. But I win it a lot more often when that's my framework instead of just do it. You have to do it.

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49:42Eric Zimmer:and I have had a lot of domains. Like all creatives, I've had one for every half-cooked up idea that I've ever had. Head to squarespace.com slash peptalk for a free trial and when you're ready to launch, use offer code peptalk, all one word, to save 10 % off your first purchase of a website or domain. As a neurodivergent creative, I am always trying to strike a better balance between creating versus just consuming. That's why Dr. Anna Lemke's class, Dopamine Take Your Brain Back on Masterclass, piqued my interest. She is such a compelling communicator and one of the things that really hit me fresh was this idea that you wanna embrace more things that make you feel uncomfortable upfront, but great afterwards versus great instantly, but bad afterward.

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51:11Eric Zimmer:Right now, as a listener of this show, you get at least 15 % off any annual membership at masterclass.com slash pep talk. That's 15 % off masterclass.com slash pep talk. Head to masterclass.com slash pep talk to get the latest offer. Let's talk about values because I like the, every time I get to this concept in the past, it feels very amorphous and abstract. Yeah. And, and also that word has lost its meaning where you're like, okay, this feel, you can end up feeling like I'm at a business seminar or something of that nature, but it's this very, very essential concept. And I love the way you approach it in such a simple way.

51:58Eric Zimmer:Could you talk a little bit about how you think about getting in touch with your values?

52:05Creative Pep Talk:Yeah. I mean, values are incredibly important. And as you said, they are nebulous and they often start to feel like something that a company puts up on its wall that it never pays any attention to. And it is a difficult thing to pin down. What is a value exactly? Like I could say, I value my family, but someone else might say, well, that's not a real value. I mean, a real value is a trait like humility or... So look, there's a lot of ways to come. Sure. In the book, I put one and then I have some additional three or four others in the back that I think are useful. Because most of the time when we're asked to do value, somebody shoves a list of 100 words in front of us and asks us to pick 10.

52:44Eric Zimmer:Yeah.

52:45Creative Pep Talk:I find that impossible because I mean, I look at them, I agree with every one of them. Who doesn't agree with like - They're all virtuous. Yeah. Honesty, of course. I value honesty. Sure. I value, right? So the exercise I do in the book, and it's one useful one, is to ask myself, you know, First, what makes me happiest? And write down some times that I've been happiest. What makes me feel most proud? Write down some times that I felt really proud. What makes me feel most fulfilled? Write down some times that I felt fulfilled. And that is a takeaway exercise that I can do. And then I can look at those things and try and start pulling out.

53:29Creative Pep Talk:And so for me, that's kind of how I got to adventure as a value. I looked at that and I went, oh, okay. That kind of shows up all three. It kind of shows up in there. And then I was like, kindness. Oh yeah. Kindness. I feel good when I feel happy when I'm being kind. I feel fulfilled when I'm being kind. I feel proud. And you know, I'm doing some grouping in here, right? Because a list of 30 values is not very useful. Right. Right. So it's not practical to reach for that.

54:00Eric Zimmer:Yeah.

54:00Creative Pep Talk:So what I want are five to seven that allow me to just quickly judge like, okay, I'm thinking of X or Y.

54:09Eric Zimmer:Yeah.

54:10Creative Pep Talk:Let me just run through these two things through the things that I've decided are important. You know, does it offer any adventure? No. Yeah. Doesn't mean I rule it out, but then I go, does it offer me an opportunity to be kind? Yeah, it does. Does it offer me an opportunity to, curiosity is another. I realize like learning. Do I learn? Oh yeah, I will learn something as I do it. You know, you know, I then look and go, okay, that, all right. That is a satisfies three of those B satisfies six of them. Let's do that. Yeah.

54:42Eric Zimmer:That's a, that's a really good way to think about it that I hadn't fully considered. I've mostly thought about it through here's the goals that I have. And then when I'm working with my desires, I'm thinking, does this align or does this not align? But then also decision-making, I know a lot of creative people can relate to this. What opportunities do you say yes to? What do you say no to? That's a great way to kind of work through it. Like, is it hitting any of these things? And if not, that's a great place to say no.

55:08Creative Pep Talk:Yeah. And as you look at setting goals, you can go, does this do that? Like I set a goal last summer, I did this thing with a really cool group here in Columbus where we did a 75 mile hike over four days. It was a backpacking trip. And before I said yes, I had to think about it because there was a lot of training involved. I mean, it took a lot of my time. But when I looked at it, I was like, oh, it has adventure. It has health, which is a big goal of mine. It has connection because I'm going to be meeting all these cool people. And I went, oh yeah, all right. That's a goal worth doing because it's tying into a lot of my goals.

55:48Creative Pep Talk:If I had just said, I'm going to go run a half marathon by myself, I might go, well, that goal doesn't quite do it. It covers the health aspect, but it's not really that adventurous. I'm going to be out on the bike trail every Saturday. Not that that's bad, but you get what I'm saying. I'm not really building connection. I'm just going out and running by myself. So I'm looking for the things, the goals that I do to reflect as many of my values as I can, because I'm getting the most benefit out of that when I do it that way.

56:19Eric Zimmer:That's another way to think about how this relates to creativity. Like I like the way you talked about it, figuring out this hike is covers more of my bases than just a marathon. Same can apply to the creative projects that you take on, the personal projects that you take on. It's hard to decide you have all these ideas. Well, which of these ideas actually align with who you want to be and how you want to live in the world? I can see that being very powerful for me. I did that exercise, found it really, really useful. And I, some of the things were things I recognized of like, oh, I'm very aware of like family is very, very high for me.

56:58Eric Zimmer:I know That's not unusual, but it's been true even before I had kids. Even before I had kids, I was thinking about what kind of dad do I want to be? What kind of husband do I want to be? It's very, very important to me. And it was interesting to kind of see where that fits. And weighing up like even like integrity versus family is an interesting one of like, if your kid ended up on the run, what would you do? Like, I was thinking of all these weird scenarios. else. But then one that came up that I hadn't, I was looking through all of these, when you're the most happy, when you are the most proud, when you're the most fulfilled, and coming up with a few of those.

57:37Eric Zimmer:One that I found that I haven't really found a word for, this is the most, I think the most spiritual I would say that I am in a more mystic way, is a lot of those moments are times when I feel aligned with purpose. So maybe purpose is the word. And I can see that that is, it does feel a bit like, oh, this is what I was supposed to do. I don't know if I actually, I don't really know if I fully buy that. Right. But that's what it feels like. Yeah. And something about that is probably that it's aligned with my whole self, including not just all the parts of me now, but, uh, the young me now me and future me all like in a straight line.

58:27Eric Zimmer:Like I can see like, oh, this is why I'm doing this because it connects to that in the past and where maybe I'm going. I don't, I don't, yeah, I don't know if I have the word for that, but it was a interesting revelation by doing that exercise that I came to. Yeah.

58:42Creative Pep Talk:I mean, purpose is, is a good one. Yeah. Um, then you get into the question of what is my purpose? And like you, I don't know that I believe that there is some external structuring of the world that is like, I built Eric because he would do this.

59:01Eric Zimmer:Make a podcast. That's where both back am. Yeah. It's funny to think about an all-knowing being creating a human and being like, you're going to make a podcast someday. And yet. Yeah.

59:14Creative Pep Talk:And yet. I think that what I'm doing with the podcast, with the speaking, with the writing, I'm like, this seems to be like of anything I found so far in life, this lines up best with my skill set, what I like to do, what's actually useful in the world. It does bring it together. Part of who I've always been.

59:38Eric Zimmer:That's another piece that I came up. A hundred percent. Yeah.

59:40Creative Pep Talk:With the book I was reflecting on, you know, when I was in high school, all I wanted to be was an author. Now I thought I wanted to be a fiction author. Um, and I gave that up pretty quick. Cause I was like, I just don't think I have that aptitude. Right. My brain doesn't seem to work that way, but it was fun to be back to, oh yeah, this is something that's always, you've always wanted. Okay, great. There's an additional motivation in there. Yeah. There's some purpose in there.

1:00:08Eric Zimmer:I have one other question. What from this book, what concept or methodology or idea helped you most in the completing of the book? So it's a little meta, but yeah, I'm curious if there's one particular idea that you're like, this thing really helped me stick at this thing. Because a lot of us just struggle to finish a creative project of that magnitude. Yeah.

1:00:31Creative Pep Talk:It's ironic because both in the writing of the book and now in the marketing of the book, I'm drawing on my own material a lot. Like I'm going into my own bag of tricks. Yeah. But the one, the most obvious one was little by little, a little becomes a lot. Right. Like I wrote this book 30 minutes at a time, essentially. Now, I don't mean like it was only 30 minutes, but I would be like, okay, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, here's the times I've carved out for writing. But I approached it every time I would start, I would set a timer for 30 minutes. I put on my little playlist. I'd turn on all my little blockers and my job was to stay in it for 30 minutes.

1:01:13Creative Pep Talk:Like just don't bail out for 30 minutes. Now, often 30 minutes would come. I just, I'd be like, all right, I can keep rolling for a while. Reset the timer. There was something about the whole ritual of it. Yeah. Reset the timer, 30 more minutes. But if 30 minutes came and I was done, I got up, I walked away. I said, great job. You did your 30 minutes. Now we just need to do it again and again and again. But by focusing it only on 30 minutes allowed me not to get overwhelmed by the process. Because the thought of writing a book is extraordinarily daunting, particularly in my case, like I didn't know how to do it.

1:01:54Creative Pep Talk:I had not been writing. I had not. This was like I was learning something new. So if I tried to measure pages, how many pages can I write a day? I have no idea. How many words can I write today? I don't know. I sure better not measure quality right now because it's really not any good yet. Right. So, but what I could measure is, did I do my, you know, did I do my four 30 minute segments? That's that, I mean, I quite literally, that is how the book got written. I use that same little 30 minute container just a whole bunch of times. And I ended up with a book.

1:02:28Eric Zimmer:That, that, that reminds me of in the creative sphere, bird by bird, that idea. Yeah. Yeah. Um, what's her name? It's a skate and Lamont, and Lamont. Um, that's how a creative project comes together. It's how change comes together. Yeah. I lied. I said, I, that was the last question. I have one more. Do you have any go to this? So as an ADHD person struggle with executive function, um, that's why I've explored these topics so much myself. And one of the things that I think about a lot is there was a time in my life, there was a before and an after. There was a before of, I thought I can't do this.

1:03:09Eric Zimmer:I can't continue on a line. I can't really make anything happen. I'm a slave to the elephant. There were a few things that helped me little by little things that helped me realize, oh no, I can do stuff. It's not always easy, but I can, there are ways of doing it. Is there any exercise or is there any like small example of how to start to put this to practice just to prove that you can do it to prove is that, yeah. Does that make sense?

1:03:39Creative Pep Talk:I mean, I felt, I faced levels of self-doubt in writing this book that I have not felt maybe since high school. I mean, they were intense because I had zero evidence that I could write a book. I saw what I wrote and it wasn't very good or it was fine. Let's call it fine. Sure. Right. I can express an idea semi-coherently, but there's a long way from that to what's a great book. And I really, really wanted to write what I thought was a great book. I did not want to, books are like my best friends. They have been for so long. I took it really seriously. This wasn't just like, let me crank out a book because it's a business card.

1:04:22Eric Zimmer:That's a great point to just highlight because this is one of the things that keeps creative people from doing it. They start because they love this thing. And that's also the thing that stops them from doing it. Because they're like, how could I make an album when the album is this thing.

1:04:37Creative Pep Talk:Yeah, a hundred percent. And I just had to suspend judgment for a long part of the time. I little by little, I just had to, my brain, I'd get done with writing for a day and my brain would be like, you didn't make any progress. All that was crap. I'd say, did you do your time? Yes. Okay. A plus try and shut the rest of it off. Now, what happened then is that I enlisted help early in the process. So in a lot of cases, a writer works and then they, you know, they, they give their book. Sometimes they share a chapter with their editor, their editor sends it back. My editor was more like, well, just write it and give it to me.

1:05:19Creative Pep Talk:I don't think that is going to work for me.

1:05:21Eric Zimmer:Right. Yeah.

1:05:21Creative Pep Talk:Right. You're gonna have to be dealing with that doubt the whole way through. So I engaged a developmental editor to help me a little bit. Right. And so So what happened was I start, you know, I got, I get the introduction done, send it off to her. She makes all her notes. She sends it back. I fix it. I send it back to her. She does a few more things. I fix it. It goes back and forth a couple of times. I get it back and I go, huh, that's actually okay. That's okay. Like I couldn't have gotten there myself, but with her, I was able to get there. And that then I had a little more confidence. And each day that I sat down and I wrote, I had a little more confidence.

1:06:01Creative Pep Talk:As I saw pages began to accumulate, I had a little more confidence. So I built that confidence slowly, but I had to divorce it from the big I can't. And so oftentimes, like, I'm not big in the cheerleader camp. Like, I can't, I couldn't be like, oh, you are an amazing writer. You know, watch out Hemingway, here comes Zimmer. You know, like I'm not going to buy that. Yes. But what I can do is go, do I know I can't write a good book? No, I do not know. Even my most pessimistic self has to go, well, you don't know that. That could be enough. Like I don't have to stomp out self-doubt. Yeah. I can't.

1:06:44Creative Pep Talk:Yeah. I just need to settle it down enough that I can keep taking the right action. And I think that's a really important point because if we wait until we don't have self-doubt, we'll never do anything. It's not going away. I've talked to on my podcast, and I'm sure you have too, people who've written multiple New York Times bestsellers, huge sellers. And I was having lunch in New York a couple months ago with one of them. I think he's got four New York Times bestsellers. And he's telling me about his latest book. He's like, I just don't. I mean, I just don't think I can do it. I just don't have the idea.

1:07:21And I'm thinking, what are you talking about?

1:07:25Creative Pep Talk:You've written four New York Times bestsellers. But what his brain says is, well, yeah, you did it before, but you can't do it now. You used to have it. You don't have it now. We all have this. What those folks know how to do is not get rid of it. They know how to settle it just enough that they can do their work. And I think that's what we're aiming at. And so that's what I had to learn to do. How do I settle my self-doubt enough? So finding what you say to yourself has to be different for everybody. But mine was a real focus on, I believe if I put the effort in, it will go somewhere good. I don't know quite where, I don't know how good, but I do know if I put the effort in, it will go somewhere good.

1:08:15Creative Pep Talk:And so I just kept coming back to that. Like, okay, Did you put the effort in today? You did. Great job. Not perfectly. Yep. You miss a day. Okay. I'm not going to make a big, big fuss out of this. Like, okay, it happens tomorrow. Start the 30 minutes. And so much of this book is just about that basic idea. How do we start to be able to take small steps that we're able to take and take them consistently enough that they will add up to something really meaningful over time?

1:08:48Eric Zimmer:Yeah. And you brought up two bits there that are very important to me. Having someone else for accountability and collaboration is really key. And also to me, there's a self-respect that part of you that is even the part of you that's self-doubt having the respect to be like, I can't bullshit this guy. I can't just lie and be like, you are great. You're going to be awesome. No, you can say, okay, maybe your concern is valid. Let's work with that. Let's talk about, let's get on some agreement. What can we agree? We can agree that we don't know if we can do this. Like you said.

1:09:22Creative Pep Talk:Yeah. Yeah. And in the book, we talked about that moment, those choice points. And I identified in the book what I call six saboteurs of self-control. Because at those moments when we're at choice point, do I work on my creative project? Do I not, as an example? If we don't do it, it is almost always entirely because of something we're feeling or something we're saying to ourselves. So how do we analyze that moment? You don't need to do Jungian analysis on your entire life. You just have to go at that moment, what's happening? And the self-doubt stalemate is one of them identified. You get to that moment and there's so much doubt that you just don't do it.

1:10:03Creative Pep Talk:The next one I called the insignificance trap. It's the idea like, well, yeah, I can do 30 minutes today, but so what? Right? So what? Oh, Eric, you're going to work for 30 minutes, that's not going to get you a book, but 30 minutes allows me to get to the next 30 minutes, which allows me to get to the next 30 minutes. And we have to, we have to see how all that adds up. It's not just, yeah. It's, uh, you know, to, to, to be very cliched. It's how a little becomes a lot. Uh,

1:10:36Eric Zimmer:well, thank you for the book and thanks for spending so much time with me. I, this is a topic that is so vital to creative people and one that is left out of the creative conversation often. Yeah. So much. Yeah. We talk all about how do you make great work and what's the difference between good and bad work and all this stuff. But to me, the first question has always been, how do you get yourself to make anything?

1:11:01Creative Pep Talk:Right. And there is a, in the creative space, I think there's a lot of talk about like GoPro, Stephen Pressfield, GoPro, show up every day. but no one tells you how to do that. Yes, right. Like, okay, that's a great idea but I keep trying to show up every day and I don't. Yes. Okay, well, this is a book about how you can.

1:11:21Eric Zimmer:Yeah, I love it.

1:11:22Creative Pep Talk:Well, thanks so much. Thank you, Andy.

1:11:44Eric Zimmer:All right, it's the three-part values exercise. That's our creative call to adventure today. You know, we don't want to just leave you inspired. We want you to be able to act on this in a way that actually makes a difference in your creative practice and creative journey and your life. Today, it's the three-part values exercise that we spoke about in this conversation. In case you missed it, here's how it goes. You're going to list the three times you are the happiest in your life, the three times that you were the most proud and the three times that you were the most fulfilled. Here's a cool thing about this.

1:12:17Eric Zimmer:I saw patterns after doing this. I saw patterns that I didn't expect and it helped illustrate like what really, really matters to me. And not only that, it showed me things that I had quit doing that some of which were because of maybe like worried about how other people are gonna perceive me or I don't know, just got busy with life and lost track of these things. As an ADHD person, I have this out of sight, out of mind thing where even things that make me super, super happy, super proud, super fulfilled are things that I will just forget about and never return to. One of those, just to be specific, was this, we did this kind of creative accelerator program back in, I think, 2016 or 2017.

1:13:08Eric Zimmer:And it was just one of the times where I was the happiest and most fulfilled and most proud of the work I was doing. And doing this process made me think, maybe I need to find space for that in my life today. I don't know exactly what that looks like yet, but stay tuned. Maybe we'll bring something like that back. I think we should because I just never felt more on fire. And this exercise unlocked that. So I highly suggest it. There's a real nuance between happiest, proud and fulfilled. A lot of parenting stuff came up for me in a way that I didn't. I know that my kids matter to me more than anything.

1:13:44Eric Zimmer:I know that my wife matters to me more than anything. I know family is huge for me. There's just something about even like putting it in order and watching like, oh, that's like, I feel so proud when something with my kids works out that we fought for, that we worked on. Yeah, it's just, it was a powerful exercise for me. I think values can feel very abstract. This makes them very concrete. And I think it's a great tool for getting your whole self on board with something. So massive thanks to Eric Zimmer for showing up on the show. Go check out his book, How a Little Becomes a Lot. I've really enjoyed working through this.

1:14:21Eric Zimmer:Yo, don't forget to sign up to our sub stack, annijpizza.substack.com. So you get an email every week. So you don't miss any of the pep. That's one of the, I love to sign up to things that keep me accountable, that keep me aligned with my values and the things that I'm trying to accomplish and having a little reminder every week of, hey, more fresh pep is here. Remember you wanted to have a creative practice. You wanted to be habitual in your creativity. That's what we make this show for. It's why we make it a creative habit to show up every week. So anyjpizza.substack.com so that you get that reminder every week.

1:14:56Eric Zimmer:Thanks to all of you for listening. Thanks to Sophie Miller for being an editor and producer on the show. Thanks to Connor Jones of Pending Beautiful for audio edits, video edits, animation, and sound design. Thanks to Yoni Wolf of the band Y for our theme music and soundtrack. And thanks to all of you for listening. Until we speak again, stay pepped up.

1:15:34Eric Zimmer:Okay, the podcast is over, so I don't know why you're still listening, but I am glad that you enjoyed it enough to stick to the end. I have one more thing for you. If you're in a place where you're feeling a lack of clarity and you want to figure out your industry market and niche and find the perfect strategic side project to do next, go sign up to our newsletter at andyjpizza.substack.com and you will get a confirmation email that will give you the download of our creative career path hand booklet and the whole process is in there and you might also get a few bonuses in there depending on when you sign up but again thanks for listening glad you enjoyed the episode and stay pepped up y 'all hey one more thing real quick just wanted to say i'm a big believer in the idea that you art what you eat meaning if you want to make an art practice you need to be consuming stuff that encourages you and inspires you to become that to do that that's why we make this podcast every week sign up to annijpizza.substack.com for our weekly newsletter so that you never miss an episode.

1:16:47Eric Zimmer:You'll also be the first to know about workshops, events, new books. We drop that stuff into the weekly emails too. It's andyjpizza.substack.com or click the link in the show notes.