567 - Find What to Focus On Next with These Frameworks

0:00Right now, get up to 15 % off select storage solutions. Put heavy-duty HDX totes to good use, protecting what's important to you. The solid, impact-resistant design prevents cracking, and the clear base and sides make items easy to find even when the totes are stacked. Find select shelving and tote storage up to 15 % off at the Home Depot to organize every room in your home, from your garage to your attic. Visit homedepot.com. How doers get more done. morning decisions how about a creamy mocha frappuccino drink or sweet vanilla smooth caramel maybe or white chocolate mocha whichever you choose delicious coffee awaits find starbucks frappuccino drinks wherever you buy your groceries all right this episode is going to be a little bit different unfiltered pizza just imagine putting pizza through a brita water filter um this this episode is different because as you can hear there's no background music there's no fancy editing you know how we do fancy editing on this show a lot of jump cuts and whiplashes audio whiplashes i don't think that's a thing but um this episode is going to be different because i haven't done this in a long time i haven't done like a unplugged episode uh where i give a little bit of updates about what's going on with me and what i'm working through and then also i have some questions loaded up from you so we're also going to do some ask dr pizza style question and answer kind of thing.

1:30If you ever have a question for me after you listen to an episode or just a general creative or creative career, creative path question, you can go to creativepeptalk.com and there's a little microphone at the bottom right. You can do this on desktop or on your phone. Click the microphone. It's not going to record you right away. You're going to have a second to collect yourself and then click record. And then if you don't like it, you can rerecord it or just trash it before you submit it. But if you ever want to appear on one of these episodes, send in your questions that way and we will try to get to it or we'll at least consider it for a future Q &A episode the first thing I want to tell you and this was kind of the prompt of doing this episode was that I am going to the freaking UK on Thursday so the day after we release this I'm going to the UK I'm going to the Edinburgh film film no fringe comedy festival mostly just for fun and kind of research creatively.

2:29I've wanted to go to that for a long, long time, many years. My buddy, Brad Montague, who's been on this show several times, has a play. I think it's called The Fabulous that I'm excited to go see. And Alice Fraser, who has been on this show, has also got a set. And I'm just excited to go soak it up. I'm going to meet with some of my college friends also and then I'm going to go work my way down to London over the following 10 days and I'm going to do some informal creative meetups like hang out in the park and doodle or grab a coffee or a pint if you are over there and you want to potentially meet up with this group maybe it'll be two people maybe it'll be 20 people I don't have any idea but if you want to be in the know in the show notes is a link to the WhatsApp channel where I'm going to put the dates and times and updates.

3:27Like if we have to change something, like I miss a bus and I can't get there on time, we have to edit it. All the info is gonna be in that channel. So sign up to that channel. You won't get my phone number, I won't get yours, but you'll be able to see all the updates there and stay tuned to when I'm gonna be in Edinburgh and Leeds and also London. and I'm also doing three book events as well. So I'm doing one in Holmforth, one in Horbury and one in London. So the dates and the times will be in the show notes as well for that. So I wanted to give you a heads up. That's part of the prompt of doing this informal episode is I wanted to make sure I got that info out before I leave and go see everybody.

4:10I'm really excited about being over there, eating sausage rolls, going to Greg's. That's the main thing I'm doing over there. If you're in the UK, you know that that's both funny and a joke and also serious. If you ever go to the UK, go to Greg's or go get some meat pies, go get some pork pies, go. That's what I'm going to be doing all week. So I'm really excited about that. This episode, what I thought was I could start, I wanted to start the first section before we get to the Q &A without any notes, which is very weird for me because we have, even though I like to explore the space of a podcast, I like to follow tangents, I usually have a pretty thorough outline going into an episode.

4:54And so I just thought like, what if I just create a little space to kind of share what I'm up to, what's been on my mind, what I'm working through or struggling with or curious about in my own creative practice, and then move into some Q &A. So here's what's top of mind for me right now. I'm thinking a lot about kind of this transistory, transitionary, maybe even, space that I've been in. If you followed me for a long time, and I think this is relevant to anybody who's listening. I was talking to people at the virtual meetup that we do with the Substack supporters and Patreon backers, the Creative Pep Rally and the Creative Pro Talk.

5:38We do two meetings a month. Um, and we were talking about, I was kind of talking about how my creative path is such where I have these sort of phases or seasons or eras. If I want to be Taylor Swift, it Taylor Swift, it, um, where I'm like focusing on a very particular part. It doesn't mean I'm almost always doing all the different things I've, I do. Like I've been doing illustration client work since the beginning of my creative journey. And I've not never quit doing that. Still very much love doing that. Finished a project yesterday. That's really fun and cool. So I'm always almost always working on some stuff like that.

6:21I always, these days, I usually have talks planned and travel. I've got the podcast every week. I've got picture books on the go and I'm doing client work. And also sometimes there's like teaching opportunities or stuff like that. Even sometimes there's coaching involved in that, although I don't get to that as much as I'd like to. This episode is sponsored by Squarespace. I freaking love having Squarespace as a sponsor because it's easy to sell it when you love something this much. I'm a big fan. Squarespace is an all-in-one website platform designed to help you succeed online. Here's what I love about Squarespace.

7:02They're intuitive and super versatile drag and drop tools. I mean, you can make a custom website without knowledge of code that makes people say, whoa, who made that for you? Looks like you built that from scratch. People have really said stuff like that to me about my site, and I built it myself quite easily with Squarespace. You can check it out at andyjpizza.com if you want to check that out, what I did with it. It doesn't look template-y, and it screams my creative brand. I also love that I have all of my domains through Squarespace now, which makes it seamless and easy to manage. I know the first thing as creative folks do when we get an idea is to grab that URL.

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9:00Plus, for a limited time, enjoy free shipping in the US on Vented. That's V-I-N-T-E-D. But even though all of those moving pieces are usually there, I usually have a sort of priority. I have a, this is kind of the main thing and everything else is fitting into that or it's, or everything else are dominoes after that thing. And so when I got out of school, I was thinking pretty much exclusively about client work, even though I started working on books right away. But eventually I moved into really wanting to get into picture books and I hit some brick walls there. I spent a couple of years there.

9:46Then I started this podcast and I was having this competing thing between the picture books and the podcast because I really wanted to do picture books, but I kept hitting brick walls. I could not get anybody to buy these books that I was working on. And I was also doing this podcast that was taking off. And so for me, it's really difficult to have that kind of competing energy, which is maybe unusual if you're looking from the outside because it looks like I always have this competing energy. This is a framework, a mental framework that I go back to over and over and over again in my own life.

10:21And that's why I talk about it pretty frequently on the show. I think about it kind of like you're cooking a meal. You're not going to have two front burner main dishes that you're like actively working with or, you know, five different side dishes. And so for me, when I think about my creative practice, I'm thinking about it like I've got my front main thing, which is usually how I'm making a living. Like it's not the thing where I'm experimenting. It's a thing where this thing is the thing I got to spend 70 % of my time or 60 % of my time on this. And when I was younger and I had jobs, it might be 80 % of my time.

11:01But you probably have a front burner too. You have like this is the thing that I'm not focused on mentally. I'm more just being the operator. I'm being the, I'm executing on this thing on a regular basis. This is kind of locked in. This is your cash cow, so to speak, if you're thinking about it through the lens of the Boston Consulting Group Growth Share Matrix, which none of you are, but sometimes I am. But that's one way to think about it. This is your cash cow. This is the thing that you've got like cooking. Um, you got up dialed in, you kind of have that thing. It's not maybe on autopilot, but you're not trying to reinvent it.

11:40So it's not requiring you to show up with that creative energy that you need for the back burner thing. So the back burner thing is something that you're having to, it's safer. It's a side dish. You can mess with it. You can experiment there. That's your side project, your side quest. This is the thing that maybe even you're like cooking up a little sauce for something that you're going to put on the front burner after this front burner's moved off of there. Like maybe this is the thing in waiting, or it's at least the thing that you're experimenting with. And for me, I can only really have one of those back burner things.

12:16And that back burner thing, that's like where I'm putting my strategic creative energy. And when I think strategic, I'm thinking I'm doing something now for some kind of payoff down in the future. And so then you have your slow cooker, you have your slow cooker, your crock pot, if you will, so many other things go in there. And then, yeah, some things go into the trash. But very few things have to go there. And sometimes you put it in the trash and look, this is a real clean, creative trash. You can get it back out and work with it. That's disgusting, but it's not real food, people. So it's okay.

12:53But these are the kind of things I have going on. And at any given time, they all change. They sometimes move around in these different spots. Sometimes like when I was doing the podcast and it started to take off a couple of years into that, I realized like I'm trying to have these two side dishes to my client work, trying to do kids books, trying to get kids books moving and the podcast and these competing energies. I can't do two of these kinds of startup up things at the same time. And I thought I'm going to have to put kids books in the trash. Now I thought maybe they're in the slow cooker.

13:30I don't know. They're in one of these, but I have to completely set it aside because it's just not working right now. And there's, when I think back, I think, Oh, it's kind of interesting because part of the, I had a lot of strategy, a lot of ideas of why I want to do the podcast. I'm ADHD. So most of the time I can only do something consistently if I'm just all in obsessed with it. And that usually is connecting to something deep within me, something, um, beyond the ego, transpersonal. Some people say if you're, um, some kind of psychoanalyst, but something that goes beyond what's good for me.

14:06Like I, it has to be part of my, what feels like a greater purpose. So it has to relate to and be positive for other people for me to go deep into it. Um, and so that was the first thing with the podcast. It was already deeply connected to what I find myself doing, even when I don't have a podcast. I will find myself like wanting to help out, wanting to share ideas with creative people and share what's working for me because I'm just passionate about, I'm so, I'm so passionate about creative people. I'm passionate about nonlinear people, nonlinear thinkers, neurodivergent people. I'm very passionate about not just neurodivergent people, but neurodiversity as a whole, like leaning into your neurotype and the difference in your neurotype.

14:48So I'm so passionate about that, that the podcast really started from there. And then once I started exploring different ways to do this, because before it was a podcast, it was kind of a blog. And before it was a blog, it was kind of a local event and, and meeting up with friends and that sort of thing. But then when I wanted to get into publishing and I learned that I needed to have some kind of audience or platform. And I thought, okay, the podcast could be good for that. And that also might help my publishing goals if this thing takes off. And so what was interesting was I thought, okay, if I let this podcast take off, maybe then later I can come back to the publishing and it'll actually, I'll be in a better situation to get through that gatekeeper brick wall that I keep hitting.

15:35And that ended up being true. But even more interestingly, what ended up being true was that I learned how to tell stories better from doing the podcast. So it was this really interesting story that I experienced of this thing in the way of what I wanted ended up being what I needed in a way that I didn't expect, is that because of doing the show every week, I was constantly looking for symbols and metaphors and analogies. And I was reading lots of books about storytelling and communicating, thinking really through the lens of the podcast and public speaking, like live storytelling kind of thing.

16:12Those things ended up making me a much better picture book author. And so those things came together to help me break through there. What I'm talking about, where I'm going, by the way, we might not get to the questions. Okay. I was afraid that might happened. Those are the backup in case I not having notes meant that I didn't have anything to say. Of course, that's not true. I hope you don't mind this very unstructured ADHD episode as we're following all these tangents. There are going to be through lines. I will try to wrap up things as I go. Speaking of which, here's me trying to tie up what I was getting at.

16:47The reason I went on that giant tangent was because I wanted to present this idea. Going all the way back to what I first started with, talking about transitions and being in a sort of transitionary space myself. I feel a little bit similar to the way that I felt at the beginning of the podcast where I had these competing things. I'm kind of in that zone right now and I'm trying to navigate how to move through it knowing that the things that I take off the back burner don't have to go in the trash. They can go in the slow cooker. They don't have to be my main focuses and I can take breaks. I think for me, this is so powerful because I'm so prone to overthinking and doing nothing.

17:42I'm so prone to because I can't figure out which one is the right one to do next, I'm going to do none of them or I'm going to try to do all of them at the same time. And both of those usually end in me not finishing anything, maybe starting either not starting at all or starting a billion things and really never finishing or publishing or shipping any of them. And so for me, it's been really helpful to have this framework to think through these things. And right now I'm sort of in that zone because when we started doing picture books And I say we, because Sophie and I write a lot together. And then I also have books that I've co-wrote and illustrated for other people.

18:23And when I started going deeper into that zone, I think it started about 2018. I was like, okay, this thing came back around. I was excited again, excited in its own right. Like excited in the deep self sort of way where I'm like, this feels aligned with who I am, what I'm about and what I want to be in the world for other people. And so I have to have that alignment. But then when I have that alignment, I also like to look at what are the benefits to this in other ways. And so I've wanted to make picture books since I was a kid. I freaking loved Ed Emberley. And I remember there's several times where at school we would read a book like Go Away, Big Green Monster.

19:05And I would come home and be like, we have to go find this book. I need this book. Same thing happened with Stinky Cheese Man and some Shel Silverstein books. And I was just really into it. And I even wrote some of my own versions of those things. I was very, very into it. And so it's always felt aligned with kind of who I feel like I am and what I want to do and what my work would be. My illustration work works just works really well for kids. And so I had that deep thing. But then as it came back around, I had a different sort of perspective on it and how it fit within the whole framework of the meal that I was cooking on.

19:43Or if you think about it in business terms, there's something called the flywheel. And the flywheel is this idea that this thing you do over here then leads to this domino, leads to that domino, leads to that domino. But it happens kind of cyclical where they all sort of work together and create positive momentum where they're kind of self-perpetuating. And so for me, that's been true. Like when I do the podcast, it turns into speaking gigs and that speaking gig might turn into a client project and that client project might turn into a kid's book or that that client project or kid's book. I learned stuff from that that turns into the next podcast.

20:22And so that's a flywheel and it kind of they kind of lead to the next thing. And so I thought, OK, if I start doing picture books, that makes tons of sense for the general path that I'm on and what I believe in. But also, I could probably, based on where I'm at, I could potentially create some picture books. Even just publishing picture books would give me some credentials that I don't have as a public speaker and podcaster. Because all of my credentials up until that point were just, you know, and it was a big accomplishment for me and for anybody that's done this. I had worked with a lot of really great clients like Apple and Sony and Google and Xbox and Nickelodeon, all these different clients over the years.

21:03but I felt like I was hitting a ceiling for what was possible. Because all of those clients allowed me to get on stages in creative circles, creative conferences and creative schools. They kind of related to and understood those credentials. But if I wanted to get on more general stages, whether it's like an ADHD conference or go do a corporate talk to talk about creativity, I needed to have credentials that made more sense to everybody, to the general public. And so I thought it's possible if I start publishing kids' books, publishing kids' books is enough. Like if I tell my dentist, I'm a kids' book author, illustrator, they instantly know what that means.

21:45They have context for that. So even just publishing those is a credential that would help open some of these doors. But if I could get on the New York Times list or get an award or something in that vein, that really could open up the doors for all the talks that I want to do and the consulting and that sort of thing. And so that was like, yes, it was aligned to my deep self. It was also, and I just want to highlight here, look, this is my episode. I told you it was going to be tangential and wild. Hopefully. I mean, you're probably one of these people that likes this sort of conversation. Not a conversation.

22:22I'm just talking at you through the internet, but I lost my thread a little bit. Okay, here's what I was saying. I wanna just, I've camped out on a couple little frameworks and thoughts that I've thought might be helpful. One is the cooking framework, which is a little bit of a take on the BCG growth share matrix from the business world. We talked about the flywheel, which maybe I need to interpret that to the creative world a little bit and put my own spin on that. And then this third one I want to talk about, this is something I've talked about on the internet, on the podcast a few different times.

23:02I don't feel like I've fully been able to nail what I mean by this. But one of my favorite illustrations I've ever done has a two-headed monster. And the two-headed monster, I love as a symbol of the duality of man. I love it as a symbol of the fact, Kind of the idea from internal family systems and Jungian psychology, which says that even if you don't have, what's the term that they use nowadays? Disassociative identity disorder, what used to be called multiple personality disorder. Even if you don't have that, there is a way in which we all have parts of ourself. We all are a collection of pieces.

23:50I think one of the ways to think about that is that you are filtered through your brain and your brain has all these different chambers. So I've heard you've got the hypothalamus. I don't know what that is, but you have the right and left hemisphere. You have all the other ones. I could definitely list so many other ones. This episode is sponsored by Squarespace. I freaking love having Squarespace as a sponsor because it's easy to sell it when you love something this much. I'm a big fan. Squarespace is an all-in-one website platform designed to help you succeed online. Here's what I love about Squarespace.

24:31Their intuitive and super versatile drag-and-drop tools mean you can make a custom website without knowledge of code that makes people say, whoa, who made that for you? Looks like you built that from scratch. People have really said stuff like that to me about my site. and I built it myself quite easily with Squarespace. You can check it out at andyjpizza.com if you want to check that out, what I did with it. It doesn't look templaty and it screams my creative brand. I also love that I have all of my domains through Squarespace now, which makes it seamless and easy to manage. I know the first thing as creative folks do when we get an idea is to grab that URL.

25:07Now you can keep track of all your websites and your domains in one place that's super intuitive and easy to manage. Head to squarespace.com slash peptalk for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use promo code peptalk, all one word, to save 10 % off your first purchase of a website or domain. Sophie and I have really specific taste. And when we put our home together, we try to find the overlap or let our individual tastes complement and balance each other out. It's not always easy, but we have a few great pieces from Wayfair that have perfectly struck this elusive balance. We just got their Cheridwin Marble Top End Table.

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26:27Pituitary gland. I don't know. But it doesn't matter. You have all these different parts of your brain and they kind of act like different parts of you. and it's helpful at times to think of yourself in these parts. So Jungians might think about it like you have a shadow side, you have the ego, you have the deep self. Freud had his own version of that. Internal family systems really breaks that apart and says, you know, there might even be all these different refractions that were created from individual traumas and experiences and all these different competing values. Like there are all these different parts of who you are.

27:09And Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor, who wrote Whole Brain Thinking, even took four of the main parts and said, you should name these different parts so that you kind of know who you're working with, what part of you you're working with. The reason I bring all this up is this kind of multidimensional way of thinking about yourself, thinking about yourself as a multi-headed sort of monster is really useful because it helps you realize that you do have all these competing priorities. It helps you to get all of them on the same team. If you think about shows like Moon Knight that has disassociative identity disorder that character does or Fight Club or, you know, all these sorts of movies, they're almost always a symbol of a deeper thread that says you will be better at accomplishing your goals or being the person you want to be if you get all of the parts of yourself on the same team.

28:02The reason I bring that up is because I keep going back to when I go to explain on this show, I often go to explain creative strategy that I have. I realized in the past that I'm usually telling you the part of me that is sort of like the ego part. And I don't mean that in a in the kind of conventional sense, the way that we talk about it as people. like not i'm not talking about the big-headed part of me or whatever i'm talking about it more like the youngian way of thinking about ego which is saying this is the part of me that is andy out in the real world doing things on this planet um and that is usually what i'm speaking to because in this show we're talking about how do you accomplish things and the ego that's kind of I think about the hero's journey even as, it's not just me, I think other psychologists have said this, as the development of a healthy ego.