570 - The 3 Part Process I Use to Actually Get Creative Stuff Done

0:00This episode is brought to you by Facebook. So you were scrolling on Marketplace and there it was, the bike you'd been searching for. You sent a message and it turned out the seller was super chatty, kind of funny, and an avid cyclist. The next thing you know, you're in a cycling crew. Well, a community cycling group. The thing about Facebook, you might find more than what you're looking for. From a browse to a bike ride, this summer, find more on Facebook. Late night bites with friends? Already hard to beat. That first too hot bite of fries you couldn't wait for, followed by ice cold Pepsi. Now that hits different.

0:42Suddenly, the energy kicks back in. The night goes longer. And the laughs don't stop. Because Pepsi brings out more flavor, more fun, and more of the moment. Food deserves Pepsi. Grab a Pepsi Zero Sugar today. If I want to do so many things, why do I do so few things? Why do I constantly have to watch people reap the benefits of ideas that I had five years ago but couldn't execute on? These are the frustrations that I have over and over in my life as a neurodivergent creative person with ADHD. but I have learned some things that have helped me along the way that have helped me publish over 10 books and show up and do this podcast every week for over 10 years and do personal projects that led to clients like Xbox and Apple.

1:33And in this episode, I want to share with you the counterintuitive way a creative brain has to get stuff done and it will help you work with your brain instead of against it. And it'll help you see that you can't do things the normal or efficient way that trying to be efficient is just a waste of time. Stick until the end for our creative call to adventure, something to do with these ideas. It's called the sniff test, and it will help transform the way that you accomplish things in the world. And to do that, I first have to tell you about the 3C flywheel of getting stuff done creatively. And before that, I have to tell you about the dog that's living in your heart.

2:15All right, let's go.

2:16Andy J. Pizza:On the creative journey, it's easy to get lost, but don't worry, you'll lift off. Sometimes you just need a creative pep talk.

2:35This 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. Their 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.

3:11You can check it out at AndyJPizza.com if you wanna 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 us creative folks do when we get an idea is to grab that URL. Now 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.

3:47If you want to write your own destiny, you need to learn how to write. You don't want to be waiting for a manuscript or a brief or a script that someone else wrote because you will be waiting forever. I spent so much time waiting, thinking I'm not a writer, but the only thing that stopped me was writing. This is why I love Mindy Kaling's class on Masterclass. It's called Scripting Your Own Success. it's all about this very thing. You need to hear her tell her story of writing her play, Matt and Ben, and how it broke open her career and led to writing and starring on the TV show, The Office, ever heard of it?

4:23Such a good example of this, really great class, very much enjoying it. She is just so awesome. I really love that they have audio mode too so that you can listen while you're traveling or driving or washing the dishes. I really love that three in four members feel inspired every time they watch and 83 % have applied something they've learned to their real lives. Masterclass keeps adding new classes, so there's never been a better time to get in. Right now, as a listener of this show, you get 15 % off any annual membership at masterclass.com slash pep talk. That's 15 % off at masterclass.com slash pep talk.

4:59Head to masterclass.com slash pep talk to see the latest offer.

5:06so you have tried white knuckling it brute forcing it to happen you've tried to accomplish things because they're the important things to do and you end up doing nothing and the reason is because you you got that dog in you right and when i say that dog in you i'm talking about the kind a dog that can't just go out and do a stroll and get some steps and go from point A to point B. It's got to stop at every freaking rock and tree and junction and sniff around and wonder and explore every little freaking tangent when you're just trying to get around the block. That's the dog that I have in me. And that's really frustrating until you realize that those aren't distractions to the walk.

5:59Those are the freaking point of the walk. And the same is true in your creative practice. And it's a huge relief as a dog owner when you realize like, oh, their whole thing, their whole world is sniffs. Their whole world is this curiosity. And that's the point. And if I let them do their thing, we can get all of what they need in half the time and effort. And that's great as a dog owner, but it's even bigger as a creative person because when you realize that the tangents and the curiosities and the sniffs are the point of making the work, you will see that it changes everything.

6:56so if you're a dog owner or you're a dog lover you probably have dogs on your algorithm in the short form video and you've probably heard that like the point of a walk for a dog is to sniff like that that's how they like the way that we take in the world is primarily through our eyes like 90 of our brain is wired is like involved in seeing because it's so such a big part of being a human for them it's smelling and the thing that they really need for their mental health on a walk is to take it in through smelling and once you realize that you're not dragging them along you're letting them do that because you realize if we let them do that we don't have to go miles and miles and miles like they're going to get everything they need by just going a couple blocks and the same is true for your nervous system if you're a creative person that's the thing that this switch was so huge for me because when I realized that I was ADHD, one of the big components of that is that you don't have the neurotypical brain that's an importance-based nervous system that says, I'm going to set my priorities and do my actions based on what's important to me and what's important to others and what's crucial.

8:08That's what's going to get done. And so whether you're ADHD or not, if you're creative, creative stuff doesn't work like that. And when you're trying to accomplish something creative, I think all of us could take a lesson from how ADHD people need to get stuff done, which is an interest-based nervous system. And it starts with a curiosity. It starts with a sniff. It starts with, hmm, that's kind of interesting. I want to pull at that thread. And then if you pull at that thread, you can turn it into a challenge. Like, ooh, I'm going to challenge myself to do X amount of tests or experiments on this kind of thing.

8:44And then once you do that, then you can turn it into something you pitch or commit to and create a crucial deadline that will make you feel urgency. And those three pieces, that's how you get stuff done. It works completely differently than the efficient path of important tasks of all the other parts of life or other neurotypical ways of doing things. And so that shift is everything. You are like a dog. You were, you're bred to sniff out things. You're bred to not ignore those distractions, but to realize those aren't distractions. Those are the point of moving through life. All of those curiosities.

9:26If you will start, even back in the day for me, when I was like 17 and I watched my mom, who I believe I got my ADHD from, really struggling because she was constantly trying to do what was important to everybody else and supposed to be important to her. and she just wasn't able to follow through on those things. I realized, maybe on an unconscious level, this is before I even knew I was ADHD, that that's not gonna work for me, that I'm going to have to, to some degree, let my curiosity and interest lead the way. And I didn't have the full path. I didn't have the full plan, the other two points that I'm gonna get to in a minute, but I knew like, okay, that plan's not gonna work for me.

10:07I'm gonna try this. And then slowly I learned how to take those interests, turn them into a challenge, and then create a deadline. And those are the three main pieces. And this is what I call the 3C flywheel of getting stuff done creatively. And it just rolls off the tongue, right? The flywheel idea is that it's this circular thing, is that you listen to your interests and curiosities. That's step one. You let them lead the way. once you kind of have a sense of what that sniff really is, then you can turn it into a challenge. For me, it has been a daily drawing year-long project challenge. It's been, I'm going to make four book covers for books from the public domain in that direction.

10:49I'm going to make 100 episodes of this podcast. I'm going to make 30 YouTube videos. That challenge works with my nervous system. Now, sometimes if I make that challenge too big based on the level of interest, that can get me into trouble but that's how i have to weigh it up i have to think like what level of interest and curiosity is this have i really shown that i am deep into this and i have capacity for this and i have some history that says this is kind of the right way if it does i can make a bigger challenge but i really want to right size that challenge because if you do too many challenges that you give up on you will start not taking that dog out for a walk you will start not believing that you can get through it and you will quit taking on challenges.

11:32So I think that's an important piece. But the first thing is find the interest, find the sniffs. Then the second thing is make a challenge out of it. Make it a public challenge. For me, that's really good because it has little rewards, little dopamine bursts of like posting online or bringing other people into the mix. Or even if it's like a weekly meetup with a creative friend, I can kind of check in on what I'm working with. But creating some kind of challenge that's active, that's externally faced. That helps me build up work. It helps me experiment until I get to the point where I can kind of prove to other people what's so interesting about this through my creative work.

12:09And then after I get that and I have a little body of work, I can pitch that to a publisher. I can pitch that to a client. I can pitch that on Kickstarter to my followers and that turns it into a deadline, which is the final and very essential part of this flywheel that I create this sense of impending doom that if I don't finish it, this sense of urgency, because that is how my nervous system is wired. I need that sense of urgency to act. And so I have to find ways of outsourcing that as a freelance illustrator. I have to find like, okay, I have to sell this book so that they give me the deadline or I have to create this Kickstarter.

12:48So they give me the deadline or I have to pitch it to this client. so they give me the deadline. And I've noticed this pattern over and over and over. This pattern helped me publish the Indie Rock Coloring Book. This pattern helped me to create the kids book, Invisible Things. This pattern has shown up in the Kickstarters that I've launched. I need all three of these pieces. And once I go through them, once I get through that deadline, the reason it's a flywheel is that, the idea of a flywheel is that this thing leads to that thing leads to that thing leads to that thing. Once I finish that deadline, all of a sudden through that process, I'm not that interested in this project anymore, but I found some new thread through making this and finishing it that I want, I'm desperate to pick up on next.

13:28And now I'm back. Now it doesn't work always. Like sometimes I have gone through times where I needed to sniff out something, um, totally different from what I'm doing, but often it's kind of cyclical and it's why I've been able to create a lot of stuff, even though I really struggle to execute on ideas. And I really find it impossible to do this dog walk like a horse would, you know, a horse, we bred them to go from A to point B in this efficient way. We even got these blinders. We put them on there. That's like the cubicle for most neurotypicals, like sit in this little place, get this task done from A to point B in the most efficient way possible.

14:07I can't create like that. It's one of the reasons why I end up getting stuck doing nothing is when I'm trying to create like that and so this little flywheel will help you do things in a completely different way

14:29this 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. Their 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.

15:04You can check it out at AndyJPizza.com if you wanna 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. Now 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.

15:41If you want to write your own destiny, you need to learn how to write. You don't want to be waiting for a manuscript or a brief or a script that someone else wrote because you will be waiting forever. I spent so much time waiting, thinking I'm not a writer, but the only thing that stopped me was writing. This is why I love Mindy Kaling's class on Masterclass. It's called Scripting Your Own Success. It's all about this very thing. You need to hear her tell her story of writing her play, Matt and Ben, and how it broke open her career and led to writing and starring on the TV show, The Office. Ever heard of it?

16:16Such a good example of this. Really great class. Very much enjoying it. She is just so awesome. I really love that they have audio mode too, so that you can listen while you're traveling or driving or washing the dishes. I really love that three in four members feel inspired every time they watch, and 83 % have applied something they've learned to their real lives. Masterclass keeps adding new classes, so there's never been a better time to get in. Right now, as a listener of this show, you get 15 % off any annual membership at masterclass.com slash pep talk. That's 15 % off at masterclass.com slash pep talk.

16:52Head to masterclass.com slash pep talk to see the latest offer.

16:59All right, it's time for the creative call to adventure. this is your sniff test. Sniff test. How do you do the sniff test? This is how you're going to get stuff done. This is going to help you move through the world in a way that works for your brain instead of against it and get you to finish some great things. And it works with these three C's of the flywheel. The three C's are curiosity. That's the sniff. The challenge. That's the challenge. The cutoff, which is the deadline. And you need to find all three to get something done your way. The first one is curiosity. That's sniffing out what are the things that are making you excited about life, making you interested.

17:40For me, if I'm in a place where nothing comes to mind, it usually is because I've been working, I've been walking through the walk like a horse instead of a dog. I've been walking through the world trying to stay on task, trying to stay on what's important and there have been these distractions so to speak that have come at me and I've convinced myself that's not important that's irrelevant and what's not important is not going to be something that I get done but I don't have an importance-based nervous system and that's not what creativity is about and so what I have to do is relive the walk that I've been on for the past six months or year or even sometimes a few years when I've really got off track and I think back to when was the last time that I was intrinsically excited about something, just a topic or an experience or just something I encountered in the world or something that somebody said or a book that I saw, like that I just like, I didn't follow up with that.

18:41I didn't stop the ego part of my brain that's walking me on this leash. I didn't say, hey, no, we are sniffing here for a bit. And so that's the first thing you got to do is figure out like, what is, what am I really curious about intrinsically? And then the second bit is create a challenge around it. This is something that I can pull off. And this usually works best if it's public facing, like some kind of public facing project or commitment, then I explore that curiosity in public to see if I, part of that challenge is, can I figure out what's interesting about it to myself and then also communicate that to others.

19:19And then the third thing is the cutoff. I have to figure out a way and I can't just do an arbitrary one. It can't just be like, oh, deadline's October 23rd, Andy. Okay. I put that on the calendar. Now it's real. No, my brain works on real urgency. So there has to be some skin in the game. There has to be like some social, you know, like, I don't know, a social skin in the game. I can't think of the word. But this has happened every time. So like, this could look like a Kickstarter. Like when I did my daily drawing project, a new character every weekday for a year, that started with research of I noticed, like, I'm very interested in all of the artists that I love, have this like cast of characters.

20:02And I was getting curious about that. I was doing the curiosity sniff, I was reading the interviews. I was trying to get at the bottom of what was interesting about this to me. And then once I started to have something to work with, I created this challenge. And it was a big one. I said, I'm going to do a new character every weekday for a year. And it was aligned with the size of the curiosity. But I will say, as you define the challenge, I take whatever you think you could do and then just cut that in half. Because you are going to lose some steam throughout the process. And I think it's important to just kind of right size that.

20:35And then after I'd done the research and I'd done the challenge where I did a new character every weekday for a year, then I created a Kickstarter that we were going to screen print all these so that they could be a finished project, a real thing. And that Kickstarter was a way of giving myself the deadline. Now, the same has happened with this podcast. I got interested in creative careers. I was talking to all my friends about it. That was part of the research. I was reading tons of interviews of other people. There was just this high level of curiosity. I turned it into a challenge where I was going to make a hundred episodes of this podcast.

21:09And then after I'd been making it for a long time with the challenge, I pitched it to Skillshare to do one of their Skillshare original classes. And that gave me a deadline to turn it into a final product. And the same has been true for my Invisible Things book. But you could do it with a record label or a publisher after you have done the work of a challenge and you've created a body of work and you're not going into that pitch empty handed, that's going to help you get that deal and get that deadline and get that cut off. And so those are the three parts of the process, curiosity, challenge, cut off, figure out what part of the process you're in.

21:48If you, if you didn't have anything instantly come to mind when I said, what are you curious about right now? You need to go back through your mind and do that sniff test. You have to think about what did I say? Oh, that's not important. That's irrelevant. I don't see how that ends up paying off. You have to give time for those sniffs. So go back there and then sit in that for a while until you can figure out a creative challenge around it. And then do the challenge, set the challenge. And then once you get to the end of it or towards the end, start thinking about what would it look like to create a real deadline around this?

22:18And anybody can do that in any scenario. You don't have to sell a book. You can create a Kickstarter. You don't have to even do either of those. You could pitch it to somebody like a gallery that gives you a deadline of when you need to show up. Those three things will work with your brain instead of against it.

22:52All right, so I hope that these three Cs, this different way of moving through getting stuff done really does unlock something for you because I know how heartbreaking it is to watch things go out in the world that are executed, maybe not as good as you could have done it, but just because they were able to have the type of brain where they just find an idea and they execute it. And you're sat there thinking, man, I thought of that five, 10 years ago, but I couldn't get it done. Now, first of all, I'll just say like, it was not done by you. Like there are lots of, there are so many things that are just kind of different versions of the same thing.

23:33So don't get in your head, don't beat yourself up. You don't have to be the first to market with stuff. You can see this in every single arena. Like Facebook was not the first to market with this thing. They were just the ones that were bloodthirsty enough to make it happen. That's not what I'm saying either, but I'm just saying, I hope that, Don't get discouraged by that. Do it in your own time. Keep going. Do it your own way. The point is not to be the most efficient. The point is to do it in the way that is conducive to the way you do it so that it becomes the thing that only you could do. And ultimately, I just wanted to say, I genuinely hope that this makes a difference.

24:15It doesn't mean that you're going to execute on every idea. It doesn't mean that you're not going to have trouble with it. But it does mean that over time, over 10, 15 years, like I've been going in my creative journey, that these things that you started and finished start to stack up. And you don't feel like, man, I never get any of this stuff done. And if you quit trying to do it the important-based nervous system way and you lean into the interest-based system and let those curiosities turn into challenges and those challenges turn into cutoffs, some interesting things can start to pile up.