571 - How to Escape Creative Paralysis According to Studies, Science and Real Life Stories with David Epstein

26:28But why did they consider that? Yeah, it wasn't rescinded, but he did plagiarize in it. Right, yeah. And so this is in that same chapter. I'm talking about sort of balancing the new with the familiar. And Martin Luther King grew up in a folk preaching tradition where, you know, if you know that expression, preaching to the choir, where we usually say that as a bad thing. Like, you're telling me something I already know. Yeah. In the folk preaching tradition, that was not seen as a bad thing. People expected it was like going to your favorite band. They expected to hear a version of the hits. And if you were too original, it was kind of suspect, right?

27:00Because we're talking about an ancient wisdom. And so he grew up in that tradition and he learned probably better than almost anyone that the way to get people to come along with radical ideas, because some of his ideas were radical at the time, was to start with things that were so familiar that people found them positively irrefutable. Yeah. So he would use these strategies like one called typology and deductive reasoning. But basically what it amounted to was he would start a sermon with something that the audience could not possibly disagree with. The story of Moses as a liberator of slaves.

27:38So like, of course, they're on board with that. And he would try to find that same template going through history, going up to the present. So then maybe it would be Abraham Lincoln, liberator of slaves. And then maybe it would be Gandhi, you know, liberator from oppression of colonialism. And then the Supreme Court, liberator in Brown versus Board of Education. And then to you in the audience, now it's your turn if you would like to be part of this lineage, which you obviously agree has been a good and important one. So he would often take from preachers, famous preachers, who he knew had already preached to this same audience.

28:11and he would basically take their sermon and insert his own radical points into it. So he was giving them stuff that he knew they already agreed with. The problem with his PhD dissertation was he did the same thing where for his thesis advisor, he took some things from a thesis that that same advisor had approved several years earlier and then added his own ideas on top of it. And in the academic writing context, that's not allowed. it. And so after he died and this was discovered in this Stanford research project, there was a, you know, sort of an investigation and they decided not to rescind his PhD posthumously, but you know, he shouldn't have been doing it there.

28:54But in the, in the preaching tradition, he grew up and you were supposed to do this. So he was just doing it everywhere. And this is how he got people to come along with radical ideas by starting with something that they could not deny and then embedding his more radical points in it. And you can see this in his sermons, the more radical a point he makes, the more conventional will be all the other stuff in that sermon. And almost everything, like every sermon, every speech, everything of his includes borrowed material. I mean, the Let Freedom Ring crescendo of his speech on the National Mall was borrowed from his friend Archibald Carey Jr.

29:31who had used it, which was borrowed from Ida B. Wells, the activist and journalist who had used it. So he was using these things that were tried and tested, basically. Yeah. And in fact, I mean, I live in DC and down on the National Mall where there's the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, some of his greatest quotes, like about a dozen of his greatest quotes, maybe it's 14 of them, are etched into this granite around the memorial. And one of the famous quotes is, darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that. And it's like etched in the memorial is this quote.

30:05And the first sentence of that is stolen. Yeah. from a preacher named J. Wallace Hamilton. And then he made the second sentence and glued it on to that first one. And that was his mode of working and how he got people to come along with what were at the time radical ideas.

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32:05I don't know if it's just me or not, but couches and chairs in my house end up taking on a kind of personality and they feel kind of like part of the family, which is weird. I know, but I bet you kind of know what I mean. I have this yellow satin love seat that we've had for probably like 10 years and we've been through so much together. It refreshed our living room vibe back in the day. And now it's been in a few different rooms. It's in my home studio. Now it's where my dog comes and sits as my studio pet. And I just love that couch. I mean, not more than my dog, but I do love that couch and it's been easy to move.

32:40It's held up for years and it still looks really cool. I have had a handful of items like this from Wayfair. Wayfair helps you create a home that stands up to real life with quality products, great value and trusted reviews. Wayfair verified products are hand vetted by product specialists using a 10 point quality inspection. transform your space with pieces that hold up to real life join wayfair rewards today and get five percent back on every purchase head to wayfair.com or shop the wayfair app for all things home that's w-a-y-f-a-i-r.com wayfair every style every home so i grew up in the midwest like near the bible belt we'll say i don't know where it really starts or ends so i had uh indiana Okay.

33:26I'm from Chicago. Okay. So I, I felt like you describing that. I was like, oh, this is also kind of common knowledge within church communities. Like people are, they're constantly taking from their scripture and then they're taking from stuff other people said. It's all the, you're hearing a bunch of stuff where you're like, oh, we've all agreed to this. So I'm not religious anymore, but I think about that thing all the time, especially when I do all my solo episodes, I'm thinking, what do we as creative people agree to? Stuff like think outside the box. And I try to think about how do I speak that language, especially if I'm going to introduce something really different or even like subvert that completely like you're doing with this book.

34:09It's such a good thought. I feel like in spaces like church where that was normalized, that was fine. Then in academia, that was a different problem. I think the argument that they said was like, this still was additive enough not to disqualify it, but it's still not, not really what you're supposed to be doing. So he flew a bit to, yeah, go ahead. No. And they also just said that he's dead and can't defend himself. So, right. That's good. You know, it was clearly, he should not have been doing that in academic writing. Yes. I mean, academic writing prizes originality to such a degree that almost nobody ever reads it.

34:43Right. Right. So yeah. Yeah. That's, it's like, they want it to be so original that only like two people care about it. And this is, this is exactly the next place I want to go Because in that scenario, he's flying too close to the sun. He's doing this to too much of an extreme. There are papers and theses that balance this thing. And the people listening to this that aren't preaching sermons, they're making picture books and writing books and making albums and movies and that kind of thing. What do we learn from that? How do we balance those things with giving people rope, giving them something familiar without taking too much?

35:30That's a great question. And I think, you know, everyone I think knows that they shouldn't sort of copy things directly unless they're putting it in the context where it's kind of acknowledged. Not to say that some of our eminent creatives haven't done that because as I was researching this section of the book and starting to realize that Shakespeare basically lifted some line. I mean, as far as I could tell, only two of his plays were not based on stories that had been told like a million times already. Yeah. I want to talk to you about that actually, but keep going. Yeah. And in some cases, like there's idiosyncratic turns of phrase that are very similar to some of the antecedents.

36:08antecedents. But that was not, again, at the time, that was not viewed as a problem. In fact, creativity was associated with taking something that people already understood and making it your own and changing it. And the idea was that that actually gave people the ability to understand the foundation and then really focus in on the changes. Just like musicians who cover a song and you know the song and then you say, well, this is really interesting, you know, what the changes are. So the degree to which Shakespeare did some of that would probably not be, you know, looked kindly upon today in some of the places because he got so close.

36:44So we have to consider our own cultural context. But I still think there's a lot of opportunity to sort of build off of stories that people know and then subvert them a little. I mean, that's kind of what I tried to do with a lot of the stories in like range or inside the box is start with the story of some person or some achievement that people are familiar with. You know, they kind of know it. And so you're not just, or they know something about it. So you're not just introducing this completely new story. What you're introducing is a different way for them to think about this story that they kind of already knew.

37:16And so I think that can be a powerful way to do it where you're not introducing too much at once and kind of understanding what the baseline knowledge of the audience is. And that's hard and that's imperfect but not only thinking about what's interesting to you but thinking about because i have that a lot like i'm interested in a ton of stuff and i have to spend a lot of time thinking about okay remember the people that are going to be reading this haven't been going down this rabbit hole because like they have lives and so you know yeah you want to start with some of the sort of basic stuff and and see how the story is normally told and then the way that i think about it is then i want to give the person these new glasses to wear so they see this somewhat familiar story in a totally new way.

38:01This feels a little bit connected to what you call shrinking the problem space. I think that's how you call it. And I think about this a lot. I loved your conceptualization of this because it's something I try to do in my own practice. But shrinking the problem space in this, maybe you could talk about what that means, But if I'm relating it to the problem space of what are you actually doing differently and really knowing that's your area where this is a real problem to solve. This is where you really have to focus your creativity. Maybe you could speak to that. Yeah, that shrinking the problem space language I took from a scientist named Herbert Simon.

38:43Yeah. He was a – well, he was a lot of things. He was a computer scientist. He was a founder of cognitive psychology, but he won the Nobel Prize in economics. and all of his work really revolved around how humans solve problems. And one of the things he found was that to make problems tractable and sort of like do our best work, what you really want to do is start by shrinking. So problem space was this theoretical space where you have to plot some path from beginning to solution. Like you can almost think of it as like a square with a maze, right? And the best problem solvers he found were people that used their early attempts as efforts to make that box smaller and smaller.

39:25They might experiment a little at first, but they would experiment with the intention of, all right, what is the thing that I'm really trying to solve here? And so I think finding ways to sort of make problems smaller, like you said, is what is the core thing that I'm trying to do here can be empowering for actually then being able to get going. Yeah, I completely agree. And I think, well, I'll just say for me, that looks like two things. One, it looks like I've talked a lot about how when you're starting out as a creative, a lot of people want to find their style because they think that's the main thing to do, finding their voice.

40:02Where in my experience, the more I feel like I've developed a voice, the more I realize like, no, that's just so that I can shrink the problem of creativity that I'm not. I think about it like the classic example is Wes Anderson. Wes Anderson doesn't show up to a set and think, now how am I going to frame this? He's not thinking that. He's thinking about this tiny problem, this tiny new thing that he's trying to do where he has all of this other shorthand for how to do all the other stuff. All that other stuff is his voice and his style. Is that kind of getting it right? Totally, totally. Right, so you have that.

40:40Because you don't want to, I don't think it's a way to do your best creative work if you're having to reinvent everything all the time, right? If the problem space is so big. So it's giving yourself some of these things that you can rely on and that you can lean on. And then it gives you more bandwidth to focus on those things that are really interesting to change and play with. Really quick, circling back to the Shakespeare thing, this is an interesting thought that came up when I was reading about the typology and the deductive reasoning, deductive sermons. It relates to, I've had Angus Fletcher on this show a couple of times.

41:14He's a writer, kind of a story expert. He has a PhD in Shakespeare. And his argument for what makes Shakespeare great is that he took these really, really familiar archetypes and then flipped them on their head. And so there's, they always have these characteristics that are super different and break the archetype in a major way. And it kind of reminds me of like Stranger Things does this really well. Lots of the stuff we love does this well, where, you know, Steve Harrington in Stranger Things is this jock. He's this, you know, just like a jerk at the start. He fills all of the 80s movie jock moron kind of tropes.

41:55But then he ends up being this incredible babysitter with like a heart of a heart of gold. And so I think that was just such a good example that I had to share it with you. No, that is great. I love that. And again, it's like grounding it in that trope, right? So you have this familiarity, which I think really helps. And one of my favorite, probably my favorite writer, Jorge Luis Borges, would write about this, that cliches and tropes are super useful because they kind of allow people to focus on what's different. Yeah. Right? Because you're meeting them where they are. They understand this character.

42:27And so then when you do the subverting or the tweaking or whatever it is, that stands out so much because they sort of understand the baseline that you're starting from. So yeah, I love that. I wanted to see if we could help people build a box to create from. So we talk about on this show all the time, both like creating personal projects, but then also your ongoing personal project of a creative practice, which is regular. I wondered if you could, I want to work towards some ideas on how to build a box, build a hypothesis that you want to test, but maybe you could talk, talk a little bit about Isabella Allende and the constraint that she puts on her creative practice.

43:12That's so useful. By the way, she sent me, if you want me to, I'd have to un-airplane my phone, but she sent me some kind of interesting emails recently. And she said that I could share them. Yeah, that'd be awesome. Yeah. Let me, but let me, So I'll give the sort of background story of her first. Obviously, you know, she's one of the greatest living writers. So it's a good excuse for me to shadow her. Okay, right. But so Isabel did not start writing until she was almost 40. She was living in exile. She was born in Chile. I was living in exile in Venezuela. And when she heard that her grandfather was dying, she started writing him a letter just to recount all the stories he had told her.

43:48Had magical realism and all these things. And very quickly she realized that this was turning into a novel. She started the letter on January 8th and it becomes this book, The House of the Spirits. It's like a blockbuster. You know, there's like an Antonio Banderas movie and all this stuff. But she realized at 40 that she was a writer and she decided she would start another book every January 8th, assuming the previous one was finished. And so for the last 44 years, that has led to a bestseller every 18 months on average for 44 years, 80 million copies. Yeah. and her life one of the reasons i thought she was interesting is because when she's profiled because house of the spirits her first book and some of her other books have magical realism some many don't but some do when she's profiled she's written about as if she's just this like mystical medium you know who like tunes into the heavens and the characters speak through her but in fact and she told me there's been two times in her career when things just poured out of her but every other time she has this rigid discipline and ritual.

44:49Like it's all, she organized her whole life around ritual, not just the January 8th thing. She lights a candle to start every workday and blows it out to finish. She like arranges her office in certain ways. She needs these periods of silence. You know, she works the same hours, all these, it's like this incredible amount of routine. And this was before she was, you know, a wealthy, famous author. She would do it in a closet if she had to at a certain point. And I think of it almost like she needs, as she told me, she needs this silence and structure. Those are the two things she need. And so every January 8th, it gives her life a seasonality too.

45:25Like everyone in her life knows if they need something from her, they better get it by January 7th. Because then as she says, her life turned outward is closed. That's so good. And it's almost like she arranged her life to be like, you know a basketball player who's shooting free throws and they dribble the ball three times and then uh clap once and then touch their cheek before they shoot it's like all this stuff that gets them into this space that that it seems silly at first but it becomes these cues that they associate with getting into their performance space and that's how she's arranged her life it still takes her time by the way she told me that often it'll be a week or two once after january before she writes anything that that she intends to keep but it's so different from the profiles of her as a mystical medium.

46:05It's like, she is disciplined, is disciplined. And that like sort of frees her to, to, to imagine within that. Um, do you want me to get these? Oh, sorry. Absolutely. While you're grabbing that, I was just going to say that. So I find myself to be a little bit, I'm spiritual leaning just by nature, but in this podcast, I think a lot of creative people are, I think it's just a symbolic view of life that comes natural to people that are, you know, using that part of the brain a lot. Um, but I try to really downplay that element on the podcast because it's so over, overused cliche. It can be, it can really get in the way if you're going too hard, that direction of channeling and whatever you want to call it.

46:51What struck me there was that it's so funny that we think of spirituality or, um, that mysticism side of creativity as this thing of being completely free of constraint. Whereas all the people that seriously practice spirituality are known for their rituals. And I just had Austin Cleon on the show. Yeah, that's the whole thing. It's like, this is a huge part of it is how you, how you get into that zone. I just had Austin Cleon on the show for his new book. And he has a whole, yeah, he's, he's such a brilliant guy. Love the new book. He just was on the show talking about it. And he has a whole chapter about that.

47:27like basically the spirituality and the ritual and how he'll measure his sketchbook after he like weighs his sketchbook after he's done, which means completely nothing, but it's just this weird ritual thing. And so, yeah, I think, I think that's just really brilliant. It's cool to see those boxes in something we think of as so amorphous and abstract. Totally. Yeah. Tell me about these emails. Oh, okay. So, so when Inside the Box was coming out, since Isabel's in it, I said, hey do you want an advanced copy I know and it was probably uh you know March or something like that and uh so I knew I knew she had just started another novel because it was not that long at the wrong time yeah and so she of course responds and says yes please send it as you know I can't read it now right that's great so fine perfect answer right and then she emails me back just recently commenting on the book and saying you know she enjoyed it and everything and I'm like aren't you supposed to be working?

48:27And so she sends this email where she says, I started a novel. She says, here's a secret. I started a novel on January 8th and gave myself a deadline to finish a first manuscript by the end of March. The reason for this short deadline is not important. So for whatever reason, she doesn't want to tell me why it's such a short deadline. My agent, my brother read it and liked it a lot. It still needs polishing, but it's May and I find myself without work until next January 8th. I'm going crazy. I'm getting rid of my clothes, replacing the furniture, walking in circles, reading compulsively, etc. Your book has been an inspiration.

49:00I need to give myself a task with boundaries. For example, write a novel set in Lima in the year 1610 about a cowardly Spanish soldier, an Inca maid and the Inquisition. Or a story set in 1810 in Ireland about a girl slash witch expelled from her village who seeks revenge. You get the idea. I can't start writing until January 8th, but I can start researching and planning. I have total freedom to do whatever I want. And at my age, 84, I have no obligation to keep writing. This freedom is lethal. Help! Exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point. Love, your pen pal. Then like an hour later, she writes a two line sentence.

49:32Do you have an idea for me? Not the incubator, the Irish witch. Did you send ideas? Oh yeah. What? Are you kidding? Yeah. How awesome would that be? Is if she took up like one of my ideas for a novel? Yeah. I actually sent her this part from my previous book that's about these Venetian orphans who became the best musicians in the world. I'm like, come on, I'm going to be so stoked if her next novel is about this. That's a great story. I know she likes to have historical stuff. She sees that, she says, this gives me 50 % of the novel. She does a lot of historical research. And speaking of the box, she feels like that sort of sets a stage and then she can just animate the players on the stage.

50:09So she's like very much into historical research. That makes ton sense. And I do recommend people check out Range. That story in particular, we probably don't have time for, but that with the orphans is really interesting. And I think, honestly, Range is such an important book for creative people because so many creative people have all this pressure to niche down in this particular thing. And really, this connectivity, this range is such a big part of being brilliant creatively. um i i don't want to do you want to speak to that a little bit before we move on to the last thing i don't want to open that such a can of worms because you wrote a whole book about it but um yeah maybe you can just kind of give um something i mean you mentioned that pressure to niche down and i think that's not even just among creatives kind of reminding everybody i think the problem with that is that it it flies in the face of this like enormous body of research that shows that creativity is recombining things, analogizing from one area to another, taking things that are already well-known and just combining them in unfamiliar ways.

51:16And that when people have these broad interests, some of which may not look like they're immediately applicable or practical, it actually gives them this really broad surface area to start connecting things. And I have a very digressive brain. And creatives tend to have, Once I was interviewing a psychologist, he told me, you have a very flat associative hierarchy, which means like you see lots of things as connected. You're like, is that an insult or is that like, what are you trying to say? You want to fight? But that also is something that's typical of creative people where they see these longer distance connections than normal people do.

51:54And you want this like huge semantic network, all this stuff in there that you can make connections between. And so I think sometimes if the message people get from, oh, you should niche down is, you know, you should have shorter antennas or a smaller net out there in the world collecting stuff. It just goes against all of this, what all this research shows about how people become, become creative. I love that. I think of it like when you're living a creative life, it's like you're watching a movie where you know there's a twist coming because creativity is a twist on something. And so if you're watching a movie and you know there's a twist, you are looking for all the open-ended things, all the suspicious things, the curious things.

52:35You need to follow those things because you want to put twists on things. The other thing I'll just say, do you feel like – are you a bit of a contrarian? I just put this together. Both of your books are kind of like, actually, no. I know that everybody is thinking this, but actually the opposite. There's tons of research that proves the opposite. I don't know. like, because I mean, even, even my first book, which was that three was, was contrarian, but, but I don't think I'm a, a knee jerk contrarian. Like, I don't think the people in my personal life would, would, would say that I'm a contrarian where they bring something up.

53:10And every time I'm like, but actually, but I think it's partly that one is that I'm quite sure I'm wrong about a lot of things. I just don't know what they are. And so when I bump into some of those things, I find them very interesting and that's where it can become a book. Right. So each of these books has overturned my own beliefs. And I think that's why I got interested enough for them to be book projects because I was confused. I'm very confusion driven in my, it's like, if this confuses me and I'm surprised. And you're, yeah. Yeah, and so I wouldn't say I'm, because there's some scientists who I think they've done incredible work where sort of turning over things in their field, but then I've also realized they're just contrarian no matter what happens, even when they're wrong.

53:50It's like, they're always contrarian. But I don't think people in my life would describe me that way. But I do think I'm drawn, when I'm going to spend enough time on a project for it to be a book, I'm drawn to things where I feel like I was wrong about them before. And so that one makes me curious, and then I also assume there's other people out there like me. Yeah, I relate to that. In creative world, I think of it like there seems to be, not everybody falls exactly into these two camps, but there seems to be people that are like mirrors. there's a famous quote that I can't remember what it is or who it's said by, but it's just this idea that they're saying artists are like mirrors and they hold a mirror up to society.

54:26And I think that is true for some artists. They're very much about like making relatable stuff or observations, showing you what you can't see, like showing you what's there that you're not seeing. And I feel very different, more like you, where I'm more interested in what's missing from the conversation or what, like, this is the thing that's not here, but it really should be there. And usually it starts with myself. It starts with like, I was completely missing this thing. And research. Yes, exactly. That's exactly it. So the last thing I like to end with, um, something people can do. Um, it's called the creative call to adventure.

55:03We end every episode with it. And I want to, I want to see if you could give us any ideas on, uh, as I was reading this, I was thinking about how there's a lot of talk about like, write the messy draft, let that part of yourself out, and then do the editing. And that's this other more rigid part. And the thing that came up a lot while I was reading like, oh, there's also the editor or whatever that part is, needs to be at the start to give you some of the box to play in, like this more rigid thinking. And you were talking about it like, I love what you were talking about with Virginia Wolfe, having basically a hypothesis for these little essays.

55:49And I really, really relate to that. It reminds me of what my friend Brad Montague and Seth Worley were doing with these internet videos before they made these bigger projects. How can we invite that? I don't know if it's the editor. I don't know what it is, the problem solver. what are some tips to invite them into creating constraints before we get started and letting that like freedom fly? Yeah. I mean, I can tell you one thing that I did with this book that I'd never done before, which is I took my hundred thousand word note list, read it, and then forced myself to outline the book on one page and one page only.

56:23Whoa, that's so good. That's awesome. Here it is for anyone who can see this. This is the one page outline. As you can see, there's like arrows and bubbles all over the place. And it's like, yeah, you definitely got the most out of that one page. I'll say that. Oh, I totally tried to defeat my own system by writing as small as humanly possible, but, but it forced me to prioritize ruthlessly. And then, and it actually meant that I was slower to start writing in the project. But then once I started, I executed so much more quickly and enjoyed it quite a bit more because I sort of knew that, that box.

56:53So I think forcing yourself, whatever feels like a very small space to try to force yourself into, just try it. I have a friend, Derek Thompson, a writer I love, because before he writes, he'll write these long articles, you know, Atlantic and all these things. And before he does it, he writes the tweet first because this forces me to try to figure out what is it that I'm trying to, what's the question I'm addressing here? What's the thing I'm trying to say? And I think that's a really interesting exercise. But one other thing, if I can share that I've applied to my own creative work is I did a bunch of reporting on Pixar for this book and particularly with Ed Kappmall, the co-founder.

57:31And, um, he told me about this rule they had at Pixar called the three pitches rule where they would have directors pitch three film ideas instead of one, because they found that if they just pitched one, they got attached to it. And their first idea usually wasn't their best idea. So true. And so it's actually called the creative cliff illusion in psychology. We feel like our best creative idea is first, but it actually comes later. And so with this book, I would write, you know, I'd start a chapter wherever, some place that came to mind, you know, and then I would cross out that beginning and force myself to write two other beginnings, not tweaking the words, starting in a different place for the chapter.

58:13and for nine of the 12 chapters, I ended up using either the second or third attempt. And again, I think this was just, how do you, one, you block that path of least resistance for yourself because the place I was starting was typically the first thing that came to mind, not because it was best, because for whatever reason, it was top of mind. Yeah. And it also shrinks the problem space. You know something you can't do and it forces you to think hard. I wouldn't say it's super pleasant. Once you put something down, you want to just have momentum. But it forced me to think really hard, and I think it made the work a lot better.

58:52So I think that's kind of an interesting practice. Do the first thing that comes to mind, then cross it out. And suddenly you've got a much smaller problem space because you probably crossed out the most convenient solution. I love both of these. I like the first one feels like a literal small problem space where you're like, this is the page that I can work on. It reminds me of, I resisted this at first too. When I started making picture books, everybody starts with thumbnails. And when you first, if you've never done thumbnails of your spreads, at first you're like, how am I supposed to put what this needs to be in this tiny space?

59:30space, but it forces you to think about composition and really be in clarity. You know, it's kind of like a logo needing to exist on all these different spaces. Like how are you, what symbols are you going to use that are going to make this come to life? Now, of course, as you go bigger, you can add detail, you can do all kinds of things to make it come to life. But that practice is really, really powerful for me. I mean, I think that captures sort of the way that the one page outline did for me, I think it captures the two main benefits of useful constraints, which is one, they force you to clarify your priorities.

1:00:03And two, they launch you into productive exploration. Because when that easy path is blocked, you start to say, well, what else can I do here? And that, you know, as Picasso said, will take you to territory that you could not have envisioned in any other way. So, so true. And I also love the, the three idea prompt. I had that exact same experience in college where we did that. We were forced to do three different ideas for our final project. And my, my first one I thought of, I was like, I'm, I am going to do this project definitely. So I didn't even bother coming up with any others. And then the night before I had to present, I thought, all right, I got to cut, I got to think of two other terrible ideas that pale in comparison to this first one.

1:00:44And the third idea, the last thing I came up with ended up being a published book right outside of college. And so it was just like such a good illustration of like, that's exactly because you really don't believe it. You are so bought into, I think for me, it's partially fear. If I come up with something I like, then I'm like, I need to attach myself to this. Like this is, you know, so that those are both really great prompts. That's really interesting. This was so fun. I could, I could talk to you forever. I'm, I'm thrilled to have this much of your time. So much like highly, highly recommend people go check out the book.

1:01:20Like there is, there's so much that mapped to my experience that I hadn't fully explained, been able to explain. Um, then once having some shorthand for it, I feel like I can reach for it easier. Um, and then also stuff that I hadn't really thought of or experienced that I'm excited to try out. Uh, what is the best place to find you on the internet and find the book? davidepstein.com. Okay. Um, that's, I have a free newsletter. The books are linked there. Um, I also just started making YouTube videos and just made one called range for creatives. Awesome. That's awesome. Which is just my name. So I'm experimenting with that format.

1:01:56That's so cool. Um, but that's actually one of the first ones that started taking off. So I don't know, maybe there's something. I will definitely put that in the show notes. Um, people will that, I think definitely go check that out. Range is such an important idea for creative people. Did you know, like, I feel like over your writing career, you've just gotten kind of more and more, I'm not saying you're going to stick with writing for creative people or in the creative space, but you did kind of like veer that way. And I really, really appreciate it because you're a great writer. So it was a question, am I doing that intentionally?

1:02:30Yeah, just did you see yourself doing that? Like, or did it kind of happen accidentally? on you? I wouldn't say that I planned it particularly, but I would say that I have always been interested in creativity and in the arts. And in many ways, the great gift for me of doing Range and Inside the Box was the amount of research I got to do about art and music and writing. I mean, it really changed my experience of going to a museum or going to a concert. So I think I have indeed always been interested. And just as I've been able to direct my career more, I've just gravitated towards the things that interest me more and more.

1:03:06Well, we're glad to have you in the space because you're a great writer and thinker. And I just, I love the book. Thanks for taking the time. That was a total pleasure. This was a joy. And I've done a bunch of podcast interviews now because the book just came out recently. And we talked in a way that was very unique. You asked a bunch of things that I haven't been asked, even though I've done a bunch of podcast interviews. Love to hear it. Best feedback ever. As an ADHD person, my worst nightmare is being boring. And so I will take that. That's the highest praise. Thanks, David. Not at all. I totally enjoyed it.

1:03:38Thank you very much.

1:03:57massive thanks to david epstein for giving me so much time and so much good exciting amazing creative wisdom that has just set me on fire. Don't forget to check out the book Inside the Box. He's a great writer, easy to read. You're just going to blow through it. It's going to give you so many things to work from in your creative journey that a lot, a lot of which are things that we explore on the show, some of which are, but he's adding all this extra research and all this new insight and language around it that I just think you're going to super, super enjoy. So I'm looking forward to having him back on the show.

1:04:33It's just a thrill to talk with somebody who is such a clear thinker and writer. And yeah, I hope we get to do it again. So go check that out. Massive thanks to David, of course. 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, sound design, and animation. Thanks to Yoni Wolf of the band Y for the theme music and the soundtrack. And thanks to all of you for listening. Until we speak again, you know what you got to do? Stay pepped up.

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