Dare to imagine your future - Debbie Millman

0:11Debbie Millman:I think that failure, the only real failure is when you give up on yourself. Everything else is losing and losing or rejection. And that's fine. We can't win every race. We can't win anything all the time. It's just not the way the world works, unfortunately. Wouldn't it be great if it did? I think the only failure is giving up on yourself. And there's a difference even between understanding that you might need to do something different. But if you just give up and defeat, maybe you just needed a little bit more time. I think there was a great football coach. I can't remember his name, but I can remember the quote.

0:55Debbie Millman:He said, I never lost a game. I just ran out of time. And I love that because that's a mindset. That's a mindset of if I had more time, I'd have done it. I would have prevailed. And I think that's really beautiful.

1:14Welcome to the Daring Creativity Podcast, a show about daring to forever explore creativity that isn't about chasing shiny perfection. It's about showing up with all your doubts and imperfections and making them count. It's about becoming more of who you already are. My name is Radim Malinic, I'm a designer, author and eternally curious human being. I am talking to a broad range of guests who share their stories of small actions that sparked lifetime discoveries, taking one step towards the thing that made them feel most alive. Let me begin this episode with question. Are you ready to discover what happens when you dare to create?

2:00Today I'm talking with Debbie Millman, a writer, designer, educator, artist, brand consultant and host of the original creative podcast, Design Matters, that has been on air for the last 20 years. In our conversation, we covered a broad range of topics from exploring her famous 10-year plan exercise that has changed countless lives to mastering deep listening and meticulous research process that unearths hidden gems from guest stories. Debbie also discusses navigating different life decades, the involuntary nature of fear and how creating your own opportunities rather than waiting to be chosen can lead to extraordinary influence and meaningful work.

2:41It's my pleasure to share with you my conversation with Debbie Millman.

2:51Debbie, it's my pleasure to have you here today. How are you doing?

2:55Debbie Millman:I'm good. How are you? Well, I'm very excited to have you here because just before we started recording, I had to tell you that if it wasn't for everything that you've been doing, especially podcasting for the last 20 odd years, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing. Potentially many hundreds of others in this creative sphere wouldn't be doing the same thing. Thank you. You're making me blush and you're far too generous, but I appreciate it. Nevertheless. I normally say for those who never heard of my guest, can you please introduce yourself? But I'm thinking, do we need to do interaction? I'm happy to do whatever you want.

3:28Debbie Millman:I'm in your very capable hands. Excellent. So who's Debbie Millman? What do you do? I'm, as you mentioned, I'm a designer and a writer. And I'm one of the owners of printmagazine.com. And I've been writing for print, oh gosh, for about 20, a little over 20 years. although I only became one of the owners about five years ago. And I run a graduate program which is where I am right now at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. And I co-founded the world's first ever Masters in Branding in 2010 with Stephen Heller, my very dear friend and mentor and somebody I consider my fairy godfather. And I am the host up a podcast called Design Matters, which has now been on the air for 20 years.

4:19Debbie Millman:I tend to do things for long periods of time, as you can see. Absolutely. And I think I always like when you talk about something that you've been doing, then you become at the head of it. So be it's the print magazine, be in the School of Visual Arts, like you stay in long enough so you can actually be in charge. I love that. I mean, that's my observation. Low and steady. Basically, stay there until everyone disappears and go well i will be in charge for a while debbie i want to take it actually 20 years back when you did a class with milton glazer which was one of the pivotal classes and one of the most important sort of things in your life and little did you know how much of an effect and impact would you have on potentially hundreds of others because in your class with Milton Glaser.

5:08He asked you to write an essay to yourself. And it's such a fascinating story. I would love to know a little bit more about it.

5:17Debbie Millman:Absolutely. This was 2005, so exactly 20 years ago. And because I was a writer for print magazine, and at that time, the magazine was a paper magazine. And because I was a writer, I would get the writer copies that came right off the press as opposed to waiting for it to be mailed through a subscription the way that anybody that had a subscription would get it in the mail. And when I got it, I remember it was January of 2005, I was looking through it and I saw an ad in the magazine for a summer intensive with Milton Glazer at the School of Visual Arts. Now, I didn't teach at the School of Visual Arts.

6:00Debbie Millman:I barely knew anything about the School of Visual Arts other than a few of my friends that were fine artists had gotten their MFAs from the School of Visual Arts, and that's pretty much all I knew about it. But because I got the magazine early, I was able to apply early to this class, which was first come, first serve, and I got in. So I guess I had this early edition of the magazine. And so before it went out to the general public, I got it and I was told when I called to apply that I was the first person to apply. So they were like, oh, the ad's running already. And I was like, oh, yeah, I got an early edition of the magazine.

6:43Debbie Millman:So that August, I took the summer intensive with Milton and ostensibly it was for people that were mid-level professionals, which I certainly was, that were looking to reboot their careers, that they might have felt that they were at a standstill or had reached a plateau, had to sort of take your next step in your career and in the world. And it was life-changing. The final exercise in the intensive was to write an essay thinking about what your life would look like five years into the future. So a five-year plan. and he asked us to write it from the moment we woke up and opened our eyes until the moment we closed them and went to sleep and he said that it was a very powerful exercise he didn't quite understand why that he'd been teaching for many decades and that teaching was the most important thing he felt that he did with his life and that for whatever reason he'd always hear back from students telling him that the exercise profoundly changed their lives and so much of what they'd written about had come true or all of it had come true.

7:55Debbie Millman:And so he didn't quite understand the magic of it, but he'd seen enough evidence that it was something that seemed to be rather successful for people. And so I put my heart and soul into it. I wanted so much of my life back then. It was my mid-40s and I was longing for a different life and I was completely open with what I was hoping for in my life at that time. And so not only did I write a really long essay, I also made a list. A list of all the things that I'd be doing in 2010. And I took it very seriously. And then And I put it away. I was writing it in a journal that I was using at that time.

8:41Debbie Millman:Finished the journal, put it in a stack of, put it in a pile of other journals that stacked up in one of my drawers. And the next year, I remembered I was looking for an address. I knew I'd written down the address of my grandparents' home in Borough Park. And I, when I was growing up, said they were no longer even alive. They had moved to Florida and all of that, but I was thinking about it and I wanted to look it up on Google Maps and remember it. And I remember that I'd asked my mother for the address and I put it in that book and forgot about that as well. Remembered that the address was there, went to the journal, opened it up, came across the essay and I was like, wow.

9:24Debbie Millman:even within a year of writing the essay, things had started happening. And I was now being offered an opportunity to teach at the School of Visual Arts. I was asked to be, to join the National Board of AIGA. And these were very big, audacious goals that I had at the time that I didn't even think were remotely possible. And the only reason I had teaching at SVA on my list was because there I was at it learning and I wrote this list of things. And over the years, it just started to, they started to manifest one after another. Now, it wasn't that they only just plopped in my lap, it was also some things that I very deliberately tried to get, but I'd mostly forgotten that they were things that I had written about because they were just things that I wanted anyway.

10:17Debbie Millman:And I think 13 years later, every single one came true. And because I was always looking to expand the type of classes that I was teaching, and Milton had to give his approval of my teaching at SVA and my running the grad program, when he stopped teaching, I asked him if I could start using that exercise in my classes. And he said yes. I told him that I wanted to expand it, though, to 10 years because I felt like five years, especially if I was doing this with young people, wasn't enough time. It was just a blip. And so I felt like people needed more runway. And so I've been teaching it ever since, changed it to a 10-year plan.

10:59Debbie Millman:And for whatever reason, of all the things that I do, people are mostly always interested in this. and I don't know maybe because it's more magical than anything else that I do and in many ways more optimistic but people really do seem to love the idea of it. Well thank you so much. The reason why I ask you about this story because one of your former students, Dana Gossett, who was the first guest of this season, I was like I was told her look this is the guest I've got coming up and I've got Debbie coming up and she said Debbie's class was incredible because first of all she made you ask yourself questions about what you really wanted and in my case i've manifested almost everything that i have written in her class the more she taught you how to present yourself and a guide in how to get you what you want to be is one of the sentences that also changed me most the courage is more important than confidence she gave me a lot of confidence into coming into workplace and i owe her a lot and i don't think she realizes she's phenomenal incredibly smart and beautiful human you see the things that you manifested in that milton's class it started this pyramid effect i don't know how to describe it it started things you wanted to do something for yourself and this is how you've influenced so many people along the way that you know when your name is mentioned these kind of reactions come back what i want to know debbie when you said you mostly it was quite clever how you got there through the early edition of the newspaper on a first-come, first-served basis.

12:30But you said you were in your mid-40s. What is it about our mid-40s that kind of make us think in a way that, you know, well, maybe there's a change. I need to rethink what I do, look for new ideas, opportunities. And in your case, you just wrote them in an essay, kind of forgot, and only to find out a bit by bit that 30 years later, all of them has manifested themselves.

12:52Debbie Millman:Well, I think that if we look at our lives through the decades, our 20s are very much about establishing who we are, experimenting, playing, searching, longing. and then we move into our 30s and I think we start to get a little bit more serious about our careers. Some of us get married. We start to think about a family. We start to accrue the more mature aspects of adulthood. And I think by 40s, you have achieved a lot of what you'd hoped for in your 20s, if you're lucky, and you begin to consider other things. You start to consider time in a different way. At that point, you know, your life is probably halfway over, unless you're really lucky and live a little bit longer into your 90s or 100s.

13:53And so things become slightly more both tangible but also amorphous.

14:04Debbie Millman:You want more, but you're not quite sure how to go about it. And by the time you're in your 40s, it's a little bit harder to experiment. One of the things that I've learned as I've gotten older and wrote about in my last book was, As I've gotten older, I find it a lot more difficult and vulnerable making to do things that I'm not good at. I don't want to be humiliated. I don't want to be embarrassed. I don't want to seem less than. And so it's harder to start new things because I don't want to feel silly or look silly. And so when we're in our 40s, I think we're on the one hand trying to reach mastery, but also trying to consider other possibilities.

14:46Debbie Millman:Paula Sher has always said that the 50s is about, okay, you've made it, lifetime achievement awards if you're lucky, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I don't know that she went beyond the 50s at the time. I think she probably made that chart. It's a wonderful chart. I'll look for a link and send it to you. I don't know that she went beyond the 50s because I don't know that she was beyond the 50s at the time she wrote it. But now that I'm in my 60s, the big question for me, Radim, is if not now, when? You know, what am I waiting for? And I've done a lot of things, but there are still a lot of things that I haven't done.

15:21Debbie Millman:A big part of not having done them is fear in doing them and being a beginner at something or being inexperienced or not being successful at something that I really want. when I expect a certain level for myself in the various things that I do. So I expect something to look a certain way and sound a certain way and have a certain sense of what I want the outcome to be. Whereas when you do something new, you have no idea. And humans hate uncertainty and I hate uncertainty. And so that's what I'm grappling with now a lot in my 60s. What do I want for this last third, if I'm lucky, of my life. And I want a lot.

16:02Debbie Millman:I want more than I even had ever wanted before, only because I do feel that, I hate to use the word, but sort of desperation of time running out. And I don't want to sound like a Debbie Downer, and I'm the only person that's allowed to use that term towards me. And that's just letting you know now. But nobody's going to live forever. but when we're 20 we think we will when we're 40 we hope we will when we're 60 we know we won't and so I think that to me has become the underlying mantra of my life at right now when you describe us beautifully when you said it's harder to start it's harder to to do new things thinking like is there element of unresolved self-acceptance is there something that i mean i was let's be honest i was quite surprised when you said i'm getting older and i'm finding things harder because i was riddled with anxiety and insecurities when i was 20 but it was the medium of creativity that kind of changed the lane for me of okay you can focus on this this is your hideaway space this is your escapism and you can be something and you can do something that way and we'll sort out the rest later when i stopped worrying about the perfectionism or am i doing the thing right or do i care what people think about my work i felt like the element of self-acceptance became much much stronger and i couldn't let go of thinking whatever people think doesn't matter we'll be back after a quick break This episode is brought to you by Lax Coffee Co.

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18:27Debbie Millman:Oh, I've never gotten to that point ever. I don't know that I ever will. It would be a great accomplishment if I could say I have no F's left to give about what I do and how other people perceive me well i haven't turned into a psychopath i mean i know i can tell i wouldn't i i've heard very good things about you but it's the element of letting go a little bit but i was surprised when you said that we've taken it back to to danese when she said that you told her that the courage is more important than confidence i'm prodding this topic of daring creativity daring forever as a topic of my next book.

19:04And it's not a book about jumping out of planes or doing something stupid. It's about actually doing the thing you would regret never starting. And it's a book about courage, self-acceptance, curiosity, and gratitude. I would like to know your take on the difference between confidence and courage.

19:20Debbie Millman:Oh, absolutely. Before I do that, I don't want to forget to say this. I just saw Dene's new film that she did with Santiago Carasquilla. It is amazing. The work that she is doing is just extraordinary. And she was my student 10 years ago. I had this incredible class of students. And there's, I don't know, maybe 10 or 15 that have really gone on to like superstardom. and she's one of them. And Santiago shared a link with me of this little film that they made. And I say little only because it's short. It's really not little. It's quite grand, but it's magnificent. And so I just wanted to make sure I told you that.

20:08So confidence. I hear over and over again in my classes, I'll do that when I feel more confident.

20:15Debbie Millman:I'm going to do that when I feel more secure. And I ask them when they think that's going to be. Like, how are you going to get that way? You can't go into a supermarket and buy a box of confidence. It's not going to work that way. Confidence, my definition of confidence is the successful repetition of any endeavor. that you have confidence based on previous experience, keywords, previous experience, that the last time you did that thing, you didn't fall on your face. That whatever it was, a podcast, a marathon, a meal that you were making, that somehow you created something that wasn't a failure.

21:04Debbie Millman:And it could be something that you've done many times, or it could also be something that because you've been so successful at other things, you feel like you can have that success following you into something else. But the key here is understanding that you've built a foundation of confidence based on the successful repetition of any endeavor. So let's go back to the beginning of attempting that endeavor. That attempt of that particular endeavor had no certainty associated with it when you initiated the journey. And what provoked you to do that? What motivated you to do that? What gave you the sense that you could do that?

21:50Debbie Millman:Two things. Courage and hope. Courage and hope. And so you needed the courage to step into that certainty. I'm sorry, you needed that courage to step into that opportunity, that endeavor, before you knew what the result would be. The confidence only comes after the result. It never comes before. And so you need to be able to have some faith in your own courage to buoy that courage up to take that first step. And if you think back to all the things we learn how to do, eating, talking, pooping, these all take time. time we can't even go to the bathroom without potty training why would we think that anything else any more complicated than that would be something we could just do successfully out of the gate we can't that's the first part of this the second part is that we as humans hate uncertainty The reason we hate uncertainty is because our brains started as reptilian brains and have evolved over time to have three parts, which are reptilian, mammalian, and the neocortex.

23:21Debbie Millman:And the neocortex is the part that we're all very familiar with. We use it to our awareness, will, creativity, all of that is controlled in that part of our brain. The mammalian brain is what makes us want to be connected and social and take care of each other. the reptilian brain is all involuntary action it controls our metabolism and our heartbeat and our eye blinking things that we don't think about they just happen in our bodies and part of that involuntary control are is where our fear factors come in if i were to walk across the street and nearly get hit by a bicycle in new york city i wouldn't have to will my adrenaline to inject cortisol in me, I would be immediately, instantly impacted by my adrenaline.

24:14Debbie Millman:I would not think adrenaline, kick in. It's all involuntary. And so when we think about what our prehistoric brains are trying to keep us safe from, it's anything that we don't know. It's anything that would make us feel vulnerable and uncertain. What is that? The future. What is that? Not doing something that I've never done before. And so between need for certainty and our requirement of courage, it makes anything, any precipice that we are about to cross or want to cross without knowing what the outcome is going to be extremely stressful. well when you mentioned when you ask people like when you're gonna do it and they say i'll do it when i'm more confident and it kind of reminds me of when you go when you put people in gym for in january usually when they feel guilty about christmas and there'll be a pt trainer i will say oh can i show you some moves oh can i show you what to do and people will say i'll do it when i feel a bit stronger i do it when i feel ready like you feel again i think we go to this sort of fear of not being enough no fear of not being quite readily accepted and when you talked about sort of bicycles and cortisol it made me think of a quote by a cycling coach called charlie begelius and he works for ef education and his quote which i'll read to you in a second made me think about difference between failure and losing i think when we talk about confidence and courage i think we potentially have hijacked the meaning of the word failure because he was talking to his team just before the race at Tour de France.

25:50And he said, it's okay to lose, but it's not okay to fail because losing is something we do over and over again as we try to win a stage, Tour de France stage. Failing is not doing what you want to do the way you want to do it. And I think we are sometimes so harsh on ourselves as creatives and our sort of gentle souls thinking, I'm failing here, even though we do what we want to do the way we want to do it. You just potentially haven't accepted that sometimes you're going to lose. Well, yes and no.

26:20Debbie Millman:I mean, I mostly agree with that. But I think that failure, the only real failure is when you give up on yourself. Everything else is losing and losing or rejection. And that's fine. We can't win every race. We can't win anything all the time. It's just not the way the world works, unfortunately. Wouldn't it be great if it did? I think the only failure is giving up on yourself. And there's a difference even between understanding that you might need to do something different. But if you just give up and defeat, maybe you just needed a little bit more time. I think there was a great football coach, since we're talking about sports, that said, I never lost a game.

27:12Debbie Millman:I think he was the coach of the Green Bay Packers years and years and years ago. And I can't remember his name, but I can remember the quote. He said, I never lost a game. I just ran out of time. And I loved that because that's a mindset. That's a mindset. That's a mindset of if I had more time, I'd have done it. I would have prevailed. and I think that's really beautiful. I think you beautifully said it that failure is just when you give up because everything else is losing because how many times would you see an internet meme that says there's a fear of failure or I've got a fear of failure but no one's got fear of giving up.

27:47People just think that what they're doing right now is potentially stopping them from sort of progressing somewhere else.

27:52Debbie Millman:I love that. We talk about fear of failure but not fear of giving up. That's good. I hope you put that in your book. That is really good. I've never heard that before. And I really love that. Thank you. I think the word failure, I think, is unnecessarily heavy. Everything is a progress. Everything that we do is taking us somewhere. You talk about 20s, 30s, 40s. Like, we are always on a trajectory going forward and forward. Like, none of us would ever decide to stop and say, you know what, I don't want to pursue this thing because I'm too scared or I'm this. Because we still have to go. Yeah, but this is the thing about fear of failure.