Ep 46: The Creatives Gift Guide Pt 3

The Eisenhower Matrix

SUMMARY

In the final installment of our three-part Creatives Gift Guide series, Dustin Pead explores an almost century-old concept made popular by a former US President that can revolutionize your creative productivity in 2024. This powerful time management technique helps you separate truly important work from the noise and distractions that constantly vie for your attention.

As the holiday season approaches and we look toward a new year of creative possibilities, implementing this system could be the most valuable gift you give your creativity. By distinguishing between what's urgent and what's important, you can finally focus on the work that truly matters to your creative journey.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• ⚡️ The Eisenhower Matrix divides tasks into four categories based on urgency and importance: do first (urgent/important), schedule (important/not urgent), delegate (urgent/not important), and delete/procrastinate (neither urgent nor important).

• ⚡️ Implement a weekly brain dump to capture all tasks, ideas, and opportunities vying for your attention, then honestly evaluate each item on the Eisenhower Matrix to determine its true priority.

• ⚡️ Keep your completed matrix visible as you work to stay focused on your priorities and quickly categorize new opportunities or tasks that arrive throughout the week.

NOTABLE QUOTES

• 💬 "The 34th President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, quoted an unnamed university president when he said, 'have two kinds of problems, the urgent kind and the important. The urgent are not important and the important are never urgent.'"

• 💬 "There's so many things vying for our attention... so many opportunities that are constantly put in front of us that if we don't empty out the old ticker once a week on a legal pad, a note on your iPhone, whatever it is that you use, it can be really congested and things will get lost in there."

• 💬 "I really don't think our brains are designed to hold in today's world more than about three months worth of information and things that we have ingested without jotting it down somewhere."

EPISODE RESOURCES

• ⚡️Using Asana for Creative Teams eBook - A practical guide to enhance your creative productivity, whether you use Asana or not

• ⚡️The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey - Book that popularized the Eisenhower Matrix concept

• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⚡️ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

• ⚡️ Schedule a FREE Coaching Call here.

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome back everyone to Creativity Made Easy. Today we're going to conclude a three week podcast series in this spirit of giving season called the Creatives Gift Guide in which we'll discuss some gifts that you can begin to give your own creativity for the holiday season this year and take your creativity to the next level in 2024. This week I want to share with you an almost century old concept made popular by a former US President. Let's get into it.

Welcome back everyone to Creativity Made Easy. I'm your host Dustin Pead, creative coach and consultant. Everything that I do put out into the world, all the ways that I can help you or your team or your organization, you can find at DustinPead.com. That's P-E-A-D. You can follow me on all social media platforms, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, all the fun ones, at DustinPead.

If you're listening to this, would really love and appreciate a five star review as it helps get this content out even further to those who need it like yourself. If you're watching on YouTube, welcome. I'm so glad that you're here. I invite you to just kind of take a poke around after you watch this short podcast episode and look at all the other amazing pieces of content that we've been able to put together this year in 2023. It's been an incredible year.

And I'm so very excited to share this stuff with you. I would love for you to hit the like button, subscribe and ring the bell every time I post any pieces of new content to YouTube, you will get a notification about it, which I dropped this podcast every single week on Thursdays. There are clips and shorts and reels and all that fun stuff that hop out throughout the week. But the bulk of our content is on Thursdays for you. Before also we get into it, I want to remind you my new ebook is now out.

You can actually order it on my website, dustinpead.com/store. The ebook is called using Asana for creative teams. And I want to tell you that even though you may not use Asana or you may not be on a creative team, this is very applicable to yourself as a solo creative or a solopreneur. It's also not specifically tied into Asana.

I use that verbiage in the book because that's what I'm used to. It's what I've been teaching and coaching and consulting with creatives and creative agencies with for many years now. But it's not something that you have to have. You could use Post-it notes for all I care and this book will still help you take your creativity to the next level. So you can go and purchase that. You'll immediately get it in your inbox as soon as you do it. And you can have it for yourself. Gift that to your creativity in 2024.

or you can gift it as a little digital stocking stuffer for the creatives in your life and help them accomplish things that they've never thought possible in the new year. So let's get to today's episode. The 34th president of the United States. Do you know who that is? If I just said that off the top of your head, are you one of those history buffs? I'll give you a second to think about it. 34th president. Answer in three, two, one. It was Dwight D. Eisenhower. That's right.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th President of the United States and a five-star general during World War II, he presented an idea that would later lead to what we know as the Eisenhower Matrix. In a 1954 speech, Eisenhower quoted an unnamed university president when he said, have two kinds of problems, the urgent kind and the important. The urgent are not important and the important are never urgent. Stephen Covey, author of The Seven Habits of

highly effective people took Eisenhower's words and then used them to develop what is now a popular task management tool known as the Eisenhower Matrix. The Eisenhower Matrix is also known as the Time Management Matrix or the Eisenhower Box or the Urgent and Important Matrix. This tool helps you divide your tasks into four categories. The task that you'll do first, the task that you'll schedule for later,

the task that you'll delegate and the task that you may delete or procrastinate on. Now I was first introduced to this concept by a former boss of mine and it has really changed the way that I lead teams and the way that I coach and consult creatives as well. Here's my recommendation on how you can implement this gift to your creativity in 2024. Number one, you need to do a weekly brain dump at minimum

weekly. There's so many things vying for our attention. So many projects that come across our desk, so many opportunities that are constantly put in front of us that if we don't empty out the old ticker once a week on a legal pad, a note on your iPhone, whatever it is that you use, it can be really congested and things will get lost in there. Once you do that weekly brain dump, I want you to evaluate each one of those items on

the Eisenhower matrix. And I want you to be honest in your evaluation. There's a lot of things that come across our desk that we would really love to make urgent and important, but if we're honest with ourselves, it's really neither one of those. It's neither important nor urgent in the grand scheme of things. And so as you look at these four quadrants on your paper, you're going to see these categories of urgent, urgent and important, urgent, but not important, not important.

not urgent. You're going to see these things. So let's talk about what is urgent and important. This gets bumped into the top priority for you for that week or for that month or for that term or whatever length of time you have. This will be top priority for you. If it's both urgent, meaning it's, it's D U E it's, it's do really quickly and it's super important, then nothing else gets above these items.

in your week and there could be multiple items but realistically there's probably only going to be one to two items in your urgent and important list. The things that are urgent but are not super important things that are very shortly time sensitive but they don't really add a ton of value those are things that you can either automate or you can even delegate something that's important but not urgent gets delegated to someone else or gets saved.

for later, it doesn't get to be at the top of your to-do list. And listen, if it's not important or it's not urgent, either needs to be deleted or heavily procrastinated on. And so I encourage you, when you're feeling overwhelmed, use this tool. I think it's a really great thing to introduce into your weekly preview if you're doing something like on sunny nights or whenever the beginning of your week is and you're kind of forecasting out what the week is gonna look like. I think going through this Eisenhower Matrix is

really great way for you to be able to kind of separate the the facts from fiction and and be able to truly understand what the most important thing is that you need to go after that we can clear out all the clutter and clear out all the mess and when you've done that mind dump now you have the brain capacity to take on the some things that are very important and very urgent so I suggest you do this no more than weekly

But I would say no less than quarterly. I really don't think our brains are designed to hold in today's world more than about three months worth of information and things that we have ingested without jotting it down somewhere. To me, weekly is more appropriate, monthly it can be appropriate for you, quarterly can be done if you have a really good system in place. But I would say

Make sure you're doing this mind up and getting things onto your Eisenhower matrix. And then you keep that matrix on your desk in front of you attached to your computer monitor, wherever you sit and work at. You're to want to keep that in front of you so that when you feel yourself beginning to get swayed off the path by the other continual things that are coming across your plate, it's a new week. There's new opportunities. There's new problems to solve. There's new fires to put out. Then you can ask yourself as those things come across your desk, you can begin to think.

proactively and say, is this urgent and important? Is this urgent but not important? Is it important but not that urgent? Is it neither important or urgent? And then from there, you can evaluate immediately and know exactly where to send those tasks. Urgent and important gets your top priority for you today until it's done. And then from there, you can go onto the urgent but not important stuff. And then from there, you can get into the important but not urgent things.

But you can automate things, can eliminate things, you can delegate things, you can procrastinate things, all the things that are in the focus funnel. If you know what I'm talking about, run it through that system after you've put it on the Eisenhower matrix. Listen, it's been an incredible 2023 with you. I thank you so much for listening to this podcast series on the creative gift guide and being able to gift your creativity some very strong productivity in 2024. There's some amazing things coming.

your way from me in 2024. cannot wait to share with you. I'm hoping next week to drop a best of 2023 episode, but if I don't, look forward to seeing you in the new year. And so if we do get that episode out next week, it's going to be some of our favorite things that happened in 2023 on this podcast that I'm going to cut up and share with y'all. But like said, if we don't get to it, it's not a big deal. You know why? Because it's really not urgent and it's really not all that important to me. Like I would love to be able to share it with you.

At the end of the day, what matters to me most is that I'm sharing today's episode with you and I'm going to do the next right thing and I'm going to share it with you before the end of the year. So January comes around. We're going to have a whole new set of fun adventures together on creativity made easy. Happy new year, everyone.

Ep 45: The Creatives Gift Guide: Master Your 12-Month Rhythm

Planning for Creative Success in 2024

SUMMARY

Are you tired of feeling surprised when busy seasons return annually? Do you find yourself behind schedule on projects that happen every year? In this episode of Creativity Made Easy, Dustin Pead explores how creative professionals can escape the cycle of seasonal stress by implementing a 12-month rhythm approach to their work.

This episode is part of our special three-week "Creatives Gift Guide" series designed to help you give meaningful gifts to your own creativity as we approach 2024. By understanding and planning for your annual creative cycles, you can transform overwhelming busy periods into manageable, productive seasons that allow your creativity to flourish.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• ⚡️ Key Takeaway #1: Identify Your Cyclical Patterns. Too often, creatives are surprised when busy seasons return, acting as if these predictable cycles are completely new or out of our control. Take a day with yourself or your team to review the past year and identify trends. Look for patterns in your successes, failures, and periods of stress. By recognizing these cycles, you can begin planning for them rather than reacting to them.

• ⚡️ Key Takeaway #2: Implement the 4D Creative Process with Margin. The 4D Creative Process—Define, Dream, Design, and Develop—works best when stretched out over time rather than compressed into a stress-filled rush. For recurring annual projects, start the definition and dreaming phases months before the actual busy season. If March is traditionally hectic, begin your creative process in December or January, giving yourself ample margin for each phase.

• ⚡️ Key Takeaway #3: Plan the Work, Then Work the Plan. Once you've mapped your 12-month rhythm and allocated appropriate time for each phase of the creative process, stick to the timeline. By planning with intention and foresight, you transform the chaotic reactive mode of creativity into a structured, proactive approach that reduces stress and improves outcomes.

NOTABLE QUOTES

• 💬 "Too often we as creatives seem to be surprised when these busy seasons return annually as if they're new to the world or things just kind of happen to us completely out of our control."

• 💬 "If you can plan the work, then you can work the plan and you can succeed at some really big, amazing things."

• 💬 "Your brainstorm session is not the place for you to edit the ideas. It is not the place for someone to go, 'We tried that before. That's never going to work because of our budget.' That is not this meeting."

EPISODE RESOURCES

• ⚡️The 12-Month Outlook

• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⚡️ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

• ⚡️ Schedule a FREE Coaching Call here.

TRANSCRIPT

Hey everyone. Welcome to creativity made easy. I'm your host Dustin Pead creative coaching consultant. And today we're going to continue a three week podcast series to close out the year in the spirit of giving called the creatives gift guide in which we're going to discuss some gifts that you can begin to give to your own creativity to take it to the next level in 2024 this week. Let's take a step back and look at something I call 12 month rhythms. Let's get into it.

Welcome everyone to the show. My name is Dustin Pead creative coach and consultant you can find me and everything that I've got going on all the content that we release at DustinPead.com P-E-A-D you can follow me on Instagram Facebook LinkedIn all the social media platforms at Dustin Pead if you're listening to this I would highly encourage you to leave a five-star review that would really help get this content out to more people who need it and benefit from it if you're watching on YouTube I'm so glad that you're here. Thank you for joining me today I would love for you to hit the like button the thumbs up hit subscribe and ring the bell so every time I release new content you get notified about it now before we dive into today I want to remind you I talked a little bit about it last week if you're on my newsletter you've seen it if you're on my socials you've seen it but my first ever ebook comes out tomorrow. Y'all I'm so so excited. So today is the last day to preorder this book for 50% off and it's all about using Asana for creative teams. Now I want to say this too even though it says using Asana for creative teams I need you to understand that this framework is designed for any creative whether they're solo or within a team and no matter what software you're using.

I speak Asana language because it's what I've been leading creative teams through for a long, long time. And so it's easy for me to kind of speak that language, but this book in no way is dependent on you having to use Asana. You could use Basecamp, you could use Post-It notes for all I care, whatever it is, this book will help you take your creativity to the next level by getting things done in 2024. Enough talking, enough daydreaming, enough what ifs.

Now it's time to get the work done. So go to dustinpead.com slash store. You can preorder that book today for the last time at 50% off for only $5. it, get one for you, get one for any creative in your life as a last minute digital stocking stuffer. I know that the creatives in your life or you will greatly benefit from it as it's something that I've been building towards for a long, long time. Listen, we're going to get into this thing today in the creatives gifts guide about 12 months rhythms and this is something that I've kind of dawned on me in the later half of my creative career that there are these ebbs and flows that happen to us. too often we as creatives seem to be surprised when these busy seasons return annually as if they're new to the world or things just kind of happen to us completely out of our control.

Have you ever been in this situation before you're sitting in a creative briefing meeting and suddenly it dawns on you that you and your team are already behind the eight ball on this project. You should have had this meeting months ago, even before you begin. feels impossible to even begin because you already fear, feel paralyzed by no margin and the inevitable long days and late nights ahead in order to accomplish this project.

Listen, I've been there. I know you've been there too. You know, the immense amount of stress of this adds to you and your team. If only there were a way to get out in front of these mountains that seem to pop up around this time every year. And it could be any time of year, no matter when you're listening to this podcast episode. So if you've been there, you know that immense stress. I want you to just kind of lean in with me over the next few minutes as we talk about these 12 month rhythms.

See, sometimes we get so stuck in the weeds of day to day survival that we miss the bigger picture. We miss the reality that there are busy seasons in our work, whether it be intentional or not. Lots of our work is cyclical. So why do we act like it isn't? Listen, it's been said by many people before me, but it's something that I stick to. If you can plan the work, then you can work the plan and you can succeed at some really big, amazing things. So here's my tips on your 12 month rhythms and how you can avoid this seasonally recurring frustration in 2024. First thing, take a day either by yourself or with your team, set it aside and review the past year. When you review this past year, you're gonna look for trends. You could do this in July, you could do it during any downtime that you normally have, but take a day, set it aside, review the last 12 months and look for trends.

Look for the things that you see kind of popping up time and time again. When you're successful, when you're least successful, when you're caught off guard, when you're not caught off guard. If you've been around for a while, these might be a little more obvious to you. You're like, oh, well, in our company, every March is this big push. And so we know every March is going to get crazy. Set your rhythms up with margin filled timelines. So if you know March is a busy season for you, then why wait until March to gear up for that busy season? Why not start thinking about it in January or December? Give yourself and your team some margin to really dive into the full functioning 4D creative process. Now 4D creative process is something that I've talked about on this podcast and my blog before and the four D's are define, dream, design, develop. And that is a long scale creative process. You can do it in a very short amount of time. It works better if you can stretch it out. So as you're thinking over these stressful times and these clumps throughout the year, what's the right time to start setting goals for that project that come up on these busy seasons? That would be the defined part, right?

What's the right time to sit there and start defining out the goals for that particular project? Even if it's something that you do every single year, maybe your company has a Christmas initiative like I did for so long in local church ministry. You know Christmas is coming. It's the same message every single year, right? But we're going to package it differently. And so we're going to start thinking about how do we package that differently this year? What are some things that we can do? We don't want to define what our goals are for that, which leads us right into the next D is the dream. This is the brainstorm. This is the fun stuff. This is where you get to come in a room with a bunch of knickknacks and cool music playlists and great environment and lots of people. And you can just dream until your little creative heart is content, right? But when should you begin that brainstorming about the project? If your busy season is in March, you should not begin dreaming about that in March. You need to be dreaming about that no later than January, if not December or earlier depending on how big and massive this undertaking can be for you. Set aside no, okay, I see that rhythm coming. So I know that we're gonna, we're gonna dream about it here so that when we get into March, for example, we're not overwhelmed with the thing. Now, next thing is design. That's the third D and the four D process. What's the right time to refine all of those ideas that you got from your brainstorm? Now, a lot of people will love to sit into a, in a brainstorm and immediately refine all the ideas. Can I just strongly encourage you not to do that? Your brainstorm session is not the place for you to edit the ideas. It is not the place for someone to go, we tried that before. That's never going to work because of our budget. That is not this meeting. And if you have people in the room that are contributing to the meeting in that way, you need to kindly ask them to wait for the next meeting because you're really going to want them. And that's this meeting that we're talking about here. It's the design meeting. This is when you're going to refine those ideas into a cohesive designed production, a pitch, a package, a concept, whatever it is. You're gonna take the three to 500 ideas that you came up with in your brainstorm and you're gonna distill them down into the things that work for you, that are within your timeline, that are within your budget, that hit the goals that you're looking for more accurately.

And you have those because you have all these ideas to choose from and you have the margin to choose from them because you brainstormed or you dreamed at the appropriate time in your 12 month rhythm. Now that you know what you're going to do, you've designed it, now it's time to get the work done. How long is it going to take you to develop this? If your initiative is in March every year and you know it's going to take you at least eight weeks to pump this out, then you know that by the time you get to January, if you're not already starting the work. you don't already have that thing defined, dreamed and designed and ready to start development by January, then you're already behind the eight ball. So look at that from a 12 month timeline and lay it out. I have a template for you at dustinpead.com. You can click around and find it. Look for the 12 month rhythm timeline. And now that you have that, you're going to plan those things out based on the 4d creative process, which you'll see on the timeline at dustinpead.com. Now that you have that, you're going to work the plan, right? You've planned the work. Now it's time to work the plan. So as I close this with you, something to think about before you get into 2024, these 12 month rhythms, how can I help you implement the 12 month rhythm? Sometimes it helps to have an external eye and see the things that you're going to miss. So let's chat, go to dustinpead.com, click on the let's chat button. I would love to have a free 30 minute conversation with you and how I can help implement this 12 month rhythm into your personal or team creative environment in 2024. It's going to be an amazing year. You're to get all sorts of things done. Let's just take a minute and plan the work and work to plan. We'll talk to you next time. Next week, we're going to wrap up this whole creative gift side, some gifts that you can give to yourself with a little thing called the Eisenhower matrix. It's something that blew my mind a few years ago and I can't wait to share it with you. We'll talk to you next week on creativity made easy.

Ep 44: The Creatives Gift Guide: Goal Setting

Transform Your Creative Goals from Dreams to Reality in 2024

SUMMARY

In this first installment of The Creatives Gift Guide series, creative coach Dustin Pead breaks down practical goal-setting frameworks specifically designed for creative professionals. Discover how to transform abstract creative aspirations into achievable goals using both SMART and CLEAR methodologies, while maintaining the flexibility that creative work demands. Learn a balanced approach to goal setting that spans nine essential life categories, ensuring your creative goals align with overall life satisfaction and professional growth.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• ⚡️ The SMART framework (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) provides structure for creative goals.

• ⚡️ Michael Hyatt's SMARTER approach adds Exciting and Risky elements for enhanced motivation

• ⚡️ The CLEAR method (Collaborative, Limited, Emotional, Appreciable, Refinable) offers flexibility crucial for creative work

• ⚡️ Setting goals across nine life categories ensures balanced creative and personal growth

• ⚡️ Breaking goals into daily tasks and weekly reviews significantly increases achievement rates

• ⚡️ According to Dominican University research, people who set goals are 43% more likely to achieve them

NOTABLE QUOTES

• 💬 "Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible." - Tony Robbins (quoted in the episode)

• 💬 "You can do hard things. Let's make it a little bit risky." - Dustin Pead

• 💬 "Future you is not created in the future. It's created in the present." - Dustin Pead

• 💬 "It doesn't matter how big or little the progress is, as long as it's progress. Just do the next right thing." - Dustin Pead

EPISODE RESOURCES

• ⚡️”ASANA for Creative Teams” ebook

• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⚡️ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

• ⚡️ Schedule a FREE Coaching Call here.

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome back everyone to Creativity Made Easy. I'm your host Dustin Pead. Today we're gonna start a three-week podcast series on the spirit of gift giving called the Creatives Gift Guide in which we're gonna discuss some gifts that you can begin to give your creativity to take it to the next level in 2024. And we're gonna start off with the big G goal setting.

My name is Dustin Pead, creative coach and consultant. I'm so glad that you're here today to join us. We're going to talk about this big G goal setting. I know that so many people are talking about goal setting right now, and I might just be adding to that chaos and noise, but I really hope that today's episode relieves some tension for you when you're thinking about 2024 and your creative goals.

I want to share a cool announcement about a new ebook that I put out into the metaverse about using Asana for creative teams. Now, I've gotten some feedback so far and some people are like, "Well I don't use Asana" or "I'm an individual creative and I don't have a team." Listen, this book is for any creative professional or hobbyist looking to take their creativity to the next level by organizing it and putting it into a process and system that works for them. This is not a one-size-fits-all type of thing. This is something that fits you individually and your team as well.

Let's talk about goals. How do you set goals? Are you a person that actually does set goals? If not, why not? I know they can be intimidating. I'm speaking with a couple people this week that said goals have always been super intimidating to me, and so I find it's easier not to set them and then I'm not let down. There is that little bit of "if I don't set a benchmark, then when I don't hit it, I won't be upset."

But I think goals are vastly important to getting the life and the career that you desire. You need to have something that you're striving for or else you're just kind of going with emotions and whatever comes day by day. In the words of Tony Robbins, "Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible."

And I'm a living testament this year in 2023 to tell you that that is so very true. There was also a study done by Dominican University recently that found that people who set goals are 43% more likely to achieve them. So if you have something in your mind that would be nice, if you were to just set a targeted goal towards that, then you're almost 50% more likely to achieve that goal just by setting that specific goal.

What I want to get into today is the different ways to set goals. You've probably heard these acronyms before. At least one of them you've probably heard before. There's a system out there called SMART goals. It's an acronym S.M.A.R.T., and it walks you through the things that you need to remember when you're setting goals.

If you just say "Oh, I want to be healthier in 2024," that's great, but the problem is that it's not specific, and that's the first S of SMART goals. I didn't come up with this. This has been around for a long, long time. This is just me breaking it down and explaining it to you on a short podcast form so that you can take it and start thinking about your goals for 2024 if you haven't already.

Your goals need to be SMART. The S is specific. You need to get more specific. Instead of getting healthy in 2024, "I want to lose 30 pounds by July 1st." Which takes us to the next letter M - measurable. You want these things to be measurable. You want to have some kind of a number attached to it or some sort of way that you can measure whether you actually achieved this goal. Just getting healthier, how do I know if I achieved that? But if I say I want to lose 30 pounds by July 1st, then I know that when I get to July 1st and I haven't dropped 30 pounds from what I was at the beginning of the year, then I can measure the success of that goal.

You also want them to be achievable. That's the A in SMART. Is this actually achievable? I love to play golf, but I'm not going to get out there and play as good as Tiger Woods. So a goal of becoming a PGA pro for me in 2024 is not achievable.

Also relevant - that's the R in SMART. Is that goal relevant to your current life situation and scenario? Is it something that will increase the overall well-being of your career or your livelihood or your personal life or your spiritual life or your financial life in the situation that you're in right now?

And the last letter of SMART is T, and that means time-bound. Taking it back to my original illustration of losing 30 pounds by July 1st, that's time-bound, it's locked in. July 1st is when I'm going to achieve this goal. I recommend that your goals are spread throughout the year. Many people recommend this, and I'm not the first one to recommend it, I'm just passing along what I've learned. If you have goals that are spread throughout the year as far as being due, we talk about DUE dates and DO dates. If you have certain goals that are DUE at certain times of the year, then you're more likely to hit them rather than all of your goals being due on December 31st.

Now, Michael Hyatt, who I talked about last week on the podcast in our episode on how full focus can change the game for you, would take SMART goals and add two letters to the end of that, turning them from just SMART to SMARTER goals. He would add the E and the R at the end of SMART goals. The E would be, make sure that your goals are exciting. Make sure it's something that you can actually get excited about, cause if you're not excited about it, you're probably not going to pursue it with much gusto. And I would even say make sure that the end goal is what's exciting, not the process. Usually the process to achieve a goal isn't all that exciting, but the end goal is what needs to be exciting.

And the last thing he would say with the extra two letters on SMART goals is that the R here is that you need to have it be a little bit risky. Have it be a little bit risky. Don't make it too easy on yourself. Make it something that's a little bit hard to achieve. Yes, we want to make it achievable, but we don't want to make it so easy that it's like "I want to wake up by noon one day a week." You can do hard things, and so let's make it a little bit risky.

There's another acronym that I came across earlier this year when it comes to setting goals that I really love. I haven't dug too deep into it yet, but I am fascinated by the concept. It's called CLEAR goals. I love that acronym just right out the gate because it's one that I want to embody, I want my goals to be super clear.

The C stands for collaborative - this is a type of goal that encourages teams to work together collaboratively. You're not going to get this goal on your own. You're going to bring other people in, whether it's your team, your friends, your family, your coaches, your mentors, your mentees, whoever it may be.

The L here is very similar to time-bound, but it's limited. You're gonna limit the duration of time. The next one is emotional, which you kind of hit a little bit with Michael Hyatt's SMARTER on the E where he says make it exciting. But I like it, it takes it one step further - make it emotional, makes it personal. It's something that brings out some sense of emotion in you.

Now, the next one is appreciable. This is obviously like a more financial term, right, are your assets appreciating in value or depreciating in value? What they say here is that you want to break down your goals so that you can accomplish them quicker. It's kind of that snowball effect. If you ever heard Dave Ramsey talk about the debt snowball, how you want to tackle your smallest amount of debt first and then your next largest and then your next largest and you keep rolling it over.

The last thing in CLEAR goals is the R and that's refinable. You're setting a clear objective, but you're being flexible with the situation as new information changes the goal. You can embrace, refine, and modify the goals. This is not an excuse to bow out - you're not gonna get two weeks into January and say "well, you know what, I wasn't really feeling it anyway." But you're gonna say, "You know what, situations change. My job situation changed. We added a family member who lives in our home now. We have taken on new debt. We have new financial freedom that we weren't planning on." Things happen, things change, life is going to happen.

Here's something that I wish someone had told me a long time ago about setting goals. You need to consider some well-rounded categories. I love the Full Focus planner so much because Michael Hyatt encourages you to consider these different life aspects when you're considering your goals, so that all your goals aren't just work-centric or just hobby-centric or just money-centric.

Here's what I recommend before we end today's episode. No matter what categories you choose, no matter what acronym you may or may not use to come up with your goals, I highly encourage you to find a system that works for you that breaks these goals down into weekly or daily tasks that inches you closer to the goal with regularity.

Remember, you don't need to get obsessed about the thing that's way out in front of you for three to 12 months from now. You need to just know that the next right thing is what you need to do. Break it down into chunks, the appreciable part that we talked about in CLEAR goals. Break that down into little bitty chunks that you can make progress on one day at a time.

It doesn't matter how big or little the progress is, as long as it's progress. Just do the next right thing, make that progress, check it off. Then do the next right thing, accomplish it. And if you do those bite-sized chunks all throughout the year, or throughout the time length of your goal, you're going to look up one day and realize you're way closer to your goal than you ever thought possible.

I cannot wait to continue this series with you next week. We're going to continue the Creative Gift Guide series by talking about 12-month rhythms. It's a really big picture framework that I think will set your new year into a whole new level of expectation and a whole new level of accomplishment.

I cannot wait to talk to you about that. Check out the ebook at DustinPead.com/store. Preorder that now before December 14th. You'll get 50% off. It's only $5 and it'll help you, your team, or maybe even somebody you know that needs it going into 2024. You can give that to them as well.

I cannot wait to talk to you next time on the Creativity Made Easy podcast.

Ep 43: Full Focus Planner: A Creative's Guide to Goal Achievement

(featuring Blake Behr)

SUMMARY

Discover how the Full Focus Planner system can transform your creative practice from scattered to structured. Host Dustin Pead and special guest Blake Behr, CEO of Ridgeline Electrical, dive deep into this powerful planning tool that's helping creative professionals actually achieve their annual goals. Perfect for artists, designers, and creative entrepreneurs looking to maintain creative freedom while implementing strategic planning.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• ⚡️ The Weekly Preview ritual increases goal achievement by up to 50% - it's not just about planning, but maintaining an emotional connection to your goals.

• ⚡️ Using physical planning tools creates stronger neural connections than digital alternatives, making goal tracking and achievement more likely.

• ⚡️ The planner's goal detail sheets help maintain balance across different life areas while keeping long-term objectives visible daily.

• ⚡️ Future success is created in the present - intentional planning and review sessions are investments in your future self.

NOTABLE QUOTES

• 💬 "Future you is not created in the future. It's created in the present. You can't invest in future you in the future. It can only be done right now." - Blake Behr

• 💬 "If you don't do some kind of review preview to your next week, you're 50% less likely to get anything done." - Blake Behr

• 💬 "I'm probably going to hit between seven and eight of those ten goals this year... if you would have told me at the beginning of the year that I would hit 70-80% of my goals, I'd say you're crazy." - Dustin Pead

EPISODE RESOURCES

• ⚡️ Full Focus Planner: fullfocus.co

• ⚡️ "Best Year Ever" by Michael Hyatt

• ⚡️ "Platform" by Michael Hyatt

• ⚡️ Asana for project management

• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⚡️ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

• ⚡️ Schedule a FREE Coaching Call here.

TRANSCRIPT

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Creativity Made Easy podcast. I'm your host, Dustin Pead, creative coach and consultant. I'm so very excited for a very special episode with you today as we close out the month of November about how full focus can change the game. I have a special guest with us today. It's going to be great.

"I just want to fight people, man. I just want to fight people after I hear that song. I just feel like, go, let's do it. Who took my gum? Let's go. Who took my gum? Wait, everyone, hang on. Who took my gum?"

All right, the guy that's here that's so obsessed with who took his gum, my good friend, business partner Blake Bear. You've seen him on the show before. If you watch us on the Culture Based podcast, you've seen him there as well. Blake is the founder and CEO of Ridgeline Electrical Industries and co-founder of The Culture Base, also co-host of the Culture Based podcast with me. Look at us here, different backgrounds, different colors. That's about it.

But today, I asked Blake to join me, because we're going to talk about this thing called the Full Focus planner, which we are great nerds of and we nerd out on it together regularly. I want to get into that because I feel like for a lot of creative people, as I've been having a lot of conversations with creative people, they kind of see me walking around with this little notebook and they hear me say different things that are a part of the Full Focus planner. And they're like, "Oh, what's that about? Well, what do you got going on over there?"

It's super intriguing to them because most creative people are super unorganized and kind of spur of the moment type of people, not great planners historically, right? And so we have an opportunity to really kind of talk about that and there's been a few converts already into the fold.

I just want to say right up front, Michael Hyatt and Full Focus, they have no idea that we're recording this. Hopefully this doesn't get shut down from them. I'm fully expecting to get a thank you card in the mail from them from this, just because like I said, we're not in any way related. We're not certified Full Focus pros, you know, because everybody has their certifications now. None of that. We're just loyal users. And it's kind of changed the game for us, hence the title, how Full Focus can change the game.

A couple of things to remind you of before we get going here. My job here in this podcast and all the content that I'm pushing out is to help creative people know themselves, their process and their team so that they can create greater things together. Would love for you to subscribe on any audio podcast platform you might be listening to this on. Leave a five-star review that really helps. If you're watching on YouTube, thanks so much for watching. We release this content every single Thursday and would really love for you to like, subscribe, ring the bell, super helpful.

If you want to follow along, you can see here on YouTube, my Instagram, Facebook, YouTube handle, all that stuff at DustinPead, P-E-A-D, or you can go to DustinPead.com and sign up for a free consultation where anything that I'm talking about in any of these episodes, even the Full Focus planner, if you're like, "How can I do this?" I would love to chat with you about that.

So today, like I said, we're going to be talking about this Full Focus planner. Full Focus is kind of an idea book business from a guy, a leader named Michael Hyatt. He was the CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishing. They started Full Focus because they believe everyone deserves to win at work and succeed at life. Their mission is to make it nearly impossible for people not to get the double win.

Now this whole double win terminology from them is kind of new to me. I'm not 100% what's going on there, but do you know anything about this, the double win thing?

"I'm guessing it has to do with intrinsic, extrinsic wins. Like the extrinsic of hitting the goal, the intrinsic of the value that it brings. That's my guess."

Because a lot of their goal setting stuff is very similar. I mean, I dig that. Let's just pretend that's what it means. That's exactly right because that was a lot of syllables.

Blake introduced me into Full Focus probably earlier this year. He's talked about it with me for a while now. But earlier this year, I had my transition out of full-time local church ministry into this coaching and consulting thing. And Blake and I have been working on the Culture Base together and things like that. And I'm always looking to kind of improve my organizational skills and improve my planning.

I'm a huge planner. I love goal setting and goals, honestly, have always been super difficult for me, really easy to come up with. I think everybody can be like, "Oh yeah, I can just come up with goals like crazy," but it's hard to stick with them. You know, if we're lucky, if we get to March and we even remember what the goals were, much less have made any traction on them at all.

That was probably the most intriguing part of this whole thing for me. But Blake, why don't you just share with us how you came to know or discover this whole Full Focus planner and how it entered your world?

"Yeah, so it started from me seven or eight years ago, which the planner hasn't been around that long, but maybe it has, I don't know. But the thing that actually connected me was Michael Hyatt's - I think this is my 10th year doing one of his programs called Five Days to Your Best Year Ever."

"Yeah, which I just started. I'm in day three right now. I'm doing it on five days this week."

"Oh awesome. Very cool. Yeah, I'm loving it. My favorite week. I am actually waiting till next week, which in lifetime is Thanksgiving week. And I always wait for that week to kind of start it up."

"So anyway, it's fantastic. Helped me start my business. It just helps compartmentalize the way you think about things and then goal plan and set that up. I love it."

"Do they still sell that anymore? Yes, Best Year Ever? Okay. Yes, the program you mean? I feel like they took a hiatus at one point. I don't know if the program is there, but I do know as of our recording, we're recording this on Wednesday, November 15th, yesterday, Tuesday, November 14th, he just came out with an updated and revised version of the book."

"Oh cool. But I know somebody who may or may not be also on this podcast sent me the video content for that whole deal and so that's what I'm working through."

"Cool. And then I'm getting sued. Awesome. Real quick, I said may or may not be - you gave your way."

"So anyway, I still I'm still saying it was you. I will say though this is a cool bonus that I just found on Michael Hyatt's podcast which I think is called Lead to Win. Is that right?"

"So what his podcast is called - I don't know. Just look at Michael Hyatt. He's got a couple of different podcasts, but his main podcast that he does with his daughter - Hyatt Miller is her last name. Anyway, they just released this week. They're releasing every day this week on that podcast, him reading a chapter of the updated and revised. So it's basically like a free audiobook."

"For the updated and revised. So what I've been doing is been doing the Best Year Everything during the day for that particular day. And then later in that evening, I've been listening to the chapter on this podcast for his updated and revised version, which I just bought the old book. And then a week later, they were like, 'Hey, we're coming out with a new one.' And I was like, 'Well, now I got them all, I guess.'"

"Yeah. He's a great author. He wrote another book called Platform that I highly suggest that's really about knowing your platform, knowing how to build platform. Really good one. And which we're kind of going off on some tangents here. But at the end of the day, that's what tripped me into this is I started doing a bunch of this. And what I noticed was I just didn't have a good planner. Like, how do you take all of this information? How do you have good reviews? How do you go through this process and not have a place to keep it all?"

"And so I mean, I started creating different like pages that I would print out every day that tried to capture a lot of this. I even went to a printer here in town, a local printer downtown Indy and was like, here's what I'm looking for. And they gave me this hard bound book and it cost a ton to make because I'm making like one to five of them. And we used to do that with the day notes or the day sheets. They were the day sheets from Story Brand."

"Ben Arment. Exactly. So I created a rendition of that with a lot of the Full Focus concepts. And then I was on the phone one day talking to a buddy of mine, Omer. And he was - I was like, 'Man, I am just like, I just finished getting this done. And it's been working great. But there's still some gaps.' And he said, 'Oh, did you hear Hyatt just came out with another one? He just came out with a planner.' And I was like, 'Shut up.' And then it was like right when I was starting my company. So it was like perfect timing for me to get people my stuff where it is."

"I mean, it's so funny the things you remember. But like I remember where I was when I heard that. Like you know what I mean? It's like, do you remember Pearl Harbor? In shop. I remember where I was when I found out that Michael Hyatt came out with a planner."

"I was outside of a storage facility that we were operating some of our logistics through. And so it was so funny. I remember stopping be like 'shut up' and I ran and jumped and ordered it right there."

"But here's my like why - because I know a lot of people who are just like, 'Oh, just do it online. Do everything online. Like it's easier.' I'm a very tangible person. Like I need things in my hand to work through. And I need, and maybe even more than this, I need something that tells me create this mindset and lifestyle. That's what I need."

"And the thing, it's like, I used to have a Fitbit. And when I had my Fitbit, I would run all the time. I was healthy. It was working out a lot. And I was like, man, this is great. Then I was like, oh, I'll get the Apple watch. It does all this stuff and I'll be able to get other stuff. The problem is, is when you look in an Apple watch, you think of not be healthy. You just think of do, like get stuff done, go here. Like it's telling you what to do. When I look at a Fitbit, I think be healthy, right?"

"Same thing with having a planner that is in my hands that when I have it, like even if I ever was to go something more technical or tech driven, it would need to be something that had a mindset lifestyle behind it. Right? Not like a, like, I don't think I could do a like an iPad, I don't think I could do it. Because an iPad is a lot of - I've tried."

"So it's, that's why I love it. I love that it's set up in a quarter by quarter basis, because it excites you about your next one. And you're not carrying a Bible around. I mean, look at this thing. It's hefty as it is for a quarter. But it's just the right amount of hefty."

"The thing is, this thing goes with me everywhere. When I hear people like, 'Oh, I struggle with having a planner because I'm not always at my desk or I'm not always in these places.' And I always just straight up tell them, I go, 'Well, I just carry it everywhere.' Like, they know me, my wife and my planner. Like, it's just there. It's weird."

"And it's like, I haven't gone that far yet. Yeah, I haven't gone that far yet, but I do hear your voice often. I'll see it sitting on my desk or the table. Cause even if I walk upstairs for a little while, I'll take it. I'll take it with me. And I, and then I'm getting ready to leave to go somewhere. And I think, do I need to bring this with me or not? And I always hear Blake go, 'I take it with me everywhere.' And I go, 'All right, fine.' I'll take it. And I take it. And I'm always glad I did because something happens or I need to jot it down in there or something like that. But yeah, I haven't, I haven't gone as far to take it on a date."

"Offline, I would love to hear your strategy for convincing your wife that it's okay for you to take your planner on the date."

"But let's not get on the table. I mean like I'll bring it in the car. It sits with me there kind of thing."

"Okay, okay good. I thought you meant like it's the two of you a couple glasses of wine and Michael Hyatt's Full Focus planner."

"I'm like '73 Merlot, what do you think?'"

"I love that. Well, yes, like I said, Blake introduced me to this earlier this year, going all the way back to, you know, when Blake and I met and we started creating things together, you know, we were using these day sheets from Ben Arment and the Story conference. And he's since kind of sold all that stuff to Harris the Third and he's doing a great job with it. But we've always kind of looked for a system to help us with that."

"I love what you said Blake about, it gives you a mindset perspective. It's not just another tool. It's a mindset. Because that's really how this has changed the game for me. And my initial thoughts were I've been an Asana person for a long, long time and use project management system software of Asana for a really, really long time, ever since I've known Blake, I've probably been on Asana and I still use it. It's still really great."

"But the tangible aspect of having the things written down in front of me is a big deal. I was just listening to a podcast recently where they were talking about journaling and how much you know, we all know like psychologically proven that if you write something down, it sticks in your head more than if you type something out. It's just the way it's just the way our brains work."

"And so using that to our advantage, you know, we use that and we go, okay, well, I'm going to write this down. My initial thoughts on the Full Focus planner, it can be a lot. And we'll talk about that here towards the second half of our episode where it kind of breaks down some things for you every week. It can be a little bit overwhelming."

"And even my wife from afar has since I've started doing this, she's been kind of like, I want to do it seems like it's really helpful. Also seems like a lot. And I'm like, it is it is a commitment. And so I've committed for me a year to going through it. I'm like, I'm gonna buy four of these, I'm gonna do it four times."

"And after honestly, I got not even halfway through the first quarter before I was like, this is it. This is what I've been missing because the biggest takeaway for me - and I want to kind of hear from you too, like what the biggest impact has been for you. But for me, the biggest impact has been I've always had these goals, but never been able to do anything with it. And now I have goals in front of me every single week. And even more so like we'll talk about here in a second. I have them in front of me every single day."

"And so that's really changed the game for me to be - and I might not hit - I have 10 goals this year and he'll tell you not to go past 10 even in the book, there's only a space enough for 10 of them. I have 10 goals this year and some life things have happened. I'm probably going only going to hit between seven and eight of those goals. But if you would have told me at the beginning of the year that I would hit, you know, seven, 70% 80% of my goals for this year, I'd be like, you're crazy. Because by March, I'm not even remember what they are. But it's just been a great, every time someone asked me what do you get out of it? I'm like, I know it sounds cliche, but it's focus. It's focused."

"Yeah, that's good. I think one thing I would say before I kind of jump into that is it doesn't mean you don't put other things around you like Asana or like your Google calendar. I think the mindset is the Full Focus planner is not supplemental to those things, those things are supplemental to the planner. The planner for me is the fuel.

And it is the motivation and it is the connection to staying with your goals. So many people get so far from their goals because they lose connection to their goals. I love the Full Focus planner because weekly I am re-establishing my connection to that goal. And even in like an emotional way, right? Okay, so it is so important to have emotional and intrinsic motivation to hit your goals.

Otherwise, when you get into the rough aspect of your goals, you will just drop them. It's so easy. This is why the majority of people never make it past January or February with their goals is because life sets in and it's not easy and you've got to be able to have something that's deeper than I just want it, you know, you gotta have something deeper.

So for me, the biggest impact this has had on my life has been the ability to take vision to action. And it is just being able as a visionary to have all this stuff in your head. When it stays there, it gets muddy. When it stays there, it feels impossible. Every day that goes by that it stays up in my head, it feels almost more impossible until I give it some tangibility. I don't think that's a word, but I'm gonna say it gives us some tangible aspect to where even putting it down on paper now has given me this feel of, okay, now, I've seen in the past that when I put things down on paper, they become reality.

And so the biggest impact it's had is, I mean, I went from running somebody else's company for them and taking a massive leap out on our own and being a one income household to now having a company with 50 plus people and we're serving a ton of people, there's tons of impact to say that vision turned into something. And it's not like very beginning vision turned into it. It's been this iterative vision or this evolving vision that constantly continues to change.

And I know that it doesn't matter so much because I've got something that's going to be able to help me bring all that together and to continue going back to say, okay, now I'm touching base with this again. And I'm not sure that's part of the goal. Now I think it's evolved. I think it's more emergent to be like this.

And so it's having something that allows me to do that and to go back and to look at things. Like I love books, I love libraries. I'm more of an audio book person, but I love the view of books. Like even in the background, having books up, I just love it. But I'm also the nerd who's been doing this for six, seven years. So I've got a couple of these things laying around to where they only had one version of this.

Now they have like a ton of different ones, right? There was only - and they've continued to evolve themselves and I love that. But I literally have a bookshelf that is just lined with these things. And I love it though, because I can go back and be like, what was Blake thinking four years ago? What was Blake thinking about his company about how we were going to run this aspect?

And there is - there's even parts in the journal or in the planner that have empty sections for you to journal, essentially. And I don't, this isn't my journal, but there are times that I'm like, you know what, I kind of want to give future me a perspective. Like, here's what I'm thinking. And just being able to do that, especially in the weekly aspect where like they have a weekly review section, that's been super helpful to kind of sweep back through."

"Yeah, for sure. I know we talked for a second about the about Asana and or any other project software. I just want to kind of give people an insight real quick because one of the things we're going to talk about here in a second is the weekly preview portion of the planner. And the part of that weekly preview is for you to assess review any task management software that you use. So even the book itself is built to bring all of that other content in.

So I do some consulting with some other organizations. And so I have other Asana workspaces for those organizations. But when I'm doing my weekly preview, I pull up those things. And so I work those things into the Full Focus planner. If there's something that's expected of me or something that I said that I was going to do, I will pull that into my planner on my weekly preview.

Before we jump into the weekly previews and the rhythms and the startups and the shutdowns and all that stuff, do you modify or add anything to the planner? I know there's a whole Facebook community out there for the Full Focus planner, and they will always come up with different mods and different things that they've added and different hacks that they've used for, this is better, do it this way, this is not as great, don't do it that way. And I know I've picked up some of those from them. I picked some of those up from you. Do you have any of those?"

"Absolutely. Everyone's brain works differently. There is no one brain that works the same way. So to think that there's only one way to plan, I think 10 year ago, me would have said, because I had success in it, I would have been like, this is the only way to do it. This is the only way. This is it. And not realizing that like there's - I've never been diagnosed as ADD, but I clearly have those little tips that I'm like, here, here.

And so creating something within that planner that helps grab and grab that stuff quickly and helps moderate some of that jumping around kind of thing is so helpful. And so when you create your own stuff in it, and you don't feel like you have to be some purist in every right, you're going to come out with really neat stuff.

I mean, even like I daily want to have the aspect of putting vision on my planner. So visually here, like in the sides over here on the left-hand side of a day, I always go through, I write vision and I write to do as a high level, like things that I need to capture and grasp. That's not something that is necessarily there on the planner.

I also on the far left hand side number every task and then in the time area, I put the number I don't write out tasks in my time slots, where I've seen a bunch of people write out what the task is they're going to do in that time slot."

"Yeah, it seems like a lot of effort to me."

"That I just - it's just a map key for you at that point. Exactly. You know, they've added a lot of things that early on I was actually doing daily wins and even like keeping check marks for things. And like as far as like progress bars and I was adding that kind of stuff in myself and then they came out with it. I was like, this is glorious.

But one of the bigger ones that I've done probably within the last year and a half to two years is I will add a post-it that jumps from day to day. And that post-it is more like my vision items. So the stuff in the front of the book that talks about like all your goals and stuff, I label those goals, like if you had 10 goals, they're one through 10.

So each of these to-dos then has a number referencing that goal. As you're going through a goal or a year and you have 10 goals, you know that my one goal always is associated with this. My two goals always associated with this. And so the reason I like having this right here is that I don't have to rewrite everything the next day. I just pull it off and go to the next day."

"So that's been one aspect that I don't even know how you would ever create that in an analog version. So it's like, yeah, post-it notes are kind of the only way you can do it."

"Yep. Exactly. So to me, that's been super helpful kind of adding that in."

"Yeah. I've, I've, I took that hack from Blake as well. And so I have my post-it note on every day one through 10, the number associates with the goal, which the goals by the way, are the very first page in the book is a place for your annual goals. And even every quarter you're rewriting these annual goals. One, and you number them one through 10. There's a place in there of like, what quarter am I going to complete or start it? Or when does it do? You can use it however you want really.

But yeah, the sticky note has been probably the biggest hack for me. I also do the, for the most part, we'll just write the number of the task in there. If it's a meeting, I'll write the person's name on that column for the meeting. Just so I know, oh, at two o'clock, I'm with Larissa at one o'clock, I'm with Blake or, you know, that kind of stuff. So that's really helpful.

All right, let's get into before we get too long in this episode, just kind of how to how this how this week and a day looks like in the life of the Full Focus planner. So at the very beginning of your week, which their weeks run Monday through Sunday, Sunday is the last day of the week. Monday is the first day of the week is typically most of us start our work week on Mondays don't start our work week on Sundays for the most part.

And so what they have for you after the Sunday page is they have this thing called the weekly preview. Now on the left side, there is it's really more of a weekly review than it is a preview. Right. The left side is more about like 'Hey, the big three that you said you were gonna accomplish this week, remember last week when you did this thing and you said, I'm gonna accomplish these big, these are the big three things that I'm gonna focus on this week. What percentage of each of those did you get done?'

And so you can kind of start to see like, oh, is my focus shifting from what I told it was gonna be even a week ago, or do I need to refocus that back on? It's what didn't work, what worked and what didn't work, and why and why not? I love those. I love that section. What the question what will what will you continue to do and what will you change? Love that question. Writing writing that down gets you an opportunity to to really kind of commit to that change or commit to the new habit that maybe you've picked up over the last week or two.

After action review is up at the top list three to five of your biggest wins from the week I'm really not great. At the bottom of every daily spread, there's a place for your daily win. I'm really not great at doing that. I need to get better at putting that in there. But at the end of the week, I am really good at looking back over my pages and go, 'Wow, look at all that I accomplished.' And I'll write down the three or fig really big things that I was actually able to get done.

But then when we look on the right side of that, then we're getting into the weekly preview, which we've got a goal review section in there. We've got streak tracker is one of the things. So like some of your goals, maybe habit oriented goals, like I want to, I want to develop this new habit. Like for me, one of my goals this year was to release content weekly, at least one day a week every, every week of the year.

So release weekly content for 52 weeks would be one of was one of my goals this year. And so I'm able to look back and look on this weekly spread every week, I'm able to look back and go, 'Yeah, I did that here, here, here, here, here.' So at least as long as I get one check mark on that list and I've come, then I've hit that goal for that week onto the next week.

Rejuvenation is probably one of my favorite parts of the weekly preview. What are you gonna do intentionally to sleep, eat, move, connect, or relax a little bit better this week is what it says. And then you schedule that out in your daily pages super great. One of my favorite things to do, which we'll talk about Workday Shutdown here in a minute is to do the Peloton. I'll do a Peloton ride, a short Peloton ride at the end of my day for Workday Shutdown.

But then there's weekly overview for your events, your projects, your tasks, any other commitments, and then you end your weekly preview with the weekly big three, which we talked about a minute ago. But Blake, can you just kind of what is weekly big three versus like a daily big three?"

"Yeah, weekly, I mean, weekly big three breaks down your daily big threes, right? Like if you know, we're wanting to get to a certain point on a project, then I could go, 'Hey, we want to be at ready to launch this product by this date.' And so in this week, I want to get to whatever 50% done is let's get 50% to there, then my daily threes are, what is my, like, am I focusing on that every day or does that take like know, a backseat to the reality of that should be a top three.

So if that get to 50% has 12 tasks to it, then I need to put those 12 tasks in my big three, you know, like, so I think that's kind of the difference. The weekly preview though, I'm going to get pretty bold in saying this. Let's go. The weekly preview. If you don't do some kind of review preview to your next week, I think you are 50% less likely to get anything done."

"I totally agree."

"But I think you know how there's so many people who say, hey, if you write down your goal, your X amount percent more likely to have make it happen. I agree that that's real because if you don't write it down, you don't give a darn, right? Like that's it. Okay. That's permission to play. But for those who write it down and like actually put thought to it for their plans, if you review have a weekly review cadence, man, I would almost guarantee a 50% more likeliness that you'll hit your goals."

"Yes, the quarters I've had that were trash were quarters that I didn't do my reviews well. And you start learning about yourself those seasons that cause you the stress and the overwhelm that you're like, man, I just don't have time for that right now. Yeah, okay. But you either need to give yourself grace during those seasons, or you need to suck it up, buttercup and get moving. Like, go do those, those reviews, because they are crucial. And it's an investment into your future, right? Like future you is not created in the future. It's created in the present, okay?

Like you can't invest in future you in the future. It can only be done right now. So if future you is going to be created, it needs to be done intentionally. And that needs to be done once a week of really getting back to your goals and getting back to why you're doing any of this. And you don't have to make, like people make this sound like it needs to be four hours. It doesn't. I really aim for no more than an hour. If it takes more, it's because I want it to. But outside of that, it doesn't need to.

And so my weekly preview, I personally create my, my, I know they do Monday to Friday or to Sunday as their week, my, my week is Sunday to Saturday, because I have a hard rest on Saturdays. I won't do things. So my Sunday startup, it's great, because I don't have my occupational work that I need to be focusing on, I get to focus on vision.

And so starting the week on a Sunday and getting in my start is just the weekly preview. I don't have to put in eight hours to have a good impactful day. I need to put in a little bit of time of planning out the rest of the week. So that's where I'm doing a task sweep of anything that I missed. I can go back through all my notes and did I miss something? Do I have, you know, something coming up that I forgot to put on in an area that I can capture all that, okay, now I'm sweeping back through every page from the last week.

Then I'm also looking at my goals. What goals did I not focus on very well. And now maybe it wasn't a top three. And that's why I didn't get focused on but it gets bumped up if it's important."

"Yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah, the weekly preview is is the most powerful part of the Full Focus planner if you asked me. There is things on at the top corner of every daily page, our daily spread, there are these four little check boxes up there that say morning ritual, workday startup ritual, workday shutdown ritual, and evening ritual.

And we could spend probably entire episodes on all four of these, but just real quickly, there's a portion at the beginning of every planner where you can basically draw out your ideal week and you can also write out your ideal kind of morning. I say rhythms than rituals just because rituals to me are less or less flexible and rhythms.

My morning and evening rhythms for the most part change quarterly, they change seasonally, depending on what's going on in my life. And so it's a rhythm for me. So my morning and evening rhythms, you know, I can list out the beginning of each quarter. All right, this is what this is what they're going to look like this quarter. It's normal stupid stuff, like I'm going to get a walk in in the morning, I'm going to pick out my clothes before I go to bed for the next day. Like it's things like that, right.

And then the workday startup and the workday shutdown, not everybody uses these I use one stronger than the other I use the workday startup for much stronger than my workday shutdown. Pretty much my workday shutdown right now was one final check of emails, slack notifications, things like that. And then I'm cleaning off my desk, I do a full clean of like any junk that's left on there so that when I get started the next day, I don't have to worry about that.

And then I'm hopping on the Peloton for 10, 15 minutes. And it's just a way to kind of final clear my head before I have to go back into family mode. I've left work mode, especially if you're listening to this or watching and you don't have a commute, your commute is from one part of the house to the other part of the house. You know what I mean? So like doing some type of a workday shutdown here is good because then you're not entering into family time or family mode in the evenings with all of the stuff kind of kind of left lingering over."

"But I just kind of future you that's why that's it the workday shutdown is serving future you."

"Yes. It lets you see if you're going to cut corners and have a rough morning, or you're going to serve future you and set yourself up for success."

"Yeah, so just overall, Blake, I know we're running long on time here. Is there anything in the morning, morning, evening, workday startup, workday shutdown that has you found particularly helpful in the seasonal life?"

"Honestly, just having the checklist helps the accomplishment aspect. You know how they talk about - Yeah, exactly. Just that that feeling and the dopamine release is so important. But the - I don't remember what Colonel said it that the most important thing you can do every day is make your bed.

And I'm up very, very early, where I don't have that ability to be the one who makes the bed because my wife's still sleeping in the bed. And so like to get up and do that and get that sense of accomplishment, I have to get other ways. And so when I go downstairs to my basement and start my morning routine and start going through my time of prayer and silence, my time of meditation, my workout time and start going through all that flow and go into the day, just that checkoff - it like, it's like putting Febreze on the clean room, right? Like, it just like, feels good.

And I'm not saying that it just me like, it gives you that sense of like, this is great. I've accomplished it. And so having that ability has been helpful. So I think more than anything, it's important to quarterly do it, like to look at your, hey, what does this thing - Yeah, morning ritual look like, because you're right, it does change. And you don't want to be like, well, it's been the way it always has. Man life, life changes. So just having the checks marks is the best part for me."

"Yeah. Well, I want to honor your time and the time that of people that are watching and listening as well. But thank you so much, Blake, for being a part of this today and just nerding out with me for a little bit about the Full Focus plan. I know we nerd out about it all the time. So we just figured, why not let everybody else nerd out with with us on it."

"So both of us go for it. Sorry. Yeah, because we didn't really talk about this. And I think it's important. Go the very beginning of the planner has goal sheets and like those goal sheets when filled out well, that's part of my weekly preview. So good. And like, I will go back to those because you can build out what does done look like you can build out all the items of the tasks that are like, hey, these are the milestone markers to get to this goal. Here's my end date. Is it a spiritual goal? Is it a family goal? Is it a whatever those sheets are probably one of the most valuable parts of this journal when used well, because what you can also see when you fill out those things and check the categorical type of goal it is, you can see where you're unbalanced, right?

Where is the imbalance at that I'm not focusing on areas that are important to me in Word, but maybe not important to me, you know, in action. And so it's a good place to re-associate yourself. So that part is probably one of the most important parts if you're actually trying to hit goals."

"Yeah, totally agree. I'm glad you brought us back to that point. One of my favorite parts of those goal detail sheets in the beginning of the book is celebration portion. Just decide. Go ahead and decide now what you're going to do when you when you hit this goal. The assumptions of nature of that statement and then also to be able to tell yourself like, oh, I'm not only after this because I want to hit this goal. But at the end of it, like one of my goals is like, hey, at the end, when I hit this goal, I'm going to take a getaway trip with Sarah. Like we're going to go get one of those getaway cabins that we really like to stay at. And that's just going to be our reward for this. And so having those types of things are, I just think huge. So good call."

"Way to end the episode strong. Thanks everybody for listening. If you're interested in the Full Focus planner, you can check out again, we're not endorsed. We don't get any kickback on it. So there's no, I'm not going to give you a special link where I get kicked back on it or anything like that. Just go to fullfocus.co. You can click around the store there and you can see all the different types of varieties of the planters they have. Where they used to just have one now they have many. And so yeah, take it, use it. If you have any questions, hit either one of us up. I'm sure we'd love to nerd out with you and talk to you about how to best use that. But until next time, we'll talk to you on Creativity Made Easy."

Ep 41: Creating with Gratitude: Morning Pages

The Creative's Secret to Starting Each Day (Part 3 of 4)

SUMMARY

Discover how the practice of Morning Pages can transform your creative process and mindset. Based on Julia Cameron's groundbreaking work, learn how this simple daily practice of longhand writing can clear mental clutter, spark creativity, and foster gratitude. Perfect for creative professionals seeking to enhance their morning routine and creative output.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• ⚡️ Morning Pages - three pages of longhand, stream-of-consciousness writing done first thing each morning - serve as a powerful mind warm-up for creatives.

• ⚡️ This screen-free practice helps remove mental distractions and false narratives that can block creative flow.

• ⚡️ Consistent practice of Morning Pages helps maintain focus on what truly matters, surfacing forgotten priorities and creative insights.

NOTABLE QUOTES

• 💬 “Our brains are the most attuned and accurate and freshly rested first thing in the morning... our thoughts first thing in the morning can tell us a lot about what's going on inside of us." - Dustin Pead

• 💬 "You need to eliminate excuses that will keep you from becoming more grateful for all that you've been given and all the opportunities that you have to create your best work." - Dustin Pead

EPISODE RESOURCES

• ⚡️ Book referenced: "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron (1995)

• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⚡️ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

• ⚡️ Schedule a FREE Coaching Call here.

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome back to the podcast. I'm your host Dustin Pead, Creative Coach and Consultant. Today we are continuing our four-part series on creating with gratitude and how when we change our perspective, we can increase our creativity, raising our art to a whole new level. Today is part three on morning pages and commonplace books.

What Are Morning Pages?

Morning Pages is a journaling concept introduced by Julia Cameron in her 1995 book "The Artist's Way." It involves three pages of longhand writing - meaning you'll write with your hand and a pen or pencil, not typing. It's stream of consciousness writing, which means you're not going to think twice about what you're writing. If it comes to your mind, you write it down, without editing yourself.

Why Morning Pages Work

Our brains are most attuned and accurate when freshly rested first thing in the morning. Our early morning thoughts can tell us a lot about what's going on inside of us. There is no wrong way to do Morning Pages.

Benefits of Morning Pages

1. Mental Warm-Up

• Great warm-up for your mind

• Start the day without screens

• Get neurons firing

• Set intention for the day

2. Remove Mental Distractions

• Address what Brené Brown calls "the story I'm telling myself"

• Work through "shitty first drafts" of thoughts

• Observe thoughts objectively

• Release mental clutter

3. Focus on What Matters

• Chance to reflect

• Remove mental junk

• Maintain focus on goals

• Rediscover forgotten priorities

Getting Started

I'm going to encourage you to start this process immediately. The main thing is to eliminate excuses that keep you from becoming more grateful for all you've been given and all the opportunities you have to create your best work. Morning Pages is a great way to begin creating from a place of gratitude rather than exhaustion, frustration, or anxiety.

The Challenge

Try Morning Pages for seven days in a row. Yes, it will take effort in the beginning. Your hand might cramp, and you might question if you're cut out for handwriting anymore. Trust me - it is worth it. If you stick with it, you can see incredible results.

Looking Ahead

Next week we'll finish up the creating from gratitude series as we go into Thanksgiving. We'll focus on you, our listeners and viewers of the content, and we'll preview some things coming up in the next few months as we roll into 2024.

Visit dustinpead.com to learn more and connect with Dustin.

Ep 40: Creating with Gratitude: Creative Fuel Days

Recharging Your Creative Spirit
(Part 2 of 4)

SUMMARY

Discover the transformative power of Creative Fuel Days - intentional time set aside to recharge your creative energy. Host Dustin Pead shares practical strategies for planning and maximizing these quarterly creativity renewal sessions, which are perfect for artists, designers, and creative professionals looking to maintain consistent creative output without burning out.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• ⚡️ Creative Fuel Days, taken quarterly, are essential for sustaining creative energy - just like a car needs refueling, creatives need intentional time to recharge.

• ⚡️ Success in Creative Fuel Days comes from having a written plan, sharing it with others for accountability, and documenting inspiration as it strikes.

• ⚡️ Breaking routine through new experiences - from art museums to unfamiliar neighborhoods - can spark fresh creative perspectives.

NOTABLE QUOTES

• 💬 "If all you do is pour out and you never take time to fuel back up, you're gonna run out of momentum in just a short period of time." - Dustin Pead

• 💬 "Seeing creativity through different mediums helps me to want to be better at what I'm doing." - Dustin Pead

EPISODE RESOURCES

• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⚡️ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

• ⚡️ Schedule a FREE Coaching Call here.

TRANSCRIPT

Creating with Gratitude Part 2: Creative Fuel Days

Welcome back to the Creativity Made Easy podcast. I'm your host Dustin Pead. Today we are going to continue our four-part series on creating with gratitude and how when we change our perspective, we increase our creativity, raising our art to a whole new level. Today is part two of that series on creative fuel days.

What is a Creative Fuel Day?

This concept came from my years in local church ministry, where we had "renewal days" once every quarter. These weren't just additional PTO or vacation days - we had to have a written plan for an eight-hour day focused on spiritual, emotional, and physical renewal. I realized this concept could be powerful for creativity as well.

Why Creative Fuel Days Matter

If all you do is pour out and never take time to fuel back up, you'll run out of momentum quickly. I recommend taking these days quarterly, and if you can't do it during the workweek, use a weekend day - but be intentional about it.

What to Do on Creative Fuel Days

1. Unplug

• Disconnect from social media

• Turn off your phone

• Remove your smartwatch

• Free yourself from notifications

2. Experience Art and Culture

• Watch a thought-provoking movie

• Visit an art museum

• Experience different creative mediums

• Let other art forms inspire your work

3. Explore New Territory

• Visit new neighborhoods

• Try different cultural areas

• Get intentionally lost (safely)

• Experience new environments

4. Engage Your Senses

• Try new restaurants

• Experience different cuisines

• Explore culinary arts

• Find hole-in-the-wall gems

5. Connect and Learn

• Have coffee with friends

• Engage in deep conversations

• Listen to lectures or TED talks

• Sit in on college classes

Making the Most of Your Creative Fuel Day

1. Have a Written Plan

   • Schedule specific activities

   • Set clear intentions

   • Create a timeline

   • Budget appropriately

2. Share Your Plan

   • Tell others before the day

   • Create accountability

   • Share experiences afterward

   • Lock in memories through sharing

3. Document Everything

   • Bring a journal

   • Note new inspirations

   • Record textures, colors, sounds

   • Write down fresh perspectives

Closing Thoughts

When is your next creative fuel day? I'm planning mine for December so I can start January fresh. The timing doesn't matter as much as the commitment to doing it. Pick a date, share it with someone, and make it happen.

You can't continue to operate at full capacity with an empty inspiration tank. Schedule your creative fuel day, make a plan, stick to it, share it with people, and you'll be better off because of it.

Visit dustinpead.com to learn more and connect with Dustin.

Ep 39: The Grateful Creator's Mindset

Transform Your Creative Process (Part 1 of 4)

SUMMARY

Discover how gratitude can revolutionize your creative process in this first installment of our four-part series. Host Dustin Pead reveals three essential mindset shifts that can transform creative blocks into breakthrough moments. Perfect for artists, designers, and creative professionals looking to enhance their creative practice through the power of grateful thinking.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• ⚡️ A positive mindset isn't just motivational fluff—it's about creating new neural pathways that override creative self-doubt and limitations.

• ⚡️ Transforming perceived obstacles into opportunities can revolutionize how creatives approach challenging projects and client work.

• ⚡️ Present-moment awareness in creativity allows artists to focus on current blessings and capabilities rather than future anxieties.

NOTABLE QUOTES

• 💬 "As we change our perspective, we increase our creativity, raising our art to a whole new level." - Dustin Pead

• 💬 "You have to take control of your mindset. You have to take it back from the lies that you may have believed, from any scar tissue that may be in there." - Dustin Pead

• 💬 "It's an amazing gift that you have to be able to create today. So use it. Use the gift with gratitude." - Dustin Pead

EPISODE RESOURCES

• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⚡️ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

• ⚡️ Schedule a FREE Coaching Call here.

TRANSCRIPT

Creating with Gratitude Part 1: Mindset is Key

Welcome back to the Creativity Made Easy podcast. I'm your host Dustin Pead, creative coach and consultant, and I cannot wait to get into this today. We are going to take a leap and start a four-part series over the next four weeks on creating with gratitude and how, when we change our perspective, we increase our creativity, raising our art to a whole new level.

Introduction

I'm so glad that you're with us today as we start this brand new series. I've been creating series of messages and packaging them together for almost 20 years in the church world, and today we're going to dive into "Creating with Gratitude." You can follow along with everything I'm putting out on social media - Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube - all of that at Dustin Pead (P-E-A-D). You can also find all of our blog materials and free resources at dustinpead.com.

Creating with Gratitude

I know it might seem a bit cheesy - we're in Thanksgiving month now, November, with pumpkins everywhere and everyone talking about Friendsgiving. It's an exciting time of year, and Thanksgiving is actually my favorite holiday. We're going to spend the next four weeks talking about creating with gratitude because I believe it's super important. As we change our perspective, we can increase our creativity.

Three Essential Mindset Shifts

1. Keep a Positive Attitude

I know you're thinking, "That's easier said than done." We're all artists, all super emotional beings. We all tend to see the glass as half empty, but I'm telling you, if you put in just a little effort to having a positive attitude, it will change the way you create things.

Resist the urge to just "keep it real" or "just being honest." We need your true self, but there comes a point where you have to take control of your mindset. You have to take it back from:

The lies you may have believed

Any scar tissue that may be there

The neurological pathways that say you're not good enough

Thoughts that say it's too overwhelming or too hard

You have to start carving out new neurological pathways with positive attitude and thinking. This isn't some new concept - we've seen throughout history that a positive attitude can change your world.

2. See Opportunities, Not Obstacles

There's going to be many things that come up against you and many roadblocks. Writer's block is a real thing - we're going to stare at the blank page and not know what to put on there. We're going to receive a project from a client and think, "Wow, I can't believe I said yes to this. I have no idea what I'm doing."

That's not an obstacle - that's an opportunity. You now have the chance to:

Explore new territory

Learn new things

Go boldly where you haven't gone before

It's a small mental shift, but it makes all the difference.

3. Stay Present

It's difficult not to worry about tomorrow, especially when you're venturing out on your own. You worry about:

What client work will come

Paying the bills

Sustaining your business

How long you can keep it up

But if you can stay present, you can create with gratitude and make amazing things. Sometimes you need someone in your life to snap their fingers and say, "Hey, come back. I know you're worrying about tomorrow. Come back to us right here."

Self-Reflection Questions

Which of these three things resonated with you the most today?

Do you need to change your attitude?

Do you need to see obstacles as opportunities?

Do you struggle with staying present?

It's an amazing gift that you have to be able to create today. So use it. Use the gift with gratitude. I think in this mindset shift that we can all make together, we can create some beautiful things.

Next Week

We're going to continue this four-part series on creating with gratitude. We'll talk about something I call "creative fuel days." It's going to be amazing, and I cannot wait to share it with you.

Visit dustinpead.com to learn more and connect with Dustin.

Ep 38: CREATIVE VULNERABILITY

Why Sharing Your Work Matters

SUMMARY

Discover why creative vulnerability is crucial for artistic growth in this intimate episode of Creativity Made Easy. Host Dustin Pead shares personal experiences and practical strategies for overcoming creative isolation, building meaningful creative relationships, and sharing your work effectively. Perfect for artists, designers, and creative professionals struggling with creative isolation or fear of sharing their work.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• ⚡️ Self-editing and fear often stop creatives from sharing potentially valuable ideas - the key is pushing past initial self-doubt to share work with trusted peers.

• ⚡️ Creating in isolation limits potential - collaborative creativity and community feedback enhance creative output significantly.

• ⚡️ Building a creative circle and fostering relationships is essential for creative growth and combating creative loneliness.

• ⚡️ "Vulnerability in creativity, while scary, leads to better work and deeper connections within creative communities.

NOTABLE QUOTES

• 💬 "What we do in these circles, these creative circles... makes a difference in our work." - Dustin Pead

• 💬 "Relationships are an important contributor to creative growth. Make certain to carve out time to connect with others who inspire and challenge you." - Todd Henry (quoted in episode)

• 💬 "I know vulnerability with your creativity can be scary... but trust me the reward far outweighs any fear that may be keeping you from being able to experience that." - Dustin Pead

EPISODE RESOURCES

• ⚡️

• ⚡️

• ⚡️

• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⚡️ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

• ⚡️ Schedule a FREE Coaching Call here.

TRANSCRIPT

Creative Vulnerability: Why Sharing Your Work Matters

Welcome back everyone to Creativity Made Easy. I'm your host Dustin Pead, Creative Coach and Consultant, and we are here today to talk about something that can be super scary: creative vulnerability.

Introduction

Thanks everyone for joining the program today. I'm so happy to be with you, whether you're watching on YouTube or you're listening as you're driving down the road. You can follow along with me online at dustinpead.com. If anything that I say in any of these episodes rings a bell for you, I would love to chat with you about how I can help make your creativity thrive and make it easier for you to create your best work. You can follow me on social media - Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube - all of it is at Dustin Pead (P-E-A-D).

The Scary Side of Creativity

With Halloween just around the corner, creativity is in abundance in our house right now. But speaking of scary things, as creatives, one of the scariest things for us can be sharing our work and being vulnerable with our creativity. We can tend to hoard it for ourselves and keep quiet about the thoughts and ideas that we have.

Just last week I had an idea that I thought was so crazy and so stupid. I told one of my friends, "This is the dumbest idea I've ever had, but I'm gonna tell you about it right now." His response surprised me - he said it wasn't a dumb idea at all, that he and his wife had been talking about something very similar. Now I'm thinking maybe it's not so dumb after all.

The Problem with Self-Editing

We often stop ourselves in our own minds before we ever even voice an idea. We tend to self-edit, and that stops us from creating our best work. We can keep to ourselves in our own little huddles, but as you've heard me say before, we need to get out. We need to go to:

Art museums

Coffee shops

Cool new restaurants

Fall festivals

We need to go to these places so we can be surrounded by other people and their creativity, spurring each other on to create greater things.

Breaking Out of Creative Silos

We can create in silos too, saying "No one's gonna help me with this project. I'm gonna do it all on my own in the name of myself, my brand." But friends, that can be a scary place to create from. You can create so much better if you don't create in silos, if you're willing to open yourself up and share your creativity.

Learning About Creative Community

I've been learning a ton about loneliness lately. I just finished reading "The Art of Gathering" by Priya Parker - a super detailed work about why and how we gather as humans. I've also been following Liz Bohannon, who's building a beautiful community of people to do life with. If we're honest with ourselves, we all long to have that same type of thing because we need our people.

The Daily Creative Practice

I recently rediscovered Todd Henry's book "The Daily Creative" - it's like a creative devotional, one page a day to spur you on in your creativity. Coincidentally, the day I picked it back up, the reading was titled "Your Circle," discussing how we need our creative circle. As Todd writes: "Relationships are an important contributor to creative growth. Make certain to carve out time to connect with others who inspire and challenge you."

Personal Vulnerability

Just in the last seven days, I had an instance where I really wanted to seclude myself. But I knew what I needed was to be vulnerable enough to text a few people and say, "I want to be alone today but I know it's not the best place for me to be." I did it, and I'm so much better for it - it's been a fresh new wave of creativity ever since.

Call to Action

I know vulnerability with your creativity can be scary. I know that putting yourself out there, sharing your work and your struggles with other people can be frightening, but trust me - the reward far outweighs any fear. How can you be intentional about creative vulnerability this week?

Send the text

Share the thing

Post the blog

Tell your friend the crazy idea

Walk across the street and have a conversation

The world needs your creativity. Get out there, be vulnerable with it, share it with the world, and let's make some beautiful things together.

Looking Ahead

Starting next week, we'll begin releasing podcast episodes in series. During November, we'll focus on creating from a place of gratitude. It's going to be an amazing time as we learn to grow and be creative and vulnerable with each other in our creativity.

Visit dustinpead.com to learn more and connect with Dustin.

Ep 37: Why Creativity Can Be Easy

Simplifying Your Creative Process

SUMMARY

Discover why creating doesn't have to be a struggle in this foundational episode of Creativity Made Easy. Host Dustin Pead challenges the myth that creativity requires chaos, offering insights into how creative professionals can develop sustainable processes that lead to consistent output. Perfect for artists, designers, musicians, writers, and creative teams looking to move beyond ideation to actually finishing their best work.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• ⚡️ Creatives often overcomplicate their process, getting stuck in ideation but struggling with completion. The key is finding a sustainable system that works for you.

• ⚡️ As Jerry Seinfeld noted, 'Art is making order out of chaos' - creativity isn't about magical inspiration but about systematic process.

• ⚡️ With the right tools, support, and environment, consistent creativity becomes achievable and repeatable.

NOTABLE QUOTES

• 💬 Too many creatives are overcomplicating the creative process, specifically when it comes to seeing it all the way through to the end." - Dustin Pead

• 💬 "Art is making order out of chaos." - Jerry Seinfeld (quoted in episode)

• 💬 "Creativity can be easy. It doesn't have to be so complicated, but you have to find a process that works for you and keeps you and your team accountable." - Dustin Pead

EPISODE RESOURCES

• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⚡️ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

• ⚡️ Schedule a FREE Coaching Call here.

TRANSCRIPT

Why Creativity Can Be Easy: Simplifying Your Creative Process

Welcome back everyone to the podcast. Welcome to those watching on YouTube, those listening everywhere. For now, we're gonna call this thing Creativity Made Easy. Still wrapping up my first year of content, releasing content every single week for you as you journey through what the creative process looks like for you.

The Creative Process Problem

I have a confession to make: I think too many creatives are over-complicating the creative process, specifically when it comes to seeing it all the way through to the end. We can be really great at ideas, right? We often get bored or lose direction or interest and quickly move on to the next shiny thing because let's face it, it's way more fun to start things than it is to finish them.

Real-World Examples

Musicians work for months on a new album and by the time it debuts, they're sick of hearing those tracks on repeat in their brains, but they gotta go out and tour to support album sales.

A painter stares at a subject for so long that the lines become blurry and she convinces herself that it's ugly, paints over the beginnings of a masterpiece then moves on to start with a new vision.

A writer fills daily pages or a word quota to one day release their first book but the mundane routine of having to return to the blank page has sucked the life out of him and he ditches the project altogether, never seeing his dream come to fruition.

The Truth About Art

But the reality is there is no art without sticking through the process. I love this quote from Jerry Seinfeld from an interview in 2021. He said that "art is making order out of chaos."

We think that creativity is some magic formula that we must conjure up through a series of impromptu feelings or events, but we've got it all wrong.

A New Approach

Listen friends, creativity can be easy. It doesn't have to be so complicated, but you have to find a process that works for you and keeps you and your team accountable to see it all the way through to the end.

I believe that with the right tools, the right support, and the right environment, you can make creativity achievable time and time again.

Moving Forward

The direction of my content on this platform, whether you're listening or watching on YouTube, is going to be dedicated solely to helping you find the sweet spot for you and/or your team to create your best work.

I want to create some beautiful things together. If you're listening to this and thinking, "man, that sounds really awesome, I would love to know more about how I can do that," I encourage you to reach out to me at dustinpead.com and click the "let's chat" button.

An Invitation

I've got a couple of clients right now and space for just a few more that I would love to help understand and refine their creative process so they're unleashed to do their best work ever.

In transparency, I don't know exactly what all it's gonna look like, but I do know that I'm committed to bringing you weekly encouragement as we move forward in this journey together.

Call to Action

Creativity can be easy - stop over-complicating it. Let me help you schedule a call. Let's get on the phone together and see how we can make this thing easier and work for you, not against you.

Thank you for listening and subscribing. Please leave a five-star review on whatever platform you're watching or listening. Now we're going to move forward into this content on creative process and how we can make creativity work for you, not against you, and how you can create your best work ever.

Visit dustinpead.com to learn more and schedule a consultation.

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