Creative Pep Talk
082 - Creative Vaccine
(upbeat music) Hey y'all, just a quick heads up. The episode you're about to listen to is eight to 10 years old. Now, these episodes were intended to be evergreen, and I still believe there's a lot of good information in these early episodes, but I do wanna let you know that some of my ideas have evolved over time. Times have changed since we made these episodes, and ultimately, I'd like to think I've grown a lot as an artist and a human, and that these don't necessarily represent my best work, or the best of the podcast. If you're new around here, I suggest starting with the most recent episode, or at least go back to around 300, and move forward from there. Enjoy the episode. If you don't have a really clear understanding of what the problem is, finding the solution is nearly impossible. In fact, it's as likely as winning lottery. Hey everybody, you're listening to the Creative PEP Talk podcast. This show is about commercial art, making a good living, making great art. I'm your host, Andy J. Miller. Illustration Age is our proud syndicate. You can find this show at illustrationage.com/creativepeptalk on SoundCloud and iTunes, or on my site, AndyJ.pizza. Type that into your browser, and you can see all my nice drawings. I am so excited about this episode. It's ridiculous. Let's get into it. I'm a believer in the idea of dressing for the job you want, not the job you have, and I have applied this to my creative practice too, which means if you want professional results, you need to present online like a pro, and that means going beyond social media and having a professional website that reflects your style and looks legit. I rebuilt my site this year with Squarespace's Fluid Engine and was so happy with how easily I could build my vision without coding, that when they approached me to support the show, I jumped at the chance because I love and use this product. So go check it out, squarespace.com/peptalk to test it out for yourself. And when you're ready to launch your site, use promo code PEPTALK, all one word, all caps, for 10% off your first purchase. Thanks goes out to Squarespace for supporting the show and supporting creators all over the world. [MUSIC PLAYING] Miro is a collaborative virtual workspace that syncs in real time for you and your team so that you can innovate an idea into an outcome seamlessly. We talk a lot on this show about the idea of how creative research shows that playing with the problem is essential to innovation. Now, when I think of play, I don't think of documents and email. So if your team is often working remote, you need something more dynamic and collaborative. I think that Miro's mind maps and flowcharts, where team members can edit and play in real time, has a lot more capacity for innovation and playing with the problem than traditional ways of collaborating over the internet. Whether you work in innovation, product design, engineering, UX, agile, or IT, bring your teams to Miro's revolutionary innovation workspace and be faster from idea to outcome. Go to Miro.com to find out how that's M-I-R-O.com. [MUSIC PLAYING] Today's episode is about understanding the big problems in your career, getting really, really familiar with what the problem actually is before you try to solve it. This has been incredibly powerful in my career, in my projects, and in my day to day. And we're going to jump into that. Before we do, though, I just want to say thank you so much for listening to the show. Thank you for sharing it. Thank you for believing in it. I'm going to be 30 this year. Big-- woo! I'm going to be an old man. I'm going to be a real adult. I feel like, at this point-- and I've been reflecting, as you do when you're in this situation, on everything that's been going down and where I'm at, and the podcast, and all that good jazz. And you know what? I am so ridiculously passionate about this podcast, if you didn't already pick that up in previous episodes. I am a real practitioner. I am not rolling in giant piles of cash, and I'm not being optioned for movies and whatnot. But I will say, over the past 10 years, from when I went out into freelance, I've tripled my income. I've created a viable business. I support a wife and three kids on this thing. And in no way am I sitting on a hill, you know, somewhere drinking champagne, celebrating. I'm in the trenches. I still have issues. I'm still fighting the good fight. You know, we have bills to pay, and things are going on, and it can be tough sometimes. So, you know, I don't have it all figured out. But I have learned some practices and principles in terms of maintaining, finding a balance between being excited about the creative work you're doing, and making a good living on it. And that's what this show is about. Whether you're a musician, or an illustrator, or a filmmaker, if you want to be creatively fulfilled in your work, and you want to make a living doing that, this is the podcast for you. I think that I've learned some good principles that have served me, and I've tested them time and time again, that I'm going to share with you to the best of my ability. And then I'm going to go out there, and I'm going to try to interview people, not people that have won the art lottery, not people that just got lucky and went viral and whatnot. I want to find the people that have learned practices, principles, they've found that clarity in their work, and they found strategy that they've employed that work, because they are business artists. And I'm going to go find them, and I'm going to kind of try to deconstruct what they know and what they do to help you do what you do better. And that's what I'm all about. That's what this show is about. But you know, I'm a practitioner, I'm not fresh at a graduation, don't know a thing, but I'm not sitting on a mountain somewhere. So I'm right in the trenches with you, and I am passionate about sharing everything that's worked for me and what's working for other people. And that's what this show is, that's what it's all about. So I'm happy to do that, I'm happy to be someone who has built a business, and I'm willing to help you do the same thing, whether you're an illustrator that's creatively fulfilled, but you're not paying the bills as well as you'd like, or whether you're working on your Etsy business, and you're tired of the monotony of churning out the same things, and you want to find some creative fulfillment. You've got the money flowing. Wherever you find yourself in that spectrum, I want to be a catalyst to help you get back on that tightrope and balance those things better. And so that's what this is. I hope you're excited for today's episode. I'm super excited. Let's get to the real deal content. If you don't have a really clear understanding of what the problem is, finding the solution is nearly impossible. In fact, it's as likely as winning the lottery. It's just happenstance. If you don't understand what the problem is, if you haven't studied and defined the problem. You know, back in the day, and that's the technical historical term, because I don't really know the years and dates. I've done some minimal research here, but I'm not a historian. But back in the day, before we understood germ theory, before we understood that germs were causing illness, before we understood that problem, we were trying to solve this in the craziest of ways. Like back in the day, the old English men and women, if they had a wort, they would cut a mouse in half and tape it to the wort or tie it. And there was another really crazy one that I read about where they would, if you got, you know, stabbed by a sword, they would create this sympathy, magic sympathy potion by grinding up mummies and worms and pig intestines and to, sorry, that's really disgusting, and I'm sorry about it, but that's what they did. They would grind it up into a paste, and then not apply it to the wound. They would apply it to the blade that made the wound, and this would create some kind of sympathy effect that would make the wound heal itself. Well, it didn't do that, but that was the idea, behind it. And so without an understanding of germ theory, of what was going on without really studying the problem, right, they would come up with all kinds of crazy ways of solving these problems. It wasn't until I think it was Louis Pasteur came along and figured out we got some germs going on that we started to understand how to really advance medicine in a systematic way. And the thing about art careers is that often, when you talk to the people at the top, the people that are at the very, very tip top of the mountain, a lot of those people won the art lottery and their best advice is that they were in the right place at the right time. But what if you find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time, but you still feel like you're supposed to make a go at this, what do you do? Well, you have to really understand the problem that you're trying to solve. So today we're going to try to diagnose your creative career, the different levels. We're going to take you to the art doctor. Today I'm going to play Dr. Andy J. Pizza and I'm going to try to help you diagnose your career. We're going to look at the top level, the macro level where the doctor just asks you some questions, right? The top level, and then I'm going to get out the art stethoscope, this is getting outrageous. Get the art stethoscope, go in and layer deeper in the mid-level and we're going to go from career to your project to project, your mid-level and then we're going to go to the day to day. We're going to take it to the lab, get the microscope out in your day to day and we're going to ask what are the problems you're trying to solve there and get really, really clear about the problem we're going to try to solve. And then sometimes when you do that, the solution is actually in the definition of the problem, right? It's like, I don't know where you stand on vaccines. I know that's a hot topic, but the idea behind a vaccine is that actually in the virus is the vaccine, the cure is found in the problem. And I've found that when you follow the design process, the first step of the design process is define the problem. And I have found this step to be a miracle worker that often, if I'm super confused, don't know what's going on either in my career or a project or in my day, that I've realized that I didn't start off right by getting crystal clear on what the problem I was trying to solve actually is. And then when I go back and I get really, really clear on what am I trying to do in my career? What am I trying to do with this project, this particular project? What is the main thing that I was trying to do today? And I map that out. That's like 90% of the battle won. That the solution is actually found in the problem. And this is one of the reasons I think the design process is so brilliant and why all this talk of design thinking has kicked off. I think the most brilliant part is getting really, really clear on the problem before you get started. And so that's what we're gonna do today. (upbeat music) So you come into the doctor's office. The first thing they do is the 40,000 foot view. I never know when I say the whatever 1,000 foot view. I never know what the term is. Is it 30,000, 20,000? I don't know, but let's call it the 30,000 foot view. The top airy level, the big picture thinking, the doctor just asks you a few questions about your symptoms. And the macro level is your career as a whole, defining what are you trying to achieve with this career as a whole? And if you're listening to this podcast and you see yourself as someone who wants to be a commercial artist, you wanna thrive financially and be creatively fulfilled, then I think what you're trying to do, the problem is finding the right type of work that perfectly balances a demand on your time. So people are willing to pay for it and balancing that with you really like doing this thing. And so if you're a commercial artist, that's the problem that you're trying to solve. And so this was actually a really, really big turning point for me a few years ago. I was on the phone with my buddy Nick Morrow, who's a musician, he's a good friend of mine, one of my best friends. And I was complaining to him on the phone and about where I was in my career. And he kind of stopped me and was like, look, a lot of the things that are going on right now all sound really cool from the outside and I'm having a hard time understanding what your problem, like what the problem actually is. Could you just define the problem for me? And as someone with experience and history with design, I kind of felt like, oh, like yes, I haven't even stopped to define what is the central problem of my career that I'm trying to solve. And it was in that moment, I kind of fumbled a little bit, but I eventually landed on this idea that I was really looking for the work that I could do that would meet a really big demand in the market and a deeper creative film it. And it might sound like the most obvious simple thing in the world, but when I got ultra clear about where I was trying to go, all of a sudden the path just appeared. And if you listen to this podcast, you've probably heard my tower story. If not, you can go back to the "Pinsel in the Stone" episode. I don't know what number that is, but you can go back to that episode and listen to me tell it in detail. But the central idea is when I was in England, I ran to a far away tower and I didn't know how to get there. All I knew was that the tower was giant and that from anywhere on the land, I could see it and I could pick the next road that looked like it was pointing that way. But I forgot to plan on coming back home and my house is just a blip on the horizon among lots of British homes. And I got lost going back because I didn't have that point on the horizon, that true north. But when I did have that true north out on the horizon, all I had to think was what road in front of me looks like the next best road. It looks like it's the most promising and that it's heading towards that end goal, that problem that I'm trying to solve. And then I would take that road until it no longer was pointing the right way and I would take the next right road. And in your creative career, it's not unlike this. And so if you can get really specific about what is the place that I want to be? Do I wanna be, you know, for some of you, right? You're not super worried about money. Maybe you don't have a lot of responsibilities financially and you don't plan on, you know, having kids or getting married or owning a house and all that jazz. And so you think, you know, financially thriving isn't as big of a deal to me. I really am more worried about being creatively fulfilled. And so if you create that matrix for yourself, you pick the next right road that looks like that. And I think when it comes, in terms of mapping this thing out of what problem am I trying to solve in my bigger career? This is really 90% aspirational, 10% action. It's not super practical. It's more like a bigger vision of what you want your career to look like without having the details of this is exactly how I'm going to implement it. And that's why this is the 30, 40, 50,000 foot view. Another example that really kind of cleared up things for me is that when it comes to your career, it's kind of like, you know, picking the next roads and finding clarity in this path and knowing which projects to spend your time on and which markets to go after. It's kind of like buying a house. You know, if you've ever bought a house, it can be super overwhelming. And you go from house to house and you're like, oh, we like this one, it's got a lot of space, but not as many rooms as we want. And this one has a basement and we like having a basement. That one has big windows, da, da, da, da, right? And you go house after house. Eventually you're like, I just don't know how to decide. And my dad is actually an accountant, total nerd. And I've stole a lot of his nerdiness. And what he used to do is create this kind of house matrix of here are the top 10 things that we want. These top three are definite. We have to have these top three. The next two are high priorities. And then the other ones are icing on the cake. We could have them or we don't have to have them. But if it comes down to that, we'll go with the one that has the one that we want. And by defining this problem, when we did this, when we were looking for a house, when we finally got to this stage of mapping out the exact things that were definite, the exact things that were maybe's and the definite, the things that were, we kind of like to have that. When we got to that stage, all of a sudden picking a house became a science. And I think in your career, if you're feeling really confused, the thing about confusion is that it will cause you to be apathetic. It will cause you not to show up. In the morning, you know, I've talked about on the podcast. I like to get up early in the morning and work on my projects. If I don't have a clear picture of something that's going to get me out of bed so I can get moving, I will sleep in. I need that clarity and it needs to be connected to that deeper desire, that problem that I'm trying to solve in order to show up day after day after day. You know, I don't think the killer of your creative career is laziness. I think it's confusion. I think it's not understanding what this time and energy is supposed to amount to. And so I think the biggest thing that you need to get clarity on is, what is my ultimate problem that I want to solve in my career? So the next level, the mid level, we're going to talk about on a project to project basis, whether it's your personal projects or it's client work, how do you define your problem from the get go to get the best results, to avoid making work that is weak and watered down and ineffective that doesn't actually solve the problem because you weren't clear about the problem. So the next level, the doctors getting out the stethoscope. We've gone from asking the questions, the bigger 30,000 foot view, and we're got the stethoscope. We're taking a little bit of a closer look at this thing, and we're looking at the project to project, going from career to projects. And for this one, the analogy, I really wanted to come up with an analogy that took a plot line from something like Boy Meets World. I couldn't remember any off the top of my head. So let's pretend like there was an episode of Boy Meets World where Corey and Sean, best friends, if you're unfamiliar with the show, Finney gives them a science project, right? And for some reason, you know, maybe the smart kid, maybe Topanga and Minkus were, so ridiculous. Maybe they were teasing Sean and Corey about how they're terrible at science and they'd never take any projects seriously. And so Sean and Corey have this fire up their butts to make this science project amazing and kick Topanga and Minkus' butt on this and prove themselves once and for all. And Finney gives them the project and they're excited to start. They want to get moving, right? They're so anxious. Finney gives them the project and they say, the science project is to make a hand glider. And then right from that moment, man, Corey and Sean start getting their past and notes and quietly working on the project, even before Finney's been able to deliver. Using this Boy Meets World thing is just totally ridiculous. But before Finney can even really deliver the brief, they're drawing up hand gliders and passing notes and thinking about algorithms and the trajectories and the calculus behind how to make the perfect hand glider, right? And they spend the whole week at home crafting this bad boy and practicing and trying it out. And they can never really get it to take off. They can't get it to work perfectly, but they think they've got maybe the best shot in the class. Like there's no one that's put the time and energy into making this thing amazing. And so they come on the day, the day when all the students are gonna practice them, they get their dad to take it in the back of his truck, they get it to school and they realize that their hand glider is 10 times the size of everybody else's. And it's a shocking moment. And Finney says, what are you doing? And they're like, we've made the perfect hand glider. He's like, well, if you would have paid attention when I was giving the brief, what I said was, you need to make a hand glider for a GI Joe. It's all right. I don't know, maybe those are the worst analogy ever, but I think that there's something here, okay? Because sometimes, right? When you go to start your own personal project or you go to, you get a client brief, you know, they send you a brief in the email, you're so nervous to prove yourself or you're so eager to get making stuff that you don't get really specific about the problem you're trying to solve, right? And so for me, right? I'm working on the Creative Pep Talk website. And one of the things I started jumping in and I started, what you do is you just look through all the templates and the options and you think, which one do I like? And it's kind of like choosing your favorite color, right? But the thing that you need to do, you know, and I was overwhelmed doing this website. I was thinking through, you know, which website do I like the most? Is this one good? Is that one good? I kind of like that about this one. And I got into this point of total confusion and I wanted to give up because I'm like, you know, I just can't figure it out. And when I went back and said, well, what does this website actually need to do? 'Cause it's not about which one I kind of prefer the most. It's not about my favorite color. It's about which color is going to serve the purpose that this thing needs to serve. And I went ahead with this project and I made a list. These are the three things that this project needs to do. The top one is the most important. And so one of the things I think is important to do with your personal projects especially, and then also client stuff, is if this thing was just a red button and that red button could only have one function, let's say it's getting you to work with target or whether it's getting a record deal, whatever it is, if this album could only serve one purpose, what would it be? And when you get hyper specific about the thing that you're trying to solve and the purpose of the project that you're making, all of a sudden you're realizing that it doesn't have to be all things to all people. One of the things that really stunts my personal work is when I go to make a piece of work and I think, well, I've really been wanting to make something about spirituality. And I've also been wanting to do something kind of clever with smashing two symbols together. And I've also tried to do something with a blue color scheme. And I've also been trying to do something rainbow, but at the same time, and I'm trying to make this project everything in my career and I'm missing the levels, like the next right road doesn't have to get you to the ultimate career tower. It just has to get to the next step. And one of the things that I keep thinking about is that you see these creative people that wanna do everything under the sun, but it's like eating an elephant. You can't do it in one giant bite. You just take one small bite, but you gotta take one specific place. And so you can get to all kinds of things with your projects in your career. But being super effective with the one that you're focusing on now is about deciding really clearly, what does this thing need to accomplish? And when you get really specific about the purpose of each individual project, all of a sudden, the strategy just emerges, all of a sudden, the answer is really clear. And so with your personal projects, I'm urging you to say, all right, the next six months I'm gonna work on a personal project. What's the biggest thing that if I solved it in my career, it would create a domino effect in all the other areas? And how do I build a project that specifically serves that purpose? And then when it comes to your client work, when they come to you with this thing that says, we need this song that perfectly does this. Don't think about all the other cool things that would be great for a song. Think about how do I solve this specific problem and get ultra clear in your next personal project? Make a list. What are the top five things that this thing needs to do? What are the two that are non-negotiable? Which ones are icing on the cake? And I guarantee you, all of a sudden, you'll have the most potent personal project that you've ever had. - Hey, in case you don't know, we have a monthly live virtual meetup every last Monday of the month with supporters of the show from Patreon and Substack. We have so much fun on these calls and they are the warmest, most encouraging creatives that I have ever met. And we also talk real creative practice stuff. We have authors, illustrators, lettering artists, picture bookmakers, fine artists, musicians and folks that work in video and film as well. And we have people that are just starting out, people super established in their creative careers and everything in between. For the rest of this year, we're gonna chat through our new Journey of the True fan series, exploring questions and ways to apply these ideas to your own creative practice so that you can leave 2024 stronger than you came in with more visibility, connection with your audience and sales, sign up to whichever suits you best at either patreon.com/creativepeptalk or antijpizza.substack.com. And I hope to see you at this month's meetup. - It's holiday shopping time, y'all. It's time to freak out. - Ah! - Not because uncommon goods is here to make it easy. Listen, all I did was click the for her section on this site and I instantly saw five things that I could get, Sophie, don't tell her, but I'm thinking either the National Park sweaters, the tea advent calendar. There's also just below that little bubble tea kit for my oldest and then I saw one of these, you know, the retro little viewfinder orange real viewer things, but you can make it your own photos. Okay, it might not make sense. You have to go check it out yourself. Here's the thing, I have seriously never seen so many good options for gifts online in one place and unlike lots of other convenient options, shopping uncommon goods actually support small businesses. To get 15% off your next gift, go to uncommongoods.com/peptalk. That's uncommongoods.com/peptalk for 15% off. Don't miss out on this limited time offer uncommon goods. We're all out of the ordinary. (upbeat music) So just a real quick recap. When you're talking about the career and you're defining problems there, you're talking 90% aspirational, 10% action. You know, it's loftier, it's more vague, it's kind of more esoteric, it's harder to pin down like exactly the thing in the exact action steps to get there. It's really more a feeling and a why and a purpose. And then you get to the mid level and you're talking about the projects. I think that's more like a 50/50. Like it should be 50% aligning with those greater aspirational goals that connect to your career. But then 50% should be an action oriented element. Like these are the exact things that we're gonna do. The specific micro purposes with this project that we're gonna solve that's gonna head us towards those bigger aspirational goals. And then when you go down to the level of the labs, putting your career under the microscope, so to speak, sending off the blood work to the labs and you're going day to day, I think you're talking about 10% aspirational in 90% action, 90% getting rubber hits the road. Like you don't have time to think and pontificate every day about what's the real purpose behind today? Like that needs to be connected day and day out to the bigger career purpose and then to the bigger project purpose. But when it comes to your day to day, defining the problem is about being productive. Now, productivity is a tough thing for me. You know, I'm an ADHD guy. I like to be working on a billion things. I like to just go with the flow and kind of do a billion things at the same time. But as I've become more successful and I have more on my plate and it's bigger, you know, higher levels of performance, I've had to figure out how do I get stuff done? And then especially in my personal work, how do I drive the needle forward on a consistent basis? And that's about productivity. And so what I've found is defining the problem is about 10% aspirational, 90% action. And there's this really interesting study that I found in the New York Times that I think illustrates why defining the problem is such a big deal when it comes to productivity. It's the JAM study and they did this study where they took 25 tubs of JAM, jars of jars of JAM and put them on a table at this convention to sell. And then they did a study where they put six jars of JAM on the table to sell. And what they found is that when you have a ton of options like 25 jars of JAM, you get a lot more people coming over to the table. And what they found was out of 100 people, if you had 24 jars on the table, 60 people would stop and take a look. And if you had the six jar table, only 40%. So a lot less people would actually stop and take a look. But with that larger assortment, those 60 people that stopped a way smaller percentage would actually buy than the people that had less choice. And so I think it was something like if out of those 60 people that would stop, only two of them would buy, whereas out of the 40 people that would stop, 10 of them would buy. And so with less choices, your brain is actually more apt to make decisions and take action. And I think in your day-to-day, if you keep things open, really, really open, and let's say you've got 20 things on your plate at any given time and you every time you transition from one thing to the next, you're actually wasting loads of time just trying to decide what the next thing is. I've found, and I don't do this every day, I do this when I need to get tons of stuff done, which isn't every day, but the days when I have more than I can imagine doing, I make my to-do list and I say, here's the things that have to get done. Here are the things that I'd really like to get done, and these are the things that would be icing on the cake to get done. And if you thrive on having that open mode of getting to let the day carry you along, plan some time specifically for that. So for some times in those days, I'll say, all right, the first two hours, I'm just gonna do whatever I feel like doing just to get that energy rolling, but then I'm gonna go into execution mode and I'm gonna take that first thing on my list and I'm gonna get it done. And then I'm gonna take that next thing on my list and I'm gonna get it done. And minimizing my choices of what I'm doing for that day means that I get infinitely more. Just like those jams of jars being sold, like being sold so much more with less choice, I get so much more done when I have a clear priority of, I'm gonna do this, then I'm gonna do that, and then I'm gonna do that. I always get so much more done when I clearly define what I'm doing beforehand. And actually sometimes making that list, we don't wanna do it because it's gonna take 30 minutes or it's gonna take an hour to get prepped and like look over everything you get done. But I've found, right, if I've got three illustrations to do that day and I just think I'll just kind of go at it hard right from the get go, go ham on this day. I'm not gonna even spend the time to make the list. I find I might get one and a half illustrations done 'cause I end up wasting so much time in between. But if I say, look, I'm doing these two illustrations strategically, I've looked at them, I've found that these are the ones I need to finish, time-wise, these ones are gonna take less time and I make a plan early on, I get really, really clear about what the big problems of the day are, I find that sometimes I get all three done. Just by minimizing that dead space, that confusion of too many choices. And so I think if you start your day, especially those days when you've got a lot on your plate, the best way to solve that unproductivity is to say, all right, how am I gonna spend the day? What are the big problems of the day and actually dedicate time and energy to do that? Don't feel anxious about that time spent planning. And I think that's a big part of the reason why we don't define the problem, is that we're so overwhelmed by the problem in trying to solve it, that we just wanna throw things at it as soon as possible. And every, that first step of the design process of saying, what's actually going on here? What's the problem we're trying to solve? We often feel like it's wasted time. But I would say no time spent is more important than that early time of saying, what am I trying to do here? And so early in the morning, don't just jump in and try to get as much done as possible. You're actually gonna be way less effective than if you take the time, stop, give yourself ample time to break this thing down. So on this macro career level, I suggest that if you're confused in the general direction of where you'd like to be, and there's some pain there, like you're not exactly happy with where you are, I suggest that you schedule some time to meet up with a friend, someone who cares about you, cares about your career, and hash out what your real objectives are. Like, what things do you think would be really, really creatively fulfilling? What are the most creatively fulfilling aspects of what you could do? And then start getting really specific about where you think the biggest demand in the market might be for those things. For me personally, my favorite thing to do creatively is to create those moments of clarity, like those aha moments, and I can do that with a drawn visual illustration for an editorial illustration, or I can do that with speaking, like with analogies and through verbal illustrations. And I found that, you know, I almost sometimes enjoy doing a bit of both, but I love doing the verbal ones, and I wanna do more of that. And so lately I've been thinking about how do I pivot closer to that and solve that problem? Maybe you're finding that your personal projects aren't cutting the mustard, or when you're having difficulty getting started when you have some free time to do your personal projects, you don't know what to make. And so the action that you need to take there is, what is the next domino that if I knock down in my career will start a chain reaction? What's the biggest problem in my career that, what's the thing I could do with a project that would put me on the next best road to hit towards that career level problem? And then maybe, like many creative people, I would guess, you're not being as productive day to day as you'd like to be. And one of the things that I think really, really helps is just make sure that you've got somewhere. Lately what I've done, I've got a whiteboard, and everything that's on my plate is on that whiteboard. It's not super organized. It's just a visual reminder that says, those are all the things that you're, all the plates that you're currently spinning. And then on a day to day basis, what I actually do is I make a smaller list of, and I like paper, I like having it in the real world, some people like apps, but I just have a scrap piece of paper, and I look at that bigger list, and I say, which ones do I need to take on today? The days that I spend the extra amount of time doing that are, I would say 50% more productive than the ones that I don't. And so, those are the three levels. I think if you can start defining the problem in those levels, you will find your confusion level going way down, and your effectiveness going through the roof, I know I do. And when I find myself in that confusion level, I found, like I said, I found that recently with the podcast, as I'm going about making a website and building out this until a greater capacity, I found every single time going back to the heart and saying, what does this website, what do I want it to do? Because it might not be the most effective place to listen to the podcast. Maybe that's not what I want it to do. Maybe I want it to serve a different purpose. Maybe I want to have a specific impression that I'm trying to build with my portfolio. Who am I trying to impress with this thing? And what's the most effective way to do that? And then maybe it's not the most functional for the wrong person, but that obviously doesn't matter. And so, I hope that this idea of getting super clear on the problem really, really helps you. And another aspect of this before we go is that in terms of your client work, when someone's hiring you, don't allow them to hire you without them being really, really specific about what they're trying to achieve. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten into a complete mess when I let a client get out of the gate without being clear of their expectations, what they were trying to do. That's one of those situations where you get into 5,000 iterations. Because the other thing about not having a clear problem, you're trying to solve, not having a clear point on the horizon that you're trying to get to is that you never really know when you're there. Some people are actually in the perfect spot of creative fulfillment and financially thriving, but they still feel super discontent because they never work clear about their expectations from the get-go. And so some of you just need to get super clear on the problem you're trying to solve and find out you're already there. But when it comes to this client work, you can't let them start paying you to solve a problem that they don't understand. And so one of the things I do in my own work is if I get thrown a problem like that that's really vague, is I start creating a workflow or a series of questions that says, when I take an, when I onboard a new client, these are the things that I need to know right from the get-go. So if they haven't provided me with that information, I'm gonna send them a detailed email saying, I need to know what work of mine do you already like? What are you hoping to do with this image? What are you hoping to get out of this? What do you like the sketch process to be? You know, all of those things from the get-go so that when we get to the other side with a solution, we know, I know, and they know whether it's successful or not. And I, you know, I think this is a simple thing and I think it's a little bit misleading that it's so simple, but the power of defining the problem has just been insane in my own career. So I hope it helps you. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Thank you guys so much for listening to the creative pep talk. Thanks for the enthusiasm, the lovely emails you send me, the tweets, the Instagrams, the iTunes reviews. You are just touching my heart. Thank you guys so much. Thanks to our syndicate illustration age. You can find the show on illustrationage.com/creativepeptalk. I wanna thank Yoni Wolf of the band Y for the theme music. I gotta thank Nate Yutesh, my man, for his band's music, Metavari, for all the other tunes. Go check them out. Thank you guys so much for the love and the support for the show. I am trying my darndest to bring real value to you every week and really help you thrive financially and also stay creatively fulfilled. Thanks guys, do whatever it takes to stay peped up. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) I did consider Barney a friend and he's still a friend to this day. The idea of Barney is something that I want to live up to. You know, I love who you love me. I call it the purple mantra. Barney taught me how to be a man. Generation Barney, a podcast about the media we loved as kids and how it shapes us. Listen wherever you get your podcast. (upbeat music) From Academy Award-winning actor Matthew McConaughey's soulful and humorous picture book to New York Times best-selling author Kristen Hannah's The Women, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books is an author interview podcast unlike any other. In 30 minutes or less, each episode of this chart-topping and webby award-winning show dives deep beneath the cover. Fostering friendship and camaraderie, support and curiosity, connection and compassion. Hosted by me, Zibi Owens, author, bookstore owner and head of what the LA Times called the Zibiverse, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books has something for everyone, whether you're a mom like me or simply a busy reader. So don't miss out. Follow Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you're listening now. New episodes are released every weekday, bringing books to life. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)