Creative Pep Talk
065 - Slow & Steady
(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. (upbeat music) Howdy, it's me, Andy J. Miller, the commercial artist who runs Creative Peptalk, the podcast. This show is about making money and making great art. It's the mixture of these things on that spectrum of business to art where right smack dab in the middle. We're talking about thriving financially, but then also being creatively fulfilled. Exploring, is that even possible? And sharing what we're learning about that. So today, I wanna talk to you about a topic that I'm pretty excited about. The episode is discipline, okay, discipline. I'm sure I could call it a few different things like commitment or, I don't know, but that word kind of scares me, but I think it accurately defines what has kept me going. We could also call it slow and steady. I might call it slow and steady. That might be the tune. I wanted to round out this conversation about hustling, about 14 hour days, glued to your desk. That whole, that you have to be a certain type of person, that kind of type A mentality to succeed as a creative person, which that is kind of really, I think it really aggravates me because, of course, type A people are successful in a capitalist society. Like, if you're a type A person, maybe go ahead and go over and be a CEO. Be one of the next CEOs of tomorrow. But, you know, I'm not actually saying you can't do art, you can do whatever you want, but I get worried because I know that's not me. And I know some of the most creative people I know don't fall into that category. And I think some of that discussion can make them feel like, especially the young people that are just getting started, that they're disqualified before they get out of the gate. And so, I want to talk about what I owe, any success that I've had this far, and the one out of the million possible ways of having an art career, the one that I know about, what I think I can contribute some of that success to, and it's not 18 hour days, seven days a week. That's not what I would call my secret sauce, if you will. So we're gonna get into that. We're gonna get into that just in a second. 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 flow charts, 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. 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 book makers, 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 to 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. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) So I kept hearing about this hustle thing and this, you know, kill yourself working so hard that you puke everywhere and die. And I just felt like that it wasn't, (laughs) I'm sorry, that was ridiculous why I was saying it. But I kept hearing that and it was just bugging me because I kept thinking, you know, I feel like I'm doing okay and that's not my story. So, you know, what do I got going on that maybe some of these hustlers don't got? You know, what thing can I attribute some of this stuff to in case there are others like me that can't sit in front of the computer for 15 hours in a row? I have to be doing a lot of different things in a day. I can't just be sat there glued moving pixels every second. I can't do it. I'm not productive that way. I can't be productive that way. And so I kept thinking through, what do I owe, you know, what qualities or things that I've done have contributed to the breakthroughs that I've made. And I started thinking through this and I started thinking about what the podcast is all about. You know, the creative pep talk, why is it a pep talk? And I figured out that for me, it's all about staying inspired, staying in touch with why I'm doing this so that I can stay motivated. And if I can stay motivated, I can keep going. I can be disciplined. I can show up every day. And even if I can only muster up a little input every day in the long road, I really do believe the slow and steady wins the race. You know, there were people when I graduated college that came out of the gate on fire. They were going all over the place, man. They were doing this and that and that award and this client and just totally tearing it up, blowing everybody's minds, right? And I look around and a lot of those people aren't practicing anymore, at least not visibly. And I really think the trick isn't, how can you psych yourself up and superficially inspire yourself and motivate yourself to do a big sprint? You know, just be like, all right, I'm ready to go. You know, I think when I got out of the gate, I thought that and as I got some clients in the door, I thought, all right, I did it. I'm in, I can kind of coast now. And what happened was after I got into that coasting for a while, the clients kind of dried up and it hit me strong. This isn't a short game. This is a long game. And for me, the things that have really been important since the get go were how do you stay disciplined in the long run? And so for me, that's what this episode is all about. And I wanna share, 'cause the other side to that even is that I'm not naturally disciplined. Left to my own devices, I'm a mess. I'm not gonna joke around with you. I've come a long way in the past 10 years. You know, just through bad habits, generally. Just having to overcome all these different things. And I think naturally, I'm not your typical, successful person, right? And I'm not someone who likes routine. I'm not someone who is naturally disciplined. But I've learned some tricks. So if discipline shuts you down instantly, you're like, well, I know that's not me. I'm gonna give you three tricks that I have used myself that keep me motivated on a daily basis so I can keep clocking in more hours on this dream of mine, on this work that I love to do. So that's what I wanna talk to you about today. Let's get started. Number one, it's a marathon. I think you need to embrace this idea really hard. I think that more than ever, we've been convinced that everything is about the overnight success. Everything is about going viral. And I've talked about this on the show, but I think it's a good analogy. If you think about it in terms of money, right? We all have had, you know, money's been floating around long enough for us to get some general cultural wisdom surrounding it, okay? If someone came up to you and said, I can make you rich overnight. We have words for that. It's called baloney. It's actually called a get rich quick scheme, right? And we know, we know the tells of that. We know when we hear someone say the certain types of words, we know to be skeptical because there is no pattern in the overnight success. There's no pattern in the lottery. And if there's no pattern, you cannot formulate a plan. A plan is based on seeing patterns. And we all know that the most effective way to have a financially thriving situation as a person is not winning the lottery, okay? So we know that, right? But what we don't know, what we're not familiar with is the internet. The internet has not been around long enough for us to get some real wisdom around it, okay? And so I think that part of the problem is that we see the things that are so visible and exciting either are going viral, whatever that means, or they're things that were seemingly overnight successes. And I don't know where this quote is from, but I heard someone say recently, "You know, an overnight success takes years." And it's totally true. So by the time someone gets on your radar, it can seem like it happened overnight. But the truth is most of those people were clocking in time for years before things started to take off. And so I think the first thing that you really gotta embrace and something that's helped me a lot is just to slow down and have the patience. Go back to episode 50 and listen to Mikey Burton talk about patience. That was a really good insight. I really believe that if you can come to terms with the fact that when you graduate or when you're getting started, whenever you're getting started, whatever age, that you can, you know, just expect, you know, I'm gonna start heading down this road and yeah, there'll be some breadcrumbs along the way that are exciting, but for things to really pick up pace, I need to clock in some time over several years, whatever that might mean. It might mean two years, it might mean eight years. But along the way, you'll get enough exciting stuff to keep you going if you keep clocking your time in and eventually things will start to really work out. I really believe that if you go five years in one direction, interesting things are bound to happen, they really are. And I think the problem that we have is we think, we'll make a lucky shot in the dark, peace overnight, put it up on Instagram, be like, all right, explode internet and nothing happens. And we're like, well, I guess that really wasn't the right way. But I really think dipping your toes in in that fashion actually doesn't pay off. I listened to, I think I spoke about this a little bit recently too. BJ Novak from The Office, Ryan from The Office was on the Tim Ferriss podcast, excellent episode. Go check that out if you haven't already. It's really, really good. He's such a craftsman, which I appreciate. He talks about how the first time he did stand up, he totally bombed. But luckily, he'd already booked a week of shows. And so he went and did it again and did it again. And he said that you can't test the waters of an industry or something you wanna try just by dipping your toes in. You really need the cannonball straight in. And you just spend some time there and check it out and get used to the water, right? It's just that idea, if you dip your toes into some cold water, you're like, "Ugh, I'm out of here." But once you're in there for a while, it starts to warm up. I don't know if that analogy makes any sense, but we're going with it. So that's the first thing. Embrace the long game. Think about it in terms of the career that you wanna have over the long haul. Not just what you want to happen right now. That type of thinking will get you in trouble. Pretty much guaranteed. All right, so that was number one. It's a marathon. Number two, be you. This one is incredibly important. It sounds like a platitude. It's not. I have lots of real things to say about this that I think are pretty legit. So stick with me if that sounds fluffy to you. Okay, so as you guys know, I've been somewhat vocal about the fact that I've lost a few pounds, which is a weird thing to talk about. But, you know, I've kind of changed my diet this year and had some success with that. And one of the biggest things I took away was that you really need to go with you. You really need to do it your way. And you can't get caught up in what all the experts say and what everybody says. You know, so many times the things that we listen to are the things that make us most insecure. You know, when we go hear the speaker and they say, it's gotta be done this way. You know, you hear this industry giant. And the only thing you hear is everything that you're not. And it really means it makes you think, maybe I'm not cut out for this. Maybe this is the wrong direction. And I really think that that is poison to your motivation, to your discipline. You spend all your time and energy worrying about whether you should be pursuing this thing rather than clocking in actual time, rather than stacking up those hours dedicated to your craft. What I think you need to do is let go of the idealism, let go of what other people say you need to do in order to have a good creative career, and think about the truth, the realistic truth. Because it'd be better if you have a, you know, a decent creative career than none at all. And the way that that's manifested in my current dieting habits is that, you know, if you ask an expert, how could I be at the peak of health, right? They will tell you, okay, if your meal plan needs to be a big breakfast, a pretty big lunch, a smaller dinner, and minimal snacking, right? Here's the thing about that. The thing about that is, I can't do that. And so because I couldn't do that, because if I eat a big breakfast, I'll just eat a bigger lunch, then I'll eat an even bigger dinner, and then my snack will be gigantic. And then I'll just end up eating 10 times more than if I just listen to my natural rhythm of my body. Now, before all the nutritionists, freak out and send me emails, I get it. It's not the healthiest way possible to have a diet. So what I figured out is, if I have a light breakfast, a light lunch, I'm a decent-sized dinner in a medium snack later, I can eat a pretty small amount of calories in a day. A reasonable one where I can lose weight and start to get healthier. Is it the healthiest way? No, it's not the healthiest way. But if I refuse to listen to my body, I won't be the healthiest. I won't be the peak healthy and just eat the way that I'm supposed to eat. I'll just eat terrible. I'll just eat the total opposite, right? And so I think sometimes you get these experts that say, if you wanna perfect the ideal situation of a creative career, you have to do X, Y, and Z. What happens if your personality type, your strengths, don't allow you to do X, Y, and Z? Here's my advice. Instead of saying, well, I can't do X, Y, and Z, I quit. Figure which three of those letters you can do. Maybe you can do X and Z, but you can't do Y and do those. And as you go along, you'll figure out the rest. You'll figure out how to outsource Y, but you need to go with your strengths. You need to go with what you're good at. Now, I'm a big believer in not limiting yourself mentally because I think so much of this stuff is one in the mindset. Having the right mindset is so incredibly important. And I think one of the things that it's really, really important to embrace your strengths, and it's really important not to obsess over what you're weak at or to try to perfect what you're weak at and spend too much time worrying about that. But I think, for me, I try not to label my weaknesses just because I don't really know what I'm weak at. Maybe I just need to try things out a little bit, but I do try to really get in tune with, what do I know I'm good at right now and lean into that stuff? There's a test called the Strengths Finder. It's by the Gallup Organization. It costs 10 bucks. I highly recommend it. It's one of the most important things I've ever done in my career is taking that test. And they will tell you your top five strengths. And the interesting thing for me is that most personality types you read it and you're like, that's me. Wow, crazy. So it's basically just telling you what you already know. The cool thing about this test is, at least for me, when I took it, those five strengths initially came from left field where I was like, this doesn't sound like me at all. I've never thought of myself as being these traits. But the more that I kind of ruminated on these, the more I realized that I'd never noticed these things about myself, but they totally named me as a person. And a big part of the reason I dove into this podcast was on the back of these strengths. And so I really recommend going and checking that out. But either way, I think it's important, get in touch with what you're currently really good at, what you're currently not so good at, and don't go uphill against the wind. Figure out how to sail with the wind. I think that is incredibly important. It's definitely a big part of everything I do is ignoring the things that I'm really lacking and just thinking, look, I'm not gonna figure those out. I'll just do the bare minimum of those things and then really lean your career towards the things that you're super good at. (upbeat music) It's holiday shopping time, y'all. It's time to freak out. 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. Just, 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. Last but not least, probably the most important to me. Number three, find your why. Okay, you've heard this a million times probably. Simon Sinek, he has the third most popular TED talk of all time. It's about finding your why. Most companies, most business people have a clear sense of what they do, how they do it, but they don't know why they do it, and why is the most important question. Now, I've learned ways of figuring this out for myself, and, you know, find your why's an easy thing to say. It's much harder to actually go do it. So I'm gonna tell you the things that have massively helped me get in tune with why I'm doing this. And why is it so important that you know what your why is? For me, it is a game changer. It literally is, if I have any secret sauce to my career, it is a secret sauce that I continually revisit almost every day, why I'm doing this? Because if I don't understand why I'm doing this, I won't do it at all. Because it is integral to my motivation that I feel meaning in the work that I'm doing. It's what gets me out of bed in the morning. If I didn't have a why, I'd just sleep all day and I'd be miserable and I'd be unbearable, to be honest. Think about it this way. If you want to go get guitar lessons. And the guitar teacher said, "All right, I want you to memorize these five chords and come back next week." And you said, "Why?" He's like, "Don't worry about why. Just go learn the chords and come back next week." That to me is a nightmare. That is like my biggest nightmare for someone to say, "Learn this technical know-how and I'm not gonna explain why you need to know it at all. I just go do it." That monotony and the boring practice of that, I will refuse to do it if I don't understand the greater principle of why I'm learning that. However, if he said, "Learn these five chords so that you can play this white stripe song that you like." Now, just as a side note, I'm not a giant white stripe fan. I just know that when you're starting to learn guitar, that's a good place to start because they have a lot of simple songs. So don't get hung up on the reference. But if you said that to me, all of a sudden I'm getting motivation because I understand if I learn these chords, why am I learning them? I'm learning them so I can play this song. And that's progress. And that's a real tangible result that there's a general principle behind the monotony. That helps me get through it. That helps me find discipline because I've got a vision, a goal to reach for, right? Now, that's a practical goal. I think you can take it one step further in the whole Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You can take it one step further beyond learning a cool song to how does that affect me on a relational level? On a selfish level or a selfless level, how does that relate to people? Because that's what it's all about, it's people, right? So I think you need to come up with your practical why. Like, this thing helps me do this. So for instance, I learn these chords. I can play this song, cool. All right, great. But how much more motivated are you if you're a 15 year old? And you know, not only if I learn these chords, can I play this white stripe song, but that girl that I have a giant crush on is an insane Jack White fan, a crazy white stripes fan. Now you've got that deep rooted why. Now you're staying up all night, trying to learn the song in one night, right? So you can take your guitar to school and be that guy, right? That makes sense. Okay, so I think you need to go on a few levels. You can start with the more superficial stuff and then keep exploring over time so you can find that deeper rooted thing. So I'll explain it just for me real quick just to give you an example of what it looks like. So for me, the top level why, the reason I started down this creative career path was, I just hated traditional employment. I just, I'm not good at it. I'm not good at being the cog in the machine. It makes me sick to my stomach when I've worked those jobs just to do the same thing over and over and over and over and over. And not really have any motivation, you know? I don't get paid more if I produce more. I don't get, you know, all I ever hear about is when I don't do things right, all that crap. It's really, really hard. It makes me sick to my stomach. You know, I'll get an hour into that work out of a eight or 10 hour shift and I will just, I will be an emotional wreck. So on a practical level, I knew that if I could somehow cobble together some kind of creative career where I get to do new things and I get to decide my schedule a little bit, I will be infinitely happier, right? Then I pushed it a little bit further. I knew that I wanted to be a good dad and I wanted to be a good husband. I wanted to be able to provide for my family and I knew my wife wanted to stay on with kids so I wanted to allow that to happen. So that was another motivator. That was another why that was a deeper rooted one that wasn't just selfish. It was about helping be a thriving person so that my family can thrive. So that I can be a happy dad. So I can be an inspiring dad, right? So that's another level of why that really motivates me. Then you push it a little bit further on up that hierarchy of needs. You know, you go beyond survival and you start talking about more philosophical meaning. Something that motivates me now these days as I'm not so concerned about survival and I'm more concerned about, you know, maybe loftier goals. One of the things I try to do is I'm always thinking about how do I use art to give form to the formless but incredibly important aspects of life? You know, I'm a big believer that the most important things in life are invisible things. They're things that are abstract and not tangible. You know, things like family or love or spirituality or the, you know, the people, like the idea of connection with people, right? These things to me are dreams. You know, these to me are the most interesting, most important things in life. Yet for most people, it's really hard to get in touch with these things on a regular basis. And so if you're a parent, you might enjoy that show, "Parenthood." If you're not, if you're a single young person, that show might not make any sense to you. I don't know. But for me, when I would watch that show, every week it was like, you know when a tragedy kind of happens in your life and everything starts to make sense and you're like, oh, it's really obvious what's important. I need to be good to my mom. I need to make sure I call her. You know, all that good stuff. You're like, all of a sudden it becomes clear what life's all about. Watching "Parenthood" was kind of like that for me without having to have a tragedy every week. It was like, oh yeah, family, people, love, these things. These are the only things that matter. I need to keep this at the forefront of my brain and not just in my mind, but in my heart, I was moved. And when I moved, that's how you're disciplined, right? When you're motivated. And so for me, a deeper wide, the deepest why I can muster right now is if I can do this podcast and I can bring form to the formless thing of the abstract idea of having a successful creative career, trying to find patterns in that static. If I can bring from some form and actually help some people figure that out, that's really meaningful to me. And then on a more literary, poetic way, if I can tell stories, you know, if I can bring form to things like journey and triumph and dreams and weird stuff like that, if I can bring form to that and tell stories about, you know, finding yourself and make that feel meaningful and moving, then I can help people remember that those things are important. So yeah, that's lofty and I might not ever pull it off, but it keeps me going. It keeps me moving. I love that idea. That moves me. It gives me excited. So getting in tune with those whys, the different layers, you know, as you grow and as you have different needs, that's what's gonna keep you. Keeping those whys at the forefront, that's what keeps you motivated. That's what gets you excited. That's what will get you out of your bed in the morning. If you keep those things in your face. So I'm not gonna just say, do that. I'm gonna give you a few ideas of how I found some of those things. Obviously I have a lot to say about why I do what I do. And I didn't just wake up one morning and it all came to me and I didn't just take an afternoon off and figure all that out. It took years and years of all kinds of different exercises to figure out some of that stuff. So I had words and I could explain it and I could keep it in the forefront of my brain. I'm gonna talk about three ways that I did that. So this is the list within the list. So here's the system. It's one, reflect, two, talk, three, observe. I'm gonna explain that real quick. Now, the first one is reflect. Reflect back however old you are, you've had a life so far, right? Look back throughout your whole life and try to get a bigger picture. Try to step back and see where these big events, the big memories, the times where you were upset, the times when you formed a new memory, a big memory. You know, on Inside Out, that new Pixar movie, they called him core memories. You know, those few things that happened to you throughout your life that really had a big impact and stuck with you. And also think about the art that resonates with you, the art that, not just like on a cerebral level, you think, that's pretty cool, but the stuff that, you know, you're trying not to cry and it's making you ball your eyes out in the theater next to your friend. You know, what are the things that, what's the art that hit you in such a way that you didn't even have a choice whether or not you liked it? It just smacked you over the head in a visceral way. Those things, there's something about that. You have to believe that wasn't random. There's something in your subconscious that it connected to and it's there and it's there for the unearthing. That why is there. And so one of the ways I think you can do this, and you'll have to excuse me, this dot to dot analogy. I can't remember if I made it up or if I heard it somewhere. So if you know where this comes from, go ahead and reach out and tell me on Twitter or something, but I think I made it up. And I just, sometimes when I feel like I think of something that's pretty good, I question whether I could have made that up. I don't know if you do that, but I do that. So here it is. When you're reflecting, I think you can think of it like this. Most of life is like being an ant and you've got a paintbrush tied to your butt and you're walking along. You're going from one dot, you know, on the dot to dot, you start with number one and you go out searching all over the place for number two and you kind of search all over the place. You kind of finally find rest dot number two dot number two and then you're going all over the place and then you find the next big event in your life and it's kind of random. It doesn't, it's really hard to see any connection between any of these things, right? When you're right down in the middle of it. But when you actually do a dot to dot, you know, when you're a kid doing the dot to dot, you kind of have the God's eye view of the whole picture. And here's the cool thing that I think we can all resonate with is that once you're about a fifth or a sixth of the way through the dot to dot, you start getting a feel. You know, you might start off a little bit slow, like one to two, two to three, three to four, four to five, but the further you go, the more you start getting a rhythm to what's happening, right? And so it's one to two, two to three, three to four, four to five, five to six, six, seven, seven, you know, you start speeding up because you can see where the thing's going because you have that overview. And so the first thing I suggest you do is step back, look at all these core events, these core memories in your experience, in the way that you've interacted with things with art and start seeing the connection. And once you see, you know, if you're a 20, 30, you might be a fifth, a sixth, you know, a quarter of the life of your life has gone by, I don't know the math, whatever, but you're well into the dot to dot, right? And if you step back and try to get a God's eye view, try to map this stuff out, you will start seeing some patterns about what's moved you and how that relates to your experience. For me, it looked like I went all the way back to when I was a kid when I started doing this and I started thinking about not just the picture books that meant something to me, but the picture books, the pages that really emotionally hit me. And I noticed that they were the ones where there was like a character hiding, right? And you couldn't see 'em. And at first, I didn't know why I liked that. I just started taking notes. I just started connecting these things. At first, it's just an abstract thing. But eventually I noticed it all goes back to that idea that life has this giant abstract hidden side. Every day there's stuff, there's other dimensions, things happening on deeper layers, and that's the thing that's compelling to me. And those hidden things, that's speaking to that, even from an early age. And so, for me, that's what that looked like, but for you, it's gonna look totally different. What are the things that, don't think about the things that everybody's obsessed with, right? You know, like, don't, breaking bad, if you like that show, that's not a unique quality. That's not one of your moments. But what show are you obsessed with that nobody cares about? What activities can you do that you can sustain for way longer than anybody else? Those are the things. Those are the things you really need to lean into. Those things, those are the dots that you need to start noticing. And as you start getting that God's-eye view, you're gonna start seeing the bigger picture before you live it out. Are you gonna start getting a sense of where the next few dots are? And I think it's actually pretty powerful. It's been integral for me in finding my why and finding what I'm all about. The next thing you need to do, you need to take all that information, all that research, all that reflection. You need to go talk to people about it. You need to go find the friends and mentors that are willing to invest their time in talking about you. Now, you're gonna have to trade. You're gonna have to talk about them, too. It's good if you find someone that's trying to go through a similar process, and you guys both talk about each other, both spend time reflecting and talking about this. Get all of that stuff out of your head and into the air by speaking it. You're gonna start making connections that you wouldn't make if they just were left in your head. Now, the last part is observing. Observing is about now the present day. It's about noticing, you know, one of the biggest things about being an artist or really finding your why in general is just being present in the everyday little thing. Kind of like a stand-up comedian, noticing the little things that other people don't notice. Noticing when you're feeling aggravated and noticing why. Noticing when you're excited and pinpointing why. Why am I excited? Being observant is a giant key to coming in touch with what is meaningful to you, and you can use that as your fuel to be disciplined in the race in the long run. There's a good book out there called "The War of Art" by Stephen Pressfield. And so much about that is about fighting the urge to not do the work. There's always a billion things trying to stop you from clocking in time, from running the marathon. There's so many things. One of them is just the idea that it's a sprint. That's killing the marathon. He talks about this idea of being a pro, and I love the concept of being a pro artist. Not a hobbyist, not an amateur, not someone who just works when they're inspired, but someone who clocks in the time day after day, nothing's more important than that. If you spend a season of your life, if you spend one year clocking in 15 hours days and then burn out totally and never work again, that's not ideal. That's not gonna get you a great career in the arts. But if you spend three hours a day, every day, that minimal effort, but every day, for 10 years, you're going to destroy the person that hustled for a year, honestly. I think that when you're doing creative work, the real creative stuff, like you're actually being, coming up with new stuff, I think it's harder to do more than five hours of that a day, personally. Everybody's different, but I can sustain about five hours of true creative work. I can then clocking a few extra hours of more menial pixel pushing and maybe a little bit more like housekeeping in terms of the business. So I think an eight hour day, nine hour day is okay. And give or take it, everybody's different and every day is different. Sometimes I'll have a 12 hour day and then sometimes I have a four hour day. Everybody's different and if you're working in office, I'm sure 90% of your time's wasted by your co-workers and meetings and all that jazz anyway. You might feel like you're working, but we know the truth. But I think it's important to think about it like a pro and a pro doesn't just do things when he feels like him or her or she feels like whatever that is. You know what I'm saying? A pro shows up day after day. A pro has the motivation to come to the plate day after day, clock in the time and if you do that, I can promise you that as that time compounds, interesting things will start to happen. I can guarantee it. So be a pro, embrace the long game, be the tortoise. All right, I think that will, that for me, honestly, that's, if I've got one thing going for me, it's that I have a hard time doing anything that doesn't feel meaningful, which means that I don't do a lot of things that are normal, but it means that I, I'm desperate to find a meaning. I'm desperate to tap into finding some worthy cause that will serve me being productive and working hard and clocking in hours. And if I could pass anything on, that's what I'd pass on to you guys. Love to hear from you. I love to talk to you guys about these ideas. If you wanna argue on Twitter, I'm down for that. If you think I'm totally wrong, that's, let's talk. I could be wrong. My ideas are growing all the time. I'm passionate about my ideas, but they change, they grow. They adapt, so I'm always interested to hear other tags on this stuff. All right, that's it. That's all we got for today. A nice, tightly wrapped episode for you. Pretty excited about this episode. Thank you guys for spreading the pep all over the land. By default, I think 99% invisible was actually not on the design charts for some reason yesterday. So I got to be number one on the design charts and iTunes. So thank you guys for listening and reviewing the podcast and making that happen. That's so cool. It makes me so excited. It keeps me going to see that people are getting something from this, even if it's just being entertained while they're making stuff. That's great. I've got more interviews planned. I've got all kinds of cool stuff planned for the podcast, and as it grows, I love this. It's such an honor to be able to serve you guys in this way, and I really genuinely mean that. Thank you to Yoni Wolf, the lead singer of the band Y, who let me use his music for the show. The opening song is January 20-something by that band. The closer is Berkeley by Hirstback that you're listening to now. Thank you so much, Yoni. You are the man. I love this music. I love that that opening song sounds like the podcast image looks. I love that. Thank you. Thanks guys. Stay peped up. That's what this episode's about, actually, is how do you stay excited and motivated? And that's why the show's called that, because why? Because I need more pep talks than anybody. I think the only reason, if I'm good at doing pep talks is because I have to talk myself up every day just to get through a regular day. That's a normal thing for me. And so you probably need a small percentage of pep talks that I need, and I hope that you're getting them here. So whatever you've got to do to stay peped up and keep making stuff, do it, and until next time, I will see you later. Thanks guys. ♪ Baby down in a hearse back is where my new best look is at ♪ ♪ If I slip a partial two, then I can't curse if my cake is cooked ♪ ♪ And my own events are not ♪ ♪ But you might find me in the white pages yet ♪ ♪ My name's next to numbers ♪ ♪ Like someone's father's father welcome ♪ ♪ I'm not a child, I'm not a child, I'm not a child ♪ Hey y'all, one more quick thing. After this year, I rebuilt my website using Squarespace's new fluid engine, and I was so pumped about how it turned out that I have been really thrilled to find as many ways to partner with them and tell you about what they can do and bring you discounts as possible. With social media going haywire, I think having a site that feels as unique as your creative work is essential to building trust with your target audience or your clients. I have had several clients point out how cohesive and fresh my site looks lately. If you want to check that out and what I was able to do without any code, check out AndyjPizza.com. If you want to test it out, go to squarespace.com/peptalk to test it out yourself. When you're ready to launch, use promo code PEPTALK for 10% off your first purchase. Thanks Squarespace for supporting the show and for supporting creative people. I'm Whit Missldine, the creator of This Is Actually Happening, a podcast from Wondery that brings you extraordinary true stories of life-changing events told by the people who lived them. From a young man that dooms his entire future family with one choice, to a woman that barely survived her roommate, we dive into what happened and hear their intimate first-person account of how they overcame remarkable circumstances. So this is actually happening on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts, or listen ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app.