Sometimes the thing we're building, whether that's an exciting new project or a whole career, feels so big and overwhelming it seems impossible. Focusing on that bigger thing, we wonder if we'll ever get traction on our efforts to build it. So what do we do? Dream smaller? Settle for less? Oh, God, I hope not. Let's talk about it. Click here for a full transcript of this episode: https://www.abeautifulanarchy.com/podcast/episode-080 A Beautiful Anarchy is posted 3 out of every 4 weeks. On...

Isn't art-making and creativity meant to be fun? Why is it so often a source of struggle than anything a sane person would call fun? And are the challenges worth it? Or is there something bigger at play here, something more than fun? I have this feeling we create because we must, because it's part of who we are, and that we do it because it's hard. Because that's where flow, transformation, and meaning are to be found, or created. Let's talk about it. Click here for a full transcript of this...

Introversion seems to have become a movement lately and as someone with strong life-long introverted characteristics, I think it's great that we're finally celebrating those quieter qualities, but there's also a danger in allowing the label to define and limit us. Jung said introversion and extroversion were about where we got our energy, our fuel; maybe it's time we stopped yakking about which pump we get out gas at, focused more on where we're going with our creativity, and got in the car....

You're different. About the only thing that we all share in common is that we are so very different. So why do we learn so early to blend in and put so much effort into being the same? Carl Jung talks about the society rewarding the diminuation of personality and I think it's the artists role to resist that, to not only be different, unapologetically, but to make a difference. Let's talk about it. Click here for a full transcript of this episode:...

19th-century economist Vilfredo Pareto was out in his garden when he noticed only 20% of his pea plants were producing 80% of the peas. Fast forward to today and the Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 Rule is familiar to many in the business world, but what's it got to do with you and your creative life, and is there something more for us in this idea than what is so often reduced to notions of productivity and profitability? Let's talk about it. Click here for a full transcript of...

We need time to do our best work, but not only time. We need the internal resources to pay the emotional costs, and time without attention, focus, and curiosity probably only leads to cranking out the work, and that neither honours to muse nor benefits our eventual audiences. As we return to something a little closer to normal life, I worry I'm not going to have the same kind of time or internal resources that slower pace of the pandemic has allowed me. Let's talk about it. Click here for a...

A recent visit to the dentist sent me into a tailspin when I was told I needed a root canal. After a week of fear (more like terror) and two hours with a specialist (the worst of which was having to listen to Adele, on a loop), I emerged with a fresh suspicion of my own assumptions about the things I know nothing about. I was left wondering if my first instincts were really serving my higher needs, and thinking wonder might be a better creative fuel than worry. Let's talk about it. Click...

The creative life is full of decisions. Do we? Don't we? And how? Some people over-think their choices, some go with their gut. I go with a simple paradigm that brings things into perspective and focus: if something isn't a "hell, yes!" then it's usually a no. How can this way of thinking help you make more meaningful decisions? Let's talk about it. Click here for a full transcript of this episode: https://www.abeautifulanarchy.com/podcast/episode-073 A Beautiful Anarchy is posted 3 out of...

There is a relationship between the skills—or craft—that we hone, and our ability to dream about what is possible and reach beyond it. Creativity is not the realm of technique alone, nor only in the inner life of the imagination, but in the way they work together and call each other forward. Let's talk about it. Click here for a full transcript of this episode: https://www.abeautifulanarchy.com/podcast/episode-072 A Beautiful Anarchy is posted 3 out of every 4 weeks. On those 4th weeks you...

Creativity is less the stuff of brilliant ideas and more the reality that those ideas take work to realize, to take a project from (in the words of Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull) suck to un-suck. Unless you're James Dyson, in which case you're trying to do the opposite. It took Dyson 5,127 iterations to get his cyclone vacuum cleaner to work and there's a lesson in there for all of us. Let's talk about it. Click here for a full transcript of this episode:...

For something so rooted in uncertainty, innovation and the discovery of new things, isn't it strange that creative work seems so often to be subject to voices telling us we're doing it wrong? Could it be that hearing, "you're doing it wrong" is a good sign we're on to something? I think there's a better question than "am I doing this right or wrong?" Let's talk about it. Click here for a full transcript of this episode: https://www.abeautifulanarchy.com/podcast/episode-070 A Beautiful...

If the last episode of A Beautiful Anarchy was about the pressure to produce, this one is the (loving) kick in the pants you might need to stop worrying about it and start doing what it takes to widen the margins. I've got 3 ideas about reducing the pressure of time, expectations, and scarcity of ideas; let's talk about it. Click here for a full transcript of this episode: https://www.abeautifulanarchy.com/podcast/episode-069 A Beautiful Anarchy is posted 3 out of every 4 weeks. On those...

Paralyzed by the pressure to produce and keep cranking out the work? You're not alone. Creators often feel like they're only as good as their recent work which means you got to keep producing recent work. But people don't respond to your work because you make it frequently. They don't need more from you, they need more of you. Let's talk about it. Click here for a full transcript of this episode: https://www.abeautifulanarchy.com/podcast/episode-068 A Beautiful Anarchy is posted 3 out of...

If the last episode of A Beautiful Anarchy was about failing to move on from past defeats and choosing not to get stuck there when things inevitably go wrong, then this episode is about the dangers of camping out on past successes, and getting sidelined when everything goes right. There's got to be so much more to the creative life than resting on our laurels and cranking out boxed sets of our past work. Let's talk about it. Click here for a full transcript of this episode:...

Life is never a straight line. You never get into comedy, for example, thinking you'll nearly burn down the venue or bleed out on stage (keep listening) so when the unexpected happens you're left with a choice: keep going? Quit? What do you do when it all goes wrong, when you're trying to make something beautiful but the pieces are nothing but ugly? Let's talk about it. Click here for a full transcript of this episode: https://www.abeautifulanarchy.com/podcast/episode-066 A Beautiful...

There was a motivational poster in my school that admonished us to "Always finish what you start." It included a photograph of a sprinter about to cross the finish line. It shouldn't surprise you to hear I don't think the creative life is the same thing as the 100m dash, and that there is often great value in starting many things we don't finish, cutting our losses, and being willing to make a U-turn now and then. Let's talk about it. Click here for a full transcript of this episode:...

When I sent out an email last month talking about the need to be able to identify the audience for our creative work, my own audience raised some questions about the importance of understanding who it is that might choose to experience our work, and the implications that might have on both our art-making and our efforts to put that art into the world. Let's talk about it. Click here for a full transcript of this episode: https://www.abeautifulanarchy.com/podcast/episode-064 A Beautiful...

The time has never been better to be a self-teacher. Learning how to do new things is as simple as asking Google, YouTube, or the million blogs and articles online. But this will only take you part way. It'll help you understand how others do things, but answering the bigger question is harder: How do YOU do something? It's less important that you learn the way to do something than it is that you discover the way YOU do something. Let's talk about it. Click here for a full transcript of this...

Joseph Chilton Pearce said, "to live a creative life we must lose the fear of being wrong." And yet we live in a culture where the need to prove ourselves right has never been more easily satisfied. Many of us spent the formative years of our lives in schools that were built not around learning, discovery, or exploration of new ideas, but remembering the one right answer. Is there freedom to be found in a willingness to be wrong? Let's talk about it. Click here for a full transcript of this...

Somewhere along the way we decided play and work were necessarily different from each other. Maybe it happened without our noticing it on the way to becoming adults, when play became frivolous and work became serious. But what if the opposite of play is actually boredom, or non-play, and our best work was done playfully? What if play is just Flow? Let's talk about it. Click here for a full transcript of this episode: https://www.abeautifulanarchy.com/podcast/episode-061 A Beautiful Anarchy...

Pablo Picasso was once asked whether he knew, when he started it, what a painting was going to look like when it was finished. "No, of course not," he replied.  "If I knew, I wouldn't bother doing it." What Picasso was implying was that the act of painting was the way he discovered what the painting itself would become, that putting his brush to the canvas was an act of exploration before it was ever an act of expression. He was also, I think, implying that the act of exploration was the very...

The Roman stoic philosopher, Seneca, in the years before Nero went crazy and ordered the poor guy to off himself, was relentless in reminding those around him that life was short and that far from being morbid, the daily reminder to memento mori, or remember we will die, is an invitation to live that life fully and to make the most of it. And since this is a podcast about making, I thought maybe we should talk about it. Click here for a full transcript of this episode:...

Only 2 months ago about 190 million Americans made New Year's resolutions in hopes of introducing changes to their lives. Only 8% will accomplish these changes and most of us will have quit the effort by January 08, designated Quitter's Day. This does not mean change is impossible, it means we might not want it badly enough, and are probably going about it the wrong way when we do. Let's talk about it. Click here for a full transcript of this episode:...

In the old Cherokee story about the two wolves battling within each of us, the one that prevails is the one we feed. But is it that simple? Does one wolf have a distinct advantage that demands we be even more proactive in feeding the other, how do we do that, and exactly when did this become a podcast about wildlife because I thought this was meant to be about my creative life, wasn't it? Let's talk about it. Click here for a full transcript of this episode:...