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00:01:34.600 | Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading
00:01:44.920 | your life, money, and travel all while spending less and saving more.
00:01:49.480 | I'm Chris Hutchins, and I am excited to have you on my journey to optimize my
00:01:53.800 | life.
00:01:54.160 | First off, I'm so grateful for all the questions you've been sending in and I'll
00:01:58.200 | be releasing a Q&A episode soon, starting with a ton of great content on credit
00:02:02.480 | cards, points, and miles.
00:02:03.880 | But today, we're talking to Chase Jarvis.
00:02:06.920 | And while you might not know him by name, I am sure you've seen his work.
00:02:10.920 | He's one of the most influential and award-winning photographers, creating
00:02:15.360 | hundreds of campaigns for companies like Nike, Apple, Samsung, Google, and
00:02:20.320 | Red Bull.
00:02:20.840 | He's written two best-selling photography books and was a contributor to the
00:02:25.000 | Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times story, Snowfall.
00:02:28.680 | And if that's not enough, he is also a successful entrepreneur.
00:02:32.160 | In 2009, he launched the Best Camera app, earning App of the Year, letting you
00:02:37.640 | share images directly to social networks, and the app is widely credited with
00:02:42.160 | kicking off the photo-sharing craze.
00:02:43.880 | The next year, he founded CreativeLive, which was just acquired by Fiverr last
00:02:49.120 | month and is one of the world's largest live-streaming education companies.
00:02:53.360 | So today, we're going to be talking about creativity.
00:02:57.560 | Now, if you hear that and think, "Oh, that's not for me, I don't paint or do
00:03:01.880 | anything creative, we might be cut from the same cloth," because that is exactly
00:03:05.880 | the reaction I had when I started thinking about this conversation.
00:03:08.840 | But as I started doing my homework, I realized I couldn't have been more wrong.
00:03:13.480 | Part of that homework was reading Chase's new best-selling book, Creative
00:03:17.840 | Calling, "Establish a Daily Practice, Infuse Your World with Meaning, and
00:03:22.760 | Succeed in Work and Life."
00:03:24.840 | It was a fantastic read that really opened up my eyes to how I could optimize
00:03:29.320 | and upgrade my own life through creativity and creative practices.
00:03:33.280 | I am incredibly honored and excited to be chatting with Chase Jarvis.
00:03:37.080 | So let's jump in.
00:03:38.360 | Chase, thanks for being here.
00:03:41.960 | Thanks for saying all those nice things about me, Chris.
00:03:44.680 | Yeah, it's always good to flatter someone before you're going to
00:03:48.360 | interrogate them about all kinds of things.
00:03:50.240 | Oh, stop, stop.
00:03:53.400 | So I would say you have quite an intimidating creative background.
00:03:57.000 | Were you born into this journey or how did it all come about?
00:04:00.080 | Were you always this kind of creative icon in your peer group?
00:04:03.160 | Interesting.
00:04:04.280 | I'll start with a short story and it goes back to second grade.
00:04:07.000 | Okay.
00:04:07.760 | So my teacher, actually, it's going to go to first grade.
00:04:11.680 | The summer between first and second, I made my first film.
00:04:14.320 | Me and a couple of buddies in the neighborhood, we washed a bunch of cars
00:04:18.240 | and did some yard work to get enough money to buy two rolls of Super 8 film.
00:04:23.440 | And then we hired my buddy's brother, Derek, for $1 to be our cinematographer.
00:04:28.880 | We, we scripted, made our costumes and it was called the sons of Zorro.
00:04:33.240 | It was a blockbuster.
00:04:35.560 | The funny thing is in addition to making the film, there was
00:04:39.120 | a business aspect of it, right?
00:04:40.680 | We had to pay all that, lay all this money out to make the film.
00:04:44.080 | And then we went and bought a bunch of concessions.
00:04:46.120 | We put flyers up all over the neighborhood.
00:04:48.320 | We screened the film to a sold out audience, and we actually
00:04:52.720 | made a profit on our first film.
00:04:54.400 | And I, again, this was the summer routine first and second grade.
00:04:56.840 | So I'm rolling into second grade thinking I'm the shit, right?
00:05:00.320 | Movie maker.
00:05:01.520 | This is going to be cool.
00:05:03.120 | And I had a little magic act that I had going on.
00:05:06.920 | I had a little standup comedy routine and second grade kicks off and I'm loving it.
00:05:12.720 | And that's right before the holiday break.
00:05:15.400 | So we're recording this around Thanksgiving time here in the U S in 2021.
00:05:20.880 | So it was roughly the same time of year.
00:05:23.360 | Take me back second grade.
00:05:24.600 | Before the holiday break, there's this thing called the ice cream social and the
00:05:30.240 | there's student or parent teacher conferences.
00:05:33.440 | So I'm at school after the day is done and the parents show up and I'm eating
00:05:38.080 | ice cream with friends running around the halls and I dug in just to hear, just in
00:05:42.600 | time to hear my second grade teacher, miss Kelly, tell my parents that Chase is so
00:05:49.560 | much better at sports than he is at art.
00:05:53.040 | And I'm like, okay.
00:05:55.160 | And right now, if you're driving your car, listen to this podcast and you're
00:05:57.920 | like, Oh, poor little Chase, you know, actually I didn't, it wasn't poor little
00:06:00.560 | Chase.
00:06:00.800 | It was like, Oh, okay.
00:06:01.520 | That was a piece of programming that I took and said, okay, great.
00:06:05.800 | I'm going to pay more attention to the thing that the teacher thinks I'm good at
00:06:09.320 | because whether we like it or not, we're social animals and we all can get
00:06:12.080 | acceptance and we want to lean into those things where other people find virtue and
00:06:16.120 | value in us and steer away from those that where, where we are, uh, so say less
00:06:21.040 | encouraged.
00:06:21.800 | And so started my creative journey.
00:06:25.000 | Fast forward.
00:06:26.480 | I ended up going to college on a soccer scholarship.
00:06:29.800 | I played soccer and football, could have played either, could have gone on to
00:06:32.720 | soccer professionally.
00:06:33.880 | And at some point I'm recognizing that there's this side of myself that I have
00:06:38.880 | been denying for since largely second grade.
00:06:43.040 | And I didn't build an identity around being a creator, although I was a skate
00:06:48.680 | punk and we enjoyed building our own skate ramps and punk rock music and spray
00:06:53.160 | painting and all that kind of stuff.
00:06:54.680 | So there was all kinds of creative activities, but my identity was wrapped up
00:06:58.360 | in the thing that the adults in my life wanted for me and my parents, career
00:07:03.720 | counselors, grandparents, teachers, these people that we largely respect and
00:07:08.200 | admire were steering me to do, to stay focused on sports.
00:07:11.720 | And I was fine academically.
00:07:12.760 | I was solid.
00:07:13.560 | But my punchline here is you open the show with questioning whether or not you
00:07:19.160 | had a creative sort of identity or you're aware of the creativity that resides
00:07:23.480 | within you and that you create something every day, all day long.
00:07:26.920 | You're a creative machine, Chris.
00:07:28.240 | And I had that same experience, right?
00:07:31.880 | Creativity is something that's trained out of us, not trained into us.
00:07:36.880 | The cool thing about it is it's a flame inside us that never goes out.
00:07:40.080 | And I believe I wrote the book creative calling.
00:07:43.200 | I started creative live and all these creative apps and basically everything
00:07:47.680 | in my entrepreneurial and creative journey has been around trying to cultivate
00:07:51.600 | this, understand it better and share it with others.
00:07:54.680 | So the short answer to your question is no, I was not raised in a world.
00:07:59.880 | My dad was a cop.
00:08:00.800 | My mom was a secretary at a biotech company.
00:08:03.640 | It wasn't thought of as critical for my upbringing.
00:08:06.680 | And yet when I looked around at what is creativity and how valuable could it be?
00:08:12.040 | I like so many people who you identified yourself as one of these people in the
00:08:17.440 | intro were unclear about what that even means and the value that represents in
00:08:22.000 | the world.
00:08:22.400 | So no, it wasn't in my background.
00:08:24.320 | Yes.
00:08:24.840 | I think it's the most important and urgent thing we can do is understand and
00:08:28.040 | acknowledge our personal creative journey.
00:08:30.640 | It's funny.
00:08:31.600 | One of the things in your story that you shared rung similar to me, which was
00:08:35.280 | about making movies.
00:08:36.520 | So I remember I read this book, "Rodamonte's Revenge."
00:08:39.520 | It was like a 75 page sci-fi book.
00:08:41.720 | And so for a project, a friend of mine, I made a movie and we submitted it as a
00:08:45.760 | school project.
00:08:46.800 | And I think back to all the boxes my parents kept of things as a kid, I was all
00:08:52.560 | with drawings and all that stuff.
00:08:54.080 | As a child, we were so much more creative.
00:08:57.560 | We were drawing, playing make-believe.
00:08:59.840 | I went to my neighbor's house the other day and there's all these kids that made
00:09:02.400 | up a game in the backyard where they draw things and hide them.
00:09:05.320 | Are we less creative as we're older?
00:09:07.480 | What is that journey like?
00:09:08.840 | Because it feels like it was so much stronger and part of our identity as
00:09:13.840 | children and it somehow, and maybe you know why, but somehow it waned as we got
00:09:19.560 | older.
00:09:19.920 | Well, there's science here at work.
00:09:22.400 | And then I can also share, I believe that almost everyone's empirical experience,
00:09:26.840 | at least if it doesn't echo this sentiment, it's present somewhere in your
00:09:31.520 | past.
00:09:32.040 | If you stand up in front of any first grade classroom, second grade classroom,
00:09:36.240 | say, "Who wants to come up to the front and draw me a picture?"
00:09:38.880 | Every single hand goes up.
00:09:40.080 | Every single hand.
00:09:41.440 | There's not judgment around, "Oh, cool.
00:09:43.640 | I want to draw."
00:09:44.480 | Does anybody here not want to draw or play a game or create a story together?
00:09:49.400 | Everyone says yes at first, second grade.
00:09:51.840 | And then you go to fifth, sixth grade and it's a third of the hands and you go to
00:09:55.960 | high school and it's two hands out of 30.
00:09:58.640 | And this is what I mean.
00:10:00.720 | And I do believe this is changing.
00:10:02.440 | So I want to put a pin in this.
00:10:03.760 | We can revisit it later.
00:10:04.880 | But ultimately we are emerging from a time, thankfully, we're leaving a time
00:10:12.040 | period where the concept of creativity was seen as optional.
00:10:16.440 | I think of what our parents and our parents' parents were coming out of the
00:10:19.680 | industrial revolution, factories.
00:10:22.080 | The education system was based largely on the factory.
00:10:26.280 | Like you put all the kids in the widgets in one end, you put them through this
00:10:29.640 | black box, everybody learns the same thing at the same time in the same way.
00:10:32.920 | And then they come out the other end.
00:10:34.280 | That, first of all, is not how human beings learn.
00:10:37.000 | We all learn differently through different modalities.
00:10:39.760 | And so it's easy to see why this thing that is very intangible,
00:10:46.400 | very difficult to describe.
00:10:48.640 | We know it's valuable, but you can see how those things end up on the cutting
00:10:52.800 | room floor of a system that values homogeneity and simplicity and mass
00:10:59.760 | production, much like a factory.
00:11:02.000 | So it's not easy or it's not hard.
00:11:04.640 | It's not a stretch rather to understand why we are in this situation and why you
00:11:11.960 | notice that your friends and their friends' kids are joyful and playing and
00:11:16.320 | creating like crazy imaginative stuff.
00:11:19.120 | And yet here we are like, okay, I got to pay the bills.
00:11:21.880 | Got to do this.
00:11:22.520 | My spreadsheet is up to, is it, you're looking at a spreadsheet right now of all
00:11:26.520 | the things I need to talk to Chase about.
00:11:27.960 | And it's just important for us to be aware, like we can respond to things if we
00:11:34.160 | are aware that they have, that has happened.
00:11:36.240 | So anyone who's listening right now who hasn't, doesn't identify as a creative
00:11:40.680 | person or a creator, let's just put a pin in that too, because we're going to come
00:11:45.080 | back, I'm going to beat you over the head with the fact that absolutely you are
00:11:48.120 | creative, that Chris, you and I are co-creating this conversation right now.
00:11:51.760 | If you just started screaming in your microphone, it would dramatically change
00:11:55.040 | the trajectory of our conversation.
00:11:57.800 | Is there like a specific definition you use to define creativity?
00:12:01.880 | Yeah.
00:12:02.640 | Creativity, the way that I think about it and talk about it in my book, it's a
00:12:05.920 | very, it's a widely accepted definition.
00:12:08.160 | It's just taking two or more things and combining them in an unlikely and
00:12:13.960 | ideally useful way.
00:12:15.840 | So there's an element of utility there.
00:12:18.160 | Even painting can be, the utility of painting is to make you feel an emotion
00:12:22.040 | or making a film, for example, is to understand a story or narrative
00:12:25.880 | and connect with that narrative.
00:12:26.960 | And, you know, it helps you see that science is wildly creative.
00:12:32.600 | Computer coding, wildly creative.
00:12:34.840 | The light that we all take for granted right now, right?
00:12:39.280 | That's just electrical engineering plus creativity.
00:12:42.880 | It took Einstein, however many thousand, 10,000 experiments gone wrong in
00:12:47.120 | order to create the light bulb.
00:12:48.440 | We even use the word create the light bulb.
00:12:51.280 | And we think of that as hard science.
00:12:53.120 | So when you start to see that you're just combining things in new and interesting
00:12:58.000 | ways to make useful stuff, you start to realize that creativity is all around us.
00:13:03.960 | Looking back now on different things in my life and saying, oh, there was
00:13:08.120 | creativity there.
00:13:09.040 | My friend and I both had children around the same time.
00:13:12.080 | What device can we create to feed a bottle to a baby without having to hold it?
00:13:17.760 | And we were like, oh, if you take a gallon size Ziploc and you fill it half
00:13:21.000 | with air, it's like the perfect pillow and cradle for a bottle.
00:13:24.560 | And now talking to you, I'm like, that was probably a really creative moment.
00:13:29.360 | Whereas in the time I was like, just I'm solving a problem.
00:13:32.040 | It doesn't feel like creativity.
00:13:33.280 | That's the cool thing about creativity.
00:13:36.160 | Again, this scale is really where I'm trying to focus people's attention.
00:13:41.440 | Because if you can, it is not a stretch.
00:13:44.240 | It is not a logic, it is not illogical or not a logical fallacy that if creativity
00:13:50.520 | is defined by combining two or more things in new and useful ways, ideally
00:13:57.400 | useful, then you're like, wow, okay.
00:13:59.560 | If you can identify or agree with that, that's a pretty easy step to recognize
00:14:05.000 | that what you just did with that bottle was even called it an invention.
00:14:09.080 | You're inventing.
00:14:10.560 | We use words like innovation all the time, but what is innovation
00:14:15.080 | if it's not creativity applied?
00:14:18.000 | So it's a pretty simple framework, a pretty simple argument
00:14:22.480 | for someone to buy into.
00:14:24.080 | And for those of you who are identify as creative and listen to the show, great.
00:14:28.520 | I don't need to bring you along, but for the doubters, hopefully
00:14:32.080 | the first nine minutes here.
00:14:33.560 | As it will at least get you to understand, to listen to the next nine minutes and
00:14:38.320 | listen for the further rationale that this is a superpower.
00:14:44.000 | I'm now accepting that creativity is something that happens all the time,
00:14:48.480 | whether I'm tweaking a recipe at dinner or creating a bottle holder.
00:14:52.840 | And now what?
00:14:53.920 | Now I've accepted I'm creative and you've talked in the book about how creativity
00:14:59.080 | is something that's wildly important and as essential to health and wellbeing as
00:15:02.800 | exercise and nutrition and mindfulness.
00:15:05.440 | So how do I use this newfound knowledge that I'm creative to benefit
00:15:10.680 | myself, to feel better, to be happier?
00:15:12.800 | I'll give you the vague concept first, and then I'll give you
00:15:16.800 | a very actionable approach.
00:15:18.520 | And for some people, the vague notion is enough for them to grab onto it and put
00:15:23.760 | it to use and others may need something a little more structured.
00:15:26.840 | So we'll cover both.
00:15:27.720 | The first and more conceptual approach is okay.
00:15:31.840 | If you acknowledge that creativity is all around you, what you really are doing is
00:15:37.560 | sweet.
00:15:38.360 | I have the ability to shape my environment, right?
00:15:42.840 | I'm choosing the things that I will expose myself to.
00:15:46.360 | I will craft a morning routine.
00:15:49.920 | I will curate and cultivate the kinds of things that I let into my world.
00:15:55.680 | Those are people, those are art, those are ideas.
00:15:59.320 | And what you're doing is you're creating a framework for you to then go on and be
00:16:04.680 | able to live the life you want.
00:16:06.120 | And again, for most people, you're like, oh, okay, I buy that.
00:16:11.360 | I buy it.
00:16:11.880 | And that's part of what I want.
00:16:13.920 | There's a part in the book where I talk about, yes, this book is, if you identify
00:16:18.440 | as a creator, this will supercharge your photography, your design, your
00:16:22.360 | entrepreneurship, but really this is a book about life and how to live it.
00:16:26.360 | And this is the place where I want to get people because then, you know, moving
00:16:31.920 | freely between cooking a meal and tweaking a recipe to use your example and
00:16:36.760 | designing a career art for yourself.
00:16:39.440 | What do I want to do next?
00:16:40.760 | If I can, we have to spend our time some way and we all have to make money.
00:16:44.520 | Why don't I do something that I love and make my, not just make a masterpiece, but
00:16:51.160 | make a masterpiece of my life.
00:16:53.000 | To me, that's a much more interesting life lived.
00:16:55.600 | And again, the people that you look up to respect and admire, they did not get that
00:17:00.200 | life on accident.
00:17:01.120 | They created it very intentionally because if you do not continue creating it, if you
00:17:05.040 | stop, then you will, if you don't write your own script, somebody else will
00:17:09.200 | certainly write it for you.
00:17:10.080 | So let's just say that I'm guessing that I got three quarters of the listeners to
00:17:14.880 | say, okay, cool.
00:17:15.560 | I'm down with that.
00:17:16.280 | If I recap that in my own words to try to bring it to life by recognizing that I'm a
00:17:22.120 | creator, I'm doing creative things, whether it's food or at work.
00:17:25.840 | Or with my family, I'm now realizing that, wow, I actually have the ability to create
00:17:32.360 | things in life.
00:17:33.240 | And I can apply that same lesson to what many people think of as, well, I need this
00:17:37.880 | job and I need to do this thing.
00:17:39.400 | And this is how the day works.
00:17:40.640 | And I have to do this thing.
00:17:41.480 | I can now apply these creative lessons to how I can structure my day, how I can
00:17:46.680 | structure my career, how I can structure my life, where I live, and that the same
00:17:51.520 | muscles that I would use to do that can be improved and strengthened by these other
00:17:57.880 | creative acts.
00:17:58.520 | So if cooking more and being more experimental, I'm strengthening the same muscle
00:18:02.480 | that I would use to plan my day and life.
00:18:05.520 | You are a hundred percent correct.
00:18:07.360 | And the science is very clear here.
00:18:09.800 | Everyone on your show is probably aware in some way, shape or form of
00:18:12.960 | neuroplasticity.
00:18:13.760 | This is what you are doing when you are picking up that hobby that you gave up when
00:18:18.200 | you were in seventh grade because playing the guitar wasn't cool at that time or
00:18:22.200 | something.
00:18:22.600 | What you are doing when you re-engage with that and when you drive home a different
00:18:26.560 | way from work every day, or you actively are changing the recipe for the meal you're
00:18:32.280 | cooking for your family, your friend, your girlfriend, wife, husband, partner,
00:18:35.960 | whatever, that literally rewires your brain to new possibilities.
00:18:42.600 | Because if you do not do those things, then those paths in your brain get, they're
00:18:48.680 | like grooves in pavement.
00:18:51.280 | They become ever deepened.
00:18:52.960 | And that lack of ability to escape those grooves, that is where monotony and a lack
00:18:59.000 | of innovation, a lack of a dynamic environment actually, I think, undermines the
00:19:04.480 | human spirit.
00:19:05.360 | It undermines the things that you say, "Gosh, I wish I could do X or Y or Z."
00:19:10.120 | So, one, not changing all of those things and putting this to work in the way that
00:19:15.880 | you talked about, not only does it not make possibilities more possible, but it
00:19:23.200 | actually actively undermines those things.
00:19:25.560 | So, yes, a hundred percent.
00:19:27.600 | Now, I think we got three quarters of the listeners coming along with us at this
00:19:30.640 | point.
00:19:30.880 | For that one quarter who was like, "Okay, I need something more concrete," you may
00:19:34.960 | have, or you may have heard of or be aware of a concept called a practice or a
00:19:43.120 | process.
00:19:43.920 | What is the creative process?
00:19:46.160 | I have a very simple, and the book is actually divided into four sections, that
00:19:50.440 | this is a process that will work for a drawing that you want to make at your
00:19:55.120 | desk, for a book, or for your life.
00:19:58.560 | Four simple steps.
00:20:00.160 | And the acronym is IDEA, I-D-E-A.
00:20:04.120 | And this is a four-step process that you can look at the creation of anything and
00:20:10.080 | say, "It went through these four processes."
00:20:13.440 | And when you are aware, it's again, like so many things, the awareness that this is
00:20:18.120 | happening and your ability to then focus on these as steps can actually, the
00:20:22.760 | increased awareness and focus will enhance your ability to do it more regularly with
00:20:29.720 | more consistency and I would argue more successfully.
00:20:33.880 | So I stands for, this is imagine what's possible.
00:20:38.000 | Before you create something, you have to say, "What do I want to create in this
00:20:41.200 | world?"
00:20:41.480 | Before you started this podcast, what do I want to do?
00:20:43.720 | Do I want to write a book?
00:20:45.040 | Do I want to chisel some concrete slabs and make a tablet?
00:20:49.320 | No, I want to create a podcast.
00:20:51.120 | So you imagined what was possible.
00:20:52.840 | Then you have to very simply design a plan.
00:20:55.800 | This is just like building a house, right?
00:20:57.680 | You don't just start hammering shit together.
00:20:59.880 | Imagine what you want to do, design a plan, execute that plan.
00:21:04.640 | And then the A is what is the most commonly misunderstood, but one of the most
00:21:11.000 | important is we need to amplify this outcome.
00:21:15.920 | And by amplify, create an audience for this thing, whether that's internal or
00:21:22.680 | external, whether that is, you just need to put it out into the world.
00:21:27.160 | You need to share this because that is a very valuable feedback loop that will
00:21:31.760 | help you refine your creative endeavor, whatever the thing that you set out to
00:21:36.480 | create was.
00:21:37.520 | So once again, imagine, design, execute, and amplify.
00:21:41.640 | Four very simple steps that if you do not know where to get started, do this with
00:21:45.840 | anything.
00:21:46.320 | You can do it right now.
00:21:47.080 | I want to draw a picture.
00:21:48.040 | What do I want to draw?
00:21:49.080 | I want to draw a monkey.
00:21:50.120 | All right, I'm going to design how the monkey is going to look.
00:21:53.000 | It's going to be hanging from a tree.
00:21:54.400 | I'm going to make some funny circles on a page.
00:21:56.920 | I executed that plan.
00:21:58.200 | And then if I like what I, and then I'm going to show my partner and they're
00:22:02.560 | going to laugh at me and I'm going to get some feedback and go back and maybe
00:22:05.680 | refine it.
00:22:06.160 | But the point is, this is a simple for, for this is literally how creativity
00:22:10.880 | works.
00:22:11.360 | If you care, most people don't care cause they get concept one that we spent a
00:22:15.800 | little more time talking about.
00:22:16.960 | If you don't get that, or if you want to make this a very repeatable process and
00:22:20.720 | you want to have a more scientific approach, if you're a, a scientist by
00:22:24.960 | trade or computer programmer, this may help.
00:22:28.440 | It seems like with every business, you get to a certain size and the cracks
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00:25:35.240 | So how important when exercising our creative muscles is it to maybe go deep
00:25:42.800 | versus wide? So for example, I'm kind of like conversational in French, but I
00:25:48.200 | could probably be fluent, and so I could go really deep in on one thing, or I
00:25:52.560 | could go pretty wide and go read a book on something totally new like the
00:25:55.840 | history of manufacturing in the U.S., which is a wild, interesting thing to
00:25:59.520 | learn about, probably really spark some creative thoughts. How do you think
00:26:03.400 | about exercising deep in a practice, whether it's the guitar or cooking or
00:26:07.800 | something versus adding new things to your arsenal of learning and
00:26:11.960 | creativity? This is an interesting question, and it's interesting for me on
00:26:16.840 | a couple different axes. I'm going to try and go with the first and most
00:26:20.640 | obvious, which it depends on what your goals are. I believe, you know, there's a
00:26:26.160 | section in the book on mastery, and it's my personal belief having mastered
00:26:33.280 | photography. I've been named master of a bunch of different areas of photography
00:26:37.480 | by those groups that do such things, and I also am aware of my mastery of
00:26:44.200 | photography. It shows up in my resume and my bio and all that stuff, but one
00:26:50.120 | of the things that I love about going deep, and this is true about anything
00:26:54.880 | about going deep on any subject, is first of all, you tend to only go deep
00:27:00.680 | on something you love because that's what you're willing to do, and whether
00:27:03.800 | that is birding or mechanical engineering or podcasting or photography
00:27:13.200 | design, you name it, going deep on something and allowing yourself to, let's
00:27:20.520 | just, for the most simple definition of mastery, let's say you've got 10,000
00:27:23.520 | hours, you know your way around the whole ecosystem. Maybe you don't know
00:27:26.720 | everything, but you are aware of your areas of opportunity to grow. When you
00:27:32.120 | have mastered something, you have the distinct benefit of being able to lift
00:27:39.280 | and stamp the concept of mastery onto other areas and master them in an
00:27:46.000 | increasingly accelerated way, and our mutual friend Tim Ferriss, dear buddy of
00:27:51.000 | ours, and you can look at Tim, was a salsa dancer, a world champion, in fact,
00:27:57.080 | and before he was an author, and then he had, same thing I think with judo, he
00:28:03.080 | had mastered a couple of different areas, and then he was able to then apply what
00:28:10.640 | he had learned conceptually about how deep do you have to go, whether is it
00:28:14.520 | mastering a number of skills or is it mastering one skill or one technique, how
00:28:18.640 | do you learn, who are good mentors and coaches, you get a body of experience,
00:28:24.000 | and then you can, not all of it applies to writing, for example, in Tim's case,
00:28:27.840 | but a lot of it does, and you see this pattern in someone who is world class at
00:28:34.360 | something, tends to be really freaking good at a bunch of things because they
00:28:38.760 | have then in turn expanded what they learned about mastering one thing to
00:28:43.680 | other things, not always the case. So to your question about if I want to be
00:28:48.920 | creative, should I go experimental in one thing or deep in others, I think it
00:28:53.960 | is a, it's a little bit of a yo-yo. The first thing you want to do is cover a
00:28:59.240 | broad set of interests. If you do not know what you are passionate about, if
00:29:02.680 | you do not know if it's the guitar or ceramics or needlepoint or cooking, then
00:29:08.960 | just experiment and play. And we can, there's a lot of cues from our childhood.
00:29:12.920 | You talked about making films, you talked about your kids drawing, you know,
00:29:16.360 | there's all these cues of things that we loved in our history that as an adult,
00:29:21.880 | if you reconnect with some of these things, you will be shocked at how much
00:29:26.120 | joy it could create for you. So it depends then on where you are in that
00:29:31.560 | phase. The yo-yo part is go broad at first, then go super deep. And once you
00:29:35.560 | go super deep, you understand what mastery is, and then you can go broad
00:29:38.280 | again. You can start to play in a bunch of different areas and look for the next
00:29:41.680 | thing that you'd like to master.
00:29:43.800 | Do you have some examples maybe from readers that have written in after
00:29:47.320 | applying some of these lessons from the book that might be really relatable to
00:29:50.600 | people about how creativity could change and reshape someone's life who is not
00:29:55.640 | really thinking about it?
00:29:56.520 | I can open my phone and go to any Instagram post or go to my DMs, for
00:30:01.160 | example, and just, I'll just, I'll do it right now. The first DM I clicked on of
00:30:05.840 | the 150 that are here in my phone from yesterday, I just finished chapter two
00:30:10.760 | yesterday evening. It's helping me so much. Now I can see myself. I see how my
00:30:14.960 | creativity is vital and that it's possible for me to get back to joyfully
00:30:19.480 | and playfully letting go of the pressure to make money and help others simply by
00:30:23.760 | letting go allows me to get better at my thing. Thank you so much for this book
00:30:28.720 | and having shared your journey and your story. I really do hope to meet you one
00:30:31.760 | day, probably interviewing you on my soon to be podcast. There are literally, I
00:30:36.280 | get hundreds every day of people who are putting these very simple things to
00:30:43.240 | work. I had someone not yesterday, day before yesterday, I use the example of
00:30:49.360 | driving home a different way to rewire your brain. If you bring the house to
00:30:54.640 | the office, we all tend to travel the same path because we don't have to think
00:30:57.680 | about it. We can think about what we're going to cook for dinner or where we're
00:30:59.960 | going to go to the movies or who we're going to call that evening. And just the
00:31:04.160 | simple act of driving home a different way every day, slightly different, it
00:31:11.760 | helps you see the wonder in the world and that you truly are not a robot and
00:31:17.920 | you do have autonomy in 99% of the time you turn left and you turn right. There
00:31:24.640 | is a recognition and awareness that builds up in you that you can change.
00:31:30.760 | What you did yesterday does not define who you will be today or certainly not
00:31:35.440 | tomorrow.
00:31:36.280 | Yeah, I already see ways that I could start applying it here. And that's
00:31:40.560 | pretty exciting. Are there other ways that you can fuel creativity, whether
00:31:46.160 | that's diet or exercise or mindfulness?
00:31:48.280 | Since all the hacks is about all these things like travel, for example, or
00:31:52.960 | changing your body composition, for example, you are putting creativity to
00:31:57.960 | work when you do that, because you're creating what create a new diet
00:32:02.400 | regimen. When you put certain foods in your body, you feel better straight up,
00:32:06.960 | you give your body the fuel that your individual creature wants. Maybe you're
00:32:13.240 | allergic to nuts. So you cut nuts out and crave protein, you're an O positive
00:32:17.320 | blood type, and the more protein is better. And like, when you start to feel
00:32:21.040 | your individual human with the right kind of food, and you take the right
00:32:24.520 | kinds out, you only do that through experimenting. And you then create a
00:32:32.080 | plan for yourself to what you're going to put in your body. And then you add
00:32:36.680 | exercise and you go back to your child and you said, God was so fun. I was on
00:32:41.080 | the long distance running team when I was in junior high, and I just loved it.
00:32:43.960 | As a kid, I was very competitive and whatnot. And now as an adult, I'm going
00:32:47.440 | to take up running again. And you realize that you're doing all of these
00:32:51.160 | things we've talked about so far in the podcast, right? You're looking back to
00:32:53.720 | your childhood things that made you happy and healthy. Or you played soccer
00:32:57.560 | as a kid and you start not as a 42 year old tech executive, you start juggling a
00:33:02.800 | soccer ball again in your backyard. Like, I'm telling you that will ignite
00:33:07.080 | something awesome in you. And it probably will give you one piece of a
00:33:12.520 | fitness regimen that will, if you insert that into your you're already like, Oh,
00:33:18.320 | girl, I'm gonna go to the gym three days a week for an hour, you've infused this
00:33:21.240 | play. And it's this combination of play the utility of moving in a more dynamic
00:33:26.120 | way than you do at the gym, that creates a great workout regimen. And if you
00:33:31.720 | create a good, you know, food program that you love that has foods that you
00:33:36.160 | love, and you've experimented through preparing these things, and you create
00:33:40.080 | an exercise regimen that engages you that is more than just going to the gym
00:33:43.800 | three days and sitting on the Nautilus machines, you are going to create more
00:33:47.960 | success for yourself, you are, you will be more joyful, and you will pursue both
00:33:52.640 | of those things more vigorously than if you did not take intention if you just
00:33:56.920 | read some shit on the internet, and then went and did I'm going to do four sets
00:34:00.320 | of eight reps of squats, and then I'm going to do that's not an inspired life.
00:34:04.720 | And the people that you look up to and appreciate and admire, that is not how
00:34:08.240 | they are doing it. I promise you, they are taking an active role. And so
00:34:13.400 | whether this is for changing your body composition, or for traveling to a place
00:34:18.960 | that you've, you know, always desired to travel to, like, it's all there for you.
00:34:24.840 | That's the thing. It's like, it's not just about making a work of art. It's
00:34:31.360 | about making your life a masterpiece.
00:34:34.320 | Yeah, yeah, you talked about joyfulness, which I thought was something
00:34:38.160 | interesting in that last comment. Is there science behind creativity
00:34:43.200 | affecting our happiness and our joyfulness in life?
00:34:45.720 | Absolutely. So if you can disrupt the the typical paradigms, there's, you
00:34:54.760 | start to pay attention. And this concept of attention not mean pay attention,
00:34:59.080 | like as in what your eighth grade math teacher told you, but as attention, the
00:35:04.160 | one thing we truly have in this life is where we direct our attention. When you
00:35:08.760 | realize that, where you place your attention, are you thinking of yourself
00:35:12.880 | is lucky or unlucky, as happy or sad as creative or not great, we start deciding
00:35:18.800 | to direct your attention. The science is very clear. You decide to be happy. And
00:35:25.400 | then you get breaks at work, and you break through on your diet and your
00:35:30.560 | relationship. It's not the other way around. If you wait to be happy until you
00:35:34.800 | get that break at work, you will largely be waiting forever. So there is a high
00:35:40.320 | correlation to people's autonomy, and their creativity as connected to their
00:35:47.440 | life arc to not just happiness, but and joy, but also to fulfillment, which I
00:35:54.360 | think is is very powerful asset. If you feel fulfilled, that is like a it's the
00:36:02.320 | wind at your back. Life is life happens for you rather than to you. You may not
00:36:07.640 | know this, but we share in common is that both of us, I think when we had very
00:36:11.360 | little money decided that we were going to travel the world with our then
00:36:15.040 | girlfriends now wives for multiple months. Yeah, so we did eight months, we
00:36:21.400 | spent all almost all of our money. I'm curious what kind of impact you think
00:36:25.440 | either that trip specifically or just travel in general has on people's life,
00:36:29.520 | people's creativity. Wow, I think travel is an incredible gift that you can give
00:36:37.760 | yourself for so many reasons. I'll go back to my own personal experience first
00:36:43.080 | and then I'll expand it in the particular I think I think it was James
00:36:46.800 | Joyce in a particular less universal. So I'll share my experience and maybe you
00:36:50.760 | can they'll resonate with the listener here. So I mentioned that I was from
00:36:56.680 | economically. My family didn't have that much money, middle, lower middle class
00:37:01.480 | status. Dad was a cop. Mom was a secretary. Bless my mom's heart. We I
00:37:06.040 | remember she didn't bake cookies because sugar was expensive. That's the kind of
00:37:10.120 | household I was raised in. Temperature was 58 degrees. If you're cold, put on a
00:37:13.600 | sweater. And yet they would save up all of their money. And we had some friends
00:37:19.720 | who lived abroad and we would visit them every summer. And so I went from the
00:37:25.800 | middle of my lower middle class suburb, largely white, only hanging around with
00:37:33.320 | people that looked and talked and walked like me. And then imagine plunking
00:37:38.320 | yourself down in the middle of London in the early 80s. Mohawks, Piccadilly Circus,
00:37:46.640 | punk rock that commingled with art and culture. And the same could be true for
00:37:54.800 | my parents are travel super freaks. They you know, that's basically all they do
00:37:58.920 | now is they're in Asia for a month at Russia for a month and they go off the
00:38:03.480 | place. But despite from being at a very young age, we had very I didn't want for
00:38:09.200 | anything. I don't want to misrepresent this. I had Adidas with four stripes and
00:38:12.600 | like upside down Nike's kind of thing. And yet the experience of going to going
00:38:19.080 | abroad, spending time in the mountains transformed me because I realized that
00:38:25.280 | the world that I came from wasn't all that there is. And when I learned about
00:38:29.720 | other cultures through again, things that were engaging to me at the time, punk
00:38:33.640 | rock music, for example, or cuisine that I remember going to Mexico, for example,
00:38:40.800 | and the concept of spicy food didn't exist. My mom's very sensitive to spice.
00:38:46.240 | So we had no spice, pepper in my house. And I go to Mexico and you realize, oh,
00:38:51.840 | so that's a jalapeno. It you think of the spice of life, but it was like very
00:38:56.520 | literal for me. And so whether it's cuisine or music or culture, like it is
00:39:01.800 | so much value in it. And I did not know that about you, Chris. And I'm guessing
00:39:06.640 | that was that it was part of your courtship and your, your process of
00:39:11.360 | falling in love and deciding to make a life together, that there's some that
00:39:14.720 | travel has a special place. This is your earlier point about looking back at the
00:39:18.120 | things in your life that were valuable or inspirational or whatever to you. And
00:39:21.360 | then you can make them come to life in your adult life here with a little bit
00:39:24.880 | of intention and some, some resources. And I bet that travels special to you.
00:39:30.320 | Right?
00:39:31.000 | Yeah, definitely. I mean, one of the things that I think I probably never
00:39:36.000 | recognized until this conversation was, you know, I'm the kind of person at work
00:39:40.400 | or in life that someone says, Oh, this isn't going to work. It's no, actually,
00:39:43.520 | let's actually find a different way to do it. Or when something breaks, like a
00:39:47.720 | dryer breaks, I'm like, let's just see if we can open it up and figure out how
00:39:50.720 | to make it work. And we don't have to call someone. And I think that going
00:39:56.400 | abroad, traveling different countries, realizing that everyone around the world
00:40:01.400 | does so many things in different ways. Like in some countries, people eat
00:40:04.640 | dinner at 11pm. In some countries, people take a nap in the afternoon. In
00:40:08.120 | some countries, they wake up when the sun rises. Like everyone lives a life
00:40:11.640 | that's totally different, which inherently means anything you're doing,
00:40:15.200 | whether it's at work, whether it's for your creative passion, whether it's
00:40:18.240 | your just your routine at home, there are people that are doing something
00:40:21.280 | entirely differently, successfully and happily, such that kind of broadening
00:40:26.840 | your horizon, whether it's food, culture, just environment, temperature, you
00:40:31.800 | know, all kinds of things.
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00:41:44.880 | Do you all remember episode 122 when I spoke to chef David Chang about leveling
00:41:50.480 | up your cooking at home? If not, definitely go back and give it a listen.
00:41:53.840 | But one of his top hacks was using the microwave more. I'll admit I was a
00:41:58.680 | skeptic at first, but after getting a full set of microwave cookware from
00:42:02.880 | Anyday, I'm a total convert and I'm excited to partner with them for this
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00:42:56.560 | I just want to thank you Quick for listening to and supporting the show.
00:43:01.640 | Your support is what keeps this show going. To get all of the URLs, codes,
00:43:07.000 | deals, and discounts from our partners, you can go to allthehacks.com/deals.
00:43:12.400 | So please consider supporting those who support us. I think I have this
00:43:17.520 | perspective now that I didn't realize I had and had applied to work and life.
00:43:22.560 | Anything can be done in any number of ways and there's probably a more optimal
00:43:26.720 | way. And part of the reason I probably love to optimize is that I've seen that
00:43:31.120 | there are other ways to do things. So I refuse to believe that the status quo is
00:43:35.320 | the best we've got. And I now attribute that, unknowingly before, but to seeing
00:43:41.120 | how so many different people live so many different ways. I think that's part
00:43:46.040 | of the magic, the richness, and the depth of a life well-lived. And to be crystal,
00:43:52.640 | like, if you cannot afford to go to, I just used the example of London because
00:43:59.080 | it's something we did as a kid, you don't have to travel tens of thousands of
00:44:02.880 | miles on expensive airplanes and stay at fancy hotels. Like, literally going into
00:44:09.840 | the woods and you'll find that you need a different set of skills, that people do
00:44:14.320 | live differently. Whether it's somewhere in your backyard or across the planet,
00:44:20.640 | this exposure to different ways of living, this is part of what I am
00:44:24.960 | encouraging people to do. It's not dissimilar to going driving home a
00:44:29.640 | different way every day of the week because it reminds you that there are so
00:44:34.760 | many other things outside of your routine. And right now, there's someone
00:44:38.080 | who's saying, "Oh my gosh, I got two kids under four," and it's like, whatever the...
00:44:41.600 | Hey look, I'm not saying that's not a reality for you. I'm saying that I know
00:44:47.440 | there is space in your life to do something differently that will remind
00:44:54.960 | you and reconnect you with the authority, your own personal authenticity to pursue,
00:45:01.280 | to move in the direction, however fast or slow, of the life of your dreams. And part
00:45:08.760 | of the way you build dreams, part of what our culture has really whiffed on the
00:45:13.280 | last two decades, is the imagined part of my creative process. Part of what
00:45:17.040 | traveling does is helps you imagine you want for yourself in this life, right?
00:45:23.160 | Maybe, I used the example earlier of going to Copenhagen. Maybe you're inspired
00:45:28.200 | by the architecture and the simplicity, and so that you want to bring that
00:45:32.240 | experience of what it felt like to live in that architecture back because you're
00:45:36.440 | gonna build a home for yourself one day, and you've experienced what it feels
00:45:39.760 | like to live in a really well-designed place, and you want to then bring that
00:45:42.720 | back for yourself here in the States or wherever you live.
00:45:46.280 | Yeah, and if anyone's listening to this podcast, there's a dozen episodes about,
00:45:51.000 | you know, how to travel for free and credit card points and miles. We were
00:45:54.320 | fortunate that this group is exposed to many ways to make a trip to Europe cost
00:45:59.640 | almost nothing, a trip to Africa cost almost nothing. There's a handful of
00:46:02.960 | sign-up bonuses that make that even possible. It's so true, man.
00:46:07.600 | I'm glad, I'm fortunate for you, and I'm grateful for you and your show for
00:46:13.000 | helping people live a richer life through a variety of hacks, whether
00:46:18.320 | that's travel or, in this case, it's one part psychology, two parts taking action to
00:46:23.440 | hack, I think, culture. And as soon as you do this stuff, this is the
00:46:28.880 | cool thing, as soon as you do it once, you're like looking around, you're like, "I feel like
00:46:32.400 | you just got away with something." Like, "What? I have my own podcast now? Or I'm going to
00:46:36.760 | Africa for $1,800 for two weeks? Like, how is this possible?" And there's
00:46:43.600 | something unlocks in you, and you realize this world of possibility, and then you
00:46:48.080 | can lift and stamp that world of possibility onto other things. It's this
00:46:52.200 | beautiful, virtuous cycle.
00:46:55.040 | Yeah, I think there's a good segue to ask you, "Are there things you do in your daily routine that other people
00:47:02.320 | might benefit from adopting or trying that might fall in the category of
00:47:06.720 | kind of life hacks or anything like that?"
00:47:08.760 | Sure, at the risk of sounding cliche, because even the concept of a morning
00:47:13.120 | routine wasn't really popular on the internet 10 years ago, and here we are,
00:47:16.840 | everyone's talking about it, but I would underscore that there's a reason for
00:47:19.800 | that, because starting owning the morning and/or some sort of a routine will help
00:47:24.640 | you own the day. And having a routine and having an element of your routine being
00:47:30.960 | to break your routine, to me, that is the life hack that is most
00:47:36.440 | unrecognized, unrealized, and under-planned for. I live the things
00:47:44.440 | that I'm talking about here, like driving home a different way, or listening to
00:47:47.400 | some different music, or trying to learn new things from friends who are experts
00:47:52.120 | in the world of fill-in-the-blank, if I have some benign or newfound curiosity
00:47:57.800 | to it. So I think that's the big takeaway, is what can you do to provide space in
00:48:02.680 | your routine to do things differently, whether that's an extra half an hour to
00:48:06.800 | cook dinner, or we've talked about carving out some time to travel to a
00:48:10.360 | faraway distant place that does things very different than we do, or driving
00:48:14.160 | home a different way, or pursuing a hobby that is something creative such that you
00:48:18.660 | can rewire your brain and apply more creativity in your life. Make space for
00:48:22.640 | all that stuff, because it is critical. That is what most people who are
00:48:26.880 | successful and fulfilled have a routine that allows for these things. And it's
00:48:31.520 | not, you know, you hear like, "Oh, I eat 30 grams of protein when I wake up."
00:48:35.520 | True. But again, you deconstruct the most successful and fulfilled people, and
00:48:40.240 | they make time for the stuff that I'm talking about, for creativity. Now, I do
00:48:46.520 | want to endorse cold water therapy, specifically because I've been a
00:48:51.600 | practitioner for about 10 years, started off with cold showers, and then I would
00:48:56.320 | go to spas or gyms or specific places that had cold water that I could get
00:49:02.600 | into for long durations of time. And then it went to me having my own cold
00:49:08.400 | plunge at my house in Seattle, and then I'm right here up at our little beach
00:49:12.960 | house, and I'm 100 feet from the Puget Sound, which right now is 49 degrees, 48
00:49:17.680 | degrees in that water. So I am a huge advocate of cold water. If you haven't
00:49:22.800 | had Wim Hof on the show, he's, you know, written a bunch of books. He's been on
00:49:27.160 | my podcast, The Chase Jarvis Live Show. You can easily search and read the
00:49:32.080 | benefits of cold water exposure. It is better than coffee, great for your immune
00:49:36.120 | system, and very good for personal mindset psychology. It is interesting to
00:49:42.320 | every day get into very cold water, despite never wanting to. So your ability
00:49:48.480 | to willingly make yourself uncomfortable for a short amount of time every day,
00:49:51.680 | turns out it's pretty valuable. Funny enough, we have a hot tub in our
00:49:57.200 | home, and that hot tub, we stopped using it for a few months, so I drained it. I
00:50:01.320 | filled it back up. Pump doesn't work. Looked outside last night, it's in the
00:50:04.560 | 40s. I was like, "Oh, I got a cold plunge. Pump doesn't work. Can't get the hot tub
00:50:09.240 | working." So I was telling my wife, I was like, "Hey, I guess now we have a cold
00:50:13.080 | plunge until someone replaces this pump." Which, by the way, is something I'm
00:50:16.720 | creatively trying to figure out how to fix, but until then, we have that. One
00:50:21.680 | thing, when it comes to creativity, one of the things that I know I face a lot,
00:50:26.380 | that I want to touch on before we go, getting in, everyone knows that awesome
00:50:30.280 | zone flow state, but what about when you're stuck? Do you have any tips for
00:50:34.200 | people that are sitting there trying to be creative on something, whether it's
00:50:37.960 | writing, wet working, anything, and they hit that creative block? How do you get
00:50:42.480 | past that and move forward? Play. Play is an incredibly powerful lever. Go goof
00:50:52.640 | off. Go do something that brings you a ton of joy that is ideally not at all
00:50:57.960 | related to the thing, to the problem you're trying to solve. Creativity
00:51:01.720 | happens, again, it's this virtuous cycle. You try it, you get a little more
00:51:06.160 | courage. You try it some more, you get a little courage. It's like there's so
00:51:10.440 | many virtuous cycles, or positive feedback loops, or leverage that we can
00:51:15.200 | get from these things, and this relationship between joy and play is a
00:51:19.600 | very strong one. Let's just take your hot tub pump, for example. If you
00:51:24.160 | set a deadline and you need to have it fixed by Friday, and you literally sit
00:51:28.000 | there in front of the thing, there will be times on Wednesday at noon when you've
00:51:32.200 | been trying to fix it, and you can't fix it. You're like, "I need to stop staring at
00:51:35.680 | this pump because I'm thinking in loops, and I'm not
00:51:38.880 | unlocking anything here." And so you go hit a bucket of golf balls, or go get in
00:51:45.240 | your cold plunge, or go do something that brings you a lot of joy, and you sit down
00:51:49.240 | at that problem again, and the problem looks differently. This is, again,
00:51:52.640 | programming your body with powerful neurochemistry, a little bit this sort of
00:51:59.040 | work-hard-rest cycle that we know is good for the human body, and the human
00:52:04.440 | body appreciates things like sleep and good nutrition. There's a list in my book
00:52:08.640 | "Creative Calling" about creativity boosters and zappers, and there are some
00:52:12.120 | very simple physical things like going out and play. This is why I love to look
00:52:17.600 | back into our childhood and think of the things that brought us a ton of joy.
00:52:22.120 | There's a guy who used to work for Tim named Charlie Hone. I don't know if you
00:52:25.200 | remember Charlie. He wrote a book called "Play It Away," which is a really
00:52:28.520 | interesting book that he wrote, which is specifically around playing to reduce
00:52:32.200 | anxiety. And one of the things, it's just a simple exercise that I took out of his
00:52:37.320 | book as an example here for your listeners. He brought himself like a
00:52:41.560 | hundred baseballs, and he and a buddy go to a park, and a buddy slow pitches, and
00:52:47.600 | they just take turns whacking these balls all over the baseball field. Then
00:52:51.760 | they go pick them up, and he said in 30 minutes, each of you hit a
00:52:55.640 | hundred baseballs. You walked around, you got outside, and because he loved playing
00:52:59.120 | baseball and hitting balls as a kid in the batting cages, he said it just
00:53:03.720 | completely transforms his headspace. And then he goes back to whatever the
00:53:07.920 | problem at hand is, and he's refreshed and invigorated. And so, you know, I like
00:53:13.620 | to think of, I think those things, specifically playing, are very helpful,
00:53:21.400 | and they help in a myriad of ways. It's like a panacea for inaction, and we've
00:53:27.800 | lost that in the same way that we've largely lost our imagination. And we have
00:53:33.420 | to do actually active work to get it back. So, I think play is very valuable.
00:53:38.000 | And I will put an asterisk by this, which is, if you're sitting in front of a
00:53:41.520 | problem, and you're, let's just say you're a professional creator, you're a
00:53:45.800 | copywriter, or a designer, or something, you are paid to create on demand. And that
00:53:51.600 | actually comes through discipline, right? That comes through, people say, "Oh, I just
00:53:57.480 | have a blank page here, and I'm stuck. I can't write anything." Why don't you write
00:54:01.960 | 500 shitty words? "Show me your best stuff." And then a photographer will say,
00:54:06.360 | "Oh, no, I'll show you this." And it's just, "I don't want to show you, because I'm not
00:54:10.360 | really proud of my work." "Okay, then show me your worst stuff." "Show me my worst
00:54:14.560 | stuff?" "Yeah, just show me something, because the something means that you're
00:54:17.680 | working, that you're..." I think Chuck Close said, "Inspiration is for
00:54:22.680 | amateurs. The rest of us sit down, and we get to work." So, I like the mix of
00:54:27.720 | like, tough love and wild inspiration. The tough love is, sit down at a certain
00:54:33.160 | time, and do this work every day, even if you don't feel like it. And, if you're
00:54:37.580 | just doing that, and you're not inspired, doing things that bring joy, and play, and
00:54:42.720 | laughter, going to a stand-up comedy, hitting baseballs, taking up running
00:54:48.000 | again, these things that will bring you joy, that are from your past, this
00:54:51.880 | combination of those two things, of sitting in front of the page, and doing
00:54:54.620 | the work anyway, and taking breaks, this is a very powerful comedy. Yeah, I think
00:55:00.400 | this is actually a great place to wrap up, because everyone here can hopefully
00:55:04.640 | take some time in the rest of their day, and go play a little, and get
00:55:08.160 | inspired. But, obviously, I think everyone needs to check out this book. I really
00:55:11.880 | enjoyed it. Link to that in the show notes. I think it's creativecalling.com
00:55:15.960 | is also the book's website. Yep. Yep. Where else can people find out what
00:55:21.080 | you're up to? I'm at Chase Jarvis everywhere on the internet, Instagram,
00:55:25.640 | YouTube, Twitter, whatnot. And, I would also steer people to creativelive.com,
00:55:31.880 | which is, we've built a learning platform specifically for creators and
00:55:37.640 | entrepreneurs. So, it is, whether you are just dabbling, and you want to learn
00:55:43.000 | skills from someone who is the best in the world, there are people who are
00:55:46.720 | literally Pulitzer Prize winners, the highest performers in every category,
00:55:53.520 | from photography, design, filmmaking, entrepreneurship, you can learn from
00:55:58.720 | these people there. So, whether you're trying to pick up new skills, or going
00:56:02.040 | for inspiration, specifically creative inspiration, there's more than 2,000
00:56:06.320 | classes there for an annual subscription price of 150 bucks, or something, 149
00:56:11.720 | bucks. That's another destination there on the internet. Yeah, when I worked at
00:56:15.920 | Google Ventures, we were investors, got a chance to take a few courses. They're
00:56:19.360 | fantastic. Chase, thank you so much for being here. Chris, thanks for doing the
00:56:24.040 | show. All the Hacks is a really fun place. It's a fun destination out there in the
00:56:28.560 | internet media universe. Congrats on making a successful show. And I'll say it
00:56:33.840 | slightly differently, congrats on creating an amazing show that a lot of
00:56:38.840 | people benefit from. Keep doing it. Yeah, thank you.
00:56:44.400 | That was amazing. Thank you so much for listening. Recognizing my creativity in
00:56:48.760 | the middle of this conversation feels like a big unlock. And I'm excited to see
00:56:52.520 | how that affects my ability to be creative with the rest of my life. Also,
00:56:56.440 | I'm really grateful for all the amazing questions you've been sending. And I'll
00:57:00.080 | be doing a Q&A episode to answer all of them, actually a few episodes. So please
00:57:04.920 | keep them coming as I genuinely love hearing from you and would love to be
00:57:08.560 | able to help you all continue to upgrade your lives. You can send anything my way,
00:57:12.600 | even if you just want to say hi, by emailing chris@allthehacks.com. That's it
00:57:17.560 | for now. See you next time.
00:57:18.920 | I want to tell you about another podcast I love that goes deep on all things
00:57:37.120 | money. That means everything from money hacks to wealth building to early
00:57:40.640 | retirement. It's called the personal finance podcast, and it's much more about
00:57:45.000 | building generational wealth and spending your money on the things you
00:57:48.400 | value than it is about clipping coupons to save a dollar. It's hosted by my good
00:57:52.960 | friend Andrew who truly believes that everyone in this world can build wealth
00:57:56.800 | and his passion and excitement are what make this show so entertaining. I know
00:58:01.520 | because I was a guest on the show in December 2022. But recently I listened to
00:58:06.320 | an episode where Andrew shared 16 money stats that will blow your mind. And it
00:58:10.760 | was so crazy to learn things like 35% of millennials are not participating in
00:58:15.440 | their employer's retirement plan. And that's just one of the many fascinating
00:58:19.680 | stats he shared. The personal finance podcast has something for everyone. It's
00:58:23.760 | filled with so many tips and tactics and hacks to help you get better with your
00:58:27.400 | money and grow your wealth. So I highly recommend you check it out. Just search
00:58:31.680 | for the personal finance podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you
00:58:35.840 | listen to podcasts and enjoy.