Daily Creative with Todd Henry

We live in uncertain times. My friend Andy posted a photo of a sign from 2015 today that asked “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” Well, I seriously doubt that any of us would have answered “living through a global pandemic with an uncertain ending.”

No matter what your role, it’s important that you learn to plan for uncertainty. You can’t predict what will happen, but you can prepare yourself to deal with unexpected events in a more productive way. On this episode, we share three core principles for planning for uncertainty:

1. Ask better questions. Many people don’t ask questions because they don’t want to know the answer. However, it’s only when things go awry that you fully realize the quality of the questions you’ve been asking. In this episode, I share how to ask the “what’s the pin in the grenade?” question to help you prepare for unexpected negative events.
2. Build your runway. You need to know that you have the resources needed to bridge from here to there. Many businesses will go under during this pandemic because they weren’t able to survive the downturn, but those who make it through will be far better positioned on the other side to take advantage of the rebound.
3. Protect the main thing. Mission is king. You need to adjust and adapt in whatever way is necessary to protect your mission and abide by your values.

Uncertainty is inevitable, but how we deal with it makes all the difference between a successful outcome and a disastrous one.

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To gain attention for your work (or your message) you must stand apart from everyone else. There is no place for being another in a line of similar messages. How do you separate yourself from the pack.

Today's guest is Mike Michalowicz, author of the new book Get Different. He shares specific strategies for standing out from the crowd.

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I have been waiting for this announcement for over a year. Last Thursday I sent an announcement to all of our subscribers of 3 Things, my Sunday email that goes out each week with three creative sparks, that I've been working on a secret book during the pandemic. In fact, the book is about twice as long as any of my previous books and I wrote it in about a third of the time. It was quite a push.

The main reason why I wrote this book is because I noticed that a lot of people around me - creative pros at all levels of their game - were struggling to stay engaged and focused during the pandemic. However, those who seemed to endure and even thrive in the midst of the uncertainty were those who had daily practices to sustain them.

A phrase popped into my head: Talent may get you a seat at the table, but it's your daily practices that keep you in the game. What you do every day matters most.

So my new book, Daily Creative, is designed to help you do just that. It features 366 daily essays covering everything from mindset to tools to creative sparks to leadership. It's designed to be your daily companion as a creative pro. In fact, one early reader told me "It's like having my own personal coach in the mornings." That's exactly what I was aiming for.

Why are daily practices important?

1. They keep you micro-aligned. When you're doing complex, uncertain work, it's easy to drift. Just a few small deviations from your intended course seem like no big deal, but those deviations amplify over time and can carry you far from where you intended to end up. So, by doing a daily check-in on both your mindset and your practices, you ensure that you're at least making intentional decisions about your course.

2. They develop resilience. How do you increase your capacity? By doing hard things. By asking hard questions. By pushing beyond your comfort. Daily practices force you to do things you may not always feel like doing, but that will increase the likelihood you'll persist in the face of resistance. You train yourself to do hard things.

3. They refine your perspective and productive passion. You are smarter than you think. You know much more than you think. However, much of what you know is beneath the surface of your consciousness. It's on the level of intuition. When you're under pressure, you are likely to ignore those intuitive hunches because they're inconvenient. A daily practice forces you to slow down, listen to your thoughts, and be shaped by your intuition.

So, even though the book doesn't release until September 6th, I'm asking you to pre-order it now. Pre-orders are a huge part of the early success of a book, which is why so many authors ask you for them. So, I've put together a bunch of pretty great bonuses as a thank you for those who pre-order.

For example, you can get the audiobook version for free. Or, you can actually start reading the book RIGHT NOW by receiving it as a daily email.

Learn how to get these bonuses at dailycreativebook.com.

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One key element of any healthy culture is that people understand how to give effective feedback to one another. Because creative work can feel a bit subjective, feedback can be a difficult thing to navigate, so many people default to being overly prescriptive or controlling. However, while specific, tactical feedback might achieve short-term results, it often creates bigger problems over the long-term. Instead, we need to learn how to offer feedback in a way that helps the team (or our clients) think in new and better ways about the work.

On this episode, we share three core principles for offering better feedback:

Honor the process

The end result of a project is just the final piece of a very long process. When you offer suggestions without first understanding how someone arrived at that result, you are negating their entire process, and the decision-making that went into it. You have to allow them the opportunity to share not only the end result of their thinking, but their thought process itself.

Ask better questions

Instead of being prescriptive, ask questions that help the other person articulate why they made the decisions they did. Also, ask questions that help them think about other pathways they could have taken, and where those pathways may have led. “Why did you choose to...” or “How did you arrive at...” are wonderful conversation starters to get them talking about the why behind what you are seeing or experiencing.

Invite them to re-direct

Once you’ve had a thorough conversation about the process, begin asking them questions that nudge them in what you think might be a more helpful direction. For example, “what if instead of doing X, you chose Y? How might that change your process?” or “Can you think of a way that we could...?” These are open-ended questions that value the other person and also invite them into the process of re-directing the work in a meaningful way.

Yes, we’re all pros and we need to be able to deal with difficult feedback. And, it doesn’t serve anyone when we are overly-prescriptive and lack empathy in how we interact with the work of others. Be a pro, and be intentional about giving feedback that helps them think not only about what to do, but why they should do it that way.

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When I ask "what is the one thing that stands in the way of your productivity?" the most common answer get is "I don't have enough time!" But...really? We each have the same amount of time - 168 hours a week. It's not so much about the quantity of time as it is about how we choose to leverage it.

In this episode, I share three big time blocking strategies that you can implement to help you produce better creative work in 2022.

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