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Are you spending more time putting out fires than starting them? If you are, you probably own your own business. You probably have emails to answer and clients to talk to and meetings to have. You probably sit down to do something and 3 hours later wonder how you’ve only answered 2 emails and in that time, you had 5 more come in. Putting out fires is sometimes part of this crazy adventure but if we don’t get to occasionally start them, we might burn out. No pun intended, or maybe it was… because we have to start fires AND we have to make sure they keep burning.

We are in the business of making things that do not exist. Not the professional fire fighting business. More like the professional fire starting business! Starting fires is in our job description. It’s how we got here. Having “stuff” to do does not excuse us from our work. Email is important, your clients are (very) important, but all of that goes away if we don’t continue to make awesome stuff. That’s where we get confused I think: Our clients don’t pay us to put out fires, they pay us to make stuff. To be creative. If we don’t take care of that part first, eventually we stop getting paid.
Start-More-Fires

If you feel yourself putting out more fires than you’re starting this week, rest, then Start. More. Fires.* Do something that feeds your soul. Get out of the house, find a trail, hike. Make something new, make something awesome. There is not a single reason why we can’t make that happen today. We don’t have time not to. Starting fires is what you do. Stop spending your days putting them out.

 

Happy fire starting and Monday 🙂

*These are metaphorical fires. Please don’t start real fires. That’s not cool. Unless it’s a campfire… by all means, please start a campfire.

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Good morning fellow makers 🙂 Last night I went skating. At a skating rink with a disco ball, epic light shows and lots of little children to crush if I fall. I’m convinced that shoes with wheels on them were not made for large mammals like myself. Anyway, I’m out there stumbling around (not falling though!) when I see this late 50’s guy in a tie-dyed t-shirt literally skating circles around me. He’s obviously better than me. I mean his shirt gave that away. But another thing that was obvious: he’s done this before. He’s had this experience that I’m having right now of “I don’t know if I’m going to fall and crush a child or not.” But that didn’t stop him. He kept going and now he’s awesome. This thought taught me a lesson about comparison.

The problem with “They’re better than me” comparison is that you get to see all of the awesome and none of the suck.

You see all of the good and none of the bad. All the winning and none of the struggle. But trust me it’s there. Nobody gets through this one without the struggle. Nobody gets to the have good ideas without first having a lot of really, downright, awful, bad ideas.  So the next time you feel comparison coming on, think to yourself “I’m just seeing the awesome.” The move on. Keep moving, keep making, keep thinking, keep growing.
Comparison-Move_on

Remember this: If you keep stopping to see what everybody else is doing, it’s going to take you longer to make something awesome. Tie-dyed guy was better than me. When he started there was some dude better than him. In the real world there are a lot folks doing awesome work and awesome things. Don’t let the fact that they’re making awesome stuff stop you from making awesome stuff. They went through the suck. It didn’t stop them.

 

Happy Friday, yo!

Chris

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  • Terry Neuzil - Wow! makes so much sense Thanks ChrisReplyCancel

leaders are readers

Reading wasn’t important to me until I made it important. It’s important because I’m only one person. I don’t have all the information. In other words, the collective ideas, views, knowledge, and life experience of other people are always going to be more than I can ever have on my own. Education and reading is how we can close that gap a little bit at a time. We absorb the ideas, experiences, and knowledge and we apply it to our life. Making our view of the world more broad through reading.

So I thought since summer is upon us, it would be a good time to make a plan for what I want to read over the next three months. Here’s a my summer reading list 2014 some I’ve read before and some I haven’t. Some are old and some are new but all should be awesome. Here’s to a summer of awesome:

1)The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance  The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance by Steven Kotler

6)The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly?   The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly? by Seth Godin

8)Duct Tape Marketing: The World    Duct Tape Marketing: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide by John Jantsch

  9)As a Man Thinketh    As a Man Thinketh by James Allen

11)Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal    Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal by Oren Klaff

13)Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust   Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust by Chris Brogan

14)The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business   The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business by Josh Kaufman

15)Zag: The #1 Strategy of High-Performance Brands   Zag: The #1 Strategy of High-Performance Brands by Marty Neumeier

This should get me started 😉 All of these books have come highly recommended from friends, podcasts, etc. I can’t wait to dive in! Hope you get to enjoy some of these as well. Happy reading!

Happy Thursday!!

Chris

 

Question:

What books do I not have on here that I should add to my “Big List?”

 

 

 

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Phone Monsters, Family timeMeet NED The Phone Monster.

Our phones are great but sometimes we need to take a break from them on purpose. NED (No Electronic Distractions) is a physical reminder to be intentional. It was thought up by my brilliant friends Josh and Jenny Solar. The idea being that they feed NED their phones at least 1 hour a day (on purpose) and spend that time with their kids (on purpose) distraction free! When it comes to family or friends, intentional time spent with them is invaluable. For you and for them. NED is just a crazy fun way to make that happen.

While NED is designed to help families be more intentional about the time they spend together, I would challenge you to think about how it could help you as a creative?

Why would putting down your phone help you make better art?

Here’s why:

Intentionality Breeds Creativity

Being intentional is part of creativity. The act of choosing what we put in our brains and when is the single biggest part of my creative process. And the creative process of so many others who make stuff for a living. When it comes to our phones, as awesome and helpful as they are, it’s difficult to control the messages that are coming in unless we’re controlling the time we’re spending on them and how we spend that time.

Two ways you could use NED to feed your creativity:

1) Time For Bed? Feed NED!

What if you left your tasty iPhone for NED to enjoy overnight until 9am? Or when ever is a sufficient time for you to have done something awesome with your morning? I’ve talked before about how when I wake up in the morning and grab my phone to turn my alarm off, the internet is there: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Email. All those things are great but I don’t want to spend the first 30 minutes of my day catching up on other people’s lives. Instead I want to live my own. So I will intentionally do something else like read, drink coffee, eat bacon, as soon as I wake up.

2) Preparing for a big project? Use NED as reminder for no distractions.

When I’m preparing for a shoot, I won’t look at Facebook or Instagram starting two days before the shoot because I know how it can affect my creativity. I can’t control the messages coming in so I know it’s best to just not do it. Instead I let NED serve as a reminder to not carry my phone around for those two days. He gets to eat my phone, I get to make better art. Win, win!

Creativity is about leaving stuff out and putting stuff into our brains. It’s about our brains connecting the dots. That means if we want to increase our creativity, we have to do or not do things on purpose.

I love this idea and I wanted to tell you about it! So consider yourself told 🙂

The cool thing is you get to help make NED real: You can support the Kickstarter campaign here. This could change the way families interact and it could change the way you work as a creative.Ned, Phone Monsters

 

Happy Wednesday!

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We love the drive-in movie theater. Yes like the one your Grandparents went to. They still exist, man! It’s the perfect summer time experience: Drive out to the middle of nowhere, eat corndogs, watch movies in the open air. It’s awesome. We have yet to have our first drive-in visit of the year but trust me it will be happening soon. Because: corndogs.

Since Jen and I shoot weddings, we have a lot of work coming up this summer and I’ve been thinking about things that I can put on the calendar as an intentional experience to feed my creativity. The first thing that came to mind was the drive-in. We’ve been going for the past few seasons as a time to literally step away from work, rest, hangout with friends, and reset. I figure if I’m going anyway, I may as well go on purpose. #DriveInOnPurpose 🙂 But the question is:

How can going to the drive-in make you a better creative?

1) It’s Outside.
There is a definite link between creativity and nature. Being outdoors has inspired great works of art from every generation and it will continue to do so forever. Because we long for wilderness literally and figuratively. Plus there’s a different experience as a movie-goer watching a film in the open air that you just don’t get in the indoor theater. Being outside is awesome.

2) It’s a chance to rest.
Since Drive-Ins are few and far between, you usually have to drive a ways to get to one. Driving through Tennessee in the summer is refreshing. So you have the drive, then since there are usually two films playing (for one low price!!), you have the 4-6 hours of no cell service, no email, no Facebook. So it offers an opportunity to step back from your work, rest and watch epic movies. And eat corndogs.

3) The movies are usually different enough to shake your brain up.
Right now the closest drive-in to us (The Stardust Drive-IN Theatre) is showing Maleficent (Disney, dark fairytale, Angelina Jolie) followed by Blended (Rom-Com, Adam Sandler, Drew Barrymore). I’ve talked before about dissonance and how it can be good for your brain to experience in order to shake things up when you’re creatively stuck. Well, turns out the drive-in has that feature built-in to it’s features. Win, Win!

4) It’s different.
I would venture to say that most people have not been to a drive-in, yes? It’s different. Different is good! Different means that we’re introducing something new into our brain and our brain will return in kind by helping us connect the dots because that’s how creativity works! Taking in new sources of stimuli is the beginning of creativity. So in this sense, you are literally feeding your creativity and eating corndogs! Who knew the drive-in could do all that? #BusinessExpense

Also stuff like this:

things to make you more creative, drive-in, summer movies, things to do in summer

 

So there ya go. The drive-in: not just for making out. 😉

If you wondering if there’s one close to you, I found this searchable drive-in database to help you find the closest one. Call up your friends, make it a thing! Drive-in’s are a dying breed but an awesome part of history and good for your creativity. If you go, let me know how it was!

Happy Tuesday!

 

 

 

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