everybody. This is still a hefty and this is heat and shop. Today on the subject, we're gonna talk about how to overcome creative blocks or internal resistance to get certain work product on you, like talking about more than your sales and market. We just want a bullshit and chat about business and life. And hopefully, while we're doing that, provide long value to be the best business for people trying to get shit way. Don't want to give you feedback. That's bullshit. You want you to do your best. This is definitely something everybody has gone through when you're founder, when you're in a startup, you going through this will be quite a lot. You have to create things you have to create work. Product doesn't benefits.

Writing an email doesn't benefits. Writing a sale script, creating a landing page, publishing a block post, creating a video, you know, writing some code to finish up a future. Whatever it is you have to create. And whenever humans are involved with kind of creative and productive endeavours, they do encounter internal resistance, right? Would you would call like writer's block? Okay, Whatever creative blocks and those of those moments where you have a difficult time getting started or you have a difficult time not getting distracted. And so finishing the thing that you need to do. And I thought it'd be fun for the two of us to just jam a little bit on this and share some of our kind of some off. Always that we found around this. Some of the tips that we have to share to overcoming any kind of creative blocks of

resistance is yeah, I'm gonna first say that like, I'm not even sure if creativity can be

different. Do, uh all right, that was more,

Uh, yeah. I mean, look, the reason I'm saying that is it's It's one of those things where it's like, What is being creative, really mean? Sure, if I'm an artist and I can't paint and I'm a painter like I paint like paintings that I can, we can define that as there's a creative block where there could be something else going on. But we can say there's a blocking creativity. If I'm a writer and I just can't get myself to write, you could argue. Okay, that's the creative block, right? Um,

there's there's books for that. There's a book called The Artist Way, and there's other books, too, and they talk about things like write morning pages. So, like when you wake up, just write a bunch of stream of thought, and that will help jump start your creativity. I don't know, though, like in business in the in the life of work. I'm not sure if creativity is something that's define herbal in the same way that is in other places. And I feel like we always have the opening and ability to be creative, whether it's in our in our personal lives or in our work lives, even if we're not artists,

even if we're not writers. And that's something that I would want to stress and say, OK, if you feel like you're blocked creatively, I would recommend you get very specific about what's different in your life from when you are creative, I guess in your own kind of mine, and then try to figure out how you want to fix it. For example, in my own life, if I'm not very creative, if you want to call it that with my words when I speak, if when I right It's just not going out properly. Like if I write a female or something like that, I know that I'm just not feeling right. I don't know if I'm creatively blocked you Some would say that. Stop feeling right or if,

you know, even in my case, it's like, You know, I'm trying to, like, tweet something and share something I've done or just come up with something that's in my head that I want to like share and it just not coming out. That could be a creative block, but really, for me, that has a lot to do with it, something that I think I relate to, creativity in this way and creative blocks, which is your feelings. And I think that it's not really about creativity. I think it's more about how do I see. That's what I'm gonna throw down,

see what you got right on, like I'm not gonna even challenge you, because this is gonna become too big of a topic and I don't even know if I want to. Although this reminds me we need to find more things to argue about. This is actually a fun part of this parkas that we haven't done in a while. We just like each other too much and agree with each other a lot. But the thing that I want to focus on real quick is I mean, you have created, you know, you have created so many different things. But let me just ask you when you when you have to win the last time that you rode out of a more long form barcos or something along those lines, have you You have surely encountered times where you didn't just say I need to write this. You sit down. You opened your editor and you started writing and then you're like, up. It's finished. I'll edited later,

and that was it. That's kind of a very smooth experience. But you surely have gone through phases where you open the editor and you started, uh, you thought about the first sentence, and then you've got distracted by email on that detective somebody and then you slept with someone, and then oh, it's time to go and meet up for coffee with somebody. You went back and tried to restart again and kind of did this for a couple of days and didn't really progress anywhere or just had a difficult understood down and and finish the thing that you really wanted to finish the work on, because that was what I would just call internal resistance. Right? There's something inside of you that was like blocking it might not be blocking your creativity. Maybe it's just your focus. Maybe it's your energy, whatever it is. But I think what a lot of people encounter I definitely encounter this is that I want to create a work product,

Whatever that is could be a piece of content oftentimes, and it's not always a smooth this just saying I'm going to do it now that I'm doing it often times I'll have to go some form of resistance even because my attention is split because I don't feel like doing it right now or because when I start working on it, I have a difficult time to get into quote unquote, a state of flow where things just happen. And so I have a few start full starts before I finally get to the creating part of it. Do you have a counter that?

Yeah. I mean, I've learned that I just need to spill the beans. Some things like that, and what I mean by that is I just need to, like, not get caught up in being blocked. And if I have to write something crappy Teoh, for me, getting past it is just doing the work and whatever it is just starting. Even if it's like a sentence or a word or whatever with writing, I think a lot of it has to do with that. You could easily over think what you're trying to write, and that usually leads to this lack of freedom, and then your words just don't flow. It's just overthinking it. So like one way to think about it with any endeavor that I would say you feel blocked on creatively or whatever is just don't let yourself stay in your head and get it out of your head whatever you have to do.

So even if you're blocks on like creating an interface clear block on, how do I send this sales email, you know, or whatever, Just start writing or start drawing on a whiteboard or just start for me like a lot of things with product have to do with a look at other other products with one block just to get some inspiration going or get some, like criticism going right about them. And then in that decade, like Mumby up, she kind of just start. So I think just starting is the key. And I know, like, I'm sure a lot of creative things like Tell you gotta do this stuff. Say that, but yeah,

I love it. So let me ask you about about dealing with distractions when you have, like, these blocks, right? So you're somebody that is incredibly quote unquote on you are, you know, involved in so many different communities. You're very active from Twitter and social media. You are Your inbox is, you know, probably a very noisy and loud place. And I know how good you are being super fast and responding to things and just use part of problem a 1,000,000 different places in communicating with a 1,000,000 different people and organizations and teams during a normal day. What's your process for? For when you need to do, um, you know,

when you when you're not in manager mode animal but you're in make a mode. What's your process for that? Do you block out everything the you disconnect from the Internet. Are you just like you've gotten so good at it? Even if you have 1000 taps open and slack and notifications and your phone rings, you just don't respond to anything. You sort of get in the zone. Do you deal with, like, blocking out? Um, you know, Christ, for your attention or distractions when you are in this kind of make a mode, trying to save work product yourself

have gone pretty amazing a context switching. So I think if you're gonna work on, uh, it's anyone work on a lot of things, I think like I love the idea of maker and manager mode. My my biggest issue isn't what I'm sitting in front of a computer. It's actually what I'm not. So these days I'm sort of out and about more, uh, having meetings related to F Y. I that are outside of my home office, basically, and I have a meeting days like today is gonna be a meeting day, and it just means I have two or three meetings there outside my house. So for me, the issue is more like, Can I whip out my laptop in my car,

which is my second office, and work for like, an hour or in between meetings. Literally. I do that. And so for me, sitting in front of a computer is my biggest a pack if you want to call it that or my biggest issue that I try to solve for because, like, I could go sit in a coffee shop and, like, get on my laptop to Don't get me wrong, that's fine. I kind of like a car, though weird like that. And so I think there's these habits and behaviors that we develop to make sure that we are productive. And for me,

I find those. So it's not so much like I'm in front of a computer. There's a 1,000,000 tabs open peeper slacking, and I can't concentrate cause I can switch between towns pretty fast. Ah, and so that helped. And so I don't have any routine of turning things off. I think I'm a little different than most people like that, cause I feel pride in being able Teoh process those things, and I don't think I would call it multitasking. I think a lot of people haven't met bad comments, meditations that for me is simply this. If I If my attention is drawn to something and then all of a sudden I need to shift my attention to something else, how quickly can I can I engage in that something else and then get back to my other thing? Yeah, hello.

And that's context switching. That's what I would practice if someone wants to get like some gets a what I would say, his advanced level and the reason I called advanced levels. When I talk to people about this, yeah, I can't do that like Okay, well, I mean, we could do anything you want to do, so that's cool. Uh, you just need to decide if it's important you in order to be able to contact Switch. And I think contact switching is what I would advise. Anybody who wants to get better at like even the creative blocks and things like that is, if you can switch from a task to another one and then switch back and impossibly switch to another one and then switch back, you're You're mastering this ability to take your attention from one thing to another and being able to shift your mind really fast and so you know,

I think like that's That's the way I think about a lot of this stuff, which is like, very basic, like things that are happening that are reality. How'd I just get better at them instead of trying to resist them with a lot of people do resist. Obviously, the natural thing to do is like turn everything off because when I'm in this mode, I'm in this mode and this is what I need. I get it like, Do that If that works for you. For me, I prefer did not have to have such strict rules around my life in my work so that I

can be a little more fluid. I love it. I love one thing I like most about. What you just said was the somebody's like, I'm just not good at that. And you're like, This is what you want to tell yourself, right? We could get good at anything we want Teoh. That's the most heat on being about everything you said. It's like, uh, I don't if I buy into this way of thinking, that was pretty much I think that there's a certain this is the It's a lot that I want to see you, but I wanna keep this episode short. So two cents and then I'll get give a book recommendation will wrap this up. I think that a just like anything in the world,

if you want to get good at things, you have to practice them and do them a lot. And it helps if you believe you can get good at them. And if you can bring a certain lightheartedness to thinks. But if you mentally make this a massive mountain your Oh, my God, I cannot focus. Focus is impossible for me. It's 400 generations of people without focus, and I am haunted by the spirits of my DNA and the 1,000,000. And also I have all these proofs, all these stories I could tell myself about my past. Somehow I had a difficult time focusing. And so I know I need to focus tomorrow, but I can already know if you make this a huge deal, you are going to make those thoughts realities,

right? You're gonna follow you. Your thoughts will influence your actions and your state. I mean, your thoughts will influence how you feel the way you feel will influence how your you know what you do in which you're capable of in terms of tapping to resource is so think about these things that these massive challenges will make them bigger than they need to be. So if you can think lighter thoughts if you can think better thoughts if you can just look at this and go Yeah, I mean, maybe in this example that I gave if you think I've always you know what, we struggled. So now is the time to get better, right? I have, ah, lifetime experience and struggling. So now it's time to go through a lifetime of experience on the being great us. And if you could just,

you know, attacks some of these things that you want to get better with a little bit of humor with a little bit of cure posse with a little bit of like lightheartedness, it makes the world of makes a world of difference. And then it's nothing of practice. Right where the mawr you create, the more you do, the better you get at these things. And eventually some of the things that were incredible challenges to you in the past now seems super super easy. So the best thing to do to get great at whatever creating stuff or having less Inglis of blocks and resistance? It's just to create more, more stuff and get better at creating and, uh, Quikbook record. You give one. I'll give one to wrap up the episode. The War Off Art from Steven Press Field Isa Super Short Book I Love his writing is Writing is so persistent.

I like when I read something that really well written like, I really appreciate that I call he said this really nicely in three sentences thing. This book is so small, and the pages are like usually just half written, just one paragraph of two paragraphs. I love that. It's a very quick read, but it's really well written, Um, and kind of focus is exactly on this,