The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 57 - Unstuck

Transcript:

Jen: Well, hello there, you wonderful, generous listeners. One of you reached out to us recently and asked, "How can I help you with the podcast?". What a wonderful question. So, thank you for asking. And we thought we might answer it for all of you. You could help us by sharing this podcast with someone who you think might get some value out of it. How about taking a screenshot of your phone right now and texting it to someone you care about? With a little message like, "Thought of you when I heard this today".

Pete: Mmm, love that. Thank you, listeners. The other thing you might want to do is sign up for our weekly Box O' Goodies, which is an email that Jen and I send out every week with a list of our favorite resources relevant to that week's episode. You can sign up at thelongandtheshortpodcast.com. And, you can also browse our transcripts and all of our other episodes, and there's a couple of ridiculous photos, and ways to contact both Jen and I. Thanks for listening.

Pete: Hey, Jen.

Jen: Hi, Peter. I'm sitting across from you in my office in New York City.

Pete: I know, it's so weird without a screen in-between our faces.

Jen: It's so fun.

Pete: It is.

Jen: Wow. Well, we have had quite the two weeks together. It feels like we have been bouncing ideas back and forth in an inspiration volley unlike, really, anything we've done together before. It feels like we are unstuck.

Pete: Tell me more about that.

Jen: I will, right after this music finishes playing. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: So what do you mean by unstuck?

Jen: Well, I just mean, we're in this great creative space, because we've had the ability to dig deep, ask each other questions, act as a sort of tennis-match of inspiration. And, it got me thinking about the times when it's not this easy for us- when we sit down to record and we're like, "Do you have anything? No? Do you? Oh, okay, well, we'll see how this goes.". And then, we record two episodes that never see the light of day because we're stuck.

Pete: We're stuck.

Jen: So I thought it might be worth noodling on, when you're stuck, how do you get unstuck?

Pete: Feels like a million dollar question. My first thoughts are, there's no such thing as being stuck.

Jen: ...What?

Pete: Just to debunk the whole episode, off the back.

Jen: Oh my gosh, say more.

Pete: What I mean by that is, there's always something we can do to move something forward. And what I think happens when we think we're stuck, is we are trying to do something a certain way, and we come up against tension, or a roadblock, or a creative...what we think is a creative blocker. But it's because we're trying to do something a certain way. And so the noodle, or the question becomes, what if I did it a different way? Or what if I did it the opposite of the way I'm trying to do it? What if I just tried something audacious, or ridiculous? And so maybe we could, we could bounce around a bunch of questions that I think are helpful when being stuck. But I think, firstly, the notion of being stuck might be false.

Jen: Oh my goodness. My mind is melting, my brain's exploding, and I love it! Immediately, when you started saying that, I started scratching something down on my sticky notepad over here, which is that- maybe saying that you're stuck could actually be a relief? Because then you're off the hook. It's like, "Oh, this is so hard. I'm so stuck. I have no ideas. Well, guess I can walk away.".

Pete: Exactly. It's a bit like what Seth Godin talks about with writer's block.

Jen: I love that so much. Tell, tell everyone.

Pete: Essentially, Seth says there's no such thing as writer's block. And, in the same way, there's, there's no such thing as painters block. That, someone who's painting a house doesn't get stuck one day and go, "Well, the old painters block struck so I better not finish. I won't be able to finish today.". But that we've created this phenomenon of writer's block where we think, "Oh, I'm stuck and I just can't write any more today.". And, Seth's assertion is a bit like what we're talking about, which is- just write something crap. If you're trying to write something really, really good, and that's why you're feeling stuck, then try and write something terrible. And just see what happens. Just write, just move, just take one step.

Jen: Oh my gosh. This reminds me of something I was doing with some clients this summer, who had some writing assignments and didn't necessarily feel, in their core, like they were great writers. So, I had heard someone use the phrase "zero draft", which precedes "shitty first draft".

Pete: Oh, a pre-"shitty first draft".

Jen: Yes. And that for many of them was the key. It's like, "I don't know what to write. I don't know what to write. I can't even write a shitty first draft, because I don't know what would go in the shitty first draft.". To which I would respond, "Then write a zero draft.".

Pete: Right, write a zero draft. [laughing]

Jen: And for some of them, that was a tool of permission. So...

Pete: Wow.

Jen: I know. Try it on for size.

Pete: Yeah. But I love that. I think it speaks to what Seth talked about, and it speaks to what we were just talking about before, which is- try something else. So, I will often have clients tell me, "I feel stuck. I don't know what to do. And I feel like I've exhausted all my options.". And so one of my favorite things to do when people feel stuck is to pick an arbitrary number.

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Pete: And say, say that arbitrary number might be seventeen. And say, okay, cool, come up with seventeen ways you could come unstuck. There's no right answer. I'm sure sixteen of them are going to be ridiculous, but maybe there'll be one that we might like. So go. And they immediately just brainstorm and they always end up coming up with the number that I suggest. Because turns out, there's no shortage of ideas. Even, even bad ones. Or especially, especially bad ones, yeah. And so I think this, this notion of like, when feeling stuck, can we just randomly pick an arbitrary number, and then brainstorm ways to come unstuck?

Jen: Okay, so this makes me recall a message I sent you the other day about...I had challenged myself to see if I could write a blog post in less than two minutes.

Pete: Yeah, which you did.

Jen: I did it.

Pete: Well done.

Jen: Which was really crazy. It was a zero draft. But...

Pete: Impressive.

Jen: So, the reason I have to challenge myself with time constraints is because, as a questioner, I often experience analysis paralysis. Where it's like, oh, there's so many things to choose from. And then I have to go down these research rabbit holes. And like, if I don't know every last detail of every last thing, then like, I will never be able to get it done. I'm so stuck in not knowing. So, for myself, I know that I could sit for two hours to write ten sentences. So, I said to myself, see if you could do it in two minutes. And I did it.

Pete: Boom.

Jen: But I'm a questioner. I'm curious to know for someone like you, who is so good at having an idea and just acting on it right away. If you start to create excuses for not working, how do you undo those excuses? What sort of tests do you set up for yourself?

Pete: The time constraint one is one I've definitely used. Sorry, I've, and I've actually done a very meta post about this, which was, I think, titled, "I Only Have Twenty Minutes To Write This Blog Post". And so, it was a blog post about using time constraints to your advantage. And I find that super helpful, myself. Another thing I like to do is ask myself, where am I stuck? Or, what's the hard part? I think I've mentioned this a few times on the podcast. Actually, just writing it down, is often super helpful for me to realize I'm stuck on this one particular thing. And the one particular thing is most likely not as big as I think it is in my head. And then having done that, I do the arbitrary number thing. I'm like, "What are fifteen ways I could get through this?". Or, "What are sixteen really bad ideas related to this?". And I just find that process of moving, of starting, of writing, or whatever the action is, really, really helpful. Because, usually there's one idea that I think is worth picking up, and I can't find that one idea unless I just get a bunch of bad ideas out there.

Jen: I have a little exercise that I do from time to time, that maybe I should share.

Pete: Please.

Jen: It's an exercise I call, "Drop the Pen".

Pete: Oh my gosh, I never heard this.

Jen: So, it's like a creativity jolt exercise. So, in my mind, creativity is being able to connect the dots.

Pete: Mh-hmm.

Jen: So I will...well, I have to actually get something. Excuse me for a moment, while I grab a book off the shelf.

Jen: Okay, so what I do is- I grab a book off the shelf. Right now I just picked up, The Little Book of Talent by Daniel Coyne. So, I typically will grab a book on creativity, or a personal development book, and then...I call it "Drop the Pen", but there's never a pen involved. It's really just my finger. I open up the book, I drop my finger, and whatever I land on, I try to connect it to the work I'm doing in that moment. It might be ridiculous. And it might be amazing. So in this moment, we are talking about how to move your work forward. And my finger just landed on...let's see, I haven't looked yet.

Pete: Oh my gosh. She's doing it. It's happening.

Jen: "Made the better choice". That's what my finger landed on. So, now I'm going to connect this to the idea of stuck versus unstuck. If I want to be someone who makes the better choice, I'm going to commit to moving my work forward, which means finding a way out. So let me try again. I'm going to drop the pen again.

Pete: That was an easy one. That felt set up. We go again.

Jen: Drop it. Like it's hot.

Pete: What have we got?

Jen: "Hit golf balls for an hour".

Pete: [laughter] Okay, cool. I like it.

Jen: Okay, so how I would connect that- to me, hitting golf balls for an hour is the equivalent of working on your technique. So then I would say to myself, if I'm feeling stuck, what could I do to move my technique forward for the next hour? I'm going to commit to something that is technical.

Pete: Yeah. I think I would add to that, that as a golfer, one might feel stuck. That, oh, my technique sucks. And I'm really stuck in the way that I swing the club. And it's like, well, what if you just hit a hundred golf balls and practiced your technique?

Jen: Oh my gosh. Okay, I want you to try.

Pete: This so much fun.

Jen: Isn't it so fun? Drop the pen, but actually just drop the finger.

Pete: Drop the finger. Okay, here we go. "Every skill is, is built out of smaller pieces. What scientists call, chunks.".

Jen: Love it. Okay. So, if you're feeling like you can't move forward, instead of focusing on the big picture, focus on the small chunks.

Pete: Yes. Okay, building on that. A question you can ask yourself...we're really fired up here...a question you can ask yourself when feeling stuck is- what is the smallest thing I can do to move this forward? Or, what can I do in the next twenty minutes to move this forward? Start really small.

Jen: I love it. I love it. You could use fiction books or other cookbooks. But I prefer things that I know were written in order to help people through their creative process. So, I typically use something on creativity, or a personal development book, or like a leadership book.

Pete: Hmm. I love it.

Jen: And we do this in class all the time.

Pete: Right. I think another way that we can talk about getting unstuck, is to talk about people in our lives that might be able to support us. So a question to ask is, who do I know that can support me? Or, help me? Or, give me some feedback? And I think that a really interesting way of getting unstuck, is saying to someone like you, Jen, I would say to you, "Here's the situation, what do you think?". Or, "Here's a situation, what am I missing?". And knowing you, you would immediately come up with a bunch of really interesting ideas, a bunch of which I'm sure I haven't thought about. And that sometimes, what's really simple for someone else is like really, it's not fear-inducing, but really can feel like somehow, that we're stuck. Like, we are blinded by something that is right in front of us, that you are able to point out to me.

Jen: Ooh. Which leads me to something else I love to do when feeling like I cannot crack this nut, is to bring the issue to a friend who has literally no expertise...

Pete: Yes!

Jen: ..in the area I'm working in.

Pete: You're looking right at me. Which is great.

Jen: Sometimes it's you. But it's not always you. You know, sometimes, I'll be working on something and I'll, you know, ask a friend who is a writer to help me with a theater problem.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: You know.

Pete: I think it's brilliant. I think this notion of "beginner's mind" is something that gets a lot of air-time. Especially in companies, but also just in creativity is, can we look at a problem with beginner's mind, even a problem that we've solved before? And try and see a way to solve said problem that we might not have thought before? And that doing that with a beginner's mind, and looking at first principles can be a really effective way to do that. So I love that, going to someone who literally has a beginner's mind makes that practice even easier.

Jen: And if you're thinking to yourself, "But I only have friends who are in my industry", that's what podcasts are for. There are so many ways to get advice from someone that doesn't even realize they're advising you on a very specific issue you're dealing with, by just tracking down a great thinker who is outside your realm, and seeing if you can apply their principles to your work.

Pete: Right. It's like what you just did with the book, but doing it with a podcast. I think that's really cool.

Jen: Mmm, I feel the creative juices flowing. [laughter]

Pete: Okay, what about, like, for those of us, of those listening, that maybe like being stuck?

Jen: Well, that's a real thing. That is a real thing. I had an experience with a client a couple weeks ago where, I wasn't actually talking about her, but I said, "Some people love their problems. They love their problems so much. They're married to their problems.". And she said, "I feel called out in this moment.". I was like, "I wasn't talking about you, but we should definitely deal with that.". Because sometimes our problems, they're so familiar. That feeling of, "Oh, I can't move this forward", is so familiar that we'd rather stay there than find out what it's like to leave that feeling behind.

Pete: Yeah. Change is scary. And people like to stay in their comfort zone sometimes. Which means staying with the feeling of stuck. Ooh.

Jen: So are we...I mean, I feel like out of the gate, you put this challenge on the table. So I'm going to pick up the challenge and offer it to you, listeners. Are we eliminating the word "stuck" from our personal vocabulary?

Pete: Yes. I think there's no such thing as being stuck. There is only opportunities to think about something in a different way.

Jen: Ooh, snap. So, if I'm hearing you correctly, it's not just that we're eliminating the word "stuck". It's that we've actually replaced it. So, if I come to you with the intention to say, "Pete, I'm feeling stuck.". Instead, I'm going to say, "Pete, I have an opportunity to grow.".

Pete: Mm-hmm. Yes, please. I'll answer that call.

Jen: Oh, my gosh. It was hypothetical, but I got a little butterfly, in my stomach.

Pete: It might be the singing in the background. Or it could be the challenge.

Jen: Okay, so, Pete.

Pete: Mm-hmm.

Jen: Take us home. Tell us what we've learned today. In a nutshell.

Pete: So, right out of the gate, what we have learned is that being stuck is a choice. And, I think we can choose to eliminate that word from our vocabulary. That I believe there is no such thing as being creatively stuck. And that instead, we can come up with little fun exercises, like you and I did. Little fun opportunities to have a conversation with someone. Or a series of questions that we can ask ourselves in order to come up with alternatives to things that we are working on.

Jen: I love it. And that is The Long and The Short Of It.