My friend Rob and I got into a conversation over lunch about the concept of creative literacy. We’re not really taught — even in liberal arts and creative arts academic programs — how to manage and follow through on great ideas.

Everyone can experience a brainstorm — but most creative brainwaves end without follow through.

And what a lot of people don’t talk about is the overwhelm that comes from a high creative state. There is an anxiety that accompanies having a ton of ideas flowing all at once.

We talk a lot about how to get to those creative flow states, but when you’re in the middle of one it's kind of the worse time to have to wonder what your process should be. Or to worry that you don’t have one.

Everyone can experience a brainstorm — but do you have a system of rain barrels and cisterns and wells in place to make the most of that when it does happen?

As Rob pointed out, most creative brainwaves end without follow through.

And what a lot of people don’t talk about is the overwhelm that comes with a creative state. There is an anxiety that accompanies having a ton of ideas flowing all at once.

We talk a lot about how to get to those creative flow states, how to get into them, but when you’re in the middle of one it's kind of the worse time to have to wonder what your process should be. Or to worry that you don’t have a process.

I’m experiencing a high creative flow state right now. A lot of people I talk to are also feeling that. And it’s great. Energy has been stagnant for months, for me anyway. For a few years for some of us, also me.

Everything is kind of in Aries in right now and there’s a lot of creative energy and a desire to take action and it's all sort of pouring in now. So Rob was kind of asking me, what are some of the tools that I use to manage that, or is there a way that I can break that down and actually share part of that process.

I think I can do a pretty good job of grounding it a little bit in some systems and tools, especially to help with this idea of overwhelm. So I'm not so much concerned with 'I don't have any creative inspiration'. This is specifically about, what do you do when the fire hydrant is on and it is all running into the street and there's a sense of panic about that.

My favourite go-to magic wand is a list. Lists are magical. They have an ability to change the perception of things. The perceived size of items or problems or concerns, your perceived scope of the To Do cloud that's around your head versus the actual list that ends up on paper in front of you.

There's this anxiety about forgetting things, more than anything, right? So you kind of keep all these balls in the air mentally. You're spending a lot of mental energy just launching balloon after balloon after balloon after balloon, and they're all tied to you and all floating around you in this little cloud.

And one of the things that lists do is they allow you to put those items somewhere so you don't have to worry about forgetting them anymore and that sort of frees up the bandwidth. You can take the balloons down and there's not so much of a cloud around you.

I'm going to talk about checklists in just a bit, which is also another specific way to free up bandwidth.

But there's this high that goes along with taking action, taking risks. It feels sort of good. It's profound! And you can really feel on fire when you're in that state. But the dark side of that energy is what happens when it runs its course or burns out. There's a crash. That caffeine, that sugar high, that drug is going to crash at some point.

And then you're going to realize that you expended a lot of energy starting things without following through on them. And you won't necessarily have the energy left over to follow through, if you spin it in the wrong way. You know what I mean?

Another tool that actually presented itself to me in a really obvious way when I was travelling with Rob last fall was this idea that we should focus on manifesting people, not things. Not the stuff, not the To Do list items, not the resources. Focus on manifesting people who have those things.

You look at that list you made, and maybe there's 25 things on it. When you manifest the right person, they may come with 10 or 12 of those items already taken care of. Or they may have the resources to tick those boxes for you, without you having to do anything other than asking them.

Collaborate. That's what I mean by manifesting other people. That can be an instantaneous thing. It can be a stranger on the street that you stop and ask for directions. In that moment, you're manifesting a person that can tell you how to get to where you're going. It's collaboration, whether it lasts 30 seconds or a couple of years and it's a more formal relationship.

Reach out to experts. Instead of telling them about your great new idea, ask them questions. What do they actually want in the area of your big idea? So you can kind of gear the questions that you ask them towards the area that you're interested in, rather than you telling them what you're making and getting their feedback on it, ask them what they want in the area in which you're proposing a solution or an idea or a venture.

They'll tell you what to make. They will literally tell you exactly what's missing, what they wish existed, and sometimes they'll even help you make it.

The number of times that I've been given resources just because I reached out to someone as an entrepreneur in this phase of my life, let's say in the last 15 years, there are so many times that I have reached out to a coder, a developer, a software engineering expert, a publishing industry person, whatever it might be, and come at them in the right way, with a really curious and respectful desire to participate, people can pick up on that authenticity.

Now if someone is closed to helping other people, that's their issue. You're not going to manifest them anyway. Cross them off your list if you accidentally catch them in your net. Focus on manifesting someone who is open to participating with you.

Just to give you an example of what I'm talking about, more recently with the audiobook production part of my business that I'm moving into, which is one of my big creative new states right now. And when I say I was in a high creative state, a lot of it is around audiobook production. That's one of the new irons in the fire.

I was looking for some resources online, looking for some books on Amazon. I found one in particular that looked really techy. Because I have more questions about some technical stuff, to do with software and file types and less about getting in the spirit of You-Can-Do-It. I'm not looking for that kind of pep talk.

I was looking for something a little bit more specific, and I ran across this author's book and he was a Dutch person. It was still a book written in English but he was Dutch. I looked him up on Facebook and saw that he did live in Holland.

I noticed something in his book that felt kind of like a sign to me. There were examples that he was using about different kinds of studio space that exists, that you can access, as an independent producer of an audiobook. And he linked to a story about my home city, Chattanooga, Tennessee, where our public library built a really state of the art sound facility and they use it for learning purposes and school programs.

But I know a couple of people who do their podcast there. It is something the public has access to. He mentioned it as being a cool resource that our city had. Because of the timing of my reaching out to the Universe, looking for that magic carpet ride of links on the internet that take you to all the things that you were looking for and it all feels perfectly aligned and stuff.

So I was having one of those moments with his book.

So I just decided to send him a friend request on Facebook and then I followed it up with a message explaining why I'd sent him the friend request. And I told him the story, the connection with Chattanooga and I asked him a really technical question that I had, threw some jargon at him, so he would know that I could kind of speak his language and that I was looking to get a more geeky answer from someone.

He was so excited by the interaction that within just a few messages back and forth, he told me about this course that he built and that was available on Teachable and it was an expensive class! It was like, $1500 or something to take this course, and it was really techy looking.

And he offered me a coupon code to access the course for free if I would give him some feedback about it and let him know if that was what I was looking for. There were things about it that needed to be changed to make it more accessible for other kinds of authors.

I mean, that's just an example of something that happened. So when I say 'Manifest the people', that's what I mean.

Take the opportunity. Someone crosses your path and you think, I'm going to Facebook message this stranger. Just do it! I mean, what's the worse that can happen. They can decline your friend request or not answer your message. Or if they seem rude or not open, fine. Keep on moving.

But I can't tell you the number of times that I have reached out to someone who is an expert and they were very generous with their time, their information, and sometimes with their resources.

When I was bootstrapping my business, trying to build something online, I got a lot of help from a lot of people that way, and it's one of the reasons I was able to do it at all.

People like to share their wisdom. They like to be acknowledged for having it. It's often hard earned. They like to have sort of heirs receive their information. People who care, because no matter who you are, you are what filled your work in. Your family doesn't care about your work, and your friends don't want to hear you talk about your work.

Your peers want to hear you talk about your work, and who really values what you do, are the people who are driving down the same road behind you. That's who you want to talk to. Because that's your opportunity to make a difference for someone else, and I think it's motivated by an impulse to sort of go back in time and save yourself, you know?

So when someone approaches me wanting to know about how to do a podcast or something, I already have a list of resources ready to go. So I'm just gonna copy and paste and email it. I'm so excited to think that all the research that I did and spent maybe weeks or months on, can now be reduced to a single email for someone who really wants that information and is gonna go do something with it.

That's really exciting to me. It brings me joy. So don't underestimate the fact that everyone else likes to do that too. We like to be on the end where somebody's asking us to share, and when we're on the end where we're asking for the information, we often feel like we're bothering people.

Now I do think you need to keep your emails succinct. Don't tell people long drawn out stories about your life. Keep it brief. Really really respect their time and think about the fact that you may be one of 50 people who's sending them emails like that, right?

It's really easy to answer something that's short and specific and a lot of people who have taken time to build resources or expertise in a certain area, do have things like checklists that they can send you, or a favourite resource or website that they can point you to.

So make it easier for them to do it quickly. I think you're more likely to get a favourable response.

TIME is the one thing that is limited. It’s the one thing that you can’t make more of. And this is one of my tools, actually. This is one of my subheads in this episode, is this idea about time. You can find more resources. You can manifest more people. You can make more money. But you can't make more time.

So that's one of the big things that you have to deal with when it comes to creative overwhelm, creative productivity, getting shit done. If you can work the time part out, then you can graft a plan onto that. So time is the one thing you can be really strict about. If you're religious and disciplined about the time, then you can be creative and you can flow within that structure. And you can play. You can be a little bit more loose and happy.

This is where I use 3x3 strategy. But you can’t use 3x3 unless you can identify 3 blocks of time each week.

My mentor in writing and publishing and productivity is Tim Grahl. You hear me talking about him when I talk about marketing a lot. Steven Pressfield, who I also talk about, is partnered with Shawn Coynes in a publishing company called Black Irish Books. You've heard me mention many times Steven Pressfield's War of Art as one of my big creative bibles. And Shawn Coynes Story Grid is that type of work specifically for fiction authors and screenplay writers.

Tim's latest book was published by these guys. He's friends with them. He works with them. So Black Irish Books published his latest book called Running Down a Dream. It's a really personal story about Tim trying to start his own business. A lot of failures and anxiety and psychological stuff really that he dealt with. It's super vulnerable and very confessional and just really cool. It represents a lot of why I like him and admire him so much.

In addition to being willing to share how much he sucks at certain things, he's also really, really great about identifying systems and sharing them in this way that I talk about. That mentors have this really genuine authentic impulse to put out their recipes for others.

So in Running Down a Dream, which I'll link to, on this issue of time and creative project management, he talks about a few steps that address this in particular. And one of them was to first identify what the shortest path is. Meaning, find the thing that'