Daily Creative with Todd Henry

While it’s certainly important to address conflicts and work to resolve them in a healthy way, it’s equally important to focus on the overall culture of your team and how it is trending.

Read the full essay here.

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The most creative and productive careers often emerge at the intersections of disciplines. It’s not a linear path, but a serendipitous collision of multiple areas of interest that create an opportunity. Some might even call it a “creative accident”, which is the reason for the name of this show. Such was the case with today’s guest Danielle Feinberg. 

Danielle Feinberg began her career at Pixar Animation Studios in February 1997, and since then, she has worked on 14 of Pixar’s feature films. She cut her teeth on early films like A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc. and the Academy Award®-winning Finding Nemo and The Incredibles. Feinberg was the director of photography-lighting for the Academy Award®- winning features WALL•E, Brave, and Coco. Most recently she completed her work as the visual effects supervisor on Turning Red.

In this interview, we discuss how creativity and career emerge at the intersections, why it’s important to pursue awe in your life and work, and how Pixarnavigates the complexity of a long-arc project like a film.

Watch Danielle's TED talk.

Learn about the documentary about the making of Turning Red.

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When you think about innovation, you probably also think about disruption. Innovation in many people’s minds is about creating a better solution that makes an old one obsolete. This means that it’s inherently a competitive and finite thing - someone wins, and another person loses.

But what if we didn’t have to think of innovation in that way? What if innovation could be something other than disruptive? That’s what today’s guest Renee Mauborge argues is not only possible, but necessary. Renee is the co-author of which has sold millions of copies, and she’s back today to discuss her new book called Beyond Disruption. 

If you are interested in building a career or an organization based on building a body of work that benefits yourself, your community, your industry, and the world, you need to listen to what she has to say.

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It’s faulty thinking to evaluate past decisions based upon your present understanding. And, doing so can lead to worse decisions in the future. In this episode, I share an essay that I recently wrote about why we need to approach each decision with clarity of mind and refuse to allow retro-analysis paralysis to cloud our judgment.

Read more essays and listen to the podcast archives at ToddHenry.com.

My new book Daily Creative is available now.

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A few months ago, my friend Ben Beshear had me on his podcast Life, Money, and Living Well to discuss creativity, leading talented people, and finding purpose and mission in life. I really enjoyed our chat, and asked him if I might be able to release a part of it on the podcast. Today's episode features the first hour of our conversation. To hear the final part, where I discuss my views on retirement and productive passion, listen to the full episode here.

My new book Daily Creative is available now. It's a daily reader to help you stay prolific, brilliant, and healthy.

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When seeking advice, it's best to go to someone with a lot of experience. Today's guest has certainly earned his wisdom, and has compiled it into a new book of advice for anyone wanting to live a more meaningful life. Kevin Kelly is a renowned writer, futurist, and technology enthusiast. His career in technology and futurism began in the early 1980s when he became an editor at Whole Earth Review, a counterculture magazine focused on technology, ecology, and personal empowerment.

In 1993, he co-founded Wired Magazine, a publication that explores the intersection of technology, culture, and politics. He's authored several books, including The Inevitable and What Technology Wants.

Today he returns to the show to discuss his latest book Excellent Advice For Living.

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It’s time to reclaim the profundity of the present moment. Each moment has meaning that, if ignored, will be lost forever. Circumstances will never again combine in this unique way to form this moment, right here, right now. There are insights that you can never regain if you let them slip through your fingers.

Those who are able willing to do their own thinking and to take disciplined, strategic pauses even in the midst of chaos and uncertainty are much more likely to connect non-intuitive dots and synthesize larger patterns.

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Do you have a framework for making decisions? How do you know which opportunities to take and which to pass on? Can someone take a look at your work - how you lead, write, talk, collaborate - and see what matters to you?

In my 2015 book Louder Than Words, I wrote about the value of having a personal manifesto (or team manifesto) that can guide your work and help you do work that is personally meaningful and uniquely valuable. It’s not supposed to be an in-depth playbook, but is more of a set of guiding principles by which you make decisions and invest yourself in your work. It helps you in three ways:

1. It reminds you of your core values, and what you're unwilling to compromise for short-term gain.
2. In a complex world, it gives you a simple set of rules by which to live.
3. It shows others what matters to you, and helps you be more consistent in how you approach your work.

I also realized when I released the book that I’d never made my own personal manifesto public.

So, on this episode I offer a few thoughts about how to craft your own manifesto, and I share the guiding principles that I use in life and work.

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If you are feeling uninspired, recognize that it could be due to feeding on the output of the Zeitgeist Blender. Don’t allow cultural sentiment to rob you of the joy of surprise and delight.

This is the podcast version of an essay from ToddHenry.com. You can read the full essay here.

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Each person has a unique form of genius to offer the world. It's the thing that you bring to the table that no one around you can bring because of your unique combination of passions, skills, and experiences.

On today's episode, Ozan Varol is here to discuss how each of us can awaken our unique genius and bring it to the world each day. Ozan's new book is called Awaken Your Genius.

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