Daily Creative with Todd Henry

After 2020, a lot of people are asking questions about life, work, and the choices they are making. Some are even beginning to consider whether it’s time to move on to a new kind of work. But where do you even start to consider a career change? How do you find the intersection of your skills, your interests, and the opportunities in the marketplace?

Today’s guest, Ashley Stahl, is a career expert and has developed a framework to help anyone discover the kind of career that they are best suited for. In the interview, we discuss everything from how to seek opportunities to how to identify the kind of work you are best suited for to how to interview well. Her new book is called Youturn.

Mentioned in this episode:

Please Support Our Sponsors:

Butcherbox: Butcherbox.com/accidental

Please Support Our Sponsors:

Butcherbox: Butcherbox.com/accidental

After 2020, a lot of people are asking questions about life, work, and the choices they are making. Some are even beginning to consider whether it’s time to move on to a new kind of work. But where do you even start to consider a career change? How do you find the intersection of your skills, your interests, and the opportunities in the marketplace?

Today’s guest, Ashley Stahl, is a career expert and has developed a framework to help anyone discover the kind of career that they are best suited for. In the interview, we discuss everything from how to seek opportunities to how to identify the kind of work you are best suited for to how to interview well. Her new book is called Youturn.

This episode is sponsored by Stamps.com. Get a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. Go to Stamps.com and enter promo code Accidental.

The pandemic hasn’t really changed the direction of the marketplace, it’s mostly just accelerated it. Many of the strategies companies are employing to deal with remote work are ones that were already inevitable a year or two ago, but have now become necessities because of the state of the world. The change that we’ve all been thrust into can be destabilizing if we aren’t able to adapt to the new reality.

On today’s episode of the podcast, David Burkus shares key insights from his new book Leading From Anywhere. It’s important that managers learn to understand how these new complexities affect the mindset and workflow of the people they work with, and develop strategies for helping their teams thrive, especially since it’s unlikely the workplace will ever go back to “normal”.

One of the key insights we discuss is the importance of developing empathy for the people on your team. The workplace is often the “great equalizer”, in that we all have access to the same enviroment, the same resources, the same tools, and the same people. However, when we work remotely, each person is in their own environment and some are most definitely better equipped than others to deal with the pressures of the day. While one person may live alone with plenty of space and ultra-fast WiFi, another might be living in a two-bedroom apartment with small children who are doing remote school at the kitchen table. We must learn and adapt to the unique needs of the people on our team if we want to help them succeed, which means we can’t simply layer the same expectations on everyone on the team. We must commit to a posture of continuous learning, then adjust as we go.

Regardless of when the pandemic ends, we will all need to learn to “lead from anywhere”. Hopefully, this episode will help you along that journey.

Mentioned in this episode:

Please Support Our Sponsors:

Butcherbox: Butcherbox.com/accidental

Please Support Our Sponsors:

Butcherbox: Butcherbox.com/accidental

The pandemic hasn’t really changed the direction of the marketplace, it’s mostly just accelerated it. Many of the strategies companies are employing to deal with remote work are ones that were already inevitable a year or two ago, but have now become necessities because of the state of the world. The change that we’ve all been thrust into can be destabilizing if we aren’t able to adapt to the new reality.

On today’s episode of the podcast, David Burkus shares key insights from his new book Leading From Anywhere. It’s important that managers learn to understand how these new complexities affect the mindset and workflow of the people they work with, and develop strategies for helping their teams thrive, especially since it’s unlikely the workplace will ever go back to “normal”.

One of the key insights we discuss is the importance of developing empathy for the people on your team. The workplace is often the “great equalizer”, in that we all have access to the same enviroment, the same resources, the same tools, and the same people. However, when we work remotely, each person is in their own environment and some are most definitely better equipped than others to deal with the pressures of the day. While one person may live alone with plenty of space and ultra-fast WiFi, another might be living in a two-bedroom apartment with small children who are doing remote school at the kitchen table. We must learn and adapt to the unique needs of the people on our team if we want to help them succeed, which means we can’t simply layer the same expectations on everyone on the team. We must commit to a posture of continuous learning, then adjust as we go.

Regardless of when the pandemic ends, we will all need to learn to “lead from anywhere”. Hopefully, this episode will help you along that journey.

This episode is sponsored by Indeed. Want qualities job candidates fast? You need Indeed. Right now, our listeners get a free $75 credit to upgrade your job post at Indeed.com/creative. (Offer good through March 31, 2021.)

This episode is also sponsored by Skillshare. Explore your creativity at Skillshare.com/AC and get a free trial of Premium Membership.

Have you ever felt anxious about your job, but you don’t know why?

Everything is going well, or at least according to plan, and there is nothing obvious that should be causing anxiety. Yet, when bedtime rolls around, you struggle to get to sleep, and you have a perpetual sense that you’re falling behind.

Falling behind? Behind what?

That’s the question I was asking myself early last year. I was on the mark to have a record year. Things had been going great, and I was able to help more people and teams and see more impact from my work this year than I ever have. By all accounts, I should have been on cloud nine. Yet, somewhere in the back of my mind, I noticed anxiety creeping into my thoughts, my planning, and the writing I am doing for my next book. At the exact moment that I should have felt peace and space I was experiencing the opposite.

That’s when I realized that I was keeping score.

This is an old habit, and one that dies hard. I was paying attention to a lot of little markers that have nothing whatsoever to do with my core work, or my effectiveness, or the impact that I’m trying to have with my clients or the people who read my books and listen to my podcasts. Instead, I was paying attention to things outside of my lane, and allowing them to pull me off-course and rob me of the joy and satisfaction that I should have been experiencing.

Here are a few of the unhealthy ways I tend to keep score. See if you can relate:

How THEY Are Scoring

When someone else gets something – a contract, an offer, an endorsement – that I wanted, it bothers me. It’s as if there is only so much of it to go around. As much as I encourage my clients to focus on their own lane, I have to admit that it’s easy for me to let my peripheral vision distract me. I’ve had to develop the discipline of reminding myself that they are not responsible for my body of work, and I am not responsible for theirs. Stay. In. Your. Lane.

I’ve seen this play out in teams when someone gets a coveted promotion, or is celebrated for a project, or gets more than their share of esteem for the amount of contribution they truly made. It pulls the team apart, and people begin to withhold because they feel as if they aren’t being treated fairly.

They aren’t.

Business isn’t fair, just like life isn’t fair. There will be things that you get that you don’t deserve, and things you deserve that go to someone else. There’s probably someone else right now keeping score on what you’re getting that they’re not. The sooner you learn to embrace the inherent unfairness of the workplace, the sooner you can simply focus on bringing your best every day and letting the chips fall where they may. I love this quote from the Bhagavad Gita, which I first heard from Steven Pressfield: “You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of work.”

Are you paying too much attention to how they are scoring?

Things I Can’t Control

This is another one. I tend to track things I can’t control, and get anxious about things that I couldn’t change if I wanted to. It’s one of the curses of being a systemic thinker – I always worry about the governing dynamics, even when they are well beyond my ability to influence.

Inside of organizations, I see this play out as a general fear about market trends, or about the new company leadership (seven or eight levels above), or about the person on the team who simply doesn’t like you. There is nothing that can be done about any of these things – aside from diligently doing the work in front of you – yet they rob many people of valuable creative cycles that could be spent actually creating something...

Have you ever felt anxious about your job, but you don’t know why?

Everything is going well, or at least according to plan, and there is nothing obvious that should be causing anxiety. Yet, when bedtime rolls around, you struggle to get to sleep, and you have a perpetual sense that you’re falling behind.

Falling behind? Behind what?

That’s the question I was asking myself early last year. I was on the mark to have a record year. Things had been going great, and I was able to help more people and teams and see more impact from my work this year than I ever have. By all accounts, I should have been on cloud nine. Yet, somewhere in the back of my mind, I noticed anxiety creeping into my thoughts, my planning, and the writing I am doing for my next book. At the exact moment that I should have felt peace and space I was experiencing the opposite.

That’s when I realized that I was keeping score.

This is an old habit, and one that dies hard. I was paying attention to a lot of little markers that have nothing whatsoever to do with my core work, or my effectiveness, or the impact that I’m trying to have with my clients or the people who read my books and listen to my podcasts. Instead, I was paying attention to things outside of my lane, and allowing them to pull me off-course and rob me of the joy and satisfaction that I should have been experiencing.

Here are a few of the unhealthy ways I tend to keep score. See if you can relate:

When someone else gets something – a contract, an offer, an endorsement – that I wanted, it bothers me. It’s as if there is only so much of it to go around. As much as I encourage my clients to focus on their own lane, I have to admit that it’s easy for me to let my peripheral vision distract me. I’ve had to develop the discipline of reminding myself that they are not responsible for my body of work, and I am not responsible for theirs. Stay. In. Your. Lane.

I’ve seen this play out in teams when someone gets a coveted promotion, or is celebrated for a project, or gets more than their share of esteem for the amount of contribution they truly made. It pulls the team apart, and people begin to withhold because they feel as if they aren’t being treated fairly.

They aren’t.

Business isn’t fair, just like life isn’t fair. There will be things that you get that you don’t deserve, and things you deserve that go to someone else. There’s probably someone else right now keeping score on what you’re getting that they’re not. The sooner you learn to embrace the inherent unfairness of the workplace, the sooner you can simply focus on bringing your best every day and letting the chips fall where they may. I love this quote from the Bhagavad Gita, which I first heard from Steven Pressfield: “You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of work.”

Are you paying too much attention to how they are scoring?

This is another one. I tend to track things I can’t control, and get anxious about things that I couldn’t change if I wanted to. It’s one of the curses of being a systemic thinker – I always worry about the governing dynamics, even when they are well beyond my ability to influence.

Inside of organizations, I see this play out as a general fear about market trends, or about the new company leadership (seven or eight levels above), or about the person on the team who simply doesn’t like you. There is nothing that can be done about any of these things – aside from diligently doing the work in front of you – yet they rob many people of valuable creative cycles that could be spent actually creating something meaningful.

Are you tracking the score of things you can’t control? Are there forces “out there” that are causing you to spin your wheels or worry about tomorrow?

This one is tough. There are certain expectations that I set for myself, and when I miss the mark on one of them, it bothers me. This is true even if I far exceed a dozen other expectations. There could be really good reasons why I didn’t meet my own expectations, but that doesn’t matter. I could still stew on it for weeks. Often, I don’t even realize how this is affecting me until I stop and really consider what’s causing my anxiety. Sometimes I realize that it is an errant comment I made in a talk the month before, or a bad client call, or something that no one else even noticed – let alone remembers – but me.

This is one of the reasons I start feeling like I’m “falling behind.” Behind on what? My own expectations. No one else even knows they exist.

It’s fine – great, even – to push yourself to excel. It’s necessary if you want to do work you’ll be proud of in ten years. However, you can’t allow the arbitrary scoreboard you’ve established to drag you down. It should fuel you, not kill your drive.

Are there ways in which you are setting expectations that you could never possibly live up to? Have you allowed expectation escalation to push your idea of success to an overly stressful and unreachable level?

I’m curious if I’m alone (I suspect not), or if there are arbitrary scores that you keep in your own work, on your team, or in other areas of your life that affect you.

This episode is sponsored by Patreon. Sign up today and start creating on your own terms at Patreon.com.

There probably aren’t many people reading this who will be deeply saddened to see 2021 in the rear view mirror. This has been quite a year, for certain. Now, it’s time to set our sights on the future and to think about how we will prepare ourselves for whatever is ahead. It’s time to steel our resolve and establish the practices that will enable us to bring our best each day in the coming year.

On today’s episode, Brian Johnson is here to talk about how to optimize your life and pursue wisdom in 2021.

If you want to accomplish anything in your life, you need to build the infrastructure to facilitate it. Nothing happens without the supporting mechanisms, disciplines, and practices to bolster your effort. As much as we love the romantic notion of “winging it” or “making it up as we go”, talent and instincts only get you so far. If you want to create deep impact, and to sustain that impact for a long season, you need to support your effort with practices.

Your practices do a few things for you:

1. Increase your capacity. When you do something over and over, your capacity to do that thing increases over time. So, if you want to get better at study, then study. If you want to be a better writer, you write. If you want better relationships, you set disciplines around how and how often you engage with others.
2. Increase your agency. When you obtain a sense of mastery in one area, it tends to increase your sense of agency to change other areas of your life as well. If you want to up your confidence, start doing one or two small things very consistently and very well.
3. Increase life satisfaction. A lot of research points to the reality that small, everyday wins create a sense of deep engagement and enjoyment. If you want to feel deeply engaged with your life in 2021, just choose a few small, healthy habits or practices to implement and do them well and often. You’ll notice an uptick in your mood and your sense of overall wellbeing.

Here are the questions I challenge you to consider over the coming week:

What 1-2 new practices will you implement in 2021 to help you achieve your goals? (Will you start studying? Develop better exercise habits? Start a small writing practice each day?)

What will you stop doing in 2021 so that you have more space to do the things you want to integrate? You can’t just layer things into your life – you need to regularly prune.

Let’s make 2021 a great year!

Mentioned in this episode:

Please Support Our Sponsors:

Butcherbox: Butcherbox.com/accidental

Please Support Our Sponsors:

Butcherbox: Butcherbox.com/accidental

There probably aren’t many people reading this who will be deeply saddened to see 2021 in the rear view mirror. This has been quite a year, for certain. Now, it’s time to set our sights on the future and to think about how we will prepare ourselves for whatever is ahead. It’s time to steel our resolve and establish the practices that will enable us to bring our best each day in the coming year.

On today’s episode, Brian Johnson is here to talk about how to optimize your life and pursue wisdom in 2021.

If you want to accomplish anything in your life, you need to build the infrastructure to facilitate it. Nothing happens without the supporting mechanisms, disciplines, and practices to bolster your effort. As much as we love the romantic notion of “winging it” or “making it up as we go”, talent and instincts only get you so far. If you want to create deep impact, and to sustain that impact for a long season, you need to support your effort with practices.

Your practices do a few things for you:

1. Increase your capacity. When you do something over and over, your capacity to do that thing increases over time. So, if you want to get better at study, then study. If you want to be a better writer, you write. If you want better relationships, you set disciplines around how and how often you engage with others.
2. Increase your agency. When you obtain a sense of mastery in one area, it tends to increase your sense of agency to change other areas of your life as well. If you want to up your confidence, start doing one or two small things very consistently and very well.
3. Increase life satisfaction. A lot of research points to the reality that small, everyday wins create a sense of deep engagement and enjoyment. If you want to feel deeply engaged with your life in 2021, just choose a few small, healthy habits or practices to implement and do them well and often. You’ll notice an uptick in your mood and your sense of overall wellbeing.

Here are the questions I challenge you to consider over the coming week:

What 1-2 new practices will you implement in 2021 to help you achieve your goals? (Will you start studying? Develop better exercise habits? Start a small writing practice each day?)

What will you stop doing in 2021 so that you have more space to do the things you want to integrate? You can’t just layer things into your life – you need to regularly prune.

Let’s make 2021 a great year!

This episode is sponsored by Literati. Go to Literati.com/creative for 25% off you first two orders.

This episode is sponsored by Patreon. Create a steady, reliable income and the freedom to make what you love. Sign up today at Patreon.com.