Getting Work To Work

For the last year and a half, I've been hearing this question a lot in response to brainstorming project ideas: "But will it scale?" I also hear it asked in response to mentorship and communication in general. I'm completely fascinated with the question and find myself thinking about the idea that my work should operate from a scale greater than 1-to-1. In this episode of Getting Work To Work, I'm going to explore this idea of scale as it applies to creative work, how I feel when I hear people play this card too early in the creative process, and why there are more factors in play than just our individual time.

Eric Thayne is a filmmaker and online educator who believes the best investment you can make is in yourself. On his journey of becoming a more valuable filmmaker, he shares what he has learned from cinema hacking, mentorship, and delivering both high quality client work and a thriving learning community: what you are really selling is value. I’ve received Eric’s email newsletter for a few years now, but it wasn’t until I took his free webinar at CinemaMastery.com, that I really started to understand his approach to infusing everything he does with value. If you are a filmmaker who wants to learn how to create cinematic videos and attract high-paying clients without buying more gear or spending money you don’t have, visit CinemaMastery.com and click the Free Training button.

What is the minimum level of acceptance for your work? Where is the line between crap and good enough? What does excellence look like in your work? Is perfection attainable? These are several questions guiding today's episode of Getting Work To Work in which I explore the differences between crap at the start of your creative process and the crap at the end. I find that a lot of creative entrepreneurs confuse the two, extending deadlines, avoiding even starting your work, and suffering unnecessarily. I hope by the end of this episode, you'll have a better understand of your crap thresholds and which ones need to be thrown out and which ones need to be solidified. Special shoutout to my good friend Kyle Shold of Freshwater Bay Creative for brainstorming this topic over lunch today.

A couple of days ago, I had a fabulous guest speaker in my Professional Practices class say something that blew my mind and got me thinking: "We have more than enough information and not enough implementation." So much truth in that statement and had to ask myself, why? Why do we favor learning, but not doing? Why do we collect our digital merit badges in favor of showcasing our work? In this episode of Getting Work To Work, I'm going to explore five questions—that are actually excuses in disguise—and how they keep us stuck on information acquisition and not implementation.

In this interview episode of Getting Work To Work, I talk with approachable badass, Melanie Spring. I met Melanie at a conference in Portland a couple of months ago where she gave one of the best talks on branding and being yourself I’ve ever experienced. I walked up to her at the end of the event and asked her to be on this show. In this interview, we talk about a variety of ways you can show up for yourself including owning your voice, speaking with confidence, knowing who you are and what you stand for, listening to yourself, and sharing in order to heal and to build hope.

Is it possible to be bored in the digital age? With an infinite supply of streaming media and social networks—not to mention physical media, relationships, and responsibilities—I don't think we have time to be bored. And yet, as I've gone through my days recently, something has felt off. Is it boredom or something else? In this episode of Getting Work To Work, I'm going to explore the value of boredom, how monotony is a lot like a baby's dirty diaper that needs to be changed, and a few ways you can go about pushing through monotony to the change you need.

For the past four years in the spring, I've taught a class to college students about to graduate called Professional Practices. One of the assignments that I have them do is to identify and research leaders in their field of study or in the industry they are wanting to work in. It's an interesting assignment because it's less to do with passively consuming other people's content, or even comparing oneself to them, and more about paying attention to the people you are connecting with and why. If you were to do this assignment for yourself, would you be able to come up with a list of 5-10 people? Who would be on that list? These are great questions, but here is the kicker: What do you actually learn from the people you are paying attention to? And do you actually act upon that information?

In this interview episode of Getting Work To Work, I talk with Bernie Taylor—an independent naturalist, thought leader, and author—about his work exploring modern-day stories and their connections to mythology, biology, and Paleolithic cave art. We touch on the self and the masks we wear, what stories tell us about ourselves, how the evidence of imagination is found in Paleolithic cave art, genius and madness, and the tension between the past and the future. Bernie also shares about how his latest book, Before Orion “will change the idea of who you think you are.”

I'm reading a delicious book by Adam Savage of MythBusters fame called Every Tool's a Hammer. I'm only about halfway through, but his wisdom has impacted me in a very powerful way: in order to move toward the future I want to create, I need to not only define the big picture, but also obsess over the little details as well. I have a big project that I've been paying lip service to for a few months now and Savage's book has essentially called my bluff about whether I'm serious or not and given me a framework for how to proceed.

One of the hardest things for me to grapple with is when my work doesn’t work. I’m naturally filled with questions: Am I hustling hard enough? Am I pushing hard enough? What am I doing wrong? In the frenetic energy and chaos of these moments, I try everything and anything possible. I’m searching for the answers to these questions. I’m filling my time with activities that tell me what to do, who to be, and how to provide value. But something happened today when I decided to quiet down and sit in the silence: I could actually hear what I needed.