Using Creativity to Reshape Your Life and Regain Freedom with Chase Jarvis
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I'm Chris Hutchins, and I am excited to have you on my journey to optimize my life. First off, I'm so grateful for all the questions you've been sending in, and I'll be releasing a Q&A episode soon, starting with a ton of great content on credit cards, points, and miles. But today, we're talking to Chase Jarvis. And while you might not know him by name...

I am sure you've seen his work. He's one of the most influential and award-winning photographers, creating hundreds of campaigns for companies like Nike, Apple, Samsung, Google, and Red Bull. He's written two best-selling photography books and was a contributor to the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times story, Snowfall.

And if that's not enough, he is also a successful entrepreneur. In 2009, he launched the Best Camera app, earning App of the Year, letting you share images directly to social networks, and the app is widely credited with kicking off the photo sharing craze. The next year, he founded CreativeLive, which was just acquired by Fiverr last month and is one of the world's largest live streaming education companies. So today, we're going to be talking about creativity.

Now, if you hear that and think, oh, that's not for me, I don't paint or do anything creative, we might be cut from the same cloth, because that is exactly the reaction I had when I started thinking about this conversation. As I started doing my homework, I realized I couldn't have been more wrong. Part of that homework was reading Chase's new bestselling book, Creative Calling, establish a daily practice, infuse your world with meaning, and succeed in work and life.

It was a fantastic read that really opened up my eyes to how I could optimize and upgrade my own life through creativity and creative practices. I am incredibly honored and excited to be chatting with Chase Jarvis. So let's jump in. Chase, thanks for being here.

Thanks for saying all those nice things about me, Chris. Yeah, it's always good to flatter someone before you're going to interrogate them about all kinds of things. It's, oh, oh, stop, stop. So I would say you have quite an intimidating creative background. Were you born into this journey or how did it all come about? Were you always this kind of creative icon in your peer group? Interesting. I'll start with a short story and it goes back to second grade. Okay. Okay.

So my teacher, actually, it's going to go to first grade the summer between first and second. I made my first film, me and a couple of buddies in the neighborhood. We washed a bunch of cars and did some yard work to get enough money to buy two rolls of super eight film. And then we hired my buddy's brother, Derek for $1 to be our cinematographer. We, we scripted, made our costumes and it was called the sons of Zorro. It was a,

blockbuster. The funny thing is, in addition to making the film, there was a business aspect of it, right? We had to pay all that, lay all this money out to make the film. And then we went and bought a bunch of concessions. We put flyers up all over the neighborhood. We, uh,

We screened the film to a sold out audience and we actually made a profit on our first film. And I, again, this was the summer routine first and second grade. So I'm rolling into second grade thinking I'm the shit, right? Movie maker. This is going to be cool. And I had a little magic act that I had going on. I had a little standup comedy routine and,

and second grade kicks off and I'm loving it. And that's right before the holiday break. So we're recording this around Thanksgiving time here in the U S in 2021.

So it was roughly the same time of year, take me back second grade. Before the holiday break, there's this thing called the ice cream social and the student or parent teacher conferences. So I'm at school after the day is done and the parents show up and I'm eating ice cream with friends running around the halls. And I duck in just to hear, just in time to hear my second grade teacher, Ms. Kelly say,

tell my parents that Chase is so much better at sports than he is at art. And I'm like, okay. And right now, if you're driving your car, listen to this podcast and you're like, oh, poor little Chase. You know, actually I didn't, it wasn't poor little Chase. It was like, oh, okay. That was a piece of programming that I took and

And said, okay, great, I'm going to pay more attention to the thing that the teacher thinks I'm good at because whether we like it or not, we're social animals and we all can get acceptance. And we want to lean into those things where other people find virtue and value in us and steer away from those where we are, say, less encouraged. And so started my creative journey.

Fast forward, I ended up going to college on a soccer scholarship. I played soccer and football, could have played either, could have gone on to soccer professionally. And at some point, I'm recognizing that there's this side of myself that I have been denying for since largely second grade. And I...

didn't build an identity around being a creator, although I was a skate punk and we enjoyed building our own skate ramps and punk rock music and spray painting and all that kind of stuff. So there was all kinds of creative activities, but my identity was wrapped up in the thing that the adults in my life wanted for me. And my parents, career counselors, grandparents, teachers, these people that we largely respect and admire were steering me to do, to stay focused on sports. And I was fine academically. I was solid, but

My punchline here is you opened the show with questioning whether or not you had a creative sort of identity or you were aware of the creativity that resides within you and that you create something every day, all day long. You're a creative machine, Chris. And I had that same experience, right? Creativity is something that's trained out of us, not trained into us. The cool thing about it is it's a flame inside us that never goes out.

And I believe I wrote the book, Creative Calling. I started Creative Live and all these creative apps. And basically everything in my entrepreneurial and creative journey has been around trying to cultivate this, understand it better and share it with others. So the short answer to your question is no, I was not raised in a world. My dad was a cop. My mom was a secretary at a biotech company. It wasn't thought of as critical for my upbringing. And yet I

When I looked around at what is creativity and how valuable could it be, I, like so many people who you identified yourself as one of these people in the intro, were unclear about what that even means and the value that represents in the world. So no, it wasn't in my background. Yes, I think it's the most important and urgent thing we can do is understand and acknowledge our personal creative journey.

It's funny. One of the things in your story that you shared rung similar to me, which was about making movies. So I remember I read this book, Rotamonte's Revenge. It was like a 75-page sci-fi book. And so for a project, a friend of mine and I made a movie, and we submitted it as a school project. And I think back to all the...

The boxes my parents kept of things as a kid, I was all with drawings and all that stuff. As a child, we were so much more creative. We were drawing, playing make-believe. I went to my neighbor's house the other day and there's all these kids that made up a game in the backyard where they draw things and hide them. Are we less creative as we're older? What is that journey like? Because it feels like it was so much...

stronger and part of our identity as children. And it somehow, and maybe you know why, but somehow it waned as we got older. Well, there's science here at work. And then I can also share, I believe that almost everyone's empirical experience, at least if it doesn't echo this sentiment, it's present somewhere in your past. If you stand up in front of any first grade classroom, second grade classroom, say, who wants to come up to the front and draw me a picture? Every single hand goes up.

Every single hand. There's not judgment around, oh, cool. I want to draw. Does anybody here not want to draw or play a game or create a story together? Everyone says yes at, you know, first, second grade. And then you go to fifth, sixth grade and it's a third of the hands and you go to high school and it's two hands out of 30. And this is what I mean. And I do believe this is changing. So I want to put a pin in this. We can revisit it later, but

Ultimately, we are emerging from a time, thankfully, we're leaving a time period where the concept of creativity was seen as optional. Think of what our parents and our parents' parents were coming out of the Industrial Revolution, factories. The education system was based largely on the factory. You put all the kids and the widgets in one end, you put them through this black box, everybody learns the same thing at the same time in the same way, and then they come out the other end.

that first of all is not how human beings learn we all learn differently through different modalities and and so it's easy to see why this thing that is very intangible very difficult to describe we know it's valuable but you can see how those things end up on the cutting room floor of a system that values homogeneity and simplicity and mass production much like the factory so it

It's not easy or it's not hard. It's not a stretch rather to understand why we are in this situation and why you notice that your friends and their friends' kids are joyful and playing and creating like crazy imaginative stuff. And yet here we are like, okay, I got to pay the bills, got to do this. My spreadsheet is up to, is it, you're looking at a spreadsheet right now of all the things I need to talk to Chase about. And it's just important to

for us to be aware. Like we can respond to things if we are aware that they have, that has happened. So anyone who's listening right now who hasn't, doesn't identify as a creative person or a creator, let's just put a pin in that too. Cause we're going to come back. I'm going to beat you over the head with the fact that

absolutely you are creative. Chris, you and I are co-creating this conversation right now. If you just started screaming in your microphone, it would dramatically change the trajectory of our conversation. Is there like a specific definition you use to define creativity? Yeah. Creativity, the way that I think about it and talk about it in my book, it's a very, it's a widely accepted definition. It's just

just taking two or more things and combining them in an unlikely and ideally useful way. So there's an element of utility there. Even painting can be the utility of painting is to make you feel an emotion or making a film, for example, is to understand a story or narrative and connect with that narrative. And, you know, it helps you see that science is wildly creative, computer coding, wildly creative. The, the,

light that we all take for granted right now, right? That's just electrical engineering plus creativity. It took Einstein however many thousand, 10,000 experiments gone wrong in order to create the light bulb. We even use the word create the light bulb. And we think of that as hard science. So once you start to see that you're just combining things in new and interesting ways to make useful stuff, you start to realize that creativity is all around us.

Looking back now on different things in my life and saying, oh, there was creativity there. My friend and I both had children around the same time. What device can we create to feed a bottle to a baby without having to hold it? And we were like, oh, if you take a gallon-sized Ziploc and you fill it half with air, it's like the perfect pillow and cradle for a bottle. And now, talking to you, I'm like, that was probably a really creative moment. Whereas in the time, I was like, just, I'm solving a problem. It doesn't feel like creativity.

That's the cool thing about creativity. Again, this scale is really where I'm trying to focus people's attention because if you can

It is not a stretch. It is not a logic. It is not illogical or not a logical fallacy that if creativity is defined by combining, you know, two or more things in, you know, new and useful ways, ideally useful, then you're like, wow, okay. If you can identify or agree with that, that's a pretty easy step to recognize that what you just did with that bottle was even called it an invention. You're inventing.

We use words like innovation all the time.

But what is innovation if it's not creativity applied? So it's a pretty simple framework, a pretty simple argument for someone to buy into. And for those of you who identify as creative and listen to the show, great. I don't need to bring you along. But for the doubters, hopefully the first nine minutes here will at least get you to understand, to listen to the next nine minutes and listen for...

the further rationale that this is a superpower. I'm now accepting that creativity is something that happens all the time, whether I'm tweaking a recipe at dinner or creating a bottle holder. And now what? Now I've accepted I'm creative and you've talked in the book about how creativity is something that's wildly important and as essential to health and well-being as exercise and nutrition and mindfulness. So

How do I use this newfound knowledge that I'm creative to benefit myself, to feel better, to be happier? I'll give you the vague concept first, and then I'll give you a very actionable approach. And for some people, the vague notion is enough for them to grab onto it and put it to use, and others may need something a little more structured. So we'll cover both. The first and more conceptual approach is, okay, if you acknowledge that

creativity is all around you, what you really are doing is, sweet, I have the ability to shape my environment, right? I'm choosing the things that I will expose myself to. I will craft a morning routine. I will curate and cultivate the kinds of things that I let into my world. Those are people, those are art, those are ideas, right?

And what you're doing is you're creating a framework for you to then go on and be able to live the life you want. And again, for most people, you're like, Oh, okay, I buy that. I buy it. And that's part of what I want. There's a part in the book where I talk about, yes, this book is, if you are identified as a creator, this will supercharge your photography, your design, your entrepreneurship. But really this is a book about life and how to live it. And again,

And this is the place where I want to get people because then, you know, moving freely between cooking a meal and tweaking a recipe to use your example and designing a career arc for yourself. What do I want to do next? If I can, we have to spend our time some way and we all have to make money. Why don't I do something that I love and make my, not just make a masterpiece, but make a masterpiece of my life and,

To me, that's a much more interesting life lived. And again, the people that you look up to, respect, admire, they did not get that life on accident. They created it very intentionally because if you do not continue creating it, if you stop, then you will, if you don't write your own script, somebody else will certainly write it for you. So let's just say that I'm guessing that I got three quarters of the listeners to say, okay, cool. I'm down with that. If I recap that in my own words to try to bring it to life,

By recognizing that I'm a creator, I'm doing creative things, whether it's food or at work or with my family, I'm now realizing that, wow, I actually have the ability to create things in life. And I can apply that same lesson to what many people think of as, well, I need this job and I need to do this thing. And this is how the day works. And I have to do this thing. I can now apply these creative lessons to creativity.

how I can structure my day, how I can structure my career, how I can structure my life, where I live, and that the same muscles that I would use to do that can be improved and strengthened by these other creative acts. So if cooking more and being more experimental, I'm strengthening the same muscle that I would use to plan my day and life. You are 100% correct. And

The science is very clear here. Everyone on your show is probably aware in some way, shape or form of neuroplasticity. This is what you are doing when you are picking up that hobby that you gave up when you were in seventh grade because playing the guitar wasn't cool at that time or something. What you are doing when you re-engage with that and when you drive home a different way from work every day or you actively are changing the recipe for the meal you're cooking for your family, your friend, your girlfriend, wife,

you know, husband, partner, whatever, that literally rewires your brain to new possibilities.

Because if you do not do those things, then those paths in your brain get, they're like grooves, right, in pavement. They become ever deepened. And that lack of ability to escape those grooves, that is where monotony and a lack of innovation, a lack of a dynamic environment actually, I think, undermines the human spirit. It undermines the things that you say, gosh, I wish I could do X or Y or Z. Right.

So one, not changing all of those things and putting this to work in the way that you talked about it, it,

Not only does it, is it not make possibilities more possible, but it actually actively undermines those things. So yes, a hundred percent. Now I think we've got three quarters of the listeners coming along with us at this point for the one quarter who's okay. I need something more concrete there. You may have, or you may have heard of, or be aware of, um,

a concept called a practice or a process. What is the creative process? I have a very simple, and the book is actually divided into four sections, that this is a process that will work for a drawing that you want to make at your desk, for a book, or for your life. Four simple steps, and the acronym is IDEA, I-D-E-A. And this is a four-step process that you can look at the

creation of anything and say it went through these four processes. And when you are aware, it's again, like so many things, the awareness that this is happening and your ability to then focus on these as steps can actually, the increased awareness and focus will enhance your ability to do it more regularly with more consistency and more

I would argue more successfully. So I stands for, this is imagine what's possible before you create something. You have to say, what do I want to create in this world? Before you started this podcast, what I want to do, do I want to write a book? Do I want to chisel some concrete slabs and make a tablet? No, I want to create a podcast. So you, you imagined what was possible.

Then you have to very simply design a plan. This is just like building a house, right? You don't just start hammering shit together. Imagine what you want to do. Design a plan, execute that plan. And then the A is what is the most commonly misunderstood, but one of the most important is we need to amplify this outcome. And by amplify, I

create an audience for this thing, whether that's internal or external, whether that is, you just need to put it out into the world. You need to share this because that is a very valuable feedback loop that will help you refine your creative endeavor, whatever the thing that you set out to create was. So once again, imagine, design,

execute and amplify four very simple steps that if you do not know where to get started, do this with anything. You can do it right now. I want to draw a picture. What I want to draw. I want to draw a monkey. All right. I'm going to design how the monkey is going to look. It's going to be hanging from a tree. I'm going to make some funny circles on a page. I executed that plan. And then if I like what I, and then I'm going to show my partner, uh,

And they're going to laugh at me and I'm going to get some feedback and go back and maybe refine it. But the point is, this is a simple for, for, this is literally how creativity works. If you care, most people don't care because they get concept one that we spent a little more time talking about. If you don't get that, or if you want to make this a very repeatable process and you want to have a more scientific approach, if you're a, a scientist by trade or computer programmer, this may help.

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So how important when exercising our creative muscles is it to maybe go deep versus wide? So for example, I'm kind of like conversational in French, but I could probably be fluent. And so I could go really deep on one thing, or I could go pretty wide and go read a book on something totally new, like the history of manufacturing in the US, which is a wild, interesting thing to learn about. It probably really sparks some creative thoughts. And so I think it's important to go deep.

How do you think about exercising deep in a practice, whether it's the guitar or cooking or something versus adding new things to your arsenal of learning and creativity? - This is an interesting question and it's interesting for me on a couple different axes. I'm gonna try and go with the first and most obvious, which it depends on what your goals are. I believe, there's a section in the book on mastery.

And it's my personal belief having mastered photography. I've been named master of a bunch of different areas of photography by those groups that do such things. And so, and I also, I'm aware of my mastery of photography. It's, it shows up in my resume and my bio and all that stuff. One of the things that I love about going deep, and this is cool. This is true about anything about going deep on any subject is

is, first of all, you tend to only go deep on something you love because that's what you're willing to do. And whether that is birding or mechanical engineering or podcasting or photography design, you name it, going deep on something and allowing yourself to

Let's just for the most simple definition of mastery, let's say you've got 10,000 hours, you know your way around the whole ecosystem. Maybe you don't know everything, but you are aware of your areas of opportunity to grow and

When you have mastered something, you have the distinct benefit of being able to lift and stamp the concept of mastery onto other areas and master them in an increasingly accelerated way. And our mutual friend, Tim Ferriss, dear buddy of ours, and you can look at Tim was a salsa dancer, a world champion, in fact. And

Before he was an author. And then he had... Same thing, I think, with judo. He had mastered a couple of different areas. And then...

he was able to then apply what he had learned conceptually about how deep do you have to go? What are, is it mastering a number of skills or is it mastering one skill or one technique? How do you learn who are good mentors and coaches? You get a body of experience and then you can, not all of it applies to writing, for example, in Tim's case, but a

A lot of it does. And you can, you see this pattern in someone who is world-class at something tends to be really fricking good at a bunch of things because they have then in turn expanded what they learned about mastering one thing to other things. Not always the case.

So to your question about if I want to be creative, should I go experimental in one thing or deepen others? I think it is a it's a little bit of a yo-yo. The first thing you want to do is cover a broad set of interests. If you do not know what you are passionate about, if you do not know if it's the guitar or ceramics or needlepoint or cooking, then

then just experiment and play. And we can, there's a lot of cues from our childhood. You talked about making films, you talked about your kids drawing, and there's all these cues of things that we loved in our history that as an adult, if you reconnect with some of these things, you will be shocked at how much joy it could create for you.

So it depends then on where you are in that phase. The yo-yo part is go broad at first, then go super deep. And once you go super deep, you understand what mastery is, and then you can go broad again. You can start to play in a bunch of different areas and look for the next thing that you'd like to master. Do you have some examples maybe from readers that have written in after applying some of these lessons from the book?

that might be really relatable to people about how creativity could change and reshape someone's life who is not really thinking about it? I can open my phone and go to any Instagram post or go to my DMs, for example, and just, I'll just, I'll do it right now. The first DM I clicked on of the 150 that are here on my phone from yesterday, I just finished chapter two yesterday evening. It's helping me so much. Now I can see myself. I see how my creativity is vital and that it's possible for me to get

back to joyfully and playfully letting go of the pressure to make money and help others. Simply by letting go allows me to get better at my thing. Thank you so much for this book and having shared your journey and your story. I really do hope to meet you one day, probably interviewing you on my soon-to-be podcast. There are literally, I get hundreds every day

of people who are putting these very simple things to work. I had someone, not yesterday, day before yesterday, I used the example of driving home a different way to rewire your brain. If you

from your house to the office. We all tend to travel the same path because we don't have to think about it. We can think about what we're going to cook for dinner or where we're going to go to the movies or who we're going to call that evening. And just the simple act of driving home a different way every day, slightly different, it helps you see the wonder in the world and that you truly are not a robot and you do have autonomy in

99% of the time you turn left and you turn right, there is a recognition and awareness that builds up in you that you can change. What you did yesterday does not define who you will be today or certainly not tomorrow. Yeah. I already see ways that I could start applying it here and that's pretty exciting. Are there...

Are there ways that you can fuel creativity, whether that's diet or exercise or mindfulness? Since all the hacks is about all these things like travel, for example, or changing your body composition, for example, you are putting creativity to work when you do that because you're creating a new diet regimen. When you put certain foods in your body, you feel better straight up. You give your body the fuel that your individual needs

creature wants. Maybe you're allergic to nuts, so you cut nuts out and crave protein. You're an O positive blood type and more protein is better. And like when you start to feel your individual human with the right kind of food and you take the right kinds out, you only do that through experimenting and you then create a plan for yourself to

to what you're going to put in your body. And then you add exercise and you go back to your child and you said, God, it was so fun. I was on the long distance running team when I was in junior high and I just loved it. As a kid, I was very competitive and whatnot. And now as an adult, I'm going to take up running again. And you realize that

you're doing all of these things that we've talked about so far in the podcast, right? You're looking back to your childhood thing, what made you happy and healthy, or you played soccer as a kid. And you start not as a 42 year old tech executive, you start juggling a soccer ball again in your backyard. And you're like,

Like I'm telling you that will ignite something awesome in you. And it probably will give you one piece of a fitness regimen that will, if you insert that into your, you're already like, okay, I'm going to go to the gym three days a week for an hour. You've infused this play and it's this combination of play, the utility of moving in a more dynamic way than you do at the gym that creates a great regimen.

And if you create a good food program that you love, that has foods that you love and you've experimented through preparing these things and you create an exercise regimen that engages you, that is more than just going to the gym three days and sitting on the Nautilus machines.

you are going to create more success for yourself. You will be more joyful and you will pursue both of those things more vigorously than if you did not take intention. If you just read some shit on the internet and then went and did, I'm going to do four sets of eight reps of squats and then I'm going to do, that's not an inspired life. And the people that you look up to and appreciate and admire, that is not how they are doing it. I promise you they are taking an active role

And so whether this is for changing your body composition or for traveling to a place that you've always desired to travel to, like it's all there for you. That's the thing. It's like, it's not just about making a work of art. It's about making your life a masterpiece. Yeah. Yeah. You talked about joyfulness, which I thought was something interesting in that last comment. Yeah.

Is there science behind creativity affecting our happiness and our joyfulness in life? Absolutely. So if you can disrupt the typical paradigms, you start to pay attention. And this concept of attention, not mean pay attention like as in what your eighth grade math teacher told you, but as attention, the one thing we truly have in this life is where we direct our attention to.

When you realize that where you place your attention, are you thinking of yourself as lucky or unlucky, as happy or sad, as creative or not creative? When you start deciding to direct your attention, the science is very clear here.

You decide to be happy and then you get breaks at work and you break through on your diet and your relationship. It's not the other way around. If you wait to be happy until you get that break at work, you will largely be waiting forever. So there is a high correlation to people's autonomy and their creativity as connected to their life arc.

to not just happiness and joy, but also to fulfillment, which I think is a very powerful asset. If you feel fulfilled, that is like a, it's the wind at your back. Life happens for you rather than to you. You may not know this, but we share in common, is that both of us, I think, when we had very little money, decided that we were going to travel the world with our then girlfriends, now wives, for multiple months.

Yeah, I love it. So we did eight months and we spent almost all of our money. I'm curious what kind of impact you think either that trip specifically or just travel in general has on people's life, people's creativity. Wow. I think travel is an incredible gift that you can give yourself.

For so many reasons, I'll go back to my own personal experience first, and then I'll expand it. And in the particular, I think, I think it was James Joyce in the particular lives universal. So I'll share my experience and maybe you can resonate with the,

listener here. So I mentioned that I was from economically, my family didn't have that much money, middle, lower middle-class status. Dad was a cop. Mom was a secretary. Bless my mom's heart. I remember she didn't bake cookies because sugar was expensive. That's the kind of household I was raised in. Temperature was 58 degrees. If you're cold, put on a sweater. And yet I

They would save up all of their money. And we had some friends who lived abroad and we would visit them every summer. And so I went from the middle of my lower middle class suburb, largely white, only hanging around with people that looked and talked and walked like me. And then imagine plunking yourself down in the middle of

London in the early 80s. Mohawks, Piccadilly Circus, punk rock that commingled with art and culture.

And the same could be true for my parents who travel super freaks. They, you know, that's basically all they do now is they're in Asia for a month and Russia for a month and they go all over the place. But despite from being at a very young age, we had very, I didn't want for anything. I don't want to misrepresent this. I had Adidas with four stripes and like upside down Nikes kind of thing. And yet the experience of going to going abroad, spending time in the mountains,

transformed me because I realized that the world that I came from wasn't all that there is. And when I learned about other cultures through, again, things that were engaging to me at the time, punk rock music, for example, or cuisine that I remember going to Mexico, for example, and the concept of spicy food didn't exist. My mom's very sensitive to spice. So we had no spice, not even any pepper in my house.

And I go to Mexico and you realize, oh, so that's a jalapeno. You think of the spice of life, but it was like very literal for me. And so whether it's cuisine or music or culture, like it, it, there's so much value in it. And I did not know that about you, Chris. And I'm guessing that was, that it was part of your courtship and,

Right.

Yeah, definitely. I mean, one of the things that I think I probably never recognized until this conversation was, you know, I'm the kind of person at work or in life that someone says, oh, this isn't going to work. No, actually, let's actually find a different way to do it. Or when something breaks, like a dryer breaks, I'm like, let's just see if we can open it up and figure out how to make it work. And we don't have to call someone. And I think that going abroad, traveling different countries, realizing that

everyone around the world does so many things in different ways. Like in some countries, people eat dinner at 11 p.m. In some countries, people take a nap in the afternoon. In some countries, they wake up when the sun rises. Like everyone lives a life that's totally different, which inherently means anything you're doing, whether it's at work, whether it's for your creative passion, whether it's your routine at home, there are people that are doing something entirely differently, successfully and happily, such that kind of broadening your horizon, whether it's food,

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perspective now that I didn't realize I had and had applied to work and life. Anything can be done in any number of ways, and there's probably a more optimal way. And part of the reason I probably love to optimize is that I've seen that there are other ways to do things. So I refuse to believe that the status quo is the best we've got. And I now attribute that unknowingly before, but to seeing how so many different people live so many different ways.

I think that's part of the magic, the richness and the depth of a life well lived. And to be crystal, like if you cannot afford to go to, I just use the example of London because it was something we did as a kid. You don't have to travel tens of thousands of miles on expensive airplanes and stay at fancy hotels.

Like literally going into the woods and you'll find that you need a different set of skills that people do live differently, whether it's somewhere in your backyard or across the planet, this exposure to different ways of living. This is part of what I am encouraging people to do. It's not dissimilar to going driving home a different way every day of the week because you're

It reminds you that there are so many other things outside of your routine. And right now, there's someone who's saying, oh my gosh, I got two kids under four and it's like whatever the... Hey, look, I'm not saying that's not a reality for you. I'm saying that I know there is space in your life to do something differently that will remind you and reconnect you with

the authority, your own personal authenticity to pursue, to move in the direction, however fast or slow of the life of your dreams. And part of the way you build dreams, part of what our culture has, you know, really whiffed on the last two decades is the imagine part of my creative process. Part of what traveling does is helps you imagine the

you want for yourself in this life, right? Maybe I used the example earlier of going to Copenhagen. Maybe you're inspired by the architecture and the simplicity so that you want to bring that experience of what it felt like to live in that architecture back because you're going to build a home for yourself one day and you've experienced what it feels like to live in a really well-designed place and you want to then bring that back for yourself here in the States or wherever you live. Yeah. Yeah.

And if anyone's listening to this podcast, there's a dozen episodes about, you know, how to travel for free and credit card points and miles. We are fortunate that this group is exposed to many ways to make a trip to Europe cost almost nothing. A trip to Africa costs almost nothing. There's a handful of signup bonuses that make that even possible. It's so true, man. It's there. I'm glad I'm fortunate for you. And I'm grateful for you and your show for helping people live a richer life through

a variety of hacks, whether that's travel or this case, it's one part psychology, two parts taking action to hack. I think culture to you. And as soon as you do this stuff, this is the cool thing. As soon as you do it once, you're like looking around. You're like, I feel like you just got away with something. Like what? I have my own podcast now, or I'm going to Africa for $1,800 for two weeks. Like how is this possible? And it's,

There's something unlocks in you and you realize this world of possibility and then you can lift and stamp that world of possibility onto other things. It's this beautiful thing.

virtuous cycle. Yeah. I think this is a good segue to ask you, are there things you do in your daily routine that other people might benefit from adopting or trying that might fall in the category of kind of life hacks or anything like that? Sure. At the risk of sounding cliche, because even the concept of a morning routine wasn't really popular on the internet 10 years ago. And here we are, everyone's talking about it, but I would underscore that there's a reason for that because

Starting owning the morning and or some sort of a routine will help you own the day and having a routine and having an element of your routine being to break your routine. To me, that's that is the life hack that is most unrecognized, unrealized and under under.

planned for. I live the things that I'm talking about here, like driving home a different way or listening to some different music or trying to learn new things from friends who are experts in the world of fill in the blank if I have some benign or newfound curiosity to it. So I think that's the big takeaway is what can you do to provide space in your routine to

to do things differently, whether that's an extra half an hour to cook dinner, or we've talked about carving out some time to travel to a faraway distant place that does things very different than we do, or driving home a different way, or pursuing a hobby that is something creative such that you can rewire your brain and apply more creativity in your life. Make space for all that stuff because it is critical. That is what most people who are successful and fulfilled have a routine that allows for these things.

And it's not list, you know, you hear like, oh, I eat 30 grams of protein when I wake up and I true. But again, you deconstruct the most successful and fulfilled people and they make time for the stuff that I'm talking about for creativity. Now, I do want to endorse cold water therapy.

specifically because I've been a practitioner for about 10 years, started off with cold showers, and then I would go to spas or gyms or specific places that had cold water that I could get into for long durations of time. And then it went to me having my own cold plunge at my house in Seattle. And then I'm right here up at our little beach house and I'm 100 feet from the Puget Sound, which right now is 49 degrees, 48 degrees in that water. So

So I am a huge advocate of cold water. If you haven't had Wim Hof on the show, he's written a bunch of books. He's been on my podcast, The Chase Jarvis Live Show. You can easily search and read the benefits of cold water exposure. It is better than coffee, great for your immune system, and very good for personal mindset psychology. It is interesting to every day get into very cold water despite never wanting to,

So your ability to willingly make yourself uncomfortable for a short amount of time every day, turns out it's pretty valuable.

Funny enough, we have a hot tub in our home. And that hot tub, we stopped using it for a few months. So I drained it. I filled it back up. Pump doesn't work. Looked outside last night. It's in the 40s. I was like, oh, I got a cold plunge. Pump doesn't work. I can't get the hot tub working. So I was telling my wife, I was like, hey, I guess now we have a cold plunge until someone replaces this pump, which by the way, is something I'm creatively trying to figure out how to fix. But until then, we have that.

One thing, when it comes to creativity, one of the things that I know I face a lot that I want to touch on before we go, getting in, everyone knows that awesome zone flow state. But what about when you're stuck? Do you have any tips for people that are sitting there trying to be creative on something, whether it's writing, working, anything, and they hit that creative block? How do you get past that and move forward? Play. It is, it is...

play is a incredibly powerful lever. Go goof off. Go do something that brings you a ton of joy that is ideally not at all related to the problem you're trying to solve.

Creativity happens, again, it's this virtuous cycle. You try it, you get a little more courage. You try it some more, you get a little courage. It's like there's so many virtuous cycles or positive feedback loops or leverage that we can get from these things. And this relationship between joy and play is a very strong one. And let's just take your hot tub pump, for example. If you set a deadline, I need to have it fixed by Friday, and you literally sit there in front of the thing,

There will be times on Wednesday at noon when you've been trying to fix it and you can't fix it. You're like, I need to stop staring at this pump because I'm thinking in loops and I'm trying to, I'm not unlocking anything here.

And so you go hit a bucket of golf balls or go get in your cold plunge or go do something that brings you a lot of joy and you sit down at that problem again and the problem looks differently. This is, again, programming your body with powerful neurochemistry, a little bit this sort of work hard, rest mentality.

cycle that we know is good for the human body and the human body appreciates things like sleep and good nutrition. There's a list in my book, Creative Calling, about creativity boosters and zappers. And there are some very simple physical things like going out and play. This is why I love to

Look back into our childhood and think of the things that brought us a ton of joy. There's a guy who used to work for Tim named Charlie Hone. I don't know if you remember Charlie. He wrote a book called Play It Away, which is a really interesting book that he wrote, which is specifically around playing to reduce anxiety.

And one of the things, it's just a simple exercise that I took out of his book as an example here for your listeners. He bought himself like a hundred baseballs and he and a buddy go to a park and a buddy slow pitches and they just take turns whacking these balls all over the baseball field. Then they go pick them up. And he said, in 30 minutes, you can hit each of you hit a hundred baseballs. You walked around, you got outside. And because he loved playing baseball and hitting balls as a kid in the batting cages, he

Like he said, it just completely transforms his headspace. And then he goes back to whatever the problem at hand is and he's refreshed and invigorated. And so, you know, I like to think of, I think those things specifically playing are important.

very helpful and they help in a myriad of ways. It's like a panacea for inaction. And we've lost that in the same way that we've largely lost our imagination and we have to do actually active work to get it back. So I think play is very valuable. And I will put an asterisk by this, which is if you're sitting in front of a problem,

And let's just say you're a professional creator, you're a copywriter or a designer or something, you are paid to create on demand. And that actually comes through discipline, right? That comes through discipline.

People say, oh, I just have a blank page here and I'm stuck. I can't write anything. Why don't you write 500 shitty words? Show me your best stuff. And then a photographer will say, oh, I know I'll show you this. And it says, I don't want to show you because I'm not really proud of my work. OK, then show me your worst stuff.

Show me my worst stuff. Yeah, just show me something because the something means that you're working, that you're, I think Chuck Close said, being inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us sit down and we get to work. So I like the mix of like tough love and wild inspiration. The tough love is sit down at a certain time and do this work every day, even if you don't feel like it.

And if you're just doing that and you're not inspired, doing things that bring joy and play and laughter, going to stand-up comedy, hitting baseballs, taking up running again, these things that will bring you joy that are from your past,

this combination of those two things of sitting in front of the page and doing the work anyway and taking breaks. This is a very powerful comment. Yeah. I think, I think this is actually a great place to wrap up because everyone here can hopefully take some time in the rest of their day and go play a little and, and get inspired. But obviously I think everyone needs to check out this book. I really enjoyed it. Link to that in the show notes. I think it's the creative calling.com is, is also the book's website. Yep. Yeah.

Yep. Where else can people find out what you're up to? I'm at Chase Jarvis everywhere on the internet, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, whatnot. And I would also steer people to creative live.com, which is we've built a learning platform specifically for creators and entrepreneurs. So

It is whether you are just dabbling and you want to learn skills from someone who is the best in the world. There are people who are literally our Pulitzer Prize winners, the highest performers in every category from photography, design, filmmaking, entrepreneurship,

You can learn from these people there. So whether you're trying to pick up new skills or going for inspiration, specifically creative inspiration, there's more than 2000 classes there for an annual subscription price of 150 bucks or something, 149 bucks. That's another destination there on the internet.

Yeah. When I worked at Google Ventures, we were investors. I got a chance to take a few courses. They're fantastic. Chase, thank you so much for being here. Chris, thanks for doing the show. All the Hacks is a really fun place. It's a fun destination out there in the internet media universe. Congrats on making a successful show. And let me say it slightly differently. Congrats on creating an amazing show that a lot of people benefit from. Keep doing it. Yeah. Thank you.

That was amazing. Thank you so much for listening. Recognizing my creativity in the middle of this conversation feels like a big unlock. And I'm excited to see how that affects my ability to be creative with the rest of my life.

Also, I'm really grateful for all the amazing questions you've been sending. And I'll be doing a Q&A episode to answer all of them, actually a few episodes. So please keep them coming as I genuinely love hearing from you and would love to be able to help you all continue to upgrade your lives. You can send anything my way, even if you just want to say hi by emailing chris at allthehacks.com. That's it for now. See you next time.