November 14, 2018 • 39 mins
Expert of procrastination domination Samantha Bennett advises to start right where you are.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
But at the same time, I really don't think you
want to be, you know, on your deathbed or face
to face with its St. Peter or the angels whatever,
going like, yeah, I would have done more, but my
boyfriend was a very hard of You don't want to
be that guy, you know. Oh yeah, I get your
work done because we're here for like a minute. You know,
(00:31):
it's least us and Jill Hersey and this is EU Turns.
We're talking about change and we're trying to make it
a little easier than it seems to be. And we
have a great expert who is going to make it
really easy for us today. I don't know about really easy,
but possibly quite funny and fun Samantha Bennett is with us.
(00:53):
Hi Sam Hi, guys Hi, Lisa Hi. Jill Sam is
an expert in procrastination domination. I love that. I love
that phrase. She's also the creator of the Organized Artist Company.
She's written two books which we'll talk about. And again,
I just love your honesty and your humor in the
(01:16):
way you approach all things change. Thank you so much
for for that. My pleasure, my pleasure. I'm delighted to
be here. So does that mean you're a procrastination dominatrix.
It does. I've got my boots and my whip in
the other room, and I'm gonna show a procrastination who's
really the boss. Oh yeah, I love that. Yeah. And
(01:36):
it seems like, particularly for creative people, you feel like
they need that like whip crack and routine. Well, you know,
actually that's a little you know, the procrastination dominating the
nation thing is almost it's a little bit of a
bait and switch because they think that's what people think
they need, right. They think, like, I just need somebody
to sit on my head and make me do it.
(01:56):
And I know what I need to do. I just
need to make myself do it. And the fact of
the matter is, you almost it's not really a discipline
discipline problem. You don't need more discipline, You need more desire. Really,
because I am a procrastinator par excellence, and it really
maybe it's just I need so much desire that I
(02:18):
desire it more than being comfortable or more than fear
of failure or whatever. But it really, it doesn't seem
like I don't want it. It just feels like I
can't do it. Yeah, So let's let's get a little
more specific in our in our languaging, right, because I
think procrastination is a big word that a lot of
things get lumped under, um, Because if you're not actually
(02:39):
suffering a lot of consequences from your procrastination, it probably
isn't procrastination. Right. So if you're paying a ton of
late fees and you're always in trouble with your friends
for being late, and you're really missing out on opportunities
because you're not you know, moving your projects forward or
getting stuff done, or people aren't calling you to participate
in things because I know you're not reliable, then you
(02:59):
have a grastination problem and you should see somebody about that.
But like I, okay, so just we'll take this podcast
for example. But it's every area of my life, Jill.
It's the opposite of me. Um. I had read your
book and written up notes and questions and it's all
prepared last month, and I read your book last night.
So I put it off and put it off, and
(03:21):
it wasn't like a surprise. I didn't wake up yesterday
I go, oh my gosh, we're interviewing Samantha. I knew
it was coming. I just put it off and put
it off and put it off, right, see, and I
would disagree with you. I don't think you put it off.
I think everyone. That's what I hear from everybody. Everybody's like,
oh my god, I never do anything till the last minute. Well,
of course, that's how we know something needs to be done,
(03:41):
is because it's the last minute. Like that's when everybody
gets things done. The point is that the last minute
is different for everyone. Sometimes it's a month ago, sometimes
it's last night. But your last minute is your last minute,
and that's what feels right for you. My sister does
her Christmas shopping in August, and it's not my lady
which and she and she possibly starts feeling anxious about it,
(04:04):
you know, right around July four and and so August
maybe her last moment so and here. And this also
brings up the beauty and magic of deadlines, right, because
when we have a date and some social accountability attached
to something, we know we have to do it. Like
you said, it's not a surprise, it's sort of in there,
tumbling around. And in fact, you usually start working on
(04:25):
it even before you've actually started working on it, you know,
so that oh my god, I've got a presentation to tomorrow,
and I haven't even started working on it. Well, that's
not exactly true. You've been started thinking about it. It's
been in the rock tumbler. And for most of the
people I work with anyway, by the time they sit
down to do it, they pretty much know what they
have to do. They just need to execute. Sometimes, then
when you know, you've been noodling it in your head
(04:46):
and you've been working the problem, but when you go
to actually create the thing, say the presentation or whatever,
you encounter all kinds of you know, challenges and stumbling blocks.
It just doesn't flow the way you thought. And and
then you're up all night or we don't have time
to fix it because you gotta get the presentation. Then
you give a shitty presentation and you hate yourself for
(05:08):
not doing as well as you could have. Yeah. Have
we now crossed into consequences procrastination? Now? Okay? Okay, So
what's the other kind though? I Mean, you said there's
a procrastination problem, and then there's also something else? Is it?
Is it like the kind of putting off of our
dreams and what we want we actually I would love
(05:30):
to be doing. Yeah, So this is This is a
little complicated because this is one of those things where
it's two things that are equally true at the same time. UM.
I call those creative dichotomies. I don't know what they're
really called, but it's um because two things are true.
On the one hand, you need to set your dreams
and set your goals and pursue them with the NonStop,
(05:53):
dogged never say die resistance of a bulldog like you
just cannot take any any version for an answer. You
have to keep going and equally true. At the same time,
projects have their own time frame, life happens. You have
to be in a dynamic, surrendered relationship with your dreams
(06:17):
and there right, So we set the goal, we go
after it, and we stay open and flexible about how
that goes. Because I'm about to go to a meeting
this afternoon for a musical that I wrote that's getting produced,
that we wrote eight years ago. We coulation, thank you,
actually getting done. It's well, I'll believe it an opening night.
(06:38):
But you know, for years, for eight years, it's been
like oh almost, oh not quite. Oh the fundings here,
Oh no, it's not. Oh this producer is interested. Oh no,
they're not, so you know, you gotta just kind of
keep the candle lit and keep going after it while
also staying surrendered and going after other things. You know.
(06:58):
I want to say though, that you in your book
give people permission to let go of projects sometimes so
and I was kind of delighted to get that permission
given because very you know, the dogged thing is the
message we ordinarily here. Completion is so overrated. That's all. Good, girl,
(07:20):
finish everything on your plate. Well you started it, you
better finish it, young lady like I just no, Yeah,
I have a major finishers complex. So this is speaking
to my soul. Please, you need to deal with this.
Some things are valuable just for the process of doing them.
It's all things like, oh, I start journals, but I
don't finish them. The object of journal writing is not
(07:42):
to have a completed journal no one cares published, so true.
The object of journaling is to be in the process
of journaling. And once you've done that, you can let
it go. You know all that, Oh, I've got all
these notes from all these workshops I've taken. No notes
are your process. The knowledge is inside you, the experiences
(08:05):
inside you can let the notes go. You can let
the journal go. You got halfway through a screenplan, didn't
finish it, fine, you may have learned all you need
to from that process. And what tells you, you know what,
I'm kind of done with this. I'm not finished, but
I'm done. I don't, you know. I think it's different
for everybody. I think I think part of what I
would say to start just really paying attention to your
(08:26):
own inner signals. To me, it feels like I'm reaching
up on an empty shelf, you know, like when I
think about doing it, I'm up there, I'm like, oh yeah, yeah,
I wanted to do that, and then I'm like, oh
oh wow, there's just nothing there. There's not resistance, there's
not self esteem issues, they're not but there's any desire either.
It's just like, oh yeah, I guess either now is
(08:48):
just not the time. And that certainly happened to me
where I've set something aside and then years later it's
been like, oh, now is the time. Now, I'm really
wanting to finish this and get this thing done. So
that's about intuition. You use your intuition to know what
you should do and not do. And you talk about
intuition a lot um, it's a it's a big skill
for you. It's one of your one of your superpowers. Yeah, superpowers,
(09:11):
thank you. Exactly, definitely, I'm a big fan of intuition
in or knowing. However you want to phrase that for yourself? Um,
because there's so much you know, school school is great,
but it laid a big trip on us. You know
about how you're supposed to know all the answers in advance. Yes,
life doesn't give you even the questions, and of advance,
(09:31):
forget about the answers questions exactly. You know, life isn't
like that. Love isn't like that. Parenting isn't like that.
Being a good friend or an entrepreneur or a creator
isn't like that. You know, It's a lot more like
following the sparkly bread crumbs into the forest. You know,
you don't No, I hear this all the time from
(09:52):
people like, Oh, I want to do this, but I
don't know how, And of course you don't know how.
How could you possibly you don't or and even if
someone else has done it before, they haven't done it
your way. So you have to rely. You know, you
have your skill set, you have your knowledge capital. You
have this personality, this identity, this way of being in
the world that you were born with. But mostly what
(10:13):
you have is you're just your own little inner compass.
You're inner knowing about what's what's right for you and
what's not. And it's tricky because sometimes, like the natural
reluctance to try something new and the genuine feeling that
this is not right for me are almost identical feelings.
Like it can be very tricky to figure and you
can disguise the fear in something else, you know for sure,
(10:40):
especially smart people, you can defend. You can defend it
like crazy if you're good at that kind of thing. No,
the reason I'm not trying this is really because it's
unrealistic and honestly wouldn't make sense for me. Not really
that interesting. Yeah, responsible, I don't really think the market's
ready for that. I just yeah, right right. You also
(11:03):
talk yourself in and out of things on a time. Yeah, yeah,
I hear that. Um, so we are talking about you
turns here and UM. One of the interesting things I
feel like we've encountered, as we've found our quote unquote
experts to talk to like you, Um, is that all
(11:23):
of them have gone through dramatic U turns because it's human,
because we all have these twists and turns and um
when we come back from the break, I'd love to
hear about about the one. You are so honest about
the rest of them you lie about, Yeah, for the breaks.
(11:53):
Jill had asked Sam a question about one of her You,
terms and life sometime when things didn't turn out the
way that you had intended that they turned out, Can
we talk about that a little bit? Sure? Absolutely? I
mean I I spent most of my life as an actor, right,
So I was one of those kids who went to
theater camp. I studied theater in college. I had a
career in Chicago and then the Los Angeles, and I
(12:16):
had one of those acting careers that went well enough
that you didn't want to give up on it, but
not well enough is to actually be able to support
a person. So I was, you know, in this world
of like doing just a million different jobs and gigs
and projects and shows and auditions and other projects and juggle, juggle, juggle,
and it was creatively very satisfying, financially disastrous. And then
(12:40):
my second marriage fell apart and just a really sort
of the one to punch of alcoholism and in fertility
just kind of took us down, and I spent six
weeks on the couch crying, which is what you do
when your life falls apart, perfectly understandable where And then
I had one idea. I had one idea. My one
(13:05):
idea was maybe I could go to carbon Duria, which
is a little town about ninety minutes outside of l
A that I'd always been in love with. Right it
was one of those places I would come to for
the weekend. We'd come for lunch and I'd be like, oh, oh, Phone,
I could live here. Oh there's no way, but it
would be so great. And I just thought, well, maybe
I could. And so I got a short term rental
and I called it a writing retreat because I wasn't
(13:26):
willing to say I was getting divorced, because I didn't
know if I was or not. And it was great.
I got a ton of writing done. I loved it.
And then I got another short term rental and then
I moved. And the minute I moved, you know, that
is when you make a big change and you're really uncertain,
(13:47):
but you just commit, and it's like the universe just
comes rushing at you like there's just this giant tidal
wave of support and money and opportunities and easy fun,
great like the great partment got delivered at the amazing
I had the best deal, knowing carb like incredible things.
And from my ex husband too, like his life like
(14:10):
a rocket, like so many of his dreams came true
almost the minute we separated, and it was like we
were standing there on separate mountaintops going like, Hi, I
love you, Sorry we couldn't do this together. So are
you a believer in at moments of upheaval in your
life that sort of sounds like this one just sort
(14:32):
of barreled down on top of you. It's not like
it was planned upheaval, particularly that that those are good
moments to just consider, what the hell, let's let's let's
change everything. Let's go at it light to match see
what burns for sure for sure, because you know, we
don't when we are twenties, you know, we have a
lot of opportunities to change our lives, you know, and
(14:52):
there are a lot of decisions that feel like very
big momentous decisions, and then we make other big momentous
decisions as we get older. I think those those opportunities
come more rarely, so to start to take advantage and
really question, yes, who am I? Yes, but it's my
life about? Yes, what do I want? Really? You have
(15:12):
a tool for figuring out what you really want? That
I absolutely love the five minute Art project, just because
sometimes we don't know what we want and even when
we put ourselves in a new situation. You could have
stayed in a ball in carpenteria, you know, feeling sorry
for yourself, but you didn't, And so I think this
is an incredibly useful tool for people who are feeling
(15:34):
stuck and need to figure out where their heart is
leading them. Yes, this is an incredible tool and and
my favorite, and it works every time for everybody. And
there's so few things you can say that, Um, yeah,
anytime you're feeling stuck, particularly stuck in a story, stuck
in an event, stuck in the old old stuff, make
(15:57):
some five minute art about it. And that might mean
just getting a piece of typing paper and a magic
marker and just drawing stick figures. It might mean making
up a song or a dance, or getting out the
sculpie clay, you know whatever, and it's not good. You
don't have to make it good art. Nobody's ever going
to see it. It's just about getting the feelings into form,
(16:19):
giving them a shape outside of your brain. Because feelings
just want to be felt, that's all they want. Feelings
just want to be felt. And once a feeling knows
it's been felt, it can get promoted and get a
better job. There's something like giving it shape. I was
doing an interview one time with a woman who had
(16:39):
a podcast, but she also still had her full time job,
and she was reading my book and prep for the
podcast and read the thing about five minute art and
was like, oh, yeah, that's super interesting. I should suttenly
try that one time, like we all do, right, Like, yeah,
I would be that. I would be that person saying sure,
sure in another five five a tea here and right,
(17:01):
always talking doodle. Absolutely, some people do better think better
when their hands are busy. I'm like that too. Um
But so anyways, she she came home and just had
had an incredibly crappy day at work, really super duper crappy.
I saw my book on her desk and went, oh,
I should make some I've had a crappy day. I
should make some five minute art. About this. So she
(17:23):
got out a piece of typing paper and a pen,
and she says, she's not a drawer, you know, she
doesn't think of herself as an artistic person. But she
made this sort of sketch of herself kneeling, and then
everybody from work in a circle around her, throwing rocks
at her. Oh my gosh, Oh my gosh. That's like
some what somebody who's been through a war would would
(17:45):
sketch like a real PTSD one. Just that expression alone.
I mean, it's one thing to say to your sweetheart, honey,
I've had a crappy day. It's another thing to say this, yeah, right.
So that alone and I thought was amazing. And then
after she drew it, she had this little insight and
she added a circle around her and she said the
(18:10):
circle was God's love m hm. And she went into
work the next day was a totally different attitude really
rooted in her, knowing that she was protected by the
love of God and and was it a sign that
she really should leave that job with the rock throwing people.
(18:31):
I mean, she was protected the circle or is it
field and other rocks could hit her as it happens.
I'm still in touch with her, and she did in
fact leave that job eventually. But what I think is,
I think we all know the story of what it
is to go to work every day feeling like they're
throwing rocks at you. We all know how that's going
(18:52):
to go. Eventually, you're going to quit or get fired.
There's no good way that's gonna add going in. However,
with this confidence, with this sense of inviolability, with this
sense of you know, they're not trying to hurt me,
they can't hurt me. They get what's what's deep and
true about me is is unassailable. You know that that
can't be. So I can show up and be present
(19:15):
and listen and see what happens, you know, follow the
path in the way it's actually meant to go, and
not just let my hurt feelings make the decisions for me.
You talk about that. That's another thing that you touch
on in the book. Um is another way of expressing God.
But the net for people who are uncomfortable with the
word God, UM, it's just a way of feeling protected, right,
(19:40):
and and that's really helpful when you're going through a
difficult time. Yeah, yeah, I I UM. I also have
very mixed feelings about the word God. So I'm all
for that. Yeah, I have this image in my head
of like like if if there's a beam of light
(20:01):
going through you, right, like through your spine, that goes
up through your head and sort of connects you to
the stars, and it goes down into the earth and
connects you to Earth and um. And then maybe there's
other beams of light coming off of you, like like
a dandelion spokes, right, and so they connect you with everything, right,
because everybody else has those spokes too, and maybe even
(20:23):
all the animals and plants do, maybe even the rocks do.
So when you get that picture in your mind, you
start to see this this net, this web of all
these inter locking spokes, and we're all part of the
same thing, right. This is that first of all of thermodynamics,
right that the energy is never lost, it's only transformed.
(20:44):
So we're connected to everything. We're all basically the same thing.
I mean, we're made out of the same things that
the stars are made out of. You. There's the whole
thing about we have a certain amount of our DNA
is the same as Japanzees, like some enormous percentage of
our DNA is the same as daffodils. I mean, like
(21:05):
we're really the same, and that that feeling of just
being part of a giant, energetic net. I find very
like you could lean back in it like it's a hammock.
You know, you could on it when you want something,
like you could yank on it a little bit after.
You know, you can't overwhelm it. You can't be too
small for it. You're you're, you're an essential part of it.
(21:28):
I don't know. I get a lot of just sort
of instantly beats that sense of isolation, that sense of falling,
falling through the cracks. Yeah, yeah, you kind of can't
be lonely with that, can you? No? Give another? Um
another exercise that I thought was so simple and great
in your book, UM about confronting fear by speaking it
(21:52):
out loud. Yeah. You know, when things are inside your head,
they seem really real, you know, like, Oh, they're all
gonna hate me. Oh I'm gonna do this, and no
one's gonna come, No one's gonna pay for that. They're
gonna I'm gonna make a fool of myself. I'm gonna fail,
I'm gonna fail publicly. I'm gonna fail publicly in a
really ugly way. That all feels very super real. And
(22:16):
what I notice is that when you even just write
it down on a piece of paper and better yet,
read it, write it down a piece of paper and
then say it out loud to somebody you trust, um,
almost immediately another part of your brain kicks in and goes, well,
you're probably not gonna lose everything. Not everyone's gonna hate it,
(22:38):
you know, like you can get some sort of perspective.
And this is this is again part of the thing
about making some art about it, but again just giving
some form outside of your head since you can really
analyze it, because some things do have risks. And you know,
you were talking at the beginning of the program about
change and about change being uncomfortable. I mean that what
(23:00):
that image in the net says to me is that
changes constant. Right, Energy is constantly flowing through that net.
So if change is constant, and God or the net
or whatever we want to call that is also constant,
then sort of the more change, the more God. So
you may not like change, but change sure loves you.
(23:21):
There's only one alternative to change, really, and that's death. Well,
I love I think that a lot too. I don't
talk about it so much because it's a little bit
of a buzz kill, but I talked to a lot
of creatives are like, well, I would do more, but
you know, I had this teacher who really discouraged me
when it's in the third grade. You know, she told
me I couldn't write, or I had a mother like this,
or a boyfriend who was like that. Like, I get it.
(23:42):
We've all had those experiences that put us off, you know,
something we loved. But at the same time, I really
don't think you want to be, you know, on your
deathbed or face to face with St. Peter or the
angels or whatever, going like, yeah, I would have done more,
but my boyfriend wasn't very part of you don't want
to be that guy. You know. Oh yeah, I get
(24:04):
your work done because we're here for like a minute,
you know. Okay. So the subtitle of your book, Get
It Done is from Procrastination to creative genius in fifteen
minutes a day. So when you say get it done,
you don't necessarily mean spend ten hours getting it done,
because you might burn yourself out and explain the fifteen
minutes a day. So who's got ten hours, right. I mean,
(24:27):
I think this is a big problem. We have these
you know what, I want to write a book, I
want to start a business, I want to do these
big things. Um, and we sort of feel like, oh,
I need a built in provose for six months in
order to do that, which would be great, and I'd
like to sign us all up for that, but wells
of us to have lives, we don't have all that
kind of time. So my challenge, my dream, my mission
(24:50):
in life is to have everybody spending fifteen minutes a
day on the projects that matter most to them. And
you know how this is. We get everything done for
everybody else all day, but the stuff that really matters
to us. Our prayer and meditation, practice, our yoga, are writing,
our music, our dance are whatever it is you love
(25:11):
to do is not getting done. It's not even on
the list sometimes, So put it first, Put it first,
fifteen minutes a day, brandish acutally, five days a year.
It changes your life. I have seen this. My clients
and students who do this see unbelievable, miraculous results. And
(25:32):
is that because the fifteen minutes actually turns into an
hour and you get so much more into it than
you thought you would ever be able to. Or is
it because the consistency of that um practice all of
the above. Sometimes yeah, sometimes you sit down for fifteen
minutes and four hours go by. Sometimes you sit down
for fifteen minutes and you stare at a blank piece
(25:53):
of paper for fifteen minutes, which is fine, fifteen minutes
of unforced boredom, never heard a person. And this, you know,
I have to be constantly productive. Disease has got to go. Yeah,
it's showing up for it every day. It's get the
fifteen minute thing, hop scotches. You write past your perfectionism,
right past your you know, um overthinking because you know
(26:17):
how perfect is it going to be in fifteen minutes?
How much could you get done in fifteen minutes? And
you'll be amazed how much you can get done in
fifteen minutes every day for a week, a month, a year,
ten years. It's it's shocking. So you've had clients who
actually produced books in fifteen minutes a day, or thought
of great, great new ideas for a business or something
(26:37):
like this. I do, I do. I wonder who finished
a PhD actually in fifteen minutes a day for thirty years,
how long with it? But it might have taken her five,
you know, but she had little kids. I mean, there
was only so many times she had. My favorite story
is I had a woman who was working with me privately.
And I hardly ever worked with people privately anymore, um,
(27:01):
so it was a little exceptional. But she, um, she
had a day job, you know, and under fluorescent lights
that she was pretty sure was sucking her soul away, right,
And she wanted to be a jewelry designer and maker.
So I talked about this fifteen minute thing, and she's like, Sam,
that's not gonna work for me. And take me fifteen
minutes just to get my stuff out, like I've got
all those beabes and tools, and and I was like, look,
(27:21):
you're a creative person, figure it out, like even to
spend fifteen minutes sketching or doodling or daydreaming whatever you want.
The next time I talked to her, she had made
herself like a little kit right, like a little um
like people who do fly tying to tackle box, like
a tackle box exactly so she could take it out,
work for fifteen minutes and put it back and in
three weeks she had made two three necklaces, which was
(27:44):
three more than she had made in the previous nine months. Okay,
she was also in turning at a tattoo parlor, which
in l A, being a tattoo artist is kind of
a big deal. It's internet a tattoo parlor. And now
she had this little kid, so she started taking her
jewelry kit to the tattoo parlor, you know, to work
on like during the downtime. Well, they didn't know she
made jewelry. So now the tattoo parlor starts selling her jewelry,
(28:06):
and between the jewelry and the tattoos, she can quit
the soul sucking job and like start oil painting, which
was she really wanted to do. I'm telling you minutes
a day. I love that. And you also talk about
time and how having too much of it can be
as paralyzing as not having enough. When we come back
(28:27):
from the break, we're gonna get into that. You're talking
about time, and I think we all feel like we
don't have enough time, but you say the problem is
(28:47):
sometimes having too much time. We'll have to wait a wait.
We all have twenty four hours a day, so nobody
has more time than anyone else. Dobody gets any more
than anybody else, So that's the best absolute you're not
having enough to do maybe in that time, and just
feeling overwhelmed. Yeah, yeah, we're talking before with the beauty
and magic of deadlines. You know that when you end
(29:07):
up with a vast expanse of time and no deadline,
it can really be hurtful. And then we start whipping
ourselves too, because we've spent all this time telling myself like, Okay,
when summer vacation comes, okay, when I retire, okay, when
I get this time off, Okay, this is what I'm
gonna do it, And then the moment comes and you
cannot get off the couch. And I think that's a
function of a lot of things. Sometimes I think we
(29:29):
just don't give it ourselves enough time to downshift, you know,
I mean to transition. Transition to go from having a
full time job to be with your kids all the
time to all of a sudden a lot of empty space.
There's a lot of recalibration that needs to happen, and
I think to be a little patient with yourself while
you do that. But also, you know, just use the
(29:50):
other tools that are at your disposal. Use the fifteen
minute a day thing. Use social accountability, like get a buddy,
because I can tell myself that I'm gonna do something forever,
and I may or may not do it. But if
I tell you guys that I'm gonna have it to
you by Tuesday morning, yeah well I will have it
to you by Tuesday morning. So leverage the things that
matter to you too, to help getting you through those
times where you feel like because you say you want
(30:11):
to do something to yourself and you wake up at
six months later and you have no idea how that
just happened, and you still haven't made any progress on
your project because you didn't do the fifteen minutes a day.
Well that's it. I mean, sometimes procrastination just means your
project is too big. So then you what do you do?
Break it down into small lots of small, little projects,
any little chunks exactly. So you think to yourself, we
(30:33):
should redo the house, and you get this image in
your mind at the house like top to bottom and
totally redond. Oh my gosh, it's so beautiful, right like
it's and then you immediately get overwhelmed because how do
you even right, I don't know Kyle guy, and I
don't know how to do right, and then you just
freak yourself out and don't do anything. This is a
very comte, right. They get a big idea, but it's
(30:56):
so big they don't even know where to start. So um,
I'm a big fan of going through the door that
is open, right, pick something that's right in front of you,
it's little and doable, and and start to work on that.
Because your brain is this beautiful, amazing problem solving machine.
(31:17):
Almost every question you give it, it tries to find
an answer to and it mostly succeeds unless there's too
many unknowns or too many variables. So something like how
do I redo the whole house without spending our life
fortune and finding a contractor who's not going to trick
me and end up holmless on the street? Oh my god,
trying to think about too many things. There's too many
unknowns and too many variables. How do I find a
(31:40):
new carpet for the upstairs bedroom? Oh, your brain says,
carpet for the upstairs bedroom. Oh, there's that carpet shop
that I drive by every day, And oh wait, didn't
my cousin Stevie just redo her house. Maybe she knows
something about like once you give it something specific to
look for, your brain is great at geting an answer,
(32:01):
so that's why you got to chunk it out. So
it sounds like something else that you talked about in
your book, which is this idea of clutter, because sounds
like your brain when you're thinking of to be do
in your whole house. Your brain is cluttered with too
many ideas. But I think in our lives we create
clutter physically, emotionally, um, psychologically. And you have this exercise
(32:22):
of a dream closet which isn't really a closet. And
when you when I saw that chapter title, I was
all excited and that I had a vision of my
dream closet, which was nothing, was like Barbies dream closet,
nothing like what you're talking about. Can do have a
dressing table? And did have a fainting couch, yest couch?
It didn't It was pink velvet. But let's tell us
(32:44):
about your dream closet exercise. Yeah, I'm still hung up
on like all these little shoe boxes and the and
the fainting. Yeah, I totally want that. Um. Yeah, So
here's the thing the Chinese say that health is flow, right,
Health is flow. We want are to flow in and
out of our lungs, really would love to flow in
and out of our lives. This is probably why I
(33:04):
say like changes, love is God is good, right, more
flow better. Clutter is stuck nous right. So, whether we're
dealing with stuck stuff piles of stuff that don't move,
or stuck feelings, stuck ideas, you have an unhealthy situation.
(33:24):
So whether we're dealing with stuck stuff or stuck ideas,
stuck old stories. So the idea of a dream closet
is to just it's a little imagination game, to just
imagine in your mind a closet that has all your
old dreams in it, your dreams of when you were
a child, your dreams of when you were in college,
and all through your life, and to maybe take a
look and seedd hardy really yours. Sometimes we get dreams
(33:48):
handed down to us from our parents or our grandparents,
or from the culture. Definitely, and to be able to
look at something and go, wait a minute, that's not
my dream. I don't care about a six bedroom house
in the suburbs. That's not my um. Some of that
stuff can get get rid of some of it. Um,
it's just old. You know. I'd be like, oh, yeah,
that was my dream when I was thirteen. But I
(34:09):
don't let thirteen year olds make decisions for my life
right now. It doesn't fit me anymore anyway, it does.
It's too tight. Or there's other dreams that we go, Wow,
that dream has been with me a long time and
it really does still matter to me. I really do
want to take that out and and see see how
I can make that functional in my life. Right now,
there's something you say that actually I believe so firmly, um,
(34:33):
and I think it's it's a it's more powerful even
than I can comprehend. But you see, structure is freedom,
and that just blows me away. Can you elaborate on
that a little bit. Yeah, So a pile of bricks
in the yard is a pile of bricks, A pile
(34:55):
of bricks in form in structure is a house. Right,
So we need to have parameters around things. We need
to have Even children when they're playing games, go okay,
here's the rules. That's hot lava, and you be the
fairy princess and I'll be the king. Like those are
the rules of the game, and then we play that
(35:16):
game until we decided to play another game. UM. So
to understand what the structures are that are supporting you
and what ones maybe aren't, and where the illusion of
freedom is actually keeping you stuck because you think freedom
means you can do whatever the heck you want with
(35:36):
no rules and no parameters, and just like you know,
stay in bed all day and then you do nothing
and then you do nothing, whereas like my calendar rules
my life right and I'm so I still keep a
date book. Many people do, they just don't tell one another.
But many people have a file effects. Still, yes, my
(35:58):
sister has very effective, fabulous person in the world. It's
a bulging file effects to this day. You know, when
you show me a better technology, I'll use it for
pen and PaperWorks great for me. I do have a
Google calendar too, so that my team knows where I am. Um.
But on the on my calendar, I'll block out Friday
afternoons because I don't like to work Friday afternoons. Right.
(36:18):
If I'm working on a book or if I'm writing,
I'll block out writing time and then it says on
my calendar writing tender one so that I write from
ten to one, because that's what it says to do.
You know. I put CrossFit on my calendar. I put
date night on my calendar. All those things that are
really important to me. I structure the time so that
(36:39):
they happen. I have one last question. What I really
care about is becoming an elusive Rainbow sparkles unicorn. Am
I gonna do that? Coming in Elusive Sparkly Rainbow Unicorn
is my answer to managing crowds and going to conferences
(37:00):
and networking events and places where there's a lot of people.
I'm super shy and super introverted that yeah, we could
tell no one ever believes it, but it's it's real.
You haven't seen in a group like watch me. My
hands start ringing, I start sweating, I lose my words.
It's terrible. And I also just to get it out
there from anxiety and depression. And I said that just
(37:22):
because I think it's important to acknowledge, and you talk
about it in your book, which I think I really
appreciate it. I mean, you said it's something you manage
exactly exactly the same way I would manage any other condition.
And um, but reminding myself that I don't need to
meet every person in the room. I don't need to
make twenty new best friends. I can just make one friend.
(37:44):
I could just be there for a little bit and
then go back up to my room. That's the elusive
part of the Sparkly Rainbow Unicorn part, Like I could.
And I can also treat myself a little with a
little more special special. You know, I can really make
sure that I take time for my meditation practice that morning.
(38:04):
I can really make sure that I'm wearing something that
I feel great in. I can um schedule something fun
for afterwards, you know, lunch with a friend, just so that, um,
I'm showing up in a way that feels really great. Yeah.
So you're feeding yourself when you know you're going to
be dreamed later exactly, and sort of babying yourself into it,
(38:26):
essentially saying, look, self, I'm going to challenge you to
do something that doesn't come so naturally, but I'm going
to give you some treats along the way. And there
might be a roast chicken. When I'm done chicken. We
consit in a room and read it like my inner
nine year old runs the show way more than I
care to admit so I bribed my intern nine year
old with a chance to read in bed or some
(38:47):
silver sparkly shoes. All right, I'm going to be having
a long, friendly chat with my inner nine year old
this evening. Thank you so much for all of this
great advice, Sam. You can find more of it in
Samantha's books, Start right where you are and get it done.
You can also find more of Sam Bennett at start
(39:08):
right where you are dot com and on Twitter, at
or art. Come and connect with us at You Turns podcast.
Tell us your stories, let us know how you spark
up
But at the same time, I really don't think you
want to be, you know, on your deathbed or face
to face with its St. Peter or the angels whatever,
going like, yeah, I would have done more, but my
boyfriend was a very hard of You don't want to
be that guy, you know. Oh yeah, I get your
work done because we're here for like a minute. You know,
(00:31):
it's least us and Jill Hersey and this is EU Turns.
We're talking about change and we're trying to make it
a little easier than it seems to be. And we
have a great expert who is going to make it
really easy for us today. I don't know about really easy,
but possibly quite funny and fun Samantha Bennett is with us.
(00:53):
Hi Sam Hi, guys Hi, Lisa Hi. Jill Sam is
an expert in procrastination domination. I love that. I love
that phrase. She's also the creator of the Organized Artist Company.
She's written two books which we'll talk about. And again,
I just love your honesty and your humor in the
(01:16):
way you approach all things change. Thank you so much
for for that. My pleasure, my pleasure. I'm delighted to
be here. So does that mean you're a procrastination dominatrix.
It does. I've got my boots and my whip in
the other room, and I'm gonna show a procrastination who's
really the boss. Oh yeah, I love that. Yeah. And
(01:36):
it seems like, particularly for creative people, you feel like
they need that like whip crack and routine. Well, you know,
actually that's a little you know, the procrastination dominating the
nation thing is almost it's a little bit of a
bait and switch because they think that's what people think
they need, right. They think, like, I just need somebody
to sit on my head and make me do it.
(01:56):
And I know what I need to do. I just
need to make myself do it. And the fact of
the matter is, you almost it's not really a discipline
discipline problem. You don't need more discipline, You need more desire. Really,
because I am a procrastinator par excellence, and it really
maybe it's just I need so much desire that I
(02:18):
desire it more than being comfortable or more than fear
of failure or whatever. But it really, it doesn't seem
like I don't want it. It just feels like I
can't do it. Yeah, So let's let's get a little
more specific in our in our languaging, right, because I
think procrastination is a big word that a lot of
things get lumped under, um, Because if you're not actually
(02:39):
suffering a lot of consequences from your procrastination, it probably
isn't procrastination. Right. So if you're paying a ton of
late fees and you're always in trouble with your friends
for being late, and you're really missing out on opportunities
because you're not you know, moving your projects forward or
getting stuff done, or people aren't calling you to participate
in things because I know you're not reliable, then you
(02:59):
have a grastination problem and you should see somebody about that.
But like I, okay, so just we'll take this podcast
for example. But it's every area of my life, Jill.
It's the opposite of me. Um. I had read your
book and written up notes and questions and it's all
prepared last month, and I read your book last night.
So I put it off and put it off, and
(03:21):
it wasn't like a surprise. I didn't wake up yesterday
I go, oh my gosh, we're interviewing Samantha. I knew
it was coming. I just put it off and put
it off and put it off, right, see, and I
would disagree with you. I don't think you put it off.
I think everyone. That's what I hear from everybody. Everybody's like,
oh my god, I never do anything till the last minute. Well,
of course, that's how we know something needs to be done,
(03:41):
is because it's the last minute. Like that's when everybody
gets things done. The point is that the last minute
is different for everyone. Sometimes it's a month ago, sometimes
it's last night. But your last minute is your last minute,
and that's what feels right for you. My sister does
her Christmas shopping in August, and it's not my lady
which and she and she possibly starts feeling anxious about it,
(04:04):
you know, right around July four and and so August
maybe her last moment so and here. And this also
brings up the beauty and magic of deadlines, right, because
when we have a date and some social accountability attached
to something, we know we have to do it. Like
you said, it's not a surprise, it's sort of in there,
tumbling around. And in fact, you usually start working on
(04:25):
it even before you've actually started working on it, you know,
so that oh my god, I've got a presentation to tomorrow,
and I haven't even started working on it. Well, that's
not exactly true. You've been started thinking about it. It's
been in the rock tumbler. And for most of the
people I work with anyway, by the time they sit
down to do it, they pretty much know what they
have to do. They just need to execute. Sometimes, then
when you know, you've been noodling it in your head
(04:46):
and you've been working the problem, but when you go
to actually create the thing, say the presentation or whatever,
you encounter all kinds of you know, challenges and stumbling blocks.
It just doesn't flow the way you thought. And and
then you're up all night or we don't have time
to fix it because you gotta get the presentation. Then
you give a shitty presentation and you hate yourself for
(05:08):
not doing as well as you could have. Yeah. Have
we now crossed into consequences procrastination? Now? Okay? Okay, So
what's the other kind though? I Mean, you said there's
a procrastination problem, and then there's also something else? Is it?
Is it like the kind of putting off of our
dreams and what we want we actually I would love
(05:30):
to be doing. Yeah, So this is This is a
little complicated because this is one of those things where
it's two things that are equally true at the same time. UM.
I call those creative dichotomies. I don't know what they're
really called, but it's um because two things are true.
On the one hand, you need to set your dreams
and set your goals and pursue them with the NonStop,
(05:53):
dogged never say die resistance of a bulldog like you
just cannot take any any version for an answer. You
have to keep going and equally true. At the same time,
projects have their own time frame, life happens. You have
to be in a dynamic, surrendered relationship with your dreams
(06:17):
and there right, So we set the goal, we go
after it, and we stay open and flexible about how
that goes. Because I'm about to go to a meeting
this afternoon for a musical that I wrote that's getting produced,
that we wrote eight years ago. We coulation, thank you,
actually getting done. It's well, I'll believe it an opening night.
(06:38):
But you know, for years, for eight years, it's been
like oh almost, oh not quite. Oh the fundings here,
Oh no, it's not. Oh this producer is interested. Oh no,
they're not, so you know, you gotta just kind of
keep the candle lit and keep going after it while
also staying surrendered and going after other things. You know.
(06:58):
I want to say though, that you in your book
give people permission to let go of projects sometimes so
and I was kind of delighted to get that permission
given because very you know, the dogged thing is the
message we ordinarily here. Completion is so overrated. That's all. Good, girl,
(07:20):
finish everything on your plate. Well you started it, you
better finish it, young lady like I just no, Yeah,
I have a major finishers complex. So this is speaking
to my soul. Please, you need to deal with this.
Some things are valuable just for the process of doing them.
It's all things like, oh, I start journals, but I
don't finish them. The object of journal writing is not
(07:42):
to have a completed journal no one cares published, so true.
The object of journaling is to be in the process
of journaling. And once you've done that, you can let
it go. You know all that, Oh, I've got all
these notes from all these workshops I've taken. No notes
are your process. The knowledge is inside you, the experiences
(08:05):
inside you can let the notes go. You can let
the journal go. You got halfway through a screenplan, didn't
finish it, fine, you may have learned all you need
to from that process. And what tells you, you know what,
I'm kind of done with this. I'm not finished, but
I'm done. I don't, you know. I think it's different
for everybody. I think I think part of what I
would say to start just really paying attention to your
(08:26):
own inner signals. To me, it feels like I'm reaching
up on an empty shelf, you know, like when I
think about doing it, I'm up there, I'm like, oh yeah, yeah,
I wanted to do that, and then I'm like, oh
oh wow, there's just nothing there. There's not resistance, there's
not self esteem issues, they're not but there's any desire either.
It's just like, oh yeah, I guess either now is
(08:48):
just not the time. And that certainly happened to me
where I've set something aside and then years later it's
been like, oh, now is the time. Now, I'm really
wanting to finish this and get this thing done. So
that's about intuition. You use your intuition to know what
you should do and not do. And you talk about
intuition a lot um, it's a it's a big skill
for you. It's one of your one of your superpowers. Yeah, superpowers,
(09:11):
thank you. Exactly, definitely, I'm a big fan of intuition
in or knowing. However you want to phrase that for yourself? Um,
because there's so much you know, school school is great,
but it laid a big trip on us. You know
about how you're supposed to know all the answers in advance. Yes,
life doesn't give you even the questions, and of advance,
(09:31):
forget about the answers questions exactly. You know, life isn't
like that. Love isn't like that. Parenting isn't like that.
Being a good friend or an entrepreneur or a creator
isn't like that. You know, It's a lot more like
following the sparkly bread crumbs into the forest. You know,
you don't No, I hear this all the time from
(09:52):
people like, Oh, I want to do this, but I
don't know how, And of course you don't know how.
How could you possibly you don't or and even if
someone else has done it before, they haven't done it
your way. So you have to rely. You know, you
have your skill set, you have your knowledge capital. You
have this personality, this identity, this way of being in
the world that you were born with. But mostly what
(10:13):
you have is you're just your own little inner compass.
You're inner knowing about what's what's right for you and
what's not. And it's tricky because sometimes, like the natural
reluctance to try something new and the genuine feeling that
this is not right for me are almost identical feelings.
Like it can be very tricky to figure and you
can disguise the fear in something else, you know for sure,
(10:40):
especially smart people, you can defend. You can defend it
like crazy if you're good at that kind of thing. No,
the reason I'm not trying this is really because it's
unrealistic and honestly wouldn't make sense for me. Not really
that interesting. Yeah, responsible, I don't really think the market's
ready for that. I just yeah, right right. You also
(11:03):
talk yourself in and out of things on a time. Yeah, yeah,
I hear that. Um, so we are talking about you
turns here and UM. One of the interesting things I
feel like we've encountered, as we've found our quote unquote
experts to talk to like you, Um, is that all
(11:23):
of them have gone through dramatic U turns because it's human,
because we all have these twists and turns and um
when we come back from the break, I'd love to
hear about about the one. You are so honest about
the rest of them you lie about, Yeah, for the breaks.
(11:53):
Jill had asked Sam a question about one of her You,
terms and life sometime when things didn't turn out the
way that you had intended that they turned out, Can
we talk about that a little bit? Sure? Absolutely? I
mean I I spent most of my life as an actor, right,
So I was one of those kids who went to
theater camp. I studied theater in college. I had a
career in Chicago and then the Los Angeles, and I
(12:16):
had one of those acting careers that went well enough
that you didn't want to give up on it, but
not well enough is to actually be able to support
a person. So I was, you know, in this world
of like doing just a million different jobs and gigs
and projects and shows and auditions and other projects and juggle, juggle, juggle,
and it was creatively very satisfying, financially disastrous. And then
(12:40):
my second marriage fell apart and just a really sort
of the one to punch of alcoholism and in fertility
just kind of took us down, and I spent six
weeks on the couch crying, which is what you do
when your life falls apart, perfectly understandable where And then
I had one idea. I had one idea. My one
(13:05):
idea was maybe I could go to carbon Duria, which
is a little town about ninety minutes outside of l
A that I'd always been in love with. Right it
was one of those places I would come to for
the weekend. We'd come for lunch and I'd be like, oh, oh, Phone,
I could live here. Oh there's no way, but it
would be so great. And I just thought, well, maybe
I could. And so I got a short term rental
and I called it a writing retreat because I wasn't
(13:26):
willing to say I was getting divorced, because I didn't
know if I was or not. And it was great.
I got a ton of writing done. I loved it.
And then I got another short term rental and then
I moved. And the minute I moved, you know, that
is when you make a big change and you're really uncertain,
(13:47):
but you just commit, and it's like the universe just
comes rushing at you like there's just this giant tidal
wave of support and money and opportunities and easy fun,
great like the great partment got delivered at the amazing
I had the best deal, knowing carb like incredible things.
And from my ex husband too, like his life like
(14:10):
a rocket, like so many of his dreams came true
almost the minute we separated, and it was like we
were standing there on separate mountaintops going like, Hi, I
love you, Sorry we couldn't do this together. So are
you a believer in at moments of upheaval in your
life that sort of sounds like this one just sort
(14:32):
of barreled down on top of you. It's not like
it was planned upheaval, particularly that that those are good
moments to just consider, what the hell, let's let's let's
change everything. Let's go at it light to match see
what burns for sure for sure, because you know, we
don't when we are twenties, you know, we have a
lot of opportunities to change our lives, you know, and
(14:52):
there are a lot of decisions that feel like very
big momentous decisions, and then we make other big momentous
decisions as we get older. I think those those opportunities
come more rarely, so to start to take advantage and
really question, yes, who am I? Yes, but it's my
life about? Yes, what do I want? Really? You have
(15:12):
a tool for figuring out what you really want? That
I absolutely love the five minute Art project, just because
sometimes we don't know what we want and even when
we put ourselves in a new situation. You could have
stayed in a ball in carpenteria, you know, feeling sorry
for yourself, but you didn't, And so I think this
is an incredibly useful tool for people who are feeling
(15:34):
stuck and need to figure out where their heart is
leading them. Yes, this is an incredible tool and and
my favorite, and it works every time for everybody. And
there's so few things you can say that, Um, yeah,
anytime you're feeling stuck, particularly stuck in a story, stuck
in an event, stuck in the old old stuff, make
(15:57):
some five minute art about it. And that might mean
just getting a piece of typing paper and a magic
marker and just drawing stick figures. It might mean making
up a song or a dance, or getting out the
sculpie clay, you know whatever, and it's not good. You
don't have to make it good art. Nobody's ever going
to see it. It's just about getting the feelings into form,
(16:19):
giving them a shape outside of your brain. Because feelings
just want to be felt, that's all they want. Feelings
just want to be felt. And once a feeling knows
it's been felt, it can get promoted and get a
better job. There's something like giving it shape. I was
doing an interview one time with a woman who had
(16:39):
a podcast, but she also still had her full time job,
and she was reading my book and prep for the
podcast and read the thing about five minute art and
was like, oh, yeah, that's super interesting. I should suttenly
try that one time, like we all do, right, Like, yeah,
I would be that. I would be that person saying sure,
sure in another five five a tea here and right,
(17:01):
always talking doodle. Absolutely, some people do better think better
when their hands are busy. I'm like that too. Um
But so anyways, she she came home and just had
had an incredibly crappy day at work, really super duper crappy.
I saw my book on her desk and went, oh,
I should make some I've had a crappy day. I
should make some five minute art. About this. So she
(17:23):
got out a piece of typing paper and a pen,
and she says, she's not a drawer, you know, she
doesn't think of herself as an artistic person. But she
made this sort of sketch of herself kneeling, and then
everybody from work in a circle around her, throwing rocks
at her. Oh my gosh, Oh my gosh. That's like
some what somebody who's been through a war would would
(17:45):
sketch like a real PTSD one. Just that expression alone.
I mean, it's one thing to say to your sweetheart, honey,
I've had a crappy day. It's another thing to say this, yeah, right.
So that alone and I thought was amazing. And then
after she drew it, she had this little insight and
she added a circle around her and she said the
(18:10):
circle was God's love m hm. And she went into
work the next day was a totally different attitude really
rooted in her, knowing that she was protected by the
love of God and and was it a sign that
she really should leave that job with the rock throwing people.
(18:31):
I mean, she was protected the circle or is it
field and other rocks could hit her as it happens.
I'm still in touch with her, and she did in
fact leave that job eventually. But what I think is,
I think we all know the story of what it
is to go to work every day feeling like they're
throwing rocks at you. We all know how that's going
(18:52):
to go. Eventually, you're going to quit or get fired.
There's no good way that's gonna add going in. However,
with this confidence, with this sense of inviolability, with this
sense of you know, they're not trying to hurt me,
they can't hurt me. They get what's what's deep and
true about me is is unassailable. You know that that
can't be. So I can show up and be present
(19:15):
and listen and see what happens, you know, follow the
path in the way it's actually meant to go, and
not just let my hurt feelings make the decisions for me.
You talk about that. That's another thing that you touch
on in the book. Um is another way of expressing God.
But the net for people who are uncomfortable with the
word God, UM, it's just a way of feeling protected, right,
(19:40):
and and that's really helpful when you're going through a
difficult time. Yeah, yeah, I I UM. I also have
very mixed feelings about the word God. So I'm all
for that. Yeah, I have this image in my head
of like like if if there's a beam of light
(20:01):
going through you, right, like through your spine, that goes
up through your head and sort of connects you to
the stars, and it goes down into the earth and
connects you to Earth and um. And then maybe there's
other beams of light coming off of you, like like
a dandelion spokes, right, and so they connect you with everything, right,
because everybody else has those spokes too, and maybe even
(20:23):
all the animals and plants do, maybe even the rocks do.
So when you get that picture in your mind, you
start to see this this net, this web of all
these inter locking spokes, and we're all part of the
same thing, right. This is that first of all of thermodynamics,
right that the energy is never lost, it's only transformed.
(20:44):
So we're connected to everything. We're all basically the same thing.
I mean, we're made out of the same things that
the stars are made out of. You. There's the whole
thing about we have a certain amount of our DNA
is the same as Japanzees, like some enormous percentage of
our DNA is the same as daffodils. I mean, like
(21:05):
we're really the same, and that that feeling of just
being part of a giant, energetic net. I find very
like you could lean back in it like it's a hammock.
You know, you could on it when you want something,
like you could yank on it a little bit after.
You know, you can't overwhelm it. You can't be too
small for it. You're you're, you're an essential part of it.
(21:28):
I don't know. I get a lot of just sort
of instantly beats that sense of isolation, that sense of falling,
falling through the cracks. Yeah, yeah, you kind of can't
be lonely with that, can you? No? Give another? Um
another exercise that I thought was so simple and great
in your book, UM about confronting fear by speaking it
(21:52):
out loud. Yeah. You know, when things are inside your head,
they seem really real, you know, like, Oh, they're all
gonna hate me. Oh I'm gonna do this, and no
one's gonna come, No one's gonna pay for that. They're
gonna I'm gonna make a fool of myself. I'm gonna fail,
I'm gonna fail publicly. I'm gonna fail publicly in a
really ugly way. That all feels very super real. And
(22:16):
what I notice is that when you even just write
it down on a piece of paper and better yet,
read it, write it down a piece of paper and
then say it out loud to somebody you trust, um,
almost immediately another part of your brain kicks in and goes, well,
you're probably not gonna lose everything. Not everyone's gonna hate it,
(22:38):
you know, like you can get some sort of perspective.
And this is this is again part of the thing
about making some art about it, but again just giving
some form outside of your head since you can really
analyze it, because some things do have risks. And you know,
you were talking at the beginning of the program about
change and about change being uncomfortable. I mean that what
(23:00):
that image in the net says to me is that
changes constant. Right, Energy is constantly flowing through that net.
So if change is constant, and God or the net
or whatever we want to call that is also constant,
then sort of the more change, the more God. So
you may not like change, but change sure loves you.
(23:21):
There's only one alternative to change, really, and that's death. Well,
I love I think that a lot too. I don't
talk about it so much because it's a little bit
of a buzz kill, but I talked to a lot
of creatives are like, well, I would do more, but
you know, I had this teacher who really discouraged me
when it's in the third grade. You know, she told
me I couldn't write, or I had a mother like this,
or a boyfriend who was like that. Like, I get it.
(23:42):
We've all had those experiences that put us off, you know,
something we loved. But at the same time, I really
don't think you want to be, you know, on your
deathbed or face to face with St. Peter or the
angels or whatever, going like, yeah, I would have done more,
but my boyfriend wasn't very part of you don't want
to be that guy. You know. Oh yeah, I get
(24:04):
your work done because we're here for like a minute,
you know. Okay. So the subtitle of your book, Get
It Done is from Procrastination to creative genius in fifteen
minutes a day. So when you say get it done,
you don't necessarily mean spend ten hours getting it done,
because you might burn yourself out and explain the fifteen
minutes a day. So who's got ten hours, right. I mean,
(24:27):
I think this is a big problem. We have these
you know what, I want to write a book, I
want to start a business, I want to do these
big things. Um, and we sort of feel like, oh,
I need a built in provose for six months in
order to do that, which would be great, and I'd
like to sign us all up for that, but wells
of us to have lives, we don't have all that
kind of time. So my challenge, my dream, my mission
(24:50):
in life is to have everybody spending fifteen minutes a
day on the projects that matter most to them. And
you know how this is. We get everything done for
everybody else all day, but the stuff that really matters
to us. Our prayer and meditation, practice, our yoga, are writing,
our music, our dance are whatever it is you love
(25:11):
to do is not getting done. It's not even on
the list sometimes, So put it first, Put it first,
fifteen minutes a day, brandish acutally, five days a year.
It changes your life. I have seen this. My clients
and students who do this see unbelievable, miraculous results. And
(25:32):
is that because the fifteen minutes actually turns into an
hour and you get so much more into it than
you thought you would ever be able to. Or is
it because the consistency of that um practice all of
the above. Sometimes yeah, sometimes you sit down for fifteen
minutes and four hours go by. Sometimes you sit down
for fifteen minutes and you stare at a blank piece
(25:53):
of paper for fifteen minutes, which is fine, fifteen minutes
of unforced boredom, never heard a person. And this, you know,
I have to be constantly productive. Disease has got to go. Yeah,
it's showing up for it every day. It's get the
fifteen minute thing, hop scotches. You write past your perfectionism,
right past your you know, um overthinking because you know
(26:17):
how perfect is it going to be in fifteen minutes?
How much could you get done in fifteen minutes? And
you'll be amazed how much you can get done in
fifteen minutes every day for a week, a month, a year,
ten years. It's it's shocking. So you've had clients who
actually produced books in fifteen minutes a day, or thought
of great, great new ideas for a business or something
(26:37):
like this. I do, I do. I wonder who finished
a PhD actually in fifteen minutes a day for thirty years,
how long with it? But it might have taken her five,
you know, but she had little kids. I mean, there
was only so many times she had. My favorite story
is I had a woman who was working with me privately.
And I hardly ever worked with people privately anymore, um,
(27:01):
so it was a little exceptional. But she, um, she
had a day job, you know, and under fluorescent lights
that she was pretty sure was sucking her soul away, right,
And she wanted to be a jewelry designer and maker.
So I talked about this fifteen minute thing, and she's like, Sam,
that's not gonna work for me. And take me fifteen
minutes just to get my stuff out, like I've got
all those beabes and tools, and and I was like, look,
(27:21):
you're a creative person, figure it out, like even to
spend fifteen minutes sketching or doodling or daydreaming whatever you want.
The next time I talked to her, she had made
herself like a little kit right, like a little um
like people who do fly tying to tackle box, like
a tackle box exactly so she could take it out,
work for fifteen minutes and put it back and in
three weeks she had made two three necklaces, which was
(27:44):
three more than she had made in the previous nine months. Okay,
she was also in turning at a tattoo parlor, which
in l A, being a tattoo artist is kind of
a big deal. It's internet a tattoo parlor. And now
she had this little kid, so she started taking her
jewelry kit to the tattoo parlor, you know, to work
on like during the downtime. Well, they didn't know she
made jewelry. So now the tattoo parlor starts selling her jewelry,
(28:06):
and between the jewelry and the tattoos, she can quit
the soul sucking job and like start oil painting, which
was she really wanted to do. I'm telling you minutes
a day. I love that. And you also talk about
time and how having too much of it can be
as paralyzing as not having enough. When we come back
(28:27):
from the break, we're gonna get into that. You're talking
about time, and I think we all feel like we
don't have enough time, but you say the problem is
(28:47):
sometimes having too much time. We'll have to wait a wait.
We all have twenty four hours a day, so nobody
has more time than anyone else. Dobody gets any more
than anybody else, So that's the best absolute you're not
having enough to do maybe in that time, and just
feeling overwhelmed. Yeah, yeah, we're talking before with the beauty
and magic of deadlines. You know that when you end
(29:07):
up with a vast expanse of time and no deadline,
it can really be hurtful. And then we start whipping
ourselves too, because we've spent all this time telling myself like, Okay,
when summer vacation comes, okay, when I retire, okay, when
I get this time off, Okay, this is what I'm
gonna do it, And then the moment comes and you
cannot get off the couch. And I think that's a
function of a lot of things. Sometimes I think we
(29:29):
just don't give it ourselves enough time to downshift, you know,
I mean to transition. Transition to go from having a
full time job to be with your kids all the
time to all of a sudden a lot of empty space.
There's a lot of recalibration that needs to happen, and
I think to be a little patient with yourself while
you do that. But also, you know, just use the
(29:50):
other tools that are at your disposal. Use the fifteen
minute a day thing. Use social accountability, like get a buddy,
because I can tell myself that I'm gonna do something forever,
and I may or may not do it. But if
I tell you guys that I'm gonna have it to
you by Tuesday morning, yeah well I will have it
to you by Tuesday morning. So leverage the things that
matter to you too, to help getting you through those
times where you feel like because you say you want
(30:11):
to do something to yourself and you wake up at
six months later and you have no idea how that
just happened, and you still haven't made any progress on
your project because you didn't do the fifteen minutes a day.
Well that's it. I mean, sometimes procrastination just means your
project is too big. So then you what do you do?
Break it down into small lots of small, little projects,
any little chunks exactly. So you think to yourself, we
(30:33):
should redo the house, and you get this image in
your mind at the house like top to bottom and
totally redond. Oh my gosh, it's so beautiful, right like
it's and then you immediately get overwhelmed because how do
you even right, I don't know Kyle guy, and I
don't know how to do right, and then you just
freak yourself out and don't do anything. This is a
very comte, right. They get a big idea, but it's
(30:56):
so big they don't even know where to start. So um,
I'm a big fan of going through the door that
is open, right, pick something that's right in front of you,
it's little and doable, and and start to work on that.
Because your brain is this beautiful, amazing problem solving machine.
(31:17):
Almost every question you give it, it tries to find
an answer to and it mostly succeeds unless there's too
many unknowns or too many variables. So something like how
do I redo the whole house without spending our life
fortune and finding a contractor who's not going to trick
me and end up holmless on the street? Oh my god,
trying to think about too many things. There's too many
unknowns and too many variables. How do I find a
(31:40):
new carpet for the upstairs bedroom? Oh, your brain says,
carpet for the upstairs bedroom. Oh, there's that carpet shop
that I drive by every day, And oh wait, didn't
my cousin Stevie just redo her house. Maybe she knows
something about like once you give it something specific to
look for, your brain is great at geting an answer,
(32:01):
so that's why you got to chunk it out. So
it sounds like something else that you talked about in
your book, which is this idea of clutter, because sounds
like your brain when you're thinking of to be do
in your whole house. Your brain is cluttered with too
many ideas. But I think in our lives we create
clutter physically, emotionally, um, psychologically. And you have this exercise
(32:22):
of a dream closet which isn't really a closet. And
when you when I saw that chapter title, I was
all excited and that I had a vision of my
dream closet, which was nothing, was like Barbies dream closet,
nothing like what you're talking about. Can do have a
dressing table? And did have a fainting couch, yest couch?
It didn't It was pink velvet. But let's tell us
(32:44):
about your dream closet exercise. Yeah, I'm still hung up
on like all these little shoe boxes and the and
the fainting. Yeah, I totally want that. Um. Yeah, So
here's the thing the Chinese say that health is flow, right,
Health is flow. We want are to flow in and
out of our lungs, really would love to flow in
and out of our lives. This is probably why I
(33:04):
say like changes, love is God is good, right, more
flow better. Clutter is stuck nous right. So, whether we're
dealing with stuck stuff piles of stuff that don't move,
or stuck feelings, stuck ideas, you have an unhealthy situation.
(33:24):
So whether we're dealing with stuck stuff or stuck ideas,
stuck old stories. So the idea of a dream closet
is to just it's a little imagination game, to just
imagine in your mind a closet that has all your
old dreams in it, your dreams of when you were
a child, your dreams of when you were in college,
and all through your life, and to maybe take a
look and seedd hardy really yours. Sometimes we get dreams
(33:48):
handed down to us from our parents or our grandparents,
or from the culture. Definitely, and to be able to
look at something and go, wait a minute, that's not
my dream. I don't care about a six bedroom house
in the suburbs. That's not my um. Some of that
stuff can get get rid of some of it. Um,
it's just old. You know. I'd be like, oh, yeah,
that was my dream when I was thirteen. But I
(34:09):
don't let thirteen year olds make decisions for my life
right now. It doesn't fit me anymore anyway, it does.
It's too tight. Or there's other dreams that we go, Wow,
that dream has been with me a long time and
it really does still matter to me. I really do
want to take that out and and see see how
I can make that functional in my life. Right now,
there's something you say that actually I believe so firmly, um,
(34:33):
and I think it's it's a it's more powerful even
than I can comprehend. But you see, structure is freedom,
and that just blows me away. Can you elaborate on
that a little bit. Yeah, So a pile of bricks
in the yard is a pile of bricks, A pile
(34:55):
of bricks in form in structure is a house. Right,
So we need to have parameters around things. We need
to have Even children when they're playing games, go okay,
here's the rules. That's hot lava, and you be the
fairy princess and I'll be the king. Like those are
the rules of the game, and then we play that
(35:16):
game until we decided to play another game. UM. So
to understand what the structures are that are supporting you
and what ones maybe aren't, and where the illusion of
freedom is actually keeping you stuck because you think freedom
means you can do whatever the heck you want with
(35:36):
no rules and no parameters, and just like you know,
stay in bed all day and then you do nothing
and then you do nothing, whereas like my calendar rules
my life right and I'm so I still keep a
date book. Many people do, they just don't tell one another.
But many people have a file effects. Still, yes, my
(35:58):
sister has very effective, fabulous person in the world. It's
a bulging file effects to this day. You know, when
you show me a better technology, I'll use it for
pen and PaperWorks great for me. I do have a
Google calendar too, so that my team knows where I am. Um.
But on the on my calendar, I'll block out Friday
afternoons because I don't like to work Friday afternoons. Right.
(36:18):
If I'm working on a book or if I'm writing,
I'll block out writing time and then it says on
my calendar writing tender one so that I write from
ten to one, because that's what it says to do.
You know. I put CrossFit on my calendar. I put
date night on my calendar. All those things that are
really important to me. I structure the time so that
(36:39):
they happen. I have one last question. What I really
care about is becoming an elusive Rainbow sparkles unicorn. Am
I gonna do that? Coming in Elusive Sparkly Rainbow Unicorn
is my answer to managing crowds and going to conferences
(37:00):
and networking events and places where there's a lot of people.
I'm super shy and super introverted that yeah, we could
tell no one ever believes it, but it's it's real.
You haven't seen in a group like watch me. My
hands start ringing, I start sweating, I lose my words.
It's terrible. And I also just to get it out
there from anxiety and depression. And I said that just
(37:22):
because I think it's important to acknowledge, and you talk
about it in your book, which I think I really
appreciate it. I mean, you said it's something you manage
exactly exactly the same way I would manage any other condition.
And um, but reminding myself that I don't need to
meet every person in the room. I don't need to
make twenty new best friends. I can just make one friend.
(37:44):
I could just be there for a little bit and
then go back up to my room. That's the elusive
part of the Sparkly Rainbow Unicorn part, Like I could.
And I can also treat myself a little with a
little more special special. You know, I can really make
sure that I take time for my meditation practice that morning.
(38:04):
I can really make sure that I'm wearing something that
I feel great in. I can um schedule something fun
for afterwards, you know, lunch with a friend, just so that, um,
I'm showing up in a way that feels really great. Yeah.
So you're feeding yourself when you know you're going to
be dreamed later exactly, and sort of babying yourself into it,
(38:26):
essentially saying, look, self, I'm going to challenge you to
do something that doesn't come so naturally, but I'm going
to give you some treats along the way. And there
might be a roast chicken. When I'm done chicken. We
consit in a room and read it like my inner
nine year old runs the show way more than I
care to admit so I bribed my intern nine year
old with a chance to read in bed or some
(38:47):
silver sparkly shoes. All right, I'm going to be having
a long, friendly chat with my inner nine year old
this evening. Thank you so much for all of this
great advice, Sam. You can find more of it in
Samantha's books, Start right where you are and get it done.
You can also find more of Sam Bennett at start
(39:08):
right where you are dot com and on Twitter, at
or art. Come and connect with us at You Turns podcast.
Tell us your stories, let us know how you spark
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