June 16, 2026 · Episode 71
1Hr 16 Min, 54 Sec 

Summary

Why is there such a massive gap between wanting to start a creative project and actually putting brush to paper or hands to wood? In this episode of Pain In The Arts, we focus on removing creative friction by unpacking the hidden blocks of identity friction, perfectionism, and over-engineered productivity systems. Moving past failed bullet journals and rigid efficiency frameworks, Lyndon shares how a chaotic, Indiana Jones-inspired “Grail method” can eliminate artistic blocks to spark organic inspiration.

Plus, we celebrate the arrival of Lacey, our new elite assistance dog who is already causing studio chaos. We also break down how to beat the digital doom scroll by resetting your daily consumption habits, and how to lower the stakes using hands-on making practices like furniture restoration and campervan fit-outs. Discover how to redesign your physical environment, build low-friction creative rituals, and join us for our six-month accountability pact!

Love this conversation? Get exclusive podcast episodes on our Patreon and support the show!

Transcript

Lyndon: Last episode, we were talking about the imminent arrival of Lacey, the assistance dog.

And now she’s in the studio.

Brea: She’s in the studio. We have a studio dog as well as a studio cat. We actually have both animals in the studio now.

Lyndon: And that cat has been a scaredy cat for about a week. It’s been on edge.

Brea: Oh, yeah. It was funny when we were like anxiously and excitedly awaiting Lacey’s arrival last Monday. And we saw Nibbles. She was walking around the house just so content with life, so happy. And she sat up on Birdie’s big cloud sack, which is like a giant foam-filled beanbag. So Nibbles was sitting there like a little puddle in the middle of this big pool, and she was so relaxed and happy.

And then Lacey arrived, the Smart Pup, with two handlers, and they came into the room, and Nibbles just—

Lyndon: Went on attack…

Brea: Oh my gosh, she just — her eyes suddenly were like saucers. Her face just looked like she’d been insulted.

Lyndon: The hair stood up on the back. Actually, when one of our support workers had brought her dog around about a month ago, Nibbles then, her hair just stood up on her back. Like that classic—

Brea: Looney Tunes…

Lyndon: Yeah, like a cartoon. But she didn’t do that when she was on the cloud sack when Lacey arrived, and so she wasn’t really giving off attack vibes. And then one of the handlers went to go over and say, “Hey, girl, it’s okay,” and she swiped at her.

Brea: Yeah. Big time. We’ve never actually seen Nibbles—

Lyndon: Yeah…

Brea: Like swipe at somebody or try to hurt anybody, but she was just shocked and in defense and, yeah, she kinda lashed out a little bit. She didn’t get her, which was good. Thank goodness.

Lyndon: But often when we’re recording, SF Nubs — the studio cat, which is Nibbles — will be sitting at the glass door over there just looking outside and having a snooze, and that’s where she is now. And we’ve got Lacey here, who is probably the most obedient dog I’ve ever met.

Brea: Oh, she’s incredible.

Lyndon: Yeah. Just beautiful. Hey, Brea, we’ve trained her well.

Brea: We can take zero cre- credit for—

Lyndon: Lacey.

This is what happens when you wait seven years.

Brea: For a Smart Pup… for—

Lyndon: A Smart Pup.

Brea: They come along and they’re super smart.

Lyndon: Clue’s in the title.

Brea: Yeah.

Anyway, so — Lacey is beautiful. Let’s just describe her. She’s a black Labrador, very sleek. She’s still very young. She’s about 15 months old, and so she’s just got that sort of still sprightly pup look about her.

Lyndon: She’s—

Brea: Fit.

She is fit. She’s very strong, very agile, and super obedient, and just so clued into our instructions and directions for things. Yeah, she just is ready to work, isn’t she? She’s ready to do all of the things that she’s been trained to do.

Lyndon: Yeah, a working dog — they’re happiest when they’re working. That’s when they’re the most fulfilled.

Brea: Yep. So — and Lacey definitely is. Yeah. She loves it. She can’t wait to get out and go on walks and do all the things that she’s been asked to do.

Lyndon: Okay. What’s the worst thing about her?

Brea: There’s nothing.

Lyndon: There is. No. And you know what it is.

Brea: What? Having to pick up the poo?

Lyndon: No. What? The poo actually is fascinating. I can’t… every time I pick it up, I’m like, “Wow, should I be using a plastic bag?” No. Do I—

Brea: Use the bags? I hope you do.

Lyndon: You’re not allowed back in the house… Have you seen that video where there’s just some guy, he’s picking up poo — like dog poo — in the park or something, like he’s just doing everyone a favour.

But then the twist in the video is that he actually doesn’t own a dog himself.

Brea: Oh—

Lyndon: What a yuck. So he’s just going around. It’s not true. It’s not a documentary. It’s a reel or something. I’m not sure if it was him that was hanging up the bags in the trees as well. Yeah.

Let’s not — no — talk about her number twos.

Brea: Although they are—

Lyndon: Incredible…

Brea: Incredibly clean. Lacey’s on a very strict diet.

Lyndon: Incredibly clean and light and dare I say crisp.

Brea: No—

Lyndon: You dare not. Can we not talk about — can we not talk about her… what’s it called? Hey, what about wombats and they do like little cubes.

Brea: Yeah. What about ’em?

Lyndon: Oh, and what are rabbits’… Oh, droppings. They’re called droppings. Yeah. But they don’t — you don’t generally refer to dogs’ droppings, do you?

Brea: Kind of, yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah. No. No.

No Pats Allowed

Lyndon: The worst — okay — thing about her is we’re not allowed to touch her.

Brea: Yeah, actually, that’s—

Lyndon: We can’t pat her…

Brea: Absolutely awful. Yeah. We’ve been tormented for the past week and a half since she arrived. We were given permission to give her a few pats on day one when she first came into our house, before we had done any handler training.

They let us greet her and just make her welcome a little bit, and then from that day on, we’ve not been allowed to pat her.

Lyndon: So — and it’s horrid… Every time I turn around, I see you doing little things. Like Birdie, just seeing what you can get away with.

Oh, not true. So you were, like, cleaning her ears. Day three, you’re like, “Here, let me clean your ears,” and then, “Oh, let me put pajamas on you.” And, “Oh, I think you need more brushing.”

Brea: I’m just looking after her. Can’t help it that there’s some incidental touching going on.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Brea: But yeah, it’s really difficult because she’ll sit and look up at us with these big puppy dog eyes — literal puppy dog eyes.

And she’s absolutely gorgeous. She’s—

Lyndon: The quintessential—

Brea: She is…

Lyndon: Dog, really. Quintessential puppy. Got all the moves and all the looks, and the tilting of the head, and the—

Brea: Yeah…

Lyndon: And the big brown eyes, and—

Brea: She’ll even put her hand up to shake hands if she thinks she — not even if she thinks she’s being asked to, because we’re not giving the command — but just to get a little bit of attention and to, you know… she wants to show us that she’s willing to do all the tricks and stuff.

But the biggest part of the news — of getting Lacey as the assistance dog of the home — is it now—

Lyndon: That we can’t go anywhere ever?

Brea: We’re now handlers forever.

Lyndon: We’re handlers with this massive responsibility to an elite animal.

Brea: I know.

Lyndon: It’s like welcoming — it’s like being the foster parents of a genius child athlete that you’ve now gotta — like everything you do—

Brea: You’ve gotta keep everything going for them and—

Lyndon: Yeah yeah. Gotta keep them in tip-top shape and if they ever put on an extra half a — it’s your fault.

Brea: Yep.

Lyndon: Oh, goodness.

Brea: That’s all right. We are gonna be reassessed in three years to see whether we continue to pass our handlers—

Lyndon: It’s a welfare check…

Brea: Check, yeah, and see whether Lacey still passes her assistance dog test.

So it’s all the pressure’s on us to keep it all going.

Lyndon: Yep, it’s gonna be a tense three years.

Brea: I know. Yeah. Oh — no, the biggest thing about this whole new inclusion in our household is that Birdie absolutely loves Lacey, and has already just been absolutely in love with having her in the house, and giving her pats, and—

Lyndon: There’s never been so much tongue kissing happening in this family.

No.

Brea: Not even when we were first dating. Yeah, Birdie tongue kisses all the dogs in the neighbourhood, but now — now we’re hoping—

Lyndon: She’ll practice some monogamy.

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: Or madogamy.

Brea: That might be healthy… cause at least we know where Lacey’s tongue has been.

Lyndon: Yeah, that’s right.

Brea: We know what goes into her mouth.

Lyndon: And we know what comes out.

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: It’s fascinating.

Brea: It is fascinating. No, Birdie loves Lacey so much, so there’s lots of hugs, lots of pats going on. And Birdie is the only person allowed to pat Lacey and cuddle her and give her all the rubs and lovings.

Lyndon: And special treats.

Yeah, so she’s got what’s called high-value treats — HVT — for anyone playing at home. And we’re not allowed to give them to her. And in Lacey’s entire life so far, she’s never been fed the high-value treats as the ultimate reward—

Brea: Yeah…

Lyndon: By anyone who came into her life.

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: And so yeah, it’s all about creating that bond. And it is tricky because we have to be the handlers but the bond has to be with Birdie. And so we’re continually reinforcing that bond. And it’ll grow over time, but initially we’ve really got to make sure that Lacey isn’t looking to us for any of that stuff.

Which is why we can’t show her affection. And also because we’re handlers — handlers can show their dogs affection, but we do have to remain the alphas as well.

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: The leaders.

Brea: She is looking to us to give the instructions and so on. But we want her attention focused always on Birdie and—

Lyndon: It’s—

Brea: Supporting her.

Lyndon: It’s quite intelligent that she can do that.

And the way — incredible — that they’ve trained her has all been for that as well. Yeah. So that’s been really quite amazing actually.

Brea: Yeah. It is. It’s like having an elite athlete in your home, but also a toddler elite athlete—

Lyndon: Yeah,

Brea: Because there are so many needs that you have to take into account and be hyper-focused on as well. And she—

Lyndon: Follows you around like a toddler.

Brea: She does, yeah. She’s taken to following me around while I do the washing and sweep up all of her fur that is now everywhere. She’s always around, which is very lovely. But yeah, again, we’ve just gotta be careful that her deepest affection and connection comes to Birdie.

Lyndon: Welcome to Pain In The Arts, where the pursuit of meaningful art meets the unpredictable demands of real life. I am Lyndon.

Brea: I’m Breallyn, and you’re also here with Lacey and Nibbles.

Lyndon: I’ve titled this episode, “I’ve Been Meaning To Do That.”

And you’ll see why in a moment.

Productivity Obsession

Lyndon: I’ve spent a fair bit of time this year thinking about why I’m not doing the creative things that I actually want to do.

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: And I may have mentioned this to you yesterday, I think — that maybe I’ve been looking at it wrong, because I think I’ve been approaching it from the standpoint of productivity.

I was telling you about this, wasn’t I?

Brea: You did mention it, yeah.

Lyndon: So systems, schedules—

Brea: Productivity…

Lyndon: Habits. Yeah.

Brea: It’s a dirty word, isn’t it?

Lyndon: I’ve even read some artistic, creative angles on it as well.

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: But I think embedded in me is an admiration for people that are really good at that stuff.

Brea: Yeah. And there are people that are very productive and very creative at the same time. They happen to—

Lyndon: We hate them.

Brea: They’re prolific in what they do, and—

Lyndon: Yeah…

Brea: Yeah, everyone wants to kinda be them.

Lyndon: That’s right.

I was actually saying yesterday, wasn’t I, that it’s a bit like when there’s the good-looking girl at school, but she’s also good at maths.

And you’re like, “What?”

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: That’s—

Brea: You can’t have two—

Lyndon: You can’t have two—

Brea: Great strings to your bow.

Lyndon: Yeah. That’s right. There’s a — I’ve forgotten what that Japanese word is for being, like, really efficient. Do you remember what it is? It used to be on the tip of my tongue when I was running the coffee van because I thought it was quite brilliant.

I think the Toyota company, I think it was really a mantra of theirs — it’s like being efficient but also minimising waste. So for an example, it might be if you make a widget, say, whatever it is, and you have a box that you put it in, and then you ship it off in a truck to the docks or whatever.

What they would do is look at it and go, “If you change the dimensions of the box, you can completely fill this truck.” Or if you use a different kind of truck, you’ll be able to fit 15% more in.

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: All that — all that kinda stuff — like just looking anywhere that there is waste and removing it.

Have you found what that word is?

Brea: Yeah. According to this, the core philosophy of driving efficiency at Toyota is kaizen, which translates — yeah — to continuous improvement. Is it kaizen? Yeah. Kaizen. Yeah, I—

Lyndon: I think that’s it.

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: There was a movie years ago, and it had the actor John… Was it John Burlinson? Is it Tom Burlinson? Oh, yeah. Was he from The Man From Snowy River? Yeah.

Brea: Yep.

Lyndon: And anyway, so you may know this movie because he was a windsurfer in it.

Brea: Oh, really?

Lyndon: Do you remember that? And in the morning — so he — for—

Brea: Those who don’t know, I was a windsurfer—

Lyndon: You were a windsurfer back in the day. When I met you, you were a windsurfer. I was not a windsurfer. So he, in the morning, like before he got up to catch a wave or whatever, he would get out of bed, and then he’d put the kettle on and the toast on, and everything would come… The toast would pop up, and he’d be able to spread it and get his, you know — it was all this sort of just like—

Brea: Super efficient—

Lyndon: Super efficient. It’s a—

Brea: Bit like — and that really appealed to me… Wallace and Gromit, isn’t it? Yeah. A bit like Wallace and Gromit.

Yeah. Although that was all with clever machine-like—

Lyndon: And it’s weird—

Brea: Inventions and stuff.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Brea: Where the bed would tip you into your trousers, or tip—

Lyndon: Yeah—

Brea: Wallace into his trousers.

Lyndon: Yeah, yeah, so it was a bit like that. And it always stuck with me. But funnily enough, I hadn’t thought about this until now.

This morning when I was getting my coffee and a bagel — I remembered that yesterday I put the bagel on, and it was ready before the coffee was.

And so then I was in a quandary, cause I’m like, “Now when do I put the cream cheese on?”

Brea: Oh, no.

Lyndon: Because if I wait too long, the cream cheese won’t start melting on the bagel. But if I do it right now, it’ll melt in too much.

And I was like, you know what? I’m gonna have to do better with that.

And so this morning—

Brea: Your kaizen is not very kaizeny.

Lyndon: It was this morning. It was amazing. It was amazing. And I had it all ready at the exact right times.

Brea: Wow.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Brea: And you know what? You’re only 52.

Lyndon: I told you to never say my age in public. I’m in my mid to late 40s. Yeah.

Brea: You got your bagel and your coffee ready at once.

Lyndon: But—

Brea: Just puts Lacey’s achievements to shame, doesn’t it?

Lyndon: Hang on a minute.

This episode isn’t going the way I wanted it to. When I was doing the coffee van, like I loved coffee, but the coffee van wasn’t meant to be my whole thing.

So I worked at a studio in the afternoons, and so I needed to… I wanted to be as efficient as possible, get the coffee out of the way, and just get on with the music stuff.

And this kaizen idea really appealed to me. And then — and I was, like, trying to get my 100 coffees in every morning, and then after a while I was just like, “It’s driving me nuts.”

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: Because there’s so many things — oh, it was — in, like — yeah — it was, yeah, it’s—

Brea: It was actually hard to watch you go through that, cause I obviously as a family we would—

Lyndon: Thanks for helping.

Brea: I was. I believe I was raising your children at the time.

Lyndon: Oh. Yeah.

Brea: Yeah, as a family, obviously we’ve always done everything as a family. We’ve worked together. If you’re doing something, it means you’re doing it for all of us, and likewise. We were needing the income and wanting to build our little empire, with the coffee van being one of the parts of it. And yeah, have a decent income from it. But then, yeah, it also — so much of our energy went to it. Yours particularly, obviously, cause you were doing the daily van stuff.

And we would be trying to figure out, could we upsell — like I was making muffins — oh, that’s right.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Brea: Can we increase our sales to each customer by a little bit, which overall will increase our profitability by 10 to 20%?

Lyndon: Yeah.

Brea: I had all the — all the—

Lyndon: Numbers in my head.

Brea: Yeah. All the figures, everything worked out. All the figures, like how much — yeah — how much does every coffee and muffin cost us to make?

And therefore, how much do we need to sell each day to cover the costs, and then cover the costs of the van and the petrol and all that sort of thing. So we had all our breakdowns done, and trying to reach these targets, and seeing you contend with that day by day.

And it was exciting. We had a lot of good times with that. We built something that was very cool, and—

Lyndon: Yeah, I think—

Brea: Yeah, we enjoyed it…

Lyndon: I think business intrinsically — it’s easy to get caught up in it.

Brea: Yeah. Do—

Lyndon: You know what I mean? I don’t, yeah.

Brea: It’s like a game. Yeah, you’re trying to achieve something and, you know—

Lyndon: Yeah.

Brea: Sort of — get better and better…

Lyndon: Yeah, and there’s often new challenges every day. I think the thing that was hard with the kaizen approach is there’s so many other things that aren’t in your control necessarily, that can give you stress because of that. For instance, there was a time — and this sort of thing happened, or different versions of this would happen from time to time.

I had a car show that I did every year, and it was about an hour and a half’s drive from home, and I got up there and they’d cancelled it and didn’t tell me.

Brea: Oh, that was awful. That was so infuriating that time.

Lyndon: Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And so there’s a snowball effect because when you’re doing an event like that, you have to order extra stock.

Yeah. So you’ve gotta think about it ahead of time. And because you’re working with consumables you may end up having to throw stuff out.

Brea: Yeah…

Lyndon: So all kinds of things. The generator often would play up, and so then that level of service and efficiency would be reduced until you could get that fixed — you know — if you could control everything, the kaizen thing would be much easier.

Yeah, then you could be efficient. That’s right. And then you sorta learn that, oh, that’s all part of it. It’s the same with gigging. Like I used to have this idea of, once I’m doing these better kinda gigs and once I’m at these other venues and so on, then the monitoring won’t be an issue. It’ll always be fantastic. And it’s like — that’s not reality — that’s not reality.

Brea: Yeah…

Lyndon: Part of — there’s—

Brea: Always these crappy little challenges—

Lyndon: Part of — every time — but yeah, there’s — you’re dealing with people, you’re dealing with different gear sometimes, all sorts of stuff, yeah. But, so I think I’ve always liked this idea of efficiency and productivity, especially when you feel like you’re in an area that isn’t meant to be forever, and you’re trying to get another side of your life or your career on the move, and the momentum with that.

It’s like, I’ve really got to get this other thing happening — making money, being somewhat sort of self-contained, and it just becomes a natural part of every day that I don’t have to think about too much.

Brea: A little bit more on an automatic level.

Lyndon: Yeah. Yeah. And it can’t really be. Yeah. When you’re running a business, as soon as you’re in this cruise mode, things just start falling away.

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: It’s pretty amazing.

Brea: It’s a way to kill your business, basically, is — yeah — is by not continually trying to improve it and be on top of all of the things.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Bullet Journal Fail

Lyndon: I know I’ve spoken about this before — bullet journaling.

Brea: Yes. I have seen you outside with a journal many a time.

Lyndon: Yeah, but inside the journal was — blank page — was YouTube app. No, really.

Brea: I’ve seen — when I say I’ve seen you outside, I’ve seen the journal and the pen sitting there on the little side table and the coffee in your hands. And you’re—

Lyndon: What I have—

Brea: You’re gazing into the middle distance.

Lyndon: It depends what glasses I’ve got on. In my right hand is my coffee, in my left hand is my bagel, and then — yeah, you’re right. Next to me is the notebook and pen, and I go, “I’ve only got two hands.”

Brea: No room for you, journal.

Lyndon: Tomorrow. Yeah, but I’ve liked the idea of bullet journaling, and I landed on that and went, “Oh, this is the perfect system.”

If I can take to this, then I can get—

Brea: Oh, your life would be grand.

Lyndon: Yeah, cause what is it? Ideas aren’t meant to be held in your head. I can’t remember who said that.

You’re meant to get ’em out. Your brain is — yeah — for working through stuff, not holding in stuff. I don’t know. I can’t remember. This is—

Brea: I remember the philosophy behind — hey? You can’t remember the philosophy behind the journaling.

Lyndon: No, I can, but it’s just not forming into words. Which is handy for a podcast, really, isn’t it?

Anyway, so this bullet journaling — for people that don’t know, you need to rule some pages in it first so that you’ve got a forward planning area. So you divide a page into six sections, and so you’re looking at six months ahead at a time. And then you’ve got your daily pages where you write in, get the thoughts out of your head — like all the stuff that you’ve gotta do today.

And then if it’s something that’s for the future, you can put it in what’s called the future log. And so there’s a system you need to set up inside the journal first.

Brea: It’s quite detailed.

Lyndon: And then, yeah. And the idea is that when you move to the next page, if there’s something on the previous page that you still need to do or still want to do, you — what do they call it?

Anyway, you move it forward, right? So you basically write it in again, but that gives you a moment to kinda go, “Oh, that’s actually not important anymore.” How — okay — sometimes that happens. Like—

Brea: It’s on your to-do list, but then—

Lyndon: Yeah…

Brea: You end up not doing it, and then you realize, ah, it doesn’t matter. Time’s passed.

Lyndon: Doesn’t really mean anything. That’s right. You’ve gotta call up the ATO. And then you discover that you’ve left it so long that you’ve been fined, and you go, “I don’t need to do that anymore.”

Brea: I’m pretty sure — just — that’s why any lists exist in the first place, so we don’t get those awful fines…

Lyndon: Yeah, so it’s meant to be a combination of your lists, but also whatever — your dreams, stuff that you wanna do — and everything, basically. So if you’ve got to walk the dog, you’d put that in there as well. So it covers everything, but in a way that releases you from having to feel like a slave to lists and so on.

Anyway, I thought—

Brea: You heard about it and thought your life was about to change…

Lyndon: I didn’t just hear about it. I watched many videos because I wanted to really get into it.

And I found it, to be honest, I found it hard to understand, because you use symbols. The idea — the reason it’s called bullet journaling is cause you use bullet points. But you put symbols, so instead of just a dot there, symbols might mean different things to you. So—

Brea: So it’s got its whole own kinda language associated with it.

Lyndon: Its own language. Yeah. Its own code. Yeah. And then, yeah — and I bought a notebook that I could create a bullet journal in.

Brea: And these notebooks are not lined like your regular notebooks. No, they’re just — they’ve got little dots — dots — haven’t they? Grid dots. Yeah.

Lyndon: Grid dots. Yeah. Yeah, that’s essentially the difference.

And they have a system of indexing too, so basically you don’t write in stuff in the index until it’s actually taken place in the book. So you do it in reverse. You might start a particular month on page 62, but you’re not gonna know that it’s page 62 until you’ve actually got to it and—

Brea: Written page 62 there. So you’re the one writing the page numbers. You’re the one writing—

Lyndon: Yeah…

Brea: What each page is for and everything.

Lyndon: Can you see where this has fallen down for me?

Brea: Yeah, I can. I’m actually surprised it’s taken you so long to realise it’s not for you.

Lyndon: I’ve known it, but I thought I could be better, cause you’re right.

I started—

Brea: So what did you like? What were the ideas behind it that you liked?

Lyndon: That journal — in theory, if you were bullet journaling, you’d have one of these that I’m holding up here. Is that it? It’s probably not even it. You’d have one per year probably.

I’ve had this since 2018, and I got a month into it.

And I was so careful drawing the lines and that. Yeah. And I’ve seen other people — can imagine — do theirs, like other creative, artistic people that have gone, “This is my bullet journal,” and it looks like a work of art. But they do it beautifully — you can do it however you want—

Brea: And little stickers and little symbols and—

Lyndon: Pictures.

Yeah.

Brea: And yeah, they look—

Lyndon: Pretty. So all this sort of productivity BS and self-help stuff has never worked for me. Yeah, and I did know that from when I was a teenager and had all the sticky notes basically covering my wall and bedhead like a serial killer. All these things I wanted to do and — motivational sayings. Yeah. Yeah. But—

Brea: Wow…

Lyndon: This is a big preamble for what we’re actually meant to get into today. Yeah. This is gonna be testing. Cause that’s right — you’ve literally explored this idea for quite a long time because… And I know we’ve talked about this from time to time throughout the years.

Brea: You’ve been trying to get a system to work for you that will help you to—

Lyndon: I’m trying to be—

Brea: Someone else, I think… to get organised. Yeah.

Lyndon: Why can’t I just accept me for me?

Brea: It hasn’t worked for you, essentially.

Lyndon: And I was—

Brea: But what — now what’s different? Why are you talking about it today?

Grail Method Breakthrough

Lyndon: Because I was having my coffee and bagel yesterday, and someone was talking at me on YouTube about their method. And it’s called the Grail method. Oh. And I thought, “Hello. What is this method?” And what flashed up on the screen was, “Have you failed at bullet journaling — and Notion and blah, blah, blah, and all these other methods, and the — I don’t know — the Paramore effect?”

And I was like, “Yes.”

Brea: You have—

Lyndon: Failed—

Brea: At them all.

Lyndon: Yes, I have. And so this guy was talking about how he got his inspiration from Indiana Jones, and I thought, “I’m listening.” And he was actually — I wish — I should have all these names in my notes.

Brea: Yeah, we need to credit this—

Lyndon: I need to—

Brea: Credit this creator who’s now changed your life again.

Lyndon: Yeah, he’s changed my life. We’ll see how long for. Probably just lead me down another dark pit.

Brea: A dark pit of four or five years, or however long.

Lyndon: Yeah. Six. Don’t tell me how long. It’s — I’m trying to be in denial. And he was actually making a recreation of the journal of Indiana Jones’ dad.

I can’t remember his name. Mr. Jones.

Brea: Professor.

Lyndon: Professor Jones, who had this journal, and in it he just wrote down everything. And so it’s really quite a chaotic journal.

But the idea with it is that, yeah, you use it, you write down everything, and you continually review it, and it’s not meant to be a productivity tool.

So kinda what happens in all the creative mess of it all, is that you end up having different ideas juxtaposed against each other. Things that often don’t relate, and so that fuels your creativity.

Brea: Oh, that’s interesting.

Lyndon: That’s… So yeah, there’s this whole idea in it — is that to people who are productivity focused and efficiency focused, this seems a very flawed way to have a notebook.

Brea: Which just seemed like an absolute mess — yeah — without structure, without a sort of a point to it.

Lyndon: Yeah, but those things that actually look like flaws are the superpowers of it.

Brea: Yeah, okay.

Lyndon: So what it does is it removes friction. And so for a creative person like me — and someone who clearly has stumbling blocks — like I could barely start the bullet journal because you’ve got all this structure that you need to employ before you can — learn the language to set it all up — yeah — before you can actually start writing. Wow. So that’s friction.

Brea: Yep.

Lyndon: And for someone like me, it doesn’t work.

Brea: And also, yeah, knowing you, knowing your brain — that friction never goes away, even when you’ve got the system, you know, if you knuckle down and set the system up to start with.

The system always has to exist. You’ve always got it there, so are you flipping to the right page? Have you written the right thing at the right time — and the right — exactly — all of that, like having to obey the rules of it—

Lyndon: Yeah…

Brea: Is—

Lyndon: No.

Brea: Yeah, it’s just — and—

Lyndon: That’s what this—

Brea: Not for you.

Lyndon: That’s what this guy was saying. He was like, he would have an idea, and he’d go to put it in his bullet journal.

And he’d be like, “Okay, so is this today, or do I put it in the future log, or is it a sometimes?” Cause there are these different places you’re meant to write things.

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: And everything — you write it in the right place, and that way you can always find it, you can always refer to it, you can, blah, blah, blah.

Brea: Yep.

Lyndon: Yeah, it was just not working.

So over the last four years, he’s been doing this, what he calls the Grail method, because of the Holy Grail in—

Brea: Oh, right—

Lyndon: In the movie, right?

Brea: Yep.

Lyndon: But he said it’s actually nothing new. Leonardo da Vinci did it that way.

Brea: Yep.

Lyndon: And—

Brea: And I reckon countless — you know — a whole bunch of people have—

Lyndon: Done it…

Brea: Just like everyday people, they have just their notebook, and just — yeah — would be writing whatever. A little bit of reflection, a little bit of shopping list, a little bit of this, a little bit of that sort of thing.

Lyndon: Yeah. Yep. And it’s not meant to… this sort of notebook isn’t meant to be like where you have your to-do lists, but you could write that stuff in there. Yeah. But it’s not necessarily the best place for it, sort of thing. It’s not like—

Brea: Your weekly calendar-type notebook.

It’s for what you have to do. It’s more of a creative reflection. Is that right?

Lyndon: No, not necessarily. But remember, I only watched this six-minute video yesterday. And it’s changed my life. Hallelujah.

Brea: But you can’t—

Lyndon: So don’t ask me too much about — okay.

Brea: Actually explain it.

Lyndon: Don’t ask me too much about it, cause that’s just — okay.

Have you — the impetus for where this idea — of me going, “Ah, I’ve been looking at it — that I need to be more productive” — but the way in to be more productive is to remove the friction.

Brea: So—

Lyndon: Do—

Brea: You need to be more productive?

Lyndon: Yes.

Brea: Okay. Do you?

Lyndon: Of course.

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Brea: Maybe—

Lyndon: No, but this is the thing — the sooner I start making something — yeah — or creating something, the more productive I am, because it just feeds the next thing.

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: So when you go, “Oh, I need to be more productive. I need to find more time in my day, and I need to make sure that I get this done by a certain time,” you’re creating all this sort of friction that makes it hard to actually do anything.

For me. For other people, it’s like exactly what they need. They get up, they — I don’t know what they do. They jog and then they drive to work, and then they — I don’t know.

Brea: Again, your mind boggles at the lives of others—

Lyndon: I’m sh—

Brea: Who have jobs.

Lyndon: What do they do then when they get there? I don’t know.

I don’t know.

Brea: We only know from watching TV.

Lyndon: All right. So this is the question that I’m sitting with.

If productivity isn’t my way in — what is?

All right. Okay.

Brea: And do you have an answer?

Lyndon: Yes. Yes, I do, because this is a practical episode.

I don’t think I’ve ever done an episode like this before, so you’re gonna be—

Brea: I’m in for a treat.

Lyndon: Wow.

Brea: No—

Lyndon: You’re in for some hard work, actually.

Brea: Oh, wow. Okay.

Lyndon: Cause we’re doing all this live on air.

Brea: Oh, yeah.

Oh, you’re actually gonna take me through the method or whatever?

Lyndon: Okay. Yeah. Cool. It’ll be new to both of us. The — there’s a gap, isn’t there, between “I want to do this” and “I haven’t started”?

But it isn’t laziness.

It’s — so I was talking about friction before, so it’s identity friction.

Brea: Okay.

Lyndon: If you say, “I wanna do this, but I haven’t started,” it’s usually because you’ve gotta be a beginner again at something — in a field or a domain that you care about.

Brea: Yeah, okay.

Lyndon: Yeah. So it’s uncomfortable, but in a very specific way.

Brea: Yep.

Lyndon: So I think — you know, if you go to… I went to our nephew’s bucks’ party.

And there was, like, axe throwing in that.

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah, I got involved in axe throwing.

Brea: Yep, something different — yeah, whatever. Yeah. It’s just like you sorta throw yourself into it.

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: Or throw the axe into it.

But when it’s in an area that you already work in or that you care about — it’s a particular kind of — yeah, there’s already pressure — uncomfortable—

Brea: Because you feel like, “I need to be good at this.” Yeah. It’s not just a bit of fun.

Lyndon: So what I’m gonna do — this is the practical part.

I’ve scoured all the self-help books. I’ve gone through our library, and I’ve come up with some categories. So let’s go through these categories, and then I’ll ask you questions for each category.

Brea: Okay.

Lyndon: Cause you gotta start thinking about this for you.

So you might have a dormant skill — something that you were doing and you may have had some fluency in it, and then life absorbed it.

Brea: Ooh.

Lyndon: And the interesting thing about this category is the grief that often sits underneath it.

So it’s not just like — that I stopped doing whatever it was. It’s like I used to be someone who did this.

Brea: Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Lyndon: But there’s a gap between where you left something and then—

Brea: And then, yeah, starting—

Lyndon: Again—

Yeah, so that can feel a bit humiliating or deflating, or it can be nearly a reason to not start—

Brea: Yeah…

Lyndon: Again.

Brea: Yeah. Yep.

Lyndon: So what did you do before writing became your work or your identity? Windsurfing.

Brea: I did a lot of drama actually, which obviously relates to writing. But I was involved with, and ended up being a leader of, teams that put on plays — like I would write some plays and we’d put them on and stuff like that. Or else we would get scripts and so I would be directing and organising rehearsals, and figuring out the schedules, and casting, and blocking, and doing all the things.

Yeah. Which I did enjoy a lot of, and I did some university study with it. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it. Okay. And I haven’t done that for many years. Yeah. So I do miss acting, but probably directing even more.

Lyndon: Okay. Yeah. Interesting. Well keep that in mind.

The next category —

Perfectionism and Watercolour

Lyndon: — would be a deferred curiosity.

Often people can name the exact moment that a seed was planted in something that they’re curious about.

Cause what I wanna look at is some of these categories and perhaps come up with a couple each, right? And then look at what the block is from us starting.

So the block for deferred curiosity is often perfectionism. You’ve imagined doing it well, and so if you start, it risks that image. I think that sort of happened to me with watercolour.

Although — yeah — when I actually haven’t… You know how I got all the paints and everything?

My first sort of use of all of the materials I got wasn’t even watercolour. I was doing some charcoal and some other things, just some sketching just to — yeah — get into it, and I was like, “Ugh, that is awful.”

Brea: Oh. Yeah. So you were judging the product of what you were doing?

Lyndon: Yeah.

Brea: That’s interesting.

Cause I’ve actually been wanting to — a lot later than you, cause you were telling me you were interested and starting to collect the things.

Lyndon: That was, like, yeah. Scary. It was. It was over — oh, it wasn’t the start of this year. It was the start of the year before.

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: That’s sad…

Brea: And I was like, “Oh, yeah, cool.”

But then in the last few months, I’ve actually started to feel like, “Geez, I’d love to give watercolour a go.” Oh, yeah — and started to enjoy it, and I’ve done a couple, but just literally the colours. I haven’t done the composition type thing. I’ve just been playing with how the brushes work and how much water do you add with the different techniques and stuff like that, which I wanna do more of cause it’s so fascinating.

And what I do love about that — and it is actually something that I consistently wish my life involved more of — is sitting in a garden and observing. Mostly for writing purposes, and it’s actually the exercise I do every time I’ve not written for a while, is I’ll go back to my senses and start observing.

Oh, yeah. Start talking, like writing about what can I hear, what can I smell, and start just making observations essentially that you kinda wrap these things into words. But I would love to do it as well with visual stuff and I feel like watercolour is such a nice way in, because it just seems like there’s such a connection between the way nature looks and the way watercolour brushes and paints work. They just seem like they mirror each other so well. I don’t know. Yeah.

Lyndon: You can’t, because that’s my thing. How dare you — I’m having a go — already have done a couple of… How dare you have already put brush to paint and paper, and all I’ve done is a shitty charcoal work.

Brea: You know we’ve started — and I think we’ve mentioned it before on the podcast — we’ve done a couple of analog nights. Which I am wanting to—

Lyndon: Instate. I don’t know why you put “we.” I don’t think I was part of—

Brea: Any — yeah, you went and watched the footy. You weren’t — you didn’t come along to analog night. So I was there in our analog room on my own doing my watercolours.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Brea: But something I want the kids to get involved in and us to do a bit more of, because we’re just surrounded by too much digital stuff.

Lyndon: What is interesting about this one is, when I think about it, I do have very strong images associated with things that I want to start. So for instance, when I’m thinking about watercolour — it’s in the morning. I’m out. It’s not gonna work in winter, is it?

I’m outside just over there on the concrete looking out into the garden, and I’m not necessarily painting anything from the garden, but like — I’m in the sun and I’m doing it — yeah — for however long. And I think with anything, you have an image in your mind even if you haven’t completely thought about it.

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: I think so, yeah. It exists.

Brea: It’s like the vibe of it and you’ll feel being in that moment.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: All right.

Creative Rituals That Nourish

Lyndon: Next category — a creative ritual.

Brea: Ooh.

Lyndon: So we’ve had a dormant skill, a deferred curiosity, and then a creative ritual. So this one isn’t so much about the output.

It’s more about creating a protected mental space that feeds everything else. So a daily walk — but a daily walk without anything in your ears.

Brea: Listening—

Lyndon: Without a podcast or — yeah…

Brea: I mean — yeah. So—

Lyndon: It’s — except of course…

Brea: Kind of room to allow that creativity to exist.

Lyndon: A sketchbook — yeah — maybe that no one ever sees would be—

Brea: Also the — mine is — morning page — mentioned it before — is it’s journaling, and doing some of those writing exercises as such, or writing from a prompt, or just journaling generally.

Just, for me, this is very early in the morning. I’ll get up when Birdie’s support worker will arrive at 6:00 AM, and that will be the start of my day. And if I’ve had enough sleep — which, yeah, can vary and is tricky to get sometimes. But if I’ve had just enough, I can then go, “I’m awake and I’m ready.”

So I’ll literally just take my notebook, sit down. It’ll be dark and quiet, no one else is up. Birdie might be going back to sleep or just having quiet time with her support worker, and I can just write whatever the heck I want. And it might be tumbling out all of the thoughts that have just been pressing on my mind, and it’s almost like cleaning your mind out at that point, like just dumping them all down and allowing them to just be out of your head.

Or it might be that, yeah, I specifically focus — and again, I love to do it about nature or about describing the world around me. So I might do that specifically as an exercise, and use those as ways to work my way into working on my main project at the moment.

So I’ll try to do that. And at the moment, because I’ve got my one day a week that I set aside to just focus on my creative project, I’ll definitely do it on that day. But other days I might do it as well, which is nice. But in my ideal world, I’d do that every morning.

And that would be followed by a coffee, and then my watercolour session.

Lyndon: The tricky thing with the creative ritual — or the stumbling block, if you like — is thinking that you have to produce something.

Brea: Yeah, okay.

Lyndon: The failure mode is that you’ve gotta produce something when you don’t. That’s the whole point of doing something like that.

Brea: Yeah. Yep.

Lyndon: So unstructured creative time that’s not in service to a project or to anything else.

Brea: Yeah, so you’re not like going, oh — or it’s not in—

Lyndon: Service—

Brea: To a—

Lyndon: Deadline…

Brea: Gotta get on with this thing cause, yeah, there’s a deadline looming or something. Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah, yeah.

Brea: Yeah.

Which is so hard to protect that in your own head and in your own calendar. Like to go, “That’s just the time for me to noodle around doing nothing much.”

Just my creative thoughts. See what comes of it. Because there’s always a deadline, and there’s always something else that needs doing. Yeah.

Making Practice With Hands

Lyndon: This next one I think is similar. It’s called making practice.

So this is more — ideally it’s removed from your main creative work.

Brea: Okay.

Lyndon: So for me, being a musician, it wouldn’t be another instrument. It would be woodworking or—

Brea: Oh—

Lyndon: Cooking.

Brea: And we’ve actually talked about this, haven’t we, as like a hobby type thing or a—

Lyndon: I guess I’m doing it with the Tarago van fitout. Yeah.

Because I’m working with wood.

Brea: Yep.

Lyndon: I’m working with my hands. And design. Yeah. And it’s different kinds of problems that need solving.

Brea: Yep.

Lyndon: I like this one a lot. Yeah. But I’ve never thought of it as… I probably thought of this more as project to project based.

Brea: Yep.

Lyndon: And maybe that’s how it is.

But there is something about when you’re working with your hands and working with materials, it reconnects you to process over product as well.

Brea: Yep.

Lyndon: Cause often, for music, I’m not thinking about a product, but there is an end goal. There is an aim. There is — you know — there is a finished song.

Yeah. And once that song is finished, then there’s all the — now what do you do with it? How’s anyone gonna hear it? What’s the purpose of it? So there’s this—

Brea: Yeah…

Lyndon: In a way — it’s like — you do start thinking about it as a product.

Brea: Yeah. In a sense. And it’s on a conveyor belt. As soon as you’ve had the idea, like you’ve gotta get it to the finish line — and then it keeps going and yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah. All the process of it… Making practice, it’s tactile and it’s physical. It’s something where you can see the result immediately, I guess, which is helpful.

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: And failure is low stakes. Yeah. Like weirdly too, with this woodworking stuff, I had to source this lightweight plywood — yeah — that was the right thickness and all this sort of stuff.

Brea: Yep.

Lyndon: And then work out how to get it home. I needed it cut so it would fit in the car.

And so now it needs to be cut at particular lengths so that I know that I’m left with timber that I can use. Yeah. It’s not cut in half and now it’s oh, now—

Brea: Too short—

Lyndon: For the outcome — it’s too short for — yeah — yeah. So it was all this consideration and somewhere in, in my cutting out of the different pieces for what I was building, I had to say to myself, “If I get it wrong, it doesn’t matter, I can go get another piece of wood.”

Brea: Yeah.

Yeah.

Lyndon: Because in my mind — reduce the pressure, yeah — it was like, oh, I can’t stuff this up—

Brea: Yep…

Lyndon: Because it’s here now and this is, you know—

Brea: Yeah…

Lyndon: This is the culmination of so much figuring out and whatnot, and I had to remove all of that stress in the end and go, yeah, measure twice, cut once, and if you stuff it up, don’t worry about it.

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: And that made it much, much easier.

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: So yeah, so the—

Brea: More pleasurable I imagine too, like that, cause you’re doing it cause you’re enjoying the process — yeah — as well as the result—

Lyndon: Yeah…

Brea: At the end. Yeah.

Lyndon: Exactly. And I needed to make it lower stakes.

I’d made the stakes too high.

Brea: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yep.

Lyndon: Yeah. So is there something that you want to build or make or do with your hands or is it—

Brea: I love working with my hands. And I tend to do more restoration rather than build from scratch. Yeah, I’ve got, at the moment in our dining area, half a project that I did start a while ago.

I actually wanted to get it done throughout all the good weather over spring and summer, and it’s now winter — yeah — and I haven’t finished it.

Lyndon: If you wait long enough, those seasons come around again.

Brea: They come in again.

Lyndon: That’s what I learnt.

Brea: That’s it. It’s gonna have to, because yeah, there was a couple of things that just didn’t quite work out with it, and then I had no room to get it done, and there were other things going on.

You guys — you and our son — were using the garage. I couldn’t get in there. So there was just, I don’t know, stuff, and I was just busy, and I haven’t done it. But again, it’s pretty low stakes. It’s literally an ’80s cabinet that I picked up from Facebook Marketplace for free, which I always love.

And there was no love for this cabinet. It was, like, this highly polished cherry red wood colour, that just — it just doesn’t look good in today’s homes. It was very popular back in the day.

Lyndon: Dare I say, never looked good.

Brea: A lot of people had this kind of — yeah — it’s—

Lyndon: A very chunky—

Brea: Style too. Very high gloss kind of thing. It’s not like — yeah…

Lyndon: It’s not my favourite thing.

Brea: No, you weren’t a fan of it. But, again, if it doesn’t look good by the time I’m finished, it doesn’t matter. I can give it away. But I’ve wanted — I’ve needed and wanted somewhere to put glassware, tableware, that kind of thing, and our little hutch thing that we’ve got at the moment is too small.

It doesn’t work. Anyway, this will be great for storage, and I got it, and yeah, I’m doing it black and white on the inside and with a black sort of matte finish. I like black cabinets, so that’s what I’m doing. Yeah, you’re not impressed. But anyway, that’s what I’m working on.

But it’s interesting that this is the kind of thing that I do — is just like, yeah, restore stuff. We had an old bookcase at one point — or it wasn’t that old, but it was like a timber bookcase that we were gonna get rid of, and I’d actually listed it on Marketplace, and then just suddenly went, “Oh, I need a…” like — I need a bookcase — at the same time I had plenty of bookcases.

At the same time, I had been looking at entryway hooks and stuff like that — oh, yeah, okay — a little station for your keys and your coats and your boots and stuff. And I just, the two things clicked in my mind. I went, “Oh, I can convert this bookcase into a coat rack,” with a shelf at the top and a shelf at the bottom and — oh, yeah — room for boots, baskets in there for boots and some hooks for coats. Which I did.

And I really enjoyed doing it. It was just something, yeah — again — pretty low stakes, something that I can do when Birdie’s with her support worker, and my brain can switch off all the constant planning and thinking and problem solving and just work at the process at hand.

So that’s why I really like it. It really de-stresses me. And yeah, so I did that one, and almost every visitor that comes in comments on it.

Yeah, and always goes, “Oh, wow, I love this. Where did you get it from?” And I go — oh — “Oh, I made it from an old bookcase.” Yeah. And yeah, people are always asking me, “How did you do it? What did you use? Did you just — what did you do to get it to this point?” And so yeah, it’s been good and also keeps the coats out of a big pile.

Lyndon: Would you say it’s a talking piece?

Brea: I would, but it’s — I’ve kinda talked it up now. Now it sounds super impressive.

It’s literally just a bookcase-looking thing with some hooks in it and some baskets and stuff.

Lyndon: Yeah, but you don’t look at it and go, “It’s a bookcase.” It doesn’t immediately scream bookcase. It looks like what it is, which is good.

Consumption Habits and Accountability

Lyndon: There’s one more category.

Brea: Okay.

Lyndon: Lots of categories.

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: I think there’s five. This one, the last one — a consumption habit that feeds creativity.

Brea: Oh, dear.

Lyndon: Do you know what that is?

Brea: No.

Lyndon: This is probably the easiest one.

Probably the most overlooked, but the easiest. So this is the idea that input shapes output, and most creatives are running on empty input-wise.

Especially in these times, because our consumption has become passive and algorithmic.

Brea: Yes. Yep.

Lyndon: Or even — and I’ve noticed this with me very lately, cause I used to kinda see other family members and that doing this — is watching a movie and then referring to your phone during it.

Brea: Oh—

Lyndon: Yeah. Rather than just watching the movie.

Brea: Yeah. Yep.

Lyndon: And it frustrates me too with — generation, what are we? X, Y, Z. What’s that generation called? Gen Z. Seem to be happy to… This is my observation in our little bubble here, but to put a movie on, it’s nearly take it or leave it. You know what I mean?

Because we get so much entertainment just from watching clips — yeah — on YouTube or Reels.

Brea: It’s not as important a thing. Like, when we were growing up, it was like — we — we’re going to watch a movie and everyone would sit down and watch it, and—

Lyndon: And then when we could bring the cinema home, we still treated it like the cinema.

Brea: Yeah. Yep.

Lyndon: Didn’t we? And it was like, you had to sorta get everything done. If you’re watching it on VHS, and that’s like — you had to get everything done while it was, like, doing all the ads beforehand and, you know, promoting whatever, and then finally it would — the movie would start, and it was like, “It’s starting. It’s starting.” “Get back in here.” Oh, yeah. And anyway, but there’s more — like talking during the movies and—

Brea: Yeah, like the — we’ve got, yeah, kids that are young adults now, and also some support workers that will sit down with us and, yeah, we’ve got a lot of people in that generation right now pretty much in our house every night, like sitting down with us to eat food and, we’ll go, “Oh, we’re — let’s watch this,” or, “Should we — who wants to choose a movie or who wants to choose a show?”

And they’ll go through the choosing or the, “Oh, yeah, what are we watching?” And—

Lyndon: Yeah…

Brea: All that. But then they’ll walk out halfway through.

Or you’ll look over and they’re on their phone, and then they’ll go, “Hang on. Who’s that? What’s happening?” Yeah. And you go, “If you had’ve watched it.”

Lyndon: Yeah, I know. It’s so frustrating. But then I’ve found myself recently, the last couple things I’ve been watching — I go, “Oh, is that—” like the actor, and then I’ll go IMDb — yeah — on my phone and look it up and go, “Yeah, okay. No, that is… What else were they in?” Yeah. And then you go, “Oh, now I’ve got to rewind the movie. I missed it.” So — it’s amazing how yeah, how—

Brea: I actually watched — somebody had — I watched a reel of how — were you watching it — a young person—

Lyndon: Were you watching it while you were trying to actually do something else?

Brea: No. A young person had made a slideshow for his mum, on a separate screen, cause she kept asking, “Who’s that actor and what’s he been in?” And so anytime a new actor came up, he’d have a screen with all their details.

Lyndon: One of those streaming services, it has it, like if you pause the movie, it then has a little info about — yeah — whoever’s on screen at that time. Yes.

Brea: Very handy.

Lyndon: It was handy.

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: So what are some other examples of this? Going to a gallery without your phone would be one. So hard to do. I went out the other day without my phone cause I forgot it.

Brea: Yeah. Yeah.

Lyndon: And, yeah, survived. It’s great. Didn’t—

Brea: Well done.

You made it back…

Lyndon: Didn’t need it. Half a day it was. Half a day. As soon as we got back home, I rushed here and I unplugged it and hugged my phone.

Brea: I find — talking about my consumption of — is it, generally consumption of—

Lyndon: What’s this?

Brea: Your point about this — what was the title of it?

Lyndon: The consumption habit — a consumption — that feeds creativity.

Brea: Yeah, okay.

Lyndon: Cause you’re — sorry, you remember a while ago I was talking about that for me personally there’ll be times where, throughout my whole life, I feel guilty for not having the guitar in my hand or for not doing something purposeful in directly music related.

And I was saying how there’s this musician and producer, Dan Wilson, who was saying, as an artist, part of your job is to sit and ponder in silence.

Part of your job is to listen to music.

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: Part of your job is to go to a live performance. And — absolutely. Yeah — so it’s—

Brea: So be part of the network and be seeing what others are doing—

Lyndon: Yeah—

Brea: Hearing what others are doing—

Lyndon: Yeah…

Brea: And be involved in—

Lyndon: Yeah…

Brea: Yeah, in the community—

Lyndon: Of it. And when I was younger, I always felt the need to sorta justify my creative existence and I felt like I had to tell people I was busy all the time. Yeah, I’m busy. Yeah. I’m busy. Okay. Yeah, I’m busy doing this, I’m busy doing that, I’m busy…

And—

Brea: It’s a real — yeah, cause people don’t really understand, oh, I’m, you know — no — I’ve been so busy. I’ve been listening to this. It’s been really cool. I went out and saw this band. Yeah. That’s—

Lyndon: Right. That—

Brea: Doesn’t sound like…

Lyndon: That sounds like — I practiced guitar for two hours this morning. Yeah. They’re like, “What?” “Get a real job.”

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah, so what were you saying?

Brea: Yeah, I know that what I don’t like about my consumption habits is that I do have my phone a lot now.

And I will scroll Instagram or whatever, and I know that it’s a doom scroll. I know that I’m not doing anything good for my brain, nothing good for my creativity, nothing that relates to—

Lyndon: Lacey, what are you doing? That was my little Cordoba guitar — Lacey — that she knocked over. I think she must’ve got it with her tail.

Brea: I think she—

Lyndon: It shouldn’t really be there. I’ll move it later.

That’s fine. Unbelievable.

Brea: What crashing was Lacey just having a sniff in the studio?

Lyndon: Get rid of her.

Brea: Knocking stuff over? Yeah, like I — I don’t like that I have succumbed to that horrible scrolling that we all do.

What I did for many years would be — like I’d feel the tension throughout the day building up, like just kid wrangling and the relentlessness of parenting mostly.

But even before we were parents, just working, doing whatever. And I’ve always known, like from when I was a kid, that reading is my — it’s like my sanity. If I can’t read I will not be okay. I just won’t be. My brain will go too fast. My stress levels will rise. It’s just, yeah, I can’t kinda do without it.

So I would always, yeah, just reach for a book. And even if I’m sitting down for five minutes and reading something, I can feel the tension drain away. My head gets back together, I’m clearer, I’m more centred. I’m just a better person for having read. And it can be anything.

It’s usually fiction. For me, fiction will have that effect. Lacey’s just having a bit of a scratch, you can probably hear it.

Lyndon: Holy moly.

Brea: Lacey. L—

Lyndon: Lacey.

Brea: Yeah. So yeah, for me, reading does it, and yeah, particularly fiction, because non-fiction stuff, I’m more thinking about the content of it afterwards. Oh, do I have to do something — oh, yeah — because of this? Or yeah — is it a new thing, or what have I learnt that I can apply? Whereas fiction, I’ll read, and then my mind will just absorb it and learn from it, but without dot points to myself.

I’ll be — what I’ll be learning is how did that writer put that together? And notice how their descriptions were, notice the interplay between the characters. I’ll just be noticing it again and again in my mind. So it’s a much more relaxing process, and a creative process. It is — it’s literally me teaching myself about the world of literature, which I love.

Maybe I can be choosing to not be looking at my phone so much and picking up my book instead more often, because I’ve noticed that I’m definitely slipping into that habit of sitting down — that couple of minutes that you might go, “Oh, I’m gonna have a cup of tea now,” and you sit down.

Yeah, I pick up my phone more often than I pick up a book, and I don’t like that about myself. Don’t like it, yeah. Yeah.

Lyndon: Looking at a consumption habit that feeds your creativity, it’s deceptively hard because it requires presence and not just time.

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: I think that’s the tough thing about it.

So what we need to do — and I know we’re running out of time with this episode — but using those categories, we need to find two things each that we’ve been wanting to do this year.

And then say what they are, and then what we’ll do is later in the year we’ll do an episode to see how we’ve gone with it.

Brea: Oh, cool.

Lyndon: Okay. But between now and then, we’re gonna hold each other accountable to it in the nicest possible way. Yeah.

Brea: Nice.

Can you just give me a reminder of the categories again?

Lyndon: So what I will say before I do — is that something to think about is that some of these categories are skills-based. Or skill-based.

Brea: Yep.

Lyndon: And some are perhaps ritual-based. So they have different entry points and different failure modes.

So what might — and it’s not like — you don’t have to do this, but what might be worthwhile is having one of each.

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: It might be smart. It doesn’t really matter, but it might be smart.

I’ll tell you what they are, the categories, and I’ll tell you what my two are.

Brea: Okay.

Lyndon: A dormant skill. So something that you were doing but you haven’t — and you’re doing it somewhat fluently, but you haven’t done it for a while because life got in the way.

Brea: Yep.

Lyndon: A deferred curiosity. Often that comes from an exact moment of where you went, “Oh, I’d love to do pottery.”

Brea: I actually would love to do pottery.

Lyndon: No. There was a pottery wheel on Marketplace for 100 bucks.

Brea: Oh, really?

Lyndon: They’re always on there. Could you get me? They’re always on there. Do you know why they’re always on there and they’re like 100 bucks or 80 bucks?

Brea: Cause people go, “Oh, I’d love—

Lyndon: To do pottery.” Love to do pottery.

Would you? What kind of pottery? A wheel, a potting wheel. Like everyone with their memories of Ghost in there.

Brea: I’ll just start with pinch pots.

Lyndon: A creative ritual. Something like a daily walk, or if you were talking about keeping a journal or morning pages or whatever people call it.

A sketchbook that no one sees.

Might be something that’s done every day or weekly or — I’ve not been good at those. And there was making practice, so that was something more physical, more tactile — working in an area that is removed from your main creative work.

Brea: Yep.

Lyndon: And then there was the consumption habit that feeds creativity.

And that’s often — cause you know I was saying I tentatively titled this — I’ve been meaning to do that. You often do hear people say, “I’ve been meaning to go to more galleries,” or, “I’ve been meaning to go see live music. I’ve been meaning to…” and then a year goes by and nothing’s been done.

But—

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: They’re the different categories. And so I’ll tell you what mine are, which gives you a bit more time to think.

Brea: Okay.

Lyndon: My two things — I think you probably know what they are already.

Watercolour painting—

Brea: Yeah…

Lyndon: And keeping a journal. And the reason I wanna keep a journal — so one of the things with the bullet journal was it did also allow you to write more long form in it if you wanted to.

You didn’t — it didn’t need to all be bullet points. But it was more essentially for getting stuff out of your head and just getting a bit more organised, and not feeling the burden of tasks and to-do lists and appointments and all that sort of stuff. So it was meant to free you up a bit creatively.

But I’m not gonna — I think bullet journal’s off the table for me now.

Brea: Okay. Because it was like—

Lyndon: There was too much friction.

Brea: Yeah. It all pointed towards productivity — productivity was the — and efficiency.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Brea: And that’s — whereas you need it pointed towards creativity and — yeah — the freedom of it.

Lyndon: Yeah. Yeah. So I’m gonna be trying this Grail method.

And I feel like it’s just a matter of me starting, and I don’t think I’ll have a problem with this because when I think back to when I was — I’ve been a terrible journaler. I don’t keep diaries. It has fallen into a category of like to do this because I can see the benefits for me, especially just writing stuff out.

And I know when I have done it, it does actually feed my songwriting, and my lyric writing, and my ideas. So it’s got so many benefits. But when I did do it years and years ago, I had no system.

Brea: Yeah. Yeah.

Lyndon: So it did look a lot more like this Grail method. Yeah. I think just over the years, you get caught up in being a better person and — yeah — you sort of — see if anyone else has said that — can get pushed and pulled into areas that you were never created to be. You’re not that person.

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: I’m not a Type A whatever.

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: I would like to be, but I ain’t.

So watercolour.

That’s the more skills-based one. And then the notebook or whatever I’m gonna call it is the more ritual-based. They’re mine.

Once we’ve said your two, I’ll just quickly outline some of the ways that we can get around the roadblocks for these.

Okay.

Lyndon: So do you know what your two are?

Brea: At the risk of you getting furious—

Lyndon: Better not be watercolour.

I will end you.

Brea: I was thinking of taking up watercolour.

Lyndon: Oh, geez.

Come up with your own ideas.

Brea: I’ve been fascinated with it for quite some time. Anyway.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Brea: I might give that a go. The other thing, like yeah, is — I can’t even remember the category of that, but like a — an I’ve been meaning to, or a—

Lyndon: For which one?

Brea: For watercolour, a — it—

Lyndon: Could — for you it would be a deferred curiosity.

Brea: Yeah, that’s the one. Deferred curiosity. I like that.

Because for me it is pretty low stakes and I know you’re gonna be way better at it than I am — and not that it’s a competition between us—

Lyndon: It is now.

Brea: Especially cause you know you’ll win. We’ll put our early results up—

Lyndon: We should—

Brea: Actually, yeah. We’ll put up a couple and we won’t say whose is whose and people can vote for their favourite.

And the other one I liked — because I have been telling myself off about it — is the doom scrolling and picking up my phone way more often than I need to during the day. Not for phone calls or not for things I need to, and I end up somehow on Instagram. But I would rather be picking my book up if I need that mental break.

Not pulling up a social media app, but picking up a book. So that — yeah, I would like to make more of a commitment to myself to do that, because I feel like that’s something I’ve lost in myself, and I miss it.

Lyndon: Yeah. That’s good.

What I’m gonna go to is how we might actually start. Okay. And I’ll just go through these really quickly.

Brea: Yeah, cool.

Lyndon: Cause there’s three approaches.

Brea: Yep.

Lyndon: There’s one approach called minimum viable version.

Brea: Oh.

Lyndon: And what that is — just what’s the smallest possible form of that habit. So for instance, you might just go I’m only gonna do this for 10 minutes.

Or I’m just gonna do one page, or I’m just gonna do one sketch. So you reduce it to what’s the smallest amount that I can do to get started?

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: Because you know how I was saying before, like you often have this image of what it’s like.

Brea: Yeah. So you go out and you buy the easel and all the expensive paints and — yeah—

Lyndon: I’d have that special hat on that the artists have.

Brea: A uniform. A smoking—

Lyndon: Jacket. I would set everything up. You know what I’m like.

I would have it — it would all look grand, so if someone walked around they’d know exactly what I was doing. But then by the time I’ve set all that up and got all that equipment, I’d be like, “Oh, that’s my time.” I guess—

Brea: Better pack up—

Lyndon: Now… I guess I can’t ruin this perfect picture. This perfect situation.

By actually starting. By actually starting a picture.

Brea: Yeah. And doing it, and making it not a very good-looking painting in the end.

Lyndon: Yeah, exactly.

Brea: Okay.

Lyndon: So — the other one is environmental design. Now this is one which I have preached about for years. With guitar students, I’d always say, “When you get home, first thing you do, get your guitar out of the case.”

Put it on a guitar stand. You can pick it up every time you walk past whatever. “If you leave it in the case, you won’t play it.” So it’s the same—

Brea: That’s an interesting one. Yeah, I really—

Lyndon: So I would need to — yes — do that with my journal.

Brea: Yeah, so what do you need to do to set up your journal?

Lyndon: I need to buy it. Okay. So that’ll take a month. The research begins. I was already looking as soon as I finished that video yesterday. I was like, “I need to…” And I typed in something like leather bound Indiana Jones. And boy, there’s so many. And in the end I was like, “I can’t go with any of these,” because I know one of these will turn up and I’ll just be like, “This smells like camel.”

And it’ll be a deal breaker.

Brea: So funny. See, I have an opinion on that with journals and notebooks and stuff, because I’ve always been a journaler.

But I used to get given a lovely one for Christmas, or I’d buy a beautiful one that I would see in a store, save up my pennies, literally — and buy it.

Lyndon: Not literally. We had—

Brea: No pennies when you were — okay. Save up—

Lyndon: You’re not that old.

Brea: Save up the very little — yeah — discretionary money that I ever had. Yeah. And I’d buy a nice notebook, and then it was, like, too good to write in cause it was the good one.

So what I switched to doing was buying a 50 cent workbook. Oh. Like a student workbook — I know what you mean — from Office Works or — yeah, no — or the supermarket, and that’s what I would use. And I would fill those because the writing didn’t have to look good. My handwriting could get…

And in fact, my handwriting would get — it would get messier, but it would actually get more aesthetic looking as I’d go along, because I would stop trying to write neatly and just write more freely. Yeah. And the flow would happen.

But it didn’t have to look good. The dates were everywhere. There was, like—

Lyndon: Yeah…

Brea: Yeah, half a page kinda ripped out here and there, or a shopping list, or just different things. And that’s how I would do it. So I actually recommend just get any old notebook, doesn’t matter, just start. Just start.

Yeah. And in the lowest stakes you can, so you don’t—

Lyndon: Wreck the good notebook.

That’s good advice. That’s not gonna work for me. I’ve got three requirements.

It has to feel — it has to look good and feel good in my hand. When I open it up, it has to open completely. None of this, you go to write on the left side and the right side’s flipped up and is cramping your hand.

I hate that. Already the cost has suddenly spiralled. Oh, dear. And then the third thing is I don’t want white pages. Oh. They have to be off-white. I don’t like stark white pages. And it has to be—

Brea: I feel—

Lyndon: For you… And it has to be unlined.

Brea: Oh, gosh.

Lyndon: All right. The last one is — so remember, this is ideas to help get started.

Brea: Yep.

Lyndon: The third one is you attach it to something that’s existing. For instance — for me, I might attach it to having my morning coffee.

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: I might go, “I know I’ve got…” Time’s not an issue at that point — yeah — perhaps. So that might be where I go, “I’m gonna do my coffee and my journaling.”

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: At—

Brea: Habit stacking kinda thing…

Lyndon: Habit stacking — yeah — if you wanna take—

Brea: Yeah…

Lyndon: Us back to that.

Brea: In a good way.

Lyndon: Yeah. So you’ve got what’s the smallest way you can start? What’s the — that might be a way to get into it.

Brea: Yep. So get your 50 cent notebook. Don’t buy your Indiana Jones—

Lyndon: No, no — hammer bound. Cause I want it all in. I don’t wanna then find the not-right notebook, and then not know what to do with what I’ve written in the other one. No. And then there was the environmental design. So—

Brea: That, that is—

Lyndon: Actually one — keep, keep the sketchbook on the table.

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: Or, yeah.

Brea: I have a couple of things that I do need to do with that, and one of them — like I now have reading glasses, which I didn’t for many years.

But I keep them upstairs next to my computer, and I use them when I’m—

Lyndon: Writing — like writing and working on my computer. But that means they’re not downstairs when I might have a cup of tea and have some time to read a book.

I had a solution for this.

Brea: Yeah, I need new glasses. It’s a — and I literally am—

Lyndon: Yeah, you just get a second pair.

Brea: I get a second pair. Yeah. But I’m well overdue for my next schedule. Like they’ve even stopped sending me emails because it’s been so long since I had—

Lyndon: Yeah…

Brea: Glasses, like my first set. So I’m overdue for them. So it would actually be nice to have a pair for upstairs, a pair for downstairs.

It sounds so basic, but it makes a big difference to not have to go, “Oh, I’ve gotta go upstairs to get my glasses, bring them downstairs, read my book, and then remember to take them back upstairs for when I work on the computer.” It’s like it’s just easier to make a cup of tea in between putting on the washing, doing the this, that, and the other around the house, and having a cup of tea — I’ll just pick up my phone.

Lyndon: So you’re removing the friction.

Brea: Yeah, that’s right. So I need a pair of glasses, and I need a better light in our analog room for sitting and reading.

Lyndon: Oh, yeah.

Brea: Cause it’s not a good spot, actually. Unless the sun’s coming right in. Yeah.

So there we go.

There’s two upgrades to the environment that I need to create.

Lyndon: Yeah. That’s good.

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: If anyone else wants to take on this — I’m not gonna call it a challenge. No, I wouldn’t either. Cause it’s not a challenge for the sake of a challenge. Challenges. No. It’s like literally — for me, it’s a couple of things.

The watercolour has been clearly longer than I realised. But it’s been a good 18 months or more, and I haven’t started and I’m like, “Let’s get this thing going.” And the bullet journal thing, as we discussed earlier, has been going on 30 to 35 years now, but — it’s been a long—

Brea: Agonising—

Lyndon: So there’s — yeah — decline. So if you are listening and you’ve got a couple of things that you’ve been meaning to do, maybe this is something you can do with us.

Brea: Yeah.

Lyndon: And I reckon maybe first week of December, maybe we’ll do an episode — oh, yeah — see how — cause that gives us—

Brea: Yep… Gives us six months to see how we go with changing some habits to be kinder to ourselves and our creative practices.

I think that sounds nice.

Lyndon: Yeah. I’m always full of good intentions. Yeah.

Brea: Ideas man, right?

Lyndon: And I hate being held accountable. So this could be the worst six months of my life. And on that note, we’ll talk to you again next week.

Brea: See you then.

Lyndon: Bye.

Brea: Bye.

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