July 22, 2025 · Episode 30
52 Min, 26 Sec 

Summary

What if the key to creative momentum isn’t a perfect system—but just doing something, however small, every day? In this episode, Breallyn and Lyndon reflect on building a creative practice through slow, steady progress and how easy it is to lose momentum—even when things are finally going to plan. It’s a conversation about staying in motion—even when everything’s pulling you sideways.

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

Transcript

Lyndon: Tell us what you did on the skate park.

Breallyn: I had a go on a skateboard and I came off it and broke my elbow.

Lyndon: Did it start with this? “Check me out, kids?”

Welcome to Pain In The Arts. You are with Lyndon.

Breallyn: and Breallyn.

Lyndon: And I want to thank all our subscribers on Patreon or our patrons. In fact, thank you for the support. You can go to www.patreon.com/painintheartslife and follow the show on your favorite podcasting platform. Wherever you get your podcast, you can follow our show. That actually helps a great deal as well.

Breallyn: We haven’t done a night recording for some time. I was trying to remember when the last time it was, because I believe that we also had gin and tonics. I haven’t had a gin and tonic for weeks and I was like, tonight’s the night.

Lyndon: Tonight’s the night, partly because am I back on the wagon or am I off the wagon?

Breallyn: I dunno.

Lyndon: I dunno. Do you…

Breallyn: have a problem with the wagon?

Lyndon: No, but yeah, I don’t know which is the right expression, and either way would be wrong in my case. But, it’s been, it’s not cold in the studio, but the rest of the house is freezing because…

Breallyn: it’s an ice block.

Lyndon: our heating just decided to stop working on the weekend.

Breallyn: Yeah. Nothin’ like the middle of winter for that to happen.

Lyndon: That’s been fun.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Every now and then I’m out there and I go, “You know what? We could just maybe not have a heater or just rug up.” And then about an hour later when I start feeling the cold, I’m like, “Nah, I don’t like this.”

Breallyn: I noticed you scuttle back into the studio where you do have a nice split system. So it’s got its own separate little heating.

Lyndon: I think the trick is to not have your room so hot that you can’t venture outside. I guess it doesn’t really work in the dead of winter though, does it? No, like I don’t like, even if it’s hot weather outside, I don’t like it being that cold inside that when you go outside, your body goes into some sort of shock.

Breallyn: Oh, I know. I spend summer freezing ’cause we don’t have the heater on and I sit inside and then summer freezing.

Lyndon: Yeah. ’cause we don’t have the heater on.

Breallyn: Yeah, because it’s cooler inside. So then I’m just, I don’t know. I think I’m just, I think I just need to resign myself to the fact that my feet are always cold. Like they’re never warm unless they’re in direct sunlight or possibly the shower. But yeah.

Lyndon: You need to walk on your hands if you want your feet in direct sunlight.

Breallyn: Yeah. Sunlight’s the best. But yeah, I don’t know.

Lyndon: You’ve always got cold feet.

Breallyn: Always cold. Yeah. But yeah.

Lyndon: Not on our wedding day. Boom, boom.

Breallyn: No, today. We deserve the GNT, I’ve gotta say, because we’ve been cold all day. We’ve had Birdie all day with no carers, and I pulled a rather horrific night shift, so I’m, yeah.

Lyndon: I didn’t even want to ask you about it because it’s been every night. It’s been pretty bad.

Breallyn: Yeah. Yeah. It’s really starting to crack me at the moment. So yes, it’s…

Lyndon: And as much as I’m not up with her, like you are normally doing that on the nights where you are up with her, I don’t sleep as well.

Breallyn: No.

Lyndon: ‘Cause I’m acutely aware of everything that’s going on and the queen bed is empty.

Breallyn: whereas the…

Lyndon: I’m holding space for you and it never gets taken up.

School Holiday Shenanigans

Breallyn: And yet Birdie started to do this thing where, ’cause I often sleep on the single mattress on her floor, but she gets out of her bed and hops into that bed with me and snuggles up. But she takes four-fifths of that single mattress. She shoves me right over to the edge and I say, “move over, give me some room.”

And she’ll wiggle her way around, so she understands that I’m asking her to shove over, but she just makes it worse. So I’m like hovering.

Lyndon: And she has a knack of propping herself up on her elbow, which is fine, except that it’s normally on your thorax.

Breallyn: Yeah, thorax.

Lyndon: I don’t think it’s a thorax. It’s on your, what’s that thing called? It’s look, if I was an insect, it would be my thorax. That’s what I was thinking. It’s the middle part between the head and the and the tummy.

Breallyn: Not because I’m so deliriously tired that I’m laughing at your thorax.

Lyndon: What’s that part of your throat called? I think thorax is pretty good. We need to crack on because I’ve turned the heater off, so it’s gonna slowly become an icebox.

Breallyn: Great.

Lyndon: And we’ve also got another episode of Slow Horses to watch. We’ve gotta fit another one in.

Breallyn: Definitely. Yep. That’s our reward.

Lyndon: Can’t be all work and no play. Exactly. we did just watch an episode.

Breallyn: It’s holidays, and this happens to me regularly, so I can’t just blame school holidays, but it’s, “Oh, okay, I’m not gonna get any, like a chunk of time this week where I can work on my book because…”

the schedule is so interrupted. Sometimes Birdie’s got programs, sometimes she doesn’t. There’s a few carer shifts. But there’s a whole lot of times where I’m now stepping in to do that caring role and that completely wipes off any chance of work or any other, pretty much anything else.

So my schedule is shuffled around. I’ve gotta try to figure out what do I need to do in terms of deadlines for clients. And also this week our youngest son turns 18, so there’s party planning to do, not that I’m doing that much. We’re going…

Lyndon: it’s not a big party.

Breallyn: We’re going to dinner at the pub.

Lyndon: it’s pretty low key.

Breallyn: It is very low key for an 18th.

The Story of the Broken Elbow

Lyndon: That’s not that uncommon these days.

Breallyn: Yeah. That’s interesting. Our eldest, we had a big 18th for, and then the other two we have not. It’s just what they want. But yeah, at least I’m not doing food. I’m, I just had a memory of the fact that I, for our eldest. Do you remember this?

Lyndon: I remember doing a lot of food prep.

Breallyn: We did a lot of food prep. We actually had a competition.

Lyndon: Did we? I…

Breallyn: you, yeah.

Lyndon: I won. I imagine.

Breallyn: I think that the consensus was that I won, but we each took a table. I had the…

Lyndon: I don’t remember that at all.

Breallyn: I had the confectionary bar and you had the savory, like massive charcuterie layout.

Lyndon: It was amazing.

Breallyn: Do you? That It was amazing. It was delicious. ‘Cause…

Lyndon: it wasn’t flat either. It was high. It was like…

Breallyn: you did, you used logs and things. I remember. There was some…

Lyndon: oh yeah.

Breallyn: Very nice aesthetics going on with yours. But I had a very cute looking confectionary bar with all the different, little glass jars with lollies and different things.

So that was nice. But about two days before the party on our eldest’s actual 18th birthday, I’d taken the other kids to the skate park. That’s right. And I, yeah.

Lyndon: Tell us what you did on the skate park.

Breallyn: I had a go on a skateboard and I came off it and broke my elbow.

Lyndon: Did it start with this? “Check me out, kids?” Is that what happened?

Breallyn: It was going quite well. I was having a go and the boys were skating. Birdie was there. I think I had her…

Lyndon: it was down the peninsula.

Breallyn: scooter or something?

Yeah, it was down the peninsula. Yeah. We were staying down in Rye for a few days. You had a migraine, so you were back at the house.

Lyndon: Oh, I did too.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Which isn’t unusual before?

Breallyn: Not unusual. So I’d taken the other three kids out to go, we’re, we’ll go out for a few hours. And our eldest was actually back home, didn’t come down to Rye with us at the time, so at least that wasn’t marring her 18th birthday.

But, yeah, I had to go on the skateboard and fell off right onto my elbow. Cracked it, broke it, and then because I had Birdie, I knew, “Oh, this isn’t good. This is really bad.” I know I’m about to like, it’s not painful yet, but it’s about to get really painful. And all I had in my head was, “I’ve gotta get her safe back to you because I’m like incapacitated.” I won’t be able to chase her. I won’t be able to care for her very well.

So I hustled the kids into the car, made everyone grab their skateboards and the bikes and everything, chucked everything into the car, drove out like, fanged it out of the car park, drove past the Rosebud Hospital in order to try to get back to the house so that I could drop the kids off with you and then pass out. But I didn’t make it. I had to pull over on the side of the Nepean Highway.

And yeah, pretty much like I could see my vision fading, so I had to just pull over and just say to the boys, “Look, just make sure Birdie doesn’t get out of the car.”

And I called you and you understandably, ’cause you had a migraine, were a bit bamboozled and I didn’t quite know what to…

Lyndon: I was like, “What? You drove past the hospital?”

Breallyn: I didn’t say that, but yeah.

Lyndon: I was trying to work out what you wanted and what you were doing. ‘Cause didn’t, I’m trying to…

Breallyn: That’s right. We only had the one car. So I was trying to get back to you so that you had the kids and the car. So anyway, I think you ended up calling an ambulance because I was no longer responsive and they drove the two blocks to get me.

Lyndon: No wonder I’d blocked this out of my mind.

Breallyn: by which time I was okay. Oh, not okay. By which time I’d come to it again.

Lyndon: I remember getting there to you and to the van and waiting for the ambulance to arrive. I remember all of that.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: I just don’t remember how I got to you. I probably ran like James Bond, probably. I think you…

Breallyn: Ubered it.

Lyndon: Uber. Yeah.

Breallyn: So that was our eldest’s 18th. And then, yeah, a few days later we were hosting the massive party. And yeah.

Lyndon: and I won the table competition.

Breallyn: I, don’t actually, I think I remember the cheers for the confectionary table. That’s definitely what I remember.

Lyndon: That night I only see one table and it’s the charcuterie table.

Breallyn: But next two kids, we’ve said, “You can do what you want for your birthday. Do you want a big party? We’ll do it.” They’ve both gone, “Nah, no thanks. It’s all right. We’re fine. We’ll just go out for dinner.”

Lyndon: So you think you marred it for them?

Breallyn: No, I did an excellent job.

Lyndon: They were just like, it was just too stressful, “Mum trying to skateboard, breaking her elbow, passing out the Nepean Highway, getting taken two meters to the closest hospital. No 18th for me. Thanks.” No. So is that what we’re talking about, kids’ birthday parties?

Breallyn: No, it’s not what we’re talking about. That was, yeah, it’s just a, it’s a busy week, so I do have some prep to do this week. So all in all, my creative pursuits this week…

Lyndon: Oh, okay.

Breallyn: Have completely disappeared. Although we do always, I think maybe it’s ’cause we have a time together and obviously we are wanting to put out regular episodes for listeners. But yeah, we have been really regular with being able to get here in the studio and create a podcast. This is, I’m happy with that.

Lyndon: Yeah. This is a creative pursuit.

Breallyn: It is. But yeah, my writing’s not happening this week, but, and the topic for today to cut a long story longer…

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: It’s a…

Lyndon: a, we will get to the topic quick. We’ve got episode five, season three to get to.

The Psychology of Interruption

Breallyn: Yeah, this happens to me regularly. A week gets busy. And my creative time is often the first thing to get bumped off the list of things to do, which I really don’t like. And I hope to, gradually, slowly be able to change that. Obviously there’s been other priorities that I’ve had to put ahead of that, but today’s topic is called the ripple effect. How tiny changes create creative tsunamis?

This is, I guess what happens when you’re trying to build a practice, a routine, some sort of methodology into your life with all the other things going on. And when that gets derailed, it really has an ongoing effect. It’s harder to pick up the next week. You might have forgotten things. You’ve gotta repack things, go over things again. Just try to get back.

Whatever momentum you’ve lost, because I think momentum is such a massive thing in any pursuit of anything. Yeah, it can really get derailed quite easily, I find in my life anyway. The difficulties of interruptions and how that has that ongoing effect and how it doesn’t just affect that day that week, but then it bleeds into the coming month or the rest of that project.

I just wanted to dig into what, why it is that losing a day or like having a interruption to your week or to the momentum that you’re trying to create, why is that so disruptive? What’s going on? Because I uncovered a couple of little…

Lyndon: nuggets.

Breallyn: Yeah. And I’m not a scientist, but every so often I think I seem to…

Lyndon: But you can use Google.

Breallyn: Exactly. And we have touched on some of these things before, but I think it is worth mentioning because I know personally, I am very quick to beat myself up when it comes to, “Why didn’t I get up early and do something? Why haven’t I done this?” To put the blame squarely on myself for why I haven’t achieved the things I’ve wanted or done things as quickly as I was hoping to, or, completed something or continued something.

Like in me, it’s so quick to tell myself bad things. And I don’t think I’m the only one. I know, chatting sometimes to other artistic friends, they’ll be sort like, “Oh, it’s the, my most favorite thing. it’s all I want to really do. If I just was given a day with nothing to do, I’d, I’d go and write that song or I’d paint that thing. And I don’t know why, I just don’t put aside more time for myself to do that.”

It just seems like it’s the last thing that gets onto the schedule. It is something we touch on a lot obviously. ‘Cause that’s, that’s the whole point of our podcast, I think. But there is, yeah, there is some explanations as to why it’s so hard.

Context Switching in the Brain

Breallyn: So one is context switching. Our brains really are not built this way to switch rapidly between getting into that creative zone and then switching out of it, dealing with all the other things, dealing with the interruptions, answering an email.

Lyndon: our brains aren’t good at doing that.

Breallyn: No, they’re not good at doing it.

Lyndon: I reckon mine is.

Breallyn: Your brain is terrible at it.

Lyndon: No, it’s, but this is how quickly it can switch. I can be outside having my coffee and in that sort of downtime while I’m drinking my coffee, I get all motivated and I go, “This is what I’m gonna do. The first thing I do when I go in is, I’m not gonna look at my emails,” so it’ll be something like that. “I’m not gonna look at my emails. Instead, I’m gonna do that thing that I planned to do this morning, and I’m not gonna look at my emails until lunchtime.”

I’ll step inside, put the cup down in the kitchen, come into the studio. Emails. So that’s how quick, so your brain can…

Breallyn: no, but that proves my point is that…

Lyndon: okay.

Breallyn: what, as soon as that happens, as soon as you’ve interrupted that, it’s quite hard then to get back to that creative block that, that deeper work we’ve, which we’ve talked about before.

Lyndon: So the switch only works in one direction.

Breallyn: It only works in one direction. It only works when you’re coming out of deep work and you get distracted, you can do that easy enough. But yeah. To then get back into deep work or then to find that creative momentum again, that’s really quite difficult.

Yeah, we’re just not made for it. No one is, it’s like there’s a cost to doing it, it’s a switching cost, or it’s like the energy, the time and the mental energy it takes to re-engage and find your focus again, is not like just, going from “I’m gonna put the washing on” to, “I’m gonna answer the emails.” It’s far different to that and it, yeah, it really is. It’s like a different, substra-strata layer of your brain that you access. It’s, yeah, very hard to get back into that.

Lyndon: So you are actually saying there’s science behind why it is harder to do.

Breallyn: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Lyndon: Oh good.

Breallyn: Yeah, there is, and I’m probably just scratching the surface as well with my scientific research. As I’ve said, I’m not a scientist, but there, there’s definitely reasons. It’s not just because we’re lazy or because we can’t be bothered getting back to it, or because we’re a bit muddled or disorganized. That’s not it. That’s not the reasons.

The Zeigarnik Effect

Breallyn: The other psychological effect of interruption is something known as the Zeigarnik Effect, which is an effect where our brains remember unfinished or interrupted tasks way better than we remember completed tasks. If you’ve written half a song or you’ve recorded something, you need to put more tracks down. Or if I’ve got an unfinished chapter or something, it haunts us when we’re trying to sleep. And that’s the thing that we keep thinking of rather than the completed parts that we’ve done.

It leaves this open loop in your mind, it never gets closed until you finish that thing. So that creates a sense of instability and you’ve got this unfinished task, like you, you are not free. You’ve got something that you’ve got to get back to. So it’s quite stressful.

Lyndon: That’s my constant state.

Breallyn: Yeah. Yeah.

Lyndon: And I put that under, ruminating.

Breallyn: Oh yes.

Lyndon: Because I think they must be related because you’ve got all these things that are haunting you. And then they come into your mind and then you’re like, “This is what I’m gonna do about it,” and “This is my strategy.” And then you just keep thinking about that over and over again.

So it really is this sort of loop thing that you’re talking about. And it’s actually really dangerous to your health.

Breallyn: Yes.

Lyndon: As I found out.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: I don’t recommend it, but I think that I… the trick is to recognize it and then, see, I did recognize it, but I thought because I had these strategies and “this is what I was gonna do about this,” “this is what I’m gonna do about this other thing,” “this is how I’m gonna handle this other thing that’s come up.” You think that you’re dealing with it.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And then as soon as that next thing comes along, that might not be anything that you are haunted by. It’s just a new challenge that might happen to you or something you have to deal with. It can make the whole thing cave in.

The Power of Environment and Tiny Habits

Breallyn: I think being a bit self-aware about unhealthy, let’s say, not even habits, but just patterns that we are in, doesn’t change the fact that you’re still in that pattern and it’s still unhealthy. Yeah. Being aware of it. We’ve been a bit stuck sometimes because of our situations, I think it’s been hard to be healthy.

Lyndon: It’s all related, like from my own experience and understanding through I, and anytime you go through something that’s quite a, it has a big impact on your life, you tend to, I do anyway, and I know other people that do, you explore that a bit to try and work out how to get out of it. So what’s happening? It’s like, “Why is this happening?”

And so through all of that, I’ve discovered that there is a much stronger connection between your mind and your body than I may have understood. But there’s also, I think, a connection between those two things and the environment you’re in.

Breallyn: Oh, yes.

Lyndon: And you do hear this when people, let’s say experts, talk about changing habits. They’ll talk about changing your environment and, “Oh, what’s that? So hang on, what’s that phrase? ‘Show me your friends and I’ll show you your future.'”

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: So even like just the people that you’re hanging out with. That it might be a particular scene. For me, when I was doing the coffee run in the mornings…

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: that literally was the same route.

Breallyn: Yeah. All the time.

Lyndon: All the time.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Like virtually the same every day.

Breallyn: like Ground Hog Day, every day.

Lyndon: Yeah. So it aids that ruminating.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: So that, yeah. And this is of course, I feel like I’m telling people how to suck eggs because we all know that if we go away on holiday, we are literally taking a break from our routine.

Breallyn: Yeah. which, yeah. And we…

Lyndon: routines can be healthy.

Breallyn: we think differently because we are not, we’re not looking at the same things, going through the same actions and therefore sparking the same thought patterns. Yeah. Day after day.

Lyndon: I think routine is a different thing because routines are generally considered a positive thing.

Breallyn: Yeah. and I’ll, especially if you…

Lyndon: but what I’m…

Breallyn: build them thoughtfully.

Lyndon: What I’m saying is that if there’s stuff happening in your mind, that’s affecting your body and then the environment that you’re in is also feeding that, that’s what I’m saying. And, the same thing like with routines. You do need that consistency, thought process, action and environment to be able to keep up the routine. As soon as one of those things changes, it’s much, much harder. So I’ve heard…

Breallyn: That’s so true. Yeah.

Lyndon: So I’m told.

Breallyn: So you’ve told yourself. So I wanted to flip it around a bit, in my mind because I was going, “Oh, yet again, school holidays, absolutely derailed my train.” But I wanted to focus a little bit on thinking about, “Oh, hang on a second. Look, there’s gonna be interruptions.

There’s gonna be times where you can’t continue that rather precious routine that you started, or momentum that you’ve tried to build that is gonna happen, but it is okay because there’s a compound interest on creativity, because those little things that we’re doing for our creativity, to build in those blocks of that time on our passion projects that we are really trying to do…”

And it amidst all the busyness of, raising a family and having a very high needs child and running businesses and all the rest of it that does pay off over time. And those little tiny things do end up stitching themselves into a much, much bigger thing.

So I wanted to have a look from the world of science once again at a couple of principles, that also can help in this way, like maybe to counteract some of those other principles that explain why it’s so derailing when you can’t do your project for some time or whatever.

There’s a book that’s quite popular at the moment called Atomic Habits by James Clear. One of the principles in that is the idea of getting 1% better every day. So these small habits, like these tiny improvements are the building blocks for larger results and massive results. So they’re so small, like the little 1% that you do, it’s an easy something, it’s something small that you can do.

It’s like you’re not setting yourself up for this huge task. You’re just trying to do one tiny thing. So it’s not much risk of failure. It’s easy to achieve that thing.

Lyndon: Does, does that mean I’ll be 100% better in, in just over three months?

Breallyn: Yeah. Which is good.

Lyndon: I’m skeptical of this.

Breallyn: It’s just an idea, obviously. It’s how do you judge a 1%? I don’t know. But I see people applying it to things like their backyard is scary to walk in ’cause it was so like filthy and strewn with weeds and stuff. So they just do a couple of little things, a little 1% a day or a weekend or whatever, just to try to chip away at that task, that big thing.

Lyndon: I used to have a teacher, Ken, and he had a mate, Ian, whose front yard was so overgrown. Ken would ring him up and pretend to be the police saying that they’re searching for a missing person and they wanted to know if they could search his front yard.

Breallyn: Oh no.

Lyndon: And like he’d leave a message on the answering machine. It would be this like long of story and he’d ring up. Other times he’d be like a sergeant wanting to use his front yard for like military exercises. And it was always something different. Always recorded on an answering machine and always really funny. But yeah. Famously had, when the grass gets so long it seeds?

Breallyn: And eventually the council does get in touch.

Lyndon: it was long. It was like literally if a child walked in there, you wouldn’t see them. So it was pretty funny.

Counteracting Negative Thought Loops

Lyndon: But isn’t this whole thing like you’re talking about the brain remembers the unfinished things.

Breallyn: Yeah. The brain remembers, unfinished or interrupted tasks. Yeah. Better than completed ones.

Lyndon: Yeah. So the brain remembers unfinished and interrupted tasks the most, and that’s the sort of stuff that haunts us. Doesn’t that then cloud the achievements? Isn’t one of the issues that we have, that everybody has, is, we remember a lot of the negative things and this would fall into that and we have trouble remembering like what we, what everyone calls our wins, you know, our little wins.

Breallyn: Oh yeah, for sure.

Lyndon: And, often we need to be reminded about that. Like we were just, earlier today or yesterday, I was thinking, “Man, you and I need a break even just to go have a coffee somewhere, other than here at home.” So that we can just go, “Hey, this is actually the stuff that we’ve achieved. This month, or, and, or even this year,” just so that we can have a little bit of a reset.

And then you were saying, and I hadn’t said anything to you, but we were just talking about what we’ve got coming up over the next couple of weeks, and I think you said next weekend while Birdie is on camp, we’ve planned to be away for that weekend, so…

Breallyn: we’re…

Lyndon: away. Got a little, we’ve got two nights or something down the coast.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And I was like, “Oh, thank goodness,” because we really need to focus some of the good things that have happened because I think it, especially in the holidays, like every day to me feels, “I don’t know what day it is.” Like it feels like a Sunday, not that Sunday, Sunday might as well be Saturday for me, and Saturday might as well be Friday. But I’ve literally not known like what I’m doing.

I’m kind of a routine of sorts that I had established is just thrown out the window for a bunch of different things. It’s, “Oh man, like I just need to…”

Breallyn: reset somehow.

Lyndon: Need reset to have a bit of a break and a bit of a reset. So if this is why I’m like skeptical with this 1% thing. It’s if there’s something so incrementally small, it’s gonna be much easier to forget, isn’t it?

Breallyn: Yeah. It’s definitely like easy to forget the little wins.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: But just in the day like that you are focusing on that little thing. It’s just, it’s one idea, I suppose it, and it’s not, I guess the way that I would apply it is that if I’m writing something I might not get to do that big chunk of work, but I can, in my mind, decide, “All right, I might get a short window.

So I’ll just focus on that one paragraph that I didn’t write very well last time I wrote it.” Rewrite that, or, even just think about a character and sort of flesh out their personality a little bit more or something. Like just doing those little tiny things. I think…

Lyndon: 1% they talk about one percenters in sport, don’t they?

Breallyn: Yeah. True.

Lyndon: things that are worth a lot to the team. But you don’t get a stat for.

Breallyn: So makes a difference to the overall outcomes. And the other principle that is in that book I think is habit stacking. I dunno if you’ve spoken about habit stacking before.

Lyndon: you’ve spoken about habit stacking before?

Breallyn: Yeah. I don’t know that it’s the only place that talks…

Lyndon: I just think of pancakes.

Breallyn: about it.

Lyndon: What, is that, in that book?

Breallyn: I believe it is, yeah. It is that idea of tying, if you’ve already got a certain habit, like making a coffee in the morning, you tie something else to that so that you are then doing those two things.

Lyndon: do you think there’s any new ideas in the self-help sector?

Breallyn: realm?

Lyndon: I don’t reckon.

Breallyn: I think there’s a lot of stuff, a lot of rebranded ideas that come around and around again, which doesn’t matter. If somebody words something a certain way and that resonates with you and it works for you at that time of your life, then go for it. I think it’s all good.

Lyndon: and the audience is always changing.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: It’s the same with music. The audience is always changing. That happens, like you get, remember when you’re younger and then you’ll be like going on about a song that you really like, and then a parent or someone older than you will say, “Some band did that years ago. Sounds just the same.” And you’re like, “No, it doesn’t,” but like it does. So it happens with everything.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Good on them. I’ve got a little one percenter I’ve been doing every night.

Breallyn: Yeah. What’s your one percenter?

Lyndon: I play bass as the last thing I do pretty much before I go to bed.

Breallyn: That’s something new or…

Lyndon: Before I head upstairs.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: What I’m doing though, I don’t plug it in. I’m just getting a blister up on my thumb. Because I’ve decided that I quite like playing with my thumb. Actually, I was watching Sting the other day and he was playing predominantly with his thumb. But anyway, I need to see what the trick is to get the callus.

Breallyn: Right.

Lyndon: Yeah. So if you go too hard too soon, you’ll get a blister and that is not your friend.

Breallyn: So it’s a fine line between a callus and a blister that you’re trying to…

Lyndon: Yeah. Once you’ve got the callus going, you’re all good. So I just, I play for about 10 minutes with my thumb virtually every night. So there you go. I’m gonna put that down as my one percenter, job done.

Breallyn: There’s a little win. Yep. Nice one.

Lyndon: It’s the same thing every day.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: But in a hundred days I’ll be a hundred percent better. I’ll show you my callus. Yeah.

Breallyn: Wow.

Lyndon: I think it’s moved to my throat.

The Problem With Long-Term Projects

Breallyn: The other thing I wanted to talk about is because often we’re talking about longer projects, so that open loop in our mind is gonna stay open for a very long time. It’s not just finishing something off and ticking it off. It’s a long, slow burn. If you’re doing an album, writing a book, doing a big piece of artwork, or some kind of installational compilation or something, it’s a large project, so you don’t get to have that sense of finality and completion very often. It’s a very long time.

Lyndon: I wanna talk about Greta Zilla. I know I’m interrupting, but I was just thinking, no, it’s okay. Last year she wrote a song a week. So she’d got 52 songs, I believe, something like that.

Breallyn: That is a great thing.

Lyndon: There are 52 weeks in the year.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: So I’m assuming it was 52. So that was a really big year of co-writing. And then out of that she has come up with 12 or 14 songs, whatever, for her album, which she’s recording this week. So yeah, that’s like an example of having an idea, a vision, making it happen.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: So it would’ve, the seed of that idea and the organizing of it would’ve started, let’s say, in 2023. It might’ve started way earlier than that. Yeah. But she would’ve had to be planning it the year before.

Breallyn: Yep.

Lyndon: Between, say, January and now, she would’ve been doing pre-production, maybe getting the, working out all the finance and everything else to be able to actually record the album. And then, of course, she would also be thinking about the releases or the release and tying that in with festivals and with other live gigs.

Breallyn: Starting to plan marketing.

Lyndon: All the marketing, so that would be happening towards the end of this year. And then it would also be getting promoted and performed next year, because there’s obviously festivals during summer. And so if you think about it, like it’s virtually like a three year process.

Breallyn: Very dedicated process. Yeah.

Lyndon: For those 12 or 13 or 14 songs that some people will then listen to for nothing.

Breallyn: Yeah, I know.

Lyndon: But yeah, that’s, so that is, it’s a big effort, a big project, yeah, looking forward to it actually.

Breallyn: Yeah. That sounds great. I love Greta Zilla.

Lyndon: You bought the t-shirt.

Breallyn: I bought the t-shirt.

Lyndon: And the sticker.

Breallyn: Love the music. And when you went and did a co-write with her, you came back with plants that she’d sent me and, oh, cuttings.

Lyndon: I did.

Breallyn: I’ve got, what have we got? Devil’s Ivy and all kinds of things that she sent. Yeah.

Lyndon: She’s a plant lady.

Breallyn: And she sent a gift to this other plant lady.

Lyndon: Is that what the term is? Plant lady?

Breallyn: I don’t know.

Lyndon: Plant girl.

Breallyn: Dunno. I am in a Facebook group called Crazy Indoor Plant People.

Lyndon: Okay, that sounds more like it.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: The C I D P or C I P…

Breallyn: C I P P.

Lyndon: Do you call yourselves the sippers? Yeah. Yeah. Sippers of Australia. Yeah. You know what I don’t like about that?

Breallyn: Everything you’ve told me before.

Lyndon: The fact that the ‘C’ for crazy is a hard ‘C’ and then it’s been turned into a soft ‘C’.

Breallyn: There has been debate, debate among the group, whether we’re kippers or sippers.

Lyndon: It’s kippers every day. Every day. Yeah. Which is a fish. So good on ya’s.

The Progress Principle

Breallyn: Research shows that the single most powerful motivator is making progress in the meaningful work. So you get more motivation from seeing the progress that you are making, absolutely. Yeah. It’s not about the completion, it’s about the progress and getting into, like, getting yourself stuck into the work and seeing that you are making those little wins along the way and yet working your way through the challenges, actually seeing some progress in the thing that you’re trying to achieve.

Lyndon: We were saying last week that, let’s call it the process of progress, but that process, that changes you while you’re doing it. So it’s not just about, “Oh, like I’m doing this, I’m seeing progress,” and so that’s making me do more work. It’s actually making you feel better about, not just about yourself, but you actually, I don’t know, it releases…

Breallyn: You’re a different person.

Lyndon: Toxins, is that right?

Breallyn: Sitting on the other side of…

Lyndon: It releases the good chemicals.

Breallyn: It does. Well, scientifically speaking, it’s a positive feedback loop that it boosts our mood, our motivation and our creativity. Yeah. But yeah, like you, like we were saying, like art that is made has changed the world because it’s changed the artist regardless of whether it’s received or not. So yeah, that, that progress, that actual making, the meaningful art, that is the best thing.

Breallyn: I remember there was a study done at some point where a whole lot of sort of philanthropic types tried to figure out how were they gonna support their artist friends and contemporaries, people that they thought, “These are really brilliant people. They’ve got lots to offer, but they’re struggling. They often can’t pay the rent and they’re trying to do all these jobs.”

Lyndon: They don’t look you in the eye.

Breallyn: All these things, they smell. And that they try… so they did a bit of a questionnaire. They were trying to figure out, “How can, like what’s the best thing that we could do? Is it to set up a communal studio space? Is it to provide resources? Is it to subsidize housing? Like, what, what could we do to make the lives of artists better?”

I think they were specifically focused on visual artists, in their questionnaire. And the answer from all the artists, like once they compiled all the results, the single best thing that could be done is for people to buy the work. So all they, they were sorting their own housing out, they were eating noodles and working desk jobs as well as doing their art, and they just wanted to make their art.

But the best thing that could happen is for that art to be bought because it meant that all those other things could fall into place. That there’s then a demand for their work, so they need to work more, so then they’re paid more.

Lyndon: It’s not rocket science, is it?

Breallyn: Yeah, it’s not.

Lyndon: But the other part of that too would definitely be that no one wants to feel like a charity case.

Breallyn: No, that’s so true.

Lyndon: So you don’t want someone to be paying your rent. You want them to be paying you for your art. Yeah. And then you pay the rent.

Breallyn: Yeah, absolutely.

Lyndon: So it’s, wow.

Breallyn: They could have saved themselves time.

Lyndon: I just thinking there’s, there might have been one person, like out of all the respondents that said, “Yes, a house please.” And is sitting there at the end of it going, “Oh, I missed opportunity. Thanks a lot guys. Yes. Set me up with some housing.” Wow.

Coping with Creative Disruption

Breallyn: So I am, for my own sort of self-care and good mental health this week, trying not to focus on the fact that I have this unclosed loop in my head and the disruptions, how debilitating I find that when it comes to continuing a, this longer piece of work that I’m focused on.

So instead I’m gonna give myself a bit of a break about that and just acknowledge, I suppose, why that is so painful and difficult to cope with and get over then the next week. And yeah, just try to focus on the progress that I have made and how I am gonna get back into that.

I’m actually, you know what I’m thinking, so school holidays is nearly finished, which means another term. I think I’m gonna try to find a time where I could get away for a little bit of a writing retreat during this next term. So I’m gonna focus on that. That can happen and yeah.

Lyndon: Isn’t the secret or one of the key components as an antidote to this phenomenon or phenomena…

Breallyn: See, that’s your brain…

Lyndon: Phenomena or phenomenal.

Breallyn: Your brain works like that. That’s why you can’t not open your emails.

Lyndon: But isn’t one of the antidotes to be setting aside time to forsake all else? “I’m doing this. I’m gonna, this is my creative…” Yeah, do that, plan your creative retreat, your writing retreat. But if something comes up and then that doesn’t happen, you’re in a bigger hole, a deeper hole.

Breallyn: I just have to, yeah, things are gonna happen. And we’ve talked about before, we’re in a position where we are not able to go. Our commitment to our creative projects is like our number one thing, because we’ve got a special needs child. She has to come first. And there’s a lot of those needs that disrupt daily life and that do step in front of so many things, not just our creative work. So that’s, there’s no real getting away from that or around that. Everything else has to flex to that thing.

Lyndon: Yes.

Breallyn: Yeah. And yes, so to your point, like if I then plan this amazing couple of days away and it doesn’t happen, I just have to then cope with that as well and just go, “Okay, I could reschedule it or I could…”

Lyndon: But what I’m suggesting is that it’s, it’s not that and nothing else. Obviously you’re not doing nothing else, but it would be like a tandem approach where you go right, every morning, for instance. So you say every morning or whenever the time is between six and seven or between two and three in the afternoon, whatever, is my time. I’m not gonna let anything else encroach on that time.

And then over the course of, say, three weeks, there’s gonna be 15 times that you’ve, you’ve done nothing but your creative work. That’s the plan. But you might only end up with eight, but that’s eight more than you would’ve had, you would’ve done if you didn’t. Because like in, in both of our diaries, we’ve got, everything else is in there, but like sometimes it’s the creative stuff that because we just kind of think it’s…

Breallyn: Gets pushed out.

Lyndon: Yeah. We’re gonna do it. We’re gonna get it done. We’re gonna do that thing. And it’s like what often goes in our diaries is, “Gotta meet with this person. We’ve gotta make this call. We’ve gotta sort this thing out. We’ve gotta go to this appointment,” all this other stuff.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And there’s a lot of stuff which all has to be done, but it’s these other things need to be put in there.

Breallyn: Yeah. It’s definitely something that I’m trying to work towards. And I don’t know, this year just seems to be ridiculous.

Lyndon: You’ve done it before.

Breallyn: I’ve done it before.

Lyndon: It’s not like you don’t do it.

Breallyn: No. Oh. And I’ve always tried to have it as a priority, but yeah. I’m finding this year’s been more challenging than I would’ve liked. And the fact that I can’t guarantee I’m gonna get any sleep at night is one of those things. Like, it’s really hard to go, “I’m just gonna have that one creative hour first thing,” when sometimes I’ll have not, like I’ll have slept for two hours, then been up for three hours, and slept for another half an hour.

Lyndon: It’s tough. But you will give that…

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: You will give that time. Even when you’re tired, you’ll give it to other people for their benefit.

Breallyn: Yeah. But it’s a different, like I can sluggishly get my way through some emails and some things, and even to a lesser degree work for clients. I do not find that I can do my creative writing when I’m really tired.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: If my brain is sluggish, I actually can’t do it. And I don’t, I haven’t figured out a workaround for that one yet. So yeah, it’s then my choices are to do something to try to get some work done…

Lyndon: You are definitely choked as well.

Breallyn: Or not.

Lyndon: Because that’s true. Creative activity it needs air and space around it, and when it’s getting choked, when your time is getting filled up and when your sleep obviously is getting taken away from you, creative space gets choked.

Breallyn: And I always feel like I’m making an excuse as to why I’m not doing more of my writing. But it, it’s not that I’m not trying to figure these things out.

Lyndon: No, but…

Breallyn: And I guess that’s why we’re doing this podcast is to talk about all the bloody brainstorming that we’re doing just to try to get ourselves into a place of creating the things that we want to create.

Lyndon: It’s good fun. Yeah. There’s lots of parents will tell you too, like how the year that their child is doing VCE is tough for everyone, whether you’ve got a child that’s struggling with VCE or whether you’ve got a high achiever.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Either way it’s rarely the student going through that on their own, everyone is on that journey to a certain degree, and which, yeah. And and VC is over two years, but obviously, so this is in Victoria, Victorian Certificate of Education, but the second year is probably where more of the pressure is.

And then if you’ve got more than one child, like we do, you can be going through this as a parent, trying to take care of them emotionally, spiritually, physically, mentally during that year. And then you’ve gotta do it all again a year or two later for the next child. And then you’ve got, we’ve been on that journey as well, there is that. Yeah. So that’s…

Breallyn: There’s on, that’s on one hand is Yeah. Yeah. Child going through VCE. And then on the other hand, our nephew’s wife and I were…

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: Comparing notes about sleeping. She has an actual newborn, and I have got Birdie and we’re pretty much awake at the same time during the night. So we’re, yeah, we’re gonna FaceTime.

Lyndon: So you might as well text. Yeah. FaceTime each other.

Breallyn: Yeah. Which is, which is crazy. Birdie is 13 years old this year. And as a newborn, she slept pretty well. Like for the first seven years of her life, she was sleeping really well.

Lyndon: She was a good sleeper.

Breallyn: She was a really good sleeper. And then she stopped.

Lyndon: Yeah, she just stopped.

Breallyn: She just stopped sleeping.

Lyndon: Wow.

A Mother’s Love and Unwavering Commitment

Breallyn: Yeah, and it is part of one of the symptoms of her…

Lyndon: Of Phelan-McDermid Syndrome.

Breallyn: Yeah, Phelan-McDermid Syndrome. Look it up. There’s no real answer, I don’t think so. It just means that she comes out of her room and wants her mum many times a night. And yeah, some nights we get better sleep, but often we don’t. And as much as like I struggle and I really do struggle with it, I just always think like, how’s she managing?

Lyndon: She seems to manage, okay.

Breallyn: I don’t know. It can’t be good for her brain and her development. And obviously she got a lot of challenges. So I don’t know.

Lyndon: When I got up this morning, you looked like you hadn’t slept all night and she looked as fresh as a daisy. So I think she’s coping pretty well.

Breallyn: Oh my gosh. I don’t know. I don’t know how she does it sometimes. When I’m so tired, like I’m, I can’t keep my eyes open and I have to read to her a lot. We’ll be in her room, I’ll be reading to her and my eyes will be closed and I’ll be slumping. ‘Cause I can’t sit up any longer. And yeah, she’s looking like she’s got hours in her.

And sometimes I have to give her iPad and lie down next to her and put my arm over her so I know if she moves. And I sleep and she just watches her iPad. And yeah, that’s just how I have to do it to try to keep her safe and make sure she’s not up walking around the house and getting into danger.

Lyndon: I can’t remember the life we used to have. I literally can’t remember it.

Breallyn: No, I can’t either.

Lyndon: I can’t remember what it felt like.

Breallyn: I can’t remember what it feels like. I remember it as an intellectual exercise. I remember being a parent of small children and thinking, “These nighttimes will eventually go away.” Like I’m not always gonna be needed to look after my children throughout the night. And then we had Birdie and then, yeah, that has not gone away.

So for more than 20 years I’ve been up at night. I think that’s pretty much what’s happened. Yeah, no, there was that, there was a section in the middle where Birdie was sleeping and that was great.

Lyndon: I finished my gin about 20 minutes ago.

Breallyn: I’ve been sitting on mine.

Lyndon: And I’ve been quietly trying to encourage little bits of ice into my mouth without it being heard on the microphone.

Breallyn: Crunch them.

Lyndon: I am off to watch a bit more of Slow Horses and then after that it will be nighttime routine. Sorry, pre-bed. It’ll be pre-bed where I will probably have that disgusting Ecco drink.

Breallyn: Don’t ruin the gin with Ecco.

Lyndon: Ah, this is a bit later though. This is my special recipe.

Breallyn: When I’m having my Milo, like a teenager, you are having what? Disgusting. Echo.

Lyndon: No, Ecco is a different brand, which I have a feeling might be better. It’s basically like a caffeine, it’s like a Clayton’s caffeine drink.

Breallyn: Which means that it’s not caffeine. No, it’s Clayton’s. For those who don’t remember Clayton’s.

Lyndon: Oh, what else did they say? It’s a faux caffeine or fake.

Breallyn: It’s caffeine free. It’s, there’s no caffeine. I dunno why you mentioned it.

Lyndon: There’s people that like coffee get obsessed. Now they’ve got like coffee drinks made from mushrooms and they’re trying to pass that off as “grab your fungi latte.” I haven’t tried that. And I’m gonna stick to my Ecco, which is gross, just so you’ll know. And it’s rye, chicory. Barley and roasted barley, is that right?

Breallyn: Malted barley.

Lyndon: Malted barley. Are you sure? Rye, chicory, hickory dickory dock and malted barley. And it pretty much just imagine what dirt would taste like in milk. That’s what it tastes like. So you’ve gotta have a couple…

Breallyn: You put yourself through this.

Lyndon: Have a couple of Malt-o-milks. It’s like pendants.

Breallyn: Why? Because you now you can’t sleep. This is a terrible routine.

Lyndon: And then I come in here to close down the studio computer and while it’s closing down, I pick up the bass guitar and I…

Breallyn: Work that callus.

Lyndon: I get my callus on.

Breallyn: Sounds so bad.

Lyndon: And that’s where the term calisthenics comes from, allegedly.

Breallyn: I’m off to get my couple hours sleep before Birdie wakes me up. Been nice chatting in the evening.

Lyndon: We’ll talk to you next week.

Breallyn: See you then.

Lyndon: Thanks for listening.

Want more deep dives into the creative process? Our Patreon supporters get exclusive episodes and behind-the-scenes content.