The One You Feed - Bonus Re-Release: Todd Henry

Episode Date: December 18, 2014

Todd Henry describes himself as “an arms dealer for the creative revolution”Todd is the founder of Accidental Creative, a company that helps creative people and teams generate brilliant ideas.  He regularly speaks and consults with companies, both large and small, about how to develop practices and systems that lead to everyday brilliance. Todd’s work has been featured by Fast Company, Fortune, Forbes,HBR.org, US News & World Report, and many other major media outlets.His latest book, Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day, unlocks the forces that cause even the brightest, most skilled people to become stagnant in their life and career, and introduces practices that help them build a body of work they can be proud of.It’s been called “A simple, elegant and masterful manual for leading a fulfilled life” by David Allen, author of Getting Things Done, and Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art says “If you can read this book and not be inspired, you need a 100% full-body-and-soul transplant.”In This Interview Todd and I discuss…The One You Feed parable.What mediocrity means.The Seven Deadly Sins of Mediocrity.How little choices become a big choice.How to pick your battles.Why the phrase “no one on their deathbed ever wished for another day at the office” is wrong.What the west coast should have to match the Statue of Liberty.How no one loves every part of their job and that’s ok.That a little of something is better than a lot nothing.What are Mapping, Making and Meshing?The difference between Drivers, Drifters and Developers.What is the Project Plateau?What is the core practice to transform your work?Common Sense is not Common Practice.What is the Bliss Station?Where is the most valuable land in the world?Todd Henry LinksTodd Henry homepageTodd’s latest book: Die EmptyThe Accidental Creative homepageTodd Henry author page on AmazonSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Stereo Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, and wherever you get your podcast. One of the ways that we feed the bad wolf is by telling ourselves the lie that, well, I've got tomorrow, right? I'll just wait till tomorrow. I'll start it tomorrow. I'll do it tomorrow. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear.

We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction. How they feed their good wolf. Our guest today is Todd Henry, founder of Accidental Creative, a company that helps creative people and teams generate brilliant ideas. He regularly speaks and consults with companies, helping people develop systems and practices that lead to everyday brilliance.

His latest book is Die Empty, Unleash Your Best Work Every Day. Thanks for joining us today, Todd. We're happy to have you on the show. Thanks, Eric. It's great to be here. So I want to first start off and just say how much I genuinely enjoyed your latest book, Die Empty. There's a lot of great stuff in that and a lot of stuff that we end up sort of coming up on this show again and again. So I'm looking forward to talking a little bit more about that. But very nice work. Thank you.

Yeah, it's, you know, writing a book is kind of, it's a long, laborious, painful process. So you always hope that people can get something out of it, because at the end of the day, you don't want to have written it in vain. So it's always encouraging to hear somebody say, hey, I read it, and I got something out of it. That's really encouraging to hear. Thank you. I really enjoyed it. So our podcast is based on the old parable where there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us who are always at battle. One is a bad wolf and he represents hatred and greed. And the other is a good wolf, which represents kindness and love. And the grandson stops and thinks for a second and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start this off by asking you, what does that parable mean to you in both your life and your work? the role that really, I think, desire and comfort play in the life of anyone who wants to do great work or wants to accomplish something or build something or add value. I think we all, regardless of whether we're intentional or not, we're all building a body of work. We're creating value

just by virtue of our presence on earth, value of some sort. And I think that the question that we have to ask is, am I building the kind of value that I want to point to later and say, yes, that represents what I care about, that represents something that I really believe in? Or are we building the kind of value that's there by default? At the end of the day, we do what's easiest, we do what's most comfortable. And I think really in that parable, I hear that battle between the desire to do what you know to be right, to do what you know will stand the test of time, that will prove value, that will be valuable to other people, and the lull of comfort, the lull of apathy and self-centeredness that's the wrong path. And yet that's the very seductive path, I think, for many of us, because it's easy just to kick our heels up and rest on our laurels instead of asking on a day-to-day basis, what's being called out of me and what can I contribute to the world today that will be a value that will stand and that I can point to at some point in my

life and say, yes, that represents what I believe to be true. And so when I hear that parable, that's really what comes to mind to me is on a daily basis, am I feeding that desire to create value, to build a body of work I can be proud of? Or am I feeding the side of me that craves comfort and stagnancy and an easy life? Because I think a lot of people who chase an easy life, when they get later in their years, they say, what have I done? I've abdicated my contribution for the sake of a little bit of comfort, you know, and I think that the price of regret is incalculable in those cases. Yeah, there's a lot in what you said there. And one

of the themes that sort of I noticed over and over in your book, and I think it's interesting, is you talked about comfort. And, you know, when we hear the parable, we say the good wolf or the bad wolf, you know, it's fairly dramatic, the bad wolf is greed and hate. But also, you know, you talk a lot about comfort, you talk about the road to mediocrity. And how so maybe that choice isn't as apparent to us day to day as we think it is. So one of the things I thought was really interesting was you talking about how people arrive at mediocrity. Could you share a little bit about your thoughts on that? Yeah, so this word mediocrity, if you parse it into its original language, it comes from two words, medias and ochris, which mean middle and rugged mountain.

So to be mediocre means to stop halfway up a rugged mountain. It means to stop halfway to your objectives. You're halfway up, you see the objective, but you stop for some reason. And there are many forces, I believe, that can cause people to get stuck in that place of mediocrity. But all of those forces, I believe, are the result, all of the forces are forces that we can feed and I think signify in this parable. They signify the bad wolf, right, in many ways. And I labeled them in the book Die Empty, I labeled them the seven deadly sins of mediocrity because I do, I believe they're deadly. They're deadly to us emotionally. They're deadly to us mentally. I think that they cause us

to become stagnant and apathetic and to abdicate our contribution. I also put them in the order A, B, C, D, E, F, G, not just to be cute, but because I thought they'd be more memorable that way. They are aimlessness, boredom, comfort, delusion, ego, fear, and guardedness. And I think if you feed any one of those things, whether it's through a willing aimlessness about your work, refusing to ask what battles you're going to fight, through the lull of boredom, instead of being fiercely curious, you allow boredom to take root in your life. If you feed comfort at the expense of growth, if you feed delusion at the expense of self-knowledge, if you feed ego at the expense of confident adaptability, if you feed fear at the expense of finding your voice, or if you feed guardedness at the expense of staying

connected to others and having others in your life to speak to you, if you feed any of those forces, they're going to grow in your life and they're going to eventually result in medias ochras halfway up the rugged mountain because you're not realigning yourself on a day-to-day basis and feeding the good wolf, right? The good wolf, which would be those practices, I believe, that can keep you focused and moving up the mountain. Yeah. And about mediocrity, I'm going to read something you wrote because I thought it was really good. You say, no one charts a course for mediocrity, yet it's still a destination of choice. It's chosen in small ways over time, and those tiny, seemingly inconsequential decisions accumulate until they result in

a state of crisis. And one of the things that runs through your book over and over also is it's about the small daily decisions that we make, the small daily actions that add up to a life that's either worth living or one that's not. Right. Yeah. And I think we lose sight of that. I think we look at the big thing that we want to do, whatever that is. We look at the big delta, the big change that we want to create. And I think we fail to realize that that big delta is made up of a lot of little deltas, a lot of little changes that have to happen along the way. Little choices about where we put our focus, our assets, our time, and our energy. I tell people your fate determines your fate, right?

Your focus, your assets, your time, your energy. So where you put those four things at the end of the day determine the kind of change, the kind of small delta that you create today. But I think a lot of people become paralyzed when they look at that big thing that they want to do. They want to launch a business or they want to write a book or they want to change an industry or they want to do. They want to launch a business or they want to write a book or they want to change an industry or they want to whatever it is. I think it's easy to become paralyzed instead of stopping and saying, wait a minute, what does that mean for me today?

What would excellence in my life and my work in adding value, that little delta, what would that mean today? Not tomorrow, not the next day, but today. And if you put enough of those little deltas together, it will add up into something big. But nobody sets out to launch a business. Nobody sets out to write a book. It's about what you do today, about where you put your focus, assets, time, and energy. Gretchen Rubin said, what you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while, right? And I think that's a very, very wise philosophy. I think that it's very important how you choose to spend those everyday little increments of focus, assets, time, and energy. wise philosophy. I think that it's very important how you choose to spend those everyday little increments of focus, assets, time, and energy. Yeah, that has seemed to come up a lot as we've

gone through this show. One being, you know, that you've got to do more than just think. Action is really important. And secondly, the saying I use a lot is a little bit of something is better than a lot of nothing. You know, that doing something is better than sitting around thinking about doing something really grand. There was another thing in your book that I really enjoyed because every time I've heard it, it sort of rubs me a little bit the wrong way. It's that saying out there that nobody on their deathbed ever regretted spending an extra day at the office or another day at work. And you sort of talk about why you don't necessarily agree with that phrase. Could you

elaborate? Yeah, I think people like to say this. They say, well, nobody ever laid on the deathbed wishing, oh, if I only had another day at the office, right? They regret other things. Well, I don't think that's true. I think a lot of people that I have met later in life have expressed deep regret about not having treated their life with intention, treated their life with purpose. And by the way, when I talk about work, I don't just mean your job. I mean, your job's the most physical manifestation of your work, but your body of work is comprised of any place you add value. So it's how intentional you are about, you know, obviously your job, but also your work, but your body of work is comprised of any place you add value. So it's how intentional you are about obviously your job, but also your family, your friends, how you treat the barista at Starbucks, how you spend your money, right? All of those things comprise your body of work.

It's the thing you're building, how you develop yourself mentally. All of these things comprise your body of work. And I think people are unquestionably regretful about the way that they spent their life later in life because they realized they took the path of default. They took the easiest path. They said yes to whatever was in front of them instead of asking, what do I need to do to really continue moving up the mountain? And so they settled in. And for some people, that decision happens maybe a little bit later. Maybe they get to age 40, 45, 50 years old and they say, I think I'm just going to cruise it out the rest of my life. I'm just going to

kind of settle in. I've worked hard. I'm going to enjoy the fruits of my labor. Then 20 years later, they realize I've basically spent the last 20 years of my life phoning it in, cruising. So I think this oversimplification of nobody ever wish for another day at work, it really bothers me because I think we are wired as human beings to derive meaning from the value that we create. We are wired to derive meaning from our work. We're wired to derive a sense of identity from our work. That doesn't mean we are our work.

It doesn't mean that our identity is what we make. But I think what we make gives us a sense of purpose and identity and place. I think we're biologically wired for that. So I think it's oversimplification. And honestly, I think it's kind of a little bit naive to say people don't regret not having spent their life and their work with more purpose. The other thing you said in the book, and I agree with around this topic, was that the other problem with that argument is that it divides your life into pieces, that you've got your life and then your work over here, and does away with the idea that your work can be satisfying and gratifying and meaning. Work is not a bad word.

Yeah, that's exactly right. I do think that there's kind of a war on the word work in our culture, especially in Western culture right now. There's an idea that work is bad, is inherently bad. And there are all these books. I mean there are some very good books obviously. They're really good books. But I mean there are books like The 4-Hour Workweek and some of these others that almost – that's not at all what Tim Ferriss was saying in the book, right? I mean the guy works very, very hard. But it's almost, it feeds this idea that work is a bad thing in our culture,

and we should do as little of it as possible. And I just completely disagree with that mindset, because I think that, I believe that we all have not just an opportunity, but we have a responsibility to contribute value, to use whatever we've been given and use whatever sphere of influence we have, whatever platform we have to create value for those around us. You know, Viktor Frankl said that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast should be accompanied by the Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast, right? This idea that with liberty comes responsibility, comes the need to use that liberty to the service of others. And so, and Viktor Frankl also in Man's Search for Meaning said that everything changes when we stop, this is a paraphrase, everything changes when we stop asking the question, what do we want out of life? And we start asking the question, what does life

want out of us? And I think that that's really the philosophy that we should be taking. And sometimes that's going to mean maybe having to do things that we would prefer not to do. But in the end, I believe it's the path to a more gratifying life and work experience. We had an interview with a gentleman who wrote a book called Prisoners of Our Thoughts, and he was a student of Dr. Frankl. So we've explored his, Viktor Frankl's work a fair amount. So it's great stuff. Let me ask you, you talk in the book a little bit and you define, there's two things that sort of go together and I'll use them both. One is defining your battles and the other is sort of understanding what your unique contribution is and how that might be different than what anybody else could

do. Can you tell us more about that? Yeah. So I think some of this is tied up in the concept that we often call passion, right? Passion for work. And I think, Eric, that we often misuse and abuse that word passion because we use it to mean anything that I'm mildly interested in. I think one, I think that's one of the ways we abuse it. So, you know, I'm passionate about ice cream. I'm passionate about my work. I'm passionate about my wife. I'm passionate about the Cincinnati Bengals, right? Or whatever. Anybody could clearly see those are different things, you know, different levels of meaning there, the word passion. The word passion in its root language comes from the word to suffer, right? And I think it can be valuable for us to reclaim that understanding of the word passion in its root language comes from the word to suffer, right? And I think it can be valuable for us to reclaim that understanding of the word passion when

we talk about passion for work. What work am I willing to suffer on behalf of? Am I willing to go in a little early for? I'm willing to stay a little late for? I'm willing to put more of myself into because it means so much to me. I'm committed to an outcome that transcends my day-to-day tasks. Because it means so much to me. I'm committed to an outcome that transcends my day-to-day tasks.

The other thing I think we often do when we confuse this term passion, especially when we think about defining our battles, is I think people often think that passion for work means that I am in love with the tasks that I do every day, that I have to feel this sense of rapture every time I fire up my laptop. Oh, joy, I get to work. And the reality is that nobody feels that way. We get glimpses of people feeling that way. I have probably about as much latitude to craft my days as anybody could in their work. I mean, I largely direct myself. I create my own projects. I basically live off of the value that I create for clients or in the books I write or whatever it is.

And I can choose whatever work I want to do. And there are a lot of things that I do that I don't like. I don't like the task themselves, but I love the outcome. I'm passionate about the outcome of freeing up creatives to be more of who they are, to bring more value to their work. And so that's just one example. I mean, another thing, I don't like writing. I can't, I mean, I've written two books. I'm in the middle of writing a third book right now. I don't like to write, you know, which is kind of a weird thing for an

author to say. But books are the best way for me to communicate a message. And I'm so committed to the outcome that I endure the work of writing, right? And so, you know, I think all of us have to ask when we're talking about defining our battles, what is the outcome that I am committed to? What is the thing that the line that I draw that I say, not on my watch, this is not going to happen on my watch. I'm going to stand in the gap. This is what I'm fighting for. It's my through line. It's the thing that connects all of my activities together. And I think that once we come to terms with what that is, and it's probably not a job, it's probably not an activity, it's probably not a career or a career set, it's

probably something that transcends all of those things. And once we identify what that is, that we believe that is being called out of us, that battle, it completely changes the game. Because I could do what I do, and I have done it in various settings, right? I've done it through what I'm doing now. I've done it in other jobs. I do it in other spheres of my life, in relationships with organizations. I volunteer my time to do it with people, right? Because once you identify that through line, it becomes sort of the thematic thread for your life and for your work. And so I think it's important for all of us to stop and ask those questions. You know, what battles am I fighting? What is so important

to me that I'm committed to the outcome regardless of the consequences? There is a – you say in the book that there are three things that people need to go through in order to sort of die empty, which is a great book title. Not – it's strikingly close to my co-host's latest memoir, which I think was Die Empty, Screaming and Alone. No, Die... Better. Yeah, yeah. Let's hope not. But you talk about needing to do mapping, making, and then meshing. And then you go on to describe people who only do one or two of those things. So if you could first describe for us what that is mapping, making, and meshing, then I want to ask you a couple of questions about what happens

if you do one and not the other. Yeah. So, so we tend to, you know, we tend to think of work as this giant sort of conglomeration of this mess of activities and tasks and plans and goals and strategies and all these things. But really, if you really look at the work you do, you can kind of parse it out into three discrete buckets. Now, they're not clean buckets. I mean, some things transcend one bucket or the other. But you can kind of generally categorize work into three separate buckets, the first being mapping. And mapping is planning. It's strategy. It's sitting down, making lists, doing strategic plans, figuring out what you're going to do. So it's planning what it is you're

going to do in order to be successful. The second kind is making. And this is probably what most of us get paid for. It's checking tasks off of lists. It's doing the things that you planned during mapping phase. And a lot of people, when they think of work, they think of really those two things, mapping and making. I plan and I do. I plan and I do. But there's a third kind of work that we often neglect, especially when things get busy. And this is what I call meshing. Meshing is all of the work that ties your work together. It's things like we just talked about, defining your battles, figuring out what is the thematic thread of my life and my work and how can I build more of my mapping and making around that thematic thread. It's things like developing yourself intellectually, things like setting goals

and making sure that you understand where you're headed with your work so that you're not aimless. It's things like developing relationships, building into relationships. So it's all the work between the work. And those are the things that often get lost when we get really, really busy. So for example, let's say you're really great at mapping and making, but you're not meshing. And this is where a lot of people, I think, get off the rails when things get busy. We're planning and we're doing and we're planning and we're doing, but we're not stepping back to look at our life and say, where am I going? Where is all this taking me? Am I still even working on the right problem? They're not developing

themselves mentally. They're not sharpening their skills and growing. I call this profile the driver. The driver is the person who's very nose down. They're getting a lot done and drivers tend to be very successful. I'm sure you probably have experienced this in various work settings you've been in. Drivers tend to be very successful, especially early in their career, because they're very driven. They're very ambitious. They get a lot done. They take a lot. They have broad shoulders. Because of that, they get out ahead, but they're not doing the little things to continuously develop themselves, to step back and redefine the problems, to think about their work systemically and strategically. And so oftentimes, they end up making really great progress, but they're not

making strategic progress in their life and in their career. And so they can kind of get off the rails. So they have to focus on meshing as well if they want to be effective. Now, my personal inclination is that I tend to map quite a bit and I tend to mesh quite a bit, but I sometimes struggle with the making part of it. And this is, well, I actually float back and forth between this one and another one, but this is what we could call the dreamer, right? The dreamer are the people who have big plans. They have a lot that they want to do and they're great at developing themselves, developing their skills, but they're not actually getting around to doing the stuff that they're planning. And this is a real problem. The one that really kind of eats my lunch on a regular basis is another profile that

I call the drifter. Yeah, that's me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so the drifter is really great at making and they're really great at meshing. So they're getting a lot done and they're meshing, but they lack the conviction of a strategic plan, right? So they don't understand where all of it is going. So they tend to bounce from thing to thing to thing to thing to thing. Whatever shiny new project comes along or new idea comes along, they get it going and then they hit what Scott Belsky calls the project plateau, where a shiny new project comes along and they think, Ooh, that looks more exciting than what I'm working on right now. So they jumped to the next project. And so they tend to leave a, a bunch of half finished projects in their wake. Um, and that's, that frankly, that tends to be where I, um, I, I really struggle as well. Um, and, and so the, the, the, the challenge there is I think a lot of times you need accountability, you need

relationships, you need deadlines for projects, you need people breathing down your neck. I've had to bake that into my life and into my work in order to make sure that I actually finish what I start. Because otherwise I will bounce from thing to thing to thing because sometimes we'll lack the conviction of a strategic plan. The final profile, the most desirable is the developer. And that's when you're mapping, making and meshing effectively. And that's, I believe, where all of us want to be long term in order to continue to do our best work. How did you arrive in the spot you are as far as, you know, the accidental creative, that book was both of the books sort

of tie together about how to do your best work targeted at creative professionals. What was your background that sort of led you to this message? Yeah, so all, I always tell people, everything that I write about comes from painful experience, you know, painful personal experience. So, I mean, I've done a ton of research, obviously, but a lot of it is the result of my own experiences and then interviews with other people who have had similar pain, similar experiences and what they've discovered to be true. So, back in 2005, I was leading a team of people for several years before I was leading a team of people. We were really struggling. We were working a ton. I mean, you know, 70-hour week kind of work and just doing crazy stuff to try to create value.

And I started asking some of my creative director friends at organizations, hey, how do you keep your team healthy in the midst of this? And they looked at me like I had three heads. What do you mean, keep them healthy? I mean, we just burn through people and bring in a fresh crop, right? And I'm like, well, that doesn't seem like the right solution. It might be organizationally expedient, but it doesn't seem like the best way to really build a loyal team and help people produce their value. And so I started doing a ton of research about how are people doing this effectively? And then I created a podcast in 2005 called The Accidental Creative. And the idea of the podcast was really just to share some of the things I was learning about

how teams seem to be most healthy, how they seem to function in the most healthy way. And then I also was doing some freelance idea generation and some freelance creative work as well at the time. And so some of these teams that would bring me in to generate ideas or do other things, slowly but surely, they started saying, hey, this would be great if you could come help us generate ideas. But you know that podcast episode about the role of fear in organizations? Could you just come and spend an hour talking with our team about that? Okay, sure. And so over time, that gradually became more and more of the thing I was doing. And I realized, okay, this is probably the place that

I need to be. So I actually launched my business and was still doing ideation work, but more and more just working with teams to help them talk about the dynamics. Because we're really great about talking about how we do the work, but we're not great at talking about why we're doing the work and talking about the process of the work. So, you know, we're very good about objectives and deadlines and systems and all of those things. But there are a lot of intangibles that happen in the midst of that, especially when you're dealing with the uncertain environment of creative work. We have to solve problems every day and when you have to do it on demand. So that's really where my work really directed me. It was more because clients were saying, hey, can you come talk about this?

And that then fueled the research, which then a couple years later led to the first book. And then a couple years after that led to the book Die Empty. So by the time I wrote the second book, I had many, many years of experience working with teams, but then also really just kind of delving into some of the real key pain points for people who are trying to create value and people who want to create value, but they just seem to continue to hit the wall and they can't seem to surmount the wall. Great. What could you give a, you talk a lot in your book about, um, that regular practices, you know, you, you say that, you know, incorporating certain practices into your work can help with these things. Are there any that somebody could, uh, listen to this podcast and then go and do?

You've got a couple of recommendations of simpler things to start with that might help people to do their best work. Yeah. So I'll just I'll give you one, first of all, because this is the one that I started with in 2001 and that really became the core practice that transformed my life, my career, the way that I saw my role in the marketplace. All of these things came really from this core central practice. And it's not something that – I wish I could say something that is going to completely blow people's minds. But the reality is most of the things we need to do, we already know.

We just aren't doing them. Common sense is not common practice. And it's not what you know, it's what you do that matters. So the thing that I've found has been the most transformative in my life and the life of the people I work with is building time into your life on a daily basis to stop, to read, to absorb stimuli, to commune with great minds, to think, to study, and then to process what it is you're reading. So if you do nothing but build an hour into your morning, so get up an hour earlier, spend half of that time reading something that you

think is going to be relevant to your work, and then spend a half hour writing, processing, thinking about what you just read, how it applies to the work that you're doing, it will radically change how you approach your work. and it will radically improve your ability to come up with ideas in the course of your work. Joseph Campbell, I wrote about this in Die Empty, Joseph Campbell had this concept he called the bliss station. And the bliss station is the place in your life where you do nothing but feed your soul. You read books that inspire you. You look at art that inspires you. He said everybody in their life has to find their bliss station. They have to find that place in their life that they go where they're alone, where nobody's judging them, nobody's looking at them.

But they're just doing whatever it takes to feed their soul, toisable time into your life to study, to think, and to write, and to process what you're learning, it will transform your life and your work. I think that process part is particularly key, right? I think we're in a time in civilization where we just – so many of us as professionals of different sorts are always absorbing this blog article, that blog article, this podcast, but it's that processing time that I know I'm guilty of missing, right? Just bringing more in, bringing more in, and it doesn't really add value unless I find a way to integrate it into my life. And that is a matter of slowing down and not bringing more in, but doing more with what comes in. Yeah, that's exactly right.

And Keith Ferrazzi, who I interviewed for the book The Accidental Creative, said that he spends an hour of processing time for every hour of reading time that he does. Because he thinks that processing is as important as the reading. And it is. I mean, if you're not stopping to think, you might as well not be doing anything. For me, that principle became clear to me. I think it was maybe a couple of years after I'd built this practice into my life. And suddenly I was reading a book that I'd checked out from the library. And at the point I was reading, I don't know, like 70, 80 books a year, 90 books a year, something like that. And I was

reading a book and I thought, boy, this all seems vaguely familiar to me. Boy, where have I, somebody else said something and I realized I'd already read the book. And I was about halfway into it before I realized I'd already read it. And I thought, if I'm rereading a book and I'm just now halfway in and I'm realizing I've already read it, I'm obviously not thinking about and applying the things I'm reading. So I slowed down my reading and I built in processing time so that that wouldn't happen again, you know, because I want to make sure that anything that I'm putting into my mind is useful to me and can be leveraged in the course of my life, my work, my relationships. Well, I think that we're getting near to the end of our time.

Is there anything else you would want to add that we have not covered related to either the book or our overall theme? Yeah, I would just, I would say, you know, about a decade ago, I was in a meeting and the guy who was leading the meeting asked the question. He said, you know, what do you think is the most valuable land in the world, right? And I'm like, well, I don't know. You know, everybody starts throwing out guesses. The oil fields of the Middle East, right? Or the diamond mines of South Africa or all these things.

And he said, I believe the most valuable land in the world is the graveyard because in the graveyard are buried all of the unwritten novels, all of the unlaunched businesses, all of the things that, that people said, I'm going to get around to that tomorrow. I'll start that tomorrow. And they pushed it and they pushed it into the future. Uh, and one day their tomorrows ran out. They reached the bookend of their life and all of that value was buried with them dead in the ground.

And I think one of the ways that we feed the bad wolf is by telling ourselves the lie that, well, I've got tomorrow, right? I'll just wait till tomorrow. I'll start it tomorrow. I'll do it tomorrow. And we push it. And sometimes it's because of comfort or because of apathy or aimlessness or boredom or whatever it is, but we push it into the future.

And so that day I went home from that meeting and I wrote two words on an index card and I put them on the wall of my office. I put them in my notebook and they've been the defining ethic of my life for the last decade. And those two words were die empty. Because I want to know at the end of my life, I have not laid my head down with all of my life for the last decade. And those two words were die empty. Because I want to know at the end of my life, I have not laid my head down with all of my best work still inside of me. You know, I'm not going to get everything out. Nobody gets to do that. I hope I die with more ambition, more hopes, more dreams than I had the day before. But I want to lay my head down knowing

I've lived my life by design, not by default. That I have done everything I can in my power to get the things in my life out of me that were most important to add value to the world around me. And I want to die empty of regret, but full of satisfaction for a life well lived. So if I could wish anything for the listeners of this show, just be purposeful today. Don't wait until tomorrow. Don't abdicate your contribution. You have not only the opportunity, but the responsibility to bring whatever is inside of you into the world so that others can share in that value. Well, that is an absolutely stunning way to end. So, Todd, thanks so much. I enjoyed the book. I enjoyed this interview a lot and look forward to talking with you more in the future. Thanks

so much. Great. Thank you, Eric. Okay. Take care. You can learn more about this podcast and Todd Henry in our show notes at oneufeed.net slash Todd.