Alexis 0:05

Hey , I'm Alexis Booth and welcome to the Breakout Booth . I was a senior manager at Google . I'm a wife and a mother , and I learned the hard way If you're not fired up , you're on hold . I believe success is closer than you think . There's a set of skills and habits you can grow to unlock unbelievable outcomes . In this podcast , we'll explore them through real talk and bold conversation , because I want to help you break out . Hey , welcome to the Breakout Booth . I'm Alexis Booth and we are in for an interesting conversation

Creativity is a superpower we all possess

Alexis 0:47

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Alexis 0:47

Today we're going to be digging into the topic of creativity , which is a superpower that I believe you and everyone around you already has inside you right now . I also think it's something you can get better at with practice . But most people I know, don't think of it as an attribute they possess , let alone something that could be cultivated or developed . When I hear people talk about creativity , it's usually in the context of "oh , have you met Sarah ? She's so creative . It's like this special characteristic--- almost like a personality trait , that's either present in a person or it's not there at all . And not only do I think it's wrong , I think it's such a loss for you , for us and for the world at large , to think that way , because creativity contains and embodies the very spark of novel ideas and innovation , and because creativity can provide you access to deep personal fulfillment . So , if you want to change the world , or maybe you've got a job in marketing , or you're a software engineer , you're a clinical researcher or a project manager , whatever it is you do for work , have you ever been told to think outside the box ? That is literally your manager asking you to get creative . That's right . Even if you don't think about creativity in the context of your job , it's actually an essential element of so many jobs . Not every one , but a lot of them . So creativity is actually something you're probably already using on the regular , and there are , in fact , proven ways to get better at it .

Alexis 2:34

If you still don't believe me that creativity is an important characteristic in the workplace , I'll share a little story from my past that I hope will help you rethink things a bit . When I applied to Google back in 2009 , I'd highlighted my album on my resume in the personal interest section and it ultimately became part of the packet that was reviewed by hiring committees , which is the packet's essentially a pile of all the documents about any candidate . It gets reviewed by leaders and longstanding employees . It's part of the core hiring process there and because it was a long time ago when Google was still fairly small , Larry and Sergey were still reviewing every single candidate packet for all the new potential hires as the last step in the process . So Larry Page was actually the very last reviewer of my hiring packet and he apparently said to the person helping him review all these packets . "Wow , she's super Googley ! "

Alexis 3:33

It was a statement that was literally a reaction to the highlight of my creation of this music album . While I can't tell you his exact thoughts at the time , I imagine what he saw in my packet went beyond any technical or business skills that anyone would need to have gotten to that point , but rather I demonstrated the kind of intangible skills and habits that any startup or fast moving company is looking for in potential employees . It involves developing original ideas , so taking the mere spark of an idea all the way to a finished product and having an internally driven motivation and bias for action to create something that no one else had asked me to do . So I deposit here as evidence today creativity is part of the magic you bring with you in your job and in your life every day , and it's something worth growing . Also , Larry Page thinks I'm super Googley , or I mean he did at some point in time . It's pretty cool .

Alexis 4:38

Now , beyond talking about the practical applications of creativity and , you know , thinking about how beneficial it can be to your job , I also want to highlight an even bigger idea , which is that creativity can give you access to something even greater than adding value in a work context .

Alexis 4:57

Creativity lies at the heart of experiencing some of the purest moments of joy and satisfaction that there are to feel in life . There's something so deeply fulfilling in witnessing your brain and your body compose a new idea all by itself , whether it's doodling on the back of an envelope , bringing a painting to life on canvas , screaming at the top of your lungs when you're all alone in your car and letting pure anger or heavy sadness take the form of words or sounds that never existed before in that particular way . Or maybe it's letting go while you're sitting in front of an instrument like a piano , a cello , a guitar and playing the notes you've played tens , if not hundreds , of times before , but with a depth of expression and a phrasing that the world has never heard . Or if you're an athlete , whether you practice taekwondo or yoga , maybe your love is soccer or football . There are moments where a pose , a play , a formation somehow comes to life in a way that transcends any plan or expectation .

Alexis 6:12

These are all moments that can become truly spiritual experiences , where you let go of everything and simply let something else take over . All the time you've spent practicing and preparing it suddenly comes together in an inspired moment of delight and creates an experience that can leave you breathless . But as important as creativity may be in making leaps in your job, launching a new startup, or cultivating a greater sense of personal fulfillment, there's mounting research that we are up against an increasing number of barriers that can stifle or even prevent creative thought all together .

Alexis 6:54

One I struggle with is a constant state of interruption . Creativity inherently requires deep thought . In order to come up with an idea you'd never had before . You need to have a clear mind and have time and space to let random ideas come up , almost as if out of thin air . But if you're being pinged by co-workers non-stop and you aren't preventing the mental assault that comes from the endless stream of app notifications and texts that your phone is dying to tell you about , you're holding yourself back from letting the creative process take you away on a stream of novel thoughts and you may be blocking your next big idea from ever taking shape .

Alexis 7:42

And as a parent of young kids , I can also attest to the fact that devices are not the only things that can lead to interruption . Sometimes one of the most important things you can do if you're a parent is hire a sitter or take a day off of work so you can have time and space all to yourself and you can get into a flow state and flex your creative muscles to yourself . And you can get into a flow state and flex your creative

Creating gray matter in the brain

Alexis 8:08

muscles .

Alexis 8:08

Another bit of research I find especially fascinating . There is a recent study that looked at people who had especially high scores on the smartphone addiction scale , known as SAS . This is a standardized questionnaire that evaluates if you have a phone addiction and the magnitude of it . Anyway , the study compared performance on a creative task between people who had high and low scores on this SAS . And not only did the folks who self-reported signs of device addiction come up with less creative solutions to the task , they did neuroimaging that showed these individuals had less activity in parts of their brains that were lighting up like fireworks in the other participants' heads .

Alexis 8:55

It reminds me of something I remember a senior leader talking about like 10 years ago . He'd seen some research that taking a different way into work every day can help develop gray matter in the brain . Now gray matter is something that is linked to intelligence , and it basically contains the cells that are responsible for sending and receiving signals throughout your nervous system . So he started doing this every day . He would take random roads into work and he described it as a practice that helped him feel more agile every day at work .

Alexis 9:31

One of the things I know I've done recently is I've stopped using maps when I'm driving in my car and traveling through areas that I'm relatively familiar with . Having turn-by-turn directions that are leading me to my destination doesn't only take away from the freeing opportunity of solving a simple but enjoyable problem . You know , thinking about what path I want to take and having to make real-time decisions , avoiding road closures or driving around backed up traffic . It also puts me right in the middle of an interruptive state, which can rob me from noticing the beauty of the world around me , whether it's the leaves changing in the fall or ice crystals reflecting the sun's rays . After a snowstorm , how often are you listening to a song and suddenly you're being told to take a turn , or you're having a conversation and it gets interrupted by one of those . By the way , when I dug into recommendations around how to develop more gray matter in the brain , the primary recommendation was to meditate daily , basically letting your brain have quiet time where random thoughts can flutter by . I see that as a passive approach to letting creativity flourish . I also think there are more active ways to promote it , and those are the things we're going to be talking about today .

What is creativity?

Alexis 10:50

Now , the dictionary defines creativity as the use of imagination or original ideas , especially in the production of an artistic work . Now , I do agree that creativity and art are inherently intertwined . Art is literally a manifestation of creative thought where it's put to paper , or music , or dance , you know , whatever the artistic form is . But I think the definition is incomplete and it's deceptive and limiting . I actually came across another definition as I was researching for this episode that's closer to what I'm actually exploring here . It's called creative cognition and it's basically the combination of mental processes that support the ability to generate novel ideas . There's a whole field dedicated to exploring it .

Alexis 11:42

In a way , creativity actually exists in every single moment of your life . From the way you move a bubbling pat of butter around a hot pan to make morning eggs: Do you poke it with a knife forward and backward in a circle ? Do you swirl the pan ? Or what about how you listen to and respond to every single person you come into contact with . It's also in the way you end your day , with lucid and , eventually , restful dreams at night , bridging connections between all the beautiful thoughts racing through your brain and at its core .

Alexis 12:20

The most important thing you can do to foster creativity is simply embrace being present in the moment and making room for yourself to explore your own ideas , rather than sit in a reactive state waiting for someone else to ask you for something , or zombying out and doom scrolling on your phone or bed rotting and binging on a weekend full of Netflix .

Alexis 12:48

Because , while I do acknowledge there are times when doing those things can be restorative and I love melting into my couch and devouring a full season of Bridgerton in one sitting, spending every moment you are not at work or asleep in that state is a loss for you and for everyone around you .

Alexis 13:10

Because if creativity is about imagination and creating new ideas , there is no other brain just like yours and no other person who has experienced the things you have in your life , which means that every idea you have is kind of unique , and that is something to be celebrated .

Alexis 13:31

So , rather than let yourself get lost in the binary idea that either you are a creative person or you're not , I want to ground today's episode in the idea that you are inherently a creative person simply because you're human and you have a special , unique brain and set of experiences , and those are the foundational elements of creativity . And to take it just a bit further , not only does creativity already exist inside you , you can cultivate it and tap into it even further , meaning you can expand your ability to imagine different futures , different things or experiences you can create , and you can increase your ability to come up with new and novel ideas and develop them even further . And with that , I welcome you to join me and have a conversation with a very special guest of mine , who is not only a friend . He is an expert in creativity . He's been a working artist for over 20 years and he also happens to be the man behind my mic , as in he's the producer of this podcast . Welcome , Pablo Signori .

Pablo 14:47

What's up ? Thanks for having me .

Alexis 14:50

Yeah , thanks for being here ! How are you doing today ? What'd you have for lunch ?

Pablo 14:54

I had leftover Coda di Volpe , which is a restaurant here on Southport that I like very much . They make very good pizzas .

Alexis 15:04

I thought you were naming a meal . I was like, what is this ?

Pablo 15:08

No, no , no , it's an Italian restaurant , but they make great pizza and they have the official stamp that comes from the city of Napoli . That signifies you make legit , truly authentic Neapolitan pizza .

Alexis 15:20

Ooh , I know Spocanopoli .

Pablo 15:22

Yes , that's also- .

Alexis 15:23

That's one I've gone to .

Pablo 15:25

Good .

Alexis 15:25

Yeah , I need to go back there sometime . Ooh , I'm jealous now .

Pablo 15:29

It's a classic . Those are kind of my two go-tos right there . We've covered pizza , now what ?

Alexis 15:36

Well , before we really dig into this episode , I did want to share a bit more background on you . I've known you for a long time and in fact my husband knows you from even longer . You were very good friends back in high school and actually college as well .

Pablo 15:52

Yeah , he's always been like a significant part of my life , through every phase .

Alexis 15:56

Yeah , very cool . Well , and you were at our wedding , you were retching .

Pablo 16:02

Yes , I had the flu . It wasn't that I drank too much . I had the flu when I got there .

Alexis 16:06

I sadly was not at yours . I had to travel for work . I don't remember what it was . I think there was international travel that was going on . But I did get like 100 pictures from Geoff that weekend .

Pablo 16:17

Yes , we had a good time . It was a good time .

Alexis 16:19

Yeah , we've played plenty of dice . What was the bar that we used to go to ?

Pablo 16:23

I think it was Guthrie's , wasn't it ? Yes , we couldn't remember what the name of it was yeah . Now I live like two doors down from that place and I never go .

Alexis 16:31

Is it still open ?

Pablo 16:32

Yeah , it reopened . It closed during the pandemic and then this guy Matt bought it and now they reopened it .

Alexis 16:47

Anyway so we actually go pretty far back and we reconnected last year this idea because I was playing around with this idea, this podcast , although that wasn't why I reached out to you . I was actually reaching out to you because I wanted help on the intro , but it turns out you actually are a podcaster . You want to talk about your podcast ?

Pablo 17:01

Sure . So kind of just a little side thing . I am obsessed with fly fishing . During the pandemic I realized that within the fly fishing space there's just so much information coming at you that it's very hard to digest as a new angler , and so I was like I need to do something about this , because I've only been fly fishing for seven years , so like coming into something brand new , like a hobby . As an adult , you know how you learn . It's like it's much more dialed , and I realized after I'd done a lot of research that like everything's like Swiss cheese , like there's no chronological order .

Pablo 17:35

So my attempt to fix the broken education system in fly fishing was to put out a podcast that is chronological it's from from zero to hero , basically with a , an angler that was the captain of the U . S . fly fishing team . So he's my cohost , Mr . Lance Egan , and yeah , so now we're on season three and it's had some very good success within the industry and it's been cool seeing how it changes people's perspective on fishing , because we try and tap into all different types of subjects , not just like technique and species , but also like the philosophical side of things too .

Alexis 18:12

Super cool .

Pablo 18:13

It's called the Newb and the Knower .

Alexis 18:14

Yeah , so I mean , I think in the context of the podcast , it was a happy , almost accident that I actually wound up coming back to talk to you . What's been really awesome about working with you and actually the reason that I wanted you on this creative episode is you've effectively like , yes , you're my producer of this , but you've actually even identified yourself as the creative director of it , and I think one of the things that's been so helpful in the context of the podcast is you've actually helped nurture the creative process , and I think a lot of the things that we're going to explore here are going to ultimately tie into a lot of the things you you helped me do , which is awesome . In terms of who you are , I mean , do you want to give a background on where , where you've been ? I mean you , well , whatever ,

Pablo 19:03

It's not---

Alexis 19:05

But it's all relevant . I mean , you've been a working artist for 20 years .

Alexis 19:10

I guess I'll start off and hand back over to you , but I know one of the big things that you had when you were younger you had your band , Malbec , which I think was a really big . Well , actually , even before that , though ,

Pablo 19:24

Well , I mean .

Alexis 19:24

I don't know .

Pablo 19:25

I've always been working in a creative space on some level . I started studying classical guitar when I was 15 . Then I went to boarding school for it , where I met your husband Interlochen shout out there and then I went to music school for college . I was a classical guitar performance major and then towards the end of that I realized that I was sort of disenchanted with the classical scene because of their penchant on perfectionism and how they it felt uncreative actually , which is why I sort of didn't like it that much . Not to bash on classical music , because I love it and I think that it is very creative , but in that setting it wasn't .

Pablo 20:00

So anyways , I got into songwriting and I moved to Los Angeles after I graduated and I started doing some solo work , like solo sort of album , my first EP . I had the fortune of coming across some people that were already sort of set up there that I had gone to boarding school with , and so I did it at Graham Nash's house from Crosby, Stills , Nash, and Young . He has a studio in his backyard yeah , it was kind of nuts . He would come in from time to time .

Alexis 20:24

That's so cool .

Pablo 20:25

Yeah , and then from there I put a band together and by 2007 , I think it was we got signed . We got a publishing deal , and the interesting thing about it was that we each got signed as individual writers , which is just kind of how they do publishing . So what that ended up allowing for was that once the band broke up , we were together for seven years and then , once we broke up , I was still able to continue being assigned artist and writer , just because that was the contract . Well , also because I was putting out work that they liked , but it was pretty cool . So I went on to do a solo thing . My focus was mainly like commercial music and music for TV and film . So I had a lot of placements , uh , such as Grey's Anatomy . And then , you know , I wrote a billboard top . I can't remember what they the title , it was some top five billboard stat , uh , with Alan Stone , his one of his songs called Unaware , yeah .

Pablo 21:16

Then I started really focusing on the commercial music . So I've done a bunch of different commercials . If it's holiday time and you're watching TV , you see a Reese's commercial , come on with Will Arnett's voice . There's a good chance that I made that thing . And then I've been scoring films also . So through that whole trajectory I sort of in a weird way , through another podcast that I produced , got involved with some biotech people and now I'm the creative director for a new startup that basically focuses on building life science research facilities 2.0 , though we're trying to make them very different from the traditional model . But that's all I can say without an NDA . So that's where we're at . Now, we're up to speed . I try to do it as fast as possible because it is kind of a---

Alexis 21:56

Oh , you also did a movie recently .

Pablo 21:59

Yes , I did . I've done a few short films and I also starred in a commercial that was really bad . It was really really bad . That was a long time ago , but I've been scoring movies . That's kind of been like one of the joys I've gotten into recently is working on scoring short films . And then I wrote , directed and starred in my own short film and the cool thing is your husband was a gracious contributor to the film . So it comes full circle and we shot last January in Argentina at about 14,000 feet . It's like an epic journey of a individual who suffers burnout , actually , and could use your podcast .

Alexis 22:38

Well , nice lead in coming back , uh , today's conversations . I mean , this is a podcast . It's all about hidden and misunderstood skills and habits . You know , creativity is actually one of the first ones that I wanted to explore .

Pablo 22:51

I love that .

Alexis 22:52

I mean talking about skills and habits . What is creativity ? Is it a skill , is it a habit ? Is it something else ? What do you think ?

Pablo 22:58

it's a great question and I agree with everything that you said in the beginning . I think it is something that everyone inherently has . It's a human trait . The problem is I think you're right , I think that it's been sort of mislabeled . It's become like something that's only associated with a very niche demographic , which is completely unfair .

Pablo 23:15

You find creativity in all aspects of your life , so to me , creativity is it's like being free and open to create , right . It doesn't have to be in any particular medium , it's just the idea that you're able to go there . I taught music for a long time in the interim there , and one of the things that

Talent is distinct from creativity - and success

Pablo 23:35

people used to always say was like you know , like this person has no talent , so they could never learn an instrument , and I always thought that that was the weirdest thing . I think that there's some people that will inherently be better than other people , but that doesn't mean that you can't be creative in your own right , even if you suck . Just the fact that you're doing it means you can do it creatively . It doesn't have to be in music either . It can be in anything really . So to me , creativity is one of these things that's free flowing in all of us , right , we just need to tap into it , give ourselves a chance to tap into it and have that sort of open mind to it .

Alexis 24:08

Yeah , so it's funny you talking about talent . I recently was perusing and looking at different books . Adam Grant actually has a book called Hidden Potential . His argument is actually the people who are most successful . I think he's more talking perhaps , about you know , financially successful . So it's , we're starting to introduce other variables that actually are kind of interesting .

Alexis 24:33

But he was actually saying that the people who wind up being the most successful actually are not necessarily the people with the most talent . It's actually the people who are most willing to stick it out and they find actually productive ways to stick with it and actually continue to evolve and get better over time .

Pablo 24:53

I can tell you , being a working musician , composer , songwriter in Los Angeles for 14 years , the people that I know now within my network that are the most successful are exactly that .

Pablo 25:06

They might not be like the weirdo who just comes up with the craziest best ideas , and they're unstoppable , which a lot of times that comes along with other aspects that are not really paired well in a business environment , because ultimately it all ends up being business , for better or for worse . I don't know . I'm not going to go down that road , for me it's worse , but then whatever . But you do notice that it's the people that stuck it out , the ones that just showed up every single day and thought of it more of as like a job than they did , some sort of just hobby or thing that they're good at . You know , and the other side to that is that the people that are very talented don't have to work as hard oftentimes , which works in the beginning , but as you get further into the profession it sort of ends up hurting you because you don't have the skill sets that you needed to be successful in that industry .

Alexis 25:59

I have so many other thoughts there , but I'm going to come back to the question here when I think about creativity , and even in really prepping for this episode I've been digging pretty deep on what creativity has been and what its actually becoming . One of the things that I was noticing was that - s o I recently stopped working . I had been working at Google for 14 years and I think a lot of what I had been successful at was I worked for an institution . There were goals , there were specific things that other people had set out in a framing of what we were trying to do . I'm really good at solving problems . I'm really good at actually asking better questions to make sure you're solving even the best problem or even focusing on the right thing .

Alexis 26:45

But I do think that one of the things that I didn't wind up practicing a lot there was actually me generating truly novel ideas all my own . It was always , you know , I'd been given assignment or my team had a responsibility . In a space I was asking all of the other the leaders , the stakeholders , the people who are responsible for doing this stuff on the regular and so the creative process for me there was mostly listening to and assembling like kind of the best of and recommending the most beneficial path forward , but actually most of the things that I was doing maybe it was creating a tool or a process that was inherently creative , but I wasn't actually doing like true raw creation , if that makes any sense . And I think what's actually been really fun about this podcast is it's actually even comes back into a question we were texting about of like is a podcast art ? I actually feel like what this podcast for me is becoming is almost like philosophical art .

Pablo 27:50

Yeah , yeah .

Pablo 27:51

Well , I think that's one of the components to to make what I consider true art or serious art is there has to be a philosophical component to it talk to me about that a little more okay , so I'm so curious . I've had a lot of late night conversations about this , but it always brings me back to two things in my life , which one we might end up talking about later , which is sort of the X factor .

Pablo 28:13

But , the other one is my uncle , my dad's cousin is he was an Argentine painter that was pretty well known , big enough to where they do , like you know , exhibitions and stuff like that in the Palace of Arts and whatnot in Argentina and Buenos Aires and Córdoba , wherever . But so I went to dinner one time at a friend of my wife's house and I walk into this person's place and it's just like the most beautiful collection of art in this old sort of European style mansion downtown . The walls were all marble and they had paintings and pre-Columbian art and sculptures just everywhere . Well , it turns out the guy was an Argentine art collector of which I owned a bunch of his prints . Once he told me his name , I was like this is just so weird and serendipitous because I actually have the prints that you've made of some Argentine artist . So we ended up kind of going into the kitchen while my wife hung out with all her friends that she was reconnecting with . I went into the kitchen with him ---his name's Giacomo--- and we just started talking about art and what makes art and what is creativity and talent , and all these things that we're sort of discussing right now .

Pablo 29:28

Now this man is like one of these stoic old school art people that , like , have a certain vision for what art is . So there's a lot of famous work that he wouldn't consider art and the word that he used was serious art . I'm putting that in air quotes for the people listening that can't see me . You know the word I use is true art , but his whole point was serious art is something that comes from within you . And we started talking about it because I had told him that I was composing music for commercials and he's like that's not art . And I was like how is that not art ?

Pablo 29:54

He started naming all these people, like he's like do you think John Lennon would do that ? And and he kept on being like you know , an artist makes art because they have to , because it comes out of them , not because it's commissioned , and it's like they're doing it for the money , which I kind of laughed at , because Rembrandt had a bunch of ghost painters and Bach was writing all of his music for the king . So I kind of thought that was silly , but it did bring me down a couple of notches because I had a lot of respect for this guy and he had a really good points . The man was very intelligent . So I wasn't about to get in a fight with like a 90 year old man over art , but it did get a little spicy in there for a second . But what I sort of walked away from with that conversation was a huge opportunity for me to sort of rethink and recalibrate what

Pablo’s key components of art

Pablo 30:40

my take on art was for myself and my work . So I've removed his idea of serious art and I've turned it into what I call true art .

Pablo 30:48

And I don't think that necessarily has to fall into any medium . I think it just requires a few components , and this is a work in progress . So maybe my definition will change . I don't even think it's a definition , I think it's just key components to what make art . So one , I think is philosophy . I think it has to be philosophical on some level .

Pablo 31:08

Even if you're like making fun of something like The Onion , to me that's art , you know .

Alexis 31:14

Yeah , sure .

Pablo 31:16

The next is process . There has to be a process to it . Maybe your process is like , you know , you're like Basquiat and you just take ketchup and you just splat it on a page and you make something of it . Whatever your process is that's something , right . It's calculated and it could be short , it could be long , you know there's no metric there but I think there has to be that component to it . And the last one , and one of the more important ones , it has to make you , and at least someone else , feel something .

Pablo 31:45

So if it's just something that you do and no one feels anything towards it , then I feel like it's very hard to qualify it , because that's really the objective of art is to get some sort of reaction good , bad , sad , whatever . And if you take it out of the artistic sort of side of an industry , you know , like I used to talk about my old man he's an oncologist and I used to always think of him as like an artist , like what he does , like he cures people's cancer . You know he has a philosophy behind it , he has a very clear process and at the end of the day , people feel something from his work , right . So I think it qualifies for my perspective , right . And then where talent fits into , there is sort of arbitrary .

Pablo 32:28

I think that it's a great component and it oftentimes creates exceptional art . But not all art has to be exceptional , right ? That's the thing , that's the mistake that I think I see a lot of people making . It's like you talk to people that are trying to get into music or something , they want to be a songwriter and they expect their first song to be their hit album and it's like , no , that's not how this works .

Alexis 32:52

It's not the way it works .

Pablo 32:53

You have to take time and do it .

Alexis 32:54

Well , it's also . It's even is a hit album . Does that mean that it's actually good art ?

Pablo 32:59

Exactly .

Alexis 33:00

At all either .

Pablo 33:01

You know , that's where it gets tricky, but .

Alexis 33:03

Well , and that's actually one of the things I think that I have struggled with in pursuing art at any point in my life . Also , this podcast itself , which is the idea of , like , internal versus external validation or purpose . You know , are you doing it for yourself , like or is success , or you know , deciding it's good ? Is that something you're deciding on your own or are you actually looking for external validation ? And I'll tell you , having been in the corporate world for you know , over 20 years , like , literally , it is external validation . Someone else is paying you to do it .

Alexis 33:42

If you're trying to go up the career ladder , you literally have to have other people vouching for you saying that you've met the criteria . Yes , you are a person that we believe in . Also , any of the kind of like leadership , growth kind of things , like you get literally handpicked to be part of them . So I think also when I was younger , part of the reason I , you know , I think also when I was younger , part of the reason I even pursued music in the first place was , like people told me I was good right and you know I got different awards and other things that like kept me going on it .

Alexis 34:14

But I also struggled because actually for me and music it was , I kept I'd do something for a while and then I just like I hit this point where I just had it I'd like stop , and then I'd come back six months , a couple of years later or whatever . One of the interesting things about it too , was that not only would I come back feeling refreshed and like no , I'm doing this for me , like I wanna do it , I think at almost perhaps every single one of these , I suddenly had some skill or talent or something that had developed in the time , even while I wasn't actively practicing it , which is really weird .

Alexis 34:50

I think for music and I think for art in general , I had this sort of back and forth and it's like when we are living in a society again when money changing hands is such a important part of what we need to do to pay bills and to do stuff , it's hard to turn off that external validation need . It's like drilled into us and being able to come back and actually say , no , I'm gonna do this for my own reasons and even even if people are giving me like weird looks and stuff , I'm like I don't care what you think , like I'm doing this for me and I don't you know for me for the podcast . Right now I don't even know what I think and I'm so curious , like there's so many things you've already put out here that are fascinating to me and like this is such a great excuse for a conversation we wouldn't have had otherwise .

Pablo 35:39

It's true . It's definitely true . That's what's cool about podcasting also it has that

The X factor

Pablo 35:43

aspect to it .

Alexis 35:44

You talked about the X factor before . Can you talk about that a little bit more in detail ?

Pablo 35:48

Yes , I've brought it up on my podcast , which is kind of funny , also because it's something that I've spent a lot of time thinking about , because a large part of my life was spent making what I'm calling art and trying to get paid for it , and so that forces you to think of , well , why did this one work and that one didn't , and what's the difference between me and them in certain situations , right ?

Pablo 36:13

So I started thinking a lot about the X factor , which I use that phrase sort of before the show came out , so forgive me for that , I don't have another real name for it . There's a colleague of mine that calls it Eureka Metrics , but it is sort of like that intangible ingredient that makes art and whatever medium godlike , for lack of a better word . I always use this example because it was really the first time I had seen it in person and it was so visceral .

Pablo 36:41

But when I was studying classical guitar , they used to have these masterclasses every Monday where people preparing to do their concerts would go and perform in front of the entire guitar faculty and the students . So it's kind of like if you can picture an amphitheater sort of style lecture hall in a college and down on the floor is a guitarist and the maestro who was the head of the department , and then everyone else sits in the seats and they listen .

Pablo 37:08

So on this particular day , when I was there , this classical guitarist who was deemed the best in the world was also there doing an honorary PhD . Denis Azabagic . He's this Croatian guy who's incredible . He had just won the Guitar Foundation of America competition , which is the most prestigious competition in the US for classical guitarists , and so he was doing his thing . What was interesting about the school that I went to was that because it was a , you know , it was like third best music school in the country , but the guitar department wasn't that robust in a way . So in order to bolster the numbers , they would just sort of let a lot of people in that shouldn't have been in there . So it was kind of a mixed bag . You had like the best guy in the entire world and then somebody that probably shouldn't have been studying that

Pablo 37:51

.

Pablo 37:51

So Denis gets up to play . He's playing the Bach Chaconne . It's like a 17 minute piece and it's very tricky . It's technically very difficult , but it also requires a lot of like mental prowess because there's , like these , certain parts that almost tend to want to loop themselves , but there'll be one or two different notes that change . That leads you down a different path and if you don't hit them , you can get lost basically in the piece . So it's just notoriously difficult .

Pablo 38:17

The guy gets up there , he discusses his piece and he starts to play . It's absolutely beautiful . Perfection . I'm looking around the room while he's playing and I start to notice that no one's really that locked in . It's like the first five minutes they watch and then , as the things go on , it's like one guy's working on his homework , another person's falling asleep , another person's rifling through their bag . This is kind of insane . We have the best guitar player in the world right now playing for us and no one gives a . What is happening right now ?

Alexis 38:52

Wow .

Pablo 38:52

So it was kind of interesting . And then what was crazy was he finishes , they go over some notes and then the next guitarist comes up .

Pablo 38:56

Now this person was like a freshman in college and one of these like what I like to call numbers , quote unquote , which is basically like someone that was just there to like put money into the department . They get up there and they play Lágrima by Tárrega , which is like one of the most beginner pieces you could play . It's beautiful , but it's not very difficult . And this poor fellow gets up there , he puts down his footstool , puts his guitar on his knee , starts talking his voice is shaky , his hands are trembling , his guitar is like , looks like it's electrified because he's like so unstable and he starts to play and it is just a train wreck , full-on train wreck . I don't think he got more than like four or five notes even out .

Pablo 39:41

It was just not okay .

Alexis 39:43

Oh God .

Pablo 39:44

I felt horrible . I looked at everyone in the room and there wasn't a single person that wasn't watching this performance . Right , and I was like what ? This is insane . How is this possible ? This makes no sense . And I realized then that for me , again , I can only speak from my own perspective , but I think that the X factor is actually the combination of those two performances: technically perfect , but could fall apart at any moment . Right , it's like riding that razor's edge where it's like controlled chaos basically right .

Pablo 40:20

It's like in the case of a classical musician . It would be like they know the piece so well they would never get lost in the bachacone and they wouldn't flub a note . But they also have the freedom to be so expressive that they are just like moving with the piece not just playing the piece , if that makes sense like they're literally like puking their guts out and , yeah , their heart isn't entangled in every note . You know what I mean .

Alexis 40:44

Yeah , it's making me think of like a singer that literally they could start crying or screaming or whatever the emotion is , like it's the singing is on the cusp of that .

Pablo 40:57

Yes , exactly it's that thing , and it doesn't have to be like loud and boisterous either . It can be - like , super quiet . You know it's more about the emotion that's attached to it , and so I think , for my standards , really good true art has that component . You know the best shows I've ever been to of bands or whatever . They do that and they always make you feel something right . You always walk away just like with your mind blown and I think it's that thing . But I don't think that in order to be creative , you have to have the X factor right . Going back to sort of what we were talking about , I just think that in order to make true art , you do you know what I mean .

Alexis 41:32

Well , and yeah , and I think that's kind of that philosophical bit . It's funny that that actually comes back Like that's the things that I'm starting to feel about this that I hadn't been feeling about other things that I've done , at least in a long time .

Pablo 41:45

Yeah . -

Alexis 41:46

But I was known as someone who was inherently creative . I was , in fact , hired . You know that whole Larry story was about, that's cool , that she did this thing . Like that means that she can be creative in an you know , in an applied way , and that those are the types of things that you need to do for like problem solving of business problems .

Pablo 42:05

Yeah , and I think that's true . You know , I think that's why it's funny that a lot of people , like , don't consider themselves creative . You know , I think I can't play music , I can't draw , you know , it's always like about how bad they are , but meanwhile they're like , you know , crazy mathematicians , or you know they are like shipping and receiving strategists that are just you know what I mean . Or whatever your discipline is , or you can make the most perfect coffee you've ever drank . It's kind of unfair that it gets pigeonholed to just like the arts . I've always said that .

Alexis 42:35

Yeah , so I want to come back to . I talked in the opening part of the episode that creativity is something that you can grow , you can nurture it .

How to cultivate creativity

Alexis 42:45

Can you talk to me about ? If someone said Pablo , I want to get more creative or I want to pursue this project , what would you recommend that they do ?

Pablo 42:55

That the biggest part to it , I think ? Well , there's two of them . One is just allowing yourself to be free in a non-judgmental environment , and that's mainly for yourself , because when you allow this sort of creative vulnerability , it feels very unsafe at first , and this happens to me even . I've been a creative my whole life basically , but like not in all aspects of my work , but certain ones that are new . You know , like as of the last three years now I'm taking on more of like a creative director role where I'm doing a lot more things in brand identity and strategic creative decisioning and stuff like that . So for me , I also have that thing where it's like I have to allow myself a space to think just through the creative idea and not how anyone's going to react to it . Because , as soon as you start thinking about

Alexis 43:45

that external validation bit ?

Pablo 43:47

Yes exactly, that's poison . It's really poison to the creative space . And I think that it's important to have people there sort of checking your work or experiencing your work , because that's what makes it , that's part of what makes it art for me , I think , is like someone else has seen it right . It made someone feel something like I had said . But I think it's also a later stage of the process , so in the beginning you don't have to share it with anyone . You can just keep it for yourself but allow yourself an untethered , vulnerable creative space to just create whatever the creative thing is right .

Pablo 44:21

And the other thing is to do it as much as you can . And fly fishing , we say . You know , you can read all the books in the world , but unless you spend time on the water , you're never going to be a good angler . And the same applies to a creative person . You can read books about creativity , you can listen to podcasts about creativity , but unless you're actually sitting down and doing the work , it's not going to happen . And there's another story , I'll tell you . That sort of works perfectly with this concept . But I think it was Bruce Springsteen that said I don't know the exact way he said it , but just to paraphrase . He basically said that he sits down every day to write a song and he's doing it not to write his best song , but he has to be sitting at his desk writing a song so that his best song comes out of him , and he writes a bunch of bad songs to get to that one great song , and that's Bruce Springsteen, right .

Alexis 45:09

Well , by the way , also another person who I think of for that same thing is Prince . When he died , his vault had , like so many finished videos and finished songs , and that's only like the whole thing that I remember hearing about him was he wrote a song every single day, especially in the eighties, that was, like his most prolific period, you know . So Prince has something like 41 top one hits , and, like, that's a really high number of them compared to most artists . But he probably created 10 times that number of songs if not more, over the course of his life . And again, we come back to the question also is is a number one hit actually , actually a sign of good art . That's a totally separate question which I'm going to just park .

Pablo 45:57

That's a different podcast .

Alexis 45:59

is a totally different . But I think if you even have a 5% hit rate of the things you produce being good like , . that's insane .

Pablo 46:09

Yeah, I agree , I agree , I mean it's not it shouldn't be about the that end goal anyways , like the process is so important , Like that's really what you're trying to do . You're trying to be creative . The end result is just the product that comes out of it , you know , and hopefully it's good , but if it doesn't all that sort of arbitrary you know what I mean , Especially in the beginning you're just trying to output as much as you can .

Alexis 46:29

I'll say---and I am not a prolific songwriter--- I have created an album and I do still write songs from time to time and I'm actually trying to get into it again right now . But my thought around why I need to produce more is that it's actually . I'll get really fixated on some idea . I'm working thinking like this is the coolest thing ever and like it's just not happening , and I need to be able to close it out enough so I can actually like shelve it and see what else is going to come up .

Pablo 47:02

Yeah .

Alexis 47:02

Because oftentimes they'll like stick around long enough and be like so insidious of like I just need to fricking finish this .

Pablo 47:10

I mean , that's the hardest part . The first 40% is like glorious and you're like , oh , this feels so good and I'm like in love with this whole process . And then , once you've written enough to where it's like , okay , there's something there , right , then Then the back 60 is brutal .

Alexis 47:31

I totally have one of those right now . Yeah , I got , I got into recently I'm doing a songwriters group , with a bunch of moms , which is super cool . And we're getting weekly prompts and you're supposed to submit them . I'm still stuck on the one from last week that I wrote . I love the lyrics that I wrote , but it's just not working with the rest of it . But I can't , like I have found myself I'm unable to like move on to the next . I'm like , so stuck on it , which is anyway .

Pablo 47:58

Well , that kind of goes into the idea of what I was saying , sort of like doing it every day . Another thing that goes along with doing it every day is because you're doing it so much , the work becomes much less sacred .

Pablo 48:10

You're much more free to be like okay , well , I know , tomorrow I'm going to write another song , so that's fine .

Pablo 48:15

Or it even allows you to sort of grow sort of a bank of ideas that you can sort of mix and match and , like you know , for any songwriting , as our sort of example medium , you know , you can take lyrics or chord progressions , or you know even conceptual ideas and put them on a song that , a new song that you're doing , and be like I have always loved this line , this song is not going anywhere , I'll just use the line and then write a whole nother song around that or whatever . You know , like there's no rules really , you know . That's the whole point is , if you can think more macro a lot of times with these things , then things become much less precious and you're much . It's much easier for you to just sort of keep moving , you know , and not get stuck , cause it's like it's just a fleeting moment , whereas if you're only doing one thing a week , you know , then it's like well , I have to get this done because this is like my song , it's not one of your millions of songs , right , right ?

Alexis 49:09

So yeah , all right . Coming back to the recommendation , so be in a judgment free place , like give yourself room to be vulnerable and do as much as you can . Is there anything else that you would put in there ?

Pablo 49:21

Yeah , I think this is one that doesn't get mentioned very often . This is why I'm going to mention it . I think try and get inspired from other things out there , but not in the same lane . So if you're songwriting , don't listen to I mean , yes , listen to records if you want to , of course , but I tend to try not to do that when I'm working , which is kind of weird , but I'm a bit of a chameleon . I mean , I was , I'm a commercial composer , so it's , if I listened to too much of one thing , I ended up sounding like it .

Pablo 49:49

So what I ended up doing is going to different art forms books , movies , blogs , website design , just other things to sort of inspire me . You know , if you're songwriting , one thing that I love to do that is a great example of this is go to YouTube and type in you know random city , Budapest , drone footage and put that on your screen and write to it , and all of a sudden you're writing like your own music video , without even realizing . And that's a creative way to approach creativity , right . So you can do that in any sort of discipline . It doesn't have to be just songwriting . You know , you can try and solve your business problem by going to some website or some creative space and seeing how they did something and think of it abstractly and see if you can apply that solution to your problem . You'd be surprised how many ideas it kicks out and stuff that you wouldn't normally think of right ?

Alexis 50:44

Yeah , what you're describing to me sounds like be curious about other things and yes . I do have plans to make another episode that explores

Creativity and curiosity

Alexis 50:55

very deeply curiosity as its own thing .

Pablo 50:59

That's great .

Alexis 51:00

I do think that that is extremely tied in . I actually part of what I was thinking about is , you know , if the creation of new things is l ike a wood pellet I'm thinking about , like a wood pellet fire ? I feel like the pellets themselves are actually curiosity , things that you're curious about and new ideas , and the only way to get more new ideas is to be open and curious about the things you don't know about just yet .

Alexis 51:27

Yes , and curious about the things you don't know about just yet . Yes , and you can constantly feed the fire of creation . Yes , and being in that creative place is there , and then the output winds up being either solving it can be problem solving , so it can be in a business context . It could also be like your cabinet door that I gave a weird example in my lead in . Or it can be art for the sake of art, which those are two related but very different ways of turning the thoughts into something more than just the thoughts .

Pablo 52:07

Yeah, harping back to your intro you were talking about two different people can output something different , right ? There was a moment where you mentioned something along those lines and I see that with creativity , all the time you can give an assignment or a brief to two different people , the results will be wildly different .

Pablo 52:24

And that's because a huge part of creativity which goes along with sort of this curiosity thing is experience . You're a filter for whatever you experience . So you experience something , you process it and then you put that into your work , right . So I think experiencing things is also really important , which is a really funny thing because , as you know , this is like a side note , but as songwriters and producers get older , they become more sedentary and they have less experience than they did in their 20s . So it becomes much harder to write like your opus as you get older , because you're just not in the wheelhouse as much , because you've kind of settled , you know , know . So it's important . I mean , I always tell people, drive in the car or get out of your space . Try and find new places to still be thinking about creativity . There's a book called I can't remember the name of the book . There's a book I read , though .

When you’re most creative

Alexis 53:24

Congratulations , Pablo . You can read .

Pablo 53:27

But it's sort of . It's all about the creative mind and from a scientific point of view , and one of the biggest takeaways from the book that I found very interesting because it totally was true in my own experience was that the creative mind solves problems when it's not actually thinking about them . It's a subconscious mind that is actually solving the problem , which is why a lot of times I would get ideas for songs or melodies , for compositions when I was in the shower or I'm driving . Driving has become like my favorite way to write , like you can ask my wife .

Pablo 53:58

She wants to punch me because I'm constantly tapping voice memos on my Apple watch and singing into the thing , whether it's a beat , a bass line or a melody , but it's funny how just like a long drive will , just you know your conscious mind is is concentrated on steering the vehicle and keeping you alive , and your subconscious mind just drifts to some other place . There's a million ways to do things like that , so that would be another another thing that is good experience .

Alexis 54:25

Yeah , speaking of books , um , when I , 20 years ago now , I remember trying to do the Artist's Way .

Pablo 54:31

Oh yeah . Julia Cameron , very , very , very popular book

Pablo 54:35

in creative circles . I will also admit I never finished it . I don't think I know anyone who has .

Pablo 54:42

Well . So actually I love there are two weekly practices that she that it's literally like part of the process . One of them is that you're supposed to do morning pages , so you have to write three pages a day and just put your pen to paper or pencil , whatever , and it's like , even if you don't have anything to say , what you're supposed to write is I don't have anything to say . I still don't have anything to say , and eventually you'll actually start getting out of your way . I think that was one of those things I remember when I started doing it . I did do those things like I don't have anything to say , and there's times when I actually need to journal , whether it's I'm protecting my thoughts or I don't want , like , the really ugly stuff to get out . I'll even use that still .

Pablo 55:27

That goes along with that concept I told you about last week , about reaching in the well . So reaching in the well is basically the idea that you have a well of creative ideas inside of you , but it's very hard to get to them unless you've sort of like dug a channel . And the only way you can dig the channel is by constantly sitting down and forcing yourself to do the creative work , which is totally exactly what I was saying when I was saying just do it as much as you can spend time on the water . Quote unquote . The more time you spend being creative , you would think that you would use up your creative ideas , but actually the opposite happens . You have access to way more and it becomes so much easier to like write a great line , or you know come up with a creative solution , or paint a beautiful painting .

Pablo 56:12

It's just the way it works . It's just that you just get better at it . It's like you've practiced it and you're you . You just keep feeling the well more and more and more .

Alexis 56:19

Yeah , it's like creativity begets creativity . It's like the law of abundance sort of thought .

Pablo 56:25

Yes , yes .

Alexis 56:26

The other thing that the Artist's Way though the book . The other assignment you have on every week is to go on a date with yourself , which I think is a really interesting one too . I remember when I started doing it it was I felt so awkward and I was recently talking to one of my friends so you know mid 40s who . I was like , oh , you , should you want to go ice skating ? Like , just go ice skating , you don't . And they was like oh , you want to go ice skating , just go ice skating . And they were saying , oh , no , I'll bring my daughter . And I was like , no , that's literally not the purpose . If this is for you , it's for you , and as soon as your daughter's there , it's about her .

Alexis 57:00

I think there's a lot of people who actually this makes very uncomfortable the idea of going and eating a meal by yourself simply for the sake of doing it yourself . But I also think that part of what it is is it's tapping into my own actual thoughts . Again , it's the practice of the more often that you are just with yourself , you get more comfortable being with yourself , and that's the only place where you can truly unlock and unleash your own ideas as opposed to reacting to something that someone else says and like oh , now I have an idea no , I think that's true and it's funny that you're mentioning this sort of solo , solo hangout .

Pablo 57:43

I don't know if it's because I've been living in a creative sort of work environment for so long at this point , but I crave that . Every year on my birthday I do a solo camping trip and then intermittently , whenever I can , I escape to like . Fly fishing has given me an excuse . It's basically just a way to do exactly what you're saying . It gives me a purpose to do it right , but it's way less about actually like the fishing aspect . It's more about being alone in nature . You know I do it with other people also , but like and I always feel bad saying this and I guess I shouldn't , but I enjoy being on a river by myself as much as I do with other people if that makes sense and it's just .

Pablo 58:23

It's for that exact reason . There's a certain like breath of fresh air that you get . It's like hitting the reset button when you're just by yourself for a while . You know .

Alexis 58:32

Yeah , well , I mean , it means

The creative process - steps in a work context

Alexis 58:34

that you're also doing it for the benefit of you , you're not doing it for someone else . I actually want to come back to the question of process . I think I love the tips that you're talking about in terms of the creative process . When I was thinking about this , I was actually thinking about the work application of the creative process and you know , having come from Google where there's , you know , 10x , thinking that's kind of a whole concept . There is actually a process that , like we use , or I'm not part of Google anymore , am I so they use once upon a time I used while I worked there anyway , but it's kind of .

Alexis 59:16

There's a couple steps in it . The first one is to really get clear on what it is that you're actually doing . So , if it's a particular problem , what is the problem ? But not just like , oh , I need to build a tool . It's like , no , why are you building the tool ? What's the actual underlying thing that you're trying to solve ? And we were talking about this a little bit too , of if you're trying to actually do something creative , you're much better off shooting for like a vibe or a vision than you are a particular thing , because the more specific that you get in terms of your goal , the more you're actually going to prevent yourself from being able to actually have wildly creative thoughts that sometimes can often wind up being the best ideas that you would get . So that's step one . Step two is actually scheduling time for this , and I would actually say in general , you're much better off having time split over multiple days or even potentially having breaks between them so that you can like sleep on ideas and let things develop .

Pablo 1:00:23

It's a huge part of my process , by the way .

Alexis 1:00:25

Yeah , cause I think one of the things I my process , by the way . Yeah , cause I think one of the things I , having come from this world , like I was constantly having just this sense of massive urgency , need to do it yesterday . That can also be super , super problematic around , like if you're trying to be creative , you gotta let it , you gotta let it be , and like it's gotta come together .

Pablo 1:00:46

I think so . You know there's people that that disagree with that . But I had a conversation sort of a little bit about who you're making the work for and and part of that process , and there's certain people that think , well , you know , if you're really good , then you can do it under pressure and you can . You can do it for whatever client asks you for , like towards their taste . And I have a different philosophy around that , because I think that if you're being true to the art , then you're doing it in a way that seems natural to you and that actually the art is so true that it draws the right audience to your work . If that makes sense . Instead of you trying to capture them , they capture you in a way .

Pablo 1:01:31

So , and I think that the waiting part of it everyone's different , right , but for me personally , that's a huge part of my process . Like I will just puke out ideas and then I have something and then I can't look at it for like a day or two or listen to it for a day or two , because I need that perspective . Then I come back and I'm like a whole new wave of ideas comes through , right , you don't always have the luxury .

Alexis 1:01:54

Right .

Pablo 1:01:55

Commercial composing is like really quick turnaround , you know , you have like 24 hours to do it , you know .

Alexis 1:01:59

Well , and if you have a product launch or you're in a competitive situation , especially , this is where a lot of these things start coming into play . Like there are deadlines , like I understand there are deadlines , it's , it's a valid thing if your actual , true goal is to have the most creative and potential game-changing ideas come out . Um , putting forcible , you know , stopping points on it , yes , will inherently limit it , and it's possible you may wind up having the best idea out of the gate and just you go and that does happen .

Pablo 1:02:35

That does happen, yes .

Alexis 1:02:36

So it doesn't necessarily mean that you can't do it in the timeframe , but having that as like a requirement of the process does become problematic . One of the other things I know at Google that we used to do was the idea of trying to make it fun . So it really sort of amplifying the idea of it being a playful experience and , like just you know , it's sort of actually coming back to Julia Cameron her whole book is talking about how you unleash your inner child . You know the idea of the most pure , purely creative ideas coming from a place of anything's possible . It's kind of like you know you're talking about having a judgment-free zone .

Pablo 1:03:14

Yes .

Alexis 1:03:14

Being able to throw out silly , ridiculous things . The statement might be silly or ridiculous , but it might actually spawn really cool stuff that comes out of it .

Pablo 1:03:24

Yeah , I think play is really important and giving yourself time for that and you're coming from a sort of a specific vibe . But if you flipped it , let's say you're trying to write like the saddest song you've ever written in your whole life I can almost guarantee you the first line you write you will think is cheesy and dumb , because it's very hard to make something like that feel real . But if you allow yourself time to play , you'll live in that space . You'll start to become that , you will physically become sad and then that's where the magic happens . But it's never going to happen if you're not allowing yourself that sort of vulnerable play space .

Alexis 1:03:59

Well , and I think another thing about the timing of all of it . If you are in a bad mood for whatever reason or there's like really challenging things happening in your life this week or whatever , being able to actually revisit all this stuff next week once , like okay , things are calmer , I actually am in a much better space , like that's another reason we're having more time and space to be able to do this is helpful . So in sort of this innovation process , I'd call that step two scheduling time to play , and I'd agree with you the more times like on the mat that you get , the better . The third step in the process you know again thinking about this from more of that problem solving innovation process is to get out as many idea concepts as you can . You actually described this in what you were just saying there . One of the exercises , if you actually do like an innovation workshop , is everyone gets a bunch of post-it notes .

Alexis 1:04:54

I actually am holding up some post-it notes here they're hot pink , I also have yellow , and I do have blue here too .

Pablo 1:05:01

Hey , nice . Depends on the idea category .

Alexis 1:05:04

Ooh well , or you , if you have a big group , like for an innovation workshop , you'd actually be throwing like 50 people together in a room where it's literally you're having a brainstorming session and everyone is supposed to put up at least 10 post-its or whatever , but the more the better . The ideas just get those ideas flowing and literally the purpose of that day is to throw all of this stuff up on the wall . You may wind up doing this start of a funneling process where you start saying yes to this , no to this , or categorizing what the different responses are . That may or may not be part of that day , but the most core step is literally to get as many possible ideas that you have out . Step four is actually honing down , having that list to come from and picking one of them to move forward with , and you start making moves .

Alexis 1:05:58

The goal with this there's the idea of fail fast . The best thing that you can do is , if you have a crappy idea is to realize it's a crappy idea as quickly as you possibly can . So then you're like , okay , throw it out , move on to the next one . What's the next one from the list that we're going to go pick up ? But basically you start making those moves and then , while you're in that , you're reevaluating what's going on and are you going to rejigger it .

Alexis 1:06:22

Maybe the idea is good , but actually the way that you've gone after it is not working out . Play , actually , the way that you've gone after it is not working out . Play around , try it again . Like you know , if you're writing a song , okay , well , let's keep the chord progression , but let's change the lyrics , or actually all of it's good , but I don't like where the melody is going with this . Sometimes also again that fail fast idea . Maybe just you know what . We're going to cut our losses , let's try something else that's different , but also from a place of not judging yourself over that . It's fine to fail . In fact , again like celebrate failure is even a thing that we--- I'm not there anymore--- they try to do you should try to do . Let's talk about you listener , right ?

Pablo 1:07:06

I should say I think failure is such a crappy word for this sort of application just because to me actually can't really get to the good stuff unless you get the bad stuff out of the way . So for me it's just like a pipeline to magic sauce , right , and so like you got to sort of clear the pipeline so that the magic can come out , you know .

Alexis 1:07:29

Yeah .

Pablo 1:07:29

What we're calling the failures are actually very important parts of the process . Right , it's like the rocks before the gold . You know , I love those failures . I hate them , going through them , but like I know how important they are , so I forced myself to just make it . And then I'm like , okay , I've gone far enough with this , it's never going to happen . Bye . And then you keep going .

Alexis 1:07:50

I love . I love the call out on this . By the way , there is a question that I recall having asked all sorts of people that I interviewed when I was working at Google that focused on talk about a failure , and I remember I actually got it in an interview for a follow-on job and I was like I hate this question . I haven't failed . There's a lot of things I mean . Arguably yes , you could say , but thinking about the things that you've done in your past that you failed at actually inherently promotes this idea of having regrets and that you did bad .

Pablo 1:08:26

Yeah , exactly .

Alexis 1:08:27

And at the point that I had this one interview , I was already at least 10 years into my job there and was like I had shifted my thinking so much because of this whole concept of failing fast and postmortems and like actually like , looking at the things that were happening and basically blameless postmortems it's no one's particular fault . It was actually the process itself that had issues with it and there were people involved in this . But , like I'm not blaming you for this outcome that we had . Anyway , I'm with you as to the idea of , like I'll still call it fail fast but it's not like you , failed .

Pablo 1:09:02

I was just trying to clarify .

Alexis 1:09:03

Oh no , I love the clarification .

Pablo 1:09:05

Because the failure is like so part of it . You know it's like so important .

Alexis 1:09:13

I would actually argue again . I think I was saying celebrate when that happens , because you made a decision and you're actually moving in another direction and that's great that you're making . I talk a lot about making moves . You're just continue to make more moves .

Alexis 1:09:23

Anyway , the last step in this is to call it done , which is , in my opinion , one of the biggest things that actually doesn't happen in this process . There's a lot of times you actually finish it and either you leave it in a somewhat incomplete state or you never tell people that you did it , or you know if it . If it's a song like great , I finished the song . Well , did you ever go to an open mic night with it ? Or actually get up on a stage at some show and play it ? Or have you recorded it and actually like put it on an album or at least somewhere , you know , on SoundCloud or whatever ? I suppose there are also probably artists out there who would start yelling at me and be like that doesn't mean but , but I do think that there is something that you described it in your form of true art .

Pablo 1:10:12

Someone has seen it or heard it or experienced it . I think that that's an important part of it , and it's more about making someone feel something . Whether that's good or bad doesn't matter . It's the fact that they feel something . A lot of important art . People either hate it or love it . I'm actually going through this right now with my company because I'm doing the logo and it's like split .

Pablo 1:10:32

No one's like , yeah

Power moves

Pablo 1:10:33

, it's okay , they're like I hate that thing , or they're like this is the most insane thing I've ever seen, so it's been difficult .

Alexis 1:10:36

I know we're probably running low on time here, so we should start thinking about closing it up . I do have one other question I want to ask you before we go there .

Pablo 1:10:37

Sure .

Alexis 1:10:37

One of the one of the ideas I've been playing around with is this idea of power moves . So the concept of a power move is it's something that you did in your past that wound up leading to either some form of a growth spurt or it otherwise changed your trajectory . And it needs to be in your past , because what you're doing every day , like , hopefully you're making moves and trying different things and whatever , but you never , you don't know what's going to stick until enough time has passed that you can actually look back and reflect upon oh my gosh , that was . I didn't even expect that thing to be anything . I didn't even know I was doing a thing and look at what that wound up being, like that could be an example . What would you think of as some of your power moves in the concept of creativity ?

Pablo 1:11:36

've thing comes glaringly to mind that has been significant across many mediums of creative art that I work in , and that's learning the tools that are available out there . I mean , actually it's kind of funny in high school I was like I'll never play an electrified instrument . I was like that's stupid , I only want to play acoustic instruments . And I hated computers , hated computers , like I was just like these things are so dumb , like they don't have the human touch . But now I'm very , very obviously very different from that .

Pablo 1:12:09

I love computers and I use them all the time , and the biggest thing that I hadn't really realized is just that I ended up in my early 20s spending a lot of time trying to learn recording software and it was pro tools and then I ended up switching to a different one , ableton but it was at a time when I knew pro tools so well , so I didn't really need to do that , but I felt creatively stifled within the program and so I moved to a different one .

Pablo 1:12:34

And , all that said , I think it's very important to sort of explore the tools that are out there because especially now in 2024 , like there's so many things that you can do and learning them really helps you be creative , like it really just does . When you can just like not have to think about you know how to use or manipulate something . You just you're free to sort of just create and and and this goes for like , for sort of anything . I mean , if you're you know , if you're , if you're trying to write a book or something like knowing how to properly use Word , or even like these new AI applications , which is a subject we didn't get into , but it's like sort of taboo within creativity , which I don't really understand why I use AI all the time and I think it's just another tool for me to use . It's like I'm not relying .

Alexis 1:13:23

How do you use AI ? I'm curious , oh my gosh .

Pablo 1:13:27

I use AI a lot of times when I'm writing . I'll write what I'm writing and then if I get stuck someplace I'll be like you know , read what I've written and suggest other things that I could talk about . You know , it's more of like a it's like a junior producer , where it like kicks out extra ideas . For me it's almost like the post-it idea where you put a bunch of ideas on the board . It helps add to that which is great .

Pablo 1:13:48

And then I use it a lot actually in photo and video for upscaling , touching up images . It's much quicker , I can let the thing do the thing while I work on something else , and most of the time it's pretty solid . So to me it's just like having an extra pair of hands working on what you're working on . I don't use it so much like supplement the creativity . I use it to sort of like be a catalyst .

Alexis 1:14:11

actually love the call out of tools . Back in my twenties, when I was playing around a lot, I had, at some point, I think I had Sonar---t his was, like, way old school, but I had, like, a pretty basic setup in in my apartment at the time, so that I could like record stuff . I don't have anything like that right now . Um , and actually I had gotten a bonus and I bought pro tools and I literally can't fricking use it right now , like I'm trying to get MIDI in . But I I finally made a decision of um learning tools and now apparently , by saying it on here , I'm going to actually have to do it crap .

Pablo 1:14:52

I mean , yeah , there's a learning curve . It sucks , but it's good .

Alexis 1:14:55

But I do think one of the things that , especially for like recording software and being able to get access to sound banks and other things that you can use I think we've talked about this you personally are able to produce songs all by yourself . You do not need another person . You can choose to work with another person as an intentional thing . But one of the things I know that has held me back , I think , needing to go to someone else to actually figure out how to do the next steps of that . So I think that's one of the things . But this is more of creativity for the sake of creativity , where I don't have any particular outcome in mind and it's just more a matter of I need to have the time and dedicate the time to it . But learning an instrument or any of those types of things , that definitely falls . I would say that's not necessarily a tool , but it's part of the process . Necessarily a tool , but it's .

Pablo 1:15:49

It's part of the process . I think right .

Alexis 1:15:51

Yeah , if you can't get to that basic level of capability , I mean you can do interesting things , but like it starts being like is that , is that actually creative or is that just like a very poorly executed like , whatever ?

Pablo 1:16:05

Doesn't matter . This is judgment free zone .

Alexis 1:16:08

All right , I like it .

Pablo 1:16:08

One thing I will say about the tools too , because we talked about music and stuff , which is very niche . But one thing that I've been using as a tool for creativity , more in a business sort of I guess communications lane , is Notion . I'm obsessed with Notion and it's been very powerful for me Notion I'm obsessed with Notion and it's been very powerful for me , creative, helping me get my creative ideas out in a place that feels creative right . It's like I go into like a Google spreadsheet or I go into a Google doc or Microsoft doc and it just feels so flat . It doesn't have that that sort of like lively , creative feeling that I want . And then when I open Notion , I feel like the sky's the limit . I can organize my things in a million different ways and I can put cover pictures on things and I can put emojis where I want them and I can make databases and like . It feels so open and free to me that it's helped me creatively , just from like a productivity standpoint as well . So it doesn't have to be tools that are like only within the creative space . It can be other things as well . That's my point .

Alexis 1:17:19

. I don't want this conversation to end , but unfortunately the clock is telling me we probably should . So , anyway , I want to just say thank you so much for your time here today . Of course , so many interesting things that I want to explore so much deeper , but I'm so glad that you spent the time so that my listeners can hear from you and learn from you . So thank you .

Pablo 1:17:41

Yeah , of course I had a super good time and , of course , if anyone has questions , I'm all about paying it forward because that's what people did with me . So if you ever have a question or you want to learn more or have you know , you're just curious you can always DM me at on Instagram , at PabloSong10 , and don't be shy

Creativity starts as a commitment

Pablo 1:17:59

. I love helping people out with creativity because I think it's it's the one thing that I can give back to the world .

Alexis 1:18:06

Very cool . Well , playing back what we talked about today , we had quite a broad exploration on the topic of creativity . Actually , we didn't answer . Is it a skill ? Is it a habit ? What would you label it as ?

Pablo 1:18:21

It feels like a tool .

Alexis 1:18:30

Here's what I will call it . I think it is eventually a habit , but I think it starts as a commitment , a commitment to fostering and letting creativity pop up in your life , and the more and more you can practice and repeat that , you can turn it into a habit . I also agree that there are skills that support the ability to do it , but I think creativity itself . I'm going to put it in the habit category .

Pablo 1:18:53

Yeah , I think you're right . I think it is a habit , and we established that in the beginning because the main thing about it is to decouple the art aspect from the creativity aspect , because that's the mistake everyone always makes they just assume that it's art . Let's just separate those things once and for all , right .

Alexis 1:19:10

All right . So creativity is a commitment that can become a habit . That's the official word here today . That's right .

Pablo 1:19:20

You heard it here first .

Alexis 1:19:21

Yes , you did so . Anyway , we had a really broad discussion around creativity and we in particular dug into some steps you can take if you want to nurture and foster more creativity in your life . So hope this was helpful for you . Again , my name is Alexis Booth . This is the Breakout Booth . If you have enjoyed what you've heard here , please subscribe to the podcast or you can sign up for my newsletter over at breakoutbooth . com . Thank you again to Pablo Signore for being here as our resident expert on creativity .

Pablo 1:19:58

Heck , yeah , let's go .

Alexis 1:20:01

And if you want to be in touch with him @PabloSong10 on Insta , you can catch him there . With that , I hope you have an awesome day .

Pablo 1:20:11

Thanks , take care y'all .

Alexis 1:20:13

Woohoo Bye .