In the early 1990s, visitors to the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C.

one of America's most iconic structures, were seeing something they weren't

supposed to decay. The white marble was

eroding faster than expected, stained by mysterious blotches that no

one could quite explain. Cleaning crews were scrubbing constantly,

but the more they cleaned, the more damage they caused. The maintenance

budget was ballooning, and behind the scenes, frustration mounted.

Something was wrong, but no one could agree on the cause.

So the experts did what experts do. They brought in more

experts. Engineers, entomologists,

conservationists, each with theories, data and reports. And

there was talk of chemical erosion, pollution, faulty materials.

One theory even blamed the nearby tidal Basin. It

was, in a word, overwhelming. Each possible

explanation spawned a new investigation, a new recommendation, a new

spreadsheet. But with all that information, the problem only

got murkier. Then someone asked a

deceptively simple. Why are we cleaning the monument

so often? Well, they said, because of the bird droppings.

And why are there so many birds? Well, because they eat the

spiders. And why are there so many spiders? Because they eat the

midges, the little insects that swarm the memorial at night. And why are there

so many midges? A pause, then.

Well, because of the lights. We turn them on in the evening, and it draws

the insects from across the basin. That one question

and a willingness to ask why five times cut through the noise.

Instead of launching another task force or dumping money into cleaning and

pest control, they tried something radical. They turned the

lights on. Just a little bit later in the evening, the midges

stopped swarming. The spiders left. The birds found other

places to perch. And the Jefferson Memorial, well, it started

to recover. No fancy treatments, no special chemicals. Just

one small change based on a clearer understanding of the system.

Sometimes we don't need more information. We need

better focus. The lesson here isn't just about monument

maintenance. It's about how we approach problems, especially as

creative pros and as leaders. Because, let's be honest, in

our work, we're often buried under a mound mountain of information,

strategies, advice to do, lists. We chase the next piece of

insight, hoping it'll unlock clarity, when really we're just adding more

noise to an already loud room. And all the while, the real issue,

the core challenge, goes untouched. Creative work

demands clarity. Leadership requires focus. But those

things don't come from doing more. They come from cutting through the clutter,

from asking better questions, and from doing less, more,

intentionally. On today's show, we're going to talk about exactly that.

How to minimize unnecessary work, get to the heart of the information

we actually need and create systems that help us do our best work,

stay focused and lead with clarity each day. This

is Daily Creative. Since 2005, we've served up weekly

ideas for creative pros and leaders who want to be brave, focused and

brilliant every day. My name is Todd Henry. Welcome to the

show.

I am not where I thought I was to be. And when I was in

my early 20s, my life was set to become an architect. That's what I wanted

to be. And I got a great job coming out of school. That's Pat Flynn,

entrepreneur and author of the new book called Lean learning.

And in 2008, I was let go like many other people during that time. And

I was lost because I had done everything the way I was supposed to. I

was a overachiever, I was an over learner, 4.2 GPA, all the things,

and yet still it was all taken away from me and my path was no

longer. And so I scrambled for a bit. I fell into a state of depression

and was just trying to find myself. And I ended up finding the world of

podcasting and more specifically the world of online business. And I

eventually started a business to help architects pass an exam called the lead exam

that blew up and I was generating more revenue doing that than I was as

an architect. And I said, wow, this is incredible. I have to share what I'm

learning here. Started writing books in 2013, started speaking on stages, and lo

and behold, I've been, I've become known as somebody who, at one point

I was known as the crash test dummy of online business. Somebody who

continued to try all kinds of different things, from niche websites to

software companies. Sometimes it goes well, sometimes I fail. And either way,

it's always a lesson for people. And what I've learned along the way is that

the way that I approach the things that I'm trying to figure out has been

pretty unique for a lot of people. That uniqueness is what compelled Pat to write

his new book, which is called Lean Learning. It's about getting through all of the

unnecessary and overwhelming information to the heart

of what it is you're actually trying to do. Yes, when we think about

our consumption habits and with how much access we have to all different

kinds of things. Back in the day, information was valuable because

it didn't exist or it was hard to find or hard to get. In fact,

you could pay for information like an Encyclopedia Britannica and you were

immediately like, seen as, like, smarter because you had access to it where other people

didn't. Now we all have access to the same information. We're literally at a buffet

line of info at all times. And because we, our

brains aren't evolved to learn how to consume all of this and organize it

as it's coming in, we are now obese with information. We're moving slower.

We feel not more inspired, but sometimes even less

inspired or more deflated. As a result of that, we're moving much more slowly. Since

the concept of lean learning is a number of principles that allow

you to know when to say no to certain things, to learn where

to lean into certain things. One of the first principles is the difference

between just in case learning, which is what we do, right? It's we almost

treat information like food. If you're growing up in the caveman days or

whatever, and you came across some food you like, you hoard it, because you might

not come across that food again in the future. And so you take it all.

And now, with access to all the information, we still want to take it all.

And I remember running a survey once at a podcasting event, and I asked the

audience, like, how many of you are subscribed to more than five podcasts? Everybody's

hand went up. How many of you are subscribed to 10? Nobody's hands went down.

They were still up. 20, 30. Some people were subscribed to 50

different podcasts. And I love podcasts. They're great. But if

you're always consuming, not only do you not have time, but you're

going to be pulled and pushed into all kinds of different

directions and pretty much stay stagnant or worse. And so

the concept of lean learning, again, is not just in case information,

but just in time information, Figuring out what your next step

is. You don't want to aim aimlessly. You don't want to be aimless in what

it is you do. You still need direction. But what's that next step? You

learn about that next step and then you implement

getting to implementation. Getting to action is going to teach you more than

trying to learn the entire process and then likely not even taking

any action at all because you're overwhelmed. And this idea of trusting that

information that you need on the next step is going to be there, and it

will likely be better by the time you're ready for it. And that's one of

the main principles behind lean learning.

One of my favorite illustrations to use when I'm giving keynotes, especially when I'm talking

about creativity or leadership, is that of Dee Hawk

and his hierarchy of information. De

Hawk said there's a lot of noise in our world, but noise is not very

useful. Noise becomes useful when it achieves a cognitive

pattern, when it's combined with other noise and forms data.

So data can be useful, but data really isn't all that useful

unless it's combined with other data. If I just said 10 to

you, that's not very useful. But if I said it's 10 minutes

until this episode is over, then you suddenly have

information. That's what you get. When you combine data with other data, you get

information. But information itself is not all that useful because

it can't help you make decisions. Information only

becomes useful when combined with other information in a way that forms

knowled knowledge. When combined with other knowledge becomes

understanding. And understanding is what allows you to be able to

see around corners. It's what enables you to be able to intuit, to

be able to make decisions. But understanding

itself is not the ultimate end. What we're aiming for

is wisdom. Wisdom is

knowledge guided by some kind of ethical framework, some sort of

decision making framework. So while knowledge can tell you

which corners you might be able to go around, wisdom is what

tells you which corners you should go around.

Wisdom is closely aligned with creative intuition.

And so if we want to be brilliant at what we do, we have to

figure out how to get all of that noise that's in our world

into some kind of meaningful system that allows us to

choose which noise to pay attention to, to turn into data, to turn into

information, to turn into knowledge, to turn into understand, and

ultimately to turn into wisdom. But like Pat said,

that's not easy to do. It's all about the results.

So when you start to consider, okay, what do you want to actually see from

this information that you are gathering and what might be the easiest way to

get there? That's another principle in the book. It's actually a question that Tim Ferriss

once asked me that has now become a part of my DNA of how I

approach things is just to ask myself, if this were easy, what would it

look like? And that way you can often remove most of the

things that you are thinking about getting involved with to just get to that action

piece. A lot of business owners might call it a minimum viable product. So like

in the sense of learning, the minimum viable result, or at least first

tangible milestone is what you're looking towards. So just learning enough

that you might need, and it depends on what it is that you're trying to

learn about, but even giving yourself some deadlines around that, okay, I'm going to Spend

a week to learn about just this little thing that I'm going to do next,

and then I'm going to assess whether or not that worked or it didn't, or

whether I should persist or I should pivot. Pat says one of the biggest mistakes

that creative pros and leaders make is they try to go alone.

Getting some help around that is also really key. The understanding

that we only know what we know, and we often can't read the label when

we are inside the bottle. So that's why one of the first chapters in the

book is about surrounding yourself with peers and colleagues and mentors

and people who have gone down those paths before, because they

can guide you through the experiences that they've had and mistakes that they've made as

well. Thinking about the why behind it and what you're looking to get out of

it, you can often reverse engineer, okay, I'm going to give myself a little bit

of time. And then you just commit to it, right? You put it in your

calendar to learn about and. Or take action on those things and you just

commit to it. For example, recently I was learning how

to do shorts, YouTube shorts, not so shorts or anything like

that, reels, TikToks, that kind of short form format, which I had never really done

before. So I said, okay, I'm going to find people who have done it well

and see what they're teaching. I'm going to find one format that I'm just going

to work on and experiment with, and I'm going to do it for 60 days

straight and that's it. And I am going to start on this date and I'm

going to end on this date. And that gave me parameters. I only had so

much time to learn about this until I finally had to take action. It's similar

to something in the book that I call Voluntary Force Functions. Putting yourself in a

situation where there is a date where you have to show up. And day

30 came around and I was only getting about 300 to 400 views

per video, which isn't much in the grand scheme of things. And normally I would

have given up. I would have said, you know, I've given myself enough time and

I probably, this isn't going to work. But I said, no, 60

days is what I'm going to give myself. That's what I've been told from others,

that it might take that much time. So again, getting guidance from the outside.

Day 35 comes around. Todd in one of those videos, hit

750,000 views. And ever since

then I can pump out a video now on on that channel, which is

a Pokemon related opening a pack every day channel and

a million views per day on on every new video, pretty much guaranteed

at this point. It's turned into two and a half billion views in 300 days.

It's turned into a separate five figure income and it's also

led to incredible brand deals and opportunities like getting to get

invited to a Detroit Lions game to open packs on their field and other

collaborations that are in the works that I can't even share yet. All because I

started and I gave myself enough time. And even if the Shorts experiment

didn't work out, even if I didn't find success from it, it would have still

been a win for me because I gave it a shot.

I started, I gave it enough time to see and then assess

and thankfully it worked out this time. I've used that phrase force

function a lot with my clients. I'll tell people that frameworks are force functions,

right? So when I come in, I teach a framework, I'm forcing you to have

the conversation. I can't tell you the answers, but I'm forcing you to have the

conversations that will lead to the answers. And I realized I've used force

functions in my own life. Like when I write a book, like really committing to

writing a book is a force function, because as much as maybe I have the

research and the ideas and the framework for a book, there's so much

that goes into a book. There's so much additional research and thinking that

has to go into it. So like committing to the book channels your

curiosity in a way that just letting your curiosity dry out on

the plane won't do across a bunch of different projects. So what are some other

examples? Like for people listening, what are some other examples of force

functions that can help them direct their curiosity in a helpful way? Yes,

this is great. So let's say you are going to. You want to learn a

language, right? Which is a very common thing that people want to learn. And

oftentimes we go, okay, what's the best app? And we get the app and we

have Duolingo and we are increasing our streak, but we're not really

applying these things nor have any reason to

make sure that we do the work other than we want to continue the streak.

I think Tim Ferriss has practiced this. He's done something similar. He takes this

kind of learning to the extreme, but it's still based on the same principles. It

might be a conversation with somebody who speaks that language and only that language

that you're going to have a month from now, you're going to be inclined to

just not waste time and find out, okay, if I'm going to have a conversation,

what are the words and phrases I need to know to at least kind of

hold my ground for a little bit. He used to have a show on Apple

TV back in the day. One of the first episodes was he was trying to

learn Tagalog, which is the Filipino language. And he

created a force function by being inter. He knew he was going to be

interviewed on the news, like, within a certain period of time. So he knew he

was going to be on Filipino television and have to speak Tagalog.

So he didn't try to learn all the words. He just tried to learn the

right ones that would make sense for that situation. But he did the work and

he helped himself also by putting him in a position where he couldn't help but

learn it. That's the other part of voluntary force functions. He

lived with a Filipino family and just tried to absorb it in real

time because he couldn't do anything unless he actually had to figure it out. A

more recent example from my own personal life relates to fishing. In fact,

I wanted to learn how to fish with a particular lure called a jig.

And a jig is like a hook with a skirt on it. And it's an

artificial lure. It's often very difficult to learn, but it can yield the

biggest fish and the most fun bites. Really, we're talking

largemouth bass. And I used to tie on a jig, and I'd

cast out a few casts, and I would just feel not confident with it at

all. So much so that I'd often put it down after a few casts and

go back to Old Reliable, the drop shot. And I'd catch fish using

my old Reliable. And I'd be like, yeah, cp, I probably don't even need the

jig. And even though I really want it to learn. So one day I knew

that I had to force myself to learn it. So I went out on a

boat and took nothing with me except jigs.

Literally, the only thing I could fish if I wanted to fish was a jig.

And I wasn't going to go home, right, because a bad day of fishing is

still better than a day working. But I cast out a number of casts, and

in that same moment where I wanted to give up on that and move on

to something else that was more confident with, I couldn't. So I just kept going.

And eventually, around 2pm hours of fishing, practicing, trying different

casts, trying different motions, et cetera. I finally got a bite. I didn't get a

fish yet, but I got a bite. And my confidence levels shot through the roof.

Even I didn't. Even though I didn't get the result yet, I was seeing some

progress, which was incredible. And by the time I finished the day, I

ended up catching two and forever. Now I start with the jig because I am

now very confident with it and it wouldn't have happened if I didn't force myself.

So that's like a more environmental forcing of

you having to do the thing that you want to do. And that. That worked

really well for me there. Yeah, I love that. We had a researcher on a

while back who talked about the importance of strategic failure,

that failure is actually a very productive. We should not just

tolerate failure, we should aim for failure. And it feels like that's the process

you're describing because you're throwing yourself into something

you're learning as you go, you're trying to figure it out as you go. And

you know you're going to fail, but that's okay because each of those failures are

going to propel you toward ultimate success. Is

that descriptive of. That's spot on. There's a lot of mental barriers

we have to go through to be able to achieve that, like imposter

syndrome or procrastination or the fear of failure.

All those kinds of things are weighing in our decision to continue on the

thing that's. That begins to be difficult. But absolutely, it's the

mistakes that you make that actually become the guide rails for

you. Right. Oftentimes we think the mistakes are the things that are going to derail

us, but that they actually become the guidelines the guide rails

through, that you can move back this way or move back that way, or begin

to understand things more from the doing. I, no offense to Berkeley,

the school I went to to graduate with an architecture degree. But I learned more

in my first week at like, in an actual architecture firm

and how to apply those things than I did in five years of school. Those

baseline foundational items were still key. However,

what I really needed to learn I picked up so quickly because I didn't

have a choice. I had a deadline and I had a boss and I needed

to get these things done. And just if we look back on our

lives, oftentimes we think about the things we've achieved and learn how to do, and

it's not from just reading a book. And all of a sudden we understand it

again. Those things that we learn are important that we know what to expect.

However, at some point you eventually have to take action and do and

fail and fail fast, as they often say. Or fail forward at least. And I

think I once heard that fail is an acronym. First attempt in learning,

as some people say, which I do agree with. A little cheesy, but I'm all

about the cheesy because I like dad jokes, so I'll take it. Everything's better with

cheese, right? Yeah, for sure.

Pat Flynn's new book is called Lean Learning. We only scratch

the surface of our conversation in this episode,

so if you want to hear the full interview, you can do so for

free@dailycreativeplus.com just enter

your info and we'll send you a private link where you can listen to all

of our full interviews.

Hey, thank you so much for listening. Again, if you'd like full interviews, all of

our full interviews, bonus episodes, and much, much more, you can get

them@dailycreativeplus.com just enter your

name and email and we'll send you a private feed. My name is

Todd Henry. If you want to know more about my keynotes, about my books, and

all of my work, you can do so at ToddHenry.

Until next time, may you be brave, focused and brilliant. We'll see you then.