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Being Creative – a conversation with the Fairy Godmother of Creativity
23 Plays29 days ago
For every aspect of the way any and every organisation large or small operates there is a system. A way of doing things properly so that standards can be maintained, objectives achieved, and customers satisfied.
They are the result of lots of big brains and spending big budgets on lots of research and testing.
So, what would happen if you transferred those systems out of the world of work and implemented them in your wider life?
That is what Tricia Duffy, who was a management consultant did. Now Tricia who created the In Ten Years Time Philosophy is widely known as the godmother of creativity.
In this episode of the Abecederwork life balance podcast Rest and Recreation Tricia explains her journey from management consulting to living a creative life, to host Michael Millward.
Tricia explains the ups and downs of the change process, what got left behind and how life has changed for the good.
Tricia also hosts the In Ten Years Time podcast, which is available wherever you pod.
Rest and Recreation is Made on Zencastr, because creating on Zencastr is so easy.
If you would like to try podcasting using Zencastr use our offer code ABECEDER.
Travel
Tricia is based in London. Members of The Ultimate Travel Club travel at trade prices. Use our offer code ABEC79 to receive a discount on club membership.
Visit Abeceder for more information about Michael Millward, and Tricia Duffy.
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Being a Guest
If you would like to be a guest on Rest and Recreation, please contact Abeceder.
We recommend that potential guests take one of the podcasting guest training programmes available from Work Place Learning Centre.
If you have liked this episode of Rest and Recreation, please give it a like and download it. To make sure you do not miss future editions please subscribe.
Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abeceder is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to make you think!
Thank you to you for listening.
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Transcript
Introduction to Rest and Recreation Podcast
00:00:05
Speaker
on zencastr Hello and welcome to Rest and Recreation, the work-life balance podcast from Abbasida. I'm your host, Michael Millward, Managing Director of Abbasida.
Zencastr Promotion
00:00:19
Speaker
Today i am going to be learning about creativity from Tricia Duffy. As the jingle at the start of this podcast says, rest and recreation is made on Zencastr.
00:00:31
Speaker
Zencastr is the all-in-one podcasting platform on which you can make your podcast in one place and then distribute it to the major platforms. Zencastr really does make making content so easy.
00:00:45
Speaker
If you would like to try podcasting using Zencastr, visit zencastr.com forward slash pricing and use my offer code, Abbasida.
Meet Tricia Duffy: Creativity's Fairy Godmother
00:00:54
Speaker
Now that I have told you how wonderful Zencastr is for making podcasts, we should make one.
00:01:00
Speaker
One that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading, and subscribing to. As with every episode of Rest and Recreation, we won't be telling you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think.
00:01:15
Speaker
Today's Rest and Recreation guest is Tricia Duffy. I've heard other people describe Tricia as the fairy godmother of creativity. Hello, so nice to be here.
00:01:26
Speaker
It is, it is, but it's not your turn yet. Sorry. Tricia is based in London, the capital of the United Kingdom. It is an expensive place to visit, which is why when I go to London and indeed anywhere else, I always book my travel through the Ultimate Travel Club because the Ultimate Travel Club gives me access to trade prices on flights, hotels, trains, package deals and all sorts of other travel purchases.
00:01:52
Speaker
You can become a member of the Travel Club as well by using the link in the description and the discount code. Now that I've paid some bills, it is time to say hello to Trisha Duffy, the fairy godmother of creativity.
00:02:05
Speaker
Hello, Trisha. Hello. Thank you so much for having me. oh It's great. it's Well, thank you. It's going to be good fun. That's an instruction. Okay. i' i've Let me just take, make a note of that. Yeah, I've got it down.
00:02:18
Speaker
Thank you very much. Let's start by you. How did you get to be known as the fairy godmother of creativity?
Tricia's Creative Journey
00:02:25
Speaker
ah Well, I guess I had a bit of an epiphany about three or four years ago where I decided to completely change my life because I wanted to live with a different kind of creative balance in my own life. I wanted to change the ratios of how I spent my time so that I would spend my time in more creative acts.
00:02:44
Speaker
I started using a process, a sort of a philosophy really that I stole from work um because I've been a management consultant for the last 12 13 years. I noticed that the organizations I worked with, the creative organizations I worked with, were more successful when they had a long-term plan, a 10-year plan.
00:03:02
Speaker
And so I wondered what would happen if I did that for myself, used these same processes that I was using in my clients for my own purposes. So I started doing a 10-year plan and thinking about creativity.
00:03:12
Speaker
And I found that it really worked for me. And I sort of quietly just did this on my own. I wasn't really sharing it. About a year or so ago, I decided that actually what I discovered through my own experimentation was could be precious for other people.
00:03:26
Speaker
And so I started to talk about my philosophy and the importance of living with creativity, particularly for those in midlife, because there is a common narrative that can happen that people tell themselves they're not not creative people.
00:03:41
Speaker
And I believe that that's really, really flawed. So I started just to kind of perpetuate this message and I started my podcast People found it engaging and interesting and they felt supported by it. So I guess that's really where it where it came from, where it stemmed from Yes, one of those people was me, which is why you're here today.
The Right to Creativity
00:04:00
Speaker
before we go any further, please, let's tell people what the name of your podcast is. It's called In 10 Years' Time, How to Live a Creative Life. in 10 years time, how to live a creative life. And that's available on all of the platforms and well worth listening to.
00:04:15
Speaker
Thank you. Yes, it is available everywhere you pod.
00:04:19
Speaker
There's a whole new language around podcasting, isn't there? it's so I I know. There's so some very creative people in it. But if we're going to talk about creativity... and being creative, then i think it's worth defining what the word creative means.
00:04:36
Speaker
What is creativity? Because you mentioned that people in the middle of their life tend to assume that they're not going to be creative anymore. So I think the definition and of it in the dictionary is something other along along the lines of forming or um making of something that wasn't there before, something original and something innovative.
Health Benefits of Creativity
00:04:56
Speaker
Creativity is a sort of a human condition, isn't it? It's something that humans do. And I also believe it's a human right to be creative. we're We operate in a system, don't we, and an economic system that is designed for us to think of success in certain ways, to measure ourselves financially, to measure and compare. And I mean, that's a natural kind of human trait as well as to compare ourselves. And that sort of economic system, which none of us created, but we have to live within in order to survive.
00:05:26
Speaker
It's fitting in, isn't it? It is fitting in, exactly. Survival means fitting in. Exactly that. Creativity can make you stand out, be different. Yeah, that that system does not rate spending time in creativity because that often is just about spending time in creativity and doesn't necessarily or not without a great deal of risk um generate a commodity or an artifact or a thing that might be of financial worth.
00:05:53
Speaker
And so with all of those conditions, there's a big sort of risk lens associated with creativity as well. It feels like quite a big kind of sort of risky thing to do It's not a sensible thing to do, is it? to To go into anything creatively, you're more sensible to take a job in a bank or go work in in hr michael ah it's it's right the dictionary definition is is clear what it means but if we're all creative then we can all make our own definition of what creativity is can't we I guess we can. Yeah.
00:06:28
Speaker
Yeah. What does it mean for you? Well, it's about how I spend my time is a primary driver for me because the only commodity that of any value to us when you really, really break it down, bearing in mind what I said about the economic system, is how we spend our time in participating in creative acts, however they may be, whether that be creating podcasts or songwriting as I do or painting or crochet or whatever it might be you are better able to process your own feelings and stuff you are able to balance your hormones in a different way you are able to commune with other people and with your art itself and there are so many benefits to
00:07:12
Speaker
to living with creativity in terms of, yeah, this investment of how we spend our day-to-day minutes and hours that I think everyone can benefit from. And for me, I am a songwriter. That is my main creativity. Although obviously the podcast is a creative act as well.
00:07:26
Speaker
Carving out time every day just to write four lines of a lyric, even if I'm occupied with work and and have other things that i need to do, allows me a ability to feel connected to myself, to process the things, as I mentioned, to heal myself when I need to.
00:07:41
Speaker
and also to kind of share messages and and ideas with the world in in a completely different way. Just to go back slightly in what you were saying there, are you suggesting that being creative has physical and mental health benefits as well? 100% yeah I mean I'm not a scientist but many things were not a scientist but there's a myriad of research and medical journals and all sorts of studies across multiple universities and in lots of different countries that backs up the fact that creativity offers you benefits globally
00:08:17
Speaker
to your well-being in terms of, I mean, just things like your hormone levels. So adrenaline is an important hormone. It gets a bit of a bad rap because of the the fight and flight response.
00:08:30
Speaker
But actually, we need adrenaline to make decisions every single day. It's it's part of the executive network of hormones that enables us to decide to cross the road safely. to decide to get on the train and wait for the doors to open, etc. So it's really, really important for our day to day survival and just very, very small decisions, even just things like getting dressed and getting out to work every day.
00:08:50
Speaker
What it also does, because it's very logical, is it stops us from being imaginative. So actually, by participating in creative acts, whatever they may be, we can reduce our adrenaline. that There are four ways, really, that we can reduce our adrenaline. One of them is through meditation.
00:09:03
Speaker
The other is through repetitive sports. So running, walking, that type of thing. When we're asleep in ah REM, our adrenaline drops to zero. It's the only time during the day that our adrenaline um drops to zero, which is why our dreams are so imaginative.
00:09:16
Speaker
Your dreams are not limited by that hormone, and which is why you can dream, you can fly and things that are impossible in the realms of physics on this earth. By finding ways to drop our adrenaline during the day, we can actually create more exciting, innovative problem solving. I mean, this could apply to any aspect of your work.
00:09:35
Speaker
And any aspect of your life, in fact, by just allowing yourself to get rid of some of that kind of, well, logic tells me I should be doing this because I've been in this situation before. And so my brain is overriding me with a quick solution.
00:09:48
Speaker
We can actually come up with things that are way more exciting and interesting and also potentially lead to great innovation and brand new tools and art and problem solving and work and all sorts of things that didn't exist before.
00:10:01
Speaker
Makes me think that if you're going to have a meeting in the afternoon where you've got to come up with a solution to a problem, one of the best ways to prepare for it is to go out for a walk because that will that exercise will reduce your adrenaline levels and then you'll be more creative
Creativity and Economic Growth
00:10:17
Speaker
in the meeting. if Would that be correct?
00:10:19
Speaker
100% or have a nap. A 10-minute nap can be... i mean, you must have heard about... There's a ah an apocryphal tale about Einstein, but also ah self-declared tale from Salvador Dali.
00:10:31
Speaker
who talks, there's four different stages of sleep. The first stage is this sort of falling to sleep stage where something called sleep spindles happen. And they are still researching all of this um in the medical community. They've done a lot more research on deep sleep and na REM sleep and on the latter stages.
00:10:48
Speaker
But that early falling to sleep stage where your sleep spindles happen, um they believe is where neural connections, memories, et cetera, are all being made in your brain.
00:10:59
Speaker
And Salvador Dali, what he used to do, he tells this very detailed story about how he would sit on a chair in a supine position um with a heavy key suspended between his thumb and his forefinger.
00:11:12
Speaker
And beneath the heavy key, you may put a plate upturned. And just as you fall asleep, the key drops and wakes you up. And that's all you need. And I think he said, no more and no less.
00:11:24
Speaker
to be completely refreshed and able to solve all the problems that perhaps you were mulling with before. And I think, you know, he was doing that from his own learned experience, obviously. But there is now scientific backup that says, yeah, that's a really good idea. So a five minute nap or even just allowing yourself to kind of almost get to sleep and and wake yourself up.
00:11:45
Speaker
Or if you can afford the time, a full sleep cycle, so full 90 minutes so that you get to ah r REM. Perhaps we should be building that into all of our work days. Yes. Controversial. Certainly when I worked in Asia, there were lots of people that took a nap ah at lunchtime. Yeah. But when you're talking about creativity and you mentioned Salvador Dali, you really are at the top end of creativity with that with that gentleman, aren't you?
00:12:08
Speaker
Well, yeah, i mean, I think he was a problematic person with a very big ego and not necessarily um what we would call a feminist today. Can't argue with the quality of the imagination and the work that resulted from that. So there are things that we can do that will increase or improve or enhance our creativity.
00:12:29
Speaker
And some of the benefits are actually physically and mental health improvements as well. And of course, the more creative person is more likely to have a better a career as well. They'll be doing things differently is the way to get noticed and get yourself promoted ah from an HR perspective. you could say that.
00:12:46
Speaker
Well, there's also another um health benefit which we haven't mentioned, which is um regarding Alzheimer's and dementia. Because the Alzheimer's Society told us that Alzheimer's is the biggest killer in the UK in 2024.
00:12:59
Speaker
They also tell us that one in three people born today will be diagnosed with Alzheimer's at some point in their life. They've also proven through, again, myriad of medical studies that the single most effective thing that you can do to delay the onset and to um have a better quality of life after diagnosis is any kind of creativity. It doesn't matter what you do.
00:13:21
Speaker
It doesn't matter whether it's singing. It doesn't matter if it's playing a musical instrument. It doesn't matter if it's painting and it does not, but but writing poetry, it really doesn't matter what the creativity is. the actual creative act that seems to have a direct correlation with how neurons are formed and retained.
00:13:36
Speaker
So if that's true, which the scientific community tells us it is, I wonder whether anyone can afford not to be living with some form of creativity in their life. I don't think that we can. I think it's a massive crisis. There's a social care and a a health crisis that is facing us head on. And we all seem to be in denial about it, particularly in government. Yeah.
00:13:55
Speaker
Yeah, because everything's about those GDP figures at a government level. Everything in an organization is about those quarterly, monthly, annual figures of how much money have we made, how much money have we made.
00:14:06
Speaker
And creativity is actually the driver of economic improvement. ah you know We could talk about the difference between Singapore, where they have very high academic standards of education, and also talk about South Korea, where they decided that they would become a ah focal point within Asia of creativity, which is why you have the K-pop bands, and they've seen their industry boom as a result of encouraging people to be more creative. So more creativity, K-pop, yeah, one of the things, but also more product development, ah more enhancements of products, more
00:14:45
Speaker
taking the products to the next level.
Overcoming Societal Barriers to Creativity
00:14:47
Speaker
And now we don't think twice about, yeah, it's it's a Korean car. People would just, yeah, fine, we're buying a Korean car. Creativity has knock-on effects in all sorts of ways. So there's all sorts of benefits and all sorts of different levels, individual level, organizational level, national levels. We all need to get more creative.
00:15:05
Speaker
It's also really important for our own family because, i mean, I've noticed in myself that the more creative I am and the more that I protect my time to be creative, the nicer person I am, which makes me easier to live with and more capable of being a good parent, etc.
00:15:20
Speaker
I'm also contributing to my community in a different way because I talk to other people about their creativity and I share stories and I encourage them. The entire podcast was predicated on my own personal journey. But more than that as well, you could argue, and I do argue, that when we're performing a creative act, we are usually not consuming. So if we spend a bit of time with a pencil and a piece of paper and sketch something, we are resisting the attention economy. And the attention economy, as we all well know, wants us to buy things and consume things and spend money in ways that perhaps doesn't serve us.
00:15:54
Speaker
So actually taking ourselves away from our phones and our computers I mean, I'm not immune from the four hours of screen time and I know won't be the only person that has those kind of stats. But when I've got guitar in hand and I'm writing a song, I can't buy things I don't need.
00:16:10
Speaker
So actually the knock on effect of that for us as individuals and our family and the amount of money that's in our pocket for things that we do perhaps need means that perhaps we can think about our relationship with work differently. But also consumerism is around 60% of the world's emissions from a carbon perspective. So just reducing our dependency on needing to purchase things that perhaps don't stir serve us and and creating something, anything instead could have a really positive knock-on effect, kind of, you know, one one hour at a time.
00:16:40
Speaker
on the entire globe. Although, as you say, the um the people that count the pennies probably won't like that. Well, I think we all have to count the pennies and that point about if you are creative, you're doing something constructive for yourself, for your family, the knock-on effects. But because you're being creative, you're not being a consumer.
00:16:59
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. You're creating, which makes me remember back when I was a teenager, it was the time of the 80s and the the new romantics and everything. And for some reason, I always remember saying to myself, you know, I'm not a consumer.
00:17:14
Speaker
I want to be a producer. That's lovely. yeah I will create my own things. I will think about my own life rather than just consuming what other people tell me that as the is the way that I have to live, the way that I have to dress, the way that I have to eat. Yeah, that's really, really powerful. Good for you. Thank you very much.
00:17:30
Speaker
Thank you. yeah But what is it that stops people from being creative? It's interesting that you had that strength of feeling when you were a teenager. There are a lot of narratives that affect different genders and different parts of marginalized society differently.
00:17:46
Speaker
Girls in particular are rewarded for being organized. They're rewarded for good girling, you know, being good domestic. Oh, did you make that? Did you do this? Did you clean? Did you that? Um,
00:17:57
Speaker
for being caring, for being nurturing. Boys tend to be rewarded for risk-taking and, oh, aren't they hilarious when they jumped out of the tree? ah Creativity, as I mentioned earlier, is a risky thing to do. you know It's not a sensible career choice. Only people who are deemed to be um very creative can be trusted with being tastemakers, being the the folks that are allowed to take risk and is statistically more likely that in the workplace particularly, we think of men as being more creative than we do women. And that is even true of women themselves, that they would put their trust in a man to be creative. We all have our own levels of misogyny that we can't escape because this social upbringing and and systemic kind of narratives that we are subjected to are very, very strong and difficult to break out from.
00:18:47
Speaker
I myself told myself a very, very, very convincing story. that I wasn't a creative person for 25 years because I worked in an industry. I worked in the television industry where it was the men that became editorial, they became producers, they became directors.
00:19:02
Speaker
Girls worked behind the scenes in the business and the administration side. I was pretty good at that, but I think even I mean, to the point about kind of work and how we achieve mastery, 10,000 hours at anything, you can be good at anything, literally anything. Ballerina might be a stretch if you just don't have the natural grace, but really everyone can be good at everything if they put the work into it.
00:19:25
Speaker
There is some very, very strong gender bias that encourages women to do our 10,000 hours in things that are less creative and men to do. there are 10,000 hours and things that are historically considered more creative. It's very interesting that you say that because as a bloke, never been consciously aware of that at all.
00:19:44
Speaker
I'm not disputing it, not disputing it at all. It's just not something that I've ever been consciously aware of. The statistics back this up, you know, the number of books written by women is dwarfed by the number written by men or those that are published, I should say.
00:19:59
Speaker
the number In my world and as a songwriter, less than 15% of commercially successful songs are written by women. And that's not because there's no talent. You know, more women study music at university and yet less get roles in in the music industry. Less than 3% of commercially successful songs are produced by a female producer.
00:20:20
Speaker
So there's some really fundamental kind of problems in some creative industries. You only have to look at how the industries that we're aware of and the and the and the gender pay gap to see that women are pushed into roles that are more administrative, less creative roles, whereas men tend to be in leadership positions. um i think there's a stat, something like CEOs in the UK, 20% are female.
00:20:42
Speaker
It's backing up all of the things that we know about discrimination in every aspect of our lives. Yes. But in creativity, because they're so closely related, aren't they? The ability to create and be a risk taker and be a leader, all of those kind of things go handin hand in hand. Yeah.
00:21:00
Speaker
yeah I mean, there's another thing here as well, isn't there? the The men are chefs and the women are cooks and the men are artists and the women are just dabbling in their cottage industry and trying some sketching. There's a whole bunch of narratives here that back up these stereotypeped stereotypes, deep seated stereotypes. Yeah, yeah. The positioning of of how people can be creative or can't be creative. But You paint a very realistic picture of some of the challenges there that stop people from being creative. And it's like you are the fairy godmother of creativity. So how did you overcome those barriers?
Transition from Corporate to Creative
00:21:35
Speaker
I still suffer from them every day. i mean, my son, when I first said I've made a big decision, it was during the pandemic, I've made a big decision. I want to give being a songwriter a go. and I was working full-time as a management consultant at the time, he just looked straight at me and said, who in their right mind gives up a perfectly good paid job as a management consultant to become a songwriter? mean, who does that? he was absolutely astonished that I would choose to spend my time differently. yeah And he looked up the average salary of a songwriter is less than 24,000 pounds. And he was just like, are you crazy?
00:22:15
Speaker
I mean, you know, how we going to, what are we having for dinner? Beans on toast every night? Yep, that's the drill. I'm sorry, but as you say that and you're describing him, it'll be all right because he would never listen to this, but you sort of think like, okay, is he 40, 50 years old? Yeah, exactly. Very affected by the economic system, basically, already at such a tender age.
00:22:39
Speaker
I woke up in the pandemic feeling that I was not getting the satisfaction I used to get from my day job because all of the good bits have been taken away from it because I was sitting at home in my little tiny office with the computer screen and the Zoom and trying to find a way to do um kind of whiteboards remotely and all the rest of it. And all of the kind of fun parts of my job, which were getting out and speaking to people and taking the board through a journey, a big change journey with my flat Edged pen and the whiteboard and the performative elements of my job had gone away.
00:23:08
Speaker
I was painting quite a lot because obviously we had a lot of time on our hands. I was also writing a lot of songs, which was something that I had as a very strong hobby. Music had been a big part of my life for a long time.
00:23:20
Speaker
but very much as something that I saw as a sideline and something that i did on the side. And actually consider myself lucky in those days that I could have that as a hobby that I really enjoyed and I didn't have to make my living from it because as my son so articulated so well, um it is very, very difficult to make a living in music.
00:23:37
Speaker
But one hit song is a very good living. It would, but it's extremely difficult to get one of those because, as I mentioned, I am female and the whole industry is stacked against me. So I've got a 15% chance in comparison with a man and making that happen.
00:23:50
Speaker
but I just decided, look, I don't think it's too late for me. I'm willing to sacrifice a lot of things. I don't care about having a nice handbag. I don't care about having a pair of expensive shoes. What I care about is how I spend my time.
00:24:02
Speaker
I decided to completely change my life. And as I did that, I looked to explore ways in which that I i could support myself to make that change. So to start with, it was sort of a little quiet whisper of I've always wanted to be a musician. I've always wanted to sing and write songs.
00:24:20
Speaker
I just feel like it's the last chance. If I don't do it now, when will I do it? But in my work, because I work exclusively in my consulting work with creative organisations, broadcasters and production companies and IP owners, I decided just to look at what I could apply for my own work to my personal life. And and this is where the in 10 years time plan um idea really came from, the philosophy came from.
00:24:44
Speaker
I did did my 10-year plan and I wrote an article and I put it on LinkedIn. The response I got was absolutely huge. Just people reaching out to me going, oh, it's really interesting. And i I'm a photographer and I'm an artist and I'm a this and I'm a that. and how are you kind of describ describing your um slash career? They were saying, because I bravely changed my LinkedIn profile also to say that I was songwriter and consultant which felt like a massive massive step but the response I got gave me confidence that I was really on to something at that time as well I decided to go back to university and to a degree to do a master's degree in songwriting and now I spend probably about 40 percent of my time songwriting I still work a little bit 20 percent of the time
00:25:29
Speaker
I'm very lucky that I work for myself so I can, I have a portfolio kind of arrangement with my clients so I can just take a few less and still do some traditional work that works to the economic system that we live in.
00:25:41
Speaker
The rest of the time i spend on this on in 10 years time, how to live a creative life, because I'm so sure that it has made me more content, more satisfied, all the benefits that I see from it, despite the fact that economically I'm not quite in the same place as I was before.
00:25:54
Speaker
I wouldn't trade it.
Importance of a 10-Year Creative Plan
00:25:56
Speaker
And so I really want to kind of encourage everybody to get the benefits from any kind of creativity in their life. is Why I sort of go out and say, right, you know, in 10 years time, if you choose, you can master something. I don't care what age you are or what stage of your career you're at. If you want to spend a little time in creativity, you can completely change your life and the people you'll meet and the immediate success.
00:26:17
Speaker
impact you'll have on your well-being is so dramatic that it's definitely worth doing so yeah that's what the whole thing is all about it's a very inspiring story and the practicalities of it as well you've you've worked out it's great that that you're happy doing it and i wish you every success with it as well it's like fantastic really Thank you. i mean, I think it is important to say that I'm very aware that not everybody has a great deal of time. Not everybody has a great deal of resources that perhaps they can and they believe that that is a barrier to living with a creative balance. But actually,
00:26:53
Speaker
You don't need a great deal of time because creativity is like compound interest. If you spend five minutes sketching today and then another five minutes tomorrow and two minutes the day after, then on the fourth day, you'll do something a little bit better.
00:27:05
Speaker
Or maybe you'll do something worse and it'll be the fifth day you do something better. but I really feel that I'm an apprentice in my songwriting now, although I'm writing every day and I'm getting some good sessions in terms of co-writes with artists and what have you.
00:27:17
Speaker
But I've got a long, long way to go. And actually having a learner's mindset also really serves us very, very well, particularly in later life, particularly anyone who's thinking about retiring. you know, if you've got to the top of your game and you're a CEO or or a headmistress or, ah you know, a manager of some kind, and then you stop working, your identity is very, very strongly impacted by that.
00:27:38
Speaker
What having a creative kind of outlet offers you is the opportunity to redefine yourself as somebody who's not an expert. It doesn't have to allow their ego to think they always need to be at the top of the tree and be good at everything and know the answer to everything.
00:27:52
Speaker
Just allowing yourself the great freedom to be a learner, to be a beginner, to have that beginner's mindset can be extremely empowering. And I believe that also really helps your identity because you don't have to be identified by what you used to be.
00:28:07
Speaker
You can be identified by what you are today, which might be an artist or a crochet expert or or whatever. Yeah. I think the message that I'm taking away from this is that you can be whatever you want to be. It's just the case, I suppose, of defining that for yourself, not defining it by what someone else has done, because that's just staying within a system, but actually saying, this is the life that I want to to live.
00:28:38
Speaker
This is how I want to be when i my life comes to an end. How do I get to achieve the things that I see as my future, but the authentic me,
Episode Conclusion
00:28:48
Speaker
the real me? How do I get to that point?
00:28:50
Speaker
And answer those questions for yourself, not within the context of, if this worked for so-and-so, so it will work for me as well. It won't. You have to do it for yourself. Yeah.
00:29:03
Speaker
Not by yourself, because like you say, there are collaborations and there are conversations to be had. It's not by yourself, but you have to do it for yourself. And that creates the best version of you, which then helps you to create the best versions of your family and your friends.
00:29:18
Speaker
And that's something that's very important to the In 10 Years Time philosophy is by creating your 10-year plan, it allows you the possibility to be imaginative about what might be true in 10 years But also it's it's framed in reality because you can make some predictions about what life might be like in 10 years time.
00:29:37
Speaker
But because it's so far away that it's not like, you know, a year from now or six month goals or anything like that, it allows you a little bit more freedom to dream about what might be possible within the realms of of your own realities. you mean, you can start to think about the mortality of the people close to you, the ages of your children, what they're going to be like and what kind of relationship do you want to have with them et etc and then once you've spent that time thinking about what future you might really like then every day you take a tiny step towards it and as I say that could be one minute of your time doesn't necessarily need to be a wholesale change that the amount of time you spend in your creativity and in the other decisions you make like
00:30:18
Speaker
you know picking up the phone to your elderly relatives or whatever it might be, are immediately informed because you know that when you make that decision on a daily basis, you're investing in your own future and you get the benefit on that on the day as well. So it's a double win.
00:30:35
Speaker
because you're sort of adding to that compound interest for the future, but you're also immediately more satisfied because of all the reasons we talked about earlier, like your adrenaline reducing and the community you build and all of those benefits that you you get immediately. yes So yeah, that's the real kind of essence of the philosophy is we look to the future and then we make a decision and we make decisions every day that support that future.
00:30:56
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting. Thank you very much, Tricia. It's been fascinating. Really do appreciate your time. It's been great. It's a total pleasure. Thanks very much for having me. Thank you. I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abusida.
00:31:10
Speaker
And in this episode of Rest and Recreation, I've been having a conversation with the the fairy godmother of creativity, Tricia Duffy. You can find out more about both of us at abusida.co.uk.
00:31:23
Speaker
And there is a link in the description. If you have liked this episode of Rest and Recreation, please give it a like and download it. To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe.
00:31:34
Speaker
Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abbasida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to make you think. Until the next episode of Rest and Recreation, thank you for listening and goodbye.