In December 2025, we celebrate something special—twenty years of this podcast, which first launched as Accidental Creative in December 2005. We reflect on how starting, even with imperfect beginnings, is an essential part of a creative journey. In this episode, we draw insights from the book Daily Creative, sharing a series of thought-provoking essays designed for creative professionals navigating the end of the year.

We explore themes from balance and priorities (Rubber and Glass Balls), beginner’s mindset (Just One Song), the power of working from what’s known (The Edge Pieces), and the importance of knowing what “actual work” is (When You’re Working). Each essay comes with a practical application question to help leaders and creative pros pause, reflect, and reset for the coming year.

If you’re looking for a ritual or rhythm to keep your creative juices flowing and your mindset sharp, this episode is packed with reminders and prompts to help you refocus and get ready for fresh challenges ahead.

Five Key Learnings:

1. Starting Imperfectly Is Essential: Early creative work will rarely be polished, but the act of beginning is what opens the door to growth and excellence.
2. Protect the Fragile Elements of Life: Not everything rebounds after a setback; relationships, health, friendships, and spirit deserve proactive care and attention.
3. Approach Work Like a Beginner: Tackling each project with fresh enthusiasm and curiosity ignites new insights, regardless of past experience.
4. Solve Problems Starting With What You Know: Like edge pieces in a puzzle, letting your certainties frame the unknowns brings clarity to complex creative challenges.
5. Distinguish Busyness from True Work: Knowing which activities actually create value helps redirect energy away from distraction and toward your core genius.

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Welcome to the Daily Creative podcast. It is December 2025, and that's exciting on a couple of fronts. First of all, December 2025 marks the 20th anniversary of the first episode of the podcast, which was originally called the Accidental Creative Podcast, which is also the title of my first book that released in 2011 with Penguin Random House. So some of you may have been listening since way back then, way back in 2005, December 2005, when the first episodes were released. And let me tell you, I have gone back and listened to some of those early episodes and they are, they are not good. They're not. But that sort of just reinforces something that's very important for all of us to remember as professionals that we just often need to start. And so I had heard about this medium called podcasting, and I'm gonna be sharing this more in an upcoming episode.

But this new thing called podcasting, which allowed you to kind of have your own radio show, and I had a background in audio, which I'll talk about more, and thought, wow, this might be a good opportunity to connect with some other creative directors or other people who might be wrestling with some of the same things. And surprise, surprise, it was. We're gonna be releasing an anniversary episode here coming up this month, so be watching for that. I'm gonna replay some old clips from 20 years ago, almost 20 years ago, some early interviews with some of my heroes, who I was able to interview for the podcast 18, 20 years ago, which is kind of crazy. So be watching for that. That's One reason why December 2025 is exciting, because it's a 20 year anniversary of the podcast. But the second reason is it's almost the end of the year. And some of you may know that the namesake for this podcast is a book I released a couple of years ago called Daily Creative, which is a daily reader for creative professionals.

And it covers everything from how to organize your life to how to stay inspired, to how to lead, to how to interact with others, how to collaborate, how to offer feedback. All of those things are part of this book. Daily Creative. It's short daily, basically like short daily essays or daily bits of advice for creative professionals, along with some specific prompts and questions to help you think about that topic for the day. So I thought today what I would do for this episode is, since the next episode is going to be our anniversary episode about the Accidental Creative Podcast, let's do some essays from Daily Creative. So this week I'm basically just going to be reading to you some essays from this week's entries in Daily Creative. So hopefully you'll find some of these helpful to you and where you are right now. This is from December 1st, actually.

This essay is called Rubber and glass balls.

In 1991, Brian G. Dyson, the former CEO of Coca Cola, gave what has become one of the most memorable commencement speeches ever recorded. He said, quote, imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them, work, family, health, friends, spirit, and you're keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls, family, health, friends and spirit, are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged, or even shattered.

They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance in your life. End quote. There are some things in life that are incredibly pliable. If you make a mistake, you lose a client. You can always find another one. If you produce work that's subpar, you'll likely get another chance at it tomorrow. However, there are some things that are not quite so resilient.

Relationships. Your health, your friendships, your spiritual life. These are all much more fragile and must be handled with care. If you neglect them for too long, if you drop them, they may shatter. You must know which things in your life are pliable and which are irreparably fragile. Handle the fragile elements of your life with care to be prolific, brilliant, and healthy. Ensure that you are not neglecting them for the sake of your work. And here is December 1st application question.

What are the fragile elements of your life? What do you do to ensure that they are protected? All right, we're going to move on to December 4th. This is one of my favorite entries, actually, because I had just been reading this book when I wrote this, and I thought, wow, that is a really phenomenal perspective on the creative process. So this is December 4th. It's called just One Song. Jeff Tweedy, songwriter and founding member of the band Wilco, recently released a book called how to Write One Song. I immediately resonated with the title, because that's precisely what the creative process is. Make this thing here in front of you right now. It doesn't matter how many of them you've done before.

The only one that matters is this one now. And typically, for professionals, it must be delivered under a deadline. In the book, Tweedy writes, I happen to love deadlines. Not everyone does. I do, because they fit with my belief that art isn't ever really complete. As the saying goes, no work of art is ever finished. It can only be abandoned in an interesting place. Whatever you are working on today, how can you approach it as if it's your first time? How can you refresh your perspective, ask new kinds of questions, and reclaim the joy of solving problems with your skills? How would you approach it if you were a beginner? And when the deadline arrives, how will you ensure you abandon it in an interesting place? Approach each project like a beginner and treat it like it's the only one you've ever worked on.

And here's the application question for December 4th. What would it mean to approach your work like a beginner today?

All right, we're going to move on to December 6th. This one is called the Edge Pieces, and I really love this entry too, actually. And by the way, the reason I'm doing this is because it's the end of the year and the first part of the year is a great time to buy a daily Reader and to go through to make a ritual of going through that Daily reader every single day. And may I humbly recommend that Daily Creative if you're a creative professional. Daily Creative is basically distilled essences or distilled bits of advice from many of my books into a daily reader type format. So even though it's a completely new piece of work, a lot of the principles and ideas and concepts are distilled into the digestible format. So I would recommend checking out Daily Creative. You can get it wherever books are sold in audio, ebook, or obviously paperback, if that's your Preference.

All right, December 6th. This one is called the Edge Pieces.

My family loves to do jigsaw puzzles. There's typically an unfinished one sitting on our dining room table for weeks at a time, and every so often someone will sit down and work on it. If you've ever attempted if you've ever attempted to complete a jigsaw puzzle, how did you begin? Did you just pick up random pieces and try them together to see if they fit? Or did you stare at all the pieces of the table, trying to mentally place them all together? No, of course not. You probably started with the edge pieces because you know at least one thing about they belong on the outside of the puzzle. Once you've identified all of the edge pieces, you can begin to fit them together to form a frame around the rest of the puzzle. In this way, you work your way from what's known to to what's unknown. You can follow a similar process in your creative work, start with the knowns and work your way to the unknowns. What do I know for certain about this problem? What has definitely worked well in the past? What do I know is off limits? What resources do I have to spend, whether time, money, or energy? Once you've identified the edge pieces, you can begin filling in the puzzle.

In your creative work, start from what's known and work toward what's unknown. Begin with the edge pieces. And here's the question for December 6th. Is there a problem that you're stuck on right now? How can you step back and identify the edge pieces so that you have more clarity about how to proceed?

All right, I'm going to do one more for this episode, but again, check out Daily Creative. You can find it wherever books are sold. And yeah, so let's do December 8th. This one is called when you're working.

What do you do when you're working? Actually working. Thomas Edison once said, being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment. And to either of these ends, there must be forethought, system, plan, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.

There are a number of activities we engage in every day that are grouped together under the heading of work, but not all of them are truly what we're paid to do. We are very, very busy, but not all of the busyness results in actual value. There's a select set of activities that you do each day that truly constitute work. For me, that would be writing, thinking, solving a client problem, or producing teaching that helps someone else do better work. There are a number of activities that I do to keep these things moving forward, but those activities are my actual work or the value that I'm paid to produce. So what do you do when you're working? When you're actually working, what set of activities produce 80% of the value that you're accountable for delivering? How can you set. How can you set up more of your time and energy around your actual work? Remember, not all activity is work. Know the critical value that you're actually paid to deliver, and set your days up around delivering it.

And here is the application question for December 8th. It is, what do you do when you're actually working?

All right, so those are some entries from this week in Daily Creative. Again, it's available wherever books are, so I'd really recommend you check it out. It's. It was kind of a passion project for me, Honestly. We were coming out of COVID and I kind of had all of this energy, all of this ambition to write a book, but it was still sort of distilling some of the big ideas or big concepts that would become the brave habit. So this book, Daily Creative, ended up being my post Covid project and I'm super excited about it and I'm going to be going back through it myself because often I find, and I'm sure you do as well, that we teach the things that we need to learn the most. And there are many things in Daily Creative that I myself also need to learn so or need to continue to remind myself of. So I'm going to go back through it in the coming year as well, every day as a discipline.

So I encourage you listen, it doesn't have to be Daily Creative, but have some daily ritual, some daily rhythm where you absorb stimulus, you absorb ideas, you pause, you reflect, you journal, you think about what those ideas mean and then you apply them to your life. All right, that's all for this episode. I hope you found it helpful. If you would like our full interviews, we have many interviews coming up after the first of the year. I've just been having interviews left and right the last couple of weeks with fantastic thinkers, creative pros, leaders, and we're going to be featuring some of those interviews after the first of the year. But as you know, we can only feature so much of the interview because of time constraints. So if you want full interviews as well as bonus content and much more, you can get that@dailycreativeplus.com just sign up there. It's absolutely free.

We'll send you a private fee where you can get all of the bonus content. My name is Todd Henry. You can find my books, my speaking, and all of my other work@todhenry.com until next time, May you be brave, focused and brilliant.