SUMMIT TOP 5: Amie McNee on Moving Through The “Messy Middle” (Without Losing Your Mind)

Zack Arnold

So Amy, I want to start our conversation today with an apology, and that apology is not going to be to you. That apology is actually going to be to all the other guests of this summit. I'm going to tell you why. I have had some amazing conversations throughout this entire week, and I'm so grateful to everybody else, but again, all due respect to them, I think this is the most important conversation of this entire summit. And I do not say that lightly, and I'm going to explain why in a second, but I just wanted to thank you profusely for taking the time to share your insights, your experience and all of the value that you brought to the world of creative so thank you so much for being here.

Amie McNee

Zack, I am first of all, incredibly flattered. I love a good compliment. I'm taking that on, and I'm truly like, Thank you, thank you for seeing me and thank you for allowing us to have this conversation. Truly, I'm honored, and I cannot wait to see where this, where this talk, takes us.

Zack Arnold

Yeah, I can't either. And I just, I want to prove to you and everybody else how important I think this conversation is literally we couldn't have picked a worse time to be recording this. I've spent the last No, no, you don't need to apologize at all, but I just, I want to frame this for you and everybody else. I've been planning this summit for over six months now, and trying to get 15 different highly creative people that are very busy on a calendar is like herding cats on cocaine. It is impossible. And I've been back and forth with many people, and you've been very apologetic about responses and being busy. It's the same conversation I've had with every single guest. It's a back and forth. There's nothing unusual about it. But you said, Hey, I think I found a time that I could make work. It would be 7:30am Pacific Time on the 23rd and my response was, You gotta be fucking kidding me, because that's literally the morning that I'm launching my Summit. Today is day one. I have just under 2000 people that have registered for this, and we go live in 25 minutes, and instead of being there and present, I'm recording with you. So if there's any proof that I believe this is the most important conversation of this entire week, that should be it.

Amie McNee

Oh my gosh. I love that I get to be with you as this like, huge, beautiful thing begins, and it's a huge privilege truly hear that. It's a privilege. Zack, I'm so excited that I get to be a part of this summit. I'm so excited that we get to have incredibly important conversations. And the fact that in 25 minutes, this goes live, and I get to be with you again. What an honor.

Zack Arnold

So here's the reason that I say all this. When I started to put this together, I had a thesis. And the thesis in my mind was that, in this, by the way, was I believe, the second or third week in January when I really started to ask, what's the narrative of this? The second or third week of January is right, when Los Angeles was literally burning to the ground after watching this industry metaphorically burned to the ground for the last two years, and my gut instinct was, this is the most important time ever for us to be creative and for us to make stuff which sounded absolutely absurd like, How in the world could I think that being creative in the act of making things could not just be incredibly stupid, frivolous and a waste of time. Then I found your TED talk in the first 30 seconds of it. I'm like, oh my god, this is the exact same thing that I've been saying. You literally start with a fire and saying, What is the point of creativity? So here's where I want to start. Given the state of our industry, the state of the economy, the state of the world right now, what in the world is the point of being creative?

Amie McNee

Yeah, it's a beautiful and very, very important place to start. Because I think I'm seeing it like everywhere, artists are saying, well, the what's the point? Like, no one, what's the point? I want to, you know, make cute movies, or I want to write little books. So I just want to paint, painting like, what is the point of doing something like that in a world that is hurting and a world that was literally on fire. I'm Australian. I remember in the 2019 bushfires, literally running from the fire and writing my books and thinking, is this an insane thing to do? And it isn't. It is the most important thing we can do. And so anyone out there who is thinking like, what is the point? I need you to really hear me when I say this, there has never, ever been a more important time to create art than right now. We are desperately in need of your creations right now and whenever we are in acute moments of suffering or pain or of crisis, for some reason, our instinct is well, then art must be the least important. But it is actually the opposite. Art is so important right now to ground us and who it is we are, to produce solutions, to look to what is next, to self soothe, to take care of ourselves on a physiological level, to make sure that we are okay in this moment. But also it's a collective service to create art right now, like it is helping our communities. There is so much evidence it looks at when you remove art from community, we lose all sense of self and we crumble. When you put art back into communities, we repair. There are some incredible studies that look at how art's even more important than, say, education or even food. Like give artists, give human beings art before you give them. Food, that is how important we're looking at the creative act. And so I know it is so easy to think this is not the time for art. It is the time for art. What you're doing is deeply needed. Art sits at the crux of what it is to be a human being. I need you to keep going. I need you to take this more seriously than you ever have before.

Zack Arnold

All of that sounds well and good, but sure, like coming from a writer and an artist and a painter like yeah, of course you want to be creative. But what I really want to dig into a little bit deeper, and what I love about your book, and by the way, shameless self promotion, it's right on the cover. It says, We need your art. I'm just emphasizing this throughout this conversation. You had said that you want your work to ricochet throughout the world. I'm going to do my best to have it at least ricochet in my little tiny of the world here. But I think that what we need to talk a little bit more about is some of the actual research and science behind this, because you say that creativity is the missing pillar of self development, and I've spent the last 15 to 20 years, first for myself, then podcasting about it, then writing about it, now coaching about it, that we need to, and this was part of my former brand. I used to say that we need to optimize the most important operating system, which is our self and our creative thought. And then, unfortunately, the word optimize, over the last five to 10 years, has been co opted by all the internet bros. And I'm like, I want nothing to do with that, but I was talking about how the best way that we can be creative is really focusing on ourselves as the operating system, talking about sleep, talking about diet, talking about exercise, talking about taking walks to brainstorm, all of these things before all of it was popularized and absolutely just destroyed by social media. But you really bring this other pillar and you back it up with science. So let's talk about first from the individual level, then we'll get bigger with communities and society, but from the individual level, especially right now, why do we need to focus on creativity as self development?

Amie McNee

Yeah, so as I kind of just hinted out for me, creativity is a missing pillar of self development. It needs to sit next to exercise. It needs to sit next to sleep. Let the bros. Like go bros. Take it. Take it. On your podcast, recognize that creativity should be spoken next to your sunlight exposure in the morning, like I talk about all the time. But Dr Andrew Huberman, like for sake, make some art, because this is how incredibly

Zack Arnold

I just love the way you put that. I'm sorry, but you just, you're just, you're so irreverent and You're so honest, and you you even say, I'm not for everybody. That's exactly why I didn't mean to interrupt you, but that's exactly why I wanted you and I to have this conversation. So continue.

Amie McNee

Thank you. Yes. So on an individual level and on a physiological level, there's an amazing amount of research that, again, you'd think a lot of these, like huge podcasters would pick up on, because it's, it's not insignificant, and it's not new research. We've been doing this research for a long time. We're very, very resistant to understanding the impact of creativity on our physical health. And I'm not sure why that is. I have my suspicions. I think, you know, I mean to go down a small rabbit hole. I wonder if it's a, you know, very masculine space, the health and optimization space, and the vulnerability of art is something that frightens them, because this is an incredibly exciting tool to help us physiologically. But no one's picking up on it. And I wonder if it's something about the vulnerability of creativity that makes people not want to look at it. But it is. It has incredible research, and the book that I really look to as I wrote We need your art is called your brain on art, and they've just basically collated huge amounts of research about what art does to our bodies, to our minds and to our communities. But in like to just kind of sum up a few things, like you will see less inflammation, less cortisol, less pain after 45 minutes of creating and not creating anything good, creating shit, playing around, you will see like, incredible physiological markers, which is, I get so amped up talking about this, because I'm like, it's there. The evidence is there. Like, Listen, you will see incredible physiological change when you create. You will see amazing change in your mental health and your mental well being. And again, it's all documented. It's all there we have, and we've seen it for a long time. Art Therapy is used for people with mental disorders or mental health problems, for PTSD, for anxiety to depression, again, incredible research that says creativity will help you manage these mental health problems. And then, as you said, we can look in the more wider terms, like, obviously, when we are okay, we help our communities because we are able to. But there are also incredibly cool pieces of research that look at like what art does to our communities, like how it brings us together, how it allows us to envision a better world. But there's really no arguing about this. And so my question is, why? Why aren't we all absolutely obsessed with this? Why isn't it sitting next to exercise and sleep? Why is it still the missing pillar of self development?

Zack Arnold

I'm going to double down on your hypothesis, because I definitely think you're onto something. I've been in the process of rebranding my company over the. Last year or so, I've really tried to better understand who is it that I am authentically, what parts of that are not showing up in my brand and my podcast and my writing, what are the parts that I want to come out more? And one of the reasons that I first hesitantly and then just exuberantly said I need to ditch this brand as fast as possible with my former brand being optimize yourself. And it was the vulnerability, it was the fact that I was talking about optimizing everything, but behind the scenes, my life was a total shit show. I was a fucking mess, right? And I wasn't saying things that weren't true, but I didn't feel like I was achieving the potential that I was trying to help everybody else reach. And there's just this misalignment in those two things. And what I've really discovered is that I want to be as authentic as I can about this process, about what a mess it is behind the scenes, like creativity is just messy. Creative people have messy minds, and I wanted that vulnerability. And more importantly, this is going to go to your point, the highly sensitive nature of being a creative that comes out. I think that's the thing. Because if you were to look at the Joe rogans, the Alex hermosis, the Andrew hubermans, like all of them, there's just, oh, like, we got to get in the ice bath like that. There's just, like, the hustle, the grind. And I think once they have to admit that journaling is something that can be tremendously beneficial like that breaks the entire mold. And there are the people out there like, I would say Tim Ferriss is the perfect example. Yeah, he's a good he walks this line very, very well, where he also kind of made the transition from optimization to he's much more vulnerable about the depression and the bipolar disorders and the fact that he has a journaling practice. He's somebody that I've always admired because he walks that line. So I agree with you that I think it's about the sense that you have to be vulnerable and you have to share. I'm actually very, very sensitive inside, and that breaks the entire facade of optimization.

Amie McNee

Yeah, I agree, and it's so ironic, because it is optimizing, but it does break this facade and the image that these optimizers have built, because it is incredibly vulnerable. It's incredibly exposing and it's incredibly soft. As you say, it's sensitive to create. I mean, there's nothing inherently feminine about the arts, but for some reason, culturally, we have this story, and I'd love you to hear your opinions about this. You know, I want to speak to more and more men on my journey about art and about the Create, the creative process, and about how much we need men's art. Because I do think, and I worry about how many men have been told that this is too vulnerable, it's too sensitive, and it's not for me. I'd rather take an ice bath than I would, you know, get out my pens or, you know, play around with some music. And I really do worry about that, and I hate that these stories are being perpetuated.

Zack Arnold

Yeah, and I would say that again, that if the the question is, well, if you're, if you're a man, and you're highly sensitive and you want to be creative, it's not about the act itself. It's about the image of you and who you become when you put that out into the world, in a world that just largely does not accept any of that, right? I mean, like, if you were to just to, you know, make a rash judgment about me based on appearance, and now just add to the fact that I drive a pickup truck. You put those two things together, you wouldn't assume that I'm somebody that's highly sensitive, that's introverted, that one of the most important creative practices that I have for my mental health is a journaling practice. You wouldn't know that I try to prioritize yoga like you wouldn't see any of those things. And the there's a misalignment and expectations of society behind between who it is that I really am and who I need, quote, unquote, to put out into the world, because those are the expectations. And I think it's, it's helping somebody overcome that fear of, well, I don't know how I'm going to be judged or seen, especially in this, this is going to be a really important part of today's conversation, when your creativity is your commerce, when you make a living with your creativity, because then it can be really threatening, not just to your image and your identity, but your bank account,

Amie McNee

To your finances. Yeah. Incredibly vulnerable. Yeah, this is a huge conversation, one that I know I'm only at the beginning of. I want to have this conversation more and more, because I know that the world needs more men creating I know that we need more sensitive men. I know that we need to be seeing sensitive men's art like I just I know that this is something that, like, would heal and speaking of like, the world's on fire. Like, what should I do? I know 100% that we'd fucking need more men creating art, and that that would help in so many ways. So, yeah, really important conversation, and I'm so so I didn't ask if I could swear at the beginning of this, Zack, I'm so sorry.

Zack Arnold

Oh, please. You know you don't need to apologize. By the way, that's another one of the things that I changed about my brand. Is more protective of that. And then eventually I'm like, fuck it. I'm just gonna be myself. I'm gonna be myself. I'm gonna let my guests be themselves, and I apologize if that offends anybody. You have the right to be offended, but I'm not going to change so amazing. Please. You are more than welcome.

Amie McNee

Well, what I was gonna say was, I'm so fucking grateful that we have men like us, Zack, who are openly, you know, using your creativity and sensitivity and vulnerability and letting yourself be seen in that be. I think we need more and more men giving permission to other men that this is something that's incredibly crucial to your well being, to our world, well being, to the world's well being as we need men making art.

Zack Arnold

Yeah, agreed. And I want to go a little bit deeper into something very specific, which is the difference between being creative and being a creative and this is a conversation that I had. You might be familiar with him. His name is Dr Scott Barry Kaufman. He's literally known as probably the world's expert on creativity on the neural level, on the cognitive psychological level. He's got the number one psychology podcast in the world. Wrote a book called wire to create. I have I did an interview with him recently. I've got it in the bonus resources for this summit, but I asked him the same question. There are a few people that I'm really interested in, what their opinion is to this question. But for you, I think your your opinion is going to be really important. What's the difference between being creative and being a creative

Amie McNee

The really beautiful question, and this is how I'm gonna answer it. For me, I don't want to fucking hear what the difference is. If you are creating, then you are a creative if you write, then you are a writer. If you are making art every now and again, then you're an artist. Think we can get very into the vernacular. And, you know, oh, you know, am I doing enough to qualify as this? And does this make me that, like, I only made this much money this year? Does that mean that I can still be considered, you know, a producer, like, I just shut the fuck up. Like, if you are creating, then you are a creator. We have so much elitism around labels in creative industries and as to when you can call yourself something, or when am I allowed to put, you know, the hat of like actor on my head? Is it only when I have a feature film made like I'm so tired of getting so particular about these titles, claim the title for yourself, put it on your own head. If you are doing it, you are it. And so I get very I think people think I'm too casual with the language that I use, but I don't care, because if your actions are matching the word, then you have it. And I don't want to get very picky about it,

Zack Arnold

I love that. And I love how you're this is something we're going to go into a little bit deeper in a second. But you don't pull any punches. You're very clear about how you feel, and you express that. So I love that you actually have the counterpoint, which is that there is no difference. So I love that approach. I'm not going to disagree with you. I just want to add a little bit more to disagree. So from my perspective, the way that I see it, and I've been trying to figure this out for years, is that human beings are creative people. Every single person on the planet has the ability to be creative. We need creativity for survival. Where I think the difference is, and it's not a differentiation between you are or not creative, or you need to be given permission to be creative. The difference for me is that of all the people on the planet that have the ability to be creative and create things, there's a different subset of those people where it's such a part of their identity that it's almost like there's a compulsion to put things out into the world. And I know that you are that person, and I know that I am that person, where somebody can be very creative, they can paint, they can write stories, but it's something that's more like, this is a hobby, or I enjoy it, or it's, you know, like we talked about a self development practice. But then there are the people that wake up and they're like, I can't not make something before the end of the day, to feel like I've contributed to this world. That's where I see the differentiation. Everybody's creative, but those that identify as a creative we're a unique, particular subset of those creative people.

Amie McNee

That's interesting. It is obviously I think that we're all on such different parts of the journey, and maybe we want to use language to identify with different parts of the journey. And there are so many different types of creative people out there. I know exactly what you're referring to. You're referring to the fact that I absolutely could not live a life without this. And every time anyone suggested to me that I should stay in the finance world or I should just, you know, I did so many random jobs I could should continue in hospitality, I there was something the answer was no with a full stop, and I had no way to tell you that I was going to be able to get out of it, that I was going to ever be able to make money with my art, that I was ever going to be able to make a life of creativity. I had to have a life that where I woke up, I made something, and then I went to bed. And if I couldn't have that, I knew I wasn't going to be okay. And I do think there are this specific set of people who have this like compulsion to create. And you know, I remember when I was little, I've always wanted to be a storyteller. And for a long time, I really wanted to act, and I still see that in my future. But whenever I told anyone I want to be an actor, they'd always be. They'd always say, Oh, well, you if you want to be an actor, you have to really want it. And it used to piss me off a lot. I'm like, because I think it was pissed me off because I was like, What are you talking about? Like, I you don't understand, like, I have a compulsion to create, and I couldn't even imagine a life where I'm not drawn to storytelling in some way of like form. So I really resonate with that. I do. I. I think I'm I'm careful with my language, because I know how many people want to gatekeep that title from themselves, but I I see us, and when I meet an artist like me, I know it immediately. There's something slightly unhinged about us, and I love it.

Zack Arnold

Game recognizes game Oh, something slightly unhinged. There it is. I love it. That's exactly what I was looking for. So what I want to go into a little bit deeper now is, I think so many people feel stuck at the moment. It's the, you know, there's so little work to go around. And it's not something that's just happening in Hollywood. It's happening to everybody that creates media. The book industry has cratered. Educational online courses have cratered like there's an endless proliferation of free content, but it's been much, much harder for people to monetize it, for people to build sustainable businesses. And there's this paradox, and this is something that you write about, both with your own personal experiences and also with your clients, that we now have all of this space for being creative and creating things, and it's impossible to do it. So I actually want to talk a little bit more about where you had said in 2018 you got, you know, let go from your coffee barista job, you literally couldn't pay the rent. You move in with your in laws. Seems like the perfect opportunity to be creative and make stuff, and all you have is the ability to do nothing. So so many people are in this place right now. Let's talk a little bit more about how we actually start to use this time amidst all this uncertainty to create when we feel like doing anything. But

Amie McNee

It's so deeply ironic that I think one of the creatives kryptonites is too much time, like we just don't need more time. And so when an artist comes to me, or someone who wants to make and create but isn't, and they say, I just need more time, I just call a media bullshit. We don't need more time. So rarely do we need more time. And when we are given more time, we freeze. And I saw it for myself when I suddenly lost my job and I had all the time in the world, and I would just cry all day because I was trying to create and I couldn't. The pressure was too much, and I saw it with dozens and dozens of clients during covid, when they were all made furlough, and they all had all the time in the world that they'd been begging and praying for to create, and they all created less during that time than they would have when they had full time work. An abundance of time does not mean an abundance of creation, and I think that's something that's something that's hard to get our heads around, and we can get really upset with ourselves about that, but it's, I think, an incredibly common thing like having too much time is very difficult for the creative person. We need restrictions, just as we need restriction when it comes to our creativity itself. I ran a workshop on the weekend that was called, just make shitty art, and I just worked with people, and I was like, make shitty art. And that was the parameter, shitty art. It could do anything. It just had to be shit. And they're asking me for more and more parameters, like, can it be a poem? Can it be this? Like, people want restrictions. We want to be told what to do, and we want to be told when to do it. So when we do have too many options, it just gets out of control. And so for me, if you're in the situation where you're like, Oh my God, I've just got way too much time, like all day, I'm like, I'll start. I'll start in an hour. I'll do it. Oh, you know what? I'll have some breakfast, and then, oh, you fuck it, I've the washing. And then if your day is looking like that, and that's what my days looked like for years, I need you to start restricting yourself so that you can only create, only create for 20 minutes, between 820, and 840, in the morning, and the timer goes off and you're fucking done, and you cannot create after that. It's okay that we need restriction. Let's build it into our day. We need that kind of I don't know what it is about human beings, but we can't have it all. We really freak out when we have it all.

Zack Arnold

Yeah, this is something that I talk about extensively. Some would guess that you and I probably have a lot of similar practices that we teach with our coaching. But I talk about this concept of work, life integration, because I put this out into the world. I think I've said it in two or three other summit interviews. So for those that are listening to everything, I apologize for the redundancy, but putting it out into the world that when I have my first TED talk, I already know what the first line is going to be, and it's that work life balance is bullshit. It's complete and total bullshit. It's a myth that we are not going to ever be able to work towards. It doesn't exist, but what we can take control of is developing the skill of work life integration. And I always talk about, you need to create restrictions. I always tell, boy, do creative people. They hate calendars, they hate time blocks, right? But restrictions, your calendar, your time blocks, are what set your creativity free. I always talk about this all the time, and the summit's the perfect example. I just arbitrarily said, Let's make this the last week of June. I had no idea, right? And I figured this probably isn't enough time, but all of the work that's gotten done under immense pressure is what led, what has led to, what is this summit that is going to be launching literally in two minutes as of this conversation.

Amie McNee

Um. I couldn't agree more, and I'm someone who I will not look at a calendar like, I find it deeply stressful to be feel like I'm hemmed in, like restriction, like I'm, oh, I'm ranting and raving about restrictions. Don't restrict me. Like, that's my impulse. Like, I do not want you to tell me what to do. I do not want you to tell me when to do it. So I have to be very careful with this, like, very rebellious part of me, and I don't have a clear daily structure, but I know that I have to do 500 fucking words in the morning, and if not like, I've failed my day. And so these are the small ways that I, like integrate, like, consistency into my life. Otherwise I would just be let loose and nothing would ever get done. I also have time frames, or everything is arbitrary in a creative life, especially if we're not working with an external force. So for a lot of us, if we don't have a job right now, but we want to finish a project, and that project's deadline is non existence because it's only us, it's only you who's asking for it to be done. Like Good Luck. It's too hard stop making it so difficult for yourself. Put restriction on it. At the moment, I've got, I'm working with, 100 days at the moment, and this feels like a really good length of time for me, for the projects I'm working on. I have 100 day goals, 100 days entirely fucking arbitrary, but by the time 100 days is done, I have to have finished certain things, and I need that, otherwise it'll just go on and on and on, and it's very hard to be your own boss as a creative and I love us, and I'm so proud of us for having to constantly be the one that puts restrictions on us. We were never taught to do that. I think that's why we have so many issues. Because we're we're constantly waiting for the boss to tell us when and how we're going to do something, but we can't with a creative it's on us, and that's really difficult, and I'm so proud of us, but it is time to put that hat on and put some lines in the sand, because we need your art. Hate to say it. Say it a lot, but we need your art, and so we need some structure and some restrictions around your practice.

Zack Arnold

Yeah, where you and I are beating the same drum right now for years, whenever I've done any in person speaking, or even when I was doing it via zoom, I would often leave the conversation even before I introduce myself, I'd say, All right, so for everybody here today, just quick show of hands so I understand I understand the makeup of the room. How many of you are the owners of a small business that sells a product or a service? 234, hands. I'm like, sorry, can we make sure the mic is on once again? Raise your hand if you're the owner of a small business that sells a product or service. Then maybe a couple more. Then I'm like, I'm gonna ask this one more time. And then all of a sudden, everybody's like, Oh, he's talking about me in this new world that we live in. We are all the CEOs of our own businesses, but we don't manage our lives that way because we weren't taught how to manage our lives that way. And that is why we need new ways of thinking. We need new mindsets. We need new strategies. Because we weren't taught this stuff, but we don't realize that, therefore we put it on ourselves. What's wrong with me? Why can't I figure this out? It's the system that puts you here, not you or your inability to manage it.

Amie McNee

We creative people, especially, have been seriously victimized by industrialization and capitalism in itself. Really, like, there's so many reasons why we struggle with trying to be our own bosses, and it isn't our fault. And I need you to be so compassionate to yourself. I was the worst I've had, like, I've had bosses that were, like, trying to grab my ass. Like, I've had bad bosses I was worse than that guy. Like, I was the worst boss of myself for many, many years, and so we need to figure out ways to put restrictions in. We need to learn an entirely new skill, and we also need to be ridiculously compassionate to ourselves as we do it, being the boss that cracks the whip and who is incredibly cruel will lead to a terrible, terrible burnout and a mistrust of yourself that makes creativity very hard. So we're kind of asking you to do two things right, which is, you know, be firm with yourself and make sure that you have due dates and restrictions and and structure, and also be so unbelievably compassionate to yourself. And those two things can happen at the same time. I know it because I'm finally here.

Zack Arnold

Yeah, and there's another one of those words. We're going to go back to this hypothesis that you have about, why aren't we talking about this more specifically for men, compassion, exactly, compassion for ourselves. You want to talk about things that I was never trained in. It's how to be compassionate with myself.

Amie McNee

And that's like, so heartbreaking. And I want men to find a voice within them that is so gentle, gentle again, it's not a voice, and it's not a word that you use with masculinity. But I want gentleness for men. I want you to have a voice that is so compassionate to yourself. And I know you love journaling, Zack and journaling was my pivot, for me, like it was where I really was able to turn things around, and I found a voice on the pages of my journal that was this compassionate voice, because I was living with like a tyrant inside my head who was so mean to me. And I found this voice, and I called it a mothering voice, because it is very feminine, but I long for compassionate, soft voices for all of us, especially men, because I don't know that you've ever spoken to yourself. Gently in your fucking life. And I know that the way you become an incredibly successful and joyful creative is by learning how to speak to yourself with so much softness, with so much gentleness, giving yourself space to be,

Zack Arnold

Yeah. And the scary thing about that process is that once you start to reflect, you start to hear all the voices, and you start to really get a better understanding of those voices. And I realized that, essentially, I was trained and conditioned my entire life to be a machine, and I was for a long time. And at first I just assumed that's me, that's who I am, that's how I'm built. And then I started to dig into all this, whether it was through therapy, whether it was through journaling or other practices, and I realized that's not my voice. Is it? That voice came from somewhere else. I wasn't born with this. I'm not wired with it. I was conditioned to be this. And I started to realize the tremendous cost that it came from. And similar to I've always made the joke with my team and with others that I say, Yeah, I just I work for the worst person, like, of all the bosses I've had in my career. Right now, this guy's the worst. Like, I've never worked for somebody else that sends me ideas on a loop at three o'clock in the morning, like, What a dick, right? He just never stops. Because it's that voice that says you're a machine. Keep building, keep creating, keep pushing forwards. And it wasn't until I started to reflect on that, and my own words and my thoughts reflected back in the page. And like, I'm not so sure this is serving me the way that I think that it's serving me

Amie McNee

That's I've had such a similar journey. Zack, like, it was like, word to word. I could have just said that myself. I started writing down my inner dialog on the pages of my journal, and I was like, whoa. She's a bitch. She was so mean, and I still hear her from time to time. I don't know that, like, that's a journey that ever really ends, you know, I It's a voice of the culture we've been brought up in. It's a voice of people in my past. It's, you know, she's there, but she's so much quieter now, because I've taken care of her, I've learned how to deal with her, but she was incredibly cruel. And so I don't know about your journey with journaling, Zack, but I just found this like balance of like, I started learning how to use words that would soften that voice. So I similarly, was obsessed with productivity, and because of the culture we live in, like, I believe my worth was incredibly tied to how much I was producing and how much money I was making and to find a voice on the pages of my journal, and she just appeared out of nowhere that said, You are so fucking worthy right now, even though you have no money and no one wants to buy your books, you are incredible. You are immaculate and you are inevitable. And like finding this language changed my entire life,

Zack Arnold

I want to get a little bit deeper into journaling. I want to talk about burnout. But here's this one thing that I want to make as a side note. For anybody that's listening that's unfamiliar with you, you're like, well, if nobody's buying her books, then why is Zack doing a podcast? What they're talking about creativity, what they don't understand. And this is one of the things that I just love about the work that you're doing. You're sharing everything about your latest book, which, by the way, has been a at least by, you know, all standard metrics, maybe not by the metrics inside your own mind, has been a tremendous success. You're sharing the exact number of copies in what markets, how much you're getting paid for, what your advance was. So I just anybody that's thinking, well, if nobody's buying it. Should I buy it? We're talking about your previous life. You're doing very, very well with this new book, and it has completely changed your life and changed the lives of others. And I always so whenever I've decided that I want to make a significant pivot in my life, and I'm not making this about me, I want everybody to realize this. Whenever I make a significant pivot, I ask myself the question, who are the best in the world at doing this thing? Now, the people that I want to be next, and there are all kinds of authors, successful filmmakers, there's plenty of people out there, but who are the ones that I gravitate towards that have my values, that are doing it the right way, that I can learn from, that can become my digital mentors, and that's essentially how I found you. I actually found you on Instagram maybe two three years ago. The algorithm, of all things like for me to thank the Instagram algorithm is just against everything I believe, but the Instagram algorithm helped me find you when I was still on it, because I've since deactivated my account because it's such a toxic shithole of garbage. But it was you were just so unapologetically yourself. And it was just one of those things I'd see it. I'm like, Oh, that's interesting or, Oh, that's an interesting thought. But it was when you launched your sub stack that I really got to know you. And I said, if there's you know somebody, I wanted that list of the five people I'm going to surround myself with the most next it's when you started writing about the book tour and writing about the sales and the entire process to make it happen. But this was the clincher. It was the post right after you launched, where you said, I am so burned out, and I'm like, this is the person that I want to follow, because who in the world talks about being burned out after they just launched? A successful book that teaches you, partly, how to avoid burnout. So going back to the beginning of this conversation with boy, the timing of you and I recording today couldn't be worse. Let's talk a little bit more about the timing of when I showed up in your inbox.

Amie McNee

Yeah, beautiful, I have been on such a huge journey in the last like six months. And as you said, like when I first started journaling, it was I've journaled every single day since April 16, 2018 so that was really when I started using that voice, that compassionate voice, and since then, that compassionate voice and that gentle voice has led me on this journey of becoming a successful author. And I credit that voice, because I would not be here if I had let my inner critic run wild. The reason I am here today, you know, a full time author living my absolute dream. And I cannot underline that enough, Zack, like I'm living my actual dream. This is so beautiful is because of a voice that was so kind and so compassionate that I cultivated myself. But getting here has been big and massive, and the last six months, I had, we need your art come out in March. I gave everything to this book. I also shared, as you say, everything about this book. I've never seen an author share their advance before. I've never seen an author share their sales before. And I thought, This is ridiculous, like, Why are we always being kept in the dark? I want to be someone even though I pretty 100% sure that publishers fucking hated it. I know it really scared my agents, like it was not interesting standard. It was anti industry, and that's part of the reason why I do it, because I have a compulsion to rebel against industry. But it's all taken a huge toll. Of course, it has. I've given it my all, and I knew it would. I was ready to give this book a lot, because I know she's important, and I know she can change the world and change artists lives, creative people's lives. So I've given a lot, and as I came home from this book tour, I was like, very, very tired. And if I'm going to be sharing my advance, if I'm going to be sharing the highs like i we i want to, and I get to share the lows as well. And so your beautiful email found me sitting on the couch for four weeks straight, basically unable to do anything apart from watch the office. And it was an amazingly difficult time for me. I'm incredibly I got incredibly bored, very irritable. I wanted to create but my body said no, and my mind said no too. I had no interesting thoughts. Zack, I don't want to brag, but I have some interesting thoughts most of the time. You know, to have just zero going on in my brain was so alarming. But I was very, very tired, and I let myself move through that, and I listened to my body, and that was probably one of the hardest things I had to do this whole book launch, was to recover. But if we're going to be incredibly brave as creatives, we have to learn how to recover. And so this was actually just as an important part as my book launch and how I launched my book, as how I did I recover from my book launch. So your beautiful email found me exhausted, and you saw and had to feel the repercussions of me being incredibly flaky and a bit all over the place. But I'm also very proud of myself for how I handled it.

Zack Arnold

You handled it extremely well. What I found so ironic about the timing was that as soon as I had mailed you, it might have been the same week, a week after, I can't remember, but you basically wrote an entire post that said, I'm being really flaky. I'm not responding to anybody's emails. But by the way, when I'm reaching out to you and you say you're gonna post, you say you're going to promote like, what the fuck you're not following through with your commitments? So I found you at the exact same time that you were talking about, I'm not responding to anybody's emails. I'm just sitting on the couch right. Here's where this gets really, really eerie. The last time that I went through burnout, and this was I talked a lot about this on my podcast, it was a couple of years ago. I was going through caregiver burnout, because I was managing the ailing health of both of my parents that fell to dementia at exactly the same time. Wow, hours and hours of going through that experience on my podcast. I'm not going to belabor it here, but you know what I did? I sat and I watched the office. I went through the entire series the office. So this is just now becoming eerie,

Amie McNee

How incredibly synchronous. The show heals. The show heals.

Zack Arnold

Oh, my God, it's just it's the best thing ever. But I digress, by the way, if anybody's interested in learning more about the office behind the scenes, I actually have a podcast interview with one of the writer directors on the show. Shameless self promotion. You can look up Jen Cellota on my podcast list, but

Amie McNee

I'm heading straight there after this. I love that. How incredible. Yeah,

Zack Arnold

Yes. And we also talk a lot about creativity and ADHD, and it's a fascinating conversation. I'll actually make sure we put it in the notes for the for the summit interview as well. So yeah, please do. But anyway, what I want to get back to is this idea of, kind of the core thesis of today's conversation that now is the time, more than ever, for us to be creating art, for us to be putting ourselves out there, but talking about all the things that are blocking us, one of them being that we've already talked about, well, we have to wait for permission, right? Another being that we're really, really burned out, and I think another is that we're just we don't feel the motivation or the in support. Collaboration. And I want to talk a little bit more about how I believe, and I would assume that you're going to agree that if you're just making the work about yourself, if you're just making it about commerce, if you're just making it about well, this is going to get me income, or this is going to get me an award. That's very different than I'm doing this for others. I'm putting something out there that's not just for me, it's for everybody else. So I want to talk a little bit more about your origin story, because here's what I find really interesting about your book, about your social media, about your TED Talk, is that if you were to take the TED Talk as a transcript, you say a lot of great things, but behind your performance, there's an urgency, there's an anger behind all the things that you talk about. I want to know where all this comes from, because I think other people need to recognize and channel kind of that, that deep, intimate connection they have to why the art is so important. So where does all that urgency come from that you feel the need to put this out there.

Amie McNee

I have a lot of, I mean, fire, I suppose, about this topic. And, you know, I get a lot of comments on that TED talk is, don't yell at me. Why does she have to be so like, Why Does she seem angry? Like, there's a, there's a reaction to the way I speak about this. Because they do speak about it with a lot of with a lot of urgency, and there is a lot of anger there. I'm so tired of a world that, for some reason, is insistent upon the idea that creatives are here to decorate the world, that we're maybe a nice to have when we're actually we sit at the center of how we make this world be a better place. I'm so tired of people thinking that we are vain or that we want attention, or that we're like fame hungry, or the creative people were away with the fairies, that we're not realistic like we have so many narratives that have been built by the society about what a creative person is, and they are all so false, and they are all so fucking detrimental to this world becoming a better place. And I have felt so encumbered by these narratives my whole life. I felt like a waste of space. I thought I was a failed adult, I thought I was delusional, I thought I was unrealistic, I thought I was selfish, I thought I was lazy, all of these terms that society tells the artist. That's what you are. If you want to not actually just get a job in insurance, and you want to do something like, you want to work in film, or you want to write books like, What the fuck is wrong with you? You know, you're a broken adult, you're delusional, you're unrealistic. Oh, it might happen, but it's only for the very lucky few. We've been inundated by all these stories that have been trying to keep us small, and I have a very strong emotional reaction, first of all, to be told, to being told that I can't do something, but hugely to being told to be stay small, to stay quiet. And I think I just had the sort of personality that riles against the idea that we have to do what everyone else is doing, and that we have to stay as modest and quiet as possible. And I'm very grateful for that fire in me, because I think a lot of people are happy to they're not happy, but they surrender to the pressures to just stay compliant quiet, just do what you're told. And fortunately for me, being told to do something makes me explode with Rich and I genuinely think that might be genetic. It's happened since I was a child. Just don't tell me what to do. And I had such a strong calling towards being a creative person, to storytelling, to taking up space with my creations. And then when I was told no, and I was told no, so many times, every time I'm told, No, I just get another level up. And I want other artists to take that passion and to infuse it into them. I want artists to see themselves as rebels, as revolutionaries, and so that every time society says, shut the fuck up, you go, I'm leveling up again, because what we do is so I need hours and hours and hours to lay out why it's important. I'm just gonna say again, what we do is so fucking important. A world without art is literally a world is just not worth living in, like we are the reason why this is tolerable, and so we have to keep going.

Zack Arnold

Clearly, you feel a lot of passion, a lot of anger about this. And this reminded me of it was right in the beginning, maybe a month or so into the covid lockdowns in 2020 and everybody was talking about the essential workers, and I want to make this very clear, they were essential workers, the people that were in grocery stores and nurses like there's no question they were essential workers. But what was everybody doing to not go absolutely insane. They were glued to Netflix and HBO. They were watching content art that was created by artists. That's what kept us sane and not completely losing our mind as a society. Yeah, so it's not to say that the other people weren't essential, but to say, Oh, well, you know, you you frivolous Hollywood people, you writers, you artists, like we need to support those that are doing the real work right now. What was the entire planet doing when we were locked down there were freaking watching television.

Amie McNee

Art is how we survive. It's how we know ourselves, it's how we connect with each other, it's how we make sense of the world. Like it's so crucial. And I think a. Of people have an issue with that, because, you know, medicine heals people's bodies, but art, and actually it's spoken a lot about in your brain, on art. Art is like a super pharmaceutical, and I think it's why people almost disregard it, because it has so many incredible impacts on our body, on our mental health, on our community. It does so much that people are almost like it's too good to be true, like I'm just gonna fucking ignore it, like art is a super drug, and people don't want to take it seriously.

Zack Arnold

One of the things this is something I've talked about with the students that are in my year long mastermind program. So they'll, they'll get a chuckle with this. But I figure if we're being vulnerable and open, I'm just going to share this with the what potentially will be hundreds, if not 1000s of peoples that are listening to this. What has gotten me through the last six months, in the last six months has been crazy intense, like, not only did we launch the summit, I rebranded my podcast, I've rebranded my entire business. I literally, and I don't say this lightly, given present circumstances in the world, I just threw a match on my entire business and let it on fire and said, Let's rebuild everything from the ground up, because what got us here is not going to get us there. Do you know the number one self care practice that's gotten me through the last six months? It's been watching Bob Ross paint. I am obsessed with. Bob Ross puts me to bed every single night. And this is where, and I know you can relate to this too, where the combination of ADHD and OCD has served me well, I'm literally watching it serializing from episode one going forwards. If there's ever a show on the planet that you don't need to watch in order from the beginning, it's freaking Bob Ross and I'm literally episode one, episode two, episode three. But what's been so fascinating about it is watching the evolution of his creative process his first season. His first season is terrible. He's awkward. He doesn't know how to introduce himself. He's being very formal. He wore glasses, like there was glare on the camera. And I've been watching for and I don't know if you've ever watched Bob Ross or if anybody else has, but one of the things that he's most famous for one of his catchphrases is that he takes his brush and he, like, bangs the thing, and he's like, oh, you know, that's, you know, just me, you know, brushing my cares away. Or, like, he just, he has all these crazy sayings. There was none of that the first season because he was trying to find himself. So the first season of Bob Ross is him making shitty art, but giving himself the permission to say, Yeah, I'm a guy that paints on PBS. So I want to talk a little bit when we give ourselves permission to make this art, why it's okay to make shitty art. But here's the caveat. This is the part that I'm worried about. Now with artificial intelligence, everything is going to be shitty. So how do we draw the line between we give ourselves to make shitty art versus now everything's going to be shitty.

Amie McNee

My answer may surprise you. Zack, I don't think shitty art has ever been more important with the oncoming storm of AI like I think we dig deep into the crap. Because I think what's eventually going to happen is AI is going to create and then put this in inverted commas, very perfect art. It's going to be, you know exactly what you tell it to create. It will create it. We're not there yet, but we will be AI will become like that. What we're going to want from human artists is our mess. What we're going to want is to see the cracks in the vase. We're going to want to see how things didn't work out. I want to see your process. I want to see how it fucked you up. I want to know you. I want to see the humanity behind art. And so as we look at AI art, and it's coming, it's coming for a lot of other industries too, which, for some reason, no one else wants to talk about like it's coming for all of us, but people love to chat about how it's coming for art, and it is, but there's a humanity behind the art that we need to cling to. I want to understand that you had a mentee beat halfway through and threw it out, and then got it out the trash, and that's why it's all crumpled, and then there's this scrap there, because you fucked that bit up too. I want to understand who you are through your art, and I think the humanity of our art is what's going to prevail. We make we what we consume art to see ourselves. I truly believe that, and I don't think that we can see ourselves in AI art, not to the extent that we can from human art.

Zack Arnold

Yeah, I've I wrote about as soon as chat GPT came out, I had said that AI is going to kill the careers of the mediocre, those that are doing things that are highly specialized, repeatable, things that you can automate, like those things are done, and we're already seeing what I call and I'm sure that I stole this from somebody else, I just don't know who, because I consume so much very me, but the but the end, shitification of the internet, where everything is going to be mediocre, but we're now moving towards what you are saying, and I agree with this, where everything's going to feel perfect, there aren't going to be any typos, there are going to be no mistakes in the images, like it's just moving so rapidly. And what I embrace is the messiness. It's like, ooh, that has a typo, or that's not a perfect sentence structure. That's what we are going to gravitate towards, which, again, comes back to the core thesis. There's never been a better time for human art, in this age of AI, oh, my god. Relate to each other.

Amie McNee

When someone comes to me and say, What's the point of making art with with AI coming, I'm like, Oh my God. I'm like, sit the fuck down, because I'm about to, like, get incredibly in your face about this. This is the time to start making art right now, because human art is going to become like a commodity, something that's incredibly precious, because we are going to get flooded with fucking AI. And I think it could be a season. I think people are interested in it for a second, and then we're gonna get very bored of it. Then we're gonna start getting very, very hungry for real human connection again. Like the reason we consume art is to feel connected to ourselves. And we're human beings. We need a human to be a mirror. We don't need a computer to be a mirror. And so I honestly get into the arts. I, you know, a lot of times people are asking or like, what should we do now? What should I tell my kids to study? If, you know, if we can't be lawyers anymore, because AI is going to take lawyer jobs. What? Like, what should they become? They should become artists. The things we should be studying is art, because you will never rip creativity away from humanity. And you can try, and they are trying, but you cannot rob us of our creativity. And I think kids should be studying art

Zack Arnold

Here. Here, I completely and totally agree. And I think the value in it, where it's going to become even more valuable, and this is something I've talked about throughout the summit, is the idea that throughout human history, we have needed stories to make sense of our reality, like literal cave paintings. And, you know, the fire lighting the cave paintings. Like, what's never going to change is going to be our need for stories, the tools that we're using, the modes of distribution, the modes of you know, how we build audiences like, yeah, all of these things are changing rapidly, but I spend very little time focusing on all the things that are changing. At least, let me, let me put that a different way, I spend very little time worrying about the things that are changing, but I'm focusing an immense amount on them so that I can instead gear people towards focus on the things that never change. Number one, our need for stories and the fact that humans are going to need to tell those stories, our need for human connection and the value in the skill of being able to reach out to people and surround yourself with that community like these are things that are never going to change.

Amie McNee

I agree. I really, and I really believe that I just, I don't see the I'll need to connect with another human being being robbed of humanity ever. Maybe that's optimistic of me, but I don't think so.

Zack Arnold

Yeah, so the there's another couple of things that I want to dig into, really, to help people better understand what is it that's stopping me, other than the world is literally on fire and I'm glued to my phone 24/7 and I'm unemployed and there's no work like, yeah, we can check all those boxes. We know that all those things are stopping us. And I get a lot of flack for this, and I have a feeling you can relate to this, but no matter what's going on in your world right now, I guarantee you are the problem. You are the one that's stopping you from creating something. And I want to continue working through some of these barriers we already talked a little bit about. We're waiting for permission from others, this idea that we're burned out, we have all of this time, but yet we're not doing anything with it. Here are the next two that I want to dig into. And I argue that these are as close to being synonyms as possible, procrastination and perfectionism.

Amie McNee

They write one without the other. It's them.

Zack Arnold

So where do you want to start? Which one excites you more?

Amie McNee

Let's start with perfectionism, because I think most procrastination comes from some sort of perfectionism. I think if you wanted to, like, put them as a hierarchy, like, if you are asking yourself for standards that you cannot reach, you will avoid your art. Both of them are deeply rooted in fear. And I think the answer to, why am I not making art can be very simply answered by because you're fucking afraid. What we're afraid of varies for perfectionism. We're afraid of not being enough, and that is why we will not show up. Because if we are asking ourselves to hit standards that are completely impossible and that are deeply unfair, that means every time we show up to our creative practice, we disappoint ourselves, and we reaffirm the belief that we will never be enough, and we break the relationship we have with ourselves, and it is incredibly damaging. The very difficult truth is, is that if you want to be a creative person, well, you are a creative person. If you want to be a creative if we're going with Zack definition, you have to be so shit at stuff, you have to make so much mess, you have to be mediocre, and you have to be feel. You have to be okay with those experiences. I'm not saying that you won't also find absolute magic in these moments. You will you'll find a line that you've written that will just enchant you, or find a piece of music, or a little bar of music that you know really makes you happy, but you will also find so much fucking crap. And if every time you create something bad, you feel deeply unsafe, you have that fight or flight response, either you want to fight yourself or you want to literally run away, you're never going to be able to live the creative. Life that you were meant to lead. And so we need to rewrite very, very big stories that probably are rooted in your childhood, that are probably systemic, that you need to be of a certain standard, and if you're not that certain standard, then you are not allowed to participate. You are allowed to make mess. And we need to find ways for you to feel safe coming under what you want to be.

Zack Arnold

Yeah, there's a line that you had said about this that I want to dig into, that I think maybe you've already hit on some of these points, but I think it's such an important one, which is that you've been taught to the perfectionism is the ultimate humble brag. And this is dangerous. Why

Amie McNee

I'm so fucking over hearing a celeb, a celeb artist. J Lo is a big, a big like she's always wanking on about this. She goes, the reason why I'm so successful perfectionism. And you'll hear it from a lot of artists. They credit perfectionism with their success, and they are successful in spite of it, and I know that to be true, and they are miserable because of it. We constantly think, if I have really high standards for myself, that just means I'm ambitious. That means that I'm going to go somewhere. And I am an incredibly ambitious person. And I think for a long time I thought, well, I have big dreams, therefore I should have high standards. And the truth is, the bigger the dream, I truly believe this, the bigger the dream, the lower the standards you need to have. You need to just be willing to wade through this shit. So we need to see artists who are waving perfectionism around like it's some sort of thing to be proud of. We need to treat that very warily because it's a lie. And I feel very sad and sorry for the mental state that I fucking know that they're in because they are never going to be enough for themselves, and the way that they relate to themselves is very, very painful. And so you can constantly ask yourself for more and more, and I do ask myself for more and more, but I know that that way I'm going to get more is by wading through the crap. It's by writing sentences that are honest to God, dreadful. And I really I want you to listen to me as I say. This the first draft of we need your art. My partner, who's my editor, he could not read it. He handed it back and he said, This is too bad. I need you to look at it again before I read it, because I literally cannot get through it. And yeah, I was really annoyed at him and angry at him, but also as weirdly proud of myself, because I am true to my word baby, like I write shit, and I've learned to feel safe writing shit. It didn't feel great having James hand it back. I literally, I was watching him read it. He was like, his face was all Fraser set, and then just hand it back. He's like, No, I can't just fix it up. Like, I'll deal with it later. But this is it. This is the process. It's the magic, and we need to start learning how we can have a relationship with being less than we want and feeling safe.

Zack Arnold

So for me, there was a mic drop moment in here, if there wasn't for anybody else, this one to me, I've never heard it put this way before, and I'm not even sure I totally understand it yet, and I want to go deeper into it. But you said, the bigger your dreams, the lower your standards should be. I have never heard that before. How do we even unpack that?

Amie McNee

Yeah, I've never said that before. Ever that was, that was the

Zack Arnold

Amazing how this process works, because you and I are just having a shitty conversation trying to figure out how to be podcasters and creatives, and then boom, out comes this gem. What the hell does that mean?

Amie McNee

It means that if you're not open to making a load of shit, then you're not allowed to have the big dream. I'm so sorry if you, if you're asking yourself to, you know, write an incredible I'm sorry. I always go back to writing because I'm an author. But like, if I want to write a New York Times best seller, but I'm not willing to, like, write them, like, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of terrible sentences, if I'm not willing to hand in draft, a draft that just doesn't work, then I do not deserve to have that dream. If I think that I have to get it right on the first go, or if I have to have a stunning first draft, or if I have to have an idea that's just going to blow me away immediately, like I don't deserve to have the big dream. If you want to have huge dreams, you have to have low expectations for your work and you can move through the crap, and you can wade through it, and you can improve it slowly, but you need to be allowing yourself, you need to be giving yourself space for that crap. Because if you're not, then I just don't know that we're going to get brilliance from you. I don't know that you can have brilliance from high standards. I think you get brilliance from low standards.

Zack Arnold

All right, we're going to keep digging in for anybody again, not that they're just joining us, because it's not radio. They've probably been listening the whole time. But I like to tune in, yeah, if you've just tuned in to this non live on demand broadcast. But I always like to kind of, you know, bring it back to center. And it really is about the fact that the world is literally on fire. What is the point of making things right now, I'm really hoping we've hit this point home over and over, that this is absolutely necessary. There is no better time than what the hell is stopping us? Well, we're waiting for permission. We're waiting for somebody to tell us we're a director, we're a writer, we're an editor, we're a composer, right? Or it's the fact that we are just so. Burned out by the world, or that we just got it in our mind that I can't put this out there until it's perfect and well, my perfectionism is what leads to my success. Now I want to go to perfections synonym procrastination, because there's never and there are few things, if any, that are unprecedented about what's going on, but I would say the speed at which things are evolving, or, dare I say, devolving right now, it's the speed at which everything's happening at the same time, and just everything that's going on is just so exponentially fast that we can process it. We have never been more distracted. I know you have thoughts about what you call the tech Bros and how they're hijacking our mind. So I want to talk about why we're distracted, why we are procrastinating, other than perfectionism, and how we can start to overcome some of those procrastination where we say, well, tomorrow is when I'll launch the YouTube channel, or tomorrow is when I'm going to write the sub stack, or tomorrow is when I do the Instagram reel. So let's talk a little bit more about perfectionism, twin brother slash sister. Procrastination.

Amie McNee

Yes, I think first of all, I want to address the fact that there is systemic problems here, and our minds are being hijacked by institutions that want to make a lot of money of us, and that's a real problem like we've never seen such addictive and available substances as social media and as the internet and as these, these apps like they want your attention. There's a real issue here. And I think it's very easy to look at your screen time and hate yourself, but please know that, like in many ways, you are a victim. But the thing is, is that you cannot allow yourself to finish your life die. And the reason why you haven't created, you haven't composed your music, you haven't put out your film, you haven't written your books. Cannot be because of motherfucking Mark Zuckerberg. That cannot be the reason why you don't create, and it's legitimate because these companies want to hijack your brain, but we just can't let that happen. It can't be the reason why you don't do this. And so what we need to be looking at is why we're using these tools to to distract? Why are we running to social media to distract? And so my biggest question, and my first question when I listen or speak to a creative who's dealing with procrastination is, well, what are you running from? And a lot of the time we don't know. And so I say, Okay, we'll put a piece of paper and a pen next to your creative space. The minute you start to get up and you want to walk away, just write down what's happening right now, what made you run away? And there's going to be lots of reasons why you run away. And so I like to have that pen and paper there for a while, like, and I'll always have a pen and paper near by me. And like, if I'm finding myself repeatedly getting up, I need to understand why I'm repeatedly getting up. What am I walking away from because if we don't know what we're running from, it's hard to stop running, because we need to start dealing with the problem, and we need to start rewriting the stories, and we need to sit down with the fear and find out ways to calm it down, to make it less scary. Because if we can't make it less scary, but it's not our fault that we keep running.

Zack Arnold

It's my guess is you're well aware of this quote and well aware of this author. But one of the things that I quote The most often about procrastination comes from Nir Eyal, and the quote is that you can only tell if something is a distraction if you know what it's distracting you from. So the example that I often give is, I'll do this with my students. I'll say, imagine that there's a security camera up there in the corner of my office. And number one, if you watched it on time lapse, I would look like a squirrel trapped in a burlap Zack. I'm just running around the room all day. I'm never in one position. I'm at my whiteboard. I mean, you know, over here, over there. But aside from that, if you were to take a 15 minute portion of the day and you'd see me sitting on my couch over here, just like a lump of laundry, and you'd see the content on my phone I'm scrolling through Facebook reels, and you'd say, seriously, like, this is Mr. Productivity, and put your work out there. Like, What a hypocrite. But then I give the caveat. I give a little bit of context. The time of day that I'm doing this is after I've done five to six hours straight of podcast recordings, doing office hours with my students, working privately, one on one, with them, leading masterminds. My brain says we're done. That's it. No more creative thought, no more putting yourselves in front of people. No more extemporaneously coming up with ideas and stringing sentences together and making words. My brain says we're finished. So I take those 1520, sometimes 30 minutes and I just randomly scroll through Facebook reels and just being totally honest and vulnerable. The two things that I love the most are, number one, irreverent stand up comics, so all the people that should be canceled are my favorites. And number two, totally random I'm obsessed with the ASMR of chiropractic adjustments.

Amie McNee

Shut up, Zack, that's all I watch.

Zack Arnold

It's so intoxicating. But my point is that I strategically manage my energy such that that's the perfect and I say this just so ironically right now, it's the perfect decompression for me. Then once I've done that, I go back to work. But. Is, here's the difference, if I should be writing an article, if I should be recording a podcast, if I should be drafting a newsletter, and I'm doing that instead, then it's a distraction. And I think people need to really understand that not everything is a distraction, but you have to know what it's distracting you from.

Amie McNee

Exactly. I love that, and I'm very similar. I am. I have time in my day where I'm allowed to go online like we're we're allowed to consume like I want art in my eyes, you know, like I love ASMR, I love chiropractors, ASMR, I love to watch the creations online. And so I have very specific regulations around my social media use. But I use social media and I enjoy it because I have regulations around it, restrictions coming back full circle, and because I use it not to distract, but to entertain, to be, to consume, to delight. So I do think that there is a place for us to have social media. Like I often get criticized, Amy, you're telling us to get off social media, but like, you're the one that benefits so much from social media. I'm not. I'm never really big on binaries. I'm not saying we need to give it all up. I think that there are ways to live with social media and to have an abundant and happy creation practice. It's when it is our tool for avoidance that we need to start looking at it. But I think more than having an app blocker, we need to understand what we're running from. Because you can block all the apps, you'll find something find something else. You'll find something else. You know, there's, it's not a new phenomenon, procrastination. We've been procrastinating for millennia. Like humans will avoid things and artists have been procrastinating for fucking ages. Victor Hugo wrote naked so he wouldn't go outside. If you you know, we can think it's an app problem, and there are problems with these apps, but I'm telling you, like, if you're afraid of something in the creative process, you will find other ways to distract yourself.

Zack Arnold

I want to give an example for everybody that's here with one of my clients, and then I'm sure you have many stories that are similar, and you know, whatever comes to your mind, you can share. But I want to dig deeper into this idea of what are we running from. So I have a client that I've been working with privately, and she is going to hate me when I tell the story. I'm not going to give away her name, but she's gonna be I can't believe he's telling people this. Don't worry, I'm not gonna name you. But like everybody else, she's had a fairly significant string of unemployment. And she said, so I'll ask her, like, hey, what have you been up to? Well, I spent the spent the last week reorganizing and cleaning all of my closets. I said, that's interesting. Is that something that you felt you needed to do? She's like, Nope, I know it's a distraction. I'm like, Well, why do you think you're cleaning your closets? And then we started to dig a little bit deeper, and I said, Well, what? What should you be doing? If you know it's a distraction, what is it distracting you from? Well, I know I need to be sending the outreach emails. I know I need to be connecting with people. I need to build my network. I need to make sure that people know that I'm available. And then we start digging into, well, what's stopping you from sending somebody an outreach email? Well, I'm going to bother them, or I'm not good enough, or why would somebody want to help me. But then once we started overcome that the fear was still there. Even when we sent a message to literally, her idol, somebody that's unreachable, they responded to her in like 19 minutes, she still struggled to send the next message. And then we started to dig into, well, what are you running from now? And she's like, I don't really know what I want to do with my life anymore, and I'm not even sure that these are the jobs that I want. And I know that maybe there's something else for me, but I don't know what it is. So if you're cleaning your closets because you don't want to send an email, it's not just about the closets. It's not just about the email. There's almost always something underneath that.

Amie McNee

There is always something underneath it. There is and I actually think that when I have a creative come to me and say, I've got a really big problem for procrastination, I'm like, great, we've got lots to work with here, because there's always so much to see underneath it. It's whether you're willing to look and so yeah, I've had multiple experiences with myself, with lots of creatives that I've worked with. You know, I know personally for me, when I avoid. I really dislike the feeling of not knowing what to do next, and I see this in a lot of other creatives, too. So when I get up and try and leave my study when I'm working on a book, it's nearly always because I find the sensation of being unsure as to what I do next, like not having the next task, deeply uncomfortable. And so I've been learning how to sit with not knowing, which has been such a huge journey. Like not knowing is so uncomfortable to me, but like, just by being curious about why I was procrastinating, I've now gone on this whole other journey of my relationship with not knowing what to do, and that's unpacked a load of other different things. So procrastination is a really incredibly interesting box to open, and you will discover things about yourself in there. And I think I say this all the time about the creative process, like you will discover all of your lightness and all of your darkness. Like, if you really, truly pursue your creativity, you will discover so much stuff about you and the people around you. But to me, that's an incredibly beautiful gift that the creative. At does give us,

Zack Arnold

And that's where I would argue, and this could easily be a Huberman style three hour conversation just about this, but I would argue again that the reason the creativity is so important is that it helps you better understand yourself like it is one of the best forms of therapy, at least for me, is just creating. We're like, there's no better way to understand the world than to have to write words or to speak words to other people and make sense of it. I don't do this because, oh, I make a bunch of money on my podcast. I'm 10 years in, and I still haven't figured out how to make it profitable. Like the podcast itself, still a decade in, cost me money. Does it help me build an audience? Build trust? Sure, it helps me generate income in other ways, but I still haven't made money on it itself. But what was so interesting to me is I did a podcast with somebody that actually I think you were on her podcast, Anna holtman, she talks all about journaling and the creative process to work through chronic pain and work through PTSD. But when I was on her podcast, I said, Oh yeah, no, I don't journal. So journaling is just not for me. I've got a whole stack of books that have like, two pages, and then I stop either because I don't want to screw it up. I don't know what to write. What's the point? Like, all the perfectionism, right? But then she said, Okay, so that's interesting, that you said that you don't journal. How long have you had a podcast? Like, I don't know, like, eight years. Interesting. She's like, and I've been following you for a while. Like, you write a newsletter too, don't you? Yeah, huh? So you're, you're not, you're not a journaler. No, no, I'm not confirming. And all of a sudden I was like, oh, right, I realized that the process that I'm using to make sense of my world and my reality and my place in it, for me personally, it's been podcasting, it's been writing newsletters, it's been sub stack. That's how I have found my way through this entire mess because I discover so much about myself, where again, the art that I'm doing, I want to do for others, and I want to have an impact on the world, but at the same time, it's helped me be a healthier, better, more well rounded person.

Amie McNee

It's the beauty. The beautiful thing about art is that like dynamic, like duality, to it because it serves me and it serves those who I share it to, and it's so beautiful, because it gives so much to me and it gives so much to those I dare share my art with. And I love that.

Zack Arnold

So this leads me to the final place that I want to go. And if we're talking again about what are all these barriers that are stopping us from doing what we believe to be the most important act right now, no better time in history doing it the introversion. I'm glad we're talking about this. I really, I just, I don't want to put myself out there. I don't like I just don't want to connect with people. I'm scared like people are going to judge me, they're going to make fun of me. I think, especially for my audience, this one is huge, yeah, how in the world do we put ourselves out there when we're terrified to even go to the grocery store because we might have to talk to somebody?

Amie McNee

Yeah? So just to put this out there, like, I mean, deeply introverted, there's not an extroverted part of me, and I know that can be quite hard to believe, especially when you only see me doing my work where I have to talk me too. No one wants to believe us. I'm deeply introverted. I need a huge amount of alone time to recover from any time communicating with people. And I find communicating with people, you know, I don't hate it, I don't hate it, but it exhausts me, and so I find myself very naturally avoiding it. It's not how I would choose to spend most of my time. So that's my context here. Introverted, quiet and shy creators are so deeply needed, and I love you and I see you and I don't want you to change. And I think for so many of us, we've felt that in order to be a successful creative as an introverted person, I'm going to have to pretend to be extroverted. As a quiet person, I'm gonna have to learn to be loud, you know, as someone who doesn't want to put my face out there and who sucks at networking, I'm gonna have to get good at networking. And I want to suggest that we don't need to change ourselves in order to be successful. I want to suggest that your introversion is a holy and beautiful part of your creation, and I don't want you to have to sacrifice it or hide it in any way. I do think a lot of the parts of the job are going to be harder for us, but I don't believe that's going to stop us from taking up space and doing the thing that we are meant to be doing. We just have to approach it in different ways, and we have to find methods of caring for ourselves that extroverts and boss bitches don't have to So that's definitely my first thing, is you don't need to be different. And I love the way you are, and the way you are is why you are brilliant at the art that you make. So that's the first thing I really want to say. The second thing I want to say is that you don't need to be loud in order to be heard, and I think we need to figure out ways to share our art that is in alignment with us. And we don't need to scream it. We don't need to spam people with it. We don't need to do it how they're doing it. We just need to find our way of doing it, and it's always going to be uncomfortable. I don't care if you're introverted. Whatever like sharing yourself is uncomfortable because it's vulnerable, and sharing your art is vulnerable. And I don't care how you identify, it's always going to be vulnerable. But I think there are ways to do it as introverts that are going to serve us better and that are still just as potent and powerful as the way extroverts do it. So I think learning how you want to share and want to take up space, like you have to take up space, and you can't get around that you do, but how you do it is up to you, and you get to choose the way in which the world perceives you. And I want you to stop copying the extroverts and start figuring out how you want to do this.

Zack Arnold

I just I'm going to hit this point home even harder, where you say that it's not about introverts have to become extroverts. It's not we have to change. And I am by far the most introverted person I know. It sounds like maybe you and I could compete for that title. People say that's not possible. I've had multiple people that whenever I, you know, go out to a networking event, or if I speak on a panel, they're like, What are you talking about? You're not introverted at all, and I say, ask my wife, ask anybody in my family, ask anybody close to me. And I had this really interesting experience where I was leading in person creative retreat from my year long mastermind students. And it was the first time a few of them had met me in person. They had known me for years, had worked with me, coaching, doing these classes, but they saw this moment of me before I had to be on and afterwards, he's like, Wow, you really are introverted. Like, I've never seen that side of you. I'm like, You have no idea what it takes even to be on this podcast. There's nobody around me, but there's a different level of energy and focus, and there's no amount of this that's inauthentic. But we all wear a different hat, different idea. I'm sure it's the same for you, where the second I hit the stop button, I'm out so exhausting. But it doesn't mean that I'm becoming an extrovert. What I would argue for those that are listening is that the skill of being able to put yourself out there and harness this energy and be around people that's just developing the skill of being more courageous and embracing the fact you're introverted, but what you also have to develop are the coping mechanisms to deal with the repercussions, which I would guess ties back to you're on a book tour. That book tour was not just virtual podcasts. That was you literally being in airports day after day, being in bookstores day after day that would have killed me. So I completely understand why you watch the office for a month, and I'm just, I think it's a miracle that you're even in the position to be able to have a coherent conversation with me today.

Amie McNee

Thank you. Yeah, let's maybe we could look at my book tours away an introvert handed something like that because I handled it very differently than an extrovert would have. I also have really high sleep needs, and I have very low energy as person in general. And I used to think, before I had any real success as an author, and I used to watch other authors do their lives, I thought I could never do that, because I just don't have the capacity energetically to do something like that. So my book tour was very different to what other people's book tours looked like. I had huge amounts of time in each place. So I paid, you know, I paid more money to take care of myself, so that I had huge buffers on either side. I also have my partner works for me. I was, like, I was a child, like, That's how much he took care of me. I didn't think for one minute about food or drink or any transport. Like, James did everything for me. He just guided me around like a like I was a toddler. I'm surprised he didn't put me in a fucking pram. I was able to be on in the events, because then I would immediately switch off. Another thing that really helps me is to be very, very vocal about my needs with other people. So I'm leaving now because I'm done and I can't fucking talk to another one of you, like I would say that straight to someone's face, like I'm become now known for a very quick exit and if I meet new people in my life. The other day, I went over to an artist house. Was a new friendship at like, 830 I said, it's about to be my bedtime. I have to leave. And it was, like, not an appropriate time to leave, but like, just being very articulate about what my needs are as someone who needs more sleep, as someone who can't socialize for very long, has been incredibly liberating, because I think for a very long time I was very ashamed of how deeply introverted I am, and I think there's still shame for me to work through. You know, I was seen as a bad friend, I was seen as not a lot of fun. I was seen as a party pooper. And so those wounds are with me, and I think they're with a lot of introverts, right? Like we're told that we're like, just a bit odd, or, you know, we're ruining the fun. But by claiming my introversion and telling people like this is really hard for me to be in this space right now, and I really love you, but I'm struggling to say it out loud, has been very healing for me. And so I don't want us to feel ashamed of these parts of ourselves. I want us to talk about them publicly. I want us to be proud about them, and I want us to articulate the needs that we require because we are this way.

Zack Arnold

I always love to leave people with something to do, one of the My biggest kind of hesitations fears. Or just dislikes about General panel events, conferences, and otherwise, there's just this giant fire hose of information. And I always want to make sure that I can synthesize ideas and have people walk away with something practical. And I feel like we've already left a lot of practical things for people, little breadcrumbs here and there, but there's one very specifically. And I realized that you literally wrote the book on this, and we could talk about it for hours, but in just, you know, two three minutes, talk a little bit more about how somebody, in very small steps, can start to build a form of creative practice right now, using something that you call the two week reset.

Amie McNee

Yep, so we have the two week reset. In my book, we need your art. And the idea is it's like a very, very low friction way to either come back to your creative practice or to start from scratch, because you've never done it before. I know that for so many of us, especially when we're navigating unemployment, or we just don't have a lot of work, when we have those big droughts, or we just had four weeks watching the office coming back to the creative process, it's like, Oh my fucking God. Like, that project is so big, like, I don't even know how to set my toe in. Like, I cannot, and so we procrastinate, we put it off. So the two week reset is there to just ease your way back in. And the idea is to do as fucking little as possible all the time. And so I have bare minimums, like I just will do the tiniest amount of creative work as regularly as I can. And that's literally how I write my books. So my bare minimum will be 300 words a weekday, and then I also have a bare maximum. So I won't write more than 1000 words. Sometimes it's even less than that. I won't write more than 750 words. They change depending on how much energy I have. Sometimes my bare minimum is 100 words. Sometimes it's 50. I just have to show up. I just have to say I'm an artist, therefore I make art, and I do it with 50 words. And so I'm asking you to put your ego to the side, to put this Go big or go home ethos to the side, and recognize that you're a creator. So you create, whether that means you create for two minutes a day or whether it means you create for 20 minutes a day. I don't care. I just need you to start showing up for the art that is desperately calling your name. And so the two week reset, and I go into it in depth in the book, but the idea is baby motherfucking Baby steps. Baby steps lead to mastery. Baby steps are a sign of the deeply ambitious, and this is the route that we need to take.

Zack Arnold

This reminds me of a meme that I've seen going around a lot in different graph forms and post forms, but this one really hit hard for me. It's this idea that we are told we need to put in our all every single day. We need to give it 100% but, and this was really an important mindset shift for me, if all you have is 5% that day, and you give 5% you've just given 100% right? Yeah, like, and I've talked about this with multiple clients that have been through awful, horrific things in their lives. You know, whether it's literally losing their homes, losing a child, whatever it might be, and if somebody says, The most I can do today is I can take a shower, awesome. You did everything that was humanly possible today, and you took a shower and you went back to bed. That is putting in 100% that is not why putting 1% because I should be that word should really pisses me off. I should be doing this. If all you can do, the most that you can do is get out of bed and make your bed and take a shower and get back into your bed fucking Hey, you just had an amazing day. Like we have to give ourselves permission to be okay with that.

Amie McNee

I completely agree. There's some the art. Big part of the artist's role is to divorce ourselves from hustle narratives and productivity narratives. Because I think we think that if we really engage in the productivity myths of this world, we're going to be the most incredible artists. But what will actually happen is you will break yourself and so unfortunately, just along with like bearing our whole souls to the world while making incredibly, incredible art. Another part of our job is to deconstruct these narratives of shoulds and to recognize that our worth is not attached to how much we produce.

Zack Arnold

Having said that, I want to be respectful of your time, I feel like I've barely gotten started. I've covered maybe 10% of what I have in my prep document, but I have a tendency to be overly thorough. But here's where I want to end. Everybody always says, and this is kind of a recurring joke that I have, where I'm like, I will go and pontificate. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. Everybody wants to give a TED talk, right? I think there should be an entirely new business industry adjacent to TED talks that are called soap boxes. I'm going to give my soapbox, right? Love it. Talk about the value in complaining. So here's where I want to end. Is there anything that we haven't shit on yet that you want to shit on before we're done?

Amie McNee

Oh, my God, what a great question. No one's ever asked me that question, and I that's dead set, one of my favorite questions, is there anything else I want to complain about? Oh, there's, like, a few loads of different things that are coming to my mind right now. This one's actually a really big one, and I'm worried that I'm going to bring a huge topic and then cut it off, and it's just going to be like, but because creatives, I say this really gently, because creatives have been called. Truly and systemically, told that they're worthless and victimized by the system, and told that, you know, you're not going to deserve any money. Like the systems and the gatekeeping and the industries have treated us like shit, and they have. They've treated us like shit, but there is a tendency for creatives to be treated like shit and then sit in a victim mindset forever because you've been mistreated, and therefore you're done. And I'm seeing a lot of creatives, especially with AI, and the conversation of AI, it's another blow to the fucking poor artists soul, and they say, I'm done again, like I'm the victim again. And it's I need artists to be able to hold the fact that really fucked shit has happened to us, and you are still incredibly powerful and needed. Because I'm seeing and I'm getting very annoyed by a lot of artists who are just waving the white flag, and they've fucking given up. And again, I have so much compassion because so many bad things have happened to people in the creative arts. And I want to be able to hold space. I want to complain about it, and I want to complain about it with you. I do it with you. I do, but I also want you to remember that you have a huge amount of power to still wield. There are so many things that we can still do. There are so many ways that we can make impact, make money, make connection right now. And so I want to honor our victimhood, and also honor the fact that we are still so fucking powerful.

Zack Arnold

I don't know if it's possible. If I could have written this any better, if I had scripted it for months to end our conversation right there on the spot, you absolutely nailed it like mic drop and then some reverberating throughout the room, throughout the virtual halls all over the world. So having said that, immensely grateful for your time, for your insights, and I want to make sure this is what I call the shameless self promotion portion of the program. I'm really hoping that everybody says, Man, where do I find Amy? Where do I find her book? And I want to do my small parts to help your message ricochet around the world. As you said, where do we send people?

Amie McNee

So my new book baby is called We Need Your Art. You'll be able to find her wherever you buy books. If you buy it from an indie bookstore, I love you just a tiny bit more. But literally, we need your art. You can you can buy it anywhere. And then if you want to follow me and my journey, you can go to Instagram, if you're still on the app and go to inspired to write. You can also find me on sub stack at Amy McNee, and my name is spelled vaguely annoyingly. It's a m, i e, McNee, and I'm doing essays there, and kind of expanding a lot of these topics that we've spoken about today, and ranting and raving in a long form essay. So those are probably the three main things, and the three main ways you can connect with me. At the moment,

Zack Arnold

I'll make sure that everybody has those links, and I will be the first to admit that in three of my follow up messages to you, I spelled your name. Am y, and right before I hit send, I'm like, damn it. So I do not, do not

Amie McNee

stress. Do you know the truth is that I was born Amy, but I wanted to be different.

Zack Arnold

Oh, my God. Okay, this is where it gets crazy. I know we're gonna wrap this up. My and I can't believe I'm saying this publicly. My first name is not Zack. My middle name is not Zack. My middle name is Zachary. Whole long story as to why my parents decided to call me by my middle name, but this is where, just like we're talking like fraternal twins separated at birth, growing up like literally from birth, I was called Zack, but my name was spelled as Z-A-C-H, and I said, Nope, I'm changing. I drove my parents insane. And here's the reason why I was incessantly bullied, because everybody called me Zach. I'm like, fuck this. I'm changing it. It is Z-A-C-K, and my parents are like, No, it's not. I'm like, watch me. And my name has been Z-A-C-K since I was like, seven years old. And it just drives me insane when people miss it, and they do Z-A-C-H, but as soon as you mentioned that your name is actually spelled differently, I'm like, this is there's a reason that the universe brought us magic. Yeah, that's so much. Yeah, this is crazy. So anyway, just wanted to wrap up and just say this has been a tremendous pleasure, and I really hope that we have inspired and motivated everybody

Amie McNee

here today. So thank you. Thank you. Zack, very grateful for.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai