Did you ever stare at a blank page, an empty canvas, or maybe a big old pallet sitting in your backyard thinking, well, I'm just not the creative type? Yeah, well, let's blow that myth to pieces. In this episode, we're going to talk about how to unlock your inner artist, even if your last masterpiece was a macaroni collage in grade school. From daily habits to AI tools like ChatGPT, we've got simple, fun ways to get your creativity flowing again. I'm Joe and my woodworking artist over there, Kurt. We are dudes in progress. Hey, Kirk. What's going on, dude?
Hey, Joe.
Well, I like the subject of today's. Today's episode. And the reason I like it is this was really prompted through a few conversations with you and me, Kurt, about. About what is an artist and what tools can an artist use and still call themselves an artist? And that was mainly surrounded around Chat GPT and what you can create with ChatGPT. And we're going to talk a little bit about that. But I thought it was also a good idea to think about creativity in general. Think about what is an artist and the myth of the non creative person. Maybe talk about some practical strategies to help us ignite creativity. And then we're going to wrap up with talking about AI and ChatGPT and some of the other tools that we can help with our creativity. And maybe you and I will continue our discussion about does using AI make you more or less of an artist?
So you just cannot let it go.
I'm like a dog with a bone dude right now. I am. We have talked about this. I'm telling you all. If we look at all the time that Kurt and I have talked about this subject, specifically the subject of whether or not using AR AI makes you an artist. So, you know, what do you do? Right? Here we are again.
I poked the bear. Here we go again.
Yeah, when you poke the bear, somehow we have to make a whole podcast episode out of it. All right.
I love this topic, though. And I think I started, I go back to probably kindergarten. I learned I have no artistic ability in terms of finger painting, I guess, or whatever we were doing and watching other kids in school who could really draw. I had a neighbor who was an incredible artist, did a lot of cartooning kind of things, mostly during class, doodling on a pad. And I was always amazed by that skill. Or I love music. I love listening to music. But I struggled even in going to music class and the. The teacher, we never got along and I could never seem to learn to play an instrument. Joe. So those two areas very classically thought of as artistic pursuits that I would say I have failed in.
I have a friend of mine who, in first and second grade, maybe kindergarten, let's call it first grade, when everybody was still making stick figures, right? Maybe. Maybe stick figures with a house, right? He was. While everybody was making stick figures, he was drawing people with hands and fingers and fingernails and creases on their knuckles and things like that. I'm like, my gosh, look at this. And he's always been a really creative person, an artist in the traditional sense. Great illustrator, really good painter, Just genuinely a. A real artist. And he's been that way, naturally his whole life. And I think everybody is at some level a creative and has their own artistic ability. But somewhere around 12 years old, I think a lot of us, Kurt, were told by a teacher, a friend, a sister or brother, maybe our own, our own inner critic, that we weren't creative. Just what, just what you went through, okay. That you, you realized at a younger age, or you thought at a younger age that you're not an artist, or you're not very creative because of input. Maybe you didn't, you weren't creative in, in the traditional sense, or you were a slow starter, or maybe the ideas didn't come to you right away or whatever it might be. Maybe we couldn't draw a horse, right? And it ended up looking like a potato or something like that.
But pretty much it.
But maybe, maybe we were kind of a class clown and we cracked too many jokes in class and did disruptive things, and we were told that we're not taking things seriously, but little did we know that little joke that we cracked in class, or that maybe a little disruptive outburst, whatever it might have been, was a form of art. Right. But somehow we got labeled as non creative. Or he's just art's not for him or art's not for her. And that sticks with us.
Love this topic. And with so many different ways to express creativity, you forget about those. We come from the creator, the creator of creating book right now about miracles and creation and the things in our natural world. And just an amazing amount of. There's no end to the creativeness. Yeah. So we're extensions of that. And there's so many ways to be creative. So I'm really interested to hear where you're going to go on this topic. Joe.
Where we're going to go is we're going to just let the creativity flow and see what happens with this Conversation. We have a general outline like I typically do, but rarely do we stick completely to the outline. But when you think about the non creative person or somebody who was labeled not creative or they don't think they're artists, I think that's a bunch of junk, man. I think it's complete nonsense. I really do. Creativity or being an artist or artistic ability isn't reserved just for people who can paint or write poetry or draw or write music, whatever it might be. It's about making something. It's about creating. It's about making anything. A new recipe. A great dad joke is being creative. Listen, the. I gotta. I got a pal of mine who takes wood pallets and creates amazing desks and useful, practical furniture and. And that's a creative. That's a creative endeavor. It's something to be really be proud of. And that person is you, Kurt. Right? We've talked about that. When you call yourself a. Not when you, when you say you're not creative and you look behind you and I see. I can see four or five things. Maybe I can't quite see the desk, but I know it's there that you made yourself with your own hands almost out of nowhere. Just an idea and maybe a little lesson here and there from YouTube. That's creative, man.
Oh, I don't disagree with you.
That's creative.
Like I said, I've come to a different place in analyzing my own creativity. But that's a perfect example. And when people say they're not creative, one thing everyone can do, and even people who have and are really you, anyone consider as an artist or creative person, all of them practice it over and over and over again. I actually learned that too. When my son Harry was wanting to get into the creative place, he wanted to go to art school and he had to do a portfolio. And I can remember some of the. I remember taking him to some special training kinds of things when he was graduating from high school and trying to get into college kind of things. But they all said the same thing. They were talking about drawing a circle. People that are artists spend hours and hours learning how to draw a circle and those kinds of things. And that kind of struck me, right? Because I just saw people doing it and expected, hey, they just had that natural talent. But the truth of it is they may have some of that natural talent that inspires them, but they work at it or over and over again. And you. We've talked about this over again about Jerry Seinfeld. Write a joke every single day.
Writes a joke every Single day. There's a really good book by. Oh, gosh, I forgot his name. It's called the War of Art.
Right.
Stephen Pressfield is his name. The War of Art. Really good book. And it talks about leaving yourself open to the museum, but the muse doesn't arrive. The muse is that. Is that mythical or whatever, that spirit that comes on you, that inspiration that comes on you, we can call it. He thinks. He really. Steven Pressfield thinks it's an. It's an actual entity that comes upon you. And if. If you're from the Christian faith, you might understand what that entity is. But it's a. It's the idea that that doesn't arrive until you start, until you do something, until you move forward, and then the creativity ignites. And Austin Kleon wrote a book called Real Artists Steel. Let's not. Let's not discount inspiration.
Sure.
Let's not discount, you know, looking at other people's work and. And getting inspiration from other people's work. But you gotta. You gotta. You got to work at it every single day, if not every single day at some level of consistency. You're right, man. And being creative doesn't necessarily mean you're selling work at a gallery either, or you've written a hit song. It could. You're not going to get there until you practice. But if it comes from your brain, for sure it counts, man. Period.
You're an artist. You use my desk as an example, which it is a great example. I use you YouTube. Looking at different designs, I don't think I've ever found a design that matched exactly what I wanted to do. So I saw a table. Someone was building an external outdoor table using the herringbone pattern. And I liked that. But I couldn't find anyone who did a desk like that, really. And I wanted a corner desk. So I really. There was a couple things. And then the way the legs were done, how is it going to stand up? I think those three things went into the design from three different places. Let's say maybe there was more. But I took three ideas and combined them into what ended up being my corner desk in the herringbone design.
It truly is an artistic endeavor and we can't discount that. And if you can be creative in one area, you can be creative in other areas. Once you realize that you are creative, you are an artist.
You think of the bands of my youth and in the 60s and 70s, they were all trying different things. We were just talking before we hit record about Jethro Tull. Matter of fact, he didn't know how to play the flute. I think I heard somewhere. But he had a lot of classical background and he added the flute to rock and roll. Hard rock and roll music. Or Electric Light Orchestra bringing in cellos and violins into rock music and really taking his love for Beatles inspired by the Beatles. But bringing in. And even the Beatles did that. Right. With Jordan.
Absolutely.
Orchestra into and created this amazing classic. So they mixed and matched probably in the 70s. They really. They all had. That was like a thing. Let's bring. Let's try something else and bring this into. Into our rock music. That's great bands opera from Queen.
Yeah. I mean look at, look at Bohemian Rhapsody.
Oh yeah. Rejected by the record company.
Right, Right. And arguably their greatest song. Certainly their. What Most well known song.
The best album too. That many of the. I watch a lot of YouTube shows about ranking albums. Yeah. People who are love Queen would say that album that that song is on was their most creative and best album.
No doubt. It's funny that you bring up ELO Electric Light Orchestra. Just as a little side note. I just learned this year at 50 something years old, 2025, that the song Mr. Blue sky was not a Beatles song. It's by Electric Light Orchestra.
Wow. Joe.
I just learned that this year for all these years, I. I've heard that song thousands of times. And how I missed the credit somewhere or the DJ saying who it was or anything like that, I don't know. But if somebody would have in 2024, if somebody would have bet me a thousand dollars who does Mr. Blue Sky, I would have said the Beatles. And it's interesting. So I looked it up, I looked into it and it was inspired by the Beatles. It was a tribute to the Beatles. And if you hear the song Mr. Blue sky, it's a Beatles song.
I'm going to check that out. I never thought it that way because I saw them on tour for that album and saw them play that song, you know.
Yeah.
The Real Deal. So I, I kind of knew it, Joe.
Yeah. I don't know how I missed it. But this year I was looking through a list and it said Mr. Blue Sky, Electric Light Orchestra. And I'm like, what? This is wrong. That's the Beatles. And it sounds like the Beatles.
Anyway, I do the lyrics. Now that the lyrics are on your phone when you're playing songs, it's kind of embarrassing to read the lyrics now and know what they were actually saying all that time.
Yep. Yep. And some. Some you still don't know. Enagada, the Vita. Right. Which started off as in the Garden of Eden. And of course, the. The classic one is the one by man for Man's Earth Band, written by Bruce Springsteen. Blinded by the Light.
Yeah.
Anyway, back. We digress. Back, back to the subject. We are much more creative than we give ourselves credit for. We may not be creative in the. In the traditional sense, but I would argue even if you try some of the traditional labels of creativity, painting and drawing, if you practice, you will get better. And you. That that muse will show up, that that artistic spark will show up and you will become creative in most anything that you do. But let's talk about some practical strategies to ignite creativity and what, what we can do to be more creative or, or more of an artist. If you want to say, let's first buy into the idea that you could be creative, you might be an artist. Okay, let's just start there. Maybe the engine's cold, right? And your tank is empty, but you got to start it up. You got to start up that engine. You got to start something. And it may sound like a little bit of work, but small steps, what do they say? Small hinges swing big doors. So small steps is what it takes. But consistency is most important. But there are some practical things that you can do to unlock creativity or ignite creativity if you do it purposefully. Let's try to break this down and the practical stuff that we can do right now. Do you have any practical things that you've recognized, Kurt, that you do to create a creative burst? I guess you could say.
I think you were alluding to this already. You got to be open to it that you can do it. You've gotta have start with an open mind that you are. You can be creative, you can do these things. And like you said, more you practice, the better you get at it. You gotta flex that muscle like every everything else. You gotta start from that mindset. You gotta have the mindset. I'm thinking of Rick Rubin. I gotta read that book. We talked about Rick Rubin's book on creativity. He's fascinating. Watch him on YouTube and talking about his book.
Yeah, I'm definitely going to put that on our list. Rick Rubin, because we have talked about it a lot. Why have I not picked up that book? I don't know.
I mean, if you think I had a fear because I never built anything really. I never really had tried with my hands. It goes back to being criticized as a kid trying to do things and people saying, others that I care about saying, you know, you're not Very good at that. And just to have no fear about it and just go into doing it. I mean, that project I did with my bathroom, so proud of that and learning tools and like you said, little by little, I mean, oh, my gosh. I asked my dad, how did you build the house? Because I have YouTube. I fear of trying to build a house. How in the heck did you do that? Well, come to find out, he told me he worked with masons as a kid, and they did a lot of house building with carpenters and all that thing. So he learned a lot as a kid doing things so he didn't have that fear going into it.
Right.
You just gotta, like, be ready. You know what? You gotta be ready for criticism.
That's a good point.
Yeah.
Surround yourself with people who will support you in your creative endeavors. Except appropriate criticism. Right. I mean, if you. If you have engaged a mentor and they. They try to teach you a new technique or they're a little critical of something that you've done, engage that and accept that and take it for what it's worth. But people who just want to. Who just want to be silly and not support you in new endeavors, they're probably not. They're probably not worth the. Worth the time.
I have friends like you and Clay and with lots of experience, and Clay, of course, has been in the building trades. And I had to humble myself in front of two other people. One is a good friend of ours who does a lot of home maintenance work, and another one who is in the trades. And I would have to say, listen, I'm sorry, I know this probably is really a simple, stupid question, but could you give. And they were all always good to me.
Heck, yeah.
You know what I mean? You get stuck and. And you just like, hey, I'm really smart in other things. If I could help you there, then I will. But I feel really bad, but I just don't know the answer to this.
Engage people who are good at what you want to be good at as long as they're trusted people. Right. I have a couple things that I. As I think about what. What unleashes my creative process. And I'm going to talk about three things in this segment, and then we'll talk about the. The big one in the last. In the last segment here. But I do three things. I take advantage of relaxed moments. You know what I mean by that? You're. When you're taking a walk or taking.
A shower or watching TV or inspiration comes, that's your subconscious.
Right. And just let that stuff come out. But recognize when you have a good idea and prepare, be prepared to record it somehow. Our buddy Clay, who we mentioned a lot here, calls them shooting stars. And he, he records, he has hundreds of them on his phone that he has recorded. And I, I aspire to that, but I'm not there yet. But I certainly want to take advantage of those relaxed moments when you're not quite thinking about being creative. But a good idea may come to you, or an idea, it doesn't have to be good yet, doesn't have to be brilliant. It just could be an idea. Let your brain wander in those relaxed moments. Taking a walk is really good for this. If you let your mind wander and you're not distracted by music or a podcast other than this one, of course. Let those relaxed moments speak to you.
Oh, for sure. And you can't do this when you're exhausted. When I was learning computer coding and troubleshooting technical issues, I can remember years ago, I learned somewhere along the line, five o' clock in the afternoon is not the place to start troubleshooting and fixing things.
Right.
And I could be working on something. Let's say I started work all afternoon. I am just. I've come to an impasse. I'm stuck. Isn't it funny? In the shower the next morning, inspiration comes. What about this? And like, why didn't I think about that? Where did that come from? And let's go try that. I can't wait to get back to my desk and try that out. And sure enough, I got it figured out in the first half hour of the morning. That has happened to me so many times.
Yep.
Or it's like you said, bouncing an idea. We have got lots of. I work with a lot of great, smart people. You know, when you get stuck on something, hey, Asking for a little inspiration from somebody else, like, oh, wow, I didn't think of that. Let's go try that.
Absolutely.
To pay attention to creativity. Yeah.
Wherever inspiration finds you, pay attention and take advantage of those of those moments. Also, we talked about this earlier, and this isn't exactly. I'm going to kind of put together two separate thoughts here, but how about keeping like a dumb idea notebook or write. Write ideas in your journal. Some kind of daily discipline of just writing down ideas, writing down thoughts on that spark your creativity. There's a podcaster, author, his name's James Altucher. I don't know if you've ever heard of him or not.
I've listened to his podcast.
Yeah, yeah. He has a. He has A daily discipline. To this day he sits down and writes 10 business ideas every single day. 10 new business. He says most of them are terrible, but he has the discipline of writing 10 a day every single day. So do something every day. Write down weird thoughts, half baked ideas, dreams. You might, you might have come across weird, weird thoughts that meld two ideas together. But do it every day. Just get into a discipline. And this is something I don't do, but I want to do, I'll be honest with you. But get into a discipline of writing stuff down no matter how weird it is or how stupid you think it is. Just a dumb idea notebook. Start with dumb idea so that way you're the. The bar is low, the expectations are low. This is my dumb idea notebook.
Related to this is, and I've loved this, I did a course, I helped teach a course that we had on quality management and it was about brainstorming. And there's very specific rules in brainstorming. If you follow the proper rules. And one of them is everyone gets in a circle and say you have 10 people and everyone comes up with an idea. You're trying to solve a problem and whatever it is and you can't criticize that person. Everyone else has to be silent and they keep putting ideas out there and you go around the room until all the ideas are out and you put em up on the paper, put em up on the wall post its whatever you do. And you know what? Everyone feeds off that. So that's one thing. I've always loved that. But just to have fun with that. You know what? I would love to be and you could love or hate this show, but South Park, I would love to be in the creative room when those guys are coming up with south park ideas. Because the reason I say that is because they use current events. I don't watch the show on a regular basis but every time I see something it's like, can you imagine? Someone comes up, hey, I got this. You know, I don't gotta get into the ideas that they do because they're, they are crazy sometimes, but funny. And you know that someone came up with that idea and they just fed off it in that creative space.
Right. I've never, I've never watched south park but I, Everything I hear is, is, it's hilarious. Not necessarily for the faint of heart.
That's right.
But it. Nothing is sacred. Nothing is sacred.
That's right. There is no, no filter. Right.
So take inspiration where you can take it. I really suggest creating a dumb idea notebook or Some kind of journal that you keep and just write stupid stuff and stupid ideas. And the reason I say stupid ideas are dumb ideas. And I don't do this, but it's something I'm going to start and I'll give you a full report as we move along. It lowers the threshold. I never like starting a meeting with, okay, I need. We need 10 great ideas to increase profits by 25% next year. Well, okay, let's just throw crap up on a board and see what happens. So create a dumb idea notebook. I think that's a good. I think that's a good thing. And I'm going to do that. I'm going to get an. I'm going to get a journal today and just call it dumb ideas and just write crap in it. What do you think?
I think a lot of dumb ideas. Nobody knows. That's the thing about creativity. And Rick Rubin talked about this. And you know all these artists that put stuff out there that they thought was crap, and guess what? It was the B side of that record, not the song they had on the hit side.
Right.
Or how many artists have gone into, whether it's an author or a musical artist and played or did or read. Someone read their stuff and was rejected. I mean, they thought it was a dumb idea. But why did the public connect with that and it become a major hit book or song or album? That's fascinating to me. I love Paul McCartney's explanation of the song Yesterday. One of the most covered songs ever probably is the most covered song. He dreamed it. He dreamed the melody and he got up with John Lennon. I love their creativity and their back and forth. John Paul, but he played it for George Harrison and just. He goes. Because the thing that they used to do is they had a lot of music, musical background and all these old tunes. Sometimes they weren't. Ringo was famous for this. Ringo would come up with a song and they go, ringo, that's. You know you're copying, right, Right. Oh, really? Okay. So they had that in their history and. And they're playing the song yesterday to, to the Beatles and they're like, no, that's brilliant. What is that? Oh, I just dreamed it last.
So Tom Petty, it's interesting. Tom Petty has a song. Has a song. Don't back down. Yeah, I won't back down. Okay. I won't back down. I love the song too. Another artist has a song, Sam Smith has a song called Stay With Me. And actually, Tom Petty sued Sam Smith because if you slow down, I won't back Down. It's the exact same melody as Stay With Me and. But Tom Petty had a really cool thing to say about it. He says it was, you know, me getting credit for this song is right. But I'm not upset. This happens all the time. We grew up with music. You know, we're around music all the time. This is bound to happen. He didn't think that Sam Smith was necessarily malicious about it or did it on purpose. It just. He was exposed to a melody, probably sitting on a subway somewhere, and it implanted itself in his. In his head, and there we go. So, yeah, inspiration can come from everywhere, and let's take advantage of that inspiration. But the most important thing about igniting your creativity is to start, is to do something. And that. That subject has been intertwined through many conversations we had, including this conversation. But you got to start with something. And I just read a book by Greg McGowan called Effortless, and I may have talked about it here before. I think it's my second time through it. He also wrote Essentialism, which is probably his more popular book. But Effortless is really good too. He says, start with rubbish. Just start with rubbish. Start with something that is not your best work, but it's in the direction you want to head. And intentionally start with rubbish. And you can do this on purpose. I mean, you can. You can try drawing with your non dominant hand, right? Try to make a poem that doesn't rhyme or something like that. But start. Start poorly. Just start in the direction that you want to go. That's the most important thing. Because it's all going to be garbage at first. And until you improve, until you do it often, until you're consistent and you keep a dumb idea notebook and you take advantage of relaxed moments and you do all that stuff, but you can do all that stuff, but you gotta start. You gotta put paint on the canvas, you gotta put words on the page. You've gotta. You've gotta defeat that blank page.
Oh, absolutely. I mean, we can't talk about this topic again without saying Stephen King, who's. If you want to be a writer, just write. Just start writing. It could be crap. You can throw it away.
Right every day. And he does. All right, Kurt, let's talk about leveraging AI and leveraging tools like ChatGPT and the other AI programs that we have. You can't watch the news or be involved in the creative space at all without hearing about AI and ChatGPT. And what are the other ones? What's the Google one and the Microsoft one? I can't remember.
Genie is from Genie. Yeah, I was messing around with it a little bit this week, matter of.
Fact, all really good tools. Here's what I love about using AI, and this is how I use AI for the creative process. Among other things, it helps me defeat the blank page. If I got a brain freeze and I'm not, I'm just not there, I'll throw an idea into Chat GPT and I'll say, help me expand on this idea or give me 10 ideas to help me talk about a creative podcast. All right, Anything like that. You can use Chat GPT just to defeat the blank page. You know, something like, hey, Chat GPT, give me five opening lines for a bunch of book about. About a retired plumber who wants to become a CIA agent. Okay. It'll. It'll help you with that. It'll. It'll defeat that blank page for you and give you. And give you ideas. There's nothing wrong with using AI as a tool, as a spark. You and I and Clay, last weekend or the weekend before, we wrote a whole song using AI about Clay Lamb, and it was interesting. So that's how I use AI just to defeat the blank page. But I don't want to discount the idea. And this is kind of where we, where we. We chat a little bit and we debate a little bit about this. I don't want to discount the idea that AI is an artistic tool. If you use a paintbrush, nobody says the brush made the painting. Right? The artist made the painting. If you give AI a great prompt, sift through its suggestions, massage it a little bit, tweak it, make it your own, isn't that still creativity? Isn't that still you? Isn't that still being an artist at some level, maybe not the traditional level? Even if you create an image or a picture, something that looks like a painting or something that looks like a drawing, but you used AI, Isn't that still being an artist?
Yeah, I mean, it's a fantastic debate that we're all going through right now because this is still in its infancy, but it's. The genie's out of the bottle, right? There's no going back. And all the benefits that we can get there from repetitive tasks, creating blog posts and. Oh, there's, there's. It's incredible. I'm trying to study it as much as I can. It's a thing that I am trying to use in my daily work and in my side hustle pursuits to its fullest. Yeah. The song piece to me, as you're talking about. This is the part I struggle with because we wrote a song with clay and it including the music, which is phenomenal. And going back to my example of the Beatles, I don't even know where that tune came from. I don't know. And I did one for myself, Joe, for my podcast. I could play for you guys maybe tomorrow. And where is that? I don't even know where that tune came from. Is it my own? Is how unique is it? I don't really know. So I struggle with, you know, I don't want to get sued by somebody saying I took.
Right.
You know, something that they, they created. So that's where it gets a little gray for me.
Me too. And I'm not going to disagree with you there, Kurt. It does get gray. Like what we did with the song. I wouldn't necessarily call that art because all we did is we told. We just gave three ideas to ChatGPT, basically. Three not even ideas, three instructions. Number one, explore Clay Lamb and find out everything you can about Clay Lamb. And number two, create a rock song or a folk song or something like that. Create a song in the. What did we use? We said create a song in the, in the style of John Denver is what we did. Yeah, create a song in the style of John Denver and write the music for it. And that. That's, those are the only instructions we gave. And then you uploaded it to some website and it took all that and created the song. We did very little for that. That whole process took maybe total 10 minutes. So I wouldn't say that that was necessarily us being an artist, but if we took the time to say, no, we want it to sound like this. We don't want it to sound like that. Use these words instead of these words. Or what do you think about using this theme there or that theme there or whatever it might be. Then you start getting into where you have real human input, you have real creative input into the process. You know, if the, so if, if somebody takes a can, two cans of paint, a blue can and a red can and just splashes on a canvas, are they an artist? Some might say yeah, you know, yeah, but I, I, I, I struggle with that in the same spirit. I struggle with. You have to have some kind of significant human input to, to call what you've created with AI art and to call yourself an artist when you've created it with AI. But maybe that's just me.
Yeah, it's a fantastic debate. And I, I do blog posts in At Work and I use Chat GPT to get started because it does some great deep research too. I could say, hey, look at these particular sources and create the blog post. Now, it doesn't always get hit it the way I want it to be, but it does that deep research so fast. Whereas I, I mean, you gotta learn, everyone's gotta learn something. Whether it's coding or it's a topic that you're trying to research. You have to in. What we had before was just the Internet that speeded up things. We had encyclopedias before then. My gosh, the reason it feels like cheating is because it does it so quickly and it's so easy, deep and so accurate. I mean, it does have its problems.
Well, in my primary income producing activity, or you could call it my job, I'm a salesperson and I'm a sales manager and a senior manager at a manufacturing company. And something that I always did is I always found out about my customer. I always did research, find out what they do, how they do it, what drives them, all of that good stuff. And sometimes it would take me hours, days to do because depending on how significant the customer was and how much time I had to put into the, into the presentation, I can do the same thing in seconds now, maybe minutes. I mean, ChatGPT has a, has a deep research feature that can take hours or days sometimes and it'll, it'll kind of quote unquote get back to you. But I can say, hey, do deep research on Kurt Stone of the Deacon on WDW podcast and here's some bit of information about him. Here's the Kurt Stone I'm talking about. He lives in this state, in this city. Do do deep research and tell me these things about Kurt Stone and it'll do a really eerily good job. I did one for a friend of mine, he's a pastor of my church and it told me who his best friends were, what his wife did and the interests, the personal interests that he have that he has. And it even made predictions about the types of things he probably likes or the types of things he's probably interested in. That's not necessarily overt, but it's figuring it out based on everything else it knows about him.
Which is really cool is you could put all that into a project which when you get the paid versions and it'll remember your personal.
Yep, absolutely.
Ways that you would look at things.
Yep. Write this in and then eventually it learns pretty quickly and you say, write it in my style and it has learned your style. I don't Know, man, I think that if I create an image on ChatGPT, if I create an image and I tell it the image to create and I, and I have significant human input. I think I would call myself an artist in every, in the purest sense. Just like a painter will paint on a canvas or an author will write on a page, I will call myself an artist. And I think that's where you and I kind of debate a little bit on that because no, I didn't, I didn't necessarily, I didn't necessarily create the final image, but I had as much input as I would have on as if I put paint on a brush and put the brush on the canvas.
And then where I differed on that was that I think a traditional artist, if you take painting for as an example, they have an ability to see and take what they see and put it onto canvas. I don't have that ability. There's something in my brain that doesn't do that very well. I can't take from, can't look at something and they kind of think they even memorize it. I mean, yes, artists go out to do landscapes and they kind of go like that or they take a picture and do some of these people have this ability to have seen something go back and recreate that. That is a talent.
Yeah, that, that's. You're right. You're absolutely right about that.
I mean there's a traditional look at.
Artist that's a type of artist. I would say that's a type of artist, but it's, it's not.
That's a skill. I just, I am, that is a God given talent that I can't recreate.
And to try and to judge yourself based on that God given talent as an artist, I think is unfair to you.
Okay. Yeah, I'm just saying, I'm just using that. Yeah, I mean this AI stuff, the. It's a work in progress right now, isn't it?
It's pretty cool, man. It's pretty cool. So there's our show about, about creativity, about being a creative person and unlocking, unlocking your creativity. Understand that you are a creative person and don't buy into the junk that maybe you were told when you were younger. Understand that you are a creative person. Practice some practical strategies to ignite creativity. Take advantage of those, those dull moments, those maybe those boring moments in your life. And be consistent in writing down, writing down bad ideas and do something every single day. Those are practical strategies. And listen, we live in the world of AI don't be Afraid to use AI as a tool to help ignite your creativity. If nothing else, throw words into the prompt and see what happens. And see if that doesn't defeat the blank page and spark some creativity. There we go.
I love it. I love this topic.
Me too.
I love expanding and proving myself wrong. That, hey, wait a minute, maybe I do have some creativity.
You do.
That I can offer to the world or just to have fun on, on my own. It's. It's a fun thing to pursue.
We all are creative. I. I completely agree with that. Let's get into our stuff, huh?
Yeah.
How about your win for the week?
Well, I saw yours. I had one that I was going to use. At first my first thought was I did the hackathon. I was part of the team putting on the hackathon at work. This is a yearly event. We usually do, and we used to call it code A thon, but it came out on Thursday. We did it. It was very successful. Another one. I did all of the registration. I wrote a program and you know what I stole? I mean, I leveraged someone else's program and made it my own. Joe.
Awesome.
I could tell you the details about that sometime, but it was very successful in the registration. But I put down my grandson's baptism and a family day up in Massachusetts with my son and his wife's family. We had amazing barbecue food. I tell you what, talk about. I've tried to do barbecue a lot with my smoker and they have an electric smoker and they made brisket and ribs and pulled pork chicken. I mean, it was. My daughter in law could be a caterer. I mean, it was just amazing. But my grandson is so much fun. Holy cow.
Oh, yeah, no doubt about that.
He loves music. He's standing and walking now, so he walks very well. Reminds me, remember the old movies with Clint Eastwood and the orangutan?
Yeah.
Which way? But loose.
Yeah. Clyde.
My grandson walks like Clyde.
That's hilarious. That's hilarious.
Dances and he loves music. He loves playing with an iPhone and picking my teeth and staring at me and others. He's amazing. He had a cute suit and. Oh my gosh, wait till he starts talking. Walking now. Wait till he starts talking. It's just an incredible experience. A great family day last Sunday for my grandson's baptism.
Well, my win for the week is very similar. Kurt.
Yeah.
My very first visit to Kings island was this past Saturday. I think it was. Yes, Saturday. Yes. Yeah, it had to be Saturday. Was this past Saturday. My daughter came over with my grandson and my daughter and my wife wanted to do some other stuff, and I didn't want to do that other stuff. I didn't want to be around that other stuff. I wanted no part of it. So me and my grandson went to Kings island for the first time this year, and it was a blast. And he's getting to that height, man. This is my youngest grandson, and he's getting to that height where he can ride more and more rides. And it's a funny thing because there are rides that he went on last year that he doesn't want to go on this year. And it's so funny. It's that he's almost growing into apprehension. When he was younger, these same rides, I mean, just last year younger, I mean, he's only four, but these same rides last year, he loved, right? And now he's like, I don't know. But we got him on. He. He went on the rides and realized how much fun it was, and it was a blast. And I'm a ride guy. We've talked about that. I. I love roller coasters. I love things that go around in circles. I love going high in the air. I love going fast. I love amusement park rides. So that was a blast.
We have this conversation on my podcast, Joe all lot because of Disney World and who you go with and young kids and how they change. And you don't know. I was having the same thought. When we bring my grandson to Disney World, will he be afraid of the characters? Because he seems to be a little bit cautious when new people and strangers. I have a feeling he's gonna scream bloody murder. And I could be totally wrong, but it's really interesting. And it depends on the age. And you're right. We have people that always talk about they finally got their kids on Tower of Terror and they absolutely loved it. There's no gap. And you never know what their personality is until you experience it with a theme park.
And I think it's okay to push a kid a little bit to say, ah, just try it. If you hate it, it's okay. Right?
I agree. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.
Yeah, I think so, too.
That's great fun.
It was a blast, man. How about your resource?
Yeah, well, we were talking about generative AI Chat GPT. I started a course, a couple courses at work, and we have a subscription to udemy.com so I started a complete AI guide to ChatGPT, and they just mentioned something right up front, and I sent it to you in play. A Chrome extension you can put on your Chrome browser Where it'll show up in YouTube. It's a YouTube summary and transcript. It'll transcribe all of the words from that video.
Oh, really?
Yeah, it's a plugin and it's amazing. I mean, you just go to another YouTube video, it shows you all this transcription. You can download it now with that, of course, we'll talk to you. You can build an AA model from all that content and use it as a. A source. Like, hey, act as if you are this person with all this knowledge and it's using all of that very specific data because texts, it can read and summarize all that text, but the fact that you can get transcripts on the fly, baked right into YouTube. So it's a YouTube summary. Look it up. It's a chrome extension, easy to install, and there you go.
I'll definitely check that out. I love stuff like that. One thing, one idea that I thought about using AI for recently, just this week, we have a homeowners association where I live. And so with homeowners association come with rules and bylaws and all that guidelines and all that stuff. And it's. It's several. Several pages long of small type.
Right.
I mean, probably a dozen pages easily of small type. Maybe even. Maybe even more.
Yeah, you.
I can scan that in. I've not done it yet, but I've done it with other stuff. I can scan all of that in. All right.
Yeah.
Upload it to Chat GPT and say, use this as a resource.
Right.
All right. And then I can ask questions. Oh, yeah, I can. Is it against the. Is. Can I have a blue garbage can? Right. Can I paint my house? Can I paint my house pink?
Fantastic.
You know, am I allowed to have a. A horse for a pet? Stuff like that?
Love that because I hate all that stuff.
Like, me too.
That's such. That's such pain. I have needles stuck in my eye that try to dig that stuff up out of the bylaws we used. I remember being in the church council.
Yeah.
And someone trying to figure out, what are the bylaws for something. Well, that's fantastic.
Yeah. Yeah. So.
Wow.
It's amazing, isn't it?
I gotta tell my friend Judy, who's on the church council.
Yeah, definitely.
Definitely scan all your bylaws into ChatGPT.
And then just ask it questions.
You're in the. You're in a council meeting. You say, hey, does this go against our bylaws?
Absolutely.
Oh, my God, that's fantastic.
Yeah, no doubt. My resource is a book by Greg McGowan I referenced it in today's show called Effortless. It's a really good book and Greg writes in such a easy to read style. I have both the written book or the Kindle book and the audiobook and it's his follow up to his breakout hit called Essentialism. I love both of these books. I just recently read Effortless and I love it, man. I love this book. And he talks about a lot about creativity in being creative and he. I pulled that idea of starting with rubbish from him and it's a really good book, Kurt. In fact, I tell you what, to the first two people, if they want to reach out to me and or dudesudesinprogress.com just send us an email. Dudesinprogress.com the first two people that do that, I'll send them a free copy of Effortless. This is how much I like that book, effortless by Greg McGowan. I'll send you the however you want it, the Kindle version, the book book, the, the audiobook, however you want it. Just the first two people to reach out. I'll send it out. I'll send it to you. Love this book. Very good.
And you know what? I just looked it up on your link and I think we'd be happy to send you the hardcover instead of the paper book because the hardcover is half the price.
Well, there we go. There we go. You'll get the fancy one. You'll get the fancy one. But it talks about just to give you a little insight, it talks about how to take what you're doing. Now, effortless doesn't mean zero effort. It really means take taking what you're doing and making it so easy that it feels effortless or so. Or creating activities that are so much in your wheelhouse that it feels effortless. Doing things in such a way and not complicating processes and simplifying processes, which is right up my alley. I love this book. It's very, very good. Effortless by Greg McGowan.
I definitely want to try this. I guess I didn't read this, but. Turn tedious tasks into enjoyable rituals. Prevent frustration by solving problems before they arise. Set a sustainable pace instead of powering through. There's some great topics there.
Absolutely.
I like it. I think.
I love that Joe. He spends a lot of time talking about how it's better to do something every day than to try to push through at the last minute. Or even worse. Not even worse, but just as bad. Try to push through, push hard. In the beginning, people People fail that way, too. They push so hard in the beginning that they're exhausted and don't do anything else. It's really good. Check it out, man. Effortless by Greg McGowan. What's your quote?
I just bought it. There you go.
All right.
Added it to my Kindle again.
If you want the book effortless by Greg McGowan, the first two people will send you the book. No cost. However you want the book. Book. The Kindle book or the. The audiobook.
Expect to get quotes from the book in my text. See you every day. Job.
Awesome. Love those, dude.
You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have. I think that sums up what I was trying to say during this episode. That's Maya Angelou.
She's great, man. She's a really deep thinker. I like most of what she says. When you think about somebody with just soulful things to say, important things to say, Maya Angelou is right up there. I really like her stuff.
I didn't know who she was until we started doing this podcast.
Yeah, yeah.
She comes up a lot when you search for quotes. Yeah. What was yours?
Mine is from none other than Pablo Picasso. Now, here's the funny thing about Pablo Picasso. I don't know when he died, but he died, like, kind of recently in our world. But when you think about Pablo Picasso, you think, like, isn't he from, like, the 14th century or something like that? Or from. From the 1800s or 1700s.
I agree.
But he's a. He's a contemporary for the most part. It just sounds like somebody that was from a long, long time ago.
An old soul.
Yeah, definitely. But I love what he says about. About being an artist. And he has said a lot about being an artist. He says every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up. Yeah, I love that. Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up. And that is a problem. Right?
Yeah. A kid doesn't have any filter?
Heck no, man. Heck no.
We love it. We laugh at them.
We could be more like them.
No doubt about that skill to. At least when you're trying to be creative, no filter.
Well, let's wrap up right there, my friend. Our website is dudesinprogress.com dudesinprogress.com if you want to reach out to us and talk to us about the show, we would love to hear from you. And if you want free copy of the book effortless by Greg McGowan, the first two people that email us@dudesudesinprogress.com we'll send you that book, dudesinprogress.com remember, if you're an artist, start sloppy, start ugly. You know, just start. Because progress is better than perfection. You just got to keep moving forward.
Such a great topic. That's kind of what we do with this podcast every week, Joe. Yeah, just pursue something creative and try to learn from it every single week.
Absolutely.
Have a great week, everyone.
Talk to you soon, bud.