A candid, practical conversation about turning “one day” ideas into “day one” action. The crew shares how permission, soft openings, and patience with imperfection help creatives start and keep going. Highlights include Alessandra’s frustration-fueled Twitter Space on blockchain, Gretchen’s language shift that transforms piles into progress, Devin’s insight on borrowed permission from others, Shadows’ idea-tracking system in Obsidian, and Bailey’s mantra to “allow yourself to suck.” The message: start small, publish imperfectly, and repeat day one as needed.

Greg
00:00 - 00:12
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Creative Work Hour podcast. Today is episode 70. We are just trucking along. I don't know where all this time has gone to but it's been a fun ride.

Greg
00:12 - 00:21
But today we're talking about ideas. More specifically the kind of ideas that you've always wanted to do. One day I'll do this. One day I'll write a book.

Greg
00:21 - 00:45
One day I'll travel the world. One day I will learn a foreign language. How do we go from one day to day one how do we turn those ideas into actions and start creating how do we breathe life into the thing and get it going alessandra you and i were talking just a little bit before we started the recording about this and we were some good things came up right

Alessandra
00:45 - 01:32
well i i think so sometimes a one day idea can be something as simple as a problem that you want to solve Like, for me, the problem that I wanted to solve is I wanted to understand the technology that's called blockchain. Like, what is this technology? I'm not looking to be an engineer in that realm, but if the same mechanism that can control crypto markets, can prevent blood diamonds, can keep track of artwork and elements of architecture, then it stood to reason to me that couldn't blockchain be used for daily creative work? And if so, how would that work?

Alessandra
01:32 - 01:50
I talked to a lot of people about it that seemed to know about blockchain. I talked to people who knew about crypto. I talked to people who knew about NFTs. I even paid consultants to explain to me how a use case for daily creative work could live on the blockchain.

Alessandra
01:51 - 02:15
I was getting nowhere. It was stuck in that one day, I'm gonna figure this out container until a day of conversion happened. And it was called, I just got pissed off I got really pissed off, like, dadgummit, I'm sick of not understanding this. And I just looked around for what account do I have in social media?

Alessandra
02:15 - 02:42
Because I wasn't really doing social media. What account do I have that would allow me to open up a channel, open up a live show, and see if I can get some other voices to explain to me if that could be a thing? And out of that utter frustration of all places, I opened my first Twitter space and basically it was like, hello, hello, hello. Is there anybody out there?

Alessandra
02:42 - 03:12
Is there anybody out there that could explain to me what the blockchain is and if it could have use in creative daily work? And the voice that answered, hello, was in this room on this podcast. I would like to introduce her to you because she helped me convert a one day idea. One day I'm going to understand this thing so that I can make something to day one.

Alessandra
03:12 - 03:24
And shadows, do you remember that day? And did, did you know that that was like a day of converting something from a one day idea to we'd started something?

Shadows Pub
03:24 - 03:27
I do remember that day. No, I did not know that.

Greg
03:27 - 03:44
Sometimes we can go from really not knowing that we started to actually starting out, can't we? Gretchen, for you, how do you go from your one day idea into day one, today's day one? How do we go from concept into doing? And at what point does that become a thing?

Greg
03:47 - 03:49
Where do we start? How do we start?

Gretchen
03:49 - 04:22
Well, for me, this was something I just had a conversation with several, with Alessandra yesterday. I had also done a short video short about this and had been thinking about it for some time because I had seen another creator talk about this. And I hadn't really, I hadn't really thought about it because, because it is just, what comes about is how powerful just switching words around is. from one day to day one.

Gretchen
04:22 - 05:14
I mean, just the power of the words themselves and how they're switched in the order. And what, what came about for me was that I looked around and saw all my one day piles, all that were kind of coming in on me and what was happening was a level of frustration with myself and saying, this, oh, well, one day I'll get to that one, but I've got another idea, so I'll go there. And I realized it was not helping my own creative journey at all by doing that, that for me, I needed to say, okay, this is day one on this.

Gretchen
05:14 - 05:51
and give myself permission to have it be okay if that day one had to be repeated. for, again, because it did not go the way I thought it should. And letting go of that, oh, it should, and stop shooting on myself, and say, this is day one, I'm gonna get this far, and what happened, and this is the project. For me, it was and is still kind of like a daily journey.

Gretchen
05:51 - 06:02
It's a daily reminder. This is day one. I'm going to get as much done on whatever I choose to do creatively. And as far as I get is okay.

Gretchen
06:04 - 06:15
If I wander off, I wandered off. It doesn't mean I can't have another day one. They're not limited. They are unlimited.

Gretchen
06:16 - 06:43
But those, and yes, one day is unlimited, but man, one day piles are not a lot of fun to walk into a room to, but day one. piles or projects are like oh yeah that's how I kind of have to think about it I really have to take a look and be a little bit honest with myself which is you know let's let's be honest that's a challenge for everybody.

Greg
06:43 - 07:03
Absolutely Alessandra what you know the whole creative work hour I mean this this must have started with an idea at some point in time you must have had a Maybe, you know, this, you know, how did that go for you? Did it go from a thought like one day I might like to get together with a group of people? I mean, how did your day one start for Creative Work Hour?

Alessandra
07:04 - 07:23
Yeah, like when we started it, it was what they call a soft open. And a soft open comes out of the industry of running restaurants, right? Like, let's just start this thing. Let's just hire enough people.

Alessandra
07:23 - 07:33
Let's get some recipes going. Let's get some food in here. Let's get all the licenses. But let's not make any announcements, like shh.

Alessandra
07:33 - 08:23
Right let's not make a big deal of it a soft opening so creative work hour was it spring up out of a soft opening of. I was the one that was identifying what creatives that i was in classes with what they were craving. and they were not receiving no matter how much they paid for their online cohort-based course, which was for somebody just to give them the time of day to sit with an idea and to encourage them if they took the risk of toying with it a little bit. And so that thing of what Gretchen talked about, permission is key, but I think the realm of living in that it's okay to have soft openings.

Alessandra
08:24 - 08:49
It's okay to have pop-ups too. Pop-ups say there's no commitment. I mean, we have what we barely need to open up this thing in a very small scale, and we could be gone tomorrow. And so when Creative Work Hour, when we turned on the first microphones and used the first platform, it was just like, I think I want to do this thing on Tuesday.

Alessandra
08:49 - 09:09
I'll make an appointment with somebody on Monday that can tell me how to use a platform to do it. And then I'll take a beta blocker and we'll see what happens. And that was the soft opening. And it probably took six months of toying with that, doing another soft opening and another soft opening and another soft opening.

Alessandra
09:09 - 09:44
And at some point I had enough chutzpah to say, okay, on July the 1st of 2021, Creative Work Hour officially begins. Ta-da! And that's how we started. But there was like literally 100 sessions of, I didn't know what I was doing, tripping over it, it was a mess, nobody comes, or worse yet, somebody did come, and I was terrified.

Alessandra
09:45 - 09:59
But yeah, there's something about knowing that you have permission. That is, I have an idea. I have the permission to have this idea. I also have the permission to do a little something with it, and I'm not under any obligation to it.

Alessandra
10:00 - 10:05
There's freedom in that, I think. What about you, Greg? What does that bring up for you? Oh,

Greg
10:06 - 10:29
my gosh. Well, those stories of Twitter and pop-up spaces and Twitter spaces and stuff, you know, I always thought it would be nice to have a podcast. And, you know, not necessarily about a specific topic, just it would be nice to have a podcast and for kindness to be part of the podcast. And I knew that one day I would want to do that, but it was only, you know, it was a one day.

Greg
10:28 - 10:46
And Twitter spaces for me, it filled a space very near and dear to my heart. I mean, that's where I met you on Twitter spaces and many of the people in this room. And I remember you filling in for me one time when I had surgery and playing your clarinet on the Twitter space as well. And that was fantastic.

Alessandra
10:46 - 10:47
Yeah,

Greg
10:47 - 10:47
we didn't

Alessandra
10:47 - 10:48
say it was good, did we?

Greg
10:48 - 11:04
No. And I think I came on like all kinds of under the influence of anaesthetic and, you know, hopefully didn't make too big of a fool of myself. You know, I was supposed to be recovering and, you know, on the show, I got to get on, you know, my people, right? You know, oh my gosh, what I deluded.

Greg
11:04 - 11:21
But now I do have a podcast and it's like Rich and myself, I do have some support groups and PLS support groups on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. I do a brain injury support group. I do a chronic pain support group and a mental health support group. And there was a couple of us on the group, Rich being one of them.

Greg
11:21 - 11:35
And we said, wouldn't it be nice, you know, to do this podcast? I've always had this idea. And Rachel was like, yeah, that'd be cool, but I'm no good at doing podcasts. Well, I'm good at editing, you know, so don't worry about how you sound, you know, because I can take out ums and ahs and stuff like that.

Greg
11:35 - 12:01
like so should we do it and you know how we started was like well how what are you doing next week what does wednesday look like and that's kind of how we started you've got to it starts with an idea doesn't it but then you've got to like gretchen said you you know you've got to start somewhere and you've got your one day piles And I think sometimes it's putting a date to it. Maybe today is the day. It's okay to make mistakes, right?

Greg
12:01 - 12:13
Because that's how we learn. And we can use those in future episodes. We can use all that material down the road, repurpose it. Or maybe it means putting a date out there to someone else next Wednesday.

Greg
12:13 - 12:27
I'm going to start doing this thing, you know. or with a partner, or whatever it looks like. But Devon, for you, what does that transition look like for you? How do you go from a one day to today's day one?

Devin
12:27 - 12:54
Well, continuing on with this theme of permission, I think we may be onto something. When I finally become aware of the barriers between the one day and the day ones for me, it's almost always about permission. as I reflect back on that, I'm usually not aware of it. That's the thing with me is very often I'll see someone doing it or doing something like it.

Devin
12:55 - 13:09
And honestly, the thought that drops in my head is, I didn't know I could do that. Who told them they could do that? Look at that person doing that thing that I'm not doing. if they can do it, then I should be able to do it.

Devin
13:09 - 13:53
And it's sort of a combination of resentment, envy, anger, all the seven deadly sins go into finally breaking through and go, well, by golly, I'm gonna do it too. And then I find myself, and of course, then you go, I could have been doing this the whole time. And I just sort of, that process seems to be on repeat and I never seem to anticipate, hey, could this be one of those areas where I haven't been giving myself permission? But I think about this a little as we were talking here, and you know, a lot of the creatives, the artists that I respect, you look at them and a lot of them are really big on, you know, pushing boundaries, violating norms, doing things that normal people won't

Devin
13:53 - 14:16
do or don't do. And maybe that's part of the exercise is, you know, wearing your shirt inside out or, you know, cutting your hair in a wild way. It's like a way of reminding yourself, you don't have to, Comply with convention. You can try different things and giving yourself permission may give yourself permission to do the creative work that for whatever reason that hidden voice back there would say, oh, no, you can't do that.

Devin
14:16 - 14:30
You're not one of those people to stay in your lane. So that's it with me. I've got to have, someone's often going to have to bump into someone doing the thing I want to do. And then that finally lets me give myself permission to go try it.

Devin
14:30 - 14:31
Alessandra, what's your

Greg
14:31 - 14:34
thoughts? I see your face lighting up there.

Alessandra
14:34 - 14:46
Well, I'm cracking up because all I can hear in my head is this thing that Devin tells me sometimes when I'm getting, when I'm getting like, you know, really into things should be one way or another way. And this is the way it ought to be. And he'll be like,

Greg
14:46 - 14:53
I don't need your rules, man. We don't need no stinking rules. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Greg
14:53 - 15:04
Bailey, how about you? How do you go from day one for you? What does that look like for you? And I know that you've got a lot of things that you're juggling and creative endeavors and stuff.

Greg
15:04 - 15:08
How do you go from your one day into your day one? How do we get there? What

Bailey
15:08 - 15:20
do you think? Well, for me, it's two things. One is just the patience and like allowing myself to suck. Because if I don't have that, then I am like afraid to like write one word.

Bailey
15:21 - 16:00
But if I'm not afraid to suck, and I have the patience with myself to just get the words out or the notes on the piano or just get my butt in the seat, then I think that's like a lot of it. But the other thing, and I don't know if this is specific to me or not, but I have an idea sometimes that just will not get out of my head. And to me, writing is, or just doing anything creative, just sitting down to do that thing is like what gets it out. So for me, it's almost like, like, like I'm soothing my brain because there's just this like alert, that's like, like a siren just going off in my head, like at all points in time.

Bailey
16:00 - 16:10
So it sort of allows me to get that out. And to do that, I just need to sit down and start and be patient and let myself suck. So that's it for me.

Greg
16:11 - 16:25
Thanks Bailey. Shadows, how about yourself? How do we go from one day into day one? And I know that it makes me wonder how that process might look like for you doing your daily echoes and stuff, because there's a lot that goes into that.

Greg
16:25 - 16:34
So I can't imagine what might have led up for that. How do we go from one day into day one? How do we get there? What did that look like for you?

Shadows Pub
16:34 - 16:43
So the echoes themselves was never really a one day thing. It was kind of like, oh, let's try this. Let's try this. Let's try that.

Shadows Pub
16:44 - 17:05
You know, so it was a series of layers that, you know, the idea came to me and I did it sort of thing. That wasn't something that I kind of went, yeah, I should do that someday. Well, maybe the journal pages could count as that, but I've, you know, eventually got to them. In my obsidian, my daily note is not a to-do list because I refuse to have a to-do list.

Shadows Pub
17:06 - 17:29
I have a suggestions and idea note. And when ideas come around that, you know, are one day, they land in that note. And every now and again, I take a look at it and decide whether, you know, that's still an idea and we'll stay on the one day list or whether it's going to get stroked off. eventually I might come back to it or not depending what else gets in my way.

Shadows Pub
17:30 - 17:35
So I don't know that I can actually say there's a process from one day to day one.

Greg
17:35 - 17:51
Depends what it looks like and maybe they're ever evolving as well and maybe that's like therein lies the beauty. I think the overriding message to me is just the Nike thing right is just do it, just make a start. Alessandra what are your thoughts on this? Great conversation.

Alessandra
17:52 - 18:22
Well, this this conversation has actually helped me a whole lot and. The things that I have heard in this conversation that I just really want to keep track of and maybe kind of leave us with today is that the conversion point of, you know, how do you tip that one day idea? Or like with shadows, she doesn't let dust settle on an idea. And she has a system for that.

Alessandra
18:22 - 18:52
She's very much a system design, system thinker. But what is that conversion point between the idea that wants doing and the actual beginning, you're at the gate part. And I think what we've heard again and again throughout the podcast is where we have reminded each other that it starts with permission, that we've already given ourselves the permission to have the idea. It's evidenced by, we have the idea.

Alessandra
18:52 - 19:14
And then secondly, we have the permission to do something about it. The who am I, the imposter, whatever, that's not a thing here because the evidence is you already have the idea and you are on the verge of doing something about it. That's that conversion point, right? That's just simple transference of energy.

Alessandra
19:15 - 19:40
And then two, the thing that I love that Bailey pointed out is that, look, you gotta give yourself the license to suck at whatever this idea is. It can be a mess. It could be unrecognizable from the thing that you thought. Well, what if, you know, what if you want, I'm going to learn to paint and you've never painted.

Alessandra
19:40 - 19:47
I'm going to learn to draw and I've never drawn. Okay. That shit is going to suck. That's the, you have a license for that.

Alessandra
19:47 - 20:08
But at the same time, you turn that thing over, you have the license to soar. And bitches better be up out your way, because you do, you have the license to soar. And then obstacles are gonna happen. You know, like crazy settings on the camera, like had the thing up my nose half the week.

Alessandra
20:09 - 20:20
And because I heard what Gretchen said, Don't go there. Just put it out there. Get it out there. Go, go girl, go.

Alessandra
20:20 - 20:36
And so nose, hairs and all, it's out there. These videos are out there. And yes, and I did fix what the obstacle was. And so permission, license, and you know how they say that thing about that the medium is the message?

Alessandra
20:36 - 21:05
My spin on that based on this conversation is that the obstacles are also the message. You can't have in this day and age, you can't make a thing You can't make a movie and not have a piece of equipment get into the frame. You know, you can't record the flute concerto or the clarinet sonata and not hear the keys click, the obstacles. are the message.

Alessandra
21:06 - 21:50
And there's something that no one can ever take away from you, which is the reward for even if you were feeling like, who am I? Even if you were exercising your license to suck, even if the obstacles were all over and it was hard to get your message seen or heard because there were so many obstacles in trying this thing of the conversion of one day, idea to the idea has its day one, is that the reward is that you can go, and this is so human basic, so humanly basic, it's the look ma, no hands. The reward is that you can say, look, I did, I tried.

Alessandra
21:51 - 22:22
There's evidence, and that evidence, it's evidence that you were here, that you were living a life, and that you marked it. with your own creative work. And no matter where you are in the permission and the license and the reward and the obstacles, it all comes down to, whether it's a soft opening or you're going to start the podcast on Wednesday, is it all happens in the realm of time. And Greg, what time is it?

Greg
22:23 - 22:40
It's that time again! You've wasted some perfectly good time listening to the Creative Work Hour podcast when you could have been doing something else but no, you chose to listen to us instead. But in all seriousness though, what does it look like for you? How does your one day turn into a day one?

Greg
22:40 - 22:58
And if you'd like to know more about the Creative Work Hour, about the team and about what we do here, you can reach out to us on creativeworkhour.com and you can find Alessandra on the socials. I believe it's Alessandra White on the socials, right? You can be found there. Let us know what you're working on.

Greg
22:58 - 23:02
Let us know what you want to work on. Why not you? You can absolutely do it. And you know what?

Greg
23:03 - 23:20
We would love to be along for that journey and to see you turn something from one day into a day one. We would love to see that for you and be part of that. Join us again next week and we'll be here for another exciting discussion. Take care and you'll come back now, you hear?