Productive Flourishing Podcast

A lot of creative people thrive on having multiple side projects, but at the same time, having side projects may cause your main projects to suffer. Nicole Stevenson joins Charlie to jam about how having side projects might help you with your main projects. She brings her vast experiences as an entrepreneur - clothing line creator, craft show extraordinaire, illustrator, among many others - to dis...

Today’s episode is a requested reading of a previously published post on Productive Flourishing named “5 Ways to Get Through the Creative Red Zone.” This article lists five ways to get projects that are almost done into the finished stage.   Key Takeaways: [0:48] - The creative “red zone” is when you have a project that is almost finished, and you feel as if you have just as much to do as you did...

As entrepreneurs and small business owners, we can help create solutions that create positive social change - promoting diversity and inclusion, distributing wealth, creating opportunities, and promote flourishing. In today’s episode, Pam Slim joins Charlie to talk about how small business owners can lead the way for this change. Tune in today to hear their discussion and ideas!   Key Takeaways: [...

In the 9th Q&A episode, Angela joins Charlie to answer questions from the campfire about decision fatigue, business growth problems, and how to manage multiple projects when you’re already overwhelmed.   Key Takeaways: [1:06] - The show must go on! As a precursor to the depth of this episode, Charlie and Angela talk a bit about balancing hectic schedules with times of self care. [4:03] - The f...

Larry Robertson, author and thought leader, joins Charlie to jam about creativity. In this episode, they cover everything including what creativity is, where breakthroughs come through, unhelpful myths that prevent us from understanding creativity, the roles space and time have for the creative process, and the different modes of creativity.   Key Takeaways: [0:56] - Charlie gives an introduction...

Today’s episode is a requested reading of a previous published post on Productive Flourishing. Charlie answers a question about making time to plan and how he uses certain materials to organize and remind. The key idea is that you have to make time for planning, so that you save or don’t waste time when you’re in the doing.   Key Takeaways: [0:49] - Conversation started with Eric Grey about their...

Mike Vardy, a friend and fellow productivity teacher, joins Charlie to talk about the power of defaults, theming your week, how to use creative/focus blocks, and how effective scheduling, planning, and decision making is really about being kind to yourself.   Key Takeaways: [2:25] - Productivity should be fun! It is important to find a harmony between frameworks that help to keep us in check, and...

Angela joins Charlie as he tackles three questions revolving around how to take action on a good idea without it being overwhelming, how to discuss goals and finances with your business team without it being awkward, and which of the Productive Flourishing planners to use to get to your creative energy flowing.   Key Takeaways: [1:25] - Alison wants to know how to get out of planning and research...

In this episode, Charlie and Jennifer cover the “behind the scenes” of how Charlie gets stuff done. Tune in to find out everything from why he joined the army and how he applies that to his work to his workout and self-care routines. If you like “behind the scenes” or “making of,” you’ll love this episode.   Key Takeaways: [3:13] - Charlie shares his origin story, highlighting what made him decide...

Today’s episode is a requested reading of a previously published post on Productive Flourishing named “Stop Lying and Start Creating.” The key idea is that we creative people are particularly adept at making up stories and lies that keep us from doing work - especially when it comes to research.   Key Takeaways: [0:57] - Creative people have a unique talent that exceeds our ability to create. Char...

Toku McCree joins Charlie to jam about what they’ve experienced in themselves and their clients, and how to move through the guilt of getting what you want to achieve success.   Key Takeaways: [2:16] - Obsession with tactics and doing and how it stifles their business and personal growth. Often times when people reach a certain level of success and plateau, they are not fundamentally focusing on w...

Angela joins Charlie as they tackle another question & answer session, exploring the priority cage match, how to bring in more diversity into your company, and what to do when your plans are too intense.   Key Takeaways: [0:54] - Can you elaborate more on the priorities cage match? How do you allot time to things in the middle? [2:41] - When you work on several things, it’s easy to see that so...

Kristin Reinbach joins Charlie to discuss the question of whether happiness is dependent on the culture we’re from. They talk about the difference between social norms of success and happiness versus our personal concepts of success and happiness.   Key Takeaways: [2:45] - How did Kristin get to where she is today? What inspired her to get into the “happy-making business” she’s in now? [5:15] - Ch...

Today’s episode is a requested reading of a previously published post on Productive Flourishing called “Welcome to Project World.” The key idea is that we no longer live in a world defined by careers, but rather by projects. What we finish is more important than what we’ve been doing and working on.   Key Takeaways: [0:51] - Charlie suggests that the Industrial Revolution began a time when the wor...

Charlie and Angela talk about values and expectations, priorities, and boundaries in order to amp up your holidays without amping up your stress.   Key Takeaways: [1:25] - Intentionality during the holidays: what do we want this time to look like? [3:22] - There are a lot of expectations surrounding the holiday season. It is important to have conversations about how we’d like to spend (or not spen...

Our host, Charlie and his wife, Angela answer community members’ questions about networking, project post-mortems, and share real experiences of how they work together as a married couple.   Key Takeaways: [1:04] - As a solo entrepreneur, how do we go about figuring out how to be the one that gives instead of the one who takes? How forward can we be when offering our help? [2:06] - Think about how...

Mary Fran Bontempo joins Charlie to discuss how aging can be a gift, and how to make words like change, fear, and fine not be dirty words. They also discuss how much of our identities is fixed by the stuff we accumulate.   Key Takeaways: [1:19] - Introduction to Mary Fran Bontempo and how she got started in her writing career. She talks about how her creativity grew from a really dark spot in her...

Today’s episode is a requested reading of a previously published post on Productive Flourishing named “Shake It, Don’t Break It.” The key idea from this post is that you can walk to edge of the known world you see, and shake things up without completely breaking up and burning down everything you know and have built before that.   Key Takeaways: [0:53] - “We think too small, like the frog at the b...

Angela joins Charlie Gilkey answer your questions and discuss how to determine what to delegate in your business, how to focus on high-value work, what low prices say about your products and services, and what to do when your getting off your schedules and productivity schedules.   Key Takeaways: [1:15] - Open invitation to share your questions and suggestions for discussion on the Facebook group....

This episode is going to be a conversation between Angela and me about different learning styles and really getting to the bottom of how you learn, how you process and how you polish. The reason we’re going through this is because we’re both doing a lot of different creative things and we’ve found ourselves either stuck, or in the flow and we wanted to share how we’re working through that. Ready?...

Remember MacGyver, the ingenious action-adventure hero from the 80’s who was able to do things like disarm bombs with a toothpick, swiss army knife and duct tape? MacGyver was a huge influence on me as a kid and his creator, Lee Zlotoff, joins me today to discuss the genesis of MacGyver, as well as the MacGyver secret—a simple process that can help you solve your toughest problems, because who wou...

Today’s episode is a requested reading of a previously published post on Productive Flourishing, named “Your Art is For You”. So many creatives and change makers get stuck because they feel torn between the art they want to create and the art others want. And by art, I mean that special medicine that only you can create, which may not be fine art and painting, it could be something you do in the w...

Today Angela joins me again for a jam and we’re talking about grief, transitions and health. This comes because we have gone through some death and grieving recently and it’s something that people ask Angela about a lot, and I do get questions sometimes, so we’re going to go ahead and do a jam about the subject. Ready? Let’s do this!   Key Takeaways: [0:54] Charlie and Angela introduce the show wi...

After seeing how much more fun it was to have Angela with me on the Q&A’s, we’ve decided that it’s the new standard. Today we answer questions people send in about preventing overwhelm when goal-setting, dealing with a bad day and hiring someone when you don’t have the immediate cash to do so. Ready? Let’s do this!   Key Takeaways: [1:22] Q1 from Cheryl is how to plan out your yearly goals wit...

Jonathan Fields joins me for a second time today to discuss his new book, How to Live a Good Life . The journey of writing this book has been a particularly interesting one, for the process required him to step into a very uncomfortable role at the same time as it required him to immerse himself in literature that he had dismissed. We discuss this evolution as well as the places lot of people stru...