The Zack Arnold Podcast

Depression. Burnout. Imposter Syndrome. I’ll take “3 Things I’d Rather Not Admit That I’ve Experienced” for $1000, Alex! In today’s society we are conditioned to believe that we have to show up to work every single day, all day, for ridiculously long days, and always be able to perform at an equally high level. The expectation is that we should be able to summon creativity on demand, and while it...

Click to Download Audio On a weekly basis I receive emails, Facebook messages, and tweets from people all over the world who work in creative fields. Some people send me pages worth of their life stories, others are looking for quick tips to optimize something very specific in their lives, but most often the messages I receive are from people frustrated with where they are in their career who don’...

"Easy left a long time ago." - Chris Anselmo The subject matter of disabilities, especially muscular dystrophy, is a subject matter near and dear to my heart. I spent eight years of my life producing and directing the documentary film  GO FAR: The Christopher Rush Story  about the first quadriplegic to become a licensed scuba diver who was also a former national poster child for the muscul...

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock the last thirty years, you’re no doubt familiar with The Karate Kid  - the inspiring underdog story of Daniel Larusso, an awkward teen from Newark who moves to ‘The Valley’ and is relentlessly bullied until he learns to defend himself and find balance in his life thanks to his neighbor, mentor, father figure, and sensei Mr. Miyagi. You’re also no doubt famili...

Click to Download Audio If you work in a creative industry, you probably already know how difficult it can be to just making a living. But if you’re intention is to not only making a living but also feel proud of the work you do everyday...that’s a much taller order. It can seem hard enough to find extra time to perfect your specific craft, and it’s often even harder to find the extra time to meet...

I've already written extensively about how being sedentary is awful for your health and how sitting can kill your creativity . But in addition to the long term detriments of not moving at your desk, the immediate effects of sitting in positions not meant for the human body include acute pains, chronic pains, numbness and tingling, and even headaches. There are few things that make it harder to...

If you do creative work for a living, you’re a storyteller. It doesn’t matter if you’re a film editor like me working in scripted television, maybe you work in online marketing, you are a director, writer, graphic designer, composer, or anything else creative: You tell stories. Whether it’s with a single image, a specific font choice on a poster, a music cue to increase emotional impact in a scene...

Interested in joining my brand new Design Yourself program (with a 50% discount) when enrollment opens next week? Visit optimizeyourself.me/design to learn more. Let’s be honest... “A proven 5-step framework to help you overcome the procrastination, anxiety, and fear that keep you from following through with your goals”  ...just doesn’t sound sexy.  You know what DOES sound sexy? ✓ Losing 25 pound...

If you intend to climb the career ladder straight to the top, step #1 is understanding the four different types of creative jobs. Only once you understand where your job fits in can you then reframe your perspective to get the most out of every opportunity (or know if it’s time to bail out). Imagine for a moment you’ve wanted to be a doctor your whole life, and the first year of medical school is...

If you work a demanding creative job and you love doing creative work like I do, then you can most likely identify with how much I hate dealing with money, finances, bills, and paperwork. While I understand all of them are “necessary evils” to running a business and being successful, on an emotional level I feel like when I’m reconciling transactions, creating invoices, or organizing paperwork to...

Click to Download Audio [Dad•bod] (noun): A male body type that is best described as "softly round." The type of physique a man "earns" when the increasing pressures of work life, married life, and especially fatherhood no longer allow him the time or drive to maintain a hard, toned figure. As a result, what was once a sculpted, chiseled frame digresses into a soft, flabby heaping...

It’s extremely common for people who are highly creative to also constantly battle with things like depression, anxiety, and attention issues. If you’ve listened to past episodes you know this is basically the story of my entire adult life, and I even delve into  the link between depression and creativity   in the very first episode of this show. For years I believed that I must just be a weak per...

Click to Download Audio Here are two things that rarely ever happen: Me spending more than five minutes per day on Twitter. Twitter providing profound and meaningful value powerful enough to change someone’s perspective of life as they know it. But the perfect storm happened recently when I discovered this story  while killing a few minutes on Twitter before a client session. Get This… Apparently...

Let’s face it...creative people like us are a bit weird. Being socially awkward is just part of the package. Sitting in a dark room for days at a time making cool stuff - piece of cake. But throw us into a large crowd and force us to speak to other human beings and it gets ugly fast. But networking is a necessary skill to master if you intend to thrive in your creative career because no matter how...

I get it. You most likely chose a creative career because you love working on your own. As a Hollywood film & tv editor I spend the vast majority of my life in a small dark room...alone. I not only chose my profession because I love the craft of filmmaking, I also chose it because I’m not the most social person on the planet. I’m what you would call an “extreme introvert.” (Don’t believe me? J...

Kelley Dixon is the Emmy-winning editor of such iconic shows as Better Call Saul, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, and Shameless. She has been nominated for an editing Emmy every single year since 2012 (winning in 2013 for an episode of Breaking Bad), she has been nominated for an Eddie Award seven out of the last eight years, and she has received numerous other nominations as well. Needless to say...

(This article is the introduction to my brand new  Design Yourself  series intended to help you properly set goals that you will achieve, get important sh*t done in your life, and design the optimized version of you) It’s officially the time of year when life has kicked back into full gear. The holidays are long gone yet summer vacations are months away, every day is “crazy busy!” and unfortunatel...

Kelley Dixon is the Emmy-winning editor of such iconic shows as Better Call Saul, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, and Shameless. She has been nominated for an editing Emmy every single year since 2012 (winning in 2013 for an episode of Breaking Bad), she has been nominated for an Eddie Award seven out of the last eight years, and she has received numerous nother nominations as well. Needless to sa...

It’s time to be honest with yourself...when is the last time you and your smartphone were more than 5 feet away from each other? If you’re not staring at it right now, it’s probably in your pocket. When it’s not in your pocket, it’s charging within arm’s reach. If it’s not within arm’s reach (or God forbid you can’t find it), you most likely feel anxious and can’t focus until it’s in your grasp ag...

Smartphone addiction has become an epidemic. A study in 2015 found that Americans collectively check their smartphones upwards of 8 billion times...per day . That’s an average of 46 times per day for the average person (and this was over 2 years ago, it’s only getting worse). Want to be really shocked? Just one year later another research firm found that smartphone users engaged in 76 sessions per...

If your livelihood depends on your ability to be creative and generate ideas, you don’t have the luxury of wasting precious mental energy and focus on meaningless tasks, busy work, and constant interruptions. You can’t just “punch the time clock” at 5pm, you work until the job is done. And how you budget your mental energy and focus determines whether or not you’re leaving at a decent hour or chro...

Work-life balance. It’s the unicorn we all strive for and hope to achieve someday, but if you were put on the spot right now, would you be able to clearly define what work-life balance means to you? And to be frank, is balance something that even sounds appealing? Frankly, I think balance sounds plain boring. And I say that valuing nothing else in life above my family, my wife, and my two children...

Setting goals is easy. Everyone has done it. “I’m going to make ten million dollars this year.” “I’m going to lose 100 pounds.” “I’m going to live life to the fullest!!!!!!” Easy, right? I just set some goals. Yippie. The hard part is achieving the goals we set for ourselves. In fact, over 92% of New Year’s Resolutions fail, and it’s largely because people don’t know how to properly set their goal...

In our 24-7 world of constant distractions, focus is quickly becoming the superpower of the 21st century. Your ability to get meaningful work done, become successful, and avoid the endless trap of busyness that we are so tempted to get sucked into is directly proportional to your ability to do ‘deep work’ and focus intensely on one important action at a time. In today’s interview I speak with one...

Less...but better. Sounds like an oxymoron, but I promise adopting this mantra can change your life. Modern technology has changed everything about our lives, and while in some ways it has simplified things, in other ways technology has massively complicated every hour of the day for us. We are no longer human beings, we have simply become extensions of our technology. Clients expect quicker turna...