Episode 25
Why Embrace the Beginner Mindset?: Interview with J. Schuh
In this week's episode of Ongoing Mastery: Presenting & Speaking, Kirsten talks with J. Schuh about creativity, the connection between empathy and user experience, and the joke on the cover of his book.
Key take-aways:
- Even experts in their fields experience imposter syndrome and perfectionism
- We often constrain ourselves because we don’t want others to misunderstand
- Embracing the beginner mindset helps you to learn more effectively
Rourke Training’s webpage: https://www.rourketraining.com/
Ongoing Mastery: Presenting & Speaking page: https://ongoing-mastery.captivate.fm/
RSS feed: https://feeds.captivate.fm/ongoing-mastery/
Read a transcript of this episode: https://share.descript.com/view/2QizzWU1g7A
For the video version of this episode: https://youtu.be/jc6ZceD0s10
- Why does everyone hate Comic Sans?
- J Schuh’s imdb.com page
- Bennet Litwin’s imdb.com page for Frackers -
- AdobeMax -
- Kirsten's TEDx talk, "The Art of Communicating Effectively for Hybrid and Online Work"
- J. Schuh's profile on LinkedIn -
- J Schuh and Bennet Litwin’s book, Brilliance
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirstenrourke/
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Transcript
Hello, everybody.
Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:Presenting & Speaking, the podcast, and now the
Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:video series, and also interviews.
Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:And, as always, because it's my damn show, I get to bring on my damn friends.
Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:So, I've got J.
Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:Schuh, who is just brilliant, and a hug on two legs, and unbelievably sweet and kind.
Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:And, I would like to explain your history, but I don't think I have enough for it.
Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:So, do you think you could tell people about what it is you've
Welcome to Ongoing Mastery:done in your short life so far?
J:Sure.
J:Gosh, it, it's, it's kinda hard when you talk about yourself.
J:You're like, "Yeah, I've done a lot," you know, but I have done a lot.
J:As, as a kid, I always had a lot of interest.
J:I went to school for advertising, marketing, psychology, and then I
J:got outta school and didn't know what I wanted to do with my life.
J:And so I waited tables.
J:And then,
Kirsten:Okay
J:I had a conversation, one of the best conversations I've ever had in
J:my life was probably with my wife, because I told her, I said, "You know,
J:I can, I can do all these things.
J:I think I could be a voice actor.
J:I could be an actor.
J:I could be an artist.
J:I just don't know what I want to do."
J:And she said, "You know, I really don't care what you do.
J:I just, pick one thing and just do that thing."
J:And I said,
Kirsten:Yep
J:"You know, that's really good advice."
J:So, what I did is I picked animation and back then in the dark ages, there
J:were these things called phone books.
J:And I, I went to those because internet was still in the dial-up modem noises> stage. And, and, I just went from A, looking for studios to get. And, long story short, I wound up finally, eventually getting an internship with an animation company. That's how I got my start. And ever since that, I've done animation, cartoons, design, illustration, Mmm-hmm Writing, directing, producing, programming. Now, I'm a user experience strategist, design strategist, and I teach design thinking at SMU and Collin College here in town. So, I've had this really broad Yup Creative history that, now, where I am in my life, one things I wanna do is kind of share that a little bit, at least share some of the things I've learned. You know, I've done video games that have been seen by millions of people and, and, you know, I have an imdb.com, no major feature films that anybody's seen, but, you know, I'm still on there. Yeah And, so it's Oh yeah and a book. I know some stuff. And books, books Yeah, yeah. I have a, a book, It, it's called Brilliance. Mm-hmm And, you and I were talking about it a little earlier, and, and you know how sometimes creative people can try to be too creative? That's kind of what happened. If you are into fonts, everybody knows that there's one font you should never use, ever. And I'm laughing my butt off right now And that is Comic Sans, right? Yes Yeah, and, and so And what is the title font of the book, J? It's literally the title font on my book, and I know this, but I used it on purpose. Mm-hmm I said, "I am going to be so rebellious that I'm gonna use the font that every creative person on the planet Hates Tells you not to use." Yeah, hates, they just hate it, right? And so I said, "How clever am I that I'm gonna be this ultra-rebel to use that on the cover of my book?" And that was a huge fail. And what I failed to consider was that people who don't know me know that I know that about Comic Sans. So any designer that looks at this book and says "It's a book on creativity by a guy who doesn't know you're not supposed to use Comic Sans." So, that was probably my biggest, you know, design fail I ever did. Now, one time I explained it to a another designer and she goes, "Now that you've explained it, Mm-hmmm That's cool, and I'll buy a copy." But, you know, Uh-huh Trying to explain that to every person who wants to buy your book, probably not the best thing, so you know. And it's also a damn clever book. Oh, thanks. I mean, it really is. It's a damn clever book. And you get into the mind of a creative person through the framework of a college student, taking, Yeah Basically writing blog posts, and you introduce people to how creatives think without in any way talking down to them, or in any way making it alien. How the hell did you come up with that? So, I'll say this, what, we did a few attempts at, at, my co-author Bennett Litwin and I, said he, he started putting together, we read all these amazing books. We said, "This is awesome. How can we share this information with people?" And, and we synthesized everything. And when we started to write it, it sounded a lot like a textbook. And I said, "Creatives, you know, that's not exactly the best approach with a lot of creatives, is making it sound like a textbook." And so we said, "How could, how might we, right, tell this in a story Mmm-hmm That maybe creatives could get into and relate to. And since I teach at the college level, and a lot of my students and, and some of the people I've mentored, especially the last few years, have been gals, I said, "Well, let's just take, you know, a representative, a representation of some of the folks I've helped over the last few years," which happen to be some Yep Gals and say, you know, "Let's make them the central character." and that's maybe a little bit of a fail, because, you know, here's our central character as a gal and who are the authors? Two dudes, old dudes, Right. So, you know, that's, that's another thing that, you know, we're kinda like, okay. Uh, But I think, go ahead. I'm, I'm gonna stop you right there, because Okay I've known you for a really long time. Yeah And you have gotten into my head and spoken my brain better than I can, Thank you What, 25 times, by now? Like, when I've been like, "J. ba, ba, ba, ba, ba," and you're like, "Okay, Yeah What about this?" And I'm like, Yeah "Oh, yeah," so it doesn't surprise me that you could write from the perspective of somebody else, because you can put yourself into other people's heads better than most anybody I've seen. I mean, you're really Thank you Good at getting into other people's Thank you Shoes, so Well, and, and that's kind of why I transitioned over to user experience is because the first thing about design thinking or user experience is all about empathy, Yeah Right. It's about considering who you're talking to, considering the pain points of the person you're trying to solve for, and really trying to solve for them. And that's the reason we wrote, wrote the book. Actually, my students asked me to write the book. I kept telling these stories in class and my students said, "When are you gonna put all these stories together? When are you gonna put these thoughts together in a book so that you can share it?" So I, you know, we wrote the book a few years ago. It took me forever. I'll have to admit that imposter syndrome and perfectionism is something that, even Though I've done all these things, Yup It really still is a part of, if you're a creative, you're going to experience it at some point in your life. And I definitely did. Oh yeah It, it probably took a year longer to get the book finished, because I just, you know, even simple things like, Are people gonna like my illustrations? Are people gonna understand why all the illustrations aren't consistent? And I took different styles. I took a lot of risk with the book. Mm-hmm And some things I thought we did really, really well. And there's a few things, like the cover, That I probably should have, I probably should have rethought. But, you know, I, I still think the book is valuable. I think there's still good advice, and, eventually, Bennett and I have talked about doing another book aimed at creatives that will incorporate some of the stuff I've learned and both of us have learned, because Bennett has gone on and done his own feature film. He, he was a producer Mmmm On his own feature film called Frackers, and so he got that done. Of course, it launched right during the middle of COVID, But nobody was going to movies. Of course it did. So, you know, Of course Yeah. That timing could have been better there too, but you know, that's Yeah The way things pan out. So, this podcast is ongoing mastery of presenting and speaking and Right Ongoing mastery is kind of your jam. Like that's built Yeah Into your DNA. Yeah Which is one of the reasons why I think, where did you when I meet? Was it at Max? I think we met at Max. Okay And I think what resonated with both of us, I think, is because a lot of people who are in the Adobe program, who love Adobe products, who get into the community, at their heart, it's about helping people. At their Yeah Heart, it's about helping creatives be as creative as they can be. And that's really what I've discovered is my life purpose. Mm-hmm Why I've been teaching for, next year will be 22 years, and I think that's where we resonated. Yeah You and I both love, part of our mission and purpose is helping other creatives achieve what they wanna achieve and, and help them get to that next level in their, in their own success. Yeah. And that, by the way, that's, for the people on the video and the people who are listening, that's Adobe Max. And Adobe Max is like Disneyland for creatives if they use Adobe products. It's just, that's it. It's, it's all the things. Yeah Yeah, I, I mean, I really, I really appreciate that you sent me the book. It's great. I do crack up at the cover and I'm, I almost wish it could be released with a banner that goes, "Yes, we know." "Yes we know." We know it's Comic Sans. "Yes, we know it's Comic Sans. We did it on purpose. Read the fucking book," which I admit is probably not the best marketing, which is why I am not a marketing person. But, I would totally do that. I would put a nice big banner right across it and be like, "Seriously, we know what we're talking about. We do." Yeah, I, I may do, I may do a commercial where I point it out, so maybe people that, that's, can get beyond the cover. You know, of course, they say the cover is why people buy books. So, if I was gonna fail, that's probably the worst place I could have failed. But still, you know, we, people have gotten the book. Thank goodness. People have. And thank you. If you are one of the people that has, has bought our book, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Yeah. So, and, and I'm laughing because before we got on the recording, I told you that my first ever TEDx dropped two days ago, and I'm in the position right now of sharing it. And the default still image on it is the least attractive image of me, bar none, in my entire 53 years on this earth. And I'm looking at it to the point where my husband called me, he's traveling, and he said, "Honey, can they do something about that?" And I'm like, "Not without losing the people who've already signed up, Yeah Losing the metrics." And he goes, "Oh, that's a shame." Yeah And it's like, yeah, so I'm, I'm just gonna go with, I'll look better in person, yay Yeah, see, again, as I was telling you, the, the bar is low, so now anytime anybody sees you, they go, "You look amazing. Oh my gosh. You know, I saw your picture, but in person you look fantastic." "You look so much better. You're practically a model." Yeah, exactly, it's like, and I'm promoting the hell out of it. Nice But what's funny is that I was just in conversation with my friend Kellie, who works with me, not 15 minutes before this call, Okay And she said, "Why is it not up on the front page of your website?" And I said, "Oh, it doesn't really fit, and narratively, I, I put it on the speaking page, but." And she looked at me, she goes, "You're full of it, you know. You know why it's not up there." That's right. And I'm like, "I can't stand to have it up there, because it's so ugly." And she went, "Well, sucks to be you. And I'm like, "Yes ma'am." Yeah So I will No, I kind of agree. And I will say, you know, if your audience is a creative and if you are like me, that sometimes you have a hard time internally thinking, "Well, what are people gonna say?" Yeah "What are people gonna think?" Yeah And really, we constrain ourselves a lot as creatives sometimes, because we put self limitations on some of our ideas because we don't want people to think of us a particular way, or we don't want people to misunderstand us, right? I mean, just like the cover of my book, Yeah If people didn't get, I was purposely doing it Yeah To say, take risks, do things that you know you're not supposed to do, and, it can backfire, right? It can, like, you know, like I think it did a little bit in my case, but it makes for a great story now, because now Yes When people hear it, they go, "Oh, Yeah So you did know you're not supposed to use Comic Sans" and I was like, "Exactly." And my book is about beginners who don't know what they're doing, and the whole book is about the journey. So there's meta layers Within the reason I did things, right. When Yes You're starting off, you don't know what you're doing, Mm-hmm So you might use Comic Sans if you were doing this. So they don't get that it was part of the hero's journey. Yep But then also it's about taking a risk, because I do know what I'm doing, but I said, "How cool would it be to be meta, to say, use the font that nobody tells you to use." Use the font everybody that says, "Never use this, okay." Yeah, everybody says, you know, "Don't use this." So, anyway, So, what, what would you advise people, if they're struggling with ongoing mastery in their work, Yeah And trying to especially get out of their own way. Like, I struggle with it. You some struggle, struggle with it. We all do. Yeah, sure What, what is a good technique to help you kind of get out of that? What would you suggest? So, I think, there's a story that I read and the story is there was a guy who was really into being a Buddhist and he traveled all this way to this Buddhist master. And he had read all the books and he was a Ph.D. and knew everything about Buddhist history, Buddhist philosophy, Buddhist, everything, right? So he gets to meet this guy and the guy says, "Hey, how you doing?" And the guy starts talking, "Oh my gosh, I'm here finally. It's so cool. Let me tell you all the things I know." And the guy goes, "Do you want some tea?" He said, "Well, sure." So, he starts pouring the tea and he's talking, talking, still talking, and then the guy keeps pouring and it's overflowing the teacup. And he goes, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hey, you're, you're overflowing the teacup." And he goes, "You are the tea cup. You are so full of everything you know, that there's no room for anything else." And the lesson there is always try to have the mind of a beginner. Always try to have that mindset because at the beginning of anything, no matter what, if it's drawing, you know, coloring with crayons or, you know, trying to use Photoshop for the first time, when you do those things, you are not gonna know what you're doing. And you're going to look a little foolish, because you can't find something, or it's not gonna be what, what's inside your head, you know? It's gonna take some time. Embrace the child, embrace the beginner philosophy, because if you do that, you're not gonna take yourself as seriously and you're actually gonna learn better, right? You'll actually learn better, because we tend to measure the, the new things we're trying to learn based on our mastery of what we already know. And we don't wanna look foolish in front of other people, and we don't wanna look foolish to ourselves. And we get frustrated when we can't learn things as fast as we think we should be able to learn things. Mm-hmm So, so embrace that beginner mindset, because then just have fun. Say, "I don't know what I'm doing. I'm totally making this clay pot into some garbled clay thing that doesn't even resemble what was in my mind's eye. But that's okay, because I'm learning how to not do things." And I can't tell you how many times I've been playing in Photoshop or another software when I mess up and I do something, I go, "Whoa. That's totally not what I wanted, but that's cool." Mm-hmm And then later on, you go back and you go, "I totally know where I can use that thing that I messed up on in a really cool way to make this client happy." And so Yeah Those happy accidents, those messing around not know what you're doing, is really where a lot of the most learning takes place. And that's why they say it's never really failing if you're learning, because, and we just don't like to fail, so we prevent ourselves from putting ourselves in situations where we might fail or can fail, which means that comfort zone that we block ourselves in becomes our own creative limitations for the work that's possible for us to create that's within us. We close ourself down by what people think or not wanting to look foolish or make mistakes. And I think the best creatives just go beyond and risk it and be brave and just try something new. And don't worry about what people think because most people, and I read this too, when you die, most people, it's kind of dark, but most people are gonna forget about you within a year. I mean, your close friends and family are gonna remember you and they'll think about you, but most people you kind of knew as acquaintances and stuff, they're not gonna think about you after a year. So why are you so worried about Mmmm What those people think, right? You know, do your stuff while you're here and go beyond, and stop worrying about what people think, because they're not really gonna care about you that long after you're gone. So while you're here, just do it anyways. It's a hard I love it. Thing, it's, it's easy to say and hard to do because we're so worried Mm-hmm About what strangers think about it, even people we don't like. Yeah I mean, I've seen that. There are people that I don't like or don't like me, and I'm worried about what they think. And I'm sitting here going, "Why do I do that? Why can't I just be creative and just do my thing? And if they don't like it, well they already don't like me, so what am I worried about?" Yep. Yep. I love it, because that's exactly it. I, I find myself kind of trapped by the opinions of people I haven't even met yet, you know? Right Like, people on the internet, that That's right I know I'm gonna get trolled, because I'm a person Sure I'm a person in public, you know, in a public space. I'm on the internet. I'm now putting That's right. Myself out there, therefore it's going to happen. Yep And part of me is like, "But Yeah I don't wanna get yelled at." And yet it's like, Right "But would you ever talk to that person? No. So why are you listening to them? Why are you giving them power?" That's right. Yeah, yeah That's right. That's, when we worry about what other people think, we give them control of us. And it's, what's really interesting is when you start to shift, when you start to not worry about what other people think, Mm-hmm Or you say, "I, you know, I just really don't care what you think. I'm doing my own thing," people get jealous, because they wish they could be that way. They wish they would be confident enough to not care, and those are the trolls. Really, Yeah Really trolls are, a lot of times, people who are really insecure. They're not doing what they want to do in their life. They're not achieving their dreams. So what they do is they look towards other people who are trying to get stuff done and critique them. Yeah And I, I feel sorry for them, because some of them are really unhappy people that have nothing better to do than critique people that are actually trying to get stuff done. Yeah I wish for them that they would find their passion, their joy, and start doing their own thing. That's what I would wish for them, instead of throwing negativity into the world and for people who are really trying and making an effort, just trying to make those people feel bad because it gives them some sort of sadistic joy. I don't Yeah Understand that, but, no. Yep, exactly, exactly. I, and I know that you've actually got a really tight window, so I'm only Yep Gonna keep you another minute, but where can people find you? Like, if they, if they wanna know more about the magic that is J, Yeah Where is the magic that is J found? So, so my website got hacked by Russians over COVID. Oh, dammit And, and I, I still have not, I still have not taken the time to, to get that going. All right So that's on my 2023 agenda. All right. Are you on Insta? The best way, the best way to find me is just do a LinkedIn. Okay So, that's the best way to connect with me. You can get our book, if you search really hard on Amazon. So It's out there. So, maybe you can send out, send out the link, alright. And I will post the link. Let people know. Yes I, I'll give you, I'll give you a, a, a kind of a cool, I am working on my first fiction novel, with a friend of mine, Karen Goddy, Cool And we are, we, we're through our second pass. The first pass we got beta readers. It's okay, but the second pass is amazing. We're biased, but we're loving it. And so that will come Yes Out in 2023, so stay tuned on that. It's gonna be fantastic. Oh It's a sci-fi story about a bunch of kids who get trapped in a dimension. And, both Karen and I think people are really gonna love it. So, stay tuned for that. Fantastic So that's something new, yeah. Awesome, awesome. Well, I, as always, I just love your take on creativity and energy and positivity and, and you are just naturally a mentor to pretty much everybody that you meet Thanks Which is a gift, and I appreciate it. Thank you And I really wish we lived in the same damn state. I do. Yeah So, at some point, Yeah, that'd be nice. At some point, we'll be in the same state, and we'll have dinner, and it'll be awesome. And other than that, I will see you at some point. Thank you everybody for listening. I hope you've found value, because I think this is a positive, joyful conversation to have. It is. And, as always, find us on Ongoing Mastery: Presenting & Speaking on LinkedIn, the group, that's where we're kind of gathering everybody together and we'll start dropping information. And other than that, have a great coming up turkey coma day. Turkey day, yes, yeah, yeah Turkey day. Everybody have tryptophan coma. Thanksgiving, whatever you wanna call it. Whatever you wanna call it. If you're, and if you're from a country that doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving, enjoy the upcoming holiday seasons. Yes Right, and just spend time with friends and family, because that's really Perfect At the end of it, that's the most important thing to do. Yes it is. All right. Thank you so much for being on here. I really appreciate it. Thank you for being my friend. Thank you for inviting me. All right, and we'll see everybody next time.
