The One You Feed | Personal Growth, Emotional Resilience & Purpose

Charlie Gilkey on How to Get Things Done

Dec 21, 2021

Charlie Gilkey, author of 'Start Finishing' and founder of Productive Flourishing, shares valuable insights on moving from ideas to action. He discusses the significance of focusing on projects instead of just ideas and how kindness nurtures creativity. Charlie elaborates on the challenges of execution, stressing that doing meaningful work often requires overcoming self-doubt and societal pressures. He encourages listeners to embrace discipline and the hard work involved in achieving their goals, while reminding them that improvement comes from action, not just thought.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Books

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

The Importance of Finishing

Finishing projects is crucial for making an impact and achieving mastery.
Unfinished creative work leads to toxicity and self-destruction.

INSIGHT

Ideas vs. Projects

We do projects, not ideas; projects require resources and time.
Recognize that you can't do all your ideas and avoid frustration.

INSIGHT

The Difficulty of Meaningful Work

The more something matters, the harder it gets.
Difficulty doesn't signal the wrong project; it's often the opposite.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

Charlie Gilkey is the author of Start Finishing: How To Go From Idea To Done. An Army veteran and near Ph.D. in philosophy, Charlie is the founder of Productive Flourishing, a company that helps professional creatives, leaders, and change-makers take meaningful action on work matters. He’s widely cited in outlets such as Inc. Magazine, Time, Forbes, The Guardian, Life Hacker, and more and his work will help you discover the path from the ideas in your head to the actions you take in your daily life and how to go about getting things done.

But wait – there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you!

Charlie Gilkey and I Discuss How to Get Things Done and…

His book, Start Finishing: How To Go From Idea To Done
How kindness towards others often brings out the best in everyone
The Tao Te Ching
Focusing on your input and letting go of the results
We don’t just improve by thinking about things, we improve by doing them
Creative constipation breeds toxicity
We’re either creating something or destroying something
We don’t do ideas, we do projects
How doing our best work is often really hard
The myth: if it’s meant to be for us, it’s supposed to be easy
The myth that if it doesn’t come easy for you, you shouldn’t do it
Doing something until you’re good enough at it to decide whether or not you want to continue doing it
The 5 things that get in the way of doing our best work
Head Trash: Doesn’t matter if a thought is true or not – it matters if we believe it or not
The problem with automatically believing our thoughts
How discipline limits decision fatigue
How action expresses priority

Charlie Gilkey Links:

Upstart: The fast and easy way to get a personal loan to consolidate, lower your interest rate, and pay off your debt. Go to www.upstart.com/wolf

If you enjoyed this conversation with Charlie Gilkey, you might also enjoy these other episodes:

Chris Bailey on Focus, Productivity, and Meditation

David Kadavy on Getting Started

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices