Alan Gannett on Unlocking Everyday Creativity for Greater Productivity (Shortcast)
Beyond the To-Do List - Productivity for Work and Life
Erik Fisher
4.5 • 875 Ratings
🗓️ 21 August 2025
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this Shortcast edition, Alan Gannett, author of The Creative Curve, demystifies the myth that creativity is an inborn talent. Instead, he lays out how great ideas emerge at the intersection of familiarity and novelty—and how anyone can train themselves to consistently produce creative work.
- The Creativity Curve Explained: Alan introduces the “creative curve”—the balance between what’s familiar and what’s new—and how it influences what ideas catch on.
- Exposure Breeds Creativity: Why intentional, repeated exposure to relevant content is one of the strongest predictors of creative output.
- Practice Over Prodigy: Alan emphasizes that behind every creative genius is a structure of routines, research, and iteration.
- Why Your Idea Might Flop: He explains how being too far ahead of the market—or too derivative—can tank even the best ideas, and how to find the sweet spot.
- Learnable Creativity: Alan provides hope for all of us: creativity is a skill, not a gift. And like any skill, it improves with deliberate practice and the right strategy.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Beyond the To Do List, a podcast about productivity. I'm your host, Eric Fisher, |
| 0:05.3 | and this is a special shortcast edition brought to you in partnership with Blinkist, the app that |
| 0:10.7 | delivers key insights from top nonfiction books and podcasts in just 15 minutes. With Blinkist, |
| 0:17.0 | you can explore more episodes like this one covering topics like productivity, |
| 0:21.4 | mindfulness, leadership, personal growth. |
| 0:24.3 | And after listening to this episode, click the link in the show notes or go to Blinkist.com |
| 0:29.6 | and start a free trial and then search for Beyond the To Do List to find the over 70 plus episodes |
| 0:36.0 | of Beyond the To Do List that are in there as shortcasts. |
| 0:39.6 | You're going to love them just like this episode. |
| 0:47.3 | Do you ever look at a creative genius like a brilliant singer, a groundbreaking artist, |
| 0:52.3 | or a best-selling author, and think, they were just born with it? |
| 0:56.3 | Maybe you've heard this famous fact that it takes 10,000 hours to become brilliant at anything. |
| 1:01.6 | Or perhaps you'd love to create something amazing, but when you try, no magic comes? |
| 1:07.3 | Today's shortcast is going to bust the myths around creativity, and by doing so, reveal some simple, logical, and science-based insights into how creativity actually works. |
| 1:20.1 | That will help you get to where you want to be. |
| 1:23.2 | Too often we say, well, I've tried singing I'm not good at it. |
| 1:27.4 | Well, take a lesson, take 10 lessons, take 30 lessons, and then come back and tell me you're |
| 1:32.1 | not good at it. |
| 1:33.0 | Alan Gannett is a marketing CEO and an expert on technology and creativity. |
| 1:38.3 | His book, The Creative Curve, reveals the science and secrets behind achieving breakout success in any field. In this shortcast, |
| 1:47.3 | Alan dispels the myth of the creative genius who works alone, instantly creating popular and important |
| 1:53.5 | works as if by magic. We talk about how easy it can be for you to dismiss your own ability and |
... |
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