Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day - Hardcover

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Todd Henry is the founder and CEO of Accidental Creative, a consultancy that helps organizations generate brilliant ideas. In 2006 he started The Accidental Creative, one of the top business podcasts. Henry is a sought-after speaker, consultant, and coach.

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How much work did you do today that you will be proud of tomorrow? I don’t mean just how you handled the big things, but also how you addressed the little, seemingly insignificant ones. Did you make progress on what matters most to you, or did you allow the buzz, busyness, and expectations of others to squelch your passion and focus?

I’ve been asking these questions of others and myself each day for more than a decade, and they are the main reason I originally felt compelled to writeDie Empty. Through my work I’ve encountered many teams of brilliant, sharp, amazing, talented people who have at some point “settled in” or begun coasting on past success. Unfortunately, this often leads to deep regrets. It’s not that these people aren’t getting things done; perhaps they are even succeeding in the marketplace. It’s that in “settling in” they are ignoring the small hunches, ideas, and bits of intuition that could lead to something truly remarkable. For this reason, many of us have had to sacrifice long-term greatness on the altar of short-term efficiency. We have stopped unleashing our best work each day.

Unleashing your best work means ensuring that your daily mix of work includes the important work that youshould be doing for yourself (but may have been ignoring) in addition to the work that youmust do as a function of your job.

Your best work may include choosing to have the difficult conversations you’ve been deferring, setting aside time to invest in future results rather than just focusing on immediate outcomes, and pushing yourself out of your comfort zone in order to learn a new skill or sharpen your thinking. In short, it means choosing not to defer your contribution, but instead working with urgency and diligence each day as you make progress on building a body of work that represents your real values, hopes, and ambitions. It’s about putting your focus, assets, time, and energy into the work that matters most. Yourbest work.

I have learned that there are no clear rules for success, but I believe there is enough evidence to make this claim: a person who intentionally structures work and life around what matters most to them will find a greater degree of gratification and will ultimately produce better results than those who don’t. Unfortunately, our culture often doesn’t provide for this kind of fulfillment. We spend more time trying to find easy roads to success or comparing our career paths to those of others rather than striving to maximize our contribution in our own areas of influence. It’s clear that a significant share of the energy expended by employees is spent playing politics or clamoring for the next promotion. Many have lowered their sights from working toward the long-term goals of their organization to the short-term gratification they might be able to achieve as individuals. Even those who came in bright-eyed and optimistic have become worn by short-term thinking and eventually settle into the fold.

The good news is that we all have the ability to shun mediocrity and can instead live and work by design. If you refuse to settle, then there has never been a more opportune time for you to build a remarkable body of work. The current marketplace might have job uncertainty, but the upside is that it’s now necessary to take your career into your own hands. You can no longer count on your company, your manager, or your industry to define your next steps. Instead, you must stay diligent and alert and plot your own course. Opportunity abounds for those who are willing to step into the heart of uncertainty, find their voice, and commit themselves to battles worth fighting. Now more than ever, we are each accountable for plotting our own path.

George Bernard Shaw once wrote, “I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no ‘brief candle’ to me. It is sort of a splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.” I believe that the most gratifying life you can live is one that’s committed to ideals that go beyond your own comfort and enjoyment. This doesn’t mean living a life of martyrdom or always shunning pleasure. Rather, it means that to build a remarkable body of work you must commit to doing the right thing even when it’s uncomfortable and to emptying yourself every day rather than deferring action. SinceDie Empty was published, I’ve received countless e-mails from artists, managers, entrepreneurs, writers, and others expressing that they have adopted the ideal of emptying themselves and acting on what matters most each day. My wish for you is that you will muster the same courage and take action today on the things that you’ve been holding back. Unleash your best work, and refuse to take it to the grave with you. Choose to die empty.

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Die Empty

Alas for those that never sing,

But die with all their music in them.

—OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, THE VOICELESS

In February 2011, the artist, designer, and urban planner Candy Chang transformed an abandoned home in her New Orleans neighborhood into a living work of art. She had recently lost someone she cared for deeply, and was reflecting on the meaning of life and what truly mattered to her. She was curious to know if other people had similar thoughts about living with a sense of urgency and purpose so she created an enormous chalkboard running the height and width of one side of the abandoned home. She then stenciled the words “Before I Die . . .” at the top of the wall, and created dozens of spaces with the words “Before I die, I want to _____________” in grids across the surface. Chang provided the chalk needed to fill in the blanks, and waited in anticipation to see what would happen. Would people participate? Would it be vandalized? Would anyone even notice?

She didn’t have to wonder for long. The installation was an immediate hit, as neighborhood residents and passersby filled it with their hopes, dreams, and aspirations. Some of the contributions were impersonal and matter of fact, and some were deeply personal:

“Before I die I want to . . . sing for millions.”

“Before I die I want to . . . write a book.”

“Before I die I want to . . . understand.”

“Before I die I want to . . . tell my mother I love her.”

“Before I die I want to . . . be someone’s cavalry.”

Word quickly spread, and visitors began showing up from throughout the region to inscribe their dreams and creative aspirations on the wall. It wasn’t long before others were inquiring about creating installations in their own communities. At present, there have been more than one hundred “Before I die . . .” installations in cities across the globe, and Chang and her collaborators have developed a tool kit and detailed instructions for spreading the movement.

Why did Chang’s project take off quickly and become so widely covered by international media? I believe it’s because the “Before I Die . . .” wall resonates with what we both know and fear to be true: we have only a certain amount of time available to us, and how we choose to spend our days is significant. We’re also aware that there are things we would like to do and experiences we would like to have before we die, many of which are desires we’ve suppressed for months or even years. We feel the ticking of the clock, and the accompanying sense that we may be missing our opportunity to make a contribution to...