Finding the Throughline with Kate Hanley

Finding the Throughline: Conversations about the Creative Process invites you into the minds of writers and other creatives as they open up about their process, their doubts, and what kinds of changes they’re thinking about making. The questions are mildly invasive, honestly, and the answers are unvarnished…and so refreshing! 

Whether your creative work is writing, painting, making music, parenting, or simply living, Finding the Throughline can help you get—and stay—inspired. Invigorated, even. 

For detailed show notes on each interview, visit katehanley.substack.com. And if you’d like to hear these interviews in one ad-free episode (as opposed to broken up into three shorter episodes with a few ads sprinkled in to keep the lights on), become a paid subscriber once you’re there.

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Education
Self-Improvement
How To
676
The 5-Day Dawdle, Day 4: Visit Your Mother (as ...
The great thing about nature is that it has that magic ability to both calm you and energize you. And that’s precisely what we’re after during this week dedicated to dawdling and replenishing.   Take a pic of you enjoying some nature and !
6 min
677
The 5-Day Dawdle, Day 3: Physical Pleasure, Yes...
Now that you’ve said no to some stuff and cleared some space in your schedule and your head, and you’ve spent some time alone and had a chance to digest some emotions, let’s get your senses involved and do something that feels physically...
7 min
678
The 5-Day Dawdle, Day 2: Take 20 Minutes Alone ...
Spending time alone is a key ingredient for replenishment. The thing is, when you’re alone, no one is talking to you, or asking you to do something, and you can hear yourself think. Even if you are the most extroverted extrovert, alone time is...
7 min
679
The 5-Day Dawdle, Day 1: Let’s Slow it Down a B...
This week on the podcast I’m doing things a little differently, and trying to create some space for us all to slow down a little bit, catch our breath, and refill our wells a bit.  I’m calling it the Five-Day Dawdle--as in, five days of doing...
6 min
680
A Tactic to Feel Better About the Big Decisions...
There are many big, capital-D decisions that can take a really long time to figure out. Things like, should you move, change jobs, break up, have kids, or anything that feels like it’s going to change your life. These big decisions require...
5 min
681
How to Make Decisions Quickly: Decide When You’...
One way to avoid overthinking or ignoring some of the things that you need to decide is to give yourself a deadline. In other words, some times you need to decide WHEN you’re going to decide.  !
4 min
682
How to Stop Overthinking Everything EP: 554
Because you are listening to a podcast called How to be a Better Person, you give a shit, about a lot of things, including making good choices. And that desire, while beautiful, can also be a slippery slope into overthinking. I mean, we’ve all been...
14 min
683
Choose Love: Making Decisions from the Heart E...
One of the reasons why decisions can be so taxing is that we’re over-relying on our brains to make them. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for making pro and con lists and doing research and mulling things over, but your brain isn’t the only game in...
7 min
684
How to Use Intuition in Decision-Making EP: 552
Most of us know the basics of decision-making--name the problem, list the options, weigh the pros and cons of each, and choose the best one. But sometimes, the straightforward, tried and true approach just doesn’t work. Especially now in the...
8 min
685
Being a Better Person Online: Get a Grip on You...
OK the pandemic did NOT help us have a healthy relationship to screens. Not that all screen time is bad, but... we could all pretty much use a check in on how much time we spend starting at a screen.  
8 min
686
Are You Meaner Online Than in Real Life? EP: 550
There’s a scientific term for the phenomenon of acting differently online than you do in real life, it’s called the internet disinhibition effect. So if you get fired up and leave snarky comments or bad reviews, you're living out a scientific...
7 min
687
Are You Addicted to Your Phone? Maybe (Probably...
Smartphones are designed to be addictive. If you can't stop looking at yours, it makes sense. Does that mean there's nothing you can do? No. Dr. Jud Brewer, a New York Times best-selling author, neuroscientist, addiction psychiatrist, and thought...
16 min
688
Managing the Onslaught of Opportunities to Sho...
Anytime you are online (unless you’ve paid for a subscription service with no ads), SHOPPING IS EVERYWHERE!! It’s very, very hard to resist. Which is tough on our willpower, which is a finite resource that burns pretty quickly, our credit...
7 min
689
Being a Better Person Online: Keeping Relations...
All our connectivity makes a lot of things easier, but there are some things where you don’t really want to take the easy route: for example, fostering day to day closeness to people you love. 
8 min
690
DAY FIVE of the First-Ever Give a Shit Challeng...
Well, you commit to something. Something that helps keep a very manageable amount of your energy directed toward making a difference. I'll also share how I came to be secretary of the PTO--and why I'm so glad I did, despite the meetings.
7 min
691
DAY FOUR of the First-Ever Give a Shit Challeng...
In what I think might end up being the shortest How to Be a Better Person podcast episode ever, your tiny assignment today is just ridiculously simple. But hearing why it matters so very much will help inspire you to do it.
5 min
692
DAY THREE of the First-Ever Give a Shit Challen...
You may not have 50,000 followers on Instagram or a million followers on tiktok, but you still have influence. Today’s piece of the challenge is to take the information you gathered on who is already doing the work on the thing you want to help...
6 min
693
DAY TWO of the First-Ever Give a Shit Challenge...
 Here’s a crucial thing to keep in mind when it comes to making a difference on issues big and small, global and local: You don’t need to be the savior rushing in a white horse. In fact, you'd likely only make things worse. Instead, your task...
6 min
694
DAY ONE of the First Ever Give a Shit Challenge...
This week on the podcast I’m doing something a little bit different. Because I’ve gotten such a great response to my free I Give a Shit sticker (it's a nice antidote to the I give zero effs thing that’s been floating around) and because there...
8 min
695
Ask Yourself This Question to Figure Out What Y...
Your emotions aren’t here to torture you; they’re messengers, giving you information about what you value, need, and want. Here's one question to ask yourself to figure out what information your anger is trying to convey. (Then it won’t have to...
8 min
696
What’s Your Anger Story? EP: 540
Each of us has a set of beliefs about anger that we’ve been carrying around since we were little. By taking a little time to think about what those beliefs are, you can get a little more objectivity and perspective on this emotion that so often...
8 min
697
Breaking the Cycle of Anger, an Interview with ...
I wanted to reach out to someone who could help us think about anger in new ways and potentially interrupt any of our habitual patterns around it so that we’ve got some space to learn some new skills for dealing with it. The person I’m talking to...
23 min
698
Reasons Why You Might Feel Angry All the Time E...
There’s nothing wrong with anger management strategies, which are fine but, to use a healthcare analogy, learning how to manage anger is trying to mitigate symptoms, instead of treating the root cause. Let’s look at some of the many, many things...
10 min
699
Is Anger Good, or Bad? Both EP: 537
This week's episodes were inspired by a listener question about feeling angry all the time lately, and what to do about it. And since anger is definitely having a moment (all that cooped-up angst has to have somewhere to go), let's figure out what all...
7 min
700
How Do You Feel When You’re Having Fun? EP: 536
Even when you’re busy and don’t feel like you have a lot of time to do things just for the fun of it, you can increase your experience of fun by tuning in to how fun feels in your body.
6 min