You've got a lot on your plate: your business, your family, the state of the global community, and all the creative ideas jangling around in your head.

How in the heck are you supposed to focus on the kind of creative, deep work that you love... while keeping everything else afloat?

It's this question that drives illustrator, writer, and cartoonist Jessica Abel, author of Growing Gills: How To Find Creative Focus When You're Drowning In Your Daily Life.

On the next episode of Help Yourself, Jessica and I will have a candid discussion about:

When we've had a hard time focusing on what counts

How we get our heads back in the game and prioritize creative work

The tools and techniques we use to make creative work a daily habit

The role creative work plays in our professional and business lives

Cartoonist, author, and educator Jessica Abel is the author of Growing Gills: How to Find Creative Focus When You’re Drowning in Your Daily Life, the graphic novel La Perdida (winner of the the 2002 “Best New Series” Harvey Award), Trish Trash: Rollergirl of Mars, as well as two collections of stories from her omnibus comic book Artbabe. She and her husband, the cartoonist Matt Madden, were series editors for The Best American Comics from 2007 to 2013. Together they’ve authored two textbooks about making comics, Drawing Words & Writing Pictures and Mastering Comics. Her book (and podcast), Out on the Wire, is about how the best radio producers in the world use story to keep us listening.

Jessica is the chair of the illustration program at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Both within and without PAFA, Jessica helps creative people with big ideas to get past procrastination and anxiety, and get on with the business of making their potentially transcendent, game-changing creative work real in the world.

Help Yourself is a live talk show about digital small business, the New Economy, and the ins and outs of growing a company you love. Each week, Tara Gentile and her guest co-hosts talk about marketing, management, mindset, social media, productivity, and the latest news from the digital small business world. Whether you’re a coach, consultant, designer, educator, or professional building your own space in the New Economy, you’ll find valuable takeaways and of-the-moment ideas.

Help Yourself: The Secret Of Finding Your Focus