179 | HOW TOXIC PEOPLE POISON CREATIVE DRIVE

This episode is sponsored by Petra Kolb

In the last episode, the New Year Special EPISODE 178 - STOP FEEDING THE MACHINE - START CREATING STUFF THAT MATTERS, I talked about systems and platforms that drain our time, focus, and creative energy. Today I want to stay in that territory, but bring it much closer to home, because this week it isn’t about algorithms or technology.

It’s about people.

It’s something I’ve seen repeatedly over thirty years of working in creative environments. Film sets. Theatre. Production offices. Online spaces. Rooms full of people who all describe themselves as professionals. I’ve seen it from supposed friends too, who in effect I had to side-line from my own projects along the way.

And here’s the thing that took me far too long to really understand.

You can be working well and moving forward, and then someone new will enter the picture, or the project, or just have your ear in some way, and you start to stall. You hesitate more. You push less. Not because the work defeated you, but because something else changed.

What makes this hard to spot is that nothing obvious happens. There’s no argument. No confrontation. Nobody tells you to stop. You just find yourself hesitating more, delaying longer, and questioning things that never used to slow you down.

It isn’t criticism.

It’s interference.

James Clear said “Clarity is power.” And it’s clarity that can get tainted when a toxic influence enters your creative headspace.

Over the years I’ve noticed a small number of recurring toxic behaviours that consistently poison creative drive. They show up in different forms, sometimes dressed up as professionalism or positivity, but the damage they do is remarkably consistent. And I’ve trod these boards before, most recently with The Bad Apple Effect episode, but I’ve also had several well received shows about toxic archetypes, and that’s where I find myself again.

When I talk about toxic archetypes, I’m not talking about abstract theory or moral judgement. I’m talking about pattern recognition. You see the same behaviours play out often enough, in different rooms, with different people, and you start to recognise the shape of them. The details change, the outcome doesn’t. Until you learn to spot those patterns, you tend to personalise the damage and assume the problem is you.

The first archetype is what I call The Assumed Authority

This is the person who always sounds certain. Often briefly. Often cheerfully. They respond to complex or exploratory ideas with confidence and tone rather than substance, very often wrapped in playful positivity that makes them hard to challenge. I also find that they have a two-dimensional view of the world based solely on their own experience and do not care to consider the problems that someone else may face, or the solutions that are offered.

Here’s what The Assumed Authority looks like in practice.

You put something out. It might be a post, a proposal, a suggestion in a meeting, or an idea you’re still testing. You’re careful with the language. You leave space. You’re clearly exploring rather than declaring.

Almost immediately, someone louder responds.

They don’t engage with the idea itself. They don’t ask questions. They don’t challenge it properly. They don’t take time to consider anything beyond something they have already decided. I often find it stems from an “I’m Alright Jack” mentality. If it doesn’t affect them, they don’t care, and they disregard your point. They reply with certainty. Short sentences. Absolute statements. Often with a smiley face, a thumbs up, or a laughing emoji attached, as if to signal that the matter is settled and everyone can relax now.

And that’s the moment things change.

Because now, continuing feels awkward. Not wrong, just awkward. Any attempt to push the idea further risks you looking humourless, defensive, or like you didn’t get the joke. They have framed confidence as friendliness and doubt as a social failure.

Nothing hostile happened. Nobody attacked you. But the space for thinking just closed.

That’s The Assumed Authority. They don’t beat you by being right. They beat you by sounding finished, and by making further effort feel unnecessary.

They don’t engage with nuance. They overwrite it. Questions get reframed as indecision. Uncertainty is treated as weakness. Exploration gets flattened into slogans.

And here’s the key point.

They don’t win by being right. They win by sounding finished.

Because we’re wired to read confidence as competence, this works. Over time, you start to feel slow, behind, or underqualified simply because you’re still thinking things through.

The productivity cost is real. You stop trying things out. You wait until ideas feel safe. You over-polish instead of exploring, and creative momentum dies in environments where uncertainty is punished.

Another example I saw the other day was someone making a very valid and important point in a group chat, and rather than engaging with the point, someone picked a spelling error instead. The person had written there THERE rather than their THEIR, and all the reply said was THEIR. It derailed the conversation, with the original poster apologising about spelling, and the whole point being made was sidetracked and stalled.

These people are dangerous. They are awful people. They are trouble. Stay away from them.

The second archetype is The Friendly Suppressor, and this one is particularly dangerous.

This one is rarely loud and never openly hostile. They’re supportive. Reasonable. Often quite pleasant to be around. On the surface, they seem like allies, and that is what makes them dangerous. They don’t attack your ideas. They soften them. They don’t shut you down. They gently steer you away. Wanting to do things well gets treated like you’re overdoing it. Taking your work seriously gets framed as obsession. Caring too much becomes the problem.

What they’re really doing is shrinking the space you’re allowed to be creative. Here’s an example.

You talk about something you want to push properly. A direction you care about. A piece of work you’re taking seriously. They smile, nod, and then come in sideways. A joke. A half-laugh. A comment about you being a bit much, or taking things too seriously, or maybe needing to relax a little. You will often find their interference in this way very frustrating, especially if you are working on increasing your productivity.

Nothing these people say is overtly critical. That’s the thing. But after enough of these interactions, you start to adjust. You explain yourself less. You push a little less hard. You do fewer hours. You stop leaning fully into the thing that mattered, because it’s easier than constantly defending your intent.

They never tell you to stop, but they make stopping feel sensible.

The damage here isn’t immediately obvious either. It accumulates. Over time, your work gets safer. Smaller. Less demanding. Less good. Not because you changed your standards, but because the environment quietly trained you to lower them.

That’s The Friendly Suppressor. They don’t block you. They wear you down.

The third archetype is The Tone Policer.

This person doesn’t argue with what you’re saying. They object to how you’re saying it. You’re too intense. Too negative. Too serious. Too blunt. Too much.

It’s a clever trick because it turns the conversation away from the work and onto you. The substance gets sidestepped and reframed as a personality issue. Now the problem isn’t the idea. It’s your delivery, your attitude, your vibe, your energy, your tone.

And that reason is almost always comfort. They’re not asking you to be clearer. They’re asking you to be easier to sit with. They want the edges softened so nothing unsettles them, and the moment you comply, you start editing yourself before the work has even had a chance to exist.

Once tone becomes the battlefield, the work stops moving. You start second-guessing your instincts. You start diluting ideas before they’ve even had a chance to breathe. You spend more time managing how you sound than thinking about what you’re trying to do.

That isn’t maturity. It’s fear, delivered politely.

I struggled with it myself when writing this episode. The phrase “pattern recognition” has been weaponised recently by the media in the context of racism, so I tried repeatedly to remove it from this episode. Everything I wrote became derailed nonsense, so I eventually returned to it. Pattern recognition is an essential productivity skill, so I had to run the gauntlet by using it. By avoiding it, my earlier point became very difficult to lay out. It was an example of a chilling effect, perhaps, but the result was the same. It made me nervous, and it distracted me.

I don’t agree with that line in every situation, but I do like the word consent. Because tone policing works when you unconsciously agree to play their game. You give them permission to make your delivery more important than your point. That’s the trap. And once you see it, you can stop walking into it.

The fourth archetype is The Momentum Thief.

These people always show up at exactly the wrong moment. Just as something starts to gain traction. Just as you’re committing. Just as momentum begins to build.

A momentum thief usually isn’t thinking in grand, malicious terms. They’re not plotting to stop you. What they’re thinking is much smaller and much more self-serving.

They’re thinking, this feels risky, this makes me uncomfortable, or this is moving faster than I’m ready for. Sometimes they’re thinking about their own position. Sometimes they’re worried about being exposed as lazy or useless. Sometimes they just don’t like decisions being made without them in the room.

So they reach for the safest tool they have.

Delay.

They tell themselves they’re being responsible. Sensible. Professional. They convince themselves they’re helping by slowing things down. In their head, they’re not blocking progress. They’re making sure it’s right.

But what they’re really protecting is their comfort, their relevance, or their control.

Here’s a typical example.

You’ve reached a point where something needs to move. A project is ready to be locked. A decision needs to be made. You’re past exploration and into action. Momentum is finally doing some of the work for you.

That’s when they appear.

They don’t say no. They say, can we just pause for a second. They suggest one more conversation. One more check. One more stakeholder. One more round of feedback. Nothing dramatic. Nothing you can easily argue against.

And if you push back, you look reckless. Unprofessional. Impatient.

So you agree.

The pause stretches. Energy drops. People disengage. What felt inevitable suddenly feels fragile again. By the time you’re ready to move, the moment has passed, and restarting costs far more than continuing ever would have.

That’s the damage.

A momentum thief doesn’t kill ideas. They starve them. They drain the forward motion until the work collapses, and everyone convinces themselves it was just bad timing.

It wasn’t.

It was interference at exactly the wrong moment.

That’s exactly what the momentum thief goes after. Not the outcome, the action itself. They don’t want you moving forward. Because once you act, something becomes real, and once it’s real, it’s much harder for them to get in the way.

Momentum is fragile. Once it’s broken, getting it back costs far more effort than continuing ever did. I have seen them most of all in funding bodies, perhaps. Those funds can kill projects stone dead if you aren’t careful, because by accepting their assistance, or in my case simply applying for it and never actually getting it, you let momentum thieves into your project by the back door.

I didn’t write a feature film because I’d applied to a fund that specifically said you must not develop the project further than a treatment. If you do, you are ineligible. I never got the funding, and that project has not been revisited yet. I’d spent about three weeks on it before.

And that’s why this archetype is so dangerous. They don’t have to be rude. They don’t have to be aggressive. They just have to keep you one step away from action for long enough, and the work dies on the vine.

The final archetype I want to talk about is The Backseat Creative, and this is also where hijackers live. I’ve done a whole show about hijackers. They are a big problem in the creative world.

These are people who sit adjacent to the work while it’s fragile. No risk. No responsibility. No graft. They offer opinions, notes, and alternatives, but never carry consequence.

And then, once something reaches completion or real momentum, they appear. Suddenly they’re associated. Involved. Part of it from early on.

They weren’t.

But they know exactly when it’s safe to be seen.

Hijackers don’t just steal credit. They reprogram behaviour. After you’ve dealt with a few of them, something shifts. You stop sharing momentum. You stop trusting collaborators. You stop pushing things to completion with the same energy.

Not because you don’t care.

But because finishing now feels like inviting interference.

Hijackers teach you that finishing attracts parasites, and in my opinion creativity withers where credit is stolen.

This is why all of this matters from a productivity standpoint. Creative drive is fragile by nature. It thrives on permission, momentum, and a sense that trying is allowed.

Toxic people poison that by making effort feel foolish, naïve, or unsafe. And once trying feels risky, productivity collapses. Not because you’re lazy. Not because you’re blocked. But because your internal engine has been quietly shut down.

If your creative energy consistently drops around certain people, that is information. It isn’t weakness. It’s pattern recognition, and it deserves your attention.

So, let’s talk about reclaiming ground. About solutions for dealing with toxic people.

Today we’ve looked at how The Assumed Authority shuts down thinking, how The Friendly Suppressor wears you down, how The Tone Policer derails your work, how The Momentum Thief kills progress, and how The Backseat Creative and the Hijacker poison your will to finish.

The solution to all this isn’t discussion, compromise, or trying harder to explain yourself. It’s much, much simpler.

The solution is removal.

You identify the people, environments, or organisations that consistently interfere with your thinking, drain your drive, distract you, or slow your momentum, and you shut them out. You don’t argue with them. You don’t educate them. You don’t wait for permission.

You remove access.

You stop sharing ideas. You stop communicating with them and you don’t announce that you are doing it. You don’t justify it. You just quietly, secretly, and deliberately, create the distance to  let yourself breathe again.

And this is the principle that sits underneath all of it.

You do not owe everyone access to your process, your life, or your methods. You do not owe everyone proximity to your energy, and you certainly don’t owe everyone association with your success and your effort.

That isn’t harsh. It’s honesty.

The most productive periods of my life have always involved distance from certain voices. And more recently, that has been a deliberate and conscious distancing. Not because those people were evil, or even because I dislike them, but because they were damaging to my drive, my intentions, or my energy.

It’s not about punishment or moral judgement.

It’s about protecting the conditions that allow our creative work to thrive.

Before I wrap up, I do want to thank you for giving me your time and attention today. I don’t take that lightly. I realise you all have busy lives and I hope that you have found this episode interesting and enlightening.

Here’s one clear, immediate call to action for today.

Identify one person, environment, or organisation that consistently drains your creative drive, and step back from it. Not forever. Not dramatically. Just enough to let momentum rebuild.

Good luck.

Next week, I’m going to pick up where this episode leaves off, but turn it inward.

Because even when toxic people are removed, even when interference is reduced, many creative people still struggle to finish the work that matters most to them.

In EPISODE 180, I’ll be talking about High Impact Actions, a practical way of cutting through friction, distraction, and overload, and actually getting projects completed from start to finish.

It’s about focus, capacity, and making progress visible again, especially when time, energy, money, and support are limited.

If you’ve ever felt stuck with unfinished work, or like you’re busy but not moving forward, that episode is for you.

Now, take control of your own destiny. Keep on shootin’ and join me next time on FILM PRO PRODUCTIVITY!

• The music you are listening to right now is Adventures by A Himitsu.

• You can read the full transcript for this episode only at the official website filmproproductivity.com where you can also get in touch if you have any questions.

• Please join me on Facebook at the official page filmproproductivity.

• And continue to support the show by subscribing, sharing and leaving an awesome review.

  
  

  Thanks:

  • A Himitsu Music: Adventures by A Himitsu

    • Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported— CC BY 3.0

    • http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...

    • Music released by Argofox https://www.youtu.be/8BXNwnxaVQE

    • Music provided by Audio Library https://www.youtu.be/MkNeIUgNPQ8 –––

    • Contact the artist: x.jonaz@gmail.com

    • https://www.facebook.com/ahimitsuhttps://www.twitter.com/ahimitsu1

    • https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgFwu-j5-xNJml2FtTrrB3A