108: The Practice by Seth Godin

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1. 00:00:00 To the question of the day Mike is when are you going to stop buying pens.
2. 00:00:03 Well I stopped a little bit ago that one just took a long time to come.
3. 00:00:08 I had to come from Italy you know.
4. 00:00:10 No big deal.
5. 00:00:11 Yeah, MBD.
6. 00:00:12 It's nice. I like it a lot.
7. 00:00:14 You want me to talk about it for the actual podcast here?
8. 00:00:17 No, if they want it, they need to join us live.
9. 00:00:20 Bookworm.fm/live.
10. 00:00:21 Next time we're recording.
11. 00:00:23 Should we jump in to follow up? I have one.
12. 00:00:25 I wasn't sure what yours were, so I don't have it on here.
13. 00:00:28 I have actually a piece of long-term follow-up from Brainwash.
14. 00:00:34 Okay.
15. 00:00:35 Regarding the digital distractions and that digital declutter for day one of the Brainwash process.
16. 00:00:42 Yep.
17. 00:00:43 This was sort of unintentional.
18. 00:00:45 I thought I was done with this, but I recognized after I had gone through that process that I
19. 00:00:51 kept talking about the 10-day Brainwash with people.
20. 00:00:56 I also recognized the more I talked about it and the kind of reasoning behind it that
21. 00:01:01 I had let myself slip with the bringing the phones into the bedroom thing.
22. 00:01:05 Oh, sure.
23. 00:01:06 I wanted a way to make sure that I could still do what I needed to do from the bedroom, which
24. 00:01:13 was specifically to play a white noise.
25. 00:01:15 We had a Sonos speaker and we would always activate it from our phones with a Sonos app.
26. 00:01:21 The other thing is we have Hue Lights, which I would say, "Hey, dingus, turn off the bedroom
27. 00:01:28 lights."
28. 00:01:29 Sure.
29. 00:01:30 When it was time to go to bed.
30. 00:01:32 I tried the Siri part with just my watch and it did not go well.
31. 00:01:41 It would have like sometimes a five-second delay.
32. 00:01:46 Sometimes I'm working on it and then nothing.
33. 00:01:50 That was just not going to work.
34. 00:01:52 With Hue Lights, you can turn them on and off manually with the switch on the lamps, but
35. 00:01:58 we don't want to do that.
36. 00:01:59 We want to keep them not at 100% brightness.
37. 00:02:01 The whole idea is when you go into the bedroom, you're getting ready to go to bed.
38. 00:02:06 If you activate it on and off via the app or an electronic assistant, then it maintains
39. 00:02:12 30% brightness or whatever we had it at.
40. 00:02:15 I found an open box HomePod Mini at a local Best Buy and I'm like, "This might solve
41. 00:02:24 all the problems."
42. 00:02:25 All right?
43. 00:02:27 It does.
44. 00:02:29 The HomePod now is sitting on my nightstand.
45. 00:02:31 It's tiny, maybe the size of a softball.
46. 00:02:36 It's pretty decent as a speaker.
47. 00:02:38 Siri with the HomePod Mini for whatever reason is pretty much instant, so it's way better.
48. 00:02:45 The one downside to this is that when it is playing white noise, there is a white light
49. 00:02:52 on the top that illuminates, which isn't that bright.
50. 00:02:55 It's tied to a light sensor, so not a big deal for most people.
51. 00:03:00 You might not even notice it if you have other lights in your bedroom, but I notice
52. 00:03:05 it.
53. 00:03:06 All right.
54. 00:03:08 I had to make a custom cover for this thing.
55. 00:03:12 Okay?
56. 00:03:13 Which really is much less impressive than it sounds.
57. 00:03:16 I found one of my old faith-based productivity round business cards.
58. 00:03:21 And cut it smaller and filed it till it was round and then put that on top.
59. 00:03:26 So basically, that is now covering the light on the top of the HomePod Mini.
60. 00:03:30 I can activate things via Siri, which is great.
61. 00:03:33 I can play white noise, which is great.
62. 00:03:36 It's not keeping me up at night, which is great by the light on the top of the machine.
63. 00:03:41 Well done.
64. 00:03:42 I thought you were going to say you used to look like electrical tape and stuck it to
65. 00:03:44 the light.
66. 00:03:45 No.
67. 00:03:46 Well, I did use painters tape to keep the thing because I didn't want it sliding around
68. 00:03:50 and twisting or whatever.
69. 00:03:51 Like I wanted it to look decent because the light on the top is somewhat recessed.
70. 00:03:56 Okay.
71. 00:03:57 So if you find something that's the right size, you can put it on top and it almost looks
72. 00:04:00 like it's part of the thing.
73. 00:04:02 Sure.
74. 00:04:03 But I didn't want it to be moving around.
75. 00:04:04 I can still use the button on the top.
76. 00:04:06 I know where the plus and minus buttons are, so I can adjust the volume that way, but it's
77. 00:04:09 a voice assistant.
78. 00:04:10 So most of the time you're hating is talking to it.
79. 00:04:14 Yeah, exactly.
80. 00:04:16 So yeah, wow.
81. 00:04:17 And it has worked.
82. 00:04:19 The phones no longer come in the bedroom.
83. 00:04:21 So nice.
84. 00:04:22 Well done.
85. 00:04:23 I'm impressed.
86. 00:04:26 That is not a solution I would have gone for, but hey, no solves that go for it.
87. 00:04:33 Anytime I can justify a tech purchase, you know, I'm basically going to do it.
88. 00:04:39 And this one was less expensive than some other ones.
89. 00:04:44 Just sacrifice one pin and you're good.
90. 00:04:45 Yeah.
91. 00:04:46 Yeah.
92. 00:04:47 And the real takeaway from this that I have discovered is that like this is a system and
93. 00:04:53 I was kind of annoyed that I was having this problem again.
94. 00:04:55 It's like, what is wrong with me?
95. 00:04:57 I know that I shouldn't bring my phone into the bedroom, but I still keep doing it.
96. 00:05:00 My wife is doing it too.
97. 00:05:01 And we're like, we don't like this.
98. 00:05:03 We need something to support this or break this negative habit and establish a different
99. 00:05:09 positive one.
100. 00:05:10 And so finding the right tool to do that, which in this case, I was thinking the HomePod mini
101. 00:05:16 would would be a great fit for this.
102. 00:05:18 And it turns out it's probably even a better fit than I thought it would be because it's
103. 00:05:21 more responsive.
104. 00:05:23 It's the most responsive Siri device we have in the entire house, which is, you know,
105. 00:05:28 not saying it a ton, but I definitely didn't want an echo.
106. 00:05:32 Yep.
107. 00:05:33 Yep.
108. 00:05:34 So just timing wise with this thing just being released, you know, I went into the
109. 00:05:38 Apple app and noticed that they're sold out through like the end of January.
110. 00:05:43 So I figured even if I don't, even if I absolutely hate this thing, does not work at all, I can
111. 00:05:49 probably resell it.
112. 00:05:51 Get it sold.
113. 00:05:52 Yeah.
114. 00:05:53 But I'm keeping it.
115. 00:05:54 I like it.
116. 00:05:55 And it's reduced the friction and that little bit of friction, which didn't seem like a big
117. 00:05:58 deal seems like we should be able to overcome it, but we couldn't.
118. 00:06:01 Yep.
119. 00:06:02 You know, that has made all the difference.
120. 00:06:04 So fair enough.
121. 00:06:05 I'm not one that gets to been out of shape of phones in the bedroom, but part of this
122. 00:06:11 because we have a, the one and only smart device we have in our entire household is
123. 00:06:16 a water alarm.
124. 00:06:17 Sure.
125. 00:06:18 That is the only thing we have that's internet connected and it's tied to our sump pump and
126. 00:06:24 would call us, text us if it were to fail.
127. 00:06:29 Yeah.
128. 00:06:30 Because we've had cases where we get water in the basement, we're not home.
129. 00:06:33 So it would be good to know about that if I'm not home.
130. 00:06:36 That's the one and only thing we've got that does that.
131. 00:06:40 So I've got a teenage son.
132. 00:06:42 I want to set an example.
133. 00:06:43 No phones in the room.
134. 00:06:44 Yeah.
135. 00:06:45 I get it.
136. 00:06:46 I totally get it.
137. 00:06:48 So I have one piece of follow up here and nothing has come of this because this was like
138. 00:06:53 a potential follow up item that could lead to more.
139. 00:06:58 I don't even know what to do with that yet, but the one item was to talk to Becky.
140. 00:07:03 My wife about the motivation, motivation code results, the test that we took as part of
141. 00:07:09 that and then explore doing the full task is your member like you did the full deal and
142. 00:07:15 I did not.
143. 00:07:16 Mm hmm.
144. 00:07:17 I don't think I'm going to go pursue the rest of it.
145. 00:07:20 Just after having the conversations with her, I feel like I've got a pretty good handle
146. 00:07:23 on the parts that I'm interested in right now.
147. 00:07:28 And the one that was really throwing me off was the collaboration piece being number one.
148. 00:07:33 Like Joe wants to collaborate with other people.
149. 00:07:37 I don't really think of myself that way.
150. 00:07:38 So I was talking through it with her and she's like, oh yeah, that's pretty accurate.
151. 00:07:42 Come on.
152. 00:07:43 I thought I had a reason to say this book was not like to say it was off its rocker, but
153. 00:07:49 seems like that's the opposite of what I achieved in that and showing that.
154. 00:07:55 Oh, actually, yeah, it is.
155. 00:07:57 It is accurate.
156. 00:07:58 That's unfortunate because I really wanted to, you know, rail on it.
157. 00:08:01 But here we are.
158. 00:08:03 So it is accurate from what we can tell.
159. 00:08:07 And I think at this point, I am taking the pros and cons of the results that I have and
160. 00:08:16 just looking for ways to maximize those in my day job.
161. 00:08:20 That's the core place that I'm working on doing that.
162. 00:08:24 And I had a meeting scheduled with my boss this morning, but it had to be postponed.
163. 00:08:32 But my goal is to talk through this stuff with him.
164. 00:08:35 I feel like it would be good for him to understand this stuff too.
165. 00:08:39 I don't know that anything will come of that conversation, but just want to make him aware
166. 00:08:44 of what I'm doing and or at least how I think.
167. 00:08:48 If there's a follow up, that's it is to continue that conversation with him.
168. 00:08:52 But other than that, that's where I land.
169. 00:08:55 All right.
170. 00:08:56 Great.
171. 00:08:57 Fun.
172. 00:08:58 Now that all said, I feel like at least I'm somewhat itching to get into today's book,
173. 00:09:05 which is The Practice by Seth Godin.
174. 00:09:09 This is a very new book as in it's, well, at this point in time, what is it, a month
175. 00:09:14 old, 45 days old, something like that, somewhere in that realm.
176. 00:09:18 It's very, very new.
177. 00:09:19 This is Seth Godin's latest book.
178. 00:09:22 I don't have the tagline in front of me.
179. 00:09:24 Why do I always do that?
180. 00:09:25 Shipping creative work is the tagline.
181. 00:09:27 There you go.
182. 00:09:28 Shipping the creative work.
183. 00:09:30 And this, I'll say there's a couple of things that are really weird about this book.
184. 00:09:36 It's totally Seth Godin style where he does like a bunch of short form setups, like kind
185. 00:09:44 of like super short essays, I guess is the way to say that.
186. 00:09:48 Does he have them numbered?
187. 00:09:49 He does.
188. 00:09:50 There are 219.
189. 00:09:51 And then a couple like one pages at the end after that.
190. 00:09:57 So 219 of these little tiny short essays.
191. 00:09:59 Do you notice there's no table of contents?
192. 00:10:02 Yes.
193. 00:10:03 Mortimer Adler would not approve.
194. 00:10:05 Yeah.
195. 00:10:06 I was trying to put the outline together for this and wanted to, because I was trying to
196. 00:10:10 figure out how on earth are we going to go through this?
197. 00:10:13 And I was like, you know what, he's got them broken down into sections.
198. 00:10:19 Let's just run through those overarching sections.
199. 00:10:22 So I flipped the table of contents to copy those and it's not there.
200. 00:10:27 Yeah.
201. 00:10:28 I usually look for the table of contents to start and I remember looking for it.
202. 00:10:31 And then I also remember my oldest daughter asking me a question about the time I was
203. 00:10:36 doing that.
204. 00:10:37 And then I totally blocked it out, but thought I had already looked at it and I hadn't.
205. 00:10:41 And then when I came back to it, guess what?
206. 00:10:44 It's not there.
207. 00:10:45 There's not a table of contents with this one, but there are eight sections in the book where
208. 00:10:52 he breaks these little short essays into these eight sections.
209. 00:10:58 And I feel like it would be okay to go through those top levels.
210. 00:11:01 I'm sure there's probably a few individual essays we want to cover, but that's my best
211. 00:11:08 guess on it.
212. 00:11:09 Sure.
213. 00:11:10 I like that.
214. 00:11:11 Anyway, I noticed the note table of contents because I have my own version of the how to
215. 00:11:18 read a book that we covered.
216. 00:11:21 And I have a process when I create the mine node files where I drop the cover in the middle.
217. 00:11:27 And then the very first thing I do is look at the table of contents for the sections and
218. 00:11:31 then create those as like the colored child nodes underneath that.
219. 00:11:36 Yep.
220. 00:11:37 And when I noticed it wasn't there, I was like, Oh boy, how is this going to work?
221. 00:11:40 And I noticed that the side pages are shaded and those are actually the section differentiators.
222. 00:11:47 Yeah.
223. 00:11:48 So I flipped to those and then jotted them down that way.
224. 00:11:52 But you're right.
225. 00:11:53 Like this is kind of a break the mold type book.
226. 00:11:58 Mine node related.
227. 00:12:00 This is another one that's really annoying to take notes on because Seth's style.
228. 00:12:05 It's so like some of these things are so short.
229. 00:12:07 It's a couple of sentences, a couple of paragraphs.
230. 00:12:10 So in the mine node file, I have every single one of these little essays numbered.
231. 00:12:18 And then I basically just jotted down underneath those a couple of points from the ones that
232. 00:12:23 really jumped out to me, which ended up being like three fourths of them.
233. 00:12:27 Sure.
234. 00:12:28 Yeah.
235. 00:12:29 So this is another giant mine node file.
236. 00:12:31 You're getting good at these.
237. 00:12:32 I hate this.
238. 00:12:33 I'm not one that I can just read and jot down things occasionally, not try to recreate
239. 00:12:40 the structure of the book, which normally isn't that big a deal.
240. 00:12:44 But we've had some books recently where the structure has been so different.
241. 00:12:48 It's kind of like you got to figure out on the fly how you're going to attack this one.
242. 00:12:53 Right.
243. 00:12:54 And the Mortimer Adler approach kind of doesn't matter.
244. 00:12:57 Like you got to figure something else out.
245. 00:12:59 Yeah.
246. 00:13:00 I feel like we've had not the table of contents thing, but I feel like we've had a few books
247. 00:13:06 in recent months that have this style.
248. 00:13:09 Maybe it's maybe it's further back than that because I'm thinking of like, what was it
249. 00:13:13 make time was that way?
250. 00:13:16 It makes me wonder if the publishers ask for that or if it's a collection of thoughts by
251. 00:13:22 the author and they're taking like blog like in this case, it made me wonder, I don't know
252. 00:13:26 if this is true or not.
253. 00:13:27 Seth Godin went to his blog and copied 219 of his short form blog posts and put them into
254. 00:13:35 a book.
255. 00:13:36 Yeah.
256. 00:13:37 And just put it in a different package.
257. 00:13:38 I don't know if there's any truth of that or not.
258. 00:13:40 I have no idea how he came up with it or if he did sit down and write it.
259. 00:13:45 I don't know.
260. 00:13:46 Well, I think it is a collection of his blog posts because some of these and I don't have
261. 00:13:51 written down the specific ones, but he kind of has these themes throughout and you'll
262. 00:13:57 see these themes appear in a couple different little essays.
263. 00:14:03 The way he talks about them, it's almost like even though you just read about it in
264. 00:14:08 the previous one, he's introducing it for the first time.
265. 00:14:10 Yeah.
266. 00:14:11 And again, it's not like a big in depth introduction because it's Seth Godin and every word is
267. 00:14:16 very carefully selected and weighed and only the stuff that is important is going to be
268. 00:14:23 in here.
269. 00:14:24 In fact, at the end, he's got a thing, should this book have been longer?
270. 00:14:28 Yeah.
271. 00:14:29 I really appreciated it.
272. 00:14:30 Yeah.
273. 00:14:31 Because he basically was like, you know, length doesn't determine the quality.
274. 00:14:35 And I really like, I mean, we're getting into style here, but I like this style as we go
275. 00:14:40 through this and we're talking about how this book is laid out and how we're going to cover
276. 00:14:43 it.
277. 00:14:44 And it makes me wonder if I could do this same sort of thing because when you sit down and
278. 00:14:49 think about like, well, how do I write consistently?
279. 00:14:51 How do I create a writing habit?
280. 00:14:53 How do I write or blog every day?
281. 00:14:55 Well, you're only publishing a couple of paragraphs.
282. 00:14:58 That's a lot easier.
283. 00:14:59 Yeah.
284. 00:15:00 Yeah.
285. 00:15:01 And that's a good point.
286. 00:15:02 Like I have heard folks say how on earth does Seth Godin write a blog post every day?
287. 00:15:08 It's like, well, if you look at the length of those, you know, at two to three paragraphs,
288. 00:15:13 sometimes there are one paragraph.
289. 00:15:16 If you have a writing habit of any form, you know that sitting down and writing that paragraph,
290. 00:15:21 editing it and then releasing it, you're only talking 15, 20 minutes.
291. 00:15:25 If that, like it's not much.
292. 00:15:27 Yeah.
293. 00:15:28 He's thinking out loud.
294. 00:15:30 He's not trying to formulate everything he wants to say about the topic, write about
295. 00:15:34 it and then move on to the next thing.
296. 00:15:36 Right.
297. 00:15:37 Right.
298. 00:15:38 So it doesn't require massive amounts of work to do that.
299. 00:15:42 Now, if you were writing a blog post that is similar to something that's on like the
300. 00:15:50 newest blog or the buffer blog, you know, if you know those or even like one of your
301. 00:15:55 sweet setup articles, you know, if you were trying to write one of those every day, that's
302. 00:16:01 a different game.
303. 00:16:02 That's a whole different deal.
304. 00:16:06 That's an interesting point because the reason why most people blog is to get attention and
305. 00:16:14 SEO is a big part of that.
306. 00:16:17 I've been digging into SEO lately and it's not as sleazy as I initially thought it was.
307. 00:16:21 You can make it that way, but it's not inherently that way.
308. 00:16:26 However, everything that Seth is about to tell us in this book is kind of anti SEO.
309. 00:16:30 Yeah.
310. 00:16:31 Yeah, if you dive deep into how do you build a web page that's quickly and easily findable
311. 00:16:37 by Google and ranks high on those search engines, if you go down that path, you can learn very
312. 00:16:48 quickly how to set up a page.
313. 00:16:51 But a lot of that has to do with, you know, injecting keywords and making sure you're
314. 00:16:57 covering a certain realm of links that are also linking within your own site.
315. 00:17:02 Like, there's just a lot of different technicals that you can do to do that.
316. 00:17:06 But what Seth Godin's referring to is throw all that out the window.
317. 00:17:10 Yep.
318. 00:17:11 Don't pay any attention to that because you have work to do.
319. 00:17:15 And I think that a lot of that, you know, does come back to, well, it goes into the first
320. 00:17:21 section here, trust yourself, not yourself, but yourself.
321. 00:17:27 And it does come back to you have to instead of trying to play all the games, you're trying
322. 00:17:33 to trust your own intuition and trust yourself to do the work and continue the practice.
323. 00:17:41 And that's a lot of what this first piece is about is just being willing to set up the
324. 00:17:46 practice and trust the practice.
325. 00:17:50 Trust the habits, trust the routines, trust the structure that you have set up and continue
326. 00:17:56 to push through that.
327. 00:17:58 And when you want to play the web page game and try to get it ranking high, that's different.
328. 00:18:05 Yeah.
329. 00:18:06 Like, it's not, they don't meld together real well.
330. 00:18:11 Sure.
331. 00:18:13 One other thing about this and his style and the practice and all the advice that he's
332. 00:18:16 going to be giving you, like I mentioned, it kind of inspires me to take the same approach.
333. 00:18:22 Like, could I do this?
334. 00:18:25 The traditional approach is the SEO approach.
335. 00:18:28 Write at least a thousand words, stack it full of keywords, yada, yada, yada.
336. 00:18:32 Have a bunch of links.
337. 00:18:35 I have also seen Seth present at the Entra Leadership Summit.
338. 00:18:41 And Seth is instantly the smartest guy in whatever room he's in.
339. 00:18:47 Yes.
340. 00:18:48 In fact, he was on a Q&A panel with Donald Miller and it was kind of hilarious because
341. 00:18:52 they are so very different.
342. 00:18:54 And they're asking a question and like Seth will answer it and it's very thought out,
343. 00:18:58 very articulate.
344. 00:19:00 And then Donald's kind of like, what's that said?
345. 00:19:04 Yeah.
346. 00:19:05 But I think, you know, that's, it's a, this is one of the reasons whenever you sent me
347. 00:19:10 the link saying, hey, Seth has a new book out and I was like, yes, we need to do this.
348. 00:19:16 That's one of the reasons I've jumped on to a lot of Seth's work and it's like, like
349. 00:19:21 part of the reason that he can do stuff like that, I think is because he writes every single
350. 00:19:26 day, he has the practice and he is continually working towards releasing things all the time.
351. 00:19:36 So he's built in the, think things through as much as you possibly can immediately.
352. 00:19:44 Like he has that habit down.
353. 00:19:46 So when you ask him a question in person, even if it's not something he has prepared
354. 00:19:51 for as well, there's a good chance he's thought about it at some point.
355. 00:19:55 And therefore he has a well thought out, well worded answer because he's done it, what,
356. 00:20:01 4000 times?
357. 00:20:02 I don't even know how many times he's blog now.
358. 00:20:05 It's ridiculously high, the number of blog posts he's released.
359. 00:20:08 No, you're right.
360. 00:20:10 So there's a lot of like practice that goes into it and maybe he's just a product of the
361. 00:20:14 practice that he's established.
362. 00:20:16 But also the thing in the back of my head as I go through this is like, maybe Seth is
363. 00:20:21 the only one who could pull this off.
364. 00:20:24 I'm not entirely sure.
365. 00:20:26 Sure, sure.
366. 00:20:29 It's a solid point.
367. 00:20:32 But okay, the practice, you know, shipping creative work, you know, as we're getting into
368. 00:20:39 this and trying to start through this stuff, it's exactly what Seth does, right?
369. 00:20:45 So Seth is all about releasing things, you know, shipping things and being okay with shipping
370. 00:20:53 them less than 100% perfect.
371. 00:20:57 And he gets into, you know, and I don't, one of the things that he doesn't do in this book,
372. 00:21:03 this is all high level.
373. 00:21:04 There is no tactical practical here.
374. 00:21:08 There is no, like this is a motivation book.
375. 00:21:10 This is not a, here's a system for you.
376. 00:21:13 There is a section on how to draw an owl.
377. 00:21:15 Yeah, I don't think that counts.
378. 00:21:18 True.
379. 00:21:20 But it just to clarify that it's the classic meme where you have draw two circles is the
380. 00:21:26 first step of drawing the owl and then finish the owl is step two and it's completely filled
381. 00:21:31 in and perfect.
382. 00:21:32 So that's his how to.
383. 00:21:35 And I think so much of the practice here is this, like this is a motivation and encouragement
384. 00:21:41 to folks to adopt his method of creating and delivering things and providing, I hate
385. 00:21:49 using these terms, but providing value to people by watching or consuming or reading
386. 00:21:55 the things that you're producing.
387. 00:21:57 Like that's, that's what he's promoting here.
388. 00:21:59 It's a motivational book, which makes it a little bit difficult, I think, to discuss
389. 00:22:05 just because so much of the books we've done have some form of like a system or a process
390. 00:22:13 that they're talking through a mental state that they're discussing.
391. 00:22:17 This is much more broad than that.
392. 00:22:19 There is no formula for you to follow here.
393. 00:22:22 He's basically just telling you and the point of that, how to draw an owl section is like,
394. 00:22:27 you don't learn to ride a bike from a manual.
395. 00:22:31 You just have to do it.
396. 00:22:33 And what you don't know in between those two steps, you figure out as you do it over and
397. 00:22:37 over and over again.
398. 00:22:38 Yes.
399. 00:22:39 One of the sections that I liked in this first part, by the way, is number four.
400. 00:22:42 I don't know how to say this, a skida ekmek, which is from a tradition in Turkey.
401. 00:22:49 It means there is bread on the hook.
402. 00:22:51 And this is basically when you go in to buy a loaf of bread, you can pay for a second loaf
403. 00:22:56 of bread and then they'll put one on the hook, which is going to be free for a person in
404. 00:23:00 need.
405. 00:23:01 I thought this was a cool idea.
406. 00:23:02 And his kind of point with this section is that when you choose to produce creative
407. 00:23:06 work, you're putting yourself on the hook, which is kind of an interesting example.
408. 00:23:11 But I've actually seen a version of this in real life.
409. 00:23:15 There's a coffee shop that my brother-in-law works at.
410. 00:23:18 He actually manages the downtown Appleton drive-through for Seth's coffee, which you and I may have
411. 00:23:25 bought coffee from when you were here.
412. 00:23:28 That sounds familiar.
413. 00:23:29 They've got the fancy machine.
414. 00:23:31 They do, yeah.
415. 00:23:32 And they have what's called a suspended coffee.
416. 00:23:34 So you can buy two and then people can walk up and be like, "Hey, is there any suspended
417. 00:23:39 coffee?"
418. 00:23:40 Yep.
419. 00:23:41 And then they'll give it to them for free, which I think is a really cool idea.
420. 00:23:46 And that gets into this whole theme of sharing your work and sharing the process and being
421. 00:23:53 open about everything, being one of the most generous things that you can do, not waiting
422. 00:23:58 until you've got it perfect and then shipping the thing, which is kind of the approach that
423. 00:24:02 I took when I self-published my book at the beginning.
424. 00:24:07 And I kept editing it, and editing it, and editing it until I got to the point where
425. 00:24:12 it's like, "Okay, I'm always going to find more to do.
426. 00:24:15 I need to just get this out there."
427. 00:24:17 I clicked the button, and then pretty much immediately I felt both relief and dread.
428. 00:24:24 Relief and like, "Okay, there it's done.
429. 00:24:26 It's out there.
430. 00:24:27 People can actually get it."
431. 00:24:29 And then dread because I knew that I did not catch everything.
432. 00:24:34 And I'm not convinced that if I would have just sat on it for even an additional year
433. 00:24:38 that I would have caught everything anyways, that's kind of a cess point.
434. 00:24:41 I was like, "Just ship it.
435. 00:24:42 Who cares if there's typos or you miss something?"
436. 00:24:45 Well, I do.
437. 00:24:46 My personality is I don't want someone to have to get back to me and be like, "Hey,
438. 00:24:50 there's a typo on page whatever."
439. 00:24:53 So a lot of what he is saying in this book, he's talking to me.
440. 00:24:59 I know that when was this?
441. 00:25:02 This is decades ago at this point.
442. 00:25:03 There was a book that was released.
443. 00:25:06 I think it was called The Perfect Book is what it was referred to.
444. 00:25:11 So it was a full-length book, but it was perfect in that they claimed it had no typos.
445. 00:25:17 It had no grammatical errors.
446. 00:25:19 All the punctuation was perfect.
447. 00:25:21 That was the claim.
448. 00:25:23 And if I understand, maybe this is lore, it's been a long time since I've heard this story,
449. 00:25:30 but there was a financial reward if you found an error in the book.
450. 00:25:36 And maybe it was a hundred bucks.
451. 00:25:37 I don't remember how much it was.
452. 00:25:39 But if you were to report it, they would tell them where it's at.
453. 00:25:43 And if you were the first one to report an error, they would do a payout to you.
454. 00:25:48 And they had to cancel the program because they found so many errors in the book.
455. 00:25:55 And it went through the editing process like an obscene number of times.
456. 00:26:00 So I think back on that, there's a lot of this book that makes me think about that particular
457. 00:26:08 experiment because it's impossible to make something a hundred percent perfect in the
458. 00:26:14 world that you and I operate in with online content.
459. 00:26:19 At some point, you have to release it, period.
460. 00:26:23 And I love a lot of what Seth tends to do in building things in public is kind of a
461. 00:26:28 lot of what he does and has picked up a lot of support for that.
462. 00:26:35 And it's fascinating to see.
463. 00:26:38 But all of that, his methodologies here from a thinking level is what this book is primarily
464. 00:26:45 about with these first two sections.
465. 00:26:47 I guess we're kind of blending those two in that you have to trust the practice, trust
466. 00:26:51 yourself to follow the practice and being generous with yourself and offering yourself
467. 00:26:56 to people.
468. 00:26:58 If you follow Seth for very long, I don't remember what his email is, but I know it's
469. 00:27:03 possible to email him directly, like he makes that available and you have direct contact
470. 00:27:08 to him, which is kind of weird.
471. 00:27:11 It reminds me of like the Gary V away of him publishing his phone number.
472. 00:27:15 It's like, you can call Gary V if you would like and he's the one who will answer.
473. 00:27:19 Yeah.
474. 00:27:20 That is possible.
475. 00:27:21 Now, granted, it's very difficult to catch him at a time, I'm told.
476. 00:27:25 Never tried calling that phone number to see if you could talk to him, but I know that
477. 00:27:29 like it's that process, he wants to be available and very, he's very generous with his presence
478. 00:27:36 and his accessibility.
479. 00:27:39 And yet he has a practice where he's publishing things all the time.
480. 00:27:42 No idea where the man gets the time to do all this, but yet he does.
481. 00:27:45 Yeah.
482. 00:27:46 The distinction here between the first and second section, in my opinion, the first one
483. 00:27:50 titled Trust Yourself is trusting that you have something that is worth giving to other
484. 00:27:56 people.
485. 00:27:57 He talks about imposter syndrome and a lot of other stuff in here.
486. 00:28:01 He's got a section on finding your passion, which I thought was pretty great.
487. 00:28:05 We talked a little bit about Passion in the Last Book by Todd Henry because his first
488. 00:28:09 book, Die Empty, that's kind of where I first heard that idea and I thought that was really
489. 00:28:13 cool.
490. 00:28:14 Seth has a way that he phrases this, which is great.
491. 00:28:18 He says, do what you love is for amateurs, love what you do is for professionals.
492. 00:28:22 And making the point that if you commit to the process, then you will develop the skill,
493. 00:28:29 you'll develop the passion, you'll develop the purpose behind the things that you do,
494. 00:28:32 which I think is a really cool idea.
495. 00:28:34 He also has a section in here about toward a daily practice and service of your identity.
496. 00:28:40 He talks about creative people create.
497. 00:28:42 I mean, that echoes of James Clear and Atomic Habits.
498. 00:28:48 But the action item that I jotted down from that particular section, and I don't know
499. 00:28:52 how I feel about this, I hesitate even to share this.
500. 00:28:58 But I think Seth has me convinced that I should be blogging every day, which is why I am entertaining
501. 00:29:06 the idea of trying to do something like he's doing where it doesn't have to be something
502. 00:29:10 super long.
503. 00:29:11 Sure.
504. 00:29:12 Also, I'm not very good at sharing my work.
505. 00:29:17 I'm good at publishing podcast episodes on time, but I'm terrible at linking to them
506. 00:29:22 from my own website.
507. 00:29:25 And if all I did was that, I've got like, if I did it every work day, so Monday through
508. 00:29:30 Friday, if I did that alone, I've got like three out of the ten written already.
509. 00:29:39 I've got the sermon sketch notes that I've been doing on Sundays.
510. 00:29:42 I do those every week.
511. 00:29:44 So that's five out of ten now.
512. 00:29:46 If I want to shift one of those work days to Sunday instead, I mean, I'm not that far
513. 00:29:50 away.
514. 00:29:51 I just have to show up and write every day and then actually publish what I am writing.
515. 00:29:56 And at the same time, I am also updating my book.
516. 00:30:00 I think I've shared here that I have signed on with a hybrid publisher and I'm part of
517. 00:30:05 this program where I basically have to get it done by mid-June.
518. 00:30:09 Otherwise, I have to pay for an extension.
519. 00:30:11 I don't want to do that.
520. 00:30:13 So it's going to happen and I'm making progress on it.
521. 00:30:15 I've been making good progress on it, but I know that this is the thing, this daily writing
522. 00:30:21 habit, this is what helped me get the first version out the door and it's totally time
523. 00:30:25 to do it again.
524. 00:30:27 So faithbasedpredictivity.com is my personal blog is like the logical place for this to
525. 00:30:32 happen.
526. 00:30:33 And I'm scared that I'm talking about this and this is going to be shared publicly, but
527. 00:30:37 I think it's something that I just got to do.
528. 00:30:39 Sure.
529. 00:30:40 Yeah, no, I get it.
530. 00:30:42 And when you make things in a lot of different places online, it's easy to say, well, I'll
531. 00:30:47 just make my blog like a connecting zone where you can post all of those things, write a
532. 00:30:51 quick three sentences about it and post it.
533. 00:30:54 It's very easy to do that.
534. 00:30:55 So it doesn't take a lot to get to that point when you have things you're already doing.
535. 00:31:01 I think it's a little more difficult if you don't have that.
536. 00:31:04 Now, it's easy for every other Friday to write something up and post the bookworm episode.
537. 00:31:10 It's easy for folks like what you're doing with the sermon sketch notes to post that
538. 00:31:15 every Sunday night.
539. 00:31:17 That's an easy thing to do.
540. 00:31:19 So there's a couple days a week there already taking care of.
541. 00:31:23 So it doesn't take long to get there in the scenarios like what you and I are in because
542. 00:31:28 I'm terrible about it as well.
543. 00:31:29 I don't post to my blog and should.
544. 00:31:32 Yeah.
545. 00:31:33 Got a lot of things I could post there, but I don't.
546. 00:31:36 Well, that's the thing.
547. 00:31:37 I am publishing the bookworm episodes, but I am not at the same time going back to my
548. 00:31:41 website and scheduling another post to say, "Hey, go check out bookworm."
549. 00:31:45 I ended up doing that after the fact.
550. 00:31:49 I get a couple episodes behind and I'm like, "Oh, I should really add these."
551. 00:31:52 Because I do want my website to be a place where this is where everything Mike lives.
552. 00:31:57 You can find everything from this one central place, but I don't.
553. 00:32:03 I feel like if I were to commit to publishing every day and building out that calendar,
554. 00:32:09 then all of a sudden not only does that stuff get published, but also it assists me in the
555. 00:32:14 goal of actually publishing every day.
556. 00:32:17 This is a good segue for the generous section because in the generous section, a lot of what
557. 00:32:22 he's referring to is don't hoard your thoughts.
558. 00:32:25 Don't hoard your ideas.
559. 00:32:27 Don't hold on to them yourself.
560. 00:32:28 Be willing to share them.
561. 00:32:30 It's not just being generous with your time and your availability and such.
562. 00:32:33 I mean, that's a small piece of what he's referring to.
563. 00:32:36 The bulk of what he's getting at is being willing to share your thoughts and what you're
564. 00:32:39 creating.
565. 00:32:41 Don't keep it for yourself because some people talk about this a lot.
566. 00:32:44 I love making this for me, so I don't need to share it with everyone else because I get
567. 00:32:49 the benefit of making it for me by myself.
568. 00:32:54 Why would I need to share it?
569. 00:32:55 Be generous with that.
570. 00:32:56 Be willing to share those things.
571. 00:32:59 This is similar to, I've shared this in a few places here and there, not on bookworm because
572. 00:33:06 I don't think we've recorded since, but I do have OmniFocus in my mix of things right
573. 00:33:11 now.
574. 00:33:12 I saw that.
575. 00:33:13 Yeah.
576. 00:33:14 But it's not like, I mean, people are like, "Yeah, Joe's back.
577. 00:33:17 No, I'm not."
578. 00:33:19 I wouldn't say I'm on OmniFocus.
579. 00:33:22 I would say that OmniFocus is supplementing my bullet journal habit significantly in that
580. 00:33:27 way.
581. 00:33:28 By managing checklists and templates and stuff.
582. 00:33:30 It is doing that, but I historically have had a lot of scripts.
583. 00:33:36 People know this.
584. 00:33:37 I've automated a lot of things in OmniFocus.
585. 00:33:41 I'm in the process of porting some of that stuff over to the new Omni automation plugins.
586. 00:33:48 It occurred to me in the midst of reading this that historically I have done all of that
587. 00:33:53 in a silo.
588. 00:33:54 I've made these things for me and I haven't always shared the process or the result publicly.
589. 00:34:02 I have a lot of minor scripts for OmniFocus that I have never shared.
590. 00:34:08 At this point, I'm not going to share them because they're obsolete.
591. 00:34:11 They don't even work, I don't think.
592. 00:34:14 I'm in the process of porting some of that stuff over and decided to do it live.
593. 00:34:19 That's a lot of what I'm starting to do on the live streams on Mondays is porting some
594. 00:34:23 of that stuff over and building those scripts because of what Seth's saying here.
595. 00:34:28 Trying to not be a hoarder of what it is I do and how I do it or the results of what
596. 00:34:34 I'm doing.
597. 00:34:35 It sounds like you're trying to do the same.
598. 00:34:37 You already have some things that you're making.
599. 00:34:39 Don't hold on to them.
600. 00:34:41 Share them, Mike.
601. 00:34:42 Share it with the world.
602. 00:34:43 Well, to be honest, the one thing that I am sharing consistently from my site is the sermon
603. 00:34:47 sketch notes.
604. 00:34:48 Even that, I was totally hoarding that until Bodie Quirk told me, "Dude, you've got to
605. 00:34:54 share these."
606. 00:34:55 Yes.
607. 00:34:56 Just to walk you through my thought process with this, I've been taking sketch notes using
608. 00:35:02 good notes for over three years at this point with not just sermons but talks that I attend
609. 00:35:11 conferences that I go to, whatever, just so it happens that I'm not going anywhere at
610. 00:35:16 the moment.
611. 00:35:17 I'm not going to sermon notes at the time.
612. 00:35:18 What?
613. 00:35:19 Why?
614. 00:35:20 At the time being.
615. 00:35:22 I have talked about how I created the big cross-reference library for all this stuff in
616. 00:35:29 Rome.
617. 00:35:30 That was something that my initial goals for that program, I wanted to be able to tie all
618. 00:35:34 this stuff together.
619. 00:35:37 I'm like, "Great.
620. 00:35:38 I've got all this stuff."
621. 00:35:39 Then I talked to Bodie and he's like, "You've got to share this."
622. 00:35:43 No one wants to see this.
623. 00:35:45 This is just for me.
624. 00:35:47 No one else heard these messages.
625. 00:35:49 People are going to look at the art and they're going to be like, "Well, this guy's a want
626. 00:35:52 to be artist.
627. 00:35:53 This is okay.
628. 00:35:54 It's kind of cool maybe once, but I'm not going to want to look at it every single week."
629. 00:35:57 He convinced me to try it.
630. 00:36:01 Since July, I think I have been taking my notes from the sermon that I attend Sunday morning,
631. 00:36:07 recording a quick screencast, making call outs for the different sections and just walking
632. 00:36:12 through my sketch notes.
633. 00:36:15 I try to keep them under 10 minutes.
634. 00:36:17 Sometimes they're 11 or 12, but basically just walking through the thought process, how
635. 00:36:22 all these things connected my brain and publishing those on my site.
636. 00:36:28 I've gotten pretty phenomenal feedback from people saying they really like those.
637. 00:36:34 I couldn't believe it at first.
638. 00:36:37 As I'm going through this book, I have a real life example of what he is talking about.
639. 00:36:43 He's like, "Dummy, just do this with everything."
640. 00:36:45 Right.
641. 00:36:46 That's the concept of what is it?
642. 00:36:49 No unpublished thought.
643. 00:36:51 Kinda, yeah.
644. 00:36:53 Similar to that.
645. 00:36:54 I do that with the podcast I feel like, but the blogging piece, I don't know, I kind of
646. 00:37:03 like that anyways a little bit better because I have a chance to edit myself before I hit
647. 00:37:08 the button.
648. 00:37:09 I'm always scared when I sit down to record a podcast.
649. 00:37:12 I'm going to say something stupid and get myself in trouble.
650. 00:37:15 I feel like, "Don't start streaming.
651. 00:37:17 Don't do it."
652. 00:37:19 I feel like I'm not super great at thinking on my feet, but that's probably just my own,
653. 00:37:30 I don't know, you're your own worst critic, right?
654. 00:37:33 I've been going to Toastmasters and I've been challenging myself with one of the reasons
655. 00:37:37 I joined it is the extemporaneous speaking with the table topics.
656. 00:37:41 I always do pretty decent with that stuff, but it still just absolutely terrifies me every
657. 00:37:46 single time.
658. 00:37:49 I don't know.
659. 00:37:50 I guess this is a long way of saying that this is a perfect fit for me to blog every
660. 00:37:55 day.
661. 00:37:57 I need to get over myself and just do it.
662. 00:38:00 Do it.
663. 00:38:01 Go Nike.
664. 00:38:02 He talks about that too.
665. 00:38:04 Towards the end, yeah.
666. 00:38:07 I don't even remember the context of it now.
667. 00:38:10 It's not a big piece of any of the other sections.
668. 00:38:14 The main point he was making with that is just do it is not the right term.
669. 00:38:18 It's more like merely do it.
670. 00:38:20 Just squeak it out.
671. 00:38:21 That's totally fine.
672. 00:38:23 The next section here is called the Professional.
673. 00:38:28 This is an interesting section because it takes the concept of creating and it's easy
674. 00:38:36 for us to think about being an amateur.
675. 00:38:38 You do think or hobbyist is probably the better term.
676. 00:38:41 It's easy to do things when you want to do them or like to do them.
677. 00:38:45 When the muse strikes, it's easy to write.
678. 00:38:49 This is the opposite of that in that you don't wait.
679. 00:38:55 Professionals don't wait until they feel like doing something.
680. 00:39:00 How would you like it if you had a surgery planned and your doctor canceled it because
681. 00:39:06 he just didn't feel like doing a surgery that day?
682. 00:39:08 Yeah.
683. 00:39:09 That wouldn't go over real well, would it?
684. 00:39:11 He's a professional and he shows up and he does the work every day or she does.
685. 00:39:16 I don't know who your doctor is.
686. 00:39:20 Your professionals, they show up and do the work every day.
687. 00:39:23 I'm an IT professional.
688. 00:39:24 It wouldn't be a good day if I walked in and said, "You know, I just don't feel like
689. 00:39:27 fixing viruses today."
690. 00:39:29 I don't really want to touch a computer today.
691. 00:39:31 Yeah, I don't really feel like working on a screen today.
692. 00:39:35 I'm not going to.
693. 00:39:36 It doesn't work that way.
694. 00:39:37 Go back to my pen and notebook.
695. 00:39:39 Yes, yes.
696. 00:39:40 I'm going to fix your virus with my fountain pen.
697. 00:39:43 That's going to go late.
698. 00:39:44 Maybe by stabbing it.
699. 00:39:45 By the way, that's what you really need is you need an analog text expander for your
700. 00:39:50 fountain pen.
701. 00:39:51 Then you wouldn't need OmniFocus.
702. 00:39:53 That's called shorthand.
703. 00:39:56 The thing here is that you show up, you do the work.
704. 00:40:00 He has a section completely dedicated to writer's block.
705. 00:40:03 I'll hear a little bit later.
706. 00:40:05 You show up, you do the work, and you move on.
707. 00:40:10 That's the sum total of what you need to do.
708. 00:40:12 There are so many little nitpick pieces here that he covers.
709. 00:40:18 Don't be a hack.
710. 00:40:20 There's just a lot of things that he puts in here to encourage you to be the professional.
711. 00:40:27 I think at the end of the chapter or the end of this section, it's just purely decide
712. 00:40:33 what it is that you're going to commit to and be a professional about it.
713. 00:40:38 Professionals show up and do the task regardless of circumstances or feelings or emotions.
714. 00:40:47 Yeah, exactly.
715. 00:40:50 There's a couple cool things in here.
716. 00:40:52 I liked number one regarding the emotions piece you were just talking about.
717. 00:40:56 There's a section on worrying.
718. 00:40:58 He talks about how worrying is the quest for a guarantee.
719. 00:41:04 There are no guarantees when you commit to the practice and doing creative work that
720. 00:41:09 is worth producing.
721. 00:41:12 Anything worth doing does not have a guarantee attached to it.
722. 00:41:16 He says, "The time we spend worrying is actually time we spend trying to control something
723. 00:41:20 that is out of our control and there will never be enough reassurance for you to be guaranteed
724. 00:41:27 the outcome that you want."
725. 00:41:29 Which in and of itself, I'm talking about that maybe sounds like, "Well, I don't even
726. 00:41:34 want to try this then.
727. 00:41:35 That sounds unsafe."
728. 00:41:38 Yeah.
729. 00:41:39 But it's the other things in here.
730. 00:41:41 You talked about the hack versus the professional.
731. 00:41:46 He's got a grid in here which talks about that.
732. 00:41:48 The big one for me is this whole section on talent and skill because talent is something
733. 00:41:57 that people a lot of times, I think, they believe that you're born with a talent and
734. 00:42:04 you just have to discover it.
735. 00:42:05 If you've read mindset like we have, you know that's not true.
736. 00:42:08 You develop the skills based on overcoming the obstacles that are presented before you.
737. 00:42:16 In the Cal Newport book, I think it's so good they can't ignore you.
738. 00:42:21 He talks about Steve Martin and people coming up to him and asking him, "What's your best
739. 00:42:28 advice?"
740. 00:42:30 He's basically saying, "Just show up and do the work every single day."
741. 00:42:34 He says, "It's never the advice that people want to hear."
742. 00:42:37 Right.
743. 00:42:38 Steve Martin, quote, in this section which totally fits with that.
744. 00:42:42 He says, "I had no talent, none," which I thought was pretty great.
745. 00:42:46 Because when you think of Steve Martin, you probably think, like I do, who are a pretty
746. 00:42:50 famous actor and I admit that I'm not a huge Steve Martin fan.
747. 00:42:55 But that's fine.
748. 00:42:56 I mean, that goes back to the generous section where like if you're trying to please everybody,
749. 00:43:00 you're not going to please anybody.
750. 00:43:01 You got to serve somebody, not everybody.
751. 00:43:04 Okay.
752. 00:43:05 So Steve Martin and I just were not clicking, that's totally fine.
753. 00:43:08 I still respect him as a professional and I think this is absolutely great advice because
754. 00:43:15 he's saying basically that it doesn't matter.
755. 00:43:18 You could be like me, you have absolutely no talent to work with.
756. 00:43:22 If you commit to the practice, which he defines in this section as a choice, plus skill, plus
757. 00:43:28 attitude, then you develop the talent.
758. 00:43:32 You develop that skill piece of that equation to the point where you are now a professional
759. 00:43:37 and you have a high enough level skill that people are seeking your services, that you
760. 00:43:42 can get compensated for it.
761. 00:43:46 Doesn't matter where you start, matters how you finish.
762. 00:43:49 For sure.
763. 00:43:50 Like a lot of things in here, this is not new.
764. 00:43:52 There are a lot of folks who will tell you that they had nothing when they started.
765. 00:43:58 They did not have the skill or talent when they started out.
766. 00:44:02 But guess what?
767. 00:44:03 They showed up, they wrote a blog post every single day for two years and overnight success
768. 00:44:09 happened.
769. 00:44:10 So these things happen.
770. 00:44:13 It's not, I mean people talk about this pretty regularly and there are, I've been slowly
771. 00:44:21 growing kind of my own streaming world and people tend to say like you're either going
772. 00:44:27 to make it or you're not and it's all about how many folks jump in from the very beginning.
773. 00:44:35 Like you're either going to be a great and be a huge streamer or you're not.
774. 00:44:38 That's not the way this works.
775. 00:44:40 This is the same as becoming a blogger, a writer, an author, a YouTuber.
776. 00:44:44 It doesn't matter.
777. 00:44:46 It's all the same.
778. 00:44:48 You show up, you do the things that a YouTuber would do.
779. 00:44:51 You show up and do the things an author will do.
780. 00:44:54 Go to the wood shop and run the hand planes the way a woodworker would do.
781. 00:44:59 If you do the actual physical work, the results eventually come in as long as you're willing
782. 00:45:05 to learn and get better at it.
783. 00:45:07 If you're terrible at it and you just do it every day the same way and you don't try
784. 00:45:10 to get better at it, you're not going to get anywhere.
785. 00:45:14 That's not what the professional does.
786. 00:45:15 They try to get better at their work.
787. 00:45:17 So I think what you're saying is absolutely true.
788. 00:45:21 You have folks like Steve Martin who didn't have the talent or the skill, but put in the
789. 00:45:28 time.
790. 00:45:29 Yeah.
791. 00:45:30 Did the work.
792. 00:45:31 Learned how to be skilled in the practice.
793. 00:45:35 When you're talking about YouTubers specifically, I'm thinking of NKBHD.
794. 00:45:39 Yeah.
795. 00:45:40 Yeah.
796. 00:45:41 It's a good example.
797. 00:45:42 And I don't even know how many subscribers he has.
798. 00:45:45 A lot.
799. 00:45:46 But I do remember seeing his 100th YouTube video.
800. 00:45:51 And at the time he was celebrating the fact that after 100 videos he had 79 subscribers.
801. 00:45:57 Yes.
802. 00:45:58 I can't find it right now.
803. 00:46:00 Try to grab it and put it in the show notes.
804. 00:46:03 But it's pretty amazing.
805. 00:46:04 When you think about this guy who most people, if you build a channel as big as his right
806. 00:46:10 now, you would probably say, "Oh, well, he's talented.
807. 00:46:15 This is just what he was made to do."
808. 00:46:20 And he discovered this thing and it just instantly clicked.
809. 00:46:23 No, it didn't even for him.
810. 00:46:24 It did not click.
811. 00:46:25 It did not click for a very long time.
812. 00:46:27 And how many people like NKBHD who maybe started off a lot stronger?
813. 00:46:31 They got more than 79 subscribers in their first 100 videos, but they didn't stick with
814. 00:46:36 it because they didn't see the growth that they thought they were going to see.
815. 00:46:41 Podcasting is the same thing.
816. 00:46:43 I mean, it was a long time before the bookworm downloads started to creep up to where they
817. 00:46:48 are now.
818. 00:46:49 And we went into it kind of with the, at least I did.
819. 00:46:53 We talked about this in episode 100 with the attitude that if people want to listen to
820. 00:46:56 this, that's cool.
821. 00:46:57 But at the very least, we're going to read a bunch of books.
822. 00:47:00 We're going to hold it to their accountable to what we say we're going to get from them.
823. 00:47:03 We've got a side effect whether you guys want to listen or not.
824. 00:47:06 Yeah.
825. 00:47:07 It's almost the mentality that you have to have going into any creative endeavor, whether
826. 00:47:14 it's blogging, whether it's streaming, whether it's video, whether it's podcasting is like,
827. 00:47:19 this is just something I got to do.
828. 00:47:22 I got to get it out of my system.
829. 00:47:24 And if people latch onto it and it grows, like, that'd be great.
830. 00:47:28 But I'm going to do this for a single person, even if they're the only one who shows up.
831. 00:47:34 And later on, I think he talks about how the best way to do this is like for your former
832. 00:47:41 self.
833. 00:47:42 You know, like, if you could go back and speak to a younger you and help that person figure
834. 00:47:48 out what you know now, like, that's really the person that you're kind of best suited
835. 00:47:52 to help.
836. 00:47:54 But there's going to be lots of people who are going to tell you, oh, I didn't get anything
837. 00:47:57 out of it.
838. 00:47:58 This thing is garbage.
839. 00:47:59 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
840. 00:48:00 And you just got to not even pay attention to those people and just be like, okay, this
841. 00:48:03 isn't for you.
842. 00:48:04 It's totally fine.
843. 00:48:05 Yep.
844. 00:48:06 Yep.
845. 00:48:07 And then just show up and serve that person the best that you can.
846. 00:48:11 Consistently, there's a whole section in this professional section, number 87.
847. 00:48:15 Where is your hour?
848. 00:48:16 It talks about how the hour spent on the practice is the creative path.
849. 00:48:21 And this is my other action item.
850. 00:48:23 And they're basically linked, you know, publishing every day.
851. 00:48:28 Where is the content for that going to come from?
852. 00:48:31 It's going to come from a practice and the practice will be much more effective and will
853. 00:48:36 stick a lot better if I figure out when that's going to be.
854. 00:48:40 So my action item for this is like, find my hour for that writing every day.
855. 00:48:44 Sure.
856. 00:48:45 Yeah, no, it's solid, which I know is going to be in the morning and I'm not looking forward
857. 00:48:49 to that.
858. 00:48:52 Adding to the morning routine.
859. 00:48:53 Yeah.
860. 00:48:54 That's the way this stuff goes, right?
861. 00:48:56 That's true.
862. 00:48:58 One of the things you were talking about is like deciding who it's for.
863. 00:49:02 And that's a thing that comes from actually the next section or at least is talked about
864. 00:49:07 in more depth in the next section, which is called intent.
865. 00:49:11 And this is where I have a couple action items out of this book, both come from this section.
866. 00:49:19 And intent, I mean, it's exactly what it sounds like being intentional and choosing what you're
867. 00:49:26 making, who it's for, et cetera, et cetera.
868. 00:49:29 And I have one action item out of this just to decide who is it for.
869. 00:49:33 I have a video course I'm working on.
870. 00:49:37 I've got the analog Joe site.
871. 00:49:39 I've got a bunch of things I'm working on and I need to make decisions around who is
872. 00:49:45 the specific person I'm doing that for.
873. 00:49:48 I know in the world of content creations, they tend to refer to that as define your avatar.
874. 00:49:54 Like who's the avatar you're trying to make things for?
875. 00:49:57 Yeah.
876. 00:49:58 And I have a pretty good vision of who that is.
877. 00:50:02 I've never defined it.
878. 00:50:04 I've never sat down and said, this is the type of person I'm gearing this towards.
879. 00:50:10 And I know through the way that I've been making things lately, I've been able to build
880. 00:50:17 some personal connections with some of my audience, which is amazing and fun.
881. 00:50:22 So I know quite a bit about the audience that follows me just because of that.
882. 00:50:28 So I know a lot about who it is that I tend to do things for.
883. 00:50:32 But I've never sat down and defined it.
884. 00:50:34 That's I feel like what I need to do because it seems like Seth Godin was prue, like he
885. 00:50:38 was nailing this hard.
886. 00:50:40 I felt like define who your audience is and who it is you're wanting to make things for.
887. 00:50:46 So I'm curious, Mike, like I know that like with the sweet setup, I'm sure you guys have
888. 00:50:50 kind of something similar to this.
889. 00:50:52 Do you have it written down though?
890. 00:50:54 Is that a thing that exists?
891. 00:50:55 For the sweet setup, yes.
892. 00:50:57 Okay.
893. 00:50:58 For the sweet setup, our goal is to help primarily Apple power users who want to use
894. 00:51:04 their technology to be more productive or creative.
895. 00:51:07 Sure.
896. 00:51:08 And that is different than just whatever is shiny new, Apple news, whatever.
897. 00:51:16 We're not going to report on every new app that ends up being big.
898. 00:51:22 We're going to write an article on this is how you can use this to establish intentional
899. 00:51:28 habits or through the lens of being creative or productive.
900. 00:51:33 And that's a little bit vague and that's kind of intentional.
901. 00:51:36 So creative could be writing every day.
902. 00:51:39 You could also define that as productive.
903. 00:51:41 Yeah.
904. 00:51:42 How do you want to do it?
905. 00:51:44 Sure.
906. 00:51:45 But I have not done that for myself personally.
907. 00:51:49 Yeah.
908. 00:51:50 So I think I need to.
909. 00:51:51 You're going to add this on as an action item now.
910. 00:51:54 I don't know.
911. 00:51:55 I'm not sure yet.
912. 00:51:58 I think that my form of daily blogging is best executed or is most effective as me sorting
913. 00:52:10 through the things that are bouncing around in my head at the moment.
914. 00:52:15 So I think I need to create that habit and then I can start to refine that more towards
915. 00:52:23 serving a specific person.
916. 00:52:25 Sure.
917. 00:52:26 But I kind of view the practice of writing as sort of a way of thinking through things
918. 00:52:31 for myself.
919. 00:52:32 So even if nobody else reads it and it's still valuable kind of the book on approach to blogging.
920. 00:52:37 Sure.
921. 00:52:38 Yeah.
922. 00:52:39 Because this is, I mean, this is what I feel like I need to do.
923. 00:52:42 Like I have a pretty solid view of this, but I've not actually defined it.
924. 00:52:47 So that's, that's one of the pieces that I want to be intentional about to use his terminology.
925. 00:52:54 One of the other aspects of, I guess it's, it might be the piece before this, the professional
926. 00:53:00 side of it.
927. 00:53:01 The other action I might have here is just deciding when my practice is going to happen.
928. 00:53:05 Now it's messy for me because my day job doesn't fit this stuff.
929. 00:53:12 And I am trying to shoehorn it in.
930. 00:53:16 So I cannot say, I'm going to spend an hour first thing in the morning.
931. 00:53:19 That doesn't work.
932. 00:53:20 That's not possible.
933. 00:53:22 I have to fit things in like over a lunch break or at night or on the weekends.
934. 00:53:27 Like that's where the bulk of what I do fits in.
935. 00:53:30 Sure.
936. 00:53:31 So I need to nail down.
937. 00:53:32 Okay.
938. 00:53:33 If I'm going to make something every day.
939. 00:53:35 I don't have to, in my mind, I don't have to release something every day.
940. 00:53:38 Now the type of thing that I'm making might lend itself towards that, like something being
941. 00:53:44 released every day, I don't know, but I at least need to be working on things daily.
942. 00:53:50 I don't know where that's going to fit on a, on a day to day basis.
943. 00:53:54 So that's the, that's the second piece, the second action I might have here is just defining
944. 00:53:58 when that is getting it written down.
945. 00:54:00 So I know when and where that time is coming from.
946. 00:54:04 Sure.
947. 00:54:05 I mentioned the, the who's it for.
948. 00:54:07 And I'm sure that I don't have that specifically for my blog.
949. 00:54:12 And ultimately that's where the writing is going to be directed.
950. 00:54:16 I do have that though for the updated version of the book because in addition to the content
951. 00:54:22 for the book, which is what most people think of when they think of writing the program
952. 00:54:25 I'm going through, they walk you through the whole process.
953. 00:54:27 You've got to have the book proposal.
954. 00:54:29 You've got to have the marketing plan.
955. 00:54:32 You know, so you're thinking through like who you're serving, the demographics, the
956. 00:54:35 psychographics, like what problems are these people experiencing and how are you going
957. 00:54:39 to help them overcome those things.
958. 00:54:42 So I do have that sort of stuff, but in terms of the actual sitting down every day, writing
959. 00:54:49 and then publishing to the blog, I'm kind of not worrying about those things at that
960. 00:54:54 point, if that makes any sense.
961. 00:54:56 Yep.
962. 00:54:57 By the way, this section, another clue to me that this is a series of blog posts is that
963. 00:55:03 number 120, 122 and 124 are all titled, what's it for?
964. 00:55:13 I did not realize that.
965. 00:55:15 Yeah.
966. 00:55:16 Yeah.
967. 00:55:17 And I didn't jot down in my mind not file anything specific for any one of those.
968. 00:55:20 I got stuff for some of the other things around that in between there.
969. 00:55:25 But I kind of think if the book was the end goal for Seth, then he would have titled
970. 00:55:32 these a little bit differently.
971. 00:55:34 So you think these are just his blog titles?
972. 00:55:37 I do.
973. 00:55:38 Yep.
974. 00:55:39 Interesting.
975. 00:55:40 So what we should do is search Seth's blog for what's it for?
976. 00:55:43 What's it for?
977. 00:55:44 That is true.
978. 00:55:45 I did not do that.
979. 00:55:46 Actually 109 also is what's it for?
980. 00:55:49 Do you have all these written down?
981. 00:55:52 I do, yeah.
982. 00:55:53 That is intense, dude.
983. 00:55:54 That's all for the bookworm club premium members.
984. 00:55:57 Oh, yeah.
985. 00:55:58 What's it for?
986. 00:55:59 The second question.
987. 00:56:00 It totally is.
988. 00:56:01 I did not know this.
989. 00:56:03 Yeah.
990. 00:56:04 Which is fine.
991. 00:56:05 I mean, he's not saying the exact same thing in any one of these, but he's probably speaking
992. 00:56:11 to the same themes.
993. 00:56:14 And just having the blog titles be the same, it feels like I didn't get everything I wanted
994. 00:56:21 to say out about this last time, which when you recognize his practice of publishing every
995. 00:56:26 day, you understand that.
996. 00:56:29 But it makes no sense if you're trying to actually rebuild this stuff into a book format
997. 00:56:35 that is not a collection of blog posts, makes no sense that you have four different essays
998. 00:56:40 in the same section that are titled the same thing.
999. 00:56:43 And my guess is, by the way, on his website that he did not write the numbers in the book
1000. 00:56:49 are not in chronological order.
1001. 00:56:50 Right.
1002. 00:56:51 That all of these themes are bouncing around in his head all at the same time.
1003. 00:56:56 And he's publishing these maybe six months or even years apart.
1004. 00:56:59 But when he sits down and put together this book, he grabs everything that falls under
1005. 00:57:03 those headers and groups them together.
1006. 00:57:05 Sure.
1007. 00:57:06 Interesting.
1008. 00:57:07 The next section is no such thing as writer's block, which I think is just a fascinating
1009. 00:57:12 thing.
1010. 00:57:13 I've heard this multiple times from some big name authors in history.
1011. 00:57:19 And I'm drawing a blank on the one that I think pioneered this, but they said that I
1012. 00:57:24 only write when the muse strikes.
1013. 00:57:26 Thankfully the muse strikes every morning at 8 a.m.
1014. 00:57:29 Yeah.
1015. 00:57:30 Like that concept is that it's similar to the professional piece in that you have to show
1016. 00:57:37 up and do the work.
1017. 00:57:38 That whole conversation here again, but he does get into a little bit of like, why do
1018. 00:57:43 we think writers block exists?
1019. 00:57:47 And I'm not sure I followed all of his logic, but I think some of it was that we have a
1020. 00:57:51 tendency to hunt for credentials and saying that because I am a writer, thus I should
1021. 00:58:00 never have writer's block.
1022. 00:58:02 And then when you don't know what to write, guess what?
1023. 00:58:05 We panic and don't know what to do.
1024. 00:58:08 Thus we, you know, bemoan things like writer's block when you really shouldn't be afraid
1025. 00:58:16 to write things because that's the second half of this in that we tend to be afraid
1026. 00:58:21 to write something that's not polished and perfect and solid.
1027. 00:58:25 You know, some of what we were talking about earlier, being afraid of publishing things
1028. 00:58:28 that aren't a hundred percent done, that fear can lead to something like writer's block
1029. 00:58:33 and preventing you from putting things on the page because you're afraid you're going
1030. 00:58:36 to have to edit it and clean it up and such when that's the whole point of doing the thing.
1031. 00:58:42 So I think between all of that, it makes perfect sense.
1032. 00:58:45 But I'm with him, writer's block doesn't exist.
1033. 00:58:48 Maybe that's because I'm ADD and I don't have a problem coming up with ideas, but that's
1034. 00:58:51 it.
1035. 00:58:52 Yeah, I think his main point from this whole section is that this is a myth and people
1036. 00:58:58 use this as an excuse.
1037. 00:59:00 In fact, he's even got a section 132.
1038. 00:59:03 He says, any excuse will do.
1039. 00:59:05 And he says, if a reason doesn't stop everyone, then it is an excuse, which that's kind of
1040. 00:59:12 a powerful statement because you can compare yourself to those professionals like that
1041. 00:59:17 quote that you mentioned earlier.
1042. 00:59:18 I don't remember who said it, but I remember reading about it in the War of Art by Steven
1043. 00:59:22 Pressfield.
1044. 00:59:23 And you can look at Steven Pressfield and you can say, well, that guy, he's a professional.
1045. 00:59:29 So yeah, he can do it, but who am I?
1046. 00:59:32 Like, I can't do it.
1047. 00:59:33 Steven Pressfield does.
1048. 00:59:34 And Seth is saying, yes, yes, you can.
1049. 00:59:37 The thing that Steven Pressfield has that you don't is a credential and he makes the
1050. 00:59:44 point, the very first section in here, 129, you don't need a credential to do something
1051. 00:59:49 creative.
1052. 00:59:50 And he makes the point that you are probably better off just doing the work than getting
1053. 00:59:54 the degree.
1054. 00:59:55 And maybe the degree is a published book.
1055. 00:59:58 Maybe the degree is a New York Times bestseller, whatever it is that you think you need to
1056. 01:00:04 attain before you can really consider yourself a creative.
1057. 01:00:08 I think this is one of those goal lines that keeps moving.
1058. 01:00:13 And once you achieve one thing, then you're kind of like, okay, now what do I do?
1059. 01:00:18 And Seth's advice, in my opinion, is spot on.
1060. 01:00:21 Just commit to the process.
1061. 01:00:22 Just do the thing.
1062. 01:00:25 And then doesn't matter if you've got the degree, it doesn't matter if you've got the
1063. 01:00:30 title, doesn't matter if you've got the business card, doesn't matter if you have the body
1064. 01:00:33 of work, all that stuff, the score basically is going to take care of itself.
1065. 01:00:39 There's a really cool section in here, by the way, about improv comedy.
1066. 01:00:44 This is one of the things I heard him talk about at on-trail leadership.
1067. 01:00:48 The yes and, do you remember this section?
1068. 01:00:50 Yeah.
1069. 01:00:51 Yeah.
1070. 01:00:52 It's a good one.
1071. 01:00:53 I, the whole idea of doing improv comedy terrifies me.
1072. 01:00:57 In fact, when I was in college, people would want to go, there was like a live comedy thing.
1073. 01:01:01 People would want to go, and they would always call for participation from the audience,
1074. 01:01:05 like ideas and things.
1075. 01:01:07 And I never wanted to go because I'm like, they're going to ask me for an idea and I'm
1076. 01:01:10 not going to be able to think of anything.
1077. 01:01:12 And I'm not up on this stage.
1078. 01:01:13 I'm just sitting in the audience, but I don't want to be put on the spot like that.
1079. 01:01:18 But he's saying the real training that they have is whatever you're given, you don't say
1080. 01:01:23 no to it.
1081. 01:01:24 You say yes and.
1082. 01:01:26 So even if somebody is taking this improv thing in a direction that you wouldn't, you wouldn't
1083. 01:01:32 have taken it, you can't like course correct it afterwards.
1084. 01:01:35 You have to go with what they are handing you and then you can add your own thing on top
1085. 01:01:41 of it.
1086. 01:01:42 I like this picture that I get of creative work this way.
1087. 01:01:48 It's almost like what the sermon note says an example.
1088. 01:01:53 All I'm really doing with those is taking the scriptures that my pastor is already preaching
1089. 01:01:59 and saying yes and sharing like the little blurb of insight that I get from that.
1090. 01:02:07 And that makes it seem much less threatening.
1091. 01:02:10 It's much less of a obstacle that needs to be overcome for me to publish that thing.
1092. 01:02:16 And I have not taken that approach with any of the writing that I have done previously.
1093. 01:02:20 I feel like well I have to really be inspired.
1094. 01:02:23 I have to have this great idea and I have to have worked through this pretty far already
1095. 01:02:29 before I would sit down to write.
1096. 01:02:31 And at that point the words can come pretty easily.
1097. 01:02:34 And I am terrified of sitting down at the keyboard every single morning and not exactly
1098. 01:02:38 knowing what is going to happen there.
1099. 01:02:40 And I think this is the key to making this work is just take the stuff that's already
1100. 01:02:43 there not reinventing the wheel but taking this yes and approach.
1101. 01:02:48 And that's kind of what he did and you can see it as we're going through these sections
1102. 01:02:51 and I mentioned like the four different posts or essays that had the same title.
1103. 01:02:56 He's yes anding what's it for in that section.
1104. 01:02:59 I need to yes and the sermon sketch notes stuff and the bookworm stuff and the focus stuff
1105. 01:03:04 and the intentional family stuff and just write about that stuff.
1106. 01:03:07 Yeah and just apply one small thing to it because and it doesn't even have to be your
1107. 01:03:11 own thing either.
1108. 01:03:12 Yep I'm you know as you're talking I was thinking about there's three or four content
1109. 01:03:17 creators that I've been consuming like everything they do right now.
1110. 01:03:22 And because they're working in areas that I'm trying to learn and get better at.
1111. 01:03:26 And when I think about some of their not all but maybe about half of the content that they
1112. 01:03:31 make it's always here is a thing I've made before and here's one little bit on top of
1113. 01:03:38 it or here's a press release that happened and here's one little bit that they aren't
1114. 01:03:43 talking about or here's one feature that was made and here's how that affects all the
1115. 01:03:49 things that you're going to do in this platform.
1116. 01:03:52 Here's a mistake that this company made and now here's what that's going to do for you.
1117. 01:03:58 It's not hard to come up with that once you learn how to think that way.
1118. 01:04:02 So it's it's fascinating and I hadn't connected that till you said this and we were talking
1119. 01:04:07 about yes and but it's totally true like if you want to make things it's not difficult
1120. 01:04:13 to like if you if you keep a pulse on your industry in any form we you know you and I
1121. 01:04:18 watch Apple I keep an eye on like some of the hacker communities and stuff too like I know
1122. 01:04:25 more than I probably should about certain realms I've been doing deep deep deep dives
1123. 01:04:30 on streamers and stuff lately and doing that it's easy to see oh well there's this one
1124. 01:04:36 little bit that I can improve on that thing that that other person did and that's that's
1125. 01:04:40 really all it takes it doesn't take much to to go down that path.
1126. 01:04:44 Yeah he says in section 171 show up do your best and learn from it you know as long as
1127. 01:04:50 you apply a growth mindset and you're constantly trying to learn it doesn't matter what you
1128. 01:04:56 are producing it's just the act of producing it that's important a little bit later he
1129. 01:05:01 talks about 173 protecting your perfect idea and he this part was encouraging to me because
1130. 01:05:07 he says you won't run out no one is keeping you from posting every day yeah and I think
1131. 01:05:11 this is maybe a fear that I had is that well I got this inspiration and I wrote about it
1132. 01:05:18 and now I don't know what to do and he's basically saying that if you commit to the practice
1133. 01:05:24 the well never runs dry yep which even just saying that it encourages me like down in
1134. 01:05:32 my spirit I'm like yes I need to do this and in my head it's like that can't be right.
1135. 01:05:38 Yeah keep drafts open so you can collect things when you're not there that's what the answer
1136. 01:05:43 is true true he does talk about that a little bit in here by the way like the setting up
1137. 01:05:48 your tools turning off the internet doing the work yep I think that is a point that he
1138. 01:05:55 doesn't address a whole lot in this specific book we talked about it in brainwash though
1139. 01:05:59 is like we sabotage ourselves yep so it would be interesting to see what Seth's writing routine
1140. 01:06:08 looks like and how he really sets up his environment and his tools in order for this to work because
1141. 01:06:16 the more I talk through this and the more I think about it the more I believe that the
1142. 01:06:19 process that he's talking about the practice here probably is achievable for just about
1143. 01:06:25 anybody but not without adjustments to your technology defaults.
1144. 01:06:31 Yeah yep no that's solid.
1145. 01:06:35 The next section here is make assertions which I think plays into a little bit about a little
1146. 01:06:41 bit of this yes and concept because he's saying in the midst of your making make assertions
1147. 01:06:49 you know make claims you know make bold statements and essentially be okay with being wrong.
1148. 01:06:57 Yeah that's alright and he does go into like you know these aren't you know using some
1149. 01:07:03 of his titles assertions aren't guarantees they're not answers you know but they are
1150. 01:07:09 generous you know coming back to that you're offering some of your own opinions about things
1151. 01:07:15 and you're I don't want to say guesses but your unique perspective on something offering
1152. 01:07:22 that up can be your own form of an assertion and it's those assertions that other people
1153. 01:07:29 are going to resonate with.
1154. 01:07:31 Yeah.
1155. 01:07:32 And thus slowly build your collection of fans or audience.
1156. 01:07:37 The distinction here between the assertions and the answers I like the way that he articulated
1157. 01:07:44 this and I realize that this is the thing that irks me about so much stuff in the productivity
1158. 01:07:52 space is that they are writing these listicles and these articles as this is the answer.
1159. 01:08:01 Yep.
1160. 01:08:02 Yep.
1161. 01:08:03 And not an answer it is an assertion and now when I look at those articles that profess
1162. 01:08:11 to have an answer immediately I am skeptical and trust is gone.
1163. 01:08:17 So don't write one of those Mike.
1164. 01:08:21 I don't want to do that right and I feel like I do a pretty good job of I mean the whole
1165. 01:08:26 idea behind focus is that we don't have all the answers we're fellow travelers on this
1166. 01:08:31 journey we talk about that all the time.
1167. 01:08:33 We share our mistakes and I feel like we do that here too.
1168. 01:08:38 Intentional family Rachel and I talk about you know we even had an episode not too long
1169. 01:08:42 ago but like what to do when it's not working we shared like how we had this idea where
1170. 01:08:48 things should go and it just totally didn't happen that way so we had to go back to the
1171. 01:08:52 drawing board and make adjustments and that's like a constant process like that you never
1172. 01:08:58 get out of that.
1173. 01:09:00 And when I read this section on like assertions and answers I finally had a term for how I
1174. 01:09:07 wanted to approach things.
1175. 01:09:10 So I kind of like have believed that this is the way to do it in the past in terms of
1176. 01:09:16 producing this content in a way that feels genuine and authentic not professing to have
1177. 01:09:24 all of the answers but also I mean he talks about authority too in the previous section
1178. 01:09:28 like you do want to speak authoritatively and so there's a balance there I think.
1179. 01:09:35 Don't shy away from what you have figured out and sharing the things that you have learned.
1180. 01:09:40 You have the right to do that but answers and the conversation he talks about here and
1181. 01:09:47 the goal I think with the podcast that I make and the blog post I want to write is I want
1182. 01:09:52 to continue the conversation.
1183. 01:09:55 And so that's a small difference there but an important distinction is that the assertions
1184. 01:10:02 are the generous act of seeking to make things better and I can share you know I'm seeking
1185. 01:10:07 to make things better for myself and for my family and these are the things that I've
1186. 01:10:10 worked and these are the lessons that we've learned and these are the things that haven't
1187. 01:10:13 worked.
1188. 01:10:15 That is very generous but when I frame it a little bit different way is like okay so
1189. 01:10:20 you want to do X and this is the way you do it just three simple steps you'll save an
1190. 01:10:24 hour every day for the rest of your life like Ick.
1191. 01:10:29 Yes and I think there's a little bit of a revolt against that.
1192. 01:10:32 Yes.
1193. 01:10:33 If you've read some of these articles and you've tried the things that they recommend I'm
1194. 01:10:42 pretty sure I've probably written some of these.
1195. 01:10:44 Me too.
1196. 01:10:45 Without realizing.
1197. 01:10:46 Me too.
1198. 01:10:47 I'm guilty but I'm learning and I'm growing and I'm changing.
1199. 01:10:51 But so if you pay attention to maybe you're the same way but a lot of what I've created
1200. 01:10:56 in the last probably year it has less to do with here is the way to do something and
1201. 01:11:03 I've shifted over more towards here is how I or a way to do something.
1202. 01:11:08 Exactly.
1203. 01:11:09 And I'm not going to like even some of the courses I've done in the past you know I updated
1204. 01:11:17 the working with OmniFocus course in 2019 and the beginning video of that talks about
1205. 01:11:22 how like here's how I do this.
1206. 01:11:24 I'm going to take you through how I do things and then you can pick pieces out of this that
1207. 01:11:28 you like and build your own system.
1208. 01:11:31 I'm not going to tell you this is how you should use OmniFocus like I'm not going to
1209. 01:11:34 do that.
1210. 01:11:35 That's not my way.
1211. 01:11:36 I don't want to go down that path and I think that's a lot of what Seth Godin's getting
1212. 01:11:40 at here.
1213. 01:11:41 Again this is like anti SEO because that's what people are looking for.
1214. 01:11:47 That's what gets the clicks.
1215. 01:11:48 Yeah.
1216. 01:11:49 Yep.
1217. 01:11:50 But I think you know coming back to my point a minute ago like there's a bit of a revolt
1218. 01:11:53 against that because if you look at any content creators and look at stats like if you pay
1219. 01:12:01 attention to like I've noticed this on my own analytics on the site.
1220. 01:12:07 If you look at the specific pages that are continuing to get like at least in my case
1221. 01:12:13 what's getting the page views there are the articles I've written about how I do something
1222. 01:12:19 and I'm specific about explaining how I do something like my own personal workflow.
1223. 01:12:24 If I explain my personal workflow that's what people are interested in.
1224. 01:12:28 They're not interested in copying that.
1225. 01:12:31 They're interested in learning the little tiny bits and pieces here and there.
1226. 01:12:34 So that's the distinction is you can't say here's the answer.
1227. 01:12:38 Like I've worked with all the features.
1228. 01:12:40 I know all the things and this is the best way to use it.
1229. 01:12:45 There's not much interest in that anymore and I'm pretty sure that's what he's getting
1230. 01:12:50 at.
1231. 01:12:51 I hope you are correct.
1232. 01:12:54 So that all said let's go on to the next section and I think because this one make assertions
1233. 01:12:59 is fairly short.
1234. 01:13:01 The next one here is earn your skills and earlier on we were talking about like talent
1235. 01:13:06 versus skills and he does.
1236. 01:13:11 I don't want to say he buys into old world way of thinking this but he does say talent
1237. 01:13:17 is what you're born with skill is what you acquire.
1238. 01:13:20 Like that is his definition of those two and when he gets to this point he's then talking
1239. 01:13:25 about the skills that you are working towards and acquiring.
1240. 01:13:29 That's what he's referring to here not some inborn natural talent to use his terminology
1241. 01:13:36 there and I would say this is I hesitate to say this.
1242. 01:13:42 It's almost a repeat of what we've said in some other areas here.
1243. 01:13:46 Show up to the work.
1244. 01:13:47 How many times are we going to say this?
1245. 01:13:51 That's a lot of what this is getting at is like find time put in the work and try to
1246. 01:13:57 get better at it.
1247. 01:13:58 That last piece is probably the part he's focusing on here in this section is look for
1248. 01:14:05 the things to improve.
1249. 01:14:07 Find people who can help you improve on things and focus on improving your practice.
1250. 01:14:13 Yeah.
1251. 01:14:14 A couple of things here that I liked.
1252. 01:14:17 We have talked, I have talked many times about steel like an artist by Austin Clean.
1253. 01:14:23 Yeah.
1254. 01:14:24 I've never read this by the way.
1255. 01:14:25 We need to cover this for bookworms.
1256. 01:14:27 I may pick this for the next book because it's pretty short.
1257. 01:14:32 It'd be a great format for bookworm.
1258. 01:14:35 And yeah.
1259. 01:14:37 Anyways, I've talked about the idea of like connecting the dots from that book being really
1260. 01:14:42 influential for me and basically giving me a license to consider myself a creative.
1261. 01:14:48 And Seth says something similar in this book in 202 knowing as a shortcut to skill.
1262. 01:14:54 He says creativity doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.
1263. 01:14:58 And this sounds a lot to me like the yes and approach to connecting the dots.
1264. 01:15:02 So you hear something from somebody else and you think, oh, that's pretty cool.
1265. 01:15:06 And then you're not copying that thing identically, but you are restating it in your own way.
1266. 01:15:12 And that is completely fine.
1267. 01:15:13 That is still creating.
1268. 01:15:16 And I think people need to understand that that's part of the process.
1269. 01:15:20 And that's not you stealing something and you're not a bad person if that's like how you synthesize
1270. 01:15:29 and come up with these ideas.
1271. 01:15:32 The fact that you can trace them back to a source is not a knock against your creative
1272. 01:15:37 character.
1273. 01:15:39 The other thing in here, which I liked in 192 he talks about, look for the cohort.
1274. 01:15:44 He says that when you are surrounded by respected peers, you're more likely to do the work
1275. 01:15:48 that you set out to do.
1276. 01:15:51 I like this a lot.
1277. 01:15:52 And this can manifest a lot of different ways.
1278. 01:15:59 One way it could manifest is the Bookworm Club.
1279. 01:16:03 Another way it could manifest is any sort of online community or forum that you would
1280. 01:16:10 be a part of and you engage in the conversation.
1281. 01:16:14 Another way this could manifest is in a mastermind group, which that one for me, that one resonates.
1282. 01:16:23 I have gone through in the last six months or so.
1283. 01:16:28 Well, basically when all the COVID stuff started happening, my mastermind group was I hesitate
1284. 01:16:36 to talk about this, but we basically kind of fell apart.
1285. 01:16:40 We were meeting less frequently, people were having trouble showing up when we were going
1286. 01:16:44 to have the meetings.
1287. 01:16:45 And I get it.
1288. 01:16:46 We're trying to figure things out.
1289. 01:16:48 People are busy trying to figure out how they're going to make their businesses work.
1290. 01:16:51 A lot of uncertainty, totally understandable.
1291. 01:16:55 But I also noticed at that time that that's when I really wanted that support system to
1292. 01:16:59 fall back on and it just wasn't there.
1293. 01:17:02 So I went back to the drawing board and I actually formed another mastermind group, which
1294. 01:17:10 has been absolutely phenomenal.
1295. 01:17:14 And we call it the Academy.
1296. 01:17:17 And so the Academy is totally my cohort.
1297. 01:17:20 That's immediately what I thought of when I went through this section.
1298. 01:17:24 And with masterminds, the people that you surround yourself and the people that you would
1299. 01:17:30 select to be in that sort of thing, that's super important because you want people who
1300. 01:17:35 are not going to let you get away with mailing things in.
1301. 01:17:40 You want people who are going to hold your feet to the fire and make you show up every
1302. 01:17:45 day, commit to the practice that he's talking about here.
1303. 01:17:50 And I feel like just in the last 12 months, I have had, I've seen a real life example
1304. 01:18:01 of how not having that has allowed me to slip and getting back into that has made it stick
1305. 01:18:09 again.
1306. 01:18:10 Makes sense.
1307. 01:18:11 I mean, you have to be willing to find people who are of the same mindset.
1308. 01:18:16 I mean, this is some of what we do with Bookworm.
1309. 01:18:18 You know, it's similar.
1310. 01:18:19 Now granted, it's just one V one here, but we're reading things together so that we have
1311. 01:18:25 the same background.
1312. 01:18:28 We put together actions from them.
1313. 01:18:29 It's always been like from almost day one, we've talked about how it's important to have
1314. 01:18:35 things and outcomes from these books that we're going to actually do something with and
1315. 01:18:42 not just read it and move on.
1316. 01:18:44 Like, I feel like we've done the book a disservice if we don't do something with it.
1317. 01:18:49 Thus, the accountability piece comes in and having somebody else there to, as you're saying,
1318. 01:18:55 hold your feet to the fire and make sure actually doing something with it.
1319. 01:18:59 Because when we make these action items, every time, it's like, I'm going to have to report
1320. 01:19:05 on this in two weeks.
1321. 01:19:06 So I better do something with it.
1322. 01:19:09 I can't just say a cool action item and then move on the next time because I know Mike's
1323. 01:19:17 going to ask me about it and the chat's going to say, what are you doing, Joe?
1324. 01:19:21 So you have to do something with it.
1325. 01:19:24 So I'm glad you got a mastermind working now.
1326. 01:19:26 It's good to know that that's actually happening.
1327. 01:19:28 Well, so what you're talking about, that's great, but that's every two weeks.
1328. 01:19:33 So for me personally, that just wasn't enough.
1329. 01:19:36 I want somebody who is going to get in my face if I don't do it on a regular basis.
1330. 01:19:42 So this one actually, I've got a session scheduled for Monday.
1331. 01:19:47 There's another person in there who is trying to write a book.
1332. 01:19:51 So we're going to connect on Zoom, kind of like focus mate.
1333. 01:19:54 Sure.
1334. 01:19:55 And we're going to state our intentions and we're going to stare at each other for two
1335. 01:19:57 hours and make sure that the other one is writing.
1336. 01:20:00 Nice.
1337. 01:20:01 Nice.
1338. 01:20:02 You know, that's the kind of thing where like you have it scheduled.
1339. 01:20:04 So you got to show up and then once you're there, you're on camera.
1340. 01:20:07 So I got to follow through and do what I said I was going to do.
1341. 01:20:10 Like you can't hide.
1342. 01:20:11 Yep.
1343. 01:20:12 And that's where the value comes.
1344. 01:20:14 This is totally similar to not granted.
1345. 01:20:16 There's not hardly any of this happening now.
1346. 01:20:18 But the people talk about how they get so much done if they go to a coffee shop and it doesn't
1347. 01:20:23 make sense because they're easily distractible and they don't like the noise and yet they
1348. 01:20:28 can get a ton of things accomplished at a coffee shop.
1349. 01:20:31 Well, think of it this way.
1350. 01:20:33 If you went to a coffee shop, are you going to spend two hours watching YouTube videos?
1351. 01:20:37 No.
1352. 01:20:38 No, because you're there and you've got tons of people who can see your screen.
1353. 01:20:42 You're not going to do anything you shouldn't be doing.
1354. 01:20:43 You're going to stay focused because there's other people seeing if you're focused or not.
1355. 01:20:48 So there's an accountability even if you don't know who those people are.
1356. 01:20:51 There's the social pressure of I'm here to do work and other people can tell if I'm doing
1357. 01:20:56 work or not.
1358. 01:20:57 So if I'm not doing work, I feel guilty for not doing work.
1359. 01:21:01 It's that concept.
1360. 01:21:02 And now imagine that everybody there, you have told them what you're going to do when you're
1361. 01:21:06 sitting there.
1362. 01:21:07 Right.
1363. 01:21:08 Right.
1364. 01:21:09 And they're going to ask you about it at the end.
1365. 01:21:11 Yes.
1366. 01:21:12 100%.
1367. 01:21:13 100%.
1368. 01:21:14 Cool.
1369. 01:21:15 Cool.
1370. 01:21:16 All right.
1371. 01:21:17 So seek out constraints.
1372. 01:21:18 And I think this is an interesting one because we don't often think of it this way.
1373. 01:21:24 We think of the process of being creative as having no boundaries and you can do whatever
1374. 01:21:29 you want.
1375. 01:21:30 Yes.
1376. 01:21:31 And that is not the case.
1377. 01:21:34 No.
1378. 01:21:35 It's actually better to put boundaries on things.
1379. 01:21:37 I do this all the time.
1380. 01:21:39 I learned about this concept of putting constraints on art six, seven years ago.
1381. 01:21:47 And at the time I was doing some virtual marketing work for a company and we were trying to name
1382. 01:21:53 things constantly.
1383. 01:21:55 And I would repeatedly put boundaries around what we could name those things.
1384. 01:22:00 Cannot be more than two syllables and it has to have a hard cuh sound in it in some form.
1385. 01:22:06 I would put those boundaries on things and then just ask the team.
1386. 01:22:10 And there was one time that we decided to do something fun.
1387. 01:22:15 We'd do two different teams.
1388. 01:22:18 One team had the constraints.
1389. 01:22:19 The other team didn't.
1390. 01:22:21 So one team could do whatever they want.
1391. 01:22:23 The other team we did some, you know, here's how many syllables it needs to be.
1392. 01:22:26 It has to have this letter combination and has to rhyme with, I don't know what it was.
1393. 01:22:33 So we came up with those constraints.
1394. 01:22:35 The team with the constraints was done in a third of the time and had twice as many potentials
1395. 01:22:42 as the team that had zero constraints.
1396. 01:22:45 And that fascinated me.
1397. 01:22:47 And that was kind of my first endeavor of putting boundaries on something artistic or
1398. 01:22:51 creative.
1399. 01:22:52 And from that day till now I still try to put restrictions on things that I'm making.
1400. 01:23:00 Things simple.
1401. 01:23:01 Like I have this topic.
1402. 01:23:02 I'm going to make a video about it and it has to be done in three and a half minutes
1403. 01:23:06 or less.
1404. 01:23:07 Yeah.
1405. 01:23:08 And I will do that.
1406. 01:23:09 And it is, you know this, it is really hard to cover an extended topic in three and a half
1407. 01:23:14 minutes in a video.
1408. 01:23:15 That is not simple to do.
1409. 01:23:17 It's true.
1410. 01:23:18 But I will put those boundaries on things all the time.
1411. 01:23:20 And usually the work is better time it's done.
1412. 01:23:23 One of them I did here recently was putting out a newsletter.
1413. 01:23:27 I wanted to keep it under 500 words.
1414. 01:23:30 But the problem was I had a lot of information I was trying to cover.
1415. 01:23:36 And when I wrote the first draft, it was 1200 words.
1416. 01:23:41 And I was trying to get it down under 500.
1417. 01:23:43 That was my intention.
1418. 01:23:44 I think that actually is a similar constraint to what Seth Godin does.
1419. 01:23:49 I think sometimes it would be very easy for him to put something out.
1420. 01:23:52 It's a thousand words to cover a topic, but he forces himself to keep it to like 250.
1421. 01:23:58 But I think you end up with better art when you're done.
1422. 01:24:00 If you want to call it art.
1423. 01:24:01 Yeah, that makes a ton of sense.
1424. 01:24:03 Another example of this is music.
1425. 01:24:05 I mean, I play on the worship team at my church.
1426. 01:24:08 And I can tell you from personal experience that when people are changing keys and no
1427. 01:24:14 ones paying attention to the time signature, that's when things go south.
1428. 01:24:18 When everybody is locked in together, that actually makes it a lot easier to create and
1429. 01:24:25 do new things and to go kind of off the page.
1430. 01:24:29 So sometimes that's just knowing the key that you're in.
1431. 01:24:32 A lot of times that is knowing the chord progression.
1432. 01:24:36 But whatever sorts of constraints that you have, that actually produces a better result
1433. 01:24:44 in the moment that those things are gone.
1434. 01:24:46 You're sitting there wondering like, how do I contribute?
1435. 01:24:50 You can't.
1436. 01:24:51 Yeah.
1437. 01:24:52 Right.
1438. 01:24:53 Because you don't know where to fit in.
1439. 01:24:54 You're going to kill the whole atmosphere.
1440. 01:24:59 Everybody's going one direction and Mike's over here and he's doing this guitar solo
1441. 01:25:04 in a different key.
1442. 01:25:05 That's not going to work.
1443. 01:25:07 It doesn't fit at all.
1444. 01:25:10 No.
1445. 01:25:11 No.
1446. 01:25:12 So I like this idea of seeking out the constraints.
1447. 01:25:15 This I think supports my action item of heaven that hour for writing and capping at an hour.
1448. 01:25:21 I feel like that is going to produce more in terms of quantity in addition to just the
1449. 01:25:29 quality.
1450. 01:25:31 And that feels like to your point, very counterintuitive because whenever you put a constraint
1451. 01:25:37 on something, you feel like, oh, well, my options are limited.
1452. 01:25:41 They are in a sense, like going back to the music example, I don't have every single note
1453. 01:25:48 that I could possibly play available to me when I am in a specific key or mode.
1454. 01:25:56 But that actually allows me as a creator or musician to do more with it.
1455. 01:26:02 And it's impossible to explain how that actually works until you get there and you start doing
1456. 01:26:08 it.
1457. 01:26:09 Yeah.
1458. 01:26:10 A similar, you know, if you want to go into like musical production, I'm on the other
1459. 01:26:13 side of the instruments whenever I do things.
1460. 01:26:17 So I'm on the opposite end of that cable.
1461. 01:26:19 Mike plugs into the sound system and then I'm running the sound system.
1462. 01:26:22 But it's a bit of a creative process to figure out how to plug all that stuff in sometimes.
1463. 01:26:30 In my specific scenario when we're doing full on productions, I don't have unlimited outputs.
1464. 01:26:36 I don't have unlimited inputs.
1465. 01:26:38 I can't mic a guitar four different ways to, you know, fix it four different ways.
1466. 01:26:43 I only have one so I can only do so much with it.
1467. 01:26:47 So like there's a lot of like it forces you to come up with interesting ways to build
1468. 01:26:53 an entire production.
1469. 01:26:55 And that's just a sound system.
1470. 01:26:56 If you want to think of like a live stream production for a Sunday morning service, throw
1471. 01:27:01 video, throw lighting, throw, you know, slides, lyrics on the screen, you start putting all
1472. 01:27:08 that stuff together.
1473. 01:27:10 And in transitions, there's so many different ways you could do that.
1474. 01:27:15 But if you say, I'm only going to allow two lines on a screen at a time, two like lyrical
1475. 01:27:21 lines at a time, it then forces you to choose how to break up a song correctly.
1476. 01:27:26 But you only have certain boundaries within which you can do that.
1477. 01:27:29 So anyway, there's so many different ways this comes out.
1478. 01:27:31 I love this concept.
1479. 01:27:32 It's one that I've adopted for a long time.
1480. 01:27:36 The other application of this, I think, is the belief that when you have the right tools,
1481. 01:27:43 you will be able to create.
1482. 01:27:45 That's kind of that odds with this whole constraints idea.
1483. 01:27:48 Eric Clapton with a squier strat is more creative than me with every single guitar effect,
1484. 01:27:56 whatever that I have at my disposal.
1485. 01:27:59 And that just shows that it's not the tools and that's like a limiting belief a lot of
1486. 01:28:03 times.
1487. 01:28:04 And it can not just be music, it can be video stuff.
1488. 01:28:08 I was talking to somebody just the other day and they're like, "Oh, I want to grow my
1489. 01:28:12 YouTube channel, but I really need to be able to do this with my videos and I need this
1490. 01:28:18 gear in order to...
1491. 01:28:19 No, you don't.
1492. 01:28:20 Just ship it.
1493. 01:28:21 Yep.
1494. 01:28:22 Do it over and over and over again."
1495. 01:28:23 And yeah, that type of stuff would make it better.
1496. 01:28:26 But if you can't afford those tools right now, don't let that stop you from doing your
1497. 01:28:32 thing and publishing your work because if that really is like a benefit to be had,
1498. 01:28:39 you can add it down the road.
1499. 01:28:40 But in the meantime, the real valuable thing is not to assess point throughout this whole
1500. 01:28:45 book is not that you get it perfect, but that you get it out there.
1501. 01:28:48 Yep.
1502. 01:28:49 Because you know, you're shipping creative work.
1503. 01:28:51 That's the goal.
1504. 01:28:52 Yeah.
1505. 01:28:53 One last thing on that point, by the way, 215, trust the process makes a point that we don't
1506. 01:28:58 ship to win.
1507. 01:28:59 We do it to contribute.
1508. 01:29:01 So whether it is a piece of music that you want to create or a video like I was talking
1509. 01:29:06 about with all these overlays and things, like yeah, maybe the perfect version of it,
1510. 01:29:11 the one that you think is going to help you win is this ideal in your head and you can't
1511. 01:29:16 get there yet, then don't worry about that because you're really not going to win with
1512. 01:29:21 any one thing that you're going to ship anyways.
1513. 01:29:24 He says that your work will never be good enough for everyone, but it's already good
1514. 01:29:27 enough for someone.
1515. 01:29:28 And so yeah, maybe that overlay thing like that would put it over the top in your head,
1516. 01:29:33 but for somebody else who needs what you have, it does not matter.
1517. 01:29:37 So just get it out there.
1518. 01:29:39 Yep.
1519. 01:29:40 Exactly.
1520. 01:29:41 What else do you want to say about this one, Mike?
1521. 01:29:43 That's it.
1522. 01:29:44 I thought the little essays at the end were kind of awkward.
1523. 01:29:47 Yep.
1524. 01:29:48 Very awkward after the rest of the book was very put together.
1525. 01:29:51 Yeah.
1526. 01:29:52 Really.
1527. 01:29:53 I loved section 218 Tuesdays in the anthropology department.
1528. 01:29:57 He talks about how he got invited to this meeting and challenged by this person who sounds
1529. 01:30:04 kind of like a mentor to Seth back in the day who like pulled excellence out of him.
1530. 01:30:10 That was a detail that I had never heard anywhere else before.
1531. 01:30:14 And I don't think it's necessary to have that sort of event happen to you, but I like
1532. 01:30:21 that.
1533. 01:30:22 And this is why this is kind of after the content of the book.
1534. 01:30:26 It challenges me to do that sort of thing for other people.
1535. 01:30:30 Sure.
1536. 01:30:31 You know, I'm in a position where I don't have it all figured out.
1537. 01:30:36 And in a lot of ways, I'm not a professional, but in some people's eyes, I am a professional.
1538. 01:30:41 And they're looking up to me and me reaching out to them and helping them with their thing.
1539. 01:30:46 Like that means the world to them.
1540. 01:30:49 So how can I bring people into the Tuesdays in the anthropology department in my own sphere?
1541. 01:30:54 Yep.
1542. 01:30:55 But well, I have two action items from this conversation that I need to work on before
1543. 01:31:03 our two week accountability session begins.
1544. 01:31:06 And well, the first of those is deciding who I'm doing my practice for.
1545. 01:31:12 So defining who my audience members are.
1546. 01:31:15 The second of which is when is this practice going to happen?
1547. 01:31:19 Now I have it kind of fitting in day to day already, but I have not formalized that.
1548. 01:31:25 So I'm essentially taking something that I've been doing kind of haphazardly and formalizing
1549. 01:31:30 it.
1550. 01:31:31 Those are my two, Mike.
1551. 01:31:32 We'll see what comes of them.
1552. 01:31:34 All right.
1553. 01:31:36 I technically have two, but they are linked together.
1554. 01:31:40 So one is to find my hour for writing every day.
1555. 01:31:43 And then the second one, which that one is in support of is to publish every day.
1556. 01:31:49 And again, I hesitate to share that publicly.
1557. 01:31:53 Yeah.
1558. 01:31:54 Yeah.
1559. 01:31:55 Yep.
1560. 01:31:56 Well, that brings us to style and rating.
1561. 01:31:59 Yeah, I suppose it's my pick.
1562. 01:32:01 So I have to go first this time.
1563. 01:32:02 I can't just follow you.
1564. 01:32:04 As far as Seth Godin style goes, it's Seth Godin.
1565. 01:32:07 I mean, it's dense when you're talking about what he's sharing, it's always dense.
1566. 01:32:14 It's very rare that you run across a section that it feels fluffy and that there were unnecessary
1567. 01:32:19 sentences.
1568. 01:32:20 It just doesn't happen.
1569. 01:32:21 He mixes up sentence length.
1570. 01:32:22 He mixes up stories with explanations of stories with his own assertions.
1571. 01:32:29 Like he's a master at this.
1572. 01:32:33 And it's very, very easy to read this.
1573. 01:32:38 And I found it was very easy to get in in grossed in it.
1574. 01:32:41 So great book, as far as sitting down and reading it, it was a very quick read for me.
1575. 01:32:47 Some of that's because I'm just fascinated by Seth Godin and his ways.
1576. 01:32:50 So there's definitely that aspect of it.
1577. 01:32:52 Some of that is because you didn't have to write down every single essay title in a
1578. 01:32:56 minor file.
1579. 01:32:57 It's true.
1580. 01:32:58 This is where Joe's pen and paper note taking system is amazing because I'm like, oh, that
1581. 01:33:04 was interesting.
1582. 01:33:05 Okay, what's next?
1583. 01:33:06 I don't have to sit and write every title down.
1584. 01:33:11 I just write page number.
1585. 01:33:13 Here's what I think.
1586. 01:33:14 That's all I do.
1587. 01:33:17 So that all not being an issue.
1588. 01:33:20 I loved going through this.
1589. 01:33:22 As far as how to read it, I don't think this goes up into the five oh territory.
1590. 01:33:28 It's definitely a motivational book, which I feel like is hitting me at the right time.
1591. 01:33:33 So I have to be a little careful with that because I tend to want to write things higher
1592. 01:33:35 when they resonate time wise.
1593. 01:33:38 So that's one aspect of it.
1594. 01:33:41 I think it is a little bit repetitive in some aspects.
1595. 01:33:47 At least maybe my interpretation of things becomes a little bit repetitive because we're
1596. 01:33:52 talking about the professional and no such thing as writer's block, earn your skills.
1597. 01:33:58 Those three sections really come down to show up and do the work.
1598. 01:34:03 And that's when you listen to this, that's how we summarize those.
1599. 01:34:07 Now there are nuances between those and the mindsets he's getting at between those are
1600. 01:34:12 different.
1601. 01:34:13 So I have to be a little careful with that.
1602. 01:34:16 So I don't think this hits five oh territory, but as far as my opinion of it and when I would
1603. 01:34:23 recommend it to people, like if you're trying to build some form of a creative routine or
1604. 01:34:28 habit, this is a go to, I would say, like it has a lot of the core motivational statements
1605. 01:34:36 and the core practice.
1606. 01:34:40 And what's behind those habits and routines, like it has all of that stuff in it.
1607. 01:34:43 So it's a really good like consolidated way of looking at these things coming from like
1608. 01:34:48 the Stephen Pressfield background and such.
1609. 01:34:50 So like there is a lot of solid stuff in here.
1610. 01:34:52 I'm going to put it at 4.5.
1611. 01:34:54 I feel like it fits that really well.
1612. 01:34:56 Again, I don't think it goes all the way to five oh, but as far as like a motivational
1613. 01:35:00 let me get all of the stuff that goes around building a creative practice.
1614. 01:35:04 This is solid for certain.
1615. 01:35:06 All right.
1616. 01:35:09 Well, I don't know.
1617. 01:35:13 This is difficult.
1618. 01:35:14 I felt well, first of all, let's just talk about the style.
1619. 01:35:17 I guess I love Seth Godin's style as annoying as it was to make this my node file.
1620. 01:35:25 You inflict this pain on yourself.
1621. 01:35:27 That is true.
1622. 01:35:28 I do it for the bookworms.
1623. 01:35:30 So if I had not taken the approach of I want to create this for posterity and be able to
1624. 01:35:38 like go back and reference this later.
1625. 01:35:41 I can totally see getting engrossed in this.
1626. 01:35:44 I just had to stop every page basically and jot down something else in the file.
1627. 01:35:51 However, if you were to read this as like a storybook sort of thing, just getting grossed
1628. 01:35:57 in it, I feel like you would engage with it very easily.
1629. 01:36:04 No matter who you are or what your perspective is, your background is when you come into this.
1630. 01:36:10 The title, Chipping Creative Work, I looked at that and I was like, "Oh, this book is for
1631. 01:36:17 Joe and I."
1632. 01:36:18 But I feel like it's a little bit deceiving because really it's a book for anyone.
1633. 01:36:24 And I would absolutely recommend it for anyone.
1634. 01:36:29 I love his style.
1635. 01:36:31 He is such a brilliant guy, but it's not like you read one of those academic books, maybe
1636. 01:36:37 like the one we're going to get into next.
1637. 01:36:39 I don't know.
1638. 01:36:41 And it feels like they're talking over your head or you have to go slow in order to understand
1639. 01:36:47 how profound what they're saying is.
1640. 01:36:50 Seth Godin is a master at this.
1641. 01:36:52 I don't even know how to explain it.
1642. 01:36:54 He is a brilliant guy, but he communicates in a way where even if you don't consider
1643. 01:37:01 yourself an intellectual, you can sit down and instantly understand what he is talking
1644. 01:37:05 about.
1645. 01:37:06 The stories that he tells in this book are amazing, but the way he tells them, it's...
1646. 01:37:12 I mean, there's 200-something little essays here and almost every single one has a story
1647. 01:37:17 that goes with it.
1648. 01:37:18 So it would be very easy to include all these additional details.
1649. 01:37:22 And this book is three times as long, but he teases out the exact details that you need
1650. 01:37:28 to understand the points that he is making.
1651. 01:37:32 And none of these stories...
1652. 01:37:33 Yeah, none of the none, literally zero of these stories, I was like, "Well, I don't
1653. 01:37:38 really get what he's saying here."
1654. 01:37:40 He is a phenomenally effective communicator.
1655. 01:37:45 And I also feel that this book, you could go back through this immediately and get twice
1656. 01:37:52 as much from it.
1657. 01:37:54 So I think I have to rate this five stars.
1658. 01:38:00 I hesitate to do so because we went through the episode 100 and we redid some rankings.
1659. 01:38:07 And I feel like as I went through that, my tendency was to, at the beginning, a bookworm
1660. 01:38:14 rate things too high and then I look back on it later and I kind of regret that.
1661. 01:38:18 And this is not a Victor Frankl man's search for meaning type book.
1662. 01:38:26 But it doesn't have to be.
1663. 01:38:30 I do feel like for someone like my past self who is struggling to think of themselves
1664. 01:38:37 as a creative, had I read this book back then, it might have had the same effect and maybe
1665. 01:38:43 even more of an effect than the Austin Cleon one did.
1666. 01:38:47 I can see this book completely changing people's lives.
1667. 01:38:53 And that sounds a little bit sensational considering a lot of his other books are about marketing
1668. 01:38:58 and things like marketing, changing people's lives.
1669. 01:39:02 I don't know.
1670. 01:39:03 I could be proven wrong over time with that.
1671. 01:39:06 But I don't think I am.
1672. 01:39:08 I think this is a great book as long as you go into it with an open mind.
1673. 01:39:16 If you go into it thinking, "Oh, Seth is Seth and he's a special snowflake and there's
1674. 01:39:20 no way I can be like him," then you're right.
1675. 01:39:22 Everything he's going to say in here is going to change your mind.
1676. 01:39:25 But if you go into it thinking, "I want to learn from one of the best."
1677. 01:39:30 There is tons of practical stuff in here.
1678. 01:39:32 There's tons of motivational stuff in here.
1679. 01:39:33 There's tons of inspirational stuff in here.
1680. 01:39:36 There's even some tactics in here.
1681. 01:39:39 It's not primarily what he's trying to do here.
1682. 01:39:42 But I feel like he very effectively speaks to the creative process even more so than Stephen
1683. 01:39:48 Pressfield did in the War of Art in my opinion.
1684. 01:39:50 Sure.
1685. 01:39:51 Well, I was not expecting that.
1686. 01:39:53 I didn't think you'd go all the way to Five-O.
1687. 01:39:55 I don't think I was either.
1688. 01:39:57 It's a good book.
1689. 01:39:59 Cool, cool.
1690. 01:40:00 It's a solid one.
1691. 01:40:01 All right, let's put it on the shelf.
1692. 01:40:02 What's next, Mike?
1693. 01:40:04 Next is Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam, a 500-something page tome, which is a very academic
1694. 01:40:12 book.
1695. 01:40:13 But it's got lots of charts.
1696. 01:40:16 So I'm hoping.
1697. 01:40:19 The basic idea is, and this is the one I have as the 20th anniversary one.
1698. 01:40:24 So he wrote it initially in 2000.
1699. 01:40:27 And so he's revisiting some of the ideas that he posed there.
1700. 01:40:30 And basically, it's talking about American society specifically about how we tend to
1701. 01:40:38 be loners and hopefully what we can do about it.
1702. 01:40:43 I think this is an interesting topic, especially given where we are right now with all the
1703. 01:40:48 COVID stuff.
1704. 01:40:49 So forced loners.
1705. 01:40:51 Yep.
1706. 01:40:52 Interesting.
1707. 01:40:53 Well, the one after this, have I told you, I don't have this in the outline.
1708. 01:40:58 You don't know what this is.
1709. 01:40:59 I don't.
1710. 01:41:00 It just occurred to me.
1711. 01:41:01 All right, the next one is a book from 2017.
1712. 01:41:06 Lead Yourself First by Raymond Kethledge.
1713. 01:41:10 The tagline on this is "Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude," which I think will be interesting.
1714. 01:41:14 It's rated very well on Amazon.
1715. 01:41:16 We'll see what comes of it.
1716. 01:41:18 All right.
1717. 01:41:19 There's an introduction to it written by Jim Collins.
1718. 01:41:23 So he's got a new book out too, by the way.
1719. 01:41:25 Oh, he does.
1720. 01:41:26 What is it?
1721. 01:41:27 Yeah.
1722. 01:41:28 I think it's BE, like BE 2.0.
1723. 01:41:30 Okay.
1724. 01:41:31 There you go.
1725. 01:41:32 Got a gap book this time around?
1726. 01:41:33 Probably not.
1727. 01:41:34 I would say it would boil on.
1728. 01:41:36 I'm going to tackle bowling alone first.
1729. 01:41:39 Yeah.
1730. 01:41:40 I mean, I've got a couple of them sitting right here.
1731. 01:41:43 Just hesitate to share them because I'm not probably going to get through them.
1732. 01:41:47 Sure.
1733. 01:41:48 Makes sense.
1734. 01:41:49 All right.
1735. 01:41:50 Well, thanks.
1736. 01:41:51 Thank you to everyone who's been listening and those of you who are in Twitch stream with
1737. 01:41:57 us today.
1738. 01:41:58 If you are interested in joining us on those, we'll do our best to post when we're doing
1739. 01:42:03 the recordings.
1740. 01:42:04 Usually, at least get it out day of, but Bookworm.fm/live will take you to the live video recording.
1741. 01:42:11 So also, we're always very, very grateful to those of you who have joined the Bookworm
1742. 01:42:18 memberships and that, you know, it's five bucks a month.
1743. 01:42:22 Helps significantly with like hosting fees and such.
1744. 01:42:26 So thank you so much to those of you who have been doing that, helps us buy a coffee, keep,
1745. 01:42:30 you know, buying the books we're doing for the show.
1746. 01:42:34 So thank you to those of you who are on that team and that club.
1747. 01:42:38 If you're interested in joining that club, go to bookworm.fm/membership and it will walk
1748. 01:42:44 you through the process of joining that.
1749. 01:42:46 And once you get through all of that, it's not just paying our hosting fees, but you do
1750. 01:42:51 get access to these ridiculous mind map files that Mike makes.
1751. 01:42:56 And there's a handful of other perks to like special wallpapers, some old gap book episodes
1752. 01:43:00 I did a while back.
1753. 01:43:01 So there's some extra perks in it for you as well.
1754. 01:43:05 So yes, you do get a full, what is it, 105, 105 mind maps that you've done now?
1755. 01:43:12 That's more than that.
1756. 01:43:13 There's some gap book ones in there too.
1757. 01:43:15 Oh, that's right.
1758. 01:43:16 It's ridiculous how many mind maps are in there.
1759. 01:43:18 So if you want to skip reading the book, Mike's got it all done for you.
1760. 01:43:23 I got your back.
1761. 01:43:24 Go team.
1762. 01:43:25 All right.
1763. 01:43:26 So if you're reading along with us, pick up Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam and we will
1764. 01:43:32 talk to you in a couple of weeks.