128: Daily Rituals by Mason Currey

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1. 00:00:00 A little nervous about today's episode, Mike.
2. 00:00:02 -Yes, why is that?
3. 00:00:03 -Because these things are so short and there are so many different little tidbits that I have no idea how we're going to cover today's book.
4. 00:00:10 -It will be interesting.
5. 00:00:12 It will be even more interesting trying to figure out where the chapters should be.
6. 00:00:17 -Yes.
7. 00:00:17 -But I guess that's my problem or Toby's problem.
8. 00:00:22 [laughter]
9. 00:00:24 -Good luck, Toby.
10. 00:00:25 This episode is going to be your test.
11. 00:00:28 We'll see how well you do with a ridiculous episode.
12. 00:00:32 -Yes.
13. 00:00:33 -But before we get there, I was looking through our action item list from last episode and noticed there were none.
14. 00:00:41 Remember that, yes, there were none.
15. 00:00:44 That means we have no real follow-up that I can recall.
16. 00:00:48 Unless you have something that you want to go over before we jump in here.
17. 00:00:53 -I actually have a couple of things I would love to mention if we have a space.
18. 00:00:58 -Yes, we do.
19. 00:00:59 Absolutely.
20. 00:01:00 -The first thing is that September is National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and the relay team,
21. 00:01:09 which I am a part of, you are adjacent to, is raising funds for St. Jude Children's Hospital.
22. 00:01:16 This is a very worthwhile cause.
23. 00:01:19 I found out some new stuff from this campaign where the most common form of childhood cancer
24. 00:01:26 ends up costing over $200,000 on average.
25. 00:01:30 What makes St. Jude amazing is that none of the families of the kids that are treated there have to pay a dime.
26. 00:01:39 The treatment is free.
27. 00:01:41 The travel is free.
28. 00:01:42 The food, the accommodations, everything St. Jude just takes care of it.
29. 00:01:48 Which makes sense when you think about it from the family's perspective.
30. 00:01:52 You would really appreciate that, right?
31. 00:01:54 Because your kid is dying.
32. 00:01:56 You want to keep them alive.
33. 00:01:58 That's your whole focus.
34. 00:02:00 Who cares how much it costs, but in the back of your mind you're thinking about all those bills that are going to come do.
35. 00:02:06 And with St. Jude, none of that pressure is there.
36. 00:02:10 They have increased the survival rate for childhood cancer from 20% to 80% in the time that they've been open.
37. 00:02:19 And they're a research hospital so they share everything that they discover with everybody else.
38. 00:02:24 It's like open source childhood cancer prevention, which is pretty incredible.
39. 00:02:29 It's like all the things.
40. 00:02:31 Like everything you could possibly want out of that.
41. 00:02:33 That's them.
42. 00:02:34 Yeah, it's really an incredible place.
43. 00:02:36 And it means a lot to me because Stephen Hackett, one of the co-founders of the Relay Network who I have gotten to know over the last several years.
44. 00:02:46 He's had to go through this with his son Josiah.
45. 00:02:48 I've got a link which I'll put in the show notes to a post that he wrote two years after they found out about Josiah's diagnosis.
46. 00:02:57 And I teared up reading that even though I wasn't there and I didn't have to go through it.
47. 00:03:03 Just having to think about that stuff.
48. 00:03:05 It hurts.
49. 00:03:06 And Josiah is doing great now and it's really cool to see.
50. 00:03:11 He's now classified as a cancer survivor.
51. 00:03:15 And 80% of the cost to keep St. Jude running comes from fundraising efforts like this.
52. 00:03:23 So if you've got $1000, if you've got a single dollar, it doesn't matter.
53. 00:03:28 I would just ask that you consider donating something.
54. 00:03:31 I've done it every single year.
55. 00:03:32 My wife and I are going to do it again.
56. 00:03:34 And if you want to get involved, you can go to stjude.org/relay.
57. 00:03:39 As part of the fundraising for this, as we record this, is yet to have happened.
58. 00:03:44 If you're listening to this the day gets recorded, make sure you're paying attention to the podcastathon.
59. 00:03:48 It's happening on September 17th.
60. 00:03:50 We'll probably have a video of it after the fact.
61. 00:03:53 But they are again doing the game show stuff with Jason Snow.
62. 00:03:58 And I got to participate in a relay FM host, Baldur Dash.
63. 00:04:02 Nice.
64. 00:04:03 I did not do very well, but it was a lot of fun.
65. 00:04:07 Spoiler alert.
66. 00:04:09 But I suppose this will be out after it's done.
67. 00:04:12 Yeah.
68. 00:04:13 So there you go.
69. 00:04:14 So check that out.
70. 00:04:15 The podcastathon is like a big, long podcast livestream that Stephen and Mike do and they
71. 00:04:20 have a bunch of other people helping out with it.
72. 00:04:22 So I was fortunate that I got to participate this time.
73. 00:04:25 And yeah, it was a lot of fun.
74. 00:04:27 That's going to be broken into a couple different segments throughout the podcastathon.
75. 00:04:31 So check that out.
76. 00:04:32 One other non-serious and way more fun thing I have to talk to you about Jobeleg.
77. 00:04:37 Do you know what this is?
78. 00:04:39 It's a key switch.
79. 00:04:40 Are these holy pandas?
80. 00:04:41 What are these?
81. 00:04:42 It doesn't look like a panda.
82. 00:04:44 No, this is the Zilios V2.
83. 00:04:49 Okay.
84. 00:04:50 And I have a box of them right over here.
85. 00:04:52 Okay.
86. 00:04:53 Which...
87. 00:04:54 And you have a hot swapable keyboard.
88. 00:04:55 Well, yes, true.
89. 00:04:58 But there is another keyboard on the way.
90. 00:05:02 Of course.
91. 00:05:04 Of course.
92. 00:05:06 And what is it?
93. 00:05:08 It's a keychron Q1.
94. 00:05:10 So this is the new one that they came out with.
95. 00:05:13 It's the same size as the K2.
96. 00:05:16 So the one MKBHD made popular.
97. 00:05:18 Same layout.
98. 00:05:19 Yep.
99. 00:05:20 Got the full function rows at the top but doesn't have all the stuff on the side.
100. 00:05:24 It is also gasket mounted and programmable.
101. 00:05:29 So basically all the fancy stuff that you would get in like the GMMK Pro.
102. 00:05:34 Yep.
103. 00:05:35 But at $150 less.
104. 00:05:37 Nice.
105. 00:05:39 So yeah, I got the bare bones kit as a birthday gift.
106. 00:05:46 My wife knows not to get me anything without talking to me, I guess.
107. 00:05:52 I'm not sure I feel great about that.
108. 00:05:55 So what do you want for your birthday?
109. 00:05:57 I'm like, "Well, there is this one thing."
110. 00:05:58 I'm keeping an eye on you.
111. 00:05:59 Oh, you want the keyboard?
112. 00:06:01 Yeah.
113. 00:06:02 Yeah.
114. 00:06:03 Yeah.
115. 00:06:04 Yes.
116. 00:06:05 Yes.
117. 00:06:06 In fact, I would.
118. 00:06:07 Yeah.
119. 00:06:08 So yeah, the keyboard is yet to ship.
120. 00:06:11 But it from, I've seen some different reviews and stuff.
121. 00:06:14 And basically this is like next level key-cron stuff.
122. 00:06:17 It's debatable whether even I will notice the difference with this new keyboard.
123. 00:06:23 But we're going to give it a shot.
124. 00:06:25 I have learned that some of these keyboards, unless you are borderline making a living
125. 00:06:32 off of feeling nuances and keyboards.
126. 00:06:36 You're probably not going to notice the difference.
127. 00:06:39 That's just kind of what I've learned.
128. 00:06:40 Unless you do this all the time and pay super close attention to it, you're probably not
129. 00:06:45 going to catch it on a large number of these.
130. 00:06:48 So yeah, I get it.
131. 00:06:50 I get it.
132. 00:06:51 I don't know.
133. 00:06:52 I think my next keyboard is probably a custom build, but that's what we call expensive.
134. 00:07:00 See, I'm resisting that with every fiber of my being, and I'm hoping I don't end up
135. 00:07:05 in that place.
136. 00:07:06 I've already gone down that route with Bluetooth noise canceling headphones where I tried
137. 00:07:12 like eight different kinds before I finally just bit the bullet and bought the QC35s,
138. 00:07:17 which were the big deal when they came out.
139. 00:07:20 Now there's a bunch of other really great options.
140. 00:07:22 But at the time, you know, you would always, there was that one and then everything else.
141. 00:07:27 And I tried literally everything else.
142. 00:07:29 Yep, I hear you.
143. 00:07:31 These Zileos though, these are nice.
144. 00:07:34 I like the bump is more at the top and it feels a little bit more rounded than the Holy Pandas.
145. 00:07:41 They're tactile, right?
146. 00:07:42 They're not linear.
147. 00:07:43 They are tactile.
148. 00:07:44 Well, if they've got a bump then yes.
149. 00:07:46 Correct.
150. 00:07:47 But they're not clicky and they're way better than the Gatoron Browns that ship with the
151. 00:07:53 keycron stuff.
152. 00:07:54 Yeah, that's what mine has.
153. 00:07:55 The one sitting in front of me, Gatoron Browns are my dailies right now.
154. 00:08:00 I say that and I've got a keyboard.
155. 00:08:02 I don't even know where it's at now.
156. 00:08:03 It's probably in a storage unit somewhere that has the MX, the Cherry Browns in it.
157. 00:08:09 So that one has not been used in quite some time.
158. 00:08:12 But I am slowly realizing that despite everybody going to 60% keyboards and 80% keyboards, the
159. 00:08:19 one I have in front of me is a 10 keyless.
160. 00:08:22 And I don't like it.
161. 00:08:23 I want my 10 key back.
162. 00:08:25 So I think I will probably forever and always be buying full size keyboards, which is a
163. 00:08:32 monster on the desk.
164. 00:08:34 Exactly.
165. 00:08:35 But for whatever reason that keypad is something I tend to want regularly.
166. 00:08:39 I don't know what that is.
167. 00:08:41 Well, the keypad is nice and you can do all sorts of cool automation stuff with that keypad.
168. 00:08:47 But yeah, it definitely takes up a ton of room on the desk.
169. 00:08:50 So I don't think I could make it fit.
170. 00:08:52 My desk is pretty cluttered.
171. 00:08:54 Yeah.
172. 00:08:55 You know what I probably should do?
173. 00:08:57 I've got this stream deck in front of me.
174. 00:08:59 I could probably make a page for a keypad and then use it for that.
175. 00:09:03 There you go.
176. 00:09:04 I don't know.
177. 00:09:05 It would work, I think.
178. 00:09:06 So anyway, today's book has it.
179. 00:09:09 Well, let me back up.
180. 00:09:10 Today's book is Daily Rituals by Mason Curry.
181. 00:09:14 And this book is basically a quick snapshot of great artists from like the last, I would
182. 00:09:23 say probably the last 400, sometimes 500 years or so.
183. 00:09:28 It's meaning painters, writers, philosophers in some case, poets and the like.
184. 00:09:35 And what were their daily rituals?
185. 00:09:37 What were their routines?
186. 00:09:39 What were the things, their idiosyncrasies and such?
187. 00:09:42 And there are a lot in here.
188. 00:09:45 I didn't count them.
189. 00:09:46 Do you know how many are covered in this book?
190. 00:09:48 It's got to be over a hundred would be my assumption, but I don't know what that number
191. 00:09:53 is.
192. 00:09:54 There's a lot of artists covered in this book.
193. 00:09:56 And I had the great opportunity to make an attempt to try to figure out how to go through
194. 00:10:02 all of this process and determine what this was going to look like, like what this whole
195. 00:10:09 episode was going to look like.
196. 00:10:11 So going through this, I was trying to determine like, how are we going to go through this
197. 00:10:14 whole process, this whole book?
198. 00:10:15 It's like there's no way we're going to be able to cover every single artist in this
199. 00:10:22 book.
200. 00:10:23 So I've got two sections here because I didn't want three and I have a bank of like specific
201. 00:10:31 people for us to jump through.
202. 00:10:34 And in most of those cases, I have one, two, in some cases, three little points about that
203. 00:10:40 person and what it was that they did or what their life was like that we could talk about.
204. 00:10:47 But then I also have a bank of like themes that I was starting to notice as I went through
205. 00:10:52 this.
206. 00:10:53 And probably where I think we'll spend a little more time, I feel like walking through this
207. 00:10:56 specific artist is probably going to be somewhat quick, but I don't know.
208. 00:11:02 Some of these are like one paragraph long.
209. 00:11:04 Some of these are two or three pages long, but they're usually not beyond that.
210. 00:11:10 They're fairly short sections.
211. 00:11:13 Anyway, super interesting.
212. 00:11:15 I was fascinated by a lot of these rituals.
213. 00:11:19 And I think this was a gap book of yours a while back, right?
214. 00:11:22 How long has that been since you did this for a gap book?
215. 00:11:25 It was.
216. 00:11:26 I don't remember exactly.
217. 00:11:27 If I had to guess probably about eight to 10 months, but just like when I read it as
218. 00:11:34 a gap book, I started to do my mind map and then realized there was no way I was going
219. 00:11:41 to be able to do that for this.
220. 00:11:44 So sorry team, no mind node file for this one because I literally would have rewritten
221. 00:11:49 the entire book.
222. 00:11:50 Yeah, it's intense.
223. 00:11:51 It would have been at least 85% of the volume of this book because they're very, some of
224. 00:11:57 the descriptions are very, very short.
225. 00:11:59 Most of them, I would argue there's not a whole lot of fluff in this one.
226. 00:12:04 Sure.
227. 00:12:05 Yeah.
228. 00:12:06 No, it's so true because I was, I was putting together like I've, I've got a note file where
229. 00:12:11 I was writing things down about each person so that I could try to take that and then
230. 00:12:18 somehow find themes across each of these people and realized that that was going to become
231. 00:12:24 an enormous file and it was taking me longer to build the file than it was to read the
232. 00:12:31 book by a significant margin.
233. 00:12:34 And this is the absolute wrong time in Joe's life for that to happen.
234. 00:12:37 So it was not going to get through all of that.
235. 00:12:41 I think it was, what was it?
236. 00:12:43 Mid late.
237. 00:12:44 Yeah.
238. 00:12:45 And then last week, whenever I was probably about a third of the way through the book and
239. 00:12:50 going through that process and thought, "Uh-uh, I'm not going to get anywhere close to done
240. 00:12:54 in time for us to record this."
241. 00:12:56 And then I ended up needing to put this off.
242. 00:12:58 We were going to record this past Friday and needed to put it off and barely got it done.
243. 00:13:03 I finished it this morning.
244. 00:13:04 I'll say that.
245. 00:13:06 So, super fun.
246. 00:13:09 Just like some of these people, by the way, you work better with the deadline it seems.
247. 00:13:14 Yes.
248. 00:13:15 Absolutely.
249. 00:13:16 Absolutely.
250. 00:13:17 100%.
251. 00:13:18 So, let's just jump in with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
252. 00:13:23 I figured this would be a good place to start.
253. 00:13:25 And I'm just kind of walking through the book itself.
254. 00:13:29 But I did not realize that Mozart was such a chaotic person.
255. 00:13:36 Like, I don't know why that is, but for some reason in my head, Mozart was someone who
256. 00:13:41 was very organized, very ritualized and very on top of things.
257. 00:13:47 And yet, he was just pure chaos, just pure chaos.
258. 00:13:53 And when I say that, basically, he ends up marrying someone who his wife's parents did
259. 00:14:01 not approve of him at all.
260. 00:14:03 And it was just a rough, rough go being able to get married.
261. 00:14:08 And what did he even say here?
262. 00:14:10 He cannot rely on being able to compose in the evening owing to the concerts which are
263. 00:14:14 taking place.
264. 00:14:15 So, because he was doing all the concerts and stuff.
265. 00:14:17 So, he couldn't compose.
266. 00:14:18 But then he's staying up late in order to compose.
267. 00:14:20 Anyway, Mozart.
268. 00:14:21 Yeah, that was the interesting thing about this one the first time I read it.
269. 00:14:26 And I was reminded of it when I read it again.
270. 00:14:29 Mozart is one of those people that you would think of.
271. 00:14:32 This guy was brilliant.
272. 00:14:34 Just look at, and maybe it says my perspective because I grew up playing classical violin.
273. 00:14:39 So, I have played a lot of Mozart pieces.
274. 00:14:43 Not well, because they are very technical.
275. 00:14:46 This guy was a genius.
276. 00:14:48 And you would think, from my perspective, I always thought he must have just been completely
277. 00:14:53 devoted to composing.
278. 00:14:56 But he totally was, composing was a side hustle for him.
279. 00:15:01 He was trying to pay the bills with all the other stuff.
280. 00:15:05 And I remember first time I read it, kind of being blown away that this was essentially
281. 00:15:12 a side project for him.
282. 00:15:14 And you think when you realize that how much more would he have been able to contribute
283. 00:15:21 to the world had he been able to be fully focused on it.
284. 00:15:26 But then also, I think maybe that's the wrong perspective to have.
285. 00:15:31 Maybe the perspective to take away from that is, well, if you could do that, you know,
286. 00:15:35 if you could do all of this stuff on the side, then it's not too late for me either.
287. 00:15:41 Yeah, and that's a good point because I know how many of us have side hustles, right?
288. 00:15:47 And we tend to think that you can only spend so much time on them.
289. 00:15:51 And so many of the productivity people like us will tell you that things like sleep and
290. 00:15:55 mindfulness and such are really important.
291. 00:15:59 And you need to make those a regular routine.
292. 00:16:02 And yet you've got, and we'll talk about this, folks here who do their best work after their
293. 00:16:07 day job, after the kids are in bed, and then get up early the next morning and go to work.
294. 00:16:12 Like, it's just a thing that continues to come up, whether you think that's the right
295. 00:16:18 way to do it or not is totally up to you, but that's just the way that some of these
296. 00:16:23 people did it.
297. 00:16:24 And Mozart was one of those.
298. 00:16:26 He had all of his concerts and, you know, his house parties and things he needed to do
299. 00:16:30 in order to get the income he needed to keep doing what he was doing.
300. 00:16:34 And then some time had to compose the works that were actually driving all of the concerts
301. 00:16:39 and the house parties and such.
302. 00:16:41 So yes, very, very difficult to pull off.
303. 00:16:47 Let's let's go.
304. 00:16:48 I really want to talk about Kierkegaard.
305. 00:16:50 I really, really, really want to talk about Kierkegaard.
306. 00:16:53 So Soren Kierkegaard, Kierkegaard, if I could get that out of my mouth, had some very strange
307. 00:16:58 coffee habits.
308. 00:16:59 Do you approve of his coffee habits?
309. 00:17:03 I'm going to read this because I cannot do this justice if I summarize it and it will
310. 00:17:07 be faster if I just read it.
311. 00:17:08 Okay?
312. 00:17:09 You ready for this?
313. 00:17:10 Kierkegaard had his own quite peculiar way of having coffee.
314. 00:17:14 Delightedly, he seized hold of the bag containing the sugar and poured sugar into the coffee
315. 00:17:19 cup until it was piled up above the rim.
316. 00:17:22 Next came the incredibly strong black coffee, which slowly dissolved the white pyramid.
317. 00:17:27 The process was scarcely finished before the syrupy stimulant disappeared into the magister's
318. 00:17:31 stomach where it mingled with the sherry to produce additional energy that percolated
319. 00:17:37 up into his seething and bubbling brain, which in any case had already been so productive
320. 00:17:41 all day that in the half-light, Levin, which was his cohort, could still notice the tingling
321. 00:17:47 and throbbing in the overworked fingers when they grasped the slender handle of the cup.
322. 00:17:52 He also had sherry before he had his coffee if you didn't catch that particular part there,
323. 00:17:58 but the concept of filling a coffee cup with sugar and then pouring your coffee into it,
324. 00:18:04 I'm not sure it qualifies as coffee anymore.
325. 00:18:08 Disgusting.
326. 00:18:09 No, I do not approve.
327. 00:18:12 I will forever see Kierkegaard's name tainted because of this.
328. 00:18:20 The number of times that I see his name with quotes, and then yes, I'm just not going to
329. 00:18:26 be able to see him the same way.
330. 00:18:28 It's like, I don't trust your coffee habits.
331. 00:18:29 I'm not sure I trust you anymore.
332. 00:18:31 Yeah, that's the kind of detail that is really fascinating with some of these stories.
333. 00:18:38 I feel towards the end of the book, you start to lose some of that and it kind of morphs
334. 00:18:42 into this person got up at this time and went to bed at that time in the middle of the day
335. 00:18:45 they took a nap.
336. 00:18:47 Yes.
337. 00:18:48 Yes.
338. 00:18:49 They were more ridiculous stories like this sprinkled throughout.
339. 00:18:53 I mean, there are some, but I feel like he gave us a lot more of those at the beginning.
340. 00:18:59 Yeah, which makes sense.
341. 00:19:01 That's what I would do if I was working with a limited number of interesting routines.
342. 00:19:08 The very next one is one that I liked, that is Benjamin Franklin.
343. 00:19:13 Do you know why I liked Benjamin Franklin?
344. 00:19:15 Benjamin Franklin had his time-blocked day.
345. 00:19:19 Exactly.
346. 00:19:20 That's kind of the classic that people have from him.
347. 00:19:22 Yes.
348. 00:19:23 Yeah, they have a picture of his daily routine from an autobiography.
349. 00:19:30 I'm assuming this is not his actual time-blocked plan from his own typewriter, but I thought
350. 00:19:39 that was cool.
351. 00:19:40 It would be impressive though.
352. 00:19:41 Yeah.
353. 00:19:42 I do like that though.
354. 00:19:44 I had seen that picture before.
355. 00:19:45 I don't know exactly where it was, but I had heard about, I had seen that when I had
356. 00:19:50 heard about time-blocking and being tied to Benjamin Franklin's routine, but I felt like
357. 00:19:55 that was a really cool detail and I'm glad that Mason Curry put that in the book.
358. 00:20:01 Yeah.
359. 00:20:02 There are not a lot of pictures in the book, but there are some of the artists in most
360. 00:20:08 cases.
361. 00:20:09 I think this is one of the few where it's a picture of the routine itself laid out.
362. 00:20:13 I've seen this before.
363. 00:20:16 I think it's from Brett McKay over Art of Mainliness.
364. 00:20:20 I know he's got a thing where Benjamin Franklin has a whole notebook of sorts, I think it's
365. 00:20:27 devoted to Franklin and I think this is in it.
366. 00:20:30 So I'm not certain on that, so don't quote me on that piece, but I think that's where
367. 00:20:35 I've seen it before.
368. 00:20:36 Sure.
369. 00:20:37 The other thing with Benjamin Franklin, which this is where he loses me, is he's got his
370. 00:20:41 12 virtues and he focused on one a month and the thought was by the end of the year, then
371. 00:20:47 he'd be good.
372. 00:20:48 Yep.
373. 00:20:49 It's a little bit more complicated than that.
374. 00:20:51 He didn't say it exactly that way, but basically there was an element of that, like, I'm going
375. 00:20:56 to focus on this and I'm going to get it good and then I'm going to focus on the next
376. 00:21:00 one.
377. 00:21:01 And so I don't think he ever thought he was going to be completely virtuous, achieved
378. 00:21:06 a maximum virtuosity, but that is kind of implied with the strategy as outlined in this
379. 00:21:12 book.
380. 00:21:13 That's not like, as soon as I heard that, well, that's not quite how that works, but
381. 00:21:19 okay.
382. 00:21:20 Yeah, so I had his air baths, which was weird to me, like getting up early and sitting in
383. 00:21:25 his chamber without any clothes on for a while.
384. 00:21:28 He's a different kind of dude.
385. 00:21:30 That's strange.
386. 00:21:31 That's some of those strange things that are in here.
387. 00:21:33 Speaking of strange, Sigmund Freud, I don't know if I need to say much more about Freud,
388. 00:21:40 but he, two things that were kind of strange to me.
389. 00:21:43 I didn't know he was basically a chain smoking cigar man.
390. 00:21:47 I did not know that, but he had a ton, like he was basically on a cigar all day, every
391. 00:21:55 day.
392. 00:21:56 Freud had a barber come to his house every single day to trim his beard.
393. 00:22:02 He had a barber that would do house calls, and he came and trimmed his beard every single
394. 00:22:07 day.
395. 00:22:08 That's all.
396. 00:22:09 I just wanted to point that out.
397. 00:22:11 Yeah.
398. 00:22:12 Freud.
399. 00:22:13 No one has to come trim my beard, so I can't relate to the Freud with that.
400. 00:22:20 I mean, I would appreciate it if somebody did it for me, but honestly, it's quick, so I'll
401. 00:22:26 do it.
402. 00:22:27 It's fine.
403. 00:22:28 Oh, I suppose that was probably before like the electric trimmers and such.
404. 00:22:31 Who knows?
405. 00:22:32 Uh, Carl Jung, we're moving forward here.
406. 00:22:35 I'm just going to kind of keep moving because I feel like, again, the themes will be kind
407. 00:22:38 of the fun part, but Carl Jung has a quote that I thought was interesting because he,
408. 00:22:45 he was one of these workaholic people's.
409. 00:22:47 It's a fairly common theme through this is a lot of these artists ran themselves ragged,
410. 00:22:52 but Carl Jung had a quote in here.
411. 00:22:55 I've realized somebody who's tired and needs a rest and goes on working all the same is
412. 00:23:00 a fool.
413. 00:23:01 I thought that was, you know, I mean, it's a, it makes sense whenever you hear it, but
414. 00:23:08 at the same time, if you read this short story about Carl Jung, you realize that the man
415. 00:23:16 was working ridiculous hours and did things even outside of his working hours, built a
416. 00:23:22 primitive house such that he had to go down and grab buckets of water and boil his water.
417. 00:23:29 And keep in mind, this is in the mid 1900s, like 1950, 1960, like this isn't 1600s, but
418. 00:23:38 he still would take care of things as they were centuries before the time when he built
419. 00:23:45 this house.
420. 00:23:46 And yet despite all of that, he was still willing to take the breaks and try to make
421. 00:23:53 sure that he got the rest that he needed.
422. 00:24:03 True.
423. 00:24:04 He wasn't up super early, like some of the other people.
424. 00:24:07 Seven AM least doesn't seem super early to me, but so does this primitive lifestyle
425. 00:24:14 have any appeal to you, Joe Bealeg?
426. 00:24:16 Kind of sort of maybe.
427. 00:24:18 I figured it might.
428. 00:24:21 So partially because I just bought a house that's got some kind of primitive stuff to
429. 00:24:26 it, I'm yet to determine what my internet situation is going to be.
430. 00:24:31 That's here in a couple of weeks when I'll nail that down.
431. 00:24:33 Oh boy.
432. 00:24:34 Yeah, we'll see what I land on with that.
433. 00:24:38 The highest internet speed I've been quoted that's hard-lined is a one-meg connection.
434. 00:24:43 So that's after calling 12 different companies.
435. 00:24:48 So yeah, it'll be fast internet for sure.
436. 00:24:55 So we're not recording bookworm from home.
437. 00:24:58 No, unless it threw a phone call, it won't happen from there.
438. 00:25:03 I will not be live streaming from that place most likely.
439. 00:25:08 So anyway, yes, I have some primitive tendencies.
440. 00:25:14 I've been cutting up fallen trees and stuff and I need to get an axe at this point because
441. 00:25:20 I got to cut stuff up for firewood and stuff and my wife is super into having chickens
442. 00:25:26 next year.
443. 00:25:27 Yeah, there's a lot of that happening, I guess.
444. 00:25:31 So when I was reading this, it's like, oh, that sounds really nice.
445. 00:25:35 And it's like, yep, that would terrify a lot of people.
446. 00:25:37 I'm very aware of that.
447. 00:25:40 There's a lot of these routines that would terrify a lot of people.
448. 00:25:44 A lot of optimizing everything for the act of creating and then going to bed immediately
449. 00:25:49 afterwards.
450. 00:25:50 Yeah.
451. 00:25:51 There's a lot of people who don't fit that mold too, which is kind of an interesting
452. 00:25:54 thing about the book in general.
453. 00:25:55 There's so many different styles here.
454. 00:25:57 Yeah, and if, I mean, you were talking about 7 a.m. not being super early, if you want
455. 00:26:02 somebody who is up super early, let's go to Hemingway.
456. 00:26:06 And Hemingway was up by 5.30.
457. 00:26:07 Though I suppose I wouldn't count as super, super early.
458. 00:26:10 There were some in here that were up by 4 a.m. every day, and that was their routine.
459. 00:26:15 But Hemingway was up by 5.30.
460. 00:26:18 He's kind of the classic, methodical, ritualized, structured writer and had some tracking that
461. 00:26:27 he did for his word counts so that he could figure out if he was not.
462. 00:26:33 He wanted to make sure he wasn't fooling himself and thinking he was writing a lot more than
463. 00:26:36 he actually was.
464. 00:26:38 But yes, he was up early.
465. 00:26:40 And even if he had been up late drinking the night before, he was still up early.
466. 00:26:45 And his son Gregory said that he always looked great, even if he had been up drinking the
467. 00:26:51 night before.
468. 00:26:52 He seemed like he was immune to hangovers was what his son said.
469. 00:26:56 But yes, he was one of these guys who had a super regular process.
470. 00:27:03 And he did not sharpen 22 pencils, Mike, before he started writing.
471. 00:27:07 I did catch that detail.
472. 00:27:09 Yeah, as much as people like, and I've seen that one out there.
473. 00:27:13 But yeah, apparently that's a myth.
474. 00:27:17 All right.
475. 00:27:18 What was interesting about this was the word count section to me that he's keeping track
476. 00:27:23 of that stuff by hand.
477. 00:27:25 Yeah, think about that.
478. 00:27:26 He would have counted each word manually.
479. 00:27:29 Yep.
480. 00:27:30 Yeah.
481. 00:27:31 Written it down.
482. 00:27:32 Just to prove to himself that he was actually doing the work that he thought he was doing.
483. 00:27:34 And there's so many people who refuse to even look at their screen time stats when I say,
484. 00:27:39 you spend more time in social media than you think you do.
485. 00:27:43 We need more having ways.
486. 00:27:45 Yeah.
487. 00:27:46 Another one who was super structured was BF Skinner.
488. 00:27:49 As you would expect, you know, if you know Skinner, he's the behavioral psychologist.
489. 00:27:54 And he totally got me whenever he was saying he would ring a bell at different times.
490. 00:28:02 And he was one that would be like he would ding a bell at different times and have the
491. 00:28:08 buzzers go off whenever he had different transitions he needed to go through and stuff,
492. 00:28:12 which is exactly what you would expect from somebody who's big into the behavior psychology
493. 00:28:15 side of things.
494. 00:28:17 And yet he was always reliable as a result of that.
495. 00:28:22 So anyway, BF Skinner, just what you would expect from him.
496. 00:28:26 Yeah.
497. 00:28:27 Another one that I liked.
498. 00:28:28 I have a couple just like specific quotes here, not necessarily the routines that were interesting,
499. 00:28:33 but Chuck Close said inspiration is for amateurs.
500. 00:28:36 The rest of us show up and get to work.
501. 00:28:39 You can definitely see that theme throughout here with a bunch of the different routines.
502. 00:28:43 And that quote, by the way, I have heard different forms of that quote over the years.
503. 00:28:50 And I feel like it's never attributed to Chuck Close, which got me thinking as I saw
504. 00:28:55 these pop up again and again, and like the interview snippets that Mason Curry would
505. 00:28:59 put in these interviews is like, these people were all ripping each other off and claiming
506. 00:29:04 these ideas as their own.
507. 00:29:06 Totally, totally doing it.
508. 00:29:09 They were all stealing like an artist.
509. 00:29:11 Yes.
510. 00:29:12 100%.
511. 00:29:13 That's what people do.
512. 00:29:14 It's like if somebody else is doing it, claim it as your own and pass it off.
513. 00:29:18 But in today's world, I mean, you had to keep that in mind.
514. 00:29:21 Even in a lot of these cases, they could do that and people thought it was their idea
515. 00:29:25 because things like the internet and widespread media wasn't a thing.
516. 00:29:30 So you didn't know what the source of the idea was and you had no way to trace it.
517. 00:29:34 Nowadays you do.
518. 00:29:35 So you could rip people off before.
519. 00:29:38 It's a little more difficult to do that without giving the attribution today.
520. 00:29:42 Yeah, true.
521. 00:29:43 I don't know how valid that is, but anyway, Charles Dickens again was extremely routine
522. 00:29:48 and methodical.
523. 00:29:49 If I just am drawn to that, and that's why I picked these people out because there were
524. 00:29:52 definitely folks that were not at all, which we'll get to right after this.
525. 00:29:57 But the one that was interesting to me about Dickens, because obviously Dickens wrote
526. 00:30:02 a lot, but he had a very specific arrangement that he wanted his desk to be in and was like
527. 00:30:09 a minute by minute schedule type of person.
528. 00:30:13 And again, like what you were saying, like that's one of these themes that I think we'll
529. 00:30:17 get to here in a bit.
530. 00:30:18 But it's one where like if you have set times, like you're going to work, it's almost like
531. 00:30:22 what Skinner's doing with having those triggered moments and it sets your brain into that mode.
532. 00:30:28 Thus, it makes it easier to get into the mindset that you're after to do the writing.
533. 00:30:34 It seems like most of these were writers.
534. 00:30:36 I don't know if they're just the ones that I was drawn to or not, but it seems like a
535. 00:30:40 lot of folks were writers.
536. 00:30:41 Mm.
537. 00:30:42 I don't know.
538. 00:30:43 I didn't do a count.
539. 00:30:45 I assume there's a fairly healthy balance of a lot of different things on the cover he
540. 00:30:50 talks about.
541. 00:30:52 Writers, composers, painters, choreographers, playwrights, poets, philosophers, sculptors,
542. 00:30:58 filmmakers, and scientists on how they create.
543. 00:31:03 But yeah, I think the writer once stood out the most to me too, maybe just because those
544. 00:31:10 are the ones that have the most control over what and where they work.
545. 00:31:16 I mean, you don't need a ton of gear and you don't need a fancy space in order to write.
546. 00:31:22 There are people who just sat on their bed and they were prolific writers.
547. 00:31:27 Right.
548. 00:31:28 So I think that kind of appeals to me.
549. 00:31:32 Another thing kind of contrasting the very rigid, this is the schedule sort of thing is
550. 00:31:38 Woody Allen.
551. 00:31:40 I like this quote, Woody Allen said, "Any momentary change stimulates a fresh burst of mental
552. 00:31:44 energy."
553. 00:31:46 And for me, I've noticed that back in the day I used to travel between coffee shop and
554. 00:31:53 library and co-working space and I basically show up, create for like an hour and a half.
555. 00:31:58 And then when I hit a wall, I'd get in the car and go somewhere else.
556. 00:32:02 I never really understood why.
557. 00:32:04 I never had any like quantifiable data.
558. 00:32:06 Like, this is actually helping me with the creative process.
559. 00:32:10 And then Woody Allen said that and I was like, "That's it.
560. 00:32:14 That's what I've been doing."
561. 00:32:15 Thanks, Woody.
562. 00:32:17 Yeah.
563. 00:32:18 When I read that again though, I realized I kind of missed that.
564. 00:32:22 I've made a lot of changes to my home office and this is a great space to work from.
565. 00:32:28 But it's at home and I have five kids who are home schooled and I recognize that maybe
566. 00:32:35 this isn't the best place for me to be all day every day.
567. 00:32:39 So I actually joined a co-working space.
568. 00:32:43 Nice.
569. 00:32:44 A different one in Appleton, which is pretty cool.
570. 00:32:49 It's decent.
571. 00:32:50 I mean, it's not like super fancy or anything like that, but I don't need it to be.
572. 00:32:54 I just need a recognized, a different place to go to do writing.
573. 00:32:59 It's kind of noisy.
574. 00:33:00 I'm not going to podcast or record video or anything from there.
575. 00:33:04 But if I'm honest with myself, that's not where a majority of my work happens anyways.
576. 00:33:09 That's the stuff people see is the podcast, the videos.
577. 00:33:15 But a lot of it is just writing.
578. 00:33:18 I can do that from anywhere.
579. 00:33:19 So for the last week or so, I've been grabbing my laptop, going downtown and working from
580. 00:33:27 there for a couple of hours.
581. 00:33:29 Even did that today before I came home to record the podcast.
582. 00:33:31 I am much more productive that way.
583. 00:33:35 So thanks, Woody.
584. 00:33:36 Good job.
585. 00:33:37 Two more and we'll get to themes because I feel like that's kind of where I'm wanting
586. 00:33:40 to get here.
587. 00:33:41 But the first of those two is Einstein.
588. 00:33:44 I feel like I couldn't go through this without bringing up Einstein.
589. 00:33:48 And you've all seen the pictures of him, like crazy hair and such.
590. 00:33:54 And it sounds like from reading this short snippet about Einstein's, he was disheveled
591. 00:34:00 like that so that he didn't have to take the time to trim and go do haircuts regularly.
592. 00:34:06 If he was just shaggy haired, he didn't have to waste his time on haircuts.
593. 00:34:12 This probably something to that.
594. 00:34:14 Just maintain long hair.
595. 00:34:15 You can go months between haircuts.
596. 00:34:17 Who needs personal hygiene anyways?
597. 00:34:19 It's unnecessary.
598. 00:34:21 Last one here, Stephen King.
599. 00:34:23 Now I've read his book on writing.
600. 00:34:25 It's the title of the book on writing.
601. 00:34:28 And some of this comes from that book that Mason Curry puts in this one.
602. 00:34:33 But Stephen King writes to a quota of 2,000 words a day.
603. 00:34:37 That's a lot.
604. 00:34:38 You've heard people talk about the thousand words a day or 500 words a day, but he writes
605. 00:34:41 to 2,000 words a day.
606. 00:34:45 And that's how he knows when he's done.
607. 00:34:46 He has the time when he starts and he goes until he hits 2,000 words and then he can
608. 00:34:49 be done for the day.
609. 00:34:51 So just kind of an interesting way to do it.
610. 00:34:53 Instead of the time bound piece.
611. 00:34:54 Yeah, I don't like either of those to be honest, the time bound or the specific number.
612. 00:35:01 I've been driven by the number, the writing goals in the past.
613. 00:35:06 And I can't say that it's helped me produce on a more regular basis, any more than having
614. 00:35:14 deadlines for things that I publish without any sort of parameters around what they're
615. 00:35:18 going to be are.
616. 00:35:20 I also feel an enormous amount of pressure when I look at those numbers.
617. 00:35:26 Like I have all these words to go, even if it's only a thousand words a day.
618. 00:35:30 And when I get rolling, I can crank out a thousand words in 20 minutes.
619. 00:35:35 But still just looking at that big, oh, there's so much more I have to do.
620. 00:35:41 I just don't like it.
621. 00:35:42 I can't work that way.
622. 00:35:44 Which kind of leads by the way to one more point here from Annerice.
623. 00:35:48 I thought this was maybe a really profound quote.
624. 00:35:51 And I think it leads into the next section maybe with the themes.
625. 00:35:55 We can talk more about Stephen King, though, if you want.
626. 00:35:59 But Annerice said that the most important thing has been the ability to change routines.
627. 00:36:04 So a lot of these routines are shared and they're kind of snippets in time.
628. 00:36:08 Like this is what this person did.
629. 00:36:09 And some of them, like this is what they did until the day they died.
630. 00:36:12 Like they make a point to call that out.
631. 00:36:15 But some of them changed their routines quite a bit.
632. 00:36:19 And I feel like that's healthy.
633. 00:36:21 I have noticed that I have done that over the last several years.
634. 00:36:26 Some of it maybe was encouraged by a global pandemic.
635. 00:36:32 But even without that reading this book, I left with the idea that this is something
636. 00:36:37 that's natural.
637. 00:36:38 Like you do something for a while, a certain way.
638. 00:36:41 And then eventually you have to find a new way to do things in order to keep it fresh.
639. 00:36:46 It gets a really good point.
640. 00:36:47 And it's something that I think people tend to overlook is that you can change your routines
641. 00:36:52 over time.
642. 00:36:53 And that's okay.
643. 00:36:55 And when you find yourself not actually producing what you want to produce, like changing your
644. 00:37:00 routines is actually the exact same.
645. 00:37:02 Like that's the thing that you need to do.
646. 00:37:04 Like break the ritual if you're not achieving what you want to achieve.
647. 00:37:09 And that's brought out in a handful of these stories.
648. 00:37:11 Like they would sometimes talk about how some of their kids would remember things differently.
649. 00:37:16 Like most of the kids remember that dad was always locked in his room when you weren't
650. 00:37:21 allowed to go in.
651. 00:37:22 And then a different kid would say, "No, actually that's not true.
652. 00:37:25 Mom was allowed to go in there."
653. 00:37:26 Like that would come up.
654. 00:37:28 But if you pay attention to the timing of when those two stories came out, they're both
655. 00:37:33 right.
656. 00:37:34 Like it used to be one way and then dad changed and it was a different way.
657. 00:37:37 Sure.
658. 00:37:38 And kids can morph over time.
659. 00:37:41 So yes.
660. 00:37:43 Good point.
661. 00:37:44 I have an action item associated with that specifically.
662. 00:37:47 Okay.
663. 00:37:48 Towards the end, there was somebody George's Simonon.
664. 00:37:53 I'm probably pronouncing that last name wrong.
665. 00:37:55 I had not heard of this person before.
666. 00:37:58 But they had a do not disturb sign that they would put on the outside of their door when
667. 00:38:05 no one, when they weren't.
668. 00:38:07 Then they didn't want to be interrupted.
669. 00:38:09 And I was like, "That's genius."
670. 00:38:13 So I ordered from Amazon right before we recorded this two sided do not disturb sign, which
671. 00:38:24 I will put in the chat here.
672. 00:38:28 Really simple.
673. 00:38:29 Just one side says, "Welcome, please knock.
674. 00:38:33 The other side.
675. 00:38:34 Big red X, please.
676. 00:38:35 Do not disturb."
677. 00:38:36 And I can't even tell you how many times I have had the door closed, which has traditionally
678. 00:38:43 been the indication, do not disturb me.
679. 00:38:46 And I get knocks on the door anyways.
680. 00:38:48 I've got the LED hue light outside my door.
681. 00:38:53 I have a button on the stream deck to turn it red when I'm recording.
682. 00:38:57 I will still get knocks on the door.
683. 00:38:59 Every time it happens, I'm like, "Oh."
684. 00:39:02 So I'm adding another layer of defense for my deep focus modes.
685. 00:39:08 Nice.
686. 00:39:09 Yeah, I have a currently recording sign on the door, as you can tell the guys are paying
687. 00:39:15 attention to.
688. 00:39:17 And it's on the door currently.
689. 00:39:20 All I've ever asked them to do is just don't bang on the walls and stuff right next to
690. 00:39:24 this room when that's out there.
691. 00:39:26 It's like, "That's all I'm asking."
692. 00:39:27 And they chose to completely ignore it today.
693. 00:39:30 So not much I can do about it there.
694. 00:39:33 But yes, I hear you.
695. 00:39:35 And that's actually one of the themes here is that it seems like not all, but a number
696. 00:39:41 of the artists here in this book have rules around when people are allowed to interrupt
697. 00:39:47 them and what are their designated work times and what are the rules of engagement at which
698. 00:39:52 you're able to step into their creative zone and interrupt them.
699. 00:39:58 So it seems like those rules and those patterns are pretty common amongst these folks.
700. 00:40:05 Yeah.
701. 00:40:06 So what were some of the patterns that you noticed or that you liked maybe?
702. 00:40:12 Maybe some of these you're already doing them.
703. 00:40:14 Like one thing that popped up a lot that I noticed was people tended to go for walks
704. 00:40:18 and I know you go for your walks in the morning and in the evening.
705. 00:40:21 Yeah.
706. 00:40:22 So.
707. 00:40:23 Yeah.
708. 00:40:24 Out of my designated leave me alone time has disappeared.
709. 00:40:28 You know, the only catch to that is the evening walks piece.
710. 00:40:33 But the morning things probably not going to pick up until we actually move into the
711. 00:40:36 house.
712. 00:40:37 So I suspect that that's going to be a pickup thing at that point.
713. 00:40:42 But yeah, I mean, those are probably the only times that I really have.
714. 00:40:45 I'm not truly able to say you can't interrupt me and you can't step in at my day job, which
715. 00:40:52 is where I'm at.
716. 00:40:53 I wish there was some way for me to do that.
717. 00:40:56 But the only other way that I can come up with that we could do recordings like this
718. 00:41:01 and have that separation is to pay to rent a place or I don't even know what do it at
719. 00:41:09 in the evenings or on weekends and it's painful for both of us to do that.
720. 00:41:13 So I'm not sure what that would be.
721. 00:41:15 But the nature of my work doesn't really allow that in the designated times piece.
722. 00:41:23 In having those rules of engagement.
723. 00:41:25 So I'm not sure that I'm going to be able to do anything with that one.
724. 00:41:29 But there's a lot of them that are fascinating and I wish I could do.
725. 00:41:33 And I'm like, hey, you know, if I can control absolutely everything about my work, yeah,
726. 00:41:37 I would do that.
727. 00:41:38 And I wondered if that was part of it.
728. 00:41:40 Like the people who are able to be an artist and do these things are ones who can control
729. 00:41:50 the entirety of that schedule and it seems like people would tend to control it to the
730. 00:41:54 point where you're not allowed to interrupt me unless X, Y, and Z.
731. 00:41:58 So yeah, those were the rules that they would set up if they were able to set them up.
732. 00:42:02 But if you're not, I'm not sure what you do with that.
733. 00:42:06 If you do set up rules and people ignore them, then you need to get one of these rooms that
734. 00:42:11 I just shared in the chat for you.
735. 00:42:14 What is this?
736. 00:42:15 Room.com.
737. 00:42:16 Yeah, it's like a little call booth, which is soundproofed.
738. 00:42:21 So I need to get one of these and keep it as my own.
739. 00:42:26 Yep.
740. 00:42:27 Yep.
741. 00:42:28 Nice.
742. 00:42:29 It's not going to help you with the internet speed at the new place, but.
743. 00:42:33 Not at all.
744. 00:42:35 Not.
745. 00:42:36 I do know, like if I could get the internet thing figured out, like I could build an entire
746. 00:42:39 room that was soundproof off somewhere else.
747. 00:42:42 Like I could totally do that.
748. 00:42:43 But internet's questionable.
749. 00:42:46 I share this partly because it's appropriate for today.
750. 00:42:50 But also, I think the larger point here is in designing your environment to facilitate
751. 00:42:55 the focused work, which is what a lot of these creatives were doing.
752. 00:43:01 And there's lots of things that can cause you distractions.
753. 00:43:05 There's self-imposed distractions by you not turning off notifications on your devices.
754. 00:43:12 There's people drilling holes in the wall next to you.
755. 00:43:15 There's people actually entering your space when you're supposed to be doing something
756. 00:43:19 else.
757. 00:43:21 And I think the big takeaway from this book is to consider your own routines and what
758. 00:43:29 sort of creative work is valuable for you.
759. 00:43:31 And what are the things that you can do to facilitate that work?
760. 00:43:36 This room, this is like a thing that you assemble yourself.
761. 00:43:41 It's got vents at the top and it's got this little bench that you sit on and it's...
762. 00:43:45 I actually know someone who has one of these and it's pretty soundproof.
763. 00:43:48 They put it in their office because they would always have people who would need to take
764. 00:43:51 a call.
765. 00:43:52 They don't want to do it in the open space where it's bothering everybody else.
766. 00:43:58 So they hop into this little room cube thing, which looks really ridiculous because it's
767. 00:44:04 not very tall.
768. 00:44:05 It's probably like five feet tall.
769. 00:44:06 You got to like duck to get in it.
770. 00:44:08 But for some people, $4,500 or whatever it is for the cheap one of those to put that
771. 00:44:14 in your house and block out all the distractions, that's a deal.
772. 00:44:19 Yes.
773. 00:44:20 Yes.
774. 00:44:21 Or you go all the way to the top.
775. 00:44:22 I was looking at the top one is $15,500.
776. 00:44:26 So 16,000.
777. 00:44:27 Yeah, they make bigger ones.
778. 00:44:28 They make focus rooms, bunch of different versions.
779. 00:44:32 It started off as just that little closet cabinet thing though where you could pop in
780. 00:44:36 and take calls.
781. 00:44:37 So it's got a nice light gray background, little desk where you can put your laptop and they
782. 00:44:45 are soundproof.
783. 00:44:46 When you're in there, you don't hear anybody on the outside.
784. 00:44:48 They don't hear you, which is kind of the whole goal.
785. 00:44:51 They're ventilated so it doesn't get to be a thousand degrees in there while you're
786. 00:44:55 taking your call.
787. 00:44:57 And I love creative solutions like that because my natural inclination when I need to take
788. 00:45:07 a call at the co-working space is I look for an open office.
789. 00:45:10 I can go in and close the door or I'll go in the conference room and close the door,
790. 00:45:15 which they have a stat on that website.
791. 00:45:17 46% of conference room use is by a single person.
792. 00:45:22 It's because no one's thought creatively about solving this problem.
793. 00:45:28 And if real estate is the, like how much square footage you have in your space is the
794. 00:45:34 thing that's of most importance.
795. 00:45:36 And throw some money at the problem and get one of these.
796. 00:45:40 There are a lot of other people who throw a lot more money at problems thinking that
797. 00:45:43 fancy technology is going to solve it.
798. 00:45:46 And it's not.
799. 00:45:48 The newest Mac Pro, the biggest display, the fanciest keyboard.
800. 00:45:56 Right?
801. 00:45:58 These are all potential solutions to a symptom.
802. 00:46:03 If you can identify the real problem, then you can get rid of it.
803. 00:46:08 It's a worthwhile investment, especially if you view the creative work that you do as
804. 00:46:13 the most important use of your available time.
805. 00:46:17 Yeah, I can see it.
806. 00:46:19 I just think that's a pricey way to do it.
807. 00:46:20 Now, I say that and yet I know, and I have to, this is where it gets hard for me to keep
808. 00:46:29 boundaries.
809. 00:46:30 I know that here at the church, we have an interest in having like a video recording
810. 00:46:36 booth of some sort.
811. 00:46:38 So we've looked at building something that has a lot of sound deadening and video lighting
812. 00:46:46 and stuff that's set up in it that's made for that sort of thing.
813. 00:46:51 But it would have to block out like all the sounds because the building is getting more
814. 00:46:55 and more busy over time.
815. 00:46:58 And this room is actually where we've talked about building that.
816. 00:47:01 Okay.
817. 00:47:02 If I do that, how do I use that for my podcasting and my streaming and stuff?
818. 00:47:07 Like, how do I use it for that?
819. 00:47:09 So I have to like try to keep those separate.
820. 00:47:12 The other piece of this is that you're way more handy than I am.
821. 00:47:15 So if you got your hands on the plans for this sort of thing, I'm sure you could build
822. 00:47:19 it yourself.
823. 00:47:20 Oh, yeah.
824. 00:47:21 I get to build it.
825. 00:47:22 I could build it way cheaper than what they're doing.
826. 00:47:23 I'm sure.
827. 00:47:24 So yeah, this is a solution for a nerd who doesn't know how to swing a hammer like me.
828. 00:47:32 That's fair.
829. 00:47:33 That's fair.
830. 00:47:34 I just did a whole bunch of sound deadening in the ceiling of our kitchen and dining
831. 00:47:37 room.
832. 00:47:38 So that way, you know, if we get up and want to bang pans and pots around in the morning,
833. 00:47:43 we won't wake people up.
834. 00:47:44 So I have a whole system that I put in our ceiling there, which we were talking earlier
835. 00:47:50 is dry walled today.
836. 00:47:52 So anyway, how stuff?
837. 00:47:54 I'm not going to go there today.
838. 00:47:55 So some more of these themes.
839. 00:47:58 One of these, which I think you and I would tend to lean towards now, granted, I haven't
840. 00:48:03 been writing in quite some time.
841. 00:48:05 So keep that in mind here.
842. 00:48:06 But it seems like a lot of folks write first thing in the morning.
843. 00:48:10 Yes.
844. 00:48:11 And there are obviously, you know, these are themes.
845. 00:48:13 These are not hard rules, of course.
846. 00:48:16 They're definitely people who are starting their writing routine at midnight.
847. 00:48:20 I can't fathom that.
848. 00:48:22 That would make like, I would have migraines for a week if I did that two days in a row.
849. 00:48:27 But people tend to write first thing in the morning that seemed to be a theme that I
850. 00:48:31 noticed.
851. 00:48:33 But whenever I've done writing on a regular basis, the mornings are when I need to do that.
852. 00:48:39 Otherwise it's gone and I can't focus on it.
853. 00:48:42 When do you do your writing?
854. 00:48:43 I know you do a ton of this, but when do you actually do that?
855. 00:48:47 Good question.
856. 00:48:48 I think I write in the morning primarily, although not everything I do revolves around writing
857. 00:49:00 like you would traditionally think of writing.
858. 00:49:04 For example, a lot of the screencast workflow videos that I create, I don't have a script
859. 00:49:10 for those.
860. 00:49:11 And also my voice doesn't wake up until about 11 a.m.
861. 00:49:15 If I record before 11 a.m., I sound like Barry Manilow.
862. 00:49:20 Some people told me like, "Hey, your voice sounds really good today."
863. 00:49:24 What was different?
864. 00:49:25 Oh, I had to record before 11.
865. 00:49:27 So you have to wait until your voice warms up and doesn't sound as good?
866. 00:49:33 Is that what you're telling me?
867. 00:49:34 I have to wait until my voice warms up because I personally don't think it sounds better when
868. 00:49:40 it's lower.
869. 00:49:41 But also it's just a lot more taxing.
870. 00:49:44 I don't have as much control, et cetera.
871. 00:49:48 So I know that the majority of my deep work is actual audio or video creation.
872. 00:49:58 There's an audio component involved to it.
873. 00:50:01 And so that deep work that I would typically want to do at the beginning of the day, I
874. 00:50:07 can't.
875. 00:50:09 So I do the outlining and a lot of the prep and stuff like that, yes, in the morning.
876. 00:50:15 But essentially what I've done is I have learned to utilize these pockets of time when
877. 00:50:22 I have them.
878. 00:50:23 That's where time blocking is really valuable for me is yes, in a perfect world where I
879. 00:50:28 had complete control over every hour of my day, I would be doing all this stuff at the
880. 00:50:33 beginning.
881. 00:50:35 But I don't all the time.
882. 00:50:37 And if I have our weekly meeting for the Blanc Media Team from 10 to 12 on Wednesday, I
883. 00:50:46 know that with some of the meeting prep I have to do, I'm not going to get a whole bunch
884. 00:50:51 of writing done before that meeting.
885. 00:50:53 But I've got three hours after that meeting.
886. 00:50:57 And I seem to not have a whole lot of trouble just shifting that till later in the day.
887. 00:51:04 Maybe that's weird or maybe I'm just not paying close enough attention to realize that it
888. 00:51:09 is actually a lot harder for me later in the day.
889. 00:51:12 But my gut feeling is that the time doesn't really bother me so much.
890. 00:51:19 There's one other theme that's really close to this one.
891. 00:51:22 And that's to work until lunch and then they take the afternoons off entirely.
892. 00:51:27 This one I specifically pointed out because I noticed once I picked up on like two or
893. 00:51:32 three of these happening, I started to realize like a lot.
894. 00:51:36 Whenever their time schedule for the day is mentioned, there's a lot of times when people
895. 00:51:41 are done by one o'clock, by lunch, by 11, or they start at 10 a.m. and they go till two
896. 00:51:48 or three o'clock and then they're done.
897. 00:51:50 It's this four or five hour period, generally a four hour, four or four and a half hour
898. 00:51:55 period that a lot of these artists are working.
899. 00:51:58 One of which I'm drawing a blank on her name was like shooting to get a 30 minute writing
900. 00:52:04 slot in every day.
901. 00:52:05 That was her one and only goal.
902. 00:52:07 I was like, "I'm not sure when it's going to happen, but at some point today I need to
903. 00:52:10 write for 30 minutes."
904. 00:52:11 And that's how she wrote her books.
905. 00:52:14 Something about that time span, that four hour time span, it struck a chord with me because
906. 00:52:19 I know we've talked about over work, being too busy, eight hour days don't work.
907. 00:52:25 Her theme is one that we have brought up regularly on bookworm.
908. 00:52:31 So to see it come out in the artists' schedule over hundreds of years is interesting.
909. 00:52:37 It's like, "Huh, maybe they figured something out and maybe this whole knowledge work thing
910. 00:52:43 fits the whole artist's mindset, may not be considered "art" in today's world, but it
911. 00:52:50 requires the same type of mind processing and thus leads us to a point where working
912. 00:52:56 eight hours a day actually doesn't pan out and you actually have to shorten that.
913. 00:53:02 That's all theories and tying dots together and stuff that I'm still processing on, but
914. 00:53:09 wanted to share because I thought it was fascinating.
915. 00:53:11 If I was writing this book, in addition to all the research and the interviews and the
916. 00:53:17 collection of the little snippets and things which Mason Curry did a great job of, I would
917. 00:53:22 be creating a spreadsheet with things like what time did they start, what time did they
918. 00:53:29 stop, did they take a nap, how many hours did they sleep, etc.
919. 00:53:35 And I would average all that stuff out and I would break it into sections.
920. 00:53:39 So I would have a section for the writers, I would have a section for the artists, I
921. 00:53:43 would have a section for the directors, and I would have the averages for the average
922. 00:53:50 writer works this many hours, sleeps this many hours, starts at this time, ends at this
923. 00:53:57 time, all that kind of stuff because I feel like those trends are really interesting and
924. 00:54:03 there's nothing that speaks to that in this book.
925. 00:54:07 I understand that's not really the point behind the book, but that's the piece that
926. 00:54:13 I wish was there.
927. 00:54:16 Yeah, and that's, again, that's partly why I wanted to pull out themes because to me,
928. 00:54:21 those are the fascinating pieces.
929. 00:54:23 Like, yes, we can talk about, you know, Kirk or Garden is weird coffee tendency and how
930. 00:54:29 Mozart was all over the place and Skinner had his schedules and patterns and such, but
931. 00:54:35 like those are fun little snippets and it's partly why I wanted to start with those, but
932. 00:54:40 to me, the themes are where the meat of all this is and it's just not there and like,
933. 00:54:45 it's not spelled out.
934. 00:54:46 Curry didn't spell it out for us, you have to pull that together on your own, which is
935. 00:54:51 fine, just not my preference.
936. 00:54:54 Like, I feel like the trends is where some of the value is from a, "How do I improve
937. 00:54:59 me?" stance.
938. 00:55:01 Now, if you want this as just a, this is a cool way to see what people did.
939. 00:55:06 Yeah, this is absolutely the right way to do it, which is probably his intent, but
940. 00:55:10 we're always trying to figure out what to do with it and how do I take steps with it.
941. 00:55:15 So I think we maybe have that tendency as well.
942. 00:55:17 I think when you read through it the first time, the big takeaways are to look at the
943. 00:55:23 routines and if anything in there stands out to you, try it for yourself.
944. 00:55:29 Just as a historical example of at least one other person who has done this successfully.
945. 00:55:35 So maybe you get a bunch of ideas for little experiments that you want,
946. 00:55:39 you want to do on yourself and see if they improve your creative routines at all.
947. 00:55:47 But reading through it the second time, yeah, I definitely wish there was some
948. 00:55:51 trends or some big takeaways.
949. 00:55:53 I did not notice the desire to see that stuff after the first one.
950. 00:55:58 I remember after reading through it the first time, I was just like,
951. 00:56:01 there's a lot of really interesting stuff in there.
952. 00:56:04 There's a lot of really crazy people.
953. 00:56:05 And a lot of this stuff, I was just, I'm not going to do that, but some of it,
954. 00:56:13 I jotted down like, oh, that's an interesting idea.
955. 00:56:15 I think I'll, I think I'll try that.
956. 00:56:17 I walk away with this one with a couple different takeaways of things I want to try,
957. 00:56:23 but I also now, having right at the second time, do wish that some of the big picture stuff was,
958. 00:56:30 was there.
959. 00:56:31 I think in terms of improving your own routine though, it's not that important.
960. 00:56:37 Maybe that's just the way my brain works.
961. 00:56:39 Maybe you're different and you want to see the averages and stuff like that.
962. 00:56:45 Or what was the most popular piece of the morning routine for the most prolific writers?
963. 00:56:53 Like you teased out the writing goals and stuff, things like that.
964. 00:56:59 I don't know. If I were to look at that and someone were telling me, you really need to
965. 00:57:06 track your writing goals, I think my initial response would be like, oh, yeah, make me.
966. 00:57:12 Try me on that.
967. 00:57:14 But you say that and yet, you know, another one of these themes is that it seemed like those who
968. 00:57:22 had a very strict writing schedule, writers specifically, they would have an 8 a.m. to 10 a.m.
969. 00:57:30 time slot, but if they did it at 8 a.m. every single day, they would report thousands of words
970. 00:57:36 written every day. And it seemed like that number was 3000 plus. A couple of them were talking about
971. 00:57:41 6000 plus every single day. That's a lot. That is a lot. If you know that, that means that
972. 00:57:50 in today's terms of like books and stuff, they're writing an entire book about every week.
973. 00:57:56 Yeah. So let me ask you this, Joe Bielig, what comes first, the writing time or the number of words?
974. 00:58:03 No idea. Goals or habits?
975. 00:58:07 I would say in this particular case, I think what's happening is they're putting together the schedules
976. 00:58:11 and they're holding to that. And because of that, now, I also want to point out,
977. 00:58:19 and this, this is, I kind of talked about this earlier, like people would work in the morning
978. 00:58:23 and then not in the afternoon, that theme combined with the strict schedule, because those who were
979. 00:58:28 doing that routine generally had the strict schedules, they would generally have reading time or like
980. 00:58:35 either before or after that writing, or they would go on walks, they would do some form of manual labor.
981. 00:58:41 It was always something that didn't involve writing and it didn't involve like a day job type work.
982. 00:58:48 Like there was always something that they did that was kind of like a letting your mind wander mode.
983. 00:58:54 And as a result of that, it would, I think, give them some of the creativity that they needed in order
984. 00:59:00 to write that many words. So I think there's some form of a combination of those things going on.
985. 00:59:05 Sure. I think if you look at individual people, you can find people like Stephen King who are
986. 00:59:12 writing to a goal, 2,000 words every single day. Who cares how long it takes? I'm just going to get
987. 00:59:18 to that number. I wish I could go back and talk to a lot of these people. There's a lot of
988. 00:59:24 unanswered questions from these interviews, I feel. But if I were to wager a guess, I would say
989. 00:59:34 that the majority of the prolific writers who did not burn out probably focused on the time.
990. 00:59:46 And then once they got there, they just wrote and they did that enough that the results took care
991. 00:59:54 of themselves. And so after a little while they started to realize, I don't need to spend 12 hours
992. 00:59:59 per day writing. I can be done by noon if I get up at 6 in the morning. Again, I understand that's
993. 01:00:08 a very general statement and there's no data to support it. I wish there was. I feel like there
994. 01:00:14 could have been. Yeah. And you can transpose this with another side of this piece because there are
995. 01:00:22 also people who had trouble sleeping. That's another theme that seemed to come up. People who
996. 01:00:28 were up at 1 in the morning and would work for an hour and a half at night. In the middle of the
997. 01:00:33 night, who was it? Frank Lloyd Wright would be up from, was it 4 to 7 or something along those lines
998. 01:00:43 and would do all of his design work at that point would go back to bed for about an hour
999. 01:00:47 and get up at 8. But no one realized he was up for that three hour period. So they didn't even
1000. 01:00:52 know he was working on designs at that time. So when do you actually do your work? You're on phone
1001. 01:00:56 calls and in meetings all day long. You don't actually do any of your architecture design work.
1002. 01:01:00 Like, oh yeah, I do a three hours every day. You just, I can't see it. So the whole working in the
1003. 01:01:08 middle of the night thing and having trouble sleeping, that theme is certainly in this book
1004. 01:01:16 as well and it is one I want to avoid at all costs.
1005. 01:01:19 Another theme related to Frank Lloyd Wright specifically is the impending deadlines.
1006. 01:01:28 Yes, yes. I remember that one specifically, he had a project where he had to make some
1007. 01:01:36 models or something and he didn't start working on it until the client called him two hours before
1008. 01:01:43 the meeting to say, I'm getting in the car and I'm on my way. And the way that that interview or
1009. 01:01:49 that that section was written, it made it seem to me as the reader that to Frank Lloyd Wright,
1010. 01:01:58 this was no big deal. This was just the kick in the pants he needed to actually do the work.
1011. 01:02:04 And I remember reading that and thinking to myself, I would be so miserable. I would be so stressed
1012. 01:02:13 out by just being forced to crank stuff out right before a deadline for context. I mentioned the
1013. 01:02:23 relay FM Baldur dash thing that was recorded yesterday. Well, I wasn't part of the original
1014. 01:02:32 team. There was an odd number of hosts and I was the backup basically. And so we recorded it
1015. 01:02:39 Sunday afternoon, 2pm my time. I found out 5 or 6pm Saturday the day before, hey, we need you.
1016. 01:02:49 So what did I do? I watched the video from the first one they recorded. I downloaded every
1017. 01:02:56 incomparable episode where they played this low definition game that it was based off of. And
1018. 01:03:02 I went and picked up Baldur dash from my parents house so I could play a couple of rounds at home.
1019. 01:03:06 I was practicing basically every minute I had before that for something that was really just
1020. 01:03:17 very chill, very fun. But of course, my mind is like, oh, you're going to make a fool of yourself
1021. 01:03:23 because I understand the basic premise of the game. I've never really been that good at it. I still
1022. 01:03:27 don't think I'm very good at thinking of my feet. So I was super, super nervous about it. And this
1023. 01:03:33 is a totally game. It's a game. It's a game as part of a fundraiser to help sick kids. Like,
1024. 01:03:40 there is no pressure associated with this at all. And yet that's where my brain goes. So hearing
1025. 01:03:48 Frank Lloyd Wright not even thinking about this project until two hours of raising a
1026. 01:03:52 meet with a client, if I was in that situation, I would be completely useless. You'd have to scoop
1027. 01:03:58 me up from a puddle on the floor. But just to point it out, he had thought about it. Like,
1028. 01:04:03 that's that was their point is like, he was notorious for processing and thinking things
1029. 01:04:08 through in their entirety, in his own mind, but not externalizing it in any way until he
1030. 01:04:14 absolutely had to. Like, that was the problem. It's like he just didn't communicate what he had been
1031. 01:04:19 thinking through and getting ahead of the game. He just waited until the last minute.
1032. 01:04:24 Sure. I guess. Yeah. I still that sounds stressful. I forget a lot of stuff.
1033. 01:04:31 Oh, I'm not saying it's not stressful. I'm just saying that's what he did.
1034. 01:04:34 Oh, fun times. I feel there had to have been at least one point where his memory or brain
1035. 01:04:43 wouldn't have functioned the way that he would have wanted it to. And he makes a fool of himself
1036. 01:04:50 with a potential client. Maybe he doesn't care because he's so good at what he does that there's
1037. 01:04:55 a bunch of other people just waiting to work with him. But I don't know. That's the people
1038. 01:05:00 pleaser me, I guess, where I wouldn't want to. I wouldn't want to let anybody down.
1039. 01:05:05 Well, where the place the place where that falls down is if he's got two or more deadlines that
1040. 01:05:11 line up with each other. Sure. Because if he's got two on the same day and they call and say,
1041. 01:05:16 hey, I'm going to be there in two hours and he goes and busts it out. But in the middle of
1042. 01:05:21 working on that when somebody else does the same thing and they're going to be there at roughly
1043. 01:05:25 the same time. Guess what? You got a problem. You actually aren't capable of hitting both of those.
1044. 01:05:31 Yeah. I don't know. Maybe he just shortcuts one and does the other. I don't know.
1045. 01:05:37 Does not sound appealing to me at all? No, no, not at all. And I'm with you on that one.
1046. 01:05:42 Not something I want to replicate. One of the themes that I wrote down was lots of naps.
1047. 01:05:50 Lots of people took their naps. Which is intriguing. I feel like I have heard the virtues of the
1048. 01:05:58 naps extolled from many people for a very long time and I have always resisted it. But maybe
1049. 01:06:05 maybe there's something there. I do recognize to your point, you mentioned the trends and
1050. 01:06:12 kind of this four hours of work idea that we've heard more recently as it pertains to knowledge
1051. 01:06:21 work. Maybe if you took a nap, you could increase that. I don't know. I still don't like the idea of
1052. 01:06:29 interrupting my day to take a nap. But maybe that would be a way to get more creative output
1053. 01:06:39 throughout the course of a 24 hour day. Though it did seem like the folks who
1054. 01:06:45 took a nap were ones who were definitely like up late up early. They were short cutting their
1055. 01:06:51 night on top of that. Because I know I had a period where I took naps regularly. And it seemed
1056. 01:06:57 like whenever I was doing that, sleeping at night became trickier. So I would end up going to bed
1057. 01:07:04 later. So I was getting roughly the same amount of sleep. I was just splitting it up
1058. 01:07:10 between night and day. So I don't know. I've since just dropped the nap thing. It doesn't
1059. 01:07:17 exist anymore. But don't know. You can do naps if you want. Well, the idea of naps or walks or
1060. 01:07:25 some sort of reset in the middle of the day, I think is an interesting one. And I think there is
1061. 01:07:31 some format of that which I can use strategically to get better consistent output. Maybe not
1062. 01:07:41 increase necessarily the number of hours that I'm working, but get more out of the hours that I'm
1063. 01:07:47 working by mode switching, not just changing places to do work like I talked about earlier,
1064. 01:07:54 but actually stopping the work to give myself more space just to think. Especially since so much
1065. 01:08:01 of my work is creative. I don't know. It's got me thinking about how I can incorporate some of
1066. 01:08:08 that into my daily routine. It's valid. I've been getting plenty of manual labor time in lately
1067. 01:08:14 to make up for it. So that's what I've been doing. One thing I noticed with that, by the way, is
1068. 01:08:22 if I do get in the right scenario for a walk, I can be actually very creative, even when I'm not
1069. 01:08:33 at my keyboard. I remember one of the reasons that I got this co-working space downtown is that it is
1070. 01:08:40 not that far from this really beautiful trail, which is right by the river. And so I like to walk
1071. 01:08:47 that trail whenever I am downtown. I remember last fall, maybe spring? I don't remember the exact
1072. 01:08:57 timeframe. When we were working on the time tracking course for the sweet setup, I went for a walk
1073. 01:09:03 on that trail and just walked it for like an hour and a half, two hours, one day, and dictated
1074. 01:09:10 all of the scripts for that course while I was on the walk, which I had before that point,
1075. 01:09:18 never thought that I could write quote unquote while I was on a walk. Writing happens when you're
1076. 01:09:26 at your computer with a clicky keyboard. But that just showed me that that doesn't have to be
1077. 01:09:34 the case. And I can't do that every time. But when I know that I have something specific that I'm
1078. 01:09:41 just needing to noodle on, the walks I feel can be a very powerful piece to the creative process.
1079. 01:09:50 And maybe I find when I get back from my walk where I wrote the scripts for the course,
1080. 01:09:56 I'm exhausted. Then maybe that's the time to take a nap and then get up and try to do something
1081. 01:10:02 instead of, okay, now I'm going to immediately launch into the next task. I don't know, there's
1082. 01:10:07 lots of different variables at work here, but I am thinking through how all these pieces fit together
1083. 01:10:12 in the best way for me. That's actually what prompted me to start doing my evening walks.
1084. 01:10:18 It's because I've been doing so much work on the house and there's so many problems that I'm not,
1085. 01:10:22 like, it's a puzzle, like I have to put so many different pieces together and solve so many
1086. 01:10:27 different problems simultaneously that I needed the space to come up with solutions. And taking
1087. 01:10:34 that 15, 20 minutes in the evening to go for that walk was exactly what solved a lot of that for me.
1088. 01:10:41 So I just like, I gotta keep doing this because it fixes so many things and helps me get the
1089. 01:10:48 clarity that I need in so many ways. So yes, headspace. Got any action items, Mike? Unless
1090. 01:10:56 there's something else you want to cover here? No, I'm good. Action items, I do have a couple.
1091. 01:11:00 One of the things that I've been thinking about as I think through all of these different routines
1092. 01:11:09 was how much focus and care was placed on making sure that the routine was protected
1093. 01:11:17 because they recognized that the routine was the thing that allowed them to do their
1094. 01:11:24 creative work, whether it was their full-time gig or whether it was just trying to find a little
1095. 01:11:29 bit of time like Mozart on the side for the thing that we now know him for. And I recognize that
1096. 01:11:39 my life is kind of complicated, which is what it is. Lots of different hats that I wear,
1097. 01:11:49 elder at my church, five kids, middle school assistant soccer coach, yada yada yada. But maybe
1098. 01:11:55 I can simplify in some way. I remember going through a process like this when the pandemic started
1099. 01:12:02 and asking myself, what do we really need to do? It wasn't all the things that we thought it was.
1100. 01:12:09 We found new ways to do things like piano lessons. And I feel like I need to take a look at things
1101. 01:12:16 again and just ask, what is really hitting the mark? And what can I get rid of simply so that I have
1102. 01:12:26 a little bit more margin in order to protect the creative routine? I don't think I'm on the verge
1103. 01:12:34 of burnout or anything like that, but I do want to take some preventative measures. So make my life
1104. 01:12:42 simpler is the short version of that action. Another one I have is go for walks. I used to do this.
1105. 01:12:50 I mentioned the wrote the scripts for the time tracking course while on a walk, but I still find
1106. 01:12:57 this absent in my daily routine, my daily planning with my time blocking. It's sort of something that
1107. 01:13:05 I just in the moment, I'm inspired and I'll go do the thing. And I want to start building it in
1108. 01:13:11 more regularly. I want to have something on my time blocked plan of go for a walk. That's how
1109. 01:13:18 formal I want it to become because I feel it's not going to become consistent unless I do that.
1110. 01:13:24 We've talked about the value of these walks, how many times on bookworm? And every time I go
1111. 01:13:30 for a walk, I get these ideas and then I get busy and I don't go for walks, so I don't get the ideas.
1112. 01:13:35 And then you're upset because you're not coming up with the ideas that you need to solve the project
1113. 01:13:39 at work. Well, at least that's what I do. Yeah, I don't feel I'm lacking in the ideas department.
1114. 01:13:47 So maybe that's a little bit of the reason why I don't do it because I feel I can't handle more.
1115. 01:13:53 And then the other one, which is already complete, is to get the do not disturb sign.
1116. 01:13:59 It's been ordered. It will be here on Wednesday and that's going on my studio door.
1117. 01:14:06 I would say for action items on my side, I really have one and it's been an ongoing
1118. 01:14:12 action item and I'm bringing it up again here but in a slightly different way. But this has
1119. 01:14:18 prompted me to just think through what I want my daily ritual to look like, what that time schedule
1120. 01:14:27 process looks like between hiring an assistant underneath of me here at church to handle like
1121. 01:14:33 evenings and weekends and such and having the new house which has the trails and outdoor space
1122. 01:14:40 right on the same property. Between those two, I'm transitioning here in the next month into
1123. 01:14:46 a place where I can basically rewrite what that daily flow looks like. And that was what I really
1124. 01:14:55 wanted out of this was just kind of ideas, what works, what doesn't work, what do I like, what
1125. 01:15:00 do I not like, who do I think is crazy, who do I think is genius, like that whole concept is what
1126. 01:15:07 I was really after with this and I feel like it really helped me at least try to put some of those
1127. 01:15:11 pieces together and it's one that I'm, I'm not sure I'm going to formalize it into any form of like
1128. 01:15:17 schedule like Ben Franklin did but I think just processing that and at least having that conversation
1129. 01:15:24 with my wife about here's what I'm thinking as far as what our daily routine looks like.
1130. 01:15:28 This is our chance to edit that I suppose, you know whenever you're making a big transition that's
1131. 01:15:34 the time to edit your habits and routines so I'm dead center of that process right now.
1132. 01:15:40 So that was what I was wanting to work through and that's kind of the big overarching action item
1133. 01:15:46 that comes comes out of this but I knew that's what I was going to get before I walked into this too.
1134. 01:15:51 So take that for what it's worth. I guess that brings us to style and rating and I suppose this
1135. 01:15:56 is my book so as far as the style goes here Mason Curry did I think a great job
1136. 01:16:02 of showing us a little tidbit or snippet about each of these artists and helping us to see
1137. 01:16:10 maybe an area we didn't have any idea pertain to that particular person looking at you,
1138. 01:16:16 Kirchergaard and seeing these things that I never knew about and seeing the stories that have come
1139. 01:16:25 out of that and Mason did a good job of if there was a autobiography or someone who wrote about
1140. 01:16:31 the person like he would pull snippets from those directly instead of trying to pass them off as his
1141. 01:16:37 own or rewriting them. I feel like that has actually helped in this quite a bit because you could hear
1142. 01:16:42 it from the person who had one-on-one contact with this person, with this artist or from the
1143. 01:16:48 artist themselves so I feel like that was a really good way to do that. I really really wish
1144. 01:16:56 he did some form of summarization. Come on give me a chart give me a something. I don't know what
1145. 01:17:02 it is but I feel like this is just begging to have some kind of a data flow something maybe that's
1146. 01:17:10 the data analyst in me coming out. I think you kind of mentioned it as well but I really wanted
1147. 01:17:17 something like that. I understand that it's not going to be complete and you're not going to have
1148. 01:17:22 the same data points for every single person but at least try please. So I'm hoping that would maybe
1149. 01:17:29 be a supplementary thing at some point but it's just not in this and I feel like that's a fairly
1150. 01:17:35 big obvious miss here. So as far as rating goes I'm going to put it at a 4.0 because I feel like
1151. 01:17:42 there was an opportunity and it needed to be filled and it wasn't and there's also a number of
1152. 01:17:49 these that are so short that I had a hard time figuring out who the person was in some cases
1153. 01:17:55 because I pulled out like the ones that we ran through those are all folks that I at least know
1154. 01:18:00 and have some background on like and I felt comfortable talking about them because I know
1155. 01:18:04 about you know Mozart's compositions like I know some of those things and some of the books that
1156. 01:18:11 Stephen King has written like I know those people but there's a lot of names in this book I have
1157. 01:18:16 no idea who they are and maybe you know all of them but I had a lot of them in here that that name
1158. 01:18:23 was brand new to me I'd never seen that name before and it's kind of hard for me to get my head
1159. 01:18:29 around who that person is to understand what that work was there were a couple of them like
1160. 01:18:34 yeah the prolific famed writer whatever your name is apparently not that famous I don't know who you
1161. 01:18:41 are so I'm sorry but I don't know who you are anyway I wish there was maybe some kind of a bio
1162. 01:18:48 on these that would just tell us like a two or three sentence thing of what they're famous for
1163. 01:18:55 in some form so to me that was a bit of a miss it was good he put the dates like their birth date and
1164. 01:19:02 you know what their lifespan was and such so that helped me out quite a bit so anyway all that to
1165. 01:19:08 say I really enjoyed it I think you should read it but I still think it's a 4.0 that's where I put it
1166. 01:19:13 all right well I think I disagree a little bit with the biography section because if you added those
1167. 01:19:21 this book is twice as long probably it is yeah it is maybe there's a variety to it I don't know
1168. 01:19:28 yeah the other thing that I wish this book had was some other more contemporary people I guess
1169. 01:19:42 what I really want is Tim Ferriss's interviews summarized by Mason Curry if that makes any sense
1170. 01:19:52 so I think there's a lot of value to be gotten from this book I think it can inspire some really
1171. 01:20:00 cool stuff in regards to your daily routine I don't think it's perfect and I was a little bit more
1172. 01:20:07 disappointed with it the second time that we read it than I was the the first time the first time I
1173. 01:20:12 remember reading through this and I just cranked through it because it was a really enjoyable read
1174. 01:20:18 and every chapter every section for every new person does not require any previous context because
1175. 01:20:26 it's just a glance inside of of their life I do wish there was some way to kind of tease out the
1176. 01:20:34 common themes between all of these people that Mason Curry has done these little snippets on
1177. 01:20:41 but I don't fault him for not including it in this particular book I did a quick
1178. 01:20:48 search for what other sorts of things Mason Curry has written and it looks like there's
1179. 01:20:57 different versions of this in other languages and then there's daily rituals of women at work
1180. 01:21:06 I feel like this whole idea has a lot of room to be expanded and I hope that it gets there
1181. 01:21:15 I'm not extremely optimistic that it will at least it looks like he's exploring that
1182. 01:21:22 yeah what I would love to see though because what you get from reading this book is sort of the
1183. 01:21:29 focus on the details and not just condensing it down into these are the 10 things that you must
1184. 01:21:37 do if you want to be successful when most people here have daily rituals or routines or habits that's
1185. 01:21:43 what they think of is those clickbaity titles like this is what Steve Jobs Oprah Winfrey Mark Zuckerberg
1186. 01:21:49 and all other super successful people do to start their day I that sort of thing makes me want to
1187. 01:21:57 puke this is definitely not that this is a very good book with a lot of things that you can it's
1188. 01:22:03 really well written it's very interesting does get a little bit old towards the end just
1189. 01:22:09 I should say old it feels like there's a lot of repetition in the types of things that he's
1190. 01:22:16 describing in the routines towards the end like I said a lot of it maybe it's stuff I missed but
1191. 01:22:21 a lot of it felt like this person got up at this time I went to bed at this time and in between
1192. 01:22:27 they did a couple of things but that's kind of where the focus was whereas at the beginning you
1193. 01:22:31 hear about Kierkegaard's coffee you hear about Benjamin Franklin's time blocking and I understand
1194. 01:22:35 you're not going to find those little snippets from everybody but it would have been cool to have
1195. 01:22:41 some more standout stuff like that in the back I also think it could have been cool to break it
1196. 01:22:47 down by sections so if you're picking this book up as an artist you can go straight to the section
1197. 01:22:52 that includes the artists and you can kind of do that there is a biogr or a table of contents at
1198. 01:22:58 the beginning and then also an index in the back where you can find like the specific people and
1199. 01:23:03 read those but I think breaking them down by sections could have been cool and you could also
1200. 01:23:08 summarize like these are the challenges that artists face these are the challenges that choreographers
1201. 01:23:13 faced etc and this is some of the big takeaways what they did to overcome those but overall I
1202. 01:23:20 really enjoy this book and I would recommend it to just about anybody I'm gonna rate it at 4.5 I
1203. 01:23:26 really don't have anything to say against it per se just having read it a second time I can see
1204. 01:23:35 where there's some natural extensions of some of these ideas and it did get a little bit long for
1205. 01:23:45 me this second time through. Tom's valid all right I'm good with putting it on the shelf Mike what's
1206. 01:23:53 next? Next is the extended mind by Annie Paul which is a big book so if you have not started it
1207. 01:24:02 do so immediately. I I cap him I feel like this is I saw this on some of the Amazon deals and it
1208. 01:24:12 seems like it's a very popular book is what it seemed like yeah it looked like it was one of
1209. 01:24:19 Amazon's picks for the best books of this year if I'm remembering correctly I don't have it up
1210. 01:24:24 in front of me now I heard about it from David Sparks he had recommended it and I love this whole
1211. 01:24:31 idea of neuroplasticity and this the title implying the extended mind thinking beyond your logical
1212. 01:24:41 formulaic this is how I make decisions sort of a thing I feel like there's going to be a lot of
1213. 01:24:47 insights in this into just how to interpret some of the stuff that you feel maybe like you have a
1214. 01:24:55 gut feeling I don't really trust this person but you don't know why and then later on you realize
1215. 01:25:00 oh it's because they're a lying cheat and it's kind of intrinsically you knew that you don't know how
1216. 01:25:05 you knew it but you knew that like that's the kind of thing I'm expecting from from this book there's
1217. 01:25:11 lots of other books on this topic that I I'm fascinated by I've got one on my shelf back here
1218. 01:25:16 brain rules and stuff like that so I have I have these types of books but I haven't really studied
1219. 01:25:24 this a whole lot and just based off of the recommendations I feel like this maybe is a great place to
1220. 01:25:29 start yeah no sounds good I know yeah I'm excited about it I think it'll be good for sure after that
1221. 01:25:36 if you looked at the list here already I assume you have yes I am very excited this is one you're
1222. 01:25:44 going to have to pre-order if you want to get it in time and it'll be maybe a little tight
1223. 01:25:51 for us timing wise but courage is calling by Ryan Holiday and this is the first book
1224. 01:25:58 in a four book series that he's starting based on the four these four virtues that he wants to
1225. 01:26:06 cover the first of which is courage the second is temperance the third is justice and the fourth is
1226. 01:26:11 wisdom but he's starting with courage and he's doing that because what he's saying is that the
1227. 01:26:19 beginning of a lot of religions and spiritual practices and philosophies all grapple with fear
1228. 01:26:25 and having courage to overcome that fear is where a lot of life struggles and overcoming those
1229. 01:26:34 struggles starts so anyway we've always enjoyed Ryan Holiday's books and I did not want this one
1230. 01:26:41 to slip through our fingers so knowing that the timing was going to work out to where it was going
1231. 01:26:45 to be my pick right after it comes out it's like we have to do this like I just think we have to
1232. 01:26:50 it's required well truth be told I wanted to pick this one for mine but it wasn't going to come out
1233. 01:26:55 in time so glad you did I got it all right I win yes courage is calling by Ryan Holiday we'll do
1234. 01:27:03 that after the extended mine by Annie Paul but what gapbook do you have because Joe ain't going to do
1235. 01:27:09 that for a while I do not have any gapbooks although I just ordered a bunch of books so
1236. 01:27:16 maybe I'll get to one no promises one other comment on the Ryan Holiday stuff yeah I feel like
1237. 01:27:25 any time Ryan Holiday comes out with a book we should automatically add it to the bookworm queue
1238. 01:27:31 pretty much okay it's in my vote I could get on board with that we got to get through his four
1239. 01:27:37 part series here yeah for sure all right that all said I just want to thank those of you who are
1240. 01:27:43 bookworm club members specifically you guys are awesome I know we we talk a lot about mics my
1241. 01:27:51 node files which he didn't do for this one but has tons and tons and tons of those on the bookworm
1242. 01:27:57 club and we just we're so grateful to you and and you definitely help us to keep trucking along
1243. 01:28:04 and give us the motivation there so if you're willing to join us and support the show go to
1244. 01:28:11 bookworm.fm/membership and we'd love to have you on board that membership yes and just a quick
1245. 01:28:18 shout out for people who are members and have noticed that I fell a little bit behind with the
1246. 01:28:24 mine nota files I apologize they are all up to date now so go check the member section and
1247. 01:28:32 get you some of those mine map files if you are reading along with us pick up the extended mind
1248. 01:28:38 by Annie Paul and we will talk to you in a couple of weeks