144: Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon

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1. 00:00:00 I found a really cool thing, Mike.
2. 00:00:02 - What's that?
3. 00:00:03 - Remember how we were talking about
4. 00:00:04 wanting to edit the same document at the same time
5. 00:00:08 and how base camp is ridiculous
6. 00:00:10 and doesn't let us do this?
7. 00:00:11 - Yes.
8. 00:00:12 - There is an obsidian plugin
9. 00:00:15 that is called Obsidian Multiplayer.
10. 00:00:19 Have you seen this?
11. 00:00:20 - I haven't.
12. 00:00:21 We were just talking about this
13. 00:00:23 and you were holding off for the show.
14. 00:00:24 - I was holding off.
15. 00:00:26 (laughs)
16. 00:00:27 - There is a plugin called Obsidian Multiplayer.
17. 00:00:31 I have not had a chance to test it
18. 00:00:33 because you were the person I should test this with
19. 00:00:36 and life and it uses some backend thing
20. 00:00:41 that's open source, that's public and such
21. 00:00:45 and this guy tied it into Obsidian
22. 00:00:48 so that you can take notes within your existing database
23. 00:00:51 and share them with other people
24. 00:00:52 and they can edit them live together.
25. 00:00:54 - Love it.
26. 00:00:55 - They have no idea how well it works.
27. 00:00:58 I don't even know if it works
28. 00:00:59 but it sounds cool.
29. 00:01:02 - This is the perfect thing for you
30. 00:01:04 to spend hours testing.
31. 00:01:05 - Yep.
32. 00:01:08 - That's how this goes.
33. 00:01:09 - I definitely want to try this.
34. 00:01:11 So you tell me what to do
35. 00:01:12 and we'll make it happen.
36. 00:01:15 - Yeah, I feel like we should at least try this
37. 00:01:17 for the next bookworm episode.
38. 00:01:20 - Done.
39. 00:01:21 - We totally should.
40. 00:01:22 - I will say I hate this name
41. 00:01:25 because multiplayer is the term
42. 00:01:27 that everybody in the Rome research community would use
43. 00:01:30 when I was involved with the,
44. 00:01:33 what do they even call it?
45. 00:01:34 It's not insider, that's Obsidian.
46. 00:01:36 True believer calls or something.
47. 00:01:38 - Sure.
48. 00:01:39 - They're always like, oh, multiplayer's coming.
49. 00:01:41 It's gonna be a game changer
50. 00:01:42 and I'm like, I don't want multiplayer.
51. 00:01:45 I want my notes.
52. 00:01:47 - No, so maybe that's where it came from.
53. 00:01:52 I don't know.
54. 00:01:53 I didn't know that that was the thing at all.
55. 00:01:54 I have not kept up with Rome, one Iota.
56. 00:01:57 However, I found this plugin in the midst of searching
57. 00:02:00 for ways to like live edit text files
58. 00:02:04 like collaboratively.
59. 00:02:06 And I ran across that plugin,
60. 00:02:08 but it's not, it's like barely documented
61. 00:02:12 and it's not shared publicly.
62. 00:02:13 Like the only place I found it existing was on GitHub
63. 00:02:16 where you could download the code.
64. 00:02:17 Like it's not even in the plugin store
65. 00:02:20 from what I can tell.
66. 00:02:22 So that's why I'm a bit like,
67. 00:02:24 I don't know how well this'll work,
68. 00:02:25 but is what it is.
69. 00:02:28 - Cool.
70. 00:02:29 - Super fun.
71. 00:02:31 So anyway, we should try that out for next time.
72. 00:02:33 That's kind of sort of follow up, but.
73. 00:02:36 - Oh, it totally is.
74. 00:02:37 - Yes.
75. 00:02:38 I have been playing around with reading more, Mike, have you?
76. 00:02:43 - Ah, no, I think I read less actually.
77. 00:02:47 (laughing)
78. 00:02:49 - What?
79. 00:02:50 How did you go backwards?
80. 00:02:51 - Well, so it is Thursday at 2 p.m. Central Time
81. 00:02:56 as we record this.
82. 00:02:57 And Timery says that I have worked 42 hours
83. 00:03:02 and 43 minutes this week.
84. 00:03:03 So that's why.
85. 00:03:07 It doesn't include the time prepping for Bookworm,
86. 00:03:13 which thankfully this book was a little bit easier to do.
87. 00:03:17 - Yeah, this is an easy one to crank through.
88. 00:03:21 So the desire is still there.
89. 00:03:24 It just has not manifested yet for me.
90. 00:03:27 - Okay, so Mike didn't do well on that one.
91. 00:03:30 - I did not.
92. 00:03:31 (laughing)
93. 00:03:33 - I did though.
94. 00:03:34 I started reading a gap book for once.
95. 00:03:36 This has been years in the making it feels like,
96. 00:03:38 but I started reading one called Read People Like a Book
97. 00:03:43 by Patrick King.
98. 00:03:46 And I'm almost done with it.
99. 00:03:47 - That Patrick King.
100. 00:03:49 - That Patrick King.
101. 00:03:51 And anyway, I'm about done with it.
102. 00:03:54 So I'll jump into our next book afterwards.
103. 00:03:56 But being by Patrick King,
104. 00:03:58 that's why I decided that we wouldn't do this for Bookworm.
105. 00:04:02 Because--
106. 00:04:02 - Gotcha.
107. 00:04:03 - Mike's a fan.
108. 00:04:04 Mike's a really big fan of Patrick King
109. 00:04:06 if you didn't know that.
110. 00:04:06 (laughing)
111. 00:04:08 - So much.
112. 00:04:09 - Super big fan.
113. 00:04:11 - I'm about halfway done with my gap book,
114. 00:04:13 which was the Digital Zettle Caston.
115. 00:04:15 And this book you would actually like,
116. 00:04:17 at least up until this point.
117. 00:04:18 It is not what you think it is.
118. 00:04:22 It is a very thoughtful approach.
119. 00:04:24 There's a whole chapter on analog versus digital.
120. 00:04:27 And it says, digital is good for this.
121. 00:04:29 Analog is good for this.
122. 00:04:30 And usually when I see those lists,
123. 00:04:32 I'm like, well, maybe--
124. 00:04:34 - No, no, you're wrong.
125. 00:04:35 (laughing)
126. 00:04:36 - Sure.
127. 00:04:37 - You can tell the author, David Kedavi,
128. 00:04:42 I think that's how you say it, knows his stuff.
129. 00:04:45 So that would be an interesting one to cover,
130. 00:04:49 but it's not one of the big name productivity,
131. 00:04:54 typical productivity type books, I guess.
132. 00:04:57 - Sure.
133. 00:04:58 You have one down here, get busy living.
134. 00:05:00 I don't know how to hold you to this one,
135. 00:05:03 but how'd you do on it?
136. 00:05:05 - I'm here, ain't I?
137. 00:05:06 (laughing)
138. 00:05:08 No.
139. 00:05:09 - Hi, Mike's living.
140. 00:05:10 (laughing)
141. 00:05:12 - Uh, good question.
142. 00:05:14 The thought behind this was,
143. 00:05:18 essentially don't wait to do the things
144. 00:05:21 that I really wanna do.
145. 00:05:23 And I would argue I have done a decent job of this.
146. 00:05:28 The last several weeks have been crazy for me,
147. 00:05:35 partly of my own making,
148. 00:05:36 'cause I've gone through the Part-Time YouTuber Academy.
149. 00:05:39 And then also, I'm in the middle of Ship 30 for 30,
150. 00:05:42 and this is day 13, I think, of Ship 13 Days in a Row.
151. 00:05:46 So I've written and published basically 13 Days in a Row.
152. 00:05:49 Oh, by the way, related to Part-Time YouTuber Academy,
153. 00:05:52 long-term follow-up, the episode before this last one,
154. 00:05:57 I said I was gonna try to make a YouTube video.
155. 00:05:59 (upbeat music)
156. 00:06:02 Before the next episode releases,
157. 00:06:07 I will have published at least one YouTube video.
158. 00:06:11 That is not a sermon sketch note video.
159. 00:06:14 (upbeat music)
160. 00:06:17 And I made it by the skin of my teeth.
161. 00:06:20 (laughing)
162. 00:06:22 - I wouldn't say it was by the skin of your teeth.
163. 00:06:23 You released this a few days ago.
164. 00:06:25 - It was-- - We were talking about
165. 00:06:27 release date, is that what you're talking about?
166. 00:06:29 - Yeah, so I think I published it the morning.
167. 00:06:31 No, it must have been the day before,
168. 00:06:33 but I only recorded it, I think, two days before that.
169. 00:06:36 (laughing)
170. 00:06:37 - Ooh.
171. 00:06:38 - Yeah.
172. 00:06:39 - That's tough.
173. 00:06:41 - Knowing how long that stuff takes to edit.
174. 00:06:43 Ouch.
175. 00:06:44 - I'll put a link here in the chat,
176. 00:06:48 and then also in the show notes.
177. 00:06:50 This is inspired by Ship30.
178. 00:06:53 With Ship30, you basically pick something
179. 00:06:54 to write about every day,
180. 00:06:55 and so I was thinking, what am I right about today?
181. 00:06:57 And one of the things I want to get better at
182. 00:07:01 is pointing to Bookworm from all the other things
183. 00:07:02 that I do, because we read all these books,
184. 00:07:04 and get all these ideas from these books.
185. 00:07:05 It's easy to expound on those,
186. 00:07:07 and point to the Bookworm episodes where appropriate.
187. 00:07:09 So I made this thread, five books every creative should read,
188. 00:07:13 and I link to the Bookworm episodes in the tweet thread,
189. 00:07:18 and then also in the YouTube video description,
190. 00:07:21 like four out of the five we had covered,
191. 00:07:23 but I took that thread when I saw it,
192. 00:07:26 I'm like, this would make a cool video,
193. 00:07:27 so I turned it into a video,
194. 00:07:29 and published my first real YouTube video in air quotes there,
195. 00:07:34 because I've been doing sermon sketch notes for a while,
196. 00:07:36 but this is my first part-time YouTuber Academy endorsed,
197. 00:07:41 like after I've gone through all that stuff and figured out,
198. 00:07:45 this is kind of the direction and the things
199. 00:07:47 that you should consider, took all that into consideration,
200. 00:07:50 made my first video with the title slide, thumbnail,
201. 00:07:53 all that kind of stuff,
202. 00:07:55 and it's performing pretty well.
203. 00:07:58 I never really had anything, there was no momentum there,
204. 00:08:02 so it just kind of appeared out of nothing.
205. 00:08:04 (laughs)
206. 00:08:05 Yeah, but I had a bunch of people waiting for the next video.
207. 00:08:08 Yeah, I did have one video that I recorded a long time ago,
208. 00:08:12 like how I did my sermon sketch notes stuff
209. 00:08:14 inside of Obsidian,
210. 00:08:18 and that one has been generating a ton of views for me over time,
211. 00:08:23 it has almost 8,000 views, I think, last time I looked.
212. 00:08:29 So actually, I'm at 300 subscribers or something on YouTube.
213. 00:08:33 I'm over the 4,000 hour mark for monetization,
214. 00:08:38 so now I just need to get to the, for view time,
215. 00:08:41 I just need to get to the thousand subscribers, so.
216. 00:08:44 Yeah, smash that bell, like and subscribe,
217. 00:08:46 all the YouTube things.
218. 00:08:47 (laughs)
219. 00:08:50 We got into this, I was streaming yesterday,
220. 00:08:53 and I was like, turn it, I was like,
221. 00:08:56 okay, as the YouTube thinks, I stream on YouTube,
222. 00:08:59 it's like, what are you supposed to,
223. 00:09:00 like there's a bell thing, what's the bell do,
224. 00:09:03 like I could not for the life of me remember,
225. 00:09:05 like, oh, that's right, it sends the notifications,
226. 00:09:07 like, please don't, please don't hit that button,
227. 00:09:09 like, yes, subscribe, but please don't hit that notify button.
228. 00:09:13 I love you, I appreciate you, but please don't do that.
229. 00:09:16 (laughs)
230. 00:09:17 It's not worth it.
231. 00:09:19 Yeah, I honestly had no idea,
232. 00:09:21 I just thought that's what everybody says.
233. 00:09:23 Back to the original thing though,
234. 00:09:24 about the get busy living,
235. 00:09:26 so I've been going through all these courses,
236. 00:09:28 and I actually have another one that starts next week,
237. 00:09:32 called Pencil Pirates. (laughs)
238. 00:09:34 Yeah.
239. 00:09:35 And this one, have you heard about this?
240. 00:09:37 You mentioned it last time, I wrote it down,
241. 00:09:40 I didn't get a chance to look into it, but what is it?
242. 00:09:43 Pencil Pirates is basically a online cohort base course
243. 00:09:48 that walks you through visualizing ideas.
244. 00:09:51 So I kind of do this already in a very narrow way
245. 00:09:54 with the sermon sketch note stuff,
246. 00:09:56 and so this, I think, is the final piece to the puzzle
247. 00:09:59 for my big vision on what YouTube could be for me.
248. 00:10:02 It's the talking to a camera,
249. 00:10:05 talking about things that I talked about other ways,
250. 00:10:08 but in a video format, and then incorporating visuals
251. 00:10:13 and animations, which is really just timing
252. 00:10:17 that the live drawing on the iPad captured via screen floor
253. 00:10:20 or whatever, for some of the sketch note type
254. 00:10:23 visualization stuff.
255. 00:10:25 I've done this occasionally when I get these pictures
256. 00:10:27 in my head, just to communicate an idea,
257. 00:10:30 but this is, I think, gonna help me do that more systematically
258. 00:10:35 and combine that with the systematic writing every day,
259. 00:10:38 and then turning those writing ideas
260. 00:10:41 into other pieces of content, other places.
261. 00:10:44 There's that word you hate, content,
262. 00:10:45 but don't have a better one.
263. 00:10:47 - Hey, yeah, if I could find a better one,
264. 00:10:49 I would use it, but I haven't found it.
265. 00:10:51 (laughs)
266. 00:10:52 - Sure.
267. 00:10:54 So yeah, that's the next one.
268. 00:10:55 So I'm not gonna have a whole lot of spare time here
269. 00:10:59 at any point in the near future, but learning a ton.
270. 00:11:03 And feel like I'm kind of hitting my creative stride.
271. 00:11:09 I guess I had 13 days in a row or something like that
272. 00:11:11 publishing for Ship 30 for 30, and feels really good.
273. 00:11:16 I'm like seeing ideas for, oh, I could write about this
274. 00:11:19 in this way, all over the place now.
275. 00:11:22 My giraffes is full. (laughs)
276. 00:11:26 Idea generation is no longer a problem.
277. 00:11:28 - No, if you know how to, and we'll get into this
278. 00:11:33 a little bit today, but if you know how to qualify
279. 00:11:37 something as a potential idea that you could share,
280. 00:11:40 they're everywhere, and if you consume any form
281. 00:11:45 of content at all in audio, video, written form,
282. 00:11:51 if you do that for like 30 minutes a day,
283. 00:11:53 which most people do significantly more than that,
284. 00:11:56 you're gonna have a ton.
285. 00:11:59 You just are.
286. 00:12:00 - Yep, super fun.
287. 00:12:02 I will mention this now because regarding
288. 00:12:06 the pencil pirates course last thing with this,
289. 00:12:08 if people are checking that out and are interested in it,
290. 00:12:11 there is a code I think it's ship love, all one word,
291. 00:12:14 that will get you 10% off.
292. 00:12:16 And by the time it's published is that class will be live.
293. 00:12:19 So for people who are watching live
294. 00:12:22 or are gonna watch this replay on YouTube
295. 00:12:23 in the next couple of days, and you're interested
296. 00:12:25 in that course, and you wanna save a little bit of money,
297. 00:12:27 use that code.
298. 00:12:28 - Ship love.
299. 00:12:29 That's not a bookworm affiliated thing I assume.
300. 00:12:34 - That is not, so that is just like the general code,
301. 00:12:37 and then from there it'll ask you,
302. 00:12:38 how did you hear about it?
303. 00:12:39 And if you put somebody's name who's in the cohort,
304. 00:12:42 I guess it ties to an affiliate account,
305. 00:12:45 but I never set one up, so.
306. 00:12:48 - Whatever, you can put my name in there if you want,
307. 00:12:50 but the code alone will save you 10%.
308. 00:12:54 Even if you hate affiliate stuff,
309. 00:12:56 feel free to use that code and just leave the referr blank.
310. 00:12:59 (laughs)
311. 00:13:00 - Perfect, perfect.
312. 00:13:01 - Well I have two other follow up items
313. 00:13:05 on the list here for myself.
314. 00:13:07 The three total that I had one was read more.
315. 00:13:11 Another one was writing out a plan for my online business,
316. 00:13:14 which I did exactly nothing for,
317. 00:13:17 because life, though I have to say,
318. 00:13:20 it's getting a lot better.
319. 00:13:22 I've been spending a little more time reading,
320. 00:13:24 which has been helpful, but I haven't had
321. 00:13:26 error to breathe in evenings and such lately,
322. 00:13:30 'cause I've got a different website thing
323. 00:13:32 I'm building for a client.
324. 00:13:35 So anyway, I've been super busy,
325. 00:13:37 that wraps up here this weekend,
326. 00:13:38 so I should get to where I can spend some time on that
327. 00:13:41 instead of writing code.
328. 00:13:43 So getting there, Mike, getting there,
329. 00:13:45 I will get that done.
330. 00:13:46 And then my last one was to write out the plan for my day.
331. 00:13:51 Mike wanted me to time block, that's what that is.
332. 00:13:55 And Mike dictated the terms of this contract.
333. 00:13:59 - Hey, in my defense, only one asked.
334. 00:14:03 - That is true, that is true, I should not have asked,
335. 00:14:07 because it got to be significantly more complicated
336. 00:14:10 after I asked.
337. 00:14:11 (laughs)
338. 00:14:13 So I brought out my notebook and was like,
339. 00:14:18 each day was trying to write down my hour by hour,
340. 00:14:22 30 minute by 30 minute blocks,
341. 00:14:23 what's gonna happen, where and when.
342. 00:14:26 I would say I got it done about half of the time, Mike.
343. 00:14:31 And the results of this are mixed,
344. 00:14:35 because there were a couple days
345. 00:14:38 where it was really, really close to what I was able
346. 00:14:41 to achieve.
347. 00:14:43 The other times it was more of a,
348. 00:14:48 hey, this is cool, by 9.30,
349. 00:14:50 the whole thing's out the window.
350. 00:14:53 And I rewrote it one of those days.
351. 00:14:57 An hour later, what I had rewritten was out the window.
352. 00:15:00 It's like, I'm not gonna keep rewriting this.
353. 00:15:03 - No, don't rewrite it.
354. 00:15:03 - It's not worth it.
355. 00:15:04 Just like a page. - Set it and forget it.
356. 00:15:06 Honestly, I don't understand people
357. 00:15:09 who feel the need to modify those plans
358. 00:15:14 or even manually write out what they did
359. 00:15:18 so you can compare the plan versus the actual.
360. 00:15:22 Let the computer be the computer.
361. 00:15:24 It can track your time and you can look at those numbers
362. 00:15:26 if you really want to, but there ain't nobody got time
363. 00:15:30 to go back and write.
364. 00:15:31 This is what I actually did right now.
365. 00:15:34 - Yup, yup, as Blake says in the chat,
366. 00:15:36 like Cal Newport talks about, like that's the thing.
367. 00:15:38 The rewriting is the main thing, but.
368. 00:15:41 - I get it.
369. 00:15:42 - I disagree though.
370. 00:15:43 I disagree.
371. 00:15:44 - I think I would just, I would spend probably 45 minutes
372. 00:15:48 of my day rewriting that schedule.
373. 00:15:50 The days that I had that issue,
374. 00:15:53 it was probably at least 45 minutes worth of rewriting
375. 00:15:56 that I would have done.
376. 00:15:57 And if I had done that every time it was going to be off.
377. 00:16:02 And so anyway, it's about a fourth of my days,
378. 00:16:08 I was able to time block and it worked.
379. 00:16:11 Another fourth, I time blocked and it fell apart.
380. 00:16:15 And the other half, I didn't do it at all.
381. 00:16:18 And the only, the only thing I can give you as far as like,
382. 00:16:23 here's how I feel about it, was that the days that I did it
383. 00:16:27 and it worked, I felt a lot more accomplished.
384. 00:16:32 'Cause it was as if, like, hey, I did what I set out to do.
385. 00:16:36 Like there was that sense of accomplishment.
386. 00:16:39 The days where I did it and it completely fell apart
387. 00:16:42 were even worse than had I not done it at all.
388. 00:16:47 Because I felt like I was way off base
389. 00:16:49 and there was nothing I could do about it
390. 00:16:50 and I had no control over what I was getting into.
391. 00:16:55 I don't know if that's just my mindset being the issue.
392. 00:16:58 You're looking at me like bonkers.
393. 00:17:00 - I feel like there's an hour long conversation to be had
394. 00:17:03 on that statement you just made.
395. 00:17:05 - All right.
396. 00:17:06 - We've got this now.
397. 00:17:09 - This is why I've restrained from doing this time
398. 00:17:11 blocking thing many, many times.
399. 00:17:13 Anyway, I feel like that's probably a follow up thing.
400. 00:17:20 Yeah, as Silent says, an after hours podcast.
401. 00:17:24 (laughing)
402. 00:17:26 Anyway, my experience, and I'm sure there's a mind game
403. 00:17:30 going on here, it felt like it was significantly worse
404. 00:17:34 on those days where I didn't manage to follow through on it.
405. 00:17:38 No, even though it was not my,
406. 00:17:40 like it wasn't anything I did.
407. 00:17:42 It was simply things out of my control.
408. 00:17:45 And I can't quite figure out if,
409. 00:17:50 and maybe this after hours thing needs to happen
410. 00:17:52 at some point so that you can explain this hour
411. 00:17:54 a long thing that I don't understand right now.
412. 00:17:57 But if I were to continue doing it,
413. 00:18:01 I'm a bit torn because some days it would be super helpful
414. 00:18:03 and super good in other days,
415. 00:18:05 I feel like it would make it worse.
416. 00:18:07 And then sitting somewhere in the middle
417. 00:18:10 when I don't time block is kind of what I do by default.
418. 00:18:13 So right now, as we speak on this Thursday afternoon,
419. 00:18:17 I don't know what I'm gonna do tomorrow
420. 00:18:19 'cause today was my last day of doing this experiment.
421. 00:18:23 - I'm gonna give you another action item.
422. 00:18:26 (laughing)
423. 00:18:28 - Versus.
424. 00:18:29 What?
425. 00:18:30 - Okay, your action item is to the next time you go for a walk,
426. 00:18:35 ask yourself why you feel stressed out
427. 00:18:40 about creating the plan when you can't stick to it.
428. 00:18:43 Just think about, think about,
429. 00:18:45 like when it doesn't work, why didn't it work?
430. 00:18:49 - Okay.
431. 00:18:50 - That's all you gotta do.
432. 00:18:51 - But I know why it didn't work.
433. 00:18:52 - Well, you know the symptom of why it didn't work.
434. 00:18:55 But I think if you wrestle through and identify
435. 00:18:59 the root causes and then you give yourself permission
436. 00:19:01 to not care about those anymore,
437. 00:19:03 you will get to the place where you'll feel the benefit
438. 00:19:06 of doing it when it works without all the stress
439. 00:19:09 of when it doesn't.
440. 00:19:10 I don't think those two are intrinsically tied together.
441. 00:19:14 I think they are at the moment for you,
442. 00:19:15 but they don't have to be.
443. 00:19:16 - What if it's always outside forces?
444. 00:19:20 - It will be outside forces.
445. 00:19:22 - It always is.
446. 00:19:23 Like the days that it fell apart,
447. 00:19:25 it was always an outside force.
448. 00:19:27 - Okay, what we can do this live, that's cool.
449. 00:19:28 (laughing)
450. 00:19:30 - So why do you get upset when you can't stick to your plan
451. 00:19:33 'cause of outside forces?
452. 00:19:34 Why do you get upset about the outside forces?
453. 00:19:38 You can't control it, right?
454. 00:19:40 Well, what if you just disconnected the part
455. 00:19:44 that you can't control from what you feel
456. 00:19:47 about the time block plan?
457. 00:19:49 How does that map to the things that are on there
458. 00:19:52 and the sense of satisfaction you get
459. 00:19:55 when you do a good job?
460. 00:19:58 Is it that you followed through on the tasks
461. 00:20:00 that you identified you were gonna slide in there?
462. 00:20:03 Then since you get thrown off all the time,
463. 00:20:06 maybe we just reduced the number of things
464. 00:20:08 that you slide into your schedule.
465. 00:20:09 You know, you build in more buffer
466. 00:20:10 or another thing could be you make your blocks longer.
467. 00:20:13 Like there are different tactics you can deploy here
468. 00:20:15 to alleviate that feeling I feel.
469. 00:20:18 - Sure.
470. 00:20:18 Yeah, 'cause I think a lot of it comes down to,
471. 00:20:21 like these are the things I had in my head.
472. 00:20:24 Like the way my brain works is whenever I put that list together,
473. 00:20:28 like I know that that's the plan for today,
474. 00:20:32 but because I've got that plan for today,
475. 00:20:34 my brain immediately jumps to what that means for tomorrow.
476. 00:20:38 And when the whole thing, it's derailed today,
477. 00:20:40 that means it's not just today that's the problem.
478. 00:20:43 It's possibly the rest of the week
479. 00:20:45 that I've already got laid out in my head.
480. 00:20:48 So it's not just a derailment of this afternoon.
481. 00:20:51 It's the cascading effect that causes,
482. 00:20:54 but it's because my brain jumps ahead so fast.
483. 00:20:56 And I can't really get that part to subside,
484. 00:20:59 but I should be used to this.
485. 00:21:01 My schedule has to change all the time.
486. 00:21:03 - Yeah, we gotta disconnect that.
487. 00:21:04 And one way to disconnect that,
488. 00:21:06 at least a little bit would be to build in more margin
489. 00:21:08 with your time blocks, but.
490. 00:21:11 - Okay.
491. 00:21:12 So do I still have an action item or did we just do it live?
492. 00:21:15 - We kinda did it live, so maybe I'll give you
493. 00:21:16 a different action item of continuing it
494. 00:21:18 for another couple of weeks.
495. 00:21:19 So we can talk about it some more.
496. 00:21:23 - All right.
497. 00:21:25 Okay.
498. 00:21:26 Well, that's it, I have for follow up.
499. 00:21:28 Let's get off of this topic before I get more work to do.
500. 00:21:31 And let's step into today's book,
501. 00:21:34 because this is one that I think Mike,
502. 00:21:36 you have brought up at least 4 million times
503. 00:21:39 on the course of this 144 episodes of Bookworm.
504. 00:21:44 And. - That's probably accurate.
505. 00:21:46 - This is the 10th anniversary of this book,
506. 00:21:51 "Steal Like An Artist" by Austin Cleon.
507. 00:21:53 And it's New York Times Best Seller.
508. 00:21:57 The one I have is the gift edition.
509. 00:21:59 Did you rebuy this to get the gift edition?
510. 00:22:03 - I did, yep.
511. 00:22:04 - Just out here. - Yep, the hardcover one.
512. 00:22:05 - Okay.
513. 00:22:06 He's got an afterword that he put together on this,
514. 00:22:09 having been through the 10 years.
515. 00:22:11 And the subtitle on this is "10 Things Nobody Told You
516. 00:22:16 About Being Creative."
517. 00:22:18 And I have to say that as a first overarching view
518. 00:22:22 of this book, it kind of struck me how much of this
519. 00:22:27 had little to do with being an artist.
520. 00:22:30 Did you catch this?
521. 00:22:31 I'm sure you did.
522. 00:22:32 But there's so much of this that I was surprised
523. 00:22:36 by how far outside the realm of creativity
524. 00:22:41 and artist life this covered,
525. 00:22:44 and got into just life in general.
526. 00:22:47 - Yeah.
527. 00:22:48 - So maybe that didn't surprise you at all,
528. 00:22:50 but it struck me.
529. 00:22:51 - I can see that, I guess.
530. 00:22:54 I do think that this book is really for creative people.
531. 00:22:57 - Absolutely is, yes.
532. 00:22:58 - But "Steal Like A Creative" doesn't have the same ring to it.
533. 00:23:01 - No, it does not.
534. 00:23:03 It does not.
535. 00:23:04 But it works because people refer to an artistic view
536. 00:23:09 or an art, like, I'm working on my art,
537. 00:23:12 and they could be talking about woodworking.
538. 00:23:14 They could be talking about,
539. 00:23:15 there's all sorts of stuff.
540. 00:23:16 People use that term for a lot of arenas.
541. 00:23:20 So it does work.
542. 00:23:21 I'm not upset by that part at all.
543. 00:23:24 - I have a admission here right at the beginning,
544. 00:23:27 'cause you mentioned I've quoted this book
545. 00:23:29 like four million times, and that's probably true.
546. 00:23:31 I think I've misquoted this book four million times.
547. 00:23:34 (laughing)
548. 00:23:36 - Sure.
549. 00:23:38 - 'Cause I have said before that "Steal Like An Artist"
550. 00:23:41 was the book that explained that when you create something,
551. 00:23:46 all you're doing is you're connecting dots in new ways.
552. 00:23:49 That's actually not in this book.
553. 00:23:51 That's a Steve Jobs quote that I must've came across
554. 00:23:54 at the same time as this book.
555. 00:23:57 - So that there's a Steve Jobs quote in here.
556. 00:24:01 - Yes.
557. 00:24:02 - It talks about you have to look backwards to connect dots.
558. 00:24:05 You can't look forward to connect dots.
559. 00:24:07 - Correct.
560. 00:24:08 And there's lots of talk about the dots later on in the book.
561. 00:24:12 There's a page that says, "Share your dots,
562. 00:24:15 "but don't connect them," which is what stood out to me.
563. 00:24:18 It's like, "Wait a second."
564. 00:24:19 (laughing)
565. 00:24:20 - Yeah.
566. 00:24:21 - But there's another idea here in chapter one,
567. 00:24:23 which is basically saying that same thing.
568. 00:24:25 But essentially I have synthesized the ideas from this book
569. 00:24:29 syntopically with quotes from Steve Jobs
570. 00:24:31 that I collected from other sources
571. 00:24:33 and given Austin Cleon credit for low these many years.
572. 00:24:36 (laughing)
573. 00:24:39 - Welcome to the messy world of being an artist.
574. 00:24:42 (laughing)
575. 00:24:45 - So sorry about that. - Kind of hilarious.
576. 00:24:47 It's kind of hilarious.
577. 00:24:49 - Yep.
578. 00:24:50 - Yep, you definitely stole it.
579. 00:24:52 Let's just jump into it,
580. 00:24:53 'cause I feel like we're gonna cover a lot of things
581. 00:24:54 and this could go long if we're not careful.
582. 00:24:56 But chapter one is just that steel like an artist
583. 00:25:00 out of the 10 chapters.
584. 00:25:02 And this is where he's really just laying out the groundwork
585. 00:25:06 of what does it mean to be an artist, I guess,
586. 00:25:10 would be the way I'd explain that.
587. 00:25:12 In that you are to use the terms,
588. 00:25:16 you're stealing ideas and concepts from your mentors,
589. 00:25:21 the giants that you look up to,
590. 00:25:24 synthesizing those into your own
591. 00:25:28 and creating something new based on the things you stole
592. 00:25:32 from other artists.
593. 00:25:34 That's really the summarization, I feel like,
594. 00:25:36 almost of the entire book,
595. 00:25:37 but it obviously goes into more than that.
596. 00:25:40 But that's, I think, what he's getting at.
597. 00:25:43 - That is absolutely what he's getting at.
598. 00:25:44 And that's why I misattributed that quote to this book
599. 00:25:49 because it fits perfectly.
600. 00:25:51 He should have included that Steve Jobs quote.
601. 00:25:54 (laughing)
602. 00:25:55 Maybe he did and I just missed it.
603. 00:25:57 But looking back through it,
604. 00:25:58 when I came across that page later on that said,
605. 00:26:01 collect your dots or share your dots,
606. 00:26:02 but don't connect them,
607. 00:26:05 that triggered that in my brain.
608. 00:26:07 I was like, "Wait a second, that's anti this thing
609. 00:26:09 "I've had in my head for years."
610. 00:26:11 And then I started flipping back through
611. 00:26:12 and I couldn't find it.
612. 00:26:14 (laughing)
613. 00:26:17 But yeah, this chapter is the book in a nutshell.
614. 00:26:21 And I still do think that this book was very influential
615. 00:26:24 for me in this chapter specifically,
616. 00:26:27 for giving me permission to create
617. 00:26:29 because for a long time I didn't think I was creative.
618. 00:26:32 Kind of at the time I read this book,
619. 00:26:34 I was at a point where my creativity was expressed
620. 00:26:38 through songwriting for a play guitarist
621. 00:26:41 singing on the worship team at my church.
622. 00:26:43 And I would write a song and I loved writing songs,
623. 00:26:45 but then every time I would write it,
624. 00:26:47 I would be listening to the radio or something
625. 00:26:49 and I would hear this melody line or this guitar riff
626. 00:26:52 that I didn't realize I had stole.
627. 00:26:54 And I was like, "Gah, dang it, I ripped this off
628. 00:26:56 "from this other place."
629. 00:26:57 And I guess I'm just not creative.
630. 00:27:00 But that's literally the story I told myself.
631. 00:27:03 It's like, I just don't have what it takes to be creative.
632. 00:27:06 All I can do is mash up other things
633. 00:27:09 that other people have done.
634. 00:27:10 And he quotes Ecclesiastes one night in this book,
635. 00:27:15 "There's nothing new under the sun.
636. 00:27:18 "You are a mashup of what you allow into your life.
637. 00:27:21 "All creative work builds on what came before it."
638. 00:27:24 So when you recognize that you're going to be stealing
639. 00:27:29 if you are going to be creating,
640. 00:27:32 you combine that with what he says on page 14,
641. 00:27:35 your job is to collect good ideas.
642. 00:27:37 I kind of reframe that as collect dots, right?
643. 00:27:40 The more ideas you collect,
644. 00:27:42 the more you can choose from them to be,
645. 00:27:45 which ones to be influenced by.
646. 00:27:46 And I think I would take that even a step further
647. 00:27:49 where if you are just connecting,
648. 00:27:51 or if you're collecting dots,
649. 00:27:53 your brain is actually connecting those things for you.
650. 00:27:56 And sometimes you see how it works, sometimes you don't.
651. 00:28:00 That's what's so exciting to me about all of the,
652. 00:28:03 the linked based note,
653. 00:28:05 making note-taking applications out there is like,
654. 00:28:08 that's the first time I've been able to visualize
655. 00:28:10 that sort of stuff happening outside of my own head.
656. 00:28:14 And it does it in a way where it's pretty effortless
657. 00:28:17 instead of, okay, I can link to this note,
658. 00:28:19 but then I gotta go back to that other note
659. 00:28:20 and I gotta add a link back to the other one.
660. 00:28:23 That's just too much friction for me to do that.
661. 00:28:27 So I love this.
662. 00:28:30 The whole book is basically just an exhortation to create.
663. 00:28:33 And this first chapter is probably the strongest one
664. 00:28:36 in the entire book I would argue.
665. 00:28:39 Couple of other specific things I wanna talk about
666. 00:28:41 from here, page 20, he says, "Collect books,
667. 00:28:42 "even if you don't plan on reading them right away, check."
668. 00:28:45 (laughs)
669. 00:28:48 And I really liked that idea.
670. 00:28:50 Actually, just today, because we finished this book,
671. 00:28:53 we've got some time before the next one,
672. 00:28:55 and I was looking for another gap book,
673. 00:28:57 and I had this idea that I,
674. 00:28:59 this book that I wanted to read,
675. 00:29:00 I'm like, I have that book somewhere.
676. 00:29:02 So I found it on my bookshelf behind me,
677. 00:29:04 and I have something now that I'm going to read,
678. 00:29:07 but I bought that book a long time ago
679. 00:29:09 without worrying about when I was gonna read it,
680. 00:29:11 and it's just been sitting there ever since.
681. 00:29:13 And because I have it, it triggered that in my head,
682. 00:29:16 and I was like, oh, I should go read that book.
683. 00:29:18 It's Purple Cow by Seth Godin, by the way.
684. 00:29:21 - Yeah. - If you're curious.
685. 00:29:23 - Let's go on. - Yeah.
686. 00:29:24 And then the other thing I wanna talk about here
687. 00:29:26 is these swipe files.
688. 00:29:27 Do you know where I'm going with these?
689. 00:29:30 I am not sure we were going with it,
690. 00:29:32 but I know what you're talking about.
691. 00:29:34 - All right, so how would you define a swipe file?
692. 00:29:38 - Things you've swiped off other people.
693. 00:29:41 - But what do you, the way he defined it though
694. 00:29:43 is like you put them somewhere,
695. 00:29:45 and you're not really sure what to do with these yet, right?
696. 00:29:47 - Correct.
697. 00:29:49 Sounds an awful lot like a map of content to me.
698. 00:29:52 - I was just a map.
699. 00:29:54 (laughs)
700. 00:29:55 - Sure.
701. 00:29:56 (laughs)
702. 00:29:58 - It's classic, right?
703. 00:30:00 And I, obviously, when I hear of something like a swipe file
704. 00:30:03 and I hear you talking about it,
705. 00:30:04 I know it's gonna go in obsidian for you,
706. 00:30:06 and everybody under the sun knows that.
707. 00:30:09 But the thing that I find interesting is that
708. 00:30:14 this is actually,
709. 00:30:16 and I kinda got into this a little bit.
710. 00:30:19 This is, so I started doing a new segment of sorts
711. 00:30:22 on the streams that I do personally,
712. 00:30:25 where we're essentially just making notes
713. 00:30:28 in this case obsidian,
714. 00:30:30 making these notes and creating the links,
715. 00:30:32 and just talking about random topics
716. 00:30:34 and making those connections.
717. 00:30:36 But it's ultimately,
718. 00:30:38 the concept of a swipe file is just collecting things
719. 00:30:42 that you don't know what you're gonna do with,
720. 00:30:44 and then they get connected elsewhere later.
721. 00:30:47 And something like one of these link-based note makers
722. 00:30:51 is something that's super easy to do
723. 00:30:55 and it happens all the time.
724. 00:30:56 So I would imagine your take on this is that,
725. 00:31:00 hey, I do this all the time already.
726. 00:31:02 Ding, done.
727. 00:31:03 - This is literally the definition of a map of content
728. 00:31:06 that I picked up from Nick Milo,
729. 00:31:08 because he defines a map of content as like your workbench
730. 00:31:11 when you're wrestling through,
731. 00:31:12 what do I really think about this thing?
732. 00:31:14 So the swipe file would be basically,
733. 00:31:18 you create a topic,
734. 00:31:21 map of content, or map in your case, right?
735. 00:31:24 'Cause we don't wanna use that map of content term.
736. 00:31:26 - I like Blake's moratorium on context.
737. 00:31:29 (laughing)
738. 00:31:31 Blake's always trying to find a different word
739. 00:31:33 for a different way to spell out MOC for me.
740. 00:31:35 We haven't found a really good one yet,
741. 00:31:36 but that's a good one.
742. 00:31:37 - That is a good one.
743. 00:31:39 So you have this file named after this topic
744. 00:31:42 that you're trying to figure out what you think about this.
745. 00:31:45 That's where you would dump all of these things
746. 00:31:48 that Austin Cleon would say,
747. 00:31:50 go into your swipe file.
748. 00:31:52 So you, I myself would have a bunch of MOCs,
749. 00:31:57 mashups of cutouts, nice one, silent wolf.
750. 00:32:02 Right, on these different topics.
751. 00:32:05 And I would just put the things that I would,
752. 00:32:08 instead of putting it in one giant swipe file,
753. 00:32:10 I would just put them in those
754. 00:32:12 mementos of contemplation.
755. 00:32:13 Thanks, Blake.
756. 00:32:14 Let's see how long we keep this up.
757. 00:32:15 (laughing)
758. 00:32:18 - This is good.
759. 00:32:19 This is good.
760. 00:32:19 I like this.
761. 00:32:20 (laughing)
762. 00:32:22 - Oh, yes, I get it.
763. 00:32:24 I think I get it anyway.
764. 00:32:26 Really, the thing that,
765. 00:32:29 and I've not been somebody who gets into
766. 00:32:32 the whole map of content concept, I guess.
767. 00:32:37 I make these like home notes, if you will,
768. 00:32:39 for different topics,
769. 00:32:40 which I know that people who are deep into this MOC world
770. 00:32:44 tend to say are not the same thing,
771. 00:32:49 but my simpleton brain that summarizes things down
772. 00:32:54 can't quite tell the difference,
773. 00:32:56 and I get that it's semantics at which point
774. 00:32:58 it's too subtle,
775. 00:33:00 and I think it's nonsense at that point,
776. 00:33:02 but that's me,
777. 00:33:03 and I know that people hate on me for that.
778. 00:33:05 That's fine, bring it.
779. 00:33:06 And I know that I like to make these jumping off points,
780. 00:33:11 they get me to other places,
781. 00:33:16 and you can do that from a letter from it.
782. 00:33:19 Methods, anyway, we're getting into the weeds on
783. 00:33:22 like notes and such,
784. 00:33:23 but the swipe file is really just that.
785. 00:33:25 Like it's a way to capture things.
786. 00:33:28 If you wanna use GTD terms,
787. 00:33:30 it's a way of capturing things onto a someday,
788. 00:33:32 maybe file, if you will,
789. 00:33:34 that you can then expand and connect to other things.
790. 00:33:38 That's really what he's advocating for here.
791. 00:33:41 - Yeah, and I call it-- - It's unfair.
792. 00:33:42 - It is, I call it out just because I feel like
793. 00:33:46 this is actually really great advice.
794. 00:33:49 And 10 years ago when he wrote it,
795. 00:33:52 probably had no idea what the digital tools
796. 00:33:55 that we were gonna have at our disposal
797. 00:33:57 would allow us to do with this sort of thing.
798. 00:34:00 I'm kind of curious what Austin Cleon would use.
799. 00:34:05 Another person I'm curious about how they would do
800. 00:34:08 this sort of thing is Derek Sivers,
801. 00:34:10 'cause he wrote recently about the Powerplane Text Files,
802. 00:34:13 and a lot of the stuff that he talked about.
803. 00:34:14 I totally agree with.
804. 00:34:17 It's not, the way it's framed is not,
805. 00:34:20 well, let's use this old stuff because
806. 00:34:23 that way we'll always have something that can open it,
807. 00:34:27 but really it's just the lowest common denominator
808. 00:34:30 so that it's completely future proof.
809. 00:34:32 People, when people recommend text files,
810. 00:34:35 I think the initial reaction is,
811. 00:34:36 "Oh, quit living in the past,"
812. 00:34:37 but then you realize,
813. 00:34:38 "Oh, actually they're thinking about the future."
814. 00:34:40 (laughs)
815. 00:34:42 - Right, right.
816. 00:34:43 - I was surprised how well that comment
817. 00:34:45 about the swipe file actually aged over the last 10 years.
818. 00:34:48 - Correct, yeah.
819. 00:34:49 I've had conversations in the last week about,
820. 00:34:52 where do you store information
821. 00:34:55 when you need to hold onto it for later?
822. 00:34:57 And the people I was talking to were like,
823. 00:35:00 I don't know, I just throw things in Word documents
824. 00:35:01 and my head cringed.
825. 00:35:03 It's like, "Oh, that hurts so much."
826. 00:35:07 And I said something about,
827. 00:35:09 I don't ever use PKM or Obsidian or any of those terms.
828. 00:35:12 I just say, I keep it in text files.
829. 00:35:14 - Yeah.
830. 00:35:15 - And people look at you like, "What?"
831. 00:35:18 Oh, you're just a techie.
832. 00:35:20 You're one of those tech nerds.
833. 00:35:22 - That's the Digital Zetal Caston book
834. 00:35:23 is advocating for, I forget exactly how he said it,
835. 00:35:25 but basically don't trust an app,
836. 00:35:28 trust a technology, like playing text files.
837. 00:35:31 - Right.
838. 00:35:32 - And then you can use whatever app you want
839. 00:35:34 that interfaces with that technology.
840. 00:35:36 - Yep, yep, exactly.
841. 00:35:39 Thus, like so much of the stuff I work towards
842. 00:35:41 is like the non-proprietary world.
843. 00:35:44 But yes.
844. 00:35:45 - Weeds, you guys got some good ones here.
845. 00:35:48 Minelessly organized consolidations,
846. 00:35:51 milieu of concepts.
847. 00:35:53 I like it.
848. 00:35:55 This is good.
849. 00:35:55 - This is good.
850. 00:35:56 - We better move on.
851. 00:35:57 This is gonna be a long one.
852. 00:35:58 - It could be.
853. 00:35:59 We're on to chapter two and we've been at this
854. 00:36:01 for 36 minutes.
855. 00:36:03 Don't wait until you know who you are to get started.
856. 00:36:08 And I think it would be very easy
857. 00:36:13 to say that Cleon would probably jump into the boat
858. 00:36:17 of don't hold on to your art for too long.
859. 00:36:20 Boat, 'cause that's kind of what he's getting at here
860. 00:36:22 is like don't be afraid to push things out there.
861. 00:36:25 He doesn't say that.
862. 00:36:26 But he's ultimately saying that whenever you are,
863. 00:36:31 when you're in the creative mode,
864. 00:36:32 like a lot of times people say like,
865. 00:36:34 I haven't found myself,
866. 00:36:35 like I'm still learning about myself in a certain way
867. 00:36:37 or I don't feel like I understand this imposter syndrome.
868. 00:36:41 Like it's rampant, right?
869. 00:36:44 Everybody's faking it to some degree.
870. 00:36:46 And that is ultimately what he's telling you,
871. 00:36:49 don't let that get into your head.
872. 00:36:52 Don't let that be your hang up for publishing things
873. 00:36:56 and getting things out the door.
874. 00:36:57 You don't have to wait until you have all the answers
875. 00:37:00 before you publish things.
876. 00:37:01 Like how many times, Mike, if you and I release something,
877. 00:37:03 it's like, I don't know how this is gonna work,
878. 00:37:05 but this is what I know right now.
879. 00:37:07 And I'm gonna publish that.
880. 00:37:09 This is something at least I do,
881. 00:37:10 fairly regularly.
882. 00:37:11 Like this is where I'm at in my journey.
883. 00:37:14 It will hopefully help somebody
884. 00:37:15 who's not quite that far on that journey.
885. 00:37:17 Maybe there's somebody further, that's fine.
886. 00:37:19 I can learn from them.
887. 00:37:20 But there are people who are not as far as I am,
888. 00:37:22 always are, always will be.
889. 00:37:24 And it's just life.
890. 00:37:25 So don't wait until you have all the answers
891. 00:37:29 to get started on those.
892. 00:37:29 Like that's, and I think this is what you were saying,
893. 00:37:32 or like this is kind of a raw book.
894. 00:37:35 Like let's get going.
895. 00:37:36 Like this is, get you fired up.
896. 00:37:38 This is absolutely one of those parts.
897. 00:37:40 Yeah, I mean, there's honestly not a whole lot extra
898. 00:37:44 to add to this.
899. 00:37:45 I do like the quote from Salvador Dali.
900. 00:37:47 It's those who do not want to imitate anything,
901. 00:37:49 produce nothing.
902. 00:37:51 That's where I found myself for quite a while.
903. 00:37:55 So I'll just agree with Mr. Cleon here and say,
904. 00:38:00 just start making stuff.
905. 00:38:02 Don't worry about imitating other people
906. 00:38:05 because you're going to.
907. 00:38:08 That imposter syndrome, he defined it here,
908. 00:38:10 which I thought was kind of interesting,
909. 00:38:12 psychological phenomenon in which people
910. 00:38:14 are unable to internalize their accomplishments.
911. 00:38:17 So when you think about that in terms of,
912. 00:38:19 I don't want to imitate or I'm a fraud.
913. 00:38:21 And who am I to say this?
914. 00:38:25 I feel like the ship 30 for 30 course
915. 00:38:28 that I'm going through right now does a good job
916. 00:38:30 of speaking directly to this.
917. 00:38:33 And the advice that they say,
918. 00:38:34 the way they say it is interesting.
919. 00:38:35 They say, don't write for anybody else
920. 00:38:39 right for you two years ago.
921. 00:38:42 And the two years thing is the thing
922. 00:38:44 that kind of catches me off guard
923. 00:38:45 because that's not that long ago.
924. 00:38:47 Your life is probably not completely different
925. 00:38:49 than it was two years ago.
926. 00:38:51 But it doesn't have to be.
927. 00:38:53 You're just trying to communicate
928. 00:38:57 what you've learned in a period of time
929. 00:39:01 and you're trying to help out that person
930. 00:39:03 who you used to be, who you can still relate to.
931. 00:39:06 And when you do that,
932. 00:39:07 you don't have to compare yourself to anybody else.
933. 00:39:10 And you don't have to judge what you're saying.
934. 00:39:12 It's just, you know, this is,
935. 00:39:15 don't paint yourself as an expert if you're not,
936. 00:39:17 but just say like, this is my experience,
937. 00:39:19 this is what I learned from it.
938. 00:39:20 And then nobody can argue with it.
939. 00:39:23 People can attach to it if it's helpful
940. 00:39:25 or they can leave it if it's not,
941. 00:39:27 but it's not a judgment against you as a person
942. 00:39:30 and you don't have to try to pretend.
943. 00:39:32 - Yes.
944. 00:39:33 - Well said, what's going on?
945. 00:39:34 Let's keep going.
946. 00:39:35 Chapter three, write the book you wanna read.
947. 00:39:38 This is like, okay, so this concept is one that's come up
948. 00:39:42 in developer circles quite a bit, like startups and such.
949. 00:39:46 The startups and such that are successful
950. 00:39:48 are generally the ones where the founder
951. 00:39:52 and the people who created the thing
952. 00:39:54 are solving a problem that they themselves struggle with.
953. 00:39:57 This is that concept.
954. 00:39:59 And this is where, if you're gonna write a book,
955. 00:40:02 if you're gonna make art, you wanna make the art
956. 00:40:05 or make the book that you want to read.
957. 00:40:08 If you wouldn't read the book that you're writing,
958. 00:40:11 why are you writing it?
959. 00:40:13 One, which is probably an indicator
960. 00:40:15 of like a money grab, possibly, not for certain,
961. 00:40:19 but it's, I'm guessing finances are involved
962. 00:40:22 if you're doing it and you don't want to,
963. 00:40:24 or it's not something you would be excited about.
964. 00:40:27 So that little element is out there, yes, dog fooding.
965. 00:40:31 And this is something that I know,
966. 00:40:35 like I have no plans to write a book,
967. 00:40:37 but where I to do that, I would probably struggle with it
968. 00:40:40 'cause I'm not sure what that book would be
969. 00:40:43 as far as like what I want to write or want to read.
970. 00:40:47 Therefore, I want to write it
971. 00:40:48 'cause it seems like every time I want to read a book
972. 00:40:50 about something, I can generally find it,
973. 00:40:53 if not 400 of them and have to pick one.
974. 00:40:55 So I think from a book stance, it's not something
975. 00:40:59 that I find myself wanting to do.
976. 00:41:02 I definitely do this when it comes to like coding and such
977. 00:41:06 and like writing little scripts and little packages
978. 00:41:08 and gems and stuff that I can use for other projects.
979. 00:41:10 Like that sort of thing I do,
980. 00:41:12 but I can't say that I would do it as far as like a book goes,
981. 00:41:16 but that's also not his focus here.
982. 00:41:18 I'm extrapolating it into that.
983. 00:41:20 - Well, I am going to write a book.
984. 00:41:22 - Fun!
985. 00:41:25 - I did, I'm gonna write another one.
986. 00:41:27 I'm gonna update it.
987. 00:41:28 And I got a kick in the pants to do this
988. 00:41:30 even before you read this because I recently went
989. 00:41:33 to the library with my son and showed him all
990. 00:41:37 of the sections that I would typically hit up
991. 00:41:39 before I just started buying everything.
992. 00:41:41 That sounded interesting to me off of Amazon.
993. 00:41:45 That's a place to start.
994. 00:41:46 If you can't afford to buy all the books,
995. 00:41:47 just go to the library.
996. 00:41:48 They're there, they're free.
997. 00:41:50 Cost nothing to get a library card.
998. 00:41:52 But anyways, there was a book there
999. 00:41:55 and it was called Redeeming the Time,
1000. 00:41:58 Forget Who It Was By.
1001. 00:42:00 And it's basically a Bible-based approach to productivity.
1002. 00:42:05 And my son got it and looking through
1003. 00:42:08 like the people who were raving about it,
1004. 00:42:09 there's the, we covered that one,
1005. 00:42:13 but Matt Pearson, is that the guy?
1006. 00:42:15 So there's like a blurb from him.
1007. 00:42:17 There's a blurb from Cal Newport,
1008. 00:42:19 like all these big names, right?
1009. 00:42:21 And then in the introduction,
1010. 00:42:23 he's going through and he's explaining
1011. 00:42:24 like the typical way people view productivity
1012. 00:42:27 and then he tries to introduce this new term,
1013. 00:42:28 which I thought was kind of clumsy,
1014. 00:42:29 grace-based productivity.
1015. 00:42:31 And I was like, faith-based productivity.
1016. 00:42:35 Way cleaner.
1017. 00:42:38 - You had your chance.
1018. 00:42:41 - Yeah, I know exactly what verses they're basing
1019. 00:42:43 everything off of.
1020. 00:42:44 Like I've gone through that
1021. 00:42:46 and I have succumbed to imposter syndrome
1022. 00:42:50 for long enough in terms of updating that book
1023. 00:42:54 and expanding it really.
1024. 00:42:57 Like the book that I initially wrote,
1025. 00:43:00 that was the thing that got me writing every day
1026. 00:43:03 and that's what got me doing all of the things
1027. 00:43:06 that I'm doing online now.
1028. 00:43:07 And kind of just left it at that.
1029. 00:43:10 It's like, well, there it was a gateway
1030. 00:43:11 into a whole new world of content creation for me,
1031. 00:43:14 but also it's time to go back to my roots,
1032. 00:43:18 do the thing that I started doing,
1033. 00:43:20 Ship 30 for 30 has helped me create
1034. 00:43:22 that consistent writing habit.
1035. 00:43:24 So once I'm done with that,
1036. 00:43:26 once I dial in a lot of this other stuff,
1037. 00:43:28 I'm already starting to write things in terms
1038. 00:43:32 that are going to appear in that book.
1039. 00:43:34 That's another thing I learned from Ship 30 is
1040. 00:43:37 you can take a single idea
1041. 00:43:38 and write about it the rest of your life
1042. 00:43:40 because you can talk about it from every different angle
1043. 00:43:43 and it could go all the way from this tiny little tweet
1044. 00:43:46 all the way to a 60,000 word book.
1045. 00:43:49 And it's people build whole careers off of that.
1046. 00:43:53 Just think about habits with James Clear.
1047. 00:43:55 (laughs)
1048. 00:43:56 Right?
1049. 00:43:57 So that was inspiring to me and I've got something there.
1050. 00:44:00 I've got something to share.
1051. 00:44:02 It's something that I've been passionate about
1052. 00:44:04 for a very long time and it's time for me
1053. 00:44:06 to write the book that I wanna read.
1054. 00:44:08 - There you go.
1055. 00:44:09 I'll buy it.
1056. 00:44:10 - Cool.
1057. 00:44:11 - Let's go on 'cause if you're gonna write a book,
1058. 00:44:15 chapter four, you need to use your hands, Mike.
1059. 00:44:20 - But, so.
1060. 00:44:21 - Yeah.
1061. 00:44:22 (laughs)
1062. 00:44:23 - Sure.
1063. 00:44:24 So that's, yeah, it's very short the way I said that
1064. 00:44:29 but this chapter, use your hands.
1065. 00:44:31 He's talking about basically the value of the analog world
1066. 00:44:35 to use the terms I like to use
1067. 00:44:37 and the value of doing things physically
1068. 00:44:41 and even to the point where he talks about how he has
1069. 00:44:45 two different desks, one's his digital desk
1070. 00:44:47 and one is his analog desk
1071. 00:44:49 and the digital stuff's not allowed to touch his analog desk.
1072. 00:44:53 It's okay to go the other way, just not digital to analog
1073. 00:44:56 and I totally get what he's getting at here.
1074. 00:45:01 Like if you wanna like prompt your creative brain
1075. 00:45:05 doing things physically like with a whiteboard,
1076. 00:45:08 with a notebook, with a walk in the woods,
1077. 00:45:12 with a paintbrush, whatever that is,
1078. 00:45:14 like doing it physically does make a big difference,
1079. 00:45:18 I find anyway.
1080. 00:45:19 But you've heard me preach this for years now.
1081. 00:45:22 So I'm gonna quit talking about it
1082. 00:45:24 'cause you guys know exactly where I'm going.
1083. 00:45:26 - You are analog Joe after all.
1084. 00:45:28 - Exactly.
1085. 00:45:29 - Now a couple of cool ideas,
1086. 00:45:34 that's the gist of the chapter, absolutely,
1087. 00:45:36 but a couple of cool ways that he says it,
1088. 00:45:38 work that only comes from your head isn't any good.
1089. 00:45:41 I like that, I think that's true.
1090. 00:45:43 My best ideas come when I am intentionally going for a walk
1091. 00:45:48 and I'm just gonna wrestle with this problem
1092. 00:45:51 or I'm gonna go for a run or whatever,
1093. 00:45:53 but getting out and moving my body definitely helps with this.
1094. 00:45:57 By the way, a plug here for the bookroom episode
1095. 00:46:01 on the extended mind by Annie Murphy-Paul
1096. 00:46:04 because I feel like there's a whole bunch
1097. 00:46:06 of other stuff in there, it's not just your hands.
1098. 00:46:08 Use your body, basically.
1099. 00:46:11 - Yep. - And that book talks about a lot of the ways
1100. 00:46:14 that you can do that.
1101. 00:46:16 I love the analog versus digital.
1102. 00:46:18 I want to have an analog and digital desk.
1103. 00:46:21 My way my office is set up right now,
1104. 00:46:23 especially with all the things I've done to make it
1105. 00:46:25 so I can record YouTube without having to set anything up.
1106. 00:46:29 It's not possible at the moment,
1107. 00:46:31 but I definitely wanna do that
1108. 00:46:34 and find a way to bring your body into your work.
1109. 00:46:37 This doesn't have to be difficult.
1110. 00:46:39 It doesn't have to be complicated.
1111. 00:46:41 You don't have to go outside for a walk
1112. 00:46:44 if it's raining just so you can use your body.
1113. 00:46:48 It could be as simple as a standing desk
1114. 00:46:51 or if you're talking, I do this all the time.
1115. 00:46:54 We're on videos we record these,
1116. 00:46:56 but a lot of times when I'm just doing audio even,
1117. 00:47:01 I am like talking with my hands and I am very expressive
1118. 00:47:04 because that injects life into the thing that I'm making.
1119. 00:47:08 I've found.
1120. 00:47:10 And the computer is good for editing ideas,
1121. 00:47:12 but not generating them.
1122. 00:47:14 Totally agree.
1123. 00:47:16 I have been thinking about this a lot.
1124. 00:47:19 Steve Jobs, the quote,
1125. 00:47:21 the computer is a bicycle for the mind.
1126. 00:47:23 But I think a lot of people view technology
1127. 00:47:29 as this is going to help me be more productive
1128. 00:47:32 because it's gonna allow me to be more efficient.
1129. 00:47:36 That's not really what we need to manage at this point.
1130. 00:47:40 What we need to manage is our minds.
1131. 00:47:42 And if you're not careful,
1132. 00:47:45 then the computer can actually hinder that.
1133. 00:47:49 So I don't know, there's a whole other tangent to that
1134. 00:47:52 that we should explore at some point,
1135. 00:47:55 but probably not right now.
1136. 00:47:56 No, it totally makes sense
1137. 00:47:58 'cause I know that whenever I have,
1138. 00:48:01 like whenever I'm creating ideas,
1139. 00:48:04 like writing down concepts,
1140. 00:48:06 like if I'm doing that on pen and paper,
1141. 00:48:08 it allows me to get to more of them.
1142. 00:48:11 Like I generate more ideas doing that.
1143. 00:48:13 Whereas if I'm trying to do that in a list on a computer,
1144. 00:48:18 there's something about,
1145. 00:48:20 it's harder for whatever reason
1146. 00:48:22 to move from one bullet down to the next,
1147. 00:48:25 or to generate a new bubble on a mind map.
1148. 00:48:28 It takes more to do that than it does to just slide your hand.
1149. 00:48:32 I don't know why that is,
1150. 00:48:34 but simple stuff like that seems to make it so much easier
1151. 00:48:37 to just get things out of my brain.
1152. 00:48:40 So I'm with you.
1153. 00:48:42 Coming up with the ideas is way better on paper.
1154. 00:48:45 Come at me.
1155. 00:48:47 (laughs)
1156. 00:48:48 Chapter five, side projects and hobbies are important.
1157. 00:48:53 And this one, I know people have had a little bit of blowback
1158. 00:48:59 on from other people.
1159. 00:49:03 I'm drawing a blank on his name right now.
1160. 00:49:04 I can see his face, I can see his avatar,
1161. 00:49:08 but I can't think of his name right now.
1162. 00:49:10 Who, people talk about how do something you love,
1163. 00:49:15 you'll never work a day in your life,
1164. 00:49:17 or try to do the side thing until it becomes your full-time gig.
1165. 00:49:22 And he's kind of making the argument
1166. 00:49:26 that it's almost better to keep him as side gigs.
1167. 00:49:30 I don't think he would say that 100% of the time,
1168. 00:49:33 but regardless, it's the side projects and hobbies
1169. 00:49:36 that help you stay energized
1170. 00:49:39 and help you come up with even more ideas
1171. 00:49:42 and have some of that creativity
1172. 00:49:43 because it allows you to have a bunch of different arenas
1173. 00:49:48 that you're thinking in.
1174. 00:49:49 And because of that, you can cross the dots
1175. 00:49:52 over from thing to thing.
1176. 00:49:55 Whenever I think about my day job,
1177. 00:49:56 like we were talking about beforehand,
1178. 00:49:58 like all the video stuff that I do.
1179. 00:50:00 And because of all the video stuff,
1180. 00:50:03 it means like there's tons and tons of video gear
1181. 00:50:05 that I deal with all the time.
1182. 00:50:06 There's tons of networking and internet stuff I do,
1183. 00:50:08 tons of audio gear, like high-end audio stuff
1184. 00:50:11 and video stuff.
1185. 00:50:12 And yet I go home and swing an axe and split wood.
1186. 00:50:16 And I think tomorrow I'm building garden beds.
1187. 00:50:20 And what am I, I'm like plowing some dirt up,
1188. 00:50:24 moving dirt with a skid steer.
1189. 00:50:25 Like I've got some like very labor-intensive things
1190. 00:50:28 I'm doing tomorrow.
1191. 00:50:30 It amazes me how many times the two can cross,
1192. 00:50:34 like to get ideas for one or the other
1193. 00:50:37 when I'm in either arena.
1194. 00:50:39 So it is fascinating to me how those two can help out.
1195. 00:50:43 But again, like the side projects and hobbies thing,
1196. 00:50:45 like it's great to have those other arenas
1197. 00:50:48 that you can bounce between
1198. 00:50:49 in order to get some of the creativity going.
1199. 00:50:52 So it's absolutely worthwhile.
1200. 00:50:55 - I completely agree.
1201. 00:50:57 It's the side projects that take off is what he says.
1202. 00:51:02 But I think the real value of the side projects
1203. 00:51:06 is kind of what you were saying
1204. 00:51:08 that it allows you to develop things in a different arena.
1205. 00:51:11 I was stressed out about that for a long time
1206. 00:51:14 because I didn't find a,
1207. 00:51:16 I couldn't find a common through line
1208. 00:51:19 between some of the stuff that I was doing for a while.
1209. 00:51:23 That's why I hesitated to do the sermon sketch note stuff.
1210. 00:51:28 It's like this doesn't fit with a bunch of other things
1211. 00:51:32 that I've done real cleanly.
1212. 00:51:34 So I don't wanna throw it out there.
1213. 00:51:38 And there's a phrase he says in this chapter
1214. 00:51:40 which I liked,
1215. 00:51:41 "What unifies your work is the fact that you made it.
1216. 00:51:43 "You don't need anything else."
1217. 00:51:46 And so I like that it's empowering
1218. 00:51:49 and encouraging basically like whatever appeals to you
1219. 00:51:52 is a side project do it.
1220. 00:51:54 It doesn't have to make any sense.
1221. 00:51:56 It doesn't have to plug real cleanly
1222. 00:51:59 into something else that you're doing.
1223. 00:52:01 And I found that like with the YouTube stuff,
1224. 00:52:05 I drank my feet on YouTube for a really long time
1225. 00:52:09 and I've only published one real video.
1226. 00:52:10 So I can't say that I've like figured this out.
1227. 00:52:13 But just the fact that I have done that one
1228. 00:52:19 and I'm starting to get that flywheel going
1229. 00:52:22 and seeing how the ideas I generate for writing
1230. 00:52:25 can translate to other things.
1231. 00:52:27 There's connections there that I didn't realize
1232. 00:52:29 until I started to do the thing.
1233. 00:52:32 And I don't know why it was so hard for me to connect.
1234. 00:52:37 We have this podcast where we read all these books
1235. 00:52:40 and these books talk about all these other things
1236. 00:52:42 that I talk about and write about
1237. 00:52:45 all these other places online.
1238. 00:52:46 So I could just point to the stuff
1239. 00:52:48 that I already do about the books.
1240. 00:52:50 Like I never saw that until I engage with this thing,
1241. 00:52:55 which I wasn't sure was gonna fit.
1242. 00:52:59 And then once I did it,
1243. 00:53:00 that's like the path forward became clear.
1244. 00:53:03 So I just want to call this out
1245. 00:53:04 because I'll add my admonition here to Austin's
1246. 00:53:09 that just do the thing if you think it's interesting
1247. 00:53:12 and figure out how it fits later.
1248. 00:53:15 And if it doesn't, if you don't ever figure that out,
1249. 00:53:17 but you like to do it anyways, don't even worry about it.
1250. 00:53:20 Just continue to do the thing.
1251. 00:53:22 - Yeah, 'cause you don't know where it's gonna go.
1252. 00:53:25 And it seems like it usually ends up someplace
1253. 00:53:26 you didn't plan on anyway.
1254. 00:53:28 - And don't put pressure on it to be something.
1255. 00:53:31 Like that's the other thing.
1256. 00:53:31 It's important to have a hobby,
1257. 00:53:32 something that gives but doesn't take.
1258. 00:53:34 The minute that you try to make something a job
1259. 00:53:36 or a revenue stream,
1260. 00:53:40 then it's taking from you
1261. 00:53:42 because you gotta continue to pump stuff out there.
1262. 00:53:46 And that was my mistake the first time
1263. 00:53:48 that I tried to go off on my own
1264. 00:53:50 and do faith-based productivity.
1265. 00:53:52 I wanted to launch this business
1266. 00:53:55 and this was gonna be the thing that paid the bills
1267. 00:53:58 and it was never ever going to do that.
1268. 00:54:01 It's a part of maybe something like that,
1269. 00:54:04 but even if it's not, that's fine.
1270. 00:54:05 There's something later on in this book
1271. 00:54:07 that I really wanna talk about regarding day jobs
1272. 00:54:10 and side hustles, but it doesn't need
1273. 00:54:15 to turn into that.
1274. 00:54:17 It's not the fact that it only grows so far
1275. 00:54:21 is not a judgment of whether this thing is of the thing's value.
1276. 00:54:26 - Yeah, this kinda goes back to chapter two.
1277. 00:54:31 Like don't wait until you know who you already started.
1278. 00:54:33 It does kinda go back to that
1279. 00:54:35 because you're essentially not worrying
1280. 00:54:38 about the quality of it.
1281. 00:54:40 But like if you try to figure out all the details
1282. 00:54:43 of how you want things to go with your creative life,
1283. 00:54:47 before you start, then you're putting yourself in a box
1284. 00:54:53 that's very likely too small
1285. 00:54:56 and you're probably not gonna start
1286. 00:54:58 because you don't feel like you know the end of the story.
1287. 00:55:00 Hey, guess what, nobody does.
1288. 00:55:02 (laughs)
1289. 00:55:04 You don't know where that's gonna go until you start.
1290. 00:55:08 So you have to get started at some point.
1291. 00:55:12 You know, whenever I started streaming,
1292. 00:55:14 which has been a while back now,
1293. 00:55:17 it was something that I was doing
1294. 00:55:18 just kind of trying to figure out how streaming works.
1295. 00:55:21 I had been forced into it with COVID and church stuff
1296. 00:55:24 to learn how it all worked.
1297. 00:55:26 And once I did that, it's like, well,
1298. 00:55:27 it's not too hard for me to translate that over
1299. 00:55:28 into some of the personal stuff I do.
1300. 00:55:31 I have no idea what I'm gonna talk about,
1301. 00:55:33 just me on camera for an hour and a half.
1302. 00:55:36 But we'll try it and see what happens.
1303. 00:55:38 And it's morphed into some interesting things.
1304. 00:55:40 And now we're talking about,
1305. 00:55:42 should you own social media data or not?
1306. 00:55:44 Like that's, what does that even mean?
1307. 00:55:46 Like these are the things we're talking about just yesterday.
1308. 00:55:49 So it's been kind of fascinating to see
1309. 00:55:50 like how does that morph over time
1310. 00:55:53 and what can become of them.
1311. 00:55:55 So you don't know, like that starts off as side hustle stuff
1312. 00:55:58 and it's okay for it to stay there.
1313. 00:56:00 It is a thing that can go places you never expected it to.
1314. 00:56:05 And that's okay.
1315. 00:56:06 You have to be okay with that part.
1316. 00:56:08 Agreed. That brings us to chapter six.
1317. 00:56:14 Chapter six, yes, chapter six.
1318. 00:56:15 The secret.
1319. 00:56:16 You wanna know what the secret is, Mike?
1320. 00:56:18 What is the secret?
1321. 00:56:20 Do good work and share it with people.
1322. 00:56:22 It's not really a secret.
1323. 00:56:23 Sounds so simple.
1324. 00:56:25 It is very simple to say.
1325. 00:56:27 (both laughing)
1326. 00:56:31 Do good work and share it with people.
1327. 00:56:33 This is, yeah, what is good.
1328. 00:56:36 The thing here is that work on making things quality
1329. 00:56:41 as per your mind and share it.
1330. 00:56:45 You know, people, one of the things he calls out in here
1331. 00:56:47 is like how do you become found?
1332. 00:56:49 Like how do people find you?
1333. 00:56:51 And he mentions like you should relish the fact
1334. 00:56:54 that you're not found upfront
1335. 00:56:57 and take advantage of the fact that nobody knows who you are
1336. 00:57:00 because it gives you a chance to publish things
1337. 00:57:01 without dealing with all of the ramifications
1338. 00:57:05 of emails and support.
1339. 00:57:07 And did I get this paid or did I get that?
1340. 00:57:09 Or who's doing what?
1341. 00:57:10 And admins and such.
1342. 00:57:12 Like you don't have any of that.
1343. 00:57:13 You can just focus on the art side of it.
1344. 00:57:16 That's a big value and you don't even realize it's there.
1345. 00:57:19 Yeah.
1346. 00:57:20 I wish I had thought about that more.
1347. 00:57:22 (both laughing)
1348. 00:57:24 Exactly.
1349. 00:57:25 Makes your approach to the things
1350. 00:57:30 that you are currently doing, speaking for you, I guess,
1351. 00:57:33 but for myself too, a little bit different, right?
1352. 00:57:36 Yeah.
1353. 00:57:38 Yeah.
1354. 00:57:39 Let's just enjoy the fact that we are the size we are
1355. 00:57:42 and talk about what we want to talk about.
1356. 00:57:45 There's a lot of benefits that come with that
1357. 00:57:47 that you don't realize when you're just chasing a goal.
1358. 00:57:51 Enjoy the journey.
1359. 00:57:53 One of the things I liked about this chapter
1360. 00:57:57 is the encouragement to give your secrets away.
1361. 00:58:01 I don't know what you think your secrets are,
1362. 00:58:06 but I don't think it needs to be something
1363. 00:58:09 completely profound.
1364. 00:58:11 One of the things that I thought of
1365. 00:58:13 because every time I share it with people,
1366. 00:58:14 they are kind of blown away by it when they try it
1367. 00:58:18 is the three questions from my personal retreat course.
1368. 00:58:21 What should I start doing?
1369. 00:58:22 What should I stop doing?
1370. 00:58:23 What should I keep doing?
1371. 00:58:24 For a long time I felt like,
1372. 00:58:26 well, I can talk about the personal retreat stuff
1373. 00:58:27 and the value of that whole process,
1374. 00:58:29 but I can't give away those questions
1375. 00:58:32 because that's what makes it all work.
1376. 00:58:35 Right.
1377. 00:58:35 And that whatever, take the questions.
1378. 00:58:37 Who cares?
1379. 00:58:38 (laughs)
1380. 00:58:39 Yeah.
1381. 00:58:40 One of the things that he defined as a secret was Bob Ross.
1382. 00:58:45 And when he used that example,
1383. 00:58:49 I knew immediately what he was talking about
1384. 00:58:52 because there is a sushi place near us
1385. 00:58:55 that my wife and I love.
1386. 00:58:56 It's so good and we go there almost every week
1387. 00:59:01 for our date night.
1388. 00:59:02 They just do all this like crazy kind of sushi.
1389. 00:59:05 They've got fried rolls, they've got baked rolls.
1390. 00:59:08 Really, really good.
1391. 00:59:09 And it's like this old martini bar that you go in
1392. 00:59:14 and they have these TVs up on the wall.
1393. 00:59:18 And every time we go in there,
1394. 00:59:20 they are playing Bob Ross videos.
1395. 00:59:23 And so I see the happy little trees almost every week.
1396. 00:59:26 (laughs)
1397. 00:59:28 And it occurred to me watching these
1398. 00:59:30 'cause I don't know when these were filmed.
1399. 00:59:32 These are old.
1400. 00:59:33 It's a while back, yeah.
1401. 00:59:35 I'm like, "Bob Ross is the OG YouTuber."
1402. 00:59:37 (laughs)
1403. 00:59:38 He's just up there doing his thing,
1404. 00:59:41 showing people how to do this.
1405. 00:59:43 He doesn't care.
1406. 00:59:44 Like just go ahead, copy what I'm doing.
1407. 00:59:47 And that's what made him successful.
1408. 00:59:50 And so when Austin's talking about that
1409. 00:59:54 and he's saying, "Be like Bob Ross, basically."
1410. 00:59:57 I was already thinking that way.
1411. 00:59:58 And I was like, "Yeah, just share it."
1412. 01:00:01 And YouTube is interesting
1413. 01:00:03 because the way that you make money on YouTube is not,
1414. 01:00:06 well, I guess you could like sell your own stuff
1415. 01:00:09 if you go to audience big enough
1416. 01:00:10 but the way that a lot of people get paid on YouTube
1417. 01:00:13 is they just do exactly what Bob Ross was doing.
1418. 01:00:16 And they do it long enough and consistent enough
1419. 01:00:18 and they monetize
1420. 01:00:21 because they've attracted enough attention.
1421. 01:00:23 And the way you're gonna attract enough attention
1422. 01:00:25 is just keep giving stuff away.
1423. 01:00:27 So that's very different than my paradigm on
1424. 01:00:32 content creation, I guess, is looking for a better term
1425. 01:00:35 but I can't think of one.
1426. 01:00:37 The stuff that we make and like giving away parts of it
1427. 01:00:40 but keeping the real good stuff behind a paywall,
1428. 01:00:43 that's kind of how I used to think about it.
1429. 01:00:45 And ever since part time, YouTube or Academy
1430. 01:00:47 and reading this book was another push in that direction.
1431. 01:00:52 It's like, just share it.
1432. 01:00:54 - Yeah, it's scary to do that though.
1433. 01:00:57 - It is. - Because you feel like
1434. 01:00:59 once I've given this out,
1435. 01:01:00 everybody's gonna be just like me.
1436. 01:01:02 Like, well, it's not true.
1437. 01:01:05 It's not true at all.
1438. 01:01:07 Like I know that, and this is a little bit different realm
1439. 01:01:09 but we regularly have other churches come and tour
1440. 01:01:13 our church from a text dance.
1441. 01:01:16 They wanna like see what we're doing and how.
1442. 01:01:19 And I have toured other churches that are bigger than us
1443. 01:01:22 to just see how they're doing things as well.
1444. 01:01:25 And every once in a while, you will run across a church
1445. 01:01:29 that's like, no, we don't do that.
1446. 01:01:31 And it's always like, huh, interesting.
1447. 01:01:35 Like, we're churches together.
1448. 01:01:37 Like from a Christian stance, like we're working together
1449. 01:01:40 towards the same mission
1450. 01:01:42 but you don't wanna share that you're quote unquote secrets.
1451. 01:01:46 And that's ultimately what a lot of folks are.
1452. 01:01:49 Like they don't want other people
1453. 01:01:51 to start producing the exact same thing they are.
1454. 01:01:53 Like, well, we're not.
1455. 01:01:55 (laughs)
1456. 01:01:56 I don't want to be like you in that sense.
1457. 01:01:58 I just wanna know how you're doing it.
1458. 01:02:00 And then I wanna morph that into what I'm doing.
1459. 01:02:03 I'm gonna steal some of what you're doing
1460. 01:02:05 into what I'm doing, but I'm not copying that exactly.
1461. 01:02:09 I don't want to.
1462. 01:02:10 So it is interesting whenever you come across that,
1463. 01:02:13 that when people have that sense, like those churches,
1464. 01:02:17 I don't want anything to do with anymore.
1465. 01:02:19 Like it's just completely weird how that happens.
1466. 01:02:23 But other churches that, like in other groups
1467. 01:02:25 that I can have that connection point with,
1468. 01:02:28 I kinda wanna know more about them
1469. 01:02:30 and you have a closer relationship with them.
1470. 01:02:33 So it is just kind of fascinating.
1471. 01:02:35 (laughs)
1472. 01:02:37 - Indeed.
1473. 01:02:38 - All right, let's go on to the next one,
1474. 01:02:40 which is geography is no longer our master.
1475. 01:02:46 Basically, you can go anywhere you want,
1476. 01:02:49 which isn't true.
1477. 01:02:51 I actually had a hard time fitting this one in.
1478. 01:02:54 Like really?
1479. 01:02:54 - I love the chapters here.
1480. 01:02:55 I felt like made a lot of sense.
1481. 01:02:58 This one, maybe I need you to explain this one for me
1482. 01:03:01 because geography is no longer our master.
1483. 01:03:04 He goes on about how you can pick where you are
1484. 01:03:08 because of the way life works today, which isn't wrong.
1485. 01:03:14 So you need to pick a place that you want to be
1486. 01:03:17 and build from there.
1487. 01:03:19 But there's so much of my history that's around
1488. 01:03:22 where you are is a part of who you are.
1489. 01:03:25 And I guess I have a hard time just connecting that.
1490. 01:03:29 Maybe that's the farm boy in me coming out.
1491. 01:03:31 I'm not sure what it is. - Sure.
1492. 01:03:32 - So maybe I need you to take this one.
1493. 01:03:35 - Well, that's certainly part of it.
1494. 01:03:38 But I don't think that's the whole thing.
1495. 01:03:43 One of the things he says in this chapter
1496. 01:03:45 is that there's always a community
1497. 01:03:47 that you can connect with online.
1498. 01:03:50 And that is more true now than it has ever been.
1499. 01:03:55 Remember, this is the 10th anniversary edition.
1500. 01:03:57 So this was written 10 years ago.
1501. 01:04:00 But it was probably about 10 years ago,
1502. 01:04:02 maybe not quite that long,
1503. 01:04:04 when I was doing that exact thing,
1504. 01:04:08 but I did not realize it
1505. 01:04:10 because I was downloading podcasts for productivity nerds
1506. 01:04:15 and people who were a part of the Apple community,
1507. 01:04:18 even though I had never met or been with any of these people.
1508. 01:04:23 I was actually, the big thing in the Apple world
1509. 01:04:28 was the Macworld Conference,
1510. 01:04:30 and it was in California.
1511. 01:04:32 I'm in Wisconsin.
1512. 01:04:34 So I had finally convinced somebody who lived in San Diego
1513. 01:04:38 to go with me so I wouldn't have to be there alone.
1514. 01:04:42 The year that it got put on hiatus
1515. 01:04:44 and obviously it never came back.
1516. 01:04:46 So I never had a chance to go to that,
1517. 01:04:47 never had a chance to go to WWDC and Unconference,
1518. 01:04:50 any of that stuff.
1519. 01:04:51 But that same year,
1520. 01:04:54 I also took the first step of going
1521. 01:04:57 and getting involved with that real community
1522. 01:04:59 by driving down to Macstock, not so obviously a small,
1523. 01:05:02 a small portion of Macworld, WWDC,
1524. 01:05:06 all those kinds of people.
1525. 01:05:08 But my point is that I was listening to those podcasts
1526. 01:05:12 and so I felt like I had a seat at the table.
1527. 01:05:15 I was allowing those people to speak into my life,
1528. 01:05:18 even though it wasn't a two-way conversation.
1529. 01:05:20 It didn't even need to be.
1530. 01:05:23 I was around my people and I couldn't find them
1531. 01:05:27 where I lived.
1532. 01:05:28 So I just, that was one way that I interacted with them,
1533. 01:05:36 quote unquote, interacted.
1534. 01:05:38 Then Macstock was another one
1535. 01:05:39 and there's different forums and things
1536. 01:05:42 that different communities that I've engaged with
1537. 01:05:45 over the years, there's lots of different vectors
1538. 01:05:49 into these communities.
1539. 01:05:52 And I think that is the main point here
1540. 01:05:55 with Geography is no longer our master.
1541. 01:05:57 I do agree with them on some level.
1542. 01:05:59 I'm not gonna pick up a move either.
1543. 01:06:01 I've got five kids, we're real involved
1544. 01:06:02 with the church that we're at.
1545. 01:06:04 But if I wanted to, it would not be impossible.
1546. 01:06:09 I work for a company that is local,
1547. 01:06:12 but it's basically a remote.
1548. 01:06:14 Most of the team is remote.
1549. 01:06:16 And I could go work from anywhere in the world
1550. 01:06:20 if I wanted to because that's just like the way
1551. 01:06:22 that the world is changing.
1552. 01:06:24 I'm not going to for several other reasons
1553. 01:06:27 and it's easier to do when you don't have
1554. 01:06:28 a whole bunch of roots planted in a specific area.
1555. 01:06:31 But that was the big thing
1556. 01:06:34 that would hold people back a lot of times.
1557. 01:06:35 It's like, well, if I pick up and move,
1558. 01:06:38 I'm not gonna have a job.
1559. 01:06:39 How am I gonna pay my bills?
1560. 01:06:40 Like, there are a lot of scenarios
1561. 01:06:42 where that is not necessarily the thing
1562. 01:06:45 that is gonna be holding you back.
1563. 01:06:47 But then also you don't have to physically
1564. 01:06:50 be in those locations either.
1565. 01:06:52 You can find other ways to connect
1566. 01:06:53 without the borders.
1567. 01:06:58 - So maybe I took this wrong.
1568. 01:07:00 'Cause the way I took it was he was advocating for moving.
1569. 01:07:04 To a place with people.
1570. 01:07:07 - There definitely was a hint of that.
1571. 01:07:08 - 'Cause that was the part that stood out to me.
1572. 01:07:10 It's like the part of like,
1573. 01:07:11 you can connect to any community you want online today,
1574. 01:07:15 knowing that this is 10 years old.
1575. 01:07:18 In today's world, it's even more so true.
1576. 01:07:20 The concern I had was like,
1577. 01:07:24 if he's advocating for moving,
1578. 01:07:26 so that you can be around people
1579. 01:07:28 or an area that helps you be creative.
1580. 01:07:32 Like, it's not necessarily wrong.
1581. 01:07:34 But being someone who advocates
1582. 01:07:37 for putting down deep roots
1583. 01:07:40 and working through difficulties,
1584. 01:07:42 whether you want to be through them or not,
1585. 01:07:45 like I feel like that's,
1586. 01:07:47 there's value in that.
1587. 01:07:50 And leaving for the sake of creativity,
1588. 01:07:52 I feel like sets a standard and makes it
1589. 01:07:57 a little too open ended.
1590. 01:07:59 Like this is where like constraints
1591. 01:08:02 or when creativity thrives, it's that concept.
1592. 01:08:05 And if you take away the constraint of geography
1593. 01:08:09 for the sake of creativity,
1594. 01:08:10 it feels like a backwards move to me.
1595. 01:08:13 - Well, maybe I'm weird in that.
1596. 01:08:16 - I would say it's not removing the constraint
1597. 01:08:20 for creativity, but it is removing the excuse
1598. 01:08:24 for creativity where you would say,
1599. 01:08:27 "I can't do this because I'm not by these other people
1600. 01:08:31 "who are doing this thing."
1601. 01:08:32 - Sure.
1602. 01:08:33 Yeah, and that I get.
1603. 01:08:36 Like if you're a filmmaker,
1604. 01:08:41 you're probably moving to LA,
1605. 01:08:44 somewhere in that area is my guess,
1606. 01:08:46 at some point in life.
1607. 01:08:48 Like that's just the way it works.
1608. 01:08:50 So like things like that I get,
1609. 01:08:52 you know, if you're gonna be someone who's photographing,
1610. 01:08:57 icebergs, living in the depths of Kansas
1611. 01:09:01 probably isn't a good idea.
1612. 01:09:03 Like there's some pieces of this that I totally get,
1613. 01:09:07 but for the general average person,
1614. 01:09:09 like those are exceptions.
1615. 01:09:11 Those aren't the rule, I wouldn't say.
1616. 01:09:13 - Yep.
1617. 01:09:14 - So I think maybe that's where I was getting, anyway.
1618. 01:09:17 This could just be me, like,
1619. 01:09:19 - I just wanna stay where I am.
1620. 01:09:21 Like that's totally what it is.
1621. 01:09:24 So it was a little bit,
1622. 01:09:27 I don't wanna say it's off-putting
1623. 01:09:28 and it's not wrong, I don't think.
1624. 01:09:29 It was just a little bit like,
1625. 01:09:30 hey, I guess maybe I'm not following
1626. 01:09:32 what he was trying to get at, but I-
1627. 01:09:36 - Let me try to explain this book in a nutshell
1628. 01:09:41 from my perspective.
1629. 01:09:44 He's got these 10 different chapters,
1630. 01:09:46 which are like these big ideas.
1631. 01:09:48 And then inside there,
1632. 01:09:49 he's basically sharing every idea he's had
1633. 01:09:53 that fits under that heading.
1634. 01:09:54 Much like Derek Sivers, in my opinion.
1635. 01:09:57 And if you've read any of Derek Sivers' books,
1636. 01:10:00 there tends to be contradictory advice in those books.
1637. 01:10:05 And you're not intended to follow it all.
1638. 01:10:07 You're intended to take the ones
1639. 01:10:09 that resonate with you and do something with them.
1640. 01:10:12 And he's kind of explicit in saying,
1641. 01:10:14 like, these are just all my ideas.
1642. 01:10:16 Austin Cleon doesn't say that.
1643. 01:10:18 So maybe that's where you feel like
1644. 01:10:20 this doesn't reconcile in your brain.
1645. 01:10:23 But when I read that part about physically moving,
1646. 01:10:26 that's the way I interpreted it
1647. 01:10:27 through the Derek Sivers lens.
1648. 01:10:29 It was like, oh, this is just another way
1649. 01:10:30 that this geography is no longer our master.
1650. 01:10:33 It could be manifested.
1651. 01:10:34 And this one doesn't apply to me 'cause I ain't moving.
1652. 01:10:37 - Right, right.
1653. 01:10:38 And that was kind of the reaction I had.
1654. 01:10:40 I was like, I'm not doing that.
1655. 01:10:42 And then moved on, but it was,
1656. 01:10:44 I think that's a good point to bring up
1657. 01:10:46 'cause like in my head,
1658. 01:10:47 this was all supposed to work together.
1659. 01:10:49 So thanks for calling that out
1660. 01:10:51 because it's not actually true.
1661. 01:10:52 And I don't know that he would even say it's true
1662. 01:10:54 'cause I don't think he even called that out specifically
1663. 01:10:57 that this is all, you need to do all of these.
1664. 01:10:59 Like, no, that's not what he's said anywhere in this at all.
1665. 01:11:04 So don't take it that way.
1666. 01:11:05 - I don't know if he would explicitly say it
1667. 01:11:09 the way that Derek Sivers says it
1668. 01:11:10 in the introduction of some of his books,
1669. 01:11:12 but that's my interpretation of how this chapter
1670. 01:11:17 specifically was put together
1671. 01:11:18 and how I flowed with what he was sharing.
1672. 01:11:22 - Sure, makes sense.
1673. 01:11:24 - And that's general advice for anybody reading any book.
1674. 01:11:27 Take the stuff you like and discard everything else.
1675. 01:11:31 - Yum.
1676. 01:11:33 - If you find yourself completely agreeing
1677. 01:11:34 with everything in a book, that's a red flag.
1678. 01:11:37 - Or it's a really good book.
1679. 01:11:38 - One of the two,
1680. 01:11:40 the only ones I can really think of
1681. 01:11:43 or yeah, I absolutely agree with everything
1682. 01:11:45 this author is saying is the ones
1683. 01:11:47 like the Victor Frankl books that we just finished
1684. 01:11:50 because that's totally--
1685. 01:11:51 - Let's look into my head.
1686. 01:11:52 - Yeah.
1687. 01:11:53 - Okay, so you read a Victor Frankl book
1688. 01:11:54 and you agreed with everything he said.
1689. 01:11:56 - But that's his experience.
1690. 01:11:58 He's telling you this is what I learned
1691. 01:12:01 when I was in the concentration camp.
1692. 01:12:02 How can you possibly in our point in history,
1693. 01:12:07 go back and say I disagree with that?
1694. 01:12:11 - Right.
1695. 01:12:12 - So it's different.
1696. 01:12:13 I think a lot of the books in the productivity space
1697. 01:12:16 try to be either intentionally or not,
1698. 01:12:20 this is how you should do things.
1699. 01:12:25 And any book that says this is how you should do things,
1700. 01:12:30 you should not do everything it says.
1701. 01:12:33 You should find one or two things that click for you,
1702. 01:12:37 but you should absolutely not try to do it all.
1703. 01:12:41 - Yes.
1704. 01:12:42 And this is a part that I'm not going to do.
1705. 01:12:44 I'm not moving, not going anywhere at all.
1706. 01:12:47 However, I will go to the next chapter,
1707. 01:12:50 which is chapter eight, be nice,
1708. 01:12:53 which is just that.
1709. 01:12:54 Be nice, Mike.
1710. 01:12:57 Don't be mean.
1711. 01:12:58 Because in the world of online,
1712. 01:13:02 if you're mean, people will find out about it
1713. 01:13:05 and it doesn't look good for you.
1714. 01:13:08 And don't try to stab people behind the back
1715. 01:13:11 because people can figure it out.
1716. 01:13:12 Because guess what?
1717. 01:13:13 It's a log of everything anymore.
1718. 01:13:15 And when you've been mean to somebody,
1719. 01:13:17 it's out there and you cannot delete it.
1720. 01:13:20 Good luck.
1721. 01:13:21 - So never forgets.
1722. 01:13:24 - Yes, totally.
1723. 01:13:26 Never, never, never forgets.
1724. 01:13:28 So yeah, I mean, Mike is always mean.
1725. 01:13:32 (laughing)
1726. 01:13:34 - I can be.
1727. 01:13:38 So my four year old, whenever we watch a movie,
1728. 01:13:43 there's a bad guy, right?
1729. 01:13:47 And every time she identifies the bad guy
1730. 01:13:50 acting in a way which is mean,
1731. 01:13:52 she tries to say he's a jerk,
1732. 01:13:56 but it usually comes across as he's a joke.
1733. 01:13:59 (laughing)
1734. 01:14:01 So we've just internalized that as a family.
1735. 01:14:04 And anytime we see somebody being a jerk,
1736. 01:14:07 we say that he's a joke.
1737. 01:14:09 (laughing)
1738. 01:14:11 - I like it.
1739. 01:14:12 - And there are so many jokes online.
1740. 01:14:16 It's easy to spot them.
1741. 01:14:18 - Totally.
1742. 01:14:19 - But yes, this is not hard.
1743. 01:14:23 Look to give more than you take,
1744. 01:14:27 really is what this boils down to.
1745. 01:14:30 I wrote a book for our men's ministry at Define.
1746. 01:14:34 I think it's called "Maximize Manhood"
1747. 01:14:36 by Ed Cole.
1748. 01:14:38 He talks about love versus lust.
1749. 01:14:40 Love is a desire to benefit the other at the expense of self.
1750. 01:14:43 Lust is the desire to benefit self
1751. 01:14:45 at the expense of others.
1752. 01:14:47 So from a religious context where you're supposed to
1753. 01:14:51 love everybody, that's kind of what that looks like to me
1754. 01:14:55 is don't look at what you can get.
1755. 01:14:58 Look at what you can give.
1756. 01:14:59 You can apply that through whatever other lens you want.
1757. 01:15:04 But that's what I view this as.
1758. 01:15:06 And one of the coolest stories from this book
1759. 01:15:09 is it found in this chapter where he talks about
1760. 01:15:12 Harold Ramis.
1761. 01:15:14 I don't know how to say last names, I'm sorry.
1762. 01:15:17 But he said, find the most talented person in the room
1763. 01:15:19 and if it's not, you go stand next to him,
1764. 01:15:21 hang out with him, try to be helpful.
1765. 01:15:23 That's great advice.
1766. 01:15:25 And I feel like that's essentially
1767. 01:15:27 what my online career has been.
1768. 01:15:29 (laughing)
1769. 01:15:31 It's just trying to be nice, trying to help people
1770. 01:15:33 and then when you help someone, they're like,
1771. 01:15:35 hey, that actually that was pretty cool you want to do.
1772. 01:15:36 So the thing, and that opens up a lot of other
1773. 01:15:39 opportunities for you.
1774. 01:15:40 - Yeah, and he's got a thing in here
1775. 01:15:43 is like make friends, ignore enemies.
1776. 01:15:45 This is totally a, in the world of online,
1777. 01:15:51 ignore your trolls, they do exist, they're all over.
1778. 01:15:55 If you're doing anything of any worth or value,
1779. 01:15:58 they will find you.
1780. 01:15:59 - Mm-hmm.
1781. 01:16:00 - And as you're getting into YouTube,
1782. 01:16:01 there are lots and lots of trolls on YouTube.
1783. 01:16:04 - Oh, I know.
1784. 01:16:05 I've seen quite a few of them already.
1785. 01:16:10 - Yep.
1786. 01:16:10 - So the one video that's kind of taken off
1787. 01:16:12 has been like the cross-reference library
1788. 01:16:14 I do for my sermon sketch notes
1789. 01:16:15 and I get comments all the time about,
1790. 01:16:18 oh my goodness, I'm so sick of these Bible thumpers
1791. 01:16:21 talking about obsidian.
1792. 01:16:22 Sorry, that's how I use it.
1793. 01:16:24 (laughing)
1794. 01:16:24 - Yep, get over it, it's okay.
1795. 01:16:27 (laughing)
1796. 01:16:29 Yep, later out there.
1797. 01:16:30 All right, let's keep moving.
1798. 01:16:31 Chapter nine, be boring,
1799. 01:16:35 which is just all the little stuff
1800. 01:16:38 about how to get work done.
1801. 01:16:40 Like what does he have in here?
1802. 01:16:42 It's like taking care of yourself,
1803. 01:16:43 staying out of debt, keep your day job.
1804. 01:16:46 Mike, don't quit your day job,
1805. 01:16:48 according to Austin Clean.
1806. 01:16:49 Which is kind of going back to what we were talking about
1807. 01:16:51 with like side projects and stuff.
1808. 01:16:53 Get yourself a calendar, keep a log book,
1809. 01:16:56 which is what he's referring to as far as
1810. 01:16:59 like the, keep the chain.
1811. 01:17:02 Like if you've got a calendar,
1812. 01:17:03 like did I do it today or not?
1813. 01:17:06 It's kind of that concept.
1814. 01:17:07 - Yeah, he mentions Jerry Seinfeld in this chapter,
1815. 01:17:11 but we don't need to go into all of that 'cause yeah.
1816. 01:17:15 - So yeah, I mean, these are all the,
1817. 01:17:17 like super short productivity advice sort of things,
1818. 01:17:23 not all, but to somewhat,
1819. 01:17:26 and that's what he's getting at.
1820. 01:17:28 He's like, do the boring stuff
1821. 01:17:30 so that you can get the work done.
1822. 01:17:33 So you can do the creativity thing.
1823. 01:17:35 And he's not wrong, like absolutely not wrong.
1824. 01:17:38 So he gets the whole concept of, you know,
1825. 01:17:40 show up and do the thing every day,
1826. 01:17:42 build routines, build habits,
1827. 01:17:44 keep track of it so that you don't break the chain.
1828. 01:17:47 Like these are all very standard,
1829. 01:17:49 I guess recommendations,
1830. 01:17:51 and not really anything I was surprised by,
1831. 01:17:55 other than the fact that he was calling it boring
1832. 01:17:57 to do all of those things,
1833. 01:17:59 which I figured you wouldn't be too thrilled about.
1834. 01:18:01 I was like, no, that's the exciting part.
1835. 01:18:02 Like building habits and routines, that's not boring.
1836. 01:18:05 - Like, well, it is when you first encounter it.
1837. 01:18:08 - It totally is. - If you're looking
1838. 01:18:09 at somebody that you admire,
1839. 01:18:12 and you're like, I wanna do what they do,
1840. 01:18:15 and you see what they produce, their art.
1841. 01:18:18 - Yep.
1842. 01:18:19 - And then you get to know them
1843. 01:18:20 and you see how they actually make it.
1844. 01:18:23 There's always a little bit of a let down.
1845. 01:18:25 - Always. - It's like, always is.
1846. 01:18:26 - I thought this was gonna be a lot more impressive
1847. 01:18:29 than it really is.
1848. 01:18:30 - It always seems like it should be like
1849. 01:18:32 some big fanfare filled,
1850. 01:18:35 bouncy houses to make my painting all this stuff.
1851. 01:18:38 And it's like, oh no, he gets up at five in the morning
1852. 01:18:41 and does the same thing every single day.
1853. 01:18:44 That's boring.
1854. 01:18:46 - That's why people gravitate towards the tools
1855. 01:18:48 and the apps I feel.
1856. 01:18:50 - Oh sure. - Because it's new,
1857. 01:18:52 it's approachable, I can just throw money at this thing.
1858. 01:18:55 And then this is gonna provide the breath of life
1859. 01:18:59 into the habit or the routine.
1860. 01:19:01 No, it's not.
1861. 01:19:03 You gotta deal with the motivation.
1862. 01:19:05 You just gotta show up every day.
1863. 01:19:07 - Yep.
1864. 01:19:08 - And you're right, when you do that long enough,
1865. 01:19:09 you see the results that come from it,
1866. 01:19:11 and that provides excitement.
1867. 01:19:13 But when you first encounter that idea of like,
1868. 01:19:15 so I just gotta write for an hour before I go to the office.
1869. 01:19:20 - Yeah, you do.
1870. 01:19:22 (laughs)
1871. 01:19:23 - You do.
1872. 01:19:24 - Yup, and if you're gonna be a YouTuber,
1873. 01:19:26 you gotta write scripts and record and edit, like every day.
1874. 01:19:30 - Yep.
1875. 01:19:31 - Welcome.
1876. 01:19:32 - There is a quote in this though
1877. 01:19:33 that I wanted to talk about.
1878. 01:19:36 Page 125 says,
1879. 01:19:38 "The trick is to find a day job that pays decently
1880. 01:19:41 doesn't make you want to vomit
1881. 01:19:43 and leaves you with enough energy
1882. 01:19:45 to make things in your spare time."
1883. 01:19:46 This is great advice.
1884. 01:19:49 (laughs)
1885. 01:19:53 This is unbelievably good advice.
1886. 01:19:57 I wish I would have caught this
1887. 01:20:00 the first time I encountered it.
1888. 01:20:03 Not that I regret anything about my journey
1889. 01:20:07 and how it's played out here.
1890. 01:20:08 But one of the things I have noticed,
1891. 01:20:11 having reflected on the last several years,
1892. 01:20:14 and the last couple of years specifically,
1893. 01:20:16 being a part of the Vlanc Media Team,
1894. 01:20:17 I loved my time there.
1895. 01:20:19 I loved working with all those people.
1896. 01:20:22 I recognize though that I had pressure
1897. 01:20:27 to create on a regular basis.
1898. 01:20:31 It was my job.
1899. 01:20:32 It was what I was getting paid for.
1900. 01:20:34 And it feels kind of nice not to have that anymore.
1901. 01:20:39 I don't know how to explain this.
1902. 01:20:45 And I hope this comes across the right way.
1903. 01:20:50 I really had no intention of leaving Vlanc Media.
1904. 01:20:53 I kind of stumbled into an opportunity
1905. 01:20:56 that was too good to say no to.
1906. 01:20:59 And it was an opportunity for me to grow in areas
1907. 01:21:03 that I was curious about,
1908. 01:21:07 relating to business and management.
1909. 01:21:09 But I've found that with creating on the side
1910. 01:21:18 and not having the pressure of,
1911. 01:21:20 gotta have this workshop this month,
1912. 01:21:23 or get this course done by this time.
1913. 01:21:26 I'm kind of driven and I wanna get stuff out there,
1914. 01:21:29 regular basis anyways,
1915. 01:21:30 and podcasts sort of do that with every other week.
1916. 01:21:33 But that's a little bit different.
1917. 01:21:36 This doesn't feel to me like I'm making something
1918. 01:21:41 from a quality standard.
1919. 01:21:43 I mean, yes, there is because we've done it long enough.
1920. 01:21:46 I've been able to delegate a bunch of that stuff.
1921. 01:21:48 But this kind of feels like I'm just showing up
1922. 01:21:50 and talking to my friend as opposed to like a YouTube video
1923. 01:21:55 where I could always tweak that until it's good enough.
1924. 01:21:57 And then I release it or a blog post
1925. 01:22:00 where you continue to tweak things until it's good enough
1926. 01:22:02 and you publish it.
1927. 01:22:03 Does that make sense?
1928. 01:22:04 - Mm-hmm, yeah, absolutely.
1929. 01:22:06 - So-- - Because it's more like documenting
1930. 01:22:08 an existing thing you're going to do anyway,
1931. 01:22:11 instead of creating something out of nothing.
1932. 01:22:13 - Yeah, yeah, this, I mean,
1933. 01:22:15 podcasts for me have always just been like a moment in time.
1934. 01:22:17 And this is what I was thinking about at that moment.
1935. 01:22:19 I guess blog posts and videos are kind of that way,
1936. 01:22:22 that way too, but not having to do that on a schedule
1937. 01:22:27 or being able to just chuck that schedule
1938. 01:22:29 and say, you know what, I don't feel like it today.
1939. 01:22:32 Giving myself permission to do that
1940. 01:22:33 and not having the way that I provide for my family
1941. 01:22:38 be affected by that.
1942. 01:22:40 A lot of stuff that I do on the side,
1943. 01:22:44 like focus podcasts, we sell ads and things like that.
1944. 01:22:47 So if I were to say, you know, I don't want to do this anymore,
1945. 01:22:49 I would feel that a little bit,
1946. 01:22:51 but it's not the primary thing.
1947. 01:22:53 - Right. - There's no pressure
1948. 01:22:55 to continue to do that as a job.
1949. 01:22:59 It's something that I can just do
1950. 01:23:01 and I don't have to do the SEO if I don't want to.
1951. 01:23:05 And I don't have to follow the formulas
1952. 01:23:07 for the headlines to get the clicks if I don't want to.
1953. 01:23:10 I can just be me if I want to.
1954. 01:23:12 - Yep. - And that's good enough.
1955. 01:23:14 And that feels really, really good.
1956. 01:23:17 - I find that the people that I follow online,
1957. 01:23:20 that I really, really respect
1958. 01:23:22 and that I get the most from are people with day jobs
1959. 01:23:26 and it's not their main thing.
1960. 01:23:27 Do you feel that way?
1961. 01:23:29 Maybe this is me, but I feel like the people
1962. 01:23:31 that I really love learning from
1963. 01:23:33 are people who have a day job like I do
1964. 01:23:36 and can do the sort of thing on this side.
1965. 01:23:38 It's kind of like they're living it
1966. 01:23:40 and making stuff about it at the same time.
1967. 01:23:43 - Yeah, I think maybe.
1968. 01:23:46 I think that can be the case.
1969. 01:23:47 I don't think it has to be the case,
1970. 01:23:48 but I also see a whole bunch of people lately
1971. 01:23:52 who quit their day job to do their art full time
1972. 01:23:57 and the online community tends to celebrate that.
1973. 01:24:00 One of them is my focus co-host, David Sparks.
1974. 01:24:03 And I'm happy for David that he is able to do that.
1975. 01:24:06 But what I don't like or what I think is dangerous
1976. 01:24:09 is putting people like that and John Syracuse
1977. 01:24:12 and the other people have done that
1978. 01:24:15 and they tend to get put on a pedestal
1979. 01:24:19 and then kind of subconsciously everybody else
1980. 01:24:22 who's making anything,
1981. 01:24:24 there's implicit pressure to do that too.
1982. 01:24:29 And there shouldn't be.
1983. 01:24:31 I think the ideal way for most people to do this
1984. 01:24:35 is exactly what Austin Cleon talks about,
1985. 01:24:37 exactly what Derek Sivers talks about.
1986. 01:24:40 Just do the day job
1987. 01:24:41 and it's actually a benefit that that doesn't have
1988. 01:24:44 to drive the art.
1989. 01:24:45 And then on the side, you can go do the art
1990. 01:24:49 and it can just be what it is.
1991. 01:24:51 There's no pressure to make it into something that it's not.
1992. 01:24:53 - Right, I'm with you.
1993. 01:24:55 All right, let's go to our last chapter here,
1994. 01:24:57 which is creativity is subtraction,
1995. 01:25:00 which is 100% true.
1996. 01:25:04 Like whenever, if you wanna use the video concept,
1997. 01:25:07 you record a big bank of video
1998. 01:25:11 and when you're done,
1999. 01:25:12 it's usually less than 10% of what you recorded
2000. 01:25:15 or even less than that.
2001. 01:25:17 I just did a big video project
2002. 01:25:19 for an afternoon session.
2003. 01:25:22 The video, the part that I'm referring to
2004. 01:25:25 was three and a half minutes long.
2005. 01:25:27 When I guess how much raw footage I had
2006. 01:25:29 for that three and a half minute video mic.
2007. 01:25:32 So somewhere in the realm of four and a half hours
2008. 01:25:35 worth of raw footage that went into that three and a half minutes,
2009. 01:25:40 it was nuts.
2010. 01:25:41 And that's absolutely what he's getting at here.
2011. 01:25:43 It's like whenever you sit down and write something,
2012. 01:25:45 you always write it to be significantly longer
2013. 01:25:48 than what you're gonna end up with
2014. 01:25:49 'cause you're gonna edit it down.
2015. 01:25:51 And the creative part is knowing what to keep
2016. 01:25:56 and what to get rid of.
2017. 01:25:57 That's the part that's really difficult and unique to you.
2018. 01:26:03 So as we're talking about steel like an artist,
2019. 01:26:05 you steal, take ideas, connect dots
2020. 01:26:09 from a lot of different people to make a thing.
2021. 01:26:12 And then knowing what parts of that thing to remove
2022. 01:26:15 is what makes you you.
2023. 01:26:16 That's kind of the way I took this, which I really like.
2024. 01:26:21 - That is one approach.
2025. 01:26:22 That's not the angle I took from this.
2026. 01:26:24 - Okay.
2027. 01:26:25 - Go for it.
2028. 01:26:26 - I agree with that 100% by the way.
2029. 01:26:28 That is absolutely true.
2030. 01:26:29 When you start with something,
2031. 01:26:34 basically what makes it great is the stuff that you take away.
2032. 01:26:36 I'm not sure if you talked about that
2033. 01:26:38 with the Michelangelo's David and stuff like that,
2034. 01:26:41 but I've heard that story before where
2035. 01:26:44 I just chipped away all the excess stuff
2036. 01:26:48 and what was already there came out
2037. 01:26:50 was kind of the story that people tell.
2038. 01:26:53 But I took this in terms of the actual process.
2039. 01:26:56 So just getting started with creating
2040. 01:26:59 'cause one of the things he says in this chapter
2041. 01:27:01 is that nothing is more paralyzing
2042. 01:27:02 than the idea of limitless possibilities.
2043. 01:27:05 And the way to get over a creative block
2044. 01:27:07 is to place constraints on yourself.
2045. 01:27:09 This is also 100% true.
2046. 01:27:14 - Oh yeah, definitely.
2047. 01:27:15 - That's kind of what the Ship30 for 30 program does
2048. 01:27:18 is it gives you constraints.
2049. 01:27:21 You've got these short little essays
2050. 01:27:23 and you're gonna do it every day.
2051. 01:27:25 And just having those constraints has allowed me
2052. 01:27:30 to write and publish for 13 days in a row,
2053. 01:27:33 hopefully going on 30.
2054. 01:27:36 But if you start with,
2055. 01:27:40 I don't know what to write about,
2056. 01:27:42 then the tendency is to go rack your brain
2057. 01:27:45 for the best idea.
2058. 01:27:47 And I've captured a whole bunch of stuff.
2059. 01:27:49 So I looked through those and I kind of sniff test each one
2060. 01:27:53 and no, I don't wanna do that one right now.
2061. 01:27:55 I don't wanna do that one right now.
2062. 01:27:56 Then I got to the end of the list and I'm like,
2063. 01:27:57 oh, that's it.
2064. 01:27:58 I just got a bunch of junk in here.
2065. 01:28:00 But if you just take the first idea
2066. 01:28:03 that you jotted down, first one you encounter in the list,
2067. 01:28:05 like, okay, that's it.
2068. 01:28:06 I'm doing this one.
2069. 01:28:08 You can create something kind of cool from that.
2070. 01:28:10 - You can, absolutely.
2071. 01:28:11 - And then you just get that out there
2072. 01:28:14 and then the next day you pick the next one.
2073. 01:28:19 And then in the meantime, you're replenishing that
2074. 01:28:22 because you build up confidence
2075. 01:28:24 that you can turn any one of these junky ideas
2076. 01:28:26 into a good one that into something valuable
2077. 01:28:30 that you don't judge stuff in the moment anymore.
2078. 01:28:32 You're like, oh, that's an idea, that's interesting.
2079. 01:28:34 I'm just gonna capture that, I'll capture that, capture that.
2080. 01:28:36 And then, like, you put in the reps,
2081. 01:28:40 you place constraints and then you create the momentum,
2082. 01:28:42 you start where you are with what you have.
2083. 01:28:44 It's kind of the phrase I jotted down
2084. 01:28:46 to kind of summarize all this.
2085. 01:28:48 You just start going and then that creates the momentum
2086. 01:28:51 to keep going.
2087. 01:28:53 So I think that's the thing that most creative people
2088. 01:28:58 will struggle with at the beginning.
2089. 01:29:00 Is I don't know where to start.
2090. 01:29:02 I gotta have this awesome idea in order to start
2091. 01:29:04 no, you need to have an idea in order to start.
2092. 01:29:06 It's a quantity problem, not a quality problem.
2093. 01:29:10 And once you have something,
2094. 01:29:13 you have everything that you need in order to start.
2095. 01:29:16 Once you start, then you will find,
2096. 01:29:18 the next kind of fear is that,
2097. 01:29:21 well, I won't find something else to replace that
2098. 01:29:23 once it's gone.
2099. 01:29:24 Yes, you will, especially once you teach yourself
2100. 01:29:26 not to care about the quality,
2101. 01:29:28 you will find something and then you will refine it
2102. 01:29:30 and that thing will be cool too.
2103. 01:29:32 Mateo, 100%.
2104. 01:29:34 This is one of the things that I really like about this book
2105. 01:29:37 in that you can take a lot of different things,
2106. 01:29:40 a lot of different ways inside of this.
2107. 01:29:43 Yes, he has his intended way,
2108. 01:29:46 but he wrote this in such a way that you can interpret it
2109. 01:29:49 a few different directions if you want to,
2110. 01:29:52 which is what I tend to do that with things regularly.
2111. 01:29:55 I tend to conceptualize and try to get my head around
2112. 01:29:59 what is the raw idea.
2113. 01:30:01 They're trying to convey.
2114. 01:30:03 I do that a lot, which is where Mike sometimes
2115. 01:30:06 looks at me funny, like, how did you get that?
2116. 01:30:08 That's usually what's happening.
2117. 01:30:11 But I love that whenever it's possible to do that.
2118. 01:30:15 This is absolutely one of those.
2119. 01:30:17 So yes, you're absolutely right.
2120. 01:30:18 Putting the constraints on is sometimes the best way
2121. 01:30:23 to do it.
2122. 01:30:23 It is all the time, like whenever I'm looking for
2123. 01:30:27 a specific product, open source project
2124. 01:30:31 or something that does a thing I want to do,
2125. 01:30:34 I will mentally put in constraints of things
2126. 01:30:37 that I want it to be able to fit into.
2127. 01:30:39 You probably do this with obsidian plug-ins and such.
2128. 01:30:41 Like here's the thing that I want to happen.
2129. 01:30:44 And here are the constraints that I'm putting in place
2130. 01:30:47 in order to do what I want to do.
2131. 01:30:49 How can I make that happen?
2132. 01:30:51 And there's so many different ways
2133. 01:30:52 that you can come at things, like just trying to find products
2134. 01:30:55 in ways of working with tools.
2135. 01:30:57 It's kind of fun.
2136. 01:30:58 But anyway, constraints.
2137. 01:31:01 Yeah, so there's a lot of different ways
2138. 01:31:03 you could embrace this.
2139. 01:31:04 You could use the technology, say, this is good enough.
2140. 01:31:09 This is my minimum bar like you were talking about.
2141. 01:31:11 That's why I always tell people when you're starting
2142. 01:31:13 with productivity systems and things.
2143. 01:31:15 Start on paper first.
2144. 01:31:16 You can always scale it up.
2145. 01:31:17 But yeah, with paper, you can do anything.
2146. 01:31:19 And then that'll influence the direction that you go.
2147. 01:31:21 You could do this with time constraints.
2148. 01:31:23 One person that comes to mind is,
2149. 01:31:25 I think his name is Jonathan Mann, the song of day guy.
2150. 01:31:28 Yeah, yeah.
2151. 01:31:30 The guy who wrote the ATP theme song,
2152. 01:31:32 literally committed to writing a song every single day.
2153. 01:31:39 And just the act of doing that makes it easier to keep going.
2154. 01:31:45 And then also, if you were here and I could talk to him,
2155. 01:31:48 I'm sure he would say that he's been able to grow his skill
2156. 01:31:51 and develop his art to a higher level, higher quality,
2157. 01:31:55 because he's put in so many reps.
2158. 01:31:56 Yes.
2159. 01:31:57 I think this brings us to the end of the book, Mike,
2160. 01:31:59 which gets us to, he's got an afterward
2161. 01:32:04 where he really just kind of reiterates a lot
2162. 01:32:07 of what we've already covered and talks about how he's moving on,
2163. 01:32:12 I guess.
2164. 01:32:12 He's like, yeah, one of the good things you can do
2165. 01:32:14 is when you create something is don't fixate on it.
2166. 01:32:18 Be willing to move on to the next thing.
2167. 01:32:20 Once you've released something,
2168. 01:32:21 that's kind of the main thing I took away from that.
2169. 01:32:25 So he's like, I'm not going to spend too much time here
2170. 01:32:26 because I'm on to the next thing.
2171. 01:32:28 Like, OK, I appreciate that.
2172. 01:32:30 But it's done well.
2173. 01:32:30 What you should do.
2174. 01:32:32 Correct.
2175. 01:32:32 Yeah, exactly.
2176. 01:32:33 That part almost seemed like the publisher had this idea
2177. 01:32:37 for 10th anniversary edition.
2178. 01:32:39 And they're like, we're going to create something extra
2179. 01:32:42 from the author and we're going to stick it here at the end.
2180. 01:32:45 And then he's like, fine.
2181. 01:32:47 I've moved on, like you said.
2182. 01:32:49 Yes.
2183. 01:32:49 So that's one approach.
2184. 01:32:51 The other approach, which is probably more likely,
2185. 01:32:54 would be that he just wanted to drive home a theme
2186. 01:32:58 in this book because he mentioned earlier, I believe--
2187. 01:33:01 I don't think it was at this part in this section.
2188. 01:33:04 When you post to a blog, the new stuff goes to the top.
2189. 01:33:08 And so you just need to keep creating--
2190. 01:33:11 there's pressure there to keep creating something new.
2191. 01:33:14 And that's really what you should be focusing on.
2192. 01:33:16 So don't dwell on this thing that you did in the past
2193. 01:33:19 because you don't want to try to catch lightning
2194. 01:33:22 in a bottle and make something perfect.
2195. 01:33:24 You want to consistently make something.
2196. 01:33:26 And the process of making the thing
2197. 01:33:27 is going to lead to higher quality over time.
2198. 01:33:31 Yes.
2199. 01:33:32 All right, Mike, that brings us to action items.
2200. 01:33:35 Unless there's something else you want to cover first.
2201. 01:33:38 Nope.
2202. 01:33:39 Let's talk about action items.
2203. 01:33:40 I have one unless you give me more,
2204. 01:33:44 which you're making it a heavy lid.
2205. 01:33:46 I already did give you more.
2206. 01:33:48 We did it live, so it's done.
2207. 01:33:50 I've got it checked off.
2208. 01:33:51 So unless you're changing it.
2209. 01:33:55 Nope.
2210. 01:33:56 But I have one.
2211. 01:33:57 And it's something I've done in the past,
2212. 01:33:59 but I just haven't done it in recent months, maybe last year.
2213. 01:34:05 But building out a--
2214. 01:34:07 basically, it's a daily tracker for creativity,
2215. 01:34:10 like making sure I'm writing every day in some form,
2216. 01:34:14 or recording or editing or something along those lines.
2217. 01:34:17 So I want to build out a calendar for that
2218. 01:34:19 so that I can keep track of those things
2219. 01:34:23 and make sure that I've got a way to know
2220. 01:34:25 if I've got the chain going or if I've got it broken or not.
2221. 01:34:28 That's what I want to work myself towards.
2222. 01:34:31 That way I can keep track of it and such.
2223. 01:34:33 And I think I've been pretty good about making things,
2224. 01:34:35 at least internally at work stuff and a few things online.
2225. 01:34:40 But I haven't been too good about some of the writing
2226. 01:34:44 and video stuff that I've been wanting to do online.
2227. 01:34:46 So getting there.
2228. 01:34:48 So yes, that's ultimately what I'm working on.
2229. 01:34:51 You?
2230. 01:34:52 Both of my action items come from chapter eight,
2231. 01:34:54 so apparently I do need to work on being nice.
2232. 01:34:56 [LAUGHTER]
2233. 01:34:58 All right.
2234. 01:35:01 By noise.
2235. 01:35:02 One thing that I want to do from this chapter--
2236. 01:35:06 I talked about writing fan letters.
2237. 01:35:08 And there are a lot of people that I have really looked up
2238. 01:35:12 to over the years.
2239. 01:35:14 And I've talked about how they have reached out to me
2240. 01:35:18 and written letters.
2241. 01:35:20 And that has been very helpful to me, which is kind of the other thing.
2242. 01:35:26 Keep a praise file.
2243. 01:35:27 So that stuff I want to collect.
2244. 01:35:30 So I can go back and look at it occasionally.
2245. 01:35:32 There's lots of people who will say mean things.
2246. 01:35:35 But collect and review the ones that actually are nice.
2247. 01:35:40 And then also the big one for me is to write that fan letter.
2248. 01:35:44 So tell somebody else that I really appreciate their work.
2249. 01:35:50 And the way that he frames this in the book is important, too.
2250. 01:35:54 You're not doing it in a way to create an opportunity for you
2251. 01:35:59 to get something from them.
2252. 01:36:01 You're just telling them that you appreciate them
2253. 01:36:05 and what they're doing.
2254. 01:36:07 So give more than you take, right?
2255. 01:36:09 Not looking to get anything from this,
2256. 01:36:11 but just encourage somebody.
2257. 01:36:13 Now, if I do that online and I tweet somebody and I say,
2258. 01:36:19 really appreciate this, I have no idea sometimes
2259. 01:36:21 if they're going to see that.
2260. 01:36:22 Doesn't matter.
2261. 01:36:24 That's the big takeaway here.
2262. 01:36:26 If it's an actual letter that I write,
2263. 01:36:28 maybe that's what this looks like.
2264. 01:36:29 I haven't clearly thought about that yet.
2265. 01:36:31 I just want to pick somebody who has been influential
2266. 01:36:35 and I want to say, I appreciate you, basically.
2267. 01:36:41 And I think this needs to be somebody that I don't have
2268. 01:36:46 a direct connection with.
2269. 01:36:48 Kind of another version of this would be reaching out
2270. 01:36:54 to the people that I have been able to develop a relationship
2271. 01:36:58 with via text message or something like that
2272. 01:37:00 and say, hey, I really appreciate you.
2273. 01:37:01 But that's not what I'm talking about.
2274. 01:37:03 I'm talking about writing something with a good chance
2275. 01:37:06 that I never hear a response.
2276. 01:37:08 I never encounter this person again.
2277. 01:37:11 And that is completely OK.
2278. 01:37:13 Yeah, that's a good one.
2279. 01:37:14 All right, I'll hold you to that and I'll expect a letter.
2280. 01:37:18 [LAUGHTER]
2281. 01:37:19 All right.
2282. 01:37:21 All right, that's what I've got.
2283. 01:37:22 So I guess that brings us the style and rating.
2284. 01:37:26 And I'll kick us off here.
2285. 01:37:28 So steal like an artist.
2286. 01:37:30 Austin has a really good style.
2287. 01:37:32 Obviously, this is easy, easy, easy to read.
2288. 01:37:36 It's like a three day read if you want to take your time.
2289. 01:37:40 And this is one that you could sit down and read probably
2290. 01:37:43 in a sitting if you really wanted to.
2291. 01:37:45 There's lots of artwork in it and a fair amount of blank space
2292. 01:37:52 to process.
2293. 01:37:53 I partly wonders why he made that choice.
2294. 01:37:56 But at the same time, that's very much an artist feel,
2295. 01:38:00 is to have the space to add to it,
2296. 01:38:02 like add your own thoughts to it, which I don't do.
2297. 01:38:05 I put those at the back in the doodles section
2298. 01:38:09 that he left at the back of it, which I appreciated very much,
2299. 01:38:13 which was very fun.
2300. 01:38:16 So as far as a style goes, I like it.
2301. 01:38:19 It's kind of fun.
2302. 01:38:19 It's unique.
2303. 01:38:20 It's its own thing.
2304. 01:38:21 And I appreciate that coming from a book that
2305. 01:38:23 is about being an artist.
2306. 01:38:26 So I'm very grateful for that.
2307. 01:38:27 Very easy to read.
2308. 01:38:28 He's good at writing.
2309. 01:38:31 As far as a rating goes, I feel like there's
2310. 01:38:34 some spots in here where I kind of struggle
2311. 01:38:37 to get my head around it.
2312. 01:38:38 I know that you love this book.
2313. 01:38:39 And I had very, very, very high expectations
2314. 01:38:42 because you've mentioned it four million times.
2315. 01:38:45 So I was expecting borderline Victor Frankel level books here.
2316. 01:38:51 And I have to admit, it's not at that level as much as--
2317. 01:38:56 it's a great book.
2318. 01:38:57 But I wouldn't put it up there.
2319. 01:38:59 I really wouldn't.
2320. 01:39:00 It's got a lot of really great points in it.
2321. 01:39:04 It's one that I think if you want motivation
2322. 01:39:06 for starting your own art or beginning
2323. 01:39:10 to create things of any kind, this
2324. 01:39:12 is a good one to pick up that you could get through very
2325. 01:39:14 quickly that would give you that kind of kick
2326. 01:39:15 in the pants to get going.
2327. 01:39:17 It's absolutely gold for that.
2328. 01:39:21 I know it's done that for me, like putting together
2329. 01:39:23 this calendar to make sure that I'm holding myself accountable
2330. 01:39:25 to that recurring pattern is something that
2331. 01:39:28 could go a very, very long way.
2332. 01:39:31 So I'm looking forward to that.
2333. 01:39:33 So as far as the rating goes, I'm
2334. 01:39:35 going to put it at 4.5.
2335. 01:39:37 I think it's way up there.
2336. 01:39:38 But I don't think it's--
2337. 01:39:39 I don't think it's 5.0 standard, Mike.
2338. 01:39:42 I really don't.
2339. 01:39:43 So I'm going to put it at 4 and 1/2.
2340. 01:39:45 All right.
2341. 01:39:47 It's kind of interesting.
2342. 01:39:48 I think you think I'm going to rate this at 5.0.
2343. 01:39:50 I kind of feel like you should just because of how much
2344. 01:39:53 you talk about it.
2345. 01:39:53 But I don't know.
2346. 01:39:56 I don't know what you're going to do now.
2347. 01:39:57 Yeah.
2348. 01:39:58 Well, I agree with you.
2349. 01:39:59 It's at 4.5.
2350. 01:40:00 It's not Victor Frankel level.
2351. 01:40:03 It's unfair to compare anything to Victor Frankel.
2352. 01:40:10 He needs to be like 10.0.
2353. 01:40:11 And then we just back everything off of that.
2354. 01:40:15 Yeah, that's true.
2355. 01:40:17 That's true.
2356. 01:40:18 So this book, as I mentioned, it has been very influential
2357. 01:40:24 to me over the years.
2358. 01:40:26 And I think there is still some incredible advice in here.
2359. 01:40:31 So I was thinking, who is this book for?
2360. 01:40:34 It is for everyone who thinks that they are creative.
2361. 01:40:37 And my follow up argument to that is everyone is creative.
2362. 01:40:42 So I think maybe some people will see this book
2363. 01:40:46 and think that that's not for me.
2364. 01:40:47 But I think it is.
2365. 01:40:50 And I would say this is one of those books
2366. 01:40:52 that everyone should read.
2367. 01:40:53 I also think that it's very easy to read.
2368. 01:40:57 Very interesting visual style.
2369. 01:41:00 So going all the way back to the beginning,
2370. 01:41:02 and I was talking about pencil pirates,
2371. 01:41:04 I feel like Austin Klyan is the poster person
2372. 01:41:09 for pencil pirates, which is essentially
2373. 01:41:13 learn how to visualize your ideas.
2374. 01:41:16 This is kind of the thing that I want to do, not probably
2375. 01:41:18 as many visuals as Austin Klyan has in this book.
2376. 01:41:23 But the reason this book is so successful,
2377. 01:41:24 he is a good writer.
2378. 01:41:26 There's not any fluff in this book.
2379. 01:41:28 And it's very interesting visually.
2380. 01:41:30 The visuals help tell the story.
2381. 01:41:33 And story maybe is the wrong word.
2382. 01:41:35 Like there's a bunch of different mini sections
2383. 01:41:38 that are inside of these chapters, these 10 chapters.
2384. 01:41:42 And they've all got cool visuals that go with them.
2385. 01:41:44 And like you said at the end, he's got deleted scenes.
2386. 01:41:47 He calls them, which is a whole bunch of visuals
2387. 01:41:49 that he had drawn that he didn't finalize
2388. 01:41:53 for the production of this book.
2389. 01:41:54 There's, I don't know, 40, 50 of them.
2390. 01:41:58 - Right.
2391. 01:42:00 - So he's living what he's preaching in this book.
2392. 01:42:03 It's an authentic message from an authentic person.
2393. 01:42:06 And it's something that anyone could benefit from.
2394. 01:42:10 You're not gonna take it all, but there's gonna be something
2395. 01:42:13 in here that is applicable to you and would improve your life
2396. 01:42:16 by helping you create.
2397. 01:42:18 So you don't think that maybe that applies to you
2398. 01:42:23 as you're listening to this,
2399. 01:42:23 I would encourage you to rethink that.
2400. 01:42:25 I think it does.
2401. 01:42:26 And I think this is a great book that you should buy
2402. 01:42:29 and read because it's not gonna take you very long.
2403. 01:42:32 And there's a good chance that something will speak
2404. 01:42:34 to you from this.
2405. 01:42:36 - There you go.
2406. 01:42:36 So you have your action items team.
2407. 01:42:38 You have to go buy a book 'cause Mike says so.
2408. 01:42:41 Ready to go.
2409. 01:42:42 Awesome.
2410. 01:42:44 All right, let's put on the shelf, Mike.
2411. 01:42:45 What's next?
2412. 01:42:46 - Next is Things That Matter by Joshua Becker.
2413. 01:42:49 Joshua Becker is the first person, I believe,
2414. 01:42:52 to have three of their books covered by Bookworm.
2415. 01:42:55 And I almost didn't pick it because it'd be the third one
2416. 01:42:58 that we've covered, but this is if we were to go back
2417. 01:43:01 and redo Bookworm, this would probably be the one
2418. 01:43:04 that we would pick.
2419. 01:43:05 - Very likely.
2420. 01:43:06 Patrick Lencioni, we've covered two.
2421. 01:43:09 - Yep.
2422. 01:43:10 I have a third one I've debated putting on the list,
2423. 01:43:14 but another day, another day.
2424. 01:43:16 All right, Things That Matter by Joshua Becker.
2425. 01:43:18 That'll be fun, that'll be a good one.
2426. 01:43:20 From what I've heard, this is the one you should read
2427. 01:43:22 of all his books.
2428. 01:43:24 - That is also what I've heard,
2429. 01:43:25 but I have not started it yet.
2430. 01:43:26 - I haven't either.
2431. 01:43:27 I haven't either.
2432. 01:43:28 After that, I am selecting a book
2433. 01:43:34 which is very recently released called Bittersweet
2434. 01:43:38 by Susan Cain.
2435. 01:43:39 If you remember, we covered Quiet by Susan Cain.
2436. 01:43:44 This is her introverts at World.
2437. 01:43:48 The tagline on this one is how sorrow and longing
2438. 01:43:50 make us whole has some accolades from Bernay Brown,
2439. 01:43:55 a whole bunch of people, a whole bunch of people.
2440. 01:44:00 So now looking forward to this one,
2441. 01:44:02 I'm not sure that I'm excited about this one,
2442. 01:44:05 (laughing)
2443. 01:44:06 but it'll be interesting nonetheless.
2444. 01:44:08 So it should be good.
2445. 01:44:10 - All right.
2446. 01:44:11 - So yeah, Gat Book's Mike, we got.
2447. 01:44:14 - I mentioned this earlier,
2448. 01:44:16 but I'm gonna read Purple Cow by Seth Godin.
2449. 01:44:21 What inspired this, by the way,
2450. 01:44:23 was my latest sermon sketch note
2451. 01:44:26 because there's a verse that my pastor used about
2452. 01:44:29 you are a peculiar people
2453. 01:44:31 and I thought of the Purple Cow analogy.
2454. 01:44:33 - Got it.
2455. 01:44:34 - So I actually drew a Purple Cow in my--
2456. 01:44:36 - No, Sky's work.
2457. 01:44:38 That's solid.
2458. 01:44:39 Nice work.
2459. 01:44:40 - But then I realized I never actually read this book.
2460. 01:44:44 I've understood the people referring to that before.
2461. 01:44:48 I even heard Seth Godin refer to that
2462. 01:44:51 when he spoke at the Entre Leadership Summit,
2463. 01:44:53 but I have not read this book.
2464. 01:44:55 So I'm going to learn how to transform my business
2465. 01:44:57 by being remarkable.
2466. 01:44:58 - That's a good book.
2467. 01:44:59 I've read that one.
2468. 01:45:00 It's a good one.
2469. 01:45:02 It's Seth Godin though.
2470. 01:45:03 You can't go wrong with Seth Godin.
2471. 01:45:04 - That's true.
2472. 01:45:06 - That's the way it is.
2473. 01:45:07 As far as a Gat Book goes,
2474. 01:45:08 I know I'm gonna have time for one.
2475. 01:45:10 I'm not sure what it should be yet
2476. 01:45:11 'cause I'm finishing up the one I mentioned earlier
2477. 01:45:15 and need to get the next one picked.
2478. 01:45:17 Somebody should tweet a book to me and I'll--
2479. 01:45:21 - Digital Zettle Castin.
2480. 01:45:22 - How to take smart notes round two.
2481. 01:45:24 So I feel like you're gonna pick that one
2482. 01:45:26 very shortly for Bookworm.
2483. 01:45:26 - No, this is the good one.
2484. 01:45:27 This is the good one.
2485. 01:45:28 It's really short.
2486. 01:45:30 - Digital Zettle Castin?
2487. 01:45:31 - Yep.
2488. 01:45:32 - Is it actually worthwhile
2489. 01:45:33 or are you just trying to get me on the train?
2490. 01:45:36 - No, so far I'm up to chapter eight.
2491. 01:45:38 So I'm only about halfway through,
2492. 01:45:39 but it's a short book and it's really good.
2493. 01:45:41 - Okay, very hesitant.
2494. 01:45:43 I say that knowing that I'm slowly getting into this world.
2495. 01:45:47 I'm very aware of what's going on
2496. 01:45:48 and you've been aware of this.
2497. 01:45:49 - Resistance is useless.
2498. 01:45:52 - Hmm, okay.
2499. 01:45:53 Maybe, maybe.
2500. 01:45:56 - Okay.
2501. 01:45:58 - Maybe.
2502. 01:45:58 (laughs)
2503. 01:45:59 Okay.
2504. 01:46:01 Big thanks to all of you who have joined us live.
2505. 01:46:03 I know we got a couple extra folks in today.
2506. 01:46:06 Big thanks to you, silent, especially.
2507. 01:46:09 Lots of stuff going on in the chat.
2508. 01:46:10 We've mentioned some things, not all of it,
2509. 01:46:12 but it's super fun to have folks here
2510. 01:46:14 when we're recording live.
2511. 01:46:15 And we kind of made a change in schedule.
2512. 01:46:18 I think we're trying to do these on Thursdays,
2513. 01:46:20 somewhere around two o'clock or so central.
2514. 01:46:22 So if you're interested in joining us live,
2515. 01:46:24 we'd love to have you join us.
2516. 01:46:26 If you haven't already,
2517. 01:46:28 we'd also love to have you as part of our Bookworm membership
2518. 01:46:31 and join the club there.
2519. 01:46:32 If you wanna do that,
2520. 01:46:33 you can have our undying gratitude
2521. 01:46:37 and help us keep the lights on here at bookworm.fm.
2522. 01:46:41 And you can help us out by going to bookworm.fm/membership.
2523. 01:46:45 It's five bucks a month, 60 bucks a year,
2524. 01:46:47 your call, the math works out the same,
2525. 01:46:50 if you didn't know that.
2526. 01:46:51 And it's super cool.
2527. 01:46:53 You get access to all of Mike's,
2528. 01:46:55 my node files, who talk about this every couple of weeks,
2529. 01:46:58 but you get some cool perks.
2530. 01:47:00 And especially, the big one is like,
2531. 01:47:03 you get to help us keep the show going.
2532. 01:47:05 And we're super, super grateful for you who've done that.
2533. 01:47:08 So thank you to all of our Bookworm club members.
2534. 01:47:12 - All right, if you're reading along with us,
2535. 01:47:14 which you totally should be,
2536. 01:47:15 pick up things that matter by Joshua Becker,
2537. 01:47:19 and we will talk to you in a couple of weeks.