165: The Creative Act by Rick Rubin

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1. 00:00:00 We've only got one action item here.
2. 00:00:03 I talked about mine last time with the Maslek Burnout Inventory.
3. 00:00:06 Did you take this?
4. 00:00:07 - I did take this, and I borderline regret taking this.
5. 00:00:12 I'm old school and printed it, Mike.
6. 00:00:18 I felt like an old man when I, like,
7. 00:00:22 I am the person who regularly said,
8. 00:00:24 well, just sign it digitally.
9. 00:00:26 Like, you don't need to print this and then write on it
10. 00:00:28 and then re-digitize it.
11. 00:00:29 Like, I'm the person that has said this for years.
12. 00:00:32 And then whenever I pulled this up and saw all the stuff on it,
13. 00:00:36 I was like, oh, okay.
14. 00:00:37 And then I just hit print, went and picked it up off the printer.
15. 00:00:39 And when I got back to my desk, I realized,
16. 00:00:41 oh no, I just did that thing that I tell people not to do.
17. 00:00:46 I should probably stop telling them to not do it
18. 00:00:50 since I just did it.
19. 00:00:51 Anyway, I printed-- - You're gonna print out
20. 00:00:52 your emails and keep them in folders next, too?
21. 00:00:55 - Probably.
22. 00:00:56 I'm gonna have a filing cabinet back here.
23. 00:00:57 You know, you got the red bins back there.
24. 00:00:59 There's gonna be this great big filing cabinet right next to it
25. 00:01:01 for long and that's where my email goes.
26. 00:01:03 I will have an assistant who prints every email that comes to me
27. 00:01:06 and then I can literally throw it in the trash or file it.
28. 00:01:10 - Now, someone used to print out emails right on them
29. 00:01:14 and say, can you get back to this person
30. 00:01:16 and, like, hand me the paper?
31. 00:01:17 (laughs)
32. 00:01:19 - I'm not quite that bad.
33. 00:01:20 Though some people would rather I did that
34. 00:01:22 because then it would mean they would get a response from me.
35. 00:01:24 - Sure.
36. 00:01:26 Okay, so Joe's burnout test results,
37. 00:01:29 burnout inventory is the technical.
38. 00:01:31 I know there's a few of these out there,
39. 00:01:33 but the one that I took has a burnout section,
40. 00:01:36 a depersonalization and personal achievement section.
41. 00:01:39 Is this the same one you did?
42. 00:01:41 - I think so.
43. 00:01:42 - That sounds right.
44. 00:01:43 - The terms sound a little bit different,
45. 00:01:45 but that second one specifically,
46. 00:01:47 but just talk us through your results,
47. 00:01:49 maybe it'll make sense.
48. 00:01:52 Well, basically each section has three different zones.
49. 00:01:57 You're either in low level burnout, moderate burnout,
50. 00:02:00 or high level burnout.
51. 00:02:02 And I did very well on all three,
52. 00:02:04 as in I got high level burnout on all three.
53. 00:02:07 So,
54. 00:02:07 that's a problem
55. 00:02:11 that I need to do something about.
56. 00:02:14 And was not, I have to admit that going into this,
57. 00:02:19 I was not expecting it to show
58. 00:02:22 that Joe was in high level burnout territory.
59. 00:02:24 Like I was fully expecting this to be like,
60. 00:02:26 maybe moderate, like low level to moderate.
61. 00:02:29 That's what I was expecting.
62. 00:02:31 This wasn't even close.
63. 00:02:32 Like it was just way high on all of them.
64. 00:02:36 As in like the second one,
65. 00:02:38 if you got a 12 or greater on this list,
66. 00:02:40 you're in high level burnout.
67. 00:02:42 I got a 22.
68. 00:02:43 Okay, that's significant.
69. 00:02:48 So anyway, that just tells me that
70. 00:02:51 I need to maybe back off.
71. 00:02:54 Unnumber of things, do a little,
72. 00:02:55 you know, maybe one of Mike's personal retreats
73. 00:02:59 takes some time, that sort of thing,
74. 00:03:01 get some separation.
75. 00:03:02 - Yeah, you do.
76. 00:03:03 - All the things, right?
77. 00:03:05 I need to do some work on Joe,
78. 00:03:07 basically is what I'm hearing.
79. 00:03:09 - All right, well.
80. 00:03:11 - Not fun.
81. 00:03:12 - You should definitely do a personal retreat.
82. 00:03:14 I think I've given you access to the course.
83. 00:03:20 - Oh, probably.
84. 00:03:22 - But if you're serious about it,
85. 00:03:23 I will hook you up if you need it.
86. 00:03:26 I'll hook everybody else up too.
87. 00:03:27 I'm gonna commit right now.
88. 00:03:29 I'll give 50% off the personal retreat handbook.
89. 00:03:31 Anyone who uses the coupon code help Joe out.
90. 00:03:34 - All right, help Joe out.
91. 00:03:39 Go to a personal retreat for yourself as well.
92. 00:03:43 - That's my mission.
93. 00:03:46 You know how Sean McCabe has his mission
94. 00:03:48 to get every company in the world,
95. 00:03:49 takes the badicals,
96. 00:03:51 like my mission is to have everybody in the world
97. 00:03:53 take a personal retreat.
98. 00:03:55 - Nice.
99. 00:03:56 All right, do you have a way to quantify that?
100. 00:04:00 - No.
101. 00:04:01 - Okay, fair point.
102. 00:04:05 I like it.
103. 00:04:06 Anyway, that was all I had for follow up.
104. 00:04:10 I did do it, was not thrilled with the results,
105. 00:04:14 have not shared the results of this with my wife yet.
106. 00:04:17 That's this afternoon's point of conversation.
107. 00:04:20 So I'm gonna take the paper home,
108. 00:04:22 lay it on the table and say, I have a problem.
109. 00:04:26 - What do you think's gonna happen with that?
110. 00:04:29 - She's probably gonna look at me and be like,
111. 00:04:30 yeah, I know.
112. 00:04:31 (laughing)
113. 00:04:32 That's fully what I expect.
114. 00:04:33 So she knows me better than I know me.
115. 00:04:37 So she's good, she'll know.
116. 00:04:40 And then she'll probably know exactly what it is
117. 00:04:42 I need to do as a result.
118. 00:04:43 - Cool.
119. 00:04:46 So is there anything,
120. 00:04:48 it kind of sounds like you've got more digging to do with this,
121. 00:04:50 but having taken it, is there any low hanging fruit
122. 00:04:53 of like, this is what I'm gonna do starting right now,
123. 00:04:57 tomorrow, whatever, to try to move away from the edge.
124. 00:05:02 You know, because I had somebody email me
125. 00:05:05 who has a lot of experience with a lot of the concepts
126. 00:05:11 that we talk about.
127. 00:05:15 You didn't say I could share the email,
128. 00:05:16 so I'm not gonna mention who it is,
129. 00:05:18 but mentioned the burnout stuff specifically,
130. 00:05:21 like kind of warned me, hey, be careful,
131. 00:05:23 sounds like you're real close to an edge.
132. 00:05:25 If your scores are all high,
133. 00:05:28 I would argue you're probably close to the same edge.
134. 00:05:30 So I wouldn't put off doing what you can do about it.
135. 00:05:34 Obviously, it doesn't mean you have to completely
136. 00:05:36 change your lifestyle, quit your job, all that kind of stuff.
137. 00:05:39 But.
138. 00:05:40 - Yeah, no, you're absolutely right.
139. 00:05:42 I know there's, the easy one is,
140. 00:05:45 I know that I need to back off of the number of hours
141. 00:05:49 of work I put in a week.
142. 00:05:51 Like that one I know,
143. 00:05:53 I'm regularly told I work too much.
144. 00:05:55 And part of that's because I really love what I do,
145. 00:05:59 but at the same time, like I do it so much
146. 00:06:03 that it becomes a problem and becomes a strain.
147. 00:06:06 So, yes.
148. 00:06:09 Some of that might actually be,
149. 00:06:12 and again, I'm very, like this is hot takes, right?
150. 00:06:14 Some of that might just be workload.
151. 00:06:18 And because it's a church and because it's like my arena,
152. 00:06:21 it feels like there's this thing that I want to have done
153. 00:06:25 and I'm the one who can do it
154. 00:06:27 and there's not anyone else who can do it.
155. 00:06:29 Like that's the mentality that comes with it.
156. 00:06:31 So then I will run ragged trying to get that thing done
157. 00:06:35 because it's something I believe in.
158. 00:06:37 Instead of realizing that I maybe need to back off a bit
159. 00:06:41 and get some help,
160. 00:06:41 like that might actually be the real answer.
161. 00:06:44 But again, that's a hot take.
162. 00:06:46 And that just because I say that doesn't necessarily mean
163. 00:06:49 that it's an easy thing for me to go just get help.
164. 00:06:52 So. - Yep.
165. 00:06:53 - Understood. - So it is.
166. 00:06:55 So I gotta do some more deep diving on it,
167. 00:06:57 ask some questions.
168. 00:06:58 I at least have some numbers and some technical now
169. 00:07:00 that I can have a conversation with a couple different people
170. 00:07:02 about it, so.
171. 00:07:04 Start with a conversation with Becky.
172. 00:07:06 And then depending on the obvious things
173. 00:07:09 that I'm overlooking that she can see very plainly,
174. 00:07:12 I will then embark on a conversation with my boss
175. 00:07:15 and move from there.
176. 00:07:16 So. - All right.
177. 00:07:18 - It's probably the right path at this point.
178. 00:07:20 - Good luck.
179. 00:07:22 - Thanks.
180. 00:07:23 Here's hoping it goes well.
181. 00:07:24 I don't know why I wouldn't.
182. 00:07:25 Being able to have the conversation
183. 00:07:27 is half the battle it seems like.
184. 00:07:29 - Yep.
185. 00:07:30 Agreed.
186. 00:07:31 Well, since that's the only action,
187. 00:07:34 I might guess it's time to talk about today's book,
188. 00:07:37 which is The Creative Act by Rick Rubin.
189. 00:07:42 And this is an interesting one.
190. 00:07:45 It's thick.
191. 00:07:46 If you count the number of pages,
192. 00:07:48 you probably got worried when you cracked it open
193. 00:07:52 'cause it's like 400 something,
194. 00:07:53 but it is very similar, I would say, in style to,
195. 00:07:58 was it the practice by Seth Godin that we read
196. 00:08:01 with all the really short little chapters?
197. 00:08:04 - That sounds right, yeah.
198. 00:08:06 I think that was the one.
199. 00:08:07 And this one actually goes a little bit quicker
200. 00:08:09 because they all tend to start
201. 00:08:11 on the right hand side of the page.
202. 00:08:14 - Yes.
203. 00:08:16 - So there's a lot of blank space in this one.
204. 00:08:19 And I kind of like that.
205. 00:08:21 You can kind of pick through and read little snippets
206. 00:08:24 wherever you want.
207. 00:08:25 It's one of those books that's easy to kind of just open
208. 00:08:29 to a random page and get something from it.
209. 00:08:32 There are no sections with this book.
210. 00:08:34 Just I counted 78 chapters.
211. 00:08:39 - You didn't even number them,
212. 00:08:40 which is kind of frustrating to me.
213. 00:08:42 Like I always want to know how many there are.
214. 00:08:43 But come on, tell me, I want to know.
215. 00:08:45 Please. - Right. (laughs)
216. 00:08:48 We're not gonna obviously cover all of those
217. 00:08:50 or list them all.
218. 00:08:51 I'm gonna grab a small sampling of the ones
219. 00:08:55 that kind of spoke to me and then start the conversation,
220. 00:08:59 go from there, I guess.
221. 00:09:02 Before we get into the specifics of it though,
222. 00:09:05 what was your first impression of the material of this book?
223. 00:09:10 When you picked up this book,
224. 00:09:13 called the Creative Act, a way of being,
225. 00:09:15 what was your initial mental state going into it?
226. 00:09:20 And I say that as people who make stuff for the internet.
227. 00:09:24 So we probably tend to skew more towards the people
228. 00:09:28 who consider themselves creative
229. 00:09:30 versus those who don't.
230. 00:09:32 But I feel like the mindset you go into it
231. 00:09:35 with is kind of important.
232. 00:09:36 So where were you when you first started this one?
233. 00:09:39 - Yeah.
234. 00:09:40 So I'd seen, this book is one of those
235. 00:09:42 that's been making the rounds in our circles.
236. 00:09:46 I've seen it posted about and mentioned and screenshots
237. 00:09:50 and all sorts of stuff.
238. 00:09:51 I guess not a screenshot, but pictures of this book
239. 00:09:56 in a variety of places for a while.
240. 00:10:00 And by a while, I mean for about a month and a half,
241. 00:10:02 month, month and a half or so.
242. 00:10:04 I suppose it just came out first of the year.
243. 00:10:05 So somewhere on second week of the year on.
244. 00:10:09 And the snippets that I've seen of it
245. 00:10:14 and then seeing the title,
246. 00:10:16 this is all preconceived expectations
247. 00:10:20 prior to even receiving the book.
248. 00:10:21 So there was no way for me to actually look at it
249. 00:10:23 and see my viewpoint on it at this point.
250. 00:10:26 But with all of that as the background,
251. 00:10:29 I kind of had it in my head that it's similar to
252. 00:10:32 Walden Pond, like the,
253. 00:10:35 oh shoot, I just drew a blank on the author's name.
254. 00:10:39 That is bad, that's real bad.
255. 00:10:41 Okay, Walden Pond, somebody in the chat looked it up for me.
256. 00:10:45 Walden Pond is a story, whatever this author's name is,
257. 00:10:49 basically is like explaining like noticing
258. 00:10:51 and viewing things and living life
259. 00:10:54 and what it's like to live life as a creative in nature.
260. 00:10:57 And like he builds his own log cabin
261. 00:10:59 and he's, it's overlooking Walden Pond.
262. 00:11:02 And it's one that like that concept is,
263. 00:11:07 it's about his journey of being in,
264. 00:11:11 like learning how to be in the present,
265. 00:11:13 there you go, thorough.
266. 00:11:15 And it's about thorough's journey of learning
267. 00:11:19 to be in that cabin and just experience
268. 00:11:21 things around that cabin.
269. 00:11:22 That's what I kind of had in my head.
270. 00:11:24 And I'm aware that that's not really a true correlation
271. 00:11:28 because thorough's not talking about creative endeavor.
272. 00:11:33 He's talking about noticing frogs on a pond,
273. 00:11:36 like that type of thing and learning how to be in the moment
274. 00:11:40 and noticing how conversations happen
275. 00:11:41 when people walk by and all those things.
276. 00:11:44 So he's just learning to be present with that.
277. 00:11:47 Now there's a lot more to it.
278. 00:11:48 I'm dumbing that way down.
279. 00:11:50 That was kind of what I was expecting out of this book.
280. 00:11:53 So like that's the preconceived notion that I had before,
281. 00:11:56 before I really dove into this.
282. 00:11:59 So I don't know how those two books would compare
283. 00:12:03 in a technical stance, their worlds apart
284. 00:12:07 as far as like what they're talking about.
285. 00:12:09 But that was kind of where I was starting with,
286. 00:12:11 starting from on this one.
287. 00:12:13 - Sure.
288. 00:12:14 Cool.
289. 00:12:16 Well, let's jump into the actual material here.
290. 00:12:20 I wanna start the first section that I wanna talk about
291. 00:12:24 is actually the third chapter, I guess,
292. 00:12:28 the source of creativity.
293. 00:12:31 But I do want to back up just a little bit before that
294. 00:12:34 because the first chapter here is everyone is a creator.
295. 00:12:37 And I feel like this is a very strong opening to the book.
296. 00:12:42 And obviously a theme that I wholeheartedly believe in.
297. 00:12:46 But at the very beginning,
298. 00:12:49 he's laying the foundation that everyone is creative.
299. 00:12:53 Creativity is not a rare ability.
300. 00:12:55 Create, he defines it for us is to bring something
301. 00:12:58 into existence that wasn't there before.
302. 00:13:01 And also what you make doesn't have to be witnessed
303. 00:13:04 or recorded.
304. 00:13:05 So you don't have to share it with the entire world
305. 00:13:07 in order to be a creator.
306. 00:13:11 Now that's important because I feel like you have
307. 00:13:14 to have that foundation that you have the ability
308. 00:13:17 to create regardless of what you do for a living,
309. 00:13:22 whether you've ever written, published, made,
310. 00:13:25 anything, shared it publicly.
311. 00:13:27 The next thing then, the third chapter, I guess,
312. 00:13:31 I just numbered these in my my node file.
313. 00:13:33 So I have numbers with these and I'll share those
314. 00:13:36 as I go here, but that's not actually what the number is.
315. 00:13:39 I'm possible I missed numbered them or something.
316. 00:13:42 You know, but.
317. 00:13:43 - Okay, so don't trust Mike's numbers.
318. 00:13:45 We don't know if he can count.
319. 00:13:46 - They are rough estimates of where these things are
320. 00:13:48 in the book.
321. 00:13:49 (laughs)
322. 00:13:50 - Okay, all right.
323. 00:13:51 - So this is why I use page numbers.
324. 00:13:53 - Ah, I could use page numbers.
325. 00:13:55 I have those for quotes, but not for the chapters.
326. 00:13:58 I don't think those are--
327. 00:13:59 - Anytime I've got like a note,
328. 00:14:00 how to read a book 101.
329. 00:14:01 So this is maybe 201, I don't know what it is.
330. 00:14:03 But whenever I have a note about a book
331. 00:14:05 that I put, whether it's a digital or paper, it doesn't matter.
332. 00:14:09 It doesn't matter if it's just a thought that's disconnected
333. 00:14:11 and it goes to a different chapter.
334. 00:14:13 Whatever page I'm on right now,
335. 00:14:15 when that thing goes into the book notes,
336. 00:14:17 that's the page number I write down.
337. 00:14:19 Because whatever is on that page is what triggered
338. 00:14:22 the connection that I'm wanting to write down.
339. 00:14:23 Whether it's a direct quote or whether it's that specific
340. 00:14:26 comments on that page, it doesn't matter.
341. 00:14:29 But that's the page that triggered that thought.
342. 00:14:31 - Gotcha.
343. 00:14:32 Interesting.
344. 00:14:33 - I'm weird.
345. 00:14:36 Well, everyone's got their own approach.
346. 00:14:39 - No, this is the right way to do it.
347. 00:14:41 - Okay.
348. 00:14:42 - It's not an approach.
349. 00:14:43 - This is a fact.
350. 00:14:44 This is the perfect way to take the notes.
351. 00:14:46 - Well, I will tell you that my way of taking notes
352. 00:14:48 is probably not the right way for a lot of people
353. 00:14:50 'cause it's pretty crazy, but it works for me.
354. 00:14:54 - I mean, just look at your mind node files.
355. 00:14:56 Like that's pretty like, I love looking at your mind node
356. 00:14:59 files, like I could not take notes like that.
357. 00:15:01 And I'm aware of it, there's no way.
358. 00:15:03 It would drive me bonkers.
359. 00:15:04 - Yeah, that's fair.
360. 00:15:06 - So all that to say, number three on my mind node
361. 00:15:10 is the source of creativity.
362. 00:15:12 And this is the point where he starts to talk about
363. 00:15:16 how the stuff that you make things from is all around us.
364. 00:15:21 But the brain takes that stuff and then spins it
365. 00:15:28 to make you think like it is coming from within you.
366. 00:15:33 And I like that picture.
367. 00:15:35 I feel like that is very much in line with my thinking
368. 00:15:39 and understanding of the whole creative process
369. 00:15:42 that I've talked about with like the five Cs of creativity
370. 00:15:46 where you capture things that have your attention
371. 00:15:49 out in the world, like from the books that we read.
372. 00:15:52 You curate those, put them in your system.
373. 00:15:55 And then I've got a thing where I cultivate them
374. 00:15:57 and I see what is actually there.
375. 00:15:59 Then I connect them with other ideas.
376. 00:16:01 The whole idea is syntopical reading,
377. 00:16:03 going back to how to read a book.
378. 00:16:05 And then ultimately there is an expression
379. 00:16:08 where you create something.
380. 00:16:11 And this is kind of priming the pump for that.
381. 00:16:15 This is talking about how you take things that are around you.
382. 00:16:20 And even if you don't understand the process that happens,
383. 00:16:23 you bring them in and then you put them back out.
384. 00:16:25 Basically it's like breathing.
385. 00:16:27 There's inhalation and exhalation.
386. 00:16:30 And I am able to see how this applies
387. 00:16:35 to the way that I curate.
388. 00:16:37 Curious what you think about this idea.
389. 00:16:41 - Well done asking this question
390. 00:16:43 because this is like the starting point
391. 00:16:45 of where I started to connect.
392. 00:16:48 That this was going to be a book that was like high level.
393. 00:16:52 Look at this whole thing from a third person view.
394. 00:16:56 And it's kind of how the book's written.
395. 00:16:58 Like looking at this from an external perspective.
396. 00:17:01 Which is probably the correct way to do this style.
397. 00:17:06 So he's not wrong in that.
398. 00:17:07 Rick Rubin's not wrong in that style choice.
399. 00:17:10 It's just a viewpoint that I was not quite prepared for
400. 00:17:15 coming into it.
401. 00:17:16 'Cause like we've,
402. 00:17:17 think about all the books that we've read recently.
403. 00:17:19 Like they've got a three part layout.
404. 00:17:21 They've got maybe 10, 12 chapters.
405. 00:17:23 They've got a bunch of stories.
406. 00:17:26 They have a cadence to tell me a story,
407. 00:17:28 tell me about the story.
408. 00:17:29 What should I do with it?
409. 00:17:30 Tell me a story, tell me about the story.
410. 00:17:32 Tell me what I should do with it.
411. 00:17:33 Like they have that cadence
412. 00:17:34 that walks you through the whole thing.
413. 00:17:36 This is worlds apart from that.
414. 00:17:38 There are not that many stories in this.
415. 00:17:41 And there are very high level viewpoints of the whole thing.
416. 00:17:45 And this is exactly that in full form
417. 00:17:50 because it's showing like the outsiders view,
418. 00:17:54 like outside component view of what's going on with creativity.
419. 00:17:58 Like you're having these external inputs
420. 00:18:00 and then it makes us think that things are coming from
421. 00:18:02 inside of us, but it's really not,
422. 00:18:05 but it's how it feels.
423. 00:18:07 But again, that's like something removed looking at it.
424. 00:18:10 And it was at this point in the book,
425. 00:18:13 it's like, okay, I feel like in order for me to
426. 00:18:16 embrace his thought process for the rest of this book,
427. 00:18:20 I kind of have to take on this mentality.
428. 00:18:22 The question is, do I trust that mentality
429. 00:18:25 and that foundation that we're setting on, right?
430. 00:18:28 'Cause then like the rest of the book is dependent on this.
431. 00:18:30 It's true.
432. 00:18:31 Because that's the foundation
433. 00:18:33 of what he's gonna give us through the rest of the book.
434. 00:18:36 So the source of creativity being kind of outside of us
435. 00:18:40 versus inside of us,
436. 00:18:42 I think it's really hard to say
437. 00:18:46 where that's truly coming from
438. 00:18:49 because I think it's so interconnected
439. 00:18:51 between those two, which I think he would completely agree with.
440. 00:18:53 Like it's my previous experiences connecting
441. 00:18:57 with the new experiences, which are then creating
442. 00:19:00 this new seemingly new idea.
443. 00:19:04 Our seed is he'll refer to it, which we'll talk about later.
444. 00:19:07 And I think that makes sense.
445. 00:19:10 I don't think I have arguments with that.
446. 00:19:13 You know, I think I'm on board.
447. 00:19:14 Primarily because I know that so much of creativity is
448. 00:19:20 externally dependent and yet it's also dependent
449. 00:19:23 on my previous experiences,
450. 00:19:25 which come from both internal and external viewpoints.
451. 00:19:30 So I think it's spot on.
452. 00:19:32 It's just a little bit of a roundabout way
453. 00:19:34 of getting my head there, which I think is a lot of this book.
454. 00:19:37 Like there was a lot of times I was like reading this.
455. 00:19:39 Okay, hold on a minute.
456. 00:19:43 Let me reread that section 'cause race car brain
457. 00:19:47 jumped ahead and I'm not real sure what he's talking about.
458. 00:19:50 So I had to slow down a lot on this one.
459. 00:19:53 - Yeah, you can't read this like you read
460. 00:19:56 most of the books that we cover for Bookworm.
461. 00:19:59 There's no blinkest version of the message here.
462. 00:20:01 There's just a whole bunch of little anecdotes
463. 00:20:05 which could serve as inspiration
464. 00:20:07 and really change your mindset around how creativity works.
465. 00:20:12 For example, I mean, this is kind of supporting material
466. 00:20:15 here in chapter two, where it's titled tuning in
467. 00:20:19 basic idea here is that we've got these antenna
468. 00:20:23 for creative thought and we develop the sensitivity
469. 00:20:26 for creative signal.
470. 00:20:26 That's kind of the capture phase of my creativity flywheel.
471. 00:20:30 But he says that in chapter two,
472. 00:20:33 if you have an idea and you don't do something with it,
473. 00:20:34 it's gonna find its voice through another maker.
474. 00:20:37 The signal is out there.
475. 00:20:38 You just have to connect with it
476. 00:20:40 and then you have to express it.
477. 00:20:42 And chapter four is also very much in alignment
478. 00:20:45 with this awareness, right?
479. 00:20:47 The awareness, the program is happening around us
480. 00:20:50 and we just observe it.
481. 00:20:51 So it's not a state that you force
482. 00:20:53 and while you can't change what you're noticing,
483. 00:20:55 you can change your ability to notice.
484. 00:20:58 He talks about how the universe is only as large
485. 00:21:00 as our perception of it.
486. 00:21:02 There's lots of really profound stuff in here.
487. 00:21:05 If you take it in isolation and I'm trying to condense it
488. 00:21:07 into some bigger ideas for the sake of the outline.
489. 00:21:12 But all of that is, like you said, foundational.
490. 00:21:16 I think the next place I wanna go is the fifth chapter,
491. 00:21:20 the vessel and the filter.
492. 00:21:21 And I know I said we weren't gonna cover all of them
493. 00:21:23 and I've so far mentioned every single one.
494. 00:21:26 I'm not gonna do that for the rest of the book, I promise.
495. 00:21:28 These are just, like I said, really foundational.
496. 00:21:31 You have to buy into this idea
497. 00:21:33 or otherwise at this point,
498. 00:21:34 you're probably getting ready to put the book down.
499. 00:21:37 That was not the approach that I had.
500. 00:21:39 He is speaking my language.
501. 00:21:42 But number five talks about how each of us
502. 00:21:45 has a container that is constantly being filled with data.
503. 00:21:50 And I thought of with this,
504. 00:21:52 all the stuff that we've read by Chris Bailey over the years.
505. 00:21:58 And the one visual in particular from hyperfocus
506. 00:22:03 where he talks about the quality of the information
507. 00:22:09 that you collect and there's like that X and Y graph.
508. 00:22:14 And it actually goes the other way.
509. 00:22:17 I'm trying to do this visually on a reverse camera.
510. 00:22:19 It's not working.
511. 00:22:20 But you invest time in these things that are entertaining
512. 00:22:25 but they maybe aren't helpful to you.
513. 00:22:29 I don't know.
514. 00:22:30 When I think about that,
515. 00:22:32 'cause I remember reading that
516. 00:22:33 and thinking or being challenged to improve the quality
517. 00:22:37 of the dots that I was collecting
518. 00:22:41 and try to get stuff that was going to
519. 00:22:44 give me some future value,
520. 00:22:46 not just stuff that I enjoyed.
521. 00:22:48 And that's a big reason why I think
522. 00:22:51 I enjoy reading nonfiction books.
523. 00:22:53 And that seems really weird to people.
524. 00:22:54 I've just developed a taste for that over the years.
525. 00:22:57 And I do actually honestly prefer to read nonfiction.
526. 00:23:02 And there's so many nonfiction books I wanna read
527. 00:23:04 that when someone's like,
528. 00:23:05 hey, you should read fiction.
529. 00:23:06 I understand those value to be gained from it.
530. 00:23:09 I could learn how to tell better stories,
531. 00:23:10 all that kind of stuff.
532. 00:23:12 But just kind of like, nah, this looks better.
533. 00:23:14 (laughs)
534. 00:23:16 Right, so I guess what I'm trying to articulate here
535. 00:23:20 is that picture that Chris implanted in my brain
536. 00:23:22 of like the quality of the dots.
537. 00:23:24 Right, that's what I view reading nonfiction books.
538. 00:23:27 Like that's quality dots.
539. 00:23:29 And there are quality dots to be found other places.
540. 00:23:31 But I think the main idea is
541. 00:23:33 consider the quality of the dots, right?
542. 00:23:35 And then allow those things into your vessel.
543. 00:23:38 When I get this picture of a vessel,
544. 00:23:39 I get a picture of like a bucket
545. 00:23:41 that you're carrying around
546. 00:23:42 and it's only got so much capacity.
547. 00:23:44 Doesn't matter if it's a tiny little bucket
548. 00:23:47 or if it's a five gallon bucket
549. 00:23:48 or it's one of those great big garbage cans.
550. 00:23:50 Like there is a point where nothing else fits in there.
551. 00:23:52 And that's really the thing with the visual for me
552. 00:23:57 is putting the things in there that are worthwhile
553. 00:24:03 because there's too much stuff out there
554. 00:24:04 to try to collect it all.
555. 00:24:07 Right, so information is being filtered
556. 00:24:09 as we put it into our vessel.
557. 00:24:11 And then when we synthesize that
558. 00:24:16 and connect dots in new ways and express something,
559. 00:24:19 even if it's just a remix of some things
560. 00:24:22 that we have heard other places,
561. 00:24:25 by sharing it, we can become
562. 00:24:28 then source material for somebody else.
563. 00:24:31 And that can be something that they use to fill their vessel.
564. 00:24:36 And so it's kind of this perpetuating positive cycle
565. 00:24:41 if you can get over the fear associated
566. 00:24:46 with actually sharing what you're making
567. 00:24:49 because there's lots of things
568. 00:24:50 that will try to tell you
569. 00:24:52 that other people are better than you are
570. 00:24:54 and they have more expertise
571. 00:24:56 and they know more than you do.
572. 00:24:57 So who are you to share anything?
573. 00:25:00 You should just let them share stuff.
574. 00:25:02 And I feel like that's the real message
575. 00:25:05 at the beginning of this book is,
576. 00:25:06 no, you've got something to share
577. 00:25:08 and you need to share it.
578. 00:25:10 And the way to do that is to be aware
579. 00:25:12 of how the cycle works
580. 00:25:14 and then to lean into that and not be fighting against it.
581. 00:25:17 - This concept of the vessel and the filter,
582. 00:25:19 the vessel piece, maybe more so than the filter,
583. 00:25:22 filter or something.
584. 00:25:23 In my head, the filter is merely a selection
585. 00:25:27 of quality inputs like what you're saying.
586. 00:25:31 The vessel piece though, it's interesting
587. 00:25:34 because you can start to see it
588. 00:25:35 not just as a single vessel, but as multiple.
589. 00:25:38 And if you go that route
590. 00:25:41 and like using the example that he has with relationships,
591. 00:25:46 you know, if you're in, you know,
592. 00:25:48 if you're married, then the vessel of someone filling
593. 00:25:53 the role of spouse is full.
594. 00:25:56 So you can't fill that vessel.
595. 00:25:59 So that one's already full.
596. 00:26:02 Now, if you go into the creative space,
597. 00:26:04 like some people have only so much capacity for writing
598. 00:26:09 or writing endeavors.
599. 00:26:10 Like they can only handle so many of those at a time.
600. 00:26:13 You can maybe handle a newsletter, maybe a book
601. 00:26:16 and maybe a blog, but those three on top of each other
602. 00:26:19 starting to need to be a lot.
603. 00:26:20 And then your vessel of writing is now full.
604. 00:26:24 Taking on another writing project is not gonna happen
605. 00:26:26 until you drop one of those others or complete one of them.
606. 00:26:30 So you start to like add all that up in different arenas.
607. 00:26:34 Like, okay, you've got these different vessels,
608. 00:26:36 these different areas.
609. 00:26:38 And you're gonna be collecting inputs
610. 00:26:42 or taking on projects inside of those.
611. 00:26:47 And if you want to collect more,
612. 00:26:51 you need to empty of some in order to make room for it,
613. 00:26:55 assuming it's full.
614. 00:26:56 Like, this is similar to whenever people talk about,
615. 00:27:01 they just finished a big project.
616. 00:27:03 And then they had to take on a new hobby
617. 00:27:05 or they had to take on some other, you know,
618. 00:27:10 thing that they're gonna do,
619. 00:27:12 just because like all of a sudden
620. 00:27:14 they've got a ton of creative energy
621. 00:27:15 that they're used to expelling every single day
622. 00:27:17 and they got nothing.
623. 00:27:18 Now we gotta come up with something,
624. 00:27:21 some place to let that energy go.
625. 00:27:24 Otherwise I'm gonna go crazy
626. 00:27:26 'cause I got all this pent up energy
627. 00:27:28 I don't know what to do with.
628. 00:27:29 Like that's essential what we're talking about.
629. 00:27:31 So it's an interesting concept
630. 00:27:33 and I know we've kind of talked about it in different ways,
631. 00:27:36 but again, this is just a different way
632. 00:27:37 of seeing a similar concept
633. 00:27:39 that we've discussed in the past.
634. 00:27:41 - I took it a little bit different.
635. 00:27:44 I think a different perspective of this.
636. 00:27:48 I wasn't viewing it as like the things
637. 00:27:51 that I would be doing in terms of creating,
638. 00:27:53 although there's a lot of truth to that too.
639. 00:27:55 You only have so much time
640. 00:27:56 and you gotta pick and choose what your activities
641. 00:27:59 are going to be.
642. 00:28:00 But I was viewing this more as like the information
643. 00:28:03 that comes into your, I don't know,
644. 00:28:07 I need a better analogy for this
645. 00:28:10 because it's really the stuff that you choose
646. 00:28:13 to pay attention to.
647. 00:28:14 The information is around you all the time, right?
648. 00:28:16 Thinking back to "Leminal Thinking" by Dave Gray.
649. 00:28:19 Where there's all those billions of bits of information
650. 00:28:24 that are around us and we've got
651. 00:28:26 a tiny little record needle of focused attention
652. 00:28:29 on anything that's happening around us
653. 00:28:31 at any given moment.
654. 00:28:33 So we gotta pick and choose what we're going to allow in,
655. 00:28:36 basically.
656. 00:28:38 But then the fascinating part to me,
657. 00:28:41 I think is like as long as you focus on not keeping it in,
658. 00:28:46 as long as there is an outlet or an output
659. 00:28:50 associated with the inflow of the information,
660. 00:28:54 I kinda don't really care how it gets expressed.
661. 00:28:57 It's just you do have to be looking for that release.
662. 00:29:03 There has to be an output associated with it,
663. 00:29:06 otherwise I feel it gets overwhelming
664. 00:29:08 because my brain anyways tends to try to hang on
665. 00:29:11 to all that stuff and organize it.
666. 00:29:13 I'm gonna need this at some point
667. 00:29:14 'cause I haven't done anything with it yet, right?
668. 00:29:17 The fact that I express it, whether it's verbally,
669. 00:29:21 as we record a podcast,
670. 00:29:22 or I write it down somewhere, doesn't really matter,
671. 00:29:26 I have to let it go though
672. 00:29:29 before I can move on to the next thing.
673. 00:29:33 And I think it probably requires
674. 00:29:35 some consistent creation for you
675. 00:29:40 to be able to trust the process like that maybe.
676. 00:29:44 And I'm at that point now where I have my rhythms,
677. 00:29:47 we're gonna talk about that actually a little bit later.
678. 00:29:50 But if you don't have that,
679. 00:29:52 it can be a little bit tricky maybe to figure that out.
680. 00:29:54 I could see that.
681. 00:29:56 - I was glancing over this blog post in a book.
682. 00:30:00 It's about two pages long.
683. 00:30:04 And as I was glancing through some of the main points
684. 00:30:07 in these two pages,
685. 00:30:08 right now I'm realizing,
686. 00:30:11 this is actually, I don't wanna say vague,
687. 00:30:14 but it's like artistically left,
688. 00:30:17 not detailed, I guess, would be the term for it.
689. 00:30:22 Because like the way I took this,
690. 00:30:26 as I explained before you just reiterated,
691. 00:30:28 seems to follow very much in line with what he's saying.
692. 00:30:33 But what you're saying also does,
693. 00:30:34 even though those aren't necessarily the same thing,
694. 00:30:38 like it makes me wonder if there's a lot of this
695. 00:30:41 that could be taken a handful of ways,
696. 00:30:42 depending on where your current situation is.
697. 00:30:46 Like people talk about that with like paintings,
698. 00:30:50 like depending on what season of life you're in,
699. 00:30:53 if you take enough time to sit and look at a painting,
700. 00:30:56 you will see it completely different
701. 00:30:58 depending on the season of life that you're in.
702. 00:31:01 And like your previous experiences
703. 00:31:03 will dictate your viewpoint of that painting.
704. 00:31:06 I wonder if this is similar to that.
705. 00:31:08 What you're going through right now may dictate
706. 00:31:12 the way that you interpret this book.
707. 00:31:13 It's not a bad thing.
708. 00:31:15 It just means it's well set up for rereading in the future.
709. 00:31:20 But that is not the way I took it, Mike.
710. 00:31:21 But hey, go for it.
711. 00:31:24 - All right.
712. 00:31:28 Well, let's go to the next section,
713. 00:31:31 'cause I feel like this actually applies
714. 00:31:32 to the discussion that we are having right now.
715. 00:31:35 So the next chapter that I wanna talk about is 17,
716. 00:31:39 make it up.
717. 00:31:41 And in that chapter, he talks about
718. 00:31:45 how there is a difference between doubting your work
719. 00:31:47 and doubting yourself.
720. 00:31:49 All right.
721. 00:31:50 So I think maybe what you are describing
722. 00:31:53 in terms of what are the projects that I'm going to do,
723. 00:31:56 if you're wrestling with that question of,
724. 00:31:59 there needs to be a way to output this,
725. 00:32:04 but I have no idea where it is.
726. 00:32:07 I think at the beginning phases of that anyways,
727. 00:32:10 that could be the doubting yourself part,
728. 00:32:11 where it's, I don't know if I'm good enough.
729. 00:32:14 And I've been in that place before,
730. 00:32:15 where that is the thing that holds you back.
731. 00:32:18 But the other side of that doubting your work
732. 00:32:20 is I don't know if this is good enough.
733. 00:32:22 That is a totally different conversation though,
734. 00:32:25 because then it's,
735. 00:32:28 if this thing isn't good enough,
736. 00:32:32 then I can just chuck it.
737. 00:32:34 And I know that since I am good enough,
738. 00:32:36 I will make something again that will be better than this.
739. 00:32:40 I think there's a tendency to,
740. 00:32:42 if you think,
741. 00:32:45 if you don't have a bunch of creative projects,
742. 00:32:47 if you don't have a bunch of,
743. 00:32:48 if you don't have a track record of creating,
744. 00:32:50 you can get so attached to this one thing,
745. 00:32:54 and this just has to be amazing.
746. 00:32:57 And I think I have been through that with
747. 00:33:01 the first time that I launched
748. 00:33:05 the Faith Based Productivity video course,
749. 00:33:09 because I had just been let go by Asian efficiency,
750. 00:33:12 and I was trying to find my next new thing.
751. 00:33:14 And I had this idea, this one idea, right?
752. 00:33:18 And I'm like, this is the thing
753. 00:33:19 that's gonna change my world.
754. 00:33:21 And it did, but not in the way that I envisioned it would.
755. 00:33:24 It wasn't a huge commercial success at the beginning.
756. 00:33:29 Well, that's what I had anchored on.
757. 00:33:32 And so when I didn't sell a ton of copies of that course,
758. 00:33:36 I remember having the identity crisis,
759. 00:33:38 like, well, what the heck?
760. 00:33:39 I thought I was supposed to do this thing.
761. 00:33:41 Nobody cares.
762. 00:33:42 And I had that question, like,
763. 00:33:46 I don't know if I'm good enough,
764. 00:33:49 but I think at this point,
765. 00:33:50 I've been doing enough other things
766. 00:33:51 that I don't struggle with that anymore.
767. 00:33:54 And I think that's really the only way to get to that point
768. 00:33:57 is to do it consistently enough to silence the voice
769. 00:34:00 of the inner critic.
770. 00:34:02 You'll never silence the voices of the external critics,
771. 00:34:05 but the internal one is the one that--
772. 00:34:07 - It's a bit of a danger to--
773. 00:34:09 - Yell to be allowed to stand in words.
774. 00:34:10 - Start to associate the work itself as you,
775. 00:34:15 like that whole identify with the work
776. 00:34:18 so much so that your identity is tied up in it.
777. 00:34:21 It's easy to say that, but it's very difficult to do that
778. 00:34:25 in practice for many, many people.
779. 00:34:27 Like, that's not simple.
780. 00:34:29 It's great if you can, but even people who have done it
781. 00:34:33 for a very long time will fall into that hole once in a while.
782. 00:34:37 So if that's you, 'cause I know that's me,
783. 00:34:41 it's not a simple thing.
784. 00:34:44 So I just need to say that to begin with.
785. 00:34:47 Also, it's a simple change in how you term something.
786. 00:34:52 Like the way that he put it was,
787. 00:34:54 this song isn't good enough yet,
788. 00:34:58 versus I cannot write a good song.
789. 00:35:01 Like, completely different worlds apart in those two phrases.
790. 00:35:05 Depending on which one you're saying to yourself.
791. 00:35:08 And the trouble is, at least for me,
792. 00:35:11 is I find that I'm typically saying one of those two things
793. 00:35:16 without realizing it's a subconscious comment to myself,
794. 00:35:20 like, "Ugh, you're terrible at this."
795. 00:35:22 And it's such a brief comment that it just doesn't even strike me
796. 00:35:26 as something that needs to be corrected.
797. 00:35:28 It's just a thing that happens.
798. 00:35:29 Like, okay, that's not true.
799. 00:35:33 This is where, like, I had a couple, or last two episodes ago,
800. 00:35:38 I had the action item of doing the journaling at night thing, right?
801. 00:35:41 I did that, and last time I was saying
802. 00:35:45 I was gonna continue doing that, which I have been.
803. 00:35:48 That process is also one that can come and help pull,
804. 00:35:51 come and be extremely helpful whenever it comes to things like this,
805. 00:35:55 because you can start to disconnect from the specific action.
806. 00:36:00 It's like, okay, did this go well or didn't it?
807. 00:36:03 And is it done?
808. 00:36:05 Like, you can start to ask those questions,
809. 00:36:07 which I've done on a couple things.
810. 00:36:08 I've got a pretty major project I'm in the middle of at work.
811. 00:36:12 And it's one I'm pretty excited about,
812. 00:36:14 so it's hard for me to let it be.
813. 00:36:17 But it's one that I know that it's never really done.
814. 00:36:22 It involves a sound system.
815. 00:36:24 So, like, you're never actually done
816. 00:36:26 fixing and tweaking with sound systems.
817. 00:36:28 It's just a perpetual forever thing.
818. 00:36:31 So, the question is, when are you done?
819. 00:36:33 When do you call that project done?
820. 00:36:35 And you have to make that decision.
821. 00:36:37 Well, if someone has an opinion of it,
822. 00:36:40 whether it's my opinion or somebody else's,
823. 00:36:43 it doesn't really matter.
824. 00:36:44 Like, this is where the self-doubt versus the doubt
825. 00:36:49 of the project itself can start to manifest itself.
826. 00:36:54 So, yeah, I struggle with this one.
827. 00:36:58 But I'm not sure what to do about it either.
828. 00:37:01 It's just an awareness thing.
829. 00:37:03 - Sure.
830. 00:37:05 You mentioned self-doubt.
831. 00:37:07 That's actually the previous chapter, 16.
832. 00:37:11 And one of the things I jotted down from that chapter
833. 00:37:14 is that you are the only one with your voice.
834. 00:37:20 And if you really believe that,
835. 00:37:23 that can be enough to get you over that hump
836. 00:37:28 and actually release the thing.
837. 00:37:31 And then the other thing that's kind of tied to this
838. 00:37:33 is that you also have to believe
839. 00:37:36 that there will be other ideas that will come to you,
840. 00:37:38 even if you don't know exactly what they are yet.
841. 00:37:41 You have to trust that you are aware enough
842. 00:37:45 of the creative system that's happening around you
843. 00:37:48 that you can grab some new inspiration
844. 00:37:50 and make something else, which I get it.
845. 00:37:53 That can be scary.
846. 00:37:55 It's almost like you gotta let it go
847. 00:37:57 and then the minute that you let it go,
848. 00:37:58 that's when you see the next thing that you can leap to,
849. 00:38:02 which maybe that's a spot to go to the next one here,
850. 00:38:07 which is on habits.
851. 00:38:09 And there's actually two parts of this
852. 00:38:13 that I wanna talk about habits and seeds.
853. 00:38:16 So habits is chapter 27.
854. 00:38:19 And then the one after that,
855. 00:38:20 chapter 28 is seeds.
856. 00:38:22 But as it pertains to habits,
857. 00:38:26 I feel like this is important
858. 00:38:29 because this is the thing that helps the creative process work.
859. 00:38:34 It's the showing up consistently.
860. 00:38:37 It's, and these are ideas that we have heard
861. 00:38:40 a million times before,
862. 00:38:42 but again, couple of this with the seeds idea, right?
863. 00:38:45 So if you are focused on habits and not on goals,
864. 00:38:49 then the only person you really compete against is yourself.
865. 00:38:52 And for both the artist and the athlete,
866. 00:38:54 he mentions that the details matter.
867. 00:38:56 So you have to practice the right way.
868. 00:38:58 And he talks about how discipline and freedom
869. 00:39:00 are not opposites.
870. 00:39:02 We've heard that before as well.
871. 00:39:04 Okay, so then if you have habits,
872. 00:39:06 that's the process that actually produces the creation.
873. 00:39:11 But what are you actually producing?
874. 00:39:14 And he has a word for that whole process.
875. 00:39:16 He calls it crafting, which I actually really like.
876. 00:39:19 I've got different words for it,
877. 00:39:21 but essentially it's the same idea.
878. 00:39:24 You have something which is not developed,
879. 00:39:27 and then you hone it,
880. 00:39:28 and then you release it into the world.
881. 00:39:31 So chapter 28 then is seeds.
882. 00:39:33 And he talks about how you don't compare your seeds.
883. 00:39:36 You don't judge this one being better than the other ones.
884. 00:39:37 And I'm gonna get rid of the other ones.
885. 00:39:39 You just gather them.
886. 00:39:40 He says that the page 144,
887. 00:39:43 the artist's work is to collect seeds, plant them,
888. 00:39:45 water them with attention,
889. 00:39:46 and see if they take root.
890. 00:39:48 Can't judge a seed at the beginning.
891. 00:39:50 And this reminded me of the PKM workshop
892. 00:39:55 that I've done a couple different times now.
893. 00:39:58 I actually have a slide in there
894. 00:39:59 about how your personal knowledge management system,
895. 00:40:02 and it's not an app, it's a system.
896. 00:40:03 It's a whole bunch of things that are tied together
897. 00:40:06 that it's a greenhouse for your ideas.
898. 00:40:10 And you have to collect your ideas.
899. 00:40:11 You have to put them in there,
900. 00:40:12 you have no idea what they are at the beginning.
901. 00:40:14 So this imagery obviously really resonated with me.
902. 00:40:17 It was, it kind of helped me understand that analogy
903. 00:40:21 that I had kind of stumbled upon
904. 00:40:23 in a little bit different light.
905. 00:40:25 All I gotta do is grab seeds,
906. 00:40:27 put them in the greenhouse,
907. 00:40:29 give them the right conditions,
908. 00:40:30 and then whatever pops up, that's cool.
909. 00:40:33 I don't have to worry about,
910. 00:40:35 oh, I didn't get this particular thing this time.
911. 00:40:39 And that is actually very freeing.
912. 00:40:40 I have all sorts of thoughts on this.
913. 00:40:43 Number one, of course we have a habits section.
914. 00:40:45 We're not gonna skip over that particular part in the book.
915. 00:40:48 Two, mentioning seeds, like whenever I was reading this,
916. 00:40:50 like, yep, Mike's about to bring up PKMs,
917. 00:40:52 like immediately, as soon as I saw, like,
918. 00:40:55 they're all equal, it's like, yep, here we go.
919. 00:40:58 - Well, okay, so hold on a second.
920. 00:41:01 I gotta find myself here, 'cause I did ask,
921. 00:41:04 are there any specific things that you wanted to pull out?
922. 00:41:07 And the reason I asked that is because I knew that,
923. 00:41:10 because there are 79 different chapters in here or whatever,
924. 00:41:14 if you're gonna try to connect some of them,
925. 00:41:19 everybody is gonna have a different path, right?
926. 00:41:22 And that's part of the beauty of this book,
927. 00:41:24 is you'll start with one,
928. 00:41:25 and then you'll jump to something,
929. 00:41:27 and you'll jump to something else.
930. 00:41:29 So yes, you know me well, habits and seeds
931. 00:41:32 are gonna be things that I will jump to.
932. 00:41:34 - This is my dream, you have PKM as a habit.
933. 00:41:36 So, (laughs)
934. 00:41:39 the section on habits, it starts with the story,
935. 00:41:44 we've heard this before, John Wooden with the story
936. 00:41:46 of how to tie your shoes, how to put in your socks
937. 00:41:48 for his basketball teams,
938. 00:41:52 and the other side of that,
939. 00:41:55 and something you have mentioned a couple times now
940. 00:41:57 in this episode is like the concept of focus
941. 00:41:59 on your own thing, and try not to get caught up
942. 00:42:02 on what other people are saying.
943. 00:42:05 I know that John Wooden had some of that mindset,
944. 00:42:08 if not entirely, I'm trying to remember
945. 00:42:10 some of the stories there, but I also know
946. 00:42:13 that I've recently seen a, there was an interview
947. 00:42:16 with Tom Brady, and they had asked him
948. 00:42:19 about one of his opponents, I don't remember the specifics,
949. 00:42:23 I just remember them asking,
950. 00:42:26 "Did you see the tape of this guy doing this,
951. 00:42:29 "and see the stats around it?"
952. 00:42:31 No, I was busy training, like,
953. 00:42:33 no, like he doesn't know,
954. 00:42:37 like he's not 100% focused on what the other team's doing,
955. 00:42:40 he's focused on his own thing,
956. 00:42:42 and that concept is one that I think is super important,
957. 00:42:45 which is why this section on habits is so,
958. 00:42:48 I think important, and probably why we continue to rail on it,
959. 00:42:51 every time this is even remotely mentioned,
960. 00:42:54 we'll bring up the concept of habits,
961. 00:42:56 because having these little components of your day,
962. 00:43:00 of your process that are inwardly focused,
963. 00:43:03 not focused on how does this compare to other people,
964. 00:43:06 but like focusing on your own thing,
965. 00:43:08 that's where all the magic and goodies come from,
966. 00:43:12 and that's where the success can come from,
967. 00:43:16 and there's even a whole thing on defining that
968. 00:43:18 a little bit later, which is basically
969. 00:43:20 to define it for yourself,
970. 00:43:22 but doing that means that you're able to develop
971. 00:43:27 and have, I guess, peace of mind with your own art,
972. 00:43:33 define art for yourself,
973. 00:43:35 that can be a whole bunch of different ways,
974. 00:43:37 whether it's code or painting,
975. 00:43:39 and if you're comfortable with it
976. 00:43:41 and you're happy with it, that's the part that matters,
977. 00:43:44 and then you can find an audience for that,
978. 00:43:46 if that's what you wanna do,
979. 00:43:48 which I think we would both encourage you
980. 00:43:50 to share these things,
981. 00:43:51 not just hold them up in some random system,
982. 00:43:54 file system somewhere,
983. 00:43:56 but I think there is a lot of value in this whole habits thing,
984. 00:43:59 the seeds thing, of course, is very similar to that,
985. 00:44:03 collecting ideas, collecting dots,
986. 00:44:05 we've called it in the past,
987. 00:44:06 but externalizing that can have lots of benefits,
988. 00:44:10 as I'm sure you would attest to,
989. 00:44:12 but these are both topics,
990. 00:44:14 and there's probably a reason they're back to back,
991. 00:44:16 it's like, okay, build up the habits
992. 00:44:18 of collecting these seeds,
993. 00:44:19 and then nurture those seeds,
994. 00:44:21 and they'll grow into some cool things later on,
995. 00:44:23 so yes, these are awesome,
996. 00:44:26 probably some of my favorite parts of the book.
997. 00:44:29 - And it's worth calling out,
998. 00:44:31 even if you have followed along since episode one,
999. 00:44:35 and heard us talk about these things before,
1000. 00:44:37 because consider the source here.
1001. 00:44:41 I'm not sure how familiar you are with Rick Rubin,
1002. 00:44:46 - Not.
1003. 00:44:48 - But he is a producer,
1004. 00:44:50 and he has one,
1005. 00:44:52 looks like nine different Grammy awards,
1006. 00:44:56 over the course of 25 years from 1996
1007. 00:45:00 to 2021.
1008. 00:45:03 - That explains all of the actor/musician references,
1009. 00:45:07 like he's got a lot of those.
1010. 00:45:09 - Yeah, he was one of the guys who founded
1011. 00:45:14 Def Jam recordings or something way back in the day,
1012. 00:45:18 but he's been doing this forever,
1013. 00:45:20 and the way that he's been successful
1014. 00:45:24 is exactly this.
1015. 00:45:26 His goal was not,
1016. 00:45:28 I'm gonna win a Grammy someday, right?
1017. 00:45:30 He just made stuff over and over and over again,
1018. 00:45:33 and that's actually one of the cool things about this book,
1019. 00:45:36 is he shares lots of examples,
1020. 00:45:38 and if you're not into music,
1021. 00:45:40 there are other examples that he shares,
1022. 00:45:43 other stories and things like that,
1023. 00:45:45 but he'll talk about people that he was working with,
1024. 00:45:47 and the song just wasn't working,
1025. 00:45:49 so they just completely flipped around,
1026. 00:45:51 did something different, right?
1027. 00:45:52 And that is a form of experimentation,
1028. 00:45:55 or something like that,
1029. 00:45:56 but the point being here that he,
1030. 00:46:00 practices what he preaches,
1031. 00:46:03 and what he's telling us here is,
1032. 00:46:06 as a multiple Grammy award-winning producer,
1033. 00:46:10 I can tell you, the way that I got to this point
1034. 00:46:13 was I consistently made stuff,
1035. 00:46:15 and I consistently developed seeds, right?
1036. 00:46:18 And then that has a lot more credence, I feel.
1037. 00:46:22 Not that James Clear in atomic habits
1038. 00:46:26 is a flash in the pan,
1039. 00:46:27 but almost when you compare it to Rick Rubin
1040. 00:46:29 and everything that he's done.
1041. 00:46:31 I mean, I know James Clear's story,
1042. 00:46:32 so he's been writing about habits for a really long time,
1043. 00:46:35 and atomic habits was not all of a sudden,
1044. 00:46:39 he blew up sort of success story
1045. 00:46:42 that people will paint that stuff out to be,
1046. 00:46:45 but I actually think this is great,
1047. 00:46:47 because if you do this,
1048. 00:46:50 it's almost like you don't have to worry
1049. 00:46:51 about the results,
1050. 00:46:53 but it's a longer time scale
1051. 00:46:54 than we typically think of success, too.
1052. 00:46:57 Rick Rubin's been doing this for decades.
1053. 00:47:00 We wanna give up after a week.
1054. 00:47:01 You gotta stick with it.
1055. 00:47:04 - That kind of ties in,
1056. 00:47:06 what you're saying right there,
1057. 00:47:07 it ties into, is it Cal Newport
1058. 00:47:10 that talks about slow productivity?
1059. 00:47:12 It seems like he's trying to write a book on this,
1060. 00:47:14 but it's like that concept of,
1061. 00:47:17 do the work daily towards a big thing long term.
1062. 00:47:21 Like that's really what you're talking about.
1063. 00:47:24 Cool concept definitely requires
1064. 00:47:27 some perseverance and discipline.
1065. 00:47:29 - Yep, easier said than done for sure.
1066. 00:47:31 - Yeah, by far, yes.
1067. 00:47:33 - All right, the next one that I wanna talk about
1068. 00:47:38 is number 36, the abundance mindset,
1069. 00:47:43 and the reason I wanna talk about this one
1070. 00:47:47 is you don't get this from the title,
1071. 00:47:49 but there is a dichotomy here
1072. 00:47:51 that is very important to understand.
1073. 00:47:54 And again, recognize who Rick Rubin is
1074. 00:47:56 and the success that he's had
1075. 00:47:58 changes this message a little bit.
1076. 00:48:00 So the abundance mindset he talks about
1077. 00:48:03 how an artist is free to release ideas
1078. 00:48:08 because of faith that more will arise.
1079. 00:48:10 So you put a song out there,
1080. 00:48:12 even if you could continue to tweak it
1081. 00:48:16 and make it perfect,
1082. 00:48:17 well, nothing is ever going to be perfect
1083. 00:48:19 because you have to create room for the next thing.
1084. 00:48:22 And scarcity is, well, I've got this one
1085. 00:48:26 and this is the only one that I'm gonna get.
1086. 00:48:27 I'm not sure when the next thing is gonna come.
1087. 00:48:30 So I better protect this at all costs
1088. 00:48:35 and that is counter-productive.
1089. 00:48:38 He talks about how scarcity actually leads to stagnation.
1090. 00:48:42 And we've talked about abundance versus scarcity
1091. 00:48:44 in terms of overall success.
1092. 00:48:47 Somebody else did something,
1093. 00:48:49 wrote something on a topic that I was gonna write about
1094. 00:48:51 and oh, I guess I better not do that anymore.
1095. 00:48:53 No, go ahead and make your thing
1096. 00:48:54 because just because they were successful with something
1097. 00:48:57 doesn't mean there's no room for you to be successful as well.
1098. 00:48:59 In fact, the opposite is probably true.
1099. 00:49:01 It's validation that your idea is a good one.
1100. 00:49:03 So the market is big enough to support both of you.
1101. 00:49:05 Go ahead and do it.
1102. 00:49:07 And he talks about how whatever we concentrate on,
1103. 00:49:09 we get that's a pretty powerful idea.
1104. 00:49:12 And this is like what I love about this book.
1105. 00:49:14 There's all these one liners kind of
1106. 00:49:16 that if you really sit and think about it
1107. 00:49:18 and you're like, whoa, that is profound.
1108. 00:49:21 So if I am concentrating on scarcity,
1109. 00:49:26 I will get scarcity, right?
1110. 00:49:30 Not just a scarcity mindset,
1111. 00:49:32 but I really do believe if you have a scarcity mindset,
1112. 00:49:36 it's always gonna be a struggle.
1113. 00:49:37 You're never gonna be able to really tap into the flow
1114. 00:49:40 of the energy that's around you
1115. 00:49:43 because your thinking is too small.
1116. 00:49:47 You don't have the capacity to really latch onto that.
1117. 00:49:50 But if you are able to release things
1118. 00:49:53 and you have this abundance mindset,
1119. 00:49:54 you can just jump in, go wherever the wind
1120. 00:49:57 and the waves will take you, right?
1121. 00:49:59 And that's how you get some cool places
1122. 00:50:01 because you can never see the other side
1123. 00:50:05 when you have to make that leap.
1124. 00:50:06 You just have to trust that there's enough there
1125. 00:50:10 to sustain you.
1126. 00:50:11 And when it comes to creativity,
1127. 00:50:13 I mean, if you don't get this,
1128. 00:50:16 you'll still be stuck on that first thing forever.
1129. 00:50:20 And I feel like I was at that point with the book,
1130. 00:50:23 even though I self-published that book within eight months,
1131. 00:50:27 it was done being written after about three.
1132. 00:50:30 And I just continued to tweak it
1133. 00:50:33 because I wanted it to be perfect.
1134. 00:50:35 And I'm like, oh, that's the thing.
1135. 00:50:36 That's my thing, you know?
1136. 00:50:38 My one chance, right?
1137. 00:50:41 And I still get sucked into that sometimes.
1138. 00:50:44 I think, I forget who it was.
1139. 00:50:48 It was attending a live recording.
1140. 00:50:49 Maybe it was Carol who encouraged me to let that one go
1141. 00:50:54 'cause I was talking about,
1142. 00:50:55 I gotta go back and I gotta revise that.
1143. 00:50:56 I gotta update it.
1144. 00:50:57 My thinking's evolved.
1145. 00:50:58 Like, no, just go right the next one.
1146. 00:50:59 - Yep, just move on.
1147. 00:51:01 It's okay.
1148. 00:51:02 - Yep, have the abundance mindset, right?
1149. 00:51:04 That's your thinking at a specific moment in time,
1150. 00:51:07 which he talks about that in this book too.
1151. 00:51:09 And that's a whole, that's a really great section,
1152. 00:51:11 but I didn't actually jot anything down about that.
1153. 00:51:14 There's so much, I mean, we could have
1154. 00:51:16 a 12-hour conversation about everything
1155. 00:51:18 that's in this book.
1156. 00:51:18 It's all really, really good.
1157. 00:51:20 But yeah, have an abundance mindset.
1158. 00:51:23 Don't be stingy.
1159. 00:51:25 - Yeah, that's one that,
1160. 00:51:26 we've certainly brought this one up before.
1161. 00:51:31 This is not a new, like the abundance mindset
1162. 00:51:33 is not a new one.
1163. 00:51:34 At the same time, you know,
1164. 00:51:38 trying to convey the difference between,
1165. 00:51:42 you know, trying to share ideas freely,
1166. 00:51:45 as opposed to holding onto them
1167. 00:51:48 and assuming like this is the only one
1168. 00:51:50 that's the best one you can never have, it's mine.
1169. 00:51:53 That's true, but at the same time,
1170. 00:51:56 like there is the market side of it too, right?
1171. 00:52:00 You know, patents exist for a reason
1172. 00:52:03 because you're trying to prevent people
1173. 00:52:05 from stealing things.
1174. 00:52:06 So there is that out there as well
1175. 00:52:09 that I was trying to process me having
1176. 00:52:11 a little bit of the legal mind going into that.
1177. 00:52:14 Wait a second, yeah, that's fine.
1178. 00:52:15 You can share those things,
1179. 00:52:16 but have a contract in place before you do that.
1180. 00:52:19 Like that's where my brain went.
1181. 00:52:23 Like, you know, even Rick Rubin, you know,
1182. 00:52:26 he's not gonna take a song that he's completely written
1183. 00:52:30 and just give it to somebody.
1184. 00:52:32 He's not gonna have that happen.
1185. 00:52:35 - True, but I can tell you,
1186. 00:52:36 he's also not like scanning the airwaves
1187. 00:52:40 for somebody who ripped off a melody line.
1188. 00:52:44 - Correct.
1189. 00:52:45 - I've seen that with people close to me
1190. 00:52:48 where it just consumes them.
1191. 00:52:50 It's like, oh, well, these people are stealing my stuff.
1192. 00:52:53 So, makes something better.
1193. 00:52:57 - It's a compliment.
1194. 00:52:58 Yep, that's, I think you're absolutely spot on.
1195. 00:53:03 So I think that there's,
1196. 00:53:04 but there's also the difference between like,
1197. 00:53:07 this is the thing I made versus someone took this
1198. 00:53:10 before it's completely made,
1199. 00:53:12 or like you're trying to hold on to it
1200. 00:53:13 versus freely offering it.
1201. 00:53:14 Like there's a difference between stealing
1202. 00:53:16 and then being given something.
1203. 00:53:19 So there's that out there, but regardless,
1204. 00:53:23 the concept of holding on to ideas
1205. 00:53:25 because you don't want somebody else to get the idea
1206. 00:53:27 is just complete nonsense.
1207. 00:53:28 Like that's not the way it works.
1208. 00:53:31 If you're willing to share that idea very likely,
1209. 00:53:34 the person's got another comment about it,
1210. 00:53:36 can help expand it very likely to make it better,
1211. 00:53:39 assuming you're asking the right person.
1212. 00:53:41 So it's okay.
1213. 00:53:44 Don't lock down, be open.
1214. 00:53:47 - Yeah, and the chapter before that is on completion.
1215. 00:53:52 And so I feel like the context
1216. 00:53:56 or the bias towards this is just in terms of
1217. 00:54:00 abundance versus scarcity in terms of the ideas.
1218. 00:54:05 But I also think he would agree with
1219. 00:54:10 like the general concept that we're talking about here.
1220. 00:54:14 You know, I mentioned he's won a bunch of different Grammys.
1221. 00:54:17 There are, there's only a certain amount of Grammys.
1222. 00:54:21 Right?
1223. 00:54:22 So if you wanted to anchor something as evidence
1224. 00:54:25 for a scarcity mindset, you know,
1225. 00:54:27 that would be something like that would be it.
1226. 00:54:29 But I have a feeling just based on everything
1227. 00:54:31 that we've read in this book, you would even say,
1228. 00:54:33 so I've won a Grammy, that doesn't prevent somebody else
1229. 00:54:35 from winning it.
1230. 00:54:37 You have to do something that's worth winning that award.
1231. 00:54:43 And if you don't get that award,
1232. 00:54:44 that doesn't mean that the thing that you made is not valuable.
1233. 00:54:49 The real value is in the creative process
1234. 00:54:53 and you being willing to share it.
1235. 00:54:56 And in that completion chapter, he talks about
1236. 00:55:00 how each work of art is in the reflection of us.
1237. 00:55:01 It's only reflection of who we are in this moment.
1238. 00:55:04 And so this is where I feel like if you go into this
1239. 00:55:07 with a growth mindset, you're cooking with gas.
1240. 00:55:10 It's just a matter of time.
1241. 00:55:13 I make something, it's bad, who cares?
1242. 00:55:15 I'm gonna learn a lesson from it
1243. 00:55:17 and I'm gonna do it better next time.
1244. 00:55:19 And I'm gonna do that enough.
1245. 00:55:21 The score is gonna take care of itself.
1246. 00:55:23 Right?
1247. 00:55:24 There is always going to be a market
1248. 00:55:25 for things that are of high quality.
1249. 00:55:28 And the thing I have to overcome
1250. 00:55:30 is the constantly tweaking it and getting it just right.
1251. 00:55:33 Because why?
1252. 00:55:35 Because I wanna meet somebody else's standard?
1253. 00:55:39 No, he talks about how the work is done
1254. 00:55:41 when you think it is.
1255. 00:55:43 When you believe the work before you is the single piece
1256. 00:55:46 that will forever define you, it's difficult to let it go.
1257. 00:55:49 He says, "I'll page 195."
1258. 00:55:51 And so that's the trap for me, that perfectionism.
1259. 00:55:56 If I get stuck there, then I don't make anything new.
1260. 00:55:59 - You should keep making new things.
1261. 00:56:02 - How about a podcast every two weeks?
1262. 00:56:05 - Hey, there we go.
1263. 00:56:06 You can't get too caught up on each one of them
1264. 00:56:08 'cause you got another one coming.
1265. 00:56:09 - It's true.
1266. 00:56:11 And I have never gone back and listened
1267. 00:56:13 to the early episodes, but I'm sure if I did,
1268. 00:56:16 I would see that we are a lot better at it now
1269. 00:56:19 than we were.
1270. 00:56:20 - I have the amount of interest I have
1271. 00:56:24 in going back to those early episodes
1272. 00:56:26 and listening to them is definitely in the negatives.
1273. 00:56:29 - Yep.
1274. 00:56:30 It's truly something I'm avoiding.
1275. 00:56:33 Do not want to do.
1276. 00:56:35 - Yeah, I don't think there'll be a whole lot of value
1277. 00:56:36 in that, to be honest, but that's okay.
1278. 00:56:39 All right, the next one, we're gonna jump ahead a bit here.
1279. 00:56:44 But again, there's lots of great stuff in here.
1280. 00:56:46 So 55, the name of this chapter is 24/7,
1281. 00:56:52 or staying in it.
1282. 00:56:53 Creativity is something that you are.
1283. 00:56:57 And it talks about how the artist's job
1284. 00:57:00 is two kinds of work.
1285. 00:57:01 The work of doing and the work of being.
1286. 00:57:05 I like this analogy.
1287. 00:57:08 And I think this compliments probably
1288. 00:57:12 what you and I do fairly well.
1289. 00:57:14 When you are a full-time creator,
1290. 00:57:17 I feel like there is pressure to constantly be creating,
1291. 00:57:20 but you need time to switch modes
1292. 00:57:22 and just noodle on things.
1293. 00:57:25 So that's what I would call the work of being.
1294. 00:57:29 And because the day job is so different,
1295. 00:57:33 it actually, I feel kind of facilitates this.
1296. 00:57:37 I was kind of curious where you see the lines here
1297. 00:57:40 between the work of doing
1298. 00:57:42 and the work of being for yourself.
1299. 00:57:44 - Yeah, that's a blurry line,
1300. 00:57:47 but at the same time, a very clean line
1301. 00:57:50 in that it floats from thing to thing.
1302. 00:57:54 So there's the creative side and the creative endeavors,
1303. 00:57:57 the content creation side of it,
1304. 00:57:59 where we're creating this podcast, right?
1305. 00:58:01 And we're doing every two weeks, I'm always reading
1306. 00:58:04 and then processing my thoughts on it,
1307. 00:58:05 knowing that we're gonna come discuss it.
1308. 00:58:07 So for example, I've been reading this book,
1309. 00:58:10 this is absorbed all of my reading time because it's long.
1310. 00:58:14 And then the next day, I'm regularly processing,
1311. 00:58:18 or that day if I've read it in the morning,
1312. 00:58:20 I'm processing the things that I read
1313. 00:58:22 for this conversation.
1314. 00:58:25 And in one particular case,
1315. 00:58:27 I've got an audio rack sitting right here behind me
1316. 00:58:29 that I'm in the middle of building
1317. 00:58:31 and it required a fair amount of soldering.
1318. 00:58:34 So I've been soldering XLR cables, if you wanna know.
1319. 00:58:37 And that takes a lot of time.
1320. 00:58:39 It's just a process I need to go through.
1321. 00:58:42 Nothing specifically difficult about it
1322. 00:58:45 in the scheme of what I do.
1323. 00:58:47 So it was a pretty mundane thing.
1324. 00:58:51 So I was doing something, like in that case,
1325. 00:58:54 I would be sitting in the realm of being,
1326. 00:58:57 it was like my day job stuff,
1327. 00:59:00 but I've soldered XLR cables enough
1328. 00:59:03 to not really have to think about it.
1329. 00:59:05 It's like one of those things I can zone out on,
1330. 00:59:07 which then means like I'm processing what I read that day.
1331. 00:59:12 So then that's like the whole being aspect, right?
1332. 00:59:15 I'm not actually creating anything.
1333. 00:59:17 I don't have the habit of creating it
1334. 00:59:19 in action at that time.
1335. 00:59:21 This is similar, like people talk about like,
1336. 00:59:22 I do this whenever I'm mowing the lawn,
1337. 00:59:24 like I could hire that out,
1338. 00:59:25 but I want that time spent just not thinking about anything
1339. 00:59:32 in particular, just letting my mind run.
1340. 00:59:34 'Cause that's where a lot of great ideas come.
1341. 00:59:37 I just did this yesterday on the snow plow,
1342. 00:59:40 like just back and forth, back and forth, back and forth,
1343. 00:59:43 'cause snowmageddon.
1344. 00:59:45 And that is a time that seems to be wasted
1345. 00:59:50 and a lot of people would say I should outsource that,
1346. 00:59:52 but I'm not gonna do that
1347. 00:59:53 because that's a very valuable being state for me,
1348. 00:59:57 versus the work of doing,
1349. 01:00:00 like we're doing right now,
1350. 01:00:02 the work of creating the podcast.
1351. 01:00:04 Like this is the culmination of, for me,
1352. 01:00:07 many hours of time spent reading the text
1353. 01:00:12 and then processing my thoughts about it,
1354. 01:00:15 doing other stuff that I do throughout the day.
1355. 01:00:18 Now thankfully, like my job has a lot of places
1356. 01:00:21 where it's stuff I do all the time.
1357. 01:00:23 I love doing it, but I don't have to think actively about it.
1358. 01:00:27 It's not like I'm running the soundboard
1359. 01:00:29 in a way that requires me to actively focus on it.
1360. 01:00:32 It's like soldering, pulling cable, connecting things.
1361. 01:00:36 Like I don't have to think when I do those things.
1362. 01:00:38 I still like doing it, but I don't have to think,
1363. 01:00:40 which means that my brain goes to the other places
1364. 01:00:42 that being state.
1365. 01:00:43 So I like those two.
1366. 01:00:45 I like that he defined them in those ways.
1367. 01:00:48 I can't say that it's like revolutionary.
1368. 01:00:50 This is a brand new idea.
1369. 01:00:51 Like this is definitely something I've had delineated
1370. 01:00:54 in my mind for quite some time,
1371. 01:00:56 but at the same time, it's like,
1372. 01:00:58 it's kind of cool to see it termed that way.
1373. 01:01:00 So definitely a section that's worth your reading.
1374. 01:01:03 - Well, the term being I think is the one
1375. 01:01:07 that is a little uncomfortable for people
1376. 01:01:11 because when you are being with the idea,
1377. 01:01:16 you're in the presence of it.
1378. 01:01:18 It has your attention even maybe,
1379. 01:01:21 but you're not actively moving it forward.
1380. 01:01:25 You're not making something with it.
1381. 01:01:28 And that coupled with the idea mentioned earlier,
1382. 01:01:31 we've got a limited amount of attention
1383. 01:01:33 to devote to things.
1384. 01:01:35 I feel like if you're just being with an idea
1385. 01:01:37 and you're just like holding it lightly
1386. 01:01:39 and looking at it, there's like the,
1387. 01:01:42 there can be that anxiety or that pressure to,
1388. 01:01:45 nothing's happening here.
1389. 01:01:46 Let's go find something else.
1390. 01:01:48 And what he's encouraging us to do, I feel,
1391. 01:01:54 is fight against that and just be in the moment
1392. 01:01:58 with the thing.
1393. 01:02:00 And that's kind of contradictory, I think,
1394. 01:02:03 to some of the other stuff that I was talking about.
1395. 01:02:06 Or it can appear that way.
1396. 01:02:07 I really don't think it is.
1397. 01:02:09 If I'm working on something,
1398. 01:02:10 I want to be working on that thing.
1399. 01:02:12 If I'm reading a book, I want to be reading one book.
1400. 01:02:15 I know that there are people who say
1401. 01:02:16 you should read multiple books at a time.
1402. 01:02:18 And I've even tried that as an action item.
1403. 01:02:19 It hasn't worked for me.
1404. 01:02:21 I'm okay with working on one thing at a time.
1405. 01:02:23 I'm okay when I feel like I'm at an impasse,
1406. 01:02:26 putting that thing on the side
1407. 01:02:27 and not actually shipping anything with that.
1408. 01:02:29 And then moving on to the next thing.
1409. 01:02:32 But I'm also okay just letting whatever it is
1410. 01:02:35 that's in front of me be the thing that's in front of me
1411. 01:02:38 for a period of time as well.
1412. 01:02:41 And that is not easy to do,
1413. 01:02:43 especially if you're looking for some sort of movement.
1414. 01:02:48 The whole idea of like the seeds, right?
1415. 01:02:52 You can't really tell that it's growing
1416. 01:02:54 until it pokes through the ground.
1417. 01:02:56 But there's a lot going on underneath the surface.
1418. 01:03:00 And I feel like that's kind of hard to do.
1419. 01:03:03 It's a skill that you can develop.
1420. 01:03:06 It's just kind of an intuition of like,
1421. 01:03:07 no, there's something here.
1422. 01:03:08 And I just got to incubate it a bit yet
1423. 01:03:12 as opposed to like this one's done
1424. 01:03:14 and it's time to chuck it and move on.
1425. 01:03:17 - Yeah.
1426. 01:03:17 This is something,
1427. 01:03:19 it can work on a very short timeframe too.
1428. 01:03:22 At least this is the way I see it.
1429. 01:03:24 Like there's regularly problems with computers
1430. 01:03:27 and stuff that I need to solve and my day job.
1431. 01:03:30 And if I don't know the answer right away,
1432. 01:03:33 it's very common for me to just stand,
1433. 01:03:35 not say anything and just kind of look at it.
1434. 01:03:37 Like I'm not doing anything.
1435. 01:03:39 I'm just staring at it.
1436. 01:03:42 And that frustrates some people.
1437. 01:03:45 Like shouldn't you be doing something?
1438. 01:03:48 Like, and sometimes it can be frustrating to me too.
1439. 01:03:51 Like I feel like I should be doing something
1440. 01:03:52 and I don't know what it is.
1441. 01:03:54 If I don't know what it is,
1442. 01:03:55 the best thing I can do is not do anything.
1443. 01:03:57 Because the moment I start doing something,
1444. 01:04:00 I'm likely gonna be making it worse.
1445. 01:04:03 And that is the opposite of what I wanna be doing.
1446. 01:04:06 So sitting and just kind of processing it.
1447. 01:04:08 And then if it's a tough one that I can't get a solution to,
1448. 01:04:11 I'm better off going and doing something else
1449. 01:04:13 and then coming back to it.
1450. 01:04:15 And I do that on occasion too.
1451. 01:04:16 I was like, I don't know the answer to this.
1452. 01:04:18 Give me a little bit and I'll be back.
1453. 01:04:21 And I'll either come up with a solution
1454. 01:04:23 that we can do temporarily or a workaround.
1455. 01:04:26 But I need a little bit of space here.
1456. 01:04:27 And generally people are okay with that.
1457. 01:04:29 Like by the end of the day, I'll be back over here.
1458. 01:04:32 Like I'm gonna give you a timeframe
1459. 01:04:33 'cause then otherwise people are like,
1460. 01:04:35 well, I'm never gonna see him again.
1461. 01:04:37 Like that's not the case.
1462. 01:04:39 I just don't have the solution right now
1463. 01:04:40 and I need some time to come up with that.
1464. 01:04:43 So even on a short timeframe, I find that this is
1465. 01:04:46 a thing that can be helpful.
1466. 01:04:48 - Yep.
1467. 01:04:49 The mode switching I think really is the be there for me.
1468. 01:04:53 All right, the next one that I wanna talk about
1469. 01:04:58 is 61 freedom.
1470. 01:05:01 And I have in the notes here freedom and goals
1471. 01:05:06 because I feel like these are connected
1472. 01:05:11 in how he talks about this chapter,
1473. 01:05:15 but the chapter itself is just called freedom.
1474. 01:05:18 He talks about how art is far more powerful
1475. 01:05:22 than our plans for it.
1476. 01:05:23 And on page 328, he says, in the creative process,
1477. 01:05:27 it's often more difficult to accomplish a goal
1478. 01:05:30 by aiming at it.
1479. 01:05:31 Do you agree or disagree with that statement?
1480. 01:05:35 - I feel like every time I've tried to create art
1481. 01:05:38 in any form, whether it's writing,
1482. 01:05:40 even technical things like this audio rack
1483. 01:05:44 that I've been referring to.
1484. 01:05:46 Like I have a goal and I know what the outcome
1485. 01:05:49 of that needs to be.
1486. 01:05:51 And yet the way that I get there,
1487. 01:05:54 or even like the final product,
1488. 01:05:56 is already different than what I intended to hit.
1489. 01:05:59 And this is a very systematic mathematical process
1490. 01:06:04 that you can go through to come up with
1491. 01:06:06 how this thing needs to be built.
1492. 01:06:08 And even that ended up being a creative process to change.
1493. 01:06:12 So I think he spot on here.
1494. 01:06:14 Like I don't think it's ever exactly what you intend to hit
1495. 01:06:17 when you are done.
1496. 01:06:18 There's always like something that's a little bit different
1497. 01:06:20 than what you intended.
1498. 01:06:22 - Yeah, and I bring this up because of goals.
1499. 01:06:26 But I feel like this helps add some context
1500. 01:06:31 to something I was having trouble articulating
1501. 01:06:34 regarding my issue with goals.
1502. 01:06:35 It's not the goals themselves, I think, that are bad.
1503. 01:06:40 So Bodhi Quirk will be happy to hear, I guess,
1504. 01:06:43 that I'm being a little bit nicer to goals.
1505. 01:06:45 But the way that we traditionally set them
1506. 01:06:48 as I'm going to achieve this outcome by this date,
1507. 01:06:51 the whole smart format, right?
1508. 01:06:53 I feel like that's very different
1509. 01:06:55 than what you just described, which is,
1510. 01:06:58 I have a general idea of what this thing should look like
1511. 01:07:00 when it's functioning at the end.
1512. 01:07:02 - Yes.
1513. 01:07:03 - Right?
1514. 01:07:04 And so I feel like that's fine to have some sort of picture
1515. 01:07:07 of what the end product is going to be.
1516. 01:07:11 But the more specific that you get in shaping that goal,
1517. 01:07:16 I feel like if it is something that is creative
1518. 01:07:19 and I am more and more understanding
1519. 01:07:22 that creativity and productivity are like two different sides
1520. 01:07:25 of the same coin.
1521. 01:07:27 So just like everybody is creative,
1522. 01:07:30 everyone should care about their productivity.
1523. 01:07:32 The productivity is how you are actually doing the work,
1524. 01:07:36 but the creativity is how that work is being expressed.
1525. 01:07:39 It's the thing that you're making
1526. 01:07:41 as opposed to the stuff that you are doing.
1527. 01:07:43 So I think there's a correlation there.
1528. 01:07:46 And so this is something
1529. 01:07:47 that everybody should consider, I think.
1530. 01:07:49 And when you don't get so anchored
1531. 01:07:51 to the specifics of a traditional goal,
1532. 01:07:56 you do experience what he has titled this chapter,
1533. 01:08:00 which is freedom.
1534. 01:08:01 So it's fine to have those markers
1535. 01:08:06 of like, this is what I want to have happen.
1536. 01:08:08 But I guess this is a good argument
1537. 01:08:12 for holding those things lightly
1538. 01:08:14 and being willing to modify
1539. 01:08:17 or even completely scrap your plans.
1540. 01:08:20 - So this, it's interesting you brought this up.
1541. 01:08:24 So one of the things I've been thinking about is like,
1542. 01:08:28 okay, what are the technical reasons that goals are bad?
1543. 01:08:31 Like, you know what I mean?
1544. 01:08:33 Like, well, sure we say that.
1545. 01:08:35 And it's something that I would definitely agree with that
1546. 01:08:38 if you set it in that way, just a blanket statement,
1547. 01:08:41 like very vague.
1548. 01:08:44 But why?
1549. 01:08:45 Why would I say that?
1550. 01:08:47 And I don't have clean answers on that.
1551. 01:08:50 Like, so don't expect some magical thing I'm about to tell you.
1552. 01:08:53 That doesn't exist.
1553. 01:08:54 But the derivative question that I've had as a result of that
1554. 01:08:58 is what's the alternative to goals?
1555. 01:09:02 And something I've been processing of like,
1556. 01:09:03 okay, again, take this audio rack.
1557. 01:09:06 It's not that I'm trying to accomplish a goal.
1558. 01:09:10 It's that there's a problem I'm trying to solve.
1559. 01:09:13 And if I'm working towards solving that problem,
1560. 01:09:18 inherently there's typically, inherently there is
1561. 01:09:22 an obvious point in time when that problem has been solved.
1562. 01:09:27 Now, there might be corresponding or cascading problems
1563. 01:09:31 that arise as a result of solving that first one.
1564. 01:09:34 'Cause I've had that with our main sound system recently.
1565. 01:09:37 It was like, I fixed a certain thing with the amps,
1566. 01:09:39 which then led to this whole room tuning thing I had to do.
1567. 01:09:43 I fixed one problem and it created 12 more.
1568. 01:09:46 So it's just the way that that stuff goes sometimes.
1569. 01:09:48 That's a problem that needs solved.
1570. 01:09:50 Would some people call that a goal?
1571. 01:09:52 Probably.
1572. 01:09:53 So it starts to get a little bit vague.
1573. 01:09:56 Anyway, the goal thing, you got me thinking on that.
1574. 01:09:58 It's like, I wonder if it's more about, for me anyway,
1575. 01:10:01 this is again, not necessarily a hot take,
1576. 01:10:03 but it's a thing that's still being processed.
1577. 01:10:07 So it's not fully cooked.
1578. 01:10:09 Just be aware of that.
1579. 01:10:10 But this concept of problem solving versus setting goals.
1580. 01:10:14 Let me take a stab at it.
1581. 01:10:16 Okay, give me.
1582. 01:10:17 I think when you set a goal,
1583. 01:10:19 what you are saying is this is the thing
1584. 01:10:22 I'm going to focus on, right?
1585. 01:10:24 So you are converging your focus.
1586. 01:10:28 You are eliminating options as you move towards a focal point.
1587. 01:10:33 But on the other side of that,
1588. 01:10:36 the freedom that he's talking about,
1589. 01:10:38 and there are other chapters he talks about here
1590. 01:10:40 where like when you are stuck in the middle of a project,
1591. 01:10:43 you should just completely flip it around
1592. 01:10:45 and do something totally crazy and see what happens with that.
1593. 01:10:48 So that, I feel like the creativity side of this
1594. 01:10:52 is divergence where it's getting wider
1595. 01:10:55 and you are getting more options.
1596. 01:10:58 And if I were to summarize my thought on
1597. 01:11:02 how do these two things relate right now?
1598. 01:11:07 It is that we are constantly switching
1599. 01:11:09 between converging and diverging.
1600. 01:11:13 And so we're constantly switching back and forth
1601. 01:11:15 from, for lack of a better term, productivity and creativity.
1602. 01:11:20 I know that you can be productive as a creative
1603. 01:11:22 and I would argue that more people need to be creative
1604. 01:11:24 when they are being productive.
1605. 01:11:27 But I feel like there's just these two different mindsets
1606. 01:11:30 that we have to switch back and forth from.
1607. 01:11:32 And the better we get at changing our focus
1608. 01:11:35 whenever it is appropriate,
1609. 01:11:38 the better we become at overcoming the obstacles
1610. 01:11:41 that are the true obstacles that are in front of us.
1611. 01:11:45 And then you couple that with the idea of self-determination
1612. 01:11:48 and we have the ability to plot our own path.
1613. 01:11:50 And it makes a lot of sense to me.
1614. 01:11:53 (laughs)
1615. 01:11:55 But yeah, still cooking on it a little bit,
1616. 01:11:59 but I find that helpful anyways of like,
1617. 01:12:01 now is the time to look wider as opposed to now is the time
1618. 01:12:04 to look narrower.
1619. 01:12:07 Sure.
1620. 01:12:07 Thoughts or thoughts?
1621. 01:12:10 There's another seed to put in the pot.
1622. 01:12:12 Exactly. (laughs)
1623. 01:12:15 All right, the next one is just a couple of chapters ahead,
1624. 01:12:20 63, what works for you?
1625. 01:12:24 And I feel like we have to touch on this one
1626. 01:12:28 given the nature of bookworm. (laughs)
1627. 01:12:32 Because there is so much advice that we process ourselves
1628. 01:12:36 and then we talk about and people listen to,
1629. 01:12:39 we would be derelict in our duties
1630. 01:12:44 if we did not share the warning here
1631. 01:12:46 that as you receive advice,
1632. 01:12:48 you need to receive it as information, not a prescription.
1633. 01:12:52 And part of me is just like,
1634. 01:12:54 I've been kind of on this kick lately
1635. 01:12:56 that productivity books, they tend to be written as,
1636. 01:12:59 here's the system and now all you have to do is work the system
1637. 01:13:03 and you're guaranteed to get the results.
1638. 01:13:05 And I've been telling people in the different talks
1639. 01:13:08 and things that I've been doing recently,
1640. 01:13:09 like that's garbage. (laughs)
1641. 01:13:11 You have to evaluate for yourself what is actually there,
1642. 01:13:16 going all the way back again to how to read a book
1643. 01:13:18 by Mortimer Adler.
1644. 01:13:19 There's so much good stuff in that book.
1645. 01:13:21 And he talks about how when you read a book,
1646. 01:13:23 it's like playing catch and the author is throwing the ball
1647. 01:13:27 to you and you have to receive it.
1648. 01:13:29 And if they are a skilled writer, skilled communicator,
1649. 01:13:32 then they have more control and then you receive the message
1650. 01:13:35 and then you wait for yourself and you decide
1651. 01:13:37 whether you agree or disagree with it
1652. 01:13:38 and you ask questions in return, right?
1653. 01:13:42 That's a kind of weird picture for people
1654. 01:13:44 who'd never heard that before,
1655. 01:13:45 of actually having like a conversation with an author,
1656. 01:13:48 but that you really have the right to do that.
1657. 01:13:50 And you have to weigh all these things
1658. 01:13:51 and decide if it is right for you.
1659. 01:13:54 It doesn't matter how many Grammys they've won.
1660. 01:13:56 It doesn't matter how many books they have had
1661. 01:13:58 on the New York Times bestsellers list, right?
1662. 01:14:02 It may not be the right thing for you,
1663. 01:14:05 especially in this moment.
1664. 01:14:07 So this whole chapter is just about how your path is unique.
1665. 01:14:11 There's no single route to a great art
1666. 01:14:13 and there's no wrong way to make art.
1667. 01:14:16 You have to figure it out for yourself.
1668. 01:14:17 And I think what we're trying to do is share
1669. 01:14:21 the things that we noticed and the results
1670. 01:14:23 from our own experiments.
1671. 01:14:24 There's a chapter in here on experimentation as well.
1672. 01:14:28 And you can draw your own conclusions from that.
1673. 01:14:31 Feel free to try it.
1674. 01:14:32 You know, I had a tennis coach in college
1675. 01:14:35 who wasn't, he would mix up his sayings all the time.
1676. 01:14:40 And there was one time before a big match
1677. 01:14:44 in the tournament at the end of the year.
1678. 01:14:45 He's like, you know if the shoe fits,
1679. 01:14:47 try it on and think about it.
1680. 01:14:49 Right, so that's something we say all the time.
1681. 01:14:52 And that really applies here.
1682. 01:14:55 Try it on and think about it.
1683. 01:14:56 Decide for yourself though, if you decide
1684. 01:15:00 this isn't the right thing,
1685. 01:15:01 then feel free to take it off again.
1686. 01:15:02 - I have been known to mix up sayings.
1687. 01:15:06 And it's usually when I'm doing quick critiques
1688. 01:15:10 of my children is when this slips up.
1689. 01:15:13 I don't intend to do this, but simple things
1690. 01:15:15 like don't talk with food in your mouth, right?
1691. 01:15:19 That concept or the one that I've been accidentally saying
1692. 01:15:23 lately when they're talking with food in their mouths
1693. 01:15:26 is don't talk with your mouth open.
1694. 01:15:28 Like wait, wait, no, that doesn't add up.
1695. 01:15:33 So like those phrases will sometimes come out.
1696. 01:15:37 You know what I meant?
1697. 01:15:41 And of course then they're dying laughing
1698. 01:15:42 and spitting food everywhere.
1699. 01:15:44 So that complete opposite of what I wanted.
1700. 01:15:46 Being a dad.
1701. 01:15:50 - All right, the last one here,
1702. 01:15:54 if you're ready to move on to this one is chapter 71,
1703. 01:15:59 which is actually called the art habit.
1704. 01:16:03 So another chapter on habits here,
1705. 01:16:05 but the subtitle is Sanga.
1706. 01:16:08 And that's the one that I think is a cool idea
1707. 01:16:11 that I wanted to discuss.
1708. 01:16:13 So in this chapter, there's a couple of things
1709. 01:16:17 which are not necessarily related
1710. 01:16:19 that really resonated with me.
1711. 01:16:21 Page 3.59, he says, "If you look for the work
1712. 01:16:23 "to support you, you may be asking too much of it.
1713. 01:16:25 "That reminded me of that Derek Sivers essay
1714. 01:16:27 "about how to make a lot of money
1715. 01:16:29 "and do what you love, have a well-paying job
1716. 01:16:32 "and make your art."
1717. 01:16:33 That's kind of what he's talking about here.
1718. 01:16:35 - Right, do two things, not one.
1719. 01:16:36 - Exactly.
1720. 01:16:37 So success is harder to come by when your life depends on it.
1721. 01:16:41 He talks about how it's okay to have a job
1722. 01:16:43 that supports your art habit.
1723. 01:16:47 However, the word Sanga, this is kind of like a mastermind.
1724. 01:16:52 It's other people who have a creative mindset,
1725. 01:16:59 but they don't have to be expressing their creativity
1726. 01:17:02 the same way you do.
1727. 01:17:04 And I think this is, so that's typically
1728. 01:17:07 what I would describe as a mastermind group.
1729. 01:17:10 I've got a blog post, which I wrote quite a while ago
1730. 01:17:13 at this point on how to start your own mastermind group,
1731. 01:17:16 which I will put a link to in the show notes.
1732. 01:17:19 I think that's still relevant.
1733. 01:17:21 And really the takeaway I think at this point
1734. 01:17:23 is just to realize the value in this
1735. 01:17:27 and look for these kinds of people in your life.
1736. 01:17:31 Because the big thing he talks about here
1737. 01:17:33 is that creativity is contagious.
1738. 01:17:35 And I 100% believe that if you try to create in a vacuum,
1739. 01:17:39 it can be really, really difficult.
1740. 01:17:41 But when you are around other people
1741. 01:17:42 who are doing the same thing, it becomes a lot easier.
1742. 01:17:45 There's like this positive peer pressure.
1743. 01:17:47 There's motivation that goes along with that.
1744. 01:17:49 That's why things like Part-Time YouTuber Academy
1745. 01:17:51 and Ship30 for 30 are successful.
1746. 01:17:53 Because there's a whole bunch of people
1747. 01:17:54 doing the same thing at the same time.
1748. 01:17:57 - And yet they're different.
1749. 01:17:58 Like that's part of the point, right?
1750. 01:18:01 This is, so personally, like this is something that I've,
1751. 01:18:05 and I only just connected this when you started explaining it.
1752. 01:18:07 But I do so much stuff in the sound world and audio systems.
1753. 01:18:12 That's a big part of my day job, it seems like.
1754. 01:18:17 And yet that means that I'm not really
1755. 01:18:20 around other sound engineers very often.
1756. 01:18:23 I mean from time to time.
1757. 01:18:25 But the people that I am around a lot are musicians.
1758. 01:18:29 And we're all working towards kind of the same thing.
1759. 01:18:31 But it definitely is a creative process
1760. 01:18:35 for creating that song, because I'm definitely
1761. 01:18:38 a big part of that, because I'm putting like amplifying
1762. 01:18:41 or de-amplifying or putting effects into the play.
1763. 01:18:45 Like I'm adding a lot of that to it
1764. 01:18:47 in order to create the sound that the band is after.
1765. 01:18:49 So we're definitely doing this together.
1766. 01:18:51 So there ends up being a lot of creative process
1767. 01:18:55 collectively in that arena.
1768. 01:18:59 But at the same time, that doesn't really translate
1769. 01:19:02 into podcasting or writing.
1770. 01:19:06 Like it doesn't really translate into that realm.
1771. 01:19:09 I think that's where maybe what you're talking about
1772. 01:19:10 with the Part 10 YouTuber Academy.
1773. 01:19:12 Like if you're doing something around YouTube,
1774. 01:19:15 like that is definitely a place you should go.
1775. 01:19:17 At least getting started, right?
1776. 01:19:19 So that's kind of similar, but I think it is helpful
1777. 01:19:24 to find these groups.
1778. 01:19:26 You know, it can be super encouraging.
1779. 01:19:27 Honestly, it can be a great source of accountability.
1780. 01:19:30 If you're somebody like me that needs that type of thing,
1781. 01:19:32 that can be huge.
1782. 01:19:33 So please do this.
1783. 01:19:35 It's good.
1784. 01:19:36 It's good.
1785. 01:19:36 It won't hurt you.
1786. 01:19:38 - All right.
1787. 01:19:39 Should we do action items?
1788. 01:19:41 - Sure.
1789. 01:19:43 - All right.
1790. 01:19:43 I don't have any.
1791. 01:19:46 - I'm the same.
1792. 01:19:49 - Okay.
1793. 01:19:53 - All right, moving on.
1794. 01:19:54 - Well, let's talk about why that is, I think.
1795. 01:19:57 Because this book is interesting.
1796. 01:20:00 We'll get into style and rating in a minute.
1797. 01:20:04 But I think the one action item
1798. 01:20:07 that could be gleaned from this,
1799. 01:20:10 I guess technically there's lots of little things
1800. 01:20:11 that you could apply.
1801. 01:20:13 But I think the obvious one is to reconsider
1802. 01:20:18 your creative rhythms, your creative habits.
1803. 01:20:22 And I intend to do that,
1804. 01:20:23 but not with the intention of changing anything.
1805. 01:20:27 What this book has done is it has helped me
1806. 01:20:29 to look at the way that I create.
1807. 01:20:33 And in a lot of ways, it's reinforced
1808. 01:20:35 some of the beliefs that I have held
1809. 01:20:38 and created more motivation to do things
1810. 01:20:40 that I have been doing.
1811. 01:20:42 It has spurred some ideas for other things
1812. 01:20:44 that I want to do with things
1813. 01:20:46 like the faith-based productivity community.
1814. 01:20:49 But there was nothing in this that I've walked away like,
1815. 01:20:51 oh, that is something specific
1816. 01:20:53 that I am going to implement.
1817. 01:20:56 And I feel like that is okay.
1818. 01:20:57 That is not a judgment on this book
1819. 01:21:00 in any way, shape, or form.
1820. 01:21:01 - I think that's absolutely valid
1821. 01:21:04 'cause thinking about the fact that I have none,
1822. 01:21:07 and then thinking about the creative endeavors
1823. 01:21:10 that I'm involved in,
1824. 01:21:13 which seemed to be fairly extensive
1825. 01:21:14 the more I process that.
1826. 01:21:16 It helps me realize that either one,
1827. 01:21:22 I have a lot of good processes in place
1828. 01:21:23 and this is just a reaffirming book.
1829. 01:21:28 Or this is more just motivational.
1830. 01:21:31 It's not necessarily,
1831. 01:21:33 here's the tactics you need to employ.
1832. 01:21:35 Rather, this is a, hey, you know what to do, go to work.
1833. 01:21:41 - Yeah.
1834. 01:21:42 - You know what I mean?
1835. 01:21:43 This isn't how to calm your mind.
1836. 01:21:46 We had some very practical things that came out of that.
1837. 01:21:49 This one is more like, hey,
1838. 01:21:53 here's how this stuff works.
1839. 01:21:54 I'm not telling you what you should or shouldn't do
1840. 01:21:57 because he's even got a chapter in there that says,
1841. 01:21:59 hey, just do what works for you.
1842. 01:22:00 Don't listen to me.
1843. 01:22:02 Like he has that there.
1844. 01:22:04 So that's definitely a thing that is at play.
1845. 01:22:07 So it's something that I know,
1846. 01:22:10 it definitely can be something that can spur you
1847. 01:22:13 to get to work.
1848. 01:22:13 Like that's, I think what I'm getting at.
1849. 01:22:15 - Yeah, the action item that comes from this,
1850. 01:22:17 from the very beginning is make art.
1851. 01:22:20 And if you are making art,
1852. 01:22:22 this is, there's a lot of encouragement here,
1853. 01:22:24 but it's not written in a way that there's like
1854. 01:22:27 lots of different tweaks that you're gonna make
1855. 01:22:29 to your process.
1856. 01:22:30 If you're not making art,
1857. 01:22:32 I would think that that would be a very strong action item.
1858. 01:22:35 And art is whatever it is that is in your heart to create.
1859. 01:22:40 All right, so that being said,
1860. 01:22:43 let's go on to styling rating.
1861. 01:22:46 And this is my book.
1862. 01:22:49 So I will go first.
1863. 01:22:51 I love this book.
1864. 01:22:53 I mentioned in terms of the bookworm format,
1865. 01:22:56 felt very much like a choose your own adventure style book.
1866. 01:23:01 And I feel a little bit selfish
1867. 01:23:02 'cause all the stuff on the outline was mine.
1868. 01:23:05 But.
1869. 01:23:07 - Which is okay, I didn't give you anything.
1870. 01:23:09 - That's true, I did ask, I did ask.
1871. 01:23:11 - That you did, that you did.
1872. 01:23:13 - Yeah, I think everyone should pick this one up.
1873. 01:23:18 I think this is probably the perfect book
1874. 01:23:23 for what he was trying to do, honestly.
1875. 01:23:26 The way it's laid out is just amazing.
1876. 01:23:29 I feel like even the way he starts it with chapter one,
1877. 01:23:31 everyone is a creator, like it's very polarizing.
1878. 01:23:33 You either agree with that or you don't agree with that.
1879. 01:23:35 And as we talked about by the time you get to chapter 10,
1880. 01:23:38 if you don't agree with it, you're out.
1881. 01:23:40 You've decided, I don't like this guy.
1882. 01:23:43 However, for the people that this can really help,
1883. 01:23:45 the people who this resonates with,
1884. 01:23:47 I mean, this is,
1885. 01:23:50 I wish I would have had this at the beginning
1886. 01:23:52 of my creative journey.
1887. 01:23:53 I wish someone would have handed me this book
1888. 01:23:56 when I was struggling with the idea of like,
1889. 01:23:58 oh, I think I should write something,
1890. 01:23:59 but I don't know what it should be.
1891. 01:24:01 'Cause a lot of the things that he's talked about,
1892. 01:24:03 I've struggled with this stuff.
1893. 01:24:05 I feel like for anybody who thinks
1894. 01:24:09 that they have the potential to be creative,
1895. 01:24:12 this book can be very, very, very helpful.
1896. 01:24:16 I also think that no two people are going to read this
1897. 01:24:19 and walk away with the same pieces
1898. 01:24:23 that really resonated with them, that really spoke to them.
1899. 01:24:27 There's so much in here.
1900. 01:24:29 There are so many one-liners is how I called them,
1901. 01:24:32 but just it's really well written.
1902. 01:24:35 The way things are written, I mean,
1903. 01:24:38 this book could have been, I know it's 400 pages,
1904. 01:24:41 but we talked about how it's not really that long
1905. 01:24:42 because there's a lot of white space.
1906. 01:24:45 This easily could have been two to three times this length.
1907. 01:24:50 If this was written like most of the business
1908. 01:24:53 and productivity books that we picked up,
1909. 01:24:55 this would be over a thousand pages.
1910. 01:24:57 It feels very dense, very concise.
1911. 01:25:01 I picked this up and I started reading.
1912. 01:25:02 It took me forever to get through this.
1913. 01:25:05 Just because I walked out of every single chapter
1914. 01:25:07 being like, I gotta chew on that for a while.
1915. 01:25:10 (laughs)
1916. 01:25:12 I read the first five chapters.
1917. 01:25:14 That was at lunch like two and a half weeks ago.
1918. 01:25:18 And I got done, I'm still sitting there eating lunch.
1919. 01:25:22 I'm like, I gotta close this.
1920. 01:25:24 I gotta think about what I just read.
1921. 01:25:26 This is profound.
1922. 01:25:28 This is potentially life-changing.
1923. 01:25:30 So I think the audience maybe
1924. 01:25:34 is going to be a little bit narrower
1925. 01:25:38 than some of the stuff that we read,
1926. 01:25:40 but I would argue that it shouldn't be
1927. 01:25:43 because going all the way back chapter one,
1928. 01:25:45 I do believe everyone is creative.
1929. 01:25:47 I think for anybody who is interested
1930. 01:25:50 in the topic of creativity,
1931. 01:25:52 there are two books.
1932. 01:25:54 There is this one and the laws of creativity.
1933. 01:25:57 That's it.
1934. 01:25:57 They blow everything else
1935. 01:25:58 that I have ever read on this topic out of the water.
1936. 01:26:02 And this is something that I will definitely go back
1937. 01:26:04 and reread at different points.
1938. 01:26:07 I would have no trouble recommending this
1939. 01:26:09 to anybody who listens to Bookworm,
1940. 01:26:14 anyone who has a desire to make anything.
1941. 01:26:17 And I think this is an easy five stars.
1942. 01:26:21 - So Mike gives it five stars.
1943. 01:26:25 I will not be.
1944. 01:26:27 The thing that, so I think your spot on this book is amazing
1945. 01:26:32 as far as like the creative process goes
1946. 01:26:35 'cause I don't think,
1947. 01:26:37 I don't think we've got a book.
1948. 01:26:39 The Joey Kefone book is the one
1949. 01:26:42 that's probably close to the laws of creativity.
1950. 01:26:45 But this one covers like every component of creativity.
1951. 01:26:50 There's not really a piece of the process
1952. 01:26:52 that gets missed here.
1953. 01:26:53 There's a little bit of weirdness
1954. 01:26:56 when he gets into like some spiritual sides of things
1955. 01:27:00 at times that's very small portions.
1956. 01:27:04 The part that is gonna keep me off of the Five-O here
1957. 01:27:09 is just that to me this was a bit of a slog to get through.
1958. 01:27:15 - Interesting.
1959. 01:27:16 - And that might be a harsh way to say it.
1960. 01:27:18 It was a difficult read for me
1961. 01:27:21 and it wasn't because of style.
1962. 01:27:25 He has a really good writing style.
1963. 01:27:30 He's a very dense writer like you were saying.
1964. 01:27:33 Like I couldn't read this at lunch
1965. 01:27:34 and I couldn't read it at night.
1966. 01:27:35 I had to read it in the morning.
1967. 01:27:37 That was the only time I read this.
1968. 01:27:39 And it was because like I would get through two or three,
1969. 01:27:42 maybe four of these chapters.
1970. 01:27:45 And then it wasn't like I had to stop and say,
1971. 01:27:49 "Okay, I got a chew on this."
1972. 01:27:50 It was more like,
1973. 01:27:51 "Okay, I just like that whole vessel thing."
1974. 01:27:53 Like it was full, like I couldn't do anymore.
1975. 01:27:56 It was just too dense and I couldn't take
1976. 01:27:59 throwing more at myself.
1977. 01:28:02 But I found it kind of difficult to get through primarily
1978. 01:28:06 because there's just no story here.
1979. 01:28:08 Like, we've talked about that before
1980. 01:28:12 where if you're going to get a point across really well,
1981. 01:28:17 bringing story into it is a very big component of that.
1982. 01:28:21 I don't know that he intended it that way,
1983. 01:28:24 but there's just not much for the,
1984. 01:28:28 show me the climax of a plot line.
1985. 01:28:31 Like that concept just doesn't exist here.
1986. 01:28:34 I don't know that that's a requirement in a book,
1987. 01:28:38 but having seen this one without that
1988. 01:28:42 and without much for that.
1989. 01:28:45 Now there are some, but they're like less than a paragraph,
1990. 01:28:48 like a couple of three sentences here and there,
1991. 01:28:51 but not very often.
1992. 01:28:53 Like I could probably count it on one hand,
1993. 01:28:54 maybe two, six, seven stories in the whole thing,
1994. 01:28:57 out of 400 pages, maybe there's more than that.
1995. 01:29:00 I'm just underestimating it.
1996. 01:29:02 But it just didn't feel like,
1997. 01:29:04 but because of that, it meant that I had to actively work
1998. 01:29:07 at trying to stay focused on what I was reading.
1999. 01:29:10 That might be the ADD thing going on there.
2000. 01:29:12 Maybe that's what's at play.
2001. 01:29:15 It just felt like I had a hard time staying focused
2002. 01:29:17 on the book and it made it harder to get through.
2003. 01:29:20 I don't know why that is, maybe it's just me,
2004. 01:29:23 but because of that, I struggle with it.
2005. 01:29:25 That said, having gone through it, it's an awesome book.
2006. 01:29:28 I'm very grateful for having read it.
2007. 01:29:31 So I don't wanna discount that as well.
2008. 01:29:34 I just feel like there's a little bit of a shortcoming
2009. 01:29:36 in some of the choice of style there
2010. 01:29:39 that could have maybe helped some of these points
2011. 01:29:41 to get them across a little bit better.
2012. 01:29:44 Not since they did a bad job, just better.
2013. 01:29:48 Anyway, that's my opinion.
2014. 01:29:50 So all that to say, I'm gonna put it at a 4.5.
2015. 01:29:52 It's very far up there.
2016. 01:29:55 I just have that one complaint with it.
2017. 01:29:59 Well, let's put this one on the shelf.
2018. 01:30:02 What is next, Joe?
2019. 01:30:03 Next is one I'm like super, super giddy about.
2020. 01:30:09 The future is analog by David Sacks.
2021. 01:30:12 This is a follow up of sorts
2022. 01:30:15 to the revenge of analog that he wrote
2023. 01:30:19 that I read a few years ago.
2024. 01:30:21 And I'm excited about this.
2025. 01:30:24 Basically, we get to talk about analog stuff.
2026. 01:30:28 We're gonna have fun with this amazing.
2027. 01:30:31 I'm itching to get into this.
2028. 01:30:32 It'll be good.
2029. 01:30:33 All right.
2030. 01:30:34 So yes, the future is analog.
2031. 01:30:36 And what is this book choice that you won't tell me about?
2032. 01:30:39 You have to tell me now.
2033. 01:30:40 (laughs)
2034. 01:30:42 Well, I will tell you now.
2035. 01:30:44 So this is a Bookworm Club recommendation by Martin,
2036. 01:30:49 who I believe is still in the chat
2037. 01:30:54 for the live recording.
2038. 01:30:55 So thank you, Martin, for recommending this.
2039. 01:30:57 Because this is a topic that has come up several times
2040. 01:31:02 and you're right, we should be reading a book on this.
2041. 01:31:07 So we are going to read a book on motivation.
2042. 01:31:10 And the book we are going to read
2043. 01:31:13 is Susan Fowler's Master Your Motivation.
2044. 01:31:17 And I'm putting the onus on this one squarely on you, Martin.
2045. 01:31:22 You've recommended this multiple times now.
2046. 01:31:24 I saw you just recommended it after the last episode
2047. 01:31:28 and went back and read the original recommendation
2048. 01:31:31 in the club.
2049. 01:31:32 I feel like if you believe in something enough
2050. 01:31:35 to recommend it with that much space in between,
2051. 01:31:38 this has got to be a pretty significant read.
2052. 01:31:41 Because if you look for a motivation book on Amazon,
2053. 01:31:46 good luck.
2054. 01:31:47 But this one looks interesting.
2055. 01:31:51 I don't have it yet.
2056. 01:31:52 But yeah, three scientific truths for achieving your goals.
2057. 01:31:57 Right there on the cover.
2058. 01:32:01 Science, truths, goals, motivation.
2059. 01:32:07 OK, I have very high expectations already.
2060. 01:32:13 Well, I'm going into it a little bit apprehensive,
2061. 01:32:17 but I really do like the topic of motivation.
2062. 01:32:20 Talk about that before on the show.
2063. 01:32:21 And I think we get a good book on motivation,
2064. 01:32:25 which this looks just as good as any of the other ones
2065. 01:32:28 that I've seen.
2066. 01:32:30 Then it'll be a fun conversation at the very least.
2067. 01:32:34 So there we go.
2068. 01:32:35 As Martin says, he's going into hiding.
2069. 01:32:39 OK, all right.
2070. 01:32:40 All right, got any gap books?
2071. 01:32:46 No, heavens, no.
2072. 01:32:48 This one took a lot.
2073. 01:32:50 So no, I should have said that, yes,
2074. 01:32:53 I was going to read something at the times I would normally read at night,
2075. 01:32:56 but it was processing at that point,
2076. 01:32:59 even though it was like 14 hours later.
2077. 01:33:01 So no, I did not.
2078. 01:33:05 But you, anything?
2079. 01:33:07 I don't have anything selected yet.
2080. 01:33:11 However, we leave for a family vacation for a week on Monday,
2081. 01:33:17 assuming we don't get 16 inches of forecast snow.
2082. 01:33:20 So is the storm that we just went through still on its way to you?
2083. 01:33:25 No, we got got that one, but there's another one coming.
2084. 01:33:29 Is that coming through me to you?
2085. 01:33:32 I haven't looked at the weather.
2086. 01:33:34 Probably at some point.
2087. 01:33:35 I don't know.
2088. 01:33:36 Hopefully not.
2089. 01:33:37 Just got hammered.
2090. 01:33:38 Yeah, so we're recording this on Friday.
2091. 01:33:41 We would normally record it on Thursday.
2092. 01:33:43 It's because I got hammered yesterday.
2093. 01:33:45 Yes.
2094. 01:33:46 Anyway, with snow, not in other ways.
2095. 01:33:49 Yeah.
2096. 01:33:51 So hopefully on Monday, I will be somewhere where there is no snow and no work
2097. 01:33:57 responsibilities.
2098. 01:33:58 And I will have a book that I will be reading as a gap book, but I have not
2099. 01:34:01 selected it yet.
2100. 01:34:02 So I will report back.
2101. 01:34:06 I will have one next time, but I don't know where it is yet.
2102. 01:34:09 Sounds good.
2103. 01:34:11 All right.
2104. 01:34:12 So thank you to everyone who supports the podcast.
2105. 01:34:15 Thank you to everyone who joined us for the live recording here today.
2106. 01:34:19 And thank you, especially to the Bookworm Club Premium members.
2107. 01:34:24 I would say go to bookworm.fm/membership and sign up, but we're in the
2108. 01:34:30 middle of migrating things.
2109. 01:34:32 We'll make that link still work.
2110. 01:34:33 OK.
2111. 01:34:34 I know some people have had some issues signing up for things like I mentioned
2112. 01:34:39 at the beginning, we're in the process moving everything over to circle, which
2113. 01:34:42 is a much, I would say more user friendly interface and hopefully won't have to
2114. 01:34:48 bug Joe about everything that goes right long because he's the only one who has
2115. 01:34:52 the developer mind to fix it.
2116. 01:34:53 If you do decide to support the show, what you get as a couple of perks in
2117. 01:34:58 addition to our undying gratitude is the mind map files that I mentioned earlier.
2118. 01:35:05 I put those in the club and there is both a PDF version and also an
2119. 01:35:10 editable mind node version.
2120. 01:35:11 My note is the application that I use to make them.
2121. 01:35:13 So I make those available, do a dump every couple of months and throw a
2122. 01:35:16 bunch of new ones in there.
2123. 01:35:17 There's also a bookworm wallpaper that I created a while back.
2124. 01:35:22 Some gap book episodes that Joe has recorded and the new perk we mentioned at
2125. 01:35:26 the beginning, the ad free version of the show.
2126. 01:35:28 We don't even have ads every episode yet, but as it grows, if those really bother
2127. 01:35:34 you or you want to listen to it without the ads, then by being a paying member,
2128. 01:35:38 you get access to a new feed.
2129. 01:35:39 So just grab that feed, subscribe to that one in your podcatcher of choice.
2130. 01:35:44 Keep the old one.
2131. 01:35:45 We'll take the downloads.
2132. 01:35:46 Keep them both in your podcatcher.
2133. 01:35:49 Yep.
2134. 01:35:49 But thank you to everyone who has supported the show.
2135. 01:35:54 Yeah.
2136. 01:35:56 And I would just piggyback on that and say, you know, pay attention to if you're
2137. 01:36:00 on the discourse forum for the club, I think just pay attention to that.
2138. 01:36:04 I'm going to be posting some stuff as we work on this migration.
2139. 01:36:07 So just be patient with us as we're doing that move and you'll hear from a son.
2140. 01:36:12 What you need to do if there's anything you need to do to help with that process.
2141. 01:36:17 So thanks for your patience on that.
2142. 01:36:19 That said, if you are one of these amazing people who reads along with us,
2143. 01:36:23 because we know all of you do, you need to pick up the route.
2144. 01:36:27 The future is analog by David Sacks and we'll cover that one with you in a couple of weeks.