After nearly eight years of the Love Your Work podcast, I’m quitting. Here’s why, and What’s Next. Podcasting is a bad business This is not the immediate reason I’m quitting, but it is at the root: Podcasting is a bad business. When the indirect benefits of an activity run out, it’s hard to keep doing it if it’s not making money. I realized long ago podcasting is a bad business, but I kept going for other reasons. I’ll explain why in a bit. Though I didn’t start my podcast with dollar signs in my eyes, I did at least hope I would grow to earn money doing it. I’ve earned about $32,000 in the eight-year history of Love Your Work. More than half of that has been from Patreon supporters, many of whom support for reasons other than the podcast. During that time, I’ve spent: $1,008 on hosting $11,749 on assistance with editing and publishing $241 on equipment And some other expenses, for a total of about $13,000 In raw numbers, I’ve made a “profit” on the podcast. But, as I broke down in my latest income report, my “wage” was about $6 an hour. My podcast comprised about 5% of my income over these eight years, and took much more than that portion of my time and energy. Of course, I don’t think about whether the podcast was worth it in terms of an hourly rate. Creative work happens in Extremistan, not Mediocristan, and I’ve made massive life choices to be free to explore creatively without worrying so much what I’m earning in the short-term. Ways to make money podcasting But there are many different ways to make a podcast a solid business, and none of them worked for me, for various reasons. Here are some of these business models, as they apply to the “thought-leader” space (I’ll ignore the more entertainment/infotainment space that podcasts like Gimlet’s inhabit). Be so massively famous, you can pick-and-choose advertisers, while demanding a lot of money. This is where Tim Ferriss and Joe Rogan are. They both started with large platforms, and applied whatever talents that helped them earn those platforms to make their podcasts huge. After more than fifteen years as a creator, I have a modest platform, but orders of magnitude smaller. Build a “content machine” that manufactures ad slots. I won’t name names, but you’ve heard these podcasts. They’re formulaic and don’t seem to discern much who they have as a guest, nor what sponsors they accept. This business model is why my inbox is still full of pitches – they think I actually want more guests, because more guests would mean more ad slots. It takes a very rare set of circumstances for me to be excited to interview someone. Share information that directly helps people make money. If you have tactical and actionable information that’s useful to professionals in a specific industry, you can charge for premium podcast content. I’m not as interested in the tactical and actionable as I am in the abstract and exploratory. Cover a niche topic. If you have a leading podcast about a very specific topic, advertisers within that niche will be willing to pay high rates to reach that audience. I didn’t want to build my podcast according to a specific topic – more on that later. Have a “back-end” business. If you have a thriving consulting business, or training programs to sell, you can attract more clients and customers through your podcast. As I wrote in my ten-year reflections, “I want to make a living creating. I don’t want creating to be merely a marketing strategy for other things. Is that completely insane?” I flirted with success in a few of these business models. Early on, I hoped my podcast would be famous enough to pick and choose advertisers at high rates. For a while, it looked like I had a chance. I was approached by a podcast network, and I had some reputable advertisers such as LinkedIn, Skillshare, Casper, Audible, Pittney Bowes, and University of California. Various times, I thought I was on the cusp of my “big break” – such as when Love Your Work was featured on the Apple Podcasts home screen. But the more I tried to go the “get famous” route, the louder the siren-song of the “content machine” route got. There were plenty of opportunities to do “interview swaps” with hosts I wasn’t interested in interviewing. There were a few advertisers that had money, but whose products felt sleazy. Joining a podcast network would have pressured me to crank out content even if I didn’t feel like it. There was (and still is) the never-ending stream of pitch emails for guests. I had too much wax in my ears to go the “content machine” route. Not included in my lifetime revenue-estimates for Love Your Work is money I made through the “back-end business” route. I was somewhat comfortable with this model, but I haven’t made a course in years, as I’ve been focused on writing books. And as bad a business as people say writing books is, it’s better than making a podcast. The podcast has helped me sell books in more ways than one. One way is that people who listened to the podcast bought my books. The other way is, making my podcast helped me write my books. This brings me to the reason I kept making my podcast, even after I realized it wasn’t a good business. Make for what making makes you In my sixteen years experimenting with different business models as an independent creator, I’ve settled on one thing that works: Make for what making makes you. If making a podcast, writing a book, sending a weekly newsletter – you name it – merely makes you money, and doesn’t make you who you want to be, what’s the point? Sure, sometimes you don’t feel like creating, and you do it anyway. Yes, sometimes you pick one project over another because you think it will be more lucrative. But you can only redirect the river that is your creativity so much before it overflows and returns to its natural path. I learned from my guests When I started Love Your Work, and was struggling to make it big enough to work with an ad model, even if I wasn’t bringing in lots of ad revenue, I was still connecting with and learning from my guests. It was an incredible privilege to have in-depth conversations with people like Seth Godin, Elise Bauer, and David Allen. It was like having my own personal advisory board of heroes. Talking to them helped me learn how to go off the beaten path and find my calling. I was able to find patterns in their stories that I could apply to my own life and career. I would be a completely different person today if I hadn’t had those conversations. It was time to explore But there came a point when doing interviews was no longer serving me the way it once had. It was when I had gained the confidence – thanks to my previous guests – to explore further my own ideas. That’s when I stopped interviewing guests, so I’d have more time to explore. Love Your Work shifted from my personal advisory board to my personal sounding board – a sort of “open mic,” where I fleshed out ideas. I got to see how it felt to effortfully explore each idea. I got to hear how they sounded when I read them aloud. I got to feel how they resonated (or didn’t) with others. It helped me write my books A couple years after I started Love Your Work, I started writing a book called Getting Art Done. Getting Art Done turned out to be three books, two of which I’ve published. Love Your Work has been there to help me explore the ideas in these books. The Heart to Start was full of conversations from my early guests, and came from my very real struggles in gaining the confidence to take my ideas seriously enough to pursue them. Mind Management, Not Time Management came from my very real struggles to harness my creative energy and push my ideas forward. As I work on the final book in the Getting Art Done trilogy, Finish What Matters, I’m asking myself, What struggle does this book come from? Clearly, I’ve finished a lot of creative work: three books, over two-hundred consecutive weekly newsletters, and over three-hundred episodes of this podcast. But as I’ve dwelt on that final word in the title, matters, I’m asking myself if I’m really working on what matters? Love Your Work and Getting Art Done have been an exploration in creative productivity. But at some point, writing about Resistance becomes a form of Resistance. I don’t feel I’ve reached that point yet, but I don’t want to. If I’m going to learn enough to write Finish What Matters, I have to really test my ideas of what matters. I’ve probably explored enough ideas, through Love Your Work, that I want to develop further in Finish What Matters. But for the time being, I need space to explore what matters. That’s the biggest reason I’m quitting Love Your Work. I had considered doing so in the past, but I kept hoping I’d know What’s Next before I quit. I’ve come to realize that I can’t know What’s Next until I have the space to explore. What’s Next is finding What’s Next It’s a little scary to have that void. But it’s also exciting. Furthermore, I’ve faced The Void many times before: when I started on my own, after finishing each book, and a little bit after each podcast episode or newsletter. What’s scarier now than facing the void is that I’ll stick with what’s safe, and distract myself into dying with my best creations inside me. I could just say I’m taking a break, or not say anything at all and stop until I felt inspired to make a new episode. I’ve talked before about how I struggle to burn my boats and close doors. So, I’m calling it quits, knowing I could always drop another episode in the feed down the line if I wanted to. But I hope I find something that matters more, before that ever happens. Thank you for listening! Thank you for listening to Love Your Work. Thank you especially to my Patreon supporters, who can of course feel free to stop supporting, or keep supporting for the bonus content, and to support What’s Next. To learn What’s Next once I find it, be sure to subscribe to my newsletter at kdv.co. One last time, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Image: Pierrot Lunaire by Paul Klee About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email New bonus content on Patreon! I've been adding lots of new content to Patreon. Join the Patreon »       Show notes: https://kadavy.net/blog/posts/quit-podcasting/

You’ve probably heard that, in a blind taste test, even experts can’t tell between white and red wine. Even if this were true – and it’s not – it wouldn’t matter. I was in Rome last month, visiting some Raphael paintings to research my next book, and stopped by the Sistine Chapel. I’ve spent a good amount of time studying what Michelangelo painted on that ceiling. There are lots of high-resolution images on Wikipedia. But seeing a picture is nothing like the experience of seeing the Sistine Chapel. You’ve invested thousands of dollars and spent fifteen hours on planes. You’re jet-lagged and your feet ache from walking 20,000 steps. You’re hot. When you enter, guards order you to keep moving, so you won’t block the door. They corral you to the center, and you can finally look up. When you hear wine experts can’t tell between white and red wine, you imagine the following: Professional sommeliers are blindfolded, and directed to taste two wines. They then make an informed guess which is white, and which is red. In this imaginary scenario, they get it right half the time – as well as if they had flipped a coin. If it were true wine experts couldn’t tell between white and red wine, the implication would be that the experience of tasting wine is separate from other aspects of the wine. That the color, the shape of the glass, the bottle, the label, and even the price of the wine are all insignificant. That they all distract from the only thing that matters: the taste of the wine. There’s some psychophysiological trigger that gets pulled when you tilt your head back. Maybe it stimulates your pituitary gland. When you have your head back and are taking in the images on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, you feel vulnerable. (You literally are vulnerable. You can’t see what’s going on around you. You’d be easy to physically attack.) What you see is overwhelming. As you try to focus your attention on some detail, some other portion of the imagery calls out and redirects your attention. This happens again and again. After a while, your neck needs a rest, and you return your gaze to eye-level. And this is almost as cool as the ceiling: You see other people with their heads back, their eyes wide, mouths agape, hands on hearts, tears in eyes. You hear languages and see faces from all over the world. You realize they all, too, have invested thousands of dollars and spent fifteen hours on planes. They, too, are jet-lagged and hot and have walked 20,000 steps. You can look at pictures of the Sistine Chapel ceiling on the internet. You can experience it in VR. In many ways, this is better than going to the Sistine Chapel. You can take as much time as you want, and look as close as you want. You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars and fifteen hours on a plane, take time off work, or even crane back your neck. But seeing the Sistine Chapel ceiling on the internet or even VR is only better than seeing it in person, in the way that a spoonful of granulated sugar when you’re starving is better than a hypothetical burger in another iteration of the multiverse. We’ve seen an explosion of AI capabilities in recent months. That has a lot of people worried about what it means to be a creator. Why do we need humans to write, for example, if ChatGPT can write? The reason ChatGPT’s writing is impressive is the same reason there’s still a place for things created by humans. Anyone old enough to have been on the internet in the heyday of America Online in the 1990s will remember this: When you were in a chat room, most the conversations were about being in a chat room: How long have you been on the internet? Isn’t the internet cool? What other chat rooms do you like? Part of the appeal of the question “ASL?” – Age, Sex, Location? – was marveling over the fact you were chatting in real-time with a stranger several states away. Or maybe you remember when Uber or Lyft first came to your town. For the first year or two, likely every conversation you had with a driver was about how long they had been driving, about how quickly the service had grown in your town, which is better – Uber or Lyft?, or which nearby cities got which services first. The first few months ChatGPT was out, it was seemingly the only thing anyone on the internet talked about. But it wasn’t because ChatGPT’s writing was amazing. ChatGPT is a bad writer’s idea of a good writer. It was because of the story: Wow, my computer is writing! Now that much of the novelty of ChatGPT has worn off, many of us are falling into the Trough of Disillusionment on the Gartner Hype Cycle. We’re realizing ChatGPT is like a talking dog: It’s impressive the dog can appear to talk, but it’s not talking – it’s just saying the words it’s been taught. ChatGPT is very useful in some situations, but not as many as we had originally hoped. What made us talk about the internet while on the internet, talk about Uber while in Ubers, and talk about ChatGPT while chatting with ChatGPT was the story. Once the story behind the internet or Uber wore off, we started to appreciate them for their own utility. Part of what’s cool about seeing the Sistine Chapel ceiling in VR is that – we’re seeing it in VR. But even if that weren’t impressive, what would still be impressive about the paintings would be more than just that they’re amazing paintings. It’s incredible to us a human could paint such a massive expanse. We think about the stories and myths of Michelangelo, up on that scaffolding, painting in isolation. Part of our appreciation of the Sistine Chapel ceiling lies outside the ceiling itself. While marveling at it, we can’t help but think of Michelangelo’s other masterpieces, such as the David or the Pietà. Lloyd Richards spent fourteen years writing Stone Maidens, and had almost no sales for decades. Suddenly, he sold 65,000 copies in a month. He was interviewed on the TODAY show, and got a book deal with a major publisher. How did he do it? His daughter made a TikTok account. The first video showed Lloyd at his desk, and explained what a good dad he was, how hard he had worked on Stone Maidens, and how great it would be if he made some sales. Then the #BookTok community did the rest. Stone Maidens is apparently a good book. But it’s no better today than it was all those years it didn’t sell. Most the comments on Lloyd’s TikTok account – which now has over 400,000 followers – aren’t about what a great book Stone Maidens is. They’re about how Lloyd seems like such a nice guy, or how excited each commenter is to have contributed to his success. The study that started the myth that wine experts can’t taste the difference between white and red wine didn’t show that. The participants in the study literally weren’t allowed to describe the two wines the same way – they couldn’t use the same word for one as the other. It wasn’t blindfolded – it was a white wine versus the same wine, dyed red. The study wasn’t about taste at all: Participants weren’t allowed to taste the wine – they were only allowed to smell. And wine experts? That depends on your definition of “expert”. They were undergraduate students, studying wine. They knew more than most of us, but were far from the top echelon of wine professionals. Most damning for this myth was that the same study casually mentions doing an informal blind test: The success rate of their participants in distinguishing the taste of white versus red wine: 70%. That this myth is false shouldn’t detract from the point that even if it were true, it wouldn’t matter. What the authors of this study found was not that wine enthusiasts couldn’t tell between white and red wine, but that the appearance of a wine as white or red shaped their perceptions of the smell of the wine. Once you bake a cake, you can’t turn it back into flour, sugar, butter, and eggs. You can’t extract the taste of a wine from the color, the bottle, your mental image of where the grapes were grown and how the wine was made, or even the occasion for which you bought the wine. Something made by an AI can be awesome, either because it’s really good at doing what it’s supposed to, or because you appreciate it was made by an AI. Something made by a human is often awesome because of the story of the human who made it, and the story you as a human live as you interact with it. If you want to be relevant in the age of AI, learn how to bake your story into the product. Because AI can’t bake. Image: Figures on a Beach by Louis Marcoussis About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email New bonus content on Patreon! I've been adding lots of new content to Patreon. Join the Patreon »       Show notes: https://kadavy.net/blog/posts/ai-cant-bake/

We trust the food we eat, the drinks we drink, and the air we breathe are safe. That in case they’re unsafe, someone is working to minimize our exposure, or at least tell us the risks. In The Triumph of Doubt, former head of OSHA David Michaels reveals how companies fight for their rights to sell harmful products, expose workers to health hazards, and pollute the environment. They do it by manufacturing so-called “science.” Most this science is built not upon proving they’re not causing harm, but by doing whatever they can to cast doubt. Here, in my own words, is a summary of The Triumph of Doubt: Dark Money and the Science of Deception. Products we use every day cause harm Chances are you’ve cooked on a pan coated with Teflon. Teflon is one of many polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. When introduced in the 1940s, they were considered safe. We now know they’re linked with high cholesterol, poor immune function, cancer, obesity, birth defects, and low fertility. PFAS, it turns out, have such a long half-life, they’re called “forever chemicals.” PFAS can now be found in the blood of virtually all residents of the United States, and have been found in unsafe levels worldwide – in rainwater. You’ve probably heard that, in moderation, alcohol is actually good for you. But even one drink a day leads to higher overall mortality risk. More than one drink, greater risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer. Alcohol is a causal factor in 5% of deaths worldwide – about 3 million a year. 13.5% of deaths between ages 20–39 are alcohol-related. If you’re in pain after an injury or surgery, your doctor might prescribe for you an opioid. But the rise in opioid addiction is responsible for the first drop in U.S. life expectancy in more than two decades. It’s sent shockwaves throughout society. It’s helped launch the epidemics of fentanyl and heroin overdoses, and the number of children in foster care in West Virginia, for example, rose 42% in four years. You might love to watch professional football. But NFL players are nineteen times more likely to develop neurological disorders, and thirty percent could develop Alzheimer’s or dementia from taking so many hits. The “product defense” industry sows doubt How have they done it? How have companies been able to manufacture and sell products that cause so much harm, for so long? They do it by defending their products, when the safety of those products are questioned. On the surface, that’s not so bad. But besides lying and deliberately deceiving, they abuse society’s trust in so-called “science,” and our lack of understanding of how much we risk when we move forward while still in doubt. The tobacco industry is a pioneer of product defense There’s an entire industry that helps companies defend their products from regulation: It’s called, appropriately, product defense. The tobacco industry is most-known for its product defense. In 1953, John W. Hill of the PR firm Hill & Knowlton convinced the tobacco industry to start – one floor below his office in the Empire State Building – the Tobacco Industry Research Committee (TIRC). The TIRC was supposed to do rigorous scientific research to understand the health effects of smoking, but mostly they just attacked existing science, doing what they could to sow doubt. Just a few years earlier, in 1950, a study had found heavy smokers were fifty times as likely as nonsmokers to get lung cancer. With the help of the TIRC, it would take a long time for these health risks to influence public policy. About thirty years later, most states had restricted smoking in some public places such as auditoriums and government buildings. Smoking had proliferated in American culture when cigarettes had been provided in soldiers’ rations in WWI. Michaels describes one surgeon who, in 1919, made sure not to miss an autopsy of a man who had died of lung cancer, because it was the chance of a lifetime. He didn’t see another case of lung cancer for seventeen years, then saw eight within six months. All eight had started smoking while serving in the war. Today, more than a century after cigarettes were widely introduced, we’ve finally seen a massive reduction in smoking in the U.S. We can fly on planes and go to restaurants and even bars, without being exposed to secondhand smoke. The sugar industry has been at it even longer Predating the product defense efforts of the tobacco industry is actually the sugar industry. The Sugar Research Foundation was started in 1943. Scientific evidence first linked sugar with heart disease in the 1950s. In 1967, as Dr. Robert Lustig told us, Harvard scientists published in the New England Journal of Medicine an article blaming fat rather than sugar for heart disease. Fifty years later UCSF researchers discovered the scientists had been funded by the Sugar Research Foundation – which they hadn’t disclosed. Even more misleadingly, they had disclosed funding that actually made them look more impartial – from the dairy industry. Companies and industries set up “astroturfing” organizations The Sugar Research Foundation and the Tobacco Industry Research Committee are are early examples of “astroturfing” organizations. This tactic of the product defense industry involves setting up organizations with innocent- or even charitable-sounding names, then doing low-quality research to defend a company or industry’s interests. The American Council for Science and Health has published articles opposing regulation of mercury emissions, and attacked science finding harm in consumption of sugar and alcohol. When the National Football League was first looking into the effects of playing their sport, they formed the MTBI. the “M” in MTBI gave away their stance: TBI stands for Traumatic Brain Injuries, and this committee formed for finding the effects of brain injuries was called the Mild Traumatic Brain Injuries committee. The alcohol industry set up the Alcoholic Beverage Medical Research Foundation. The first board of directors included Peter Stroh, William K. Coors, and August A. Busch III. Their first president, Thomas B. Turner, was former dean of Johns Hopkins University Medical School, a tie of which they made good use in promoting their agenda – more on that in a bit. The American Pain Foundation ran campaigns to make pain medication more widely available for veterans, running ads reminding patients of their “right” to pain treatment. Astroturfing organizations are funded by “Dark Money” Astroturfing organizations are funded by so-called “Dark Money”. In other words, they do whatever they can to hide where their funding comes from, lest their biases become obvious. The American Council for Science and Health claims much of their funding comes from private foundations, but investigative reports have found 58% of it coming straight from industry, and that many of those private foundations have ties to corporations. Leaked documents show a huge list of corporate donors including McDonald’s, 3M, and Coca-Cola. The NFL’s MTBI committee’s papers included a statement saying, “none of the Committee members has a financial or business relationship posing a conflict of interest.” Yet the committee consisted entirely of people on the NFL’s payroll: team physicians, athletic trainers, and equipment managers. Documents collected by the New York Times revealed that administrators at the The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism wanted to do a randomized clinical trial on the effects of alcohol. To fund the study, they went to industry, calling it “a unique opportunity to show that moderate alcohol consumption is safe.” They were going into the study with the conclusions already in mind, saying, “one of the important findings will be showing that moderate drinking is safe.” Several companies pledged nearly $68 million toward the $100 million budget. As part of the National Institutes of Health – a federal organization – the NIAAA was pitching this as a chance for the alcohol industry to use a government-funded study to prove their product was safe. Money directly from alcohol manufacturers was to be routed through the NIH Foundation, since it’s illegal for private companies to fund government studies. When the Senate Finance Committee began investigating ties between the American Pain Foundation and pharmaceutical companies, the APF quickly dissolved, apparently knowing what would be found otherwise. Besides private foundations, straight-up lying, and routing money through a federal foundation, another way of keeping money “dark” is by taking advantage of attorney-client privilege. By having the law firm pay accomplices, even if there’s a lawsuit, the documents are private. Using connections and flawed science to manufacture pseudo-events When corporations do get studies published about the risks of using their products, they’re often low-quality studies. If they don’t deliberately conceal their findings, they often use their connections to create what are essentially pseudo-events to prop up their flawed conclusions. Internal documents from DuPont show they knew the PFAS in Teflon was a problem. In 1970, they found it in their factory worker’s blood. In 1981, 3M told them it caused birth defects in rats, and DuPont’s own workers’ children had birth defects at a high rate. In 1991, DuPont set an internal safety limit of 1 ppb. Meanwhile, they found a local water district had three times that amount. In 2002, they set up a so-called “independent” panel in West Virginia, and set a safe limit at 150 times their own internal safety limit – so they’d have less-strict standards for polluting their community’s drinking water. In 2016, the Environmental Protection Agency set a safe limit of 70 ppt (trillion!) – less than one-one-hundredth DuPont’s previous internal safety limit. The NFL did very little for many years to ask serious questions about the long-term effects on their players. When players Junior Seau and Dave Duerson committed suicide, they both shot themselves in the chest instead of the head, so their brain tissue could be studied after their deaths. The MTBI argued that players were clearly fine if they returned to play shortly after concussions. They abused the concept of survivorship bias, arguing that those who didn’t drop out of football in college or high school and made it to the pros were more resistant to brain injury. The editor of the journal, Neurosurgery, which published MTBI’s papers, was a medical consultant to the New York Giants, and later to the commissioner’s office – a clear conflict of interest. I mentioned earlier the first president of the alcohol industry’s ABMRF was a former dean of Johns Hopkins. When ABMRF published a study, the Johns Hopkins press office would issue a press-release, which would instantly make the study seem more credible. One of the studies that has proliferated throughout media and culture, finding that moderate alcohol use is actually good for you, was a door-to-door survey – a very flawed methodology. Non-drinkers in a study are likely to include people who don’t drink because they’re already sick, or are former abusers of alcohol. One of the main “papers” the pharma industry used to defend their positions that opioids had a low risk of addiction was, from 1980, a five-sentence letter to the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. It’s a letter, not a paper – there was no peer review. It has been cited hundreds of times in medical literature – often by researchers with ties to opioid manufacturers. TIME magazine unfortunately called it a “landmark study.” (This is a great example of a pseudo-event: the proliferation of flawed information throughout media made it accepted as true.) The double-standard in access to study data The papers that do get published by the product-defense industry are usually not original studies. They’re often reanalysis of existing data. Industry takes advantage of the Shelby Amendment, which the tobacco industry promoted under the guise of concern over pollution. The Shelby Amendment requires federally-funded researchers to share any data they collect. In this way, industry can reanalyze the data in ways that arrive at any conclusion they want. So, “re-analysis” has its own cottage industry within product defense. When industry does conduct original studies, they don’t have to share their data, and so it isn’t subject to the same scrutiny. Manufacturing doubt in other industries The Triumph of Doubt goes on and on with examples of deception and collusion from various industries. Some other highlights: Volkswagen installed a device in their diesel cars to detect when their emissions were being tested. The device would activate, causing the car to pollute forty times less, only when being tested. Johnson & Johnson knew as early as 1971 their baby powder was contaminated with asbestiform particles – asbestos-like particles that cause cancer – but pressured scientists to not report them. Monsanto publishes many studies in Critical Reviews in Toxicology, which Michaels calls “a known haven for science produced by corporate consultants.” Many authors have done work for Monsanto, don’t disclose their conflicts of interest, and have denied Monsanto had reviewed their papers – later litigation showed they had. Should chemicals be innocent until proven guilty? There’s a concept called the precautionary principle. It states that when we know little about what the consequences of an action will be, we should err on the side of caution. If a new chemical is developed, we should wait before we let it get into our food and water. If a new technology is invented, we should wait until we introduce it to society. In criminal courts, a defendant is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. We like this, because we hate the idea of someone being thrown in jail despite being innocent. And we can physically remove someone dangerous from society and more or less stop them from continuing to harm others. Criminal harm can be halted, chemical harm cannot But this is also our policy for chemicals, drugs, and potentially dangerous activities. We have an extremely high bar for deciding something is harmful enough we should reduce our exposure to it. OSHA – the Occupational Safety and Health Administration – has exposure limits for only 500 of the many thousands of chemicals used in commerce. Because the regulatory process is so onerous, Michaels says, in the half-century OSHA has been around, they’ve updated only twenty-seven of those 500. Yet, as with PFAS, even after we start reducing our exposure, the effects of harmful substances keep going. As one Stockholm University scientist has said about PFAS in rainwater, “We just have to wait...decades to centuries.” And, unlike a criminal court, where the only people motivated to keep from punishing a defendant are the defendant’s lawyers and family members, huge networks of people stand to profit from harmful products – executives, shareholders, and entire industries have the incentives to conspire and collude. Balancing harm with innovation On the other hand, the precautionary principle can slow or halt innovation. Many products that may be harmful may also be useful. Teflon and other PFAS have a huge number of applications. Supposedly it’s been replaced by other chemicals in cookware – though they’re probably similar (taking advantage of loopholes in the slow regulatory process). Supposedly exposure potential from cooking is low – but you know now how hard it is to “trust the science.” As horrifying as some of these abuses of science are, you can’t be horrified by them without at least some sympathy for those who didn’t want to get the COVID vaccine: If a product is immediately harmful to everyone who takes it, that’s easy to prove. But could it harm some people in the long term? It’s nearly impossible to be sure. There’s more money and power behind sowing reasonable doubt than behind exposing sources of harm. Meanwhile, it’s easy to sow and abuse the existence of doubt, and that’s why it’s the main tactic used in product defense. There’s your summary of The Triumph of Doubt If you liked this summary, you’ll probably like The Triumph of Doubt. As a career regulator, Michaels comes off as somewhat biased, clearly partisan at times, a little shrill with his use of dramatic terms such as “Big Tobacco” and “Big Sugar.” Get ready for lots of alphabet soup, as you try to keep track of the myriad agencies and foundations identified by acronyms. Because of media’s key role in the doubt-sowing Michaels writes about, I’ll be adding this as an honorable mention on my best media books list. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email New bonus content on Patreon! I've been adding lots of new content to Patreon. Join the Patreon »       Show notes: https://kadavy.net/blog/posts/triumph-of-doubt/

According to philosopher Isaiah Berlin, people think in one of two different ways: They’re either hedgehogs, or foxes. If you think like a hedgehog, you’ll be more successful as a communicator. If you think like a fox, you’ll be more accurate. Isaiah Berlin coined the hedgehog/fox dichotomy (via Archilochus) In Isaiah Berlin’s 1953 essay, “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” he quotes the ancient Greek poet, Archilochus: The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one thing. Berlin describes this as “one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general.” How are “hedgehogs” and “foxes” different? According to Berlin, hedgehogs relate everything to a single central vision. Foxes pursue many ends, often unrelated or even contradictory. If you’re a hedgehog, you explain the world through a focused belief or area of expertise. Maybe you’re a chemist, and you see everything as chemical reactions. Maybe you’re highly religious, and everything is “God’s will.” If you’re a fox, you explain the world through a variety of lenses. You may try on conflicting beliefs for size, or use your knowledge in a wide variety of fields to understand the world. You explain things as From this perspective, X. But on the other hand, Y. It’s also worth considering Z. The seminal hedgehog/fox essay is actually about Leo Tolstoy Even though this dichotomy Berlin presented has spread far and wide, his essay is mostly about Leo Tolstoy, and the tension between his fox-like tendencies and hedgehog-like aspirations. In Tolstoy’s War and Peace, he writes: In historic events the so-called great men are labels giving names to events, and like labels they have but the smallest connection with the event itself. Every act of theirs, which appears to them an act of their own will, is in an historical sense involuntary and is related to the whole course of history and predestined from eternity. In War and Peace, Tolstoy presents characters who act as if they have control over the events of history. In Tolstoy’s view, the events that make history are too complex to be controlled. Extending this theory outside historical events, Tolstoy also writes: When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall? Because of its attraction to the earth, because its stalk withers, because it is dried by the sun, because it grows heavier, because the wind shakes it, or because the boy standing below wants to eat it? Nothing is the cause. All this is only the coincidence of conditions in which all vital organic and elemental events occur. Is Tolstoy a fox, or a hedgehog? He acknowledges the complexity with which various events are linked – which is very fox-like. But he also seems convinced these events are so integrated with one another that nothing can change them. They’re “predetermined” – a “coincidence of conditions.” A true hedgehog might have a simple explanation, such as that gravity caused the apple to fall. Tolstoy loved concrete facts and causes, such as the pull of gravity, yet still yearned to find some universal law that could be used to predict the future. According to Berlin: It is not merely that the fox knows many things. The fox accepts that he can only know many things and that the unity of reality must escape his grasp. And this was Tolstoy’s downfall. Early in his life, he presented profound insights about the world through novels such as War and Peace and Anna Karenina. That was very fox-like. Later in his life, he struggled to condense his deep knowledge about the world and human behavior into overarching theories about moral and ethical issues. As Berlin once wrote to a friend, Tolstoy was “a fox who terribly believed in hedgehogs and wished to vivisect himself into one.” Other hedgehogs and foxes in Berlin’s essay Other thinkers Berlin classifies as foxes include Aristotle, Goethe, and Shakespeare. Other thinkers Berlin classifies as hedgehogs include Dante, Dostoevsky, and Plato. What does the hedgehog/fox dichotomy have to do with the animals? What does knowing many things have to do with actual foxes? What does knowing one big thing have to do with actual hedgehogs? A fox is nimble and clever. It can run fast, climb trees, dig holes, swim across rivers, stalk prey, or hide from predators. A hedgehog mostly relies upon its ability to roll into a ball and ward off intruders. Foxes tell the future, hedgehogs get credit What are the consequences of being a fox or a hedgehog? According to Phil Tetlock, foxes are better at telling the future, while hedgehogs get more credit for telling the future. In Tetlock’s 2005 book, Expert Political Judgement, he shared his findings from forecasting tournaments he held in the 1980s and 90s. Experts made 30,000 predictions about political events such as wars, economic growth, and election results. Then Tetlock tracked the performances of those predictions. What he found led to the U.S. intelligence community holding forecasting tournaments, tracking more than one million forecasts. Tetlock’s own Good Judgement Project won the forecasting tournament, outperforming even intelligence analysts with access to classified data. Better a fox than an expert These forecasting tournaments have shown that whether someone can make accurate predictions about the future doesn’t depend upon their field of expertise, their status within the field, their political affiliation, or philosophical beliefs. It doesn’t matter if you’re a political scientist, a journalist, a historian, or have experience implementing policies. As the intelligence community’s forecasting tournaments have shown, it doesn’t even matter if you have access to classified information. What matters is your style of reasoning: Foxes make more accurate predictions than hedgehogs. Across the board, experts were barely better than chance at predicting what would or wouldn’t happen. Will a new tax plan spur or slow the economy? Will the Cold War end? Will Iran run a nuclear test? Generally, it didn’t matter if they were an economist, an expert on the Soviet Union, or a political scientist. That didn’t guarantee they’d be better than chance at predicting what would happen. What did matter is whether they thought like a fox. Foxes are: deductive, open-minded, less-biased Foxes are skeptical of grand schemes – the sort of “theories of everything” Tolstoy had hoped to construct. They didn’t see predicting events as a top-down, deductive process. They saw it as a bottom-up, inductive process – stitching together diverse and conflicting sources of information. Foxes were curious and open-minded. They didn’t go with the tribe. A liberal fox would be more open to thinking the Cold War could have gone on longer with a second Carter administration. A conservative fox would be more open to believing the Cold War could have ended just as quickly under Carter as it did under Reagan. Foxes were less prone to hindsight bias – less likely to remember their inaccurate predictions as accurate. They were less prone to the bias of cognitive conservatism – maintaining their beliefs after making an inaccurate prediction. As one fox said: Whenever I start to feel certain I am right... a little voice inside tells me to start worrying. —A “fox” Hedgehogs are: deductive, close-minded, more-biased (yet more successful) As for inaccurate predictions, one simple test tracked with whether an expert made accurate predictions: a Google search. If an expert was more famous – as evinced by having more results show up on Google when searching their name – they tended to be less accurate. Think about the talking-head people that get called onto MSNBC or Fox News (pun, albeit inaccurate, not intended) to make quick comments on the economy, wars, and elections – those people. Experts who made more media appearances, and got more gigs consulting with governments and businesses, were actually less accurate at making predictions than their colleagues who were toiling in obscurity. And these experts who were more successful – in terms of media appearances and consulting gigs – also tended to be hedgehogs. Hedgehogs see making predictions as a top-down deductive process. They’re more likely to make sweeping generalizations. They take the “one big thing” they know – say, being an expert on the Soviet Union – and view everything through that lens. Even if it’s to explain something in other domains. Hedgehogs are more-biased about the world, and about themselves. They were more likely than foxes to remember inaccurate predictions they had made, as accurate. They were more likely to remember as inaccurate, predictions their opponents made that were accurate. Rather than change their beliefs, when presented with challenging evidence hedgehog’s beliefs got stronger. Are hedgehogs playing a different game? It’s tempting to take that and run with it: The close-minded hedgehogs of the world are inaccurate. Success doesn’t track with skill. Tetlock is careful to caution that hedgehogs aren’t always worse than foxes at telling the future. Also, there are good reasons to be overconfident in predictions. As one hedgehog political pundit wrote to Tetlock: You play a publish-or-perish game run by the rules of social science.... You are under the misapprehension that I play the same game. I don’t. I fight to preserve my reputation in a cutthroat adversarial culture. I woo dumb-ass reporters who want glib sound bites. —“Hedgehog” political pundit A hedgehog has a lot to gain from making bold predictions and being right, and nobody holds them accountable when they’re wrong. But according to Tetlock, nothing in the data indicates hedgehogs and foxes are equally good forecasters who merely have different tastes for under- and over-prediction. As Tetlock says: Quantitative and qualitative methods converge on a common conclusion: foxes have better judgement than hedgehogs. —Phil Tetlock, Expert Political Judgement Hedgehogs may make better leaders As bad as hedgehogs look now, there are some real benefits to hedgehogs. They’re more-focused. They don’t get as distracted when a situation is ambiguous. So, hedgehogs are more decisive. They’re harder to manipulate in a negotiation, and more willing to make controversial decisions that could make enemies. And that confidence can help them lead others. Overall, hedgehogs are better at getting their messages heard. Given the mechanics of media today, that means the messages we hear from either side of the political spectrum are those of the hedgehogs. Hedgehog thinking makes better sound bites, satisfies the human desire for clarity and certainty, and is easier for algorithms to categorize and distribute. The medium is the message, and nuance is cut out of the messages by the characteristics of the mediums. Which increases polarization. But, there is hope for the foxes. While the media landscape is still dominated by hedgehog messages that work as social media clips, there are more channels with more room for intellectually-honest discourse: blogs, podcasts, and books. And if many a ChatGPT conversation is any indication, the algorithms may get more sophisticated and remind us, “it’s important to consider....” Hedgehogs, be foxes! And foxes, hedgehogs. If you’re a hedgehog, you’re lucky: What you have to say has a better chance of being heard. But it will have a better chance of being correct if you think like a fox once in a while: consider different angles, and assume you’re wrong. If you’re a fox, you have your work cut out for you: You may have important – and accurate – things to say, but they have less a chance of being heard. Your message will travel farther if you think like a hedgehog once in a while: assume you’re right, cut out the asides, and say it with confidence. Image: Fox in the Reeds by Ohara Koson About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email New bonus content on Patreon! I've been adding lots of new content to Patreon. Join the Patreon »       Show notes: https://kadavy.net/blog/posts/hedgehogs-foxes/

Many creators and aspiring creators struggle not because they don’t have enough ideas, but because they have too many. Their situations, in summary, are “Too many ideas, must pick one.” Embedded in this belief are assumptions that, if challenged, can help you feel as if you have just enough ideas. In my recent AMA, I got a question I’m asked about creativity, probably more than any other: How can you pick a creative project when you have too many ideas? I’ve experienced, “too many ideas, must pick one,” many times. I still often do. I of course answered this question in the AMA, but here I’ll answer more in-depth. This is the thought process I guide myself through when I’m in the land of “too many ideas, must pick one.” There are three assumptions embedded in, “too many ideas, must pick one.” All these ideas are equally likely to succeed. I’m equally capable of succeeding at each of these ideas. I can’t work on multiple ideas at once. Let’s look at each of those. Assumption 1: “All these ideas are equally likely to succeed” If you feel you have too many ideas, you must think they’re equally likely to succeed, which is the first assumption. That might not sound correct at first, but think about it. If you were starving, and only allowed to eat one of various sandwiches, you would probably pick the biggest and most calorie-rich. You might not be able to tell so easily which is the biggest and most calorie-rich sandwich. In fact, there may be other factors that play into your decision. Maybe the avocado and pork belly sandwich is the most calorie-rich, but you’re craving roasted duck in this moment, and there happens to be a roasted-duck sandwich amongst the selections. While satisfying your hunger is one objective of choosing a sandwich, there are other goals in mind, such as satisfying cravings, which may compete with one another. If you have a hard time deciding amongst all the sandwiches, you expect eating one sandwich to be equally likely to succeed as eating any of the others. As with projects, “success” may come in many forms. We’ll get to that in a bit. Assumption 2: “I’m equally capable of succeeding at each of these ideas” If you feel you have too many ideas, you must think you’re equally capable of succeeding at each of these ideas, which is the second assumption. If assumption one weren’t correct, and you didn’t feel each idea were equally likely to succeed, you would probably pick the one most likely to succeed. The avocado and pork belly sandwich would clearly be more filling than peanut butter and jelly. Now, if you weren’t equally capable of eating each of the sandwiches, that would make your decision easier. If you’re choosing between avocado and pork belly and peanut butter and jelly, but you’re a strict vegetarian, the decision is easy. Same if you’re not a vegetarian, but allergic to peanuts. But since you feel each idea is equally likely to succeed, and you feel you’re equally capable of succeeding at all of them, you feel you have too many ideas. As with projects, you may have little information about your capability of succeeding, which is why, for all you know, your capability to succeed is equal across all ideas. We’ll untangle that later. Assumption 3: “I can’t work on multiple ideas at once” If you feel you have “too many ideas,” you feel they’re equally likely to succeed and you’re equally capable of succeeding at each of them. If you feel you “must pick one,” you feel you can’t work on multiple ideas at once, which is the third assumption. In our sandwich scenario, you’ve been told you have to pick one sandwich. If there’s no one else around and the sandwiches will go to waste otherwise, you might as well taste all the sandwiches, then pick one. Or eat a little of each, until you’re full. But, in that case, you wouldn’t finish any of the sandwiches. Challenging the assumptions With all three of these assumptions, you’re in a deadlock. Your ideas are equally likely to succeed, you’re equally capable of succeeding at each, and you must pick one. Well, how can you pick one if they’re all equally appealing ideas? There are five questions that can help you challenge these assumptions: What is success? What is my risk profile? What am I good at? What’s necessary to succeed? What pain do I pick? Let’s look at each of these. Question 1: “What is success?” Success can come in many forms. Maybe you want to make the most money possible. Maybe you want the most freedom possible. Maybe you want to do what you’re most passionate about. You may feel each idea is equally likely to succeed, because each idea is likely to get a different kind of success. One sandwich will fill you up, another will taste great, still another seems like the healthy choice. If you have a clearer picture of what forms of success are more important to you than others, your many ideas will no longer be “equally likely to succeed.” Question 2: “What is my risk profile?” Not only can success come in many forms, it can come with various risk profiles. One idea may have a big chance of bringing you mild success. Another idea may have a small chance of bringing you wild success. The overall expected value of each idea may be the same, but the risk profiles may be very different. Some are sure bets, some are wildcards. There are also various things you may risk in pursuing an idea. Mostly, what I call “TOM” – Time, Optionality, and Money. If you are young, healthy, and with no commitments, you have a lot of Optionality, but you might not have much Money. Making enough Money to live may take up much of your day-to-day Time. You can try a crazy idea, so long as it doesn’t take up too much Time and Money. If you fail, you’ll still have plenty of Optionality. Or, you might want to make some changes that reduce your Optionality, but free up your Time. For example, I live in South America, which limits my options for anything requiring physical presence, but it has reduced my need for Money, thus freeing up my Time. On the other hand, you may be in your sixties, retired after a successful career. You have plenty of Money and Time, but less Optionality than when you were in your twenties. You can only take on so many big projects in the rest of your life, and you may not have the energy you used to. But, you may feel you have nothing to lose by trying a wild idea. If you have a clearer picture of what your risk profile is, not all your ideas will seem “equally likely to succeed.” Question 3: “What am I good at?” Even if all your ideas seem equally likely to fit your definition of success and fit your risk profile, you’re probably better at some things than others. If you have a clear picture of what you’re good at, the assumption that you’re “equally capable of succeeding at each of these ideas” will no longer make sense. It may be that you don’t know what you’re good at, likely because you don’t feel you have information to tell you what you’re good at. You probably have more information available than you think. Think about times in the past when someone was impressed with or complimented you on something you did, which came to you naturally. Or, ask your friends what they think you’re good at. If you really don’t have information on what you’re good at, relative to your many ideas, then the third assumption, “I can’t work on multiple ideas at once,” no longer makes sense. In this case, you can and should work on multiple ideas, to get an idea what you’re good at. If you feel your ideas are too big to work on more than one, scale them back into smaller ideas. Don’t fall for “The Fortress Fallacy,” like I talked about in The Heart to Start. Instead of building a fortress, try building a cottage. It’s important to remember that what you’re good at is not necessarily what you’re best at, nor what you most enjoy. This will make more sense as we answer the last two questions that challenge the three assumptions. Question 4: “What’s necessary to succeed?” In reality, you probably don’t have a clear picture of how likely all your ideas are to succeed, nor how capable you are of succeeding at each. You have to ask of each, What’s necessary to succeed? What’s necessary to succeed at an idea is usually very different from what attracts you to the idea in the first place. You may love to play music. You may even love to play music in front of an audience. But will you love driving around the country, sleeping in a van, lugging gear, and dealing with curmudgeonly AV techs at each venue? You may love the idea of signing books for adoring fans at the local Barnes & Noble. But will you love sitting in a room by yourself, writing several hours a day? It’s worth noting that what most people in a domain think is necessary to succeed may not be. Lots can change in the industry, and changes in the mechanics of media can open up opportunities to succeed without doing some things that were once necessary. For example, thanks to self-publishing, I don’t have to write boring book proposals or get countless rejection letters to succeed as an author. Question 5: “What pain do I pick?” You may be really good at what’s necessary to succeed at an idea that has a good chance of meeting your definition of success. But there may be some things necessary to succeed that you don’t enjoy. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pursue the idea. No matter what you do, there will be some parts of it you aren’t crazy about – especially at first. When I was a kid, all I wanted to do was draw. But making a living at drawing as an adult doesn’t fit my risk profile, and what’s necessary to succeed would interfere with parts of my definition of success: I can’t travel if I have to lug around supplies and artwork, and if I do all my work on a computer, then I’m chained to a computer. I didn’t used to like to write, but I found out I’m reasonably good at it. Forcing myself to write each morning was painful at first, but through building a writing habit, it’s transformed into a strangely enjoyable sort of pain. Additionally, there are parts of making a living writing that I don’t like, or at least didn’t at first. My first one-star review shook me for days, but now I can brush them off relatively quickly. Same with angry emails from readers. I used to really hate bookkeeping, but now that I write monthly income reports, I actually look forward to tallying up my earnings. Do you really “have too many ideas,” and must you “pick one”? After all this, you may realize you don’t have “too many ideas,” and you don’t really have to “pick one.” If you don’t feel you have enough information to form a clear picture of the odds of success and your capability of success, even after asking these five questions, then you need more information. You get more information not by choosing one idea, but by pursuing many. You’ll more clearly see what has a chance of succeeding and what you’re capable of succeeding at, and choosing one – or several – will become easy. Image: Stage Landscape by Paul Klee About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email New bonus content on Patreon! I've been adding lots of new content to Patreon. Join the Patreon »       Show notes: https://kadavy.net/blog/posts/too-many-ideas/

Today I have a special episode for you. If you missed last month’s AMA/Livestream, I’m delivering it right to your ears. In this AMA, I answered questions about: What’s the best self-publishing platform, and how did I publish 100-Word Writing Habit, non standard-sized, outside of Amazon? Buenos Aires versus Medellín, which is better for mind management? How to pick a creative project when you have too many ideas? What’s surprised me most in the past two years? What task management software do I use for mind management? How to focus on one project when you have multiple curiosities? How to keep from falling down a research rabbit-hole? How many half-formed ideas do I have captured somewhere? There are some parts where I refer to visuals, for the best experience, watch on YouTube. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email New bonus content on Patreon! I've been adding lots of new content to Patreon. Join the Patreon »       Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/four-sources-of-shiny-object-syndrome/

Shiny object syndrome can be evidence of a problem, or it can be a normal part of the creative process. If you can identify the four sources of shiny object syndrome, you can tell the difference between being lost, or simply exploring. Three first three sources are problems The first three of the four sources of shiny object syndrome hold you back from finishing projects. They are: ambition, perfectionism, and distraction. Ambitious shiny object syndrome is starting projects that far outpace your abilities and resources. Perfectionistic shiny object syndrome is endlessly tweaking a project that could otherwise be called done. Distracted shiny object syndrome is juggling so many projects, you finish none. Before we get to the fourth source, a bit more about these three most dangerous sources. Ambitious shiny object syndrome You probably have a friend with ambitious shiny object syndrome. One day they proclaimed they were writing an epic fantasy novel. A few months later, they had dropped that and had a new plan: a feature film. A few months after that, they were starting a health-tech startup. All the while, you were shaking your head, because your friend clearly didn’t have the experience or resources to take on these projects. They were writing the epic fantasy novel, yet had never written a short story. They were working on the feature film, yet had never made a short film. They were working on the health-tech startup, yet had no experience in technology, the health industry, nor raising funding. Delusional optimism can be an asset. Maybe your friend will get lucky, and one of these projects will click. They’re more likely to get struck by lightning. Instead, you know what’s coming when you ask how the latest project is going. They’ve abandoned that, and are taking on something new. Conveniently, your friend always has a great excuse for why. They find a scapegoat: You can’t get a million dollars for a feature-film without a rich uncle. They claim to have never been serious about it in the first place: Oh, that silly book? I was just dabbling. More likely, they shift the conversation to another subject: Oh my god, did you see the article about the celebrity! If they had made a public prediction about their potential success in the project, you could hold them accountable. Yet they didn’t, so you have to take their word for it. Interestingly, you’ll never hear, That was foolish taking on that – I didn’t know what I was doing! Perfectionistic shiny object syndrome Or maybe you have a friend with perfectionistic shiny object syndrome. They endlessly tweak a project that could otherwise be called done. The “shiny objects” in this case aren’t other projects, but rather details within one project. Your perfectionist friend has one project they’ve been clinging to for years. Their novel has been through eleven revisions. It started as a memoir, but after becoming an urban-fantasy novel, it’s now a thriller. They had a great-looking cover for each of these. But they’ve changed some details about the plot since the latest world-building workshop they traveled to attend, and they want to try a different cover designer. But before they spend money on another cover, they want to decide whether they’re going to publish in places besides Amazon, because that affects the design specs. So they’re taking a cohort-based course so they can ask a successful author what she thinks. There’s nothing you could tell your friend to get them to ship this project. By now, they could be on their third book, having learned lessons from the previous two. Instead, they’ve convinced themself it has to be perfect. Distracted shiny object syndrome Or maybe you have a friend with distracted shiny object syndrome. They’re taking on projects they could conceivably complete, given their skills and resources. They don’t seem to suffer from perfectionism, but you can’t tell, because none of their projects get anywhere near the finish line. Instead, once they make a little progress on one project, they switch to another, then another. Once their screenplay is completed for their short film, they start recording demos for their album. Once they’ve recorded demos for their album, they write their memoir. Once they’ve finished a draft of their memoir, they’re writing a business plan for a non-profit. This “friend” may be you, and it certainly has been me. Shiny object syndrome is difficult to cure, because these sources are often mixed together. You may take on projects that are too ambitious, but also be distracted by the many other projects you’re taking on. The perfectionism that is keeping you from shipping one project, may divert you to one overly-ambitious project, or a mixture of smaller projects. The fourth source is only natural Yet there is a fourth source of shiny object syndrome that doesn’t have to keep you from finishing projects: Natural shiny object syndrome. Natural shiny object syndrome is the diversions and dead-ends that are a natural part of the creative process. When you’re being creative and innovative, by definition, you are going to try some things that don’t work, or need to explore new areas with which you aren’t familiar. [Projects are like halfpipes.] It’s fun and easy to skate into a halfpipe – to start a project. But once you’re trying to skate out of the halfpipe, you’ve run out of momentum. It’s more fun and easy to skate into a new halfpipe – to start a new project, or tweak a new aspect of the existing project. But in the natural course of being creative and innovative, you’ll also start new halfpipes. When Leonardo da Vinci developed his painting style, he skated into many halfpipes. To accurately depict light and shade in his paintings, he systematically studied the way light traveled through the atmosphere, and interacted with objects. This led him into other fields, such as optics, fluid dynamics, and geometry. Leonardo da Vinci’s natural shiny object syndrome In fact, one of Leonardo’s most pre-eminent observations in astronomy greatly informed his painting style. He correctly theorized that the light area on the dark side of the moon was created by light reflecting from the sun, off the earth. By understanding how light worked, he was able to make paintings with an unprecedented sense of realism. The “earthshine” caused by light reflecting from the earth is the same phenomenon that causes a lighter area within the shadow on the underside of the chin of the Mona Lisa. That’s caused by light being reflected off her upper chest. Okay, so Leonardo had the other sources, too Leonardo of course was an infamous procrastinator. In addition to the natural shiny object syndrome he experienced, he also had shiny object syndrome from the rest of the four sources. He had ambitious shiny object syndrome, such as when, over the course of decades, he failed twice to cast in bronze the largest-ever horse statue. He had perfectionistic shiny object syndrome, such as the fact that he never delivered the Mona Lisa to his client. He instead carried it around fifteen years, until he died, and well after it could have easily been called done. He had distracted shiny object syndrome, which caused him to run around Italy, trying to please his clients in art, architecture, and engineering. Don’t fight the fourth source You can do something about most sources of shiny object syndrome. If you have ambitious shiny object syndrome, take on smaller projects. You can use the surround and conquer technique. If you have perfectionistic shiny object syndrome, simply ship your project. Recognize the Finisher’s Paradox. Like Maya Angelou said, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” If you have distracted shiny object syndrome, pick a project, and finish it. Build your shipping skills as you work your way up to larger projects. But even if you clear those sources away, you’ll still have to live with natural shiny object syndrome. To connect ideas from disparate fields, you need to wander into them. To find out what works, you have to try some things that won’t. Image: Main path and byways, by Paul Klee About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »       Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/four-sources-of-shiny-object-syndrome/

Writing a tweet is a microcosm of writing a book. If you think deeply and carefully about every word in a tweet, and what the tweet as a whole communicates, you can extend those skills to all your writing. In this article, I’ll break down how to think about every word in a tweet, nearly tripling its performance. Step 1: The first-impression tweet The tweet we’ll work on came to me like most tweets, a thought that popped into my head. It was this: Ironically, strong opinions are the ones that are easily argued against. I could have just tweeted that. But I’ve made a habit of instead writing down my first-impression tweets in a scratch file, and later working on them before publishing. Here’s what my thought process looks like. As a tweet, this phrase is a little wordy, and weak. It starts somewhat nonsensically with an adverb: “Ironically.” What action is being performed ironically? Step 2: Improving word economy There are also some extra words that could be cut out. Do we have to refer to “strong opinions” again, by using the word “ones”? The word “that” is often not necessary, and it doesn’t seem necessary here. If we cut out all those extra words, we end up with: Strong opinions are easily argued against. Step 3: Adding back in meaning That’s shorter, more elegant, and economic. But now it’s weaker. It’s a simple statement of fact, without presenting what’s remarkable about that fact, or how anyone should feel about it. At least when it said, “ironically,” it pointed out the irony that strong opinions are those that are easily argued against. Also, since I’ve removed the second reference to “strong opinions” by removing the word “ones,” the statement no longer pits “strong opinions” against other types of opinions. Before, I was implying the existence of opinions that weren’t strong, and describing what was different about opinions that were. Our shortened statement is also in the passive voice, which makes it weaker. “Strong opinions are easily argued against,” by whom? Who is doing the arguing? It would be more direct to say: It’s easier to argue against strong opinions. But still, this statement doesn’t pit strong opinions against other types of opinions. Fixing that, we could instead say: Of all opinions, strong ones are easiest to argue against. Finally, I think we at least have an improvement over the original, “Ironically, strong opinions are the ones that are easily argued against.” It’s more direct, and pits strong opinions against opinions at-large. It also has the important quality, in tweet format, of delivering the most surprising – or ironic – thing about the statement at the end. There’s a bit of misdirection in this statement. We’ve addressed all opinions, homed in on the strong ones, which primes you to expect them to be lauded in some way. Instead, the statement points out the irony that what makes an opinion “strong” is that it’s easy to argue against. Step 4: Tweaking for the audience But this tweet is still not ready. The most glaring problem is, nowhere in the tweet is the term, “strong opinions,” and, as a tweet, that’s where its potential lies. “Strong opinions” is a term in the parlance of some sections of Twitter. This term became popular after Marc Andreessen appeared on Tim Ferriss’s podcast, where he advocated for, “strong opinions, weakly held.” By trying to be economical with words in our tweet, we’ve broken apart this term. In our latest iteration, “Of all opinions, strong ones are easiest to argue against,” it’s simply referred to as “strong ones.” Depending upon how prevalent the term “strong opinions” is in the minds of our audience members, we could stick with that more subtle hint. Sometimes that’s more effective. In my experience, on Twitter, you have to bash people over the head with what you’re saying to cut through the noise. So we could instead say: Of all opinions, strong opinions are easiest to argue against. We’ve replaced “strong ones” with “strong opinions.” It’s less economical, but includes the term “strong opinions,” pits them against opinions at-large, and delivers the counterintuitive element at the end, like the punchline of a joke. Step 5: What are we trying to say? This is probably as economically as we can write this, meeting that criteria. But it’s still not ready. Now it’s not clear from this observation how the author wants us to feel about strong opinions. It’s, ironically, not a strong opinion. Is the upshot that you shouldn’t hold strong opinions? Is it that when you hold strong opinions, you have to be comfortable with the fact they are easy to argue against? What makes an opinion “strong,” anyway? Is it the force with with which you express the opinion? If so, the statement, “strong opinions, weakly held” would mean you express the opinion with force, but are quick to change it if presented with contrary evidence. Or maybe it means that you should take decisive action on your opinions, and if that action presents you with contrary evidence, you should change your opinion and act accordingly? Now we’re starting to get to what I, as an author, really think – which is like an excavation to discover, Where did this idea come from in the first place? My personal opinion is that to hold a strong opinion, you have to be faking. There are few things any of us are qualified to have opinions about. Having a strong opinion is a very “hedgehog” way of being, and hedgehogs are scientifically proven to be wrong. Yet if you express your honest opinion – which is to be more like a “fox” than a hedgehog – you’re essentially expressing no opinion at all. Instead, you’re exploring thoughts around a potential opinion. Given the mechanics of media today, few who see what you have to say when expressing your fox-like opinion will interact with it. And because few will interact with it, fewer will see it. So in a way, to be fox-like in media is doing oneself a disservice. Your message doesn’t get seen, and since nobody can disagree with your non-opinion, you learn less. It’s beneficial to masquerade as a hedgehog on social media, but be a fox in your private intellectual life. What’s our angle? It’s at this point in revising a tweet, where I often step back and write plainly the sub-text of what I’m trying to say. One angle is, In your pursuit of learning, you have to pretend to have strong opinions, because strong opinions are the easiest to argue against – which helps you collect information. Another angle is that When you express a strong opinion, be ready to be disagreed with, because strong opinions are by definition the easiest to argue against. So now I have two potential angles: “You should pretend to have an opinion.” “When you express your opinion, be ready for criticism.” Since this is a tweet, the sub-text of the tweet is very important. Because of the social mechanics of Twitter, people will not like or retweet something that makes them look bad. The “You should pretend to have an opinion” angle is weak, because to retweet something that espouses being inauthentic is to admit to being inauthentic, and that’s socially repugnant – even if our angle has merit. Also important, it’s not socially-repugnant enough to get people to argue, which would be another way of driving engagement. The “When you express your opinion, be ready for criticism,” angle is somewhat stronger. It would be a small flex to like or retweet this, because it would show that you’re a person resilient enough to expose yourself to criticism, a quality which has social clout in some circles. Moving forward with that best angle, in the clearest way possible, we could say: When you share strong opinions, you will be criticized. Because strong opinions by definition are the easiest opinions to disagree with. Besides the fact it’s much longer, there’s something weak about this tweet. I think it’s that it makes strong opinions not look good. Why have them if they’re so easy to disagree with? As someone with a fox cognitive style, to me it doesn’t feel right. So ultimately it seems, I believe a third angle: “Strong opinions aren’t good.” If we put that simply, we’re back to “Of all opinions, strong opinions are the easiest to argue against.” That still doesn’t express clearly how I feel about strong opinions. It’s just a statement of fact. Step 6: Applying rhetoric Maybe we can make this more economical, while also expressing more clearly my feelings about strong opinions, if we use a rhetorical form. Rhetorical forms are time-tested structures in language that add meaning beyond the simple content of the words. “Antithesis” is a good rhetorical form for tweets. Mark Forsyth in The Elements of Eloquence describes antithesis as “X is Y, and not X is not Y.” We won’t use that exact formula, which would essentially be “Strong opinions are easy to argue against, and weak opinions are hard to argue against.” Instead, let’s pit the word “strong” against its antithesis, “weak” – which is part of why the phrase “strong opinions, weakly held” is so memetic. As it happens, the idea of a “weak argument” is a commonly-used metaphor, so we can add extra power to our phrase by tapping into that existing idiom. With those elements in mind, we end up with: Strong opinions are weak arguments. That’s about as good as we can do. We’ve reduced the phrase from eleven words to only five. It’s now clearer what I think of strong opinions, and it presents the irony I wanted to point out in the first place. Was all this work worth it? So, how did this tweet do? I published it, making sure to record a prediction that I was 70% sure it would get fewer than 1,500 impressions (in 48 hours). It actually got 1,081. One month later, I published the unedited tweet I presented at the beginning of this article. I was 70% sure it would get fewer than 1,000 impressions. It got 384. The data suggest that through all that excruciating detail – more than 1,500 words about writing only five – I nearly tripled the performance of this tweet. The tweet still didn’t go viral, which isn’t the point of thinking of language in this level of detail. The real point of this exercise is that if you make a habit of thinking carefully about language, you internalize much of this process, which makes all your writing better. Image: Flower Myth, by Paul Klee About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »       Show notes: https://kadavy.net/blog/posts/how-to-write-a-tweet/

Here's a bonus preview of a new podcast I've brewed just for Patreon supporters. It's Coffee w/ Kadavy. In this episode, #4, I talk about: I talk with special guest ChatGPT about why we will (or won't) see another AI winter An inventory of things I believe (at least more than 50%) A cool thing that makes reading paper books way more comfortable! A (controversial?) history book about an amazing clash of civilizations For more episodes of Coffee w/ Kadavy, join the Patreon! There are three more episodes waiting for you, and a sneak audiobook preview of a chapter from my next book.

Every message is shaped by the mechanics of media. Whether it’s a tweet, a TikTok video, a news article, or a movie, the characteristics of the medium determine how it’s made, how it’s consumed, and whether it spreads. If you understand the mechanics of media, you can more effectively communicate in a wide variety of mediums, and protect yourself from being manipulated by media. The message is the mechanics of media As media theorist Marshall McLuhan said, “The medium is the message.” In Understanding Media, he wrote: The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium...results from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs.... In other words, it’s not the content of the medium we should be worried about, but the way the characteristics of that medium determine its content – the mechanics of media. The five characteristics of media I propose that there are five characteristics present in any medium, which determine these mechanics. These characteristics affect the creation, consumption, and distribution of media. (In other words, what message is delivered, how that message is received, and whether or not that message spreads.) Those five characteristics are: Incentive Sensory Physical Social Psychological The mechanics of media are so complex, these characteristics naturally interact with one another. I’ll give a brief introduction of each, then show how these characteristics work in the popular mediums of podcasts, Twitter, and TikTok. 1. Incentive The Incentive characteristics of a medium are sources of motivation, whether money or otherwise, that shape the creation, consumption, and distribution of messages in that medium. The creator of a piece of media is motivated by various incentives, such as money and relationships. Whether or not someone is able to consume a piece of media depends upon whether its affordable or otherwise accessible. Whether or not a piece of media spreads depends upon whether incentives are aligned for the distribution platform to allow it to spread. So, a journalist may be motivated to write a story that gets page views, because that’s how they’re paid. That’s how they’re paid, because the newspaper doesn’t have paying subscribers and thus relies upon ad revenue. The stories with click-bait headlines spread and get more page views because they increase engagement for the social media platform they’re shared on, which increases the social media platform’s ad revenue. 2. Sensory The Sensory characteristics of a medium are the ways in which the medium engages senses such as sight, hearing, and touch. Marshall McLuhan wrote about how so-called “sense ratios” were engaged by a medium. Sensory characteristics primarily affect the consumption of the medium, but those effects overlap with creation and distribution. Written content, for example, can be absorbed at a reader’s own pace. As Neil Postman pointed out in Amusing Ourselves to Death, the written word is especially well-suited to careful review and comparison, which makes it easier to convey the truth. Audio content can be replayed to be reviewed, but it’s more work than simply moving your eyes back over the content. 3. Physical The Physical characteristics of a medium are the ways in which the medium engages the body. The subtitle of Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media is Extensions of Man. As a medium extends our abilities, it also removes or “amputates” abilities. When you listen to a podcast, your entire body is free to do other things. You may be cooking, showering, or fighting your way to the exit of a crowded subway car. So, audio with dense content may not be absorbed as well as if the same content were printed in a paper book – which can still be read on a subway car, but not likely while walking. Podcasts became distributed more widely as they became easier to download on smartphones, which people physically carry around. 4. Social The Social characteristics of a medium are the ways in which the medium facilitates interactions amongst people. In the age of social media, these interactions affect creation, consumption, and distribution, in concert. Algorithms that drive distribution on platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok are designed to distribute a piece of content based upon its engagement. Much of that engagement is social. If you comment on, like, or share a piece of content, that social interaction leads to further distribution. Additionally, the level of privacy involved in consuming or sharing content has social consequences. You may be reluctant to even “like” certain content, for fear of who might see. But you might share the same content with a close friend through a text message – so-called “dark social” – or even a dinner conversation. 5. Psychological The psychological characteristics of a medium are the ways in which a medium interacts with human psychology. Cognitive biases affect the way people interpret a piece of media, and media platforms are designed to exploit these biases. For example, variable rewards make social media platforms habit-forming for both consumers and creators. You never know when you’ll find something incredibly valuable during a social media session, and as a creator, you’re always checking to see if you’ve gotten more comments and views. To go back to our example of a journalist paid by the page view, incentives may motivate them or the newspaper at which they work to cover more natural disasters, shark attacks, and terrorist attacks, which grab people’s attention as a result of the availability heuristic. Here’s a sampling of how these five characteristics shape various mediums. Podcasts 1. Incentive There are two main ways podcast creators make money: either have a lot of listeners and sell sponsorship, or have few listeners, but make money on some kind of “back-end” business. It’s very hard to get new listeners for a podcast, for reasons that will be clear when we analyze the other mechanics, so this motivates many podcast hosts to do “swaps,” wherein hosts interview one another on each other’s podcasts. 2. Sensory Many listeners listen to podcasts alone, through headphones. Audio can’t be rewound as easily as someone can re-read, so the content should present simple ideas with simple language, and storytelling can keep the listener engaged. 3. Physical Listening to a podcast doesn’t engage much of your physical body, so listeners may be doing nearly anything while listening. They could be driving, showering, or doing household chores. With AirPods, they could even be hitting golf balls. Listeners may be in distracting situations, so again, the mechanics of the podcast medium lend themselves to simple ideas presented through simple language, and strong storytelling. 4. Social A podcast host makes an intimate connection with a listener because they’re often talking right into the listener’s ear, often while they’re alone. In this way, the host becomes like the internal monologue of the listener. This is part of why there are so many podcasts despite it being so hard to attract new listeners. This intimate connection can attract new customers and clients for high-ticket items, and advertisers are willing to pay a lot per listener, especially when the host reads the ads. It’s hard to attract new listeners to podcasts, because podcasts don’t lend themselves well to social consumption and distribution. Podcast listeners are usually physically occupied when listening, and unlikely to engage through likes, shares, and comments. These features aren’t available in most podcast-listening apps, since podcasts are distributed through decentralized feeds that can be captured by one of many such apps. Podcast content can be several hours long, with the information presented in the disorganized form of a conversation. Even when pieces of a podcast are presented as clips on social media, there are a few formidable barriers to such clips attracting listeners: Editing long-form content to be interesting in short-form is difficult, audio content has trouble competing with other content on social media feeds, and social media is often consumed in contexts in which it’s not convenient to download and listen to a podcast. 5. Psychological Podcast producers take advantage of the ways in which audio content can affect the psychology of the listener. Narrative podcasts use music and storytelling to manipulate listeners’ emotions and build suspense and engagement. Compelling podcast interviewees know how to talk passionately and persuasively in a way that will excite listeners. Still other podcast hosts deliberately speak in an unpolished way, to make their shows feel more like listening to a friend. Twitter 1. Incentive On Twitter, journalists can build followings, which can help them get more page views, which can help them either get paid more, or not rely on their employers at all. Entrepreneurs can grow their businesses. Writers, such as myself, can test out ideas. People, generally, can be entertained, or feel as if they’re heard. Twitter is still primarily an ad-supported platform, so more engagement with the platform means more ad revenue. While I presented above an example of a social media platform presenting articles with click-bait headlines, the incentive characteristics of Twitter also work against this. If you were to click on a link, you would leave Twitter, where you could no longer be served ads. So tweets that are just links get less distribution. 2. Sensory Twitter is primarily text, which is supposed to be the form of media most-capable of communicating the truth. Yet anyone who has used Twitter has noticed there is a lot of sensational content, with lots of arguing and fighting amongst tribes. How can this be? Since Twitter is mostly a collection of snippets of text, which can be easily skimmed, it puts people in a “hunting” mode. Unlike reading a book, where the sensory experience locks you into the progression of ideas presented by the author, on the Twitter timeline, the sensory experience is like scanning the landscape for the gazelle in the grass, or the tiger in the bush. 3. Physical Many Twitter users consume its content on their phones. They’re looking at their hands, often slouched over with neck craned downward. This is a posture that makes you more close-minded and negative, as opposed to say, standing up, with a monitor at eye-level, and shoulders back while typing on a split keyboard. Users can be in a variety of settings, such as on public transport, or even crossing the street. On Twitter, consumption and creation can be physically the same, which lends itself to off-the-cuff and often reactionary or poorly-thought-out content. So content creators on Twitter who do the majority of their thinking away from the app, and put intention into their creation process, are essentially practicing attention arbitrage. 4. Social Twitter has followed the lead of platforms such as TikTok, and decoupled the distribution of content from the follower relationship, in lieu of a feed driven by engagement or relevance of topic. Still, the number of followers greatly influences distribution on Twitter. Thus, savvy Twitter creators know they have to be active “reply guys” – replying to tweets on related accounts – until they gain a following. Besides followers and the ever-more-rare retweet, the biggest driver of distribution on Twitter is replies. Therefore, tweets that drive conversation get more distribution. Ironically, if a tweet is clear and factual, it won’t get as much distribution as if it is unclear and controversial. So, creators who are either unintelligent in a lucky way, or savvy and machiavellian enough to feign ignorance, see great distribution through “fake takes,” or expressing with great confidence a simplistic opinion people will argue over in the replies. 5. Psychological Almost all activity on Twitter is public by default, so this creates a media environment with a bias toward behavior that’s either prosocial or tribal. There can be social consequences for merely following someone or liking one of their tweets. There’s a lot of what Timur Kuran calls “preference falsification” on Twitter, to signal that one is part of a tribe. The only characteristic that counters this is that expanding a tweet or media within a tweet is private, so this private engagement can help somewhat the distribution of content people may not be comfortable supporting publicly. TikTok 1. Incentive Many creators are attracted to TikTok because it’s a platform where it’s possible to have a lot of success very quickly, and seemingly for no good reason. You can get tens of millions of views just dancing in front of your bathroom mirror. TikTok is an ad-supported platform, so the platform distributes content that will overall increase the time spent on the platform. Yet TikTok overall has a more-positive vibe than Twitter. We’ll get to why. 2. Sensory If the sensory experience of Twitter puts the viewer into “hunting” mode, the sensory experience of TikTok is more like the campfire. You’re not skimming a vast sea of text. Instead, you’re immersed entirely in a video – at least for a moment. You’re often face-to-face with a person talking. It’s harder to get angry with someone when you’re looking right at them. This campfire instead of hunting experience makes content on TikTok more positive than on Twitter. But you’re not immersed in that video for long. Users can quickly swipe and be immersed in the next video. So, there is a lot of pressure for creators to create content that grabs the attention of the viewer. It’s not unusual, when looking at an engagement graph on a TikTok video you’ve created, to see a note informing you there was a drop in viewership at the one second mark. This is part of why TikTok has a reputation for being all about looks. Indeed their new “Bold Glamour Filter” reshapes women’s faces to an astounding degree (yet they still have nothing for my gray beard hairs). 3. Physical TikTok, like all social media, is primarily consumed on a mobile phone. So consumers may be in any of a variety of settings, including highly distracting environments where they don’t have control over sound. So, TikTok videos present simple ideas, presented quickly, and videos with captions perform better, as viewers may have audio off. However, there is some incentive for creators to present complex data associated with their simple ideas. If you flash a data-rich graphic in a TikTok video, viewers will try to pause it, which is a signal of engagement for the TikTok algorithm. You’ll do even better if the graphic flashes so quickly it can’t be paused the first time. The viewer will have to let the video play again, to once again attempt to pause at the right time. For example: @davidkadavy Time multiplying helps you create more time. Credit: Rory Vaden #timemanagement #timemanagementhacks #timemanagementskills #xkcd ? original sound - ???David Kadavy 4. Social Since pausing or rewatching a video signals engagement to TikTok, dance videos have performed well on the platform. Consumers can become creators and post “duets”, in which they perform a dance next to its originator. Of course you have to watch the video many times to get your dance moves right, which signals engagement. This physical bias towards dance videos, helped along by the social characteristics of TikTok, may also contribute to its more-positive vibe. Like anywhere many humans congregate, there is still some negativity on TikTok. But if you’re going to be explicitly negative, you’re going to have to show your face. Comments are limited to 150 characters. Beyond that, you can make a reply video, a “duet” – such as in dance videos, or a “stitch,” where you place your video at the end of the video you’re responding to. 5. Psychological Because simple videos that viewers re-watch get more distribution, videos on TikTok resist the sense of closure humans have been used to since at least the time of Homer. If you summarize what you’ve covered at the end of a video, your engagement will drop and you’ll get fewer views. So videos don’t have the satisfying end we’re used to. Some creators make their videos “loop,” wherein the final thing said connects to the first thing, which hypnotizes the viewer into watching again. This being an article, it’s not bad for me to take the time to present a conclusion. That’s my overview of what I believe to be the five characteristics that shape the mechanics of media, and how those mechanics shape the mediums of podcasts, Twitter, and TikTok. The next time you’re creating something for a medium, or feeling highly-persuaded by a piece of media, take time to think about the five characteristics that shape the mechanics of media. Image: Painting 1930, by Patrick Henry Bruce Thank you for having me on your show! Thank you for having me on your podcasts. Thank you to Rachel Roth at The Rachel Roth Show. As always, you can find interviews of me on my interviews page. 300 episodes! This is the 300th episode of Love Your Work. Something I haven't asked in years: Can you please rate the show on Apple Podcasts? About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »       Show notes: https://kadavy.net/blog/posts/mechanics-of-media/

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Making, recording, and evaluating predictions is a simple way to improve your thinking and decision-making. But the way to properly make and record predictions isn’t obvious. In this article, I’ll share some predictions I’ve made, what I’ve learned, and how you can improve your thinking by making predictions. Making predictions has grown my business Five years ago, I had been running my business for ten years, and it wasn’t going great. Then, I started publishing monthly income reports, and along the way, making predictions. My income has nearly doubled, and I attribute much of that success to my habit of making predictions. I began by predicting how much money I’d make in a product launch, and grew to predicting how much traffic articles I had written would gain, and how many copies books I’d written would sell. I now routinely make predictions for things as seemingly mundane as whether I’ll enjoy a conference, whether I’ll still be publishing on TikTok a year from now, or whether an avocado is ripe. On the surface, making predictions seems like a pointless game. This is, indeed, true of making predictions the wrong way. But making predictions the right way helps you deal with uncertainty you otherwise have no hope of handling. Predictions help you bet your life, better Each of us has limited resources, such as time, money, and mental energy. We’re constantly making decisions about how to use these resources, and when we make those decisions, we are expecting outcomes. If we go on this date, will we find the love of our life, or wish we’d stayed in? If we write this book, will we achieve fame and fortune, or feel as if we’ve wasted years of our life? If we spend an hour on social media, will we make valuable connections, or spiral into self-hatred over our lack of discipline? As Annie Duke, author of Thinking in Bets wrote: In most of our decisions, we are not betting against another person. Rather, we are betting against all the future versions of ourselves that we are not choosing. —Annie Duke, Thinking in Bets Each decision we make is a bet. We bet a resource, and expect something in return. Most of us don’t recognize or express the expectations of our bets. But we should. Some bets are clearer than others If you bet a dollar on a coin flip and only win $1.50 for guessing correctly, you’d easily recognize that as an unfair bet: There’s a 50% chance of guessing correctly, so you clearly should receive two dollars. But the more variable the odds, and the more vague your wager and winnings, the more difficult it becomes to think clearly. What’s the value of finding the love of your life? What other benefits can you get writing a book besides fame and fortune? What are the chances that during this hour of social media you’ll make a life-changing discovery? Making objective decisions taking into account all these variables becomes so complicated you might as well throw up your hands, surrender to randomness, and do what feels right in the moment. And that’s what most of us do. Case in point: The multi-billion-dollar gambling industry, propped up by people doing what feels right in the moment – their decision-making shrouded by the smokescreen of ever more complex and variable bets. The key to making predictions in a way that helps you evaluate your decisions is to avoid what Annie Duke calls “resulting.” If you wager a dollar on a coin flip, with a chance to win $10, and lose, the result of your decision was bad, but your decision was good. The odds were clearly in your favor. Mathematically, you were sure you’d win that bet one of two times. If you had won, you were going to win ten times your money. Now how do you apply this thinking to more complex and vague situations, such as a product launch, your Saturday night plans, or whether or not your new hobby is a passing obsession? The key is to make a prediction, the right way. How to make predictions the right way There are two components to making predictions the right way. Turn it into a coin flip. Identify the odds. 1. Turn the outcome into a “coin flip” First, turn the prediction into a coin flip. I don’t mean in terms of odds, but in terms of result. When you flip a coin, it comes up heads or tails. When you make a prediction about a result, that result must either happen or not. For a prediction to be useful, it has to be falsifiable. This is not easy to do, which is why few of us make predictions the right way, if at all. If you think it’s going to rain, in what area will it rain, by what time? Does a single raindrop count? If you think you’ll still be doing bird photography in six months, how many bird photos will you have taken, within the previous month? If you think you’ll enjoy going to the party, how many good memories will you be able to recall a week later? You can define a successful result in whatever measurable way you want. The important thing is that to make a prediction, you need to turn the result into a coin flip. Not in terms of odds, but in terms of how you define the result. Some actual predictions I’ve turned into coin flips: My Black Friday promotion will earn $3,000–$6,000. My blog post on Zettelkasten will average worse than a ranking of 10 for the keyword “zettelkasten”, the first three months after publish, according to Google Console. I will sell 5,000–15,000 copies of Mind Management, Not Time Management within the first year. With each of these predictions, I was wagering resources. It took, time, money, and energy to run a promotion, write a blog post, and write a book. But what did I expect from those investments? I could have done any of these without making a prediction. Besides the long-term benefits of making these predictions – which I’ll get to in a bit – turning these predictions into coin flips had immediate benefits. Turning predictions into coin flips helps answer these questions: Is this worth doing? By defining a successful result, you’re forced to ask yourself if it’s worth the investment, based upon your expectations. How will I achieve this? In the process of defining a successful result, you start thinking about why you expect to achieve that result. Do you have prior experiences or past data to draw upon? You’ll never search as hard for these as when you’re making a prediction. Can I do better? Defining a successful result has a symbiotic relationship with the effort you put forth trying to achieve the result. Making the prediction motivates you to try to make that prediction correct, which sometimes motivates you to predict and try to achieve an even better result. When you flip a coin, you of course aren’t sure whether it will come up heads or tails, and when you make a prediction, you aren’t sure whether you’ll achieve that result. And that is how it should be. 2. Identify the odds The second way to make a prediction the right way is to identify the odds of achieving that result. You’ve turned the prediction into a coin flip, but it’s not necessarily a coin flip with 50/50 odds. It may be more like a die roll, with 1:6 odds, or a roll of four or lower, with 2:3 odds. If you’ve turned your predicted result into a coin flip by adjusting a range, you can adjust that range according to your expected odds. In this way, if you want to literally turn your prediction into a coin flip, you can pick a range you feel you have 50/50 odds of achieving. For example, I believed I had 50/50 odds of making $3,000–$6,000 on my Black Friday promotion, and of selling 5,000–15,000 copies of my book in the first year. I specifically chose those ranges based upon what I expected to have 50/50 odds of achieving. If your prediction doesn’t involve a range, such as whether or not you will regret going to a party, then you simply have to identify your expected odds of that result. For all odds, I think it’s easiest to choose a percentage of confidence, such as 50% for 50/50 odds, or 66% for 2:3 odds. For example, I was 70% sure I wouldn’t regret attending a conference in Vegas last year. Each of these predictions is for one event. But the result will either be achieved, or not. Therefore, what you felt 70% sure would happen will in retrospect look as if it had 0 or 100% odds of happening. So what is the point of choosing odds for your prediction? There are three benefits of choosing odds: It helps you gain clarity on each decision. It helps you distinguish risky from not-risky decisions. It helps you rate and improve your decision-making, over time. Choosing odds helps you gain clarity First, choosing odds of achieving a result helps you gain clarity on a decision. Let’s say you buy your first guitar. Surely you’re picturing yourself being a pretty good guitar player someday. But how do you define that, how sure are you you’ll become a good guitar player, and how soon? A year later, when your guitar is collecting dust in your closet, you might feel pretty bad about yourself. But suppose that when you bought your guitar you had predicted that you were 50% sure, one year later, you would have practiced guitar at least fifteen minutes in the previous month? Based upon that prediction, it turns out you weren’t so sure to begin with that you’d become a good guitar player. Choosing odds helps you distinguish sure bets from wildcards Which brings us to the second benefit of choosing odds, which is that it helps you distinguish risky decisions from not-risky decisions. You took a chance buying a guitar, and it didn’t work out. That’s easier to live with if you know you were taking a chance. Some of life and business’s greatest benefits come from taking chances. But you only have so many resources to gamble with. Professional poker players know they need a certain “bank roll” to stay in the game and keep making bets. If they have a lot of bank roll, they might play a riskier bet than if they have little. They’re able to do that because they know the odds. In business, especially creative business, your “sure bets” keep you in business, while “wildcards” can change your business. As you decide how to invest your resources, and evaluate whether you’ve achieved successful results, you’ll make better decisions if you know ahead of time whether you’re playing a sure bet or a wildcard. For example, I was 95% sure my Zettelkasten blog post wouldn’t rank in the top ten for the search term, so I was clear going into it I was playing a wildcard. Additionally, while I was 50% sure I’d sell 5,000–15,000 copies of my book in the first year, I was 90% sure I’d sell fewer than 250,000 copies, which helped put a ceiling on my expectations. Choosing odds improves your decision-making Which is the third benefit of choosing odds: improving your decision-making over time. If you had been 90% sure you’d’ve practiced guitar ten hours in a month, you’d still feel bad when it turned out you didn’t, but at least you’d have data to learn from. Without that data, you might say to yourself, “I never finish what I start. I’m a loser.” With that data, you can say, “I overestimated my enthusiasm to play guitar. I’ll keep that mistake in mind in the future.” Notice you wouldn’t tell yourself you were “wrong.” Because you weren’t. Even if you were 90% sure you’d’ve practiced guitar ten hours in a month and didn’t, you’d only end up 90% wrong. Which means you were 10% right. When you choose odds of your expected results, it’s easier to learn from your mistakes because you’re never totally wrong, and always a little right – which makes your mistakes sting a little less. But to get enough data to know how good your predictions are, you need to make a lot of predictions over time. If you don’t know the odds of a coin flip, and your prediction turns out wrong, you don’t learn a whole lot. But if you make a hundred predictions, you’ll end up with a pretty good idea of the odds of that coin flip. Make many predictions with the same odds, for faster calibration The more predictions you make with the same odds, the more quickly you can tell how good your predictions are. I’ve presented to you examples of predictions I’ve made with various odds. But whenever possible, I try to choose “coin flips” I believe have a 70% chance of being correct. 70% is an arbitrary level of confidence. What’s important is that by making many predictions of which I have 70% confidence, I learn how accurate my predictions tend to be at that confidence level. I’ve made 19 predictions at 70% confidence. Only 63% of those have turned out correct. By making and tracking many predictions, I’ve learned that when I’m 70% confident something will happen, it will generally happen only 63% of the time. I’m slightly overconfident at that range, and so should be more conservative with my future predictions. My prediction track-record I keep track of and publicly display many of my predictions on PredictionBook.com, which is one of those totally free websites with no ads that makes you nostalgic for 2007. Because I’ve made more than fifty predictions, I can see how good I am at predicting at various levels. For example, after fifteen predictions at 90% confidence, 80% have turned out correct. After five at 50% confidence, and five at 60% confidence, those have turned out correct 80% and 100% of the time, respectively. While I should to be more pessimistic about things I’m pretty sure will happen, it seems I should be more optimistic about things I’m not so sure will happen. It turned out the prediction that my Black Friday promotion would earn between $3,000 and $6,000 was correct. Since I was 50% confident, I was half-right, and half-wrong. I did sell between 5,000 and 15,000 copies of my book in the first year. Again, half-right, half-wrong. And the Zettelkasten blog post I was 95% sure wouldn’t rank in the top ten, actually did! I was happy to be 95% wrong about that – it was a wildcard that turned out. Making predictions feels unnatural – which is why you do it The next time you’re choosing whether something is worth doing, I highly recommend you make a prediction. If turning the outcome into a coin-flip and picking a percentage of confidence feels uncomfortable to you – it should. Thinking in this way doesn’t come naturally – which is why it’s a superpower. Image: Ghost of a Genius, by Paul Klee About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »       Show notes: https://kadavy.net/blog/posts/make-predictions/

In the midst of the Great Depression, cereal manufacturer Kellogg’s switched to a shorter, six-hour day. This continued a trend that seemed inevitable: people would work less and less. But economic policies, management strategies, and cultural attitudes changed. The story of the rise and fall of Kellogg’s six-hour day is a microcosm of these changes, as well as of our attitudes about the roles of money, leisure, work, and women and men. In the book, Kellogg’s 6-Hour Day, historian Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt shares his findings in studying Kellogg’s shorter workday. His main sources of information were 434 interviews conducted by the Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labor, 124 interviews he himself conducted of workers, and 241 responses to a survey he had sent. What follows is a summary of the story, and Hunnicutt’s findings. Kellogg’s switched to a 6-hour day to create jobs During the Great Depression, American businesses took on a policy of “work sharing.” The idea was that fewer would be unemployed if everyone shared jobs – more workers, working fewer hours. So, on December 1, 1930, W. K. Kellogg changed most departments in Kellogg’s Battle Creek, Michigan plant from three eight-hour shifts to four six-hour shifts. A shorter workday had seemed inevitable This continued a decades-long trend of shorter working hours. Labor activist William Heighton had written in 1827 that the workday should be reduced from twelve hours to ten, eight, and so on, “until the development and progress of science have reduced human labour to its lowest terms.” John Stuart Mill had written in 1848 about his vision for a “Stationary State”: After necessities were met, people would seek progress in mental, moral, and social realms. John Maynard Keynes would predict in the same year Kellogg’s switched to six hours, 1930, that we’d have a fifteen-hour work week by 2030. George Bernard Shaw and Julian Juxley had predicted a maximum two-hour workday by the end of the 1900s. Other businesses shortened their workdays, too Other businesses followed Kellogg’s’ lead. A survey by the Industrial Conference Board in 1931 estimated 50% of American businesses had shortened hours to save jobs. President Herbert Hoover was considering making a 6-hour day a national policy. In the 1932 presidential campaign, both major parties were advocating shorter hours. The 6-hour day was the hot business topic Not only did the six-hour day help create jobs, it seemed for a while like it was a better business policy. Forbes called it “the topic of discussion in the business world.” Business Week concluded it was profitable. The New York Times called it “a complete success.” Factory and Industrial Management magazine called the six-hour day, the “biggest piece of industrial news since Ford announced his five-dollar-a-day policy.” At Kellogg’s, 15% more shredded wheat cases were being packed per hour. Profits had doubled in 1931, versus three years prior. After five years with the six-hour day, overhead costs had been reduced 25%, labor costs 10%, with 41% fewer accidents. W. K. Kellogg said, “We can afford to pay as much for six hours as we formerly paid for eight.” (That should be taken with a grain of salt. W. K. Kellogg took pride in crafting a public image as a “welfare capitalist,” as evinced by the full-page newspaper ads he took out, boasting how Kellogg’s had done its part. In reality, nearly half of workers later surveyed recalled that their wages were reduced.) Kellogg’s returned to an 8-hour day for WWII In 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order to direct the maximum amount of manpower toward supporting the country’s fight in WWII. Kellogg’s responded in kind by temporarily returning to eight-hour shifts. A rift formed between Kellogg’s management and the labor union This was actually an opportunity the company had been looking for. Kellogg’s management and that at other companies were beginning to resent the six-hour day, and workers were becoming divided over whether they wanted a shorter workday, or more pay. In 1936, the National Council of Grain Producers had started a union chapter in Kellogg’s Battle Creek headquarters. W. K. Kellogg had been proud to pay what he considered the best hourly wages in town. During the first meeting with union officers, he wept, and kept saying, “If only they had come to me, I would have given them what they wanted.” The union got an inch, and wanted a mile After this point, the relationship between Kellogg’s workers and management became adversarial. W. K. had left in 1937, after the union came in, and at that point the union leaders had been pushing to not only have a six-hour day, in which they could earn a bonus based upon productivity, but they had also wanted time-and-a-half pay for working more than six hours in a day. Hunnicutt wrote, “More than any other union demand, this position would come to haunt Kellogg workers.” Demanding overtime pay on a six-hour day helped turn management against the shorter workday, and create a rift between workers who wanted higher wages, and workers who wanted shorter hours. In the larger relationship between management and labor, the American Federation of Labor introduced a bill in congress, prohibiting goods produced by workers working more than thirty hours a week from being traded across state lines. Hunnicutt cites this as having shifted the business world’s stance on shorter hours from support to opposition. Shorter hours became exploitation, longer hours a reward In 1938, Kellogg’s management deepened the divide between six-hour and eight-hour workers by proposing they be allowed to schedule 40-hour weeks during periods of heavy production. Overtime became available instead of a productivity bonus. Senior workers had priority access to overtime, and so they lost interest in the productivity bonus. So in the early 1940s, before the war, worker opinions were shifting to view shorter hours not as a benefit, but as instead an exploitation of workers – making them bear the brunt of fighting unemployment. And Kellogg’s was actively campaigning against shorter days, asking workers to consider how much more they would make working eight hours. Human Relations Management saw work as life’s center Meanwhile, the business world was shifting from a Scientific Management philosophy to a Human Relations Management philosophy. Scientific Management practitioners were obsessed with efficiency, but Human Relations Management practitioners were more interested in imbuing work with joy and meaning – making work its own reward. The Human Relations Management school envisioned that as work brought satisfaction, engineers and scientists would lead society into an orderly world, where desires met obligations, consumption met production, and work and leisure merged. According to Humans Relations Management, time away from work and consumption was a relic of an illogical past. Instead of work becoming obsolete, giving way to more freedom, work would become the center of life, and help us ascend Maslow’s hierarchy. Fewer workers wanted to return to 6 hours After the war, many departments returned to six-hour shifts, but six-hour workers slowly lost their beloved shorter shifts over the following decades. Central to this struggle was how workers viewed leisure. Kellogg’s workers had previously voted to essentially “buy” shorter working hours, being paid less overall, in exchange for more leisure time. Employees used their time to improve their homes, go hunting, grow and can food in their gardens, and spend time volunteering in their communities. But slowly, workers became less interested in having time away from work. Leisure was outsourced to mass media One explanation from a worker Hunnicutt interviewed was, people were now outsourcing all things they used to spend time on. One place they were outsourcing to was mass media. Sports had been such serious business amongst Kellogg’s employees, they had hired “semi-pro” softball or basketball players to play on the teams. But why watch the company team play, when you can watch pros on television? One former six-hour worker bemoaned that even conversation had been outsourced – to radio, or television talk-show hosts. Shorter hours became seen as weak and feminine The question, Six hours or eight? became a gender issue. Early on, both men and women were interested in six-hour shifts. Three-fourths of men voted for six-hour shifts in 1937, but half of men were working eight hours by 1947. The six-hour departments began to be referred to as “girls’ departments,” doing “women’s work.” Management also assigned sick and disabled employees to the six-hour departments. Men who chose to work six-hours were labeled “sissies,” “lazy,” or “weird.” Men saw work, not leisure, as a source of control and identity Hunnicutt’s interpretation was that men were increasingly seeing work as a place for control and identity – that many hadn’t known what to do with themselves after their shorter shifts. They didn’t like spending more time at home and being assigned chores by their wives, or hearing what they considered gossip. As a result, men placed more importance on working longer hours – or at least appearing to. Hunnicutt said men he interviewed commonly claimed to have gotten second jobs while they were working six hours. How often is “commonly”?, he doesn’t say, but he points out only 35% ever did get second jobs. Men felt they “had to” work long hours This attitude, which we might today call “toxic masculinity,” extended into attitudes about leisure. When asked why they preferred longer hours, men spoke of necessity, and used dramatic language, saying they had to “keep the wolf from the door,” “feed the family,” and “put bread on the table.” When Hunnicutt pointed out to men who had been working in the 1950s that workers in the Great Depression had been willing to take pay cuts to have more free time, he says they got defensive, lectured him on “the facts of life economically,” called six-hours “nonsense” or a “pipe dream,” or dismissed the question as silly. While Hunnicutt’s conclusions here are plausible, it seemed like he really wanted it to be true, and didn’t present men’s attitudes scientifically. There’s no mention of what earnings were relative to cost-of-living, and no acknowledgement of what these men’s roles might have been, truthfully, in the economics of their homes. There’s not even a mention of how throwing thousands of young men into the meat grinder that was WWII, tasked with saving the world, might have affected their own perceptions of what was expected of them. Though he did present a story of one man who had found that the extra money he made going back to eight hours was due to his ex-wife, as alimony. A shorter workday became “a sexist ploy” In the 1970s, Kellogg’s women worked with a local women’s-rights group, who presented the case that six-hour shifts were a sexist ploy meant to subjugate women. They demanded management “allow” women to have “full-time” jobs. Kellogg’s posted notices in the plant claiming that to make pay “comparable,” they were opening up eight-hour departments to women. In doing so, they skirted the issue: The activists had wanted not just comparable hours, but comparable hourly pay. The 6-hour mavericks held on Workers who stuck with the six-hour shift – who Hunnicutt calls “six-hour mavericks” – were about a quarter of the Kellogg’s workforce from 1957, into the 1980s. The union worked according to a department-by-department vote on the length of the day, so long as the six-hour workers didn’t interfere with the union majority’s strategy to try to get higher wages and more benefits. With longer hours, efficiency fell by the wayside Overtime had previously been thought of as a penalty to the company for being understaffed, but it became a way for workers to earn more money while the company’s staffing requirements remained flexible. According to Hunnicutt, with overtime instead of productivity bonuses, workers were less-motivated and careful. The company had to resort to being more controlling, motivating workers with fines, threats, and firings. The death of the 6-hour shift The increased benefits the union had fought for over the years may have worked against the six-hour shift. The final nail in the coffin was driven in 1984, when Kellogg’s threatened to relocate if workers didn’t vote to abandon the six-hour shift. So the six-hour workers gave in and voted to give it up. Some retired, some worked eight hours, but the coffin in which this nail was driven was both figurative and literal. The six-hour workers held a “funeral,” building a full-sized cardboard coffin, painted black, placed on the workroom floor, a cut-out skeleton placed inside. Thus reversed a trend that had held on for over 150 years. The idea of less work and more leisure gave way to a stable amount of work, and more consumption. It’s tempting to blame the death of the 6-hour shift on one of many juicy narratives. You could say people forgot how to spend their leisure time. You could say people were overly-materialistic, and wanted more money, instead of time. You could say toxic masculinity and a patriarchal society tipped the scales so those who wanted to work shorter hours were no longer in the majority. You could say the unions got too demanding and sabotaged the long-fought battle for a shorter working day. All these are probably true to an extent. Ultimately, businesses want to, need to, maximize profit. They have to offer benefits to employees to stay competitive. To offer those benefits profitably, they need more work from fewer workers. If you believe the efficient-market hypothesis, if a shorter workday were indeed more profitable, some business would beat its competitors by offering one, and other businesses would follow suit. So far, that hasn’t happened. If, as I believe, creativity becomes more important, productivity will be about [Mind Management, Not Time Management, and a more-relaxed work schedule will be embraced. But probably not for boxing corn flakes. There’s your summary of Kellogg’s 6-Hour Day This episode is essentially a summary of the book, Kellogg’s 6-Hour Day, by Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt. The book is very dense and written in an academic style, so I can’t recommend it unless you really want to dig deep into questions about work and leisure. It’s a provocative story that makes you wonder if we could be living in a world where a 6-hour day is standard. But it sounds like it wasn’t even close. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »       Show notes: https://kadavy.net/blog/posts/kelloggs-6-hour-day/

Desire paths are trails left on the ground, by anything that frequently travels along a route. There are subcultures fascinated by desire paths as symbols of collective wisdom, disregard for authority, or mere evidence of existence. Desire paths are also celebrated as a design technique. Desire paths in their pure form are about what you can see, but the characteristics of desire paths – which you can’t always see – can help you optimize your life and gain clarity in your creative projects. Desire path examples Desire paths are also known by a number of other names: cattle trails, cow paths, elephant paths, just to name a few. In forests or grassy meadows, it seems pretentious to call them desire paths – they’re just paths. Desire paths that question authority Desire paths are most interesting when they show up in places where a man-made path has already been put in place. A sidewalk turns a corner at a ninety-degree angle, but as people cut the corner, a desire path develops at forty-five degrees. An overgrown hedge encroaches on a sidewalk. To avoid squeezing between the hedge and a tree, people walk off the sidewalk and around the tree, and a desire path develops. A landscape architect tries to get fancy by building a curved path, but people instead take a straight path, and a desire path cuts through the grass. These desire paths that eschew the suggestions of man-made paths are like visual jokes that show a disregard for authority. Desire paths that acknowledge existence But some desire paths acknowledge the existence of a single being. A dog leaves a desire path where he’s cut across the yard a thousand times. A woman leaves a desire path where all summer she’s walked off the end of a dock, into the shallow water, to the shore of a lake. When a single being who has left a desire path passes away, the desire path remains as a reminder of their existence. The thought of nature reclaiming the desire path – for example, the grass growing back – is a sad reminder of how long they’ve been gone, and a reminder one day we’ll be gone, too. But the being doesn’t even have to be a living one. Delivery robots have left desire paths, their tire tracks marking the sidewalk with GPS precision. Desire paths as a design technique The most striking thing about desire paths is they can be used as a design technique. As I said, desire paths are like visual jokes that show a disregard for authority. They poke fun at civilization’s feeble attempts to plan, make decisions for others, or control people. Sometimes “authority” surrenders to the crowd and lets desire paths do the decision-making for them. University campuses are often full of desire paths. With so many students migrating from one of many buildings to one of many other buildings, there’s no way to predict what routes exactly will be the most efficient. So some schools, such as Ohio State University, held off on creating paved paths. Once the desire paths showed up, they then paved on top of them. The result is a latticework of criss-crossing paths, of varying widths, that no single human would have designed. Desire paths aren’t always good But sometimes “authority” has a good reason for building a path that seems inefficient. On the leading subculture of desire-path enthusiasts – Reddit’s desire paths community – parks planners have explained that nature trails often have switchbacks going back and forth across steep inclines, because such a design prevents soil erosion. When people cut across these switchbacks, hiking directly up the hill, they hasten erosion. Additionally, desire paths express the desires of the majority. Sometimes the path expressed by desire paths don’t work for people in the minority. That curved path that looks like the result of a landscape architect gone wild might soften the incline for people in wheelchairs – and how does that work out when path installation is delayed until desire paths form? Ultimately, people are going to tend toward their desires to get to their destinations quickly. Whatever practical reasons “authority” has for designing a path, the wisdom carried by desire paths can’t be ignored. The power of invisible desire paths Desire paths, in their pure form, are about what you can see. It seems the use of desire paths in design projects originated with analyzing data you can’t see. A 1942 transit study in Detroit charted origins and destinations of commuter trips, to determine where best to build roads. If you break the phenomenon of desire paths down to its essential components, you can find desire paths you can’t see, and harness their power to optimize your life and achieve clarity in creative projects. When used as a design technique, a desire path essentially does four things: A good-enough solution Collects data Exposes a pattern in the data Which leads to an ideal solution The unmodified ground is a good-enough solution people can use. Through the usage patterns of that good-enough solution, data builds up. Each footprint is a piece of data. The footprints don’t overlap, all in the same place. Instead, a pattern emerges, in the form of a path. That pattern is then used to determine an ideal solution. In the case of a college campus, that ideal solution is usually a paved sidewalk where the desire path once was. 1. Start with a prototype When a desire path forms, the untreated ground is essentially a prototype. So to create an invisible desire path, build or find a prototype. Find a low-cost, low-commitment way to give yourself a good-enough solution. For example, if you’re looking for the perfect backpack, you could take the top-down approach that desire paths so often protest: You could plan out everything you want your backpack to hold and do, then design a custom backpack. Or, you could start with a prototype: Buy any cheap backpack at a thrift store, and try it out. 2. Collect data Desire paths collect data based upon use of a prototype. Once you have a good-enough solution, you’re collecting data as you use it. With your cheap backpack, maybe you notice the straps gets loose, or dig into your shoulder. Maybe a pen falls out of it, or you find yourself rummaging through a big compartment full of small items. 3. Look for patterns Desire paths collect data, but that data is only useful once a pattern emerges. When a desire path forms, you can see it, but when an invisible desire path forms, you can’t. After enough time using your prototype, individual bits of data turn into patterns. Maybe a pen fell out of your cheap backpack only once and you fixed the straps so they didn’t loosen anymore, but the strap kept digging into your shoulder and you got sick of rummaging through a compartment full of small items. You’ve found your invisible desire path: You want a backpack with comfortable straps, and lots of small compartments for small items. 4. Find a solution When desire paths are used as a design feature, the visible path becomes the backbone of the solution. The designers simply pave a path over the desire path. Once you’ve found an invisible desire path, that becomes the backbone of your solution. Now that you’ve used a prototype enough times for patterns to emerge, you can find a solution that fits those patterns. Desire paths in creative projects Now how can invisible desire paths help you gain clarity on creative projects? Creative projects are a lot like choosing a backpack: You have a variety of requirements and preferences, not all of them are clear, and many contradict one another. There’s no one perfect solution, but there’s some ideal solution that balances everything. Too often, we approach creative projects thinking top-down: We don’t want to act until we have the perfect plan. But the perfect plan doesn’t exist. The best way to find an ideal plan is create an invisible desire path: Find a good-enough solution, collect data, and see what patterns emerge. Only then can you quickly and efficiently get where you’re going. Thank you for having me on your show! Thank you for having me on your show. Thank you to Ajay Mathur at the Be Yourself show. As always, you can find interviews of me on my interviews page. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »       Show notes: https://kadavy.net/blog/posts/desire-paths/

The term, “vulnerability” has spread into realms where it’s not an accurate description of what’s going on. The case for being vulnerable often doesn’t make sense. In the creative realm – and possibly in others – we should pursue something beyond vulnerability. When I wrote about vulnerability to my Love Mondays newsletter, saying some of what I’m about to say, I got a lot of pushback. In the current – and what I believe to be incorrect – parlance, some might say I had made myself vulnerable. I don’t agree. I’ll build up to why in the course of examining the vulnerability movement. I’ll try to keep this organized, so that if you disagree with my line of thinking, it’s easier to identify where. It’s hard to talk about vulnerability in an organized way, because the more the term is abused, the more vague its definition gets. Vulnerability means “open to harm” Let’s start by defining vulnerability. In the most basic terms, vulnerability means, “open to harm.” If you want to be more technical and specific, “open” in this case doesn’t mean “inviting” harm, but rather “susceptible” to harm. Now I’ll paraphrase some examples of how vulnerability is espoused in the current movement: “Be vulnerable at work. If you need help, don’t be afraid to ask.” “Be vulnerable in relationships. Share your feelings, even if it means you might be rejected.” “Be vulnerable in your writing. Share your struggles.” (Anyone familiar with my work might be surprised to hear me tee up this last one.) I don’t deny that a person might feel vulnerable in these situations. I’m not convinced they are vulnerable. I’m definitely skeptical that striving to be or even feel vulnerable is helpful. Emotional harm is the most-subjective harm If being vulnerable is being open to harm, to understand vulnerability we have to define what harm is. There are many types of harm, but I think most are covered in three categories: physical, economic, and emotional harm. Physical harm is the least-subjective realm of harm. Yes, people might perceive their physical wounds differently, and someone can have physical pains with an emotional cause, but for the most part, you can measure physical injury. Economic harm is slightly more-subjective. If you lose your job in a flourishing modern economy, you won’t necessarily have scars, such as if you experienced physical harm. You may ultimately be better off. Emotional harm is almost entirely subjective. What seems like emotional harm to one person may not to another. Some can’t stand to be looked at by a stranger. Others don’t care if someone criticizes them. Importantly, what causes emotional harm to a person when they’re inexperienced in a realm may not – later, to that same person – cause emotional harm after they become experienced in that same realm. More on that later. The vulnerability movement: “Be vulnerable, and benefit” Now that we’ve defined vulnerability as “open to harm,” and identified most harms as physical, economic, or emotional, let’s try to identify the case being made for vulnerability by the vulnerability movement. When I say vulnerability movement, I’m not talking about any one person, but rather my perception as a very-confused outsider, trying to make sense of the conversations being had about vulnerability in TED talks, on social media, on podcasts, and at cocktail parties. As far as I can understand, the pitch of the vulnerability movement is, “be vulnerable and benefit.” To paraphrase, using the prior examples from work, love, and art: “If you need help at work, ask for it. You risk looking like you don’t know what you’re doing, but you and your team will perform better.” “Be the first in a relationship to say, ‘I love you.’ You risk rejection, but otherwise you’ll have a deeper relationship.” “Share your struggles in your writing. People may laugh at you, but your words will help others.” To be clear, I think these actions can be wise. But I don’t believe they’re objectively vulnerable, and you don’t have to make vulnerability a goal – and maybe you shouldn’t make vulnerability a goal – to catalyze these actions. These are all cases to “be vulnerable and benefit.” To be vulnerable is to be open to harm. If you ultimately benefit from an action, were you vulnerable – were you open to harm – in the first place? Is it vulnerability if it needs boundaries? Some might say, Well, you don’t know the outcome of these actions in advance, so you’re risking harm by taking them. Yet anyone who speaks intelligently about vulnerability rightly says it should come with boundaries. A CEO shouldn’t freak out about the potential fate of the company, in front of employees and shareholders. You shouldn’t spend your first date complaining about your ex. You shouldn’t share your struggles with depression in writing a user manual for a Bluetooth speaker. Too much vulnerability is oversharing. So, according to the movement, vulnerability should be a calculated risk, one you’re likely to benefit from, and one that isn’t likely to ruin you. Don’t seek vulnerability, seek ideals It seems to me the case being made for vulnerability is in pursuit of important ideals, including but not limited to truth, security, and alignment. The more we’re honest at work, the more effective we can be in an efficient marketplace. The more we share our feelings in our relationships, the more secure we feel. The more of our true selves we put into our art, the more it resonates with others. “Fear” is the word you’re looking for I think a better term for what we experience in pursuit of these ideals is “fear.” Fear is a feeling of discomfort in the face of perceived danger. Fear can be irrational. The perceived danger can be entirely in your head. Some people experience fear just looking at a spider that has no chance of physically harming them. Some people experience fear looking at birds. Valid vulnerability isn’t the type being promoted I’ve ventured into unfamiliar territory thinking about vulnerability and putting together this critique. I found many areas where truly being vulnerable resulted in benefits, such as in combat, activism, and workplace inclusion. True vulnerability, it seems, is the product of power, and people sometimes have to be vulnerable to dissolve that power. These areas are outside the scope of this short critique. Besides, I haven’t come across much chatter in the vulnerability movement that makes cases for vulnerability in these valid areas. But aren’t I a “vulnerable” writer? One area I am very familiar with is creative work. Some readers have described some of my work as “vulnerable.” I’ve written about the death of my mother, the death of a lover, and published a conversation about grief. I’ve listed my failures and published my private doubts in my pursuit of a career as a writer. I’ve written about my health struggles in graphic detail, and shared my struggles with moving to another country. I’ve been publicly reporting my income for years, starting when it was even less-impressive than it is now. I’m further critiquing vulnerability in this article, even though I got angry emails in response to my short newsletter on the topic. Was I, am I, vulnerable in creating these things? I don’t think so. Am I risking physical harm? Not likely. Economic harm? I don’t think so. Emotional harm? That’s not up to someone else to decide. What looks like “vulnerability” is “antifragility” Have I ever felt vulnerable writing these things? In retrospect, I guess I did. More accurately, I felt fear. Because I was not vulnerable. I benefitted greatly writing these things. I grew, and got to know myself. I found my voice and got closer to doing work that comes from my core. It was all real and came from an authentic place, but I grew my business in the process. I took calculated risks, and I got better at calculating along the way. I thought that by writing public income reports, I would improve my thought processes and grow my business – I did. I thought that having a public conversation about grief would help me live with it – it has. I thought that by writing about my mysterious health issues, readers would send me ideas that would help me get better – they did. I’m not claiming to be Galileo or Harvey Milk, which is kind of the point – their work made them objectively vulnerable. But I know I’ve never set out to deliberately be vulnerable. I’ve set out to face fears, because I believed they were irrational. Somewhere along the way, I stopped being scared. What once felt like fear morphed into excitement to see what would happen – to see if this action would take me closer to truth, security, and alignment. Vulnerability as a boundary, not a beacon Now that I’ve been at it a long time, if I were to feel vulnerable, I would see that as a boundary, not a beacon. That would be a warning sign that I’m oversharing, and needlessly putting myself in danger. That’s one problem with espousing the pursuit of a subjective feeling: Being afraid is not the same as being vulnerable. The more experienced you get – in work, love, or art – the more adeptly you can recognize when you really are vulnerable, and decide it’s a good idea to stop. Performative vulnerability is a slippery slope When I wrote about this in my newsletter, some readers said they had been in communities where appearing vulnerable became a sort of contest. People seemed to be oversharing just to outdo one another. That’s another problem with espousing the pursuit of a subjective feeling: If vulnerability is the goal – whether that’s being, feeling, or appearing vulnerable – you incentivize vulnerability. The definitions and the actions fitting those definitions tumble over one another down a very slippery slope. Vulnerability can be a productive lie Sometimes we tell ourselves productive lies. You can commit to working for ten minutes, knowing you’ll keep going once you’ve reached that goal. You can give yourself permission to suck – notice that’s “permission,” not “directive” – knowing you’ll improve or do better than you had expected. Maybe the pursuit to feel vulnerable is a productive lie. It teaches you to face your irrational fears. But at some point you hopefully grow beyond vulnerability – where feeling vulnerable is a sign of danger. There are cases where danger – true vulnerability – is worth the risk, but that’s only because the ideals you’re pursuing are worth that much. What looks like vulnerability is a byproduct, not a goal Choosing your actions with vulnerability as a goal is like building a boat designed to splash water. Boats splash water because they’re traveling to a destination. You feel or even are vulnerable in the pursuit of something more important. A boat designed to splash water won’t travel as efficiently as a boat designed to go somewhere. I believe that a person designing their actions to feel vulnerable won’t be as effective as a person driven to pursue an ideal. That’s what lies beyond vulnerability. Image: Error on Green, Paul Klee Thank you for having me on your podcasts! Thank you for having me on your podcasts. Thank you to Brilliant Miller at The School for Good Living podcast. As always, you can find interviews of me on my interviews page. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »       Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/beyond-vulnerability/

The Prince is a political treatise, written by Niccolò Machiavelli, first distributed in 1513. It’s infamous for its apparent advice to political leaders to lie, murder, and manipulate. It’s still a fascinating read today, and is thought-provoking when considering any context where the true motives of actions may not be what they seem. Here, in my own words, is a summary of Niccoló Machiavelli’s, The Prince. Is The Prince advice, satire, or sabotage? Machiavelli wrote The Prince while in exile from Florence. Since he opens it with a letter to Lorenzo d’Medici it seems like Machiavelli was trying to get a political position with the Medici, by demonstrating his political knowledge. (The Medici had recently returned to power in Florence, after themselves being exiled fifteen years.) But, some scholars think The Prince is satire. Others think the advice within was a ploy, in that if it were followed, the actions would weaken the power of the Medici. “The ends [justified] the means,” in Renaissance Italy Though the phrase isn’t in the book, The Prince is the origin of the saying, “the ends justify the means.” In other words, if you have an important goal, morality doesn’t matter. It’s also the inspiration for the name of the personality trait of “Machiavellianism”, which is characterized by manipulativeness, insensitivity, and an indifference to morality. Psychologists include Machiavellianism in the “dark triad” personality traits, along with narcissism and psychopathy. Sixteenth century Italy was the perfect environment for advice like that in The Prince to flourish. There was constant conflict amongst small governing bodies, including the most-notable city-states of Florence, Milan, Rome, Naples, and Venice. Additionally, there were frequent invasions by Spain, France, or the Holy Roman Empire. If the numerous examples Machiavelli cites in The Prince are any indication, if you didn’t lie, murder, and manipulate, you wouldn’t stay in power, and probably would be murdered yourself. You don’t have to be Machiavellian to learn from The Prince As you listen to this advice, it’s not hard to think of similar, less-violent situations in our everyday lives, as we build relationships and careers, or watch others vie for power. So what is some of this juicy advice that has made The Prince and Niccolò Machiavelli so infamous? I’ll break down this summary into two sections, followed by some historical examples Machiavelli cites, peppered with some quotes. Those two sections are: Gaining power Retaining power (Note this isn’t how Machiavelli organizes The Prince.) 1. Gaining power First how to gain power. Machiavelli points out that the people within a state are eager to change rulers. People naturally expect change to improve their lives, so, they’re willing to join in armed resistance against the ruling power. This attitude extends from the people, to other states. If a powerful foreigner invades a country, the states within want to help overturn the rule of the most-powerful state. But you have to be careful. It’s normal to want to acquire more land, but when you try to do it by any means possible, you end up making dumb mistakes. How this applies to other domains As you hear this, you may already have some parallels to other domains bouncing around in your head. How many times have you bought a product just slightly different from one you already had, because you believed the change would make your life better? Marketers take advantage of this. I’ve read one marketing book that advised to think of the product you’re marketing as a “new opportunity.” Changing leadership is a “new opportunity,” that temporarily makes you optimistic, like how we feel when a New Year comes around. But often, the new product, the new ruler, or the New Year doesn’t make your life better. We get stuck in a cycle of wanting change and striving for it, only to find we aren’t better off than before, which drives our desire to change once again. This is why, to quote Machiavelli: There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. —Niccolò Machiavelli The Prince In other words, you might get short-term support in the change you’re trying to introduce, but the support you once had will soon wane, and those who were doing well before will try to overthrow you. 2. Retaining power This brings us to the second section, about retaining power. Being able to retain power starts with choosing carefully where and how you gain power. This is why Machiavelli warns: He who has not first laid his foundations may be able with great ability to lay them afterwards, but they will be laid with trouble to the architect and danger to the building. —Niccolò Machiavelli The Prince Any new state is extremely fragile, unless the person who unexpectedly gained power over that state is highly-skilled. You can gain power by getting the help of the people, or other states, but whoever helped you will probably be disappointed in what they get from it, and will no longer want to help you. Be especially careful not to make your allies much more powerful, because then they’ll become threats. Additionally, they’ll distrust you, because in the process of helping them, they saw how cunning you are. So, if you’re invading a place, you want to be on the good side of the natives. However, if they’re used to being free, you’ll have to destroy them, or they’ll destroy you. As Machiavelli said: Men ought to either be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot. —Niccolò Machiavelli The Prince In other words, if they’re dead, they can’t get revenge. And: He who becomes master of a city accustomed to freedom and does not destroy it, may expect to be destroyed by it. —Niccolò Machiavelli The Prince If you want to retain power in a new state, you need to start a colony there. You don’t have to spend a lot on the colony, because after you take the land and houses of people, they will be, “poor and scattered,” and can’t hurt you. It’s important to be in the place you’re ruling, because otherwise you don’t find out about things that go wrong until it’s too late to fix them. Statecraft is a lot of work, because, as Machiavelli says: He who has relied least on fortune is established the strongest. —Niccolò Machiavelli The Prince How this applies to other domains Some of this advice may resonate with situations you’ve experienced. Some of it may be horrifying to you. Here’s how it can apply to other domains. Imagine you’re a CEO, and you’ve just acquired a new company. It’s best to get it right the first time. If you make mistakes, you’ll have a hard time leading the company. When a company acquires another, or a new leader comes into a company, you often see layoffs right away. This mirrors Machiavelli’s related advice, which is: Injuries ought to be done all at one time, so that, being tasted less, they offend less; benefits ought to be given little by little, so that the flavor of them may last longer. —Niccolò Machiavelli The Prince If done according to Machiavelli’s advice, after the brutal layoffs, there will be ice-cream socials, team-building exercises, and bonuses scattered over the coming months and years, hopefully without more massive layoffs. Whoever is in charge had better have close oversight to an office that’s far away from headquarters, otherwise by the time you find out about problems, it’s too late to fix them. How not to rule: King Louis XII A leader who Machiavelli uses as a warning for not ruling well is King Louis the XII, of France. The Venetians brought in King Louis, because they wanted to seize half the state of Lombardy. But they later realized, they had helped make Louis king of two-thirds of Italy. Louis was now well-positioned, but then his mistakes began. He helped Pope Alexander occupy the Romagna, divided the kingdom of Naples with the king of Spain, and turned around and tried to conquer Venice’s territories. So, he weakened the minor power of Venice, losing their alliance, made a great power – the pope – even more powerful, and brought in a foreign power – Spain. He didn’t settle in the land he had conquered, and didn’t set up colonies. How to rule: Cesare Borgia Like Louis XII when the Venetians enlisted his help, Cesare Borgia came into power through fortune. Unlike Louis, he made what Machiavelli felt were wise decisions. Cesare was the son of Pope Alexander VI, who himself was cunning. He wanted to give Cesare a state to rule, but there weren’t good options. For example, the Milanese or the Venetians would stop him, and anyone in Italy who might have helped knew better than to make the pope even more powerful. When the Venetians brought the French into Italy, Alexander didn’t make a fuss, and even helped Louis out by dissolving his marriage. He provided some soldiers to help out in a military campaign in Romagna, and now his son, Cesare was the duke of Romagna. But Cesare wasn’t thrilled with his military. The Orsini soldiers didn’t seem psyched to take Bologna, and when he attacked Tuscany after taking over Urbino, Louis made him stop. So Cesare decided to figure out how to do things on his own. Cesare Borgia followed Machiavelli’s advice (somewhat literally) Anywhere Cesare took power, he was sure to kill the nobles and their families. He weakened the Orsini and Colonna parties in Rome, by making them nobles and giving them a good salary. Then he brought in a Spaniard named Ramiro d’Orco (also known as Ramiro de Lorca) to govern the Romagna. The Romagna had been in disorder when Cesare took over, and d’Orco restored order, but through nasty means, using lots of torture, public executions, and fines. Once d’Orco had cleaned things up, Cesare – according to Machiavelli – didn’t want to be associated with d’Orco’s reign of terror. So, he had him publicly executed, and put his head on a stick in the town square. Machiavelli was an advisor to Cesare during this time, and felt that Cesare did almost everything right to make the best of the power he had gained through fortune, and lay a foundation that could withstand the inevitable death of his father, the pope. Machiavelli says: He told me that he had thought of everything that might occur at the death of his father, and had provided a remedy for all, except that he had never anticipated that, when the death did happen, he himself would be on the point to die. —Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (on Cesare Borgia) When the pope did die – sooner than expected – Cesare himself was nearly dead from malaria. Though he won the favor of the next pope, Pius III died after only twenty-six days. Machiavelli felt Cesare’s one mistake was then helping elect Pope Julius II, who had promised him favors in return. As Machiavelli says: He who believes that new benefits will cause great personages to forget old injuries is deceived. —Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince Cesare had slighted Julius in the past, and he wasn’t going to forget that. Julius seized land from Cesare, and didn’t support him. You can see a dramatization of the story of Pope Alexander and Cesare Borgia in Showtime’s excellent-but-incomplete series, The Borgias. The Prince, today Machiavelli’s advice – if it really is that – sounds brutal to modern ears, but it was a product of the reality of the time. Machiavelli was the only one brave enough – maybe desperate enough – to describe that reality. In many areas of life, business, and politics, the true effects of actions are often more complex than they appear on the surface. Sometimes this is an accident, many times it’s deliberate. Why does a politician, a CEO, or a even a friend say what they say? I’m almost tempted to list The Prince on my best media books list, because the effect of a piece of media is always deeper than it appears on the surface. Political leaders in sixteenth-century Italy influenced perceptions through public events that could be described as media. You could say Cesare Borgia’s public execution of Ramiro d’Orco was a pseudo-event. If so, Ryan Holiday’s Trust Me, I’m Lying is like a modern day, The Prince: exposing the fundamentally-ugly reality of how a complex and brutal system that affects public perceptions works. Why Machiavelli’s exile wasn’t lonely Lest you have a low opinion of Niccolò Machiavelli from the content in The Prince, I want to leave you with something more endearing about him. When the Medici returned to power, they suspected Machiavelli of conspiring against them, so had him jailed and tortured – a decent reason to believe The Prince may have been satirical or, fittingly, a Machiavellian gambit to cause the Medici harm. Exiled to his farm estate, and stripped of his position as a political advisor, Machiavelli did his best to keep doing the work he loved, and retain a sense of dignity. In a letter to a friend, he described his daily ritual: When evening comes, I go back home, and go to my study. On the threshold, I take off my work clothes, covered in mud and filth, and I put on the clothes an ambassador would wear. Decently dressed, I enter the ancient courts of rulers who have long since died. There, I am warmly welcomed, and I feed on the only food I find nourishing and was born to savor. I am not ashamed to talk to them and ask them to explain their actions and they, out of kindness, answer me. Four hours go by without my feeling any anxiety. I forget every worry. I am no longer afraid of poverty or frightened of death. I live entirely through them. —Niccolò Machiavelli, Letter to Francesco Vettori There’s your summary of Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince If you enjoyed this summary, I highly recommend you read Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince. There’s also an excellent free online annotated version online, called The Annotated Prince. Thank you for having me on your podcasts! Thank you for having me on your podcasts. Thank you to David DeCelle for having me on The Model FA podcast. As always, you can find interviews of me on my interviews page. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »       Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/the-prince-niccolo-machiavelli-summary/

Which would you rather have? Mild success, or wild success? Most of us would prefer wild success. But we pursue mild success. And you can’t have one when you’re going for the other. The struggle of an aspiring novelist A more specific version of the scenario I mentioned in episode 253: Imagine you’re working at Starbucks during the day, and at night you’re writing novels – not just any novels, but your favorite kind. You call it Care Bear Fanfic Urban Fantasy. As far as you know, you’re the only person who writes Care Bear Fanfic Urban Fantasy. Judging by your sales, you’re also the only person who reads it. You’ve written three novels in this genre you’ve created, and there have been hardly any sales, aside from the handful of copies you’ve sold to your mom and close friends. After a couple years writing and promoting your Care-Bear novels, you decide it’s time for a change. You told yourself when you started writing that as soon as you made as much as your Starbucks job, you’d quit and write full-time. You’re not even close. Your hourly Starbucks wage isn’t great, but you’ve actually lost money writing your three novels, after investing in cover designs and some ads. A new opportunity Fortunately, one of your friends is a pretty successful author. She makes a middle-class living writing in a genre called Sweet Romance – mostly read by retired women, some of whom read a new Sweet Romance novel every day. You buy your friend a coffee – or rather steal it from work – sit her down, and drill her to tell you all about writing and selling Sweet Romance novels. She’s super helpful, and tells you everything you need to know about the story structure readers expect, what tropes each novel has to hit, and even what keywords to advertise under. Armed with your knowledge of the Sweet Romance genre, you get to work. It’s not your favorite, but it would beat serving coffee, you figure. The first couple novels are a challenge, but once you get it down, you’re cranking out a new one every several weeks. You’ve got it down to a whole system: You change the character names, the locations, and a few scenarios from your last novel, and they practically write themselves. Making it, as a middle-class novelist Three years later, you, like your friend, are a middle-class Sweet Romance novelist. You’ve written eighteen novels, in three series, and in the past year have profited $70k. You quit your job at Starbucks a couple years ago, and you were right: Writing Sweet Romance is way more fun than serving coffee. Still, something is missing. You’re getting tired of writing the same stories over and over. New ideas for Care Bear Fanfic Urban Fantasy stories keep coming to you. But you keep pushing them down. Why would you bother writing another Care Bear novel, when you’re sure you’ll sell none? Why would you not write another Sweet Romance novel, when you’re sure you’ll sell some. Besides, you’ve upgraded your life: You now have a mortgage and a car payment, and your dog eats Purina instead of the off-brand stuff from Aldi. These novels don’t sell forever. If you don’t keep the Sweet Romance machine going, you’ll make less and less money. A missed opportunity But, one day, you discover something that changes everything you thought you knew about the business of being an author. As you’re tallying up your earnings at the end of the month, you realize that your Care Bear Fanfic Urban Fantasy series has started selling. In fact, you’ve sold a hundred copies in the past month! That’s more copies than you’ve sold in all the previous years. You dig a little deeper, and discover another author, writing under the name Brave Heart Brian, has written seven Care Bear Fanfic Urban Fantasy novels. You’re filled with excitement, confusion, and envy. You’re excited to have some Care Bear novels to read, confused as to how Brave Heart Brian seems to have popped up out of nowhere, and envious that – judging from the Amazon ranks of his books – he’s making more money than you are! You take a deep breath and wash away the envy – it is fanfic after all, it’s not like you invented Care Bears. You email Brian to congratulate him on his success, and ask him how it all happened. It turns out Brian stumbled upon your Care Bear series last year. He loved it, and wanted to read more Care Bear Fanfic Urban Fantasy, but since you clearly weren’t active anymore, he decided if he wanted to read more, he’d have to write the novels himself. Not only has he built up a nice following of readers, he just sold film rights for his series, for millions of dollars! The good news is, Care Bear Fanfic Urban Fantasy is quickly becoming a popular genre. The bad new is, you’re not the author who will reap most of the benefits. Where did you go wrong? You wonder, Where did I go wrong? You tried writing Care Bear Fanfic Urban Fantasy for years, and the writing was on the wall: Nobody cared. The problem was, Sweet Romance was a sure bet – or at least one of the surer bets writing novels could be. You expected writing in Care Bear Fanfic Urban Fantasy to behave like a sure bet, but it was not a sure bet. The Care Bear novels were a wildcard. You didn’t distinguish your sure bets from your wildcards, so you gave up on your wildcards too soon. Sure bets for mild success, wildcards for wild success We’re used to playing sure bets. You didn’t show up to your job at Starbucks for the small chance of making a lot of money. You instead had a high chance – a guarantee, in fact – to make a little money. You knew how much you’d get paid every hour you worked. Sure bets have a good chance of mild success. Even when you fail at a sure bet, you succeed somewhat – if you slack off at Starbucks, you still get paid, so long as you don’t get fired. If your next Sweet Romance novel isn’t your best, you still make some sales. Sure bets have a good chance of mild success, but wildcards have a small chance of wild success. When a wildcard fails, all your effort goes to waste. You get nothing. But when a wildcard succeeds, the sky is the limit. In my second interview with Seth Godin, on episode 177, he told me this: Your last book was really juicy. Your last book did not sell a million copies. Those things aren’t completely related. But it’s very important that your next book not be something that you think fits into a juicy slot – not be something that is searched for from an SEO point of view…. That’s how you become a second-rate romance novelist. It’s not how you write The Martian. What Seth was telling me, essentially, was to not play sure bets – don’t write something just because you know some people are searching for it. Instead, play wildcards, to write what was interesting to me, and take the risk that it might not work. Don’t rate your wildcards as if they were sure bets Essentially, when you’ve played a wildcard, don’t evaluate its performance as if it were a sure bet. The number of sales you get on one book is not a direct reflection of the quality of that book. As Seth had told me in my first interview with him on episode 77, and as I explored on episode 286, nobody knows anything. As I talked about on episode 251, if you keep playing wildcards forever, eventually ergodicity will take effect, and one of them will hit. But you can’t play wildcards forever. Your life is only so long, and there’s only so much time in the day to generate wildcards. If you had kept writing Care Bear novels, there’s no telling how long it would have taken to quit your job at Starbucks – or if you would have ever succeeded at all. The security of sure bets + the success of wildcards You don’t have to choose between playing sure bets and wildcards. As I talked about on episode 256, you can play the barbell strategy. Have the security of mediocristan, with the excitement of extremistan. If, instead of going all in on Sweet Romance novels, you had written, say, one Care Bear novel for every three Romance novels, you’d’ve greatly increased your chances of being the breakout Care Bear Fanfic Urban Fantasy writer, at the expense of a small pay-cut in the short-term. You can play all sure bets, you can play all wildcards, or you can do a mix of both. But be clear with yourself when you’re playing one or the other. The quality of the decisions you make with your creative career depends on it. Image: Mountain Village (Autumnal), Paul Klee Thank you for having me on your podcasts! Thank you for having me on your podcasts. Thank you J Thorn at Writers, Ink. As always, you can find interviews of me on my interviews page. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »       Show notes: https://kadavy.net/blog/posts/sure-bets-wildcards/

You can’t get through a project on momentum alone. But there are mechanisms you can use to tweak your motivation and make better use of what momentum you have. These motivation mechanisms aren’t one-size-fits-all – you have to choose which ones work for you. Motivation requires self-mastery As I talked about on episode 291, getting through a creative project is like skateboarding through a halfpipe. You have a lot of motivation going into a project, due to your high expectations. Even if your expectations were to be met, it would still be impossible to coast through to the end of a project. There’s too much friction along the way. Experienced skateboarders know how to soar out of halfpipes, because they know how to tweak their momentum. Experienced creators know how to follow through on creative projects, because they know how to tweak their motivation. But gaining this experience is a catch-22: You can’t finish projects if you don’t know how to tweak your motivation, and you don’t know how to tweak your motivation if you haven’t finished projects. You have to learn, through trial-and-error, what keeps you motivated. Finish smaller projects and build your shipping skills along the way. But it doesn’t have to be guesswork. If you know what motivation mechanisms are at your disposal – and the strengths and pitfalls of those mechanisms, you can more quickly gain an understanding of your motivation. Three motivation mechanisms There are three main motivation mechanisms: carrots, sticks, and blinders. The carrot and the stick are classic motivation mechanisms that have been in the scientific literature on motivation for a long time. If you’re riding a horse, there are two ways to motivate him: dangle a carrot in front of his face, or strike him in the flank with a stick. The carrot represents the promise of potential reward, the stick represents the threat of potential punishment, and what I call blinders block out distractions and keep the horse focused on the road ahead. We’re attracted to rewards, and we avoid punishments. If we set up our projects so action leads to carrots and inaction leads to sticks, we’ll get motivated and maintain the momentum to finish – in theory. Carrots: internal and external One way to work carrots into your projects is to have promising data. If you have market research that suggest you’ll earn a lot of money if you finish the project, you might have an easier time getting motivated. Or, you might merely be so curious about the outcome of the project, that motivates you to follow through. You can also use external rewards as carrots. For example, you might promise yourself a vacation if you finish a project. On a more granular level, you might promise yourself a piece of chocolate for every 100 words you write. Sticks: internal and external One way to work sticks into your projects is to do part of a project that will result in a punishment if you don’t finish the rest of the project. I called this “The Whip,” in my book, The Heart to Start. When I create a new email course, for example, I use the whip. I set up a landing page promising emails on a schedule, then send traffic to the landing page. Once I have sign-ups, I’m highly motivated to finish writing all the emails in the course, as the promised dates approach. This same tactic has worked for other people who have tried my “Explosive Email Course” formula. You can also use external punishments as sticks. You can promise to pay your friend $100 if you don’t finish your project by a certain date. On a more granular level, you can punish yourself for behavior that doesn’t drive your project forward. Maneesh Sethi, who I interviewed on episodes 13 and 117, created Pavlok, a wristband you can program to shock you when you do things you’d rather quit. I once used it to quit Facebook, and it was shockingly effective. Blinders: physical and mental Carrots can reward you for the behavior you want to be motivated to do, and sticks can punish you for what you don’t want to be motivated to do. Blinders can keep you more focused on what you want to be motivated to do, while blocking out what you don’t want to be motivated to do. Blinders can be physical, or mental. If you have a dedicated office, or space you do your work, that’s a form of physical blinder. By working in that space many times, your mind has been trained to focus on work when in that space. As I talked about in Mind Management, Not Time Management, even if you don’t have much space, you can set up certain cues in your environment to serve as blinders. When I was first starting on my own, in a tiny bedroom in San Francisco, I transformed that space from bedroom to office through strategic use of a room divider, aromatherapy, and lighting. Physically separating yourself from a potential source of distraction is another type of physical blinder. If you put your phone in another room, or in a lockbox with a timer, that’s a blinder. By using a “grippy” instead of “slippy” tool, you’re also using a blinder. There are many options of distraction-free writing devices, but I write my first drafts on an antique typewriter. Rules and schedules as mental blinders Rules and schedules can serve as mental blinders. Simply by deciding that you will or won’t do something within some period of time, you focus your mind on the target behavior, while blocking out distractions. The first-hour rule is an effective blinder: Spend the first hour of your day working on your most important task. You can get a lot done in an hour, and can usually hold off any other activity for that short period of time. Mental blinders with secondary benefits You can also use mental blinders not only for the benefits of the behaviors they promote, but also for the secondary effects of those behaviors. The ten-minute hack – or setting a timer for ten minutes to focus on one task – isn’t powerful so much for the work you do in those ten minutes, but for the momentum it creates. Ten minutes is an easy decoy goal that short-circuits your ego’s excuse engine, but once those ten minutes are up, you usually have the momentum to keep going. On the contrary, “cheat days,” whether when dieting or reducing, say, social media intake, can let the superego take a rest, and let the id blow of steam. It can be hard or even detrimental to quit things cold-turkey, but if there’s one day a week you cheat, it can make the rest of the week tolerable. Pitfalls of motivation mechanisms As you can see, there is a huge variety of motivation mechanisms you can use to keep yourself going when projects get tough. But the motivation mechanism that works for one person won’t necessarily work for another. And some mechanisms are prone to particular pitfalls that others aren’t. Rewards lose effectiveness First, some of the pitfalls of these mechanisms. The biggest problem with carrots is eventually you get your fill of carrots. This tends to be more of a problem when the rewards you’re using are external, and not an integral part of the project. If you’re, say, giving yourself a piece of chocolate for every 100 words you write, there’s a good chance you won’t be as motivated by the tenth piece of chocolate as you were by the first. But even when the rewards are integral to the project, you can tire of those rewards, and need to search for another source – as I talked about in my reflections on fifteen years as a creator on episode 283. Rewards can backfire Also, external carrots especially can make doing the work more about the destination – the carrot dangled in front of you – than about the journey. External rewards can actually reduce your motivation. Behavioral scientist Dan Ariely described on episode 51 that Intel lost productivity when an experimental monetary bonus was removed – relative to more integral rewards, such as verbal praise. Rewards require discipline When self-administering external carrots, you also need to be disciplined enough to dole out the reward to yourself properly. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how giving yourself chocolate for every 100 words could backfire. Punishments can lose effectiveness, backfire, and require discipline Sticks can be prone to many of the same problems as carrots: The punishment may lose its effectiveness, doing the activity while motivated to avoid punishment may cause you enjoy it less, and you have to be disciplined enough to administer the punishment for it to matter. Blinders entrain behavior Blinders tend to have fewer problems than carrots or sticks. They don’t use external stimuli, so there’s less chance of your motivation getting misdirected. Instead, the more you use blinders, the easier the target activity tends to get. As the neuroscience saying goes, “Neurons that fire together wire together,” so each time you do the target activity, it’s easier to do it again. Each time you work in your home office, you train yourself to work when in your office. When you spend the first hour of your day working on your most important project, you make it easier to do it again tomorrow. Blinders are nearly foolproof Blinders are nearly foolproof because the source of your motivation stays within the project or the activity itself – and that’s the best source of motivation. So if you must use external carrots and sticks, do so sparingly. If you’re relying on external rewards and punishments to motivate yourself, or if you can’t find the self-discipline to administer your own blinders, that’s a bad sign. You clearly don’t enjoy the activities involved in completing the project, and/or completing the project isn’t meaningful enough to you to be a source of motivation. Be an expert on your personal motivation mechanisms There’s of course a lot of research on motivation – how effective carrots, sticks, or even blinders are – but none of that matters as much as how each of these motivation mechanisms work for you, personally. A motivation mechanism, such as external rewards, may backfire in the confines of a scientific study, in a context different than your project, and averaged out amongst the study subjects, rather than on an individual basis. If you want to finish lots of creative projects, you need to become an expert on your own motivation. Be a curious observer of yourself, and how you respond to carrots and sticks, internal and external, and how well you can administer and react to your own blinders. You’ll get through more projects, and each time you do, you’ll learn a little more about how keep and build upon momentum to get through bigger and bigger halfpipes. Image: Park of Idols, Paul Klee Thank you for having me on your podcasts! Thank you for having me on your podcasts. Thank you to Paul Millerd at The Pathless Path. As always, you can find interviews of me on my interviews page. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »       Show notes: https://kadavy.net/blog/posts/carrots-sticks-blinders/

The Network, by Scott Woolley, tells the history of wireless communications, and the stories of the characters that were a part of it. It’s the first book strictly about media history that I’m summarizing and adding to my best media books list. Wireless communications start with wired communications Wireless communications today of course include cell phones, but The Network takes us from the wireless telegraph, to radio, to television, and finally to satellites. First, it gives a little background on the history of the electric telegraph, the invention which suddenly made it possible to move, in minutes, messages that used to take weeks to reach their destinations. The electric telegraph was able to change the world thanks to one simple action: The ability to move a piece of metal at the end of a wire. That was enough to develop codes that could transmit messages, based upon the simple movement of that piece of metal. This process started in 1822, when Christian Órsted attached a copper wire to a battery and saw a nearby compass needle move. There was a several-decade-long race to develop an electric telegraph. The first transatlantic cable was opened for business by 1866. A big customer of these telegraph services were stock traders, who could buy shares in London, sell them a few seconds later in New York, and always profit if their trades were executed in time. Morse code was the winning format for turning the movement of a piece of metal into messages that could travel around the world. A claim in The Network I couldn’t find a source for, but that sounds pretty cool: The clouds in New York City at night used to have projected on them news, election results, and sports scores – in Morse code. From a worthless accidental discovery to worthwhile wireless The history of wireless communication started with a discovery as accidental as Christian Órsted’s: Heinrich Hertz noticed that metal objects moved slightly when lightning struck nearby. He later conducted experiments where he successfully generated sparks through the air. It was pretty cool, but he concluded that the invisible waves he had discovered were “of no use whatsoever.” Electrical signals that traveled through the air were made very useful, indeed, by Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi. For much of its early years, most people thought his Marconi Company was a scam. Like the dot-com and crypto booms, many companies at the dawn of wireless technology made off with investors’ money. One article, with the headline, “Wireless and Worthless,” pointed out that more criminals were being prosecuted from wireless companies than from any other industry. Besides, what did we need wireless technology for, when there were companies such as The Commercial, which was probably the hottest tech company in New York in the early 1900s? It owned five of the sixteen cables crossing the Atlantic Ocean, and one of the two that crossed the Pacific – which was 10,000 miles long. 10,000 miles was pretty impressive, especially when you consider that in 1896, Guglielmo Marconi could only send a wireless message one mile. What was the point? The pseudo-events of Guglielmo Marconi Marconi was good at building buzz for his wireless technology through public demonstrations – you could call them pseudo-events, a la Daniel J. Boorstin’s The Image, which I talked about on episode 257. In front of an audience, he’d ask a volunteer to carry around a “magic box.” He’d build tension from the stage, then push a lever, which would make the magic box buzz from afar. In 1898, when his wireless range was somewhere around ten miles, Marconi set up a telegraph receiver on the yacht of the prince of Wales. Queen Victoria sent the first mundane wireless text message, asking, “Can you come to tea?” The prince replied, “Very sorry, cannot come to tea.” After all, he was on the ocean. By 1899, Marconi could send a message over the English channel, and by 1901, he could send a message 225 miles. Marconi had competition in trying to send a wireless message across the Atlantic, which was 3,000 miles. Nikola Tesla, with the money of J.P. Morgan, was working on a fifty-five ton, 187-foot-tall steel super-antenna. And Marconi didn’t have the funding to build something like that. Marconi won that race across the Atlantic. In one of his publicity stunts, he was able to relay “Marconigrams,” as he called them, from celebrities in London to celebrities at a dinner party in New York. But, that wasn’t enough to impress stock traders who relied on wired telegrams – the messages took ten minutes to arrive, with pre-arranged help in expediting them as they traveled to and from coastal locations on wired connections. And radio waves are easier to transmit at night than during business hours, when radiation from the sun interferes with wireless signals. As the Titanic sank, Marconi rose But in 1912, the day before Marconi Company investors were to vote on whether to further fund the company, the Titanic sank. Using Marconi’s wireless technology, an ocean liner, the Olympic, fielded a message from the Titanic, over 500 miles away, which included coordinates, and said, “We have struck an iceberg.” Another ocean liner, the Carpathia, came to the rescue. Thanks to Marconi’s wireless technology, of the Titanic’s 2,223 passengers, 706 survived. What followed sounds like the third act of a great movie: When Marconi arrived at a lecture that had already been scheduled, there was a crowd overflowing out the building. He received a standing ovation, including from the once-skeptical Thomas Edison. And the vote of Marconi shareholders, on whether to issue another $7 million in stock to build stations for intercontinental telegraphs, was a no-brainer. David Sarnoff: The early days of an innovator Working at Marconi at that time was the young David Sarnoff, who had started at Marconi after being fired for taking the day of Rosh Hashanah off work at Marconi’s rival company, the Commercial. A Russian immigrant, Sarnoff’s father had recently become unable to work, so he had set off to support the family as an office messenger boy, at only fifteen. Being a telegraph operator was a hot tech job at the time. David Sarnoff bought a used telegraph key, so he could spend his evenings practicing his coding skills – his Morse-coding skills. He worked his way up until he was managing Marconi’s New York office, but then transferred to what seemed like a step down – as an inspector in the engineering department. Edwin Armstrong’s signal amplifier It was as chief inspector David Sarnoff met Edwin Armstrong, who demonstrated to him an amazing signal amplifier. From a Marconi station in New Jersey, Armstrong’s amplifier turned signals from an Ireland station from barely audible, to loud and crisp. They were then able to listen in on signals from competitor Poulsen Wireless, as their San Francisco station communicated with their Portland station. They were even able to listen to Poulsen’s Hawaii station, despite the fact Poulsen’s own San Francisco station – the breadth of a continent closer – could barely pick up the signal, amidst a Hawaiian thunderstorm. Sarnoff thought he had found the key technology that would help Marconi dominate wireless telegraphy, and free it from having to share its revenue with rival cabled networks. Instead, Guglielmo Marconi himself refused to believe the results of the story, and another executive publicly chided Sarnoff within the company for conducting the unauthorized experiments, which he believed merely drove up the prices of inventors’ patents. Edwin Armstrong becomes Major Armstrong Armstrong ended up selling the patent for his amplifier to AT&T. Through the use of that amplifier and other wireless-technology inventions, Edwin Armstrong achieved the rank of Major Armstrong in WWI. During WWI, Britain and Germany cut one another’s cables, making wireless communication even more important. The British military took over Marconi’s wireless stations within their empire. Armstrong helped intercept Germany’s wireless communications. RCA, born from a patent pool But during the war, the way wireless technology patents were split up amongst companies became a problem. It was impossible to build useful devices without using a variety of innovations, and thus infringing on other companies’ patents. The Navy used its wartime powers to allow American manufacturers to use any wireless patents they wanted, without consequence. Once the war was over, the military sought to maintain this freedom of innovation, and – as a matter of national security – keep the American radio industry out of foreign hands. They struck a deal to cut off the American portion of the British Marconi company, and pool together patents from AT&T, Westinghouse, G.E., and – interestingly – United Fruit Company, who had patents for communications systems on their Central American banana plantations. The name of this new company: RCA. Its general manager: David Sarnoff. Sarnoff’s radio Sarnoff had pitched to his bosses at Marconi, in 1915, a “Radio Music Box.” Far more complex than moving a piece of metal, voice had first been transmitted over radio waves in 1906, and The Navy had done “radio telephone” calls, but nobody had thought of using radio to transmit to a wide audience. His pitch described a box with amplifier tubes, and what he called a “speaking telephone.” He wrote, “There should be no difficulty in receiving music perfectly when transmitted within a radius of 25 to 50 miles. Within such a radius there reside hundreds of thousands of families.” Sarnoff had already experimented with the concept by transmitting music, to a boat cruising around Manhattan, from a phonograph in Marconi’s New York office. Sarnoff’s bosses at Marconi had ignored his radio music box pitch, but once he was in charge at RCA, he was free to pursue the idea. Sarnoff hadn’t gotten much support for his ideas at Marconi, but he had learned the value of a well-crafted pseudo-event. The upcoming boxing match between the American, Jack Dempsey, and the Frenchman, Georges Carpentier was the perfect opportunity to show the value of using radio waves to broadcast sound to a large audience. The pseudo-event that launched radio As was customary for big events at the time, if you wanted an update, you could gather near a telegraph station, where someone would announce a text-message update of the event. In Paris, a flare was to be released from a plane after the fight: white if Dempsey won, red if Carpentier. But if you truly wanted to know what was happening, you had to be one of the ninety-one thousand people there in the stadium. So, the rich and famous were flocking to New York. 300 rooms were booked at the Plaza, 500 at the Waldorf Astoria, and 800 at the Biltmore. Actress Mary Pickford took her yacht all the way from Hollywood, through the Panama Canal, and some came in the 1921 version of a private jet: a private train car. But for the first time, people who couldn’t be at the fight could get blow-by-blow updates. RCA teamed up with amateur radio operators, who rented out auditoriums and received a voice broadcast from ringside, via “radiophone.” This helped solve the chicken-and-egg problem of getting mass-audience radio started. You couldn’t get people to buy receivers if they hadn’t experienced a broadcast – and if there was nothing being broadcast – and it wasn’t worth broadcasting if nobody had receivers. By getting a lot of people together for a global event everybody was already talking about, it was worthwhile to do a broadcast, and people got to see the potential of radio. Radio in its infancy Over the next three years, secretary of commerce Herbert Hoover granted licenses to 600 radio stations – small ones that broadcast across a particular city or county. There were no radio stations or programs in much of rural America. But Sarnoff was pushing the adoption of higher-powered AM transmitters that could broadcast to multi-state regions. This idea was opposed by the smaller stations that didn’t want their audiences stolen, and also by AT&T. AT&T’s raw deal in radio AT&T believed that since radio involved transmitting the voice, they, as the phone company, should be in charge of it. They also didn’t want to lose revenue: For AM radio programs to be syndicated from one station to another, they had to be sent over AT&T’s phone lines, as they would come out distorted if transmitted wirelessly. Additionally, AT&T felt duped from the negotiations over the RCA patent pool, which Sarnoff had been in charge of. Sarnoff had proposed that AT&T get the rights to sell radio transmitters, while RCA would sell radio receivers. This didn’t seem like a bad deal in 1920, before the Dempsey/Carpentier fight, but now it looked like a raw deal, indeed. In 1924, RCA’s AM radio sales were over $50 million, while AT&T had a measly market of 600 radio stations. Most of those stations ignored AT&T’s patents and built their own transmitters, and AT&T wasn’t successful in getting the revenue that was rightfully theirs. The first radio ad The radio broadcasting industry was experimenting with business models. AT&T ran the first radio ad in 1922. For fifty dollars, a suburban housing development got to broadcast on an AT&T station. Herbert Hoover called advertising-funded radio “the quickest way to kill broadcasting.” He wanted instead to fund radio broadcasts by placing a surcharge on the sale of each consumer radio receiver. David Sarnoff was on his side, which was odd, since an advertising-funded model would make his radios cheaper to consumers. Divvying up the radio waves There were also fights over who could broadcast on what frequency. The Radio Act of 1912 had been passed, after amateur telegraphers’ messages had interfered with one another while communicating about the Titanic sinking. Hoover tried to regulate the frequencies some stations were broadcasting on, but it turned out the 1912 act had only regulated airwaves at least six-hundred meters long – the technological limit at the time. Some stations protested by deliberately overlapping their broadcasts, resulting in an hour of unpleasant squelches, followed by a message to support the passing of a law to regulate the airwaves. The Federal Radio Commission was formed in 1927, for that purpose. In 1934, it became the FCC, overseeing all types of electronic communications. How AM held back FM Sometimes, an inferior technology dominates, as VHS did over Beta, but sometimes, despite the best efforts of entrenched interests, the better technology prevails, as did eventually FM radio, over AM. AM radio signals are imprinted sounds on waves that vary according to amplitude, or the height of the waves. Thus “AM,” for “amplitude modulation.” FM radio waves are varied according to the frequency of the waves, or their width. Engineers in the radio industry and academia once thought frequency modulation wouldn’t work. A 1922 paper from AT&T claimed to prove mathematically that it “inherently distorts without any compensating advantages whatsoever.” But Major Armstrong was pushing hard for the FM method. Armstrong once again conducted a demonstration for Sarnoff. His “little black box” that transmitted an FM signal had vastly superior sound quality than an AM radio. Sarnoff let Armstrong run tests with FM equipment from RCA’s offices atop the Empire State Building – the tallest in the world at the time. The FM signal delivered better sound quality than AM with one twenty-fifth the signal power. FM threatened existing AM interests There was a lot at stake in switching to FM: It could deliver better sound quality, and – since signals could be transmitted on a variety of frequencies – it could add thousands of stations to the dial. But, there were already tens of millions of AM radios, and hundreds of expensive radio station transmitters that would become obsolete. A benefit to RCA, however, would be that with clearer signals, they would no longer have to pay AT&T for use of their phone network for syndicating content. Y2K of the 1940s: The bogus sun-spot scare In 1941, the FCC approved a band of FM stations between 42 and 50 MHz. At the start of WWII, Major Armstrong pushed the military to switch to FM, and waived any licensing fees, increasing adoption. After the war, there was a controversy about sunspots: They work in an eleven-year cycle, and in FCC proceedings, one engineer rose a stink about how the next time sunspots came around, they would interfere with stations on the existing FM band. Despite the fact nearly every expert disagreed with that prediction, the FCC moved the FM dial to the current 88 to 108 MHz band. This made $75 million worth of devices soon-to-be worthless, and pissed off hundreds of thousands of FM early adopters. (When the strongest sunspots in two centuries came along, the old FM band worked fine.) The stifling of FM radio continued. The FCC eventually cut FM broadcasts from a 150 mile radius to a 50-mile radius, which may not sound like much, but translates to a ninety-percent cut in coverage area. Conveniently, this meant FM stations could no longer send programs to neighboring markets through the air, and had to instead pay to use AT&T’s expensive and low-fidelity telephone wires. AM radio interests had also taken over most FM stations, where they simply rebroadcast their AM programs. There was little incentive to buy an FM set, and by 1946, nine of ten radio manufacturers weren’t bothering to make them. All of this was enough to prompt Major Armstrong to file an antitrust suit against RCA, claiming David Sarnoff was conspiring to stifle the FM radio industry. The bold bets Sarnoff made in TV David Sarnoff was very focused on making television work around that time. He made some bold bets that helped NBC, a spin-off from RCA, be the first on the air. Searching for office space during the Great Depression, Sarnoff had decided to move RCA and NBC into the expensive 30 Rockefeller Plaza, aka “30 Rock.” He pissed off shareholders by building elaborate radio studios. He had special wires installed in NBC’s studios – for transmitting TV signals around the building – that weren’t used for another twenty years. He had a giant studio built, with rotating stage, to work with television cameras that didn’t even exist. Overall, he spent $50 million on television research over the course of twenty-five years, and it took a long time to pay off. Battles over TV airwaves The FCC’s poor decisions continued in the proliferation of television. Despite warnings from engineers such as Major Armstrong, they allocated VHF channels so poorly, only one or two stations worked in most cities. They had to learn from their mistakes and start over with UHF stations. But UHF wavelengths were so short, the lower the channel number a station had, the further and more clearly their signal could travel. So, stations fought over the smaller-numbered of the sixty-eight channels. The television satellite David Sarnoff was there, once again, innovating in television. There was a battle over the color standard, and Sarnoff and RCA’s NSTC standard was finally adopted by the FCC in 1953. “Relay-1” was the first American communications satellite, launched in 1962. It helped bypass AT&T’s cables for syndicating programs, thus doubling RCA’s revenue. Some events had previously been broadcast via airplane to expand coverage area. Relay-1’s first trans-Pacific broadcast was supposed to carry to Japan an address from President Kennedy. Instead, it carried coverage of his assassination, and footage of the new president, Lyndon B. Johnson. There’s your The Network summary As you can see, The Network covers a lot of the early history of wireless communications. It also does it with an engaging narrative style. There is of course much more. Read it to find out: Why there’s no channel one. How Lyndon B. Johnson’s wife Lady Bird built her media empire with some suspiciously favorable treatment from the FCC. The visions that Sarnoff had late in life for fiber optics, the internet, and e-books. Whether Major Armstrong’s suicide at 63 had anything to do with his legal battles against David Sarnoff and RCA. If you’ve enjoyed this summary, you’ll no doubt enjoy The Network. Thank you for having me on your podcasts! Thank you for having me on your podcasts. Thank you to David Elikwu at The Knowledge. As always, you can find interviews of me on my interviews page. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »       Show notes: https://kadavy.net/blog/posts/the-network-scott-woolley/

A creative project is like a halfpipe. The depth of the halfpipe from which you must ascend to finish a project is equal to the height of the optimism that prompted you to begin. But there’s a way to build your project halfpipe so the project itself keeps you moving forward. The gravity of optimism pulls you into a project When you begin a project, you are optimistic. Why else would you start? You’re interested in the subject matter, and you expect to succeed. This optimism serves as the gravity that pulls you into the project halfpipe. Without experience, you can’t maintain the momentum to finish The momentum you build from this drop into the halfpipe may get you through much of the project, but will eventually run out. By the time you get to the other side of the halfpipe – the end of the project – you’ve forgotten the optimism you once had, and the friction of reality has sapped your energy. The project isn’t as fun as it once was, and it hasn’t been as easy as you had expected. You face a steep incline, and don’t have the momentum to ascend. Experienced skateboarders know how to tweak their momentum, so they have enough energy to ascend the other side of a halfpipe. Like kicking their legs while riding a swing, they’re able to climb higher and higher, as they go back and forth. Experienced creators know how to tweak their motivation, too, to ascend the other side of the halfpipe. They’ve finished enough projects, they know how to harness their momentum to make the most of their efforts, and coast through the tough parts. But the need for this experience is a catch-22: You don’t know how to tweak your motivation to follow through if you haven’t finished projects, and if you haven’t finished projects you don’t know how to tweak your motivation. A halfpipe is a closed system A halfpipe, with nothing but a skateboard rolling back and forth, is a closed system. The first law of thermodynamics states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. The energy from the descent into the halfpipe is not enough to get to the other side of the halfpipe, because much of it is wasted on friction. When you put a person on the skateboard, that adds a new energy source to the system. The skateboarder can move their body in ways that overcome the loss of energy from friction, thus maintaining enough momentum to get out of the halfpipe. But the skateboarder is a closed system, too. They require energy to move. Shiny object syndrome sets in when projects get tough Shiny object syndrome often sets in toward the end of a project. There are other halfpipes all around. The excitement of dropping into one and once again experiencing effortless momentum is a lot more fun than putting forth effort to get out of the current halfpipe. So, you switch projects – you switch halfpipes. Some creators, after dropping into enough halfpipes, figure out how to tweak their motivation to get through one – whether due to luck or experimentation. More often, they get frustrated with the endless cycle of shiny object syndrome, and burn out. They stop “skating” altogether. You learn to maintain momentum by finishing projects But, you can turn the closed system of a halfpipe into an open system that maintains your momentum, propelling you to the finish. If you use this method to finish more projects, you’ll gain experience tweaking your motivation. Maybe you need an accountability partner – or maybe you hate obligation. Maybe you gain momentum by building prototypes – or maybe you prefer to develop a detailed plan. Maybe you like to talk about ideas with friends – or maybe you discover it causes you to lose your momentum. Do smaller projects, finish more projects If you aren’t finishing projects, you can’t learn what works for you. A great way to finish more projects is simply do smaller projects. When you do smaller projects, two things happen: One, you make the halfpipe shorter, and less shallow, so you don’t run out of momentum so fast, and you can more easily find the internal motivation to get out of the halfpipe. Two, you can more easily get momentum from the project itself, in the form of feedback loops. For example, when I’m working on a new book, I don’t just sit down and write a book. That’s too long and deep a halfpipe. I might be excited going in, but I’ll soon lose momentum, and I’ll forget why I began in the first place. Instead, I break the process of writing into tiny projects, which feed into progressively larger projects. I write and share an idea on Twitter. If it does well on Twitter, I expand it into a newsletter. If it does well as a newsletter, I expand it into an article and podcast episode. After I complete this process enough times, I have a large collection of ideas I can share in my book. There’s still a lot of work to be done: I need to weave the ideas together into a cohesive whole, not to mention edit the book, lay it out, design the cover, and market it. But that bigger halfpipe of writing the book is much easier to get through when fueled by the momentum of the smaller halfpipes of tweets, newsletters, and articles. In fact, through these smaller projects with feedback loops, my halfpipe is no longer a closed system. The projects themselves are providing the momentum. Big projects are like halfpipes: You lose momentum and get stuck. Small projects are like waves: Feedback loops keep you moving forward. Turn halfpipes into waves When you surf a wave, gravity is still pulling you down the face of the wave, but the wave itself is moving, too. This is why you sometimes hear the expression of “riding a wave,” in business. The success of an industry or trend becomes an outside force that keeps you moving, multiplying your efforts. The success of a project itself can become a wave, too. As blogger Tynan has pointed out, one reason it’s hard to finish projects is that in the middle of the project, you’ve experienced all the downsides of working on the project, but none of the upsides of succeeding. You’re stuck in the halfpipe. But if you design the project so you get some of that feedback throughout the process, you get to experience some upsides that keep you moving. This works for a lot of creative projects. You can’t count the number of stand-up comedians who go to one open mic after another, testing out jokes, then take those jokes on the road to polish them, then weave it all together into a one-hour special, then repeat the process over again. Even War and Peace, written when publishing wasn’t so rapid and didn’t have such immediate feedback, was published serially, with a different name, and wasn’t even intended to be a novel. It wasn’t until later that Tolstoy wove it together, and re-wrote it. The next time you find yourself stuck in a project halfpipe, or switching to new projects each time a previous project gets tough, see if you can turn that halfpipe into a wave. Complete smaller projects that give you immediate feedback. You’ll finish more projects, and learn to tweak your motivation well enough to soar out of larger and larger halfpipes. Thank you for having me on your podcasts! Thank you for having me on your podcasts. Thank you to Ivan Farber at the Conversations About Conversations podcast. As always, you can find interviews of me on my interviews page. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »       Show notes: https://kadavy.net/blog/posts/project-halfpipe/

The world expects us to be Raphaels, but some of us are Leonardos. Don’t hold your Leonardo mind to Raphael standards, because this Raphael world would be nothing without Leonardo minds. There’s an inscription in the Pantheon in Rome that says, “Here lies that famous Raphael by whom Nature feared to be conquered while he lived.” In other words, Raphael was such an amazing painter, Nature was supposedly shaking in her boots, afraid he would learn all her tricks. (Ironically, Raphael’s remains are sealed away in a sarcophagus, where Nature can’t get to them. Who’s afraid of who?) But Nature had nothing to fear. Raphael could not outdo her. As Raphael was being buried, the painter Nature should have feared lay hundreds of miles to the north, in a little church on the grounds of the King of France’s chateau. Raphael the young phenom, Leonardo, the old has-been Several years before Raphael’s early death, he was getting paid thousands of ducats to paint one fresco after another in the Vatican. Meanwhile, the aging Leonardo da Vinci was nearby, living off a meager 33 ducat-a-month stipend, not doing much of importance. The pope had tried hiring him to paint something, but ended up frustrated, saying, “This man will never get anything done!” When the prolific art patron, Elizabeth d’Este, who had hounded Leonardo for a portrait for decades, came to visit Rome, she didn’t bother getting in touch with Leonardo. He was a has-been, who couldn’t be counted on to follow through. Who was she there to see? The young phenom, Raphael. Raphael was very similar to Leonardo, but also very different. His most important difference was that he was a master executor. If you hired Raphael, he got the job done. He also had been raised in the workshop of his father, a court painter for a Duke, so Raphael was refined and well-mannered. He knew how to schmooze with nobility. He had the connections that came along with that background, and could get a letter of recommendation from one powerful person to another with ease. Leonardo, on the other hand, was born out of wedlock – which made him “illegitimate” at the time – and didn’t get much education. While he had gained a reputation as a brilliant engineer and architect, he had also gained a reputation as an unreliable painter. Raphael: A reliable Leonardo As Raphael continued his career as the pope’s wunderkind, Leonardo worked his way north. He left yet another project unfinished in Milan, then impressed King Francis I enough to be invited to join him at the Chateau d’Amboise, as the official painter, architect, and court pageantry designer. While a gig with the King of France wasn’t the worst thing in the world, it was a step down from what Leonardo could have been doing if he hadn’t been reputed as someone who couldn’t get things done. The pope and all the nobles in all the principalities of Italy just watched him go. He’d never return again. While Raphael had some clear advantages that helped his career advance, he couldn’t have done it without the ways he and Leonardo were similar. The frescoes being painted by the young Raphael – such as his most-famous School of Athens – were exactly the kinds of projects Leonardo would have been great for, if only he could have been counted on to finish them. In fact, there was no person in the world to whom Raphael owed his own painting style more than Leonardo. When it came to painting, Raphael was mostly a reliable Leonardo. Raphael’s “Leonardo period” Art historians call the years during which Raphael spent a lot of time in Florence his “Florence period.” But they might as well call them his “Leonardo period.” That’s the four years during which Raphael’s work started looking less like that of his mentor, Perugino, and more like that of his idol, Leonardo. During Raphael’s Florence period, Leonardo was in a public face-off with another young phenom, Michelangelo. Leonardo had been commissioned to paint a battle scene in the Florence Council Hall. As usual, the first deadline came and went. Meanwhile, Michelangelo had done such a great job with his David statue, the council decided it would be a great idea to have him paint a battle scene, too. It was a pretty awkward situation for Leonardo. He was already struggling to finish, and a committee of which he had been a part had gone against his recommendation for a less-conspicuous location and put the David right outside the entrance of the council hall. Michelangelo was an arrogant prick who openly taunted Leonardo for his past failures, and now Leonardo had to walk through the shadow of Michelangelo’s latest triumph to get to his mural. Oh, and Michelangelo’s battle scene mural was directly across the room from his. By all accounts at the time, this was a painting competition – a battle of battle scenes. Leonardo wasn’t competitive by nature, but this was supposedly going to motivate him to finish his mural. Today, we might say putting Leonardo in this position was pretty machiavellian. Which is ironic, because it was arranged with the help of none other than the inventor of machiavellianism, the council’s secretary, Niccolò Machiavelli. Once word of this painting battle traveled outside Florence, young artists traveled to Florence to witness it. One of those artists: Raphael – armed with a letter of recommendation from the mother of the future Duke of Urbino to the leader of the Florentine Republic, stating that the twenty-one year-old was “greatly gifted…sensible and well-mannered.” It’s during this “Florence period” that Raphael’s work changed dramatically. It started to look as if he might know a thing or two about anatomy, he started aping Leonardo’s smokey sfumato technique, and drawing contorted, muscular men in the heat of battle. He learned a bit watching Michelangelo, but he learned a lot watching Leonardo. As it turned out, neither Leonardo nor Michelangelo finished his mural. For Michelangelo, it wasn’t a big deal. He got summoned to Rome, where he eventually painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Leonardo, however, had more of his career behind him than ahead of him. Yet another public failure meant he never got another public commission. So while Leonardo, in his sixties, was wandering around Europe, chasing what work he could, Raphael, in his early thirties, was getting showered with high-paying papal commissions, as a more-reliable Leonardo. The rise and fall of Raphael These days, we admire Leonardo more than we do Raphael, but that wasn’t always the case. That Raphael is one of the few people entombed in the palace of the gods, alongside kings, is testament to his popularity when he died. Heck, at his funeral, the pope kissed his hand. Around 1800, the church in which Leonardo was buried was destroyed in the French Revolution. Nobody bothered to try to recover Leonardo’s remains. They were mixed in with everyone else’s and forgotten. Meanwhile, Raphael was as popular as ever. If you take a peek at Google Ngram, you see a sharp increase in mentions of Raphael around that time. For hundreds of years after Raphael’s death, he was considered the quintessential painter of the High Renaissance. The art academies around Europe, who controlled the opinion of what was or wasn’t good art, built their curricula around studying the work of Raphael. But as the influence of art academies crumbled in the late 1800s with the rise of Impressionism, so too did crumble the reverence for Raphael. Meanwhile, Leonardo has risen in popularity over the centuries. Today, if you want to find a good book on Leonardo, you have lots of choices. Raphael, not so much. The probable cause of this rise in popularity and the probable cause of Leonardo’s struggles with follow-through are one in the same: Nature had more reason to fear Leonardo than Raphael. Leonardo’s massive iceberg Through the centuries after Leonardo’s death, his notes began to resurface. They had been inherited by someone who was supposed to compile and publish them, but were so numerous and disorganized, that was a nearly impossible task. His notes ended up collated and bound into individual notebooks, scattered amongst collectors around Europe. One notebook was found as recently as the 1960s, hiding in plain sight in Madrid, in the collection of the library. These notebooks have revealed that for Leonardo, painting a picture was about much more than painting a picture. When Raphael did an anatomy study, it was all about knowing how the skin on the surface of the body was shaped by the muscles underneath. The only purpose was to mimic Nature, on a superficial level. For Leonardo, an anatomy study was about much more. He didn’t just want to know what muscles were under the skin. He wanted to also know which muscles were engaged by which movements, or which nerves activated by which emotions. As a painter, there was no reason for Leonardo to know what the human heart looked like, or how it worked. Yet Leonardo made observations about the heart that would have advanced science by centuries, had they been published. Leonardo searched, Raphael found As I talked about on episodes 105 and 288, economist David Galenson would say Raphael was a conceptual innovator, while Leonardo was an experimental one. To Leonardo, there was no such thing as irrelevant information. In the course of researching how to paint something, he might make a new discovery about anatomy, metallurgy, geology, or some other field, that would set him down a different path. The art historian Eugene Garin thought, based upon Leonardo’s many thousands of pages of notes, that he was trying to compile a treatise of all human knowledge. Leonardo wasn’t studying Nature just so he could paint it convincingly – he was trying to understand all of Nature. Raphael didn’t have to explore all aspects of the world. He merely had to copy the result of Leonardo’s thinking. Galenson told me, “It’s what conceptual innovators do, it turns out.” Conceptual innovators take an idea, and make it their own. It’s what Picasso did with the work of Cézanne, what Warhol did with the work of Pollack, what Hemingway did with the work of Stein and Twain. The projects Leonardo pursued were impossible to finish Leonardo’s experimental approach meant his paintings were never finished. He was always discovering something new, so he was constantly revising. For example, after one of his anatomy studies, he realized he had painted some neck muscles wrong, so he went back and repainted them thirty years after the fact. He did the bulk of his work on the Mona Lisa during four years, but moved it around for fifteen, making finishing touches until a paralyzed hand rendered him unable. The patron never got their painting, Leonardo never collected payment, and the Mona Lisa was still collecting dust in his studio when he died. This experimental, iterative approach extended to Leonardo’s materials and methods, and made it even more difficult for him to follow through. The best-practice method of painting murals in fresco required laying down plaster and painting on it before it dried and literally set itself in stone. It wasn’t great for Leonardo’s blurry-edged painting style, and it made iteration impossible. He couldn’t lay down dozens of layers of paint over the course of years, as he did with the Mona Lisa. By the time Leonardo was painting his battle scene in the Florence Council Hall, his famous Last Supper was already fading and flaking, thanks to his resistance to painting in the reliable fresco technique. Not satisfied with adapting his style to this technique, Leonardo instead experimented once again on his battle-scene mural. He was almost finished, before the fire he was using to set colors got too close, destroying his work. This Raphael world is nothing without Leonardos Historically, the world rewards Raphaels. It rewards the ability to formulate a plan, follow through, collect payment and prestige, and move on. So, the world trains us to be Raphaels. Why do we follow a curriculum and fill out bubbles on standardized tests with #2 pencils? Because our teacher already knows the answer. They know the answer so well, they’ve programmed a computer to grade the test, and it’ll get confused if you use a #3 pencil. But for the curriculum to be designed to make Raphaels, we first need Leonardos. We need people who explore and experiment. We need them to ask questions that might not have answers, and to come up with new questions nobody ever thought of. That’s not a straightforward process. It’s messy and disorganized, and it would cause any Raphael to pull their hair out. When you don’t always find answers, and the answers you do find lead to new questions, you don’t always finish. The days of the Raphaels of the world are numbered. If somebody already knows the process, already knows the answer, we don’t need Raphael. A computer or machine can follow a process. Raphael knew this. Once his fame was established, he milked it for all it was worth. His later frescoes were painted by his staff of assistants in the largest workshop of the High Renaissance. He licensed his drawings to a printmaker, who sold copies of his work. As it becomes harder to make it as a Raphael, it’s becoming easier to make it as a Leonardo. I think Leonardo would have been a great blogger. He wouldn’t have to collect and document all knowledge, then rely on an heir to collate, typeset, and publish his life’s work on expensive parchment. He could instead write and publish one note at a time, gradually building his treatise of human knowledge. He wouldn’t have to wander around Europe looking for patrons – he could get them without leaving his home. If you’re a Leonardo, don’t bother being a Raphael If you’re a Leonardo mind, don’t fall into the trap of evaluating yourself by the standards of the Raphael world. There’s a reason why the Raphaels are so good at getting it done: Their task is simpler. Don’t beat yourself up by your inability to plan and carry out a vision no one could reasonably execute on their first attempt. Instead, find a way to explore in public, one little project at a time, building up into your grand masterpiece. Leonardo’s remains were forgotten for sixty years. Some scientist, perhaps motivated by the gradual resurfacing of the notes revealing Leonardo’s genius, gathered together some bones he figured were those of the master. They’re in a tomb in a chapel on the grounds of the chateau, and it’s one of the top attractions in Amboise. Are they actually Leonardo’s bones? Probably not. His remains are probably where they should be – not sealed away in some sarcophagus, but one with Nature. Thank you for having me on your podcasts! Thank you to Costa Michailidis for having me on the InnovationBound podcast. As always, you can find interviews of me on my interviews page. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: https://kadavy.net/blog/posts/leonard-mind-raphael-world/

Today I have a special episode for you. If you missed last month’s AMA/Livestream, I’m delivering it right to your ears. In this AMA, I answered questions about: How should I start marketing my books? How can you cope with burnout that gets in the way of creative work? How can you market your books when it doesn’t come naturally? How did you build your audience and how long did it take? (How can you build an audience without “niching down”?) What’s the difference between an accountability partner and a creativity partner? How did you get your first book deal? How can you stay motivated and get help from others when you work in isolation? How can you create luck in creative work? Which is better: Medium, or Substack? Do you use editing software, such as Grammarly? How did you come up with the Seven Mental States of Creativity? Have you made soap lately? How are you improving your fiction and storytelling skills? How do you hack learning a new language? Why are you using a pen name to write fiction? What are good writing goals for a beginner? Why do you prefer self-publishing over traditional? How can you pick a creative project when you have too many ideas? How do you make foreign-rights deals for your books? What should do with lots of different content on different topics? I also mention in this my new giveaway, and I’ll tell you briefly about it now. I’m giving away 20 of my favorite creativity books. As you know from this show, I’m a creativity enthusiast. I love to think about how to tap into your creativity and motivate action, and I love stories about how all creators do that, whether they’re writers, painters, musicians, scientists – or do any kind of creative work. I’ve compiled a list of my favorite creativity books, spanning mindset, creativity science, biographies, and more. I’m reaching into my own pocket and buying all twenty book for one lucky winner. Find out which books are on the list and sign up at kdv.co/giveaway. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/ama-september-2022/

The book, Old Masters and Young Geniuses shows there are two types of creators: experimental, and conceptual. Experimental and conceptual creators differ in their approaches to their work, and follow two distinct career paths. Experimental creators grow to become old masters. Conceptual creators shine as young geniuses. University of Chicago economist, and author of Old Masters and Young Geniuses, David Galenson – who I interviewed on episode 105 – wanted to know how the ages of artists affected the prices of their paintings. He isolated the ages of artists from other factors that affect price, such as canvas size, sale date, and support type (whether it’s on canvas, paper, or other). He expected to find a neat effect, such as “paintings from younger/older artists sell for more.” But instead, he found two distinct patterns: Some artists’ paintings from their younger years sold for more. Other artists’ paintings from their older years sold for more. He then found this same pattern in the historical significance of artists’ work: The rate at which paintings were included in art history books or retrospective exhibitions – both indicators of significance – peaked at the same ages as the values of paintings. When he looked closely at how painters who followed these two trajectories differed, he found that the ones who peaked early took a conceptual approach, while those who peaked late took an experimental approach. Cézanne vs. Picasso The perfect examples of contrasting experimental and conceptual painters are Paul Cézanne and Pablo Picasso. Paintings from Cézanne’s final year of life, when he was sixty-seven, are his most valuable. Paintings from early in Picasso’s career, when he was twenty-six, are his most valuable. A painting done when Picasso was twenty-six is worth four times as much as one done when he was sixty-seven (he lived to be ninety-one, and his biographer and friend called the dearth of his influential work later in life “a sad end”). A painting done when Cézanne was sixty-seven – the year he died – is worth fifteen times as much as one done when he was twenty-six. Cézanne, the experimenter Cézanne took an experimental approach to painting, which explains why it took so long for his career to peak. Picasso took a conceptual approach, which explains why he peaked early. Cézanne left the conceptual debates of Paris cafés to live in the south of France, in his thirties. He spent the next three decades struggling to paint what he truly saw in landscapes. He felt limited by the fact that, as he was looking at a canvas, he could only paint the memory of what he had just seen. He did few preparatory sketches early in his career, but grew to paint straight from nature. He treated his paintings as process work, and seemed to have no use for them when he was finished: He only signed about ten percent of his paintings, and sometimes threw them into bushes or left them in fields. Picasso, the conceptual genius Picasso, instead, executed one concept after another. He had early success with his Blue period and Rose period, then dove into Cubism. He often planned paintings carefully, in advance: He did more than four-hundred studies for his most valuable and influential painting, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. One model described how he simply stared at her for an hour, apparently planning a series of paintings in his head, which he began painting the next day, without her assistance. Cézanne said, “I seek in painting.” Picasso said, “I don’t seek; I find.” Cézanne struggled to paint what he saw, and Picasso said, “I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.” Experimental vs. conceptual artists Here are some qualities that differ between experimental and conceptual artists: Experimental artists work inductively. Through the process of creation, they arrive at their solution. Conceptual artists work deductively. They begin with a solution in mind, then work towards it. Experimental artists have vague goals. They’re not quite sure what they’re seeking. Conceptual artists have specific goals. They already have an idea in their head they’re trying to execute. Experimental artists are full of doubt. Since they don’t already have the solution, and aren’t sure what they’re looking for, they rarely feel they’ve succeeded. Conceptual artists are confident. They know what they’re after, so once they’ve achieved it, they’re done, and can move on to the next thing. Experimental artists repeat themselves. They might paint the same subject over and over, tweaking their approach. Conceptual artists change quickly. They’ll move from subject to subject, style to style, concept to concept. Experimental artists do it themselves. They’re discovering throughout the process, so they rarely use assistants. Conceptual artists delegate. They just need their concept executed, so someone else can often do the work. Experimental artists discover. Over the years, they build up knowledge in a field, to invent new approaches. Conceptual artists steal. To a greater degree than experimental artists, they take what others have developed and make it their own. Other experimental & conceptual artists Some other experimental artists: Georgia O’Keeffe: She painted pictures of a door of her house in New Mexico more than twenty times. She liked to start off painting a subject realistically, then, through repetition, make it more abstract. Jackson Pollock: He said he needed to drip paint on a canvas from all four sides, what he called a “‘get acquainted’ period,” before he knew what he was painting. Leonardo da Vinci: He was constantly jumping from project to project, rarely finishing. He incorporated his slowly-accrued knowledge of anatomy, optics, and geology into his paintings. Some conceptual artists: Georges Seurat: He had his pointillism method down to a science. He planned out his most-famous painting, Sunday Afternoon, through more than fifty studies, and could paint tiny dots on the giant canvas without stepping back to see how it looked. Andy Warhol: Used assistants heavily, saying, “I think somebody should be able to do all my paintings for me,” and “Why do people think artists are special? It’s just another job.” Raphael: Who had a huge workshop of as many as fifty assistants, innovated by allowing a printmaker to make and sell copies of his work, and synthesized the hard-won methods of Leonardo and Michelangelo into his well-planned designs. Experimental & conceptual creators in other fields Galenson has found these two distinct experimental and conceptual trajectories in a variety of fields. This runs counter to the findings of Dean Simonton, who believes the complexity of a given field determines when a creator peaks. Galenson argues that the complexity of having an impact in a field changes, as innovations are made or integrated into the state of the art. Sculpture In sculpture, Méret Oppenheim had a conversation in a café with Picasso, and got the idea to line a teacup with fur. It became the quintessential surrealist sculpture, Luncheon in Fur, but it was totally conceptual. She continued to make art into her seventies, and never did another significant work. Constantin Brancusi spent a lifetime as an experimental sculptor. He said, “I don’t work from sketches, I take the chisel and hammer and go right ahead.” He did his most famous work, Bird in Space, when he was fifty-two. Novels In novels, Mark Twain wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn experimentally, in at least three separate phases, over the course of nine years. He finally published it when he was fifty. Hemingway’s novels were conceptually driven, using his trademark dialog as one of his major devices. He picked up this technique and synthesized it from studying the work of Gertrude Stein, Sherwood Anderson, and Twain himself. When I talked to Galenson on episode 105, he explained the way to spot the difference between an experimental and a conceptual novel is to ask, “are the characters believable?” Conceptual novelists focus on plot, while experimental novelists focus on character. Poetry In poetry, Robert Frost, who spent his career trying to perfect how rhythms and stress patterns affected the meanings of words – so-called “sentence sounds” – wrote “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” when he was forty-eight. Ezra Pound developed his technique of “imagism” when he was twenty-eight, and had thought it through so well he published a set of formal rules. With this conceptual approach, he created the bulk of his influential poems before he was forty, despite living well into his eighties. Movies In film, Orson Welles created Citizen Kane when he was only twenty-six. The carefully-planned conceptual innovations in cinematography and musical score make it widely-regarded as the most influential film ever. Alfred Hitchcock didn’t make his most-influential films until the final years of his life, as he was about sixty. He said, “style in directing develops slowly and naturally.” Are you an old master, or young genius? I really enjoyed Old Masters and Young Geniuses. I find this dichotomy of experimental versus conceptual approaches really helpful in understanding why, in general, some creative solutions come quickly, while others take months or years of searching. Do you have a choice in the matter? Galenson is careful to stress that you aren’t either an experimental or conceptual creator – it’s a spectrum, not a binary designation. But in case you’re wondering if you can make yourself a conceptual creator, to become successful more quickly, Galenson says you can’t. You might switch from a conceptual to an experimental approach, and find it works better for you, as did Cézanne, or you might try to go from experimental to conceptual and find it doesn’t, as did Pissarro. But you can’t change the way you think. He told me, “It’s like trying to change your brain, and we don’t know how to do that.” About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »       Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/old-masters-young-geniuses

Do you want to build an audience online, but have such a wide variety of interests, you don’t know what to focus on? I think you’ll like this interview with David Perell. David Perell (@david_perell) calls himself “The Writing Guy.” He runs the cohort-based online writing school, Write of Passage (I love that name). His marketing is very specific, but he has incredibly diverse interests, and enthusiastically shares content related to those interests online. I went through his links on his website (no longer posted) to prepare for this conversation, and just my highlights of his links were over 6,000 words long! The topics included economics, art, urban planning, golf, music, and much more. I’ve been really impressed watching David’s online presence, so I brought him on the podcast for my first interview episode in more than two years! We’ll talk about: The four grants David has gotten from Tyler Cowen’s Emergent Ventures. How did he get those grants, and for what projects? Have all the opportunities to grow your audience online passed? David will share what he thinks is the biggest growth opportunity right now. We’ll talk about how to please the Twitter algorithm. What about it is “so brutal,” as David says? Topics mentioned Write of Passage David Perell Twitter David Perell's podcast “The Hedgehog and the Fox” by Isaiah Berlin David’s viral logo thread Tyler Cowen Tim Ferriss Joe Rogan David Galenson Old Masters and Young Geniuses Pablo Picasso Paul Cézanne Andy Warhol Leonardo da Vinci Raphael Michelangelo Cézanne’s studio Claude Monet Impressionism Cubism Space X Mark Manson Tim Urban on Tim Ferriss Hacker News Patrick Mackenzie Quantitative Easing Dodgeball Foursquare Mark Manson Twitter James Clear Twitter "Fake Take" Don't hate the player, hate the game Emergent Ventures Renee Girard lectures Naval Ravikant on leverage The Age of Leverage Nat Eliason on speed versus mass Warren Buffett spends one year deciding The Barbell Strategy for content marketing – Alex Birkett Matthew Fitzpatrick Mark Broadie Strokes Gained Trackman Titlelist Performance Institute About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »       Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/david-perell-podcast

Submit your questions and mark your calendars for my upcoming AMA/Livestream.

In 1977, Richard Bachman published his first novel. In an unusual move for a first-time author, Bachman made his publisher promise to release his books with hardly any marketing. Bachman stacked the dice against himself Bachman’s books were to skip the hardcover format and go straight to bargain-bin paperback – the kind you’d find mixed in with other nobody-authors, at a truck stop on I-80, somewhere near Grand Island. He also insisted he was unavailable for interviews, which cut his books off from a key marketing channel. Most publishers wouldn’t agree to such bizarre terms, but they were especially excited to release Bachman’s books. But he still did pretty well Today, forty-five years later, most people have unsurprisingly never heard of Richard Bachman. His books did alright, though: His fourth was optioned for film rights, his fifth sold 28,000 copies, and he got a couple letters a month from fans of his writing. Bachman wasn’t Bachman But his books were so good, one Washington D.C. bookstore clerk was suspicious. Steve Brown dug through the Library of Congress copyright records, and confirmed his suspicion: Richard Bachman was Stephen King. Why did one of the world’s hottest authors publish – in the same genre – under a pen name? At the time, King’s publisher had an almost-superstitious belief that if they published more than one of his books in a year, they would distract readers from This Year’s Book (that they let King publish Bachman books with so little fanfare speaks to their conviction in this belief). King later described it as like being married to someone with a drastically-smaller sexual appetite: He had to find an outlet somewhere else. “Either find an audience or disappear quietly” While he was publishing under a pen name, he figured he’d conduct an experiment. He wondered, to what degree was his massive success due to luck? So, as he has said, Stephen King “stacked the dice” against Richard Bachman. He wanted Bachman’s books “to go out there and either find an audience or just disappear quietly.” After word got out that Richard Bachman was Stephen King, his books sold even better. That book that sold 28,000 copies for Richard Bachman – Thinner – quickly sold ten times that as a King title. Is seven years & five books long enough? At first glance, King’s Bachman experiment is an open-and-shut case: Bachman’s books sold way more copies with Stephen King’s name on their covers. But King himself feels his experiment got cut short. He said of Bachman, who he killed off in a press release by “cancer of the pseudonym,” “He died with that question – is it work that takes you to the top or is it all just a lottery? – still unanswered.” Bachman worked in anonymity for seven years, and released five books – how is that not enough? Even the pros don’t know William Goldman was a two-time Academy-Award-Winning screenwriter. He wrote the screenplays for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Princess Bride, and Misery (which was supposed to be Richard Bachman’s sixth book, but instead was released by Stephen King). In Goldman’s book, Adventures in the Screen Trade, he pointed out that in one typical movie season, sixteen major films were released by the major studios. One was a runaway success, and ten of those sixteen lost more than ten million dollars. Why did those studios bother making the stinkers? Because, as Goldman said: Nobody knows anything...... Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess and, if you’re lucky, an educated one. Nobody knowing anything takes the appeal out of King’s Bachman story. It sounded like the perfect story for aspiring creatives to point to and say, “Look, the universe is conspiring against me. If you don’t have a big name already, you’re screwed.” Nothing guarantees creative success But really, nothing can guarantee success. You could say you have to have connections, and I could point out that Richard Pryor’s son played at the Apollo, and got booed off the stage. You could say you need name recognition, and I could tell you that the 28,000 copies Bachman’s fifth book sold was four-thousand more than Stephen King’s own fourth book sold. You could say all you need is your big break, and I could remind you that Steve Martin was on The Tonight Show – the big break in the comedy business at the time – sixteen times before someone recognized him in public. Nobody knows anything. If movie studios knew blockbusters, that’s all they’d make. If record companies knew hits, that’s all they’d release. If publishers knew bestsellers, that’s all they’d launch. And if venture capitalists knew “unicorns,” they’d just be called capitalists. Quality can’t hide Nobody knows anything, but somebody knows something. As Goldman himself said, you can make an educated guess. I bet he’d agree that a ninety-minute cellphone video of a ham sandwich sitting on a plate is unlikely to fill theaters. There was another author, named Robert Galbraith, whose debut novel didn’t do great. It sold 1,500 copies in the first few months – not bad either. But there was something fishy about Galbraith’s work. A journalist tweeted that she had enjoyed Galbraith’s book, but it seemed way too well-written to be the debut novel of who was supposedly a retired military officer. An anonymous account tipped this journalist, saying That’s because it’s not a debut novel: Robert Galbraith is actually a really well-known author’s pseudonym. That led to a computer linguistic analysis and the London Times confronted the alleged author. J. K. Rowling admitted that she was Robert Galbraith, then The Cuckoo’s Calling, a crime novel, proceeded to sell like hotcakes. So, of course Rowling’s name recognition helped the book sell, but try as she could to hide her identity, she couldn’t hide her quality. Her writing was, to paraphrase Steve Martin, so good it couldn’t be ignored. Stephen King got to enjoy the anonymity of his pen name for seven years. Rowling hers about three months. Maybe there’s some others out there who never got caught, but it seems social media and computer linguistic analysis has shortened the life of pen names. But King and Rowling both had the same problem: You can’t hide quality, and you can’t hide voice. From the beginning, King got letters asking him if he was Richard Bachman. Bachman had the extra challenge that he wasn’t merely copying the style of an author already dominating a genre – he literally was that author. Sometimes a copycat does better than the original, because they can’t help but be different as they try to copy. For example, Kurt Cobain said he was trying to rip off the Pixies when he wrote Smells Like Teen Sprit. An exact copy doesn’t have much chance, because the original already punctured the exact same vacuum. You can’t know anything, so know your work Jerry Seinfeld likes to tell beginning comedians they’ll never make it. Because if they hear that from a comedy legend and still do comedy, he figures, they might have a chance. Maybe it’s not satisfying that nobody knows anything. It kind of makes you want to throw your hands up and say, What’s the use?! But maybe that’s a good thing. If you can know that nobody knows anything, and still be dedicated to your craft, maybe you have a shot. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »       Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/nobody-knows-anything/

“Crumb time” is the little pieces of time that get lost throughout the day. Instead of giving away your crumb time to unproductive distractions, build systems that complete big projects with small actions. Today, I’ll tell you how. Crumb time is everywhere throughout our days. Whenever we do something substantial with our time, little chunks of time of various sizes and shapes fall to the floor. What is crumb time? Crumb time has a combination of the following qualities: Short amounts of time. Crumb time can be less than a minute, or several minutes. Unknown lengths of time. You often don’t know when your crumb time will be over. It could end in a few seconds, or a few minutes. Distracting environments. It’s hard enough to focus when you don’t know when you’ll be interrupted, but the environments in which crumb time take place are often noisy, with lots of activity. Some examples of crumb time: Standing in line at an airport: Lots is going on, you’re waiting for your boarding call. Riding in a cab: The scenery is changing, but you might have a good idea how much time you have. Waiting for a friend to meet you for lunch: They could come in the door in two seconds, or twenty minutes. Why do we give away crumb time? Crumb time feels insignificant, and we think we need a controlled environment and a big block of time to do anything useful. You don’t have the time or mental bandwidth, it seems, to make substantial progress reading a book, or writing an article. So, we doomscroll on Twitter, blow off steam with a game such as Wordle, or do something pseudo-productive such as check email once again. Productive uses of crumb time We just give away our crumb time, but we could turn it into something useful. Here are some things you could do with crumb time: Review highlights in your Zettelkasten: My favorite use of crumb time is reviewing my highlights from a book. I export them to Markdown, and whenever I have a moment, I scroll through the highlights in a plain-text app on my phone. I bold any of the highlights that are extra interesting. When my crumb time is over, I mark my place and lock my phone. Learn about something: A crumb-time list is a key component of a system of curiosity management, which I talked about on episode 284. Keep a list of subjects you’d like to learn about, and when you have crumb time, read a Wikipedia page. (I’m not a fan of read-later apps, because the easier it is to save articles, the harder it is to read all of them). Brainstorm social media updates: Twitter is a great place to share ideas, a terrible place to have them. Brainstorm potential tweets in a text file, to polish and schedule later. How about doing nothing at all? Another valid use of your crumb time is simply doing nothing. But when you choose to do something, you may as well do something useful. Anything other than giving away crumb time is better than building that bad habit. The more you give away crumb time, the easier that becomes the default use of your crumb time. Take a seven-day crumb-time challenge You don’t need to change your crumb time habits all at once, forever. Instead, try a seven-day crumb-time challenge. Here’s how: Delete social media apps. You can do most things on Twitter or Instagram from desktop. Get them off your phone, to force yourself to make good use of crumb time. Block social media websites. Use the parental controls on your phone to block websites to which you give away your crumb time. For me that’s twitter.com and instagram.com. On the iPhone, use the “Limit Adult Websites” feature, and add whatever sites you want to the block list. (You can also add adult websites to the allowed sites if that’s your thing.) Set up crumb-time actions. If you have a Zettelkasten, you know what to do. If you don’t have one, for a quick-start you could export your highlights from your favorite book and have them available on your phone. Set up a list of things you’d like to look up when you have crumb time. Set up a scratch file for brainstorming social media updates, or set up anything else you could make progress on when you have a minute. Audio crumb time You’re of course not always able to use your hands during crumb time, such as when you’re driving. This is actually a great reason to have a podcast. Sharing your ideas with others is nice, but if you want to review your own ideas during crumb time, with a podcast you already have a convenient format in which to do so. But, you can also listen to articles or text you’d like to review using the text-to-speech feature on your phone, or an app, such as Otter. Crumb time becomes something bigger I like the term “crumb time” not only because it implies crumb time’s perceived insignificance, but also because substantial things consist of crumbs. Bakers talk about the “crumb structure” of a cake, which is the mix of air and pastry that makes up the cake. In agriculture, soil has taken on a “crumb structure” when it has the right amount of moisture for the soil to bead into crumbs. Soil with a crumb structure has an ideal mix of air and moisture to be a good environment for plants to take root, and for microorganisms to assist in the plant’s growth. Crumb time is powerful because it seems too insignificant to be worth anything. But if you use your crumb time well, those little pieces of time can build into something bigger. Here are some ways: Write a book: A book is little more than a collection of thoughts, and crumb time is enough to develop individual thoughts. I shared on episode 260 my newsletter system, which makes use of crumb time: My tweets grow into newsletters, which grow into podcast articles, which grow into books. Or, you can take a more direct approach. Walter Isaacson has said he writes on his phone while waiting in the airport, and Kirsten Oliphant wrote an entire book during two weeks’ time on the treadmill. Build a database of knowledge: Instead of writing a book, you can aim to build a database of knowledge, such as the Zettelkasten I talked about on episode 250. Highlighting highlights is the easiest use of crumb time, but you can do other Zettelkasten tasks with your crumb time, such as clearing your inbox. Make real progress: Even if you don’t aspire to write a book or build a Zettelkasten, you can use your crumb time to make real progress on any of your projects. Think of crumb time as a “context”, a la Getting Things Done. Just as you might mark a next action as “@home”, “@office”, or with my Seven Mental States of creativity, you can mark tasks as “@crumbtime”. Then you have a list of tasks you can do with little time and attention. Imagine what your crumb time could become Pay attention to how you use your crumb time, and you’ll find significant uses of time and energy that could be put toward something productive. In the same time and mental effort it takes to play Wordle every day, you could build a database of knowledge, write articles, or even books. I encourage you to try a seven-day crumb-time challenge. Let me know how it goes! Image: Pexals Thank you for having me on your podcasts! Thank you for having me on your podcasts. Thank you to Ben Henley-Smith at Cord’s Best Work podcast. As always, you can find all podcasts I've been on at kadavy.net/interviews. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »       Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/crumb-time/

Do you ever feel like you don’t have the time and energy to learn about everything you want to know? Is it hard to stay focused on reading one book, when there’s ten others you want to read? You need curiosity management. Curiosity management is the management of your thirst to know things. In a world with unlimited access to information, and finite time and energy, it’s impossible to read every book, watch every documentary, or take every online course. Unmanaged curiosity leads to “curiosity pressure” This leads to a feeling of “curiosity pressure.” Curiosity pressure is the feeling you’ll never learn all the things you want to learn. When you’re under time pressure – curiosity pressure’s close cousin – and feel you don’t have enough time to do everything, your anxiety makes it hard to do one thing. When you’re under curiosity pressure and feel you can’t learn everything, your anxiety makes it hard to learn one thing. A good curiosity-management system matches your level of curiosity with an appropriate level of engagement with the topic, given your available time and energy. The downward spiral of poor retention, & feelings of inadequacy A day in the life of a curious mind looks like this: Think of thing you want to learn about, such as the chemical processes behind making soap. Instantly go to Wikipedia. Follow every link and every footnote. Regain consciousness four hours later, with one-hundred tabs open, and no recollection of what you’ve consumed. Inexplicably, one of the tabs is about the Lorena Bobbitt scandal. Feel bad that you got nothing done, and didn’t learn much either. Surplus curiosity When you don’t satisfy your curiosity, despite doing the activities of investigation – such as reading or watching videos – you’re overcome with “surplus curiosity.” Surplus curiosity is a feeling you should always be investigating more topics. The anxiety and inadequacy you feel from not satisfying your curiosity cause you to be curious about even more things. This drives a downward spiral: You feel bad for not knowing all you want to know, you want to know more things, but poorly managing your curiosity makes it impossible to satisfy your natural curiosities, much less your surplus curiosities. The goal of curiosity management: Learn just enough, and remember it You’re not going to stop being curious. Your curiosity is a good thing. But if you can manage your curiosity, you can remember more of what you consume and reduce curiosity pressure. If you successfully reduce curiosity pressure, you’ll reduce the anxiety and feelings of inadequacy that actually drive some surplus curiosity. The fundamental error: All-or-nothing curiosity The fundamental error most curious minds make is they want to learn everything about a topic the moment they become curious about it. Instead of spending five minutes perusing the Wikipedia page, they watch the four-hour documentary. Instead of reading the book summary, they try to read the whole book. This drives the downward cycle: At some point, the media they’re engaged with calls for more time and energy than their actual curiosity for the topic merits. This causes fatigue and frustration. Yet there are still so many things they want to learn about, and feelings of anxiety and inadequacy flare up. The most immediate solution seems to be to read more, watch more, consume more – surplus curiosity. Yet little of it is absorbed, and the original curiosity that began the cycle is only vaguely satisfied. The right engagement for the level of curiosity To engage appropriately with what you’re curious about, first assess the level of curiosity. There are three: Compulsory curiosity is a feeling that you should know about this. Like, “What is this TikTok thing about?” Cursory curiosity is a feeling you’d like to know something about this topic. Like, “What is Marie Curie’s story?” Compulsive curiosity is a driving obsession to learn everything you can about a topic. If you need an example, you don’t need curiosity management. Of course, as you learn about topics, your level of curiosity may progress. You try TikTok a few minutes and are intrigued. You read the Marie Curie Wikipedia page, and want to learn much more. Your compulsive curiosity may be more intense for one topic than another, or change from day to day. Three basic components of curiosity management The main mechanism behind curiosity management is categorizing topics about which you’re curious according to the level of curiosity, and engaging with those topics only to the point that your curiosity is either satisfied, or further aroused (with some exceptions). I propose four components to a good modern curiosity-management system: A rule: Never consume information upon first encountering it: (With one exception, coming up.) Take only a quick glance to assess your level of curiosity about the information, and the informations’ potential for satisfying that curiosity. Then put it in the appropriate place, for later processing. Keep a “crumb-time” list: Your crumb-time list has things about which you have either compulsory or cursory curiosity, with a simple action that will satisfy that level of curiosity. Use your crumb-time list during “crumb-time” – those little pockets of time of indefinite shape and size with which you normally do unproductive activities such as check social media or play Wordle. An example list item would be: “Watch a YouTube video on the chemical processes behind making soap.” Deep curiosity time blocks: Have regular time blocks for deep investigation about things that have reached the level of compulsive curiosity. Give yourself time to read books, and watch documentaries. ”Cheat” pockets: Freewheeling engagement with your curiosity is fun. If you never allow yourself to open a hundred tabs on your browser again, you’ll do it anyway and drive the downward spiral. Much like some diets allow a “cheat day,” a good curiosity-management system has pockets of time during which you allow yourself to be at the whim of your curiosity. It might be Friday afternoons, or fifteen minutes after lunch – so long as you’re actually able to prevent yourself from slipping into internet-induced comas. Using your curiosity-management system That’s the basic structure of a curiosity-management system, now, some examples of how to use it. A topic comes to mind that you’d like to learn about, such as Soviet dekulakization. Don’t stop what you’re doing or suppress your curiosity. Put it on your crumb-time list to look at later. You have a few minutes while waiting for an appointment to start – aka “crumb-time.” Open your crumb-time list on your phone, and find a topic that fits the time and energy you have available, and your level of interest. Do a quick search, or visit a link you’ve already saved. If your curiosity is satisfied, move it to a “done” section of your crumb-time list. If you’ve become more curious, move it to a “second-level” section, to investigate more, later. If you’re intensely curious and have time available within your deep-curiosity blocks, you may graduate to buying a book. You see a link you want to investigate, while investigating something else on your crumb-time list. Open it in another tab and give it a quick glance. If you’re interested in learning more, put it on your crumb-time list. Close the tab, then get back to the original article. Note-taking supports curiosity management You’ll better satisfy your curiosity if you don’t forget what you’ve just learned. So, a note-taking system, such as a zettelkasten, supports a curiosity-management system. Take notes even on items for which you have merely compulsory or cursory curiosity. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. You don’t even have to take perfect notes. You’ve just invested time and energy in learning about this topic, so you’ll never remember more than you do right now. Jot down a few of the things you remember. It could be as simple and informal as “saponification uses a strong base to break apart fat molecules and make soap.” Start managing your curiosity Those are my initial thoughts on curiosity management – why it matters, what it consists of, and how to construct a system for managing your curiosity. There are of course many details and inner workings I didn’t include, or that would vary from one person to another. Do you find this idea useful? Say hello on Twitter, or email me. Image: Red Waistcoat by Paul Klee About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »       Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/curiosity-management/

Five years ago, I wrote about how - after ten years as a self-employed independent creator - I hoped to "make it." I now realize, I never will. Five years ago, I sat at my keyboard to have a serious conversation with myself. It had been ten years since I had woken up to a day with nothing scheduled, and wondered how I was going to fill it with something that both made life worth living, and also paid the bills. In this conversation, I asked myself, How did you end up here? Have you made a big mistake? I had spent a good chunk of my retirement savings, left Silicon Valley in the midst of a boom, and now found myself barely getting by in South America. About a thousand words in, I stopped and cracked into tears, not only because I was scared out of my mind, but because still – despite not seeing a clear path to making this work - I couldn't see myself giving up. I concluded: Take it from me, a ten-year veteran self-employed creator: If you are looking for security or reassurance, I do not recommend this line of work. However, if you are burning with curiosity – if your heart and intuition lead you to do things that don’t make sense – well, then you don’t really have a choice in the matter, do you? When I was done with that conversation, I had a massive vulnerability hangover. I felt embarrassed to publish it, but since I had resolved to be writer, I felt I had to. However, I didn't do anything I normally did to promote a post: no Medium publication, no email blast, no podcast episode, not even a tweet. I just quietly pressed “Publish” and got on with my day. It slowly, then quickly, became the most popular thing I had ever written. Now, five years later, I've been a full-time creator for fifteen years. (It wasn't called that when I started. I was just a weird guy who wouldn't get a job.) Not long after publishing my personal conversation, I started publicly reporting my income on my blog. While more famous bloggers were excitedly reporting six- and seven-figure months, I was reporting one three-thousand-dollar month after another. One month I even lost money. However, about a year ago, my numbers started to climb. I recently reported a six-figure-year for the first time. I had made six-figures before the reports, but most of that was from an uninspiring blog I had written under a pseudonym. This was the first time I could look at every dollar I had made and say to myself, "I made this money doing exactly what I want to be doing. I am officially me for a living." I looked in the mirror later that day at the gray hairs that have come to dominate my beard and the stray ones sprouting from my temples. I thought back to when I was twenty-five and I'd stare in the mirror, looking at the young man I felt was full of potential, but who had no idea how to get out of Nebraska. Every cell of skin and hair on my body had regenerated since then, but I figured I still had the same eyes. So I looked into them and said, "You did it, kid. You made it." Not the next day, nor the day after that, but soon after, I felt a deeper emptiness than I had before. I thought back to my twenty-five year old self hearing for the hundredth time the CAD technician with hair as tall as the man was wide yell out, as he waddled through the break room, “Kadavy, with another Banquet meal!” Those microwaveable meals had been frequently on sale at Hy-Vee, ten for eight dollars, and the best strategy I could come up with in 2004 had been to save up and buy Apple and Google stock. As I had rolled my eyes and sighed at the Office-Space-like monotony of my existence, I would have gladly traded places with my current life. I had struggled for so long, so hard, and had passed up so many other opportunities a normal person would have taken. I risked failure, and hadn’t failed. Why did I feel a lack of inspiration, a malaise? Around that time, I read and resonated deeply with an essay by Joan Didion, where she marvels at how a six-month stay in New York crept into eight years, "with the deceptive ease of a film dissolve." Young, foolish, and non-committal, she felt she "could stay up all night and make mistakes, and none of it would count." It wasn't until it was over she had realized, "it had counted after all." The dozenth friend said to me recently, "If you can sell 25,000 copies of a book, do you have any idea how much you could make on a course, consulting, or coaching!?" I politely explained I had heard the same many times before and I had tried courses, consulting, and coaching, and didn't enjoy them. Basically, what I wrote five years ago: I want to make a living creating. I don't want creating to be merely a marketing strategy for other things. Is that completely insane? This friend, like seemingly all I had at the beginning of this fifteen-journey, is now a millionaire. Did I feel this emptiness because it had taken so long to get here? Because there are many more definitions of “making it,” financially, beyond a six-figure income – that everyone else seems to reach so easily? I know every time I hear an outrageously popular twenty-something creator on a podcast say, "I wrote online for a long time before I had success. Like eight months," I scoff and wonder, Just how fucking bad at this am I? Maybe this six-figure milestone so close to my fifteen-year anniversary was just a reminder that it had all counted. Maybe it brings to the surface memories of the times I almost had a big break: Like the time I paid my own way to fly from Colombia to San Francisco to be interviewed on a massive podcast, only for them to can it. Or the time a big chest-thumping entrepreneur podcast didn’t run my interview because I openly told them how little money I made (given my public income reports, I wonder why they bothered inviting me). Or, maybe I had failed at what I had actually wanted, but had invented a false goal ex post-facto, so what counted wouldn’t feel as if it had gone to waste. I dug into the paper trail I've left throughout this journey. The stack of journals I've collected confirmed that this, indeed, was something I had wanted all along. In 2007, just before getting fired, I wrote, "I have lots of projects in mind, but the main one is making 'being David Kadavy' my full-time job." There it was, plain as day. As I continued my investigation into potential revisionist history, I re-read my conversation to myself after ten years as a creator, and saw a graph: On New Year's Eve, as 2008 turned to 2009, I stayed home by myself and schemed on my mission to make it as a creator. I knelt on the hardwood next to my portable radiator and drew this graph on an eleven-dollar piece of tileboard from The Home Depot. The plan was for "Active" income to give way to "Passive" income, to give way to "Speculative" income. In other words, I would freelance just enough to get by, build passive income on the side, and as that passive income built, I would follow my curiosity and see what I could find. I had done exactly that: I had freelanced ten hours a week, made $150,000 on a passive income stream, and through the exploration I had done on the side, gotten my first book deal, then built this career as an author. I had followed my plan perfectly. When a successful author friend had warned me not to write my first book – that there were better ways to make a living – I had reasoned I was just starting, maybe after ten years I’d be really good. In the back of my mind, I thought I could do it faster. Suffice to say, this has taken way longer than I had imagined. Didion’s essay resonated with me because some part of me didn’t expect these years to count. At forty-three, with one parent gone, having narrowly-missed losing the other, and with my own body declining, I feel as if I’m in the final levels of a video game. I’ve gained power-ups and magic swords hidden along the way and in many ways feel more capable than ever. But that meter at the bottom of the screen marked “life” is lower, and I’m increasingly paranoid I’ll be devoured by a dragon before I storm the castle. I ultimately realized, this emptiness wasn't unfamiliar. I had felt it in some small way at every major milestone in this journey. With every goal I had achieved, there had been emptiness that followed the absence of that goal. That emptiness was soon replaced by the pursuit of the next. But, this was the top of the mountain. There was no next goal on the horizon. Maybe I should feel bad for how long this has taken. Maybe I'm putting up blinders I won't see around until it's too late, and I'll later be overcome by crippling regret. More likely, the journey is the destination. The beginning of each creative project is characterized by an emptiness, a void that must be filled through the act of creation. It's a great feeling to go from spinning your wheels to getting traction, but ultimately, you want to go back to the starting line and do it again. To once more see if you can storm the castle. You could argue I feel this way because this struggle is all I know. I've been at it so long, like Red and Brooks in The Shawshank Redemption, I’ve become "institutionalized." But one got busy living and the other got busy dying, and as Victor Frankl has said, "What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task." So, after fifteen years, I've "made it" as a creator, financially-speaking, in a relatively minor way, for now. But maybe the best part of making it is realizing you now have the privilege of feeling you haven't. So you can freely struggle to reach your destination, only to do it again. Take it from me, a fifteen-year veteran self-employed creator: You’re burning with curiosity. Your heart and intuition lead you to do things that don’t make sense. You feel you have no choice but to take this path. But be forewarned: Once you get to where you so deeply ache to arrive, your journey won’t be over. You can "make it" in one way or another, but to be happy with this life, you must always find a way to feel you still haven’t. Photo by Ryan Halvorsen About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »       Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/fifteen-years/

I recently advertised my book on a billboard in Times Square. It was cheaper than you think, and was up for less time than you might expect. But it’s still paying dividends. Times Square is a big deal (duh) Times Square is the epitome of mainstream success. The biggest brands have locations there, and any big brand you can name advertises there. 350,000 people walk through Times Square on a typical day. It’s also one of the most-photographed places on Earth, with many of those photos and videos being shared on television shows such as Good Morning America, and on TikTok or Instagram. A lowly self-published book advertised next to the biggest brands When my friend, Robbie Abed, told me you can advertise in Times Square for cheap, I knew I had to run an ad for Mind Management, Not Time Management. A book about a new approach to time management, in a city obsessed with time management, in a place with “time” right in the name? It was a match made in heaven! The very thought of my lowly self-published book advertised on the front of Forever 21, above a Sunglass Hut, across from the Disney store, next to McDonald’s, in Times Square made me laugh the maniacal laughter of an evil villain plotting to take over the world – in some Disney movie, of course. Will a billboard sell books? Before I explain how I advertised in Times Square for cheap, I’m sure some of you are thinking, “Will advertising on a billboard sell books?” You’re right to think that since people are walking or driving through Times Square, even if they noticed my billboard in this place that is nearly all billboards, they’re not going to stop what they’re doing, take out their phones, and order my book on Amazon. The making of a pseudo-event But that’s not the point. By advertising my book in Times Square, I was creating a “pseudo-event”. I talked about pseudo-events in my summary of Daniel J. Boorstin’s The Image on episode 257. A pseudo-event is a reality constructed just so it can be covered in media. By being covered in media, the constructed reality becomes reality. Pseudo-events can be funny, or horrifying. They can be based upon truth, or lies. But our media is full of them. Most “leaks” you see, every talk-show interview, and every planned event are pseudo-events. Instagram is one pseudo-event after another. Reality is constructed for media, and media constructs our reality. My book really was advertised in Times Square. My lowly self-published book really is a “big deal.” How much does a Times Square ad cost? People want to know, how much does it cost to advertise your book in Times Square? Some people guess five-thousand dollars. Some guess twenty-. I advertised my book on a Times Square billboard with Blip Billboards. Blip is a platform that lets you buy short displays of an ad on electronic billboards across the U.S. Each “blip” lasts fifteen seconds. I paid about nine cents per blip in tests I ran in Chicago, and had a blip run in Times Square for as little as twenty dollars. “As little as” twenty dollars? I’ll get into my exact costs in a bit. But first, was my pseudo-event worth it? Here are some of my wins from this fifteen-second ad so far. Win #1: A retweet from Tim Ferriss My first big win from my Times Square billboard was a retweet from Tim Ferriss. Tim Ferriss asks his podcast guests what message they would advertise to the world. I’ve always thought if I were asked that question, my answer would be the title of my book, Mind Management, Not Time Management. So, I made sure one of my billboards was as plain as possible. It just said, “Mind Management, Not Time Management.” Then, I shared a video of the billboard on Twitter, making sure to tag Tim (whom I’ve never met nor talked to). It was a long shot, but it worked. Tim retweeted it. Tim has 1.8 million followers. I did see a decent spike in sales. Hard to know if this was the cause, but I didn’t have competing promotions. Win #2: Speaking for the New York Public Library My second win was speaking for the New York Public Library. When I emailed my readers to let them know my book was advertised in Times Square, it turned out one reader organizes events for the New York Public Library. This reader was excited to hear about my book being advertised in Times Square, and this prompted them to invite me to speak over Zoom to the library’s audience. They promoted the event to their email list of one million subscribers, and the day before the event, my new friend there informed me that: The NYPL stocked all of my books, in paper, ebook, and audiobook formats. My event was featured on NYPL’s home page My book was selected as the NYPL Business Center’s “book of the month.” The video of my speaking event is now listed on the library’s CEO series page, along with talks by Marie Forleo, Seth Godin, and A.J. Jacobs. I also got a couple links to my website from nypl.org, high-authority links which boost my site in search rankings. Win #3: Advertising that paid for itself My third win is that some of my advertising paid for itself. And I don’t mean through book sales. If you sign up for Blip, you’ll get $25 free advertising credit. Some people have already used that link, and apparently spent enough for me to also earn a couple $50 credits, which reduced the price of my ads! Win #4: ? My Times Square ad came and went in a flash, but it continues to pay dividends I can’t predict. For example, in May I was telling someone at a conference in Phoenix about advertising in Times Square, and it turned out they had already seen one of my posts about it. There’s no telling who is reading this article, and what effect it will have on them. Like I talked about on episode 280, hidden complexity makes simple actions very powerful. Fun pseudo-events like this breed positive Black Swans. A pseudo-event lasts a moment, but lives on forever. A Times Square ad lasts a moment, but the photo, video, and story lasts forever. What did this cost? I advertised on a Times Square billboard for as little as $20, but what did this all cost in the end? Here’s the breakdown: Chicago test campaign: $65.58 (I ran some test campaigns in Chicago, to get familiar with the system.) Times Square campaign: $290 (I ran a small test, got impressions for as little as $20, but then increased my bids and budget to be sure the ad would run during a given time block.) Photographer: $200 (I got referred to a photographer from my friend, Robbie Abed, who had found them on Craigslist. I hired them for the one hour my ads were scheduled to run.) Blip referral credits: -$100 (A couple people must have used my referral link, and spent enough for me to get $50 in credits each.) Total cost: $455.58 This was a really fun campaign, and though the ROI isn’t as clear as the Amazon ads I talk about in my income reports, I think it’s safe to say it has been paying off, and still is. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »       Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/book-times-square-billboard/

In fifteen years as a self-employed creator, I’ve learned how to finish what matters. I follow a nine-step process that makes an easy-to-remember acronym, that also describes what this process does: E.R.A.S.E. F.E.A.R. Fear is Resistance Fear is at the root of most struggles to finish creative projects. Even when you think you’re merely getting interested in another project, that’s often fear masquerading as curiosity. Steven Pressfield calls it Resistance. It can cause the dreaded shiny object syndrome. But if you can break down most of the sources of fear, you can clear the way for decisive action. You can erase fear. The E.R.A.S.E. F.E.A.R process First, what does “erase fear” stand for? Envision the outcome Rehearse the process Ask questions Search for answers Enjoy the process Face the obstacles End perfectionism Assess the outcome Record the process A little more about each of those. 1. Envision the outcome. If you have a clear picture of the outcome you want, you can reverse-engineer your way to making it happen. Executing visions is a skill to work on, because we usually have a vision that outpaces our current abilities and resources. To get better at envisioning, work on your vision muscle. Practice having a vision, then carrying it out. You do this every time you cook a recipe or plan a party. Write down the outcome you’d like to see. Use the methodology I described on episode 245, about the avocado challenge, to rate your odds of success. 2. Rehearse the process. Once you have a vision, mentally rehearse the steps. Do you have any idea what steps to follow to make this vision a reality? I want “Goldilocks” fear in my projects. If you know exactly what to do, it won’t be fun. If you don’t know where to begin, you’ll be paralyzed. You want just the right amount of fear, to keep it interesting. If you’re too familiar with the process, ask yourself, How can you scale up your vision? If you’re too unfamiliar, ask yourself, How can you scale it down? 3. Ask questions about the gaps in your knowledge. Now you have a vision that challenges you just the right amount. There are parts of the process you don’t understand. These unknowns can be sources of fear: They could turn out to be way more complicated than you expected, which would put in jeopardy your ability to follow through. Write down the questions you have about the process. 4. Search for answers. Look at your questions about the process. Set aside time and energy to answer them. You can make a surprising amount of progress just guessing. Before you ask anyone else, ask yourself, How would I do this? You might find a new way of doing things. If too much is unknown, you may have to scale back your vision once again. If it’s all too easy, you may need to scale it up. But don’t get frustrated if you don’t find all the answers. You’ll learn them in the next step. 5. Enjoy the process. You’ve planned and worked to pick the right project. But you can’t go into it without some unknowns. Otherwise, by definition, it wouldn’t be a creative project. You’ll find the rest of the answers to your questions in the act of doing. This is where you need to do a little mental wrestling. Whatever fear you have, flip it over and slam it on its back. Turn that fear into excitement about discovery. If you’ve done the first four steps well, picking the right-sized project with the right amount of uncertainty, you’ll be able to pull this off. 6. Face the obstacles. As hard as you try to take on a project you can handle, you’re going to run into obstacles. Fear often manifests itself as convenient excuses. The most dangerous excuses are the true ones. Yes, your project hasn’t gone as planned or a bomb went off in your personal life, but that doesn’t mean this is impossible. Slaughter your scapegoats and move forward. Anything worth doing requires some grit. 7. End perfectionism. You’re nearing the end of your project. In fact, you could ship it right now. That is, if it weren’t for perfectionism. Perfectionism can turn the final five percent of a project into a hundred-five percent. Just when you put on one “final touch”, you notice another that needs to be improved. Part of this is due to the Finisher’s Paradox, which I talked about on episode 267: You learn in the process of a project, so by the end, you can already do better. Another part of it is fear. Fear makes you anxious. When you’re anxious, you notice imperfections. Some of those imperfections are figments of your imagination. You’ve done all you can up to this point to erase fear, but there’s still going to be some in the final stretch. Know perfectionism is there, and push through to ship. Like I talked about on episode 265, shipping is a skill. 8. Assess the outcome. Even though we’re done with the project, we’re not done erasing fear. Now that your project is out in the world, ask yourself, How did it turn out? Look back on the vision you wrote down, and your predictions about success. Does it fit that vision, and if not, why? What did you not foresee? What would you do differently next time? Write it down. 9. Record the process. Reflect on the actual process you followed. Write it down, and brainstorm how you might do it better next time. You now have a process you can follow, even if it’s just a Sloppy Operating Procedure, like I talked about on episode 224. Preparation is the antidote to fear. The next time you do a project like this, you can do it a little bigger, so you add a few unknowns to the new process that keep it interesting. Go forth and erase fear This process is exactly how I erase fear in my projects, whether it’s in the three books I’ve written, or more than 280 podcast episodes. I hope it works for you, too. Image: Broadway Boogie Woogie, by Piet Mondrian About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »       Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/erase-fear/

When Facebook was first expanding, they used a timeless military strategy to win their most-crucial first users. You can use this strategy to attack your toughest projects, by leveraging hidden complexity to lend devastating power to simple actions. Facebook faced tough competitors When Facebook was starting, in the mid-aughts, it was only available at colleges. It wasn’t easy to win new users on campuses that had their own social networks. Who wants to join the network nobody is on? That’s not where you find the big parties. That’s not how you spy on your crush. There was no point in promoting to students who already had better alternatives. Facebook would waste their limited resources, driving themselves out of business. There were plenty of competitors they needed to outlast. An established network at a college was a barrier to winning over any user at that college – a “defense,” if you will. Facebook needed to break through those barriers. The surround strategy: Attack from the flanks So they used what they called a “surround strategy”. Instead of directly trying to get users on a given campus, they got them indirectly. The strategy that decimated the Roman army 1800 years ago Facebook’s surround strategy was borrowed from the “pincer” military strategy. When you’re up against an opponent with strong defenses, it’s often not the best use of your resources to attack them head-on. It’s better to focus on the flanks. Hannibal used a pincer strategy in one of the greatest military upsets in history, at the Battle of Cannae, in 216 B.C., sending the Roman empire into a panic. As the Romans attacked from a concentrated center, the center of Hannibal’s forces fell back, creating a “crescent” shape that helped them attack the flanks. Eventually, Hannibal had the Romans surrounded. The Romans lost so many men that day, they had to lower the draft age to replenish their forces, and they reverted to using human sacrifices to try to please the gods. How Facebook won key users indirectly Facebook used this pincer strategy to indirectly win users at Baylor University, in Texas, which already had its own social network. Instead of promoting Facebook to users at Baylor, they focused on campuses near Baylor There weren’t already competing social networks at UT Arlington, a one and a half-hour drive to the north; Southwestern University, a one-hour drive to the southwest; and Texas A&M, a one and a half-hour drive to the southeast. To get the dirt on their exes, they needed to be on Facebook While Facebook wasn’t wasting resources trying to get Baylor students to switch social networks, those students started to hear about Facebook, anyway. The students in these surrounding colleges were former high-school classmates of the Baylor students. They were driving to one another’s campuses to bong beers and eat jello shots. They were hearing rumors their high-school sweethearts were getting naked with half the campus. They were laughing maniacally upon hearing the former bully was found passed out, naked with an armadillo. To get the dirt, to creep on one another’s profiles, or, sometimes to just stay in touch, they too needed Facebook accounts. So, without any promotion at Baylor, Facebook started winning users at Baylor. The birthday problem reveals the hidden complexity that make the surround strategy work This surround strategy works better than people expect it to. To understand why, think about the birthday problem, which I talked about on episode 237. How many people have to be in a room for a fifty-percent chance two of them have the same birthday? Most people guess 180 or 150, but the real answer: only twenty-three. The odds of shared birthdays climb rapidly as you add the first few dozen people to the room. Network effects between each person’s potential birthdates quickly add potential matches. Adding one person to a room of twenty people doesn’t add just one potential match, it adds twenty. Network effects...outside the network Facebook’s surround strategy leveraged these network effects. The colleges they focused on didn’t have social networks, so Facebook quickly became very appealing, as they added users. Meanwhile, Facebook also became more appealing to the students at Baylor. Who wants to use a social network that only has students from your college?! With each new user Facebook added in a neighboring campus, they added multiple contacts to potential new users at Baylor. After someone heard about Facebook enough times, they had to sign up. As Hannibal’s men surrounded Rome’s, there were more angles from which each soldier on Hannibal’s front could attack soldiers on Rome’s front, but not vice-versa. A complementary strategy to the pincer is also the “pocket,” or isolating small portions of a battalion to conquer them bit by bit. Surround & conquer your dreams Now, how can you use this surround strategy on some of your biggest and most-intimidating visions? When you want to accomplish something that’s too big to attack head-on, use the surround strategy to break down the project’s defenses. Here’s how to surround, and conquer, your toughest projects: Make a list of all the things you’d need to know or have to accomplish your goal. Brainstorm ways you could learn those skills or gain those resources with smaller projects. Take on the smaller projects that are most interesting to you, or that use your existing resources. As you take on these smaller projects related to your target project, network effects take over. The skills and resources you gain will make the larger project seem easier than it would otherwise, and you get some successes to build your confidence along the way, and learn the skill of shipping, like I talked about on episode 265. Surround & conquer Shakespeare Here’s a very simple example: Let’s say you want to read a Shakespeare play, but you can’t keep track of what everyone is saying in that language that doth make one scratch one’s head. Do this: Watch the movie. Read the Wikipedia page. Listen to the podcast. Finally, read the play. By staking out the easier-to-conquer territory in your mind, it’s easier to conquer the more-fortified territory, and run back for supplies – or a reminder of what the heck is going on, based upon the other ways you’ve heard the story. How creators surround & conquer Other creators use the surround strategy, whether they say so, or not. Before the Steves Jobs and Wozniak built their first Mac, they worked on “blue boxes” they used to tap into phone networks and make prank calls. It was just a fun and mischievous and illegal project, but it helped build their collaborative relationship on something smaller and less complex. Henry Ford got a job working on steam engines, while running experiments in his garage to perfect the internal combustion engine. He made a living gaining the background he needed, and making connections with potential investors, while on nights and weekends he tinkered on the finer details. Michelangelo didn’t paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling from scratch. He had libraries of plaster-casted drapery and terra cotta body parts he mixed and matched to draw compelling figures in his scenes. How I use the surround strategy I, personally, use the surround strategy whenever I can. For example, I want to write fiction, though I’m not a huge fiction reader myself. But, I do like movies. So, I’ve been reading screenplays of my favorite movies and reading the novels those movies are based upon, while dabbling in short stories under a pen name, and working on my storytelling skills in my non-fiction writing whenever possible. I’m learning to love fiction, while working on my fiction-writing skills. In fact, all my work is a surround strategy for conquering new books. Each of my tweets, my weekly Love Mondays newsletters, my podcast episodes and articles and notes in my Zettelkasten, are experiments with progressively larger ideas, the best of which build into a book every few years or so. Go forth and conquer The next time you’re dreaming about something that seems impossible, surround it with projects that are possible. Then, your bigger dreams will be easier to conquer. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »       Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/surround-conquer/

Industrial Society and Its Future, is otherwise known as “The Unabomber Manifesto,” written by Ted Kaczynski. Kaczynsnki is a terrorist who killed three people, and injured twenty-three others, by sending bombs through the mail, between 1978 and 1995. He used his terror campaign to exploit the negativity bias of media and pressure the Washington Post and New York Times into publishing his 35,000-word anti-technology manifesto. Obviously, what Kaczynski did was horrible, but his manifesto is a thought-provoking, albeit extreme, perspective on technology. And so here is my summary of Industrial Society and Its Future. Leftism creeps towards totalitarianism The manifesto begins with a seemingly out-of-place rant about leftism creeping toward totalitarianism: According to Kaczynski, leftists have low self-esteem, are defeatist, and hate themselves. They hate success, and feel the groups they try to protect are inferior. They are overburdened by guilt over their natural drives, and so want to turn into issues of morality things that don’t have anything to do with morality, such as policing the use of words to which they themselves have applied negative connotations. Anti-left is not far-right When people hear anti-leftism, they tend to assume the person with those views is far-right. But it’s worth noting that’s not Kaczynski’s view. A quote, for example: [Leftists] want to preserve African American culture. But in what does this preservation of African American culture consist? It can hardly consist in anything more than eating black-style food, listening to black-style music, wearing black-style clothing and going to a black- style church or mosque. In other words, it can express itself only in superficial matters. In all ESSENTIAL respects most leftists of the oversocialized type want to make the black man conform to white, middle-class ideals. In sum, Kaczynski is anti-left, because ultimately leftists still work to preserve the industrial system. This appears to come out of “left-field,” but the meat of the manifesto is more coherent, and later we’ll better understand why he brought up his views on leftism. Industrial society robs us of the “Power Process” As industrial society progresses, Kaczynski says, people lose more and more freedom. This makes them miserable, because it robs them of what he calls the “power process.” The power process consists of four main elements: A goal Effort put forth toward that goal The attainment of that goal Autonomy in pursuit of that goal To be happy, a person needs goals that require effort, a reasonable rate of success in achieving those goals, and personal control throughout that process. We replace the power process with “surrogate activities” You might think we, in industrial society, have many goals we pursue and attain through effort, but Kaczynski says we merely pursue what he calls “surrogate activities.” Surrogate activities are artificial goals, because they aren’t for the purposes of meeting our basic biological needs, and so aren’t totally fulfilling. He says we merely think surrogate activities, such as our jobs, are fulfilling, because we have to do very little in industrial society to meet our basic biological needs – such as eating, or having shelter. So, we’ve never felt true fulfillment. All we do is either easy or impossible He says there are three kinds of drives we experience in the pursuit of goals: 1) minimal effort, 2) serious effort and 3) impossible. The power process, he says, is more about group two, or serious effort. Our surrogate activities require minimal effort. But at the same time, many other things are impossible in industrial society, because we don’t have control over them. For example, our security depends upon decisions made by others, such as safety standards at a nuclear power plant, how much pesticide is in our foods, and how much pollution is in our air. Somebody else makes these decisions for us, and in many cases we can’t even know if what we’re being told is true. As technology grants freedoms, it takes them away He points out that technology seems to grant us freedoms, but it really takes them away. As each advance in technology is collectively accepted, we lose control in some new area. Cars have become so ubiquitous you can’t walk in many places. So you need to get further integrated into the industrial system by getting a drivers’ license, insurance, and registration. Or, you can take the bus and have even less freedom. As we’re increasingly able to alter our genes, it will become harder to enforce a code of ethics. First, genetic engineering will be used to treat genetic diseases, then further alterations will be seen as “good.” The upper class will decide what’s good or not, until we have a genetically-engineered upper class, and a distantly-lower class taking genetic rolls of the dice. (This is already happening, as gene splicing is being used to treat diseases such as sickle-cell anemia, meanwhile a scientist in China crossed the agreed-upon ethics line and genetically-engineered children.) We’ll outsource decisions to computers, until we no longer understand ourselves the decisions the computers are making. So we’ll keep them running to keep the system afloat. At that point, the machines will be in control. Kaczynski thinks mood-altering drugs are over-prescribed, often just to deal with the psychological stress of living in industrial society. If more people need, say, antidepressants to tolerate living in a depressing world, that world is then allowed to get even more depressing, until the drugs are a requirement. (This reminds me of the soma everyone in modern society takes in the dystopian science-fiction book, Brave New World. That book has also been made into a series.) My thoughts: Coronavirus and the power process I couldn’t help but think about this loss of control Kaczynski describes as I watched people’s behavior during the coronavirus pandemic. While I personally chose to follow protocols and get a vaccine, it was an interesting moment when industrial society clashed with individual autonomy. To sustain industrial society – which is so ubiquitous it’s impossible to “opt-out” – institutions deemed it necessary to make blanket decisions on the behalf of individuals. Some people weren’t cool with that. Whether their reasoning made logical sense was irrelevant – the emotional roots of their reactions were understandable. Industrial society and the gig economy One thought-provoking quote from the manifesto sounds like a prediction of the gig economy. It has been suggested, for example, that a great development of the service industries might provide work for human beings. Thus people would spent [sic] their time shining each other’s shoes, driving each other around in taxicabs, making handicrafts for one another, waiting on each other’s tables, etc. This seems to [me] a thoroughly contemptible way for the human race to end up, and [I] doubt that many people would find fulfilling lives in such pointless busy-work. They would seek other, dangerous outlets (drugs, crime, “cults,” hate groups) unless they were biologically or psychologically engineered to adapt them to such a way of life. Industrial society makes us fear mortality Your immediate reaction might be that industrial society is worth the lack of control. It increases average lifespan, and prevents early deaths from infant mortality, disease, or relatively easy fixes, such as an appendicitis. Kaczynski says our obsession with longevity and staying youthful is a symptom of our lack of fulfillment, due to the disruption of the power process. If we lived lives full of autonomous struggle toward goals that directly met our biological needs, we would be more at peace with aging and death. A quote: It is not the primitive man, who has used his body daily for practical purposes, who fears the deterioration of age, but the modern man, who has never had a practical use for his body beyond walking from his car to his house. Activism is a surrogate activity He then ties the disruption of the power process back to his criticism of leftism. He says leftists’ surrogate activity is activism, or joining social movements. They have a goal, and struggle toward achieving that goal, but they’ll never be satisfied. This, he says, is how leftism creeps toward totalitarianism. Once one goal is achieved, another will be invented. The proposed plan: let the system destroy itself His entire manifesto is written from the perspective of “we.” He poses as a group of people called “FC,” standing for “Freedom Club,” and presents a strategy for his goal of destroying industrial society, and replacing it with primitive society. Kaczynski points out that modernity separates us from our local communities. We break ties to family and move, so we can work a job, in the name of efficiency. He advocates for living in small groups, and growing his anti-technology movement by having as many children as possible. The conflict line: masses vs. power-holding elites Interestingly, he says to draw the conflict line in this movement between the masses and the power-holding elites, and cautions specifically against turning it into a conflict between those who are revolutionaries and those who are not. This is some impressive strategic thinking, as it was also mentioned in the book, Blueprint for Revolution. I interviewed the author, Srdja Popovic, on episode 179. Popovic pointed out, for example, that Occupy Wall Street was a poorly-branded movement, because it drew a conflict line between those who could participate by camping out in the financial district, and those who could not. Calling it “the 99%” would have drawn a more effective conflict line. Don’t strive for political power Counterintuitively, Kaczynski advises to not try to gain political power. He says that if the “green” party were to get voted into office, it would cause massive unemployment, they would get voted out of office, and it would turn people off to the party. He supported free trade agreements such as NAFTA, because he felt it would further integrate the industrial system, making it more likely it would collapse, and causing such a collapse to be more widespread. He says to be anti-left – and this is where we start to see the motives behind his seemingly-out-of-place opening rant. He doesn’t want to see leftists take over his movement, because he thinks they would replace the goal of eliminating modern technology with their own goals. He says leftists will never give up technology because ultimately they crave power. Basically, he doesn’t want to work within any existing structures of industrial society. He instead wants to see living in industrial society get so bad that the hardships can only be blamed on the system. Small-scale technology is more robust than large-scale He says small-scale technology is robust to shocks – local things such as planting crops, raising livestock, or making clothes. He points out that when the Roman Empire fell, people in villages could still make a water wheel or steel. But the aqueducts were never rebuilt, their road-construction techniques were lost, and urban sanitation was forgotten. Media manipulation, aka, why the Unabomber killed people Many people these days are surprised to find out that the Unabomber Manifesto contains intelligent and coherent ideas. They merely think of Ted Kaczynski as a mentally-ill murderer. If he’s so intelligent, why did he kill people? In the manifesto itself, Kaczynski explains that he felt this was the only way to get his message out. He reasons that if he had merely submitted his writings to a publisher, they would have been rejected. If they had been published, they wouldn’t have attracted readers, because everyone is too distracted by entertainment. So, he says, “In order to get our message before the public with some chance of making a lasting impression, we’ve had to kill people.” Our obsession with violence caused violence As explained in my Trust Me, I’m Lying summary, humans have a negativity bias, and so media has a negativity bias. Ironically, this is a case where our paranoia about negative events apparently caused negative events. Newspapers and news shows covered Kaczynski’s terror campaign for more than fifteen years, until he sent his manuscript, typed on a typewriter, to several newspapers, essentially saying: Publish this, and I’ll stop killing people. What Kaczynski did to get coverage makes the tactics Ryan Holiday confessed to look like actions of a saint. His bombings were “pseudo-events” with very real consequences. Assuming this was truly Kaczynski’s strategy – and not a backwards-rationalization he came up with after doing what he simply wanted to do – was it an effective strategy? His reputation precedes him, such that people resist taking his manifesto seriously, given what he did. While he got his words published, even nearly thirty years after his last bombing, it’s hard to see his words through the dark cloud of his crimes. The manifesto helped catch the Unabomber Publishing the manifesto was an effective strategy for law enforcement in catching Kaczynski. Attorney General Janet Reno gave the okay for the Post and Times to publish the manifesto. This put it in front of enough people the FBI was finally able to identify the anonymous killer. Kaczynski’s brother’s wife recognized him from what he said in the manifesto. Was this the explosion before the implosion? Reading Kaczynski, I can’t help but wonder, If he could have held off a little longer or been born in a different time, might he might have been able to tolerate society? Kaczynski’s terror campaign spanned a peak in what Marshall McLuhan calls “mechanical technology.” As his campaign was ending, in 1995, the internet was proliferating – an “electric technology.” This was a world where having a job meant commuting to an office, following a dress code, and working within a hierarchical organization. Once you were home, your only contact with others besides your family or people you called on the phone was media fed to you through your television or radio, or through objects that had to be transported, such as paper books, magazines, records, or VHS tapes. The internet has de-mechanized our world But the internet has further de-mechanized our world. More creators, such as myself, work with near-complete autonomy, outside of traditional hierarchies. People connect with one another around interests. We communicate without borders. As Marshall McLuhan described in Understanding Media (which I summarized on episode 248), mechanical technology “explodes” our world – an unfortunate but apt metaphor in this context. Mechanical technology compromises our individuality to turn us into cogs that fit together, while electric technology “implodes,” allowing our individuality to once again blossom. In 1998, the Washington Post reported that Kaczynski nearly confessed to a psychologist, in the late 60s, that he fantasized about being a woman. He didn’t confess, and later cited that as the moment he decided to become violent. Maybe if his gender dysphoria had been more acceptable, his path may have been different? Today’s society may not be the small-scale society Kaczynski envisioned, and this electric implosion certainly has its problems, especially as it conflicts with the structures in place from the mechanical world. But, maybe it would be just a little less pressure, so as to prevent trying to blow up the place. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »       Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/industrial-society-and-its-future-summary/

There are some invisible structures in language, and using them can be the difference between your message being forgotten or living through the ages. These are The Elements of Eloquence, which is the title of Mark Forsyth’s book. I first picked this up a couple years ago, and have read it several times since then. I think it’s one of the best writing books, and has dramatically improved my writing. Here is my summary of The Elements of Eloquence: Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase. How powerful could this stuff be? Can hidden patterns in language really be the difference between being remembered and forgotten? The technical term for the study of these patterns is “rhetoric,” and yes, it can make a big difference. Misremembered phrases While it’s hard to find data on what has been forgotten – see 99.9% of everything ever said or written – there are examples of things that have been misremembered. You’ve heard the expression, “blood, sweat, and tears.” That comes from a Winston Churchill speech. He actually said he had “nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.” Remember when, in The Wizard of Oz, the Wicked Witch of the West said, “Fly, my pretties, fly!”? Well, it never happened. She actually merely exclaimed “Fly!” four times in a row. The line remembered as “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”, was actually "Heav'n has no rage, like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury, like a woman scorned." I’ll get into some theories about why these phrases were misremembered in a bit. Non-sensical expressions You can also see evidence of the power of rhetoric in expressions that have spread through culture. Sometimes they don’t make literal sense, but have appealing patterns. It “takes two to tango,” but why not “it takes two to waltz”? People go “whole hog,” but why not “whole pig”? Why “cool as a cucumber”? Why “dead as a doornail”? Alliteration You may have noticed these phrases all have alliteration, which is the simplest of rhetorical forms. You’re probably already familiar with it. All you have to do to use alliteration is start a couple words in a phrase with the same letter. I’ve noticed some evidence of the power of alliteration looking at expressions across English and Spanish. For example, if you directly translated “the tables have turned,” which is said often, nobody would know what you were talking about. But they would understand if you directly translated “the things have changed,” which nobody says. In Spanish, that’s “las cosas han cambiado.” See? Alliteration. Tricolon So, why was Winston Churchill’s quote misremembered as “blood, sweat, and tears.” Forsyth thinks it was probably because the tricolon is more appealing than the tetracolon. A tricolon is when three things are listed, a tetracolon, four. Famous tricolons include, “Eat, drink, and be merry,” and “It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s superman.” Barack Obama’s short victory speech in 2008 had twenty-one tricolons. Forsyth points out that tricolons seem to be more memorable if the first two things are short and closely-related, and the final thing is longer and a little more abstract. Like, “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Isocolon Tricolon is three things, tetracolon is four, so is isocolon just one? In a way. An isocolon is not one thing, but one structure, repeated two times. For example, “Roses are red. Violets are blue.” Epizeuxis When you do repeat one thing, that’s called epizeuxis. So, when the Wicked Witch of the West said, “Fly! Fly! Fly! Fly!,” that was epizeuxis, but it didn’t turn out to be memorable. Diacope People think the Wicked Witch of the West said “Fly, my pretties, fly!” That structure is called a diacope, which is essentially a verbal sandwich. It’s one word or phrase, then another word or phrase, then that same word or phrase once again. So “Burn, baby burn,” from the song “Disco Inferno” was diacope, and so was one of the most famous lines in film, “Bond. James Bond.” Why do people think the Wicked Witch of the West said, “Fly, my pretties, fly!”? Probably not only because diacope is a more memorable form than epizeuxis, but also because there’s other diacope in the film, such as “Run, Toto. Run!” Zeugma So, why did the phrase “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” live on? I notice there’s some alliteration in the phrase (“Hell hath...”), but Forsyth doesn’t attribute any rhetorical structures to the phrase. However – besides the sweeping generalization about women that can’t help but tickle the tribal human mind – the actual, original phrase came in the form of zeugma. Zeugma is using one verb to apply action to multiple clauses. So if you write “Tom likes whisky, Dick vodka, Harry crack cocaine,” you’re using the verb “likes” one time for all three clauses, instead of repeating it. So the original phrase was from a seventeenth-century play called The Mourning Bride, and, once again, went “Heav’n has no rage, like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury, like a woman scorned.” The having is attributed to both heaven and hell, which makes it a zeugma. Ironically, Forsyth points out, there’s a few phrases using zeugma that aren’t remembered as such. So zeugma is memorable, but it’s not. My personal theory is zeugmas take more attention to process. They make you stop and read it again. That extra attention helps us remember, but our memories are simplistic. This is something I get to see firsthand when people tell me they’ve read one of my books. You’d be amazed the different variations the human mind puts on simple titles such as The Heart to Start or Mind Management, Not Time Management. Chiasmus We’ve established that alliteration is pretty powerful for creating memorable phrases, and we’ve talked about why some short phrases are misremembered. But what about longer pieces of prose? The most powerful rhetorical form for a full sentence has to be the chiasmus. The word chiasmus comes from the Greek letter, “chi,” which is shaped like an X. So, chiasmus is when language crosses over. For example, when the three musketeers said, “One for all, and all for one,” that was chiasmus. The structure is ABBA, which happens to also be the name of a band that didn’t do too poorly. Politicians use chiasmus a lot. Hillary Clinton said, in her bid for president, “The true test is not the speeches a president delivers, it’s whether the president delivers on the speeches.” Forsyth points out that JFK’s inauguration speech was “chiasmus crazy.” Having watched it on YouTube, I have to agree, there’s enough chiasmus to make you dizzy. But at least one of those phrases lived on: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” One chiasmus I’ve noticed – on a more granular level – is in the title of The Four Hour Work Week. It’s a chiasmus of assonance – assonance being the repetition of vowel sounds. It goes, E-O-O-O-E: The Four Hour Work Week. Mix that in with a little alliteration (“Work Week”), and a promise you can’t ignore (working four hours a week), and you’ve got a book title with a chance to be a hit. Anadiplosis, Epistrophe, Anaphora A few more rhetorical forms that have to do with the order of words within clauses: anadiplosis, epistrophe, and anaphora. Anadiplosis is repeating the last word or phrase of a clause as the first word or phrase of the next. Yoda used anadiplosis when he said, “Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” Malcolm X used anadiplosis of phrases when he said, “Once you change your philosophy, you change your thought pattern. Once you change your thought pattern, you change your attitude.” That’s also anaphora, which is starting each sentence or clause with the same words. Anaphora was also used in the Bible: “A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted,” which just sounds wrong if you’re more used to the adaptation of this in the song, “Turn! Turn! Turn!”, by The Byrds. Now, if you end each clause, sentence, or paragraph with the same word or phrase, that’s something different. That’s called epistrophe. Dean Martin used epistrophe, singing, “When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, That's amore. When the world seems to shine like you've had too much wine, That's amore.” Honorable mention There’s of course much more to The Elements of Eloquence. The terms for these rhetorical forms are intimidating and hard to remember, but Mark Forsyth weaves together his descriptions with incredible, well, eloquence. Some other forms that deserve honorable mention: Syllepsis: using a word one time, but in two different ways. “Make love not war,” is a subtle syllepsis. Polyptoton: using a word twice, as both a noun and an adjective. “Please please me” was a polyptoton. Hendiadys: using an adjective as a noun, such as if you were to say, “I’m going to the noise and the city.” Merism: referring to the parts, rather than the whole, such as when you say, “ladies and gentlemen.” Metonymy: using a thing or place to represent something that thing or place is connected to, such as if you were to say, “Downing street was left red-faced last night at news that the White House was planning to attack the British Crown with the support of Wall Street.” There’s your Elements of Eloquence summary There’s my summary of The Elements of Eloquence. There’s a lot more in the book about bringing eloquence to longer passages of text, such as through rhythmical structures like iambic pentameter. Will using these structures automatically make your writing great? No, in fact if you practice these structures, your writing will probably be a little strange at first. But you’re probably already using some of these concepts, and with some knowledge and practice, you can use them more adeptly. The Elements of Eloquence is a fantastic writing book. I read it over and over. I highly recommend it. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/elements-of-eloquence-summary/

In Trust Me, I’m Lying, Ryan Holiday reveals the media manipulation tactics he used as Marketing Director of American Apparel, and for his PR clients. Meanwhile, he exposes the inner workings of a modern media machine in which incentives make it impossible for the version of reality depicted in the media to come close to resembling the truth. I think it’s Holiday’s best book, and one of the best media studies books. So, here, in my own words, is my Trust Me, I’m Lying summary. Yes, this book is about lying Before Ryan Holiday became known as an author of modern stoicism books, he dropped out of college at nineteen to apprentice under 48 Laws of Power author, Robert Green. He later was the marketing director for American Apparel, and now has a PR agency, Brass Check, where he advises corporate clients and authors. As the title of the book suggests, the tactics Holiday confesses to might make your skin crawl. They involve deliberate provocation, bribery, impersonation, and – since it’s called Trust Me, I’m Lying – making stuff up. But everyone should read it This may turn people off to the book, but if you’re an author, marketer, entrepreneur, musician, filmmaker, or comedian, you’re in the business of trying to get your message into the world. So, ignore this book at your own peril. The people with whom you compete for attention are using these tactics. Understanding these tactics is a good way to understand the mechanics of media. You can use this knowledge to get your message out in less nefarious ways (more on that later). And, if you’re someone who thinks it’s your duty to read the news, to “stay informed,” you owe it to yourself to read this book. But be prepared to have that belief challenged, and your conception of reality altered. Media is a “racket” Holiday describes the modern media system as a “racket,” the word which Major General Smedley D. Butler once used to describe war. He defined it as something “where only a small group of insiders know what’s really going on and they operate for the benefit of a few and at the expense of basically everyone else.” Journalists are poor, busy, and desperate for a story The main insider in the modern media system is the journalist, more generally, a “blogger,” who might be someone writing articles for a small blog, or even a major media outlet such as the Huffington Post. Holiday uses “blogger” and “journalist,” interchangeably, and I will, too. Journalists are poor To help you understand the motivations of many of these journalists, Holiday points out this: They might have gone to an expensive grad school, and now live in a big, expensive city, such as NYC, San Francisco, or Washington D.C. They’ve been close enough to taste a $200,000-a-year journalism job. But now they’re churning out articles at a breakneck pace, without even getting health insurance. Meanwhile, the people they cover are rich and successful, and may include talentless reality TV stars. New York magazine called the result “the rage of the creative underclass.” Journalists are busy These bloggers have to write a face-melting amount of content. When journalist Bekah Grant left VentureBeat, she wrote a post saying she averaged five posts a day – more than 1,700 articles in twenty months. Henry Blodget, founder of Business Insider, said his bloggers need to generate three times their salary, benefits, and overhead costs to be worth hiring. So, an employee making sixty-thousand dollars a year needs to produce 1.8 million page views a month, every month. (1.8 million page views is a lot. At my current traffic, it takes me about a decade to generate that much on my blog, and I make more than sixty-thousand dollars a year.) Journalists are desperate for a story Most sites that journalists write for make their money from ads, and the way to make money from ads is to generate page views. As such, many journalists are paid by the page view. I’ve personally heard this from a friend who worked for a newspaper with a good reputation, covering news for a major city. So, journalists are desperate for a story that will generate page views. So, if you give them a juicy story that will generate page views, they will generally publish it. They’re too busy to fact check it, and since they’re compensated by the page view, they aren’t motivated to care whether or not it’s true. Readers want to be entertained, and don’t care what’s true So you’ve got poor, busy, and desperate journalists paid by the page view, and the people they’re writing for want to be entertained. Negativity attracts attention In 2010, Jonah Berger analyzed 7,000 articles from the New York Times’ most-emailed list. He found that the best predictor of virality was: how much anger does the article evoke? Increasing the anger rating of an article had two-and-a-half times the impact of increasing its positivity rating. The human mind is irresistibly attracted to negativity. When subjects of a study were shown footage of war, airplane crashes, and natural disasters, they paid more attention and remembered more than non-negative footage. Corrections don’t work Negativity attracts page views, so journalists want juicy stories, and don’t care if they’re true – and neither do readers, it seems. One study found that when people were shown a fake article with a correction at the bottom, they were more likely to believe it than those who saw an article without a correction. (Note from me: this finding hasn’t been consistent across other studies. (Is that a correction you believe?) In any case, people’s beliefs are still resistant to contrary facts.) Despite this, online news outlets are financially motivated to publish stories, whether they’re true or not. A Gawker reporter once said, “Gawker believes that publicly airing rumors out is usually the quickest way to get to the truth,” going on to say, “Let’s acknowledge that we can’t vouch for the veracity or truth of the rumors we’ll be sharing here.” Journalists are motivated to publish false stories, and, as Holiday points out, “While the internet allows content to be written iteratively, the audience does not read or consume it iteratively.” In other words, they see the story, not the correction. Media manipulation strategy: Trading up the chain Holiday shares nine media manipulation tactics in the book, but they all essentially serve the strategy that Holiday calls, “trading up the chain.” And trading up the chain is something you can do, even without lying. The chain Here’s how it works: Get coverage on smaller outlets. Those stories then get covered on mid-level outlets. Finally, major outlets pick up stories from the mid-level outlets. Smaller outlets can be individual blogs, social media, or local websites that cover a neighborhood or scene. Mid-level outlets are blogs of newspapers or local television stations. They can also be “sister sites” of bigger outlets, so they might be affiliated with Newsweek, or CBS. Major outlets are the big ones, like the New York Times, CNN, or The Today Show. It’s easy to get coverage on the small outlets It’s easy to get coverage on smaller outlets, Holiday says. If there’s a bigger outlet on which you want coverage, review stories for patterns. What are the stories about? Is there a smaller outlet where stories consistently show up before stories on the bigger outlet? The smaller the outlet, the less they fact-check Holiday says the smaller an outlet is, the less they fact check. This is where the lying comes in. Holiday confesses to creating fake email accounts to send tips to bloggers, leaking fake internal memos, and having his assistant pose as him over email and even over the phone. You don’t even have to start with the small outlets. Holiday says he successfully “conned” reporters from Reuter’s, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, The Today Show, and the New York Times. Using HARO, or “Help a Reporter Out” – which is an email list reporters use to find story sources – he found journalists who were looking for experts on various subjects. Holiday isn’t an expert on, say, vinyl record collecting, but these reporters were presumably on deadlines, and so not inclined to fact check. Holiday says he did it as a stunt to prove how ridiculous he thinks HARO is, and points out that even after he publicly embarrassed these outlets, they continue to use the service. Subprime truth One of my favorite observations from the book is that the fuzziness of truth in the media is like the subprime mortgage crisis. During the subprime mortgage crisis, banks sold loans to other banks, who sold those to other banks. These loans were rated by ratings agencies that were overwhelmed, and driven by conflicts of interest. One example of false information in the media Holiday seized upon was when a journalist misinterpreted the Wikipedia page of Holiday’s client, Tucker Max. Holiday had written Max’s page to show that his book had been on the New York Times best-seller list for some period of time in each of three consecutive years. The journalist apparently read that, then wrote a story saying Max’s book had been on the best-seller list for three years. That was wrong, but Holiday ran with it, updating the Wikipedia page to say Max’s book had, indeed, been on the list for three years, citing the incorrect article as proof. (The Wikipedia page has since been corrected.) Like the subprime mortgage crisis, in the news media, overwhelmed and conflicted reporters write stories, which are then picked up by other overwhelmed and conflicted reporters. In Balaji Srinivasan’s second appearance on the Tim Ferriss show, which I summarized on episode 274, he describes how a different kind of chain could ensure verifiable truth gets traded up the chain – in this case, a blockchain. Pseudo-events By getting a story into one outlet, then “trading up the chain” to get it covered in another, you’re creating a “pseudo-event.” If you remember my summary of The Image on episode 257, author Daniel J. Boorstin describes pseudo-events as fake events that are deliberately placed in the news, so that they become real. Holiday created a lot of pseudo-events for Max when his movie based upon his book, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, was debuting. He bought ads in newspapers around the country, then sent anonymous complaints to the newspapers, leaking those complaints to blogs, to get coverage. He notified college LGBT and women’s rights groups of screenings, so they would protest at theaters and the nightly news would cover it. He bought a billboard, defaced it, and reported it to journalists to get news coverage. It seems almost certain that the Russian Internet Research Agency read Holiday’s book. They spent many years – and probably still are – hacking public opinion in the U.S. and in other countries, creating Facebook pages for various causes, “astroturfing” those pages with activity from fake profiles, then using that influence make real-life events happen. For example, in 2016 they organized opposing protests – one through the Facebook group, “Heart of Texas,” the other for “United Muslims of America” – at the same time, on the same day, across the street from each other. Trading sensationalism up the chain for free advertising Holiday says his “leveraged advertising strategy” of running sensational ads for American Apparel just to get news coverage was responsible for 50% growth in online sales in three years with “a miniscule ad budget.” He says he deliberately designed ads that would inspire outrage: dressing up kids like adults, putting clothes on dogs, or writing ad copy that didn’t make sense. When he couldn’t use some promotional Halloween costume photos, because of copyright concerns, he had one of his employees leak them to Gawker and Jezebel, where they were covered in an article that got ninety-thousand views. He ran ads on small websites, featuring porn actress Sasha Grey, completely nude. The ads were covered by Nerve, Buzzfeed, Fast Company, Jezebel, and more. All this coverage for just $1,200 in ads (though it’s not clear how much he paid Grey). He says, “my strategy has always been: If I want to be written about, I do things they have to write about.” This is how, according to Holiday, Donald Trump got $4.6 billion of free publicity during his presidential campaign. Pseudo-events for reputational damage control Because of the way the media works, Holiday says if a client of his is in trouble, the best strategy is to create what’s essentially a pseudo-event. A major newspaper wrote a hit piece on a client of Holiday’s. The journalist who wrote the hit piece was also running a hate blog about the client’s company on the side. The client complained to the journalist’s editor, but they didn’t seem to care. So, Holiday advised his client to write an internal memo to his company, then forward that memo to a competing outlet, which published an article with the memo. The memo was apparently quite damning, because the original newspaper had no choice but to respond. Because bloggers aren’t incentivized to care about the truth, and readers are attracted to drama, Holiday says there’s no point in trying to correct something that’s been said about you in the media. If you want to try, he says, “be prepared to have to be an obsequious douche. You’ve got to flatter bloggers into thinking that somehow the mistake wasn’t their fault.” Ways of using these tactics that are less...gross I personally can’t judge Holiday for using these tactics. The medium is the message; as one of Holiday’s chapters proclaims, “everyone else is doing it”; and there’s no denying that Holiday is good at getting coverage for himself and his clients. But, I’m probably not the only one uncomfortable with impersonating others and lying to get coverage. You can still learn a lot from Trust Me, I’m Lying. Trade up the chain Trading up the chain is a completely legitimate tactic. If you want coverage somewhere, pay attention to where they get their story ideas, and what stories they like to cover. This applies to influencers, too. I no longer interview people on this podcast, but I get so many pitches that are totally irrelevant. You have a better chance of, say, getting interviewed on a podcast, if you tailor your pitch to the target show. And if you get coverage from a micro-influencer that influences a bigger influencer, you might move up the chain. Be remarkable While anger gets a lot of attention, you don’t have to be negative in your marketing. You can instead be remarkable – what Seth Godin calls a Purple Cow. I love the ridiculous book titles of author Chuck Tingle. Are you ready for this? How could you not laugh when you hear the title, Domald Tromp Pounded in the Butt By the Handsome Russian T-Rex Who Also Peed On His Butt And Then Blackmailed Him With the Videos Of His Butt Getting Peed On. Even if you don’t buy one of his books, his titles are attention-grabbing and spread. Bread Face Blog makes a living smashing bread with her face. It’s so absurd, it has to attract attention. The Instagram algorithm sees that attention, and gets her videos in front of more people. The New York Times had to write about her – how could they not? Create a message for the medium If the medium is the message, create a message for the medium. Whatever you’re creating, think about how it spreads through media, whether that’s social media, traditional media, or word-of-mouth. Lately, I’ve been seeing how people on Instagram share highlights of quotes in books. It makes sense to have larger pull quotes in my next book, so they have something pretty to take a picture of. Have you been to a restaurant or event where there’s a decorated nook specifically for taking photos and sharing them on social media? Not an accident. While researching Times Square ad space for my own publicity stunt I’m working on, I saw one fact sheet point out that Times Square was “the third-most Instagrammed location in the world.” Point being if you put up an ad there, lots of people bragging to their friends about their trips to New York will spread your ad for you. When I write a title of a book, I ask myself if it passes the “cocktail party test.” How would it feel to tell someone at a cocktail party you’re reading a book by this title? Proud and strong? Good. Embarrassed or weak? Bad. Mind Management, Not Time Management is what I call a “turnkey title.” The title alone makes a statement you can use, without reading the book. It helps make it memorable, so it spreads. Create pseudo-events Today’s media is increasingly participatory. People are not just consumers of media, but also makers of media. By creating pseudo-events, you can get more out of the media you create. I recently saw a cool video on TikTok, showing the process of making a video that showed the process of making a pizza. I know, meta, right? It’s a pseudo-event. The video of them making pizza was made for the media. The video of them making the video making pizza made me think they’re really good cinematographers. Of course, they teased the original video at the end of the cinematography video, and I had to go watch it. Many readers of the books I write also write books. So, my KDP income reports are essentially pseudo-events. One reason they exist is, I have a business writing books for people who write books, and they show that I know how to run a business writing books. They attract the attention of people who will like my books. Be careful Trust Me, I’m Lying is a must-read for anyone doing anything with media. But be careful what you do with these tactics. I know I’ve heard Tucker Max lament the reputation he’s gained as a result of the tactics in the book. I’ve also heard Max say the same for Holiday – that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to write a book that says he’s a liar right in the title. As Holiday warns, “if you chase the kind of attention I chased, and use the tactics I’ve used, there will be blowback.” There’s your Trust Me, I’m Lying book summary Not all of the book is tactics. Much of it is more media commentary, with some media history sprinkled in, and some airing of grievances Holiday has with various journalists and media outlets. Despite the damage Holiday may have done to his reputation by writing Trust Me, I’m Lying, I really appreciate the book, and it took guts to confess to the things he did in the book. It’s on my list of best media books. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »       Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/trust-me-im-lying-summary/

In 2018, Matthew Walker was on a media blitz, promoting his book, Why We Sleep. I was one of the many people who picked up the book. It slowly ruined my sleep. But recently, I fixed it. No, this is not a takedown Before I go further, this is not a “takedown” of Why We Sleep, like the one that’s been floating around. I’ve read that takedown, and I didn’t find it convincing. I trust that Why We Sleep is mostly full of accurate information. I say “mostly,” because I understand Walker has been on a mission to elevate the importance of sleep. Sometimes you have to say something like “the shorter you sleep the shorter your life span,” for a sleep-deprived public to get the point, when, technically, research shows people who sleep longer than the recommended 7–9 hours live shorter lives. It’s called rhetoric. When FDR said “we have nothing to fear but fear itself,” thankfully there weren’t blogs to write pedantic takedowns of his logic. My complaints about Why We Sleep don’t involve ill intentions. I’m sure Walker wants people to get more sleep. But I don’t think the book has the effect he expected. Why Why We Sleep will scare the sleep out of you In Why We Sleep, Matthew Walker, PhD says if you don’t sleep enough, you are at risk of the following: Obesity Cancer Dementia Alzheimer’s Heart disease Depression Anxiety Diabetes Car crashes Lower income Low sperm count Deformed sperm Female infertility Not being able to jump as high Longer workout recovery Vulnerability to colds and flus (today, that also means COVID) Low testosterone Smaller testicles So, yeah, Walker makes not getting enough sleep sound extremely scary. If that’s not enough to keep you awake at night, Walker also points out there’s also a rare sleep disorder that develops in mid-life, where a person cannot sleep, and eventually dies. Again, I get that society is full of a lot of ignorant or toxic beliefs about sleep, such as “I’ll sleep when I’m dead”. I may be in the minority in that I had the luxury of being able to take Walker’s recommendation of 7–9 hours sleep to an extreme that actually harmed my ability to get enough sleep. I was doing everything right After reading Why We Sleep, I, like many people, decided I was going to take sleep more seriously. But, as a creative with an interest in the neuroscience of creativity, I had already been taking sleep pretty seriously. I already slept with earplugs and a mask. I already avoided screens before bedtime, and had for years worn blue-light-blocking goggles before bed. I already didn’t read or watch TV in bed, and didn’t allow electronics in my bedroom. I already didn’t consume caffeine and rarely drank alcohol. I already lived a low-stress lifestyle with plenty of exercise and friends. I didn’t and don’t have kids that wake me up in the middle of the night. I already had a bedtime, and a nighttime routine, like I talked about on episode 259. I tried to do it right-er I was doing everything right. Where I went wrong was trying to follow Walker’s recommendation of 7–9 hours of sleep per night. The way I went about that: Stay in bed until I got eight hours of sleep. At first, it wasn’t a big deal. I would occasionally wake up much earlier than I had intended. But I brought to mind a graph from the book, which showed that sleep cycles come in ninety-minute increments. Now, this wasn’t a recommendation from Dr. Walker, and was my big mistake: I figured that since sleep cycles came in ninety-minute increments, if I happened to wake up too early, all I had to do was stay in bed until I could fall asleep again – which could take as long as ninety minutes. Yes, I understand I’m incredibly privileged to have the luxury of being able to stay in bed an extra ninety minutes just to fall asleep again. But, as an author, my ability to be productive is more a matter of mind management than it is of time management. It doesn’t matter, to some extent, how long it takes me to get enough sleep, but I need that sleep to get in the right state of mind to do my work. At first, this technique worked. When I woke up too early to get eight hours of sleep, I stayed in bed until I fell asleep again, and got my eight hours. Eventually, I settled on a rule: Most people use an alarm clock so they can get out of bed early. I, instead, set a time until which I had to stay in bed. For me, that was 8 a.m. If I slept past 8 a.m., that was fine, but if I woke up before 8 a.m., I stayed in bed until then. So, I was going to bed around 11 p.m., and staying in bed for nine, sometimes ten hours. If I was sleepy, I’d go to bed earlier, but I’d still stay in bed until 8 a.m. This went fine, until early-morning insomnia kicked in. It’s 3 a.m. I must be lonely (and awake) There are many kinds of insomnia, but they mostly consist of either sleep-onset insomnia or early-morning insomnia. I didn’t and still don’t have much trouble falling asleep (thanks to my nighttime routine). My problem was, waking up way too early. Not 5 a.m., but 3 a.m., and I was awake. My thoughts were racing, my heart was pounding, and I could not get back to sleep. I shared this problem with a number of friends. It turns out a lot of people have this problem. But multiple friends told me, “Matthew Walker’s book ruined my sleep.” Then, they all happened to recommend the same book to me, which had fixed their sleep. Enter Say Goodnight to Insomnia Why We Sleep takes the approach of telling you sleep is so important, if you don’t do it you’ll die. The book, Say Goodnight to Insomnia takes the opposite perspective. It essentially tells you, not to worry about sleep. Here’s some things it actually tells you: You can function fine without enough sleep. As long as you’re, in the long run, getting at least 5.5 hours of sleep a night, you’re fine. If you feel bad after a night of poor sleep, you’re probably blaming the effects on poor sleep, when they might be caused by something else – such as stress, nutrition, or normal variations. Insomniacs generally get only a couple hours less sleep than normal people, and don’t perform any less well. Your body compensates for a poor night of sleep by sleeping better the following night. People often mistake light, Stage 2 sleep, as wakefulness. So even when you think you’re not sleeping, you might be! The book was published in 2009, so I don’t know how true all of this still is, but to some extent, it doesn’t matter. That’s because Say Goodnight to Insomnia is essentially a self-administered Cognitive Behavioral Therapy program for insomnia, developed at Harvard Medical School. It’s all about restructuring your thoughts about sleep, so you can settle into a routine where you’re getting as much sleep as you need, not causing undue stress about all the things that will go wrong if you don’t get an arbitrarily-recommended amount of sleep. Hours-sleep recommendations are arbitrary Did I just say Matthew Walker’s sleep recommendations are arbitrary? Well, they kind of are. Here’s why: For one, there’s a difference between self-reported sleep, and actual sleep (in fairness, this is in the takedown I mentioned earlier). People who say they slept six hours tend to have actually slept five. People who say they’ve slept seven and a half hours, tend to have actually slept seven. Self-reported versus actual sleep duration is all over the board, and the discrepancy varies according to a bunch of factors. We can’t study sleep interventions across populations This is hard enough to deal with when trying to figure out how much you’ve slept, but when you’re trying to study the effects of sleep, over long periods of time, across entire populations, it’s simply impossible. Researchers have to use self-reports, which are unreliable. And it’s not practical to randomly split up the population into two groups and say, “You people, sleep a ton!,” and “You people, don’t sleep more than five hours a night. Oh, and both of you, do this for life!” So we can’t know how much sleep you need So while studies show people who get little sleep are at a higher risk of Alzheimer’s Disease, and we can piece together studies to form an explanation of how a lack of sleep might cause Alzheimer’s, we can’t really know if it’s being caused by a voluntary lack of sleep, or if the same thing that causes Alzheimer’s also causes a lack of sleep. Even if we did know, for sure, how much sleep exactly do you need in order to prevent Alzheimer’s? Epidemiological studies covering large populations are self-reported, so we don’t know how much sleep these subjects are actually getting. Yes, that is changing as more people are using personal sleep-tracking devices. But we still can’t force random sections of the population to get more or less sleep, and people who wear these devices are a self-selected group of people. I don’t have one, and don’t want one. Turn negative into positive sleep thoughts When you worry about not getting enough sleep, you’re having what Say Goodnight to Insomnia author, Gregg D. Jacobs, PhD, calls “Negative Sleep Thoughts,” or NSTs for short. What do you tell yourself when you can’t sleep? Things like, “I won’t be able to function tomorrow,” “I feel terrible because I didn’t sleep well last night,” and “Everyone else has an easy time sleeping.” If you’ve read Matthew Walker’s book, you can add to that, “If I don’t get enough sleep, I’ll get diabetes, cancer, and Alzheimer’s, and won’t be able to jump as high.” Say Goodnight to Insomnia program summary Here’s the gist of how the Say Goodnight to Insomnia program works. Each chapter ends with a sleep journal. For the first week, you record your baseline patterns: What time did you go to bed, and to sleep? How many times did you wake up, and for how long? How do you rate the quality of your sleep? Each week of the program, Jacobs introduces a new way to assess your sleep, and turn poor sleep habits into better sleep habits. In week one, he introduces you to “cognitive restructuring.” Every time you have a Negative Sleep Thought, you turn it around into a Positive Sleep Thought. So if you think, “I’m sleeping terribly tonight,” you remind yourself that you’re probably sleeping more than you think, and that you’ll sleep better tomorrow if you don’t sleep well today. In week two, he introduces you to the concept of “sleep efficiency,” or the percentage of time that you’re in bed, during which you’re actually sleeping. Sleep restriction therapy This is also when Jacobs introduces you to “sleep restriction,” which is the main component of the treatment program, and has been found to be incredibly effective for insomnia. Jacobs instructs you to take your baseline average amount of sleep, and add one hour to it. That’s how long you’re allowed to be in bed. For me, I was averaging about six hours of sleep, so, adding an hour to that, I could stay in bed for seven hours. My desired wake-up time was 7 a.m., so that meant I had to stay out of bed until midnight. Midnight has historically been my latest target bedtime, but I was only sleeping six hours a night, so staying up until midnight was crazy hard. It felt impossible. Some nights, I could hardly keep my eyes open at 10:30 p.m. I was reading the same sentence over and over, as I nearly lost my ability to hold my Kindle. I had to get up and pace around, or practice putting, on my hallway rug. Don’t condition yourself to be awake in bed As you can imagine, by the time I was allowed to go to bed, I didn’t have much trouble falling asleep. I still sometimes woke up in the middle of the night, and so I followed Dr. Jacobs’ advice: If you’re wide awake, don’t toss and turn and frustratingly struggle to sleep. Ideally, you should get out of your bed, and read until you feel tired again. But if you’re tired enough that getting out of bed seems impossible, Dr. Jacobs says it’s okay to sit up in bed while you read, so long as you don’t do so for longer than an hour. So, if I were to boil down the Say Goodnight to Insomnia program into three principles, they would be the following: Restructure your thoughts around sleep. So, don’t tell yourself horror stories about not being able to sleep. Trust that, with healthy sleep hygiene, your body is capable of letting you know when it needs sleep. Keep your sleep efficiency up. Dr. Jacobs recommends that you restrict sleep until you have 85% sleep efficiency for at least two weeks. In other words, 85% of the time you’re in bed, you’re asleep. Only after two weeks at that level can you add fifteen minutes to your time in bed. Condition yourself to sleep while in bed. My mistake was that by spending a lot of time in bed, in an effort to get enough sleep, I was spending a lot of time in bed when I was not sleeping. This is extra-harmful if that time you spend not sleeping is spent worrying about how you’re not sleeping enough. Your bed is for only two things, and most of what you should do in bed is sleep. After following Dr. Jacobs’ program for a few weeks, and diligently recording my sleep in the sleep journal at the end of each chapter – which I copied onto a paper with my typewriter – I was convinced it had done nothing for me. My results with Say Goodnight to Insomnia But, in fact, upon reviewing my journal, I realized it was working. After a few weeks, the Say Goodnight to Insomnia program had me waking up in the middle of the night less often, and for shorter periods, and my self-rated sleep quality had increased. By the end of the six week program, my sleep had improved on about every dimension, including sleep quality, sleep efficiency, and average amount of sleep. I will say that naps were a saving grace during this program. During the first couple weeks of sleep restriction, there were some nights where I got less than five hours of sleep. Like the book said, I was still able to function, but mercifully, Dr. Jacobs said it was okay to nap no longer than forty-five minutes, no later than 4 p.m. Say Goodnight to the damage done by Why We Sleep The intention of Matthew Walker’s book, Why We Sleep is correct – sleep is vitally important. But, how much sleep do you need? Unless you have a sleep disorder – which you should absolutely check for with your doctor – if you’re keeping good sleep hygiene, such as a nighttime routine, and are making sure you sleep efficiently and think positively about your relationship with sleep, as recommended by Dr. Jacobs – what more can you do? About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/why-we-sleep-say-goodnight-to-insomnia-summary/

One thing I hear from a lot from readers of The Heart to Start, is that many people have no problem starting new projects. They instead struggle with finishing them. I can relate. Like many creative people, I once struggled to finish projects. I always had new ideas, I left books half-read, projects half-finished. I had done lots of creative work, and had little to show for it. Now I still always have new ideas, and I still leave books half-read and projects half-finished. But now, I have lots of finished projects to show for all the work I’ve done. What’s changed? I’ve learned to finish what matters, and forget the rest. Embrace your inner Perceiver A turning point in my own creative journey came when I learned to embrace my inner Perceiver. As much flak as the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator gets for being pseudoscience, it’s still a useful lens for understanding your own tendencies. The concepts of Introversion and Extroversion have wide scientific support, but also useful I think are the concepts of “Perceiving” and “Judging.” If you watch in awe as one friend after another executes on ideas and achieves success, while you flounder, working on one idea after another, but never truly following through, your friends are probably “Js”, and you might be a “P.” This is the position I was in, until a friend at a party explained this dichotomy to me. Why was this other friend of ours so great at follow-through, while we both struggled to find our paths? This friend was a J. We were Ps. Another way of thinking about being a Perceiver is you’re someone who sees Possibilities. You can’t move forward with one idea, because you keep having other, better ideas. Meanwhile, your “Judging” friends find an idea, make the judgement to stick with it, and see it through. Shiny objects aren’t shameful Perceiving Possibilities is a necessary part of being creative. For DNA to be discovered, the researchers had to entertain the Possibility that they should pursue something other than the original intent of their grant application – which was to study cancer treatments. For Alexander Fleming to discover antibiotics, he had to see Possibilities in experimental petri dishes that were contaminated. If you want a treasure trove of Perceivers, look no further than nearly every person Walter Isaacson has written a biography on. For Leonardo Da Vinci to paint the Mona Lisa, he applied his knowledge of optics to his sfumato technique, which allowed him to model the painting with no hard lines. He applied his knowledge of anatomy to crafting the Mona Lisa’s mysterious smirk. He had dissected humans and animals, studying exactly which muscles were recruited to express various emotions. In episode 272, I talked about how Steve Jobs and the engineers and executives at Apple had to consider the Possibility that while a trackwheel served as a useful interface for an iPod, it might not be such for the iPhone. Isaacson himself has said, “People who love all fields of knowledge are the ones who can best spot the patterns across nature.” So if you’re someone who beats themself up over Shiny Object Syndrome, consider the Possibility that it’s a necessary component of creative thinking. Creative success happens in Extremistan On the rare occasion that someone with shiny object syndrome does finish a project, it might not be successful, and that can make matters worse. Why bother following through with anything, you might think, when you aren’t assured of success? But, creative work calls for a different approach to success. As I talked about in episode 253, creative work happens in Extremistan. Nobody knows anything It’s impossible to predict which creative projects will be successful. If record companies knew hits, that’s all they’d release. If movie studios knew blockbusters, that’s all they’d produce. If publishers knew bestsellers, that’s all they’d launch. If Venture Capitalists knew unicorns, that’s all they’d fund. And they wouldn’t be called “Venture” Capitalists – they’d just be Capitalists. As two-time Academy-Award-winning screenwriter William Goldman said, “Nobody knows anything.” The sky is the limit Even when a creative project is released into Extremistan, there is a huge range of potential outcomes. When Art De Vany analyzed the box-office proceeds of various movies, he found that the top 1% of movies accounted for 20% of sales. My latest book, Mind Management, Not Time Management is a success. Book-marketing expert Tucker Max calls a self-published book that sells 2,500 copies in its first year a “home run”. Mind Management, Not Time Management sold 10,000. But, Mark Manson’s Subtle Art has sold more than ten million. This podcast episode will get more downloads than about 97% of other podcasts, but it’s not unusual for an episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast to get 1,000 times the downloads of this one. It’s a long night to overnight success When you follow through and put a creative project into the world, you may have mild success, or you may have wild success. But there’s no telling how long wild success can take. The Queen’s Gambit took thirty-seven years to become a New York Times bestseller. Jane Austen’s books went out of print after her death. There’s no telling when a box-office bust will become a cult classic, or just a straight-up classic. People forget that The Shawshank Redemption was a box-office bomb, now considered by many to be the best movie of all time. Like I talked about on episode 251, you can’t call out Suvivorship Bias so easily in creative work, because you often don’t know if a project is truly dead. We’re raised in Mediocristan Creative success happens in Extremistan, not Mediocristan, and this is at the heart of why many people feel ashamed of their shiny object syndrome. We’re raised in Mediocristan, so we evaluate success and our ability to follow through based upon how things get done in Mediocristan. The whole point of civilization – with its steady paychecks, fixed-rate mortgages, and insurance policies – is to smooth out the shocks of the natural world. Mediocristan is built upon predictability, and to succeed by Mediocristan’s standards, you need to yourself be predictable. If you can follow the curriculum, do the reading, and fill out the bubbles on a standardized test with your standardized #2 pencil, you can get a good grade, that adds up to a good GPA, which lets you graduate and get your degree to put the right keywords in your resume so a computer can read it and find you. You can get a job, a steady paycheck, a fixed-rate mortgage, and an insurance policy. But for any of these niceties of Mediocristan to exist, someone has to invent something. Before Henry Ford could double the going rate for a factory worker, introduce the five-dollar day, and have 10,000 people banging on his gates, he had to create those jobs. You are a Maker/Capitalist Even if you wanted to work in a factory in Mediocristan – besides the fact that few humans could handle the monotony of working on Ford’s assembly-line – these kinds of jobs are becoming more scarce. More of our drudgery is being handled by automation. This is reducing the barriers to entry for putting ideas into the world. You can build a no-code app with Adalo or Webflow, you can print and ship artwork and memorabilia with Printful, you can – like me – sell thousands of print-on-demand books in dozens of countries around the world, and not touch a single one. It used to require capital and labor to produce a good or service. Now, less labor is needed, and almost no capital. It used to require management to organize all that labor. Now management is the arrangement of automation – but “management” isn’t the right word for it, and neither is labor. The word “creator” embodies the trifecta of coming up with ideas, doing the work, and distributing the goods. More and more of us can be creator/capitalists. We require little capital to fund our making, but we have to be adept at using what little capital we have wisely. Balaji Srinivasan would call us “capital allocators.” Finish what matters, and forget the rest If creative success is random, and happens upon a long timeline, how do you stay the course to embrace your shiny object syndrome and still ship projects? Start by building your shipping skills, like I talked about on episode 265. Treat even the smallest projects in your life as opportunities to have a vision, form a plan, and carry out that plan. You can do this by cooking a recipe, planning a party or trip, and build into shipping small creative projects. Learn to navigate uncertainty. Get used to making percentage-confidence predictions about the future, then evaluating those predictions down the road. You can learn with the Avocado Challenge I talked about on episode 245. Remember that for Henry Ford to build the Model T, he had to iterate on Models A through S. Like a construction project that seems to make no progress, until suddenly a twenty-story building appears, you need to let the Foundation Effect happen, like I talked about on episode 266. Remember the Iceberg Principle, like I talked about on episode 263. The same way ninety-percent of an iceberg is underwater, what you present to the world in your masterpiece will be just a small fraction of the knowledge and experimentation you put in. You have to embrace creative waste, like I talked about on episode 264. As a creator/capitalist, you need to use your resources wisely. Use the Barbell Strategy that I talked about on episode 244. Put most of your resources toward “sure bets” that keep you in the game. But set aside time and energy to play wildcards – crazy ideas with little downside, but unlimited potential upside. Creative work is the business of breeding Black Swans. Through this process, you won’t finish every project, and you won’t always be able to tell which projects matter. But with enough practice, over enough time, you’ll become adept at finishing what matters, and forgetting the rest. Image: Characters In Yellow, Paul Klee Mind Management is a Kindle Deal! Amazon has hand-selected Mind Management, Not Time Management for a promotional discount. It’s only $2.49 on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca. Offer ends March 31st, so grab it now! About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/finish-what-matters/

What will the future look like? In his most recent November appearance on the Tim Ferriss Show, entrepreneur and investor Balaji Srinivasan presents a cohesive explanation of the current world, and plausible scenarios of how things will play out. I found Balaji’s theories so mesmerizing, I listened to the four-and-a-half-hour podcast several times, then read and took notes on the transcript. Listening to this episode was like reading a book, so – like I do with my book summaries – I wanted to improve my own understanding of the content. So, here is a podcast summarizing a podcast, in my own words. Needless to say, the podcast is worth listening to, and since this is just a summary, you should absolutely listen to it – over on The Tim Ferris Show – to get the full context. The decline of the nation state One of the main forces at play in world events, according to Balaji, is the decline of nation states. He presents this idea in reference to a prescient twenty-five year-old book called The Sovereign Individual, which he cites in this podcast appearance and others. Since the nation state is declining, it is becoming increasingly difficult for countries to control their citizens. When it’s hard to control citizens, it’s hard to collect tax revenue to fund institutions. This loss of control is accelerating with the rise of remote work, catalyzed by the coronavirus pandemic. As more people have been able to work from anywhere, they’ve become increasingly aware of how local laws and taxes affect their lives. The power of “exit” The control of a nation state over its people is limited to the extent that people have the right to what Balaji summarizes as “exit.” If you’re unable to leave a place, either because the government is oppressive, or because you’re tied down because, say, you have land to tend and a flock of sheep, the government has more leeway in what policies they can enforce. Citizens as “customers” If people can exit their jurisdictions – whether that’s a country, a state, or a city – then citizens stop being “subjects” that jurisdictions can extract resources from, and start being “customers,” that jurisdictions want to appeal to. We’ve of course seen this for a long time, as cities have given tax breaks or other perks to compete over companies shopping for jurisdictions in which to place their corporate headquarters. But citizens are starting to look more like customers as smaller players have exited en masse. For example, lots of people and companies have been leaving California for Texas, in search of less state control. Balaji points out that not everyone has to exit to influence policies, but the fact that some do is tremendous leverage on any system. Crypto entrepreneurs call New York’s bluff An example Balaji cites of this struggle happened when New York state introduced the BitLicense – a series of regulations required for companies to do certain kinds of cryptocurrency transactions. Balaji characterizes New York’s posture in introducing these regulations as “We’re New York. What are you going to do? We’re the center of the world.” At least ten crypto companies then left New York, including Kraken, Bitfinex, and Poloniex. In some cases they had to pack up and move. In other cases they just stopped servicing New York customers. New York apparently overestimated their leverage, and companies left for other jurisdictions, who were more accommodating to their “customers.” Declining returns on state violence Something Balaji doesn’t talk about much but that is a major theme in The Sovereign Individual – and is relevant to the decline of state control – is declining returns on violence, at least at the state level. You can think of a nation state as a collection of people who contribute taxes in exchange for protection. Serfs used to pay, to their feudal lords, the returns of farming on their plots of land, in exchange for protection. Businesses in organized-crime-controlled neighborhoods pay a fee to the mob so their businesses won’t “burn down.” U.S. taxpayers pay taxes, the U.S. keeps a strong military that defends the interests of those taxpayers, and protects U.S. taxpayers’ green-bill privilege by ensuring the U.S. dollar remains the world’s reserve currency. A relevant observation that stands out to me: Sapiens author Yuval Noah Harari once essentially said that wars used to be about control over natural resources. You can invade a country and get control over such resources, and maybe even control over labor. But China can’t invade Silicon Valley, force all the engineers and entrepreneurs to work, and by doing so extract the resources there. That’s a decline in the returns on violence, on the state level at least. Centralized China vs. decentralized world The main conflict Balaji sees playing out in twenty to forty years is between “centralized China” and “decentralized world.” China is a nation-state, and one of the main forces at play is the decline of the nation state, so how does that work? What is centralized China? As Balaji describes it, China is the most centralized government. It has “root” access to everything – much like you have over your computer if you have the root password. We’re seeing that in the coronavirus pandemic: If there’s a couple cases in a city, China can and will shut down everything, and they have total surveillance over their citizens. This high degree of centralization will be, according to Balaji, an advantage in the short- and medium-term. It’s been an advantage in the coronavirus pandemic. I think the implication is that in an interconnected world with so much technological power, being highly-centralized is the only way for a government to retain control over its citizens, and thus extract resources to keep itself running. How do we get to “decentralized world?” If Balaji thinks it will take twenty to forty years for China’s centralized model to cease being an advantage, that implies that a “decentralized world” will emerge as an opposing force within that twenty to forty years. So as less-centralized governments lose the ability to stay together and fund themselves from their citizens, that will fragment into smaller jurisdictions – sometimes based upon geography, other times based upon ideology. From that no-doubt messy process would emerge new models for organizing people and resources. These new models would rise to become so much better that they rival the reigning world power in this scenario – China. Sidenote from me on guns, germs, and innovation The idea of fragmented jurisdictions competing and developing “better” models makes me think of the theories presented by Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel. Diamond theorizes that Europe came to dominate the West hundreds of years ago because Europe had itself fragmented into many competing nation states. Europe’s east-west orientation also meant new methods of agriculture or livestock management easily travelled from one jurisdiction to another. If a new method was developed in Spain, it could be used in France. Those two nation-states would then compete to improve that method, along with other neighboring countries, and any improvements could easily be traded back and forth, thus optimizing a “better” method. (I say “better” in air quotes because obviously European dominance of the West is morally unsavory. Their methods were “better” merely from a game-theory standpoint: If there is one playing field – in this case, the world – the player with Europe’s set of characteristics probably gains control over that playing field in most scenarios. Other methods could be considered better, depending upon by what criteria you rate them.) Since agricultural technology was so important to the success of a nation at that stage of global development, the portability of technology depended a lot upon climate – thus Diamond’s theory that continents with long east-west axes, and thus similarity in climates amongst jurisdictions – innovated rapidly. But in a world where innovation in digital technologies is so important, technological innovations are more portable, and so an idea can be iterated upon and improved within every jurisdiction in the world. The three-way struggle for power: woke capital, communist capital, crypto capital Balaji presents a theory of three forces that are and will continue to be struggling for power over the coming decades. I think the implication here is many “jurisdictions” will emerge with various levels of these values. As these jurisdictions compete, some will emerge as “winners” that collectively act as a “decentralized world,” which competes with centralized China. Those three forces are: woke capital, communist capital, and crypto capital. The three organizations that represent each of these, respectively are: The New York Times, the Chinese Communist Party, and Bitcoin. A little more about each of these: Woke Capital: As embodied by NYT, says, “you should sympathize.” Communist Capital: As embodied by CCP, says, “you should submit.” Crypto Capital: As embodied by BTC (or Bitcoin maximalists, in its extreme), says, “you should be sovereign.” Both woke capital and crypto capital essentially say “you are powerful…” But woke capital finishes that sentence with “…and you should apologize for that power.” Crypto capital finishes “you are powerful...” by saying “…and you should be self-sufficient.” Communist capital instead of “_you_ are powerful,” says “_we_ are powerful…” but, like woke capital, encourages a posture of submission or bowing down as you make yourself subservient to that power. Crypto capital on the other hand encourages a confident posture with head held high. An optimal “decentralized center” Any of these forces taken to their extreme is bad. Different jurisdictions will embody different mixes of these values, and, Balaji hopes, we’ll reach an optimal “decentralized center.” We’ll hopefully have a decentralized world, with a good mixture of concern for one’s fellow human, self-sufficiency and personal responsibility within the populace, and some degree of control by competent leaders and organizations who are qualified to make decisions for large swaths of people. State-controlled press, or a press-controlled state? The New York Times, and the American press at-large, seem to be the incumbents in America, and maybe it’s because Balaji leans toward crypto capital himself – he’s the former CTO of Coinbase – that he spends a good portion of the conversation criticizing the press. A resonant quote Balaji says is common: “If China’s got a state-controlled press, America’s a press-controlled state.” In other words, in China, politicians fire journalists. In the U.S., journalists get politicians fired. Are journalists competent? If journalists have so much influence over politics, Balaji poses the question, Why isn’t the U.S. establishment led by more competent people? The media has so much influence over American politics, our remaining leaders are those who are best at using the media to gain power, not those who are actually competent in their domains. By contrast, Balaji says, the Chinese system is led by people who think more like Venture Capitalists or technologists. They can think ahead and plan for various scenarios. He cites China’s decision to block outside social media companies starting way back in 2009 as prescient, probably preventing an Arab Spring-like uprising. Since the U.S. establishment do not think like VCs or technologists, they don’t actually know how the world works. So everything is a surprise. As Balaji says, “the U.S. establishment [is] always behind the eight ball. Lehman is a surprise. Bear is a surprise. COVID is a surprise. Trump is a surprise. Afghanistan’s a surprise. Everything is a surprise.” He presents as examples various article titles by American journalists, such as “Why Facebook Will Never Make a Significant Profit,” “Amazon.bomb,” or “Google’s Toughest Search is for a Business Model.” He says, “These journos are not off by 50 percent. You can’t just read their article and think you’re being sophisticated by discounting it. Their mental model of the world is often off by 10,000 or a hundred thousand X.” Yet news organizations, which are for-profit endeavors, advertise themselves as arbiters of facts. Fox News used the tagline, “fair and balanced.” The Washington Post’s masthead says, “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” and The New York Times ran a billboard in Times’ Square that just said “Truth.” Russell’s conjugation A weapon in the struggle amongst the forces of woke, communist, and crypto capital is Russell’s conjugation, also known as emotive conjugation. Russell’s conjugation is using different words, with different emotional valence, to describe the same thing. When philosopher Bertrand Russell talked about it on a BBC broadcast in 1948, he used the example, “I have reconsidered the matter, you have changed your mind, he has gone back on his word.” Balaji uses the example, “he doxes, she leaks, but the New York Times investigates,” pointing out that newspapers are essentially for-profit intelligence agencies. An average person can’t just dig through somebody’s trash and put them under surveillance, but that’s what newspapers do. Obviously anyone can use Russell’s conjugation, but since the media has so much power to shape our conception of reality it’s especially dangerous in their hands. (If the idea of the media shaping our reality is news to you, read my summaries of media theory books such as Understanding Media, The Image, and Amusing Ourselves to Death). An example Balaji cites of Russell’s conjugation in action is that the New York Times, in 2012, published an article called “How Punch Protected the Times”, about how dual-class stock helped keep the newspaper in the hands of the Sulzberger family. But in 2019, they criticized Facebook’s use of dual-class stock by publishing “You Can’t Fire Mark Zuckerberg’s Kid’s Kids”. (To be fair, they were both opinion columns.) Will the U.S. seize Bitcoin? The main force that will lead the move toward decentralization is Bitcoin. But will Bitcoin keep growing in influence, or will it be made irrelevant? Since China recently cut off mining of Bitcoin within their borders, Balaji says it’s unlikely there will be a successful technical attack on Bitcoin. China was the biggest potential threat on that front, and Bitcoin survived. Threats to Bitcoin There’s still some possibility of software attacks, such as a “zero day” attack, a very popular client having a vulnerability, a supply chain attack in which a library is included in the code and isn’t caught, or quantum decryption being developed before quantum encryption. One potential threat to Bitcoin is the U.S. government seizing Bitcoin, much like F.D.R. did with gold in 1933. With executive order 6102, F.D.R. made it illegal to “hoard” gold coins, bullion, and certificates (which I notice was a nice Russell conjugation: Instead of “hoarding,” he could’ve called it “saving.”) Everyone had to turn in their gold, in exchange for a low, fixed price, so the Federal Reserve could issue more gold-backed money. Could the government do the same for Bitcoin? History running in reverse Balaji considers this an unlikely scenario, or at least a scenario unlikely to be successful, because “history is running in reverse.” That is, in 1933, the world was moving toward centralization, and today, the world is moving away from centralization. Balaji sees the peak of centralization as 1950, when there was one telephone company (AT&T), two superpowers (U.S. and U.S.S.R.), and three television stations (ABC, CBS, and NBC). Moving toward that, the Western frontier closed, the Spanish flu pandemic spread, there was the rise of the “robber barons” and private banking, the right and left were fighting in the streets, and inflation ran rampant in Weimar, Germany. Moving in reverse, we have the internet frontier opening, the COVID pandemic, the rise of tech billionaires and crypto, the right and left fighting in the streets, and what Balaji describes as “Weimar, America,” with accelerating inflation. Additionally, in 1933, F.D.R. had the world’s smartest people helping him in his Brain Trust. Today, the smartest people are no longer working with the government. So, Balaji feels that if the U.S. were to attempt to seize Bitcoin, they wouldn’t be able to pull it off, because history is running in reverse. I’ll add that it seems that would be a tough thing to justify to the public. Executive order 6102 was at least ostensibly for the purposes of making sure the currency was backed by enough gold. I struggle to imagine a palatable justification for seizing Bitcoin from private citizens. The DeFi Matrix A big idea Balaji talks about and that Tim Ferriss agrees is a big idea is the “DeFi Matrix.” Turning an asset into money is called a “liquidity event,” because money is a liquid asset. But, increasingly, every asset can simply be traded directly for another asset, on the DeFi Matrix. For example, it’s extremely easy to exchange any cryptocurrency for any other cryptocurrency. Supposedly, the DeFi Matrix will make it possible to price things we couldn’t price before. Balaji uses examples such as a megabyte on your hard drive, a JPEG, or a minute of your time (which I already do on Clarity.fm). He describes this as being like when every newspaper went online and Google News was indexing all of them. Suddenly they were all competing against each other, and local newspapers that were just syndicating AP stories couldn’t compete anymore. Bitcoin as a world government Are you struggling to see the connection there? If all assets can be exchanged directly for one another, then currencies are no longer dependent upon geography. Suddenly, smaller countries such as Switzerland, Singapore, or Dubai, have an opportunity to compete with their currencies on a global scale. They can add privacy features or Bitcoin backing. So even if you don’t trade a megabyte on your hard drive directly for a cup of sugar, you can at least more-easily choose what liquid currency you convert to. This makes Bitcoin as like a world government, placing a constraint on every state. If a country spends more than they have, people who hold the currency can “exit” to BTC, or the DeFi Matrix. Honorable mention I’ve covered the main thread of this conversation, but it’s extremely wide-ranging, and this summary is of course no substitute for actually listening to the conversation. Some ideas I’d like to give honorable mention, which you’ll learn more about if you listen to the episode, are: Bitcoin as a “money battery,” that uses the surplus of renewable energy sources Blockchain explorers as the stealth threat to search engines How data becomes money when stored on the blockchain, thus making blockchain companies more secure How data stored on the blockchain makes it difficult to spread falsehoods What it means to be a “capital allocator,” and why we need more of them The principle/agent problem, and how automation will relegate management to the arrangement of automation Unbundling and rebundling Why San Francisco is like a terrible product with great legacy distribution How city coins will turn NIMBY into YIMBY Bitcoin as a parallel to the Protestant Reformation There you have it. I wish I knew enough to intelligently disagree with Balaji somewhere, but I personally wanted to digest the conversation, as it’s a wide-ranging and cohesive picture that gives the appearance of being correct. Go listen to the full episode to learn more. Image via Flickr: TechCrunch Mind Management is a Kindle Deal! Amazon has hand-selected Mind Management, Not Time Management for a promotional discount. It’s only $2.49 on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca. Offer ends March 31st, so grab it now! About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/balaji-srinivasan-tim-ferriss-summary-centralized-china-decentralized-world

It seems even the most devout techno-utopiasts carry around a Moleskine notebook. They appreciate the way writing longhand on paper alters their thought processes. Yet the same people think writing on a typewriter is absurd, performative, pretentious, or a deliberate troll. Over the past year, I’ve grown to love writing on a typewriter. I didn’t write my first three books on a typewriter, but I am my next one. I use my typewriter to write articles (yes, this one), email newsletters, and even tweets. I think you should try it. Write on a typewriter. The typewriter is the best writing tool ever If you’ve followed my work a while, you’ve seen me experiment with progressively more-primitive writing tools. I first used an AlphaSmart – a portable word-processor – seven years ago. Readers of my latest book, Mind Management, Not Time Management will recognize the typewriter as another “grippy” tool. It helps you get a grip on your thoughts, without letting them slip. But, I think the typewriter is the end of this road. I won’t be making cuneiform impressions on clay any time soon, and I won’t even bother experimenting with a chisel and stone tablet. As the musician John Mayer – who writes his lyrics on a typewriter – has said, “I’m not picking the typewriter because I think it’s hip. It’s the best version of the idea that’s ever come around.” Or, as I say, there is no more pure writing device than a typewriter. Before you dismiss that statement, think about it carefully. Notice I said “writing,” not “editing,” nor “publishing.” Computers are great for publishing A computer is the greatest publishing device ever. I have a computer to thank for my career as an author. It not only helps me lay out the interiors of my books and design my covers, but without my computer, I couldn’t then publish my books to a market of hundreds of millions of readers around the globe. None of it could be done without my computer. And since my computer is also what I use to crowdsource editing from my readers and prepare manuscripts, the computer is not only the best publishing device, it’s the best editing device. Typewriters are great for writing Write, edit, publish: Those are the steps you must repeat to be a writer, and they have to be done in order. You can take a step backward, but you can’t skip a step forward. No device does the first step better than a typewriter. It’s for writing, not research Some will protest that you can’t look things up on a typewriter. Well, that’s “research,” and it can be done before writing, or after writing, while editing. Research, however, is not writing. Only writing is writing. Your first draft doesn’t belong on the cloud Some will point out that when you write on a typewriter, your work isn’t stored on a hard drive or backed up to the cloud. It’s too easy to lose sheets of paper. These people fundamentally misunderstand the writing process. As Ernest Hemingway said, “The first draft of anything is shit.” The typewriter is where you say everything you might want to say and explore how to say it. While it shows up on a page, the real work takes place in your mind – daydreamt in your own personal cloud. As you write, you print Not that your first draft isn’t handy to have. This makes the typewriter the better writing device than its cousin, the AlphaSmart. The AlphaSmart has a tiny screen, which is a good forcing-function to keep your fingers moving. But once the writing is done, you mostly have to rely on what new connections you’ve made in your mind. As you write on a typewriter, you also print. When you’re done, you have a page you can pick up and mark on while you pace around or read parts aloud. By the way, if you’re thinking that piece of paper is bad for the environment, consider that one hour of computer use is worth about seven sheets of paper. We all have scrap paper lying around with a bare side we can type on. You can save that from a landfill – and a typewriter, too! When you write longhand on paper, you also get something tactile you can review. That is, if you have great penmanship. I, for one, still have illegible handwriting, even after forty years experience holding a pencil. I love how no matter what you write on a typewriter, it always looks the same: Invectives, tirades, and vituperations are printed with the same font as love letters, manifestos, and fan mail. The shapes of the letters impart no meaning, leaving only the words to do their jobs. Typewriters are faster than longhand As someone who wrote a book about how time management is overrated, I have to admit, it isn’t the most important thing in the world that you can write faster on a typewriter than by hand. The way longhand writing slows down your thought process has its place – as does the nimble qualities of writing on a computer in those rare cases where you merely need to record something you’ve already thought through. A typewriter sits right in the sweet spot between speed and deliberation. The keys require more force than those of a computer, and you can only write a dozen words or so before a bell rings, bringing you back to the present moment and reminding you to push the carriage to the start position. Typewriters are tools for thought The typewriter is the best writing tool, which makes it a great thinking tool. This is less about what the typewriter makes you think and more about what the typewriter doesn’t make you think. When I wrote about my AlphaSmart seven years ago, I was bombarded with comments about how it was weak to want a device that didn’t connect to the internet. If I wanted to avoid distraction, I should just suck it up and focus – at best disconnect my laptop from the internet. By now, more people have realized they aren’t infallible masters of their actions, and are prone to distractions. So, the first thing people usually appreciate about the typewriter is that it will prevent them from checking email or their favorite social media vice. The only web you’ll find on a typewriter might be made by a spider, but you’ll only have those if you aren’t a writer. Typewriters are great for what they don’t have The typewriter has no software and no firmware – it only has hardware. This means not a single software-update notification. My Smith-Corona has been running on the same hardware since the Truman administration. And isn’t it true, man, those annoying software updates, while they promise to improve the interface, are really for security? The typewriter is immune to attacks and hacks. And the NSA can’t touch it because there’s No Software Aboard, and so No Suspect Apps, thus No Snitching to Apple. No thought crimes will be committed on the typewriter. You can write your thoughts, No Strings Attached. You don’t get lost on a typewriter. There’s no main menu, no hamburger navigation, no apps to sample – just a writing feast. The only thing that crashes are the keys. Since the typewriter lacks modern features such as the internet or software, that means no spelling- or grammar-check. If you make a mistake, you have three choices: strike it out, paint on whiteout (if you can still find some), or my personal favorite: live with it and move on. There’s no fooling yourself when writing on a typewriter: This is a first draft. It will not be televised. Do not collect 200 edits. You can only pass “Go.” Digital Zettelkasten now on Audible! New Audible users listen free through this link. Also available on other platforms. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/write-on-a-typewriter/

There’s a reason the expression, “unfinished business” has such provocative power. Unfinished projects stack up like skeletons in our cluttered mental closets. We know if we crack open that door, we’ll be reminded of our failed intentions, our foolish optimism, and our broken promises – to others and to ourselves. But unfinished business doesn’t get the credit it deserves. Unfinished projects are a valuable and necessary part of the creative process. They build skills and plant seeds of ideas for future projects. And even when a project seems as if it’s unfinished, sometimes it’s not. The iPhone came from unfinished business We wouldn’t have the iPhone if it weren’t for unfinished business. When Steve Jobs set out to make a phone that didn’t suck, he drew upon unfinished projects, and he left unfinished projects in his wake. The iPhone we know and love – and all the imitation ancestor smartphones it spawned – may seem like an obvious invention. But at the start of the project, it was far from obvious. A trackwheel phone!? From the beginning, the iPhone was built upon the foundation laid by the iPod. The iPod had transformed Apple’s business. iPod sales were forty-five percent of Apple’s revenue in 2005. But in the early 2000s, when you left the house, you had a dilemma: Do I bring my phone, my digital camera, my iPod – or some combination of the three? Jobs had seen how the digital camera market was getting eaten up by phones that had cameras. That was one less device you had to carry with you. He knew the iPod’s market share would erode, too, as soon as there was a decent phone that could hold music. If Apple could develop that phone, they could stay alive. So the first iPhone prototypes looked like iPods. You’d use the iPod’s then-famous trackwheel not only to navigate through menus, but also to select letters to type with, or numbers to dial the phone. Fortunately, this trackwheel phone became unfinished business. But the winning prototype also created unfinished business. The iPhone killed the iPad After toying with the trackwheel phone for months, it became apparent that Apple might want to explore another approach. So, Jobs and the other executives assigned another team to develop a different prototype. This time, they would develop a multitouch prototype – one where you’d actually use your fingers on a screen to interact with the phone. Apple had been experimenting with touch for many years now, such as when they developed their trackpad. There was one project they already had in the works that they borrowed from to develop the iPhone we know today. Apple had been working on a tablet computer with multitouch technology. Not only would you touch the screen on this tablet to “click” on items, or drag them around, but it could also sense various gestures, such as swipes, or even multiple fingers. So, Apple drew upon the technology from this tablet-computer project to use that technology in their phone project. They essentially placed what would become the iPad on hold, thus making more unfinished business. Creativity is messy Let’s stop for a second to think about how horrible it would be to use a trackwheel phone. You’d have to run your thumb over a trackwheel circle to find the letter you’d want to type, then click on the center of the wheel to select the letter. Or, you’d have to click on the right part of the circle to activate the corresponding letter. You’d have to do this to dial phone numbers, or select applications, enter names into your address book, or – God forbid – to write text messages. It’s obvious to us now this is a horrible idea. But that’s because we’ve used the iPhone. Creativity is a messy process. What will later seem an obviously bad or great idea will not be obviously such when you’re in the thick of a project. Want proof? In the process of making history, the smartest product designers and engineers in the world, including Steve Jobs, spent months exploring a trackwheel phone. Not only that, but at the end of those months, they said to themselves, “Hey, maybe there’s a better way?” They didn’t kill the trackwheel phone, though. They merely started working on another prototype in parallel. You’d think that as soon as they saw multitouch, it would have been obvious it was the better solution. But instead, even after six more months, working on both the trackwheel and multitouch versions of the phone, the solution still wasn’t clear. As Walter Isaacson describes in his biography of Jobs, the executives had a meeting to finally commit to one of the paths – and it still wasn’t an easy decision. They hadn’t figured out how to make the trackwheel experience elegant. They saw potential in the multitouch experience, but they weren’t sure it was technically possible. Isaacson says this was what Jobs liked to call a “bet-the-company moment.” They finally killed the trackwheel phone, and pursued the multitouch phone, unsure if they could make it work. Professionals make unfinished business on purpose So, by deciding to pursue the multitouch phone, instead of the trackwheel phone, Jobs and the other executives deliberately created two kinds of unfinished business. One: they killed the trackwheel phone. All the time and energy they put into that project essentially went to waste. Two: They killed their multitouch tablet computer. They had to divert resources from that project, to give this multitouch phone a shot. But notice none of this is a surprise. Notice we use words like “prototype,” and when you’re making two different versions of the same product, you’re pretty sure one of those paths will become a dead end. This is very different from the way most of us work when we’re first learning how to be creative. We start a project assuming we’ll finish it. But when we realize it won’t turn out as we envisioned, we quit. And we feel bad. We lament our “shiny object syndrome”, and fall into a downward spiral of guilt. We feel bad that we can’t finish projects, so we don’t start projects, to avoid feeling bad if we don’t finish them. But professional creatives and dilettantes aren’t so different. Both professionals and dilettantes start projects, and fail to finish them. But professionals know what to expect. They try multiple approaches, knowing they’ll scrap some. They also know that even when it looks like a project is over, it’s not over. The unfinished business that was the key to iPhone’s success The day after Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone to the world, he called VP of operations, Jeff Williams. There was a problem with the phone. He said, “I’ve been carrying this thing around and it’s scratched in my pocket.” Those of us who had a first-generation iPhone know, it’s always had a glass screen. But once again, the obvious solution isn’t always obvious – or possible. The iPhone that Steve Jobs introduced on-stage in January of 2007 didn’t have a glass screen – it had a plastic screen. Jobs told Williams, “We need glass.” Williams explained that yes, it looked like as technology evolved, it would be possible to have glass screens on future iPhones, but all the current technology they had tested broke when dropped, every time. “No, no, no,” Jobs said. “You don’t understand. When it ships in June, it needs to be glass.” “Shut up and let me teach you some science” Jobs called the CEO of Corning, Wendell Weeks, who came to visit Apple in California. Weeks probably wondered why Jobs had bothered, because he started going on about how it was impossible to make a strong, scratch-resistant glass, good enough for a mobile phone. He had learned a lot about glass, building Apple retail stores around the world. Weeks finally said, “Can you shut up and let me teach you some science?”, then drew on the whiteboard, explaining an ion-exchange process that made a super-strong compression layer on the surface of the glass. Jobs wanted the glass, but there was a problem: This glass was unfinished business. Corning had developed it way back in the 1960s, but, it was a failed project. They never found a market for it, so they stopped making it. When Jobs told Weeks he wanted this glass for the iPhone launch in six months, Weeks had to break the bad news to him. “We don’t have the capacity,” he said. “None of our plants make the glass now.” Jobs is of course famous for his reality-distortion field, so he pushed Weeks, telling him, “Yes, you can do it. Get your mind around it. You can do it.” Weeks converted Corning’s Harrisburg, Kentucky plant into a full-time factory for iPhone screens, practically overnight. “We couldn’t have done it without [your unfinished business]” So the iPhone that has transformed the way we communicate and live came from unfinished business. Apple had to start work they knew they wouldn’t ship to make it happen. And they had to create unfinished business by diverting resources from that tablet-computer project – which of course finally became finished business years later, in 2010, when it launched as the iPad. Thankfully, Corning had gone through the trouble of making a super-strong glass, not knowing what they would need it for. It sat on the R&D shelf for decades before it became finished business – now known as “gorilla glass.” Corning CEO Wendell Weeks received a memo o n the day the iPhone launched, which he later framed and hung in his office. It was from Steve Jobs, and it underlines the power of Corning’s unfinished business – which they later made finished. The note said, “We couldn’t have done it without you.” Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone image: Dan Farber Thank you for having me on your podcasts! Thank you to Andrew Skotzko for having me on Make Things That Matter. As always, you can find all podcasts I've been on at kadavy.net/interviews. Digital Zettelkasten now on Audible! New Audible users listen free through this link. Also available on other platforms. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/ode-to-the-unfinished/

There’s something I want to talk about, but frankly, I’m a little embarrassed to do so. However, I write with my former self in mind, and my former self would want to know about this. So here I go. I want to talk about how to be somebody. What do I mean by “somebody?” To be somebody is to be known for your work. To have your name synonymous – or even better, eponymous – with your accomplishments. I used to be “nobody.” Now I am “somebody.” I am known in some circles for my work. My work has led to accomplishments I’m proud of. My work and I are one. There have been many steps on my journey to becoming somebody, but if I had to pick one day, it was September 14th, 2011. That was the day my first book debuted in the top 20 on Amazon. It’s hard to overstate what a massive change it was, in every aspect of my life, to overnight go from an unknown tinkerer to a “best-selling author.” The day I became somebody, my life changed. The benefits of being somebody Being somebody comes with some benefits. Here they are: Career success: This the best reason to become somebody. Name recognition helps you make money for the work you do. The money for the work you do helps you do more of that work. But career success can come in other forms. Being somebody has meant that I’ve gotten speaking invitations all over the world. Thanks to the ones I’ve been able to accept, I’ve spoken all over the U.S., and in eight countries. Respect: When I became somebody, everyone started to show me more respect. Introductions went from, “This is David, he is weird and I’m not sure what he does” to “This is David, he’s a famous author.” (Prior to becoming somebody, I was introduced by a well-known Chicago entrepreneur – right in front of my face – as a “malingerer.”) When I became somebody, my idiosyncrasies and lifestyle choices suddenly weren’t viewed as odd. Instead, they were seen as something you would expect from a creative person who is somebody. Connections: Because I am somebody, I can make connections with other somebodies. If I’m interested in the work of another somebody, I can reach out to that person, and they will generally respond. Or, I can ask for an introduction from another somebody. I’m rarely more than a degree or two away from the somebody I want to meet. This is how I managed to interview many somebodies I admire for my podcast, such as Adam Conover, Elise Baurer, David Allen, James Altucher, Seth Godin, and many more. Dating prospects: When I became somebody, my dating prospects improved immediately. This admittedly has downsides, because you don’t want to be with anyone who wants to be with you because you’re somebody. And if you think being somebody entitles you to love you’ll become a horrible person. But being somebody serves as a signal that you’re trustworthy. Even though, in recent years, many much-bigger somebodies have turned out to not be trustworthy, the social proof that your accomplishments have gained you name recognition counts for a lot in at least getting someone to acknowledge you as a potential mate. Random perks: I’m only known for my work in small circles, but that doesn’t prevent me from being “somebody” outside those circles. I don’t flaunt my somebody-ness, but people Google. Oh, do they Google. There have been many situations where someone has discovered I was somebody, because they Googled me, and then they commented on it. Which means there have been many other situations where they didn’t admit to it. This improves your prospects in a variety of situations. Sometimes that’s intangible, but I know it once at least helped me rent an apartment for a couple months during a mini life. Being somebody isn’t all upsides. I’ll get to more of the downsides later. But if you want to become somebody, how do you do that? Why do you want to become somebody? Before you try to become somebody, ask yourself why you want to become somebody. This can be a hard question to ask and it gets to the heart of why I’m a little embarrassed to even be talking about this. American culture is driven by people desperate to become somebody, but it’s unfashionable to openly admit it’s something you want. What do you want out of being somebody? If you want to become somebody, ask yourself what you expect to get out of it. It might not even be necessary to become somebody to get those things. The best reason to become somebody is to get paid to do what you love, so you can do it more. Being somebody is a job requirement behind many creative professions, such as an author, musician, or entertainer. It’s hard to substitute the benefits of being somebody in these cases. But if you want respect, or for various parts of life to become easier, there are other ways to get those things. For example, you can make connections with somebodies simply by being more outgoing and intentional. A dirty little secret about the benefits I mentioned earlier is that much of the value of becoming somebody doesn’t come from being somebody in the eyes of other people. Much of it comes from being somebody in the eyes of yourself. If you want to be somebody, and you feel you are not, you will have little confidence. If you don’t want to be somebody in the first place, nothing stands in the way of your confidence. And confidence is a big part of success. What are the downsides of becoming somebody? Being somebody comes with downsides and risks, and you should have these in mind if you’re going to try to become somebody. I think I have about the right amount of somebody-ness. The vast majority of people have no idea who I am. A small circle of people respects what I do, and when I meet them, they are always interesting and nice people. As of yet, I have few vocal haters. I am not enough of a somebody to frequently be recognized in public, outside of industry conferences. (One time in my life, I was recognized in a gym, and that went just fine.) I’m not enough of a somebody for it to impede my daily life, such that I would have to be wary of going to public places, or worse yet, followed by paparazzi. I would see those as downsides. The main risk of being somebody is reputational damage, known today in its most-extreme form as being “cancelled.” For many professions, reputational damage can be devastating, but mostly only if your career depends upon others risking their reputations by working with you. If you are an actor, comedian, and perhaps a musician, if your reputation is damaged, you may have trouble getting work. If you are an author, you have to be pretty heinous to have a publisher drop you. If you are a self-published author, you’d have to be even worse. If anything, an author should be so lucky to be “cancelled” (considering it’s for an unfair reason). You’d have to be pretty successful to even qualify to be cancelled, and you’d sell even more books. The best way for someone to prevent being cancelled is to not do awful things. But “tall poppy syndrome” does exist. People may want to cut you down just because you are somebody, because they would benefit by doing so, or other reasons that are beyond your control. Even if the majority of reasonable people are on your side, there are a lot of psychopaths in the world who could make your life hell, and being somebody likely increases the chances of that. Should you become a pseudonymous somebody? More and more people are becoming pseudonymous somebodies, in what Balaji Srinivasan calls “the pseudonymous economy.” Depending on what work you do, you can build a reputation for that work without anyone laying eyes on you or your real name. So, you can reap the career benefits of being somebody, without the personal risks of reputational damage. If your pseudonym’s reputation is damaged, you still lose those career benefits, but hopefully your true identity is still safe. You won’t get the public-facing benefits of being somebody, but you might get the boost in your self-perception that comes along with doing work good enough to be recognized. You can also work under a pseudonym without remaining totally anonymous. In other words, people might recognize your face, but not know your real name. This way, you get some of the public-facing benefits, but prevent your privacy from being violated. I have no idea what Tynan’s real name is, and I don’t need to know. If I could start over, I would write under a pseudonym, but probably still show my face. A big benefit of pseudonyms is you can improve your chances of becoming somebody by making your name easier to remember, and perhaps even associated with the area in which you work. Joanna Penn uses her real name, which would have been a perfectly-chosen pseudonym, since she writes about writing. I can’t help but wonder if some of the success of authors such as James Clear, Ryan Holiday, and Mark Manson can be attributed to their memorable and easy-to-spell names. So many entertainers work under “stage names”, it feels silly to even present an example, but Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jeane Mortenson. Are you trying to fill a hole in your heart? The older I get, the less I care about being somebody. I want to be somebody to the extent that it helps me sell more books, so I can write more books. But when I was nobody, I wanted very badly to become somebody. I may think I don’t care about being somebody, in part because I’ve gotten used to being somebody. It’s the “water,” that I, a fish, swim in. Some of it may be that being somebody isn’t quite as amazing as I had expected it to be when I was nobody (though it’s still good). But I have to admit – and this is part of where my embarrassment comes from – I to some extent wanted to become somebody to fill a hole in my heart. If you don’t have enough love in your life, you may search for it in becoming somebody. There are many examples of celebrities who had absent or abusive parents or traumatic upbringings, though I don’t know for sure if that comes out to a higher rate than the rest of the population. I would guess many of them wanted to become celebrities to fill holes in their hearts. Wanting to become somebody because you have a hole in your heart can be great motivational fuel. It can be, like I talked about in The Heart to Start, That Which Pulls You Through. But becoming somebody will not fill that hole. I feel bad for celebrities I see who are constantly in the news, acting out in destructive ways. I hope they’re just playing the “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” game, but what I fear is happening to them is they wanted to become somebodies to fill holes in their hearts. They became somebodies, but still had those holes, and now they keep throwing everything and everyone in their abundant lives into those holes – which are really endless pits of despair. Go ahead and use the hole in your heart to motivate you, but once you achieve somebody status, you better figure out how to fill that hole – because becoming somebody won’t do it. Better yet, get therapy and work on yourself while you achieve somebody status. I hate to give people the wrong idea, but becoming somebody does at least help to fill the hole in your heart. It helps you skip levels on Maslow’s Hierarchy: by achieving self-actualization through your art, you’re better equipped to backfill the lower levels of the hierarchy, such as a sense of belonging. It’s a lot easier to feel like you belong in the world when people respect you more, and when the sacrifices you’ve made and the work you’ve put in for years on end lead to success, and aren’t what you fear they are: the desperate thrashings of a drowning lunatic. But that’s as far as it goes. Beware the somebody cycle I feel bad for big celebrities because I think they’ve probably experienced what I’ll call “the somebody cycle.” I only lightly experienced this myself, but fortunately escaped being sucked in by the maelstrom (perhaps, thankfully, because I didn’t become a big enough somebody to make that maelstrom too powerful to escape). Here’s how the somebody cycle works: You want to become somebody to fill a hole in your heart You work hard, and nobody recognizes your work, for years on end You think to yourself, “I’ll show them,” and work even harder Your hard work (and luck) leads to you becoming somebody Suddenly you get more respect, and people want to be near you People want to be near you, in part, because you have more respect for yourself. So you may interpret even normal behavior from others as a higher level of respect. You think to yourself, “Where the hell were these people when I was nobody?” You get suspicious of people who want to be near you. They’re only “using” you. You become awful to be around The only people who still want to be around you are the ones who want to be around “somebody.” They don’t actually respect you or your work. Your suspicions turn out to be true. The world is full of blood-sucking leeches who only want to use you. Repeat steps 8–11 until you die of a drug overdose Sounds awful, right? I think it’s still possible to become somebody, and not get sucked in by the somebody cycle. Stick to the principles of becoming somebody. The principles of becoming somebody If you want fewer of the downsides of being somebody, and more of the upsides, make sure you’re becoming somebody for the right reasons. Here are four principles to follow on your quest to become somebody. 1. Be curious and passionate By far, the greatest benefit of being somebody is you get paid to do what interests you, and you get to do it more. But success can be a trap. If you become somebody doing something that interests you, the world will expect you to keep following that thing. But what made you successful might not have been your passion for that exact subject, but rather the process of discovery. My first book was about design. I quickly became known as the design guy. I stuck with that for a while, but became less and less interested in design. I’ve since embraced that what I’m actually curious about changes. The passion that actually drives me is the process of getting really curious about a subject, and digging into it, then sharing what I’ve learned. I could still be juicing the design thing, but I wouldn’t be happy. Keep asking yourself if you’re truly curious about your work, and whether you feel passionate about the process you’re following. If not, change something. 2. Do great work You can let your desire to become somebody drive you to work hard, but the ultimate goal must not be to become somebody, but rather to do great work. Somebodies are attracted to other people who are curious and passionate about what they do, and who do good work. 3. Play the long game Jon Bokenkamp, creator of NBC’s The Blacklist, has been on this show, on episode 93. How did I land him as a guest? When I was nobody, and Jon was less of a somebody than he is now, Jon emailed me out of the blue. He liked some design work I had posted online, and wanted to know if he could use it. I did him a favor, and more than a decade later, he returned the favor by being on my podcast. In the meantime, he had created one of the biggest shows in primetime television. From the time we first met, we were both curious and passionate people, trying to do good work. If you stick with being curious, passionate, and doing good work, you’ll be surrounded by many future somebodies. Everyone else is looking for the closest sure win. Play the long game, and you’ll become somebody. 4. Understand media Naval Ravikant says there are three kinds of leverage: you can have lots of capital, you can manage labor, or you can be savvy with media. The books and articles we read, the social media channels we consume, and the videos we watch, are just some of the media that shapes what we assume to be reality. This is easy to miss, because media is the “water” that we, the fish, swim in. It’s possible to get lucky and become somebody without understanding media, but it’s a lot easier if you do understand media. Pay close attention to how the somebodies you admire use media to increase their exposure, and shape how others see them. I’ve written summaries of a few classic media-theory books: The Image, Amusing Ourselves to Death, and – the best book for understanding media – Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media. Go forth and become somebody I feel much better now, having shared that. I risked reputational damage by coming off as self-obsessed, but I think my former self would have appreciated reading this. If you feel you have something to offer the world, and would like to be recognized for it, go forth and become somebody! But remember to make it about enjoying the process, and doing work you can be proud of. Image: Evening Shows, Paul Klee Mind Management, Not Time Management now in hardcover! Mind Management, Not Time Management has now sold 10,000 copies! Order your hardcover "souvenir" from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or your favorite bookstore. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/how-to-be-somebody/

Systems save energy. Especially if the system helps you with something you do every day. This is why I have a system for cooking. When you’re hungry, you make bad decisions, such as grabbing the quickest food you can find – which often happens to be unhealthy food. My cooking system ensures I never have to think about what to eat, or how to prepare it. It frees my time and my mind, so I can focus on creating. A little disclaimer before I begin: I’m not suggesting you eat what I eat. I have a mysterious chronic illness and am sensitive to damn near everything. This particular diet is optimized for very specific things that apply to me. If you build a system for yourself, you might want to eat something different. The basic principles still apply. Three principles of a cooking system My cooking system is based upon three principles: Batch what you can To batch, prepare what you can beforehand. You save time and energy, and – since many of your ingredients are already ready – you have a healthy meal in no time. As I’ll explain in a bit, in my system, I cut and store vegetables beforehand. This is a little extra work up-front than cutting vegetables before any one meal, but over the course of several meals, it’s less time and hassle. You sometimes have to make compromises for the sake of a system. Pre-cut vegetables are ever-so-slightly less tasty and fresh than vegetables you’ve just cut, but cutting in advance is still a net-positive. Never run out A good system prevents emergencies. After a long day, you don’t want to suddenly discover you have no food, or are missing a crucial ingredient. Even if you had the energy to do so, it would be a waste to run to the grocery store. But you probably don’t have that energy, so you’ll probably order delivery – and that delivery food will not be as healthy as a home-cooked meal would have been, and will cost more. My system is designed to never run out of ingredients. I know the minimum amount of each ingredient I can have before its time to order more. I also know my ingredients won’t go bad because I’ve had them too long. As you use your system, pay attention to just how perishable your regular ingredients are. How long can you keep them? At what minimum supply is it time to order more, so you won’t run out? For example, I have two jars of coconut oil. When I run out of the first, coconut oil goes on my shopping list. I know I’ll buy again before I run out of the second jar. Monotony first (variety later) To start your cooking system, make the same things every single meal. Through repetition, you can gradually sprinkle in variety. Many people think this sounds boring. “I could never do that,” they say. “I could never eat the same thing every meal!” Well, you don’t have to. Eating the same thing every meal is only temporary. It allows you to put together the pieces of your cooking system, such as how often you’ll order ingredients, and what compromises you’re willing to make to have ingredients ready. Making the same things with the same ingredients and the same processes gives you one opportunity after another to optimize your system. When you run out of ingredients or they go bad, you learn how often you need to order. You can also experiment with different processes, and learn how different trade-offs affect the quality of what you cook. Once you have the building blocks of a system in place, you can start adding in variety. Through many iterations of my cooking system, I no longer eat the exact same thing every meal. Many components, such as the vegetables, garnishes, spices, or proteins, can easily be substituted in the same processes to make different dishes. Many people think they couldn’t eat the same thing every meal, but then they continue to do what I used to do: Wait until I was famished, then desperately look for whatever food I could find to shove in my mouth – making bad decisions in the process. If you do this, too, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. You don’t have to eat the same things forever. Try it for a while, then mix in some variety. Categories of ingredients While you may not want to eat my exact diet, there are categories of ingredients that are nearly universal: protein, vegetables, spices, and garnish. Here’s how those apply to my cooking system. Protein I eat a variety of meat-based protein sources. I mostly alternate between ground beef and ground pork, but I also occasionally eat ground turkey. My butcher in Colombia has both beef and pork, and packs them into bags of individual serving sizes. I stack them up in my freezer. At the end of each day, I take a couple packs from the freezer, and transfer them to the fridge. The packs are thin enough, they’ll be thawed by the next day. Vegetables The main vegetable in my system is zucchini. I eat a lot of zucchini. My other staple vegetables are carrots, red bell peppers, mushrooms, cucumbers, and celery. Variability in the sizes of zucchinis has had a big effect on my cooking system. The zucchinis in Colombia are not like Whole Foods, in the U.S., where every zucchini is pretty much the exact same. When I am in the U.S., I can quickly enough make zucchini noodles on-demand with a small handheld spiralizer. But since there’s so much variance in zucchini thickness in Colombia, I use a table-top spiralizer, and store the noodles in a container. You can also buy pre-cut zucchini noodles at some grocery stores, generally not in Colombia, so I’ll sometimes buy these if they’re available and I’m feeling lazy. Carrots, I spiralize if they’re big enough for the table-top spiralizer. Otherwise, they’re cut down to a small size that can cook quickly. The bell peppers and mushrooms are also cut down to size for cooking. Celery is cut into short sticks for garnish. Cucumbers are cut into half-moons, separated from the seeds for longer storage. Spices By changing the spices in a dish, you can totally change the flavor. But, I have one go-to spice mix that I make over and over. It’s a taco mix from a keto cookbook, consisting of chili powder, non-sugar sweetener, salt, black pepper, and some other spices. I fill a Tupperware container with the mix every few weeks. Each time I make the mix, I pay attention to my supply of each of those spices, and put on my shopping list any which are low. This way, I never run out of key spices. Garnish I already mentioned that I garnish my dish with cut celery and cucumber, but I have other things I use in each meal. First, I put on a seed mixture. It’s made of various high-fat seeds: hemp, sunflower, and pumpkin seeds, and sometimes flax seeds. Then, I put on oil. It’s usually coconut oil. Sometimes it’s flax oil. Less often, it’s olive or sunflower oil. My body hates me if I eat a carb, so these seeds and oils help add fat to my dishes, which gives me hard-to-find calories, and helps keep me in ketosis. I also get some extra calories (and fat) by accompanying each meal with avocado. This is as freshly-cut as possible – unless there is some left over from a prior meal. Avocados are just a little too perishable to systematize much, though I’ve gotten better at identifying ripe ones through the avocado challenge I talked about on episode 245. Starches Honorable mention goes to the starches category. As I said, my body hates carbs, but starches would be a key part of a cooking system for most people. You could use a rice-cooker, and always have hot rice available. Pasta would be a little more work, as it wouldn’t be too good if you didn’t cook it fresh every time. The same probably goes for potatoes or sweet potatoes. Then again, you might be able to make all these starches in a rice cooker, which could save a lot of time. My cooking process Now that I’ve talked about the principles and categories of my cooking system, here’s the process I follow. As I talk about some of the decisions I’ve made in this system, you’ll get an idea of how you can build your own system. Step 1: Begin cooking protein To begin, I start the burner and put the pan on the stove. I pull a bag of meat out of the fridge, slice it open, and put the meat on the pan. I then put some of my spice mix on the meat, turn it over, and turn up the heat a bit. I want to burn some of the spices onto the ground meat, for extra flavor. Step 2: Take out other ingredients Through repetition, I’ve figured out the exact order to do each step in my system. Notice that I started the burner first. That gives it a little time to heat up, while I’m removing the meat and unpacking it to cook. It takes time to take so many containers of ingredients out of the fridge, so I do that after I’ve started cooking the meat. Step 3: Begin cooking “round 1” vegetables I could add all my vegetables at the same time, but then they wouldn’t each be optimally cooked. So, I take the extra effort to add my vegetables in “rounds,” based upon how long they will take to cook. At this point, I add my “round 1” vegetables: mushrooms, and if my carrots are sliced and not spiralized, I’ll also add them. Otherwise, they get added later, which I’ll explain in a later step. Step 4: Prepare plate with garnishes While the meat and first round of vegetables are cooking, I prepare the plate, with garnishes. I take a plate out of the cabinet, and add some celery and cucumber to the edge of the plate. Step 5: Break up protein, and add “round 2” vegetables Now that the meat and round 1 vegetables have cooked a bit – while I prepared the plate – I break up the ground meat, and stir it up with the vegetables. I then add the “round 2” vegetables, which is usually just sliced up red bell peppers. Step 6: Cut avocado While the red bell peppers are cooking, I cut an avocado, and add half of it to the plate as garnish. Step 7: Add “round 3” vegetables Finally, I add the “round 3” vegetables. This is my zucchini noodles and – if the carrots were large enough to make noodles – my carrot noodles. Since carrots and zucchinis are of different consistencies, the carrot noodles are sliced thinner than the zucchini noodles. This way, I can add both at the same time, and they will both cook to the right point, in parallel. I’ve been cooking without a cover on the pan this whole time (otherwise the dish would get too watery). But at this point, I cover it, so the noodles get steamed by the trapped moisture. Step 8: Serve Within a couple minutes, the round 3 vegetables have steamed, and all the other ingredients have cooked to their perfect points in the meantime. While that was happening, I’ve put a glass of water on the table, and grabbed a fork. I’ve gotten a measuring spoon and my seed mixture ready, and I’ve gotten the oils ready, too. I serve the entire contents of the pan onto my plate, add my seeds and oils, and I’m ready to eat. Clean up Clean up after this is easy, because I do this all in a single pan. I’m mindful of health effects of my cooking materials, and it seems every one is potentially problematic: Teflon is toxic; once aluminum is in your body, you can’t get it out; ceramic-coated cookware doesn’t last; and materials that are already in our diets, such as copper or iron, may impart too much of those substances into your food. That leaves stainless steel, but then you’re eating nickel. Thus, I use a “21/0”, nickel-free stainless steel pan. This could be the wrong choice for some reason I’m not aware of, but I’m trying. “But I like grocery shopping/cooking” Many people object to this cooking system, saying they actually like grocery shopping, so don’t want to do less of it, and that they actually like cooking. You don’t have to cut down on anything you don’t like to follow a system – just design your system accordingly. This is my default meal, and I can always make it when I want to use my time and energy thinking about something else – such as writing my next book. But, I sometimes make a new recipe, and I have a grab-bag of other recipes I make if and when I want variety – which turns out is not terribly often. When friends hear about my system, they often ask what my partner thinks of it. She actually loves it. I left her out of my description of the process, but when we make this together for dinner, we’re like poetry in motion – our moves are perfectly coordinated, with me cooking things as she cuts vegetables or takes containers out of the fridge. She has grown to like it so much that when I’m not in town, she follows the same system. Start your cooking system Hopefully this gets you thinking about how the processes you follow affect how you use your time and energy, and the decisions you make about what to eat. (A special thanks to Nelson Quest, who once made a YouTube video that no longer exists, which inspired this system.) Mind Management, Not Time Management now in hardcover! Mind Management, Not Time Management has now sold 10,000 copies! Order your hardcover "souvenir" from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or your favorite bookstore. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »   Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/my-coooking-system/

Many people think our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived short and miserable lives. In fact, that’s what most anthropologists thought. Until the 1960s, when they looked more closely at how foragers got by. The way foragers “worked” can tell us a lot about the way we, as creators, work. Farming gets a lot of output with little effort No one can be exactly sure when a human first planted a seed to grow food, but this one act was one of the most revolutionary in human history – up there with the invention of fire, or the internet. The agricultural revolution meant humans no longer needed to roam around, searching for food. But, with the innovation of agriculture came some trade-offs. We had to wait for our crops to grow, so we had to stay in one place. But staying in one place didn’t work out-of-the-box everywhere. As anthropologist James Suzman points out in his book, Work: A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots, the first successful cities sprouted up in floodplains. These areas flooded regularly, and that refreshed the nutrients in the soil, which was a must for successful farming, as crop-rotation hadn’t yet been invented. Which brings us to another drawback of farming. Yes, farming gets you a lot of food with little effort, but eventually your once-fertile soil runs out of nutrients. Creative “farming” grows ideas into finished products As creatives, it’s useful for us to “farm.” Plant seeds of ideas. Give them water, sunlight, and fertile soil, and eventually you’ll have a crop of creative products to harvest. I talked in my book, Mind Management, Not Time Management, about “creative systems.” Cultivating ideas takes time. By working with the cycles of your energy to do short bursts of work, and letting incubation do the rest, you can always have creative products to ship. (I talked specifically about my creative system for Love Mondays newsletters on episode 260.) Creative farming is a great way to consistently turn ideas into finished products. But foraging is where you get the ideas in the first place. Foraging is more effective than you think In the 1960s, anthropologist Richard Borshay Lee lived with a hunter-gatherer tribe in the Kalahari desert. He carefully tracked what they spent time on, and what they got out of it. Lee found these tribes met all their needs for food in just fifteen hours work a week. They consumed well over the daily recommended intake of 2,000 calories, and they did it all without farming. They did it by foraging. Fifteen hours a week to get everything you need. That sounds appealing to many of us. Fifteen hours a week is ironically the number of hours economist John Maynard Keynes once predicted we in the industrial world would work. In 1930, in the midst of the Great Depression, Keynes had the guts to predict that by 2030, we would at least quadruple our productivity. As a result, he said, we would work only fifteen hours a week. But foraging doesn’t lead to progress We reached that quadruple-productivity mark way back in 1980. But we still work way more than fifteen hours a week. Why? We can make philosophical arguments about the hedonic treadmill, and how we buy too much junk. But one thing is for sure: We want to see “progress.” These hunter gatherer tribes, who have sadly been all but completely driven off their foraging land by the industrial world, did lead rich lives. They worked for what they needed, they had plenty of leisure time, and everything they did was deeply integrated with their families and communities. But they didn’t have running water, electricity, or modern medicine. Many lived as long as anyone in the civilized world – if they reached adulthood. But they had a high infant-mortality rate, which pushed down the average lifespan. They didn’t have what we consider “progress.” They didn’t wonder if their children would live in a world with human flight, space exploration, or the internet. Each generation’s life was essentially the same as the previous. Creatives need to forage As creatives, we can’t just farm. We need to “forage,” too. We need to wander around, follow our curiosities, and see what surprises we can find. The hunter-gatherers of the Kalahari lived in such a rich ecosystem, they could always feel confident they could find something to eat if they went and looked for it. But as a creator, happening upon a feast is less common. It’s not every day a song comes to us in our sleep, like it did when Paul McCartney wrote “Yesterday.” Or that a happy accident occurs, like when Charles Goodyear spilled chemicals and developed vulcanized rubber. This is why you need to farm what you forage. Forage, then farm, to have great ideas, then make them real Farming what you forage isn’t just a good way to do creative work. If you want to be consistent, it’s the only way. This is hard to see, because we’re working in a world that’s a relic of the assembly line. Doctors, lawyers, accountants, and software developers, themselves, are produced on assembly lines. They follow curricula. They take exams. These exams have bubbles they fill out, so a machine can read them – as long as they’re filled out with a number-two pencil. But, like farming, these professions grow stale, like soil being sapped of nutrients. The curricula have to change, as do the exams. But those curricula don’t change from farming over and over. Someone has to farm what they forage, to change the field. Remember from episode 266 that for Henry Ford to put workers on the assembly line, he had to first farm what he foraged. It took a lot of experimentation and tinkering – from Model A to Model S, in addition to the work he did in two previous failed car companies – before the Model T was ready to be produced en masse. But the soil eventually got sapped of its nutrients. While Ford refused to change the Model T until sales dwindled, other car companies were farming what they foraged – innovating to build better cars. We’re not used to farming what we forage. It’s not how work has gotten done in recent history. But as automation and AI threaten more and more jobs, we’re freed from the drudgery of just farming. We need to forage, too. I talked in episode 250 about how I farm what I forage with my digital Zettelkasten (that article has since expanded into a successful book by the same name). To forage, I explore what interests me – reading books, listening to podcasts, and having conversations. To farm, I take notes, then categorize and connect them. These seeds of ideas grow over time, until I’m ready to harvest them. An idea can grow into a tweet, then a newsletter, then a podcast episode, maybe eventually even a book. Farming = clock time; Foraging = event time Farming and foraging call for different ways of thinking about time, too. In episode 235, I talked about the difference between “clock time,” and “event time.” Clock time’s most recent roots come from Frederick Taylor’s scientific management. Breaking actions down to split seconds was a big departure for farmers who moved to cities to work in industry. But farming, too, was a likely predecessor of clock time. Foragers could usually be confident that if they were hungry, they could find something to eat. When you live in a diverse ecosystem, if one thing is not doing so well, something else is. In fact, when Richard Borshay Lee was studying foragers, there was a drought. The nearby farmers couldn’t grow crops. To survive, they had to rely on outside food aid. The tribe he was studying did not. They got by on foods they had found in the wild. When you’re farming, you can’t count on finding food whenever you’re hungry. You have to grow it. So, you have to think carefully about time. If you don’t plant your seeds, pull weeds, or water crops today, you’ll be hungry a long time from now. This is probably one reason cultures close to the equator tend to think more about the present, whereas cultures in climates with changing seasons think more about the future. When surviving tomorrow depends upon what you do today, you think ahead. If you focus too much on farming, you’ll always be on clock time. If you keep planting the same seeds and growing the same crops, your soil will become sterile. If you focus too much on foraging, you’ll always be on event time. If you only rely on what you find in the wild, you’ll always be living hand-to-mouth. You’ll be waiting a long time between one idea and the next, and you’ll struggle to develop them into finished products. Find a seed with potential, then plant it To farm what you forage, make space to wander. Follow your curiosity, even when it feels as if it will take you nowhere. But when you find something interesting that might have potential, plant the seed. Build creative systems that help you keep ideas growing, without sapping your soil. If you do those two things, you’ll never have famines, and always have feasts. Image: Southern Gardens, Paul Klee About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/farm-forage/

There’s a story I think of every time I’m in the throes of a difficult project. It’s from the movie, Catch Me if You Can, about the infamous con artist, Frank Abignale, Jr. Frank’s Father, Frank Senior, tells him a story: Two little mice fell in a bucket of cream. The first mouse quickly gave up and drowned. The second mouse wouldn’t quit. He struggled so hard that eventually he turned that cream into butter, and crawled out. You hear the story several times throughout the movie. It’s really the theme of the movie. When Frank Junior’s parents separate, he feels like the mouse drowning in cream. He runs away and poses as an airline pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer, forging paychecks and flying all over, like a little mouse, frantically and desperately moving his little legs, trying to find his place in the world. You face The Void at the beginning of a project Whenever I start a creative project, I feel like a mouse in a bucket of cream. Every time I move one of my little legs to try to get traction, it just keeps floating in space. But, I’ve found, if you keep moving fast enough and long enough, that cream turns into butter. I talked on episode 265 about how there are a lot of different sub-skills to the skill of shipping. One of those sub-skills is overcoming your fear of shipping. In other words, facing the Void. The Void is the empty space you need to fill for your project to become complete. The Void is a figurative place. It mostly lives in your mind. But it has literal representations, too, such as the blank page or the blank canvas. The Void is present at the beginning of a project, and that prevents many creators from even getting started. But the Void has other, less obvious, effects. The Void doesn’t just prevent you from starting a project. It also prevents you from finishing projects. The Void holds you back from shipping There are plenty of things to fear as you’re about to finish a project and ship. You fear criticism of your work. You fear later seeing something you want to fix, after it’s too late. As I talked about in episode 267, you face the Finisher’s Paradox: You learn throughout the project, and by the time you’re done, you can already do better. But as you prepare to ship, and you see your perfectionism taking over, or you get shiny object syndrome, if you look deep within yourself, you’ll probably find a fear of the Void. Even though you face the Void at the beginning of a project, your fear of the Void can hold you back in the end of a project. Being in the “butter” is comfortable The fear of the Void gets in the way of shipping for two reasons. One: being in the “butter” of a project is comfortable. When something nebulous starts to solidify, we also sometimes say it “gels.” In either case, where there was once empty space where you couldn’t get traction, you’re now enveloped in something solid. When you’re in the final stages of a project that has gelled it’s like being in a warm blanket on your couch, with a bowl of popcorn, watching Netflix. When you finish this project, you have to face the Void on the next Reason number two the Void gets in the way of shipping: When you finish the project, and start the next, you have to face the Void all over again. Deep down, you know after you let go of that first project, and start the second, you’ll feel, once again, as if you’re drowning. Is it perfectionism? Maybe it’s the Void. So what are you to do? Simply being aware of your fear of the Void is a good start. When you catch yourself, in the final stretch, second-guessing or catastrophizing, simply remind yourself that you’re trying to a-void the Void, and that will help you snap out of it. What looks like perfectionism may not be perfectionism. It may be fear of the Void. Another great way to overcome your fear of the Void is to make sure you never have to face it again. As I talked about in episode 261, we’re taught shiny object syndrome is a bad thing. Working on a project, then quickly getting excited about and switching to another project, is not how traditional work gets done. But it has value in creative work. Starting projects on the side helps you a-void the Void If you get comfortable having a bunch of projects incubating on the side – and you don’t beat yourself up about the fact you may finish few, if any, of them – those projects on the side serve as buffers against the Void. Once you prepare your current project for take-off, you already have another project waiting in the wings. Your excitement for your other projects can even get you more excited about finishing your current project. But every once in a while, you’re still going to find yourself floating in space – or drowning in cream, if you will. When that happens, do whatever you can to keep forward momentum. Brainstorm and prototype, and be okay knowing most of what you come up with will suck. In other words, remember the little mouse, and get those legs moving. Image: After the Floods, Paul Klee About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/the-void/

When Michelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling, he designed and built his own scaffolding. But, it only covered half of the ceiling. So he painted the first half of the ceiling, then removed the scaffolding. When he finally got to view his work from the floor, seventy feet below, it was as if he were seeing it with new eyes. After two years work, he didn’t like what he saw. Michelangelo faced what I call “The Finisher’s Paradox.” There’s a contradiction that happens when you try to ship your creative work: By the time you’re done, you can already do better. You learned in the process. Michelangelo learned on the job As I talked about in episode 262, Michelangelo “aimed left” when he started painting in the chapel. He had little experience as a painter, and even less experience in the wickedly-difficult “fresco” method. He knew the first panel he painted wouldn’t be his best. So, as art historian Ross King explained on episode 99, Michelangelo started in an inconspicuous part of the chapel. It was the last place the clergy entering the chapel would see, and the last place the Pope would look when sitting on the throne. Michelangelo did have at least one false start. A few weeks into painting the first panel, he wasn’t satisfied with his work. The salty sea air in Italy was staining the mixture of plaster he had chosen. There were probably also some things he wanted to change about his painting style. Once the plaster on a fresco dries, it’s literally set in stone. But, like stone, you can get rid of it if you destroy it. And that’s exactly what he did: Michelangelo chipped away three weeks of work and started over. If Michelangelo learned a thing or two in the first few weeks painting the Sistine Chapel, you can bet he learned even more painting the rest of the 12,000 square-foot fresco – which, in total, took him four years. Michelangelo faced the Finisher’s Paradox So after Michelangelo removed his scaffolding from the first half of the ceiling, he was faced with a dilemma: There was something he didn’t like about his work. Since, while painting on his scaffolding, he was very close to the work, the work looked very different from the floor. He realized the scenes he had painted were too complex. There were too many people on each panel, and, as a result, the people were too small. You couldn’t make out very well, from the floor, what was going on in the paintings on the ceiling. The dilemma then was that he was two years into the work. His patron, Pope Julius II, was a nasty man, known for going on tirades and beating people who disagreed with him – perhaps even worse. He’s gone down in history as “il papa terribile,” or “the terrible” Pope. He had probably even beaten Michelangelo by that point. Additionally, the project was taking a toll on Michelangelo. His back was killing him, from literally bending over backwards to paint the ceiling. So, would Michelangelo do as he did when he first started the project? Chip away all that work, put the scaffolding back up, then start over? Or, would he keep going and ship the work? Michelangelo was faced with the Finisher’s Paradox. He had learned a lot throughout the project, and he had learned even more by finally seeing his work from a distance. Would he fix what was wrong with his work, or would he just ship it as it was, flaws and all? The tale of two (Sistine Chapel) ceilings Since the Sistine Chapel ceiling has lived on as one of the greatest masterpieces in art, it’s surprising Michelangelo saw something wrong at all. It’s even more surprising that what he saw is still there in the final product. If you look closely at the Sistine Chapel ceiling today, you’ll notice something different about the two halves of the ceiling. On one side of the ceiling, the scenes are complex. There are lots of people, and the people are small. On the other side, the scenes are simpler. There are fewer people in each panel, and the people are bigger. When the first half of the ceiling was unveiled, it didn’t seem to matter to others that the people in the paintings were small. Raphael was so impressed by what he saw, he went back to one of his own fresco’s, The School of Athens, chipped away a spot, and in its place painted a likeness of Michelangelo. But Michelangelo, himself, made some big changes to his approach. And these changes seem to have paid off. The very first panel he painted on the second half of the ceiling is one of the most famous paintings ever. In The Creation of Adam, you see God himself, giving life to Adam, from fingertip to fingertip. Like other panels on the second half of the ceiling, there are fewer main figures – in this case, two – and, as a result, they’re bigger, and easier to see from the floor. Do the best you can until you know better In the process of doing your creative work, you learn. This is especially true because nobody can teach you how to do your creative work, with the unique style and idiosyncrasies that make it yours. Yes, there will be creative waste. Much of it goes into building the underwater part of your iceberg. As you get shiny object syndrome and switch from one project to another, as you scrap iterations by throwing them into the fire, and as projects simply fail (for now), there will be delays in achieving success, as you build your foundation. But just because waste, false starts, and failures are a part of the creative process, doesn’t mean you can hide away forever, toiling on a “perfect” masterpiece you will one day unveil. Shipping is a skill, and learning new skills is sometimes scary. Remember from episode 265 that one of the sub-skills of shipping is overcoming perfectionism. Perfectionism is a “humble brag” of a quality. It’s far easier and more comfortable to say you’re still working on your masterpiece, than it is to put it into the world and see how it’s received. But as Maya Angelou once said, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” In other words, beware the Finisher’s Paradox. When you work on a creative project, you learn. Once it’s time to ship, you can already do better. You can’t ship your work without some small part of you saying, “this sucks.” It is better to build in enlightenment than to daydream in darkness. Image: Concert by Louis Marcoussis Thank you for having me on your podcasts! Thank you to Chris Parker at Easy Prey, and Joyce Ling at The Abundance Podcast. You can find every podcast I’ve been on kadavy.net/interviews. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »"     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/finishers-paradox/

On October 10th, 1901 – 120 years ago, almost to the day – the grandstand was full at the horse track in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. But not to see horses. There was a parade of more than 100 of these new things called automobiles, and several other events, including races of automobiles with electric engines and with steam engines. But the main event was a race of gasoline automobiles. By the time the event took place, it didn’t look like it would be much of a race. There had originally been twenty-five contestants. Only three made it to the starting post, then just before the race, one broke down and had to withdraw. So there were just two cars, driven by the men who had built them. One was the country’s most famous car manufacturer. The other, was a local. A failed car manufacturer, named Henry Ford. At the time of this race, the most famous car-maker in America was Alexander Winton. He had made and sold hundreds of cars. He had gotten tons of press driving from Cleveland to New York. At the time of this race, Henry Ford was a failed car-maker. He had made and sold a handful of automobiles, but his first car company had failed. It was clear who was going to win this race: Moments prior, Alexander Winton had set the world record for the fastest mile traveled in an automobile, going around the dirt track in a little more than a minute and twelve seconds. Winton’s car was seventy horsepower. Ford’s was twenty-six. He had never taken it on a turn, and it didn’t have brakes. The race was supposed to be twenty-five laps, but just before the event, the organizers shortened it to ten. According to Richard Snow, author of I Invented the Modern Age: The Rise of Henry Ford, they probably didn’t want to see the local loser lapped over and over. This race was more of a sprint. The Foundation Effect Has this ever happened to you? You pass by a construction site for months, and there’s nothing going on. There’s just a wall with a project logo, peppered with graffiti. Then one day, there’s a six-story building frame there. Now, each time you pass, it’s gotten taller. There was no visible progress for months, then there was rapid progress. You saw what I call “The Foundation Effect.” The Foundation Effect is the delay in your progress, as you build your foundation. You have false starts and failures, and it looks as if you’re going nowhere. But once you have your foundation built, you progress rapidly. Back to the races Henry Ford, the failed carmaker, won the sprint. But it wasn’t until much later he also won the marathon. Eight years after that race, Henry’s Ford Motor Company released a car that changed everything. It was durable enough to make it over rough country roads, lined with horse-drawn-wagon tracks. It was versatile enough farmers could use the engine to run a wheat thresher or move hay bales down a conveyer belt. It was twice as good as any car out there, at half the price. The first year, they sold 10,000. The second year, 20,000. A few years after that, they sold almost 200,000. By the time the “Model T” went out of production nearly twenty years after introduction, the Ford Motor Company had sold nearly 15 million. More than half of all cars in the world were Fords. Meanwhile, Alexander Winton’s company kept building custom cars, made-to-order. He just couldn’t compete with Ford’s Model T, and had to shut down. Despite having over 100 patents on automobile technology, few today have ever heard of Alexander Winton. You need a foundation How did Henry Ford create such an incredible car, that sold in such incredible quantities? He built a rock-solid foundation. Over and over, he rejected the mere illusion of progress to scrap everything and start over. As a creator, you may feel as if you’re getting nowhere. You’re starting projects, but not finishing them. The ones you do finish are failing. You’re throwing iterations in the fire, like Radclyffe Hall. From recent episodes, you know creative waste is part of the process. You’re building the underwater part of your iceberg, so some future masterpiece will be that much better. But you’re also building your foundation. The foundation of a building holds it in place. Even when the building sways in the wind or shakes in an earthquake, the foundation is there to bare the stress. Architects and engineers can design a foundation using knowledge about the laws of physics. Many buildings have been built before, so there’s a lot of collective experience to draw from. You, as a creator, need to build your foundation from scratch. It’s what makes your work unique. As a creator, your foundation is made of the change you want your work to make, the medium through which you’ll make that change, and the process you’ll follow to make your product. These things take time to develop. It will look as if you’re getting nowhere, but once they’re in place – like a skyscraper once the foundation is laid – your progress will be rapid. How to build your foundation To build your foundation, you need to clarify your vision and master your execution, so you won’t topple over. Here are some ways to do that. 1. Keep shipping This seems counterintuitive, because when a skyscraper goes up, they only build one building. They aren’t putting up a few stories, scrapping it, and starting over. The reason they can build a foundation to support the skyscraper is, millions of other buildings have been built before that skyscraper. Architects and engineers can design a strong foundation because they have tons of data. You need to collect tons of data about your unique way of doing things. How do you get it done? How do people react? Does it express your unique point of view? What is that point of view? Overall, how do you make what only you can make? Henry Ford’s hit car was the Model “T.” Why was it called the Model T? Because he had already built the Model S, the Model R, Q, P, O – you get the idea. He started with Model A. It took until Model T to build the foundation for stratospheric success. The way you build your foundation as a creator is to keep shipping. Remember, shipping is a skill. And each time you ship, you make your foundation stronger. 2. Don’t just build. Experiment. It’s funny that when most people think of Henry Ford, they think of the assembly line. A bunch of guys on a line, each doing one tiny job, such as placing a nut on a bolt, or merely turning the nut on the bolt. But for Ford to create those tasks, he first had to design the product that could be broken down into those tasks. Ford treated each car he designed and built as an experiment. He made them as good as he could, but knew they couldn’t be perfect. They were going to break down, or have annoying maintenance requirements that needed to be improved. We can design buildings that don’t collapse because other buildings have failed. Ford made new and better cars because his cars failed. That’s how he improved the transmission, lubrication, and spark plugs. That’s how he found a steel alloy that would be lightweight and strong – and countless other improvements to the design and manufacture of his cars. And that’s how, even as he improved the Model T, he kept making it cheaper. When he introduced it in 1909, it was $825. Sixteen years later, inflation be dammed, it was only $260. 3. Walk away from failures (guilt-free) Henry Ford wasn’t afraid to quit. Yes, he went from Model A to Model T, but that was in his third car company. He had one failed company before the race, and after he won that race, he gained enough notoriety to attract investors for a second car company. But he walked away from that company, too – only four months later. By the way, Ford went from A to T, and not all those cars were introduced to the public. Many were internal experiments that he walked away from – or, if you will, iterations thrown in the fire, like Radclyffe Hall’s drafts. 4. Have a vision You can’t walk away from failures for no reason. You can’t learn from experiments if you don’t know what you’re looking for. You need a vision. You don’t have a crystal-clear vision from the start. That’s why you’re doing all that shipping and experimenting and quitting in the first place. Why did Henry Ford walk away from the car company he started after the race? It wasn’t going to help him carry out his vision. Ford had a vision to create an affordable automobile for the masses. His investors, on the other hand, wanted to build high-end cars for the wealthy. The company wasn’t a foundation that was going to help Ford achieve his vision, so he stepped back, to build a foundation that would. Keep building your foundation If you’re frustrated with your progress as a creator, maybe it’s because you’re still working on your foundation. If you’re scrapping iterations and walking away from half-finished, and failed, projects, make sure it’s in the pursuit of a vision. If it is, keep learning, until you get it right. Once your foundation is in place, the sky is the limit. Image: Monument by Paul Klee About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/foundation-effect/

Leonardo da Vinci is easily the most-accomplished procrastinator who ever lived. He finished hardly any projects at all. He was great at many things, but he wasn’t great at shipping. The world would have been better off if Leonardo da Vinci had treated shipping as a skill. Far be it for me to criticize anything Leonardo da Vinci did. Despite his repeated failure to ship, he lives on today as one of the greatest geniuses who ever lived – enough so that I’m talking about him in a podcast 500 years after his death. What Leonardo da Vinci procrastinated on He foreshadowed the first law of motion, saying two-hundred years before Newton that, “Every movement tends to maintain itself.” He made a number of discoveries about the circulatory system: He was the first to notice the heart was the center of the blood system – not the liver. He described how an area of the aorta functioned, but since he never published his observations, it’s named after a different scientist, who re-discovered this area two-hundred years later. He correctly described how blood flow affects the opening and closing of heart valves – findings that were proven correct only recently – 450 years later. He wrote or planned to write treatises on topics including painting, anatomy, human flight, geology, and astronomy. Much of what he wrote would have broken new ground in these fields, and set them ahead a couple centuries – if only he had published it. Even his greatest masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, Leonardo never finished. His patron never got their painting, and Leonardo never got paid. It was still in his studio when he died, more than fifteen years after he had begun the painting. Okay, so some of Leonardo’s procrastination was iceberg-building Much of Leonardo’s failure to ship was a part of his creative process. It was the creative waste that made the underwater part of his iceberg – as I talked about in the past couple episodes. There could have been practical reasons he didn’t ship. Remember, once Leonardo delivered one of his paintings, it was gone forever. He couldn’t snap a photo of it for safe-keeping on the cloud. One reason he clung onto mostly-finished paintings was so he could refer to them, borrowing a trick he did painting a smile from one painting, and a trick he did to make it feel like the eyes are following you around the room from another painting. But it’s hard to say Leonardo couldn’t have been better at shipping, when you look at all he could have contributed if only he were. And if you want to be a great creator, it makes sense to ship. Most of us would rather have our genius recognized in our lifetime, rather than marveled at hundreds of years later for what it would have contributed. Shipping is a skill Shipping is a skill. The act of having a vision, planning to achieve that vision, and executing on that vision is a skill you should cultivate, just as you would practice a programming language, writing, or macramé. Treat shipping as a skill, and you’ll finish more projects. Shipped projects have a better chance of having an impact on the world. The sub-skills of shipping Shipping is a sub-skill of creative work. But the act of shipping itself has its own sub-skills. It’s hard to see what you’re missing out on by not treating shipping as a skill, unless you look closely at the sub-skills of shipping. Here are the sub-skills of shipping: Vision: Can you visualize the outcome you’d like to have? Planning: Can you imagine the steps you need to follow to make this vision a reality? Resourcefulness: Can you assess what resources you have that can help you achieve this vision, find what resources you don’t have, and use all those resources wisely? Adaptability: Can you adapt your plan when some part, inevitably, doesn’t go as planned? Overcoming Perfectionism: Your final product won’t be a perfect execution of your vision. Can you overcome perfectionism and ship anyway? Fear of Shipping: Once you ship your project, there will be a void in your mind where that project once lived. Can you “let go” of the project and overcome the fear of that void? Facing Failure: Once you ship your project, you give it a chance to succeed or fail. Can you face potential criticism or failure? Reflection: How well can you reflect on the project, and process what you’ve learned, so you can apply it to the next project? Project-independent shipping skills Many shipping skills are project-independent. You can practice shipping, and many sub-skills of shipping, with any kind of project. Any time you have a vision, execute on that vision, and bring it into the world, you are practicing the skill of shipping. Some examples of small projects on which you can practice the skill of shipping: Cooking a recipe: Can you figure out how to get all the ingredients? Can you execute the plan? Did it turn out how you expected? What can you do differently next time? Planning a party: What kind of vibe do you want this party to have? Should it have a theme? Who should you invite? What do you need to tell them in the invitation to set the tone? What will you do differently for the next party? Planning a trip: Do you want to relax, or have an adventure? What’s your budget? How much time do you have? How long will it take to get there? What do you need to pack? What should you do first and second and last to make it the trip you imagined? How I built my shipping skills When I first started on my own, I had almost no shipping skills. So, I started treating shipping as a skill. Any chance I had to have a vision, try to execute that vision, and ask myself what I could have done differently was a chance to practice the skill of shipping. The simplest way to practice shipping is trying to cook a recipe. I can tell you, it’s quite hard if you’re terrible at shipping. Fortunately I lived two blocks from a grocery store, because I had to make lots of trips back. Planning parties was one of the more fun ways to practice shipping. I experimented with different themes. I learned who to invite first, and who to get involved in the planning, to get people interested in coming. One of the biggest hits was the “Inexplicably Overdressed Bar Crawl.” We’d go to various dive bars wearing suits and evening gowns. It was fun to imagine what would happen if a bunch of overdressed people went to dive bars – and it was fun to see what actually did happen. I eventually worked up to planning my mini-lives, which I talked about on episode 5. If you’re going to try living in the city you dream about a couple months, how do you want it to go? How do you make the most of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity? Any project is an opportunity to work on the project-independent shipping skills and sub-skills. Project-specific shipping skills On August 7, 1974, as groggy New Yorkers were on their way to work in the morning, they couldn’t believe what they saw in the sky. It was a man – Philippe Petit – on a tightrope. For nearly an hour, Petit performed on a cable strung between the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Petit didn’t just show up and do a performance a quarter-mile in the air. What became known as “the artistic crime of the century” took a lot of planning. Yes, Petit had project-independent shipping skills he was practicing. He had the vision to tightrope walk between the towers when he saw them in a magazine in a dentist’s office in France six years prior. But, performing a tightrope-walk way up in the sky has lots of project-specific shipping skills, too. Besides the obvious challenge of balancing on a wire without falling, Petit had to figure out how to gain access to the twin towers, what materials to use to handle the wind and the weight of his body, and how to build buzz about his performance so more people would see it. So, leading up to his performance at the World Trade Center, Petit did performances on other landmarks around the world. He did a tightrope walk on the Notre Dame cathedral, in Paris, and between pylons of the Sydney Harbor Bridge, in Australia. Practice the shipping skills for your project type If you have a big vision you want to execute, take on smaller projects that will help you practice not only general shipping skills, but also skills specific to shipping that kind of project. This is why Seth Godin told me on that if I wanted to publish a successful book, I had better start cranking out “a book a week” on Kindle. I didn’t publish a book a week, but I did publish – and continue to publish – “short reads.” They’re great shipping practice specific to book-publishing projects. This is why I encourage people who want to self publish to upload to KDP a really short Kindle book – even if they do it under a pen name. It teaches you lots of shipping skills specific to self-publishing books. How do you format the book? How do you get a cover design? What keywords do you want to put in the back-end? What categories will your book be in? These are all questions you have to answer whether you’re publishing a book that’s five pages long, or five-hundred pages long. Practice shipping, and shipping will be easier Publishing a book that’s five-hundred pages long will always require some skills you don’t get to practice when publishing a book that’s five pages long. Tightrope walking a quarter mile in the air will always require skills you don’t practice when tightrope walking a hundred feet in the air. But the more skills you master before your grand performance, the easier it is to handle the new skills you’re testing for your current project. Practice shipping, and shipping will get easier. Shipping is a skill. Image: Revolving House by Paul Klee About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/shipping-is-a-skill/

When Vincent van Gogh began his career as an artist, he had already failed at everything else. He even got fired from his own family’s business in the process. Not seeing any alternative, he completely immersed himself in art. In one two-week period, he created 120 drawings. But exactly none of those drawings are famous today. What feels like waste is not waste Last week, I talked about the Iceberg Principle – the idea that any masterpiece you see is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s far more knowledge and experience beneath the surface, giving that masterpiece confidence and grace. But as you’re adding layer after layer to your iceberg, it doesn’t feel like that’s what you’re doing. It feels like you’re wasting your energy. But you’re not. After Van Gogh’s frenzied first couple weeks seriously pursuing art, he settled in to a more conservative pace. Instead of 120 drawings in two weeks, he was instead shooting to make just twenty a week. He figured that’s how many he’d have to make to end up with one good piece each week. “Waste” takes many forms What feels like “waste” can take many forms: Failed projects: You made something, and nobody likes it. Off on timing: Nobody like it yet, but some day someone will. Unfinished projects: You started, got a little ways, and maybe Shiny Object Syndrome took over. For whatever reason, you didn’t finish. Research and Preparation: You don’t always know what you’re trying to learn, but all sorts of tinkering may seem like a waste. Creative waste is part of the creative game Sometimes what feels like “waste,” makes it directly into a current or future project, thus making it clearly not waste. But even the stuff that never becomes a part of your body of work is part of the creative game. I talked in episode 256 about the Barbell Strategy. To succeed in creative work, put most of your efforts toward “sure bets” that protect your downside and keep you in the game. With the rest of your time and energy, play “wildcards,” that have a chance of big upside. Creative work happens in Extremistan, not Mediocristan. Success won’t be a steady climb up-and-to-the-right. Instead, it will look more like a poorly-shaved porcupine. Long periods of time where it doesn’t seem like much is happening, punctuated by big spikes that level up your career one at a time. Yes, you’re showing up every day and putting in the work, but all that is a series of small bets. You hope for one or two or a few to turn into positive Black Swans. Projects that take off, and take on a life of their own. In the course of playing this strategy, you can’t tell what will be wasted, and what will not. You have to trust that “waste” is part of the process. Projects will fail, projects will go unfinished, and iterations will burn in the fire. That doesn’t make you a procrastinator or a dilettante – that makes you a creator. Waste in Van Gogh’s first masterpiece Vincent van Gogh’s first masterpiece was full of waste. He did not just a sketch, but a small study, a medium study, and a print he could give out to test his idea. This was all before working on the final canvas. And that had many iterations, and four coats of varnish. He left it in his friend’s studio to prevent himself from “spoiling it.” Then he still came back and worked on it some more. All that waste was on top of the years of work he did leading up to the project. The painting was about peasants, and he wandered around living like a peasant himself, begging people to model for him. And, there was the twenty drawings a week he had done. And those 120 drawings he did in a two-week period? We don’t even know what they look like, because he destroyed them. Once this first masterpiece, The Potato Eaters, was done, it must have felt like a waste to Vincent. Everyone hated it. He got in a fight with his brother about it, and he completely cut off a friend who attacked it, viciously. Vincent van Gogh’s first masterpiece was the result of a lot of waste. Each of those drawings was a failed project, surely many were left unfinished. He did a massive amount of research and preparation, and he was certainly off on timing. The Potato Eaters is regarded as a masterpiece today. Creative waste adds to the iceberg You already heard last week about how any masterpiece is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s far more below the surface. So what new do you learn from creative waste? Sometimes, you can’t see the tip of the iceberg. Sometimes it all just feels like waste. Your projects are failing, and your preparation and planning isn’t getting you anywhere, causing you to leave projects unfinished. Just remember that other creators have embraced creative waste. I told you last week about how Margaret Mitchell re-wrote nearly every chapter of Gone With the Wind at least twenty times, Jerry Seinfeld says joke-writing is “ninety-five percent re-write,” Meredith Monk’s charts and graphs go to waste and don’t end up in the final performance, and Stephen King reminds you to “kill your darlings.” Those are all fine when you’re deep in a project and you can see where it’s going, but what do you do when entire projects get scrapped? Great creators embrace waste That’s when you need to remind yourself of the approach Picasso took to his paintings. He did one after another. He saw them as like “pages in [his] journal.” He understood that not all his works would be successful. Even once he had a finished piece, he didn’t know its true fate. “The future will chose the pages it prefers,” he said. “It’s not up to me to make the choice.” Embrace creative waste. No waste, no wins. Image: Tale of Hoffmann by Paul Klee About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/creative-waste/

1920s, London. Radclyffe Hall was pacing around her study. She wore close-cropped hair, a tweed skirt, and a man’s silk smoking jacket and tie. Her partner, Uma Troubridge, sat in a nearby chair, reading the writing of Radclyffe – or “John,” as she preferred to be called. But just as Uma’s voice wavered a bit, John grabbed the papers from her hand, and threw them in the fire. In the 1920s, throwing writing in the fire meant it was gone forever. These weren’t print-outs of digital files, safely backed up to the cloud. But Radclyffe still often threw her writing into the fire, if she didn’t like the sound of what Uma was reading. Radclyffe Hall, like many great creators, understood the Iceberg Principle Any masterpiece is just the tip of the iceberg What I call the Iceberg Principle is this: What you see of any masterpiece is just the tip of the iceberg. There is far more knowledge and work beneath the surface, giving the piece confidence and grace. The Iceberg Principle is inspired by Ernest Hemingway, who said, “The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.” He explained further: I’ve seen the marlin mate and know about that. So I leave that out. I’ve seen a school (or pod) of more than fifty sperm whales in that same stretch of water once and harpooned one nearly sixty feet in length and lost him. So I left that out. All the stories I know from the fishing village I leave out. But the knowledge is what makes the underwater part of the iceberg. In other words, when Hemingway wrote The Old Man and the Sea, he didn’t need to include every story and every detail about the life of a fisherman. He had already lived it. His experiences fishing were the underwater part of the iceberg. The stories and details he did include were only the tip of the iceberg. They were more powerful because they were held in place by everything beneath the surface. What isn’t revealed gives power to what is revealed If I say, “I’m David. I grew up in Nebraska. I now live in Colombia,” I’ve only said three statements, but each of those statements is held in place by a massive amount of knowledge and experience. When I say, “I grew up in Nebraska,” eighteen years of open skies and snow drifts and cornfields flash in my mind. When I say, “I’m David,” more than forty years of being called David are behind that. I’ve never had a different name. When you read a book by Daniel Kahneman, and he tells you something about human behavior, there’s a lot of authority behind everything he says. Each statement he makes is backed up by mountains of data, and decades of running experiments and seeing it with his own eyes. While he maintains the humble uncertainty of a real scientist, there’s confidence and grace behind each statement. Just think of how much work, experience, and knowledge went behind Einstein writing the simple equation: e = mc². This is something Radclyffe Hall seemed to understand. It didn’t matter if she threw her writing into the fire and started over. When she heard Uma’s voice waver, that signaled to her that her stories or her characters weren’t flowing on the page confidently. The same way snow and ice layers onto an iceberg, making it bigger over time, pushing more of it underwater over time, it took many iterations for Hall to write classics such as The Well of Loneliness – the first great novel of lesbian literature. Each time she threw writing into the fire, the paper burned, but the iceberg didn’t melt – it only gained mass. Keep the Iceberg Principle in mind Why should you keep the Iceberg Principle in mind? The Iceberg Principle helps you manage expectations about your work. It also takes some of the mystery out of great masterpieces you see. The product is not the process That last part, first: When we see a masterpiece, we can’t help but marvel at how it must have been made. What we see is deceiving, because we tend to mistake the product for the process. This is because the way we consume the product is very different from the process through which that product is produced. When we read a novel, we read one word after another. When we see a painting, it hits our eyes all at once. When we watch a movie, the images flash on the screen in order. But that’s not how any of it is made. The novel wasn’t written one word after another. The painting wasn’t laid down in orderly brushstrokes. The events in the movie weren’t shot, much less conceived, one after another. And no, Michelangelo did not “simply remove everything that wasn’t David.” As I talked about in Mind Management, Not Time Management, an enormous amount of “Preparation” went into carving the David. So when you see a great masterpiece, and marvel at how it must have been created, know that the product is not the process. What you see is only the tip of the iceberg. Manage your expectations It might feel intimidating to know that what you see of any masterpiece is only a small amount of the work and experience it took to create it. But it can be empowering, too. Don’t get frustrated when you sit down to write and it doesn’t make sense. Don’t lose hope when you strum a guitar and the strings rattle on the frets. Things don’t come out perfectly the first time around. I’ve talked a little on this podcast and in The Heart to Start about the Fortress Fallacy: that we tend to have visions that outpace our current abilities. One reason we fall for the Fortress Fallacy is that when we envision building a fortress, we only think of the act of building the actual fortress. We don’t think about the other seven-eighths of the work that goes into the knowledge and planning and materials sourcing of building the fortress. The iceberg takes many forms The underwater part of the iceberg can take many forms. For Hemingway, it was his life experiences, fishing. For Hall, it was the many failed iterations of her writing. The underwater part of the iceberg can be other projects you’ve done, other projects you never finished, or even time your ideas have spent incubating, between projects. Any of these can be the underwater part of the iceberg. They hold up the visible parts with confidence and grace. Great creators follow the Iceberg Principle We rarely get to see the underwater part of icebergs in creators’ work. But if you look hard, you can find it. There are few art forms where the process is more unlike the product than movies. If you had asked me when I was a kid how movies were made, I would have guessed actors and camera operators just made something up. That’s how the movies I made on our home video camera were done, after all. But in fact an incredible amount of work goes into making a movie well before camera operators are hired and actors are cast. I know now that a writer writes a screenplay first. Thanks to screenwriting instructor Robert McKee’s book, Story, we can see the underwater part of the iceberg. McKee warns screenwriters that if every idea they come up with makes it into their final screenplay, they’ve got a problem. “If you’ve never thrown an idea away,” he says, “your work will almost certainly fail.” The Iceberg Principle is why Stephen King tells writers, “Kill your darlings.” (Don’t dare try to keep your whole iceberg above water. Even your favorite parts.) It’s why when Meredith Monk is composing an interdisciplinary performance, she draws charts and graphs about how the various elements – music and dance and space on the stage – will interact with one another. None of those sketches make it to the final performance, but that work is there to add grace to the piece. It’s why Jerry Seinfeld has described the joke-writing process as an experiment that gathers data. In other words, you don’t just get up on stage and tell a great joke. You have to go from writing desk to stage and back again many times. He said of his joke-writing process, “It’s ninety-five percent re-write.” It’s why, when Margaret Mitchell was writing Gone With the Wind, she re-wrote nearly every chapter at least twenty times. Start building your iceberg When we see masterpieces we admire, and try to replicate that work, we’re bound to fail. What we create is so far from our vision, it seems pointless to even try. But thanks to the Iceberg Principle, you now know that what you see of any masterpiece is just the tip of the iceberg. To build your masterpiece, start building your iceberg. The more you add to the underwater part of your iceberg, the more solid and beautiful your masterpiece will be. Image: Crystal Gradation by Paul Klee Thank you for having me on your podcasts! Thank you for having me on your podcast! Thank you to Kjell Vandevyvere of Coffee and Pens. As always, you can find all podcast interviews of me at kadavy.net/interviews. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/iceberg-principle/

It’s 1997, and Tiger Woods is in a sudden death playoff, against Tom Lehman. Lehman shoots first, on a par three, and hits his ball into the water. Now Tiger’s up, and this is Tiger’s tournament to lose. All he has to do is hit a safe shot, far away from the hole, and far away from the water. But that’s not what he does. An aggressive and dangerous play The hole is way on the left side of the green, near the water. There’s water short, and there’s water left – where Tom Lehman’s shot went. The smart play is just hit the ball onto the green, way right of the hole, so there’s no chance it goes in the water. Then Tiger can putt twice, for par, and win the tournament. Tiger hits his shot, watches with anticipation as it flies through the air – and almost goes directly into the hole. It’s eight inches away. He just won the tournament. The crowd goes wild, meanwhile, the announcers are trying to figure out why Tiger would make a play like that. Why shoot directly at the hole, when there’s water all around? If he had made the slightest error, Tiger would have tied Lehman, and extended the playoff to the next hole. The announcers say, Well he’s 21 years old. He’s aggressive. Some of you are no doubt thinking, Why would he make a play like that? Because he’s Tiger Woods, that’s why. Perfection comes from imperfection I recently showed my partner a career highlights video of Tiger Woods. She had never heard of him, and had never seen golf (remember, she’s Colombian). By the end of the video, she was convinced Tiger Woods was a witch, who could magically conjure a ball into a hole from 200 yards away. Because that’s what she saw. Over and over, this guy swinging, then a tiny ball flying through the air for several seconds, and jumping and spinning and rolling into a tiny hole. When we see an expert in any field, we marvel at what they’re able to accomplish. When we compare our own skills, we can’t help but feel insignificant. But sometimes, what seems like perfection is someone not striving for perfection, but instead working cleverly with their imperfections. Several years after this playoff, where Tiger Woods made this bold play. He re-lived it in his book. He explained that he was very much aware all he had to do was hit the green – to play safely away from the water. In fact, that’s exactly what he did. When you’re missing right, aim left Yes, Tiger’s ball almost went in the hole, but that’s not where he was aiming. Besides knowing the smart strategy in this playoff situation, Tiger had noticed something during his warm-up before the playoff: His shots tended to go left. Like Tom Lehman, Tiger had pulled his ball to the left, but because Tiger was aiming to the right, he almost had a hole-in-one. This is hard to process for many who don’t play golf – indeed many who do play golf. How can the greatest golfer who ever lived be missing to the left? And why would the greatest golfer who ever lived aim away from the hole? When we see greatness, this is often what’s happening. Tiger was missing to the left, so he aimed right. I call it “aim left,” because it’s just less confusing than “aim right.” Aiming left is simply accepting you’re not perfect, and shooting your shot according to your tendencies. You can use this in your creative work, in your habits, and yes – in golf. When you’re missing to the right, aim left. Michelangelo aimed left When Michelangelo was hired to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling, he faced an impossible task. As if it weren’t hard enough to paint 12,000 square feet of ceiling, Michelangelo wasn’t a painter! He was a sculptor. He had hardly painted anything to that point. Add to that, this was fresco – which is incredibly unforgiving. You get a patch of wet plaster to paint on each day, and once it’s dry, it’s literally set in stone. So what did Michelangelo do? As Ross King – who I talked to on episode 99 explained, Michelangelo aimed left. He started with an inconspicuous part of the ceiling – one of the last places someone would look when entering the chapel – and one of the last places the pope would look while sitting on his throne. By starting with an inconspicuous part of the ceiling, Michelangelo was free to let his fresco-painting skills develop throughout the project. By the end of the project, he wasn’t even transferring drawings to the ceiling, and was instead painting directly onto the plaster. Other greats aimed left Accomplished creators are always aiming left. They’re always compensating for the weaknesses they know they have. Ernest Hemingway knew starting a writing session was always the hardest part. So, he aimed left. He made sure to end writing sessions knowing what he was going to write next. That way when he returned to his writing the next day, he’d have no trouble writing his first few words. Kingsley Amis did this, and Todd Henry, who I talked to on episode 109 has said he stops in the middle of a sentence. Edna Ferber built her dream house, complete with a writing study that had a beautiful view. After all that trouble, she decided that view was too distracting. So, she aimed left. She pushed her desk against the only blank wall in her study, so the view couldn’t distract her. Somerset Maugham also faced a blank wall, and I did it a while myself. Benjamin Franklin wanted to improve his character, but couldn’t focus on everything he wanted to work on at once. So, he aimed left. He kept a schedule of his “thirteen virtues.” Each week, he tried to improve at only one of those virtues – things like cleanliness, frugality, and humility. By focusing on only one virtue at a time – and forgetting the rest – Franklin improved his character in all thirteen virtues. Ways of aiming left To aim left, take anything where you consistently miss, and compensate for that miss. In The Heart to Start, I talked about “The Fortress Fallacy.” We tend to have visions that outsize our current skill level. Over and over, we start ambitious projects, but fail to follow through once we realize how daunting they are. To aim left, go ahead and dream of the fortress, but first, build a cottage – a smaller project that builds the same skills you’ll use in the larger project. I also talked about “Motivational Judo,” which is a form of aiming left. If you struggle to get motivated, create conditions that use your own action-avoidance tactics against themselves. Pavlok founder Maneesh Sethi built a wristband to shock himself. Sociologist Harriet Martineau knew she only needed to suffer through the first fifteen minutes of writing, and she’d have the momentum to keep going. This is similar to the Ten-Minute Hack I also talked about in The Heart to Start. In the previous episode, I talked about a way to cure Shiny Object Syndrome by aiming left. If you know you jump from unfinished project to unfinished project, treat shipping as a skill. Turn everyday things like meals and day-trips into “projects.” Make plans and execute – ship the projects. Many opportunities to aim left Look around, and you’ll find many opportunities to aim left. Anywhere you aren’t achieving what you want, you can find a way to direct your imperfection toward perfection. Or, at least, near-perfection – eight inches away, to be exact. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/aim-left/

Shiny Object Syndrome is an affliction that causes you to be attracted to “shiny objects.” Shiny objects can be whatever is new and trendy in your field. But oftentimes, the shiny objects are simply new ideas you have – other projects you’d rather be working on. In this form, Shiny Object Syndrome will ruin any chance you have of finishing your current project – unless you do something about it. Two sources of Shiny Object Syndrome How do you overcome Shiny Object Syndrome? What you need to do is simple: Commit to your current project, ignore the new projects, suck it up, and follow-through. The reality isn’t so simple. Shiny Object Syndrome causes mental distortions that will have you 100% convinced you’re doing the right thing: This old project is a dud. This new project is sure to be a success. To cure Shiny Object Syndrome, we need to know its true sources. That way, we can nip them in the bud, keep Shiny Object Syndrome at bay, and finish projects. There are two main causes of Shiny Object Syndrome: Naïveté of the novel Frustration with the existing We don’t know much about the new project, so we view it with rose-colored glasses. We know a little too much about our current project, so it looks terrible in comparison. This creates a “grass is greener” effect. Now how do we get in this position in the first place? 1. Naïveté of the novel As humans, we’re naturally attracted to the novel. That’s how we’ve become such an innovative species. We were not satisfied with the old way of doing things – eating our meat raw and sleeping in the elements – so we’re curious about our neighbor who’s cooking with fire and has built a straw hut. That explains why we’re attracted to the “shiny objects” in the first place, but there’s more happening in our minds that makes us not only attracted to the shiny object, but that makes us abandon what we have to pursue the unknown. The Dunning-Kruger effect A powerful force that makes us hop from one shiny object to another is the Dunning-Kruger effect. The Dunning-Kruger effect is named after it’s originators, psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger, who found that when we know a good deal about a field, we underestimate our knowledge, but when we little about a field, we overestimate our knowledge. The Dunning-Kruger effect is a favorite of internet “gotcha” culture. People love to point out the Dunning-Kruger effect at work in others, but it does a lot of good to recognize it in ourselves. When we get a great idea for a new project in a field we know little about, we often think that project will be easier than it actually will be. It seems like a good idea to drop what we’re doing, and move on. 2. Frustration with the existing This naïveté of the novel colludes with frustration with the existing. In fact, it adds fuel to that frustration. If we start a new project, thinking it’s going to be easy, we’re even more disillusioned when we realize it’s actually hard. We’ve run up against all the challenges we didn’t think about. We’ve seen the hidden complexity in the current project. As former guest, Tynan has pointed out, when we’re in the middle of a project, we’ve experienced all of the downsides, but none of the upsides, such as revenue or respect from our peers. Meanwhile, we know very little about the new project. It seems fun and easy. When we started the current project, we said to ourselves, This will be easy. We’ve realized it’s not so easy, but the Dunning-Kruger effect takes over again. We tell ourselves of the new project, Now THIS will be easy! Just knowing how the naïveté of the novel and frustration with the existing work together to cause Shiny Object Syndrome isn’t enough to cure it. When you’re in this situation, it seems rational. You can come up with good-sounding reasons why the current project isn’t worth the trouble and the new project has a better chance of succeeding. And we won’t admit we might be fooling ourselves. Shipping is a skill I have some good news: Your tendency to come up with new ideas is a good thing. Instead of trying to fight it, Shiny Object Syndrome is much easier to manage if you instead accept it. Accept it will tempt you to switch projects, then change the way you approach projects accordingly. Remind yourself that shipping is a skill. The mere act of finishing a project, no matter how small, is a skill you should cultivate. If you’ve never picked up a golf club, you would know better than to expect to play like Tiger Woods your first time out. So if you’ve never finished a project, why would you think you could take on a giant one the first time around? When I started on my own, I had almost zero shipping skills. I had piles of unfinished projects, and nothing to show for them. Fortunately one day, as I contemplated a giant shiny object I was about to take on, I realized I didn’t have what it took to make my vision a reality. I had had enough of my Shiny Object Syndrome, and was ready to put it to an end. So, I treated even the smallest things as practice in the skill of shipping. I looked up a recipe online, and planned my trip to the grocery store to get the ingredients. It sounds simple, but can you believe I had to go back several times? I planned parties and dates and trips. I treated everything as an opportunity to have a vision, plan how to execute that vision, and ship the project. The Fortress Fallacy In The Heart to Start, I introduced The Fortress Fallacy. We tend to have big visions, but those visions outpace our skills. We dream of building a fortress, when we haven’t built a cottage, much less a lean-to. This isn’t about “breaking your project down” into parts. This is about doing small projects that build skills you can later use in a larger project. Breaking your project down doesn’t build the skill of shipping. Doing small projects does. Make predictions A source of fuel for our frustration with the existing is our lack of foresight. We fall for the planning fallacy. The planning fallacy is why the Sydney Opera House took ten extra years and fifteen times the budget – you can see the same in countless construction projects. It’s why the Greeks thought the Trojan War would take four weeks, when it ended up taking ten years – you can see the same in countless military campaigns. It’s demoralizing to expect something to work out one way, and have it end up another. One way to fix that would be to have things work out the way we expect – but that’s not going to happen. The world is too complex and unpredictable. The solution is to make predictions. How do you predict the unpredictable? You don’t, really. But there’s a lot of wiggle room between This will definitely happen, and This will definitely not happen. In episode 245, I introduced the Avocado Challenge. Before you open an avocado, are you 100% sure it’s going to be perfectly ripe? No. In the Avocado Challenge, you make percentage-confidence predictions, such as “I’m 60% confident this avocado is ripe.” You then rate those predictions based upon the outcome. As you start projects, make predictions. Accept that you’re never 100% sure about anything, so make percentage-confidence predictions. For example, “I am 70% confident I will set up my blog and publish my first post by next Sunday.” After Sunday comes, review your prediction. You can even use a handy free service called Prediction Book to keep track. This does a couple things. One: It holds you accountable. We tend to approach all projects as if we’re sure we’re going to finish them – and that just ain’t so. Two: It keeps you from beating yourself up. You can’t be certain about the future, but when we don’t finish projects, we feel bad about it. If we feel bad, we learn to associate working on projects with feeling bad. So we’ll start fewer projects. As Roam Research founder Conor White-Sullivan said, "I can not speak highly enough for the practice of starting things before you know you’re going to finish them." Don’t fight shiny object syndrome, work with it In conclusion, the way to cure Shiny Object Syndrome isn’t so much to cure it – it’s to accept that you’re going to have new ideas, and you’re going to fail to finish some projects. If you pick small projects, make predictions about your ability to finish them, and treat shipping as a skill, you can reduce Shiny Object Syndrome, and work with it. Thank you for having me on your podcasts! Thank you for having me on your podcast! Thank you to Dolores at Attitudeable for having me on the show. As always, you can find all podcast interviews of me at kadavy.net/interviews. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/shiny-object-syndrome/

If you want to grow an audience online, it’s great to have a consistent newsletter. It keeps you in touch with your subscribers, and it gives you a place to test out small ideas you can later grow into big ideas. I’ve been delivering my Love Mondays newsletter every week for more than 100 weeks (and you can sign up at kdv.co). Here’s how I streamline and automate the process, so I never miss a week. Small bites of information Newsletters work great as small bites of information. Your subscribers get your newsletter right in their inboxes, so they’re in a hurry. If they know they can get a quick hit or two from your newsletter, they won’t put off opening it. You can see this with newsletters such as Tim Ferriss’s Five Bullet Friday, or James Clear’s 3-2-1 Thursday. The fact that these newsletters are full of quick hits is right there in the titles. Keeping the bites organized I design Love Mondays to have a few tiny bites of interesting things, as well as a light main dish. Each Love Mondays newsletter has a quick thought – maybe 150–300 words, about navigating the Extremistan world of making it as a creator. Plus, I have what I call “ABCs” – Aphorisms (or Quotes), Books, and Cool tools. Additionally, I may make a short announcement in the postscript. Each newsletter has the main quick thought, two ABCs, and sometimes there’s a P.S., sometimes there’s even an P.P.S. That’s a lot of different things to think up each week, so I’ve designed my system so I don’t have to do it all at once. Using a spreadsheet I built from a service called Airtable, I’m able to organize the ideas I’d like to share in Love Mondays, as well as Aphorisms, Books, Cool tools, and other announcements. I combine them to create each week’s newsletter. My system keeps me from switching mental states trying to think up each item. The spreadsheet also allows me to track the performance of things like subject lines and clicks on items I share, so I can keep making my newsletter better. Collecting ideas Each newsletter idea starts as an even smaller idea. There’s a sheet in my database that’s full of some of my best-performing tweets. Using Zapier, I have an automation set up so that anytime I “like” one of my own tweets, it gets saved to this sheet in Airtable. It saves the body of the tweet, the number of favorites it has, a link to the tweet, and the date of the tweet. I “batch” my Love Mondays newsletters on a monthly basis, using the “creative system” I talked about in my book, Mind Management, Not Time Management. To begin a batch of newsletters, I start looking for ideas in this sheet of high-performing tweets. I sort them by date, then make sure the number of likes is updated on all the newest tweets. Then, I sort them by number of likes. I don’t always grow the most popular tweets into newsletter ideas, but seeing the number of likes does help me get a feel for what ideas resonate with my readers better than others. Collecting Aphorisms, Books, and Cool tools I also have individual sheets in my database for Aphorisms, Books, and Cool tools. My Aphorism sheet also gets populated with a Zapier zap. If I like one of my own tweets, and it has an em dash in it (“—“), that filters the tweet into the quotes sheet, instead of my sheet of ideas. Again, I can sort quotes I’ve shared according to how many likes they got, to get a better feel for which ones my readers will enjoy. Other than that, I manage the sheets for Books and Cool tools manually. Reviewing the data Each week, I enter the stats from the previous week’s Love Mondays newsletter. I plug in the number of subscribers it was sent to, and how many opened, to get the open rate. For Books and Cool tools, I enter how many clicks the links got, so I can see each item’s click through rate.   As I consider new Books and Cool tools to share, I check the performance of the past Books and Cool tools I’ve shared, to get an idea of what people will like. The data has been really surprising sometimes, as things I thought people would love got little interest, and things that didn’t seem like a big deal got a lot. Again, the numbers aren’t the only thing that decides what I share. I share a lot of things I just like, even if I don’t think the highest percentage of readers will be into it. Identifying finalists I keep a big backlog on all these sheets, so I never feel pressure to think up new ideas, or new ABCs to share. I just capture things as they come. But as each new month approaches, I comb through these sheets to identify finalists I’d like to share. I just change a field in each record in Airtable, so my top candidates for tweet ideas and ABCs are at the top of each sheet, where I can later narrow them down further. Writing the drafts Once I’ve collected some of my favorite ideas, I write the idea section of the emails. I usually get the month’s emails – four or five, depending – written in two sessions. In the first session, I write really awkward drafts. In the second session, I re-write those, and they usually come out much less awkward. I space the two sessions a week apart, so my subconscious does most of the work for me. Every once in a while, I just have a good first session and don’t have to re-write – just edit a little. I do this writing in Ulysses, one newsletter after another, in one document. Before the first session, I set up the document with a simple list of dates, the body text of the tweet that serves as inspiration, and whatever other things I might want to announce in that week’s newsletter. I consult the schedule of my podcast, so I can share any recent episodes, I check my other spreadsheet of podcasts that have interviewed me to make sure I’ve thanked them, and I check my calendar to see if there are any promotions I want to announce. Wrapping it all together Now here comes the cool part. Airtable helps me wrap my main newsletter body together with my ABCs, my announcements, and my greeting and salutation. The result is a field with all the Markdown text for the newsletter. To do this, I copy and paste the Markdown text of the main idea of the newsletter into a field. From other fields, I can select the Aphorism and/or Book and/or Cool thing I want to include in that week’s newsletter. Each record for Books or Cool things already has fields for my comments and the links for the items. Once I select any ABCs, all this is added to the main body, in Markdown text. Each newsletter also has a P.S. and P.P.S. field, and if they’re populated with anything, they get added onto that text, too. Scheduling Now all I have to do is copy and paste the Markdown into a translator. I then copy and paste the rich text into my email marketing platform, ActiveCampaign. Once I have the main content of all the month’s newsletters written, it takes about fifteen minutes to integrate the ABCs, the announcements, and to have the newsletters scheduled and ready to go. Sign up for Love Mondays and see for yourself! There you have it. This system really helps me save creative energy, so that I’m using it to think of good ideas, instead of trying to fumble around with all the things I want to put in my newsletter. Obviously, all this could be automated even further. I’m actually surprised I haven’t seen an email marketing platform that already has Airtable-like database elements for managing all the tidbits one shares in their newsletter. Maybe something for someone to build. If you want to see all this in action, be sure to sign up for Love Mondays. My readers really love them, I consistently get replies saying how much each week’s idea has shifted someone’s perspective. New Book: Digital Zettelkasten: Principles, Methods & Examples Learn how to think through building a database of the most interesting things you've ever read, or thought. Available direct from me, on Amazon, and everywhere else. Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/email-newsletter-process/

You hear a lot about morning routines, but nighttime routines are every bit as important. Your parents probably had a bedtime routine for you, and if you have kids you probably have bedtime routines for them. But we need bedtime routines as adults, too. I follow a specific nighttime routine, and it helps me get to sleep faster, and wake up better-rested. Wind down, and don’t try to force sleep My nighttime routine follows two overarching principles: Wind down Don’t try to force sleep 1. Wind down: Before I started my nighttime routine, I didn’t think about what I was doing before bed. I just went to bed when I was tired. I was treating all hours of the day as equal – following time management instead of mind management. Once I started my nighttime routine, I realized “going to bed” starts well before you’re tired. It’s like the difference between crashing a plane and a smooth landing. 2. Don’t try to force sleep: I recently did a sleep study at a lab, and started doing my nighttime routine. But the study was supposed to start before my usual bedtime, and the nurses at the lab wouldn’t let me follow my routine. I didn’t sleep the whole night and the study was a waste. The problem for me was trying to force sleep. I had insomnia as a kid and trying to get to sleep always made me more anxious and less able to sleep. So now I’m careful not to force sleep. Two phases: wind-down and sleep-time In the spirit of not trying to force sleep, my nighttime routine follows two phases: wind-down and sleep-time. Wind-down phase: During the wind-down phase, I want to signal to my body that it can get ready for sleep. Again, I’m not trying to force sleep, just giving my body permission to get sleepy. I’ll get more into how I do that in a bit. Sleep-time phase: In the sleep-time phase, I’m again careful to not force sleep. But I have specific steps I follow that help me transition from the wind-down phase to actually getting to sleep. Five rules for my nighttime routine Your parents probably had bedtime rules for you. In your bedtime routine as an adult, you need rules for yourself. Here are five rules I follow: No social media after 9 p.m. No bright screens after 10 p.m. Blue-blocking glasses after 10 p.m. Reading only after 10 p.m. In bed by midnight. Here’s some more detail about each of those: 1. No social media after 9 p.m. I have a theory that associating with anyone you’re not close to before bedtime disrupts your sleep quality. The only proof I have of this is I’ve experienced it myself. Though it would make sense from an evolutionary perspective: You and the tribe might find it hard to sleep if strangers from another tribe were lurking around your campfire. I don’t want to think about a news story in the world at-large, witness a petty argument amongst strangers, or read a hostile Twitter reply too close to bedtime. I sense that it sets my brain on alarm, making it hard to sleep. Twitter is my social media of choice, and it’s valuable enough to outweigh the above negatives, generally, but not after 9 p.m. When I say no social media, that doesn’t mean that I won’t chat with a close friend on WhatsApp or Messenger. I would guess associating with people you’re close to before bedtime makes it easier to get to sleep, if anything. I often make a FaceTime call to my father after 9 p.m., but no Twitter. 2. No bright screens after 10 p.m. By now it’s well-established that blue light exposure late at night disrupts sleep and is even associated with higher cancer risk. Yes, our devices have nighttime modes that reduce this light, but I don’t trust that to eliminate blue light completely. So I avoid bright screens, wholesale, after 10 p.m. I stow my phone and tablet in a charging station in my living room, and ignore them until the next morning. This also makes it easier to follow my rule of no social media. The brightest thing I look at after 10 p.m. is my Kindle. It’s not great to be on an electronic device, but I set it in dark mode, so it’s actually less light exposure than I would get reading a paper book under lamplight. As part of this rule, I also switch off my internet and WiFi at 10 p.m. This is a good way to keep yourself off the internet, but it also may be better for your health. Studies have shown that EMF exposure before bed alters your brain activity during sleep. Scientists haven’t found any ill health effects from this (yet), but why not turn off your WiFi? We didn’t evolve to have our brain activity altered while we sleep, and you’re not using it anyway. 3. Blue-blocking glasses after 10 p.m. Even if the nighttime modes on my devices did eliminate all blue light, there’s still blue light in the lights in my house, or from street lights outside. So, I nip that in the bud with blue-blocking glasses. The blue-blocking glasses I wear are not fashionable. They are orange, and large enough to wrap around most of my face, as well as cover my glasses. Very little blue light gets past these, and I get sleepy easier and wake up more refreshed when I wear these glasses, starting two hours before my target bedtime. I even take them with me when I travel, and they help out when I need to push my bedtime earlier to get up for early flights. 4. Reading only after 10 p.m. Back when I didn’t pay attention to what I was doing before bedtime, I would often work until I could hardly keep my eyes open. I’ve since tried different activities before sleep, and found that nothing works better to get me sleepy than reading. So, the only activity I allow myself to do after 10 p.m. is read. This means there are a lot of activities I avoid before bed. Aside from bright screens, I’ve found that certain activities get my brain too active, and make it hard for me to fall asleep. If I play a video game on my VR headset, write in my journal, or even do something creative such as drawing, it’s not as easy for me to get to sleep, and I wake up less-rested. I also select the type of reading I do in a specific way that helps me get sleepy. For the first hour, I can read pretty much whatever I want. This hour helps me get through a lot of science, history, or biography books, the highlights of which I store in the digital Zettelkasten I talked about on episode 250. I use much of this reading as raw material for ideas for newsletters, articles, and books. As I’m reading, I’m looking out for specific signals help to me decide when I’m ready for bed. The first thing I’m looking out for is how well I understand what I’m reading. About this time of night, I can lose my reading comprehension very rapidly. One minute I’m engrossed in a complex neuroscience book, the next minute I realize I’ve read the same sentence several times over. This happens before I’m consciously aware that I’m tired, but it signals to me it’s time to change my reading material. When that happens, I switch from non-fiction to fiction. If 11 p.m. rolls around and I’m still comprehending non-fiction well, I make the switch anyway. Now I’m looking for the final signals that I’m ready for bed. At some point, I will realize I’ve just “come to.” I will have just started to doze off – my eyelids have gotten so heavy they’ve started to close, and I may have even lost control over the arm that holds up my Kindle. I’m not the type to fall asleep accidentally, but as soon as one of these things happens, I close my Kindle and go to bed. If by 11:30 p.m. my eyelids haven’t started closing involuntarily, I bring out the big guns. This is the reading that’s most likely to make me sleepy. I read some poetry by Robert Frost, or a play by Shakespeare. If I really want to go back in time, I’ll pull out The Iliad. Sometimes I’ll read some Emerson. The Robert Frost poetry is folksy and he and Emerson talk a lot about nature, which is very relaxing. The rhythms of Frost and Shakespeare lull me to sleep. And The Iliad is just hard to read. 5. In bed by midnight By following this progression of reading, I almost always get sleepy by midnight. My rule is “in bed by midnight,” but really if I don’t get sleepy by then, I find it does me no good to go to bed anyway. So I try to be in bed by midnight, but if I’m not sleepy, I’ll just keep reading the big guns. I have found that having a set bedtime helps me get to sleep more easily, and wake up more rested. There’s not a big difference between whether I go to bed at 10:30 p.m. or midnight, but once it gets past midnight, there’s suddenly a big difference. If I can’t get to bed until 12:15 a.m. one night, I’ll feel it the next day, and will take a couple nights more before I can get my sleep back on schedule. By the way, I make sure to have already brushed my teeth by the time I’m going to bed. I do that at some point during the wind-down phase. I hate the feeling of being sleepy and still needing to brush my teeth, so I try to do it before. And this helps prevent any late-night snacking. Going to bed: the sleep-time phase Once I’m in bed, I’m still following the principle of not trying to force sleep. I take off my glasses, but leave on the orange goggles. I get a couple of other valuable sleep tools ready: I position my sleep mask on my forehead for quick deployment, and I put in earplugs. Now, I lay on my back stare off into space, and let my thoughts flow. I do not close my eyes and try to go to sleep until I feel my eyelids get heavy again. You might wonder: My eyelids were just heavy, now I’ve gone to bed and am waiting again for my eyelids to get heavy. Why didn’t I just read in bed? I’m a big advocate of the philosophy that you should only do two things in bed, one of them should be sleeping, and the other should not be reading. If you do other activities such as reading or surfing the web in bed, you’re just programming yourself to not be sleepy when in bed. So, I make the small compromise of having to get myself to bed once sleepy, then needing to again wait to get sleepy. It usually only takes a minute or two before my eyelids are falling closed. At that point, I take off the orange goggles, lower my sleep mask, and fall asleep. There’s my nighttime routine There’s my nighttime routine. After that, I sleep until I wake up. I don’t use an alarm. I try to stay in bed until at least 8 a.m., even if I do wake up earlier. (I find if I’m patient, I do fall asleep again.) I hope this gives you some ideas for your own nighttime routine. Pay attention to what activities do or don’t help you get to sleep, wind down gradually, and keep a regular bedtime. You may, like me, get to sleep easier and wake up better-rested. Image: Gauze by Paul Klee New Book: Digital Zettelkasten: Principles, Methods & Examples Learn how to think through building a database of the most interesting things you've ever read, or thought. Available direct from me, on Amazon, and everywhere else. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/nighttime-routine/

I once was a professional dater. I was good at getting dates. I was terrible at finding a partner – which I really wanted. I went on so many dates, I made $150,000 on an online-dating-advice blog (which I recently shut down). I’ve now been in a relationship for several years. Here are the harsh truths I wish my single self had known. Dating is noise. There’s nothing about dating that has anything to do with being in a relationship. Dating provides false signals. If someone is exciting on a date, that’s often a sign they’ll be a nightmare in a relationship. If someone is boring on a date, they may be great in a relationship. I don’t know how to fix that, other than be very careful how you judge whether or not a date went well. You’ll never be “ready” for a relationship. Self-help books will tell you, “You have to love yourself before you can love someone else,” as if you’ll never be ready until you’ve achieved the platonic ideal of a fully-formed human. At that point, you and another fully-formed human will fit together like puzzle pieces – forever. More likely you’ll meet someone who’s screwed up in the perfect way to complement your own screwed-up-ness. You’ll change one another, and your best hope is the people you change into will also be compatible. You’ll never be “ready.” You’ll always be changing. Yes, you need someone. Once in a while you might decide you’re fine being alone. A self-help book will tell you it’s okay to be single and you’ll be happy in life with hobbies, personal achievements, and pets. This is just fuel for the hedonic treadmill that keeps capitalism running. New products and services are always being invented with the purpose of replacing some form of love – whether that’s a meal delivered to your door, or a ride home from the airport. Love is free, but priceless. Love is bad for GDP. If dating is miserable, you’re miserable. Many people’s stated dating preferences are emotional judo to justify their own unhappiness. If you say to yourself, “I cannot be happy until I meet someone with [insert impossible set of criteria],” you have a great scapegoat for your unhappiness, besides its true source. Don’t blame your misery on not finding what you want. Perfectionism is a refusal to start the journey before you’ve reached the destination. Beware the ferris wheel. There’s a self-selection bias in the dating pool. It’s full of miserable people who blame their dating life on why they’re miserable. If you want proof, look at dating profiles. I don’t know how men feel about this question, but when I was dating I remember seeing many a woman’s profile demanding men have something better to say than “How are you?” The problem is, there is literally no question more central to existence than “How are you?” Every action every person takes their entire day is in pursuit of affecting the answer to the question, “How are you?” A truthful answer to “How are you?” is guaranteed to lead to a conversation relevant to your well-being. And isn’t that what dating is supposed to be about? So why would someone not want to answer the question, “How are you?” Because they’re miserable. They don’t want a real conversation – they want a source of entertainment. What does this have to do with a ferris wheel? Dating apps are especially full of these miserable people. Dating apps are like ferris wheels: Some people would like to see the lay of the land, but the seats are taken up by people addicted to the ups and downs. People are not e-commerce items. Dating apps give the illusion of customization. There is no magic algorithm, there is not an unlimited supply from which to deliver your perfect match, and you would be shocked with whom you can be happy. The lines of code are designed to play into your narcissism. Like Narcissus, you’ll think you’re looking at someone else, when you’re only seeing yourself. It’s a person, not a made-to-order blazer. You do not need to be “challenged.” You hear it all the time: “I want someone who challenges me.” This is usually code for them having an impressive job or education. I get it, you want to be successful and achieve things in life. You’ll do a lot more of that from a foundation of caring and support than from partnering up with a drill sergeant. If you want to be challenged, look for someone so attentive and considerate they challenge your own self-centeredness. So what if they like Nickelback? Oh, the energy you’d save if you realized similar taste in books, movies, and music is the last thing to look for in a partner. There you have it – eight harsh truths about dating from me, a former professional dater. I have to admit, dating is mysterious and it’s possible I know little more about what sequence of actions cause love to land in one’s life than does a cargo cult. But since I’m delivering these truths from my privileged position in a happy long-term relationship, I think I have a clear head about it. Think of me as your designated driver: More sober than you single people, but still capable of crashing us into a light pole. I’ll close with this quote from Roxanne Gay, “I didn’t really learn that I deserved to be loved well until I was loved well.” I hope you find the love you deserve – it may not be what you expect. Image Credit: Senecio by Paul Klee The Mind Management, Not Time Management audiobook is here! Listen to the Mind Management, Not Time Management audiobook free with an Audible trial, or search for the audiobook on your favorite platform. Thank you for having me on your podcasts! Thank you for having me on your podcast! Thank you Chris Sparks at The Forcing Function, Dan Pierce at Mentally Fit, and Joanna Penn at The Creative Penn. As always, you can see a full list of podcasts I’ve been here. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/8-harsh-dating-truths/

Does image-based media make us think less about our principles and ideals, and more about pursuing mere appearances? Daniel J. Boorstin thought so. In his book, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, Boorstin breaks down why “The Graphic Revolution,” has built a world where our fantasies are more real than our reality. In this book summary, I’ll explain why Boorstin says, “By sharpening our images we have blurred all our experience.” Pseudo-events The thirtieth anniversary of a hotel is coming up. They reach out to leaders in the community to form a committee: A banker, a society matron, a lawyer, a preacher. The committee plans a banquet to celebrate the thirty years of service the hotel has given the community. They invite journalists to the banquet to take photos and report it in the newspapers. This hotel’s anniversary banquet is what Boorstin calls a “pseudo-event.” Pseudo-events have these four qualities: Pseudo-events are planned, not spontaneous. Pseudo-events are created so they can be reported. Pseudo-events are only ambiguously related to reality. Pseudo-events are self-fulfilling. The event is evidence of the thing the event was planned to illustrate. The thirtieth anniversary banquet didn’t happen spontaneously: The hotel created a committee for it. The main reason to have the banquet was to generate press. If the hotel was so valuable, would they have to task members of the community with planning the banquet? It was hardly real. But since this contrived banquet happened, it served as evidence that the hotel was, in fact, valuable to the community. The Graphic Revolution Boorstin blames the proliferation of pseudo-events on what he calls “The Graphic Revolution,” or our rapidly-growing ability create and disseminate imagery. The Graphic Revolution was cited, by the way – as a trigger to our departure from long-form text – in Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, which I summarized on episode 252. The foundation of The Graphic Revolution was built when the telegraph was first applied to news reporting in the 1830s and 40s. The first American newspaper was monthly, but when information could suddenly be transferred around the world in seconds, news became a product to be manufactured. The Associated Press was founded in 1848, making news a salable commodity. As printing technology became more sophisticated – such as the New York Tribune’s press, which in the 1870s could print 18,000 papers per hour – the capital required to run a newspaper meant it made good business sense to find more and more news to report. The American Civil and Spanish-American Wars, while newsworthy events, made the news machine bigger and more hungry, leaving more space to fill with pseudo-events once the real events subsided. As the term “Graphic Revolution” implies, graphics were a part of the proliferation of news. The first photograph that appeared in a newspaper was published in 1880. But also, audio is a part of the Graphic Revolution. The phonograph was invented in 1877, followed by radio broadcasts in 1900. The copy is more real than the original In 1922, De Witt and Lila Acheson Wallace used scissors and paste to put together the first issue of their magazine, in a one-room basement office in Greenwich Village. They carried the magazine copies to the post office and mailed them. It was an instant success. The Wallaces were able to start Reader’s Digest with almost no money, because they didn’t need editors or writers. De Witt simply went to the New York Public Library, and wrote summaries of articles in the magazines there. Reader’s Digest became more popular than the magazines it was summarizing. In fact, it was nearly twice as popular as America’s second-most popular magazine. Reader’s Digest became so popular, that – according to the company’s official historian – they had to help the magazines they were summarizing stay in business. To do this, they would write a short summary of an article. They would then write the article and place it in another magazine. At one point, more than half of summaries published in Reader’s Digest were of articles they had placed in other magazines. The copy is more real than the original As Boorstin says, ”The image, more interesting than its original, has itself become the original.” The runaway success of Reader’s Digest was a symptom that reading had become not about reading – it had instead become about creating the perception of being “well-informed.” People wanted to browse the summaries to feel that they were aware of what information was out there, not to learn anything from the information itself. As the Graphic Revolution and our ability to reproduce images has strengthened, copies have become more real to us than originals. We go to an art exhibit to see the original of the painting we’ve seen copies of – visitors to a Gauguin exhibit once complained that colors in the original paintings were less-brilliant than the reproductions they were used to. Movies became important in about 1910, often reproducing stories found in novels – by 1917, Publishers’ Weekly was writing about “cinema novels.” In the 1880s, you could only enjoy music if you or someone near you was playing an instrument. By the 1930s, Muzak was mashing together 24-hour mixes of sound to be played in businesses as “background music.” At one point, streaming their “muzak” made them the largest user of telephone networks. And yes, bloggers like myself gain traffic by attracting readers to summaries of books, such as The Image, by Daniel J. Boorstin. Images beget images The proliferation of imagery creates demand for that imagery, which drives demand for pseudo-events. This shapes our culture, driving us away from our principles. Pseudo-events are in higher demand than actual spontaneous events for several reasons: Pseudo-events can be planned to be more dramatic. Pseudo-events are easier to spread (you can have the news release ready to go before the pseudo-event happens – Boorstin points out it should be called a news “holdback”). Pseudo-events are easily repeated. Pseudo-events cost money to produce, so there’s more incentive to spread them (the publicist wants to show results, the client wants those results, the journalists need something to write about). Pseudo-events make more sense (they are planned, after all). Pseudo-events are more memetic. They have elements people want to spread. Pseudo-events are social currency. Knowing about pseudo-events happening in the world becomes a test of being “informed” – something that’s encouraged on the societal level. Pseudo-events spawn other pseudo-events. The effects of pseudo-events As pseudo-events spread in our image-based media, they change what we value in our culture. Pseudo-events affect who we look up to in society, how we travel, and what art we value. Pseudo-events and heroes Pseudo-events shape whom we choose as heroes. We used to choose heroes based upon their accomplishments, and how those accomplishments represented our ideals. Now we choose our heroes based upon how they appear in media – are they in the news a lot, and do they project an image in which we see ourselves? I shared in my Amusing Ourselves to Death summary that early U.S. Presidents wouldn’t have been recognized on the street. We didn’t know them by their images – we knew them by the words they wrote or said. Demagogues such as Mussolini, Stalin, or Hitler show what we get when we seek someone who fits our image of a “Great Leader.” Today, our heroes are our celebrities. We don’t make them famous because they are great – we think they are great because they are famous. Celebrities know that to be celebrities they need to get in the news and stay there. They create pseudo-events of themselves, including intensifying their images by publicizing relationships between one another. Meanwhile, dead people who deserve to be heroes fall into the background – they won’t hire a publicist, and journalists get nothing out of writing about them. Pseudo-events and travel Pseudo-events have shaped the way we travel. The word “travel” used to mean the same as “travail.” In other words, travel meant trouble, work, and torment. We love that we can easily get directly to our destination, and bypass any places that might be along the way. We calculate distance not in miles, but in hours. We don’t move through space, we move through time. We expect the faraway to be familiar, and we expect the nearby to be exotic. But travel used to be travailing. It meant spending time with strangers and strange cultures. It meant getting lost and being disoriented. But the capital required to build railroads and then highways meant we needed more people traveling. And to get more people to travel, we had to make travel less travailing. Travel has become a tautology. At the time Boorstin wrote The Image, in 1962, that meant traveling to Mount Sinai to see where they filmed the movie The Ten Commandments – or traveling to Rome to see if the Trevi Fountain really looks like it did in the movie Three Coins in the Fountain. Today, we go to see the places we’ve seen on Instagram, then take a selfie to…post to Instagram. Pseudo-events and movies I already mentioned how novels were made into movies, which then spawned novels written to become movies. The mass-distribution of actors in movies spawned the star system. Movie-goers wanted to see stars with a distinctive look, such as Mary Pickford’s golden curls or Charlie Chaplin’s bowed legs and cane. By being put on film, actors no longer get direct feedback from their audiences. Actors aren’t tested by how well they interpret the story – the story is tested by how well it displays the actor. The “bestselling” book is a pseudo-event The publishing industry became driven by what Boorstin calls best-sellerism. The Bookman was a literary journal that turned the idea of the best-seller into an institution, around the turn of the century. Printing books costs money, so publishers started planning “reprints” before they even released the originals. A paperback publisher wouldn’t plan their paperback until they had a contract to print the hardback. The hardback publishers wouldn’t print a hardback until they had a contract to print the paperback. Either contract served as evidence the book was popular, which would drive sales. Booksellers only wanted to order new books they were sure would be bestsellers. Yet the public became so obsessed with purchasing bestsellers, bookstores couldn’t carry the really big bestsellers. Retail stores like Macy’s would sell them below cost to attract customers, thus making bookstores unable to compete. We want to be deceived Pseudo-events are so ubiquitous in every part of our life, we’ve come to expect them. We actually want to be deceived. We expect the advertising we encounter to be hyperbolic and non-sensical. Maybe we want to see the originals of the photoshopped model not to change our unrealistic expectations, but rather to marvel at the work that goes into deceiving us? Consider that Schlitz advertised their beer bottles were steam-sterilized, which boosted their sales, or that Lucky Strike advertised the tobacco in their cigarettes was toasted. Nevermind that all beer bottles were already steam sterilized, and all cigarettes toasted. The claim by Ivory soap that their soap is 99.4% pure is just a little modest, so as to be believable nonsense. Are we pursuing images, or are we living life? Boorstin may sound like he wants people to get off his lawn – and he does write with a shrill tone much of the time. But much like Marshall McLuhan would say two years later in Understanding Media, which I summarized on episode 248, Boorstin is mostly trying to make us aware of our own illusions. Boorstin’s concern is mostly that, “We fill our lives not with experience, but with the images of experience.” Neil Postman later built on Boorstin’s ideas to warn in Amusing Ourselves to Death, that image-based media was devolving our discourse into nonsense. A final quote from Boorstin: Chewing gum is the television of the mouth. There is no danger so long as we do not think that by chewing gum we are getting nourishment. But the Graphic Revolution has offered us the means of making all experience a form of mental chewing gum. There’s your The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America summary I hope you enjoyed this summary of The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America, and lest your reading experience consist only of summaries, check out the full book. I personally found it to be a great history of media and publishing. It’s one of the major classics of media theory – a must-read for anyone who creates media. The Mind Management, Not Time Management audiobook is here! Listen to the Mind Management, Not Time Management audiobook free with an Audible trial, or search for the audiobook on your favorite platform. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/the-image-a-guide-to-pseudo-events-in-america-daniel-j-boorstin/

The business of creative work is the business of riding randomness. If you want to write a bestselling book or launch a revolutionary company, you’re going to need luck. You’re navigating Extremistan, not Mediocristan, as I talked about in episode 253. How do you increase your chances of having a hit without risking everything? You do it with “The Barbell Strategy.” You can use the Barbell Strategy in many areas of life and work. The Barbell Strategy defined The Barbell Strategy is introduced in Nassim Taleb’s The Black Swan, which I summarized on episode 244. The Barbell Strategy protects you from catastrophic losses that can take you out of the game. Meanwhile, it gives you chances to make big gains. Why “barbell”? Think of a barbell – a very lopsided barbell. On one side of the barbell is a big weight. On the other side of the barbell is a small weight. In the middle is the thin bar that connects the two. The Barbell Strategy is an investment strategy Taleb introduces The Barbell Strategy in an investing context. This is the strategy Taleb has used as a financial trader. As we’ll see, you can apply it to other areas as well. Taleb says: If you know that you are vulnerable to prediction errors, and if you accept that most “risk measures” are flawed, because of the Black Swan, then your strategy is to be as hyperconservative and hyperaggressive as you can be instead of being mildly aggressive or conservative. (emphasis mine) In other words, you have to accept that the world is full of Black Swans. As a review, Black Swans are outlier events with extreme impact. We think we can explain Black Swans after the fact, but we really have no idea. They can be positive, or negative. Things like financial market crashes or mega-best-selling books. By being hyperconservative, you avoid the negative Black Swans. By being hyperagressive, you expose yourself to positive Black Swans. 85% hyperconservative investments, 15% hyperaggressive investments Most people go with the “safe” investment. I’m not a financial advisor, and nothing I’m saying is investment advice, but for most people, that’s the index fund: Keep putting money in an S&P 500 ETF. Expect to get a 7% return over your lifetime. The strategy Taleb espouses is to avoid so-called “medium risk” investments. Instead, put 85% of your portfolio in hyperconservative investments – places where you won’t lose money. Invest the other 15% of your portfolio in hyperaggressive investments – places where you might lose your money, but where there’s also no limit to how much money you could make. When you’re invested in the index fund, your entire portfolio is exposed to Black Swans. The stock market dropped nearly 90% during the Great Depression, and swift drops of 30 or 40% are not uncommon. If 85% of your portfolio is spread across hyperconservative investments, you’re unlikely to need to weather such storms. With 15% of your portfolio in hyperaggressive investments, you can only lose 15% of your money. Meanwhile, there’s no limit to how high those hyperaggressive investments can go. Imagine you put 1% of your net worth in Bitcoin five years ago. Multiply that by 100, and that’s your current return. Even if you lost all the other 14% of your net worth in hyperaggressive investments, you would have nearly doubled your money, with little downside risk. The Barbell Strategy in creative work As you learned in episode 253 about Mediocristan vs. Extremistan, creative success is unpredictable. As award-winning screenwriter William Goldman said, “Nobody knows anything.” Most creatives expect their success to go “up and to the right.” When someone suggests they take some chances, to justify not taking those chances they abuse survivorship bias – as I talked about on episode 251. So they stick to “the middle.” They do the thing they feel will get them a little success. For authors, this is the strategy of cranking out a formulaic novel every month that’s sure to sell some copies – but for which nobody is ever going to camp in line outside a bookstore to be the first to get. Maybe they make the graph go “up and to the right,” but they’ll never have a breakout success. Find some “sure bets” – protect your downside To play the Barbell Strategy in creative work, first, you need to find some sure bets. Protect your downside, so you can stay in the game. Remember on episode 251 when I told you about my poker-player friend who needs a certain “bankroll” to make $100 an hour? That’s what you need. You need some room to explore long enough to let ergodicity take over. That could be a literal bankroll. I personally invested a lot when I had a secure job, knowing that some day I’d use the bankroll as runway to start something on my own. Some creatives like to have a secure day job, and spend a little time creating before or after work. Anthony Trollope and Charles Bukowski worked at the post office. Octavia Butler’s many jobs included potato chip inspector. Comedian Mark Normand was a janitor, which allowed him to think about his bits while he worked. When I first started on my own, after I had gone through savings I had bookmarked for exploration, I spent ten hours a week freelancing – the rest of the time I spent building passive income streams. I told you on episode 214 how one passive income stream made me $150,000. I now live in Colombia, where my three-bedroom apartment costs less than $700 a month – which takes off a lot of financial pressure. To play the Barbell Strategy, you need to protect your downside. There are no guarantees in life, including life itself – so this means something different for everyone. Figure out what it is for you. Play some “wildcards” Now, play some “wildcards” (Note that “sure bets” and “wildcards” are my own terms. Taleb hates gambling analogies because in gambling the actual odds are known – but you get the idea.) Wildcards are things that – as Seth Godin would say – “might not work.” In fact, they probably won’t work – but they have unlimited upside potential. They’re the “asymmetric opportunities” Tynan talked about on episode 145. “Asymmetric” refers to the risk profile: The potential downsides are small, but the potential upside are huge. The profile is not symmetric, it’s asymmetric. For example, it costs little to write a blog post. You have little to lose, but you may gain a lot. I’ve written many hundreds of blog posts in seventeen years. Two of those have led to positive Black Swans: One got me my first book deal, and catapulted my status online from nobody to somebody. Another got me an advisory position with a company that sold to Google, and became the subject of my latest book. Numerous others brought smaller benefits, but I can’t think of any I regret. Your wildcards have a chance to become positive Black Swans. You can’t predict what will work, so make lots of small bets with unlimited upside. Avoid “the middle” Finally, avoid “the middle.” There’s a few reasons for this. One, the middle is crowded. As restauranteur Nick Kokonas said on episode 213, most people aren’t as afraid of failure as they are of success. They want to do okay, but they don’t want to do great. At the same time, we have a loss-aversion bias. We hate losing an investment twice as much as we enjoy gaining from an investment. So, everyone goes for the middle. And there’s more competition in the middle. Two, the middle is where the negative Black Swans happen. You’re only investing a little in the wildcards, so you can afford to lose it all. We tend to go all-in on the middle, so when an unexpected catastrophe happens, we lose a lot. Three, the middle has little chance of bringing positive Black Swans. Your index fund is supposed to return 7% a year. It could lose 40% of its value in a day or two. Meanwhile, does it have any chance of gaining 1,000% just as fast? Very unlikely. What’s hot is usually “the middle” Look at what is hot in your field, and you’ll probably find “the middle.” In writing, it’s churning out formulaic fiction series for Kindle Unlimited. In blogging, it’s making sure you’re sharing every blog post to every social media channel. In SEO, it’s manufacturing mediocre articles on high-volume keywords you have little chance of ranking for. In SaaS entrepreneurship, it’s A/B testing to make minuscule gains in conversion rate. Some of these things might bring a little progress, which is why people do them, but they have no chance of big upside. Avoiding the middle protects your downside, and gives you a chance for more upside. With less invested in the middle, you can invest more in the wildcards. The Barbell Strategy in other areas The Barbell Strategy is useful in investing, and it’s useful in creative work. If you look around, you can also apply the Barbell Strategy to other areas. The Barbell Strategy for exercise “The middle” for exercise is steady-state, medium-intensity, training. Taleb himself is an advocate of doing power lifts, as heavy as you can. This certainly exposes you to upside, but I think it also exposes you to the downside of injury. I think the true Barbell Strategy for exercise is Body by Science, which I summarized on episode 160. It’s a very intense and short protocol, with little chance of injury. Other than that, go for long walks or do physical activities you enjoy. The Barbell Strategy for technology use You can apply the Barbell Strategy to your technology use. Some technology exposes you to potential serendipity. Surfing around on Reddit or social media is fun, and you never know when you’ll happen across a breakthrough idea. But like a risky investment, it’s risky to spend all your attention in these areas. The “sure bets” in technology are to use specific tools for the job you’re trying to get done. I talked about “grippy” and “slippy” tools on episode 230. If you’re a writer, get an AlphaSmart, or a typewriter for the initial brainstorming phases of your work. High-powered technology such as smartphones and laptops can be sure bets, too. But just use them for short bursts for specific tasks. What you want to avoid is the always-on use of the highest-power technology available. If you’re always glued to your smartphone or laptop, you’re connected to the internet, but you’re disconnected from your own mind. You can’t use technology without technology using some part of you. Marshall McLuhan, whose book, Understanding Media, I talked about on episode 248, would say that as technology extends, it also “amputates.” Another “wildcard” for technology is to not use technology at all. When I took Naval Ravikant’s meditation challenge, which I talked about on episode 246, I found that during meditation I thought more about asymmetric ideas, which I later implemented when I was using technology. The Barbell Strategy for time management You can apply the Barbell Strategy to time management. “The middle” is trying to get the most done in the shortest time. It’s being on clock time instead of event time, like I talked about on episode 235. The “sure bets” for time management are to have clear priorities, build habits, document processes, and automate what you can. These tactics help you use time and energy more effectively, without stressing you out and disrupting your creativity. The “wildcards” for time management are mostly the opposite of the sure bets. Meditate, daydream, go for walks, take naps, tinker, play, and discuss. As Taleb says, “Go to parties!” Instead of having clear priorities, spend time on “anti-priorities”: Things that don’t seem important, but that you want to do anyway. What you want to avoid is the stuff most people try to do to “save time”: full schedules, tight deadlines, last-minute crises, mindless outsourcing, and complexity creep. These tactics lead to negative time Black Swans: When one thing goes wrong, everything collapses, you lose time, and stress yourself out. Live the barbell life Let’s close with a quote from Nassim Taleb: I will never get to know the unknown since, by definition, it is unknown. However, I can always guess how it might affect me, and I should base my decisions around that. To apply the Barbell Strategy to any area of your life and work, avoid the middle, find sure bets, and play some wildcards. It’s the best way to stay in the game long enough to get lucky. Last chance to join the True Fan Patreon tier I'm offering the special "True Fan" Patreon tier through May. Join today and get lots of benefits at a discounted price. Learn more here » About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/barbell-strategy/

I recently got a message from a reader, who said, “I don’t know if it’s meditation or you reaching a new level professionally, but I feel like your writing is on FIRE!” I do feel my writing has improved over the last year. They’re right to think the meditation I talked about on episode 246 has helped. If I had to pick one thing that has improved my writing, it’s starting to use the Zettelkasten method I talked about on episode 250. But I wouldn’t be able to manage my Zettelkasten if it weren’t for a recent breakthrough in how, physically, I write. It wouldn’t be possible without my new low-EMF computing setup. What are EMFs? On episode 206, my Non-Tinfoil Guide to EMFs summary, I talked about evidence suggesting non-ionizing EMFs, or electromagnetic fields, may cause health problems. EMFs are emitted by electronic devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and computers – even the electricity these items run on emits EMFs. (I’m cautious to use the term “radiation”, since – as the irrationally rational are always quick to point out – it’s non-ionizing radiation. But it is radiation). When I learned about these potential health effects, I started to look more closely at my day-to-day exposure. What I discovered through trial-and-error has changed the way I use electronics, and it has improved my well-being, and thus the clarity of my thoughts and the clarity of my writing. Your Mileage May Vary I’ll preface this with a couple things. One is that I have long struggled with a mysterious illness. I won’t go too far into details here, but my worst symptoms are chronic muscle tension, brain fog, and a wide breadth of food sensitivities. One doctor thinks it’s chronic Lyme disease, and I’m one of the unlucky people highly sensitive to the contents of amalgam fillings, as I’ve been responding very well to replacing my fillings and following a heavy-metal chelation protocol. Everything I just said is controversial in traditional medicine, and I remain open-minded about the true sources of my suffering. The fact remains I’m one person, living in this body for what remains of this life, and I can’t wait for definitive answers when it comes to treatment and management – especially when all traditional avenues have repeatedly failed me. But I mention these things to say, also, that Your Mileage May Vary. You may have zero sensitivities to EMFs, and you may deem the potential health risks worth the benefits. I am not here to convince you that I am sensitive to EMFs, nor that you are sensitive to EMFs. I’m only here to share what I wish I had known years ago. Electrohypersensitivity (EHS): Is it real? I’m 95% sure that I have electromagnetic hypersensitivity, or EHS. This, once again, is controversial in the medical establishment. Some say this is totally a thing. Others say it’s all in my head. Governments such as France and parts of Sweden recognize EHS as a disability. But The World Health Organization does not recognize EHS as a medical condition, despite the fact a former head of WHO claims to suffer from EHS. The WHO suggests – in addition to searching for other root causes such as noise or flickering lights – Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Still, as much as 10% of a population have reported they suffer from EHS. Well, I’ve done plenty of therapy, and I’ve done a ton of meditation. I’ve pushed the edges of self-control and self-knowledge in emotional, behavioral, and dietary interventions. I’ve systematized and tracked diets and symptoms, trying to reduce noise and find patterns. I’m an active student of the many biases and errors of observation that can cause one to fool oneself. Still, reducing my exposure to certain bands of EMFs has been one of the biggest breakthroughs in my health struggle. I can’t be 100% sure, but I’m sure enough that I’ve changed how I use technology, and I feel much better since I’ve done so. Which types of EMF to reduce? When I started trying to reduce my exposure to EMFs in my daily computing, I was thinking only of WiFi, Bluetooth and LTE. I started using a wired Ethernet connection at home. I reduced my use of Bluetooth devices. I felt better, but it wasn’t a dramatic improvement. Then, I noticed something strange: On my iPad, I could write for hours. On my computer, I quickly got fatigued. I had long used a program on my computer that reminded me to take a break every hour. Whenever that reminder came, I was already having trouble concentrating. I didn’t have that program on my iPad, and I didn’t need it. I got fatigued less often on my iPad. No, a wired keyboard is not magically low-EMF I got a wired external keyboard, and distanced myself from my computer, thinking maybe my fatigue had something to do with being close to the computer itself. Again, I saw an improvement, but whenever I returned after a break, I could feel muscles in my chest twitch and tighten, and my breath shorten. Even far away from my computer, on a wired keyboard, I needed to limit my computer use, and take long breaks. I tried to do as much as I could on my iPad. But, strangely, I had to use a lightweight keyboard to use my iPad without symptoms. If I hooked up my heavy-duty keyboard to my iPad, I soon had the muscle tension and shortness of breath. Bluetooth may be your best bet (than again, maybe not!) It wasn’t until I distanced myself from anything physically connected to the computer that I could use it for hours without fatigue and trouble concentrating. Surprisingly, this meant using a wireless trackpad, and a wireless keyboard. That’s right: Bluetooth. When I finally bought a meter, I realized that in the electric field band – AC power is 60Hz – my computer emitted way more EMFs than my iPad. My wired keyboard I had carefully selected also emitted high EMFs in this band, when connected to my computer. And, this same keyboard emitted high EMFs, even when connected to my iPad – which helped explain why I had symptoms when using it with my iPad. Based on my personal experimentation, I’m not terribly sensitive to Bluetooth, nor WiFi, nor LTE. I think I am a little sensitive to all of them, but it’s nothing like when I’m exposed 60Hz radiation. That’s when my symptoms are at their worst. I optimize my EMF exposure more to be able to actually work than to avoid health effects. Bluetooth and WiFi are possibly not good for you – then again, maybe they’ll make no long-term difference to your health. I avoid unnecessary exposure when practical, but am mostly concerned with being able to work. Know which band(s) you’re sensitive to If you suspect you are EHS, keep an open mind about which bands of EMF, specifically, you are sensitive to. I feel better when I reduce exposure to 60Hz. I’ve met other people who say Bluetooth and WiFi are their nemeses. For others, it’s LTE. Others are sensitive to the new 5G technology (I can’t believe I have to say this, but please don’t lump EHS sufferers in with 5G conspiracy theorists.) After I discovered I was sensitive to electricity, it made sense why I needed to take such frequent breaks when using my laptop, but not my iPad. It also made a lot of sense why I had gravitated toward writing on an AlphaSmart. At first, I thought my improved concentration on either of these devices had to do with the lack of ease with which I could access other information – which would effect my propensity to think about other information (the characteristics I called “slippy” and “grippy” on episode 230). I posit this affects my stress response, and thus my symptoms, but I don’t think it explains the drastic differences in my symptoms across these devices. My low-EMF computing setup So, Your Mileage May Vary, but here is my low-EMF computing setup. I keep my laptop a few feet away at all times I keep my laptop a few feet away from me at all times. Yes, this means that I never use my laptop as a laptop, and I use an external display. You may wonder, Why don’t I get a Mac Mini or a desktop computer? I’ll explain why in a bit. I keep my laptop far away, and use an overbed table to keep distance from the monitor, using a Bluetooth keyboard and trackpad. I experimented with keeping my laptop several feet away, in a closet, and considered constructing an EMF-blocking enclosure for it – called a Faraday cage. This would be nice, but since Bluetooth is my best option for peripherals, a few feet away provides the best mix of lower EMF exposure, and somewhat-reliable connectivity for my keyboard and trackpad. The only times I’ve used my laptop as a portable computer over the past coronavirus year has been to take it into my recording studio. I still try to stay as far away from my computer as possible, but in these cases I’m using the screen on the laptop, and EMFs are emitted by my microphone. So, the time I can spend recording is limited, before my thinking gets cloudy. It takes time to recover if I get to that point. I use battery power whenever possible My laptop emits less electric field radiation when running off battery power, so I use battery power on my laptop whenever possible. I keep my laptop plugged into an AC power switch. In this way, it is plugged in, but not pulling power, because the switch is in the “off” position. For reasons I don’t understand, my laptop emits a weaker EMF in this way – perhaps this grounds it. When I’m low on battery power, or when I’m leaving my office for a while, I switch the power on, to recharge the battery. This AC power switch makes it easy to run my laptop on battery power Anything that is connected to AC power emits an electric field. Even dormant outlets themselves emit one. Peripherals connected to the laptop also emit this radiation. When I use battery power, that lowers the power of the electric field emitted by my laptop, and by any peripherals connected to it – such as my monitor, a webcam, or a microphone. There is still some, but it is lower. And that is why I don’t have a desktop computer – it’s better for me to run on battery power. I use an external monitor I use an external monitor, attached to my laptop. I don’t use my laptop screen at all. I point the laptop screen away from me so it doesn’t distract me. I wish I could operate my laptop with an external monitor and the laptop closed, but on my laptop this only works when it is connected to AC power. That of course would greatly increase the power of the electric fields the computer and all peripherals emitted. I have not experimented with different monitors to find which ones emit less radiation – I just bought the cheapest and smallest monitor I could find. The monitor has to be connected to AC power to operate, but the radiation emitted is lower when the laptop is running off battery power, as radiation travels through the HDMI cable. I suppose I could get a large tablet and use that as an external monitor, with battery power, perhaps even connected through AirPlay. I have not experimented with that yet. As I write this it seems like a clearly better idea. I keep my distance with a rolling overbed table I have a rolling overbed table, which I bought to write on while laid back in my recliner. My favorite new writing setup: In a recliner, with one of those over-bed tables you might see in a hospital. Laid back, with my mind on writing and writing on my mind. pic.twitter.com/5tpvF67rr0 — ? David Kadavy (@kadavy) July 30, 2020 I now also use this overbed table to keep my distance from my monitor when at my computer. Since my monitor is connected to AC power, it emits a lot of 60Hz radiation, and I notice if I get too close. Since I stay back a few feet, I’ve adjusted my display settings to display things larger. Again, being so far from my display probably wouldn’t be necessary if I used a large tablet, on battery power, as my monitor. I don’t feel sensitive to my iPad when I write on it from quite close. It emits very little radiation. Larger tablets probably emit more, though in comparison it’s probably negligible. I use a Bluetooth keyboard The first keyboard I tried was a mechanical iKBC CD87 v2, based upon another article on low-EMF keyboards. This article had said that mechanical keyboards emit less radiation. I now realize it didn’t specify what band of radiation. I still developed muscle tension, fatigue, and brain fog when using this keyboard far from my computer, and even when connected to my iPad. I experimented with using, on my computer, the portable keyboard I use with my iPad, in Bluetooth mode. It was a big improvement. This was when I realized I was not nearly as sensitive to Bluetooth radiation as I am to AC power. So, I set out to find a nice Bluetooth keyboard. I decided on the Mistel Barocco MD770, which is a mechanical split keyboard with both Bluetooth and wired capability (I went for the extra-clicky Cherry MX Blue switches). Like any Bluetooth keyboard I’ve used, its connection is flakey at times – especially since I use it several feet from my laptop. But for the first time in years, I can work on my computer for hours with little fatigue. I use a Bluetooth trackpad For mousing I use a Bluetooth Magic Trackpad 2. In the beginning of my low-EMF computing quest, I was using this wired to my laptop. Once I realized AC power was my biggest culprit, I switched to Bluetooth, which was an improvement. However, I do wire the trackpad to my iPad without a problem. I use an EMF meter to optimize my setup The EMF meter I use to optimize my low-EMF computing setup is the Meterk. It’s very cheap – only about $35. It only measures electric fields and magnetic fields, so not Bluetooth, nor WiFi, nor radio frequencies. AC power is what I’m most sensitive to, so I’m satisfied with how this meter helps me manage exposure. Anyone sensitive to other bands will want to get a meter that measures the offending bands. Many people like the Trifield. Then again, I’m not entirely sure that what’s measured by a meter in a particular band directly translates into effects EMFs have on the cells in one’s body. This could be part of why scientists are having trouble agreeing on whether EHS even exists. Really there’s nothing better than experimenting until you come up with what works for you. There’s my low-EMF computing setup There’s my low-EMF computing setup. It’s admittedly strange. I hope none of you are sensitive to your devices, because as you can see it’s massively inconvenient – bordering on debilitating – when you work with computers most of the day. Still, the effort and extra expense has paid off big for me. If you’re one of the many people with a mysterious chronic illness, it may be worth experimenting to see if EMFs are contributing to your symptoms. If you are sensitive to EMFs, I hope this gives you some ideas for how you can be productive and feel better when working with technology. Last chance to join the True Fan Patreon tier I'm offering the special "True Fan" Patreon tier through May. Join today and get lots of benefits at a discounted price. Learn more here » About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/low-emf-computing/

After fourteen rejections, as I outlined on episode 247, I finally landed a BookBub Featured Deal. Once I tallied up my results, I had lost more than $4,000 running the promotion. I’ll tell you why, and why I’d still do another BookBub Featured Deal in a heartbeat. My BookBub Featured Deal Results Book: The Heart to Start: Stop Procrastinating & Start Creating BookBub Category: Advice and How-To Date: Wednesday, June 10, 2020 List Price: $9.99 Deal Price: $1.99 Territory: United States BookBub Promotion Fee: $1,008 Promotion Size: ~1,000,000 subscribers Copies Sold: 2,541 Revenue: $1,841 Supplemental Ad Spend: $4,847 Total Profit (Loss): ($4,014)   The breakdown of copies sold (across all countries): Amazon: 2,236 Apple: 204 Barnes & Noble: 49 Google: 36 Kobo: 16 Total Copies Sold: 2,541   The breakdown of revenue results (across all countries): Amazon: $1,462 Apple: $266 Barnes & Noble: $59 Google: $34 Kobo: $19 Total Revenue: $1,841   Overall ad spend results, broken down by network: BookBub Ads: $1,910 BookBub Featured Deal: $1,008 Amazon: $1,761 Facebook: $1,187 Instagram influencers: $185 Total Ad Spend: $6,051 My BookBub Featured Deal made my book a bestseller across several categories The Heart to Start ranked as high as: #136 overall on Amazon #1 in Self-Help/Creativity #1 in Arts & Photography #1 in Entrepreneurship & Small Business #6 overall in Self-Help #6 overall in Business & Investing Three reasons my BookBub Featured Deal results were poor (financially) The three main reasons I lost $4,000 running my BookBub Featured Deal are: I was trying for a bestseller list I poorly allocated advertising spend throughout the promotion I poorly allocated advertising spend amongst platforms 1. I was trying for the WSJ bestseller list Word on the street is, to qualify for the Wall Street Journal nonfiction ebook best-seller list, you need to sell 3,000–5,000 ebooks in a week, in the U.S. Supposedly you need to sell at least 500 of those copies in a single non-Amazon channel to trigger reporting to the list. I contemplated not trying for the list and instead reaping what profits I could, but decided to go for it. I felt The Heart to Start was a longshot, but was curious to learn so I could later apply what I learned on my then-upcoming-now-out book, Mind Management, Not Time Management (read about my BookBub Featured New Release results for my new book). Despite spending more than $6,000 on the promotion, I did not break the 3,000-copy barrier. Here is my sales breakdown for U.S. sales (the above sales are worldwide): Sales (U.S.) Amazon: 2,123 B&N: 51 (countries unknown) Apple: 185 Kobo: 7 Google: 29 Total U.S. Copies Sold: 2,395 As you can see, perhaps harder than selling 3,000 copies overall is selling 500 copies in a non-Amazon channel (for this book in this genre with my audience, anyway).   2. I poorly allocated ad spend throughout the promotion I broke my ad spend down into three buckets: Warm Up: Starting around 10 days before the promotion, I built awareness about my book to “warm up” the audience, so they would act more readily when the deal hit their inboxes. During: The day of and a couple days after my promotion, I advertised the discount (where possible). Last Day: The final day of the promotion, I advertised the discount, with messaging that it was the last day (where possible). My ad spend results amongst these three buckets: Warm Up: $2,225 (46%) During: $1,477 (30%) Last Day: $1,145 (24%) Total: $4,847 I do not recommend this allocation. Without much time to plan my promotion, I got overly-zealous, and spent way too much early on. By the time I got to the Last Day, I was trigger shy and didn’t want to spend more money. If anything, this should have been reversed. The last day of any promotion will generally get you more bang for your buck. In the future, I plan to spend 50% of budget on the Last Day. 3. I poorly allocated supplemental advertising spend amongst platforms I ran ads on Amazon, BookBub, and Facebook. My breakdown amongst these channels: Amazon Ads: $1,761 (36%) BookBub Ads: $1,910 (39%) Facebook: $1,177 (24%) Total: $4,847 (note, I spent $10 on Instagram ads, which went to Facebook thus the discrepancy from above “Facebook” numbers. I also paid $185 for promotion from Instagram influencers, which is not reflected in this report, for simplicity.) I do not recommend this allocation. I spent too heavily on Facebook, and I especially did so during the Warm Up phase. I do not normally advertise on Facebook, and don’t aspire to build my skills in running Facebook ads. I already run Amazon Ads regularly, but their terms and platform features make it impossible or impractical to advertise discounts, especially with “Last Day” messaging. I think you get more bang for your buck on a BookBub Featured Deal by advertising on BookBub itself. Yes, you can target BookBub subscribers on Facebook, but it’s more straightforward to advertise on BookBub. Therefore, in the future, I plan to spend 50% of budget on BookBub Ads. The long-term results of my BookBub Featured Deal Part of the appeal of a BookBub Featured Deal is not just the sales you make during the promotion. There are also long-term benefits. Amazon algorithm boost (and increased profits) Word on the street is, Amazon has 30-day and 90-day “cliffs” on their algorithms. If your book has a big sales spike, you can expect to see a lift in organic sales for 30 days, and a less-pronounced lift that lasts for 90 days. I can tell you that once Seth Godin recommended The Heart to Start on his blog, my sales were lifted permanently. In the five months before the month of my BookBub Featured Deal, my average monthly profit for The Heart to Start was $511. In the five months after the month of my BookBub Featured Deal, my average monthly profit for The Heart to Start was $633. I saw a 24% increase in average monthly profits after my BookBub Featured Deal. It’s impossible to say the deal caused my increased profits, but I’m sure it didn’t hurt. New readers It’s fantastic to get a shot of 2,500 new readers in a single week. The effects your book can have on someone can last a lifetime. It’s hard to measure the impact new readers can have on your author business, because new readers may buy every new book you publish for decades. Sales of other formats, or books BookBub Featured Deals are discounts on ebooks, but readers who like your ebook will sometimes buy other formats. Directly after my deal, I noticed a spike of a few dozen sales of my IngramSpark hardcover version. I suspect readers who liked the book picked up “souvenir” copies. I make more than $8 per book of profit on the hardcover. It can be worth losing money initially on a BookBub Featured Deal if your book is the first in a series. As a nonfiction author, I don’t string together my books into series – at least not as strongly as fiction authors tend to. It’s hard for me to say how the promotion affected sales of my other books. I was promoting a new book at the time, too, so there were too many confounding factors. More reviews You need decent reviews to get a BookBub Featured Deal, but your deal also brings in a lot of new reviews. When I ran my BookBub Featured Deal, I had 275 Amazon ratings/reviews. After the deal, I quickly gained more reviews. Now, nine months after the promotion, I’m closing in on 500. Cheaper Amazon Ads When you make more sales on Amazon, your ads run more. This also usually means you can run your ads more cheaply. As I reported in my June 2020 income report, I had a number of Lockscreen Ads set up on Amazon well before my BookBub Featured Deal. With my 18¢-per-click bid, they weren’t running. But once the promotion kicked in, suddenly I was getting cheaper clicks. More sales on Amazon leads to cheaper ads, which can lead to more sales. Why would I run another BookBub Featured Deal? My BookBub Featured Deal wasn’t pure gravy like my Kindle Daily Deal, but I would run another in a heartbeat. Why? Because I’ve learned through experience that I should have allocated my ad spend better. If I spent ads more wisely on a future book, I may be able to hit that WSJ best-seller list. And if I didn’t try for a list at all, I’d be interested to see if I could break even for the promotion – which would surely be profitable in the long-run, thanks to the effects of a sales boost. Free budget calculator To better plan my next BookBub Featured Deal, I’ve created a calculator. Enter your total budget and it helps break down ad spend according to phase of campaign and advertising channel. Get this calculator free here. No email address required, though if you’d like to get my highly-detailed income reports delivered to your inbox, I do recommend signing up for blog post updates. Want help with your BookBub Featured Deal? Call me! If you’re planning a BookBub Featured Deal, and would like to discuss it with me, I do consultations. Book a call with me on Clarity or Superpeer (recommended). The Mind Management, Not Time Management audiobook is here! Listen to the Mind Management, Not Time Management audiobook free with an Audible trial, or search for the audiobook on your favorite platform. Thank you for having me on your podcasts! Thank you for having me on your podcast! Thank you to Trey Kauffman at The Mosaic Life and the team at Domestika for having me as a Comic Sans expert on their Curious Minds podcast. As always, you can see a full list of podcasts I’ve been here. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/bookbub-featured-deal-results/

If you want to succeed in anything creative – whether that’s writing, art, or entrepreneurship – you’re navigating unfamiliar territory. Everyone else is living in Mediocristan, but you’re living in Extremistan. You need a different approach for deciding how you define success. “Extremistan” is a term introduced by Nicholas Nassim Taleb in his book, The Black Swan, which I summarized on episode 244. We tend to think we’re living in the opposite of Extremistan: Mediocristan. When we as creatives measure success and make our decisions as if we are in Mediocristan, we ruin any chance we have of succeeding in the world we’re actually in: Extremistan. Extremistan defined Extremistan is an imaginary place where events are random and unpredictable, and the impact of those events are extreme. It’s a world full of “Black Swans.” Extremistan vs. Mediocristan Mediocristan is a place that’s the opposite of Extremistan. Extremistan is unstable. Mediocristan is stable. Extremistan is the world of the unpredictable and unexpected. Mediocristan is the world of the predictable and expected. Extremistan is full of singular events (“Black Swans”). In Mediocristan, the same things happen over and over. Extremistan is full of variables that scale infinitely. In Mediocristan, all variables fall within a range. We’re used to Mediocristan Our modern world is built to be Mediocristan. We think we can predict what will happen. Some of this may be that our mental hard-wiring makes it difficult for us to think in terms of the unpredictable and unstable. Some of it is definitely because we’ve spread, across the collective, risks that face the individual. An hourly-wage job is in Mediocristan Imagine you have an hourly-wage job serving coffee at Starbucks. You’re working in Mediocristan. There are plenty of unpredictable things Starbucks has to deal with serving millions of customers across tens of thousands of locations. Employees will call in sick or stop showing up. There can be a coffee bean shortage, causing prices to suddenly spike. Someone might slip and fall in the bathroom and sue for millions of dollars. All these things affect Starbucks’ profits. One month, they may make a big profit. The next month, they may lose money and need to take out a loan to stay in business. But all the while, you know exactly how much you’re getting paid each hour you work. Starbucks can handle these shocks and pay you a steady wage because they spread risk across the entire organization. You don’t even notice if a water main breaks, flooding another location, or if the Director of Operations gets in a car wreck and ends up in the hospital for seven weeks. Your hourly-wage job at Starbucks is mind-numbing, it’s boring, you’re living on rice and beans from Aldi. But, it’s impressively predictable. It beats the heck out of foraging in the jungle and hoping you don’t get pounced on by a puma. Creative work happens in Extremistan A Mediocristan job is a pretty sweet deal if the wage is livable. Though, stable, well-paying Mediocristan jobs are more and more scarce. That’s not the thing I want to talk about. What I want to talk about is how important it is to understand that when you’re doing creative work, you’re not in Mediocristan, rather you’re in Extremistan. An author works in Extremistan Imagine if when you get off your shift at Starbucks, you sit down and write each day. After you build a writing habit and keep it for several years, you finish your first novel. You upload your novel to Amazon, and: nothing. You get a few sales a month. Then one day, you log into your Amazon dashboard, and see a huge spike. You’ve sold 3,000 books, and it’s not even 10 a.m. Turns out an influencer shared your book on TikTok. 3,000 books is just the beginning. Your book becomes a massive best-seller. You sell millions. A big publisher picks it up and distributes it around the world. You’re getting six-figure checks for foreign rights deals, then you get a seven-figure check for the movie rights. You quit the Starbucks job. Your life is forever changed. Extremistan is a world of extremes Your job at Starbucks is in Mediocristan. Your work as an author is in Extremistan. Remember, Extremistan is unstable, unpredictable, with singular events and variables that scale infinitely. You wrote every day after work, with no financial returns – suddenly you had more money than you knew what to do with. That’s unstable. It looked as if your book was a failure, until it wasn’t. That’s unpredictable. By some fluke, the influencer shared your book. That was a singular event (a “Black Swan”). There’s virtually no limit to the number of books you could sell. Your book sales are a variable that could scale infinitely. As the name would imply, Extremistan is a world of extremes. In Mediocristan, variables fall within a range In Mediocristan, variables fall within a range. The height of humans is a good example. The height of humans is distributed on a bell curve. There are a lot of people who are about average height. There are far fewer people on the tails of the bell curve whether extremely tall, or extremely short. There are no adults nine inches tall, nor ninety feet tall. No one has even been nine feet tall. In Extremistan, variables scale infinitely In Extremistan, variables scale infinitely. The “average” net worth of a U.S. family is about $700,000. But while there are a lot of people who are average height, there aren’t so many with average wealth. To be richer than half of all Americans, you need “only” $100,000. Why are so many Americans below “average” wealth? Because if Bill Gates walks into a bar, on average, everyone there is a billionaire. The people on the high edge of wealth distribution are so wealthy, they skew the average. Jeff Bezos has 1 million times the wealth of the average American – over $100 billion. Human height has a predictable and limited range – it’s in Mediocristan. Wealth has an unpredictable and unlimited range – it’s in Extremistan. Be careful what you learn in Extremistan Because Extremistan is so unpredictable, with unlimited variables, you have to be careful not to draw conclusions too soon from what you see in Extremistan. A quote from Taleb: In Extremistan, one unit can easily affect the total in a disproportionate way. In this world, you should always be suspicious of the knowledge you derive from data. In other words, the individual can skew the collective – Bill Gates walks into a bar and on average everyone there is a billionaire. So be careful what conclusions you draw from the data, when you’re working in Extremistan. It wouldn’t matter how long you worked at that hourly-wage job at Starbucks – you wouldn’t get rich. If the wage were livable, and you enjoyed the work, that could be fine. Don’t measure Extremistan success on Mediocristan terms But you’re in trouble if, while writing your novel, you measure success on the same terms as you measure success at your hourly-wage job at Starbucks. You’d be measuring Extremistan work on Mediocristan terms. You could do something well at work, and get a dollar-an-hour raise. You’re seeing progress. You could write an incredible chapter in your book, and not see no immediate benefit. Yet the impact of that dollar-an-hour raise, stretched out over your entire Starbucks career, may be tiny when compared to the lifetime benefit of the incredible, climactic, chapter in your novel. If you only looked at the data you immediately received, you’d quickly conclude there was no point in working on your novel. You might as well stick to serving coffee. Another quote from Taleb: What you can know from data in Mediocristan augments very rapidly with the supply of information. But knowledge in Extremistan grows slowly and erratically... In other words, in Mediocristan, the more data you collect, the more you know. In Extremistan, the more data you collect, the more you think you know – if you’re not careful. In reality, new data in Extremistan tells you very little. Success in Extremistan is explosive Like wealth, success in creative work scales infinitely. Art De Vany studied the box-office performance of 350 movies that came out during the course of nine months. The top four of those 350 movies made 20% of the total revenue. The bottom four: 0.0036%. The top movie made almost $50 million. The bottom movie, about $5,000. Success in Extremistan is random Nobody spends millions making a movie to only make $5,000. If the movie industry knew how to make $50 million instead, they would only make the movies that made $50 million. William Goldman wrote a lot of screenplays, including the cult classic, The Princess Bride. He won two Academy Awards for other screenplays. Still, he said, Nobody knows anything.... Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess and, if you’re lucky, an educated one. —William Goldman This applies to movies, books, scientific discoveries, and entrepreneurship. You can learn and apply skill, but ultimately success in Extremistan is random. Success in Extremistan is delayed Success in Extremistan can also be delayed. Vincent van Gogh, after only two years of painting, wrote his brother Theo saying that maybe he had made a mistake investing so much in painting. It wasn’t until after ten years of painting that Van Gogh’s work was recognized – just before his early death at 37. It took Leonardo three years to paint The Last Supper. It took Marie Curie four years to isolate radium. It took James Cameron fifteen years to produce Avatar. Don’t use Mediocristan terms to measure Extremistan success When you’re measuring success in Mediocristan, you expect to see the graph go “up and to the right.” But success in Extremistan looks more like a poorly-shaved porcupine. The more you measure success in Extremistan on Mediocristan terms, the less you’ll invest in doing the kinds of things that will bring you success in Extremistan. If you focus all your energy on A/B testing, you’ll only ever see incremental gains. Misleading A/B test data aside, you’ll never take chances that lead to explosive growth. If you dismiss advice or don’t try something based upon a flawed interpretation of survivorship bias – as I talked about on episode 251, you won’t have the perseverance to stick around long enough for randomness to give you a boost (remember, The Queen’s Gambit took 37 years to become a bestseller). Creative work is about riding randomness in Extremistan If you want to make it in creative work, you need to recognize that you’re riding randomness. That’s a tough thing to get comfortable with – we like to have sure bets. A good strategy is “The Barbell Strategy,” which I talked about in The Black Swan book summary on episode 244: Go ahead and take the sure bets, but leave some room for the wildcards. Work the Starbucks job, but spend your evenings writing the boldest novel you can. We think of our world as predictable. We want to see steady growth. But the predicable and steady is from Mediocristan. Finding your way to success in creative work is a journey through Extremistan. The Mind Management, Not Time Management audiobook is here! Listen to the Mind Management, Not Time Management audiobook free with an Audible trial, or search for the audiobook on your favorite platform. Thank you for having me on your podcasts! Thank you for having me on your podcast! Thank you to Trey Kauffman at The Mosaic Life and the team at Domestika for having me as a Comic Sans expert on their Curious Minds podcast. As always, you can see a full list of podcasts I’ve been here. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/mediocristan-vs-extremistan/

Just a quick note here to tell you loyal listeners about a new opportunity over on Patreon. As I’ve said in my Patreon pleas at the end of the episodes, some money that I make feels better than other money. When I sell a book, that money feels good. When I get a sponsor for the podcast, that money feels...not as good. Other money I get that feels good is the money I get from Patreon supporters. This is why I don’t take podcast sponsors anymore. Each dollar feels like a little note that says, “Hey, I like what you’re doing. Please keep doing it.” And practically speaking, the money I get from Patreon supporters helps keep the business running. Books are the biggest part of my income, but it takes a long time to finish a book. Getting a few bucks a month from a reader helps me keep doing my work until I have enough ideas worth putting into a book. I’ve asked you over the years many times for your support and many of you have joined, and for that I’m grateful. But now I have a special opportunity: For a limited time I’m offering a special “True Fan” level. The name of this is inspired by Kevin Kelley’s essay, “1,000 true fans.” Basically, if you can find 1,000 people who think your work is worth $100 a year, you have a sustainable business. This special True Fan level brings you all the benefits you’d normally get at a higher level of support, but at a discounted price. You get early access to episodes – there’s two waiting you could listen to right now – plus audio of my monthly income reports, masterclasses with folks like Noah Kagan, and patron-only Q&As – all delivered to your own personal RSS feed you can easily copy and paste into your favorite podcast app. Normally, all of this goes to Patreon supporters at the $15 a month level. For a limited time, you get all this for only $9 a month. If you’re already a supporter, this offer is open to you, too. Whether that’s bumping your support up a bit, or if you’re at a higher level you can get locked in for the same benefits at a lower price. The offer, as I said, is only available for a limited time, but after it goes away, you’re locked in at this price. Plus, if I add anything to the package in the future, you’ll get that, too. The more members we have, the more cool things I can offer. Not everyone is in a position to pay for something they could get for free. If you can’t support my work, nothing will change and you can keep enjoying my free work as long as I can afford to do it from here in South America (assuming I can still live in South America). So far we have over 250 episode of Love Your Work from the past five years, and more than 100 Love Mondays email newsletters, all free to enjoy. Otherwise, if you consider yourself a “True Fan” *and* you have the means, please take advantage of this special Patreon level. As I said this is a limited-time offer. It’s an experiment, and I will close sign-ups to this level at some random time in the near future, so do act now. Again, that’s patreon.com/kadavy

Can the way we consume information make us unable to tell truth from lies? Neil Postman thought so. In his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman says everything has been turned into entertainment: Our politics, religion, news, athletics, our commerce – even our education – have all been turned into forms of entertainment. This has weakened our ability to reason about society’s important questions. In this Amusing Ourselves to Death book summary, I’ll break down – in my own words – why Postman believes the shift from a society built around reading, to a society built around moving pictures and music, has devolved our discourse into a dangerous level of nonsense. America was built upon reading In 1854, in a lecture hall in Peoria, Illinois, Abraham Lincoln was in a debate. His debate opponent, Stephen A. Douglas, had just finished a three-hour speech. Lincoln reminded the audience it was 5 p.m., he himself would be speaking for at least three hours, and Douglas would get a chance to respond. He told the audience, Go home, have dinner, and come back for four more hours of lecture. Is today’s technology “nothing new?” Every time a new technology comes along, there are people who think the sky is falling. There are also people who say it’s nothing new. They’ll show you that old picture of men on a commuter train, with their faces buried in newspapers, or they might remind you Socrates worried people would be made forgetful by the breakthrough technology of: writing. If we think back to our own memories from ten or twenty years ago, we have to conclude that not much has changed. It’s different technology, with the same people. Yes, attention spans are shorter But this scene from Lincoln’s debate from more than 150 years ago is a stark contrast from today’s world. It’s hard to imagine ordinary citizens gathering in the local lecture hall to sit and listen to seven hours of debate, without so much as a smartphone to stay occupied if things got dull. What’s even more remarkable is neither Lincoln nor Douglas were presidential candidates at the time – they weren’t even candidates for the Senate. America was the most reading-focused culture ever Postman uses this lecture scene to paint a picture of what he says was probably the most print-oriented culture ever. Unlike in England, in Colonial America reading wasn’t an elitist activity. Postman estimates that the literacy rate for men in Massachusetts and Connecticut was around 90 or 95%. Farm boys plowed the fields with a book in hand, reading Shakespeare, Emerson, or Thoreau. Thomas Paine, who wrote the mega-best-selling Common Sense had little formal schooling, and before coming to America, had come from England’s lowest laboring class. Still, Paine wrote political philosophy on par with Voltaire and Rousseau. When Charles Dickens visited America in 1842, it was as if a movie star had visited. Dickens himself said, “There never was a King or Emperor upon earth so cheered and followed by the crowds.” Today’s media is built around images Since Amusing Ourselves to Death was written in the 1980’s, it’s not concerned with Facebook nor TikTok nor Twitter. It’s concerned with television. But as Marshall McLuhan said, “the medium is the message”, and the characteristics of the television medium translate well into the characteristics of today’s media. Today’s media isn’t built around words – it’s built around images. Television is images It’s easy to turn the channel on a television, or to turn the television off completely. They sit running in the house while people do other things. Remember from my Understanding Media summary that pieces of content within a medium compete with one another in what I summed up as a “Darwinian battle.” Only the strong survive, and to survive on television you need many moving pictures, changing every fraction of a second. Whatever content is put on television, it needs to be adapted to these demands. Internet media is images Extend that thinking to Instagram or YouTube. For your media to get noticed, you need eye-catching images. If it’s video, you need quick cuts, graphics, and music. Even where there are words, words are used as if they were images. Headlines are too short to carry much content, but are also misleading and hyperbolic. Our media shapes how we decide what is true Our media is how we share ideas. It’s how we have discussions about what is important. To decide what is important, we need to compare one fact to another. But to compare facts, we also need to agree upon what is true. The media is the metaphor Postman revises Marshall McLuhan’s famous statement, “the medium is the message.” As Postman points out, a message says something directly. It makes a concrete statement that can be agreed or disagreed with – a proposition. Media based around images is not sending messages that make concrete statements. So, Postman says “the medium is the metaphor.” Today’s media merely makes suggestions. By not making concrete statements, it’s open to interpretation. You may have heard various news stories referred to as “Rorschach tests.” In an actual Rorschach test, you look at something ambiguous – an ink blot – and that ambiguous thing serves as a metaphor for some idea. It makes you think of something. Our media, in being image-based instead of text-based, is ambiguous. It serves as a metaphor that’s open to interpretation. Pay attention the next time you see a news headline about a politician who said something. It will be accompanied by an image of that politician. Is that image actually of the moment that person said that thing? Usually not (not that it matters). It’s often not even from the same event. Instead, you’ll see an expression on the politician’s face. Whether it’s carefully chosen for the emotion it conveys, or chosen based upon click-through rate, it ascribes ambiguous meaning to the words in the headline. It’s a metaphor. And those who agree or don’t agree with what the politician said – or who merely identify or don’t identify with that politician’s party – will derive different meanings from that headline/image combination. Images cannot express the truth Here’s where our image-based culture becomes a problem. When our media is not making concrete statements that can be agreed or disagreed with, we can no longer distinguish fact from fiction. Our media is the basis of our – fancy word here – epistemology: How we decide what is true. What’s even more dangerous about images is that we think “seeing is believing.” If we see an image or a video of an incident, we take what we’ve seen – or rather how we’ve interpreted what we’ve seen – as the truth. But it’s open to interpretation. It’s a Rorschach test. The medium is the metaphor. I’m always reminded of this when I see campaigns where models share pre-Photoshop images of their bodies. It’s great we’re becoming aware of how images are manipulated, but at the root of this is one problem: Even the raw image is not the truth. No image is an objective representation of reality. It’s a picture, made by a camera. Three dimensions broken down into two. The fact that few seem to recognize this is troubling. The written word can express the truth As Postman argues, the written word – unlike images – can better express the truth. When you read long-form text, you follow a line of thought. You consume it in isolation, and have the mental resources available to consider whether the author is overgeneralizing, abusing logic, or exploiting biases. You can review things that are confusing, or notice contradictions. Postman recognizes that words are not infallible. There were newspapers in the 1830’s, such as New York’s Sun and Herald that mostly covered sensational events about crime and sex. But there were two major turning points in how we used the written word. One was the invention of the electric telegraph. Once information could be conveyed around the world within seconds, information became a commodity to be sold, and thus manufactured. The first American newspaper was three pages long and monthly. Our 24-hour news cycle is manufactured information. Another major turning point was when advertising ceased to be used to convey information. Instead of making statements that could be confirmed or refuted, advertisers started using – along with images such as babies in high chairs – slogans, or “nonpropositional” language. Words as images, if you will. Maybe the question about the model in the ad shouldn’t be about whether she or he is Photoshopped, but rather why they’re in the ad at all? The models in ads, Photoshopped or not, are not there to present factual statements – they are there to make nonpropositional statements. They are there to serve as metaphors. Our world is not “Orwellian.” It’s “Huxleyan.” When people worry about the quality of information in our media landscape, people often describe it as “Orwellian.” What they’re suggesting is that our media is like that of George Orwell’s 1984, where a totalitarian power controls information through tactics such as eliminating words from language, rewriting history, and distributing disinformation. By controlling information, this totalitarian power controls the people. But Postman says our world is not Orwellian. Rather, it’s “Huxleyan.” In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, the people aren’t so much oppressed by the government’s control of information. Instead, they’re oppressed by their own addiction to entertainment. If you haven’t read Brave New World, it’s worth reading. A genetically-engineered society of various castes – all grown in labs, with no mothers, fathers, or family – spends most of its time flying in helicopters to mini-golf courses, having sex with one another, and escaping reality by taking a drug called “soma.” (If you’ve ever heard the Strokes’ song, “Soma,” you know based upon the lyrics “soma is what they would take when hard times opened their eyes.”) The society presented in Brave New World is a slightly less idiotic form of the society presented in Mike Judge’s movie, Idiocracy. Entertainment itself is not dangerous – if you know it’s entertainment Postman isn’t an old man telling the kids to get off his lawn – though he may sound like it sometimes. He’s not trying to say there should be no television at all. What he’s saying is the characteristics of the medium of television are such that everything on it has to be presented as entertainment. Think about the television news. Presumably, we watch the news for information – to be informed and make rational decisions about our lives and our society. But why do news programs have a theme song? It plays when it opens, it plays when it closes, it plays before and after commercial breaks. They play similar music when presenting “breaking news.” Music creates a mood. The only reason there could be for a news show to have music – not to mention the cool graphics – is because a news show is entertainment. “Now ... this” The TV news is a good analogy for Postman’s view of our world – which is fitting since he sees the media landscape as shaping discourse. On television news, you might see coverage of a horrific bus crash. You see aerial footage of the wreckage, as the newscaster tells you fifteen people met their fiery demise. That takes a few seconds, then the newscaster says, “Now ... this.” And we cut to the five day forecast. “Now ... this,” sums up the 1985 media landscape for Postman. Instead of long expanses of text that make cohesive arguments, it’s one image, then another image, with no connection between the two. “Now ... this.” When our media does not convey messages, but instead only ambiguous metaphors, and when the statements made by those metaphors aren’t connected, there’s no hope for reason. The “peek-a-boo” world Postman also calls it the “peek-a-boo” world, like a child’s game of peek-a-boo. One event after another pops into view for a moment, then vanishes. It’s entertaining, but it asks nothing of us. Referring again to the world as Huxleyian rather than Orwellian, Postman says: there is no Newspeak here. Lies have not been defined as truth nor truth as lies. All that has happened is that the public has adjusted to incoherence and been amused into indifference. People might say that lies today are indeed defined as truth. But remember, the media is the metaphor. What is a lie to one person is somehow interpreted as the truth to another. There’s no foundation upon which to distinguish lies from the truth because, per Postman’s thesis, our discourse has devolved into nonsense. The dominant medium shapes all other media You might have caught a contradiction in this summary: The Lincoln/Douglas debate was spoken word, not written words. Isn’t Postman’s argument that America was founded as a highly-literate society? What’s impressive about the Lincoln/Douglas debates isn’t just the attention span it demonstrated in the populace, but also the complexity of the sentences that audience was able to follow. As I mentioned in my Understanding Media summary, I change the way I write based upon how it will sound on the podcast. I don’t think of it as “dumbing down” – but I recognize that our media landscape is predominantly images and audio, and that people listen in distracting environments. The dominant form of media shapes the rest of the media. America before images only had words As Postman illustrates the Lincoln/Douglas debate, he argues that since the audience consumed mostly long-form written media, they were able to understand extremely complex language. For example, one sentence Lincoln said: “It will readily occur to you that I cannot, in half an hour, notice all the things that so able a man as Judge Douglas can say in an hour and a half; and I hope, therefore, if there be anything that he has said upon which you would like to hear something from me, but which I omit to comment upon, you will bear in mind that it would be expecting an impossibility for me to cover his whole ground.” Huh? Keep in mind, at the time of these debates in the 1850’s – aside from live events such as this one – there was only printed stuff. Not only were there no smartphones nor television nor true crime podcasts, there was no radio, no movies, and there weren’t even photographs! People on the street wouldn’t have recognized James Madison Imagine this striking observation by Postman: Each of the first fifteen U.S. presidents could have walked down the street, and the average person wouldn’t have recognized them. Our leaders were only known for their words, not for their appearance. Contrast that to today’s political landscape, where our politicians have to look the right way in the television debates. They also better be able to dish out sick burns on Twitter. A final quote from Postman: Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas; they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities and commercials. There’s your Amusing Ourselves to Death summary Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business was published in 1985. This media theory classic – alongside Understanding Media, which I talked about on episode 248 – is more relevant than ever. I hope you enjoyed this summary. The Mind Management, Not Time Management audiobook is here! Listen to the Mind Management, Not Time Management audiobook free with an Audible trial, or search for the audiobook on your favorite platform. Thank you for having me on your podcasts! Thank you for having me on your podcast! Thank you to Trey Kauffman at The Mosaic Life and the team at Domestika for having me as a Comic Sans expert on their Curious Minds podcast. As always, you can see a full list of podcasts I’ve been here. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/amusing-ourselves-to-death-book-summary-neil-postman

I just got word that the Mind Management, Not Time Management audiobook is now live on Audible.com. And you can listen to it free. If you are not already an Audible member, you can listen to the Mind Management, Not Time Management audiobook free, with a free trial. Just go to kdv.co/mindaudible. If you prefer another platform, check it out, Mind Management, Not Time Management is probably available there. I’ll leave a list in the show notes with links to the audiobook on many retailers, but it’s going live in forty retailers, so I can’t get them all. It may even be available for check-out at your local library. Here is a partial list of retailers where the audiobook is currently live: Audible Apple Google Play Kobo/Walmart Scribd Chirp Barnes & Noble NOOK Hibooks Thanks to Findaway Voices’ distribution, the audiobook is slated to go live on forty platforms. Check out your favorite platform, and it may even be available for check-out at your local library. I’ll try to keep the Universal book link updated as it becomes available in more places.

There’s an important bias to avoid: Survivorship bias. Unfortunately, people who might otherwise do something with their lives hide behind survivorship bias. Just as important as knowing when survivorship bias matters is knowing when survivorship bias does not matter. Survivorship bias has a fatal flaw. Example: Abraham Wald avoided survivorship bias to bring back more survivors In WWII the US military was trying to improve their planes. Each time a plane came back from a mission, they made a record of the bullet holes. Since most bullet holes were on the wings and tails of the planes, the military concluded they needed to add more armor in the wings and tails. But statistician Abraham Wald said, No – that’s not where you want to add more armor. You want more armor around the engine. That seemed weird. Their map of bullet holes showed very little damage to the engine compartment.   What Wald noticed that the military hadn’t noticed is they were only seeing bullet holes on planes that returned from missions. The bullet holes they weren’t seeing were the bullet holes on planes that did not return. And the bullet holes on planes that did not return were the ones bringing the planes down. Abraham Wald was cleverly taking into account what would become known as survivorship bias. Example: How survivorship bias can be used by an investing con artist In his book, Fooled by Randomness, Nassim Taleb tells a story of a con artist. He’d send out 10,000 letters. Half the letters predicted the stock market would go up in the next month. Half the letters, down. The next month, the con artist would send not 10,000 letters, but only 5,000. The following month, 2,500. Then 1,250, and on and on. Why did he keep sending fewer and fewer letters? Because he only sent follow-up letters to those who had received correct predictions. After enough letters, he had 150 or so victims hanging on his every word, eager to have this mystery genius invest money for them. Of course once the con artist received their money, they never heard from him again. They had been “fooled by randomness.” They had been fooled by survivorship bias. Survivorship bias doesn’t account for ergodicity Both these stories are useful examples of survivorship bias. In the first case, Abraham Wald used an awareness of survivorship bias to avoid getting a false signal from the data. In the second example, the recipients of the letters didn’t realize they could be getting a false signal from the letters. Survivorship bias is an important phenomenon to understand, but survivorship bias has a fatal flaw: Survivorship bias doesn’t account for ergodicity. What is ergodicity? What is ergodicity? Imagine you enter a dimly-lit bar just as it opens. A table of patrons across the room light up cigarettes. You can see the cascading trails of smoke rising. When they’re done with their cigarettes, they don’t smoke anymore the rest of the night. When you get home, you realize your clothes smell like smoke. How could this be? You were nowhere near the trails of smoke. Well, after the trails of smoke rose from the cigarettes, they dissipated around the room, until a faint haze of smoke filled the entire room. Randomness eventually touches everything That’s ergodicity. The smoke was rising from the cigarettes in a random pattern. But when a random pattern continues for long enough, that random pattern eventually fills the entire space it could have filled. The smoke spread randomly, until it filled the whole room. Ergodicity is why it’s not only 1% of Americans who are in the top 1% of income. As time passes, people enter and leave the top 1% of income. In a lifetime, 10% of Americans spend a year in the top 1%. More than half will spend a year in the top 10%. Ergodicity is why – even though life expectancy is about 76 – a 76-year-old only has a 4% chance of dying. The small risks of dying each year of life accumulate over time. Not every game is do-or-die Next time some entrepreneur or creative gives advice, or is profiled in an article, look at the comments or responses. You’ll probably see something like this: Don’t forget about survivorship bias! You didn’t hear from the thousands of others who followed that same advice, but didn’t succeed! Sometimes this is useful. More often than not, this is as damaging as survivorship bias itself. Example: Survivorship bias in Russian Roulette Imagine Russian Roulette was a spectator sport (thank God it’s not, but imagine). Chances are, there would be some “Michael Jordan” of Russian Roulette. Through mere chance, this person has survived hundreds of Russian Roulette matches. It just so happens that of the thousands of times this “champion” has spun the cylinder on the revolver, pointed the gun at their temple, and pulled the trigger, the chamber hasn’t had a bullet in it once. If there were millions of Russian Roulette players in the world – playing college Russian Roulette and little league Russian Roulette, hoping to make it to the Russian Roulette big leagues – a person like this would probably exist. Just like there is today in entrepreneurship and creativity, there would be an entire cottage industry of journalists and courses and Russian Roulette podcasts, all touting the advice from this Russian Roulette champion. How to spin the chamber, what thoughts to think while pulling the trigger, how much pressure to use, what gear like like gloves and jerseys to wear, and exercise programs for strength and conditioning. That would be survivorship bias at its finest – or worst. It’s all random. This “champion” has no skill. All their advice is useless. The Queen’s Gambit was not a “survivor” – then it was In 1983, Walter Tevis published a novel. He soon after optioned the screenplay rights to Jesse Kornbluth. Then Tevis died, and the project was cancelled. Nine years later, in 1992, Kornbluth could no longer afford to keep the option. Allan Scott bought the screen rights. Fifteen years later, in 2007, plans were underway to make a feature film out of this novel. Then the director died. (That director, Heath Ledger.) Finally, in 2020, the story from this novel was released as a Netflix series. At least 60 million people watched it. It’s Netflix’s most popular limited series ever. That series: The Queen’s Gambit. For the first time, the novel, The Queen’s Gambit, became a New York Times bestseller. This overnight success was almost 40 years in the making. For 37 years, The Queen’s Gambit was one of the “thousands of others who never made it.” In 2011, Kornbluth – who had the screenplay option before Scott had rights – said the rights had been bought by “people who will never get the film made.” The Queen’s Gambit was not a “survivor.” In fact, it went out of print. Not to mention at least two people literally did not survive to see it on the screen. Creative work is not Russian Roulette When you play Russian Roulette and lose, you are out of the game forever. Fortunately, as creatives, we are not playing Russian Roulette. If you build a company that fails, you can try again. If you write a blog post that falls flat, you can try hundreds or thousands more times. Creative work happens in Extremistan When someone says “Don’t forget survivorship bias,” what they’re really saying is, “Show me the exact steps to follow that guarantee success.” In creative work, there are no exact steps that guarantee success. Those only exist in Mediocristan. Even The Queen’s Gambit, which was wildly successful, wasn’t guaranteed success. It could have just as easily stayed out of print. Creative work happens not in Mediocristan, but Extremistan. No failure will come from pure lack of skill. No success will come from pure good luck. Creatives are like poker champions I have a friend who is a professional poker player. He knows if he plays poker online eight hours a day, he’ll average 100 dollars an hour. But he also knows for long stretches of time he’ll be losing money. It will look as if his career is over. On the contrary, he’ll also sometimes be flush with cash. It will look like he’s making way more than 100 dollars an hour. His career only works if he has one critical thing: “bankroll.” He needs a certain amount of money – a certain amount of padding – to help him weather losing streaks. If he goes bust, he’s out of the game entirely – he’s lost Russian Roulette. He has tremendous skill. That’s how he can survive as a professional poker player. But there’s no fighting randomness. His bankroll allows him to let randomness run its course long enough for ergodicity to even things out. The creative career is riding randomness Your results in creative work are not a direct reflection of your skill. Even if you’re “So good they can’t ignore you,” you could be toiling in obscurity for a while as you wait for your big break. If you aren’t cut out for that, fine. But admit it to yourself and don’t use survivorship bias as your scapegoat. Stay in the game long enough to survive But if you’re willing to try something that, as Seth Godin says, “might not work,” go ahead and try that advice. Maybe it will improve your odds a little. What’s important is you stay in the game long enough to let ergodicity give you more shots at a win. That could be literally having the bankroll to stay in the game. That could be making sure you make small enough bets – with high enough potential upside – that you don’t go bust, but have a chance to hit the jackpot. You have to watch your eggs long enough for a Black Swan to hatch. My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/survivorship-bias/

As a nonfiction author, retaining what I read is my job. Through the process of writing three books, I’ve experimented with different ways of reading, remembering what I read, and using that knowledge to develop my own thoughts. I’ll share today my note-taking system. I hope it serves as a good example of a digital “Zettelkasten” or slip box. Listen to My Zettelkasten: An Author’s Digital Slip-Box What is a Zettelkasten? I talked about Zettelkasten in my How to Take Smart Notes book summary on episode 249, but here’s a quick review. Zettelkasten is German for “slip box.” In the analog form, a Zettelkasten is a box filled with slips of paper. On each slip is an idea, notes about which other slips that idea is related to, and keywords used for organizing the slips. Wikipedia: Kai Schreiber The Zettelkasten method originated in analog, but is being adapted to digital Much of the original Zettelkasten techniques were developed to adapt the limitations of physical paper to non-hierarchical organization, like today’s internet. Now, writers are adapting the Zettelkasten method to digital software. “Zettelkasten” is a “slip box” and “note-taking system.” A “slip” is a “note” A note about terminology for this article: I’ll be using the terms Zettelkasten, note-taking system, and slip box interchangeably. They all mean the same thing. The same goes for “slip” and “note.” They’re the same thing. What do I use a Zettelkasten for? The Zettelkasten method is most commonly used by academic writers. That use case has its own unique demands. I, however, am a blogger and nonfiction (self-help) author. Here’s what I aim to do with my Zettelkasten: Retain what I read: I want to be able to put interesting things I read into my own words. Access my knowledge: I want to be able to quickly access quotes, facts, figures, and story details, when I don’t remember them perfectly. Direct my curiosity: I want to have options for things I can read that will drive my knowledge more-or-less toward learning something useful. I call it strategic curiosity, which I talked about on episode 184. Develop my ideas: I want to guide ideas through the four stages of creativity, which I talked about on episode 218. Ship writing: I want to mix my knowledge and ideas into shipped tweets, weekly newsletters, articles, and books. Four misconceptions about note-taking Like many things I’ve come to love, I was resistant to the idea of note-taking at first. Some misconceptions I had: 1. Note-taking does not take the pleasure away from reading Note-taking doesn’t have to take more mental effort than reading. It can be broken into low-effort activities that build into something great. Additionally, you can still read “for pleasure.” Not all my reading goes through my note-taking process. 2. Note-taking is not mindlessly writing down everything you read Note-taking connects your consumption of knowledge with your creation of knowledge. If you mindlessly write down everything, there’s no room for creativity. Only take notes on the parts of your reading that interest you, or that you otherwise want to retain. 3. Note-taking is not boring Some parts of note-taking look boring. For example, looking at a highlight you’ve made, then writing it in your own words, looks boring. But it’s fun. It’s just enough of a challenge to keep you engaged. 4. Google is not a substitute for notes Your notes are not simple records of facts and figures. You would not get the same results by Googling anything you’d like to reference. Inherent in the system is your own thoughts. My Zettelkasten notes are plain-text Markdown files I have a lot of notes in Evernote, but those notes are distinct from notes in my Zettelkasten. Evernote is mostly for project-related or operational things. After using Evernote for ten years, and watching it get slow and bloated, I didn’t want to get locked in to any software. A lot of Zettelkasten practitioners love Roam Research, which is very powerful. But I like the portability, simplicity, and offline-capability of plain text. My plain-text Zettelkasten notes are synced through Dropbox I love writing in Markdown, which is a simple, human-readable way of adding formatting and links to plain-text. My notes are text files (with the extension .md) sitting in folders on my hard drive, and are also synced to Dropbox. I edit my plain-text Zettelkasten notes through Obsidian, 1Writer, and Ulysses Since my notes are plain-text files, I can access them on a ton of different software. I mostly work through Obsidian on desktop, and 1Writer on iPad. I also sometimes use Ulysses, because I like how it allows me to preview the contents of many files at once. The structure of my digital Zettelkasten As I covered in my How to Take Smart Notes book summary, the general structure of a Zettelkasten is: Fleeting Notes Literature Notes Permanent Notes I have three additional categories: Inbox Someday/Maybe Raw My Zettelkasten folder structure, as viewed through Ulysses. A flow chart of my Zettelkasten process. Partly inspired by Getting Things Done. Fleeting Notes I take in my tiny Moleskine Volant, or on the Drafts app, or in any of my other paper notebooks. Literature Notes are any condensed notes I’ve made of an entire piece, such as an article or book – more on that process in a bit. Permanent Notes are single ideas, facts, or stories. This is the real “slip box” or Zettelkasten, where I connect ideas to one another to sprout new ideas or build them into larger works – I’ll give you an example later. The Inbox is where I put notes that need to be processed. This could be highlights from a book that I need to condense and summarize – as I’ll describe soon. This is where Fleeting Notes go next. This also might be a link to an article that I may want to summarize. I don’t always want to deal with everything in my Inbox, so if not, I put the note in my Someday/Maybe folder. I borrowed this from the GTD “Someday/Maybe” that I talked about in my Getting Things Done summary on episode 242. This folder is for things that seem interesting to me, but are either not interesting enough to motivate me to give them the attention I’d like to, and/or they’re not relevant enough to any topics I’m working on. Raw is where I store my exported highlights after I’ve condensed and summarized a book or article. This folder keeps me from cluttering the system, but I can still quickly search if there are details I want to retrieve that aren’t covered in my literature notes. I name my Zettelkasten files in plain English An ongoing debate amongst Zettelkasten users is how to name files. Niklas Luhmann, whose physical Zettelkatsten is being studied at the University of Bielefeld, used a branched numbering system. One could make a case for why his naming system is still relevant. Still other users insist every file should have a unique ID, so they use the date and time. I personally name my files with a plain-English description of what the note is about, such as “The Queen’s Gambit took 37 years to become a bestseller.md”. The main argument people have against this method is if you decide the note is about something else, you have to change the name of the note, and that breaks your links. But with modern technology you can easily do find/replace, and Obsidian handles name changes for you automatically. How you should name files in your slip box depends upon your workflow and preferences. Files are linked using “WikiLinks” I link my files within my system using a feature called WikiLinks, aka FreeLink. Basically, any filename I put in [[double brackets]] is automatically linked to, even if that file is in another folder in my database. WikiLinks isn’t native to Markdown, but Obsidian does support it, and makes it easy with auto-suggest. On 1Writer for iPad, these links only work for files that are within the same folder, which limits the tasks I can do on iPad. Arguably this is a form of lock-in to Obsidian, but other plain-text editors support WikiLinks. Evan Travers has a nice breakdown of Zettelkasten-supporting features in various Markdown plain-text editors. I manage my Zettelkasten through a series of comfortable habits/rituals You aren’t going to maintain your Zettelkasten if it feels like a slog. This is why I’ve carefully designed my system so I manage it through a series of comfortable and easy habits and rituals. Comfortable contexts for managing my Zettelkasten There are four main contexts around which I’ve designed the habits and rituals for managing my Zettelkasten. Active: I might be cooking, taking a shower, or having dinner conversation with friends. If an idea comes to me, or I hear something great on a podcast, I want to capture it. Lying down: I do most of my reading lying down, and I do the initial stages of book summaries lying down (more in a bit). Reclining: I do as much of my writing as possible slightly reclined, with my iPad and keyboard on an over-bed table, over my recliner. Upright: I have a standing/sitting desk where I work at my computer sparingly. https://twitter.com/kadavy/status/1288883415153094659 As you can see, I’ve designed my contexts to be as comfortable as possible, so maintaining my system doesn’t feel like a chore. Now what do I do in all these contexts? I’ll cover that as I talk about processes. My process for reading and summarizing a book One of the main sources of notes in my Zettelkasten is books. When I really want to absorb and document my learning from a book, here’s the process I follow: Read the book: I do this on my Kindle, lying down on my couch or in my hammock. I highlight as I read, and I will occasionally take a quick note – which is hard to do on a Kindle. Unlike some people, I do not take Fleeting Notes in a notebook while reading. That would make the context uncomfortable. Export the highlights to Markdown: Readwise makes this easy, though there are other ways, if you search around. Highlight my highlights: Like my reading ritual, I highlight highlights while lying on my couch. On 1Writer for iPad, I bold the most interesting parts of my highlights. I can also do this on my phone during “in-between” time, such as waiting for friends to arrive at a restaurant. Tiago Forte calls highlighting of highlights “progressive summarization.” Condense my highlights: I look at the highlights I’ve bolded and re-write the interesting ones in my own words. I’ll also pull out any interesting quotes. I may also brainstorm my own thoughts about the implications of what I’ve learned. This is all a “Literature Note.” I do this in my recliner, with iPad and keyboard. Break my condensed highlights into notes: I make individual “Permanent Notes” in my slip box – one idea per note. This is when I add relevant tags, link my note to any existing related notes, and add thoughts I have about how the individual note relates to my work. I do this on my desktop computer, using Obsidian. I follow this process for only the best books This may sound like a boring and arduous process for reading a single book. But it’s not. First, I don’t do this for every book. Whether or not I follow all these steps depends upon my interest in the book. I only do this for books I really want to absorb, such as when I wrote my summaries of Understanding Media or The Black Swan. Readwise helps me review books I don’t fully process If a book isn’t compelling enough for me to follow these steps, I still get a chance to review the highlights. Readwise sends me three random highlights each day – from my database of 20,000+. I review these highlights when I check my email. If I see a highlight I’d like to develop into a Permanent Note, I copy and paste it into Drafts, from where I will process it later. My process for academic articles and web articles I do most of my reading in books. I also read some academic articles. I do the least reading of all on the web. For both academic articles and web articles, my process is the same: I save the PDF in a “toread” folder on Dropbox (yes, I make PDFs of web articles!) I then read the PDF on LiquidText for iPad, where I highlight it. I export my highlights to plain text, and follow the same process as for books to make Literature Notes and Permanent Notes. My web-article process is inefficient Yes, my process for web articles is inefficient, but I rarely read web articles. If I read on the web more, I’d probably use Pocket and have Readwise manage those highlights. I have begun experimenting with using ePub.press to read web articles on my Kindle, but to get the highlights I have to connect my Kindle to my computer to dig them out. Capturing ideas Probably more so than an academic writer, my writing as a self-help author is driven by my own ideas. When I get an idea, I either capture it in my Moleskine Volant with collapsible Zebra mini-pen, or I capture it with Drafts. In my shower, I keep an Aqua Notes pad and pencil. I use Zapier to save my own tweets Also, many of my ideas I soon turn into tweets. If I want to put something I’ve tweeted into my Zettelkasten, I “like” my own tweet. This triggers a Zapier automation that collects the tweet and basic metadata, and saves it as a text file in my Inbox on Dropbox. An Automator script on my computer then changes the file extension to .md. I liked my own tweet, and Zapier imported it to Dropbox for me. (If I want to capture someone else’s tweet, I copy/paste it or share it to Drafts.) Clearing the Inbox As I describe in the final chapter of my book, Mind Management, Not Time Management, my ideas initially go into one of several inboxes. Currently, that’s mostly my pocket notebook and Drafts. I then have to clear those inboxes. I try to spend a few minutes each day looking through my inboxes, while at my computer. Not all notes that end up in Drafts are for my Zettelkasten, but for the ones that are, I have an “action” in Drafts that sends those notes to my Zettelkasten Inbox. I’m far from having “Inbox zero” in my Zettelkasten. It’s full of book or article highlights that need to be progressively summarized, or tweets that need to be tagged and turned into Permanent Notes. My Zettelkasten Inbox, with some examples of the types of notes in there. Idea-driven keywords for tags (and examples!) Choosing the right keywords or tags for your Zettelkasten allows it to work as a non-hierarchical database of your knowledge and ideas. This is an important piece many Zettelkasten practitioners miss. This quote from How to Take Smart Notes captures how to choose keywords: The way people choose their keywords shows clearly if they think like an archivist or a writer. Do they wonder where to store a note or how to retrieve it? The archivist asks: Which keyword is the most fitting? A writer asks: In which circumstances will I want to stumble upon this note, even if I forget about it? It is a crucial difference. I avoid generic keywords such as “Psychology.” Instead I create keywords based upon patterns I see, which inform theories I’m working on. Not #writing, but #IcebergPrinciple For example, one note I have is based upon the advice of screenwriting instructor Robert McKee. In Story, McKee says: A finished screenplay represents, obviously, 100 percent of its author’s creative labor. The vast majority of this work, 75 percent or more of our struggles, goes into...creating the climax of the last act. For my Permanent Note, I of course re-wrote McKee’s advice in my own words, but what tags did I use? The generic approach would be to tag it “#writing” or “#screenwriting.” But how would that help me? Instead, I think about how this advice supports (or refutes) an idea I’m working on. It reminds me of other writing advice, this time from Ernest Hemingway: I’ve seen the marlin mate and know about that. So I leave that out. I’ve seen a school (or pod) of more than fifty sperm whales in that same stretch of water and once harpooned one nearly sixty feet in length and lost him. So I left that out. All the stories I know from the fishing village I leave out. But the knowledge is what makes the underwater part of the iceberg. An iceberg? In another passage, Hemingway explains: The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. This Hemingway advice is so beautiful, I’ve made it the basis of one of my keywords. I call it the #IcebergPrinciple. Basically, any creative work you see is the tip of the iceberg. There’s much more work and knowledge going on behind the scenes. McKee’s advice is about how 75 percent of the work on a screenplay goes into the climax. This advice is connected to Hemingway’s advice about most of an iceberg being underwater. So, my Permanent Note for the McKee quote is not tagged #writing, nor #screenwriting, but #IcebergPrinciple. Should related notes share the same tag AND be linked? The two notes from Hemingway or McKee could be not just tagged with the same thing, but also linked to one another. Should they share the same tag, and also be linked? There’s no right answer. On one hand, it’s redundant to link them to one another and also have them share the same tag. On the other hand, does it really hurt to do both? This is the kind of internal debate I honestly haven’t resolved yet. I do whatever seems right in the moment, and if I run into problems, I’ll formalize my approach. Linking helps spawn ideas (with example!) The act of linking two notes serves a different purpose from the act of choosing the right tags for a note. As I’m making a Permanent Note, I take a moment to think of whether there’s a connection between this and any of my other notes. This is when ideas you never would have thought of otherwise come to mind. For example, I’ve been collecting some notes on survivorship bias for an upcoming article. I tag these notes with #SurvivorshipBias. (Admittedly this is a generic-sounding tag, but I have my own personal ideas about it.) But while I was creating my note about The Queen’s Gambit, and the fact that it took 37 years for it to become a best-seller, I wasn’t thinking about survivorship bias at all. I tagged it #LongNights, my personal tag for stories about “overnight successes” many years in the making. As I thought about what to link this note to, I realized this note was related to a note about survivorship bias. It’s a counter to the popular understanding of survivorship bias. For 36 years, The Queen’s Gambit was one of the stories that “didn’t survive,” but in its 37th year, suddenly it was a survivor. That may not make sense in that short example. A further explanation will have to wait for the article. But this is how linking notes makes you think about the meanings of those notes differently. Tag Indexes build completed work Once I have many notes collected related to a particular tag, I develop a Tag Index. This is a note, stored in my Slip Box or Permanent Note folder, with an overview of my thoughts on that topic. I link to the various notes I have under that tag – as well as any other related notes – then arrange them as a list in an order that makes sense to me. I write short phrases next to each link to add any thoughts that give structure to this logical progression. For example, a #SurvivorshipBias Index may start off with a link to a note called “Abraham Wald overcame survivorship bias to armor planes.” Next to that, I could write a brief phrase, “Wald realized he only saw bullet holes on planes that returned. Survivorship bias is useful for interpreting misleading data.” After that, I could link to the note about The Queen’s Gambit. I could write next to that link, “Not all who haven’t ‘survived’ are dead.” After collecting notes together in this way, I now have an outline, with source material, I can use to build into a completed article, or even a book. And if you’d like to hear how that article turns out, make sure you’re subscribed for the next article. There’s your example of an author’s digital Zettelkasten I hope you found helpful this example of using the Zettelkasten or slip box method with digital, plain-text software. I know writing it improved my own note-taking system. If you’d like to know more about the principles behind this system, do check out my How to Take Smart Notes book summary on episode 249. My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/zettelkasten-method-slip-box-digital-example

If you’re a fan of using Getting Things Done to stay on top of all the, well, things you need to get done – you’ll love How to Take Smart Notes for staying on top of all the things you want to learn. I’ll give you an introduction – in my own words – in this How to Take Smart Notes book summary. The note-taking system introduced in Sönke Ahrens’s How to Take Smart Notes is a bit like Getting Things Done for learning. GTD is great for things that have a clear objective. But creative insights can’t be planned, by definition. That’s the point of an insight, it comes out of nowhere. One of my favorite quotes from the book: It is a huge misunderstanding that the only alternative to planning is aimless messing around. The challenge is to structure one’s workflow in a way that insight and new ideas can become the driving forces that push us forward. —Sönke Ahrens In other words, you can’t plan an insight, but you can structure the way you read and learn in a way that not only improves your retention, but that also leads you to new insights. What is a Zettelkasten? The system introduced in How to Take Smart Notes is called a Zettelkasten, which is German for “slip box.” A slip box was originally a box full of slips of paper, each slip with a little note on it. The slips were arranged and annotated in a certain way to facilitate thinking and to link ideas. The most famous user of the Zettelkasten was a German sociologist named Niklas Luhmann. Luhmann credited his slip box for his prolific career, in which he published 58 books and hundreds of articles. His actual Zettelkasten is being studied in a long-term project at the University of Bielefeld, in Germany. The linking, keyword, and organization characteristics of a slip box were a precursor to our modern-day internet. But now that we’re no longer limited to slips of paper, writers and researchers are adapting the Zettelkasten technique to digital tools. How do you take smart notes? There are four basic steps to follow to make smart notes for your own Zettelkasten – or “slip box”, if you prefer: Make fleeting notes: Always have a way to capture ideas that pop into your mind, or – if reading – read actively, highlighting and taking notes. I personally carry around a tiny notebook, and use the Drafts app on iOS to capture quick thoughts. I don’t take notes while I read, but I do highlight on my Kindle. Make literature notes: Rewrite the important parts of what you’ve read. But, do it in your own words. It sounds pointless, but it’s surprisingly fun, and later on we’ll get to how it helps you learn better. Make permanent notes: Break any literature notes or fleeting notes down to individual notes. Do this only for the most important ideas – the ones that are relevant to your interests and your ongoing projects. Do this a little bit each day, so you don’t get a huge backlog. Add permanent notes to the slip box: Luhmann used a special branched numbering system to organize his notes. I prefer plain-English note titles. You also want to add relevant tags to each note, and link your note to related notes. How to use your smart notes for learning and writing The main reason to have a system like this is to direct your curiosity in a productive way, and turn your learning into writing. There are three things you’ll do with your slip box: Develop topics: As you make new notes, themes will start to develop around your areas of interest. You can interact with your notes to follow the links, and you’ll see holes in your knowledge to guide your learning. Getting research/writing ideas: You’ll never have to wonder again what you’d like to read about or write about. It will be clear from where there are lots of notes clustered around a topic in your slip box. For example, you may have many notes with a certain tag, or if you use a piece of software such as Obsidian you can visualize which notes link to one another to see patterns in your thinking. Turn your notes into writing: You can collect your notes together, and quickly form rough drafts for articles or books. Don’t simply copy your notes, though. Rewrite them, stitching them together along the way to create a completed piece. How to Write Smart Notes is primarily directed at academic writers, and, as Ahrens points out, most books on academic writing see writing papers as a linear task, with a beginning and an end. I talk about the Four Stages of Creativity in my book, Mind Management, Not Time Management. Taking smart notes allows you to do “Preparation” on creative problems through small habits. By the time you write your first draft – after “Incubation” – “Illumination” is easy. Most of the work is already done. Dos and don’ts Sounds exciting, right? But when you try to create your own slip box, the possibilities can be overwhelming. Here are some dos and don’ts that can help guide your thinking. Do choose keywords sparingly When choosing keywords for your notes, your first instinct might be to make sure you tag your note with every relevant keyword you can think of. But if you use too many keywords, it becomes hard to manage your slip box. Ahrens warns not to choose the keyword that is the most appropriate to the content. Instead, think about in what context you might want to retrieve that note, and choose your keywords in a way that would help you find that note. I’ll give you an example in the next, related, tip. Don’t use generic keywords Another instinct you might have is to choose generic keywords. Like if the note is related to Psychology, you might think you should tag it with “Psychology.” But remember that the purpose of the slip box is to facilitate insights. A tag such as “Psychology” is too broad. Choose your keywords sparingly – as I said in the previous tip – but also choose your keywords according to your specific areas of interest or lines of thought. Imagine you’re really interested in studying storytelling. You have a note about Eve eating an apple in the Garden of Eden. Your instincts might tell you to tag the note with “apple,” or “fruits.” Instead, you might have a tag called “symbols of discord,” or even “apples of discord.” You can create a whole collection of notes showing apples as symbols of discord in stories, such as in the Judgement of Paris or Snow White. Do link every note to other notes Each time you create a new “permanent note” that goes into the slip box, you should link it to at least one other note. Each note should serve as a starting point to follow a line of thought, and links help you navigate through your notes to see what ideas spring up. Links may point directly to another note. That note might be on a different topic. For instance, your note about Snow White’s stepmother feeding her a poisoned apple, tagged with “symbols of discord,” might link to another note about Snow White’s stepmother looking in her mirror on a daily basis – and that note might be tagged “vanity,” a topic under which you have other stories with vanity as a theme. Besides linking to other notes, notes can also be linked to a topic overview. This could present a summary of your notes on a topic – in other words, one of your keywords or tags. The summary could link to other notes on that topic, with a short description of what you’ll find in each one. For example, your “vanity” overview note might link not only to the story of Snow White’s stepmother looking in her mirror on a daily basis – it might also link to the story of Narcissus being captivated by his own reflection in the river. These summaries are great starting points for developing into finished articles. Don’t copy/paste When you’re creating a slip box with digital tools, another instinct you’ll have is to copy and paste notes directly from your source material. The thinking is its the most “efficient” way. The purpose of your slip box is not to be the most “efficient” directory of information. Just as important as providing a reference to things you learned in the past is the actual learning of those things. You learn better when you translate what you’ve read into your own words. Resist the temptation to copy and paste directly from your source. I personally may copy and paste to keep a direct quote from source material, but I will always supplement with an “in my own words” explanation of what’s being said. Why it works? This brings us to the science behind why the slip box is effective for learning. Ahrens explains that studies show success doesn’t come from willpower. Instead, it comes from creating a working environment that makes willpower unnecessary. There are five ways working with a slip box shapes your habits so you learn better: Elaboration: This is why it’s important not to copy/paste, but to write things in your own words. When you write something in your own words, you have to connect the new knowledge to your existing knowledge. You have to think about its broader implications. Ahrens says elaboration is the most effective technique for learning. Spacing: In managing a slip box, you retrieve information repeatedly, after time away from it. This happens when you review your highlights and fleeting notes to elaborate on them and turn them into permanent notes. This also happens when you retrieve old notes to connect them to new notes. Your memory of information fades away over time, but when you’re repeatedly exposed to information – a phenomenon called “spaced repetition” – you retain it better. Variation: Using a slip box, you review information in a variety of contexts: You read it, you take fleeting notes, you translate those into permanent notes, then you review the information further when retrieving it and linking it to other notes. This variety helps you more robustly link new knowledge to existing knowledge. Contextual Interference: Contextual interference is a randomization of contexts, and it has been shown to improve learning. For example, instead of practicing throwing all day, you might randomly alternate amongst throwing, catching, and running. The very nature of managing a slip box randomizes the contexts in which you interact with information. Deliberate effort: Deliberate practice – where you’re deliberately practicing individual skills, with rapid feedback – is more effective than simply doing whatever you feel like. Managing a slip box is structured and deliberate practice. There’s your How to Take Smart Notes book summary I hope you found this summary helpful. As an author, I was excited to first learn of the Zettelkasten or slip box technique, but I wound up spending many hours watching confusing explanations of it on YouTube, or reading equally confusing articles. How to Take Smart Notes was the only resource that gave me a good first-principles overview of how a slip box works. From that, I’ve been able to adapt the technique to my own workflow as a blogger, podcaster, and author. I do hope to share my own note-taking system soon, so make sure you’re subscribed, so you don’t miss it. Until then, I highly recommend you pick up How to Take Smart Notes. Mind Management, Not Time Management now available! After nearly a decade of work, Mind Management, Not Time Management is now available! This book will show you how to manage your mental energy to be productive when creativity matters. Buy it now! My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/take-smart-notes-summary

Hey, just a quick note to let you know I’m launching a new (free) email course. It’s 100-Word Writing Habit, and you can sign up at kdv.co/100 I built my writing career by building a writing habit. Three books later, I still write 100 words first thing in the morning. That gets me going so – in addition to books – I can ship an email newsletter each week, and a couple 2,000-word articles on this podcast, and a 5,000-word income report each month. Sure, I write more than 100 words a day, but it all starts with my 100-word habit. 100-Word Writing Habit: New FREE email course (starts March 3rd) My 100-word writing habit is so powerful, I'm starting a new email course to teach it to others. Learn the power behind the 100-word habit, as well as how to set yourself up so you never miss a day. Sign up before March 3rd at kdv.co/100

You’ve heard the expression, “The medium is the message.” But what does that really mean? “The medium is the message” is a term coined by Marshall McLuhan in his book, Understanding Media: Extensions of Man. More than fifty years after it was published – in 1964 – Understanding Media reads as if it’s from the future. In this Understanding Media summary, I’ll break down – in my own words – why “The medium is the message,” as well as other key ideas within this media theory classic. Three key ideas in Understanding Media I’m going to cover three key ideas in this summary: The medium is the message. Basically, it’s not the content of the medium that matters. Instead, the characteristics of that medium determine its content. We’re shifting from mechanical technology to electric technology. Mechanical technology such as wheels, roads, and the printing press influence us in different ways from electric technology such as the lightbulb, television, or – today – the internet. Mechanical technology detribalized humans. Now electric technology is retribalizing humans. This shift causes stress in the ways we interact with one another. Our lack of awareness of how technology changes the way we interact is a threat to civilization. McLuhan weaves these and other ideas throughout the book as he analyzes things you might normally think of as media – such as radio, television, and books – but also things you might normally not think of as media – such as roads, clothes, money, and clocks. Now, each of those three main ideas, in more detail: 1. The medium is the message What does “The medium is the message” mean? McLuhan says: The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium – that is, of any extension of ourselves – results from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology. Media are extensions of ourselves Let me break down some ideas within this quote. First, McLuhan refers to media as “extensions of ourselves.” Remember, the subtitle of the book is Extensions of Man. McLuhan casts a wide net in what he thinks of as media. To McLuhan, media is anything that extends our capabilities as humans. As he says, “Any extension, whether of skin, hand, or foot, affects the psychic and social complex.” In other words, any media extends our capabilities. In the process, it changes how we think, and how we interact with one another. Media changes our “sense ratios” How does media change how we think and interact – the “psychic and social complex?” In the quote I presented earlier, McLuhan also talks about “the new scale that is introduced into our affairs,” by these extensions of ourselves. Every medium alters what McLuhan calls “sense ratios.” We read a book with our eyes and our mind. We watch television with our eyes and our ears. The content of the medium comes to us through specific senses (sight, sound, touch, thought, etc.). As those senses are engaged, it affects how we use our other senses. I’ve referred to this before, myself, giving an example of a chimp fishing ants out of an anthill with a stick. The stick is an extension of her hand. While she’s holding that stick, she can’t use that hand for some other purpose, such as to defend herself from an attack by another chimp. Even if she could, she might not notice the attack, since she’s focused mentally on the stick, and whether or not it has ants on it. So as a medium makes one thing easy, it makes other things hard. If you are reading this summary, you’re using different senses than if you are listening to it. That changes how you interact with this summary. If you’re reading, you can easily re-read parts. If you’re listening, it’s less likely you’ll rewind to re-listen to parts. If you’re reading on a laptop or a phone or an ebook reader, each of these devices will also change how you engage with the content. Reading on an ebook reader while lying alone on your couch is different than listening on a subway surrounded by people, or listening on a bluetooth speaker while cooking dinner. The medium itself alters the content A really subtle part of McLuhan’s basic description is that “personal and social consequences of any medium...[result]” from this altering of sense ratios. In other words, the characteristics of the medium cause personal and social consequences. What’s subtly implied here is that the content we’re so often concerned about – violence in video games, for example – is really caused by the medium itself. As I write this summary, I’m thinking about what medium you’ll use to consume it. That’s changing the decisions I make. I know you might listen to it instead of read it, so I use shorter sentences. I may even be repetitive. I know if you find this summary through a search engine, you’ll be in a hurry. I know that search engines will rank my article based upon signals that suggest whether or not it was helpful for you. For these reasons, I’m trying to break up the article, so you can skim it in a hurry. McLuhan doesn’t say this specifically, but any medium is Darwinian in nature. Only organisms suited for their environment survive. Only messages suited for the environment created by their medium survive. The medium is the message. Media have social consequences So media extends our capabilities, alters our sense ratios, and shapes the messages within the media themselves. This has social consequences. Here’s some examples of how media affects society, from today’s world: Road rage: It is easier to yell at someone in another car while you’re speeding away in your car than it is to say the same thing in an aisle in the grocery store. You get road rage. Porn addiction: It is easier to look up porn on the internet to satisfy any sexual fantasy you might have than it is to deal with actual human relationships that normally surround sex. You get porn addiction. Fake news: It is easier to share on Facebook an article you agree with, but that isn’t true, than it is to stop and study the article to consider whether it is true. Additionally, the attention that message gets makes Facebook money. So as more people share the article, it further fuels the message. You get fake news. Yes, every new medium has brought about new and strange behaviors people criticize. Yes, those behaviors are often a re-invention of existing behaviors. But that’s the point McLuhan is making – the characteristics of a medium change the message. That in turn heightens and dampens various aspects of our behavior. To be unaware of how media changes us is a threat to civilization. More on that later. 2. We’re shifting from mechanical technology to electric technology Mechanical technology alters our “sense ratios” in different ways from electric technology. The same way cogs on a gear have to be cut and sized to fit together, mechanical technology forces us to compartmentalize things in a way that allows mechanical technology to work. (Kind of like Nassim Taleb’s “Platonification” that I talked about in my The Black Swan book summary on episode 244.) Mechanical technology: the alphabet A very basic mechanical technology is the alphabet. We’ve broken language into twenty-six characters we can arrange to make words that represent our thoughts. Before written language, we had to physically be in front of someone to communicate with them through spoken word. The language we speak itself is mechanical. It’s a mechanization of our thoughts. Until relatively recently, if we wanted to transport information – something as simple as “hey, let’s have dinner tonight” – we had to do so physically. McLuhan says the Roman Empire was able to govern because they distributed documents written on papyrus. They developed roads – a mechanical technology – primarily so they could physically move information throughout the empire. This enabled them to rule a massive area of land. Thanks to mechanical technology, Rome built a centralized government. When Rome lost control of Egypt, they no longer had access to papyrus, so they could no longer distribute information. Europe decentralized – it fragmented into feudalism. It wasn’t until Europe adopted paper-making methods from China that information could flow freely again and Europe could condense into larger states. Electric technology: the telegraph An example of an electric technology is the telegraph. Remember, before the telegraph was developed in the 1800s, you had to physically – or mechanically – move information from one place to another. With the telegraph, suddenly information that used to take weeks to reach its destination now took minutes. This information flow has accelerated, and now we have the internet. When I was growing up in a cul-de-sac in Nebraska in the 90s, my life changed when I started using the internet. I previously lived in a mechanical world: I could only be friends with kids who lived in my neighborhood, regardless of whether we had the same interests. Suddenly, I lived in an electric world: I could now be friends with anyone, anywhere. Now I can live in Colombia and publish my words to the whole world. But with this lifestyle that’s made possible by electric technology, I run into conflicts with the remnants of mechanical technology. The very concept of a country where I spend a different currency and where I need permission to stay is a result of mechanical technology. Centralized governments like the Romans built are mechanical. They organize people and land through physical means. Electric technology is an extension of the nervous system Remember, media is an extension of our capabilities. The wheel – a mechanical technology – is an extension of the foot. Instead of walking wherever you like, the wheel lets you go faster, but you need roads on which to travel. McLuhan says electric technology is an extension of our nervous system. In the book, McLuhan essentially predicts Google Maps: he says existing technologies – including cities – will become information systems. When we have instant access to information all throughout the world, we “feel” that information just as we might feel a fluffy kitten or a hot stove. 3. Mechanical technology detribalized humans. Now electric technology is retribalizing humans. As we use electric technology to overcome physical stress – such as carrying a letter over oceans and mountain ranges – that creates psychic stress. Thanks to electric technology, communication sped up so that we could communicate across the world. That created physical stress of doing commerce from far away. So many of us moved, creating psychic stress of being away from friends and family. Another form of psychic stress caused by electric technology comes in the form of our simultaneous awareness of everything happening in the world at all times. More on that in a bit, but first, a story about how mechanical technology detribalizes. Mechanical technology detribalized humans McLuhan describes a UNESCO experiment where they installed running water in a village in India. The villagers soon after asked for the pipes to be removed. They said the social life of the village had eroded. Thanks to running water, people were staying in their homes. They were no longer gathering at the communal well, so they were no longer chatting and maintaining relationships. Before running water, the village was more tribal. The running water detribalized the village. It compartmentalized a very important function in their lives – that of getting water. It did that through the mechanical technology of pipes. It was more convenient, but by altering the “sense ratios” involved in getting water, it extracted that act from the social ritual that once surrounded it. Electric technology is retribalizing humans In a purely physical world, people tend to organize into small tribes or villages. Instead of being compartmentalized and specialized, there are deep interconnections in relationships and functions. Instead of just selling shoes, the cobbler makes them, too. The smaller the group of people, the more every death and birth and prayer is experienced together – shared by everyone in the tribe. As electric technology has more influence, we’re increasingly retribalized. As McLuhan describes it, mechanical technology explodes, while electric technology implodes. The extension of our nervous system created by electric technology has made us more aware of how our local actions have effects on a global scale. Understanding Media, by the way, is where Marshall McLuhan coined the term, “global village.” The conflict between the mechanical and the electric When you realize we are shifting from detribalized to retribalized as electric technology takes place of mechanical technology, the world starts to make sense. Here are things we’re seeing as the mechanical is replaced by the electric: We’re shifting from industrialized food to organic food. Mechanical technology helped us increase crop yields and build reliable distribution of food. Electric technology is making us aware of where our food comes from, and the impact our food choices have on a global scale. We’re seeing a re-wilding of diets, as we introduce more biodiversity beyond the staples of corn, wheat, orange juice, and pork bellies. As people interpret this flood of information, different diets are springing up – like different “tribes” – such as keto, paleo, carnivore, pescatarian, vegetarian, vegan, and on and on. Drugs are being legalized. The state control over what people put in their bodies is mechanical, as was the scare tactics and misinformation that helped reinforce that control. As more people are learning the truth about mostly harmless drugs such as marijuana, these drugs are becoming decriminalized and legalized. Time is being reconsidered. Our linear conception of time is a relic of a mechanical world. Time has allowed us to increase output by breaking processes into steps, and allowing the coordination of those steps amongst people and organizations. But as electric technology is allowing free information flow, and automation is making “work” obsolete, creativity is becoming more important. As I’ve talked about in Mind Management, Not Time Management creative output is de-coupled from our linear conception of time. Next time you’re puzzled by the state of the world, try this: Ask yourself, Is it a conflict between mechnical and electric technology? You can see it in the questioning of whether a police force is the right way to restore order in society, in the gendered bathroom debate, in Russia’s media manipulation in American society, and in the rise of Bitcoin. We need to understand media for civilization to survive McLuhan sees our lack of awareness of how media affects us as a threat to civilization. From the book: The threat of Stalin or Hitler was external. The electric technology is within the gates and we are numb, deaf, blind and mute about its encounter with the Gutenberg technology, on and through which the American way of life was formed. It is, however, no time to suggest strategies when the threat has not even been acknowledged to exist. Yes, McLuhan compares the effects of electric technology to Hitler. He warns that it’s foolish to think of technology as “neither good nor bad.” The solution, he says is to start by being aware that the very nature of media alters our behavior in the first place. He reminds us that we misunderstand the Greek Myth of Narcissus. Narcissus saw his reflection in the river, and stared at it longingly until he withered away. We think of narcissism as an obsession with oneself. McLuhan reminds us there is something missing from our modern understanding of the myth of Narcissus: That Narcissus didn’t know he was looking at himself. Narcissus’s name comes from the Greek word for “narcotic.” As media takes over our senses, it numbs us – like a narcotic – from the true effect it’s having. One last quote from McLuhan: It is not an exaggeration to say that the future of modern society and the stability of its inner life depend in large part on the maintenance of an equilibrium between the strength of the techniques of communication and the capacity of the individual’s own reaction. In other words, we need to become aware of how media affects us. That’s what Understanding Media helps us do. Honorable mention: “hot” and “cool” media, and “learning a living” There are many other compelling ideas in this book. One of the most famous being McLuhan’s description of “hot” and “cool” media – “hot” media being media that directly takes over one particular sense, and “cool” media being media that invites your participation. Another juicy idea was the chapter on “learning a living.” Basically saying that the mere idea of “work” is a product of mechanical technology, and that we’re increasingly finding our work to come in the form of continuously learning. There’s your Understanding Media summary I could write entire articles on either of those ideas, but for now I hope you enjoyed that summary. Understanding Media is a very long and complex book – I broke down 25,000 words worth of highlights – a novella’s worth – to write this summary. It’s the most eye-opening book I’ve read in more than a decade. I highly recommend it. Mind Management, Not Time Management now available! After nearly a decade of work, Mind Management, Not Time Management is now available! This book will show you how to manage your mental energy to be productive when creativity matters. Buy it now! My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/understanding-media-summary-marshall-mcluhan

What is BookBub, and what is a BookBub Featured Deal? BookBub is a gigantic email list that sends discounted or even free books to people. BookBub curates the deals they send to their subscribers. They send them “Featured Deals.” A BookBub Featured Deal is a chance to get your book in front of hundreds of thousands of readers – or even a million+ readers – interested in your genre. You’ll sell hundreds, maybe thousands, of copies, and you may even hit a bestseller list. However, a BookBub Featured Deal can be expensive. (It’s not like a Kindle Daily Deal, which is pure gravy). My BookBub Featured Deal itself cost over $1,000. I sold over 2,500 books. (I hope to break down my full campaign results in a future article subscribe to blog post updates so you don’t miss it). A BookBub Featured Deal is not a BookBub Featured New Release, nor BookBub Ads Note that BookBub has other ways of promoting books besides the Featured Deal. There are BookBub Ads, which are display ads you can run on BookBub’s website or in their emails. BookBub does not curate these ads – any author can advertise their book with BookBub. BookBub also has the Featured New Release, for new books, which is curated but is generally not as competitive nor sought-after as the BookBub Featured Deal. How do you get a deal on BookBub? Landing a BookBub Featured Deal is highly competitive, but if you stick with it, you can one day get a deal on BookBub. My book, The Heart to Start: Stop Procrastinating & Start Creating was finally accepted after fourteen rejections, over the course of eighteen months. Here’s my advice for finally getting accepted for a BookBub Featured Deal. Go wide Many self-published and indie authors only publish to Amazon. One reason they do this is that it’s more simple. Amazon makes up about 90% of my revenue from book sales, and it has nearly that share of the entire ebook market. BookBub (generally) only selects wide books But, BookBub rarely selects for a Featured Deal a book that is only on Amazon (though I’ve heard of exceptions). BookBub has many subscribers who read on other platforms, such as Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play, and Barnes & Noble. So it’s a waste of email real estate for them to bother with books that are only on Amazon. By the way, what is “wide?” Amazon is so dominant in the ebook market that to have your book available in places other than Amazon is to be “wide.” Being wide is a lot of extra work: You have to upload and manage your book on a bunch of different platforms. This means any time you fix an error in your book, you have to re-upload it to all these places. Because Amazon matches the price of your book on other outlets, you also have to be careful not to have price discrepancies when you’re wide (more on a hard pricing lesson I learned in a bit). When you consider all the different markets and currencies in which your book is available, this is a lot to keep track of! BookBub is the best reason to be wide BookBub Featured Deals have been one of my main motivations for bothering with all the extra work of being “wide” (That and trying to “fight the good fight” to give readers choices other than Amazon.) Because being wide is so much work, I publish direct to Amazon, and use an aggregator to publish to all other outlets. I’ve tried publishing direct to various outlets, and I’ve tried different aggregators, but I’ve settled on PublishDrive. They have easy reporting, which saves a lot of energy putting together my monthly author income reports. If you want a shot at the “big break” of a BookBub Featured Deal, start by going wide. Rack up reviews (everywhere) When BookBub chooses your book for a Featured Deal, they’re putting their reputation on the line. Yes, they charge you money to feature your book, but they only have that privilege because readers trust them. Readers only trust them because readers know if BookBub has chosen to feature a book, it’s not just because they’re getting paid for it – it’s also a quality book. BookBub can’t go through the trouble of reading each book that applies for a Featured Deal. So how do they decide if your book is a quality book? Reviews! Work hard to get reviews for your book, not only on Amazon, but on other outlets as well. At the time The Heart to Start was accepted for a deal, it had about 275 ratings/reviews on Amazon (with a 4.8-star average), and a handful of reviews each on Apple Books, Kobo, and Google Play (If you check my book out, note that I’ve since lost some of those precious wide reviews because I switched to an aggregator. It’s best to choose the right aggregator from the start.) I had and still have no reviews on Barnes & Noble. Get reviews by asking or running other promotions You can get reviews by sending an email to your audience and asking for it. Or, if you have a direct relationship with any of your readers who have reviewed your book on Amazon, ask them if they would kindly copy and paste their review to one of these other outlets. Any other promotions you can run before applying for a BookBub deal can also help rack up reviews. How did I get so many reviews for The Heart to Start? It helps that when I launched the book, it was free. I gave away more than 3,000 copies, which you bet drove some reviews. You can’t fake good reviews, so write a great book Of course, it helps if these reviews are generally positive. Having gained hundreds of reviews for my books, I can tell you there’s no point in trying to fake this. If there’s ever been a friend who positively reviewed my book just to be nice, it’s never been as powerful as the reviews by strangers who actually liked (or hated) the book. The takeaway underlying all this is write a great book. But that alone won’t bring reviews – you have to work for them. Keep trying How often can you apply for a BookBub Featured Deal? Four weeks from your latest rejection. So, each time you get rejected, apply again four weeks later! Remember, I was rejected fourteen times. It took eighteen months from my first application to my first acceptance. Why not fourteen months? Because getting rejected over and over can be exhausting! Put your application process on auto-pilot Make the process of applying as automatic as possible. Each time I got a rejection email, I used a tool called Boomerang to return the email to my inbox four weeks later. That reminded me to apply again. I kept an Evernote file where I recorded the date I applied as well as the pricing and markets I chose, and comments I made in my application. I also kept links for each ebook store, ready to be copied and pasted into my application. Once you have notes like this, you could easily delegate this process to an assistant. Mix up pricing BookBub wants great deals for their subscribers, but they counterintuitively don’t need the best possible deal for their subscribers. These days, most BookBub Featured Deals are $1.99. Sometimes books are selling for more than that, but there are also books on sale for 99¢ or even free. You might think that if you are BookBub, you want to offer as many free books as possible. But keep in mind BookBub makes money from authors and publishers paying for placement in their newsletter. The higher the price for your deal, the more BookBub charges for placement. A higher price may give you a better shot (then again, maybe not!) So, you might have a better shot at charging 99¢ for your book than offering it for free. You might have a better shot at charging $1.99 than 99¢. How do you know? There’s no way to know for sure. These choices are up to the curators of BookBub, and their preferences change based on the activity they see amongst subscribers. Keep an eye on books listed on BookBub in your genre. Do you see a pattern in the list prices and sale prices of similar books? Alternate prices in your auto-pilot process If there’s not a super clear pattern, mix up the pricing in your applications. I alternated between two prices: One month, I applied to offer my book for 99¢, the next month I applied to offer it for $1.99. ($1.99 was the price that eventually got accepted.) Don’t make yourself ineligible There are various requirements to be eligible for a BookBub Featured Deal, but the easiest to mess up is pricing. Your proposed BookBub Featured Deal must be: Either free, or a discount of at least 50% (It’s usually more like 70–85%) The best deal available in the past 30 days. (They also don’t want you to offer it for less in the near future.) I messed this up at one point. When I had an international deal (more on that in a bit), it turned out I had accidentally priced my book too low on the Google Play store in the UK. So, Amazon had been matching that price. The historical list price was too low for my sale price to meet the 50%-discount requirement. So, while I was paying full price for my deal, my deal was not sent to UK subscribers, because I had accidentally made myself ineligible in the UK. This is yet another reason I use PublishDrive to publish everywhere except Amazon. It makes it easier to avoid mis-pricing my books. Try international first Speaking of international deals, there’s one caveat to my fourteen-rejection journey to a BookBub Featured Deal. My book was rejected fourteen times in a year-and-a-half for a U.S. deal. However, it was accepted for an international deal, after seven months and “only” three rejections. An international deal covers the UK, Canada, Australia, and India. (With each application, you can choose to apply for an international deal, a U.S. deal, or “All”). I did apply for “All” until I had my international deal, but BookBub accepted my book only for an international deal at that time. An international deal is practice The performance of my international deal was underwhelming, but I’m glad I got to try it before a “big” U.S. deal. (My international deal went to 140,000 subscribers, my U.S. deal – over one million). My international deal gave me a chance to learn and plan better for a bigger deal. I also learned that hard pricing lesson: paying the full price for an international deal, only to realize my carelessness in international pricing made my book ineligible in the UK. Your international deal performance may prove your book to BookBub BookBub probably watches the performance of these international deals to consider how a book will do in the U.S. Maybe the underwhelming performance of my book in my international deal was why BookBub didn’t accept it for a U.S. deal for another year! On the other hand, if my book had done great, it may have increased my chances of being accepted. To learn the ropes and maybe even to prove your book’s worth in a less-competitive arena, consider applying for an international deal first. At the very least, if you’re accepted for an international deal, but not a U.S. deal, take it and learn. Include editorial reviews or notable blurbs On the application for a BookBub Featured Deal, there’s a “Comments” section. Use this section to show BookBub curators how great people think your book is. At the advice of Craig Martelle in the 20Booksto50k Facebook Group, I included my book’s review from Publisher’s Weekly in the comments field of my application, starting with my twelfth application. It didn’t magically get my book accepted, but within a few months, I had landed a BookBub, so it may have helped. Don’t bother copy/pasting Amazon reviews into the comments section. But if you have any good editorial reviews or blurbs from famous authors, try including them in the comments field of your application. Create your own luck (your day will come) The more times you apply for a BookBub Featured Deal, the better your chances you’ll one day be accepted. Readers’ preferences change, the publishing market changes, the world changes, and so too do the preferences of BookBub’s curators. Just because you were rejected last month doesn’t mean you’ll also be rejected this month. I think the coronavirus pandemic may have improved my chances of getting a BookBub Featured Deal. This is just a theory, but traditional publishers’ projects were delayed, and I bet BookBub was getting fewer applications for traditional books. My business as an indie author, on the other hand, was not affected by the pandemic. It’s likely I had more of a shot because there was less competition. The publishing business is a business of breeding “Black Swans”, and you never know how the world will change to bring your “big break.” You have nothing to lose by applying, and everything to gain, so create your own luck by giving yourself more chances to get lucky. Some final tips BookBub also has tips on their website. Besides similar points to what I discussed here, their tips include: Have a good cover Optimize your sales pages on retailers Be flexible with your promotion date I’ll add to these a couple honorable mentions that will probably help, and can’t hurt: Spruce up your BookBub profile. Upload a photo, fill out your profile, invite your audience to follow you, and recommend some books from your genre. It signals to BookBub you’re well-known amongst their subscribers, and that you’re professional. (By the way, you can follow me on BookBub.) Run some BookBub Ads. It’s good practice to learn how to use BookBub’s ads, because they’re useful for making your Featured Deal even more successful when you finally do get one. Plus, it can build your BookBub following, which might improve your chances of having a deal accepted. Getting a BookBub Featured Deal is a breakthrough for a self-published author. It can feel like you’ll never get accepted, but if you keep at it, it’s possible – and worth the effort. Mind Management, Not Time Management now available! After nearly a decade of work, Mind Management, Not Time Management is now available! This book will show you how to manage your mental energy to be productive when creativity matters. Buy it now! My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/how-land-bookbub-featured-deal/

I recently saw a tweet storm by entrepreneur/investor/philosopher Naval Ravikant. He was challenging people to meditate sixty minutes a day for sixty consecutive days. The view from the location of my 60th hour-long meditation session. Here’s a quote from Naval about his meditation challenge, from The Naval Almanack: Meditation isn’t hard. All you have to do is sit there and do nothing. Just sit down. Close your eyes and say, “I’m just going to give myself a break for an hour. This is my hour off from life. This is the hour I’m not going to do anything. If thoughts come, thoughts come. I’m not going to fight them. I’m not going to embrace them. I’m not going to think harder about them. I’m not going to reject them. I’m just going to sit here for an hour with my eyes closed, and I’m going to do nothing.” An hour a day of doing nothing? I thought, “That’s crazy!” So, I did it. It changed the way I think about productivity. Who can give up an hour a day? Giving up an hour a day for two months seemed impossible. But I knew if I didn’t at least try it, I’d be a hypocrite. I had just finished writing a book called Mind Management, Not Time Management, after all. Taking on this challenge meant I’d be giving up an hour a day in the midst of launching a new book – which is always a busy time. But it also looked like the best possible test of my belief that time management is dead. I’d give up an hour a day of “doing” to just sit. I’d place less emphasis on time, and more emphasis on my mind. Here’s how it went. Meditation killed my motivation (in a good way) The first couple weeks were the strangest. My mind was blank. I felt numb. I lost all motivation. But probably not in the way you think. Usually, when people say they’ve lost motivation, they feel bad about it. They feel they should be motivated, but they are not. Instead, I lost motivation in a good way. I didn’t feel bad about my loss of motivation. I didn’t think, “Oh no, I want to do things but can’t find the motivation!” But I sensed my brain needed to discover new routes to motivation. What would that be like? I wanted to find out. So I kept going. Do it, Delegate it, Defer it. How about Forget it!? My lack of motivation didn’t manifest itself as a lack of motivation to do things I otherwise wanted to get done. Instead, when I thought of something I might do, I’d say to myself, “Nah! That’s not important!” I’ve long been a practitioner of Getting Things Done (which I summarized on episode 242). One of the keys to making GTD work is to write down everything you think of doing – big, small, unimportant, important – even things you might do, “Someday/Maybe.” After you write something down, you either do it, delegate it, or defer it. Thanks to meditation, I discovered a fourth option: forget it. In other words, don’t even write it down. Just let the thought pass. This is easier said than done. GTD works because it closes “open loops” in your mind. If you don’t write the thing down – GTD wisdom states – you’ll keep thinking about it. By meditating an hour a day, suddenly I was able to think of something I might do, decide it was unimportant, then forget about it completely! But as I decided not to do the things I would otherwise do, the things I wasn’t going to do started bubbling to the surface. Meditation sharpened focus on the things I did do Setting aside an hour a day where I couldn’t do anything but let thoughts flow had two effects. It reduced the time I had to “do” the things I intended to do. It increased the time I had to think about things I would do, “if only I had the time.” These effects had a symbiotic relationship: I didn’t have as much time to “do” things I intended to do, so I had to be more efficient with things I did do. Doing begets more doing. Each time you do something, it reminds you of other things you could be doing. The more you do, the more entropy sets in and you make bad decisions. By meditating an hour a day, I had less time to do things, and more time to think about how I would do those things once I did them. So the things I did, I did better. It is more productive to delete from the to-do list than to mark done. Meditation made room for “wildcards” Setting aside an hour a day also gave me more time to think about things I would do, “if only I had the time” – those crazy ideas you normally let pass through your mind. You say to yourself, “I wish,” “wouldn’t that be nice,” or “that would never work, anyway.” By thinking more about the crazy ideas I wasn’t likely to follow, those ideas started to take on more importance in my mind. As I thought more about these ideas, they started to seem doable. Things like taking a solo retreat to a cabin in the Colombian countryside. I still wasn’t sure my crazy ideas were going to work, but I came to a realization about that, too. We’re bad at using our conscious attention anyway I realized we’re bad at consciously using our attention. Scientists have known this for a long time. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky coined it “the planning fallacy.” You see the planning fallacy in action when you try to log into your bank account to pay a bill. You think it’s going to take two minutes. But then your password manager malfunctions. Then you have to complete three pages of CAPTCHAs. Then you have to do two-factor authentication, so you grab your phone. But your phone has a text message on it. You know the drill. The planning fallacy compounds as complexity creep takes over (which I talked about on episode 237). This is why fewer than half of students complete their papers in less time than their worst-case projection This is why the Sydney Opera House took ten years longer and fifteen times the budget to build as expected. So if we’re bad at using our conscious attention anyway, maybe we shouldn’t put much trust in ourselves to use all our conscious attention getting things done? We don’t know what will work We spend all our waking attention trying to do things. We think, If only we could do all the things we intend to do, we would finally achieve the success we deserve. The things we intend to do don’t just take more time than expected. Nassim Taleb demonstrates in The Black Swan (which I summarized on episode 244) we also have no idea whether things we’ve decided to do are worth doing in the first place. In the “Extremistan” world of creative work, our biggest successes often come from trying to do one thing, then stumbling upon another. Europeans discovered the New World while searching for a route to India. The microwave was discovered when a radar experiment accidentally melted a chocolate bar. Penicillin was discovered when experimental samples got contaminated. I got my first book deal while trying to land a slot to speak at a conference. As William Goldman said, “Nobody knows anything.” Goldman’s not knowing anything didn’t keep him from winning two Academy Awards for screenwriting. Meditation is the “Barbell Strategy” for attention If great discoveries come at random, what can you do? You have to be doing things that might not work, and you have to be ready when a great idea comes. As Louis Pasteur said, “Chance favors the prepared mind.” To give yourself a chance at making great discoveries, Nassim Taleb recommends “the Barbell Strategy.” Invest 85% of your resources on sure bets. Invest the remaining 15% of your resources on wildcards – those crazy ideas that probably won’t lead to anything, but that have unlimited upside. (You can learn more about the Barbell Strategy in my The Black Swan book summary on episode 244). Meditating 60 hours in 60 days had more benefits than I could list. I slept better, I had more intense dreams, I became more patient. But here’s the biggest thing I learned about productivity meditating 60 hours in 60 days: Meditation is the Barbell Strategy for your waking attention. If we’re no good at using our conscious attention anyway, and if our best discoveries come at random, it makes perfect sense to surrender a portion of your conscious attention to randomness. If you invest one hour of your working day in meditation, you invest 12.5% of your working day in mental serendipity. That’s enough time not only to think about the crazy ideas you otherwise wouldn’t pursue, but also to think about the great discoveries happening right under your nose. What about results? When you’re working in “Extremistan,” you have to be weary of “results.” Big wins are rare, and positive Black Swans take time to grow. In the more than 500 blog posts I’ve written in the past 16 years, I’ve had two that led to Black Swans (one, a book deal, the other, working with a company that sold to Google). But, I did have one big win during my meditation experiment. On the day I launched my new book, I had a winning tweet storm. The first tweet in the storm, alone, has over 100,000 organic impressions. I had over 150,000 impressions in one day. Previously, on a really good day, I might get 25,000 impressions. The end of that tweet storm brought 500 organic clicks to my book’s Amazon page. This tweet storm took me several hours – over the course of weeks – to write, edit, and publish. Would I ever in a million years have bothered spending that much time on a tweet storm? No way, that’s a crazy idea. But thanks to my hour a day of meditation, I couldn’t let the idea go. And now? Meditating 60 hours in 60 days changed the way I think about productivity. So what did I do once I was done? I meditated the next day, and the next day, and the day after that. At this point, I’ve meditated an hour a day for more than 80 days in a row. It’s a crazy idea, but this is just something I do now. Mind Management, Not Time Management now available! After nearly a decade of work, Mind Management, Not Time Management is now available! This book will show you how to manage your mental energy to be productive when creativity matters. Buy it now! My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/naval-ravikant-meditation/

It’s hard to predict the future, but you can be better at predicting the future. All you need is a few delicious avocados. Even the “experts” are bad at predicting the future Wharton professor Phillip Tetlock wanted to make the future easier to predict. So he held “forecasting tournaments,” in which experts from a variety of fields made millions of predictions about global events. Tetlock found that experts are no better at predicting the future than dart-throwing chimps. In fact, the more high-profile experts – the ones who get invited onto news shows – were the worst at making predictions. But, Tetlock found that some people are really great at telling the future. He calls them “Superforecasters”, and regardless of their area of expertise, they consistently beat the field with their predictions. Tetlock also found that with a little training, people can improve their forecasting skills. The superforecasters in Tetlock’s Good Judgement Project – people from all backgrounds working with publicly-available information – make forecasts 30% better than intelligence officers with access to classified information. Creative work is uncertain. Does it have to be? As someone working in the “Extremistan” world of creative work, I’m always trying to improve my forecasting skills. If I publish a tweet, how many likes will it get? If I write a book, how many copies will it sell? The chances of getting any of these predictions exactly right are so slim, it doesn’t feel worth it to try to predict these things. But that doesn’t mean I can’t rate my predictions and make those predictions better. Introducing the Avocado Challenge If you would like to be better at predicting the future, I have a challenge for you. I call it the Avocado Challenge. Elon Musk recently asked on Twitter “What can’t we predict?” I answered “whether or not an avocado is ready to open.” 12 likes. People agree with me. https://twitter.com/kadavy/status/1309643017599569920  Here’s how the Avocado Challenge works. The next time you’re about to open an avocado, make a prediction: How confident are you the avocado is ripe? Choose a percentage of confidence, such as 50% or 20% – or if you’re feeling lucky, 100%. To make it simple, you can rate your confidence on a scale of 0 to 10. State your prediction out loud or write it down. Now, open the avocado. Is it ripe? Yes or no? Scoring your avocado predictions You now have two variables: Your prediction as stated in percentage confidence, and the outcome of avocado ripeness. With these two variables, you can calculate what’s called a Brier score. This tells you just how good your forecast was. The Brier score is what Phillip Tetlock uses to score his forecasting tournaments. Two variables: confidence and outcome It works like this: Translate your percentage confidence into a decimal between 0 and 1. So 50% would be 0.5, 20% would be 0.2, and 100% would just be 1. Now, translate the avocado ripeness outcome into a binary number. If the avocado was not ripe, your outcome value is “0.” If the avocado was ripe, your outcome value is “1.” (You may wonder: How do I determine whether or not an avocado is ripe? I’ll get to that in a minute. Let’s pretend for a second it’s easy.) Calculating your Brier score Once you have those two variables, there are two steps to follow to find out your Brier score: Subtract the outcome value from your confidence value. If I was 50% confident the avocado would be ripe that confidence value is 0.5. If the avocado was in fact ripe I subtract the outcome value of 1 from 0.5 to get -0.5. Square that number, or multiply it by itself. -0.5² = 0.25. Our Brier score is 0.25. Is that good or bad? The lower your Brier score, the better your prediction was. If you were 100% confident the avocado would be ripe and it was not, your Brier score would be 1 – the worst score possible. If you were 100% confident the avocado would be ripe and it was ripe, your Brier score would be 0 – the best score possible. So, 0.25 is pretty solid. Predict your next 30 avocados This is a fun exercise to try one time, but it doesn’t tell you a whole lot about your forecasting skills overall, and it doesn’t help you improve your forecasting skills. Where it gets interesting and useful is when you make a habit of the Avocado Challenge. After you’ve tried the Avocado Challenge a couple times, make a habit out of it. For 30 consecutive avocados, tally your results. Calculate your Brier score, and find the average of your 30 predictions. If you regularly open avocados with a roommate or partner, make a competition out of it. My partner and I predicted the ripeness of, then opened, 36 avocados over the course of several weeks. We recorded our predictions and outcomes on a notepad on the fridge – then tallied our results in a spreadsheet. Our findings: 28% of avocados were ripe. Her Brier score was 0.22 – mine was 0.19. (I win!)   The Avocado Challenge teaches you to define your predictions Most of us don’t make predictions according to our percentage confidence. We say, “I think so and so is going to win the election,” or “I think it might rain.” Phillip Tetlock even found this with political pundits – the ones who get lots of airtime on news shows. They’ll say things like “there’s a distinct possibility.” That’s not a forecast. If so and so wins the election, you can say, “ha! I knew it!” If it didn’t rain, you can remind your friend you said you thought it might rain. And what does a “distinct possibility” mean? You can be “right” either way. And when it comes to getting airtime on news shows, the news show doesn’t care if the political pundit gets their prediction right. All that matters is they can be exciting on camera, speak in sound bites, argue a clear point, and hold the viewer’s attention a little longer so it can be sold to advertisers during the commercial break. We normally don’t make our predictions with a percentage confidence, because we aren’t used to it. The Avocado Challenge gets you in the habit of rating the confidence of your predictions. The Avocado Challenge helps you define reality The Avocado Challenge also helps you define reality. This is something we’re also bad at. If you’re on a walk with your friend and you say you think it’s going to rain, how much rain equals rain? By what time is it going to rain? You’re traveling on foot – is it going to rain where the walk started, or the place you’ll be a half hour from now? To rate your predictions and become a better forecaster, you need to make falsifiable claims. It’s hard to tell if an avocado is ripe before you open the avocado, but it’s also hard to tell if an avocado is ripe after you open the avocado. You’ll have to come up with criteria for determining whether or not an avocado should be defined as “ripe.” When we did the Avocado Challenge, we defined a “ripe” avocado as a “perfect” avocado: uniform green color, with the meat of the avocado sticking to no more than 5% of the pit.     The Avocado Challenge can improve your real-life predictions A few weeks after we did the Avocado Challenge, my partner and I were at her family’s finca – a rustic cabin in the Colombian countryside. It was Sunday afternoon, and we were getting ready to head back to Medellín. I was eager to get home and get ready for my week. I asked my partner what time we would leave. She said about 3 p.m. As I mentioned on episode 235, the Colombian sense of time takes some getting used to for me as an American. Even though my partner is a very prompt person, I’m also aware of “the planning fallacy.” I know the Sydney Opera House opened ten years late and cost 15 times the projected budget to build. So when I looked at the Mitsubishi Montero parked in the grass, and thought about how long it might take to pack in eight people, three dogs, and a little white rabbit, the chances of us leaving right at 3 p.m. seemed slim.     Fortunately, we had done the Avocado Challenge. I asked my partner, in Spanish, “what’s your percentage confidence we’ll leave before an hour after 3 p.m. – 4 p.m.?” She shifted into Avocado mode, thought a bit, and said sesenta por ciento. She was 60% sure we’d leave before 4 p.m. That didn’t seem super confident, so I asked for another forecast. I asked what her percentage confidence was that we’d leave before 5 p.m. – two hours after the target time. She said cien por ciento. She was 100% sure we’d leave before 5 p.m. Now, instead of choosing between expecting to leave at exactly 3 p.m. – or leaving “whenever” – I now had a range. It was a range I could trust from someone with experience with similar situations – and training in forecasting. The time we did leave: 3:30 p.m. My partner’s Brier score for that first prediction: 0.16. Average Brier score for the two predictions: 0.08. Not bad. Mind Management, Not Time Management now available! After nearly a decade of work, Mind Management, Not Time Management is now available! This book will show you how to manage your mental energy to be productive when creativity matters. Buy it now! My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays. Listener Showcase Abby Stoddard makes the Dunnit app – the "have-done list." It’s a minimalist tool designed to motivate action and build healthy habits. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/avocado-challenge  

If you want to write a book, don’t ask, “How much money does the average book make?” In this context, “average” is meaningless. You’re in the world of Black Swans. The Black Swan is a book by Nicholas Nassim Taleb, and I have found the ideas in it critical to navigating my career as an author. Here – in my own words – is my summary of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. These are the ideas I think about when I’m considering writing a new book.   Where does the term “Black Swan” come from? Imagine a world where you’ve only ever seen white swans. If someone asked you whether or not black swans existed, you might say no. You’ve seen thousands of swans, and they’ve all been white. Therefore, black swans don’t exist. You’ve mistaken an absence of evidence for evidence of absence. Just because you haven’t seen evidence of black swans, does not prove they don’t exist. What is a Black Swan? A positive Black Swan: In 2010, I wrote a blog post. That blog post prompted a publisher to reach out to me. I got a book deal. A negative Black Swan: A Las Vegas casino had an insurance policy. They protected against every cheating scenario they could imagine. They had the most popular show in Vegas, where magicians worked with giant live tigers. So they protected against the scenario of a tiger jumping into the audience. But they never imagined the tiger would maim one of the performers – Roy of Siegfried and Roy. Siegfried and Roy lost their careers. The casino lost $100 million. Both of these incidents are Black Swans: Black Swans are outliers: They’re not what we expect. Nothing in the past predicts a Black Swan. Black Swans have extreme impact: The impact could be positive, such as my book deal, or negative, such as the tiger attack, or the terrorist attacks of 9/11. We backwards-rationalize Black Swans: After a Black Swan happens, it seems obvious. We look back and come up with explanations for how it happened. This gives us the illusion that Black Swans are explainable and predictable. Note: COVID-19 is not a Black Swan. As Taleb has explained, global pandemics happen regularly. They’re uncommon, but they’re inevitable, and we know that. The Black Swan Turkey Imagine you’re a Turkey. Every day, humans come and feed you. You think humans are pretty good and nice. Each day you get new information to confirm this belief. A graph of your opinion of humans might look like this:     Notice the sharp drop-off at the end. That’s the day before Thanksgiving. Things seemed good, until they weren’t. History does not always predict the future. Events come along that shatter all assumptions we’ve made based upon past information. Mediocristan vs. Extremistan Black Swans happen in a place Taleb calls “Extremistan.” Extremistan is the opposite of “Mediocristan.” There’s a joke I like, “Bill Gates walks into a bar. On average, everyone there is a millionaire.” We’re attracted to the “average” and the predictable. But oftentimes the concept of “average” is misleading. Some things happen in Mediocristan and are predictable. The “average” is meaningful in Mediocristan. Other things happen in Extremistan and are unpredictable and extreme. The “average” is meaningless in Extremistan. Mediocristan is about “the collective, the routine, the obvious, and the predicted.” Mediocristan is about risk spread out amongst many, to avoid surprises. An hourly-wage job at Starbucks is possible only in Mediocristan. Extremistan is about “the singular, the accidental, the unseen and the unpredicted.” It’s where the Black Swans happen: random events you never expected, caused by forces you’ll never understand. Such as I experienced suddenly getting a book deal or working with a company that sold to Google. Mediocristan is about variables that fall within a predictable range. In the history of humanity, there’s never been a man 100 feet tall, or a woman 2,000 years old. Nobody has even come close to these extremes. Height and life expectancy follow a bell curve.   A bell curve. (Source: D Wells, Wikimedia Commons)   Distribution of height. (Source: Our World in Data)[/caption]     Extremistan is about variables that scale indefinitely. There’s no known limit to how rich a person can be. The “average” net worth of a U.S. family is about $700,000. But to be richer than half of all Americans you need only $100,000. Still, Jeff Bezos has more than $100,000,000,000.   Wealth distribution, by percentile, in the U.S. Jeff Bezos is 10x as wealthy as the highest point in this chart. (Wikipedia)[/caption] Why are Black Swans important? Understanding Black Swans can prepare you for the unexpected. If you learn about the impact that unexpected and extreme events can have, you can avoid foolish choices that expose you to negative Black Swans. Exposing yourself to Black Swans can make you successful. As we’ll talk about later, when you behave as if you’re in Mediocristan, you miss out on the positive Black Swans you’d find Extremistan. Businesses that thrive on Black Swans include venture capital, scientific research, and publishing. (Note: Another reason Black Swans are important is – as I talked about in Mind Management, Not Time Management – if it’s predictable, it can be automated. Your edge as a human is not in Mediocristan where the robots are taking over. It’s in Extremistan – in doing something nobody could expect.) Black Swan barrier: Platonicity One way we blind ourselves from Black Swans is through what Taleb calls “Platonicity.” Named after the philosopher, Plato, “Platonicity” is our desire to define things, and to pay more attention to things that have been defined. We create names for objects, we create terms (yes, such as “Platonicity”), and we invent nationalities. Because we’re so focused on things we define, we miss all the messier stuff that also matters. Taleb describes it as “[mistaking] the map for the territory.” (I once wrote about a similar concept, and called it Stuff and Things.) It’s helpful to categorize things, but it becomes a problem when we see a category as definitive, and don’t see the fuzzy boundaries between categories or revise them when we see new information that doesn’t fit how we categorize things. We’ve seen this in the gendered bathroom debate. We broke gender down into two categories. Based on that we made two bathrooms. But we’re realizing it’s not so simple. To be Platonic is to be top-down, formulaic, and close-minded. To be a-Platonic is to be bottom-up, open-minded, skeptical, and empirical. The Platonification of breast milk Doctors in the 1960s replicated breast milk in a laboratory, by replicating the components they could see in the milk (the things they had “Platonified”). It seemed to make no practical sense for women to go through the inconvenience of breast feeding when you could just use bottles and lab-made formula. There was an absence of evidence of what the benefits of breast milk were, and that was taken as evidence of absence of benefits. We didn’t know the full benefits of breast milk, but we assumed the components we could see were the only important parts. It turned out children who were not breast fed were later at an increased risk of some cancers. If the mothers themselves had breast fed, they would have had a reduced risk of breast cancer. Black Swan barrier: The Triplet of Opacity Another way we blind ourselves from Black Swans is through what Taleb calls “The Triplet of Opacity.” Those are: The Illusion of understanding. We think we understand what’s going on, but the world is more complicated and random than we know. The retrospective distortion. We assess things after the fact, so we backwards rationalize and come up with reasons why things happened. The overvaluation of information. We place too much emphasis on facts – the things we can “Platonify” – which blinds us from stuff that isn’t so easy to Platonify. How to make Black Swans happen? Since Platonification blinds us to Black Swans, and we suffer from the illusion of understanding and the retrospective distortion, it may seem silly to try to make Black Swans happen. You can’t engineer a Black Swan, but you can create the conditions for positive Black Swans to happen, as I talked about on episode 146. Tinker Top-down planning gives us the illusion of control, and keeps us in Mediocristan. Instead, tinker as much as possible, and learn to recognize opportunities when they present themselves. Taleb says the reason free markets work is not because they give rewards or drive incentives. Rather, free markets work because they let people get lucky through trial and error. (Then we explain away the brilliant things we did to arrive at this wonderful discovery.) Many discoveries come from searching for what you know, and finding what you didn’t expect. Europeans first learned of the American continent while searching for a route to India. I got my first book deal when I was trying to get votes for my speech proposal for a conference. Be patient Negative Black Swans happen suddenly, but positive Black Swans happen slowly. “It is much easier and much faster to destroy than to build.” Black Swan discoveries take time to have an impact. The computer, the internet, and the laser all had a huge impacts, but were underappreciated after initial discovery. Charles H. Townes was teased by his colleagues for inventing the laser, because they thought it was useless. It turned out to be important to eyesight correction, surgery, and data storage and retrieval. Denarrate The triplet of opacity feeds into the “narrative fallacy.” We’re wired to come up with stories of why things happen, but Black Swans happen for unknown reasons. Taleb realized that as a stock trader, there was no way for him to get an informational edge. He realized any piece of news that came out would quickly be worked into the market price of any security. So, he stopped reading the news. He recognized that reading the news as a stock trader would just support the narrative fallacy. Taleb describes a study where sports bookmakers were given ten variables to predict horse races. When they were later given double the information, these bookmakers were no more accurate in their predictions – yet they were much more confident. So Taleb decided that by reading the news he wouldn’t get an edge and he would become overconfident. The Barbell Strategy The main method Taleb recommends for protecting against negative Black Swans while exposing oneself to positive Black Swans is what he calls the Barbell Strategy.   Think of a barbell, with weights on either side. On one side of the barbell is your sure bets – things where you have little chance of losing. On the other side of the barbell is your wildcards – things with unlimited upside. The Barbell Strategy in investing (Note: I’m not a finance expert and nothing I’m about to say is investment advice.) In investing, the sure bets would be treasury bills, cash, and gold. Obviously Black Swans could come along and make these bets not so sure bets, but they’re as sure as you can get. The wildcards would be highly-leveraged option trading, angel investments, or cryptocurrency. You have a decent chance of losing your money, but there’s almost no limit to how much you can gain. In an investing context, Taleb recommends putting 85–90% of your assets into the safe investments, and the remaining 10–15% in the speculative investments. What you’re avoiding is the stuff in the middle. People think index funds are safe because they historically gain about 7% a year, but the entire stock market has lost up to 30% of its value very quickly. Since we’re living in an increasingly complex world, there’s no telling what kind of Black Swan could come in the future and cause an even bigger drop. The Barbell Strategy in creative work I hadn’t realized before reading The Black Swan that I had used the Barbell Strategy to build my creative career. When I was first starting out, I made sure to get just enough freelance work to pay my bills. I also spent a portion of my time building passive income streams. The rest of the time, I spent tinkering and exploring my own ideas. After three years, I randomly landed a book deal to write Design for Hackers. Dan Ariely mentioned a Barbell Strategy in my latest podcast conversation with him. He says he “gambles with his time.” He spends some portion of his time on things that don’t make sense, such as collaborating with a mentalist on-stage in one of his speeches, or working with a cartoonist. My own Barbell Strategy has benefitted from Dan’s Barbell Strategy. A blog post I wrote as a “wildcard” – during one of my Weeks of Want – prompted Dan to reach out to me. I collaborated with him on a productivity app. We sold it to Google. That blog post also led to my third book, Mind Management, Not Time Management. There’s your The Black Swan summary! I hope you’ve found this The Black Swan summary useful and clear. Taleb’s writing can be confusing and even off-putting at first, but if you take the time to understand his ideas, they can help you navigate an uncertain world and find breakthrough opportunities. I highly recommend The Black Swan. It’s one of my favorite books.   Mind Management, Not Time Management now available! After nearly a decade of work, Mind Management, Not Time Management is now available! This book will show you how to manage your mental energy to be productive when creativity matters. Buy it now! My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays. Listener Showcase Abby Stoddard makes the Dunnit app – the "have-done lilst." It’s a minimalist tool designed to motivate action and build healthy habits. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/black-swan-summary 

Today is the day! My new book, Mind Management, Not Time Management is now available everywhere! Writing this book has been a long journey. Over the past ten years, I slowly discovered the things I share in the book, and I also scrapped several drafts, before I finally got it right. I’m very excited to share with you a cohesive system for managing your energy, instead of your time – to be productive when creativity matters. If you bought the Preview Edition of Mind Management, Not Time Management, I’ll be sending you the First Edition. Otherwise, go buy it today. In five years of this podcast, this is the single biggest event – this is my single biggest ask – go buy this book! It’s available wherever books are sold. Or go straight to Amazon. I’m going to share with you a sample from the first chapter today. Chapter 1: Mind Management, Not Time Management “There’s only twenty-four hours in a day.” The natural conclusion we’re supposed to draw from this common observation is: If there are only so many hours in a day, you should make the most of each of those precious hours. Time management, it seems, is critically important. When you start managing your time, you find you really are getting more done. You’re keeping a calendar, so you don’t forget things. You’re building routines, so you can get repeating tasks done faster. You’re learning keyboard shortcuts for the apps you use every day. You may even start saying “no” to some opportunities, so you can make better use of your time. But it becomes harder and harder to get more out of your time. Your calendar becomes jam-packed with a kaleidoscope of colored blocks. You start “speed reading,” and listening to audiobooks and podcasts on 3x speed. You start cutting out all but the most essential activities that move you toward your goals. No more lunches with your friends – you’ll eat at your desk. Next, you figure, you can get more out of your time if you do two things at once. So you start multitasking. You’re checking your email while brushing your teeth. You’re holding conference calls while driving to work. You start searching for extra bits of time, like loose change under couch cushions. You used to sleep eight hours a night, but now you’ll sleep five. You can check emails at family dinners. You can steal a couple extra hours of work on your laptop after everyone in the house has gone to bed. You’re tired all the time. It seems there’s not enough coffee in the world to keep you going. Your anxiety levels are sky-high, and you’re becoming forgetful. You’re always in a rush. With each new tactic you learn, each new “life hack,” each new shortcut, life gets more hectic. You would start outsourcing some of the load, but you’re so busy and so exhausted, you can’t even explain what’s keeping you so busy. The harder you try to get more out of your time, it seems, the less time you have. Even if you did have the time, you still wouldn’t have the energy. Until one day you realize: “There’s only twenty-four hours in a day.” Maybe that doesn’t mean what I thought it meant? I thought it meant I should get the most done in the least amount of time possible. What I’m learning is, if there’s only twenty-four hours in a day, that means there’s a limit. I can only get so much out of my time. “Time management” is like squeezing blood from a stone. This story is not too different from my own. For my entire adult life, I have been a productivity enthusiast, with time management as one of my key strategies for getting more done. It started in college. As a graphic design student, I learned all the keyboard shortcuts I could for Photoshop. I used training software to teach myself to type faster. When I graduated and got a job, I constantly experimented with different ways of keeping a to-do list and prioritizing my tasks. I pontificated with any colleague who would listen about how to cut down on the number of emails in my inbox. One thing I loved about working in Silicon Valley was that there was no shortage of tech geeks with whom I could swap tips on the latest productivity apps. Eventually, I ran out of ways to get more done in less time, and my quest went on a detour. That led me to embark on the adventure I’m sharing in this book. Four years ago, I found myself sitting on the bare hardwood floor of my apartment in Chicago, eating lunch from a takeout container with a plastic fork. I had no furniture, no plates, no silverware. I had sold my last chair to some guy from Craigslist fifteen minutes prior. I was about to embark on my most audacious productivity experiment yet. As I looked around at the three suitcases which housed my final remaining possessions, and the painters erasing from the walls any trace that I had lived there for seven years, I was trying to wrap my head around one fact: That night, I would fall asleep in another country. For the foreseeable future, I would be a foreigner – an extranjero – in a land with a checkered history, where I barely spoke the language. It all started, six years earlier, with an email. It was the kind of email that would trip up most spam filters. I wasn’t being offered true love, millions of dollars from an offshore bank account, or improved performance in bed. I was being offered a book deal. I had never thought of myself as a writer. In fact, I hated writing as a kid. As I considered accepting that book deal offer, every author I talked to warned me that writing a book is extremely hard work, with little chance of success. But I figured, How hard can it be?, and signed my first literary contract. I didn’t know how to write a book, but the most obvious method was: time management. I needed to make sure I had the time to write the book. In an attempt to meet my tight deadline, I used every time management technique I could think of. I scheduled writing sessions on my calendar. I developed a morning routine to start writing as quickly as possible after waking up. I “time boxed,” to limit the time I would spend on pieces of the project. Still, I didn’t have enough time. I fired my clients. I cancelled dates and turned down party invitations. I started outsourcing my grocery shopping, my meal preparation, even household chores. If there was anything I had to do myself, I made sure to “batch” it into blocks of time when I could do it all at once. Writing the book became my one and only focus. I cleared away any time I could, and I dedicated it to writing. But it still wasn’t enough. I spent most of my day hunched over my keyboard, rocking back and forth in agony. I felt actual physical pain in my stomach and chest. My fingers felt as if they had been overtaken by rigor mortis. I struggled to write even a single sentence. I was spending plenty of time on my book, but I wasn’t getting anything done. My case of writer’s block was so bad that, weeks after signing my contract, I accepted a last-minute invitation to go on a retreat to Costa Rica. Logically, it wasn’t the best use of my time, but I desperately hoped that a change of scenery would work some kind of magic. A few days into the trip, I was more worried than ever. According to my contract, if my manuscript wasn’t twenty-five percent finished within a few weeks, the deal was off. Yet I still hadn’t written a single word. Unless a miracle happened, I would write a check to the publisher to return my advance, and I would humiliatingly face my friends, family, and blog readers to tell them I had failed. Does that sound like a lot of pressure? It was. I went for a walk, so I could feel sorry for myself, by myself. I was dragging my feet down the gravel road, head hung down and arms crossed over my chest. How could I be so foolish?, I wondered. Not only had I committed to writing a 50,000-word book – with detailed illustrations – despite having little writing experience beyond a few blog posts, but I had wasted time and money going on this retreat. Then, I heard someone call out. I looked up, and on the next road over was a man waving and yelling, ¿¡Como estáááás!? I had briefly noticed the man moments before. His fists had been wrapped around the simple wires of a fence, his arms stretched out in front of him as he leaned back in ecstasy, singing to himself. I had felt vaguely embarrassed for him, assuming he didn’t know someone else was around. As the man motioned for someone to come to him, I hesitated. It looked as if he was motioning to me, but that seemed unlikely. Yet I looked around, and saw nobody. I had just passed a fork in the road, and the fence the man stood behind was on the other side of the fork. I didn’t want to backtrack, because I felt I should return to the house and try to write. But I felt rude for ignoring his friendly invitation. So, I reluctantly retraced my steps, and walked over to the man, still unsure of what he wanted. What followed was the first conversation I ever had entirely in Spanish. Though, I’m using the word “conversation” loosely. The man – Diego was his name – taught me the words for the sun, the beach, the rain and the sea. It turned out Diego just wanted to chat. My conversation with Diego was refreshing. I was used to everyone ignoring each other on the crowded streets of Chicago, but here was a man who wanted to talk to someone on the next road over about nothing in particular. I was suddenly in such a relaxed state of mind that, after bidding Diego farewell, it was several minutes before I noticed I was going the wrong way. I had continued down Diego’s side of the fork in the road. When I realized this, I panicked at the prospect of getting lost in a foreign country, but then I shrugged it off and decided to keep going. It turned out I got back to the house just fine anyway. Between the pep talk I got from my friend Noah Kagan – as described in my book, The Heart to Start – and my conversation with Diego, I felt as if I had turned over a new leaf. I set my laptop on a desk on the interior balcony of the house. There, looking out at the sapphire blue Pacific Ocean, I had my first breakthrough writing session. What once seemed impossible, now seemed easy. After an hour of writing, I had most of a chapter drafted. It suddenly seemed as if I might make my deadline after all. That random conversation on a gravel road in Costa Rica became the seed of an idea that would eventually drive me to sell everything I owned and buy a one-way ticket to South America. I had discovered that making progress on my first book wasn’t so much about having the time to write. It was about being in the right state of mind to do the work at hand. I had discovered that today’s productivity isn’t so much about time management as it is about mind management. Mind Management, Not Time Management now available! After nearly a decade of work, Mind Management, Not Time Management is now available! This book will show you how to manage your mental energy to be productive when creativity matters. Buy it now! My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/buy-mind-management

When I first heard of Getting Things Done, I was skeptical. How could it possibly live up to the fanaticism of its cult following? But once I saw the power of the “next action,” of “someday/maybes,” and of organizing tasks by “context,” I knew there was a good reason for the hype: “GTD” works. More than fifteen years later, GTD still helps me stay productive and in control of all of the things going on in life and work. GTD has helped me write three books, build a business, and move to South America. I regularly re-read it, and I always find new ways to apply its principles and techniques. Here’s my Getting Things Done book summary – in my own words – after many years of practice and two podcast interviews with author David Allen. The principles that make GTD work These are not “principles” as expressed in the Getting Things Done book, but this is my summary of its most important ideas. 1. Trusted System: GTD is your “trusted system” The most important idea behind GTD is to get everything out of your head and into a “trusted system.” What is a trusted system? A “trusted” system is a system in which you can “trust” that you will engage appropriately with everything in the system. 2. Appropriate Engagement: Your trusted system helps you “engage appropriately” GTD handles a wider breadth of things than your typical to-do list/calendar combination. Because GTD helps you “engage appropriately” with everything. What does it mean to “engage appropriately?” That means you’re doing no more and no less than is necessary to achieve your goal. You can trust your system will remind you to buy cat food only when you’re physically capable of buying cat food, and before you run out of cat food. You can also trust your system to hold ideas that you may or may not act upon. If you daydream about moving abroad, you can trust your system to hold that idea and remind you periodically, so you won’t forget to do whatever you do or don’t want to do about it. So GTD handles everything from important tasks that must get done to fleeting thoughts that you merely might want to do something about. 3. Close Open Loops: GTD keeps your mind free of “open loops” Build a trusted system that helps you engage appropriately with everything, and your mental energy will be free to handle whatever is going on in the moment. This is because your trusted system keeps your mind free of open loops. If you can’t trust that you’ll buy cat food before you run out, you’ll be thinking about it. If you can’t trust that you’ll revisit that idea about moving abroad, you’ll be thinking about it. You’ll have open loops in your mind. These open loops use mental energy that you could use on other things. These open loops also make you feel like a victim of the things you have to do. It’s demoralizing to keep reminding yourself something needs to get done because you’re also reminding yourself that you haven’t followed through. If you trust it will get done, you don’t have to remind yourself. As David Allen says, ”Your mind is for having ideas, not for holding them.” 4. Bottom-Up: GTD is a “bottom-up” approach to personal organization By getting control of the ground-level things in your life, you have more energy to think about the higher-level things. By trusting that you’ll buy cat food, you have more energy to think about how your idea to move abroad fits into your long-term goals and your life purpose. One quick exercise to get a taste of GTD One quick way to get a taste of GTD: Write down every single thing that’s on your mind that either needs to get done, or that may need to get done. Don’t worry about doing those things, just get them out of your head. You may feel a little overwhelmed from writing all of those things down, but you probably also feel a lot lighter. You’ve just done the first of the five key steps to mastering GTD. The five-step process of GTD Capture: Capture everything. Anything you need to act on or might need to act on needs to be captured. Get it out of your head and into the system. Clarify: With each thing, you’re asking yourself Is this actionable? If it’s not actionable, what should you do with it? If it is actionable, what’s the “next action” (more on this soon). Organize: Put the thing in the right place. If it’s actionable, it’s in your task management system. If you don’t need it, it goes in the trash. If you might need it, you store it for reference. Reflect: Review and think about the things in your system, regularly. How often? Often enough to keep them out of your mind, which helps you trust your “trusted system.” Engage: Do what you intended to do with the things. That might be taking action, that might be not taking action. Whatever action you do take, that’s the “next action.” Identify the “next action” If you take away only one idea from this Getting Things Done book summary, it should be the “next action.” The “next action” is what it sounds like: What is the next thing you can do about this thing you’re thinking about? I used to write vague items on my to-do list: I’d write “Mom,” to remind me Mom’s birthday was coming up, and that I needed to buy her a gift. Look at how many steps removed “Mom” was from the next action! You might think the next action was to buy Mom a gift, but it wasn’t. Instead, the next action was “brainstorm gift ideas for Mom.” That’s easier to act upon than just “Mom.” You might not think it makes a difference. But – like closing open loops – identifying the next action saves mental energy. When you look at your to-do list you don’t have to wonder what action to take. And sometimes you don’t need to take action at all. Keep a “someday/maybes” list If you take away only two ideas from this Getting Things Done book summary, it should be the “next action,” and the “someday/maybes” list. Why? Because these are the two ideas that free up the most energy. The next action makes it easier to act. Your someday/maybe list makes it easier to not act. Before I knew about someday/maybe, I’d make one of two mistakes: I’d either write something down on my to-do list, not realizing I didn’t really intend to do it, or I’d recognize that I didn’t really intend to do it, and so not write it down, and thus keep thinking about it. Both of these were the wrong way. Your someday/maybes list lets you capture things you would like to do, only it’s not the right time or you’re not yet sure you want to do them. Because the things you someday or maybe want to do are in your “trusted system” you close the loops, and you stop thinking about them. But for your someday/maybe list to work, you have to review it regularly. Do a “weekly review” If you take only three ideas from this Getting Things Done book summary, it should be the “next action,” the “someday/maybes” list, and the “weekly review.” Because the weekly review is what puts the “trusted” in “trusted system.” Remember the five-step process behind GTD: Capture, Clarify, Organize, Reflect, and Engage. Capturing, Clarifying, and Organizing help you identify what to do and be sure you’ll do it. Reflecting – which you do in your weekly review – helps you feel confident nothing is falling through the cracks. Find a time once a week where you consistently have the time and energy to Reflect on your life and work. Make sure you’ve Captured, Clarified, and Organized everything. I do my weekly review on Sunday afternoons. Some people like Fridays. It is really a game-changing habit. There’s your Getting Things Done book summary! (some final ideas) Those are the most important ideas behind GTD from my fifteen years of using it. There is of course a whole book’s worth of ideas behind the system. I highly recommend you pick up the book. Honorable mention includes: Contexts: Assign a “context” to your tasks, such as “@home” or “@office.” Some to-do items, you can only do in certain places. Projects: If you think it’s a task, it’s often a “project.” (If it takes more than one task to achieve your desired outcome). Two-Minute Rule: If you’re Clarifying, and you come across a next action that will take two minutes or less, do it right away. Download your free “GTD toolkit” I’ve been using GTD for more than fifteen years. It’s helped me write three books, build a business, and travel the world. Want to know which tools I count on to get things done? I’ll instantly send you the tools I count on most if you sign up to my newsletter here. Mind Management, Not Time Management available for pre-order! After nearly a decade of work, Mind Management, Not Time Management debuts October 27th! This book will show you how to manage your mental energy to be productive when creativity matters. Pre-order it today! My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/getting-things-done/

In the game of golf, there’s an expression: “Drive for show, putt for dough.” What it means is: If you want to win tournaments, practice putting. It makes sense. In a standard even-par round of golf, putts make up half of all strokes. You’ll use your driver less than half the number of times you’ll use your putter. There’s more strokes to get rid of in the putting part of the game. “Drive for show, putt for dough” makes sense – but it’s wrong. Why? It can tell us a lot about other places in life and work with “raised floors.” Golf is a reality-distortion field First, a little background on the game of golf, for those unfamiliar. You’ve got a roughly one-and-a-half-inch ball, you’re trying to hit into a roughly four-inch hole. That hole is anywhere from one-hundred yards away to five-hundred yards away. A one-hundred yard hole is a short par 3. A five-hundred yard hole is a long par 5. Meaning you have three strokes to get the ball in the hole for the par 3, and you have five strokes to get the ball in the hole on the par 5 – that is, to shoot even par. In between these distances are the more-common par 4s. So you’re hitting a tiny ball with a chunk of metal on the end of a long stick, and you’re trying to get it into a tiny hole a few football fields away. It’s insanely difficult, and trying to accomplish this will challenge your perception of reality. So no wonder the common wisdom in golf is wrong: It’s hard enough to make solid contact with the ball. It’s even harder to look back on a round, or even a hole, and have a clear picture of what the hell happened and how you could do it better. Golf is essentially a reality-distortion field. It’s endlessly multivariate. It’s full of hidden risks and difficult decisions. It’s also frustrating and emotionally challenging, which makes it even harder to see reality and improve. So, yes, golf is a good analog to life. Seeing reality in Golf Mark Broadie of Columbia University wanted to make it easier to see reality in the game of golf. So, he collected a ton of data. He got detailed data of more than 100,000 shots from 200 men and women of all ages and skill levels. He knew where each shot started, where each shot ended, whether the shot was from the sand or the fairway or tall grass – he even knew whether each putt was uphill or downhill, left-breaking or right-breaking. This is a lot of data. At the time, if you were a stats-minded golfer, you were counting how many fairways you hit in your drives, how many greens you hit in regulation (A “green in regulation” is par minus-two, because the goal is to average only two putts on each hole.) Since you believed you were “putting for dough,” you were also counting how many putts you had. But this information stats-minded golfers were collecting didn’t really help. Maybe you had only 28 putts instead of the standard 36 putts, but the reason you had so few putts was because you didn’t hit any greens, so you were hitting the green from a shorter distance and thus your putts were shorter and easier to make. It didn’t help you see reality. If anything, it made reality harder to see. The “strokes-gained” method of seeing reality But Mark Broadie revolutionized golf stats. He developed a system called “strokes gained.” Basically, for your skill level, where on the course are you gaining strokes and losing strokes? Your average PGA Tour golfer hitting from the tee on a 400-yard hole – a par 4 – averages 3.99 strokes. From 8 feet, he averages 1.5 strokes. So imagine a golfer who is better than other pros from 8 feet. Instead of 1.5 strokes on average, he takes 1.3 strokes. Yet this golfer still averages 3.99 strokes from 400 yards off the tee. He’s better than other pros from 8 feet, but somehow just as good as other pros from 400 yards. That means somewhere between the tee and that 8-foot putt, he’s losing a fraction of a stroke – 0.2 strokes to be exact. It’s almost like for every single shot on the course, the golfer is starting with a new “par” based upon the distance from the hole and the conditions of the shot. If you crunch all of that data, you can find exactly where your game needs work. Why “putt for dough” is wrong After crunching all this data, Mark Broadie discovered why “putt for dough” is wrong: Putts make up 50% of the strokes in a standard even-par round of golf. But Broadie found that putting performance only accounts for 15% of the strokes that separate the wheat from the chaff. From Broadie’s fascinating book, Every Shot Counts: Between the best pros and average pros, between pros and amateurs, and between good amateurs and poor amateurs, the numbers show that putting contributes about 15% to the difference in scores. Tee-to-green shots explain the remaining 85% of score differences. In fact, if you took a golfer who usually shoots 90, and you gave that golfer the putting skill of a pro – who usually shoots 20 or 25 strokes less – that amateur golfer’s score would drop not by 20 or 25 strokes, but by four strokes. Instead of shooting 90, this amateur golfer with the putting skills of a pro would shoot 86. Golfers have been saying putting is the most important part of the game since the early 1800s. Mark Broadie’s work didn’t come around until the early 2000s. How could popular wisdom get it so wrong for so long? “Raised floors” can’t be lowered This is what I call a “raised floor.” It’s an area where you have a standard of performance. Since that standard of performance seems to have lots of room for improvement, you think you can improve that performance. But there’s a floor. It’s a raised floor, and you can’t lower it. We know no unassisted human will run a 10-second mile. We know there’s a raised floor, and that if you want to run a mile in record time, it’s a matter of shaving off fractions of a second. Why golfers focus on “raised floors” Yet golfers, for the longest time, thought it was putting that mattered most. Why? If you know anything about perception, you can see a few ways putting would seem like the most important part of the game. Putting is the action you’re usually making when you reach your goal – when the ball finally goes in the hole. Putting is also where you miss the hole, sometimes by a hair. When you reach the green in three strokes from 500 yards away, you have a ten-foot put for birdie, and you end up taking three more strokes to get in the hole – that’s frustrating! Three strokes for 500 yards, three strokes for ten feet – it seems clear where you need improvement. Because it’s frustrating, because it causes golfers to feel an emotion, putting seems more relevant. These examples are components of the “availability bias.” That we remember things that are easy to remember – such as “lipping out” a put or three-putting from ten feet. The availability bias is why people are often more worried about dying in plane crashes than in car crashes, despite the fact they’re far more likely to die in a car crash. Look out for “raised floors” Raised floors are in other areas of your life and work, and they can waste your energy. How many calories can you cut from your diet, really? How much can you cut your spending, really? How much time can you save, really? Don’t lower the floor. Raise the ceiling. If putting isn’t the biggest part of golf, what is? Among the top 40 PGA Tour golfers, putting accounted for 15% of the game, driving 28%, and shots from around the green 17%. The most important part of the game: approach shots – that is, shots to the green from long distances – these accounted for 40% of the game. The greatest golfer ever, Tiger Woods, gets his advantage not from great putting, but from great approach shots. In the data Mark Broadie has analyzed, when hitting from the 150–200-yard range, Tiger Woods hit his shots three or four feet closer to the hole than other pros. Those approach shots alone gave Tiger a 1.3 stroke per round advantage. There’s four rounds in a tournament. It only takes one stroke to win. 1.3 strokes per round is a lot. So instead of getting good at the short game of golf, get good at the long game of golf. Instead of cutting more calories from your diet – as we learned from the Body by Science book summary on episode 160 – build muscle that burns calories. Instead of struggling to cut your spending, make more money. Instead of stressing yourself out to save more time, manage your energy. Don’t lower the floor – raise the ceiling. Image: In the Style of Kairouan, Paul Klee Mind Management, Not Time Management available for pre-order! After nearly a decade of work, Mind Management, Not Time Management debuts October 27th! This book will show you how to manage your mental energy to be productive when creativity matters. Pre-order it today! My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/raised-floors/ 

Each November, writers around the world make a commitment. They commit to writing a novel within a month. It’s called NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writer’s Month. Since 2013, software developers have also been making a commitment. They’ve committed to generating a novel within a month. It’s called NaNoGenMo – National Novel Generation Month. The novels these programmers create – if you can call them novels – can tell us a lot about the future of work. How well can AI write a novel? (Not at all, really.) The novels that programmers generate are all over the board. One “novel” was just Moby Dick, written backwards. Another “novel” was called Paradissssse Lossssst. It was a reproduction of John Milton’s epic poem, but with each “s” in the poem replaced with a varying number of other s’s. But, some programmers take the task a little more seriously. They train AI models and see what they come up with. One such model is called GPT-2. GPT-2 was once considered too dangerous to release to the public, because you could supposedly generate subversive content en-masse, and do some pretty nefarious things. Kind of like [Russia did with a farm of human-generated content around the 2016 election]. And what is this advanced AI model able to generate? So far, nothing impressive. Programmer and author of [aiweirdness.com] Janelle Shane tweeted, “Struggling with crafting the first sentence of your novel? Be comforted by the fact that AI is struggling even more.” The sentence this AI model generated for Janelle: “I was playing with my dog, Mark the brown Labrador, and I had forgotten that I was also playing with a dead man.” Not exactly Tolstoy. The follow up to GPT-2 is now out, so we’ll see this year what kind of novel GPT-3 can generate, but if Janelle Shane’s experiments so far are any indication, humans will still have the edge. She asked GPT-3 how many eyes a horse had. It kept telling her: [four]. Your edge as a human lies in your creativity According to Kai-Fu Lee, author of AI Superpowers, forty- to fifty-percent of jobs will be replaced by AI and automation within the next couple of decades. But humans won’t be replaced across the board. It’s the creativity- and strategy-based jobs that will be the most secure. If your job is an “optimization-based” job, you might want to start reinventing yourself. If your primary work is maximizing a tax refund, calculating an insurance premium, or even diagnosing an illness, your job involves so-called “narrow tasks.” These tasks are already being automated, or soon will be automated. You could type out 50,000 nonsense words in about a day. A computer can generate 50,000 words faster than you can blink. But, you could write a novel in a month. A computer can’t write a novel at all. Which means your edge as a human is not in typing the words faster. Your edge as a human is in thinking the thoughts behind the words. This doesn’t just apply to writing novels. If you’re an entrepreneur building a world-changing startup or a social worker helping a family navigate taking care of a sick loved-one, your creativity matters. No AI will be able to do what you do for a very long time – if ever. So when a computer can do in the blink of an eye something that would take us all day, and when our creativity is the one thing keeping us relevant, that has powerful implications on how we get things done. Time management isn’t built for creative work Remember from episode 226 when we learned about [Frederick Taylor]? How he stood next to a worker with a stopwatch and timed every action and broke down all of those actions into a series of steps? He optimized time as a “production unit.” But creativity doesn’t work like stacking bricks or moving chunks of iron. Remember there are three big realities about creativity that make it incompatible with the “time management” paradigm: Great ideas come in an instant One idea can be infinitely more valuable than another idea You can’t connect inputs directly to outputs In a world where creativity not only matters, it’s arguably the only thing that matters, the ways that time management is incompatible with creativity are big problems. They’re especially big problems because the more you’re watching the clock – the more you’re a [“clock-time” person], like we talked about on episode 235, the less creative you’re going to be. So the things that used to make us more productive, now make us less productive. We can’t try to do more things in less time. We can’t multitask. We can’t skip out on sleep or otherwise neglect our health. If you want to kill creativity: Get five hours of sleep a night, fight traffic for two hours a day, and start each day with a piping hot thermos of a psychoactive drug. This is the unfortunate and inescapable reality of most Americans today. Don’t expect technology to be creative for you, use technology for you to be creative Will an unassisted AI be winning the Nobel Prize in literature in the next ten years? Some might think so. I’m no AI expert, but I’m skeptical. Remember from Episode 237 that [the birthday problem] shows us how hard it is for us humans to understand how complex some things are. GPT-3 is one-hundred times more powerful than GPT-2. But is it one-hundred times better at writing a novel? We’ll see – I doubt it. Does that make AI and other technologies useless in creative work? Far from it. We can use technology not only to lift us out of drudgery, but to assist us in being creative. Here’s just some of the ways I use technology to be more creative: I live in a cheaper country, where I can have more flexibility to do work with unpredictable success ([Extremistan] like we talked about in the previous episode). When I moved to South America, I mourned the loss of easy access to paper books. But now, five years later, I have many thousands of highlights of the most important ideas I’ve come across in my reading. This is because I’ve been forced to read almost everything on Kindle. I can quickly and easily search through those highlights. This makes writing new books much easier than it would be otherwise. I’m able to live in South America because of cheap air travel, access to massive amounts of knowledge through the internet, and global publishing power, communication, and electronic banking. Not to mention easy Spanish translation in the palm of my hand. Aside from those Kindle highlights, I can store, organize, and quickly retrieve relevant information I’ve previously consumed or taken notes on. I can quickly reference old ideas and connect them to make new ideas. I’m able to test out my ideas and get instant feedback on what’s working or not through Twitter, and email, website, and podcast stats. Amazon’s algorithms help relevant readers find my books, which earns me money so I can write more. There are starting to be some glimmers of AI assisting us in creativity in some more direct ways. A new service called [Sudowrite] won’t write a novel for you, but it uses GPT-3 to suggest characters or plot twists for your novel. If you combine advances in AI models with the trends there are in studying the structure of stories, it’s not hard to see a future where AI plays a big role in assisting writers in coming up with stories. But for now, don’t expect technology to be creative for you. Instead, use technology to help you be more creative. New times call for new measures. When we’re trying to define what it means to be more productive, we can’t apply thinking from the industrial age when we’re in the midst of the creative age. Image: [Traverse Beams, by Patrick Henry Bruce] Mind Management, Not Time Management available for pre-order! After nearly a decade of work, Mind Management, Not Time Management debuts October 27th! This book will show you how to manage your mental energy to be productive when creativity matters. Pre-order it today! My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/the-creative-age/

Subject: “IMMEDIATE Action Reqeusted [sic]” They misspelled “requested,” which had the unintended effect of highlighting that this email was urgent. There were some documents attached to the email. They wanted me to review the documents and sign them. Then, I would get a wire of money to my bank account – from Google, Inc. I had no idea this email was coming. It was a nice surprise, since it was my birthday. It was all thanks to a decision I made three years prior. Three years prior, I cleared my schedule and declared what I call a “Week of Want.” I gave myself an entire week to work on whatever I wanted. I had no plan at the time – that was the point of my Week of Want. Three years later, here I was getting a surprise paycheck, thanks to that Week of Want. Creative work happens in “Extremistan” What was happening was a [Black Swan]. A rare and unpredictable event – in this case, a positive one. If you made several copies of the universe, and repeated my decision from three years prior, in most of those parallel universes, I probably wouldn’t end up getting money wired to my bank account from Google. That’s because creative work happens in Extremistan. Nassim Taleb introduced Extremistan in his book, [The Black Swan]. Extremistan is a world of Black Swans – rare and unpredictable events. Creative work does not happen in “Mediocristan” Other kinds of work happens in the opposite of Extremistan – what Taleb calls Mediocristan. Mediocristan is a world that’s stable and predictable. Serving coffee is a good example of work that happens Mediocristan. There’s a steady supply of coffee, and a steady demand for coffee. If you get a job at Starbucks, they can more or less predict that supply and demand, as well as their overhead costs. So, they can pay you by the hour. When your line of work is thinking of ideas and bringing those ideas into the world, you can’t get paid by the hour. Beyoncé does not get paid by the hour to make her music, even though she’s Beyoncé, and her next record is guaranteed to sell. Much less is the world’s next Beyoncé getting paid by the hour. Nobody knows she’s the next Beyoncé. If you made copies of the universe, in many of those parallel universes, she wouldn’t even become the next Beyoncé. You need clear priorities in Extremistan When you’re working in a pure Mediocristan, you don’t even need priorities. You know exactly what needs to be done, and you do it. When you’re working in Extremistan, you do need clear priorities. There are a million things you could do – a million things that might work – so you have to be ruthless with your priorities. You have to be ruthless in what you say yes to and what you say no to, and in trying to find some way to objectively see what the results are so you can make better decisions in the future. Clear priorities have a dark side But clear priorities have a dark side. It’s that when you have clear priorities, you only put your money on the sure bets. And when all of your money is on sure bets, you aren’t even gambling anymore. You’ve moved yourself from Extremistan to Mediocristan. You can keep steady paychecks coming, but you’ll never hit the jackpot. So employ the Barbell Strategy So how do you give yourself the opportunity to hit it big, without going bust? You need to spend some time in Extremistan. Taleb calls it “The Barbell Strategy”: Imagine a barbell, with fat weights on the ends, and a thin bar in the middle. On one end of the barbell is your sure bets. If you’re investing, that’s treasury bills. On the other end of the barbell is your risky bets. If you’re investing, that might be options, or cryptocurrencies. What you’re avoiding is the stuff in the middle. Don’t make big bets where you can lose your shirt, and avoid the seemingly-conservative investments in which you can actually lose a lot. Give yourself a “Week of Want” One way I spend time in Extremistan is by giving myself a “Week of Want.” In a week of want, I clear as much as I can from my schedule for a whole week, and I let myself explore whatever is interesting to me. In 2012, after publishing my first book, I gave myself a Week of Want. I spent most of my week reflecting on the experience of writing that first book. Why did it seem nothing I had learned about productivity had prepared me to write that book? I reflected on the grab-bag of rituals and routines I eventually developed to keep my writing process moving forward. I shared my thoughts in a blog post, called [Mind Management (Not Time Management)]. Nothing happened right away. That’s the nature of creative work. There’s often a delay before your bets pay off. But another year and a half later, I got an email. The renowned behavioral scientist, Dan Ariely, had read my blog post, and wondered if I’d like to help him with a productivity app he was building. Another year and a half after that, I got a surprise payday from Google. Google bought that productivity app. The Week of Want is a way of “gambling with your time.” [Dan Ariely] himself talked about gambling with his own time back on episode 203. He’ll spend some amount of his time on things that don’t make sense, such as working with a cartoonist, or inviting a mentalist to perform at one of his speeches. The Week of Want exposes you to “asymmetric opportunities,” like [Tynan] talked about on episode 145. Oftentimes we hold ourselves back from pursuing a silly idea. There’s very little downside to pursuing the idea, but the potential upside is unlimited. Why “want?” The Week of Want is a great way to make sure you spend a little time in Extremistan. But it has another valuable purpose, and that purpose lies in the idea of “want.” When we’re spending all of our energy on what we feel we should do, we soon forget what we want to do. But remember that creative work is unpredictable. Even when we think really hard about what we should do, a lot of the time we’re going to be wrong. Additionally, the things we want to be doing are powerful. The things we want to be doing are the things we’re curious about. And curiosity is powerful in two ways. One: Curiosity is motivational fuel. You can work harder on something you’re curious about. Two: Curiosity is a path to originality. Your curiosity will lead you down multiple paths. When those paths converge, you’ll be where no one else has been. Why a week? You may recognize elements of the Week of Want in Google’s famous “twenty-percent time” strategy. When Google was first starting out, they allowed their engineers to spend twenty percent of their time on whatever project they wanted. The strategy worked great. Some of Google’s best products were created during twenty-percent time – including Gmail and AdSense. I’ve heard some people say that they spend one day a week on a side-project. Hey, that’s a good use of the barbell strategy, and it will expose you to positive Black Swans more than not working on a side project at all. But there’s something special about spending an entire week doing whatever you want. Working on what you want to work on, and doing so for an entire week, takes you further and further from the norm. It brings you deeper and deeper into the territory where you’ll discover truly original ideas. When I asked neuroscientist John Kounios – way back on [episode 8] – about the benefits of taking an entire week to do what I want, he said there were two potential ways that could improve creative thinking. One: Doing what you want improves your mood, which leads to better ideas. He explained, “It gives you pleasure, puts you in a positive mood, and it’s something you can sustain over the week – and then it can lead to creative insights.” Two: Taking a whole week puts you in a deeper state of creativity. Dr. Kounios said that the “insightful state of mind is very fragile.... It’s easier to get into an analytical state of mind than it is to get into a creative, insightful, state of mind. So if you can create this whole block of time for a week, it allows you to really sink into that state.” Week of Want rules To do your own week of want, clear away as much as you can for a week. Act like you’re going on vacation. Set up the out-of-office autoresponder on your email. Approach the Week of Want with no expectations as to what you’ll discover during that week. The goal of the Week of Want is much less about actually finding great ideas. It’s more about reconnecting with the feeling of wanting in the first place. We so regularly do the things we feel we should do, we soon forget what it feels like to want to do something at all. Image: [Insula Dulcamara, by Paul Klee] Mind Management, Not Time Management available for pre-order! After nearly a decade of work, Mind Management, Not Time Management debuts October 27th! This book will show you how to manage your mental energy to be productive when creativity matters. Pre-order it today! My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/week-want/ 

In New York City, sometime around the beginning of the twentieth century, a young art student sat for a portrait. The artist who painted this portrait won a prestigious award for that portrait. The young woman who sat for the portrait suddenly became a sought-after model. She could actually earn money sitting for portraits. She needed that money. Her family was poor, and art school -- especially art school in New York City -- was expensive. But she decided to never model again. The tough decision that made a good artist a great artist This young artist later recalled the moment she decided to stop sitting for portraits. She drew a line down the middle of a sheet of paper, so that there were now two columns. At the top of one column, she wrote “yes.” At the top of the other column, she wrote “no.” She said, “The essential question was always, if you do this, can you do that?” Here’s one thing that probably focused her attention on the question of whether or not she could keep modeling: She had skipped class to sit for that prize-winning portrait. So, if she was going to model, could she go to class? If she was going to model, could she put in the work necessary to achieve her dream of becoming a great artist? Her answer was, “no,” she could not keep modeling. And art history should thank her for it. Her name was Georgia O’Keeffe, and she lived on to become one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century. One of her paintings was sold at auction several years ago for more than forty million dollars. The unearned can hurt more than it helps I don’t want to assume that because O’Keeffe is one of my favorite artists -- not just for her work but also for her contrarian personality -- that you, too know who I’m talking about. You’ve seen her work: abstract close-ups of flowers and cattle skulls, paintings of the desert landscape surrounding the New Mexico estate where she spent most of her time. This story about quitting modeling has one good lesson in it: That if you want to be great at something, you sometimes have to quit something else that you’re merely good at. That’s a valuable lesson. It’s the obvious one. It’s not the lesson I want to talk about. I want to talk about the unearned. That when you accept something you didn’t earn, it often hurts you more than it helps you. Money you didn’t earn will make you foolish with finances. Flattery you didn’t earn will make you settle for mediocrity. Power you didn’t earn will disconnect you from reality. If you want to become great at what you do, you have to be on the lookout for the unearned. You have to shun the unearned. The unearned is an easy path to mediocrity When I tweeted about the dangers of the unearned, most people agreed. Some people were suspicious. “What about Universal Basic Income?,” they’d say. I don’t have an opinion on Universal Basic Income. I haven’t thought about it enough. But this is not about Universal Basic Income. As I understand it UBI would be about getting your basic needs met. Do you have a roof over your head, and food in your stomach? Having a roof over your head and food in your stomach is a good thing, especially if you don’t have to work for it. But beyond that, the unearned becomes dangerous. When I’m talking about the dangers of the unearned, I’m not talking about the basics. When you have your basic needs met, it’s an easy path to mediocrity. I don’t mean that in a bad way. I happen to think it would be nice if we lived in a society where more people could get by being mediocre. That competition wouldn’t be so fierce that you need to be the very best in your field to have a chance at survival. But, this isn’t about basic needs. This isn’t about mediocrity. The unearned is an easy path to mediocrity, and that’s fine. But if you want to be great, you need to be on the lookout for the unearned. The unearned is an easy path to mediocrity, but the unearned is an obstacle to mastery. The great Georgia O’Keeffe shunned the unearned Yes, Georgia O’Keeffe could have “earned” money sitting for portraits in the sense that she would be doing the work of sitting. But she didn’t want it. Much of what she would have “earned” would have been unearned. What Georgia didn’t earn was being an attractive young woman, that people wanted to paint portraits of. That didn’t get her much in the early 1900’s. She couldn’t even vote. She was a young woman, trying to make it as an artist in America. At the time, that was unheard of. Georgia instinctively knew the dangers of what she could get being an attractive young woman, and she actively rejected those things. Even then she was already dressing daily in her trademark black frock. She sewed them herself, and they happened to have the effect of hiding her figure. As Georgia grew into a famous artist, she consistently shunned the unearned when others tried to categorize her not just as an artist, but as a “woman artist.” When Peggy Guggenheim invited Georgia to exhibit her work in a show of women painters, Georgia rejected the invitation and proclaimed, “I am not a woman painter!” What would have been the harm of Georgia exhibiting in a collection of women artists? Certainly her achievements as an artist were more difficult because of her standing in society as a woman. But she still saw exhibitions like this as the unearned. It would cloud her judgement of what really mattered. What really mattered was not being a great “woman artist.” What really mattered was being a great artist. The artist whose work was forgotten We normally don’t think that someone in a marginalized class as getting much of anything unearned. So maybe the dangers of the unearned will be more clear if we look at the man who painted that prize-winning portrait of Georgia which launched her potential modeling career. The painter of that portrait was a classmate of Georgia’s. He also went on to become a successful painter. He studied in Paris, he won numerous awards, he rubbed shoulders with the great painters of his time. People like Robert Henri and Edward Hopper. He was regularly commissioned to paint portraits of famous actors. He was inducted into the National Academy of Design, which includes members such as architects Frank Ghery and Frank Lloyd Wright. At the height of his fame, Esquire magazine named him America’s most important living artist. His name was Eugene Speicher Ever heard of him? Me neither. After a successful career as an artist in his lifetime, Speicher has been forgotten. His work used to be exhibited in New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Today, most of his work has been sold off to smaller museums, or taken off display. In 2014, as one of Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings was being sold for more than forty million dollars, one museum in New York did hold a retrospective exhibition of Speicher’s work. No, it wasn’t the Met or the Guggenheim. It was a small museum, somewhere between Manhattan and Albany. The big question behind this exhibition: How is it possible that Eugene Speicher was so successful and famous during his lifetime, only to be -- as one critic put it -- “virtually erased from the canon of American art history.” In articles about the exhibition, critics threw about theories: Was it because he switched from portraiture to landscape painting? Was it the financial pressures of supporting a family? It’s funny, in terms of the impact of his art, Speicher didn’t achieve mastery like Georgia did. You could say he achieved mediocrity. He embraced the unearned and stayed mediocre I have a theory why Speicher’s work was forgotten: He never got really good. He didn’t shun the unearned. Worse yet, Speicher embraced the unearned. To say Eugene Speicher has been forgotten is an exaggeration. He does live on in art history for one incident. This incident supports my theory. When Speicher asked Georgia to sit for what would become a prize-winning portrait, Georgia hesitated. She wasn’t sure it was worth skipping class to sit for that portrait. And that’s when Speicher showed his true colors. Georgia later recalled what Speicher said: “It doesn’t matter what you do, I’m going to be a great painter, and you will probably end up teaching painting in some girls’ school.” Talk about not shunning the unearned. Speicher thought he could shovel the unearned into his coffers. He knew that just because he was a man, he had a better shot at making it as an artist than Georgia had. The unearned: An easy path to mediocrity, an obstacle to mastery Look at these two differing attitudes when it comes the unearned: Georgia didn’t even want to sit for portraits. It may have helped pay for art school tuition, but it was going to take away from the work that mattered. The work of becoming a great artist. Speicher thought that, because he was a man, he was entitled to a successful career as an artist. Speicher floated through his career, earning commissions, being invited to display his work in exhibitions. He was good enough to get a little further, with the help of the unearned. Georgia didn’t want a single thing she didn’t earn. Because she didn’t have money -- not even the money she could have made sitting for portraits -- she had to drop out of art school and leave New York. She supported herself through various jobs around the country. It probably looked like Speicher was right, at least for a little while, one of those jobs was, indeed, teaching at some girls’ school. But, Georgia got the last laugh. Eugene Speicher -- well, the thing he’s most famous for today -- is that he painted a portrait of one of the twentieth century’s greatest artists. Images: Revolution of the Viaduct, Paul Klee; [Georgia O’Keeffe (“Patsy”), Eugene Speicher]; [Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1*, Georgia O’Keeffe] Thanks for sharing my work! On Twitter, thank you to @jovvvian, @allenthird, @niceguylife2, and @coreyhainesco.   My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/shun-the-unearned/ 

Here’s a brain teaser for you: Imagine we’ve got a room full of people. We’re trying to figure if any two people in the room have the same birthday. For us to reach a fifty-percent probability that there are two people in the room with the exact same birthday, how many people need to be in the room? I told you this was a brain teaser, so suffice to say that the answer -- to how many people need to be in a room for there to be a fifty-percent probability that two people have the exact same birthday -- is not what you would intuitively expect. The “birthday problem” tells a lot about how we fail to see hidden complexity For the sake of this puzzle, let’s assume there are no twins, no leap year birthdays, and there are no seasonal variations. No spike in birthdays nine months after Christmas or some big snowstorm. Most people start with a rough calculation like this: There’s 365 days in a year, so for there to be two people in the room with the same birthday, take 365, divide it by two -- you’ve got about 180, give or take. With 180 people in a room it seems you’d have about a fifty-percent chance that two of them have the same birthday. This intuitive calculation is wrong. It’s very wrong. If you had 180 people in a room, the chances that two of them will have the same birthday is damn close to 100%. Even if there were only 100 people in the room, rather than 180, the chances that two of them would have the same birthday would be 99.99997%. The actual answer is fun to know, but it also tells us a lot about our minds. It tells us a lot about how bad we are at understanding complexity. It tells us a lot about how complexity tends to get out of hand, and weigh us down, and cause us to stagnate. Complexity creep. If we know the answer to what is known as the birthday problem, maybe -- just maybe -- we can fight against complexity creep: That insidious tendency for us to make things more complex and more complex and more complex, until we find ourselves paralyzed. And there’s a flip side. If you can understand complexity creep -- if you can understand how things that seem simple are actually complex, you can also use that to your advantage. Each “one thing” interacts with every other thing So how do you actually find the answer to the birthday problem? Let me start by saying that if you have trouble following the next minute or so, don’t worry about it. That’s the point. Our brains aren’t wired to intuitively understand this. On a basic level, you wouldn’t just calculate based upon the total number of people in the room and the total number of potential birthdays. In actuality, you would calculate based upon potential interactions amongst the birthdays of every person within the room. Like this: If there’s only one person in the room, there’s a 365 out of 365 -- 100% -- chance that person does not share a birthday with another person in the room. There are no other people in the room, after all. Add a second person, and there’s a 364 out of 365 chance that person does not share a birthday with the first person in the room. With each person you add, you take away one from the numerator of that fraction. With the third person, instead of 364, it’s a 363 out of 365 chance that person does not share a birthday with either of the first two people in the room. So on and on, that numerator gets lower -- from 363 to 362 to 361 -- with each additional person in the room. So far, there’s five people in the room, and a 361 out of 365 chance that fifth person does not share a birthday with any of the other four people in that room. That’s a 98.9% chance of no match. A merely 1.1% chance that this fifth person shares a birthday with one of the other four people in the room. But wait. If there are five people in a room, the chances that any two of them share the same birthday is not 1.1%. It’s 2.7%. More than double. Why? Because with each person you add, there’s a probability that a person shares a birthday with one of the other people. But as we add people to the room, each person’s individual probability is added to the total probability. This total probability is an aggregate of all probabilities we calculated each time we added a person to the room. So adding a 1.1% probability with the fifth person to get a total 2.7% probability may not sound like much, but when you keep adding people, that new probability you’re adding onto the total probability gets bigger and bigger and bigger. The answer: The number of people who have to be in the room for us to have a fifty-percent probability that two of those people share the same birthday is: twenty-three. If there are only twenty-three people in the room, there’s about at fifty-percent chance two of them have the same birthday. We aren’t wired to see complexity. We’re wired for survival. I don’t know about you, but when I first heard this puzzle, that is not the answer I expected. In fact, even now that I understand how these odds are calculated, it’s still hard for me to believe. But as I say, we’re not wired to understand these things. We’re individual creatures, wired to survive, wired to take mental shortcuts that drive us toward safety and pleasure and help us avoid pain. In the millions of years of human evolution, I can’t think of any good reason for a human to understand the hidden complexity we see demonstrated in the birthday problem. Things were simple: How many berries are in that bush? Not How does each of those berries interact with every other berry? If there’s anything we want to know about besides those berries, it’s Is there a tiger in that bush? But, we aren’t hunting and gathering in the Sahara anymore. We live in a dizzyingly complex and interconnected world. We’re getting a lesson on this in the coronavirus pandemic. Since the beginning, those of us who aren’t trained epidemiologists have struggled to comprehend how quickly a virus can spread. How a five-percent-per-day increase in cases starts to really add up. If and when we reach herd immunity -- that will probably be equally as counterintuitive to our primitive brains. Keep complexity from holding you back as a creator Understanding complexity creep, and understanding that we struggle to understand complexity creep, also applies to our work as creators. Because the single most valuable thing you have as a creator is your creative energy. The better you can make use of that energy, the more and better work you can do. It’s hard to make use of that energy if you’re being weighed down by hidden complexity. This is something I’m personally looking out for a lot lately. Remember when I told you about the time I killed that $150,000 passive income stream, back on Episode 214? That was about mitigating hidden complexity. Here I had something that was making me some money. I wasn’t doing any work on it. But I sensed that complexity lurked within. There was the complexity of opportunity costs. It was occupying space within my brain. Our thoughts have opportunity costs. When you choose to think of one thing, you choose not to think of another thing. That’s hard to see when you’re too busy thinking. There was the complexity of Black Swans. Day to day, I wasn’t doing any work on this site. But one day, something could have happened like a server could go down, and next thing I’d know, I’d be thinking about this other website, and not about the more important parts of my business. I still don’t know what I missed out on by killing that website. That’s the nature of complexity creep. You can’t see it, you kind of have to act on faith. But I do know that it’s a relief to have it out of my life. It’s created space for me to work on this podcast and my upcoming book, Mind Management, Not Time Management. Hidden complexity in everyday life You can see complexity creep in your life, too. Ever since I sold everything and moved to South America, I’ve been trying to practice practical minimalism. I had a furnished apartment, which got rid of lots of complexity. I just got my first unfurnished apartment in Colombia, and every day, I see complexity creep in to take my precious energy. It’s in buying furniture and having to pay bills I didn’t have to pay before. It’s in deciding whether or not to purchase an item: It looks like it will make my life better or easier, but it’s never just “one more thing.” Like the birthday problem, it’s one more thing, and the way that thing interacts with everything else. Leverage hidden complexity. Turn small things into big things. I promised you that hidden complexity isn’t only a thing to be avoided. It’s also a thing to be leveraged. If one little thing can also interact with many other things, that means a small thing can lead to bigger things. That’s what we see in the power of tiny habits, like BJ Fogg talked about in episode 107. That’s the power of something like the Ten-Minute Hack. I’ve noticed it myself lately as I’ve been focusing more on Twitter: That a tiny tweet can lead to a Love Mondays newsletter, which can lead to a podcast episode, which can become a book. Hidden complexity can weigh you down, or hidden complexity can be leveraged to lift you up. Both the devil and the angel are in the details. Image: Flowers in Stone, Paul Klee My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/complexity-creep/

When I was working with Timeful -- the productivity app co-founded by behavioral scientist and Love Your Work guest, Dan Ariely -- we had a great feature. You could put todo items on your calendar. You could estimate how long a todo item was going to take, and then you could drag that todo item onto your calendar. It would be right there on the timeline, along with any other events you had planned for the day. This todo-items-on-calendar thing was a handy feature. It makes sense, really. Too many of us have a todo list a mile long. We know what we intend to do, but we have no idea when we’ll actually do those things. When Timeful built this feature, and I finally got to use it regularly, I made a discovery. We’re really bad at estimating time. It shouldn’t have been a surprise. Our vision is distorted by our “time worship.” Our perception of time is warped My own faulty time estimates went both ways. I might think it would take me less than fifteen minutes to respond to an email. I’d be shocked to discover that it took half an hour. I might think it would take an hour to draft a blog post, and I’d be pleasantly surprised to see I could do it in only ten minutes. Instinctively, we know that our perception of time is warped. We know the saying that “time flies when we’re having fun.” Our perception of time changes. It changes according to our mood, our personality, or the number of events that happen within a certain amount of time. But if our perception of time is so warped, why is time so important to us? Why do we treat time as if it’s the only thing that matters? Why do we practice “time worship?” The way we measure time is arbitrary It turns out, the way we measure time is pretty arbitrary. There’s nothing in the natural world that says that we should divide our days up by twenty-four hours, with sixty minutes in each of those hours, with sixty seconds in each of those minutes. Our heart may beat about sixty times a minute, but if we’re exercising, it could be 160 times a minute. We breathe about fourteen times a minute, but if we’re running, it might be forty times a minute. Aside from the rotation of the earth and the earth’s revolutions around the sun, there’s nothing about the natural world that says we need to measure the time the way we do. Dividing the day up into twenty-four hours, sixty minutes an hour, sixty seconds a minute -- that’s leftover from a 4,000-year-old Babylonian numbering system. And hours weren’t even originally a fixed length of time! Back in the days of sundials, hours were relative to the amount of daylight in the day. Hours in one season were shorter than hours in another season. It wasn’t even until the late 16^th^ century that there was a mechanical clock that kept track of sixty minutes in an hour. To measure seconds, we had to wait until a century later -- the 17^th^ century. Even the earth’s rotations are unreliable Yet even with this mechanical precision, the way we measure time doesn’t totally match up with the natural world. In an atomic clock, 9,192,631,770 cycles of radiation in the caesium-133 atom represents one second. The atomic clock uses this atom’s radiation to keep time, because it’s one of the most reproducible and stable things in all of nature. Certainly more reliable than grains of sand falling through an hourglass, or even the vibrations of a quartz crystal. But still, even with the help of one of the most reproducible and stable things in all of nature, the atomic clock is not perfect. We still have to add an extra second -- a “leap second” -- to our measurement of time. We add a leap second eight times a decade. It’s hard to match mechanical or even atomic precision to time, in part, because even the thing that time is based upon isn’t perfect. There are tiny, portions of a millisecond, differences in the length of a day -- that is, the amount of time it takes for the earth to rotate. These differences fluctuate over the course of multiple years and throughout the year, as well as every several days. So why does time rule our lives? So if our perception of time is warped, if our measurement of time is arbitrary, if even the things upon which we measure time are unreliable, why are we so reliant on time? Most of us wake up to an alarm clock. We break for lunch at a certain time. We meet for coffee at a certain time, through synchronized clocks on our phones. We go to bed at a certain time. You probably looked at how long this podcast episode was before you decided to listen to it. One reason we’re so reliant on time is because keeping track of time is useful. It allows us to do more things in less time. It allows us to coordinate with others, so we can synchronize complex systems that make our world work. Keeping track of time helps us make connecting flights, it makes sure the grocery store shelves are stocked, and it even helps us remember to do things we might otherwise forget. Time is our “God value” (and it shouldn’t be) In a complex world, there are only so many ways you can make a decision. This is where values become critical. Values help us choose which factors are the most important in a given decision. The “right” decision in any situation varies according to our values. If we value family over money, we’ll decide one way. If we value money over our mental health, we’ll decide yet another way. We use different values in different situations to make different decisions. But we tend to have some values that dominate over all of the others. Whatever we value the most is what author Mark Manson would call our “God value.” Too often, time is our God value. Too often, time is the one big factor we use to make decisions. It’s time worship, and it’s bad. Time worship at work Think about the way time is used in many organizations. In many companies, you can see the open slots on the calendars of your coworkers. You can then fill those open slots by inviting your coworkers to meetings. This is easy to miss, so I’ll spell it out. The logic is as follows: This time is open. Time filled is better than time not filled. Therefore, I will fill this open time with a meeting. Time is the God value in this decision. When we’re on the receiving end of these invitations, we also tend to think of it only in terms of time. Again: Time filled is better than time not filled. There is unfilled time, therefore, I will fill it with this event. Again, time is the God value. Notice that we also tend to negotiate with time. Ever been really focused on something, only to have a coworker tap you on the shoulder and ask, “Got a minute?” A minute. That’s the thing they want from you. Time is the God value. If you hesitate, maybe they’ll assure you, “This will only take a minute.” Your focus is broken, and someone is impeding on that focus. Maybe you’re a little annoyed. But you don’t want to look uncooperative, so you go along with it. You stop what you’re doing, and help your coworker out. Then somehow, you burn away the rest of your afternoon trying to get back to where you were before that coworker tapped you on the shoulder. You lost a whole afternoon of productivity, all because time is the God value in your office. You lost a whole afternoon of productivity all because of time worship. Time worship in life There are some situations where other values take over. You won’t stop delivering a eulogy to check your stock prices because it will take “just a minute.” You won’t stop having sex to answer a text message because it will take “just a minute.” (The text-message response, that is.) It’s obviously inappropriate in both cases to treat time as the God value. Yet there are too many other situations where time shouldn’t be our God value, yet it is. Time worship permeates throughout our culture, affecting the way we treat one another. Am I the only one annoyed when a waiter slams a check on the table before you’ve finished chewing your last bite? The logic is a remnant of Taylorism, which I talked about on episode 226: The amount of time a table is open for business is a “production unit.” The more paying customers you can fit within that time, the better. It’s not the waiter’s fault. In the U.S., there’s a good chance I’m a “clock-time” person -- as I talked about on the previous episode -- ready to get moving to my next activity. There’s a good chance I’ll be annoyed if the check isn’t on my table by the time I’m done with the act of eating. Time worship in schools Consider the way we use time as a God value in schools. We send children to school not according to when they’re awake and ready to learn. Instead, we send them according to time. When can parents drop them off? When are busses available? Down with time worship. Up with performance. Daniel Pink’s When outlines a number of drawbacks for sending kids to school whenever it’s convenient: Testing kids late in the day leads to a reduced test performance on par with missing two weeks of school a year, or having parents with lower income or education. By contrast, rescheduling schooling according to what works with kids’ energy levels improve learning. Having math early in the day improved students’ math GPAs. Providing breaks improves performance. Overall, Pink finds, “delaying school starting times improves motivation, boosts emotional well-being, reduces depression, and lessens impulsivity.” Fortunately, both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the CDC have issued policy statements recommending that middle schools and high schools start later in the morning, to better accomodate the shifted sleep rhythms of adolescents. And it’s not just in schools that we could improve performance by reducing time worship. Olympic records tend to be broken in the late afternoon or early evening. Jurors produce less-discriminatory verdicts in the morning. Hospital workers who are well-rested and are working with fresh energy wash their hands more, diagnose diseases more accurately, and make fewer life-threatening errors. That’s right, time worship kills people. Think of time descriptively, not prescriptively What’s the alternative to time worship? Don’t think of time as prescriptive, think of time as descriptive. You can use time as a general guide, but using time as a mold into which to forcefully fit activities is unnatural, and ineffective. Next time you’re making a decision, and you start to think about how much time it’s going to take, try a mental shift. Instead of asking how the decision will affect your time, think about how it will affect your: focus, momentum, mood, motivation, mental state, energy level -- literally anything other than your time! Stop the time worship! Image: Separation in the Evening, Paul Klee Thanks for sharing my work! In Instagram, thank you to @letterbworld, @poor_bjorns_book_lab, @livroschatos. My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/time-worship/

Before I moved to Colombia, I lived several “mini lives” in Medellín. I came and lived here for a few months. I escaped the very worst portion of the Chicago winters. There was a phenomenon I experienced every time I came here, which taught me a lot about how I think about time. It always happened right around the three week mark. Getting used to a slower pace of life The pace of life in Medellín is different from the pace of life in Chicago. It’s slower. People talk slower, people walk slower. That thing where you stand on the right side of the escalator so people can pass on the left -- yeah, people don’t really do that here. They stand wherever they like. It’s usually not a problem. It’s rare that anyone climbs up the escalator while it’s moving, anyway. Whenever I came on a trip to Medellín, the same thing happened: The first week, the slower pace of life was refreshing. The second week, as I was trying to get into a routine, it started to get annoying. The third week, some incident would occur, and I would -- I’m not proud to say -- lose my shit. A comedy of errors The last time I went through this transition, it was a concert malfunction. I showed up to the theater to see a concert, and the gates were locked. A chulito wrapper rolled by in the wind, like a tumbleweed. Nobody was around, except a stray cat. Is it the wrong day? I confirmed on the website: The concert is today, at this time, at this place. So where is everybody? As I walked around the building, looking for another entrance, I saw a security guard. He told me the concert was cancelled. Something broken on the ceiling of the theater. This was especially aggravating because of everything I had gone through to get these tickets. My foreign credit card didn’t work on the ticket website, so I had to go to a physical ticket kiosk. But then the girl working the kiosk said the system was down. So I came back the next day, and the system was also down. No, it wasn’t “still” down -- it was just down “again.” So I waited in a nearby chair in the mall for forty-five minutes. Then I finally got my tickets. And now the concert is cancelled. I go to the ticket booth at the theater to get my money back. But they tell me I can’t do that here -- I have to go to a special kiosk, across town. Oh, and I can’t do it today -- they won’t be ready to process my refund until tomorrow. I take the afternoon off to go get my refund. After standing in line for half an hour, they tell me they can’t process my refund on my foreign credit card. I have to fill out a form, which they’ll mail to the home office in Bogotá. I should get my refund within ten days. I’m always wary that I’m an immigrant living in another country -- that sometimes the way they do things in that country makes no sense to me. I never want to come off as the “impatient gringo.” But at this point, I become the impatient gringo. I demand my money back, and recount the whole experience to the clerk. In my perturbed state, my Spanish is even more embarrassingly broken. I give in, fill out the form, and leave the ticket kiosk -- without my money. And I’ve been through this enough times to know what’s coming. Out on the sidewalk, in an instant, as if a switch were flipped in my brain, I go from steaming with anger, to calm as a clam. Months worth of pent-up tension melts away from the muscles in my neck and back. I feel relaxed -- almost high. Flipping the “temporal switch” I call this moment the “temporal switch.” I’ve talked to other expats about this phenomenon, and they report something similar. That when you first come to Medellín, it takes awhile to get into the rhythm of life here. But once you’re in that rhythm, you’re more relaxed, more laid back. You’re even happier. You might wonder what my concert catastrophe has to do with the rhythm of life in Colombia. I might be wrong, but somehow it seems that malfunctions are incredibly common here. It certainly seems so to myself and other expats that live here, and even Colombians agree. (If the concert incident is any support for this theory, I’ll add that I never did get a refund -- I ended up calling AMEX to do a chargeback.) These malfunctions have a symbiotic relationship with the rhythm of life. The internal chatter I experience whenever I make the temporal switch might provide some insight. I’m telling myself, “Things aren’t going to work out the first time you try them. You might as well relax, go with the flow, and enjoy the moment.” So perhaps everyone is telling themselves that. “Things aren’t going to work out the first time you try them.” That could be a self-fulfilling prophecy. In any case, even if things don’t work out on the first try, don’t worry. It will work out eventually. As the Colombians say, ¡No pasa nada! Some people are on “clock-time.” Other people are on “event-time.” The main reason I chose Colombia as a place to double down on writing was that I simply do better writing while I’m here. I think this temporal switch has a lot to do with that. In his global studies in attitudes about time, social psychologist Robert Levine identified two distinct approaches to time: There’s clock-time, and there’s event-time. Clock-time people schedule according to the time on the clock. Lunch is at this time, this meeting will end at this time, and the next meeting will begin at this other time. Event-time people schedule according to events. When I’m hungry, I’ll eat lunch. This meeting will end once we’ve met the objective, and if that doesn’t take all afternoon, we’ll have this other meeting after that one. Event-time and the “eight-day” week I went through the temporal switch several times before I knew about these two time orientations. Now that I know about clock-time and event-time, much of the behavior that I found puzzling now makes sense. There’s no better illustration of event-time than how Colombians view a week. If a Colombian wants to meet with you a week from now, they will say, “en ocho dias” -- in eight days. The first time I heard this, I was incredibly confused. Today is Wednesday, so -- ocho dias: next Thursday? I was surprised to learn that the eight-day “week” is the standard here in Colombia, as well as many other event-time countries. If today is Wednesday, eight days from now is also Wednesday. As a clock-time person, I was initially convinced that this was objectively wrong. Counting on the clock, the meeting will take place more or less exactly seven days from now -- seven rotations of the earth. But if you think about it from an event-time perspective, it’s not wrong at all. Today is an event, which has not yet ended. There will be six additional days -- each day its own event -- between now and the meeting. The day the meeting takes place is an event in itself. Add that up -- one, six, one, -- and you’ve got eight days between now and the meeting which takes place a week from now. This is not the Beatles’ Eight Days a Week. That was a malapropism -- said by a chauffeur to illustrate that he was working hard. Instead, this is literally how event-time people see the week. It’s a refreshing thought, really: Today counts. Both clock-time and event-time have their place It can come off as politically incorrect to even point out these different attitudes about time. If any of these observations sound judgemental to you, stop and think: Is it because one approach sounds better to you than the other? Well there’s your problem! Both event-time and clock-time are useful, for different contexts. Researchers Tamar Avnet and Anne-Laure Sellier found that both clock-time and event-time approaches can lead to good outcomes. It depends what you’re trying to accomplish. If you’re trying to be efficient, clock-time is the way to go. If you’re stacking bricks, Frederick Taylor’s approach to timing movements will get the wall up faster. It’s a clock-time approach. But if you’re trying to be effective, event-time is the way to go. If you’re trying to think of the perfect gift for your tenth wedding anniversary, getting it right is more important than doing it quickly. Avnet and Sellier’s study also demonstrated that clock-time and event-time approaches aren’t strictly cultural. Most of us change our approach based upon what we’re trying to accomplish. It’s when we use a clock-time approach, when an event-time approach would be better, that we get ourselves into trouble. Clock-time is a creativity killer Think about the things you’ve learned in previous episodes of Love Your Work. Remember from episode 218 that creative work follows four distinct stages. Remember from episode 226 that when Frederick Taylor tried to treat time as a production unit] his productivity eventually collapsed. Consider this study from Stanford. They found that the busier knowledge workers were, the less creative they were. The more they struggled to fit work into the time available, the more they let creativity fall by the wayside. Remember some of the ways that creative work is not like moving chunks of iron or stacking bricks. Ideas can be worthless, or they can be priceless. Ideas can also arrive in an instant. And when they do arrive, the moment they arrive is often far removed from the work that produced the idea. When the work you’re doing right now isn’t immediately bringing results, and when those results may come unpredictably -- at any time -- you can see how working on clock-time is a stressful recipe. Use time as a guide, not as restriction So what’s the solution? Should you be a clock-time person, or should you be an event-time person? Obviously, if you can’t do anything on-time, you’re going to have a tough time. You’ll disrespect people by showing up late, you’ll miss deadlines. You’ll end up racing against the clock. But I prefer to think of time as descriptive, not prescriptive. The minutes and hours on the clock are not little boxes that you need to stuff work into. The minutes and hours on the clock are instead rough measurements for how to allocate your energy. Time is a useful proxy for measuring and dividing up energy. It’s not a strict template for guiding every action you take. If you read roughly an hour a day, you’ll read a lot of books. If you meditate roughly fifteen minutes a day, you’ll be more present the rest of your day. If you brainstorm something for five minutes today, the solution will come to you sometime tomorrow. If instead, you’re trying to finish reading a chapter in the next ten minutes, or you’re trying to come up with the perfect company strategy before the meeting ends at noon, your efforts are just going to backfire. Avnet and Sellier have found that people who depend too much on the clock to dictate their schedules are less present, are less able to savor positive emotions, and are less open to the unpredictable and emerging opportunities that are inherent to creative work. Pay attention to how you’re scheduling your work. Ask yourself: Am I working according to the clock -- trying to fit work into restricted time; or am I working according to events -- trying to get it right? If you’re trying to be creative, try to practice less clock-time, and more event-time. Image: Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash, Giacomo Balla My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/clock-time-event-time/

Maya Angelou was right, “People will forget what you said...but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Because I don’t remember what this woman said to me, but I do remember how I felt: Attacked. My heart was racing. I had two options: Lash out and defend my position, or excuse myself from the conversation. My brain hastily searched for the best way out: Slip into the kitchen to get another drink? Go to the bathroom? Awkwardly appeal to my need to mingle? But then I realized something: I felt attacked, but she wasn’t attacking me. She wasn’t even disagreeing with me. She had merely asked a question. Don’t be other people. Be a thinking person. Only now, years later, do I understand why I felt so threatened. I had met a thinking person. Oscar Wilde said it well, Most people are other people. Their thoughts are some one else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. -Oscar Wilde Forgive the quotation, but it accurately describes who I was. I was someone else. Whatever I had said to that woman at that cocktail party, it wasn’t a thought. It was someone else’s opinion. And I was encountering someone who was not someone else. She was herself. She was someone who didn’t speak in pre-programmed sound bites. Someone who didn’t merely parrot the latest news headline or social media meme. Someone who listened to what you said, asked questions about it, and expected a response. Someone who, in good faith, assumed I, too, was a thinking person. Since that day, I have endeavored to become a thinking person. I’ll never truly master thinking. If I thought I could master thinking, that wouldn’t be very thinking-person-like of me. But once in awhile, I do have a genuine thought. Some people agree with me. Because I’ve tried to become a thinking person, I was proud when an Amazon reviewer of my latest book called me “a very original thinker,” and when best-selling author Jeff Goins called me “an underrated thinker.” (Though it would be nice to be an appropriately-rated thinker.) So, I humbly submit to you the way I think about thinking. How to have a thought. There are four keys to having an original thought: Read widely (not the same shit as everyone else) Stop having opinions (stop defending your “beliefs”) Stop wanting to be liked (start being intellectually honest) Write regularly (explore what you really think) In sum, assume nothing, question everything. https://twitter.com/kadavy/status/1217900835503558656 Now, a little more about each of these points. 1. Read widely (not the same shit as everyone else) Haruki Marakami said, If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. -Haruki Marakami The same way you are what you eat, you also are what you read. This is a little counterintuitive, because, in trying to become a thinking person, we’re trying not to have all of our thoughts be mere re-hashings of something we’ve read. Don’t think of reading as a way to put thoughts into your brain. Think of reading as a way of trying on someone else’s brain for a little while. This is why a book is such a bargain: Someone spends their whole life thinking. They write all of that down. Now for ten bucks you get a lifetime worth of thinking, sewn into a costume you can try on for a few hours. Charles Scribner, Jr. said, “Reading is a means of thinking with another person’s mind; it forces you to stretch your own.” With a book, you can try on someone else’s thoughts, and see how they feel. You can question those thoughts, and compare them to your own thoughts. Sometimes a book completely reorganizes the way you process the world. Other times, you just get one or two good ideas. But to have original thoughts, you can’t be reading the same thing everyone else is reading. This is tough, because we’re all fishing from the same stream. The stream of information that rushes by each day in the news and in our social media feeds. Every week, thousands of new books are published. A few dozen will be hot. Most of those books won’t have a lasting impact on culture. And they shouldn’t. Most of the books mainstream publishers are publishing are crap. They’re blog posts with 250 pages of filler. They don’t have new ideas in them. Even when the book is written by someone who has done original research, you’re better off reading one or two of their twenty-page academic papers than you are reading their 250-page book. If you want to have a thought, you can’t read the same shit as everyone else. I love the story of Tyler Cowen, who I interviewed on episode 155. He talks about how he drove all over New England going to used book stores. Used book stores are great, because that’s where you can get stuff that isn’t even available on Kindle. And cheap, too. When I graduated college, and recognized that I was still clueless, I did something similar to Tyler. The Omaha Public Library frequently had these used book sales. I’d come out of there with tote bags packed fat with books that were two dollars, one dollar, sometimes twenty-five cents. My policy was basically: If I had heard of it, I bought it. I suppose at some point in my education I was supposed to read Plato and John Stuart Mill, Jane Austen or J.D. Salinger. But somehow, I hadn’t. You might think that if I heard of it, that contradicts this idea that I should be reading something different from everyone else. But honestly, few people have read the classics. They’re too busy reading whatever new book is being shoved in their face. Besides, you’ve gotta start somewhere. Starting with classics, you can start digging into what books are in the bibliographies of the books that really move you. That’s where you come across the really weird gems. If you’re going to break free of The Matrix, you can’t be taking in the same source code as everyone else. Key number one to having a thought is to read widely. 2. Stop having opinions (stop defending your “beliefs”) There truly are few things in this world that any of us know enough about to have an opinion. That doesn’t stop people, though. Mostly, we have opinions based upon emotions, not facts. Yes, we may have enough information to feel 70% confident about an opinion, but after that, it’s all ego. Someone else has a different opinion. We don’t want to be proven wrong. So, we defend our 70% certainty as if it were 100% certainty. Then, we all end up in echo chambers where we’re parroting sound bites to one another and nodding our heads, or we’re talking shit about the people in the other echo chamber. It’s all so we can feel good. This is why many conversations these days are like using Photoshop without realizing you have “snap to grid” turned on. When snap to grid is turned on, you try to draw something in one place, but the grid forces it to show up in another place. With most people you talk to, you say one thing, and they immediately interpret what you said as meaning some other thing. Some other thing that’s only remotely related to what you actually said. You’re not talking to a thinking person. You’re talking to someone filtering everything through their inaccurate opinion. The inaccurate opinion that’s actually someone else’s opinion. Most people get their opinions from the news. This is unfortunate, because Phillip Tetlock has proven that the pundits who show up on the news the most, are also the pundits who are terrible at predicting the future. Here’s why having opinions prevents you from having original thoughts: The stronger you hold onto an opinion, the harder it will be for you to change your mind if you see new information. It’s a threat to your ego. It’s called “motivated reasoning” and Annie Duke talks about it on episode 197. Opinions are like impressionist paintings. They’re fun and may even look beautiful from far away, but up close, you can see opinions are never an accurate representation of reality. It can be fun to hold an opinion and argue the position of that opinion, but you ultimately have to accept that your opinion is not fact. The alternative is to think of your opinions in terms of percentages. As in, I’m 95% certain global warming is caused by humans. Tyler Cowan talks more about using percentages for your opinions on episode 155. 3. Stop wanting to be liked (and start being intellectually honest). Many conversations, in fact much of day-to-day interactions, are just people using their feelings as filters for selecting which pre-packaged sound bites they’re going to repeat. It’s all driven by identity. If somebody identifies as a conservative -- whether consciously or unconsciously -- what they hear is going to be filtered by that identity, what they feel will be dictated by that filter, and how they respond will be dictated by a combination of that feeling and the collection of scripts available for them within that tribe. And it’s no different for a liberal or a libertarian or an anarchist. This identity effect could also be called “tribalism.” It’s human nature to feel like we want to belong to a tribe. From an evolutionary psychology perspective, long ago, being cast from the tribe was the worst thing that could happen to you. You would have no resources and no social contact. You’d be left to fend for yourself, and you’d end up getting strangled by a giant anaconda. So, staying in-line with the tribe was an advantage. If you were ostracized, you weren’t going to survive. Fortunately, we no longer live in tribes. We live in a global civilization. You have to do a lot more than speak out of turn to truly be left to fend for yourself. You won’t be cut out of the meat share from the latest hunt -- you can order Seamless to your house. You won’t be shunned out of finding a partner -- you can connect to millions through the internet. You won’t even miss the next play by the fireside -- you can stream the best actors in the world on Netflix. But that old wiring is still there. It’s still human nature to want to be accepted, and to want to be liked. But wanting to be liked gets in the way of having thoughts. Think about how I felt when that woman at the party asked me a question. My limbic system took over, and my heart started to race. Deep down, I was worried I had said the wrong thing. Deep down, I was worried I would be left to fend for myself. As Tyler Cowen -- there he is again -- said on episode 155, “Develop a thick skin.” Don’t worry about upsetting people with your actual thoughts and questions. This is easier said than done. It’s especially hard in real-time conversation. And really -- fine, have the polite conversation at the party, or at work, avoid the conflict and have a better night or keep your job. But to start having thoughts, you can train yourself in how you react to things people say on the internet. If something upsets you, you can step away and examine that feeling. Meditate on it. Start to develop your own mental model for processing what people say. Train yourself to separate your emotional reaction from your thought process. Remember, just because someone gets upset with you, that does not automatically mean that you did something wrong. People have different conceptions of reality, and sometimes those differing conceptions simply collide. Like, you could tell me, “hey, I like your glasses,” and maybe I’m offended because I hate my glasses, because other kids made fun of my glasses in sixth grade. Nonsense. Feelings are not facts. Dr. Aziz Gazipura talks about this more on episode 219. If you stop wanting to be liked, you’ll also be less apt to the “motivated reasoning” that makes us eager to defend our opinions. 4. Write regularly (explore what you really think) I used to treat words as if they were liquid gold. If I bothered to go through the work of writing some words, those words were rare and precious, and they had to be salvaged. This was an impossible standard to meet. It set up a Catch-22. The words that I wrote had to be great. But it was hard to write great words, because I didn’t get much practice writing, because I thought every word I wrote had to be great. Now, I think of writing differently. It’s not liquid gold. It’s the water in a river that’s constantly flowing by. I’m always writing, and I treat my writing with the attitude of: There’s always more where that came from. Meanwhile, as that river is flowing by, it’s carving through the landscape. Think about it: The Grand Canyon didn’t form overnight. The Colorado River has been there, carving it for millions of years. Not everything I write ends up in some final product, such as a book or a podcast episode, or even a tweet. It’s only after I’ve written something enough times to organize my thoughts that it usually makes it into some final product. Like a river flowing though a canyon, don’t write to have a place to store your words, write to carve out a place for your thoughts to flow. Don’t always write because you plan to publish. You just add an extra layer of censorship onto your writing. This is a sure way to never truly get to what you really think, and to never truly have a thought. My favorite writing ritual is my morning habit with my AlphaSmart, my crappy little portable word processor. I grab it while I’m still in bed, and type at least one-hundred words, with my eyes closed. Sometimes it’s just simple word play. Other times, it’s anything I want to write about. Sometimes it’s my “shadow journal” like Dr. Aziz Gazipura talked about. The place where I write about anything that comes to mind, with no judgements. And when I’m done, I delete it all. Again, it’s not about storing the words that you write, it’s about carving out a space for your true thoughts to flow. Go forth & have thoughts So, there you have it. How to have a thought. Again, those keys are: Read widely (not the same shit as everyone else) Stop having opinions (stop defending your “beliefs”) Stop wanting to be liked (start being intellectually honest) Write regularly (explore what you really think) Then again, don’t take my word for it. Find your own road to having a thought. Image: Siblings, Paul Klee Thanks for sharing my work! On Twitter, thank you to @nextlevel_mind. On Instagram, thank you to @itsjoeranda. Thank you also to the Spark Joy podcast for having me on the show. My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/device-divorce/

When it came time for me to choose a college, I had no idea what I was doing. For reasons I still can’t explain, I chose to go to The University of Nebraska at Kearney. At least until I recognized my mistake. Kearney is a town in the middle of Nebraska. I grew up in Omaha, a city on the east edge of Nebraska. You may laugh, thinking, What’s the difference? It’s a flyover state. But to most of my classmates, I was a “city slicker.” So, I regularly made the drive. Two and a half hours down I-80. Two and a half hours at eighty-miles-an-hour, with a steady stream of semi trucks passing by. Each time a truck passed, the powerful winds blowing across the plains of the oxymoronically-named Platte River Valley would disappear. Those winds, blocked by the massive eighteen-wheeler, once it passed, would then reappear with more force than ever, sending my little Honda Accord swerving. I couldn’t swerve too far. My tires were firmly embedded in grooves. Grooves like wagon tracks on the Oregon Trail I-80 follows. Grooves pressed into the concrete by the tires of those heavy semi trucks. I made this drive -- often over a mixture of ice and snow and gravel and salt -- to leave a city. A city with plenty of educational options, and arrive in a cow town where one of the main forms of entertainment for my classmates -- and I’m not exaggerating here -- was hunting raccoons. Path dependency: Your future depends on it One time, I missed the exit for Kearney. This was especially frustrating, because I-80 exists mostly for big trucks to drive through Nebraska. It’s not so much for the sparse scattering of people living in Nebraska to get from point A to point B. Which means, there aren’t a lot of exits. So, if you missed the exit for Kearney, that added a bunch of time onto the end of what was already a long trip. You had to drive another twelve miles past your destination, get off the interstate and turn around and get back on the interstate and drive back another twelve miles. So we’re talking an extra twenty minutes tacked onto a two-and-a-half-hour drive, if you missed that exit. It was the kind of mistake that you only made once. And it was a good lesson in path dependency. The concept of path dependency states that once you go down one path, it’s difficult or impossible to go down another path. You’ve passed the fork in the road. Our lives are full of path dependencies. If you eat a bunch of donuts in the afternoon, you won’t have room for a healthy dinner. If you go to one party, you can’t go to another. A single moment can be the difference between dying young, or living another fifty years. Matters of life and death are the ultimate path dependency. In other words, path dependency is really, really important. It’s important to making decisions, and it’s important to designing your behavior. One area of life where path dependency has a big impact is with the devices that we use. Take your mobile phone, for example. Think of your mobile phone as like I-80, running through central Nebraska. Once you get on the interstate, once you touch your phone, at what exit will you get off? There’s Facebook Parkway, or there’s Kindle Boulevard. There’s Meditation Timer Square, or there’s Twitter Plaza. There’s Instagram Alley, or there’s Scrivener Circle. Like any interstate, once you get off at an exit, it takes some time to get back on the road. If you miss an exit, or take the wrong exit, it will take you a little longer to get where you’re going. You can get to the same place through multiple paths There are often multiple ways to get to your destination. I remember one time, I drove home from college on an old highway, instead of the interstate. This seemed outrageously adventurous at the time. The highway is slower, it’s more narrow, it cuts through towns. Part of me wondered if I’d ever make it home. Yet, it turned out to be a nice drive. It took longer to get home, but not much longer. And I didn’t have to deal with so many eighteen-wheelers. It was probably a safer drive. This ties into the grippy and slippy tools I was talking about on episode 230. Sometimes speed isn’t the most important thing. Less time isn’t always more better. Choosing the right road to take is important for designing your behavior, so you can do more of what matters to you and less of what doesn’t matter to you. But once you’re on that road, path dependency also matters a lot. You don’t want to take the wrong exit. If you want to go down Scrivener Circle and get some writing done, it’s a problem if you accidentally pull into Instagram Alley. If you’re trying to settle in for the night to read a book on Kindle Boulevard, it’s a problem if you take a detour on Facebook Parkway. And God forbid, if you mean to go to Meditation Timer Square, you instead end up in Twitter Plaza. Introducing the Device Divorce: Stop taking the wrong turn on your devices This is why I’m a big advocate of divorce. No, not divorcing from a marriage (though, if you need a divorce, get one). I mean divorcing your devices. A “Device Divorce.” When a marriage goes through divorce, you split up. You split up your possessions, you split up your assets, you divide custody amongst your children. You split up the paths. You say, “That path I was going down, I don’t want to go down that path anymore.” A Device Divorce is where you split up your devices. The activities you do with your devices, the paths you can go down once you’re on a device, you split them up. Let’s say you have a computer, a tablet, and a smartphone. Each of these devices can do a lot of things. Just like you can get to one destination through many different roads, you can do one thing with each of these three devices. You can check email with your laptop, your tablet, or your smartphone. You can use social media with your laptop, your tablet, or your smartphone. You can write a book on your laptop, your tablet, and yes, even your smartphone. But, should you? Should you use each device you own to do every little thing each device can do? Fortunately, most of us don’t evenly distribute all of our activities amongst all of our devices, anyway. If we’re going to write a book, we’ll do it on our laptop. If we’re going to make a call, we’ll do it on our smartphone. If we’re going to watch a movie, we’ll do it on our tablet. But, even though we don’t evenly distribute all of our activities amongst all of our devices, we still do a little of everything on all of our devices. Maybe we do most of our social media on our phone, but we also do a lot of social media on our laptop. Maybe we do most of our email on our computer, but we also do email on our tablet. The problem with this is, it exposes us to path dependency, gone rogue. If we take a wrong turn, we end up on the wrong road. Once we’re on the wrong road, it takes that much longer to get where we’re trying to go. Think of it this way: You can do a lot of things with a toothbrush. You can scrub your teeth with a toothbrush. You can also scrub your toilet with a toothbrush. But would you scrub your teeth and your toilet with the same brush? No! So why use the same device to do two things that are completely at odds with one another? Why surf the web with the same device you use to write? Why chat with your friends on the same device you use to meditate? You need to split up. You need a Device Divorce. You need to make it easy to get to the places you want to go, and hard take a wrong turn to the places you don’t want to go. A simple exercise to begin your Device Divorce To begin a Device Divorce, try this exercise: Draw three columns on a piece of paper. At the top of each of the respective three columns, write laptop, tablet, and smartphone. Now, in the respective column, write down the activities that you primarily do on each of these devices. Do you see any contradictions? If you go down one path to do one of these things, will that take you farther and farther from another path to do another thing? Will it break your focus? Will it dampen your momentum? Will it alter your mental state to go down Instagram Alley instead of Scrivener Circle? If so, you aren’t using your devices, your devices are using you. Next, make a decision. Decide what activities you will do on each of the three devices. But, just as important, decide which activities you will not do on each of these three devices. My personal device arsenal Me, I do most of my writing on my iPad, with an external keyboard. I do not do email on my iPad. I do not do messaging on my iPad. I try to do as much email as I can on my iPhone. But, I don’t have Twitter or Facebook installed on my iPhone. I’d be taking wrong turns, left and right. My laptop, I simply try to limit its usage as much as possible. My laptop is a “slippy” tool. Too many side roads and detours. Your Device Divorce doesn’t have to stop at your primary electronic devices. According to a poll I did on Twitter, three out of four of you already have an extra tablet or smartphone just lying around. These old devices often can’t run the latest software (thank you, planned obsolescence). But just because a device can’t do everything, doesn’t mean it can’t do something. I have an extra iPad. It’s so old, I can’t even run most apps on it. But, I use this old iPad for listening to a relaxation recording by former guest Andrew Johnson, I use it for reading on the web, and I use it for reading PDF articles. I have a friend who has an old iPod Touch. When he works out, he listens to music, and writes down his progress on the iPod Touch. But he knows he won’t get interrupted by a message or a phone call, and he won’t be tempted by social media. Love Your Work listener Adam Thomas told me he has a “study nook” in his apartment. In his study nook, he keeps an old laptop. He uses an app called Freedom to block any distracting websites on that laptop. The laptop is only for reading research. Fortunately, product designers are starting to create devices with specialized functions. I recently got a dedicated Kindle, just for reading books. Our former Love Your Work sponsor, Offgrid Mindfulness, has made an awesome meditation timer/alarm clock. Interestingly, you have to go back in time to get one of the best limited-function devices. There have been some attempts to create dedicated word processors, but they still have too many functions and are too expensive for my tastes. I still love my old portable word processor, the AlphaSmart. It was originally intended as a cheap way for schools to teach typing, and it’s unfortunately discontinued, so you have to buy them used. Get creative with your Device Divorce. Look at what functions are important to you, what detours you want to avoid, and what devices you have. Be intentional about what your devices do and don’t do. You’ll have deeper focus, and do more of what matters, and less of what doesn’t matter. Image: Six Species, Paul Klee My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/device-divorce/

I used to be a time management enthusiast. I say “used to be,” because time management eventually stopped working for me. How I became an accidental author It all started with an email. It was the kind of email that would trip up most spam filters. I wasn’t being offered millions of dollars from an offshore bank account, true love, nor improved performance in bed. I was being offered a book deal. I had never thought of myself as a writer. In fact, I downright hated writing as a kid. I remember reading about how Stephen King said that when he was a kid, he was “on fire” to write. I remember saying to myself, That makes no sense! Who on Earth would enjoy writing? I had never thought of myself as a writer, but I had fantasized about being an author. I guess that means I didn’t think so much about writing, but I liked the idea of having written. As I considered taking this book deal, I talked to everyone I knew who had written a book. They all warned me that writing a book is extremely hard work, with little chance of success. One author simply said, You’ll want to die! But, I figured, how hard can it be? So, I signed my first literary contract. How I tried to write a book, when I didn’t know how to write a book I didn’t have any idea how to write a book, so I did it the only way I could think of: through brute force time management. I simply needed to find enough time to write this book. So, I used every time management technique I could think of. I put writing sessions on my calendar. I developed a morning routine that would get me writing first thing in the morning. I “time boxed” to try to limit the time I would spend on parts of the project. I fired my clients, I outsourced my meal preparation, I cancelled dates and turned down party invitations. I did everything I could to focus all of my time on writing my book. But it still wasn’t enough. I spent most of my day hunched over a keyboard. I felt actual physical pain in my stomach. It felt as if rigor mortis had taken over my fingers, as I struggled to write even a single sentence. Sure, I had the time to write my book, but I wasn’t getting anything done. My case of writers’ block was so bad that, a few weeks after signing my book deal, I accepted a last-minute invitation to go on a retreat to Costa Rica. With a signed contract in my file drawer and a deadline breathing down my neck, it wasn’t the most logical thing to do with my time. But I desperately hoped that a change of scenery would work some kind of magic on my writer’s block. But a few days into the trip, I still had nothing. Zero! Zilch! My contract said that if I didn’t have my manuscript twenty-five percent done within a few weeks, the deal was off. So, unless a miracle happened, I would write a check to the publisher to return my advance, and I would humiliatingly face my friends, family, and readers to tell them I had failed. Does that sound like a lot of pressure? It was. The chance encounter that changed the way I thought about writing productivity I wanted to feel sorry for myself, by myself, so I went for a walk. I was dragging my feet down the gravel road in Costa Rica, with my head hung down. How could I be so foolish?, I asked myself. Not only had I signed a contract to write a 50,000-word book, with little writing experience under my belt, I had wasted time and money going on this retreat. Just then, I heard someone call out. I looked up, and saw a man on the next road over waving big in my direction, with his entire arm, ¡¿Como estááááás?! I had noticed this man earlier in my walk. He was gripping onto the simple wires of a fence, leaning back in ecstasy, singing to himself. I had felt vaguely embarrassed for him, assuming he didn’t know someone else was around. I looked behind me, trying to figure out who he was waving at. But there was no one. He was waving at me. I hesitated. What could he possibly want? I had just passed a fork in the road, and the man was on the other side of the fork. I didn’t want to backtrack. I wanted to get back to the house and make one more attempt at writing. But, I was beginning to feel rude for ignoring the man’s friendly invitation. So, I reluctantly walked over to the man, trying my best to fake enthusiasm. What followed was the first conversation I ever had entirely in Spanish. Though, I’m using the word “conversation” loosely. The man, Diego was his name, taught me the words for the beach, the rain, the sea, and the sun. Mostly, we pointed at things, and he would say the word in Spanish. My conversation with Diego was refreshing. I was used to everyone ignoring one another on the streets of Chicago, yet here was a guy who wanted to talk to someone on another road entirely, about nothing in particular. My first breakthrough in writing my book I was in such a relaxed state that, after bidding Diego farewell, a few minutes passed before I realized I was going the wrong way. I had continued down Diego’s side of the fork in the road. At first, I panicked at the prospect of getting lost in a foreign land. But then I shrugged it off and continued down the road. It turned out I got back to the house just fine anyway. Between my conversation with Diego, and the pep talk Noah Kagan gave me the day before -- as described in my book, The Heart to Start -- I felt as if I had turned over a new leaf. I set up my laptop on a desk on the interior balcony of the house. There, overlooking the sapphire blue Pacific Ocean, I had my first breakthrough writing session. By the end of an hour, I had most of a chapter drafted. It seemed as if I might make my deadline after all. Throughout writing that first book, I still got stuck all of the time. But, I had discovered a different way of getting things done. Writing a book is not about time management It was clear that creative work wasn’t so much a matter of time. After all, I was still spending most of my day banging my head against a wall. But, every once in awhile, writing would come easily. The pain in my stomach would subside, the rigor mortis in my fingers would dissolve, and, suddenly, I’d be writing. Sometimes I did an entire day’s writing in only fifteen minutes. Why can’t I do that fifteen minutes of writing, then get on with my day?, I asked myself. That random conversation on that Costa Rican road became the seed of an idea that would eventually drive me to sell everything I owned, and move to South America. Throughout writing my first book, patterns started to emerge. At first, when writing came easily, it seemed to be a random occurrence. Over time, I realized it wasn’t random at all. There were certain conditions that had to be met for writing to come easily. Most of all, I realized that, in order to write easily, I had to be in the right mental state. As the great sculptor Constantin Brancusi said, “Things are not difficult to make; what is difficult is putting ourselves in the state of mind to make them.” Writing a book is about mind management Creative productivity isn’t about having enough time to do the work. It’s not about typing faster, so you can type more words in less time. It’s not about shoehorning as much work as possible into every sliver of time available. Like planting a seed in nutrient-rich soil, and feeding it the water and sunlight it needs in order to grow, creative productivity is about creating the conditions within your mind to have valuable thoughts. Creative productivity isn’t about time management, it’s about mind management. Image: [Guitar and Fruit Dish, Juan Gris] New Book: Mind Management, Not Time Management (Preview Edition) Read my upcoming book months before anyone else. Grab it, for a limited time, here. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/time-management-book-writing/

Sometimes people tell me, “Hey David, The Heart to Start is a great book, but now that I’ve figured out how to start, how do I finish?!” If you’re anything like me, finishing is tough. You can always find a good reason not to finish what you’ve started. It’s not fun anymore, you don’t want to paint yourself into a corner if it goes well, or – my personal favorite – now you have an even better idea! (which you soon abandon, like the thousand projects before it.) Our guest today can help you stop floundering, and start finishing. In fact, he’s the author of a book called Start Finishing: How to Go from Idea to Done. He’s got all of the discipline of an Army officer, and all of the wisdom of a philosophy professor – he’s even been both of those things. He’s Charlie Gilkey (@CharlieGilkey). Whether you’re flip-flopping, floundering, or fluttering about from project to project like a butterfly in a botanical garden, Charlie can help you start finishing with his book, or start flourishing, with his podcast, Productive Flourishing. Today, we’ll talk about: Charlie says, “be courageous enough to commit more fully to fewer projects.” For lots of us, that’s easier said than done. Hear Charlie psychoanalyze me out of my own straitjacket. Finishing a big project changes who we are. How can you push past your comfort zone just when you’re about to make a transformation? You’ve heard of “fear of success.” I’ve always had trouble believing in it. But Charlie cleared it all up. Hear the four stories we tell ourselves that hold us back from success. P.S. Charlie is the last guest for awhile. Because I’m dedicating every ounce of creative energy to my upcoming book, Mind Management, Not Time Management. (Remember, the Preview Edition is available for a limited time.) I’ll still be workshopping ideas from the book in my bi-weekly essay episodes, so stay subscribed for those. Interestingly, since Charlie is all about finishing, and I’m on the home stretch for finishing this book, that makes him the perfect final guest. New Book: Mind Management, Not Time Management (Preview Edition) Read my upcoming book months before anyone else. Grab it, for a limited time, here. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/charlie-gilkey/

One day, I was in a coworking space, here in Colombia, writing in my Moleskine notebook. One of the other co-workers came up to me and asked me a question. He said, in Spanish, and with a sense of earnest curiosity, “Why are you writing in your notebook? Your computer is right in front of you. You can write much faster on your computer. Why aren’t you writing on your computer?” That question really stuck with me, because I thought the answer was obvious -- though I guess it wasn’t. And it got me thinking about the tools we use to create, and why we use them. Creativity is hard You already know, from listening to episode 218 about the Four Stages of Creativity, that we don’t solve creative problems all at once. We need to go through stages. We need to go through Preparation, learning about the problem. From there, the problem goes through Incubation. Our subconscious works on it while we do something else. Only then can we reach Illumination -- our “aha” moment. Finally, to get it ready to ship, we need to go through Verification. And you also know, from being a human being, that when you’re up against a really tough problem, anything in the world suddenly becomes more appealing than that problem. You’ll get “shiny object syndrome,” and want to escape to another project. Or you’ll check social media. I even find that I sometimes procrastinate on a really tough project by working on a slightly less tough project, that I have been procrastinating on until now. Ayn Rand called it “white tennis shoes syndrome.” That if she came up against a tough problem while writing, she’d suddenly remember that there were some white tennis shoes in the closet that had smudges on them, and needed to be cleaned. Distractions, it seems, are nothing new. Choose the tool for the creative job But, I’ve found, depending upon where you are in the Four Stages of Creativity, the tool you use can make all of the difference in whether you keep moving forward, or fall off the tracks. Through lots of trial and error, I have collected for myself the perfect arsenal of different tools for different situations. Here are some of them. First thing in the morning, I write, with my eyes still closed, while still in bed, on my AlphaSmart. It’s a portable word processor. Discontinued. Available used on Amazon for about forty bucks. I do my morning writing session on an iPad, with a wired external keyboard. I have multiple 9” x 12” whiteboards lying around the house. I jot down ideas when they come to me. Sometimes I’ll even take a whiteboard to a cafe and write on it in long form. Then, I have my 6” x 9” Moleskine Classic notebook. I also carry with me everywhere the tiniest notebook I could find: the Moleskine Volant, which is 2.5” x 4”. And, of course, I have an iPhone SE, on which I occasionally brainstorm, if there’s no better tool around. Sometimes, I even find it useful to simply pace around and talk out loud. Finally, there’s plain, old-fashioned thinking. Just sitting in the park or swinging in my hammock, trying to navigate the twists and turns of a problem in my own mind. Oops, I almost forgot. I also have a laptop. I try to avoid using it, but sometimes I simply need to be on a full-blown computer. Some tools are slippy, some tools are grippy Some of these tools are “slippy.” Some of these tools are “grippy.” Slippy tools are tools are efficient. There’s little friction. You can create your final product quickly with a slippy tool. Grippy tools are inefficient. There’s lots of friction. You can’t create your final product quickly with a grippy tool. Often, you can’t create your final product at all with a grippy tool. Slippy tools sound great, but they have a drawback: Because slippy tools are so powerful, you can more easily get distracted. Yes, I can type fast and switch between documents and quickly do web research on my laptop. But I can also just as easily check my email, putz around on social media, or waste a couple of hours on Reddit. Grippy tools sound terrible. Writing by hand is slow, and worst of all, you can’t even use the writing. When I write on a whiteboard, I have to erase it all eventually. The right tool isn’t about the fastest output Some people will protest: But David, you could get an iPad with Pencil, and you could write by hand, and it would convert the characters into text. Or, David, you could get a special pen that would store the writing as text in the cloud. When I wrote about my AlphaSmart, my beloved portable word processor, people had all sorts of objections and suggestions. Why don’t you just get a Chromebook!?, they’d say. Or, Don’t you know there’s this word processor that costs ten times as much but that syncs with the cloud!? Or, my personal favorite, Why don’t you just get some self control and learn how to focus!? Sigh. It Shakes My Head. This is the sad state of our world. This is how little respect we have for real thinking, and the space and time and mental energy that it requires. If we don’t wake up, we, as a species, are fucked. Your tools & your thoughts are one Fortunately, that was five years ago that I wrote about my AlphaSmart, and since then people are starting to get it. They’re finally starting to realize that they don’t have perfect control over their thoughts and actions. They’re finally starting to realize that others want control of their thoughts, and that others profit from that control. They’re finally starting to realize that the tools they decide to use shape those thoughts -- whether that’s through enabling clearer thinking, or making them vulnerable to disruptions in their thinking. Imagine the most simple example possible of a primate using a tool. Imagine a chimp fishing ants out of an anthill with a twig. In the moments when that chimp has her hand wrapped around the twig, she cannot use that hand for some other purpose. This is the nature of tools. Tools give us new powers, but, in the process, tools take away other powers. Imagine you’re Superman, and you have the power of X-ray vision. Wouldn’t you prefer to be able to turn off your powers of X-ray vision? If you had X-ray vision all of the time, that would actually suck. You’d be bumping into things, because you couldn’t see them. Everyone you saw would be naked. Before you get too excited, remember: Everyone you saw would be naked. Tools help exercise thoughts, or record them. They rarely do both. Here’s another thing that surprises most people when I tell them about my arsenal of tools. Much of what I produce on these tools disappears. My morning writing session on the AlphaSmart? When I’m done, I delete everything I just wrote. The writing I do on the whiteboards? I usually erase it all as soon as I’ve run out of space. When I speak out loud? I usually don’t record it. And when I sit and think? Those thoughts disappear into the ether. Yes, if I really come across something great using any of these tools, I have options. I can write down a thought in a notebook, I can record my own speech, I can take a picture of a whiteboard. I can even hook up my AlphaSmart to a computer, and transfer my writing. But that’s not the point. The point of each of these tools is not what I produce with these tools -- it’s the way these tools enable thoughts. In the early stages of any project, the thinking I do with these tools serves as Preparation, one of the Four Stages of Creativity I mentioned in episode 218. Preparation can be about research, but Preparation can just as easily be the exploration of a problem in your own mind. What do you think about this? What questions do you have? What are the ins and outs and ups and downs of it all? I know that once I’ve done that Preparation, the next stage, Incubation, will take over. I know that when I return to the problem, I may have my “aha” moment. I may have my moment of Illumination. Grippy tools for thinking, slippy tools for producing This is why I want “grippy” tools for the early stages of any project. In a way, your progress on the project is itself slippy or grippy. When I’m in the early stages of a project, it’s like I’m scaling up a wet rock face. I don’t have a firm grasp of the problem. I need all of the grip I can get. I need any threat of dis-traction to be as far away as possible. I don’t need dis-traction. As Nir Eyal would say, I need traction. Yes, after the tools -- like training wheels on a bicycle -- have enabled the thoughts, after I’ve explored the twists and windings of the problem in my head, I eventually have a grip on the problem. The rock face is no longer wet. I don’t need grippy hiking boots to keep going. I can wear more comfortable and nimble cross trainers. When it’s time to turn clear thoughts into finished products -- when the project is ready for Verification -- then I can use a slippy tool, such as a laptop, connected to the internet, and all its myriad dis-tractions. So the next time you’re working on a tough problem, and the next time that tough problem is making distractions more attractive, ask yourself: Am I using the right tool? Let go of the dangerous expectation of an instant breakthrough. Trade in your slippy tool for a grippy tool. Thanks for sharing my work! On Twitter, thank you to @geekosupremo, and @mtr_amg. Thank you to @balancethegrind for naming Love Your Work in their Top 26 podcasts you can listen to about work, life, and balance. On Instagram, thank you to @wepublishhorror @success_from_books @jasonjclement, @ecemtombas, @shelbsimone, @eifgul, @wetherscold, @bluevalewriting, @mel_thecreative, @almahoffman, @michigan_st8ler Image: [Boaters Rowing on the Yerres, Gustave Caillebotte] New Book: Mind Management, Not Time Management (Preview Edition) Read my upcoming book months before anyone else. Grab it, for a limited time, here. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/grippy-slippy-tools/

Offer expires soon. You don’t want to miss it! It’s the investment of a lifetime! It’s going to be the party of the century! Can you feel the anxiety piling up? You know what it is – it’s FOMO. The Fear of Missing Out. In a hyper-connected world, FOMO is more intense than ever. Our friends are sharing amazing travel photos on Instagram, people are talking about the hot new investment opportunity on Twitter, news headlines bait us with the mystery of what we’ll find out if only we’d click. Even social distancing isn’t enough to calm FOMO. Sure, you have little choice but to stay home, but then you see the screenshot of the Zoom party you weren’t invited to. Having a fear of missing out is an innately human thing – it’s been around forever. But FOMO is relatively new. In fact the term FOMO – so ubiquitous it’s in the dictionary – was invented in 2004, by today’s guest, Patrick McGinnis. Patrick McGinnis (@pjmcginnis) is the author of Fear of Missing Out: Practical Decision-Making in a World of Overwhelming Choice. When Patrick invented FOMO, he was a student at Harvard Business School – a choice-rich environment. More than fifteen years later, Patrick still thinks about the dark side and the bright side of FOMO – as a venture capitalist. If you’re going to love your work, you have to make great decisions. That’s what this conversation will help you do. There’s more to FOMO than you think. In this episode, you’ll learn: How can FOMO be a good thing? If you’re feeling the FOMO, it might be a sign. With all the lip service FOMO gets, it’s a shame more people don’t think about FOMO’s cousin: FOBO. What is FOBO, and why is it all bad? FOMO and FOBO can wipe out your mental energy with decision fatigue. Learn a quick and fun hack for saving brain cycles called “ask the watch.” You’ll love it. P.S. Patrick McGinnis is one of the last guests we’ll have on Love Your Work for awhile. Why? Because I’m dedicating every ounce of creative energy to my upcoming book, Mind Management, Not Time Management. (Remember, the Preview Edition is available for a limited time. I’ll still be workshopping ideas from the book in my bi-weekly essay episodes, so stay subscribed for those. You don’t want to miss this conversation. If you do, you’ll regret it! New Book: Mind Management, Not Time Management (Preview Edition) Read my upcoming book months before anyone else. Grab it, for a limited time, here. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/patrick-mcginnis-fomo/

To get exceptional results, you need to do exceptional things. Most things that are normal are normal only because very few people can resist them. Just because it’s normal, doesn’t mean it’s good for you. It often means the opposite. It’s like the Ancient Chinese proverb says, “If five million people do a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.” Don’t let them get a piece of you If you want to carve out your unique place in this world, you need to rise above the noise that other people succumb to. Which means that you have to ruthlessly eliminate the self-destructive things that most people do. The economy runs, like a flywheel, off of exploiting our weaknesses. Sell us addictive and unhealthy substances, then you can sell us drugs to treat the diseases they cause. Hold our attention with news that convinces us we can’t trust one another, then you can sell us suburban developments and home security systems. Then there’s even more attention leftover to sell to advertisers because our social isolation makes us bored and lonely. Getting us to do things that aren’t good for us is great for the Growth Domestic Product. We’re so vulnerable to these things that if you can cut out the things that break you down, and replace them with the things that build you up, you can be way more effective than most people. I say you could be one hundred times more effective than most people. Here are eleven things you can do to be one hundred times more effective than most people. Before I go further, I want to acknowledge that this list really pisses some people off. I posit that it threatens their self-perception. I’m not saying you’re a bad person if you do or don’t do these things. I’m saying you’d be better off if you did all of these things. Let’s be honest -- it’s darn near impossible to do all of these things. I know I don’t. This is just the list I aspire to. Also, some people hear this list and think it sounds like a boring life. I would encourage those people to get a life -- I’ll explain at the end of this episode. Okay, on with the list. 1. No sugar Sugar is an addictive substance. Sugar stimulates dopamine, and the more dopamine you stimulate, the more dopamine you need in order to feel stimulated. If you want to hear more about that, listen to Robert Lustig in episode 186. It is downright criminal how much sugar surrounds us every day. The last time I was in a hospital, the only things in the vending machine were products filled with sugar -- in a hospital. 2. No alcohol Again, why is this normal? Just look at how many bars and liquor stores are on every city street. At some point in my 20’s I realized that each Saturday night I was regularly spending the equivalent an entire working day going from bar to bar -- not to mention the way that drinking affected me the next day (and likely throughout the week). You can accomplish a lot if you cut out alcohol. I’m lucky enough to not be addicted to alcohol, but economist Tyler Cowen shared an interesting perspective on this podcast: that alcohol is so harmful to much of the population -- those who are addicted to alcohol -- that the only responsible thing to do is to not drink, so it won’t be such a normal thing anymore. 3. No caffeine This one is hard for the coffee lovers. Caffeine, again, is an addictive substance. What happens when you’re addicted to something? You don’t use it, it uses you. The more caffeine you use, the more caffeine you need, until you simply can’t get enough. Many people don’t realize that their caffeine use is at the root of other conditions, such as anxiety, depression, high blood pressure, even schizophrenia. Additionally, using caffeine, even in the morning, can reduce the quality of your sleep that night -- whether you know it or not. 4. 8 hours of sleep a night Speaking of sleep, one of the best things you can do for your health and well being is get enough sleep. Sleep is especially important for creativity: To have great ideas, you need to have knowledge to connect into great ideas. To have knowledge, you need to form memories. To form memories, you need to sleep well. Yet another reason to cut out caffeine. Sleep is the new coffee. 5. Throw your TV in the garbage According to Neilson, Americans watch an astounding four hours a day of television. Imagine everything you could do in four hours a day. I think there’s a neurological component to this, too. As someone who watches very little TV, when I do finally see TV, it’s jarring. The way people interact is childish, everything is broken down for short attention spans. Even if you do something productive while watching TV, I bet you would do it better if you would turn it off. 6. Delete social media from your phone Social media can be fun and valuable. Trying to function in this world with no social media accounts is a tall order (though some people manage to do it). A good compromise is to delete social media from your phone. Only use it on your computer. The danger of having social media on your phone is all of those pockets of time and focus that it steals from you. When you’re waiting in line, or on the bus, or just lounging on the couch, it’s way too easy to go straight to social media. If you must be on your phone, why not read a book, or jot down some notes for your next creative project in a text file? 7. Keep your phone in silent mode A great way to keep your phone from sucking up your time and attention is to simply keep your phone in silent mode, or “Do Not Disturb.” This, in addition to eliminating as many app notifications as possible. Check your phone on your schedule, not on your phone’s schedule. If you’re concerned about emergencies, you can set up certain contacts to bypass silent mode. 8. Read 1 hour a day It’s a lot easier to cut out lots of attention-stealers, such as social media and television if you replace them with an attention cultivator. Reading in long form, such as books or long articles, cultivates your ability to focus, which makes it easier to focus. I recently experimented with cutting out reading during a media fast. It was a valuable exercise, but I did eventually notice a drop in my ability to focus. Now that I’m back to reading an hour a day, I’m re-gaining that focus. 9. Meditate 15 minutes a day Meditation rewires your brain for focus. Meditation makes you more aware of what’s happening in your body and mind. And self-awareness boosts creativity. It may not make sense that by sitting and doing nothing for fifteen minutes a day, you can be more creative. But when you let your thoughts settle, each action you take can be more purposeful. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that if you don’t want to meditate, try simply doing nothing for fifteen minutes. Just stare at a wall, or look at birds. Much of the benefits people see from meditation come simply from what they’re not doing. So, try doing nothing. 10. Journal 10 minutes a day I think of writing like training wheels for thought. When you write down your thoughts, whether that’s in a journal, on a scratch file, or on an AlphaSmart, it helps solidify those thoughts. Like meditating, taking some time to journal will help you take more decisive action in your life and work. It doesn’t have to be fancy. You’ll be surprised what mental clarity you can achieve by writing down even your most mundane thoughts. 11. Get therapy When I published this list on social media, some people proclaimed that they don’t need therapy, and that therapy is “for crybabies.” I don’t know where these people got their ideas of what therapy is -- probably from watching too much TV. Therapy, I’m thinking of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in particular, is not about being a “crybaby” or even “venting.” It’s hard work, but it helps undo thought patterns at the root of self-destructive behaviors. It also eliminates the feelings that trigger those self-destructive behaviors. If you try it and stick with it, it can be like magic. One day, you just find yourself not reacting in the way you once did to something that used to make you feel sad or anxious. Here’s the list again: No sugar No alcohol No caffeine 8 hours of sleep a night Throw your TV in the garbage Delete social media from your phone Keep your phone in silent mode Read 1 hour a day Meditate 15 minutes a day Journal 10 minutes a day Get therapy Discipline is a byproduct of meaning Now some people protest that following this list sounds like a boring life. I think that just shows how deep the cultural programming is that we should for some reason seek pleasure at every turn, and avoid pain whenever possible. As someone who follows much of this list, most of the time, I can tell you I don’t find my life boring at all. But that’s because I have meaning. Discipline, if that’s what you want to call this, is not the cause of meaning -- discipline is the byproduct of meaning. “Get a life,” by that I mean find meaning in your life, and the opportunity costs of not being disciplined skyrocket. How do you find meaning? Well, that can be a future episode. Let me know if you want to hear about it. Image: Composition with Grid IX, Piet Mondrian Our Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/100x-more-effective/

Ari Meisel (@arimeisel) created a productivity system out of necessity. He was suffering from a chronic and life-threatening illness that was so severe, he had no choice but to make the most out of every ounce of energy he had. He took everything in his life and he applied what he now calls “OAO.” He Optimized, Automated, and Outsourced everything he could. Through his own system, which is now called Less Doing, he was able to track the symptoms of his illness, and what triggered those symptoms. This helped Ari work his way to a clean bill of health. He eventually competed in an Ironman competition. I talked to Ari several years ago, after I first discovered the Less Doing system. That webinar conversation is available to Patreon backers of certain levels. Now, as I am working on my next book, Mind Management, Not Time Management, I wanted to talk to Ari again. I realize that so much of what I’ve learned and developed over the past several years is built upon what I learned from Ari’s Less Doing system. If you’re going to love your work, you have to do less of what doesn’t matter, and more of what does matter. In this conversation, you’ll learn: Why does OAO – Optimize, Automate, and Outsource – have to be done in order. Avoid the common mistakes people make when they try to “scale up” broken systems? Ari says there are deep-seated psychological reasons behind why we procrastinate. What are some of those reasons? You might learn something surprising about yourself. You’ve heard me talk about weekly routines instead of daily routines on the podcast before. We’ll dig deep into how Ari organizes his three-day, fifteen-hour work week. For example, why is Thursday his content day? Photo: TechCrunch My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Shownotes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/ari-meisel/

As the nineteenth century was turning to the twentieth century, Frederick Taylor grabbed a stopwatch. He stood next to a worker, and instructed that worker on exactly how to pick up a chunk of iron. Over and over, Taylor tweaked the prescribed movements. Grip the chunk of iron in this way, turn in this way, bend in this way. Once Taylor found the optimal combination of movements, he taught the process to other workers. Their productivity skyrocketed. “Taylorism,” as it came to be called, brought us leaps and bounds forward in productivity. Today, the remnants of Taylorism are ruining productivity. After Taylor’s intervention, the workers who were moving only twelve tons of iron a day were now moving forty-eight tons of iron a day. They quadrupled their productivity. Only a few decades before Taylorism, most people’s concept of time was more closely linked to the movement of the sun than it was to the stopwatch hand. The availability of daylight, the height of a stalk of corn, or the day of first frost that signaled the coming of winter, ruled the work of farmhands. Many of Taylor’s workers objected to having their movement so closely watched and timed, down to the second. Actually, more accurately than that -- Taylor’s stopwatch timed according to the hundredth-of-a-minute. But, “scientific management”, as it was called, swept through the industrial world. Companies couldn’t stay in business without adopting it. The goal of Taylorism was to produce the most work possible in the minimum amount of time. As Taylor watched the movements of the workers, he was trying to reduce waste. He wanted each motion to be as quick and efficient as possible. He wanted each hundredth of a minute to bring the job closer to being done. But, Taylor discovered there was a limit. Logically, there’s no point in a worker sitting idle. Logically, if the worker keeps moving iron, he’ll move more iron than the worker who stops for a smoke break. Intuitively, if you want to get the highest output possible out of the minimum amount of time, take your efficient movements, and fill all of the time with those movements. But, Taylor discovered, it didn’t work that way. The point of diminishing returns There’s a concept in economics called the point of diminishing returns. We can see the point of diminishing returns in action if we imagine Frederick Taylor filling the yard of Bethlehem Steel with workers. Imagine Frederick Taylor has one worker moving iron in the yard of Bethlehem Steel. Thanks to following Taylor’s prescribed movements, that worker is moving forty-eight tons of iron a day. Then, Taylor adds another worker. Now, the workers are moving ninety-six tons of iron a day. Taylor can keep adding workers, and the productivity in the yard will keep going up by forty-eight tons for each worker Taylor adds. Until... Until they start to run out of space. There’s just not as much room in the yard for the workers to pick up the iron, and move it from one place to another. They get in each other’s way, they run into each other, or one worker will have to wait for another worker to finish his job before that first worker can finish his job. At first, it’s not a huge problem. Taylor has merely reached the point of diminishing returns. The point of diminishing returns is the point at which each additional production unit -- in this case, the production unit is workers -- each worker doesn’t return as much benefit as the previous production units did. The return is diminishing. At some point, Taylor adds a worker, and doesn’t get an additional forty-eight tons of production. He gets only forty. Like I say, it’s not a huge deal. They’re still moving more iron than they were before they added that worker. Their margins are high enough on the labor costs that they’re still making more profit. Now, let’s apply this concept to a single worker. Only now the production unit isn’t the workers themselves. The production unit is time. As Taylor filled the available time with motion, the output of a worker rose. But at some point, Taylor hit the point of diminishing returns. As he filled the available time with efficient, optimized motion, at some point, the additional time filled didn’t bring the returns that the previous units of time did. Maybe he tried instructing the worker to move three chunks of iron in ten minutes, then had no problem adding a fourth chunk of iron within that ten minutes. He could string together these ten-minute units, one after another. He could fill up a day with those units, and get the output he expected. But then, at some point, moving an additional chunk of iron in that same unit of time didn’t bring Taylor the returns he expected. In this case, let’s say that number was five chunks of iron within ten minutes. Maybe the worker could keep it up for an hour, but soon the worker would get tired. Eventually, the worker couldn’t move that fifth chunk of iron within a ten-minute unit. The worker got too fatigued. Taylor had reached the point of diminishing returns. The point of negative returns Let’s go back to the steelyard, where Taylor is adding workers. At some point after the point of diminishing returns, Taylor isn’t getting forty-eight tons of output per additional worker, nor is he getting forty tons of output per additional worker. At one point, workers were waiting for one another or getting in each other’s way once in awhile. But now the yard of Bethlehem Steel is nearly gridlocked. The workers are constantly in each other’s way. They’re getting fatigued holding the chunks of iron. Injuries are skyrocketing. Productivity in the steel yard collapses. Taylor is way beyond the point of diminishing returns. Not only is he not getting the output he expected from adding an additional worker. That would be the point of diminishing returns. Taylor has now hit the point of negative returns. He’s now getting less output overall per additional worker. For each worker Taylor adds, he’ll get less output than he would have if that worker had just stayed home. Creative work is not industrial work Scientific management is simple enough when you’re moving chunks of iron. Simply experiment with the amount of iron moved in a given amount of time. Eventually, you’ll find the right formula. But creative work is different in a number of ways. There are three ways: One: Some ideas are more valuable than others. Two: It doesn’t take time to have an idea. Three: In creativity, actions don’t link to results. Some ideas are more valuable than others First, some ideas are more valuable than others. Imagine you write two 50,000-word novels, in parallel. Let’s say you work equally as hard on the first novel as you do on the second novel. You spend just as much time typing the first novel as the second. The first novel sells zero copies. The second one sells a million copies. They’re both free of misspellings. They’re both quality writing. Why does one sell a million copies, while the other sells zero? If the performance of the traditional publishing industry tells us anything, it’s that nobody has any idea why one novel falls flat and the other takes off. But, you can know this: Not all ideas have equal market value. In fact, the difference in market value, for the same amount of work, can be infinite. So, words typed, while a worthy unit of output to track if you’re trying to convince yourself you’re a writer, is not the only thing to optimize for. The quality of ideas matters. Ideas don’t take time The second thing that makes creative work different from moving chunks of iron is that moving chunks of iron takes time. Yes, all of the things leading up to having an idea take time -- we’ll talk about that next. But the act of having the idea takes no time at all. Neuroscientists can look at people’s brains and give them a creative problem. The people can go from being nowhere near solving the problem, to solving the problem, in an instant. Again, sitting yourself down and forcing yourself to come up with ideas is a worthy exercise. It will increase the output of ideas you have, it will build your skill in your craft, and it will increase the chances that one of those ideas is a hit. But you may be just as likely to have that idea while not working at all. Remember Helmholtz’s speech from episode 218, about the Four Stages of creativity? He said his ideas didn’t tend to come to him “at the writing table.” The moment of having an idea takes no time at all. Technically, you could have nearly unlimited ideas in a given “production unit” of time. Actions aren’t linked to immediate results in creative work Now, the third thing that makes creative work different from moving chunks of iron is that, in creative work, actions don’t link to results. By that I mean that if you grip a chunk of iron and pick it up off the ground, you have done work. You have moved that chunk of iron a little closer to its destination. Creative work doesn’t work that way. Say you have an idea for that novel that sells a million copies. Where did it come from? Think about Paul McCartney’s song, “Yesterday.” McCartney famously heard the melody for “Yesterday” in a dream. At first, he was convinced it was a melody he had heard before. He thought it was an old Jazz tune his father had played when he was a kid. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCV9oqtwyVA “Yesterday” has stood the test of time as an original song. But musicologists have found numerous similarities to other songs. One such song is called “Answer Me, My Love.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhr94uOdElU “Yesterday”’s lyrics are as such: Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away, Now it looks as though they’re here to stay, “Answer Me, My Love”’s lyrics are as such: She was mine yesterday, I believed that love was here to stay. McCartney didn’t steal from “Answer Me, My Love.” But it’s almost certain that he heard the song before. In 1953, when McCartney was eleven years old, a version of “Answer Me, My Love,” by David Whitfield was the number one song on the UK charts. Then, it got knocked from the number-one spot -- by another version of “Answer Me, My Love,” this time, by Frankie Lane. It was the first time in UK pop chart history that a song was replaced by another version of itself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00uPMWDEeZE Was McCartney inspired by this song? It’s impossible to know for sure, but it’s certainly plausible. So this idea you have for a novel that sells a million copies. Maybe you’re in the right state of mind to have this idea because you took a vacation last month. Maybe you’re more relaxed because you got a massage two days ago. Maybe you’re thinking more clearly because you went on a hike earlier that day. Yet it was the funny red hat worn by the woman who walked by the cafe that sparked the idea. Meanwhile, it could have been inspired by some book, buried deep in your unconscious, that your mom read to you when you were three. We’re done with time management Taylorism was the birth of “time management.” It was when we started to look at time as a “production unit.” When we look at time as a production unit, we assume that each additional unit of time we spend doing something will get us the same gain in output as the previous unit of time. But it doesn’t work that way. Even in work as simple as moving chunks of iron, Taylor learned that human energy doesn’t neatly pack together to fill all available time. We have our limits. Today, we’re still treating time as a production unit. Our calendars are filled up with boxes, sometimes overlapping. Jason Fried calls it “calendar Tetris.” We live according to that calendar. “There’s only twenty-four hours in a day,” you’ll hear people say. The conclusion we’re supposed to draw from that is that time is precious, so you better fill it all up. Filling up that time was a big leap forward, but now we need to draw a different conclusion. If there’s only twenty-four hours in a day, that tells you there’s a limit. That tells you that eventually, “time management” is squeezing blood from a stone. When it comes to creative work, that stone is a very fragile stone, indeed. Image: Dynamism of the Human Body, Umberto Boccioni My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/end-time-management/

Andrew Mason (@andrewmason) started a little website called The Point. An investor friend of his gave him a million dollars in seed money. The Point failed, but Andrew then used that seed money to pivot his idea into the fastest-growing company in history. Groupon hit a $1 billion valuation in only sixteen months. For someone with no entrepreneurial experience at all, this was crazy. Yahoo! offered to buy the company for $3 billion. Google offered more than $5 billion. Early on, the media wanted to adore him. After the company went public, the media wanted to abhor him. Groupon’s current valuation: a modest $400 million. After Groupon, Andrew started a company called Detour. Once again, the idea failed. But once again, he was able to find a great clue for a new company in the company he was already building. Now, Andrew is the CEO of Descript. Descript is like a word processor for audio. If you’ve ever tried to edit spoken-word audio, you know how time-consuming and frustrating it can be. Descript makes editing spoken word audio as easy as editing a Word doc. With Descript, not only can you edit spoken-word audio by copying, pasting, and deleting text, but you can also edit by typing words. Descript’s Overdub feature can actually create audio based upon your voice. All you have to do is feed it several hours of training data. If you listened to the episodes here on Love Your Work in December, you heard my Descript Overdub voice double fill in for me on the intros. If you’re going to love your work, you have to read the signals the market gives you. Sometimes plan “B” is a billion-dollar idea. In this conversation, you’ll learn: After going from having no experience as an entrepreneur, to founding the fastest-growing company ever, how has Andrew approached building his new company differently from how he built Groupon? Andrew says at Groupon there was “more tolerance for assholes.” What has Andrew learned about building a company culture where the mission doesn’t get in the way of kindness. Andrew said he had a “useful naïveté” about the money that he first raised. How does he still hold onto this naïveté, even as a seasoned entrepreneur? Thanks for sharing my work! On Twitter, thank you to @dbarrant, @keozdev, @podcastally, and @JeffNartic. On Instagram, thank you to @frekihowl, @_imperialpurple, @daizymann, and @paych_arte. Our Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Sponsors http://linkedin.com/loveyourwork Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/andrew-mason/

First of all, I hope that you are taking good care of yourself during these unprecedented times. I hope that you and the people you love are safe and healthy.   I have something I’ve been working on for a looong time. And it’s very relevant to what we have going on today. Many people are working from home. They’re thrust into unstructured days, and trying to make the most of them.   So, I don’t want to delay. I want to get this thing in the hands of people ASAP.   It’s my next book, and it is a BIG one.   Since you’re a loyal podcast listener I want you to have the first chance to read it.   It’s called Mind Management, Not Time Management, and it chronicles my decade-long quest to find the keys to the future of productivity.   Learn how to: Quit your daily routine. Use the hidden patterns all around you as launchpads to skyrocket your productivity. Do in only five minutes what used to take all day. Let your “passive genius” do your best thinking when you’re not even thinking. And, very relevant to today’s world, Keep going, even when chaos strikes. Tap into the unexpected to find your next Big Idea.   If you feel like you have the TIME, but you struggle to find the ENERGY. If you feel like the more time you save, the more overwhelmed, stressed, and exhausted you feel, then this is the book for you.   Mind Management, Not Time Management, will help you learn faster, make better decisions, and turn your ideas into reality.   I’m offering a very special Preview Edition of the book to my loyal listeners. Read the chapters that are available right now, and get the rest of the chapters as I finish them. The First Edition is scheduled to come out in Fall, so this is a chance to overhaul how you get things done before anybody else does.   Learn more and buy at kdv.co/mind This is a limited-time offer, so do it now. That’s kdv.co/mind

Many businesses have “SOP’s” It sounds very official as an acronym, and what it stands for sounds even more official: Standard Operating Procedure. It’s a document which outlines a process within a business. What’s the purpose of the process? What are the steps to follow? Who will do different parts of the processes, and which parts can’t begin until another part is finished? I was telling a friend about the process documents I have for running my business, and he said, “oh, you mean SOPs?” I could feel a visceral reaction to that term. It made the muscles in my back and neck tense up. “Yeah, SOPs,” I said. “But they aren’t Standard Operating Procedures. They’re Sloppy Operating Procedures.” Processes make businesses possible Every business has processes. The employees of that business follow these processes to build a product, or perform a service. Processes make businesses possible. Processes help the business create a consistent product, at scale. Through repetition, processes allow businesses to create more of their product, at higher quality, with lower expenses -- to increase profits. Each time a process is followed is another opportunity to reduce error, or to simplify the process. It took me a really long time to realize that processes are important for creatives, too. I thought that process was the enemy of creativity. I’ve come to learn that process is creativity’s best friend. For creativity, forget the Standard Operating Procedure -- try the Sloppy Operating Procedure I wasn’t completely wrong in thinking that process was the enemy of creativity. My problem was that I was thinking about process in the wrong way. I was thinking of process as an SOP -- Standard Operating Procedure, when I needed to be thinking of a process as the other SOP -- Sloppy Operating Procedure. Whenever I sat down to try to writing a Standard Operating Procedure, my brain would shut down. It wasn’t until I gave myself permission to suck -- permission to create a Sloppy Operating Procedure -- that I really made progress. The Sloppy Operating Procedure is not a neatly-edited list of steps and standards and dependencies that help you deliver a product. No, the Sloppy Operating Procedure is a living document. It’s disorganized. It has free-written paragraphs that might be incomplete or end mid-sentence. It’s full of grammar and spelling mistakes. The Sloppy Operating Procedure is, well, sloppy. Sloppy Operating Procedures kill procrastination There are two important mechanisms that make the Sloppy Operating Procedure powerful. One is that the Sloppy Operating Procedure kills procrastination. It does this in a couple of ways. One way the Sloppy Operating Procedure kills procrastination is that it gets you started on creating a process document. If you’re expecting to sit down and crank out a polished Standard Operating Procedure document, you’re going to put it off. The second way that the Sloppy Operating Procedure kills procrastination is that it makes it easier to do things that are boring or repetitive. This point requires some more explanation. SOPs kill boredom and drudgery I may dread collecting data for my monthly income reports, but the reason for the dread can be found in a document called “How to Be a Hacker.” A document dating back to 1996, which outlines the values of the “hacker” -- a word which has gained a lot of baggage over the years, but which to me still means someone who likes to know how something works, who will tinker around to find new ways of doing things. I shared this hacker credo in my first book, Design for Hackers, and rule number three of this credo explains the second way that the Sloppy Operating Procedure kills procrastination. That rule is as follows: Boredom and drudgery are evil. Boredom and drudgery are evil. Anything that you’ve had to figure out one time, you shouldn’t have to figure out a second time. And this, I’ve found, is at the root of why I procrastinate on some tasks in my business. So the reason I used to dread collecting the information for my income reports is that I’ve already figured out how to collect information for my income reports, and I don’t want to figure it out again. I don’t want to ask myself again, “are book sales cash-based or accrual-based? What are all of the places my books are published again? How do I get a report from this aggregator?” I’ve already answered these questions once. I don’t want to answer them again. Since I create Sloppy Operating Procedures, the second time I do a process, I don’t have everything all figured out from the first time I did that process. I have some sloppy notes. My notes might say: “Collecting Amazon book sales: Have to convert currencies from each country into USD. Maybe there’s a way to automate this?” That’s what it might say after the first time I collect Amazon book sales. And because it says that, the next time I have to collect Amazon book sales, there’s just a little less boredom -- just a little less drudgery. In fact, it makes the task more interesting. I know that as I do the task again, I’ll have a little less boredom and drudgery, but I’ll also have a new task: I’ll improve a little on these notes. I’ll improve a little on this process. The first time I did the process, I didn’t have the time or energy to think about automating the process of converting currencies. I just wanted to get the task done. A Sloppy Operating Procedure was all I could muster. But between doing the process the first time and the second time, maybe I’ve heard about reporting software that can automate it for me. Or maybe I’ve tasked myself to look up some spreadsheet formulas. So the second time I do the process, I have to think less about some parts of the process, and so I have more mental energy leftover to better automate and document other parts of the process. Ideally, the first time you do a process, write some quick notes; the second time you do a process, write instructions and make a training screencast; the third time you do a process, delegate it. Now, I don’t even collect the Amazon book income for my income reports anymore. I have instructions and even a screencast showing how to do it. My assistant does this process now. So, the Sloppy Operating Procedure kills procrastination because it gives you permission to suck in writing your SOP, and the mere existence of that SOP removes the boredom and drudgery from the task. SOPs help you produce more with less I mentioned that there were two mechanisms that make the Sloppy Operating Procedure powerful. The first mechanism is that it kills procrastination. The second mechanism is that the Sloppy Operating Procedure helps you produce more work with fewer resources. How does it do that? You’re doing the same amount of work, after all. Eventually, your Sloppy Operating Procedure is a clean and clear list of steps to follow in order to produce something. At this point, it’s not so different from a Standard Operating Procedure. What’s different, is how you produced it. But once you have a process that you can follow, without fail, to produce your product, that process does much of the work for you. This is especially true if you use the process in order to delegate the task, but it’s also true if you use the process simply to assist yourself in doing the task. This is especially important with the most creative parts of your work. Your own mind is the secret sauce -- the proverbial secret mix of eleven herbs and spices -- that make your product special, and you want your process to highlight your secret sauce, not to water it down. SOPs take you from “front burner” to “back burner” As your Sloppy Operating Procedure evolves into a Standard Operating Procedure, the task evolves, too. The task evolves from requiring Front Burner Creativity, to requiring only Back Burner Creativity. I talked about the distinction of Front Burner Creativity and Back Burner Creativity back on episode 194, but here’s a short refresher. Front Burner Creativity takes your very best creative energy. It’s like you’re stir frying some vegetables, and you want to get them just right. Back Burner Creativity still requires creative energy, but it doesn’t necessarily require your very best creative energy. It’s like you’re boiling some pasta. You know about how long to let it boil to get it al dente. You’ll stir it here and there, and you’ll check in on it in about seven minutes. As your Sloppy Operating Procedure becomes a Standard Operating Procedure, the tasks involved in creating your work go from needing Front Burner Creativity to needing only Back Burner Creativity. And when you can keep a project cooking on the Back Burner, that frees up your Front Burner. When I started this podcast four years ago, it was Front Burner Creativity -- big time. It took my very best creative energy, every day, just to keep it coming every week. But now it’s Back Burner Creativity. My Sloppy Operating Procedures have become Standard Operating Procedures. I have a checklist I follow every time I record. I have a spreadsheet I use to share the relevant information with my production team. My production team has a detailed checklist and standards document to follow. Finally, I have a spreadsheet that generates the relevant tasks for each episode, and my assistant has a screencast to follow to upload those tasks to my task manager. Even though each episode still requires creative energy, it requires much less creative energy. My SOPs save that energy for me, and I even keep some of those SOPs a little sloppy. I let myself mix things up, creatively, so long as they don’t screw up the process that helps me keep this show coming each week. Sloppy Operating Procedures boost your creative output, bit by bit So now that the podcast is a Back Burner project, I’ve been able to develop other projects on the Front Burner. I’ve published a book, several short reads, and I’m writing another book. Along the way, I also brought my Love Mondays emails from Sloppy Operating Procedure to Standard Operating Procedure. I keep those coming each week, too. I’m still one person, one creative, but I’m able to create more, with the same -- even fewer -- resources. The next time you find yourself in boredom or drudgery, try making a Sloppy Operating Procedure. I hope it helps you cook up something delicious. Image: Still Live with Gingerpot 2, Piet Mondrian Our Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/sloppy-operating-procedure/

Megan Devine (@refugeingrief) is the author of It’s OK That You’re Not OK, and runs the Writing Your Grief workshop. It wasn’t until Megan, a therapist, experienced grief herself that she discovered how we as a culture utterly fail to support the grieving. As loyal listeners know, I experienced a tragedy several months ago. My healthy, active, 69-year-old mother died suddenly. An abnormal blood vessel – which she was born with, but didn’t know she had – burst in her brain. I lost my grandparents long ago, but losing my mother was by far my most profound experience with grief. For the first time, I found myself on the receiving end of attempts to acknowledge my own deep state of grief. Some attempts – which you’ll hear in today’s conversation – made me feel supported. Other attempts – which you’ll also hear – not so much. I also went to some grief support groups with my father, and was shocked at what I discovered: It was like a hidden underworld of grief. People who lost someone six months ago, or six years ago – all in pain, all struggling to feel supported by friends, coworkers, or even family. It helped me realize how poorly I, myself, had handled other people’s grief. Which is okay. Grief is by definition impossible. But we can always do better. If we’re going to love our work, we have to be kind to one another. And part of being kind is supporting others when they’re hurting. In this conversation, you’ll learn: What are the top things to never say when trying to support the grieving? The list could get impossibly long, so Megan will share a quick shortcut. You may have heard of five stages of grief. I won’t bother listing them, because these stages are horribly misunderstood. Learn why thinking of grief according to stages just makes things worse. The #1 thing that’s broken about how we respond to grief is that we treat it like a problem to be fixed. There’s one simple mindset shift that can help us do better. Chances are, you’ve had grieving people in your life. If you haven’t, you most certainly will. Now is the time to build these skills, so let’s get started. Photo Credit: Stephanie Zito My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/megan-devine/

What are you doing?! Didn’t you read the title of this episode? I’m begging you: Stop listening to my podcast. You’re still here? Okay, I’ll see what I can do to persuade you to stop listening to my podcast. I’ll admit it: It bums me the fuck out that there aren’t more people listening to my podcast. I’ve been delivering an episode every week for the past four years, and I haven’t seen any growth at all for the past three of those years. If anything, my stats tell me I get fewer downloads than I did three years ago. Before I get to why I want you to stop listening to my podcast, I have to be clear: Sometimes it makes me sad that more people aren’t listening to my podcast. And it’s not that I want to be rich and famous. I decided what I wanted when I made the decision, four years ago, to double down on being a writer and a podcaster. I told myself, “I want to make a living creating. I don’t want creating to be merely a marketing strategy for other things?” So, I sold everything I owned, and moved to the “third world”. I knew I would struggle to make money for awhile, but I never knew the struggle would take this long. I never knew it would be this hard. That’s the reason I wish more people listened to my podcast. I don’t need to make enough money to buy a Bentley, or even a Toyota. I just want to make enough money from my writing and podcasting that I can do more writing and podcasting. I wrote my first book ten years ago. I moved to South America four years ago. I don’t want to write so I can make money, I want to make money so I can write. And that’s the only thing that makes it fucking heartbreaking about not having more people listening to my podcast. What I learned on my media fast But there’s no denying that people shouldn’t be listening to my podcast. At the beginning of this year, I tried an experiment. I went on a “media fast.“ I stopped listening to podcasts. I stopped checking Twitter. I even stopped reading books. I stopped multi-tasking, and I started uni-tasking. At first, it was agonizing. I felt like I needed more stimulation. But I powered through it, and it was like rummaging through the junk piled up in your dead grandmother’s dusty attic. I was surprised what I discovered underneath all of that clutter: My own thoughts. Instead of listening to a podcast while cooking and eating lunch, I simply focused on cooking and eating lunch. If I was chatting with a friend on WhatsApp, I wasn’t switching to Instagram between messages. I was only chatting with that friend. I watched the sunset almost every day, and I didn’t post pictures of those sunsets to Instagram. I just sat there and watched the colors change, like some enlightened Neanderthal. Eventually, things started bubbling to the surface. After lunch, I would jot down ideas on a little whiteboard. While watching sunsets, ideas would come to me for my next book, or for podcast episodes like this one. Creating is better than consuming It was hard to admit it to myself: Creating is better than consuming. The more you consume, the less you can create. Some people will protest: “If you aren’t consuming, where are you going to get inspiration!?” “Inspiration” is bullshit. You’ve seen enough things in your life, and you’ve had enough damn ideas -- you never did shit with most of them (neither did I). Your need for “inspiration” is a fear of your own thoughts. It’s a fear of doing the hard work of processing what’s in your head, breaking out of the bullshit scripts that society writes for you, and having an actual thought. A true, sometimes uncomfortable, original thought. You don’t need inspiration. You need action. I can’t deny, from my own experience of going on a “media fast,” that much of the time, when I was consuming, it was standing in my way of creating. And wasn’t “creating” what I wanted to do in the first place? This was an uncomfortable realization. I even had a couple of friends point out that reading books is a form of procrastination. Sacrilege! But, they’re right. How many books have you read? Can you recite what you learned from those books? Have you truly taken action on what you learned, or did you just move on to the next book? Everyone’s trying to get a piece of you As you can see, for me, as someone who creates, as someone who writes books, and makes a podcast, this was a tough realization. I had to search myself for why I create what I create. I concluded that, more than anything, I create for my own self-development. In this world, everyone is trying to get a piece of you. Facebook wants your eyeballs, and your browsing history. The news media wants your attention. They’ll manipulate your emotions. They’ll try to fool you into thinking there’s something virtuous about “being informed.” But it’s all bullshit. On top of it, addictive substances are all around us. How many lives have been destroyed by alcohol, or addictions to prescription drugs? Go to a hospital and look in the vending machine: Sugar, sugar, and more sugar. It’s so pervasive, we assume sugar isn’t putting us in the hospital. And how many of us swear we can’t function in the morning unless we have a piping hot Thermos of a psychoactive drug? Yeah, caffeine. This shit ain’t right. Stoicism is not the cause of meaning. It’s the effect of meaning. You’re probably wondering what the fuck the news, Facebook, and coffee have to do with my podcast. As I said, I primarily make this show and write my books to help myself. Because it brings me meaning. That meaning is strong enough to motivate me to take a break from listening to podcasts and reading books, to say fuck the news, fuck Facebook, fuck alcohol on every corner, fuck the sugar all around us, fuck the caffeine in every cup. Some people would describe my mindset as “stoic.” My unpopular opinion is that Stoicism isn’t useful as a philosophy. It rings hollow in my ears. Stoicism is not the cause a meaningful life. A stoic mindset, instead, is the effect of a meaningful life. All of the things I described can be pleasurable. You could call my media fast a “dopamine fast.” As Dr. Robert Lustig taught us on episode 185, pleasure -- which is triggered by dopamine, is different from happiness, which is triggered by serotonin. In fact, pleasure and happiness are polar opposites. I don’t shun pleasures by way of stoicism. I don’t shun pleasures for the sake of shunning pleasures. I do it because none of that “pleasurable” stuff will help me be the human I want to be. None of that will help me with this journey. This journey of creating. I create so that I can create. If you don’t consume, maybe you’ll create? And so who would I be if I expected you to listen to my podcast? I’ll reiterate: Yes, I want podcast listeners -- and Patreon supporters. Yes, I want to sell books. When I make money, I can do more work. But the thing I hope for myself is the same thing that I hope for you: I want you to break out of the “matrix” of bullshit that rules the thoughts and actions of so many of us. I want you to stop consuming, and start creating. And if you’re trying to escape the bullshit through your own discipline, A.K.A. “stoicism” -- you’re going to have a bad time. There’s nothing I can say to you, no “inspiration” I can provide, which will make it happen. So, yes, it makes me sad sometimes that I don’t have more podcast listeners. But then I tell myself, “David, if they aren’t consuming, maybe they’re out there creating.” I have no choice. That has to make me happy. The reasons that are strong enough to help you break free -- you can only find those in yourself. You have to listen to the voice inside your head, and have a conversation with it. And you can’t hear that voice, if mine is still ringing in your ears. So if you can find the meaning within you, if you have the motivation to become a better you, you have everything you need. Stop listening to my podcast. Go make your own podcast! But I’ll still be making mine, as long as I can. My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/stop-listening-podcast/

Dylan Evans (@evansd66) had an intense experience with uncertainty. He was fifty percent certain that civilization would collapse within several years. So, he sold his house, gave up his job, and set out to learn how to survive the apocalypse. He tells the story in his book, The Utopia Experiment. He and a team of volunteers constructed yurts on the Scottish highlands, and started growing their own food and making their own clothes, trying to see if they could disconnect themselves from civilization. Civilization didn’t collapse within the period of time that Dylan had predicted, and as he looked at what remained of his life, he started to ask himself, “where did I go wrong?” This led Dylan to study what he calls Risk Intelligence – he now has written a book by that title. Risk Intelligence is the ability to navigate uncertainty. That is what we’ll be talking about today. Navigating uncertainty matters in creative work Imagine you serve coffee at Starbucks. Starbucks knows exactly how much to pay you each hour. They know exactly how much coffee you can make, they know exactly what that coffee costs them, they know exactly what profit margin they want. Creative work is not serving coffee. You never know how long it takes for an idea to brew. When a breakthrough does come to you, the results can be unpredictable. Sometimes a project takes off, and sometimes it doesn’t. Some of that is due to skill, a lot of that is due to luck. If you’re going to love your work, you need to know how to deal with uncertainty. If you write this book, what are the chances it will sell? When you launch this product, how much money will it make? Questions like these help you choose: Amongst the countless actions you can take, what actions are worth it? And when you do finally make a choice, and you look back at the results, do you really have a clear picture of whether you made the right decision? What can you learn from the decision you made which can make your future decisions wiser, more clear – better? When you’re trying to love your work, you’re dealing with uncertainty. Part of dealing with uncertainty is knowing how to be at least a little more certain in an uncertain world. It’s as close as you can get to predicting the future. In this conversation, you’ll learn: How can you make falsifiable forecasts on your creative projects? When you make falsifiable forecasts, you can start to score your ability to predict the future. If you improve your forecasting skills, you’ll make better predictions, and better decisions. Dylan says, "The difference between a good decision maker and a poor decision maker...is that a good decision maker will rate the quality of his or her decision by the actual thought process going into the decision, not 'Did it turn out to be the correct decision?'” Well, how do you rate the quality of your decisions? You may have fantasized yourself about unplugging from civilization. I was curious: What’s the one thing about civilization that Dylan realized he was taking for granted? Thanks for sharing my work! On Twitter, thank you to @CapeHornCHI and @analydiamonaco. On Instagram, thank you to @sonny_enslen. My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Sponsors https://linkedin.com/loveyourwork Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/dylan-evans-utopia-experiment-risk-intelligence/

In the 1600s, Penelope Kent boarded a ship from Holland to the New World with her new husband. Their ship wrecked off the coast, but still, Penelope and her husband made it to shore. There, they were attacked and tortured by the natives who lived on the land. By the time the natives were done with them, Penelope’s husband was dead. Penelope was still alive, but partially scalped, with her stomach sliced open. She took shelter in a hollowed out tree. Days later, some other natives found Penelope. These natives were fortunately friendly, or at least enterprising. They sewed shut Penelope’s wounds with fishbone needles and vegetable fibers. What happened next depends upon the source you read. By some accounts the native tribe released her to New Amsterdam -- now New York. By other accounts, they sold her into indentured servitude. Somewhere way up my family tree, Penelope was my first ancestor to come to America. Given all she went through to make it to what would become the United States -- a hundred years later -- it’s astonishing that I would ever leave the U.S., in search of a better life. In fact, I moved to the so-called “third world.” Sorry, Penelope. In 2016 I sold my possessions and moved from the United States to Colombia, looking for a better life. Four years later, it’s safe to say that I’ve found that better life. The irony isn’t lost on me: Centuries ago, my ancestors moved to America for a better life. And in the twenty-first century, I moved to the “third world” for a better life. I use air quotes for “third world,” because I recognize that the designation of some countries as “third world” is passé and even offensive. I also recognize that many parts of Colombia -- even parts not far from my doorstep -- are very much “third world” by most people’s standards. Finally, as many Colombians have pointed out to me, if I were Colombian, I’d probably want to do the opposite: I would want to move to the U.S. for a better life. I appreciate my blue-passport privilege more than most Americans I meet, and I know that the U.S. has a lot going for it. I don’t write this article to gloat. This is not going to be about me working on a laptop on the beach, failing to mention the Malaria-ridden mosquitos that snuck under my bed net while I slept last night. I write this to offer some perspective: That if you’re clear about what you want in life, that you can often get those things -- as long as you’re also clear about what you don’t want or, more important, what you can live without. Why Colombia? First, why did I think that Colombia was the place where I could find a better life? My primary motivation for moving was to double down on my career as a writer and podcaster. It wasn’t just that the low cost-of-living in Colombia would provide me with the financial runway that I knew I would need, I also knew that the lifestyle that was possible in Colombia would support the habits and routines I needed to build in order to make it as a creative. Medellín, the Colombian city in which I live, is a popular destination for digital nomads. They spend the six months they are allowed on a tourist stamp -- depending on their nationality -- then they move on to other hotspots such as Bali or Budapest. While plenty of people have described me as a digital nomad, I don’t consider myself one. I’m committed to building my life in Colombia, if for nothing else, because I’m more productive staying here than I am scrambling around the world. I haven’t even visited many of the digital nomad hotspots, but the friends I’ve made who live that lifestyle all agree that Medellín is a fantastic place to build a consistent work routine. You can rent a furnished apartment for less than the price of an unfurnished apartment in most major cities, you can get just about anything delivered -- even a haircut -- for a fraction of the price of delivery in the U.S., and the temperature steadily stays at around room temperature year-round (In fact, Medellín is known as “the city of the eternal spring.”) One friend who was visiting commented that Medellín isn’t so much about seeing anything in particular, but rather witnessing the laid-back lifestyle. The cafes in the upscale Poblado neighborhood get packed at 3 p.m. every afternoon. A high ratio of the people are there talking to each other, rather than escaping into their devices. Colombians place a high value on spending time with family. They want everything to be tranquilo (peaceful or relaxed). If you’re taking a cab home after dark, there’s a good chance your driver will wish you to descansar (to rest, literally, to “un-tired” yourself). Designing my life around consistent writing About a decade ago, I got my first book deal, with little experience as a writer. I discovered through that process that writing is hard. I found that the more consistent I could be, the better my writing was. At the time, I was living in Chicago, where consistency is nearly impossible. If I could pick one word to characterize living in Chicago as a writer, it would be “friction.” Everything gets in the way. The rent is cheap for a major American city -- in fact, I moved to Chicago from San Francisco for that very reason -- but it’s still expensive for what you get. The public transportation is infuriatingly unreliable, and then there’s the weather. Don’t get me wrong: I love Chicago, and visit frequently. It’s just that, for what I wanted to accomplish with my life, Chicago got in the way. On one hand, there are lots of things to do, and bustling arts and startup scenes. On the other hand, there are lots of things to do, and bustling arts and startup scenes. There are lots of opportunities to distract yourself, and you pay for those opportunities with traffic, high prices, and lots of noise. After I escaped the worst months of a couple of Chicago winters -- a practice I call “mini lives” -- I found myself looking back at the work I had done while hiding away in Medellín. It was my best work. So, I moved. I love my “third world” health insurance By choosing the things that I wanted in life, I also had to make a lot of compromises -- what I call the principle of “good enough.” A good segue into compromises is healthcare. One of the things I like most about living in Colombia is having affordable healthcare. As a 40-year-old single male, I pay less than $140 a month for the best health insurance money can buy here. I suffer from chronic health issues -- part of the reason I’ve chosen writing as a career -- and I have gotten a ton of diagnostics. I rarely have to pay anything more than my monthly premium, and when I do, it’s like $9. I’m covered worldwide -- for stays less than a few months -- and pre-existing conditions are accepted, with a few major exceptions. Being a self-employed writer, getting health coverage in the U.S. is prohibitively expensive. One 30-year-old digital-nomad friend told me he investigated the minimum coverage if he moved to New York State: nearly $1,000 a month, and he’d have to pay the first $10,000 of any health expenses throughout the year. It wasn’t until I visited the doctor several times here in Colombia that the mental effects of having health coverage really sank into me. For the first time in my decade-plus self-employed career, I felt secure from a healthcare standpoint. If I noticed a symptom, I didn’t have to debate with myself whether it was worth a $300 visit to the doctor. If the doctor recommended a diagnostic, I didn’t have to decide whether to shell out $1,000, or play Russian Roulette with my prospects of having a serious illness. How many of us apply 80/20 to our lives? Healthcare is a good topic through which to introduce one of the key principles that make my life in Colombia a “better life.” That principle is the principle of the “good enough.” In the United States, we’re obsessed with making things “better.” We want faster cars, more convenient apps, nicer restaurants, a drug for every symptom under the sun, and faster service. This leads to lots of truly useful innovations -- innovations that the rest of the world can then easily implement for a fraction of the cost. But the problem with “better” is that it’s not always worth it. Sometimes, something that’s 20% better costs 200% more. If you can carefully pick and choose the 20% less good -- the “good enough” -- you can design a life where you get more of what you want, and less of what you don’t really need. The idea of the 80/20 principle gets a lot of lip service these days: Do the 20% effort that will get you 80% of the result. But when it comes to our lives, few of us apply the 80/20 principle, or the “good enough” principle. We can’t have the 80% mobile phone -- we need the 100% new iPhone. We can’t have the “good enough” clothes, we need the 100% most fashionable brand. We strive for the 100% healthcare, because so much is at stake, but maybe we’d be better off with the 80% healthcare? The healthcare I get in Colombia is great, in that I can afford it. Yet in many ways, it’s also merely “good enough.” Sometimes it’s hard to get an appointment. Instead of seeing the same doctor every time -- a doctor you build a relationship with -- you see whatever doctor is available. Prescription drugs are much cheaper in Colombia -- but sometimes they can be expensive, and you have to pay for them out-of-pocket. If you’re unlucky enough to end up with a rare disease that calls for a cutting-edge experimental treatment, Colombia is probably not the place to get that treatment. But established treatment protocols for common conditions are available, and affordable. My girlfriend’s mother had a heart attack a few years ago, and needed a quadruple bypass. This event, which would financially ruin many American families, cost this middle-class Colombian family -- which would very much be lower class by American standards -- essentially nothing. Today, my girlfriend’s mother is alive and well, toasting arepas, frying up empanadas, and playing with her grandchildren. The 20% that gets me 80% in Colombia Extend this principle of “good enough,” and you can see why my life in Colombia is a better life. There’s no Whole Foods in Colombia, but you can get organically-raised vegetables for a fraction of the price. Every zucchini isn’t the pristine green torpedo you’ll find at Whole Foods, but it’s “good enough.” If you need to buy something, Amazon (the website, not the river) is not the first place you’ll look. You have to go to a mall, and see what they have. It’s like a scavenger hunt. If it’s “good enough,” you buy it. If it just won’t do, then you order on Amazon. It will cost you 30% extra in shipping and import taxes, and will take two weeks to arrive. That’s not two-day (or same-day) Amazon Prime shipping, but it’s “good enough.” Just managing to stay in Colombia, as an immigrant, is sometimes extremely difficult. I had a visa rejected twice, and am in the throes of an apartment search with maddening requirements for foreigners. It can be a real productivity killer for periods of time, but in the end, it’s worth it for me. Isn’t Colombia dangerous? Most people’s first question about Colombia is about safety. They’ve watched Narcos, they’ve heard the horror stories about when Pablo Escobar and his henchmen ruled the streets of Medellín, and FARC ruled the jungles of Colombia. I won’t tell you that Colombia is a crime and violence-free utopia, but I will tell you that it’s “good enough.” This is an area where people are easily deceived, and I think it has to do with our perception of risk. When Americans do gain the courage to visit Colombia, they are amazed. “I never once felt unsafe,” they’ll say. Even expats who have been here a long time will say, “been here for twenty years. Never had a problem.” In actuality, Medellín has a homicide rate a smidge higher than my former home of Chicago. And the robbery rate in my neighborhood is fourfold that of Chicago as a whole. I’ve had at least one terrifying robbery attempt, as shared in episode 216. Things you do that are more dangerous than visiting Colombia So, yes, living in Colombia is more dangerous than living in most places in the United States. However, the risk isn’t much higher than many risks that Americans take on a daily basis. According to data.world’s crunching of State Department data, in the seven-plus years between October 2009 and June 2016, more than eight-and-a-half million U.S. citizens travelled to Colombia, and twenty-five were killed. That’s 0.29 deaths per 100,000 U.S. travelers. Contrast that with traffic deaths in the U.S. They aren’t 0.29 per 100,000 -- they’re almost 11 per 100,000 inhabitants, per year. More than thirty times the rate. If you assume that the average person travels 10,000 miles in a car each year, that makes traveling to Colombia as dangerous as riding in a car for 266 miles. Traveling to Colombia is about as dangerous as driving -- one time -- from Boston to New York City. The U.S. government doesn’t want you to know you could find a “better life” (or maybe they’re just clueless) Interestingly, when data.world crunched this data, they found Colombia to be one of the countries with outsized travel warnings. Some countries that people travel to, the State Department issues travel warnings that are about on-par with the actual danger of traveling to that country. Pakistan, Philippines, and Honduras, for example, are dangerous places to travel, and travel warnings are issued for them accordingly. Colombia, by contrast, gets about as many travel warnings as those countries, but is maybe one-tenth as dangerous. Sometimes I wonder if it’s a conspiracy: Scare people out of discovering that they can have a good life somewhere else, keep the U.S. economy chugging along. Then again, maybe it’s just blind hubris that the American government thinks Colombia is such a bad place. My girlfriend -- according to Colombian law, my spouse -- has been rejected for a visa just to visit the United States twice. (And no, it’s not a Trump thing. She was rejected during the Obama administration as well.) Each of these attempts, by the way, is a thousand-dollar roll of the dice. We have to hire a lawyer, pay the application fee, get on a plane and fly to Bogotá and stay in a hotel. The reason they reject her: She doesn’t make enough money. They think, “surely, when you see how much money you can make in the U.S., you won’t go back home. This is clearly more important than the job you have, the property you own, the businesses you’re invested in, and even your relationships with your friends and family.” Give me a fucking break, America. If you’d stop blowing yourself and look up for a second, you might be surprised what you see. What can you get that’s “better,” if you’re willing to accept what’s “good enough?” Living in a place like Colombia does carry some small extra risk. And repeated exposure to small risks can add up to big risks. Consider the fact that the average life expectancy for a man in the U.S. is 76 (women live longer: 81). Yet if you’re a 76-year-old man, what are your chances of dying in a given year? Only about 4%. It’s not being 76 that kills people, it’s repeated exposure to those small risks, which add up over time. But, that repeated exposure to small risk is part of my equation. I have things I want out of my life. I’m willing to forego certain luxuries to get those things, and I’m even willing to expose myself to other risks in pursuit of the things I want. Think about this for yourself. What do you want out of your life? Are there ways you can have those things, if you’re only willing to sacrifice other things? If you can settle for “good enough” in some places, and even take risks in other places, you can ultimately build a “better life”, not by “first-world” or “third-world” standards, but by the only standards that really matter -- your standards. My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/third-world-better-life/

Dr. Aziz Gazipura is author of a great book, Not Nice: Stop People Pleasing, Staying Silent, & Feeling Guilty... And Start Speaking Up, Saying No, Asking Boldly, And Unapologetically Being Yourself. What does it mean to be a "good person?" If someone asks you to do something, do you have to do it? If someone invites you to hang out, do you have to make the time? If someone shares an idea, do you have to pretend to like it? Some people think that to be a "good person," you have to be “nice.” You can’t make someone upset. You can’t hurt their feelings. So you withhold criticism, you don’t express what you want. Eventually, you start to forget who you are, what’s important to you, and what you truly want to get out of your life. You'll be a better person if you aren't too "nice" If you’re going to love your work, you need to be authentic. And that’s hard to do if you’re too busy people pleasing to think about what it is you want. To be a good person, you don’t have to be “nice” – at least not in the way many people think about what it means to be nice. In fact, to be a good person, you can’t be too “nice." How being treated "not nice" led to a breakthrough in my career I can think of a time when someone was not “nice” to me, and it was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I was trying to come up with an idea to present at the SXSW conference. I wasn’t famous for anything, but I had a number of accomplished friends who were authors or ran successful businesses. So what do you do when you have no credibility, but you know people who do? You put together a panel. You get well-known people together, and moderate a discussion amongst them. So I came up with an idea for a panel, and I pitched it over email to one of my accomplished friends. He got back to me almost immediately. I still have the email. It said, "Hey man, I appreciate the intro but I don't think this is the best fit for me.” I was really devastated for the rest of that day. But the very next day, I looked back over this email, hated my life, and sighed. I really felt like a loser. Finally, I said to myself, “okay, enough bellyaching. Time to come up with a different idea.” This sounds like I’m making this up, but I swear this is 100% true. The very next moment – the very next idea I had – was for me to do a talk called “Design for Hackers.” Through the process of pitching that idea to SXSW, I got my first book deal. To write a book called Design for Hackers. That launched my career as an author. That changed my life. That took me from being just another nobody to a respected, published, best-selling author. It was all possible because my friend was not “nice.” He didn’t try to protect my feelings. He didn’t try to go along with something that wasn’t right for him. He was authentic. By being authentic, he freed me up to be authentic. If he hadn’t been honest, or if he had gone along with my first idea, just to be “nice,” I would have been caught up doing something that wasn’t right for me. By doing what was right for him, my friend allowed me to do what was right for me. Do what's right for others, by doing what's right for you But how do you find the courage to do what’s right for you, even if it might upset people in the short term? I loved Not Nice so much. It really helped me see the ways I am too nice in my life. It helped me see how that doesn’t just hurt me, but it hurts others, too. More important, it helped me see the fear and desire for approval at the root of my motivations to be too “nice." In this conversation, you’ll learn: Dr. Aziz says, only apologize "when you act out of accordance with your own values.” Easier said than done? Dr. Aziz will show you how to start with an “apology fast." Dr. Aziz says "someone having hurt feelings does not automatically equal you doing something wrong…. You could hurt someone's feelings by giving them a compliment.” Learn how to let go of “over-responsibility.” You’ll be more authentic, and you’ll ultimately help others get what they truly want. Dr. Aziz says "If you haven't asserted yourself very much...the idea that you're going to somehow glide into this really smooth way telling people no and asking for what you want, is a fantasy that's trying to deny the growth that's needed.” Learn what you can do today to start getting comfortable saying no, ultimately have clearer boundaries, and living a more authentic life. Listener Showcase Jeffrey Mason self publishes books and tools that help create conversation, break down barriers, and inspire expanding one’s parameters. You can learn more at www.jeffreymason.com. My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/dr-aziz-gazipura/

When I was writing my first book, Design for Hackers, I developed a ritual. I would lay all of my research materials on the floor. Graphic Design history books were splayed out. I had research papers or articles printed out and stapled. There were highlights and sticky notes everywhere. In the center of all of this, I had a whiteboard. Well, it wasn’t actually a whiteboard. Whiteboards were too expensive. It was a piece of tile board -- tile board is what you would use for the wall inside of a shower. A whiteboard can go for more than $100. I bought this piece of tile board at The Home Depot for $11. It looked like a scene from a movie. I was the detective, trying to catch the killer. Where had the killer struck before? Is there a pattern to the killer’s behavior? Where will the killer strike next? My living room looked like a detective’s office. If a friend invited me out to do something, I would tell them a lie. I would say I couldn’t go out. But that wasn’t the lie. "Writing" doesn't always mean writing Saying I couldn’t go out while I was kneeling over my research material on my living room floor wasn’t the lie. I really didn’t have much time for socializing while writing my first book. The lie was that I would say that I was writing. In actuality, I would do little, if any, writing during this evening ritual. I might scribble a note here or there. I’d write one or two-word concepts on sticky notes, and arrange them on the whiteboard by feel. I’d draw lines amongst the sticky notes. I might even sloppily squeak an outline onto the whiteboard with a marker. But nothing I produced on these nights had any hope of showing up in my book. My computer was nowhere to be seen. I hid it in another room. Writing? I wasn’t really writing, per se. The speech that changed the way we see creativity In 1891, German scientist and philosopher Hermann von Helmholtz celebrated his 70th birthday. At the party thrown in his honor, he rose to give a speech. He reflected on his illustrious career. He had achieved one groundbreaking discovery after another. In physics, he formulated the concept of energy conservation. In art, he devised theories on color perception that influenced Impressionist painters. In medicine, he invented the ophthalmoscope. But Helmholtz was about to make one more contribution, this time to our understanding of creativity. He said: [Inspiration] comes quite suddenly, without effort, like a flash of thought. So far as my experience goes it never comes to a wearied brain, or at the writing-table. I must first have turned my problem over and over in all directions, till I can see its twists and windings in my mind's eye, and run through it freely, without writing it down; and it is never possible to get to this point without a long period of preliminary work. And then, when the consequent fatigue has been recovered from, there must be an hour of perfect bodily recuperation and peaceful comfort, before the kindly inspiration rewards one. Often it comes in the morning on waking up.... It came most readily...when I went out to climb the wooded hills in sunny weather. It wasn’t until years after I wrote my first book that I discovered this passage. But when I did, my experience writing that first book came back in a flash. Research becomes writing No, I wasn’t “writing” during these evening research sessions. Not in the sense that my fingers were moving on a keyboard, and that words were appearing on a screen. Yet I had come to learn that this work I had put in the night before would pay off the next day. The next morning, I’d amble across the creaky hardwood floor, sit down in a chair, and put my fingers on the keyboard. The notes from the night before were nowhere to be seen. The books were back on the shelf, the sticky notes were in the trash, and the whiteboard -- okay, tile board -- was erased and stowed away. I eventually learned that those nighttime research sessions made all of the difference. Even though my notes were nowhere to be seen, the success of my morning writing session depended entirely on whether I had taken the time to immerse myself in my source material. If I hadn’t done my ritual, my writing session was agony. A dull pain would form in my stomach. My shoulders would round forward. My knuckles would tighten and my fingers would turn into claws. I’d struggle to get anything out. But if I had done my ritual, it was different. As if by magic, my fingers would move on the keyboard, and words would appear on the screen. Now, I really was “writing.” So when I heard about Hermann von Helmholtz’s speech, it all made sense. This was why I had settled into this pattern. This was why I had learned to perform this ritual with a whiteboard, sticky notes, and books strewn about the floor. I had been “[turning] my problem over on all sides.” When it came time to write, it didn’t matter whether I kept my notes. The “angles and complexities” were now “in my head.” I couldn’t go straight from research into writing. I had a “wearied brain.” Instead, I needed to wait until the morning, my “hour of perfect bodily recuperation and peaceful comfort.” That’s when the writing would finally come easily. You fall flat when you try to power through creative blocks Helmholtz’s speech probably brings back memories for you, too. You remember times when you felt hopelessly blocked. You were writing a report, designing a logo, or trying to make a tough life decision. You gathered all of the information you could, and racked your brain for a solution. You panicked, certain you would never gain clarity. You began to question your abilities. You may even have questioned your right to exist. But then, seemingly out of nowhere, the solution appeared. This time, the writing flowed, the perfect logo appeared in your mind, or that decision that was once unclear suddenly became obvious. It might have happened when you sat down to take another crack at the problem, but more often it happened somewhere else. You were taking a shower, you were playing catch with your kid, or you were waiting at the check-out counter at the grocery store. Wallas's "Four Stages" of creativity Social psychologist Graham Wallas also related to Helmholtz’s speech. Thirty-five years after the fact, he formalized Helmholtz’s observations on the creative process into what he called four “stages of control.” These four stages make the random and mysterious creative process seem a little less random and mysterious. The first of the four stages is Preparation. During Preparation, you’re learning everything you can about the problem. As Helmholtz would say, you turn it “over and over in all directions,” until you “can see its twists and windings” in your mind. You know it so well that you don’t even need to refer to your notes in order to talk about it or to brainstorm solutions. The second of the four stages is Incubation. Incubation is the period during which the “consequent fatigue” of the Preparation stage reaches the point of “[having] been recovered from.” Incubation happens any time you aren’t actively working on the problem. You could be working on something else, taking a walk, or even sleeping. The third of the four stages is Illumination. Illumination is the “aha” moment -- the moment neuroscientists would call insight. It’s when the solution comes “quite suddenly.” It’s a “flash of thought,” that arrives “without effort.” The moments of Illumination are the moments that make creativity seem so mysterious, because they are sudden and unpredictable. Your breakthrough idea may come while making breakfast, clipping your toenails, or “[climbing] the wooded hills in sunny weather.” Finally, Wallas suggested a fourth stage, which wasn’t mentioned in Helmholtz’s speech. Verification is when you evaluate the idea you arrived at during the Illumination stage. You make sure your calculations add up. You check your facts and correct your grammar. You put the finishing touches on your masterpiece. So, the four stages of control -- which scientists widely refer to as the four stages of creativity -- are Preparation, Incubation, Illumination, and Verification. More than 120 years later, Helmholtz’s observations still stand up. With Google Scholar returning more than 6,000 articles citing Wallas’s four stages -- mentioning these stages is practically a requirement for any research paper on creativity. Respect the Four Stages of creativity Within the first few months of writing my first book -- though I didn’t know it at the time -- I had discovered the power of working with these stages. Though I knew that I wouldn’t write a single useful word in my evening research session, I was okay with that. I had tried enough times to sit down and write without doing a deep dive like this first, and it was painful enough that I never wanted to do it again. I knew that somehow, the things I explored tonight would connect together tomorrow. Furthermore, I knew that the things I wrote the next morning wouldn’t be ready for print. There would be awkward sentence structures, unnecessary explanations, or things I’d need to look up one last time. My research session would be my Preparation, my night’s sleep would provide Incubation, and my morning writing session would bring Illumination. Later -- when I edited my writing -- I would do my Verification. By being comfortable working according to the four stages, I had reduced the pain of writing. Since it was no longer painful, I was less likely to procrastinate. Since I knew not to push too hard to reach a solution, I stopped burning out. If you’re going to make it as a creative, this is the most important thing to remember, and it’s easy to lose sight of it in our results-driven world: If you are going to do creative work, you have to respect the Four Stages of creativity. Too often, we expect to reach creative solutions right away. We expect to sit down, and learn a few things about the problem. And then we expect the perfect solution to come to us. We stare at the blank canvas. We cower in front of the blinking cursor. We agonize over the tough decision. And the fact that we can’t make any progress at all certainly doesn’t help the matter. So, respect the Four Stages: Preparation, Incubation, Illumination, and Verification. Don’t expect a solution if you haven’t immersed in the source material -- you haven’t done the Preparation. Don’t hope for a creative miracle if that source material hasn’t had a chance to sink in -- it hasn’t gone through Incubation. And when you do put pen to paper, brush to canvas, or bow to string, don’t expect what comes out to be worthy of Carnegie Hall or the Louvre. You’ll still have to do your Verification. The world we live in doesn’t respect the Four Stages. People call brainstorming meetings where they expect to reach a solution. Movies show songs being composed in a flash of inspiration. And each of us, from time to time, gets burnt out, because we tried to power straight through a creative block. Now that you know this little secret, just to make things easier, every once in awhile, you might have to tell a little “lie.” Image: Horse and Cart, Georges Seurat My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/four-stages-creativity/

Demir and Carey Bentley are co-founders of Lifehack Bootcamp, where they help professionals make more of their time and energy, to get more results. They once found themselves getting sucked into the prevailing values of the place they lived. The place you choose to live can have an outsized influence on how you choose to live. If where you live is a bad influence on you, you’ll do things that aren’t good for you. If where you live is a good influence on you, you’ll do things that are good for you. The place you live can influence you through cost of living, through weather, through how you get around – even through through culture. If people in a place value one thing, it can make it hard for you to value another thing. To design your life, start with your surroundings If you’re going to love your work, you need to design your surroundings so you can pursue your values. One way to do that is by choosing the right place to live. The influence of place has long been an interesting topic for me because I’ve long felt like I was born in the wrong place. It wasn’t until after college – after I had traveled a small amount – that this feeling really hit me. “Nebraska” for many people is synonymous with “the middle of nowhere.” For me, until then, it was simply where I lived. As I struggled to find work after college and to set up a life somewhere, that was when I really started to feel profoundly unlucky for being born and raised in “the middle of nowhere.” As an aspiring designer, the design scene in Nebraska seemed nonexistent to me. I wanted to live in a cosmopolitan city such as San Francisco, or Seattle. Even Minneapolis was a bustling metropolis, in my mind. Yet I still felt stuck, because of family ties, a lack of social connections in other places, and simply because I was afraid of change. Now, I’ve lived in some big cities. I lived in the Bay Area. I spent a couple of months in the NYC area. I lived for eight years in Chicago. The sneaky influence of cultural mindset Now, I know that much of the fear I felt for leaving “the middle of nowhere” was cultivated by the mindset of the people who lived there. When I finally did leave Nebraska for California, it didn’t calm my nerves much to hear the fear-laden objections of the people around me. “The traffic is horrible,” “you’ll never buy a house,” or “the people are different” (to which I thought, yeah, that’s kind of the idea). Same thing when I moved from San Francisco to Chicago. I remember one guy said, “What’s in Chicago, besides a bunch of big buildings?!” Uh, you run a Ruby on Rails dev shop, genius. (That technology was invented by a Chicago company.) It took many years of living many places to recognize how, no matter where you live, you can get swept up in the concerns that prevail the culture. Those big cosmopolitan places where I was desperate to live were no exception. How to leave "New York" Which brings us to the topic today of lifestyle design. How to “leave New York,” or really anyplace that’s a bad influence on your behavior. Demir and Carey were living in NYC, working tons of hours, and paying the price with failing health. Now they live right around the corner from me, in Medellín, Colombia – when they aren’t traveling the world. I joined them in their home, just a few days after having their very first child. We talked about how they escaped the toxic mental distortions of the NYC lifestyle, traveled the world, and designed a new, better-balanced life, in another country. In this conversation, you’ll learn: Demir says he started doing “irresponsible things” when he finally hit his “Office Space moment.” What did he do that would have certainly gotten him fired? It’s a funny story, but there’s a lesson about lifestyle design in there, too. What’s the “champagne moment” exercise? If you have a vision of a better life, but don’t know where to start, learn a mental hack you can apply this week to make progress toward that vision. Looking for the next travel destination, and wondering whether you can get some work done? Learn about the “Pilates test.” What does Pilates have to do with finding reliable WiFi? Thanks for sharing my work! On Instagram, thank you to @amrassaid and @motherhoodandmerlot. On Facebook, thank you to the Hello Boss Girl Bossgirl Breakthroughs Group. On Twitter, thank you to @winterknit, @StefanHeineken, @SaraTaricani, and @jovvvian. My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Sponsors https://linkedin.com/loveyourwork Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/demir-carey-bentley-lifehack-bootcamp/

As I kicked and punched at the man, I glanced at the knife in his right hand. And I felt it dig into my side. It all started as I crossed paths with the man. He reached in his pocket, and pulled out the knife. I then did what surely only an idiot would do. I began to fight him. A few seconds earlier, as the man approached me on the path, he stared at me fiercely. He charged toward me, and bared his gritting teeth. His eyes reduced to snake-eye slits, and glowed under the harsh night lamplight. He shook his head from side to side, growling. When the man transformed from just another passerby into a mortal threat, I felt something I had never felt before, and that I haven’t felt since. A bolt of lightning rose from my stomach, to my chest. I heard a deep growl grow into a roar. An authoritative “NOOO!” It wasn’t until I heard that roar echo off the surrounding buildings that I realized -- it had come from me. It’s worth noting, I’ve never been a “tough guy.” I had never been in a fight. Yes, my older brother beat me up more times than I can count, but if someone at school threatened me, I would always meekly back down. So as I watched myself, from outside of my own body, kicking and punching at this man with a deadly weapon in his hand, I was saying to myself, What are you thinking!? But there was no going back. The struggle had begun, and for the first time ever, I was literally fighting for my life. Is this how I die?, I asked myself. But the snake-eyed man suddenly didn’t look so fearless and dangerous. His eyes widened, his eyebrows soared, his mouth gaped open -- its corners bending downward. I guess he thought he had picked an easy target. It turned out, he was wrong. As the man evaded my frantic kicks and punches, an economist took over my mind. I was fighting for my life. He -- was fighting for -- what? An iPhone? Some money? He still hadn’t said anything, so I didn’t know for sure. And that’s when I felt the knife dig into my side. Right between my left ribs. Only, thankfully, it didn’t happen. The knife was still by the man’s side -- dangling from his right hand, as he repeatedly grabbed at me with his left. I had only imagined him stabbing me. It must have been a simulation run by the economist that had taken over my mind. And that simulation had brought the economist to this conclusion: I had way more to lose than this guy. And that was my advantage. All I had to do was make some space, and this guy would cut his losses and move on. But the pavement was wet. I hadn’t run more than a few paces before I slipped, head-first, down the sloping sidewalk. The flesh of my left hand was being ground off by the concrete, as I used it as my brake pad. As I slid down the hill, I glanced over my left shoulder. I hadn’t gone far, but maybe this was enough distance to get him to give up. But he didn’t give up. He was following me. I still don’t know how, but I somehow got to my feet faster than he could catch me. I vaulted myself over one guardrail. I vaulted myself over another guardrail on the next path over. I scurried down a steep hill, slammed into a chain link fence, and ran like hell. When I arrived at home, only a couple of blocks away, my hand was bleeding, my toe was bleeding, my shoes were ripped, and a button was broken off of my favorite shirt. But, I was safe. We all know what you’re supposed to do when someone pulls a knife on you. Give them your wallet. Give them your phone. Do what they tell you to do. “Your life is more valuable than your iPhone,” people will say. Yeah, no shit. Just because I got away with my decision, doesn’t make it a good decision. Annie Duke would call that “resulting” -- rating the quality of your decisions on the outcome, rather than, well, the quality of your decision. You should not fight a guy who pulls a knife on you. That would be a bad decision. Except that, you aren’t making a decision. You’re merely reacting. It’s a non-decision. This is the error we make when we play armchair quarterback to other people’s “decisions.” “Why didn’t the cop shoot the assailant with the deadly weapon in the kneecap, instead of the chest?” “Why didn’t they just leave the room when the sexual assault began?” We know what the ideal action would be. We don’t know shit about what it’s actually like to be in that situation. That feeling I felt that night. That feeling I hadn’t felt before, that I haven’t felt since, and that I hope to never feel again, is a well-known phenomenon. It’s called “fight or flight.” It’s what happens when you are in a seriously dangerous situation, and your sympathetic nervous system takes over. I didn’t stop and politely ask the man with a knife what he wanted. I didn’t then simply hand it over. “Have a nice evening!” That would have been the right “decision.” But I wasn’t making a decision. I fought, then I “flought.” In the book Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky introduce us to two different types of thinking. There’s System 1 thinking -- that’s the thinking that you do in the moment. It’s “fast” thinking. Then, there’s System 2 thinking. That’s the more deliberate thinking. That’s the “slow” thinking. Really, System 1 hardly qualifies as “thinking” at all. At least not what we normally think of as thinking. Not the “what were you thinking,” thinking. I wasn’t thinking. It was System 1. System 1 is your dumber self. Because of System 1, we make all sorts of bad decisions. They aren’t always as bad as fighting a man with a knife. Sometimes it’s simply checking your email while you’re still in bed in the morning, or buying that scone to go with your morning coffee. If System 2 had a say in the matter, it would remind you that checking your email is a bad way to start your day, or that eating a sugary scone for breakfast is going to make you feel like crap. The good news is that we can use System 2 to make decisions ahead of time. Before System 1 -- our dumber self -- has a chance to make its poor non-decision, System 2 can make sure it never even gets a chance. Colombians have an expression. “No dar papaya.” “Don’t give papaya.” You give papaya, someone will take it. It means don’t walk around with your cell phone out. Don’t wear a fancy watch. I’ve even heard a taxi driver use this expression when talking about someone who got robbed while in a taxi. He shouldn’t have had his cell phone out while in the taxi, the driver explained. “Don’t give papaya.” After four years in Colombia, it’s still not clear to me at what point someone is not “giving papaya,” but instead being robbed by a criminal. “Don’t give papaya” is what an American would call “victim blaming.” It’s a way of saying “if something bad happens to you, it’s your fault.” Deeper than that, “don’t give papaya” is a way of convincing oneself that there’s justice in what is sometimes an unjust world -- especially in a place like Colombia. Let’s be honest here. I don’t like the expression, but the Colombians have a point. Long before my System 1 was making poor decisions, my System 2 could have made better decisions. It’s not my fault that a man pulled a knife on me, but I’m the one who cut through the park at night. I’m the one who was seduced by the temperate air to walk home, instead of taking a taxi. Most important, I’m the one who has to live -- or not live, as it could have been -- with the consequences of each of those decisions. So, my fault or not, I’m going do things to prevent that from happening again. So, since that incident, I do things differently. I try to design so that System 1 doesn’t make bad decisions. I design for my dumber self. I took some Krav Maga classes, to help practice how I react in a panicked emotional state. I printed out paper backups of any two-factor authentication codes, so I worry less about losing my cell phone. I don’t walk through parks after dark, and I take taxis after 8pm. I don’t only design for my dumber self to prevent the situation I was in, but other potential situations. I only take taxis from apps, where I’ll have a record of the driver and plate. I’m sure to check the plate number on the app, and make sure it matches the car I’m getting into. This policy has led to at least one screaming match with an obstinate rideshare driver in the United States. I make decisions and policies with System 2, and I practice them. System 1 doesn’t get a chance to make a non-decision. I also design for my dumber self in matters that aren’t life or death. Habits, routines, and the way you shape your environment with System 2 can all prevent System 1 from making bad non-decisions. So, I deleted Twitter and Facebook from my phone. I use a newsfeed blocker on my desktop browser. I use the first hours of my day to do my most important work. Each Sunday, I plan my week ahead of time, to make sure I’m set up to address my top priorities. If I want to get some writing done, I don’t take my laptop to the cafe -- I only bring my iPad, and an external keyboard. I don’t give the papaya of my attention and focus to those who seek to juice it for all it’s worth. I use System 2, so System 1 won’t get me in trouble. I design for my dumber self. Image: The Age of Bronze, Auguste Rodin My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/design-dumber-self/

Things were not going well for Neil Pasricha (@NeilPasricha). He came home from work one day, and his wife told him she no longer loved him. Around that same time, Neil's best friend committed suicide. Neil needed something to lift his spirits. Something to remind him, every day, that there was something good in the world. That’s when Neil started his blog, 1,000 Awesome Things. At the end of each day, he wrote about one little awesome thing from life. Today, Neil has written several awesome books, including The Book of Awesome and Awesome is Everywhere. His blog, 1,000 Awesome Things was named Best Blog in the World two years in a row from International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, Neil is the Director of The Institute of Global Happiness, and he has a fantastic podcast called 3 Books, on which he’s interviewed titans such as Judy Blume, Malcolm Gladwell, and David Sedaris. Neil’s new book is You Are Awesome, and it’s all about resilience. In this conversation, you’ll learn: Neil says "You never know when you're making art, who in your own personal life is going to resonate with it.” What surprised Neil about the difference between running a blog, and a podcast. Neil also says "no one should be embarrassed of any book ever.” What is “book shame,” and why does Neil feel it should be wiped off the face of the planet. Neil also says "A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.” (And he admits he stole that from Game of Thrones). Hear the fascinating science behind how reading cultivates emotional intelligence. Listener Showcase June designs patterns for really cool crocheted figurines. I’ve seen them. They really are amazing. Check out June’s work at planetjune.com and on all of the socials at @PlanetJune. My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Sponsors https://honeybook.com/loveyourwork https://linkedin.com/loveyourwork Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/neil-pasricha/

There’s an expression, to burn your boats. It originated with a military strategy. Hernán Cortés famously “burned the boats,” after arriving in the New World to conquer the Aztec empire. (He actually “scuttled” his ships. He sunk them.) I recently burned my boats, when I killed off a $150,000 passive revenue stream. The birth of a passive income muse In March of 2007, I was sitting with some friends on the cable-locked chairs and tables – at two in the morning – on the porch of a closed restaurant in Austin, Texas. We were doing the kind of thing that we did at the time, after a night of parties at the SXSW conference: We’d sit around and talk about our ideas. Facebook and Twitter were still fringe services – most of the mainstream world knew nothing about them. The internet seemed full of opportunities. The subject of my dating life came up. I was terrible at finding a girlfriend, but I was good at finding dates. I described in great detail to my friends the way I had optimized my process of online dating. I had something to say about what you should write in your profile, what your pictures should be like, and what to say in your messages. I’ve since learned that this is the way I approach many things. I like to get deep into the details, to break it down into a framework, then do my best to explain it in a clear way. I thought I was talking about something very obvious or unexceptional, like tying your shoes, but my friends were on the edges of their seats. As was standard at SXSW at the time, whatever you talked about, there was an idea for a business there. “You HAVE to blog about this,” one friend said. Then, of course, the rest of them piled on. Now, almost 13 years later, I’ve made well over $150,000 off of the blog that I created because of that conversation. I burned my boats Last month, I killed this blog. I didn’t so much kill it as I let it expire. Literally, I simply let the domain expire. I burned my boats. At the height of this blog’s revenue, I earned $11,000 in one month. The amount of work I did on the blog during that month: approximately zero. It was a passive income “muse” as Tim Ferriss would call it. In the days before I killed this blog, I wasn’t earning near that much, but I was earning something. Why burn your boats? Intuitively, it makes no sense to burn your boats. Intuitively, it makes no sense to kill off a passive income stream. Something that’s earning you a profit, without you needing to do any work. But our intuitions aren’t always correct. Our intuitions sometimes see opportunity where there is no opportunity. Our intuitions sometimes see harm where there is no harm. Opportunity where there is no opportunity First, the opportunity where there was no opportunity. The revenue was way down on this site. I made maybe $300 in 2019 off of this site. But, I didn’t do any work on this site. I had a couple of opportunities there. I could invest some time, write a little content, build a few links, and maybe I could bring that revenue back up. I also could sell the site. I even had an interested buyer. But these opportunities weren’t the opportunities they seemed. This has a lot to do with the perception of harm where there is no harm. The real pain of loss aversion In behavioral economics, there’s the concept of “loss aversion.” That losses feel about twice as bad as gains feel good. Losing a $300 a year income stream feels about as bad as gaining a $600 a year income stream feels good. Which is to say that it hurt to kill off this passive income stream. But I reminded myself that the reality was probably not as bad as it actually felt. Added onto that hurt was that this passive income stream held a special emotional significance. This passive income stream made possible the business that I have today. The start I didn't have the heart for First of all, it wasn’t easy for my friends to convince me to start this blog. I didn’t write a book called The Heart to Start because starting things always came easily to me. I was full of objections. Primarily, I didn’t want to build a personal brand around online dating tips. I didn’t want to be known as the “online dating” guy. But my friends pushed me to start the blog. When I presented this objection, that I didn’t want to be the “online dating” guy, they said I could make up a name. So that’s what I did. I started the blog under a pseudonym on WordPress.com, and began to write. It wasn’t until I really got rolling that I even bothered to buy a domain, and eventually started hosting the blog on my own server. And I’m glad I got started. Early days So, I worked on this blog for about three years before I made any money on it. Yes, I knew that the revenue potential was there, but mostly it was something I did on the side. I enjoyed the freedom of writing under a pseudonym. I enjoyed the focus of writing on only one subject. Most of all, it was a good outlet for me. I’d come home from a disastrous or depressing date, and there’d be emails in my inbox. People telling me that my blog posts were helping them. I wasn’t writing anything risqué or manipulative or even ground-breaking. To me, it was common sense stuff – but it helped people, and that kept me going. Perfect timing When I did finally start making money from this blog, the timing could not have been better. November 22, 2010, is when I signed my contract to write Design for Hackers. That month, I made $659 from this blog. It wasn’t a lot, but I needed all of the extra money I could get. I had just spent three years on my own, searching for some idea that was closer to my core – something other than being the “online dating” guy – and I had just found it. I had written some blog posts about design, gotten a book deal, and eagerly signed the contract. I now had no clients. I had a meager first-time-author advance, and I had a book to write. If I missed a single deadline, I’d have to give back my advance. But writing a book is an all-consuming process, and I didn’t have the time nor energy to find some other way of bringing in income. Fortunately, that’s when this passive income muse took off. That November, I had made $659. In December, it went down to $517. But in January, the revenue skyrocketed. I made $1,799, then $1,856 in February. By April 2011, this site brought in $4,726. It was paying all of my living expenses. Meanwhile, I was finishing the first draft of my book, Design for Hackers. How did I make that much money? I talk more in-depth about this passive revenue stream in my course, Blog 2 BLING!, but the basic way this worked was that I was referring people to Match.com. At the time, if you searched for “match.com promo code,” my site was maybe the second or third result. I got 100% of the first purchase a customer made through my promo codes. If they signed up for six months for $120, I got $120. How passive income brought me closer to my core Yes, I could have doubled down on this site. Yes, I could have dropped the Design for Hackers thing, and made more money. But it wasn’t what I was passionate about. It wasn’t the intersection of my Love and Money Venn diagram. But, it did get me closer to that intersection. So, this passive income site meant a lot to me. If I hadn’t had that income coming in, I don’t know if there would have been a Design for Hackers. I wouldn’t have had the runway to get where I am today, where – as you can see in my monthly income reports – I’m keeping my head above water as an independent creator, living in South America. Losing opportunity to create opportunity So yeah, it hurt to let this site die. It also hurt to pass up what seemed like opportunities to revive the site, or at least sell it. And this is where the value of burning your boats comes in. It’s about opportunity costs. When you burn your boats, you can’t go back. When you burn your boats, you aren’t spending any energy thinking about your alternatives. When you burn your boats, you are committed to your mission. Yes, it’s nice to have something to fall back on. Yes, it’s nice to have your options open. You get something out of it. But sometimes you get more out of not having those options. Opportunity costs are something you might think about in investing. Say you’re returning 4% a year on an investment, with no chance of losing your money. Depending upon your strategy, you might want to keep your money there. But say there’s another investment with unlimited upside, and a chance of losing a good amount of your money. It might be worth it to take your money out of that 4% investment, and put it in the unlimited upside investment. But you only have so much money. At what point do you put it all in the unlimited upside investment? Yes, I could have spent some time and money trying to revive this site. I could have even given it to someone to manage it, for a revenue share. I would have made more money than I was making. But what would I have missed out on? How much better could I make my podcast with that time? How much progress could I make on my next book? What courses could I build with that time? Don't learn what you don't need to know Additionally, I could have sold the site. I would have to collect together all of the loose ends, collect the money, and make the hand-off. I would have had to do a process I hadn’t done before, and that I don’t plan to do in the future. I’m not in the business of flipping websites, so what’s the point of learning to sell a website. Not to mention that if I did sell the website, what might they do with the user data? What might they do with the brand that I created? In the end, it wasn’t worth it. A strategy for the scatterbrained At one point, this passive income stream got me where I wanted to go. Toward the end, it was doing little more than take up space in my mind. As I talked about on episode 180, I’m a “Perceiver” in Myers-Briggs. I see possibilities everywhere. I don’t want to close doors. I don’t want to let go of opportunities. I’m scatterbrained, I get shiny object syndrome. Can you relate? Where do you need to burn your boats? Something to think about: Where do you need to burn your boats? What opportunities do you have that are taking up mental space and other resources? What could you accomplish if you freed up that space? Burn your boats, burn your boats, burn your boats. Image: Worn Out, Vincent Van Gogh My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/killed-150k-passive-income/

How’s it going? Really, how are things going for you? If things are going pretty good, you might want to tear everything down, and start all over again. Nick Kokonas (@nickkokonas) is Co-Owner of The Alinea Group and CEO of Tock. The Alinea Group is a collection of restaurants Nick started with world-class chef Grant Achatz, including their first restaurant, Alinea – a three-Michelin-star restaurant that received the James Beard Foundation Award for Outstanding Restaurant in 2016. Alinea is also ranked in the top restaurants in the U.S. and the world on numerous lists, including World’s 50 Best Restaurants. Tock, Nick’s other company, is a reservation system for buying tickets to some of the best restaurants in the world. With Tock, Nick has completely re-thought the economics of restaurants, eliminating wasted seating inventory, and making available variable pricing based upon the popularity of reservation times. Nick is a truly original thinker. He’s demonstrated this on his appearances on some other podcasts, including The Tim Ferriss Show and Noah Kagan Presents. But this conversation is full of fresh insights, including: Nick says “people are far more afraid of success than failure.” What drives Nick to tear everything down and start over, even when things are going well? Nick also says "if you're trying to innovate. A/B Testing things as a terrible idea because people won't know what they want.” But there’s an important distinction he draws. Find out when he tests, and when he doesn’t. At Alinea, they intentionally make the first moments of dining there incredibly awkward. Seriously, I was cringing hearing him describe this. Nick said "there are people who hate us for it, and I'm okay with that.” Find out why. Thanks for sharing my work! On Instagram, thank you to @booknotes101 for doing a giveaway of The Heart to Start. Thank you also to @characelik, @5wisdomsproject, and of course @tomjepsoncreative. On Twitter, thank you to @mischievousmali, @geekosupremo, @Palle_Schmidt, @LouisSzabo, @LovinDaLife, and @LWCvL. Our Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/nick-kokonas/

Four years ago, almost to the day, I moved to Colombia. Four years ago, I decided to become a writer. Four years is how long it takes to get a college degree. Today, I’m graduating. It might seem strange that I didn’t think of myself as a writer. By the time I set out on this mission I had already written one best-selling book. But writing was still frightening to me. Every time I sat down to write, I felt a sense of agony and fear, and I wanted to run away. Today is my "graduation day" Now that I’ve dedicated myself to writing for the past four years, I feel confident in calling myself a writer. Since it takes four years to get a degree in something, I declare today, January 9th, 2020, to be my graduation day. Something to ask yourself as you listen to this: What transformation have you made? What commitments and changes and sacrifices did you make to make that transformation? My quest to becoming a writer took some big commitments, changes, and sacrifices – but by making these changes, I was getting something I wanted. Why I moved to Colombia to become a writer By moving to Colombia, I was doing two primary things things: One: I was choosing a place where I knew I could build routines I wanted to build to do the things I wanted to do. I wanted apply the things I had learned about how to be more productive in producing creative work. Second, really, wrapped up in the idea of being able to build the routines I wanted to build, was a behavior-shaping constraint: By moving to Colombia, I was also moving myself far away from distractions. When I lived in Chicago, for example, I could easily fly across the country on a whim, just because there was a neat conference going on, I got a speaking opportunity (usually not paying much, if at all), or even a friend was having a cocktail party in New York. But now I can’t fly to any major U.S. city on a whim. From Medellín, I have to connect through Miami or Panama City. What might have been a two-hour journey, now is usually seven at the least. Sometimes I even have to spend the night at a hotel in a connecting city to get to my destination. That extra friction means that if I want to go somewhere, I better have a damn good reason. Instead, I stay where I am, and I write. Another thing I did to make myself a writer was I started wearing really ridiculous glasses. Friends made fun of me, and some people straight up told me that I looked ugly in the glasses, but I didn’t care. It was what I was going for, honestly. I was using my manner of dress to influence my behavior. As I talked about on episode 172, I was changing my identity so that I could change my actions. Now that I’ve done the action a lot, my identity is solidified. I was very strict with how my habits and routines helped me write for the past four years. I made sure to not waste any time in beginning to write each day. I didn’t eat breakfast, I didn’t shower. I simply put on some comfortable clothes, meditated, then sat down to write. For the first few hours of each day, I made sure to face a blank wall (which I talked about on episode 46). I knew the morning was my most creative time, but it was also my least-disciplined time. I needed to face a blank wall so I could be sure not to get distracted. My identity as a writer wasn’t solidified. Each time I sat down to write, I wondered whether I would manage to write anything at all. After four years, I can finally say "I am a writer." Here's what that changes Now, four years after I started this mission, I declare that I am a writer. I have graduated. I no longer wear the dorky glasses. Much of the time, I even wear contacts (You’ll never convince me to voluntarily slice my eyes to fix my vision). Each morning, I no longer face the blank wall. I no longer put in ear plugs. I know that I am a writer, so I know that I can write, and I’m not in a panic each morning trying to convince myself that I can write. After I meditate, I take a shower, put on some less-comfortable clothes, and go to a cafe. Even with noise and people, and even though I’m groggy, my writing muscle is strong enough that I can write. Sometimes I do have trouble getting started, and I want to put in ear plugs, but just as a challenge, I won’t put them in and I’ll see if I can write even with all of the conversations going on around me (It helps, by the way, that most of those conversations are in Spanish, which is not my native language. If I hear a conversation going on in English near me, it’s much harder.) Many things that I picked up while transforming myself into a writer, I still do. I still try to choose a tool that will reduce distraction. Right now, my favorite writing tool is an iPad with an external keyboard – one that actually plugs in. I still manage my work according to mental states. I still don’t eat breakfast. But I simply have more comfort and confidence in my ability to write. I know that I wrote yesterday. I know that I wrote every day for a thousand days before that. I know I can write today. Other self-education projects This isn’t the first time, by the way, that I’ve created a self-education program for myself. Way back on episode 52, you heard me talk about my $40,000 DIY MBA. When I got fired from my job, I considered going to business school. Then, I thought to myself, Would I rather spend a bunch of money to earn a degree? Or would I rather spend a bunch of money to build a business? I could learn in the process of building that business, I figured. I decided to cash out a good portion of my retirement portfolio – $40,000 – and give myself the freedom to teach myself. That $40,000 bought me a year of exploration. By the time that year was over, I could support myself with my business. And that business continues to teach me new things. In fact, I often refer to my own business as a Personal PhD program. I may not be expanding the bounds of all human knowledge, but I am expanding the bounds of my own knowledge. It’s like a PhD in my own curiosity. So, I declare that today, January 9, 2020 is my graduation day. I may have written a lot before, but from today on, I am officially a writer. What's your graduation day? Here’s something worth asking yourself: What skills have you picked up, what transformations have you made, without acknowledging them? In this world, we have fewer and fewer rites of passage. We have fewer ceremonies. We have fewer opportunities to reflect upon what we’ve achieved, to throw away or burn our old shoes, and step into our new shoes. It’s a powerful thing to do. As we go into this New Year, take some time to reflect. What were you once afraid of that you are no longer afraid of? What did you once do as an amateur, that you now do as a pro? What’s your graduation day? Image: Maternity, by Mary Cassatt My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/graduation-day/

This is the time of year when we make resolutions. Very few of us will actually keep them. The reason we can’t keep resolutions is that resolutions don’t work. We would be better at reaching their goals if they built habits, instead. BJ Fogg (@bjfogg) is a behavioral scientist at Stanford University. He specializes in “Behavior Design.” BJ has a new book coming out, right now in the beginning of 2020. It’s called Tiny Habits. I wanted to have him back on the show to announce the book. But then I realized that this episode on how to build good habits is so good that it’s worth running again. Here’s what you’ll learn: You need to pick habits with the right characteristics to be successful in building those habits. What are the components of a habit that will stick? What are the most common mistakes people make in trying to build habits? You've probably heard that it takes 21 days to build a habit. That's actually a myth. How long does it really take to build a habit? Our Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Sponsors https://honeybook.com/loveyourwork Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/bj-fogg-bestof/

Socializing is good. But socializing as a default – out of some Fear of Missing Out – is not good. David's voice double fills in for him once again – and it's getting better. Image: Still Life With a Burning Candle, Pieter Claesz Our Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/art-staying-in-bestof/

Twelve years ago, David met Rob Hunter (@vegashacker) on Craigslist. They had both left their jobs at the same time. They were both determined to make it. So, David and Rob spent several months wandering from cafe to cafe in San Francisco. They put in twelve hour days, not making a dime. David says it was one of the most exciting times of his life. Today, David has this podcast, best-selling books, and lives in South America. Today, Rob is one half of Focused Apps, makers of hit iOS games including Hit Tennis and Emoji Me, which has more than 40 million downloads. Our Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/tale-two-bootstrappers-bestof/

Here’s an essay from a few years ago. It helps explain why David likes to step back from his work during the final weeks of the year. Puny humans. Also, for the first time ever, hear David Kadavy's voice double, created using Descript's "Overdub". Image: Pere Magloire on the Road to Saint-Clair, Etretat, Gustave Caillebotte Our Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondaysss About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/see-you-next-year-bestof/

I decided last December that I would be taking this December off. I like to give myself some space toward the end of the year so I can recharge, and come into the New Year with a fresh perspective. So, I’m reaching into the vault of more than 200 episodes, and pulling out some of my favorites – especially ones that are good for this time of year. This is a fantastic conversation with Sean Stephenson, and it takes on special significance this time around. Though what you’re going to hear is the only conversation I ever had with Sean Stephenson, I always felt a special connection with him. So when I discovered that he was born exactly one day after me, it seemed fitting. When this episode debuted, my mother sent me a text message. She said, “Listening to interview with Sean Stephenson on my walk. Very good. I was struck at the very beginning that he was born the day after you, and what a different experience his parents were thrust into.” When Sean Stephenson was born, he wasn’t expected to make it through the night. He was born with brittle bone disorder. Throughout his life, he suffered hundreds of bone fractures. Even as an adult, his limbs were twisted, he never grew larger than three feet tall, and he was confined to a wheelchair. In July, I rushed from Medellin to Scottsdale to be by my mother’s bedside. She had suffered a brain hemorrhage, and – as you may have heard on other episodes – she later died. About a month and a half later on August 29th, I was still in Scottsdale – where, it happens, Sean Stephenson also lived. I was sitting in a cafe, and I took a break from writing to open up Instagram. And I was instantly saddened more than I was already. The first photo in my feed was of Sean, and it said “in memoriam, Sean Stephenson 1979–2019”. His wife, Mindy, had posted it that morning. When Sean Stephenson was born, he wasn’t expected to make it through the night. But he made it through forty years. In those years, through his work as a therapist and through his writing and public speaking, Sean inspired a ton of people. I was one of them, and when I returned to my parents house, from the cafe, I saw one of Sean’s books sitting on the shelf. Get off Your "But”. My mother had bought it after hearing Sean on the show, so I guess he inspired her, too. Listening to this conversation in preparation for writing this intro was even more powerful than it was the first time around. I always try to get a superpower from my guests, and listening again helped me realize that I had internalized some of the lessons I learned from Sean. Mostly that Sean has a way of helping you realize the limiting beliefs you put on yourself. The ways that you tell yourself you’re the victim. The scapegoats you create, on whom you can blame your shortcomings and failures. I always felt there was something messed up about that: Sean was dealt a tough hand in life, and so now I feel better about my own situation? That does sound messed up, but it works. And now that Sean is gone, this conversation serves as another reminder. A reminder to make the most of each day you’re here on this earth. Sean did that. I’m trying. One fun thing I didn’t realize until I listened to this conversation again: In this conversation, Sean recommends the book One Small Step. One Small Step is of course the book by Dr. Rober Maurer, who you heard on episode 187. That episode is a hit. It’s worth listening to. I had discovered Dr. Maurer’s work through another channel. It made me realize there’s so much valuable knowledge in the Love Your Work catalog. Even listening to each of these conversations several times, there’s always something new to discover. So if you’re craving new episodes, try re-listening to some of your old favorites, as we head into the new year. Our Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondayss About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Sponsors https://honeybook.com/loveyourwork Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/sean-stephenson-memory/

In the 1840’s Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis noticed a pattern. He noticed that too many new mothers were dying of a fever. And it didn’t seem like a coincidence to him that many of these women who were dying shortly after childbirth had something in common. The doctors who delivered their babies had just performed autopsies. The death rate – by this fever – of new mothers, whose babies were delivered by doctors who had just handled dead bodies, was sometimes over thirty percent! That’s incredibly high, even by the standards of the 1840’s. The death rate of this clinic, where doctors performed autopsies and delivered babies, was so high that some women gave birth on the street, rather than go to this clinic. So Dr. Semmelweis performed an experiment. He tried one simple thing. This one simple thing dropped the death rate from this fever from the double digits to the single digits. Some months the death rate was zero! The one simple thing Dr. Semmelweis did: After doctors were done performing autopsies, before they delivered babies – he had them wash their hands. Today, Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis is recognized as a pioneer in antiseptic procedures. I wish I could tell you the same was true during his lifetime. Instead, he was ridiculed. He lost his job. He eventually moved away. Nearly twenty years after his experiment, Dr. Semmelweis still couldn’t convince most of the medical community to wash their hands. He was committed to a mental institution, where he died fourteen days later, after being beaten by guards. The guards didn’t beat Dr. Semmelweis to death, though. You can’t make up cruel irony like this. He died from an infection in his wounds – an infection which could have been prevented with antiseptic treatment. The antiseptic treatment for which he is now known as a pioneer. Image: The Death of Marat, Jacques-Louis David Our Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Sponsors https://offgridmindfulness.com Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/cell-phone-emfs/

On July 4th of this year, I was finally hitting my stride. After a year of visa troubles, I had secured a three-year visa. I was finally back in the writing rhythm I had been in before my visa troubles started. Things had been fucked, and they had become unfucked. Little did I know, everything was about to get even more fucked than it was before. One thing that got me through the fuckedness that ensued – you’ll hear about it in this conversation – was that I had read Everything is F*cked, by Mark Manson (@iammarkmanson). In this conversation, you’ll learn: How can a book called Everything is F*cked possibly be, as the subtitle promises, A Book About Hope? Everything being fucked doesn’t require hope. Hope requires everything to be fucked. I’ve talked before on the show about living an “antifragile” life. Learn how to avoid having what Mark calls “fragile values." Mark says “if there’s no reason to live, then there’s no reason to not live.” How can what Mark calls “the uncomfortable truth,” be liberating, instead of deflating? Photo by Maria Midoes Listener Showcase Palle Schmidt has a new book, SOLO - Survival Guide for Creative Freelancers. Palle is giving it away to Love Your Work listeners, for a limited time. Check it out at http://bit.ly/kadavy Our Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »      Sponsors https://offgridmindfulness.com http://linkedin.com/loveyourwork Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/mark-manson-everything-fucked/

You are what you surround yourself with. When your environment changes, your mind changes with it. We recently talked about how your environment can put you in a creative mental state, when we talked to Donald M. Rattner, on episode 201. But what about the objects you surround yourself with? They’re a part of your environment, too. The devices we use are a part of our environment, and the devices we use affect our mental state, too. We’re already pretty intentional about how we change our environment for the exact activities we’re doing. You cook in your kitchen, and you sleep in your bed. You wouldn’t sleep in your kitchen, so why do you meditate with your smartphone? Image: View Across the Bay, Juan Gris Thanks for sharing my work! Thanks to the 80,000 Hours podcast for syndicating my conversation with Rob Wiblin to their podcast. Thanks to the Traction Growth & Income podcast for interviewing me. Thanks to the Big Gay Author podcast for mentioning my interview with Robbie Abed. On Twitter, thank you to @mrlacey, @giftedguru, @LWCvL, @dbarrant, @kierantie, and @thepixelgrid. On Facebook, thank you to Sean Corbett. On Instagram, thank you to @jamesonbairesq, and @realba88. Our Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Sponsors https://offgridmindfulness.com Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/dont-meditate-smartphone/

Dan Ariely (@danariely) has more opportunities than he knows what to do with. As a James B. Duke professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University and author of New York Times best-selling books, such as Predictably Irrational, he has lots of demands on his time. Dan has to say “no” to a lot of opportunities that don’t have a clear payoff. But, surprisingly, he also says “no” to a lot of opportunities that do have a clear payoff. That’s because, as Dan tells us in this conversation, he gambles with his time. He intentionally does some small amount of things that don’t have a clear payoff. In order to have the space and time for those gambles, he needs to say “no” to some sure bets. In this episode, we’ll learn more about how Dan gambles with his time. We’ll also learn: How did “gambling” with his time lead Dan to publish his exciting new graphic novel, Amazing Decisions: The Illustrated Guide to Improving Business Deals and Family Meals? The creative process for Dan’s new graphic novel is a big departure from that of his research papers and books. How did he navigate the uncertainty when collaborating with an artist? With everything Dan knows about human behavior, how does he design his habits, rituals and routines to optimize creative output and spark motivation? This isn’t the typical conversation with the living legend of behavioral science, Dan Ariely. If you want to know more about his groundbreaking work on irrationality, check out our first conversation on episode 51. A quick note here: Dan and I talk about “Timeful” a number of times throughout this conversation. If you’re not familiar, Timeful was a productivity app that Dan and I collaborated on. It later sold to Google and some of the Timeful features are integrated into Google Calendar. Our Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondayss About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Sponsors https://offgridmindfulness.com https://honeybook.com/loveyourwork Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/dan-ariely/

Over the past four years, I’ve been trying to “make it” as a creator. Yes, I was on my own for another eight years before that, but this past four years has been when I really doubled down on creating. To make the things I create not just a marketing tactic for some other thing. For the creations themselves to be the thing. Each month for the past two years of this journey, I’ve been reporting my income on my blog, kadavy.net. Sometimes, it’s been pretty embarrassing. These aren’t your usual income reports, where someone reports making six or seven figures in a single month. These are the income reports of a creator struggling to make it. This week, I’d like to give you a preview. This is a preview of something you get at some levels of Patreon backing. An audio version of my income report, delivered right to your favorite podcast app through your own private RSS feed. These income reports are where I think out loud about why I do one thing, or why I don’t do another thing. Hear how I build this business. Hear the exact thinking behind my decision-making, as it happens. This is the income report for August of this year. By the time you hear this, the income report for September will be out, too. If you’d like to hear it, just go to patreon.com/kadavy, and look for the proper backing level. I would appreciate your support so much. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/income-report-patreon-preview/ 

Donald M. Rattner (@donaldrattner) is an architect, and author of My Creative Space: How to Design Your Home to Stimulate Ideas and Spark Innovation. I’ve talked a lot on this podcast about matching your work to your mental state. If you’re in the mood to do the work you’re doing, everything is going to be easier. But you can also match your mental state to the work. You can change your mental state so the work you need to be doing gets done. One powerful way to change your mental state is to change your surroundings. If you design your space to think more creatively, for example, you’ll do better creative work. In My Creative Space, Donald draws upon mountains of research from the field of environmental psychology, to show you how to change your space to change your creativity. In this conversation, you’ll learn: How has the field of environmental psychology shown how the spaces where you work can change everything from your thinking to your physiology? Research shows that the optimal light level for creativity is 150 lux, and the optimal noise level for creativity is 70 dB. Just how bright and loud is that, and why does it work? Travel posters – especially vintage travel posters – may help you think more creatively. Donald explains why – when it comes to creativity – “construal level theory” (something you might remember from my conversation with David Rock) favors things far away in distance and time. This conversation is packed with knowledge, and so is Donald’s book. Image: The Moneylender and His Wife, Quentin Massy New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Sponsors https://kadavy.net/motivation Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/donald-m-rattner/

If you had asked me when I first started Love Your Work why I was doing it, I don’t think I could have given you a straight answer. I simply felt compelled to create a podcast. Sometimes it’s through the act of creation that we discover what it is that we’re creating. This is a special 200th episode of Love Your Work. Over the past four years, I’ve been on my own creative journey in making this show. Today I want to reflect on that journey – share what I’ve learned along the way, and hopefully that will reflect some of what you’ve learned. I didn’t know for sure why I was starting Love Your Work when I first started, but if you were to ask me NOW why I started Love Your Work, I’d tell you that it’s because I was struggling with a conflict. It’s a conflict that you might struggle with yourself. On one side of the conflict is who you are expected to be. On the other side of the conflict is who you really are. The process of self-actualization – the process of “making it”, is a process of becoming that person who you really are, through your creative work. Image: The Nap, Gustave Caillebotte Music in this episode by MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License: "Perspectives", "Nowhere Land", "Satiate Strings", "Inspired", "Immersed", and "Prelude and Action". New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/200th-episode/

Scott H. Young (@scotthyoung) is best known for learning the entire MIT Computer Science curriculum, on his own, in only a year. He did it through “ultralearning” It’s a way of organizing your learning so each moment you spend learning is much more effective than it would be otherwise. If you’re like me, you love to learn new things. If you’re like me, you’d also like to learn more in a shorter amount of time. In Ultralearning, Scott shares how to break down learning projects into their component parts, and how to choose the most effective ways of learning each of those individual parts. In this conversation, you’ll learn about: How can “meta learning” – or planning your learning projects – make the process more enjoyable, and prevent burnout and procrastination? Learn why when you feel like you’re learning more, you may actually be learning less. Which is right for you? Free recall, or repeated review? If you’re like me, the term “ultralearning” may sound a little exhausting. Learn how you can apply ultralearning principles to even the most casual learning projects. You can use ultralearning principles to learn a new language, learn to dance, or to get more bang for your career-building buck. Thanks for sharing my work! On Twitter, @martinstellar, @DaveCohencomedy, @kosherjellyfish, @mischievousmali. On Instagram, @alexandbooks_, @icoknick, @nathan.guitar. Elsewhere, thank you to Al Chen for building the todos by mental state Coda template, and Mavericks Thoughts for including me in the article, How 10 Top Writers on Medium Start Their Day. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Sponsors http://linkedin.com/loveyourwork https://kadavy.net/motivation Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/scott-h-young/

  If you’re going to get an edge, you have to be aware that the prevailing wisdom is almost always wrong. You have to know when to go against that wisdom. One place I’m glad that I went against the prevailing wisdom is in my decision to not buy a house – especially when I was in my early twenties. The prevailing wisdom was that a house was “the best investment you can make.” Instead, I decided to invest in myself. This post is from more than ten years ago, and it’s talking about decisions I made fifteen years ago, which makes this a fun episode for two reasons. One, I wish I would have had more confidence in my point of view earlier on. I was definitely onto something. I’m always struggling to trust my instincts, and this is a good reminder that my instincts have been right at least one time in the past. Two, I’m reading this as it was written ten years ago. Notice that my writing style has gotten much better – my writing was definitely not as audio-friendly, but I’ll be reading it as it was written. I wasn’t a good “prompt talker” as I call it. Lots more ten-cent words in this one. Image: The Open Window, Juan Gris New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/self-investment-podcast/

When something bad happens, it’s tempting to think that you made a bad decision. But the quality of your decision making doesn’t always align with the quality of your outcomes. Sometimes you make a good decision, and you have a bad outcome. Even more dangerous, sometimes you make a bad decision, and have a good outcome (you'll learn why). Annie Duke (@AnnieDuke) is a former professional poker player, and a decision strategist. She's dedicated to improving decision-making skills around the world amongst adults and children. She’s author of Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts. In this conversation, you’ll learn: We often think of life as like a game of chess. Why is it actually more like a game of poker? How do we separate luck from skill? Learn the most common mental error people make that holds them back from ever learning to make better decisions. Why do strong opinions make you dumber? Learn how to overcome “motivated reasoning” to make more accurate predictions, and better decisions. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »      Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/annie-duke/

We hate to lose. But if we don’t take risks in life, we never win. The more we protect ourselves from loss, the more we stagnate. Like economist Tyler Cowen told me, if you want to be “dynamic,” you have to develop a thick skin. I’ve been thinking more and more lately about the importance of having a thick skin. The importance of being – Antifragile. I’ll tell you more about it in this week’s episode. Image from: Head of a skeleton with a burning cigarette, Vincent Van Gogh New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/antifragile-life-podcast/

What if your smartphone didn’t distract you? What if your focus couldn’t be shaken by social media, by the latest news story, or even by your coworkers? What if you could be indistractable? Imagine what you could accomplish. Nir Eyal's (@nireyal) new book will help you do just that. Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life will lead you away from dis-traction, so you can get traction. You may remember Nir being on Love Your Work a couple of times before. We talked about the societal implications of distracting technology more than three years ago, on episode 21. And now he’s back to show you how to fight back distractions – whatever the source. In this conversation, you’ll learn: Nir wrote the Bible on building habit-forming products: Hooked is a Wall Street Journal best-seller. So why would he also write the book on how to avoid being distracted by these products? How can you reimagine distraction to short-circuit it at its source? Nir helps you redesign your triggers, your task, and your temperament. Why is the myth of multitasking a myth in itself? Nir shows you how “multichannel multitasking” can help you do two things at once while being as focused as ever. Links Nir mentions: Schedule-maker tool Distraction guide Full disclosure, Nir is a book marketing client of mine. I consulted for him on some marketing tasks for this book, Indistractable. Of course, I rarely take clients, and I only did so because I respect Nir so much as an author and a thinker, and because I loved the book! Thanks for sharing my work! On Twitter, @noidentity_uk, @MPozdnev, and @JeffPossiel. On Instagram, @tomjepsoncreative. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/nir-eyal-indistractable/

To make it as a creative, you need to make the most of very limited resources. Your most valuable resource as a creative is your creative energy. You only have so much creative energy, but if you use that energy wisely, you can be leaps and bounds more productive than you could be otherwise. To manage your creative energy well, be intentional about how you use it. One way to be intentional about how you use your creative energy is to categorize and label different types of creative energy. Today, I introduce two types of creative energy. “Front burner” creativity, and “back burner” creativity. If you think of your creative energy in terms of “front burner” and “back burner,” you can have more creative output on your smaller projects, while still tackling those bigger projects – all without procrastinating or burning out. I’ll tell you more in this week’s episode. Image: Guitar and Music Paper, Juan Gris New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/front-burner-creativity/

Robbie Abed (@robbieab) is author of Fire Me I Beg You: Quit Your Miserable Job (Without Risking it All). Robbie is also one of the early influencers on LinkedIn's publishing platform, he’s had over 500 coffee meetings, and he's one of the key catalysts – along with James Altucher – behind why this podcast exists at all. (You’ll hear the story.) How would you feel if you got fired today? If the answer is “relieved,” you should re-think your job. I took a short visit to Chicago, and sat down with longtime friend Robbie Abed. In this conversation, you’ll learn; Thinking about quitting your job? What’s one question you should ask yourself to know if you should pull the trigger? How do you quit your job without committing career suicide? Robbie says “Never lie on your resume, but lie like hell in your exit interview.” Find out why. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »

Have you ever wondered to yourself: How the the hell did I end up in this situation? I asked myself this question once. I was changing my clothes in the bathroom of a filthy Fuck My Life laundromat in Chicago. It was a terrible situation. But I learned an important lesson. I’ll tell you about it in this week’s episode. Image from: A Bar at the Foiles-Bergére, Edouard Manet New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays Listener Showcase This week, we’re featuring Luke Freeman of positly.com. Positly.com is a platform for recruiting and managing research participants. Sign up to be featured at kadavy.net/showcase About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/problems-worth-having-podcast/

Ryan Evans (@ryanevans) wanted to make easy money. Growing up on a pig farm, Ryan was used to making little money for lots of hard work. But Ryan would soon learn an important lesson about the dangers of easy money. This is, in my opinion, the most powerful conversation I’ve had on the show yet. In it, we’ll talk about: Are there good ways to make money, and bad ways to make money? Ryan’s hard lesson gives him a unique perspective that few people have. Hear the story of what it’s like to get investigated by the SEC for insider trading. What’s it like to serve hard time for making easy money? If you’ve ever wondered what federal prison was like, Ryan will tell you. I had to cut a third of this conversation out, in order to fit our production budget. We pay by the minute for editing, so there isn’t room for the whole thing. Patreon supporters got access to the raw uncut conversation weeks ago, delivered straight to their favorite podcast apps. Support Love Your Work on Patreon to hear the whole thing, and get other goodies in the process. Join at patreon.com/kadavy. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »

You may have heard that you should assign yourself an “aspirational hourly rate.” That you should tell yourself you’re worth, say, $300 an hour; and if you can spend $300 to save yourself an hour, you should do so. That’s a powerful idea for making the most of your time and energy, but is all of your time equally valuable? In this week’s essay, I propose a variable money value for your time. Image: Glass and Checkerboard, Juan Gris Thanks for sharing my work! On Twitter, @EvryLovelyThing and @tchassakamga. On Instagram, tomjepsoncreative of The Sideman Designer podcast. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/variable-money-value-time/

Rob Wiblin (@robertwiblin) is the Director of Research at an organization called 80,000 Hours, and host of the 80,000 Hours Podcast. 80,000 hours being the amount of hours you will spend working in a typical career. 80,000 Hours is dedicated to finding out just how effective various careers are, and who is suited for those careers. We all want the work we do to matter. But how do we really know whether the work we do does matter? The foundation of 80,000 Hours is a philosophy called Effective Altruism. The EA community asks tough questions about what are the most important issues facing humanity, and how best to address those issues. EA tends to come up with counterintuitive conclusions that go against most people’s first instincts. You’re going to hear some of those counterintuitive conclusions. You’re also going to learn: Why did Rob insist on having a much longer conversation than the typical one-hour conversation you hear here on Love Your Work? He has data to back up his suggestion. Why should you stop listening to your gut instincts about what actions have an impact? Following the research can increase your impact a thousand times over. Why are the highest-profile issues some of the last issues you should be giving your attention to? Rob provides a framework for making the most of your money, time, and attention. This is a much longer conversation than usual. I’d like to thank Rob Wiblin and 80,000 Hours for offering to cover the extra production costs over our usual shorter conversations. We pay by the minute, and they were happy to chip in to make this conversation more in-depth. You’ll find out why early on in the conversation. Links mentioned The benefits (and lack of harm) of nicotine Nature.com: Impact of plastic straw ban on oral health advice? Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean by Jambeck et al,. Science (2015) What you think about landfill and recycling is probably totally wrong by Rob Wiblin Population ethics Population axiology The Non-Identity Problem How many lives does a doctor save? Simplifying Cluelessness, by Philip Trammell Crucial Considerations and Wise Philanthropy, by Nick Bostrom A year’s worth of education for under a dollar and other ‘best buys’ in development, from the UK aid agency’s Chief Economist 80,000 Hours Key Ideas New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/robert-wiblin-interview/  

We’re so accustomed to operating in a time management world, we can’t imagine it being any different. We all have our calendars full, and even then we can’t seem to manage it all. Believe it or not, it wasn’t always this way, and if you want to stay relevant in the coming years, I think you’ll have to learn to operate under a completely different paradigm. We need to stop thinking so much about how to better manage our time, and start thinking about how to better manage our minds. I’ll tell you more in this week’s episode. Photo by milan degraeve on Unsplash. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays Listener Showcase Vidas Pinkevicius is not only one of our top-contributing Patreon backers, he’s also an organist who draws. Vidas is author of Pinky and Spiky comics. You can check out his work on Steemit. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »   Show notes: >http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/mind-management-world-podcast/

Dr. Robert Maurer (@Dr_RobertMaurer) is author of One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way. He’s also Director of Behavioral Sciences for the Family Practice Residency Program at Santa Monica UCLA Medical Center and a faculty member with the UCLA School of Medicine. In One Small Step, Dr. Maurer shows you how to make really big changes with ridiculously small steps. I first discovered One Small Step on the Amazon page for my own book, The Heart to Start. Amazon kept showing me that people who bought my book were also buying Robert’s book. After it had been sitting there for week after week, I thought to myself, I’ve gotta see what this is about. You’ve heard me talk about taking small steps on this podcast, including my episode on how to build good habits with B.J. Fogg. It turns out there’s a name for this practice. The Japanese call it Kaizen. In this conversation, you’ll learn about: How do large goals put us into fear mode? Learn about the neuroscience of why we don’t take actions. How can you start doing anything with small steps? You can start an exercise habit simply by standing on a treadmill, or a flossing habit while flossing only one tooth. How did Dr. Maurer himself write his book by committing to only ninety seconds per day of writing? Support the show Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon » New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/robert-maurer-kaizen/

Breaking through resistance to be creative is a battle with your own mind. We learned last week from Dr. Robert Lustig about how commerce is set up to hack your mind into a state of constant wanting, wanting, wanting. But the more you seek satisfaction from the outside world, the harder time you’ll have finding it. That’s why I think you should shut off the consumer mind, and fire up the creator mind. Photo by Paul Skorupskas on Unsplash Thanks for sharing my work! On Instagram, tammylynnmcnabb, and tomjepsoncreative of The Sideman Designer podcast. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger     Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/creator-mind-podcast/

Dr. Robert Lustig (@RobertLustigMD) is Professor emeritus of Pediatrics, Division of Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), where he specializes in the field of neuroendocrinology – in other words, how the brain regulates hormonal activity in the body. His research and clinical practice has focused on childhood obesity and diabetes. Dr. Lustig believes the food business has hacked our bodies and minds to pursue pleasure instead of happiness, by pushing processed food loaded with sugar. As you’ll see, the way sugar triggers our brain chemistry isn’t a whole lot different from the way technology triggers our brain chemistry, which is relevant to prior discussions I’ve had on the podcast about how technology shapes behavior. Dr. Lustig points to this confusion between pleasure and happiness as having fostered today’s epidemics of addiction and depression. Getting your creative work out into the world, and finding a way to love your work, both require that you have a healthy relationship with your mind, and your definition of happiness. This is why I was extremely excited to come across Dr. Lustig’s book, The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains. It really brought a scientific explanation to much of what I’ve been searching to explain here on Love Your Work over the past few years. In this conversation, you’ll learn: Why are pleasure and happiness neurologically different phenomenon? How do we confuse them for one another? How does the pursuit of pleasure reduce your ability to experience pleasure? The more pleasure you pursue, the harder it becomes to be happy. You’ve heard that Coca Cola used to have one addictive substance in it – cocaine. Hear the story Coke doesn’t want you to know about why the original formula had FOUR addictive substances. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/robert-lustig-podcast/ #share2steem

Curiosity is powerful fuel. If you want to make it as a creative, you need to follow things you’re curious about. It’s your best shot at being able to put in the work necessary to succeed. But curiosity can be so powerful, it can take you off track. In this week’s article, learn how to use curiosity strategically. You can harness the fuel of curiosity while driving toward your goals. Image by Steve Johnson New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays Listener Showcase Frafri makes “music for entrepreneurs.” Visit frafri.com to find all of the places you can listen. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/strategic-curiosity-podcast/

We’re living in a time of exciting technological innovation. But just because technology can do something for us, doesn’t mean that it should. Cal Newport is author of the new book Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World. Digital Minimalism is a philosophy of using the power of technology only in the ways it serves us best, while eliminating use of technology in ways it harms us, or even in ways it only has a marginal benefit. Aside from Digital Minimalism, Cal Newport is an extremely prolific author. He’s written books such as So Good They Can’t Ignore You, Deep Work, and How to Become a Straight-A Student. He’s a tenured computer science professor at Georgetown University. Cal has accomplished all of this in spite of – or maybe because – he’s never had a single social media account. This is a fantastic conversation with Cal. He and I overlap a lot in our interests, so I was very eager to discuss with him the implications of technology usage, and also to dig deeper into his relationship with Deep Work. As you know if you listen to Love Your Work regularly, I’m always searching for ways to get more out of my mind, and to maintain a healthy relationship with technology that helps me get more creative work into the world, without distracting me from doing that creative work. In this conversation, you’ll learn: How did we all get so addicted to Facebook? For many of us, it was an accident. For Facebook, it was no accident. How do Amish communities survive, despite being surrounded by a world with a rapid pace of technological innovation? It’s all about using technology for its benefits, without damaging the community. Cal goes beyond "Deep Work” to talk about the different “flavors” of Deep Work he uses to power his wildly successful career as both an academic and an author. Links and resources mentioned Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport Tragedy of the commons Ten arguments for deleting your social media accounts right now by Jaron Lanier Pavlok Mouse Book Club Moleskine Medieval Technology and Social Change by Lynn White Technological instrumentalism Technological determinism Dynamical system Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport The Hedgehog and The Fox So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love by Cal Newport Cal Newport Photo Credit: Penny Gray Photography New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative entrepreneur. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/cal-newport-podcast-interview/

If you want to be a master of your craft, you need to be able to see your skills and accomplishments objectively. You need to always be on the lookout for ways you might fool yourself – for ways you might cause yourself to feel as if you have accomplished something, when in fact you have accomplished nothing. One of the ways you can distort your vision of the truth is by identifying too strongly with the place you live. I talk about it in this week’s article. Thanks for sharing my work! Thank you to the Meshed Society Newsletter; to @LivC2012, @rhysbmorgan, and @wes_mister on Twitter; and to @Aliceswalsh and @Maxam1 on Instagram. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative entrepreneur. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/stop-loving-city-podcast/

Eric Zimmer (@etzimmer) was living in a van. He had Hepatitis C and weighed 100 pounds. Then he got arrested and lost his job. He was facing up to forty years in jail time. He had a $300-a-day addiction to heroin. Today, Eric is host of the popular podcast, The One You Feed, which was named one of the best podcasts on iTunes in 2014, and has more than 10 million downloads. The One You Feed is based upon an old parable about a good wolf and a bad wolf at battle inside each of us. The one who wins is the one you feed. Eric straightened out his life and has overcome addiction. He helps others not only through The One You Feed, but also through behavioral coaching work. How did Eric go from a $300-a-day heroin addiction to 13 years clean and sober? We’ll find out today. We’ll also talk about: The delicate relationship between creative pursuit and self image. How can creativity become a scapegoat for self-destruction, or a vehicle for self improvement? How was Eric able to integrate friendship and his love for music into his podcast? The One You Feed helps him feed his “good wolf."" Why is Eric grateful that he was drawn to heroin? Counterintuitively, the victory of a ""bad wolf” can spring the “good wolf” into action. Links and resources mentioned One You Feed Podcast The Two Wolves parable Keith Richards Kurt Cobain Vincent van Gogh Leonard Cohen Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Arthur Ashe What should be our next Patreon goal? Take our survey at kadavy.net/goals. Start supporting Love Your Work at patreon.com/kadavy. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative entrepreneur. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/one-you-feed-podcast-eric-zimmer/

I often have listeners write to me, lamenting that they have “too many interests,” or that they “lack focus.” They’ve been taught to feel ashamed of their curiosity. It’s interesting, the personality types of “introvert” and “extrovert” get a lot of attention. But I think equally as important is the difference between “perceiver” and “judger.” What is that? Well those hopelessly curious people, they would fall into the perceiver category, and they should stop feeling ashamed about it. I’ll tell you more in this week’s article. What should be our next Patreon goal? Take our survey at kadavy.net/goals. Start supporting Love Your Work at patreon.com/kadavy. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative entrepreneur. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/perceiving-judging-podcast/

Srdja Popovic (@SrdjaPopovic) is a revolutionary. He played a big part in overthrowing Serbian president Slobodan Milošević. He now coaches activists around the world in non-violent resistance techniques, through CANVAS (Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies). This may seem out of left field to have a political activist on the show. It’s not meant to be some thinly-veiled political statement. Rather, I think anyone who is trying to get people on board with their message can learn a lot from the techniques of revolutionaries. I recently read Srdja’s book, Blueprint for Revolution: How to Use Rice Pudding, Lego Men, and Other Nonviolent Techniques to Galvanize Communities, Overthrow Dictators, or Simply Change the World, and was blown away by the inventiveness and deft strategy of the techniques he shared. It’s a fascinating book whether you’re trying to overthrow a dictator, or you’re merely trying to get people to read your blog. In this conversation, you’ll learn: We think Rosa Parks’s courageous stand was a spontaneous event. Learn how it was actually a strategic hit, designed for maximum effect. If you’re trying to get people on board with your message, branding is everything. Learn how a movement like Occupy Wall Street missed a golden branding opportunity. Effective activists choose tactics that have the most influence, with the smallest risk. Learn Srdja’s brainstorming techniques for homing in on these tactics. It’s a valuable exercise for any influencer. Links and resources mentioned Blueprint for Revolution: How to Use Rice Pudding, Lego Men, and Other Nonviolent Techniques to Galvanize Communities, Overthrow Dictators, or Simply Change the World by Srdja Popovic Slobodan Miloševic The World’s Greatest Unreported Hyperinflation The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien Otpor! Occupy Movement Democratic Opposition of Serbia Blitzkrieg Multi-level Marketing 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action Gene Sharp Montgomery bus boycott NYU Harvard Kennedy School Colorado College Arab Spring Civil Rights Movement Laughtivism Ghandi Salt March Why Dictators Don’t Like Jokes Toys cannot hold protest because they are not citizens of Russia, officials rule Occupy Wall Street We are the 99% Orange Revolution Milk Harvey Milk James Lawson Sudanese protests Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies Image Credit: Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung What should be our next Patreon goal? Take our survey at kadavy.net/goals. Start supporting Love Your Work at patreon.com/kadavy. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative entrepreneur. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/srdja-popovic/

We live in a world rich with information, and algorithms help us find the things that fit us. Algorithms help us decide what books to buy, what music to listen to, and even who to date. But are algorithms always a good thing? If they aren’t, how can you be “anti algorithm.” I talked about this concept a little bit with Tyler Cowen back on episode 155. Now I’ll expand on it. What should be our next Patreon goal? Take our survey at kadavy.net/goals. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative entrepreneur. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/anti-algorithm-podcast/

How do you market something when you don’t know what it is, or who it’s for? If you’re anything like me, you feel driven to create, but it’s only through the process of creation that your vision takes form. It’s only through putting that creation out into the world that you begin to realize what it means. This makes it a challenge to market your creations. If you don’t know what it is, you don’t know how to sell it. If you don’t know who it’s for, you don’t know how to speak to those people. I’m honored to have the legendary Seth Godin back on the show. His first appearance was exactly one-hundred episodes ago, on episode 77. My first conversation with Seth proved to be a breakthrough moment for me. The things Seth said to me gave me the courage to self publish The Heart to Start, as well as other, shorter books. I’m still digesting this conversation, but I think it will prove to be another breakthrough. It helped me answer a lot of questions I had from reading Seth’s most recent book, the instant classic, This is Marketing. In this conversation, you’ll learn: What are “status roles,” and how can you use them to help your product spread? Seth will tell you why status is more than just money and materialism. Why is “specific” a kind of bravery? If you don’t know “who it’s for,” you might simply be hiding from a fear of failure. Seth calls me out with very direct advice that will stick with me for the rest of my life. Find out why Seth doesn’t want me to sell out to easy money. Links and resources mentioned This Is Marketing by Seth Godin Paul Cézanne Jackson Pollock Permission Marketing Seth's Blog The Marketing Seminar In search of the minimum viable audience Myers–Briggs Type Indicator Samuel Beckett Waiting for Godot Kickstarter Keith Johnstone Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre by Keith Johnstone The Godfather Breaking Bad Microfinance WaterHealth International Akimbo The Podcast Fellowship J. K. Rowling Harper Lee Earnest Hemingway Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by Seth Godin Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin Free Prize Inside: How to Make a Purple Cow by Seth Godin How blind auditions help orchestras to eliminate gender bias Can 10,000 hours of practice make you an expert? Akimbo - The Big Sort: Why taxonomy matters Akimbo - Interoperability Becoming by Michelle Obama The Martian by Andy Weir The Domino Project altMBA What should be our next Patreon goal? Take our survey at kadavy.net/goals. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative entrepreneur. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/seth-godin-podcast-2/

I'm launching a new email series. Summer of Starting will help you get out of your own way, stop procrastinating, and start creating. Sign up before May 24th at summerofstarting.com

Big creative projects are daunting. It’s easy to burn out, and procrastinate. The problem is, creative problems don’t get solved in one go. In medicine, there’s a concept of the “minimum effective dose.” It’s the minimum dose at which the medication will elicit a response. If you follow Tim Ferriss, you hear him mention minimum effective dose often. You heard about the minimum effective dose of weight training back on episode 160. Now I’m going to tell you about the concept of minimum effective dose, as applied to your creative projects. I call it “Minimum Creative Dose". What should be our next Patreon goal? Take our survey at kadavy.net/goals. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative entrepreneur. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/minimum-creative-dose-podcast/

Vincent Van Gogh was a loser and a failure. He failed as an art dealer, and as a preacher. He even got fired and banned from his own family’s business. On top of it, Van Gogh had terrible health problems. His gums were sore, he was losing weight, and he had a hacking cough. He was also prone to psychotic episodes, during which he was institutionalized for months at a time. Vincent never really found his place in the world. He died young, at only 37. I recently read an incredible biography of Van Gogh. By the end, I was left wondering, what can you possibly learn from this tragic life? Steven Naifeh is co-author if the incredible [Van Gogh: The Life]  (@VanGoghTheLife). It’s a 900-page treasure chronicling the life of an artist who is so revered, tourists bring their relative’s ashes to spread over his gravesite in Auvers, France. Steven and his co-author and partner Gregory White Smith spent more than a decade compiling Van Gogh’s biography. To do so, they had to sort through mountains of letters and literature from the period of Van Gogh’s life. Since neither of them spoke Dutch, they worked with more than twenty translators and researchers to complete the book. The result is a Van Gogh biography of unparalleled depth, painting in intricate detail the outer and inner life of Vincent Van Gogh. In this conversation, you’ll learn: Most people think Vincent Van Gogh died in obscurity, but that’s not true. Why is it that, as he languished in an asylum, Vincent's work was actually exploding in popularity. Many people also believe that Vincent Van Gogh committed suicide. How did Naifeh and Smith come to change the opinion of even the most studied Van Gogh historians. What can you possibly learn from the tragic success of Vincent Van Gogh? Steven shares insights about what he and his late partner and co-author learned from studying Van Gogh’s life. It’s surprising, and touching. Links and resources mentioned Steven Naifeh Van Gogh: The Life - Book Van Gogh The Life - Website Van Gogh The Life - Instagram Van Gogh The Life - Facebook Claude Monet Jackson Pollock: An American Saga Jackson Pollock - Is he the greatest living painter in the United States? Theo Van Gogh Van Gogh Letters Albert Aurier Article Grave of Vincent and Theo van Gogh The Potato Eaters Van Gogh Museum Paul Gauguin German Expressionism Pierre-Auguste Renoir Georges Seurat A Sunday on La Grande Jatte Camille Pissarro Émile Bernard Paul Signac Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Salon Paul Cézanne Alfred Sisley The Eight Impressionist Exhibitions, 1874-1886 Temporal Lobe Epilepsy Manic Depression Absinthe Syphilis Syphilis and the use of mercury Gregory White Smith Wheatfield with Crows Tree Roots Museum unconvinced by Van Gogh death theory John Rewald Loving Vincent At Eternity's Gate Don McLean - Vincent ( Starry, Starry Night) Vincent Di Maio NCIS: Provence: The Van Gogh Mystery Luck Unites a Couple for a Lifetime of Great Collaborations Almond Blossom What should be our next Patreon goal? Take our survey at kadavy.net/goals. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative entrepreneur. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/vincent-van-gogh-podcast/

Do you want to love Mondays? If you already love Mondays, do you want to keep loving Mondays? I’m launching a new newsletter that will help you do just that. It’s called Love Mondays, and it’s a weekly boost of inspiration to help you find the mindset to make it as a creative entrepreneur. If you’re already on my email list, you’ve already been enjoying these. Many of them include one of the more than 11,000 highlights I’ve built up over years of reading about how history’s greatest artists and thinkers have carved out their own unique places in the world. Others are the gems pulled out of conversations you’ve heard right here on Love Your Work. Those of you already getting these emails know I told you about how Georgia O’Keeffe decided to quit modeling to double down on art. I’ve told you about how professor Dean Simonton’s work shows that quantity of creative work leads to quality of creative work. I’ve shown you how neuroscientists have discovered that the best predictor of so-called “insight machines” is brain patterns that show a high level of self awareness. Today, I’m going to give you an insight from comedian Steve Martin. If you ever feel like your big break will never come, this will keep you going. And if you’d like to get a boost in your inbox every Monday morning, go sign up for the Love Mondays newsletter at kadavy.net/mondays What should be our next Patreon goal? Take our survey at kadavy.net/goals. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative entrepreneur. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/introducing-love-mondays/

Austin Kleon (@austinkleon) woke up one day and realized two things: The world seemed to be filled with more and more anger and distraction every day, and – to make matters worse – consistently doing creative work wasn’t getting any easier. Austin had already written three New York Times bestselling illustrated books. Millions have already learned to Steal Like an Artist – the title of his first book – and they’d learned to put their work out there with Show Your Work. Austin wasn’t sure how much more he had in him. That inspired him to write his new book, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad. In this conversation, you’ll learn: Why making something for yourself is technically making something for someone else. Learn about the many different ways that focusing on your own creative expression can reach others. How can you be a valuable asset to the creators you admire? Austin shares a specific story that shows you why you have more to offer than you might think. What one thing can you do in the morning – or rather, not do – to do your best work yet? Links and resources mentioned Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad by Austin Kleon Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon Austin Kleon Austin Kleon Newsletter A/B Testing The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter by David Sax Leave A Message Studs Terkel Radio Archive Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do by Studs Terkel Richard Scarry's What Do People Do All Day? by Richard Scarry Honoré de Balzac Seth Godin This is marketing by Seth Godin Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson Stephen King The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien The Complete Tales of Winnie-The-Pooh by A. A. Milne Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren Newspaper Blackout by Austin Kleon Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative by Austin Kleon Lynda Barry Dan Chaon Saturday Night Live Five-Timers Club Role Models by John Waters Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book by Walker Percy Walker Percy’s problems of reentry Frankenstein Ryan Holiday Morning Pages What should be our next Patreon goal? Take our survey at kadavy.net/goals. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/austin-kleon-podcast/

If you do particular actions on a regular basis, you’ll change your identity. For example, if you make it a habit to write every day, you’ll eventually see yourself as a writer. But it can work the other way around, too. If you change your appearance, you can change your identity. If you change your identity, you can change your actions. In this week’s episode, I share my own experience of changing my identity, in order to change my actions. What should be our next Patreon goal? Take our survey at kadavy.net/goals. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/identity-actions-podcast/

David Allen (@gtdguy) has built a legacy. He’s created a system that helps millions of people get more of what they want out of life. Getting Things Done, the book, has sold millions of copies. And there’s an entire cottage industry of GTD apps and consultants, all over the world. Even if you’ve never read or heard of GTD, you or someone you work with probably operates with “next actions,” and “contexts.” David and I talked more about the GTD system back in his first appearance on the show on episode 85. This time, we’ll be talking about David’s accidental legacy. How does somebody create something that spreads like wildfire and changes the culture? Today, we’ll talk about: Your day to day actions are guided by meaning on various levels. How can you think about the different levels of what’s meaningful to you, and how can you think about what actions you need to take to make those things happen? Why does David’s screensaver say “let go?” Following a system like GTD may feel like it’s for control freaks, but learn the difference between being in control, and under control. What was the one email David got that made him decide that GTD was ready to scale globally? Links and resources mentioned GTD Getting Things Done Summit Getting Things Done Coaching Programs Merlin Mann 43 Folders Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen Franklin Covey VitalSmarts Top Gun Howard Stern Will Smith Robert Downey Jr Julie Flagg GTD Summit Marshall Goldsmith Dan Pink Charles Duhigg Cady Coleman We've reached a new funding goal! We now have detailed show notes, starting with next week's interview episode. Start supporting Love Your Work at patreon.com/kadavy. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/david-allens-getting-things-done-legacy/

Lots of people want to build a “legacy.” They want to be remembered when they’re gone. It’s a natural product of our fear of death. But is it realistic to want to build a legacy? Is it realistic to believe you can control whether or not you’re remembered? And might aiming to build a legacy prevent you from doing the type of work that builds legacies in the first place? I examine these questions in this week’s episode. We've reached a new funding goal! We now have detailed show notes, starting with next week's interview episode. Start supporting Love Your Work at patreon.com/kadavy. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors https://kadavy.net/motivation Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/no-legacy-podcast/

To me, Andrew Warner’s (@andrewwarner) Mixergy podcast created the entire category of entrepreneur interview podcasts – a category this podcast here falls within. I started listening to Mixergy something like ten years ago, and it was one of the main podcasts that got my gears turning to eventually start this podcast – after putting it off for years, of course. Andrew has created over 1,700 interviews and courses with top entrepreneurs. People like Jimmy Wales, Barbara Corcoran, and Paul Graham. He’s known for getting his guests to open up and reveal exact numbers in their businesses. Sometimes I find myself squirming at the direct questions he asks, but it works! I recently took a trip to San Francisco to be on the Jordan Harbinger Show (look out for my appearance on that show toward the end of the month, I think you’ll like what I prepared specifically for that show). While I was in town, I was trying to think of who I would like to interview. The first person who came to mind was Andrew Warner. In this conversation, you’ll learn: Monetization: Andrew was the first podcaster I can think of to put his past episodes behind a paywall. Why does Andrew think that was a great decision, what drove that decision, and why does he hate the word “paywall?" Did Andrew create the category of the entrepreneurial interview podcast? I was dying to know who inspired Andrew to interview entrepreneurs in the first place. We’ll find out. Why is harsh criticism a gift? Andrew shares his perspective which helps him keep improving. Also, the day before the interview, Andrew messaged me. He wanted to change the location of the interview. We were originally going to do it in Mixergy’s offices in the Financial District of San Francisco, but now Andrew was inviting me to his HOUSE. He said he’d explain why later. You’ll hear why in the interview – it’s pretty cool. Links and resources mentioned Pagerduty Crescent Hotel NEA Mixergy Hero’s Journey Venture Voice Rosalind Resnick Howard Stern This American Life The Biography Of WordPress with Matt Mullenweg shorty awards Everyone is Accessible – interview with Gregory Galant VV Show #40 – Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn Anchor techstars AngelList Paul Graham Readwise Airtable Kindle Direct Publishing We've reached a new funding goal! We now have detailed show notes, starting with next week's interview episode. Start supporting Love Your Work at patreon.com/kadavy. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors https://ce.uci.edu/ https://backblaze.com https://kadavy.net/motivation Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/srini-rao-unmistakable-creative-podcast/

To optimize your creative output, you need a creative productivity system. If you can identify the building blocks of your daily work, you can construct a system that works for you. One of those building blocks is what I call “task transitions.” Task transitions are those little spaces between finishing one task, and starting another. Each transition is a critical moment. It’s when you decide whether you’ll keep moving, take an intentional break, or simply fall off the tracks. I’ll tell you more in this week’s episode. We've reached a new funding goal! We'll have detailed show notes, starting with next week's interview episode. Start supporting Love Your Work at patreon.com/kadavy. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors https://ce.uci.edu/ https://kadavy.net/motivation Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/task-transitions-podcast/

Vanessa Van Edwards (@vvanedwards) is a recovering awkward person who teaches people how to be more successful with people. Vanessa was a great student, but, she says, she was terrible with people. Until one day she discovered that she could study people and interacting with people the same way she studied math and science. In fact, she used math and science to break down social interactions. She set up a lab and started running experiments on everything from conversation starters to reading facial expressions. She shares everything she’s learned in her hit book, Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People. This book breaks down social interaction so you can succeed, whether that’s thriving in networking events, or having a more fulfilling dating life. You’re going to learn: How can awkwardness be a part of your own unique brand of charisma? How can you get the most out of conferences, even if you’re an introvert? What is "The Franklin Effect," and how can it make you more likable, even to your mortal enemies? We've almost reached a new funding goal! Help us get detailed show notes. Start supporting Love Your Work at patreon.com/kadavy. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors https://ce.uci.edu/ Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/vanessa-van-edwards-podcast/

To follow a productivity system, you need to be able to trust that system. You need to trust that if you put something into the system, it will get taken care of at the right time and place. But the more complex you make that system, the harder it becomes to follow and maintain. This is where building “triggers” becomes invaluable in tweaking a system that works for you. A “trigger” is a stimulus that elicits a response. You can use productivity triggers to simplify your productivity system. Triggers keep your productivity system running smoothly, and they keep your system from getting bogged down complexity. In this week’s article, I’ll tell you exactly how to find the right triggers for you to use to be effortlessly productive. We've almost reached a new funding goal! Help us get detailed show notes. Start supporting Love Your Work at patreon.com/kadavy. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors https://ce.uci.edu/ Shown notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/productivity-triggers-podcast/

Dr. David Rock (@davidrock101) is the author of Your Brain at Work, is also the founder of the NeuroLeadership Institute. They use a science-based approach to growing soft skills, working with companies such as Intel, Microsoft, and IBM. When I was just getting finished writing my first book, Design for Hackers, I was really mystified by what was going on in my own brain. I wanted to know why creativity was easy sometimes, and hard other times. That’s when I picked up Your Brain at Work, and my work changed forever. It served as a handbook for my brain. I learned to think about the strengths and limitations of my brain, the different categories of thought, and what mental and emotional states would make creative work come easily. Today, you’ll learn about: What are level one, two, and three tasks, in terms of your brain’s horsepower? How can you manage your day by these categories? What is construal, and how can it help you work more quickly, with more clarity? What are the four keys to creating the conditions for insight? If you can set up your work so that you’re consistently creating these conditions, you’ll think more creatively. We've almost reached a new funding goal! Help us get detailed show notes. Start supporting Love Your Work at patreon.com/kadavy. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors https://ce.uci.edu/ Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/david-rock-podcast/

Creative productivity is about mind management, not time management. You have to get into the right mental state to be creative. And you need to have your brain stocked with the knowledge it takes to solve the creative problem at hand. I believe creative energy is the next resource to be managed—at least in the age of creative productivity. Think about the way we manage time, and we take that for granted. That’s why I’ve built my own system specifically to manage my creative energy. Today I’ll be sharing, in more detail than ever, the exact creative productivity system I use to crank out not just the ideas for books and podcast episodes, but to actually produce the work. We've almost reached a new funding goal! Help us get detailed show notes. Start supporting Love Your Work at patreon.com/kadavy. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors https://ce.uci.edu/ Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/creative-productivity-system-podcast/

Mark McGuinness (@markmcguinness) is a creative coach, a poet, and a former psychotherapist and hypnotherapist. Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art, calls Mark an "overeducated Brit who thinks deeply about stuff you and I have never heard of." Mark is the host of the 21st Century Creative Podcast. On the 21st Century Creative, Mark explores how to take advantage of the huge opportunities presented by the digital age. This at a time when there are more distractions than ever threatening to take you off course, and fewer traditional safety nets to catch you when you fall. In this conversation, we'll talk about: Click here to be creative: How to use mantras, chakras, – and other sometimes thought of as "woo" things – as like graphical user interfaces for altering your mental state. How the feeling > action > response loop can guide your creative direction: If you're wondering how to create work that really moves people, this is the key. How to use impostor syndrome to your advantage. It's a double-edged sword, or a sushi knife, as you'll see. Use it carefully. Mark also mentioned his 20 Creative Blocks list and ebook in the conversation.     Sponsors https://ce.uci.edu/ Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/mark-mcguinness-podcast/

When you're trying to make it as a creative entrepreneur, you need to make the most out of everything you have. You need maximum output with minimal investment of time and energy. The more complex you make things, the more you get bogged down. The more you surrender your creativity to the whims of the the muse, the harder you make it to bring your work into the world. Last week, as we talked to Paul Jarvis, you heard how he uses repeatable processes to make the most of his resources. I call these repeatable processes "productivity cycles." This week, I'll break down what's so great about productivity cycles, I'll share some productivity cycles that I follow, and I'll tell you how to build your own productivity cycles, based upon how you work. Love Your Work is now fully listener-supported! Patreon supporters are now covering ALL production costs for Love Your Work! Join our wonderful Patreon backers at patreon.com/kadavy. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors https://ce.uci.edu Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/productivity-cycles-podcast/

What if success isn't about scaling up as big as possible? What if success is actually about the freedom to call your own shots? Paul Jarvis (@pjrvs) was asking himself these questions as he left the corporate world way back in the 90s. Now he works from his home in the woods on an island near Vancouver. He explores what he's learned in his new book, Company of One: Why Staying Small is the Next Big Thing for Business. Previously, Paul was a freelance designer, working with clients such as Microsoft, Mercedes-Benz, and Marie Forleo. He now writes books, and makes courses and software products. Courses such as Creative Class, which teaches you how to "go pro" in your freelance career, and software such as Fathom Analytics, which gives you simple website analytics without tracking or storing your users' personal data. In this conversation you'll learn: How to manage your time in a company of one: Paul shares specific details on how he manages his time on a weekly basis, a monthly basis, and beyond. How to build your company of one around your skills: How does Paul build on his strengths and make his weaknesses irrelevant? How to make room for creativity by being organized: Learn why systems and processes actually enhance creativity rather than stifle it. Love Your Work is now fully listener-supported! Patreon supporters are now covering ALL production costs for Love Your Work! Join our wonderful Patreon backers at patreon.com/kadavy. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors http://audible.com/loveyourwork Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/paul-jarvis-podcast/

To start off the New Year you can see that we're covering topics for how to improve oneself – stuff like staying focused or even staying secure in your digital life. This week, I'd like to share with you a workout protocol that I've been enjoying for staying fit AND healthy – which, as you'll see, are not the same thing. I've tried many different workout programs, INSANITY, CrossFit, Strongfirst, many others. This is by far the best results for time investment I've ever experienced. It's a workout that only takes about 12 minutes, once a week. Now, I know a claim like that makes your BS detectors go off, but hear me out. And as you'll see, just because it's only 12 minutes doesn't mean it's easy. But I personally find it really enjoyable. Disclaimer: Always talk to your doctor and fitness professional before starting or changing an exercise routine. Try any of the following at your own risk. Love Your Work is now fully listener-supported! Patreon supporters are now covering ALL production costs for Love Your Work! Join our wonderful Patreon backers at patreon.com/kadavy. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/body-by-science-summary-review/

Chris Wilken (@whereswilken) is founder and CEO of Let's Fix Security. He takes a behavioral approach to thinking about security, trying to make good security practices easy to implement. As a small business owner and a person in general, I've been thinking more and more about how to stay secure online. As soon as you start trying to think about how to stay secure online, you start to feel overwhelmed. It's hard to think up new passwords that are tough to hack, and it's even harder to keep them all straight. The two-factor authentication that more and more services are starting to require is annoying. I have limited resources as a solopreneur. Any unexpected interruption or loss of data means I'm not working on the things I want to be working on. Yet I also don't have the resources to have a full-time security expert to keep things buttoned up. It's probably the same for you. So this episode is for you. In this episode, we'll talk about: Are you a target? You don't have to be high-profile to be a victim of a security breach. Find out why everyone is vulnerable. How can good habits make security easy? We often put off thinking about digital security because it can be overwhelming. Throughout this whole conversation we'll be talking about how to reduce overwhelm so you can take action. Learn what the four "buckets" of security are. We'll be talking about how to prioritize your security concerns, again so you can take action. Make sure your most important stuff is secure. One thing I wanted to mention. I talk in this conversation about canisters for securing cryptocurrency paper wallets. I researched further, and it turns out that's not what they're called, so if you search, you'll have trouble finding them. They're actually intended to be "pill cases,". They are still very handy for keeping paper-based two-factor authentication numbers – especially if you're nomadic or traveling. Love Your Work is now fully listener-supported! Patreon supporters are now covering ALL production costs for Love Your Work! Join our wonderful Patreon backers at patreon.com/kadavy. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/digital-security-basics/

Smart phones are powerful. But with great power comes great potential to get off track. Smart phones are like a superpower. If you had x-ray vision, you wouldn't want to use it all of the time. I've discovered one simple thing to do with my smartphone. Since I started doing this, it's made me more productive than ever. Love Your Work is now fully listener-supported! Patreon supporters are now covering ALL production costs for Love Your Work! Join our wonderful Patreon backers at patreon.com/kadavy. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/one-phone-resolution/

Chris Bailey (@Chris_Bailey) had a crazy thought: What if, after graduating from college, instead of getting a job – what if instead he spent a year learning everything he could about productivity? Chris followed that crazy thought into a project he called "A Year of Productivity." That was five years ago, and Chris has now written two books: First, The Productivity Project, and now his new book is Hyperfocus: How to Be More Productive in a World of Distraction. Chris has a unique approach to productivity advice. He mixes scientific research with his own sometimes-whacky personal experimentation. He once purposefully made himself bored for an hour a day with tasks such as "watching paint dry" or "reading the iTunes Terms and Conditions." As we go into 2019, we're all thinking about how we can be better in many things. This conversation will give you fresh thinking for how you keep yourself productive and focused. We'll talk about: How did Chris make the decision to turn down job offers and dedicate himself to studying productivity? The more confident you can be in your decisions, the more focused you can be. Chris's "regret minimization" technique will help you frame your big decisions. How does Chris separate the scientific research behind staying productive and focused from the hype around being productive and focused? The better you can separate the wheat from the chaff, the easier you can find what works for you. How can you start forming your own unique approach to productivity and focus – and how can you start that TODAY? There are already clues you can look at to start being more focused than ever. Chris is going to share those with you. Image credit: Chris Roussakis Love Your Work is now fully listener-supported! Patreon supporters are now covering ALL production costs for Love Your Work! Join our wonderful Patreon backers at patreon.com/kadavy. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/chris-bailey-hyperfocus/

December 15th is the three year anniversary of Love Your Work. I've often found that it takes three years to really accomplish something, so I get the sense that something big is around the corner. Then again, the podcast has recently become profitable, so maybe that big thing is already here. We often want results right away, but oftentimes, it takes three years. I talk about it on today's episode. Love Your Work is now fully listener-supported! Patreon supporters are now covering ALL production costs for Love Your Work! Join our wonderful Patreon backers at patreon.com/kadavy. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/three-years/

When your life gets too comfortable, you stop taking risks. Loss aversion takes hold and you become complacent. You stop innovating. You stop being dynamic. By the time you realize you've become irrelevant, it's already too late to change. This is one of the main themes behind the work of Tyler Cowen (@tylercowen). Tyler writes one of the most influential economics blogs in the world – if not THE most influential – at marginalrevolution.com. He's also an economics professor at George Mason University. In Tyler's book, The Complacent Class, he argues that Americans are getting too comfortable, and not taking risks – or, as the title would imply, they're getting complacent. Average is Over – another of Cowen's books argues. The complacency of Americans is leading to The Great Stagnation, another of Tyler's books. Instead of being stagnant, we should be dynamic. Keep learning, take risks, and step out of your comfort zone. This, Tyler believes, will lead to economic growth, which Tyler argues is a good thing in his latest book, Stubborn Attachments. I was thinking about the theme of taking risks and stepping outside of your comfort zone just before I wrote this intro in a cafe in Chicago. Moments prior, I was thinking about how – out of all of the places in the world – this cafe was not where I wanted to be in that moment. Not only had my Colombian visa application been rejected, but my first AirBNB stop in Chicago turned out to have a bedbug infestation – so I had to hastily move to a different one. But then I realized that while my life is riddled with problems in recent months – and if you're interested in details, listen to my recent notes right here on this podcast, especially "An Update on My Colombian Visa." While my life has these problems, these problems lead to growth. They're problems that lead to a lifestyle that I have built and that I continue to build. I could avoid all of these problems by living a more comfortable and stable lifestyle, but that wouldn't help me grow in the ways I want to grow. It would cause me to stagnate. Critically important, I've designed my life and work to withstand volatility – whether that's political, financial, or emotional volatility. Not only can I withstand that volatility, I can grow from it. I've built this outlook with the support of Tyler's thinking. I find him to have a holistic view of the economics that rule our world – with uncommon emphasis on art, culture, and creativity. So, this is perfect timing to have Tyler on the show. In this conversation, we'll explore: Why should you move? Tyler says that even if you're merely considering a change, that probably means you should make that change. He explains the data that tells you why. Is there a "next Austin" just waiting to explode in growth? Find out where that "next Austin" might be so you can get there first and take advantage of the opportunity. One way we get complacent is by trusting algorithms to make all of our decisions for us, whether that's on Netflix or Facebook or Amazon. How can you be "anti-algorithm", and how can being "anti-algorithm" help you be more dynamic. Image credit: [Politics and Prose Bookstore](https://www.flickr.com/photos/politicsandprose/5907532234/in/album-72157627002886179/ ). Love Your Work is now available on Pandora! Pandora recently launched a podcast genome, and Love Your Work is one of the few hand-picked podcasts included in the public beta. To sign up for the beta, go to https://pandorapodcastbeta.splashthat.com Love Your Work is now fully listener-supported! Patreon supporters are now covering ALL production costs for Love Your Work! Join our wonderful Patreon backers at patreon.com/kadavy. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors http://audible.com/loveyourwork Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/tyler-cowen-interview/

We're wired to seek pleasure, and avoid pain. But to make it as a creator, you need to push yourself outside of your comfort zone. Many things that feel good about creating can hold you back, while many things that feel bad are powerful fuel. Stoicism is a philosophy that has been getting a lot of attention lately. Ryan Holiday, who we talked with on episode 31 is one modern popularizer of Stocism. In today's episode, I share with you eight mantras I tell myself to resist temptations that will only hurt my creative work in the long run. Love Your Work is now fully listener-supported! Patreon supporters are now covering ALL production costs for Love Your Work! Join our wonderful Patreon backers at patreon.com/kadavy. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/eight-stoic-mantras-creators/

Amber Rae (@heyamberrae] was on the wrong path. She was swept up in the hype of the Silicon Valley startup scene. She was working too many hours on too many projects. She pushed herself so hard, she drove herself into anxiety, addiction, and eventually triggered a seizure. But Amber was doing some writing on the side. That writing helped her discover what she was hiding from, and find meaning in her past. In Amber's mess, she found the message. Now Amber helps entrepreneurs and creators develop emotional mastery. She's sharing what she's learned in her new book, Choose Wonder Over Worry: Move Beyond Fear and Doubt to Unlock Your Full Potential. In today's conversation, we'll talk about: What's easy for you, but amazing for others? You'll hear shortcuts you can take to find the secret superpower hiding right beneath your nose. How did Amber become a writer by accident? You'll hear about the way she mentally framed the work she did, and how that held her back in some areas, while propelling her forward in others. What did Amber learn from working closely with Seth Godin? What did she do when Seth told her he thought the project she was working on would wind up a failure? Amber's a very exciting creator, and there's much much more to this conversation, so listen to hear the rest. Love Your Work is now fully listener-supported! Patreon supporters are now covering ALL production costs for Love Your Work! Join our wonderful Patreon backers at patreon.com/kadavy. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors http://babbel.com Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/amber-rae-podcast/

I regretfully have to cancel tonight's meetup in Chicago.

One thing I've discovered in talking to many of my guests is that your creative voice doesn't magically appear in your mind. You have to put in the work, and then your voice emerges from that work. But to do that work, you have to keep your creative machinery working. You have to keep putting out work, and you have to keep cleaning out the waste that gets in the way of putting out that work. That's what I'm talking about on this week's episode. I call it "creative hygiene." Love Your Work is now fully listener-supported! Patreon supporters are now covering ALL production costs for Love Your Work! Join our wonderful Patreon backers at patreon.com/kadavy. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors http://babbel.com Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/creative-hygiene/

Bad news.

A long and detailed update about the status of my Colombian visa.

Ariel Garten (@ariel_garten) envisions a world where we can control computers with our minds. She's on the cutting edge of computer and brain interfaces with her creation, the Muse headband. Ariel sent me a headband a few months ago, and I've been using it to refine my meditation sessions. The headband gives me neurofeedback to help me identify a relaxed-focus mental state. So while I'm meditating, I get audio feedback that's an expression of my brain's activity. That audio feedback helps me adjust my meditation technique. The point of muse is to train your brain into focusing on one thing so you can build that skill and carry it over into other forms of meditation, as well as to have the mental awareness throughout the day to manage your attention and focus. I've experimented with EEG headsets before. I first bought one about seven years ago. The Muse absolutely blows away that experience. In addition to being useful for meditation, it is also a clinical-grade headset – used by neuroscientists everywhere – that measures all brainwaves as well as certain movements. In this conversation, we'll talk about: What mental cues can keep you in a meditative state? We'll talk about how mental cues differ from one form of meditation to another, and how those cues relate to what Muse measures. How do you develop a product with a new technology, when the application is unclear? Hear Ariel's story about how Muse started as a playful experiment, and evolved into a useful product. How do you follow disparate interests to an original idea. Ariel has a background in psychotherapy, fashion design, neuroscience (of course) – as well as having many other interests. How has that curiosity helped her arrive at an original idea, and how did she see past the naysayers who wanted her to focus on one thing? Muse is not a sponsor, but they have set up a special deal for our listeners. If you use the code LOVEYOURWORK at choosemuse.com, you'll get 15% off the Muse headset, or the new Muse 2. Plus, a portion of your purchase will support the show. Again, that's LOVEYOURWORK at choosemuse.com. Love Your Work is now fully listener-supported! Patreon supporters are now covering ALL production costs for Love Your Work! Join our wonderful Patreon backers at patreon.com/kadavy. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors http://babbel.com Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/ariel-garten-podcast/

Productivity is about mind management, not time management. I've been thinking about how this applies to managing your tasks on a day-to-day basis. I've come to realize that as long as you have the proper due dates attached to your tasks, it doesn’t matter what project those todos are for. What matters is your ability to do those tasks in an energy-efficient way. In this week's episode, I share with you how I keep creative work coming with ease all day long. Love Your Work is now fully listener-supported! Patreon supporters are now covering ALL production costs for Love Your Work! Join our wonderful Patreon backers at patreon.com/kadavy. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/mental-state-not-todos/

Srini Rao (@unmistakableCEO) is host of the Unmistakable Creative podcast, and author of the new book, Audience of One: Reclaiming Creativity for Its Own Sake. In Audience of One, Srini gives you the tools and encouragement you need to stop focusing on external validation, and to reconnect with your creative spark. In a world where you can publish your creative work to more people than ever, it's easy to lose sight of why we create. If you're dead set on your work reaching a lot of people, ironically, you'll lose touch with that special something that makes your work resonate with others in the first place. In this conversation, we'll talk about: How do you follow up a success to reconnect with "Creativity for Its Own Sake?" We'll hear about how Srini's self-published book hit the Wall Street Journal bestseller list, and we'll hear about how he has struggled to reconnect with the true source of creative work that resonates with others. How do you ask a question that gets right to a great story. Srini asks great questions on his podcast, The Unmistakable Creative – in fact, I was on there recently, and he got stories out of me that I had never told before. So I loved digging into his questioning style. His thoughts on this could be as useful for a first date as they are for a podcast interview. What has Srini learned from hosting more than 700 podcast interviews? He'll break down the best tips and ways of thinking that he's gleaned from creators, bank robbers, drug dealers, performance psychologists, and more. Love Your Work is now fully listener-supported! Patreon supporters are now covering ALL production costs for Love Your Work! Join our wonderful Patreon backers at patreon.com/kadavy. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors http://gusto.com/loveyourwork http://everyplate.com http://earthclassmail.com

There's something I've noticed that very successful communicators do. It's a very simple tactic, but it can go a long way in making everything you say or write more engaging, more memorable, and more effective. I'll tell you about it – this thing that successful communicators do – this week. Love Your Work is now fully listener-supported! Patreon supporters are now covering ALL production costs for Love Your Work! Join our wonderful Patreon backers at patreon.com/kadavy. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors http://gusto.com/loveyourwork http://babbel.com Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/prompt-talking-podcast/

You hear it all of the time. Maybe you even say it yourself: It's "crazy" at work. There are unrealistic deadlines, demanding bosses, and wall-to-wall meetings. Jason Fried (@jasonfried) believes it doesn't have to be that way. In fact, he'll tell you why in his new book, called It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work. Jason needs no introduction for many of you, but for everyone else: Jason is the CEO of Basecamp, which is simple yet powerful project management software. Basecamp the software has a long history of staying simple even when it doesn't make intuitive sense. Basecamp the company, with Jason at the helm, has a long history of espousing sensible work practices, even when they don't make intuitive sense. We'll talk about: What's the difference between deadlines, and "dreadlines?" How can this simple distinction help you stay in control of your projects? How does Jason and his company struggle with it being "crazy" at work, and what do they do about it? Hear about their fascinating "uphill/downhill" tactic for deciding when to quit a project that just won't end. Hear specific ways to handle clients that make it "crazy" at work. Jason will tell you exactly what to say, and guide you through a real-life scenario using the stoic technique of "negative visualization." Jason was the very first guest on Love Your Work, three years ago. I'm thrilled to have him back. Image credit: Michael Berger Love Your Work is now fully listener-supported! Patreon supporters are now covering ALL production costs for Love Your Work! Join our wonderful Patreon backers at patreon.com/kadavy. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors http://gusto.com/loveyourwork http://earthclassmail.com http://babbel.com Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/jason-fried-podcast-2/

When you're marketing your business, it's easy to gravitate toward sure bets. Things you can do and be assured of a positive outcome. But these sure bets can cause you to miss out on asymmetric opportunities: Things that take a small amount of investment, with a small chance of a very big upside. We talked about asymmetric opportunities in last week's conversation with Tynan. This week, I'll tell you how to find asymmetric opportunities for growing your business. These are also known as "Black Swans." We'll get to why. Love Your Work is now fully listener-supported! Patreon supporters are now covering ALL production costs for Love Your Work! Join our wonderful Patreon backers at patreon.com/kadavy. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors http://gusto.com/loveyourwork http://babbel.com Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/black-swan-marketing-podcast/

Sometimes an idea pops into your head, and you think to yourself, "nah, that's insane!" Then you move on with living your regular life. We all have these ideas. Sometimes we don't even notice them. In The Heart to Start, I called the source of these crazy ideas "The Voice." The thing is, sometimes these crazy ideas are what you call "asymmetrical": It doesn't take much to try them out, but the potential payoffs are huge. Our guest today has to be the king of crazy ideas. Tynan (@tynan) is his name. That's it, he just has one name – like Madonna. Tynan. Just a few of the crazy ideas that Tynan has followed through on: He owns a private island (it's not as expensive as you think); he lived in San Francisco, rent-free in an RV, for several years; and he owns both a minivan and a Bentley. Tynan is also a serial self-publisher, and watching his self-publishing story was a source of inspiration for me as I made the leap from traditional to self publishing. I first met Tynan several years ago. He joined mutual friends of ours for dinner during my mini-life in Austin. When I met Tynan, I thought to myself "if and when I have a podcast, this is definitely the type of person I want to have as a guest." Here's some of what you'll learn: What thought processes can you employ to seek out interesting opportunities in your life? How can you prevent yourself from making an emotional decision about your crazy ideas, and instead see the true cost/benefit? If you have a crazy idea, but you have hesitation about following it, what are some ways you can break through that hesitation, and any other mental blocks you see? Tynan's new book is Forever Nomad, and his site Cruisesheet is full of the best cruise deals. Love Your Work is now fully listener-supported! Patreon supporters are now covering ALL production costs for Love Your Work! Join our wonderful Patreon backers at patreon.com/kadavy. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors http://gusto.com/loveyourwork http://earthclassmail.com Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/tynan-podcast/  

What does it really take to "make it" as a creative entrepreneur? I often have people asking me for ideas on strategies for how to smoothly transition from their day jobs to making their art for a living. Is it possible? What do you have to do? I always feel like I have an answer that they don't want to hear. But here it is anyway, in this week's episode. Love Your Work is now fully listener-supported! Patreon supporters are now covering ALL production costs for Love Your Work! Join our wonderful Patreon backers at patreon.com/kadavy. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors http://gusto.com/loveyourwork Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/walk-through-fire/

Nathan Barry (@nathanbarry) knows better than anyone: Sometimes, you're working hard on something, and it's just not happening. How do you decide whether to double down, or shut down? This is what Nathan was asking himself two years after launching his email service, ConvertKit. He was bringing in only $1,500 a month, and he was losing customers every month. It was time to decide: Double down, or shut down. Today, ConvertKit brings in much more than $1,500 a month. They recently had their first million dollar month. Spoiler alert: Instead of shutting down, Nathan did double down. Today, we’ll analyze how he made that decision: When Nathan decided to double down, he had no idea if his business would succeed. How did Nathan – and his spouse – mentally prepare for the worst-case scenario? Nathan had to dig into his savings to the tune of $100,000 to double down on ConvertKit. What criteria did he use to know whether or not to quit. What was the one question Nathan asked himself that ultimately got him to double down? This is a super valuable conversation. It's incredibly helpful if you've been working on a project that just isn't taking off. I've used this conversation myself to think about this podcast, how I define success, and how I should divvy up my own resources amongst my various projects. (Note: Since recording this episode, ConvertKit has decided not to rebrand as Seva after all.) Love Your Work is now fully listener-supported! Patreon supporters are now covering ALL production costs for Love Your Work! Join our wonderful Patreon backers at patreon.com/kadavy. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors http://gusto.com/loveyourwork http://earthclassmail.com Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/nathan-barry-podcast/

It's no surprise that we procrastinate on things that we don't want to do. But why do we procrastinate on things we do want to do?: Our hopes, dreams, and aspirations. I call it aspiration procrastination, and there's a fascinating theory from psychology that can help you understand why you put off your dreams, and what you can do about it. I'll talk about it in this week's episode. Love Your Work is now fully listener-supported! Patreon supporters are now covering ALL production costs for Love Your Work! Join our wonderful Patreon backers at patreon.com/kadavy. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors http://gusto.com/loveyourwork Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/aspiration-procrastination/

Steve Stewart was manager of the band Stone Temple Pilots. He guided them from being an unknown funk band to a multi-platinum powerhouse whose sound is synonymous with 90's grunge. With Steve by STP's side, they sold over 25 million records, for nearly half a billion dollars in sales. But then the Internet happened. The record industry wasn't selling many CD's or records anymore. Fans were becoming a bigger part of helping music spread, and free music was key to the new success equation. Steve had to stand by helplessly as big music industry players shot themselves in the foot, and tightened their budgets in the process. But now, Steve is trying to fill in the gap that free music created. Now, imagine that Justin Bieber paid you. With Steve's new company, that could become true. Steve is now CEO of Vezt. With Vezt, music fans like you can buy a share of the future earnings of a song. So if you're a Justin Bieber fan, you could at some point buy a share of his song. (In case you're wondering, you can't "short" a song, these aren't stocks you're buying.) We're going to learn more about how that works in today's conversation. Find out: What artistic decisions did Stone Temple Pilots have to make in order to become a huge success? I take Steve back to the early days, and we find out why early-90's music critics have called him to apologize. How does Vezt fill in the hole that music-sharing created? Fans have become a part of the music promotion process, with Vezt, they'll start getting a piece of the pie. Blockchain companies are hot now, but the blockchain is not always relevant to the business model. What about blockchain technology makes Vezt possible? Love Your Work is now fully listener-supported! Patreon supporters are now covering ALL production costs for Love Your Work! Thank you supporters! To help, go to kadavy.net/donate. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors http://gusto.com/loveyourwork Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/steve-stewart-stone-temple-pilots-vezt/

You've heard the advice to find your passion. You've probably also heard the advice that finding your passion is bad advice. But if you shouldn't "find" your passion, what should you do? Isn't passion important? New research tells us exactly what is wrong with "finding" your passion. It's the subject of this week's article. Love Your Work is now fully listener-supported! Patreon supporters are now covering ALL production costs for Love Your Work! Thank you supporters! To help, go to kadavy.net/donate. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors http://backblaze.com/loveyourwork Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/dont-find-your-passion/

Brave is a new browser that's reinventing the attention economy. Brave does block ads, but it's not just an ad blocker. It also blocks scripts that slow down your browsing experience, invade your privacy, and leave you vulnerable to hackers. Since much of the internet currently runs on the ad-supported model, Brave doesn't stop there, with the blocking of ads. They've invented a cryptocurrency that could change creative monetization forever. You can use the Basic Attention Token, or BAT, to pay creators whose content you consume most – or, as a site owner, you can earn BAT. In fact, I've earned some BAT myself. In the future, Brave says they will be paying you for browsing content. Now how does that work!? We'll talk about that and more in today's conversation. I'm talking to Jonathan Sampson (@bravesampson), who is Brave's Senior Developer Relations Specialist. We'll talk about: How did we end up with an internet where we need a browser like Brave. Brave's founder and CEO invented Javascript, yet Brave blocks a ton of Javascript. How did that happen? Brave claims to save you about $23 a month, and give you a browsing experience up to 8 times faster. Where do those gains come from? How is it possible that Brave could pay you for browsing the web? Where would the money come from, and who will be missing out on that money? I've been using Brave regularly for a few months now, and I really enjoy it. As we'll talk about in this conversation, if you'd like to support the work I do, download Brave at kadavy.net/brave. If you stick with it for 30 days, Brave will reward me with $5 worth of BAT. Again, that's kadavy.net/brave. Love Your Work is now fully listener-supported! Patreon supporters are now covering ALL production costs for Love Your Work! Thank you supporters! To help, go to kadavy.net/donate. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors  http://skillshare.com/loveyourwork http://backblaze.com/loveyourwork Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/why-brave-browser/

Sometimes things don't go as planned. Just ask me, as I'm on my temporary exile in Peru right now, since having my Colombian visa rejected. If we can’t plan something in our morning, if we can’t plan something when we visit a website, then where do we get the idea that we can plan things as complex as our lives? Or as complex as a big project, such as a book? When things don’t go as planned, you get new information. You can use that information to make a new plan. So, in this week's article, I'm suggesting that you make things not going as planned part of the plan. It can take you places you never expected to go. Love Your Work is now fully listener-supported! Patreon supporters are now covering ALL production costs for Love Your Work! Thank you supporters! To help, go to kadavy.net/donate. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors http://backblaze.com/loveyourwork Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/plan-for-the-unplanned/  

BJ Mendelson (@bjmendelson) is author of Privacy: And How to Get it Back. One of the key themes we've been exploring on Love Your Work over the past three years has been just how it is that creators get paid. This was certainly top of my mind when I doubled down on writing and podcasting and moved to Colombia with no clear business model in site. To understand how creators get paid, we need to understand the entire economy of content. How does content get monetized, and how much or how little of that monetization makes it to creators? We've talked about how the economics of content shape technology in my essay on the Behavioral Revolution. We've talked about how those economics promote digital distraction in conversations with Hooked author, Nir Eyal. We've talked about new models for monetization – such as cryptocurrency-based compensation – with Steemit CEO Ned Scott, and with Maneesh Sethi from Pavlok. Today, we're going to dig into privacy. When you understand how your privacy is being invaded to keep the web running, it becomes more clear just where things will be going in the future, and what you can do as both a creator and consumer of content to make that a bright future for yourself and your fellow creator. In this conversation, we'll learn: What are the ways that our privacy is invaded to keep the web running. Why does it matter? What can you do to protect your privacy, and encourage companies to search for other ways to monetize? Is the online advertising industry in for a day of reckoning? What trends should you, as a creative entrepreneur, be aware of? Love Your Work is now fully listener-supported! Patreon supporters are now covering ALL production costs for Love Your Work! Thank you supporters! To help, go to kadavy.net/donate. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors http://skillshare.com/loveyourwork http://backblaze.com/loveyourwork Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/bj-mendelson-privacy/

Socializing is good. But socializing as a default — out of some Fear Of Missing Out — is not good. If you can find the discipline to pursue your work, while others are just killing time, you will have mastered The Art of Staying In. The Art of Staying In is deciding not to go out and socialize just because it's the default thing to do. Instead, you use that time and energy to take control of your life and your work. If you master The Art of Staying In, two things will happen. One, you'll suddenly have a lot more time and get a lot more done. And two, you'll suddenly be in control of your destiny. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Donate on Patreon Supporters are currently covering more than half of production costs for Love Your Work. Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at kadavy.net/donate. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/stay-in-podcast/

Adam Conover (@adamconover) had good things going for him. He had just graduated from college, and his sketch comedy group was a hit. So many people were watching their videos! This was before YouTube, so they kept on having to find new places to host the videos, there was so much traffic. But then the group broke up. At first, Adam wasn't worried. Since he had so much success, he figured he could easily build a career in comedy. But he slowly learned that he was wrong. It was slow going. Today, Adam has his own hit show, Adam Ruins Everything, on TruTV. On Adam Ruins Everything, Adam takes a well-researched and hilarious approach to straightening out popular myths and misconceptions. Adam has "ruined" Tylenol, pure bred dogs, and diamond engagement rings, just to name a few things. Adam Ruins Everything starts its third season on TruTV this fall. So what happened? How did Adam work his way back to success in comedy? In this episode you'll learn: How did Adam discover that "ruining" things was his calling? What mindset did Adam have that helped him bounce back from failure to find success again? In businesses where personal connections are important, why does Adam tell you NOT to suck up to successful people. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Donate on Patreon Supporters are currently covering more than half of production costs for Love Your Work. Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at kadavy.net/donate. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net."     Sponsors http://skillshare.com/loveyourwork Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/adam-conover-podcast/

After publishing my first book, it took me six years to publish my second book. After publishing my second book, it took me only six months to publish my fourth book. I published three books in the past six months, and I learned a ton along the way. I'm going to share it with you today. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Donate on Patreon Supporters are currently covering more than half of production costs for Love Your Work. Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at kadavy.net/donate. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/self-publishing-lessons/

Phil Thompson (@Cape_Horn_CHI) is the illustrator and business mind behind Cape Horn Illustration, which sells Chicago wall art. Today we have a great discussion on making art that sells. Phil's portfolio of products includes maps of microbreweries in Chicago, marathon maps for all of the major marathons, and "home portraits." His work has been featured on the sets of major motion pictures like "The Big Sick," and "Blockers." Phil also happens to be my mastermind partner. We've been talking every two weeks about how to balance our individual artistic visions with what the market wants. We've learned a lot in our conversations, and I'm really excited to be sharing Phil and his work with you today. Today, we'll talk about: How do you "validate" your art. Hear about Phil's first experiments in selling his artwork online. What did he learn from his first success, and what did he learn from his first big failure? How do you make your art marketable? Learn to think about what your art does for someone. How does that translate into sales? How can you turn your interests into profitable art? I love how Phil has been able to take his curiosities – whether it's running marathons or learning about Chicago architecture – and he's been able to use those curiosities to fuel profitable art. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Donate on Patreon Supporters are currently covering more than half of production costs for Love Your Work. Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at kadavy.net/donate. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors http://skillshare.com/loveyourwork http://weebly.com/loveyourwork  Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/phil-thompson/

You heard me talk last week about morning routines, with the co-author of My Morning Routine, Benjamin Spall. I have a new morning routine I've been practicing this year, and it's been giving me some of my best ideas yet. The amazing part is I'm able to do this routine before I even get out of bed. I'll tell you why in this essay.     Sponsors http://earthclassmail.com  http://weebly.com/loveyourwork  Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/stay-bed-podcast/ 

Benjamin Spall is co-author of the new book, My Morning Routine: How Successful People Start Every Day Inspired. He and his co-author have interviewed 300 successful people from business, fitness, and the arts. People like Biz Stone, Arianna Huffington, General Stanley McCrystal, and Marie Kondo. The way you spend your first hour of your day sets the tone for the rest of your day. But there seems to be endless ways to you can spend this precious time. Should you meditate? Go for a jog? Do some writing? Oh, and I'm in the book as well (page 132). They interviewed me about my morning routine, and my evening routine. I'll tell you why I wear the dorkiest orange goggles imaginable before bed. They've looked for the patterns amongst successful people to find out the things you'll hear about in this conversation. Things like: What time do successful people get up in the morning? You hear a lot of talk about getting up at 4 a.m.. Is that the norm? How do successful people manage technology to get the most out of their days? You'll hear a tip from a former Love Your Work guest, Nir Eyal. And if you haven't optimized your morning routine, the options can be overwhelming. How can you start making lasting changes now?     Sponsors http://skillshare.com/loveyourwork  http://earthclassmail.com http://weebly.com/loveyourwork  Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/morning-routines-podcast/

Clear prioritization inspires clear action. But how do you decide what's the most important todo item to tackle first? For me, I like to listen to my body. It's the subject of this week's essay.     Sponsors http://weebly.com/loveyourwork  http://earthclassmail.com  Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/listen-body-podcast 

You've heard about the importance of working with people who come from different perspectives. But will that automatically lead to great work? It's not so simple. Our guest today, Shane Snow, was curious about why diverse teams are supposedly so powerful, when they're in fact hard to pull off. That's why he wrote this new book, Dream Teams. In this book, Shane really breaks down what makes a truly great team. How can you have just the right amount of conflict to have better ideas and go farther as a team, without the relationships turning sour. Even though I work by myself, I really enjoyed this book. It's full of great stories of dream teams throughout history, and it really made me think about how to seek out differing perspectives in improving the work I do. In this conversation, Shane and I talk about: Do we always have better ideas working with a team? What are the key components of making something great as a group? We also talk a lot about writing. How did Shane turn his curiosity for one subject, into a marketable idea about Dream Teams? We also trade tips about how we do research for the books we write. Hear exactly Shane and my different approaches to doing research and collecting ideas to write about.     Sponsors http://skillshare.com/loveyourwork http://weebly.com/loveyourwork http://earthclassmail.com Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/shane-snow-interview/

I have a new book! STEEM is revolutionizing the way creators get paid. I've cashed out over $4,000 from writing on the STEEM blockchain. The most amazing thing is – nobody had to pay me a dime. You heard me interview STEEM co-creator Ned Scott on episode 71. I explained how to make money on STEEM on episode 110. This short read is an updated and slightly expanded version of that free episode. Grab the new book – on Kindle, Paperback, or Audible – at kadavy.net/steembook

If you've heard about stoic philosophy, you've heard about Seneca. Stoicism is in many ways about being indifferent to pleasure or pain. One thing that's pleasurable is getting free things. Free things like Facebook. After the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the mainstream is really waking up to the true cost of "free." If something is supposedly "free," you're paying for it in some other way, whether that's with your data, or just the opportunity costs of your attention. As you'll see, even Seneca knew that almost 2,000 years ago. I've of course talked many times on this podcast about the broken economics of media. With Nir Eyal on episode 21, also on episode 22 when I talked about The Behavioral Revolution, and many many other times. I wrote this article two years ago, but with everything going on in the collective conscious, I thought it would be a good time to dig it out and share it on the podcast. It might help you reframe the idea of "free" in your mind, and make smart choices that make you the person you want to be. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Donate on Patreon Supporters are currently covering more than half of production costs for Love Your Work. Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at kadavy.net/donate. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/seneca-facebook-podcast/

Tim Kasher's (@timkasher) work is deeply embedded in my creative DNA. When I was a young 20-something sitting in a cubicle in Omaha, Nebraska, Tim's work and his success was there to inspire me to find my own creative voice. Tim is one of the pioneers of indie music. He's the frontman of Cursive. Of all of the Cursive songs out there, you're most likely to have heard "The Recluse." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JcFgL2qO9Y The Recluse is on Cursive's most successful album. The Ugly Organ recently passed its 15-year anniversary, and has sold an amazing 170,000 copies. Before Cursive, Tim was in a band with Conor Oberst, of the band Bright Eyes, called Commander Venus. After leaving Commander Venus to focus on Cursive, Tim also started a folk band, The Good Life. Omaha in the mid 90's and early 2000's was an indie-rock fan's paradise. Artists like Kasher and Oberst cross-pollinated. They started producing their own cassettes, and eventually formed the label Saddle Creek Records, featuring bands like Bright Eyes and The Faint. The success of Saddle Creek records was a sign of the times. The Internet was allowing great music to spread. They could use lower-cost production and distribution, and communication for spreading their music and booking shows, and a cluster of kids from Nebraska could build a fanbase around the world. I personally always found the story of Saddle Creek records and Tim Kasher inspiring. When the world was telling me to live one way, it seemed like the band members of the various Saddle Creek bands were always underfoot in any bar I stepped into. They were there to remind me you could do things your way, no matter where you're from. I guess that message was still with me when I left Silicon Valley, and as I moved to Colombia to double down on writing and making this podcast. The message that you can "make it" anywhere. You can get by on the power of your ideas. I also love that Tim isn't afraid to follow what interests him. He was brave to split genres between Cursive and The Good Life, and now he's branching off into other crafts. He recently wrote, directed, and produced his first feature film, No Resolution. Following the theme of dysfunctional relationships you'll often hear in Tim's lyrics, No Resolution is about a rift between an engaged couple on a particular New Year's Eve. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3f6Uzn6LgOI Since Tim is multi-talented, he couldn't stop at writing and making an entire film, he even made a soundtrack to go along with it. I'm thrilled to have Tim Kasher on the show. This is a great conversation for anyone looking to find their creative voice, and the courage to follow their unique path. Learn: How does Tim think about genre? Fitting the confines of a genre can water your creative work down, but it can also help it find an audience. How did Tim avoid the "sophomore slump?" He had to push himself to find his creative truth. How does Tim follow his many interests? You can worry that you're spreading yourself thin, but Tim wanted to pave the way for other artists to do what's interesting to them. Clips you'll hear during the interview are The Martyr, and Art Is Hard. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Donate on Patreon Supporters are currently covering more than half of production costs for Love Your Work. Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at kadavy.net/donate. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors http://skillshare.com/loveyourwork http://weebly.com/loveyourwork Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/tim-kasher-podcast-interview/

I was forced to leave Colombia, but now I'm back. Thanks everyone for the help over the past week. I'll explain shortly what happened, and what my situation is now. If you're interested in an even more in-depth, though somewhat redundant overview, delivered after a good night's sleep, watch this Facebook live. If you've been considering supporting the show, now is still a good time. This snafu has disrupted much of the past month, and will require more travel and expense to keep things going as normal. You can donate at http://kadavy.net/donate. I'm also accepting the following cryptocurrencies: bitcoin:3FKfyxtQ8wUww4XxGF9EZ6ukKzbPqCe3aQ ethereum:0xE3CF82Feb6B83b18E37b472017e2a660d33B6fe0 monero:43AV7YumpkB4eAPgv3uMpW63svuqaM1C8ZdEoPvZe76wU8gxZYsdiqSEB4TJUTkD3s7rmHzoxdEubBY7qNzyEAFf3HC4Knp

Human productivity has its limits. You can only type so fast. You can only fill out a spreadsheet so fast. But creativity is infinite. It takes no time to have an idea, but not all ideas are created equal. Traditional productivity and creative productivity seem to be at odds with each other. This week's essay explores why productivity is limited, and creativity is infinite. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Donate on Patreon Supporters are currently covering more than half of production costs for Love Your Work. Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at kadavy.net/donate. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/creativity-infinite-podcast/

A short note for you listeners. I got kicked out of Colombia. I hope to keep bringing you a high-quality show. Thank you so much for your support. If you want to help keep the show coming, please support on Patreon at kadavy.net/donate

Is the educational system a waste of time and money? Most people can agree that schools are inefficient, boring, and expensive. I personally love learning, but I always hated school. Yet, if you're like me, you're probably initially resistant to the idea that we should spend less on the educational system. Our guest today, Bryan Caplan (@bryan_caplan), wants to make the case for spending less time, less money, and less human energy on trying to educate people. He's author of the new book, The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money. Bryan says that people aren't making more money after earning a college degree because they learned more. It's just the piece of paper itself that employers care about. If we didn't push so many people to earn college degrees – and to rack up debt in the process – degrees wouldn't be a base-level requirement for survival in today's job market. Intriguing isn't it? In this conversation, you'll find out: What's the difference between the "signaling" and the "human capital" models of looking at education? Why is this the key to seeing education as a waste of time and money? If we cut education, won't inequality get worse? Bryan tells us why he thinks cutting education spending would actually bring more opportunity to the underprivileged. What is the "social desirability bias?" Bryan tells us why this bias leads us blindly into wasting time and money on so-called education. It's a thought-provoking conversation. You're bound to hear something you don't agree with, and you'll be forced to think about it. Hopefully you enjoy that as much as I do. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Donate on Patreon Supporters are currently covering more than half of production costs for Love Your Work. Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at kadavy.net/donate. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.   Sponsors http://skillshare.com/loveyourwork http://weebly.com/loveyourwork Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/bryan-caplan-interview/

As humanity progresses, we're always finding new resources to optimize. Time is one resource we optimize. But the idea of time management has become so ubiquitous, it's hard to imagine what it's like to not manage our time. By understanding that time management as we know it hasn't been around forever, we can be prepared for the next resource to be optimized. I talk more about that in this week's essay. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Donate on Patreon Supporters are currently covering more than half of production costs for Love Your Work. Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at kadavy.net/donate. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.       Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/time-management-invention-podcast/

Drew Ackerman (@dearestscooter) has a podcast so boring, it will put you to sleep. That's why it's so successful. Almost five years ago, decided to make a podcast. Drew suffered from insomnia, so he wanted to make a podcast that would help people fall asleep. Drew wrote stories and droned on, and gradually began to earn new listeners. Today, he's produced over 650 episodes. He's kept up a pace of about three episodes a week. Drew's show, called Sleep With Me, has millions of listeners. He's one of Patreon's top creators with almost 4,000 patrons. Sleep With Me has been featured in The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. While Sleep With Me is an incredibly successful podcast, you'll see in this conversation that the success is no fluke. Drew has worked incredibly hard. Find out: How did Drew motivate himself to finally get started, even after procrastinating for years. How did Drew use Motivational Judo to trick himself into making one episode after another? What self-talk did Drew use to keep himself going and finally quit his day job, even after making the podcast for three years, without pay? This conversation is like a perfect blueprint of my latest book, The Heart to Start. If you've read the book, you'll see lots of familiar concepts playing out in Drew's story. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Donate on Patreon Supporters are currently covering more than half of production costs for Love Your Work. Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at kadavy.net/donate. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors http://skillshare.com/loveyourwork http://weebly.com/loveyourwork http://theprepared.com Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/drew-ackerman-interview/

I've written a couple of books now, and the process is nothing at all like I expected it would be. I think misconceptions about how to write a book prevent many people from writing their books. Just imagine all of the unwritten books that are locked up inside of people around the world because of these misconceptions. So in this week's essay, I share what I wish I had known about writing a book. By the way, I have a "short read" about how to write a book. It's called How to Write a Book. It's on Kindle, paperback, and it's now on Audible! So if you enjoy this essay, check out that short read. It takes less than an hour to read so it won't get in the way of you writing your book. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Donate on Patreon Supporters are currently covering more than half of production costs for Love Your Work. Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at kadavy.net/donate. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors http://theprepared.com Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/three-things-book-writing/

Charlie Hoehn (@charliehoehn) was on top of the world. He was working with popular authors like Tim Ferriss and Ramit Sethi, and he was helping launch books to the top of the New York Times best-seller list. The problem was, Charlie was miserable. His need to succeed drove him to sacrifice sleep and abuse performance-enhancing drugs. His body was breaking down, and he became crippled with anxiety. Eventually, Charlie found a way out of anxiety, and a way into not just a healthy work/life balance, but a healthy work/life integration. Charlie's secret weapon: Play. If you're anything like me, your initial thought is: Huh? Play? I don't need to play, I'm an adult! Charlie is such an advocate of play that he's written two books about it: Play it Away and Play for a Living. In this playful conversation with Charlie, you'll find out: What does Charlie mean by "play?" I hadn't realized how central play was to my life and work until I had this conversation. How can play actually help you build skills? Being playful can sharpen your skills in reaching goals. How did Charlie overcome workaholism and adjust to a healthy relationship with a high-profile life? We'll also talk about what Charlie learned working with Tim Ferriss, how to think up irresistible book titles, and the power of improv.     Sponsors http://skillshare.com/loveyourwork http://weebly.com/loveyourwork http://theprepared.com Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/charlie-hoehn-podcast/

I've talked on the show many times about how creative work gets paid for. The "free" mentality forces the hand of creators, and it's often not healthy for the people who read their words. Reading everything for free is like eating every meal at McDonald's. I talk more about my own journey of avoiding "factory-farmed" words, instead buying "free range" words, in this week's article. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Donate on Patreon Supporters are currently covering more than half of production costs for Love Your Work. Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at kadavy.net/donate. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors http://theprepared.com Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/free-range-words/

Cy Wakeman (@cywakeman) is the founder of Reality Based Leadership. She wrote a book called No Ego. No Ego is a leadership book, which is an unusual read for me since I'm a solopreneur, but I couldn't put it down. You might hear me talk about ego from time to time. I think my conversation with Ryan Holiday back on episode 31 was the first time I was really thinking about ego. He wrote the book Ego is the Enemy. Since then I've come to realize that ego is the number one enemy that can hold you back from reaching your creative potential. Your ego will keep you from being accountable to yourself and what you want to accomplish. It will direct your attention outside of you, and cause you to blame others. It will cause you to make limiting excuses for yourself. But if you're able to bypass your own ego, something magical happens. You start to concentrate on what you can control. You start to see a connection between your actions and the results you get. This is what I loved so much about Cy's book, No Ego. It's a powerful book for keeping ego from ruining your workplace, but at the same time it's a powerful book for keeping ego from ruining yourself and sabotaging your own potential. Love Your Work now an Alexa Skill! To add the Love Your Work skill to your Amazon Echo, say "Alexa, enable Love Your Work." It's very important, by the way to use the word "enable," and not "add." Also, you can search on the Alexa app, or visit kadavy.net/alexa New Short Read: How to Write a Book I just published a little "book." It's more of a pamphlet, really. It's a Kindle Short Read called "How to Write a Book." It will show you how to use self motivation to overcome writer's block and make your book real. Buy How to Write a Book at kadavy.net/wab. Again, that's kadavy.net/wab Donate on Patreon Supporters are currently covering more than half of production costs for Love Your Work. Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at kadavy.net/donate. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors http://skillshare.com/loveyourwork Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/cy-wakeman-podcast/

Today's essay is about the power of taking your own advice. I've got an interview coming up next week with Cy Wakeman (@cywakeman). Cy is the founder of "Reality Based Leadership." She wrote a book called No Ego, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Today's essay is based upon a quote from that book. Love Your Work now an Alexa Skill! To add the Love Your Work skill to your Amazon Echo, say "Alexa, enable Love Your Work." It's very important, by the way to use the word "enable," and not "add." Also, you can search on the Alexa app, or visit kadavy.net/alexa New Short Read: How to Write a Book I just published a little "book." It's more of a pamphlet, really. It's a Kindle Short Read called "How to Write a Book." It will show you how to use self motivation to overcome writer's block and make your book real. Buy How to Write a Book at kadavy.net/wab. Again, that's kadavy.net/wab Donate on Patreon Supporters are currently covering more than half of production costs for Love Your Work. Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at kadavy.net/donate. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/take-your-own-advice-podcast/

I'm very glad to have my friend Maneesh Sethi back on the show. You first heard Maneesh way back on episode 13. Maneesh is the founder of Pavlok. Pavlok started out as a wearable device that shocks you out of breaking bad habits. You may have heard me talk about using [Pavlok] to break my Facebook habit. It's very effective, because being shocked is not pleasant. But what really excites me about what Maneesh is doing is he has a much larger mission. He says he wants Pavlok to "upgrade humanity." He wants to use technology to change behavior for the better. The broken economics of technology products The ill effects and broken economics of technology is a topic I've talked about often. I dreamt of a "behavioral revolution" wherein technology might change behavior for the better, back on episode 22. But, I lamented that the economics were broken, something I debated with Nir Eyal, who is author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products back on episode 21. Silicon Valley's ideas for how to fix technology Now here's where I go on a long aside, and I might sound a little more angry than usual, but I think it's important. Three years now after I first wrote about the behavioral revolution, there's starting to be buzz in the mainstream media about the ill effects of technology. I think the most recent election and the rise of fake news made people take notice, and they're starting to get it. There was a recent piece in the New York Times, "Early Facebook and Google Employees Form Coalition to Fight What They Built," wherein many Silicon Valley elites are featured, talking about their "union of concerned experts called 'Center for Humane Technology.'" Truthfully, I didn't read the whole article. Their mission is noble, but my general understanding of the topic is that they believe there should be a sort of designer's "code of ethics," that product designers would somehow magically follow. I say this because I've long been familiar with the work of Tristan Harris, who is the founder of the Center for Humane Technology. Tristan used to be an in-house ethicist at Google. I did invite Tristan to be on the podcast a couple of years ago. There was talk of him coming on, but I think it eventually fell through the cracks for him. He's obviously had no problem finding more press exposure, with this New York Times piece. He was even on Sam Harris's podcast, so you can listen to that one if you want to learn more. I don't have anything to add to that conversation, though I was annoyed that the conversation was entirely focused on this idea of ethics, and there was no talk of the economics that force the hands of tech companies and the people who work at them. Fix the economics of digital distraction I believe ethics can only take you so far. As long as there are big companies that answer to shareholders, what is profitable will be what gets done. The larger an organization becomes, the less you can rely upon the consciences of the individual actors. I shouldn't be surprised that the Silicon Valley elite are calling attention to themselves over the very problems they created, and coming up with what I think are hamfisted solutions for those problems. After all, those of us with a conscience refused to do the damage in the first place. I left Silicon Valley more than ten years ago. It would be revisionist to say it was because of the damage technology was going to do. I didn't know precisely where technology would lead, but I did know that after being involved in the initial excitement of the Web 2.0 movement, which was all about using technology to connect people, my work in tech felt increasingly without purpose nor positive impact. I talked more about these feelings in episode 16, entitled Earn it. So, if the Silicon Valley elite had been able to detect the vacuousness of the companies they were building, if their hunger for meaning had been stronger than their hunger for wealth, they wouldn't be in the positions they are in. And since they ended up in these positions through this blindness, they're coming up with these inelegant solutions. No, I don't think ethics will solve the problems of tech. I think the economics need to be fixed. As long as it is profitable to build products that divide us and affect our emotional and physical health, those are the products that are going to be made. Blockchain may fix the broken economics of technology But a shining star of hope has emerged, and that is blockchain technology. Blockchain technology may enable what is good for us to become profitable. I've talked about blockchain technology and its potential to fix these economics. I discussed it with Steemit CEO Ned Scott on episode 46, and have shared my experiences with earning from my writing in my Steemit tutorial on episode 110. By the way, a Bloomberg columnist reached out to me based upon that Steemit tutorial. I was quoted in a Bloomberg article "Websites That Pay Users With Blockchain Aim to Disrupt Facebook." My quote: I feel like I’m in the Stone Age when I’m on Facebook or Twitter. They have no value without what you’re contributing to them. If Facebook doesn’t respond to this, things can change very quickly. They should be very concerned. I explain a little more what I mean by that in my Steemit tutorial on episode 110. To sum it up: Blockchain platforms like Steemit are a community garden. Facebook is digital sharecropping. I'm being a little harsh, and I even detect in myself some sour grapes here. There is some value to ethics, and I'm glad awareness is growing. I just think much better solutions are right under the noses of these powerful people. I can't tell you how annoying it is to me that Medium, for example, is holding onto this subscription model when the blockchain is right there. Can Maneesh Sethi upgrade humanity with the blockchain? So, enter Maneesh Sethi, and why I'm so glad that he is in the world. Maneesh is trying to incentivize good behavior with the blockchain. You can earn "volts" on the Pavlok mobile app, for tracking your sleep, doing a gratitude journal, or building pretty much any habit you wish. As you'll hear in this conversation, Maneesh quietly built volts on the blockchain way back in 2014. His users have been earning volts, with no value, ever since. He tells me volts will actually be released as a cryptocurrency sometime later this year, meaning people could actually earn money building good habits and breaking bad habits. And also that the volts that they've already earned may suddenly become valuable. It's an attempt to fix the broken economics of technology. It's huge, and exciting and I can't wait to see if it works. This conversation is long, and rambly, like this intro, and we interrupt each other a lot. But, I love talking with Maneesh so I left it mostly unedited. Hopefully you appreciate some of the tangents we go on. New Short Read: How to Write a Book I just published a little "book." It's more of a pamphlet, really. It's a Kindle Short Read called "How to Write a Book." It will show you how to use self motivation to overcome writer's block and make your book real. Buy How to Write a Book at kadavy.net/wab. Again, that's kadavy.net/wab. Donate on Patreon Supporters are currently covering more than half of production costs for Love Your Work. Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at kadavy.net/donate. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors:  http://skillshare.com/loveyourwork Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/maneesh-sethi/

Big creative projects are daunting. It's hard to find the motivation to make them happen. I talk about a trick I use to make creative projects practically complete themselves. I call it cascading motivation, and it's the subject of this week's article. New Short Read: How to Write a Book I just published a little "book." It's more of a pamphlet, really. It's a Kindle Short Read called "How to Write a Book." It will show you how to use self motivation to overcome writer's block and make your book real. Buy How to Write a Book at kadavy.net/wab. Again, that's kadavy.net/wab Donate on Patreon Supporters are currently covering more than half of production costs for Love Your Work. Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at kadavy.net/donate. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/cascading-motivation-podcast/

John Ramey (@jpramey) found success as an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. He dropped out of college with only one semester left, moved to Silicon Valley, and built a successful startup. After he sold his startup, John traveled the world helping budding ecosystems promote entrepreneurship. He ended up setting up a program called Nomadic Mentors, which pairs experienced entrepreneurs with incubator and accelerator programs around the world in developing markets. By the way, I'm one of the mentors in Nomadic Mentors. I've done a trip to Greece and to Serbia where I spoke and helped entrepreneurs. After John traveled the world, he served as the Innovation Advisor to the Obama White House. He set up a program at The Pentagon for making government innovation happen in months, rather than decades. Now that John has had that success, has traveled the world, and has seen firsthand how governments work, including very intimately with the U.S. government, and a trip to North Korea that you're going to hear about, what is John dedicating his time to now? He's actually running a site for "prepping." You may have seen some reality shows with shifty-eyed people prepping for nuclear fallout or a zombie apocalypse. This is not that. John affectionately refers to himself as a SANE "prepper." If you go to his site, which is at theprepared.com you can see that John is quite sane. He provides incredibly-detailed and practical information on all sorts of disaster or emergency-preparedness supplies. On theprepared.com you'll find prepping checklists for emergencies such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and car accidents. You'll find detailed reviews of supplies such as water storage containers and non-perishable food. You'll find everything you need to be informed on how best to prepare you, your family, and your home for an emergency. This is a very long conversation. John has really seen The Matrix, so to speak, that rules our daily lives. Hear about: How he lived in Silicon Valley on $2.85 a day. How did he end up working at the White House? What was his trip to North Korea like, and why wasn't he, as an American, allowed to use the bathroom on one ocassion? After all John has done, why has he decided a "prepper" site was the next project for him? Self Motivation Webinar March 7th I'll be sharing my best self-motivation tips from over a decade as a solopreneur in my brand-new webinar, Self Motivation for Solopreneurs. It will be on Wednesday, March 7th 2018 at 3pm EST. Learn more and sign up at kadavy.net/motivation. Donate on Patreon Supporters are currently covering more than half of production costs for Love Your Work. Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at kadavy.net/donate. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/john-ramey/

Getting writing done is a battle with your mind. If you're a perfectionist, it can be a very tough battle. But if you have phrases you can tell yourself, you can win that battle. I think of them as "mantras." They're little things you can say to yourself when you get stuck. They'll keep you moving. In today's article, I'll tell you eight mantras to overcome perfectionism and get writing done. Buy The Heart to Start on Amazon You have something to offer the world. Break through fear, self-doubt, and distractions to finally make it real. Buy The Heart to Start. Donate on Patreon Supporters are currently covering more than half of production costs for Love Your Work. Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at kadavy.net/donate. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/eight-writing-mantras-podcast/

Joanna Penn (@thecreativepenn) is one of the leaders in helping self-published, or I should say "indie" authors, find their way. She has been self-publishing since 2009. She's written 27 books under 3 different pen names, and she earns a multi-six-figure income. She writes about writing and running an indie author business at thecreativepenn.com, and she has a podcast called The Creative Penn. Regular listeners know that I recently self-published for the first time. In the process of self-publishing, I've discovered a whole new world. I used to think that self-publishing would be a step down for me. After all, I had a traditional publisher for my first book. It was nice to have the vote of confidence, and the advance check, from the publisher. And it was nice to have the support on editing, design, and distribution. But it turns out there's more and more opportunity in self-publishing. You have full control over your writing, and you're going to be responsible for your most of your marketing anyway. You actually have more control over that as a self-published author. There are more six-figure authors than ever. A recent survey from Written Word Media found that, in 2017, the number of authors making $100,000 or more jumped by 70%. In this episode, you'll learn: Why is "self-published" the wrong term. I keep saying "self-publishing," and I'll probably keep saying it, but Joanna prefers the term "indie author." Why is that? How can you hit the New York Times' best-seller list as an indie author? Joanna has done it. She explains why she thinks it's not such a big deal. Why have pen names? As I said Joanna publishes under three different names, which I think is a very cool and interesting way to break down creative resistance. But I was surprised to hear why she does it. Buy The Heart to Start on Amazon You have something to offer the world. Break through fear, self-doubt, and distractions to finally make it real. Buy The Heart to Start. Donate on Patreon Supporters are currently covering more than half of production costs for Love Your Work. Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at kadavy.net/donate. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/joanna-penn-podcast/

As regular listeners know, I recently self-published for the first time. I traditionally-published my first book, Design for Hackers, and I had a good experience. I liked having the extra support for getting my book laid out and printed, and onto shelves around the world, and as a first-time author, I really needed the vote of confidence and accountability of a publishing contract. But this time around, with my new book The Heart to Start, I had a lot to learn. Fortunately, it turned out that I had already built many of the skills I needed to self-publish. I'm glad that I never stopped learning. Whether you dream of publishing a book, or of doing something else, today's article will help inspire you to keep learning. Buy The Heart to Start on Amazon You have something to offer the world. Break through fear, self-doubt, and distractions to finally make it real. Buy The Heart to Start. Donate on Patreon Love Your Work currently costs $260 a month to produce, and supporters are covering half of that! Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at kadavy.net/donate. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/never-stop-learning/

Jordan Harbinger (@jordanharbinger) started out as a lawyer, but made a big change. You heard about another lawyer who made a career change, Jodi Ettenberg, back on episode 23. Jodi became a food and travel writer. Jordan Harbinger did something different. He quit his job as a lawyer to become a podcaster. A very successful one at that. If you listen to podcasts, you've probably already heard The Art of Charm. (Jordan now hosts The Jordan Harbinger Show). Jordan examines relationship-building and networking to be more effective in business, and in life. The Art of Charm received a brief mention here on Love Your Work when Hollywood set designer JP Connelly shared his favorite podcasts on episode 91. In this episode, Jordan shares: Law is a prestigious profession with a rich history. Did Jordan hesitate to start podcasting instead? Jordan has interviewed folks such as Shaquille O'Neil, Larry King, and Robert Cialdini. How does he connect with influencers, and how can you do the same? When it comes to building a platform such as a podcast, what really makes a difference in growing the show? Buy The Heart to Start on Amazon You have something to offer the world. Break through fear, self-doubt, and distractions to finally make it real. Buy The Heart to Start. Donate on Patreon Love Your Work currently costs $260 a month to produce, and supporters are covering half of that! Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at kadavy.net/donate. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/jordan-harbinger-podcast-interview/

Something that has been on the top of my mind the past few years is how creators can make an honest living from their work. You heard me talk with Hooked author Nir Eyal back on episode 21 about how technology is fragmenting attention, for example. These economics incentivize creators to be outlandish or even dishonest. But, the blockchain and cryptocurrencies may change all of that. I've been earning money for my writing lately on the STEEM blockchain, on a social network called Steemit. You heard me talk to STEEM's CEO, Ned Scott back on episode 71. I recently cashed in over $1,000 in STEEM cryptocurrency. Today I'll be giving a basic introduction to making money on Steemit. You'll learn: Where does the money come from? I cash in the STEEM Tokens I earn, but why are they worth anything? What are the various forms of STEEM, and what are they for? I'll talk about STEEM, STEEM Power, and STEEM Dollars. Once you earn STEEM, how can you convert it to USD? I'll give you the gist in this episode, but for step-by-step instructions, visit the original post for my beginner's guide to STEEM Buy The Heart to Start on Amazon You have something to offer the world. Break through fear, self-doubt, and distractions to finally make it real. Buy The Heart to Start. Donate on Patreon Love Your Work currently costs $260 a month to produce, and supporters are covering almost half of that! Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at kadavy.net/donate. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/steem-beginners-podcast/

Join Audible and listen to The Heart to Start free at http://kadavy.net/audible Hey there, just wanted to let you know that the audiobook version of The Heart to Start is now available on Audible!   I know many of you have been anticipating this, as audio is such a convenient medium – it probably explains why many of you discovered my work through my podcast.   If you sign up over here as a first-time Audible customer, you will get a 30-day trial, in which you can pick The Heart to Start as your trial book.   By the way, signing up through my link helps support my work. I'll earn a $5 bounty if you sign up for the free trial, and if you choose HTS as your first book AND become a customer of Audible for at least 61 days, I'll earn another $50 bounty. Here's the link again.

Todd Henry (@toddhenry) has written a ton of books. My personal favorite is called Die Empty, and it's all about finding the urgency to pursue your creative destiny. His newest book is called Herding Tigers, and it's all about leading creative people so they can do their best work. He also has a great podcast called The Accidental Creative. In fact, he interviewed me on the show, and you can listen to it over here. In this episode, we'll talk about: The different kinds of work: What is making, mapping, and meshing? What's your style when it comes to executing your ideas? If you're weak on one kind of work, and strong on another, what's the result? And how do great creative leaders create an environment where their people can be creative and effective? The killer tip from this is that "great leaders have great rituals." Buy The Heart to Start on Amazon You have something to offer the world. Break through fear, self-doubt, and distractions to finally make it real. Buy The Heart to Start.     Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/toddy-henry-podcast/

We're in only the second week of 2018. There's optimism in the air, and you have a fresh well of energy and motivation for making change in your life. Have you thought about starting something? Maybe you want to start writing, or you want to start a company. How can you make 2018 the year you finally get started? I'll share three easy ways in today's article. Buy The Heart to Start on Amazon You have something to offer the world. Break through fear, self-doubt, and distractions to finally make it real. Buy The Heart to Start. Donate on Patreon Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at kadavy.net/donate. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/2018-get-started/

BJ Fogg (@bjfogg) is a behavioral scientist at Stanford University. He specializes in "Behavior Design," which aims to influence people for the better through insights about human behavior. In this podcast episode, BJ breaks down how to build good habits. Why do we fail to build good habits? Most resolutions to build good habits fail for two reasons: We think too vaguely. We think things like "I want to eat healthier" or "I want to lose weight." If you want to make something a reality you have to break it down into actions. Specificity makes behavior easier to change. Our motivation changes. You might start off trying to build good habits and feel very motivated, but your motivation will wane. You may have felt very motivated by something – such as the New Year – but that will pass. Or, life gets in the way, and that causes your priorities to change. What are some of the hardest good habits to build? What is a good habit? Well, that's up to you. But some of the most common good habits that people want to build are writing, and meditation. Yet they're the hardest. It's up to you what you consider to be a good habit. If you need help deciding on one popular habit: Should you make your bed? I've got you covered with that episode. Since I wrote a book about building writing habits with the aim of writing a book, I'll use that as an example to apply BJ's concepts in this post. The "swarm of bees" approach to build good habits We fail to build good habits because we think to vaguely. For example, we might say we want to write a book. You can't just sit down and write a book, especially if you're a beginning writer. An even more vague goal you might hear from people is that they want to "eat healthy." Neither of these are habits. These are outcomes. They are the results of taking actions, but they aren't actions themselves. So, it becomes mentally impossible to use them to "build good habits," if you aren't intentional about it. Fogg uses a concept, in his tiny habits training program, he calls the "swarm of bees." You start with your vague outcome. Fogg calls it an "aspiration." Write it down on a piece of paper. Then, write down a bunch of behaviors you could do that would help lead to that aspiration. It looks like this slide from Fogg's TEDx talk. [caption id="attachment_4474" align="aligncenter" width="750"] The "swarm of bees" is an outcome surrounded by behaviors that could lead to that outcome.[/caption] In this slide, the aspiration is "health outcomes," which could be something like losing weight. Let's think of the swarm of bees as something like writing a book. Outcome: Write a book Behaviors Sit at computer. Put fingers on keyboard. Type. Read about how to write a book. Read about how to publish a book. Do market research. and so on... Not all behaviors are habits: Three categories of behaviors As you come up with behaviors to match your aspiration, you'll find each behavior falls into one of three categories: One-time behaviors: Things you do just once, such as buy a book or schedule an appointment. Behaviors over a period of time: Things you do over a period of time, such as mow the lawn regularly over the summer. Habits: Things you do habitually with no time restriction. Brushing your teeth, meditating, or writing. Pick behaviors that are a good match for you, to build good habits Now you have an outcome you want to reach, and you have a list of behaviors that will bring you closer to that outcome. Next, you need to pick a behavior that you can build into a good habit. But you don't want to pick just any behavior. If you want to build good habits, the behavior has to be a good match. Fogg recommends choosing a behavior with the following three characteristics: The behavior has an impact: A good behavior will take you toward your aspiration. Since you already did the swarm of bees exercise, this will be a given. The behavior is something you can do: The good match for you is a behavior that you're capable of doing. If you’re a beginning writer trying to write a book, trying to build a habit of writing 5,000 words a day might be too much. The behavior is something you want to do: If you don't want to do the behavior, you can't build it into a good habit. How many days does it take to build a good habit? It depends! Despite what you might hear about how long it takes to build a good habit, there is no set number of times or days. (Commonly you hear the myth of “21 days” to build a good habit.) It really depends upon the habit you’re building. Some habits are instant: The moment you touched a smart phone, using it became a habit. When Fogg got a new rocking chair, sitting in it instantly became a habit, because it was so much better than his other chair. Other habits can take more time to take root. Good habits are like the roots of a plant More accurately, both good habits and bad habits are like the roots of a plant. Any plant needs to take root in order to survive. You want to pull the weeds (the bad habits) before their roots get too strong, and you want to nurture the good plants (the good habits) so they can take root and thrive for a long time. If you have a good habit going, but your life gets disrupted, you should take extra care to help that habit take root in your new circumstances. Think of it how you would think of moving a plant from one pot to another – it would need extra care. Good habits change your personal identity When you've built a good habit, meaning it's firmly rooted, it changes your personal identity. You start to tell yourself, "I'm the kind of person who...." Now that I've personally established a habit of writing, I'm more confident in my identity as a writer. "I'm the kind of person who writes." I write every morning during my pre-established writing habit, but now I can write anytime. Good habits have a "ripple effect." They lead to more good habits. Fogg has helped thousands of people build good habits through his tiny habits program. He collects data on the effects building good habits on these people. Fogg has found that, within five days after starting to build one good habit, eighty percent of people start building other habits. They apparently say to themselves, "I'm the kind of person who builds good habits." Consistency matters more than scale in building good habits When you're trying to build good habits, consistency matters more than scale. For example, if you have a habit of writing 100 words a day, and you're able to do it every day, that's better than if you try to build a habit of writing 1,000 words a day, but you're only able to do it occasionally. Why? Because if you keep writing 100 words a day, the habit has a chance to take root. It goes from being a behavior you do for a short period of time, to being a habit that you stick with. You really know something is a habit if it is easier to do the habit than it is to not do the habit. Think about habits like brushing your teeth or bathing. You don't feel right if you don't do them. They're strongly-rooted habits. It's a part of your identity. "[You're] the kind of person who brushes their teeth." Back to the writing habit: If you try to write 1,000 words a day, it's hard to remain consistent early on. It's easy to make excuses such as that you're too busy. You can't be consistent, so the habit can't take root. Tiny habits are the seeds of good habits Consistency is more important than scale. A small behavior done consistently has a better chance of taking root and changing your identity than a large behavior done inconsistently. This is why Fogg recommends tiny habits. Tiny habits are the seeds of good habits. I've been talking in this post about how much better it would be to build a 100-word writing habit than to try to build a 1,000-word writing habit. Those 100 words would be the seed that takes root. Your identity changes. You're the kind of person who writes every day. The next thing you know, you're writing much more. Feel good about your habit, don't feel bad about your habit For a habit to take root, you have to be consistent with it. You'll have a better chance of being consistent with your habit if you feel good about that habit. So find ways to feel good about your habit, and avoid ways that make you feel bad about your habit. Here's a few ways to keep you feeling good about your habit, and avoid feeling bad about your habit. Keep your good habit a tiny habit If you want to feel good about your habit, it helps to succeed at your habit. Fogg strongly recommends that you keep your habit tiny forever. It's counterintuitive. After all, if you want to write a book, how are you going to do it by writing just 100 words a day? The key is to allow yourself to do your habit beyond your target. So, if you have a habit of writing 100 words a day, go ahead and write 250 words, or 1,000 words. But keep your target at 100. I will say that I make a contradictory recommendation in my post, how to write a book. There's value as a writer to getting really good at writing pieces of a certain length. There's also value in building the habit of publishing. It would be incredibly complicated to study these factors, along with the factor of word count, to make a scientific recommendation on what works best. So, Fogg still staunchly stands by keeping your habit tiny. He's a scientist, and that's what he knows works. Congratulate yourself for performing your good habit Every time you do your habit, celebrate in some way. You could have a reward for yourself, but you can also merely tell yourself that you did a good job. This will keep you feeling good about your habit, and prevent you from feeling bad about your habit. In the writing example, let's say you have a tough day of writing. But, you wrote 100 words. Don't feel bad. Instead, congratulate yourself for performing your good habit for the day. Again, if you go past 100 words, that's great, but really congratulate yourself for merely writing 100 words. Lower your standards to feel good about your habit Ambitious people tend to have high standards. Not only do they want to write 1,000 words a day, they expect those words to be great. This just adds another opportunity to feel like you've failed at your habit. Worse yet, you may keep yourself from starting your habit in the first place. This is why, in my book The Heart to Start, I say you should give yourself "permission to suck." If you're writing badly every day, you have a much better chance of becoming good at writing if you instead decide not to write at all, just because you don't think you're a good writer. You'd find yourself in a Catch-22 situation: You can't get good at writing because you won't practice it. You won't practice writing because you don't feel that you're good at it. Don't count habit "streaks" Fogg recommends against counting "streaks," for your habits. Habit streaks create another opportunity for you to feel bad about your habit, which can lead to you not performing the behavior, which can prevent the habit from taking root. Imagine, for example, that you have a good habit of writing 100 words a day, and you’ve counted a streak of twenty days. Then, you miss your habit for some reason – maybe you were sick or you had house guests. Now, not only do you feel bad about missing your streak, you also have the sensation of starting your streak all over again. It’s as if you’re committing to 10,000 words, rather than 100. It would then be easy to abandon your good habit altogether. In summary... Find behaviors that fit your aspiration. From those behaviors, find a good habit match. Build tiny habits. Feel good about your habits. Don't feel bad about your habits. Buy The Heart to Start on Amazon You have something to offer the world. Break through fear, self-doubt, and distractions to finally make it real. Buy The Heart to Start. Join Love Your Work Elite Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at lywelite.com. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show Notes: https://kadavy.net/blog/posts/build-good-habits/

Many of you have checked out my new book The Heart to Start. I got tired of hearing the advice "just get started," and I wanted to break it down for people. It shows you how to bust through all of the mental distortions and distractions that stand in the way of you getting started. Today, I'm going to share another sample chapter. This is from Chapter 10 of The Heart to Start, and I'm going to tell you about when I got stuck trying to start writing my first book, Design for Hackers. Our friend Noah Kagan, who you've heard on this show, ended up showing me how I was standing in my own way. You can buy The Heart to Start on Amazon. There's now a paperback version, so if you picked it up on Kindle and want a physical copy, now you can do that. Also, I really truly appreciate all of the reviews that have been pouring in on Amazon. If you've read The Heart to Start, please click on a star rating on Amazon. It would be a HUGE help. Join Love Your Work Elite Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at lywelite.com. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors: http://brandfolder.com/loveyourwork Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/linear-work-distortion-podcast/

David W. Galenson is an economics professor at The University of Chicago. He's also a visiting professor at other schools, such as MIT. David is an unusual economist in that he studies the economics of art. Have you ever noticed how some young geniuses have rapid success? Have you wondered when your work will finally get noticed? It turns out, there are two totally different approaches to making your art, and the approach that you take can drastically affect when you'll find success. I recently picked up David's book, Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity, and I found it so fascinating, I had to have him on the show. David's theory is that there are two totally different approaches to making one's art: You might be a conceptual innovator, in that you take a concept and run with it. Or, you might be an experimental innovator – you might be tweaking for a lifetime, trying to figure something out. You may have heard about Galenson's work on Malcolm Gladwell's podcast, Revisionist History. There's an episode that uses Galenson's theory to explain why Leonard Cohen's song, Hallelujah took so long to become popular. In this talk, you'll learn: What makes someone a conceptual innovator? What about an experimental innovator? Who are some well known innovators in each category? You'll hear about Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, Bob Dylan, Picasso, Alfred Hitchcock, and many more. Can you change your innovation style? Or are you just better off embracing your style? Join Love Your Work Elite Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at lywelite.com. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors: http://skillshare.com/loveyourwork http://readwise.io/heart http://brandfolder.com/loveyourwork Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/david-galenson/

Today, I'm very happy to announce that I have a new book out. Have you ever heard the advice "just get started?" Have you ever been left wondering "yeah, but how?" This was me when I was first starting on my own. I knew that the best way to make progress toward my dreams was to just get started. But that seemed easier said than done. It seemed each time I tried to start, I'd run into a fear, or a self-doubt, or I'd find a way to procrastinate. My new book is called "The Heart to Start: Win the Inner War & Let Your Art Shine". It's available right now on Amazon at kadavy.net/heart. Please, please go get this book. It's the result of a lifetime of learning, and many months of work. It's short and to the point, and I really think it will help you reach your potential. Thank you to all of the early readers of the book. Many people provided feedback and edits, and I could not have made the book what it is without you. After you check out the book, I'd deeply appreciate an Amazon review. Especially those of you who have already read it. I've probably already asked you for a review, but I want to remind you – please, please write a review on Amazon. When you have a book on Amazon, reviews are everything. You've gotta have reviews, because they help boost the book in Amazon's discovery engine. So when someone is looking at a related book, they see The Heart to Start. So please buy the book, and please leave an honest review. Again, you can find it at kadavy.net/heart. And I'll have a sample chapter for you on today's show. Mockup credit Join Love Your Work Elite Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at lywelite.com. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors http://brandfolder.com/loveyourwork Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/heart-to-start-mockup/

Libryia Jones (@wanderwomanic) has made it easier for people to have the experience of living in different places. Last year, she organized a trip for her and and more than thirty others to spend a year on the road. They lived in places like Prague, Cape Town, and my personal favorite, Medellin. If you've been listening to this show for awhile, you know that I'm a big advocate of travel. More accurately I'm a big advocate of mini-lives – living on a different place for a month or more at a time. It's a great way to grow and it just makes life interesting. But travel isn't always easy. You have to find a place to live and work, and it can be more fun if you have others to share the experience with. Libryia's company, Wanderist is organizing another trip. In fact, there are two opportunities to come through Medellin, so hopefully some listeners will check it out. In this conversation, we'll talk about: How did Libryia turn rejection into opportunity? She wasn't able to travel in other programs, so she made her own program. How does Libryia travel, even as a single mother? She has a refreshing point-of-view about seeing parenthood as a source of inspiration, rather than as a limitation. When you travel, you want to be safe. How does Libryia think about traveling to places that others might see as dangerous? Join Love Your Work Elite Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at lywelite.com. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors  http://skillshare.com/loveyourwork http://readwise.io/loveyourwork http://brandfolder.com/loveyourwork Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/libryia-jones/

The past several years, I've been really fascinated with optimizing creative output. It all started when I wrote my first book, Design for Hackers. I had been creative on command working as a professional designer, but when it came time to write a book, it was harder than ever. Since then, I've noticed that if I arrange my life and work according to mental states, I can be sure that I do my most important creative work during my peak creative time. I can then arrange the rest of my life and work to serve that peak creative output. Join Love Your Work Elite Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at lywelite.com. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/seven-mental-states-podcast/

One of the key things that I did early on in my career as an independent creator was set up passive revenue streams. If it wasn't for this passive revenue, I never would have been able to free up the time to explore, so I never would have come up with my first book, Design for Hackers, and I probably never would have found the time to make this show. I looked at the passive revenue as a way to explore other things. I didn't make it a part of my personal brand, so to speak. In fact, one of my passive revenue streams was an online dating blog that I wrote under a pseudonym. Our guest today, Pat Flynn (@patflynn), has a different approach. He's all about the passive revenue. He's been setting up passive revenue streams since 2008. He started with a training e-book for an architecture exam, and he's got a security guard training website, courses for marketing a food truck business, podcast playing software for podcast websites, so many more things, including his latest book, Will it Fly, a Wall Street Journal best-seller, which shares what he's learned about knowing whether a new business endeavor is worth following. Pat has been sharing his income reports every month since he started. These days he's earning close to a quarter of a million dollars a month, with all of the businesses I mentioned, and more, including his extremely popular podcast, Smart Passive Income. In this conversation, we'll talk about: How did Pat start making money by sharing what he was learning? You can learn a lot about why you don't have to be a so-called expert to help people. Pat went from the well-established profession of architecture, to making money online. What leaps did he have to make to transition from a profession that was so important to his identity? How does Pat think about transparency? What gave him the idea to start sharing his income reports online? Join Love Your Work Elite Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at lywelite.com. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors: http://skillshare.com/loveyourwork Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/pat-flynn-podcast-interview/

For this very special 100th episode of Love Your Work: How do you find your calling? I've been trying to get to the bottom of this over the past two years, and I think it boils down to a three-step formula that I'll present in this special episode. Discover To find your calling, you need to discover what it is you want to pursue. Usually, it seems, you don't just wake up one day and know what it is you want to do. It can come from different sources. Don't let your dreams hold you back. Let them evolve. (Listen to Peter Bragiel's episode) Don't let the expectations of others drown out your inner voice. (Listen to Jason Fried's episode) Turn your weaknesses into a superpower. (Listen to Maneesh Sethi's episode) Decide If you're going to find your calling, you need to decide to pursue it. The chance of success needs to be more compelling than the alternatives. Bounce back from rock-bottom. (Listen to Elise Bauer's episode) Put the risk in perspective. (Listen to Laura Roeder's episode) Make measured changes. (Listen to Jeff Goins's episode) Do Once you've discovered your calling, and you've decided you're going to pursue it, you have to actually do it. But how do you break through all of the fear and distractions to make it happen. Make the most of your best mental energy. (Listen to Dan Ariely's episode) Scale back your goals. (Listen to Seth Godin's episode) Have a clear picture of success. (Listen to Tucker Max's episode) Just do it. That's how you get things done. (Listen to Jame Altucher's episode)   Join Love Your Work Elite Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at lywelite.com. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/find-your-calling/

Ross King is author of the book The Pope's Ceiling. It tells the story of just how Michelangelo managed to paint 12,000 square feet of ceiling with little or no experience as a painter. I think there's a dangerous belief in creative work. And that is the belief that certain artists are simply gifted, and that that alone explains their greatness. It's easy to look up at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and conclude that Michelangelo lived up to his reputation as the "divine one." That he wasn't human. That he was actually a god of sorts. Today, we'll talk about the process that Michelangelo actually took to complete this seemingly impossible masterpiece. In this conversation, you'll learn: How did Michelangelo curate his reputation as a "divine" painter. He really wanted people to believe that, and he shaped that perception. Michelangelo started painting the ceiling with little or no painting experience. He knew he would have failures along the way. How did he turn his failures into success in the project? Even though Michelangelo didn't have experience as a painter, he had built up a bag of tricks to draw from. Learn how he used his other experiences to make his first attempt at painting a success. Join Love Your Work Elite Support the show, get early access to episodes, bonus masterclasses, office hours with me, and a discount on the Love Your Work T-shirt. Sign up at lywelite.com. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors http://skillshare.com/loveyourwork http://storyblocks.com/loveyourwork Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/michelangelo-creative-process/  

About two years ago, I was on a retreat in Mexico with some friends. We were each exploring what we wanted to do in our lives and careers. It took all week for me to admit it to myself: I wanted to double down on being a creator. I wanted to have conversations on this podcast, read books, and write books. I wanted to make my creative output the top priority in my life. So, I moved off to Colombia to set up everything so that I could be fully-focused. I had spent a lot of time in Medellín before, during a few "mini lives" I had done here. I always found that I got more work done here, and that it was better work, too. So, as I was doubling down on being a creator, Medellín was the clear choice. In this article, I'll share with you how I picked the city where I could have the best creative output. Whether you feel like moving to another country or not, it will give you things to think about in optimizing your own creative output. Join Love Your Work Elite Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at lywelite.com. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors http://storyblocks.com/loveyourwork Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/creative-city-podcast/

Rob Hunter (@vegashacker) and I met ten years ago in a cafe. Well, I met him on Craigslist, really, but then we met in person in a cafe. We had both left our jobs at the same time. We were both determined to make it on our own. So, we spent several months wandering from cafe to cafe in San Francisco. We'd put in twelve hour days, not making a dime, and it was one of the most exciting times in my life. Today, I have this podcast, a best-selling book, another book on the way, and I can live wherever I want. Today, Rob is one half of Focused Apps. Their hit iOS games include Hit Tennis, and Emoji Me, which has 40 million downloads. Rob is also location independent. We both left our jobs at the same time. We both wanted to make it. But as you'll see in this episode, we had two very different mindsets, different approaches, and different paths. Listen to this episode to learn: When you start on your own, you better have some kind of vision of where you're going. What did we expect to achieve from the beginning? Starting on your own is a risk. How did each of us think about risk, and what our options were? How did that shape our approaches? When did we finally feel like we "made it?" How did we finally get there? About HALF of this conversation hit the cutting-room floor, so if you're an LYW Elite member, watch out for the uncut episode with bonus material. I focused this episode around our different approaches and paths, but in the bonus material Rob shares his lessons learned from making many, many, apps that didn't work, as well as a couple that did. LAST CHANCE to get the Love Your Work T-Shirt 30% off when you Join Love Your Work Elite Through October 31st, get a coupon for 30% off the new Love Your Work T-Shirt when you join Love Your Work Elite. Sign up at lywelite.com. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors http://videoblocks.com/loveyourwork http://skillshare.com/loveyourwork Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/two-boostrappers/

I've talked a little on this show – especially in the early days – about the idea of "mini-lives". Basically, you go live your normal life in another city for a month, or two months. Or, in the case of our guests today, about six months. Mike and Megan left their jobs in Washington DC, and before they decided to go anywhere else, they wanted to live a mini life. And, they came to Medellín. I sat down with them in a cafe to hear their story. You're going to hear: Their philosophy behind living a mini-life. What did they want to get from the experience? How did they make the decision that the financial investment was worth it for them? What have they learned from the experience? How has it really tested them? If you've been considering planning a mini-life, check out the bonus content for this episode on LYW Elite. About twenty minutes of this conversation ended up on the cutting-room floor. I shared some tips I've learned over the years for planning a successful mini-life. Get the Love Your Work T-Shirt 30% off when you Join Love Your Work Elite From now through October 31st, get a coupon for 30% off the new Love Your Work T-Shirt when you join Love Your Work Elite. Sign up at lywelite.com. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors http://videoblocks.com/loveyourwork Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/mini-life-medellin/

Ian Leslie (@mrianleslie) is author of Curious: The Desire to Know, and Why Your Future Depends On It. If you've ever had a lot of free time, you know how scary it can be. The very first day that I was on my own, more than ten years ago, I woke up to just vastness. I had a whole day ahead of me that I needed to fill up with something. I figured I'd have the best shot of making it if I just followed my curiosity. I figured if I started with curiosity, I could keep myself from getting off track and wasting time. I also figured I would end up somewhere special, and most importantly, I'd be doing something I loved. So I followed my curiosity and I ended up combining my interests in design, in programming, and in entrepreneurship. That became my first book, Design for Hackers. Following your curiosity can be really powerful, but how do you deal with having disparate curiosities? How do you make sure you're being productively curious? Ian wrote the book on being productively curious. In Curious, Ian Leslie explains what curiosity is, why it's important, and why there's a growing curiosity divide: Some people are getting curious, while others are getting less curious. The more curious will be at a distinct advantage as the world gets more complex, and traditional work gets more scarce. In this conversation, we'll talk about: What's the difference between diversive curiosity and epistemic curiosity? One can get us off track, while the other can really pay off. If you have lots of varied interests, how do manage your curiosity? You want curiosity to pay off, but you don't want to be merely distracting yourself from being productive. A popular opinion these days is that you shouldn't bother memorizing anything, because you can look it up. Ian explains why he disagrees with this. Learn why a well-stocked mind is your best tool for breakthrough insights. I talked to Ian for more than an hour, but that's more than we were able to put in the show today. We pay by the minute for editing the podcast, so we edited the conversation down to the most critical elements about being productively curious. But, if you are a Love Your Work Elite member, be sure to listen to the full, uncut interview for some bonus listening. There are some GEMS in there. In particular, towards the end, I asked Ian how he thinks about writing book proposals. I've struggled myself with writing book proposals. It seems like you have to write the whole book, before you can write the proposal, before you can get the book deal to write the book for real. Get the Love Your Work T-Shirt 30% off when you Join Love Your Work Elite From now through October 31st, get a coupon for 30% off the new Love Your Work T-Shirt when you join Love Your Work Elite. Sign up at lywelite.com. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors http://skillshare.com/loveyourwork Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/ian-leslie-interview/

I recently passed my tenth year as a self-employed independent creator. I don't recommend it. I say that, and some people don't believe me. When I wrote this post that I'm sharing on today's show, some people thought it was some kind of a click-bait strategy. I think it's because this post kind of takes a turn. It starts off sounding a little grim, but it ends up sounding hopeful. The thing is, I never expected so many people to read this post. As of right now, it has over 46,000 views on Medium. When I sat down to write this a couple of months ago, as my tenth anniversary was approaching, I did so with genuine questions in my mind. I wanted to know if I had made a horrible mistake. I wanted to find out if I had been fooling myself. It was really a journal entry for myself. I didn't submit it to any publications, where it was sure to be read. But, sharing some of my most uncomfortable thoughts is my job as a writer. So, I just put it on my main feed on Medium. At least it was out there, but I wasn't thrusting it into the world. Publishing this post was a lesson that the power of a post is enough to carry it. I think it's easy to forget that when the popular wisdom is to make sure you share on all of your social channels, and ask people to upvote, and maybe even send it to your friends. I did none of those things, and this one still took off. Join Love Your Work Elite Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at lywelite.com. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/ten-years-podcast/  

Jon Bokenkamp (@jonbokenkamp) wanted to be a screenwriter. So, he decided it was his job. He sat at his desk from nine to five every day, writing frantically, and each night he went to another job. One that paid him. He waited tables. After three years, he sold his first screenplay. Then he sold some others here and there. Then the phone stopped ringing. After one failed script, he was contractually obligated to write one more. That script became The Blacklist (Netflix). It's a thriller on NBC starring James Spader. They're starting their fifth season this week. Spader plays Reddington, a veteran, private-jet-setting criminal who acts as an informant to the FBI, and who has a puzzling interest in agent Elizabeth Keen, played by Megan Boone. In this conversation, we're going to learn: What was the mindset that Jon put himself in to make it through the three-year project of writing his first screenplay? How does Jon ward off his distractibility, and channel it into his writing method? I think it's a great lesson in how in creative work, the final product is totally different from the process used to get there. How has Jon's writing process changed now that he has a whole team, and basically has to write a movie a week? Jon is a Nebraska-native like me. Hopefully you won't mind listening to us reminisce a little about that strange place in the beginning. If not, skip ahead, and you'll hear some really great stuff on doing tough and long creative projects. Image: Flickr user Thibault     Sponsors http://skillshare.com/loveyourwork Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/jon-bokenkamp-the-blacklist-interview/ 

I'm working on a new book. It's called Getting Art Done, and it's going to help you boost your creative productivity and make your masterpiece. Today I'm going to read a sample chapter from the first draft of Getting Art Done. It's about the voice inside your head, and how it can lead to your most explosive ideas. To learn more and preview Getting Art Done, visit gettingartdone.com. Join Love Your Work Elite Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at lywelite.com. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/the-voice-podcast/

James Pearse Connelly (@jpconnelly, Instagram: @jpconnelly) is an Emmy-Award-winning television set designer. He's designed sets for shows like Bill Nye Saves the World, Martha & Snoop's Potluck Dinner Party, The Voice, and Top Chef. I wanted to have James on the show to learn how he does creativity on a large scale, with literally moving parts, and an unforgiving production schedule. I figured that to do what James does, which is express the feel of a show through architecture and materials and fabrics and furniture, and to deliver on-time, James must really know his creative process. And you can tell from this conversation, he really does. Even if you aren't a designer, chances are you work on creative projects all of the time that have lots of unknowns in the beginning. The work James does just puts a magnifying glass on what it takes to make creative work come with less pain, no matter what medium you're working in. In this show, you'll learn: How do you create a design that supports an idea and serves the client, rather than one that just follows trends. How does James manage his creative vision across a whole staff? We'll really get inside James's head for some of his best set designs. How does he integrate a subtle design language into his concepts? This was a really fun part of the conversation because you'll see how designers "talk" using subtle cues in their work. In this case, I think you'll be surprised all you can glean from a spiral staircase. Join Love Your Work Elite I'll be holding an office hours hangout for LYW Elite members, NEXT TUESDAY, September 19th, 8pm. Sign up at lywelite.com. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/james-pearse-connelly/  

I've been working on a new book called Getting Art Done. Today, I'm going to share with you a chapter from the first draft of the book. This chapter about the importance of shipping your work. It's easy to fantasize about what a great creator you will be one day, while never really finishing your work in the present day. If you make it a point to ship work, won't the quality suffer? I share what I've learned by examining the paths of great creators, and what I learned by making a point of shipping myself. Join Love Your Work Elite I'll be holding an office hours hangout for LYW Elite members, September 19th, 8pm. Sign up at lywelite.com. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/success-ship-podcast/

L. David Marquet (@ldavidmarquet) had spent a year preparing to captain a submarine in the U.S. Navy. But at the last minute, he was assigned to a different submarine. Not only was it a different ship than the one he had prepared for, it was also the worst ship in its fleet. It was so bad, only three men had reenlisted. Since David didn't know the ship, and since the situation was so bad, he had to try something different. Instead of using the leader/follower model, he started using a new leader/leader model. Instead of David giving orders, and instead of his men asking permission, he started empowering each sailor to think for himself. You may have heard Jason Fried on episode 1 recommend David's book Turn the Ship Around. In it, David Marquet tells the story of how his leader/leader model turned the USS Santa Fe from worst to first. The year after David took command of the ship, 36 men reenlisted, instead of just 3. In the decade following, 10 of those men would go on to become submarine captains themselves. David was in Medellín, and I sat down with him to talk about this and more: How does the leader/leader model save mental energy for everyone involved? How can you encourage your micromanaging boss to use leader/leader? How did David go from being a submarine captain, to writing a book that USA Today calls one of the top 12 business books of all time. How did he learn to tell stories, and how did he actually get the writing done? Join Love Your Work Elite Each Love Your Work Elite member get their own personal RSS feed of bonus material, masterclasses, and early access to episodes. Sign up at lywelite.com. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors http://skillshare.com/loveyourwork Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/l-david-marquet-interview/  

Love Your Work listener Gustav Dybeck is a design student from Sweden. He has an opportunity to do an internship for about 9 months, and he wants to make the most of it before he starts his career. You may have heard a clip a couple of episodes back on Gustav's favorite moment on Love Your Work. He was in Medellin awhile back, and since I originally pursued a career in design, Gustav was interested in hearing what I thought he should do for his internship. So, we talked about it in a cafe. A quick warning, there's a lot of background noise in this. It's was an off-the-cuff idea to record our conversation, so this episode is a bit of an experiment. We'll talk about: Experiences abroad: do they really make you more innovative? Working for prestigious firms: is it really worth it? If you don't pursue a prestigious firm, what should you pursue? What one experience did I personally have early in my career that completely changed my perspective about what I wanted to accomplish in design? Join Love Your Work Elite Some levels of Love Your Work Elite now include a video (and audio) Masterclass with Poornima Vijayashanker. Poornima was engineer #1 at Mint, and shows you how make money off your idea from day one. Sign up at lywelite.com. Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me david@kadavy.net.     Sponsors http://pistollake.com/loveyourwork Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/design-internship-advice/

Daniel J. Wilson was working on a screenplay when I met him during a mini life in Buenos Aires several years ago. I'd soon learn that he was also an accomplished artist, with his work covered in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The London Times, and displayed all over the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Daniel has also worked in film, his IMDB page includes editing credits for a number of documentaries and TV series, co-producer credits for PBS's Frontline series, credits as an actor. He's also a competitive cycler, a former NYC Yellow Cab driver, and he's currently a PhD candidate in neuroscience. If that weren't enough, Daniel's got a new app. It's called Minutiae. It's a bit of an "anti-social" network. When Instagram encourages you to scroll through lots of photos and make your life look amazing, this app is dedicated to capturing the mundane, everyday details of life. I hear lots of people lament their varied interests. They're usually afraid to follow their curiosity because they're afraid of what they'll leave behind. I've experienced this a lot myself. As I've made the switch to designing in advertising and architecture, to designing for startups, to founding my own startup, to writing books, and starting this podcast – you always have to wonder if you're killing your career when you switch paths. Here's just a few things you're going to learn in this conversation: Daniel's app Minutiae is delightfully impractical. It won't get acquired and it won't go public. How do you get the funding to build an app that's not a business? Why did Daniel go through all of the work to get his NYC Yellow Cab license? He actually ended up working as a cab driver! Daniel's always switching from one field to another, and planning adventures in his life. Hear how he thinks about learning how to know the unknown. Join Love Your Work Elite Some levels of Love Your Work Elite now include a Masterclass video recording with Noah Kagan. I interview Noah about the formula he used to add tens of thousands of leads to his email list. Sign up at lywelite.com.     Sponsors http://pistollake.com/loveyourwork http://skillshare.com/loveyourwork Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/daniel-j-wilson-interview/

It's easier than ever for creators to get their work noticed. But, it's harder than ever to actually get that work done. Think about it this way: You're writing a novel. You use Twitter and Facebook and write on your blog, and your work gets noticed. But, you have to put all of those distractions aside, and get to writing. If you don't, your novel will never become real. In this week's episode, I'll show you how to pick the right creative tool for the right creative thinking. Do your best work, without letting distractions knock you off-track. This article originally appeared on Medium Join Love Your Work Elite Some levels of Love Your Work Elite now include a Masterclass video recording with Noah Kagan. I interview Noah about the formula he used to add tens of thousands of leads to his email list. Sign up at lywelite.com.     Sponsors http://pb.com/loveyourwork http://pistollake.com/loveyourwork Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/choose-your-weapon-podcast/  

Almost 15 years ago, Getting Things Done started taking the internet by storm. Techies started buying binder clips and index cards in bulk. Today, "next actions" and "contexts" are commonplace in teams around the world. Just about everyone knows GTD stands for Getting Things Done. When I was trying to deal with wearing multiple hats as a designer in an architecture firm, I absorbed some GTD through osmosis to get on top of my daily tasks. A few years later, when I finally listened to the audiobook for GTD, I could feel my brain being rearchitected. I captured everything that was on my mind, and developed a habit of doing a "weekly review." Suddenly, my creative energy was unleashed. And so was my energy for thinking about the bigger picture, like what I wanted out of my life and my career. Millions of people have been impacted by GTD in this way. It's all thanks to our guest today. After more than 20 years as a productivity consultant, David Allen (@gtdguy) finally put his knowledge into book form with Getting Things Done, which came out in 2001. Since then, he's taken GTD global, with certified GTD consultants all over the world. One of his top people even lives not too far from me down in Colombia. Here's what we'll talk about in this conversation. GTD helps clear the space in your head for creative work, but what about actually getting creative work done? We'll learn how David used GTD to actually write Getting Things Done. GTD also helps clear your mind for making big life decisions. How did David use GTD to decide to move from the US to Amsterdam a few years ago. GTD suggests a lot of paper for keeping track of things. What does David think about digital management of GTD? Image credit: Vera de Kok Join Love Your Work Elite Some levels of Love Your Work Elite now include a Masterclass video recording with Noah Kagan. I interview Noah about the formula he used to add tens of thousands of leads to his email list. Sign up at lywelite.com.     Sponsors http://pb.com/loveyourwork http://casper.com/loveit http://pistollake.com/loveyourwork Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/david-allen-podcast-interview/  

You've heard that multitasking is a myth. I'm here to tell you that the idea that multitasking is a myth, is somewhat of a myth in itself. When it comes to creative work, you can actually work on two projects at once. The trick is, you don't even know you're working on that second project. This article originally appeared on Medium. Join Love Your Work Elite Some levels of Love Your Work Elite now include a Masterclass video recording with Noah Kagan. I interview Noah about the formula he used to add tens of thousands of leads to his email list. Sign up at kadavy.net/elite     Sponsors http://pb.com/loveyourwork Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/multitask-creative-work-podcast/    

By now you've heard that you need 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become a master of your craft. The story you don't hear is that it also takes 12,500 hours of deliberate rest. When you rest, you let what you've learned sink in. The ties connecting concepts get stronger, and weak connections get cleared away. Alex Soojung-Kim Pang is author of the book Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less. He's also a visiting scholar at Stanford University, and founder of The Restful Company, where he helps companies use deliberate rest to be more creative and productive. I picked up Rest to help with research for my upcoming book. You should pick it up, too. It's fascinating. It's packed with research and stories about why rest is critical to creative productivity. I had to have Alex on the show to learn more, and have him break it down for us. In this conversation, learn: Why should you be deliberate about using rest to make your work better? What's the hypnogogic state, and how did the surrealist painter Salvador Dalí use it to get more creative ideas? Why did Ernest Hemingway always stop writing when he knew what was going to happen next. When's the best time to take a nap for optimal creative output? How long should the nap be? Join Love Your Work Elite Some levels of Love Your Work Elite now include a Masterclass video recording with Noah Kagan. I interview Noah about the formula he used to add tens of thousands of leads to his email list. Sign up at kadavy.net/elite     Sponsors http://pb.com/loveyourwork Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/alex-soojung-kim-pang/  

It's so easy to get caught up in ruminating over what we might do. I know I ruminated over starting this podcast for more than FOUR YEARS before I finally took action. Fortunately, the guests here on Love Your Work are all doers, and they tend to encourage doing, instead of thinking. Having that constant reminder has helped me take action in growing this podcast, and in writing my new book. But, sometimes doing, instead of merely thinking about doing, is easier said than done. That's what this article is about. Join Love Your Work Elite Love Your Work's audio hosting expenses are now fully listener-supported! Next up, let's make our publishing assistant costs listener-supported, too. Be an even bigger part of the show, and hear raw, ad-free interviews, weeks in advance. Sign up at kadavy.net/elite     Sponsors http://pb.com/loveyourwork Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/stop-thinking-start-doing/

Bernadette Jiwa (@bernadettejiwa) thinks there's been an obsession with data in entrepreneurship over the past several years. When we're not sure about something, we're encouraged to run tests. I've even heard the advice before "test everything." Really? Test EVERYTHING? If you really know anything about statistics, you'll know that many things in a budding venture don't have a large enough sample size to be tested. If you're testing literally EVERYTHING, you'll get nothing done, and your company will have no vision. Bernadette is author of the new book, Hunch: Turn Your Everyday Insights into the Next Big Thing. In it, she teaches you how to harness the power of your intuition, recognize opportunities other people miss, and create breakthrough ideas. Seth Godin (who you heard on episode 77) calls Hunch "a modern classic." You can buy Hunch at kadavy.net/hunch. In this conversation, I talk with Bernadette about: Why did a hat salesman in New York do a better job at predicting the election results than data scientists like Nate Silver did? How did the shopping cart get invented? If the inventor had gone with the initial data, we might be stuck hauling baskets all over Whole Foods. Hunch is Bernadette's sixth book, so she has lots of publishing wisdom I was eager to soak up. She'll share her personal story about happily returning her advance check to a publisher. They wanted her to compromise her values. We'll also hear what Bernadette learned working closely with Seth Godin. She was the editor of Seth's giant book, "This Might Work." Join Love Your Work Elite Love Your Work's audio hosting expenses are now fully listener-supported! Next up, let's make our publishing assistant costs listener-supported, too. Be an even bigger part of the show, and hear raw, ad-free interviews, weeks in advance. Sign up at kadavy.net/elite     Sponsors http://pb.com/loveyourwork http://casper.com/loveit Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/bernadette-jiwa-interview/  

There are a lot of voices out there in entrepreneurship encouraging you to "Hustle." I really don't like this word, and I think it sends the wrong message about just what you should be aspiring to in your life and work. One thing you want to aspire to is to not pay too much for shipping costs in your business, and cut down on hassles. Join Love Your Work Premium Would you like to hear raw, ad-free interviews, weeks in advance? Just join Love Your Work Premium. For a small amount per month, you'll get access to ad-free interviews weeks in advance. Just go to kadavy.net/premium to sign up.     Sponsors http://pb.com/loveyourwork Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/why-hustle-podcast/    

You've heard it before. The story of the starving artist. You may even believe it yourself. You may think that to keep your creative integrity, you have to give up on making money. Jeff Goins (@goinswriter) is returning to the podcast today to tell you about why that's not true at all. In fact, instead of being a starving artist, you can be a thriving artist. Learn in this episode: How is it that Michelangelo was actually a multimillionaire by today's standards? How did writers like John Grisham launch their careers while having a day job? How can you get leverage with publishers, record labels, and other gatekeepers, so they're chasing after you instead of the other way around? What can you do to put yourself in the "thriving artist" mindset? Jeff's new book is called "Real Artists Don't Starve" and you can get it at kadavy.net/dontstarve.     Sponsors http://freshbooks.com/loveyourwork http://pb.com/loveyourwork Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/jeff-goins-podcast-interview-2/  

The world around us can program certain goals into our minds. If we aren't careful, we can end up with goals that have nothing to do with our happiness. You might not even realize that you expect to become a billionaire someday. You might be better off admitting to yourself that's not what you want. Join Love Your Work Premium Would you like to hear raw, ad-free interviews, weeks in advance? Just join Love Your Work Premium. For a small amount per month, you'll get access to ad-free interviews weeks in advance. Just go to kadavy.net/premium to sign up.     Sponsors http://freshbooks.com/loveyourwork Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/never-a-billionaire/

I first discovered the work of Seth Godin about 13 years ago. Since then he's helped me think about how to make work that's remarkable – The Purple Cow. He's shown me how to think about having a direct relationship with my customers – with Permission Marketing. He's shown me how to push through when things get tough – with The Dip. Plus, countless other things. He's written so many books, Tribes, The Icarus Deception, All Marketers are Liars, just to name a few more. He writes a blog post every day. I still love going to Seth's blog because it looks like it came out of another time. It's on typepad. He doesn't even have a custom domain. Still, it's one of the few sites that I visit directly just to read what's there. While people are screaming about how you've gotta figure out a Snapchat strategy, Seth just sticks with good old-fashioned words, and he's so good at it. Seth has been at the forefront of how technology changes how we communicate with one another. He started his first email newsletter in 1990. In fact, he invented the concept of getting emails from companies. Throughout his career, he's pointed out and described what this new paradigm makes possible. You have to Unleash the Ideavirus, you have to tell stories, you have to build your tribe. But in more recent years, he's focused more on helping people overcome the emotional barriers of actually putting this advice into practice. This is what I was interested in figuring out coming into this interview. What caused that shift? How does Seth think about doing generous work? How do you gain the courage to do something that might not work? I also wanted to dig back further into Seth's origin. I'm still struck by how far ahead of his time he was way back in the 80's and 90's, and how long it took for some of those concepts to gel and become true. It's a good lesson that if you want to do work that resonates with people, sometimes it takes a long time. Here are the three links that Seth sent me about publishing: Advice for authors Advice for authors Why (some) Kickstarter Campaigns Fail Join Love Your Work Premium Would you like to hear raw, ad-free interviews like this one with Seth Godin, weeks in advance? Just join Love Your Work Premium. For a small amount per month, you'll get access to ad-free interviews weeks in advance. You'll also get access to fully-produced episodes a couple of days in advance. Just go to kadavy.net/premium to sign up.     Sponsors http://freshbooks.com/loveyourwork http://www.casper.com/loveit Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/seth-godin-podcast-interview/

Some of you already know that I'm writing a new book. Getting Art Done will help you overcome Resistance and bring your work into the world. I had much of my own Resistance to fight to get this book project underway. I spent three months working on a book proposal, then I failed to get a literary agent. That was a tough blow, but what really flipped the switch for me was the conversation I had with Seth Godin. You'll be able to hear that entire conversation with Seth next week, so be sure you're subscribed. Join Love Your Work Premium If you'd like to hear the raw, unedited, ad-free interview with Seth Godin (coming June 8th), you can do that right now. Just join Love Your Work Premium. For a small amount per month, you'll get access to ad-free interviews weeks in advance. You'll also get access to fully-produced episodes a couple of days in advance. Just go to kadavy.net/premium to sign up.     Sponsorshttp://freshbooks.com/loveyourwork Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/no-nyt-best-seller-podcast/  

Not too long after moving to Colombia, Danny Michelwicz got obsessed with cacao, the raw material that's used to make chocolate. Since then, he's been learning about the craft of sourcing cacao and making chocolate, learning about his new country in the process, and working to have an impact on an underserved region. I went into this interview thinking I'd talk with Danny more about how his business, Tilín Cacao, has been a source of adventure, but we actually ended up talking a lot about the chemistry of chocolate, and how it's made. There's a lot of interesting thoughts in here about finding a neglected opportunity, pursuing it with a sense of artistry, and making something unique and hard to replicate. Try Danny's Chocolate Danny has a shipment going to the United States later this summer. You can preorder for a huge discount. Just go to tilincacao.com/loveyourwork. I don't have any financial relationship with Danny's company, but I do love the chocolate. Join Love Your Work Premium If you'd like to hear the raw, unedited, ad-free interview with Seth Godin (coming June 8th), you can do that right now. Just join Love Your Work Premium. For a small amount per month, you'll get access to ad-free interviews weeks in advance. You'll also get access to fully-produced episodes a couple of days in advance. Just go to kadavy.net/premium to sign up.     Sponsors http://kadavy.net/premium Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/danny-michlewicz-tilin/

Sometimes, to make a breakthrough, you have to partner up with "the man." Sometimes it's worth it. But, don't jump at every chance you get. I recently had an opportunity to join a podcast network. In fact, it was a very good podcast network. But, I turned it down. Since writing this article, I've watched this podcast network do very well. Meanwhile, I've struggled to grow this podcast. In fact, my downloads went DOWN for the first time since I started a year and a half ago. Some of that is from Product Hunt shutting down their podcasts section, and it's hard to know what else has caused it. As I'll say in this article, it's totally possible that I made the wrong decision. But, it still feels right to me. This article originally appeared on kadavy.net.     Sponsorshttp://kadavy.net/premium Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/podcast-network-podcast/

May 5th, 1979. It was a jovial atmosphere. A new person was coming into the world. But as soon as the child was born, the room went quiet. The doctors predicted the baby wouldn't make it through the next 24 hours. Now, over 35 years later, as that baby, now an adult, would joke in his TEDx talk – all of those doctors are dead. And Sean Stephenson @theseantourage is the only doctor that remains. Sean Stephenson was born with brittle bone disorder. His growth was stunted, and he's suffered hundreds of bone fractures throughout his life. But his condition has armed Sean with superpowers. He discovered that he has the power to rid the world of insecurity. In fact, it's become his life's mission – what he was born to do. Sean Stephenson is a therapist, an author, and a motivational speaker. I first came across his work when a friend shared a video on Facebook. I was immediately struck by Sean's positivity, and I became an instant fan. As someone who has struggled with insecurities – like everyone does, whether they accept it or not – Sean was immediately disarming to me. He's is uniquely qualified to help people break through the stories they tell themselves. Not just because of his life experiences, but also because of his training. We'll get into how Sean discovered his superpower, and what he's learned about bringing growth into his life. Sean's Facebook Page  Sean's ebook "How to Stay Positive When Life Gets Sean's free "Principles on How to Live an Empowered Life"     Sponsorshttp://kadavy.net/premium Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/sean-stephenson-interview/

Routines can reduce cognitive friction and boost your productivity. But do you really want to do the same thing every day? You know I think productivity is all about mind management, not time management. Routines are useful for managing your mind. On this episode, I'll tell you how having a weekly routine can help you boost productivity and be more creative, without boring yourself to death. This article originally appeared on Medium. If you are listening to this before 5pm PST on Friday May 5th, 2017, pay close attention. Stop whatever you're doing, and go to gettingartdone.com.   I'm writing a new book. It's called Getting Art Done, and you can preview it for free if you act fast.   If you ever have trouble bringing your work into the world. This is the book for you. It will give you actionable steps to break down fear and self doubt, and make your art real.   Go to gettingartdone.com and sign up for email updates. That's gettingartdone.com. Do it now before the timer on the website runs out.   Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/weekly-routine-podcast/  

Ned Scott (@certainassets, Steemit: @ned is trying to reinvent the way content gets made. He wants you to get paid in the process. Ned is the co-founder of a cryptocurrency called STEEM, and he's CEO of a website that runs on STEEM, called Steemit. Basically all of the actions that you would normally take on a site such as Reddit – writing posts, upvoting, or commenting, mines the STEEM – that's S-T-E-E-M – cryptocurrency. You can then cash in that cryptocurrency for the currency of your choice. The attention economy and digital distraction You've heard me talk about the economics of digital distraction on the podcast before. Hooked author Nir Eyal and I talked about it on episode 21. Companies such as Facebook steal your attention, because the current models of supporting content creation incentivize them to do so. For example, because the bulk of Facebook's revenue is from ads, they want you to spend as much time on your news feed as possible. This then incentivizes content creators to create the most attention-grabbing content possible. They'll use tactics such as inciting rage – even if it means ruining an innocent person's life. We saw this tactic backfire when Gawker outed a closeted gay executive. Or, they'll just plain lie – which is something we're seeing with the current "fake news" crisis. The incentives of the attention economy By the way, I discussed some of these incentives with Ryan Holiday on episode 31. Ryan wrote a great book on the subject with Trust Me, I'm Lying. Will STEEM incentivize different behavior? Well, that remains to be seen. Many journalists are currently paid by the page view. I have journalist friends who have worked at a respectable newspaper, and their performance was measured by the page views on their stories. Think about that for a second. They weren't allowed to own stocks because it would be considered a conflict of interest in case they had to write about one of those companies, but somehow being rewarded by the page view is not a conflict of interest? So if journalists are no longer paid by the page view, but instead by their work being upvoted – the incentives will shift somehow. It's hard to say whether it would be good or bad, but they will shift. Spending attention vs. spending STEEM My theory is that we spend our attention far differently from how we spend our money. We're wired not to see the fruit in the bush, but rather the tiger behind the fruit in the bush. With STEEM we aren't spending our money, per-se, but there appears to be a different psychology to upvoting on Steemit. I'm sure those incentives bring along other quirks. From what I've seen, the most popular content – hence the content that has earned the most money – on Steemit is about STEEM. Content like this podcast, I guess. Other than that, like I say, it remains to be seen. To wrap your head around it, I'd recommend signing up at Steemit.com, and looking around. By the way, my Steemit username is kadavy, so let's connect there. Can you earn money on Steemit? I've been a STEEM user (@kadavy), or rather I've used the website Steemit (yes, it's a little confusing at first), for several months now. I've converted some of my STEEM to Bitcoin, just to run a test. So far, I've earned spendable money for using Steemit. And, as I record this, the total value of all of the STEEM that is out there is at over 50 million dollars. Where does that money come from? How does STEEM work? Why might it work in the long run? and why might it not work? Ned and I will talk about all of that and more in this conversation. Remember, none of this is investment advice, just an exploration of a potential new way to incentivize content creation. Seth Godin interview coming soon! A very revealing Seth Godin inteview is coming soon. Make sure you're subscribed, so you don't miss the episode.     Sponsorshttp://freshbooks.com/loveyourwork Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/steem-podcast-ned-scott/    

Warren Buffett (@WarrenBuffett) and I were neighbors. He lived in his famously modest house on Farnam. I lived in a $535-a-month 1-bedroom, in a basement with moldy carpet, several blocks down, on 49th. I used to live down the street from the famous mega billionaire, Warren Buffett. I never even saw him, but his presence taught me a lot. This article originally appeared on Medium. Sponsors http://freshbooks.com/loveyourwork Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/warren-buffet-lessons-podcast/  

Jorge and Tanja wanted to travel the world, dance and party. It turns out, they were able to do that and make more money than they ever imagined they would. Jorge and Tanja wanted to make it as a professional Salsa dancing couple. They aspired to travel the Salsa circuit, to perform in competitions, and they figured they could make ends meet teaching classes in their home city. But the Salsa world was crowded. To make their debut as a dancing couple, they found they couldn't get a slot as Salsa performers. So, they put together a performance dancing Bachata. Bachata is a Dominican style of music first recorded in the 1960's. (Medicina De Amor is played at this point in the intro.) In recent years, Bachata has been remixed with current pop hits. Bachata is kind of Salsa's little cousin. (Latch Bachata Remix is played at this point in the intro.) Bachata wasn't as popular as Salsa, so Jorge and Tanja were able to make an appearance. The performance – danced to Xtreme's "Te Extraño" – ended up on YouTube. And it exploded. Their debut performance has amassed nearly 100 million views, and it's launched Jorge and Tanja – and Bachata dancing – into super stardom. Today, 9 years later, Jorge Burgos and Tanja Kensinger are known as Ataca y La Alemana (joint Instagram). They're Bachata royalty. They travel the world, run conferences, and their dance company, Island Touch, has dance teams all over the world. Sponsors http://freshbooks.com/loveyourwork Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/ataca-la-alemana-interview/  

I take focus seriously. The way I see it, being productive is not about time management. It's about mind management. If you're fully-focused on the task at hand, you can have way more creative output. So, I experiment a lot with ways to deepen my focus. Some of the methods I've settled into are unconventional. I'm going to share them with you today. This article originally appeared on Medium. Sponsors http://freshbooks.com/loveyourwork Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/10-unconventional-podcast/  

Ryan Hoover (@rrhoover) loves software products. He wanted to share new software products with other people who love software products. So, he started a little email list. There were a few dozen people on the list. They were submitting products to the email list, so Ryan got to learn about new products every day. But the email list grew rapidly. Once it got to a few hundred subscribers, Ryan decided it was a time to build a site. Three years later, Ryan sold his site, ProductHunt, for about $20 million. I don't spend much time in Silicon Valley these days, but I've at least heard that Ryan Hoover is kind of the golden child of the valley. He's perfectly executed building ProductHunt, and most importantly, building the community that drives ProductHunt. And I think you'll notice in this conversation. I actually got kind of frustrated talking to Ryan. He seems to have always made the right decisions. I think some people are able to do that, but I'm not one of them. I think it's actually hard to learn from people who do things right. That's why, on Love Your Work I'm always digging for the ways my guests have changed over the years, and where they went wrong along the way. Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel you can learn more from hearing about how someone changed than about how they executed everything right. In any case, Ryan's story is a great example of how you can build something explosive by starting with something you're curious about, and building a genuine community around it. Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/ryan-hoover-interview/  

Learn how to hijack habits you don't want, and replace them with habits you do want. I'll specifically be talking about how to replace a Facebook habit with a book-reading habit. That's what I did, and that's what worked for me. But, you can try this with any habits you want to hijack. This article originally appeared on Medium. You can follow me at kadavy.net/medium Don't forget to take the Love Your Work survey for a chance to win a $20 Amazon Gift Card: http://kadavy.net/survey   Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/hijack-habits-podcast/

One day, Joanna Wiebe (@copyhackers) was hanging out on a web forum, helping a few startup founders with their copy. The next thing she knew, she had an inbox filled with requests for her help. So many people needed her copy help, that she couldn't help them all, so Joanna released some ebooks, under the name Copy Hackers, and made about $30,000 right away. Since then, Joanna has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs with their copy. But the more time she spent writing copy, the more she realized that all writers struggle with one thing: facing the blank page. Joanna has built a new app, called Airstory, to help serious writers collect together all of the pieces that make good writing, and make it happen. I immediately found it interesting, I've learned the hard way over the years that writing is not linear. Airstory helps bring the research and collaboration components of writing into a single cohesive experience. Joanna and I will talk more about how to keep the creative process going smoothly. Plus, she'll share some great tips on doing customer research – I especially like her hack of combing through Amazon reviews. Learn how, by following her passion, improvising with what she had, and facing her fears, Joanna has gone from her day job, to an information business, to building Airstory.   Take the listener survey (before April 7) for a chance to win a $20 Amazon Gift Card: http://kadavy.net/survey Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/joanna-wiebe-interview/    

How do you feel first thing in the morning? If you're human, you're probably at least a little bit groggy. You aren't thinking straight, you can't focus. You're a wasted morning just waiting to happen. So, the first thing you do is reach for the coffee. I have a suggestion that may help you get more out of your mornings. Are you ready for this? I think you'll hate me for it. Well, I think you should let the coffee wait. I promise, I can explain. You see, that groggy feeling you have in the morning. You can do some amazing things in that state. It's the subject of this week's episode. This article originally appeared on Medium. You can follow me on Medium at kadavy.net/medium. Before I begin, how would you like a $20 Amazon Gift Card? Sound good? Well, I'm GIVING AWAY a $20 Amazon Gift Card every Friday from March 10th until April 7th. All you have to do is go to kadavy.net/survey and answer our short listener survey to be entered to win. It's seriously short. It will take you less than two minutes. I promise. Remember, I'm giving away a gift card EVERY WEEK, so, the sooner you answer the survey, the more chances you get to win. You only have to answer the survey once, and you'll get up to 5 chances to win. This episode comes out March 9th, so if you go to kadavy.net/survey and answer the survey RIGHT NOW, you'll have a very high chance of winning a $20 Amazon gift card, because I'm giving away a gift card TOMORROW. Again, go to kadavy.net/survey for a chance to win a $20 Amazon Gift card. Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/write-first-coffee-later/  

Peter Bragiel wanted his own travel show. So, he got a camera and started traveling. At first, not much happened. Peter Bragiel just kept stowing the tapes away in a box. But, eventually, his adventures got bigger, and his videos got better. He's travelled the entire trans-Siberian railway, he's canoed the entire Mississippi river, and he even rode a tiny scooter, with a maximum speed of 29 miles-per-hour, across the United States. Peter's adventures are released on his YouTube channel, under the brand In-Transit TV. And Peter makes a living off of these travel videos. He's worked with brands such as Range Rover and American Express. He also learned Spanish using Rosetta Stone, as preparation for a sponsored trip to Cuba. (He ended up crashing a vintage car during the shoot. You'll hear about that, and what they did about it.) This week's episode is a great story about making dreams happen. How did Peter finally get the courage to publish his videos? How does he plan bigger and bigger trips? Why did Peter – who worked as a runway model in Milan, and an actor in Los Angeles – reject the gatekeepers and choose himself? I can't help but feel, after listening to this conversation, that Peter and I are a lot alike. It seems like he has always felt compelled to travel and make videos, even if it didn't immediately make sense. I know I'm always spending hours on things that don't immediately make sense. I especially liked hearing about how things he wrote in his journal years ago, eventually came to light. I think this is important to be aware of. Your subconscious is always trying to tell you something about your destiny, so it pays to listen. Sponsors http://kadavy.net/freshbooks http://kadavy.net/treehouse Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/peter-bragiel-interview/  

Rejection hurts. Sometimes it hurts a little more than other times, but it still does hurt. But, rejection is a part of life. If you never get rejected, you’re not really trying. In 2016, I quadrupled my creative output. But, I got rejected harder and more frequently than any year before. I’m hoping for bigger and better rejections in 2017. I reviewed my 2016 rejections, and it didn’t feel good. I had to relive them all at once. But, it was a valuable exercise, and — if nothing else—you can take some sadistic pleasure in reading about them.   Sponsors http://kadavy.net/freshbookshttp://kadavy.net/treehouse Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/top-rejections-podcast/    

Hugh MacLeod (@hughcards) is a hero of mine, who helped me find my own path. It was 2004, I was sitting in a gray cubicle in Nebraska. And I discovered a PDF on the Internet called "How to be creative." I read it, and it was one of the most moving and inspiring things I had ever read. You know how sometimes you read something and you're like "yes! That's exactly what I was thinking! Except I didn't have words for it." This little PDF was like that for me. It was subversive, and edgy, and bold, and spoke to the non-conformist part of me that wanted to live outside of the template. And it had these brilliant little cartoons in it. They were all the same format. And small. Very small. It turns out they were all drawn on the back of business cards. Hugh MacLeod, the man behind this PDF had been drawing these cartoons for 7 years by this point. I came across his blog, called Gaping Void, and found more bold thinking and brilliant cartoons there. It was one of the blogs that inspired me to start my blog in 2004. I even put it in my "blog roll." You see, there was no Twitter or Facebook, so that's how you would connect people and ideas. You'd just put a link to their blog on your blog. And that's how you would say "listen to this person. This person has things to say." Since then, Hugh's cartoons have been seen everywhere. He's built a consulting business around the cartoons, helping companies define and express their culture. Companies like Microsoft, Cisco, Volkswagon, Zappos, eBay, and Intel. Hugh even illustrated a book with Seth Godin. Well, I'm very excited to be connecting you with Hugh MacLeod's ideas today. Listen to this interview to discover how to overcome perfection paralysis in your work. How do you discover your creative DNA? How do you fill your work with the universal truths of human experience, to make it resonate with others. And ultimately, how, and why, do work that serves others.   Sponsors http://kadavy.net/freshbookshttp://kadavy.net/blogtutorial http://kadavy.net/treehouse Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/hugh-macleod-interview/    

I talked about minimalism with some of my guests. I talked about it with Craig Benzine on episode 39, and with James Altucher on episode 53. I'm not an extreme minimalist. I don't count the number of things that I own, trying to keep the number down. I consider myself to be a practical minimalist. I have just enough things to improve my focus, but I don't have so many things that it hurts my focus. I recently went minimalist when I sold most of my things and moved to Colombia. In this episode, I'll share just how being a practical minimalist helps me focus. This post originally appeared on Medium. You can find it and follow me at kadavy.net/medium   Sponsors http://kadavy.net/freshbooks http://kadavy.net/treehouse Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/practical-minimalism-focus-pod/    

Vinnie Lauria found his calling after backpacking around Asia. He had just sold a company. He had just gotten married. He feared that if he spent a year traveling, he'd run out of money, and he'd run out of momentum. He worried it would be career suicide. But his wife, Kristine, pushed him to seize the day. They sold everything, gave up their apartment in The Mission and hopped on a one way flight across the Pacific, planning to come back in a year. Throughout his travels, Vinnie kept doing what he does best. He was meeting entrepreneurs everywhere he went – Korea, Japan, China, Indonesia, India, you name it – all over Asia. Along the way, he stumbled across a unique opportunity. He noticed there was a gap in funding for entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia. All of the Venture Capital firms were risk averse, and didn't invest with a Silicon Valley mindset. Meanwhile, there was an explosion of early-stage startups hungry for funding. So, with no investment experience to speak of, Vinnie partnered up with some friends and started a Venture Capital firm. Golden Gate Ventures is an early-stage VC firm in Southeast Asia. They've invested $60 in over 30 companies in 7 countries, including TradeGecko and Redmart. He and Kristine now live in Singapore, with their two children. They never did move back to San Francisco. Vinnie is a really close friend of mine. A year after I moved to California, I was pretty lost. I didn't like living in San Jose, and I didn't like the direction my startup was going in. I couldn't bear to give up and move back to Nebraska. Meanwhile San Francisco was just up the road, if only I had the courage to make the move. Around that time, I met Vinnie, and spent a lot of time with him and his now wife, Kristine. They were both adventurous, and had a bold perspective on living life. I did move up to San Francisco, and fulfilled a life-long dream of living in a bustling city. Vinnie always offered inspiration when I needed it. You'll see he's not afraid to do things that many people consider risky. He values adventure, and he's a big advocate of putting yourself in a situation where you have no choice but to succeed. As Vinnie likes to say "when you jump, the net appears." Listen to this episode for inspiration on making big changes in your life. Vinnie will share his story of quitting a secure job at IBM and moving across the country with no plan. We'll talk about how he used to live and work with as many as 12 people in a 3-bedroom apartment. He'll share his unique methods for managing the roughly 1,000 new people he meets every year, and how best to connect them. Overall, you'll hear how a guy from Long Island ended up founding a VC firm in Singapore.   Sponsors http://kadavy.net/freshbooks http://kadavy.net/ac http://kadavy.net/treehouse Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/vinnie-lauria-interview/    

We're well into 2017 now, and I've been reflecting on 2016. It was a great year. In fact, I more than quadrupled my creative output.   I'm just talking about words published here. I'm not even talking about the weekly episodes I published here on Love Your Work. Almost every episode of Love Your Work so far has been in 2016.   I spent much of 2016 experimenting with some methods of optimizing my creative output, and I'll be sharing them today.   This post originally appeared on Medium. You can find it and follow me at kadavy.net/medium   Sponsors http://kadavy.net/freshbooks http://kadavy.net/treehouse   Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/4x-creative-productivity-podcast/  

Noah Kagan first appeared on Love Your Work back on episode 41. On that episode, we talked about why discomfort is your compass, and learned that Noah even makes his bed in hotel rooms. I asked Noah to come back on the show because he had a blog post awhile back that I wanted to ask him about. It's called "my organization system," over on his blog, Okdork.com, and he talks pretty in-depth about how he manages his calendar week-to-week. I've been thinking a lot about managing mental energy throughout the week – after all, productivity – especially creative productivity – is more about mind management than it is about time management. So, listen to this show to hear, in-depth, how Noah optimizes his creative output by managing his mental energy. How does he get into flow? How does he juggle all of the details of running AppSumo and SumoMe? And how does he recharge? Noah is also joining the world of podcasters with his new show, Noah Kagan Presents. Noah interviewed me, and that episode should come out in a few weeks. Go subscribe to Noah Kagan Presents to be sure not to miss it.   Sponsors http://kadavy.net/freshbookshttp://kadavy.net/ac http://kadavy.net/treehouse Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/noah-kagan-interview-2/  

Over the past year, pretty much every week, I've released a new episode of Love Your Work. This will be my last episode this year. I'll be taking a break for a few weeks. We've come so far since exactly one year ago, when the first batch of episodes debuted. The show has now been downloaded over 200,000 times! If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you may have seen some of the growth charts. The downloads just keep growing week after week. I'm thrilled that the show is resonating with people, and I appreciate the subscribes and the reviews. I've had a great time over the past year, and I've learned so much from our guests. The show is really taking off, so why am I taking a break? I thought I'd share my thought process. I think it will make a good mini-episode in itself. Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/see-you-next-year/  

There's this sort of productivity meme going around that you should make your bed. But, isn't making your bed kind of a waste? And isn't making your bed especially wasteful if you're busy? Here on Love Your Work, I've spent the past year interviewing some of the most successful entrepreneurs and creators. People like James Altucher, Jason Fried, Ryan Holiday, Laura Roeder, billionaire Steve Case, and many more. I wanted to get to the bottom of this meme. Today, on a very special episode of Love Your Work, we ask: do you really need to make your bed to be successful? Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/make-your-bed/  

One of the best ways to impact others, while making money, is through building online courses. And, if you're considering writing a book, developing an online course is a great way to validate your idea, and see if your advice works. But, building online courses can be totally overwhelming. It seems there's so much you need to know about developing it, and marketing it. Then, there's all of the technical nuts and bolts for collecting payment, and delivering the course. Like many things, your vision of what your online course could be can get in the way of you even starting. I learned the hard way just how much energy you can waste with things that don't add value to your course. And, what I learned can be applied to product development at large.   Sponsors http://wpengine.com/pre http://kadavy.net/freshbooks http://kadavy.net/video Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/8-things-online-courses/    

James Altucher doesn't need an introduction for many of you. But for the rest, James is currently best known for his book, Choose Yourself, which is a National Bestseller, and which USA Today named in the top 12 business books of all time. You can buy Choose Yourself at kadavy.net/choose   He also has a very popular podcast. The James Altucher show has featured guests such as Tim Ferriss, Dan Ariely, Peter Thiel, Coolio, and Jewel.   James has published well over a dozen books, and first made his name as a financial pundit, writing for The Financial Times, and TheStreet.com. He's also appeared many times on CNBC as a financial expert.   James has become a millionaire, then lost it all, multiple times. He's been an entrepreneur, a hedge fund manager, and even hosted an HBO show. He writes about what he's learned through the ups and downs of his life and career on his website, jamesaltucher.com. Popular articles include "How to be the luckiest guy on the planet in 4 easy steps," and "I want my kids to be drug addicts."   Listen to this conversation to learn the hows and whys of investing in yourself, including why buying a house may be a terrible decision for you.   James and I will also talk about our recent experiences with going minimalist. He has a method for getting rid of things that I wish I would have used.   I really wanted to dig into how James has managed to be so prolific in his work. He produces a ton of work, It seems like he rarely doubts any ideas he has.   It seems like it's always been that way for him. Which doesn't help much if you're struggling to be more courageous in your work. If you're someone, like me, who wasn't born thinking big, James will share his tips on how to make progress.   As someone who has learned a lot from reading James's writing, I was also excited to learn more about how he approaches writing. James is going to share some absolute gold on writing that has already helped me make my own writing connect with others.   Also, learn how my former neighbor, Warren Buffett chose himself. And, if you happen to be a podcaster too, I selfishly asked James how he connects with influential guests, and how he prepares for interviews. Even if you aren't a podcaster, his answers, of course, could help you connect with influencers, and help you get more out of the books you read.   Sponsors http://wpengine.com/pre http://kadavy.net/freshbooks http://kadavy.net/video   Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/james-altucher-interview/    

One of the more subtle underlying themes of this show is that you should invest in yourself. There's a lot of noise out there you'll hear from others who want you to spend your money in ways that will benefit them. Ultimately, you have to be mindful in your decisions so that you're sure you're really investing in yourself.   I'll be talking about that a bit more in my conversation next week with James Altucher.   Look out for that episode to drop next TUESDAY. I'm going to release it slightly early so it doesn't interfere with Thanksgiving in the US.   For now, I want to share my own story of choosing myself. This is about the time that I almost went to business school. What I decided to do next defined the course of my career.     Sponsors http://wpengine.com/pre http://kadavy.net/freshbooks http://kadavy.net/video   Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/my-40000-diy-mba/    

Dan Ariely is a researcher on the forefront of behavioral science. He specializes in understanding irrational behavior, for example, why do people take less candy if you give it out for free, than if you charge a penny for all the candy you want?   Dan actively works to find ways to change behavior for the better using this knowledge. Dan is a professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University. He's also the founder of the Center for Advanced Hindsight, which helps companies improve well-being using behavioral science. Dan has also co-founded many companies, including a productivity app called Timeful. I worked with Dan on Timeful, and Google bought the company. Now, some of Timeful's features, such as "Goals" have been integrated into Google Calendar, impacting what must be hundreds of millions of people. Dan's numerous TED talks have been viewed nearly 15 million times. He's the author of three New York Times best-selling books, including Predictably Irrational. He has a new book called "Payoff: The Hidden Logic That Shapes Our Motivations," which you can buy at kadavy.net/payoff.   In Dan's new book, he unlocks the secrets of motivation, whether you're motivating others, or yourself. Listen to this interview to learn why bonuses can reduce productivity, what is it that people really want from work? How does Dan – who is a self-proclaimed bad manager – manage a big lab of talented people? And how can you hack your own motivation using behavioral science research?     Sponsors http://wpengine.com/pre http://kadavy.net/freshbooks http://kadavy.net/video   Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/dan-ariely-interview/    

The current productivity wisdom is all about getting things done. Now, productivity is about making creative breakthroughs happen. Getting Things Done brought us beyond todo lists and priorities, and made us think about breaking projects into actions, and giving those actions contexts. By considering the context of our todos, and by giving ourselves a place for the “someday maybes,” we freed up our minds from the overwhelming wave of clutter delivered by our newly-digital world. GTD was the killer tool of the knowledge worker. But, in an increasingly distracted world, where even knowledge work is threatened by technology, productivity needs to evolve once again. This article originally appeared on Medium. You can follow me on Medium at kadavy.net/medium   Sponsors http://wpengine.com/lyw http://kadavy.net/freshbooks http://kadavy.net/video Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/productivity-isnt-gtd/      

Nir Eyal, author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, has been on the show before. We had a little debate about digital distraction back in episode 21. Nir and I have both been exploring new book ideas independently, and practicing writing about those ideas, somewhere within that space. I've been leaning more into the productivity space, which you've heard a lot of on this podcast. So, we recently had a call where we discussed where we were headed, how we're testing out new ideas, and how we might position new ideas. We figured, just in case, we'd record the conversation, in case it would make a good podcast episode. And I think it will make a good episode, especially if you're an aspiring author who wonders how to home in on the right book idea. We'll talk about writing for Medium.com, and why it's such a powerful tool for testing out new ideas. I'll get very specific about my process for analyzing ideas I write on Medium, and how I decide what's worth pursuing further. We'll also talk about the psychology of book positioning, book marketing, and coming up with titles for books – a bit of an extension of the book marketing conversation I had with Tucker Max on episode 29. Note that I say "we," and I'm aware I ended up dominating the conversation. This is something I do when I get too excited about something. Still, it should be useful. And if you have no book-writing aspirations, it will be a perhaps unsettling behind-the-scenes look at how the sausage is made.   Sponsors http://wpengine.com/lyw http://kadavy.net/freshbooks http://kadavy.net/video Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/medium-book-marketing-nir-eyal/  

If you have certain behaviors that you want to encourage in your life, you can be intentional about making them happen. Here's a trick I devised to make it easy to do things that are good for me, and a little harder to do things that are bad for me. This article originally appeared on Medium. You can follow me on Medium at kadavy.net/medium   Sponsors http://wpengine.com/lyw http://kadavy.net/freshbooks http://kadavy.net/video Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/make-it-easy-podcast/    

Jocelyn K. Glei is author of Unsubscribe: How to Kill Email Anxiety, Avoid Distractions, and Get Real Work Done. You can buy the book at kadavy.net/email It's an awesome book that I really wish I had when I was first trying to get things done with email in the working world. I've since gotten my email decently organized, just through learning the hard way. Still, Unsubscribe had some very useful ideas and tools for me, I'll be exploring it all in my conversation with Jocelyn today. Listen to this episode to learn how you can keep email from distracting you from your important work, how can you use it to move projects forward, to build relationships with influential people, and how can you use it in a way that will nurture the relationships that you do have?   Sponsors http://wpengine.com/lyw http://kadavy.net/treehouse http://kadavy.net/audible Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/jocelyn-k-glei-interview/  

Back when I was writing my first book, I was shocked how hard it was. I was spending all day just trying to get into that flow state. So, here's one way I've found to help make that flow state happen on demand.   Sponsors http://wpengine.com/speedy http://kadavy.net/treehouse http://kadavy.net/audible Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/yolo-blank-wall/    

Cards Against Humanity's Max Temkin (@maxtemkin) is co-creator of Amazon's #1 selling card game – actually the #1 seller in all of the whole Toys & Games category. It's a game for horrible people, and it's also America's #1 gerbil coffin. You've probably played it before. Max Temkin and his friends were self-described "nerds." They didn't play sports, they didn't have girlfriends, and they were bored. So, they played lots of board games. They played Balderdash so much, they couldn't even play it anymore because they knew all of the words in the game. They became game connoisseurs. They played so many games, they had to make their own. Cards Against Humanity started as PDFs you could download and print out. The game is still available this way, for free, on their website, but Cards Against Humanity has independently produced and sold their game, making millions in profit. Listen to this interview to learn how to make a good impression on notable people, how to be ready to act when luck comes your way, what deep two psychological phenomena made Cards Against Humanity so explosively popular, and why it's important to figure things out for yourself. Also, learn how Max and team made $70,000 by literally selling "nothing," and nearly $4 million selling bullshit. I mean actual shit from bulls.   Sponsors http://wpengine.com/speedy http://kadavy.net/treehouse http://kadavy.net/audible Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/max-temkin-interview/  

This week, I share you a story of failure. I know everyone seems to be obsessed with failure lately, and I always thought it was strange. I didn't usually look at things as failures, but as lessons learned. Well, in this case, I really tried for something, really thought I would succeed, and I really failed. Or at least I felt like it. In actuality, it could just be another lesson learned – another step on the path toward meeting my goal. This is an article that originally appeared on Medium. You can follow me on Medium at kadavy.net/medium   Sponsors http://wpengine.com/speedy http://kadavy.net/treehouse http://kadavy.net/audible Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/love-work-episode-44-failed/    

Mark Manson is known for writing personal development advice that doesn't suck. He writes at markmanson.net, which has more than 2 million readers a month. Mark writes about a variety of topics, including happiness, self-knowledge, habits, and relationships. You've probably read Mark's work before. Big hits include "Fuck Yes or No," "In Defense of Being Average," and an article by the same name as his upcoming book: "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck." I love Mark's writing because it cuts right through the usual self-help nonsense you read that may make you think that all you need to do is follow your passion and think positively and you'll somehow magically become successful. Instead, Mark encourages you to see things as they are, to find comfort in discomfort, and to accept that when you try to have it all, you really end up with very little. So, this interview is great for anyone ready to face the hard truths in life in pursuit of being the best version of themselves. Find out why mark starts off his new book telling you "don't try." How can you find fulfillment and shut down unhealthy cycles in your life and relationships. How can travel clean away your biases and insecurities. If you're living or considering living the digital nomad lifestyle for awhile, how does Colombia differ from Brazil? How can you get the benefits of travel without leaving your hometown? And how does your lifestyle change when your values change?   Sponsors http://wpengine.com/speedy http://kadavy.net/treehouse http://kadavy.net/audible Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/mark-manson-interview/  

On Tim Ferriss's podcast, Malcolm Gladwell urged his 30-year-old self to “Leave North America…. Which is — despite the fact that it pretends to be the only place that matters — is not the only place that matters.” I recently moved out of North America myself, and I share my thought process in this Medium article (which also appeared on Observer).   Sponsors http://wpengine.com/loveyourwork http://activecampaign.com/loveyourwork http://kadavy.net/audible   Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/leave-north-america/    

Noah Kagan is a close friend of mine who has been one of my secret weapons in my own battle as an entrepreneur. Years ago, when I first started out on my own, and I was wandering from cafe to cafe in San Francisco, working on a Facebook app, Noah Kagan invited me to bring my laptop to his office space. He was building his own Facebook app empire at the time. We'd get burritos in South Park, in SOMA, and Noah always had fresh ideas. Ever since then, whenever I've struggled with motivation, whenever I've felt overwhelmed in my business, I've asked myself What Would Noah Kagan Do? Noah is now best known for AppSumo, which is a daily deals site for digital goods, and also SumoMe, which is a little toolkit you can install on your website to grow your audience with email sign-ups, a share widget, click heatmaps and a bunch more tools. You may have also heard of Noah because he's missed out on some big exits. He was #4 at Mint, which sold to Intuit for $170 million, and he was #30 at Facebook, which is currently valued at more than $350 billion, but he got fired after 8 months. So, Noah potentially missed out on easily more than a hundred million dollars. Most people hear that, and it sounds totally devastating. But, I know Noah, and I don't think he would change a thing. That's because Noah has injected his own personality and his own unique way of doing things into his business. And he's found success his own way. He's done that better than anyone I know. He works really hard, but he always makes it fun. In fact, I sat down during a retreat he organized with his company in Chicago. The retreat even had a t-shirt, and Noah was of course wearing it. I can recall many different 2-minute conversations I've had with Noah that have lead to big breakthroughs, and – wow – we have more than an hour here. Listen to this episode and learn about continuous improvement: How does Noah keep improving in his business – specifically when it comes to running webinars? How do you incentivize others to be selfish and get them to share? How do you balance the art of a business with the operations? How do you find complementary team members? How do you pick your battles to have the biggest impact with the least headaches? Why is discomfort your compass? Why might you want to read the same book over and over again? and more... Sponsors http://wpengine.com/loveyourwork http://activecampaign.com/loveyourwork http://kadavy.net/audible   Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/noah-kagan-interview/    

Google Calendar has been adding new features lately. You can find time for your goals, and set reminders, for example. I played a very small part in these features, but I learned a lot about my own productivity in the process.   This post originally appeared on Medium.   Sponsors http://wpengine.com/loveyourwork http://activecampaign.com/loveyourwork http://kadavy.net/audible   Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/love-your-work-episode-40-three-productivity-lessons-from-google-calendar/    

Craig Benzine hit rock bottom when he wasn't getting any tables at his job as a waiter, and he feared he wouldn't be able to pay his rent. So, he started making YouTube videos. Okay, that's not the first thing I'd advise you to do if you're having trouble paying rent, but it worked for Craig. He's built a life and living for himself making videos featuring clones of himself, imaginary whales, explosions, beards, and coffee. Craig is known on YouTube and elsewhere as WheezyWaiter. And he also runs a channel called The Good Stuff where he teaches you all about things like renewable energy, robots, and albino squirrels. He also appears on a channel called Crash Course, where he's the U.S. Government and Politics instructor. If all of that weren't enough, Craig is also in a band called Driftless Pony Club, and they have released 6 albums since 2004. I dabbled with making silly YouTube videos myself several years ago, and that's when I first discovered Craig's work. I couldn't figure out how on earth Craig was managing to make a video every single day before going to work. It was inspiring to watch, and at the same time it made me feel totally inadequate. Fortunately, I got to sit down with him in Chicago, and ask him how he does it. You'll learn about how Craig uses habit-building and constraints to increase his creative output. How does he manage to put out so much great work. You'll notice also how Craig works with his productivity cycles. He knows the best time of day for his creative work, and he makes the most of it.   Sponsors http://wpengine.com/loveyourwork http://activecampaign.com/loveyourwork http://kadavy.net/audible   Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/wheezywaiter-interview/      

We all have habits that we'd like to build. But we usually aim a little too high. If you understand that the building of the habit is in itself something to achieve, then building good habits will be easier. This article originally appeared on Medium.   Sponsors http://wpengine.com/loveyourwork http://activecampaign.com/loveyourwork http://kadavy.net/audible   Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/love-your-work-episode-38-build-the-habit-first/    

David Kadavy (that's me) being interviewed by Almog from the Unstagnate podcast. He did such a great job of researching, and teasing out the things I've been thinking about a lot lately that I just had to share it with you, which he was kind enough to let me do. In this discussion, I'll share the rituals and thought frameworks I used to write my first book, Design for Hackers, in half the time of most books like it. Bear in mind that's total time from book deal to book release. It actually was 12 hours a day of agony, but I'll tell you about the cohesive personal productivity system I've devised to make my flow states happen at the right times. You'll also hear the story behind how that first book even happened – how I had set up my entire life so that when something like that opportunity came along – I would be ready for it. Also, how did I get the opportunity to work with behavioral scientist Dan Ariely, on features that are now being integrated into Google Calendar, such as "Goals" and "Reminders." Find out why you might want to grab a pen BEFORE you grab your morning coffee. How to create a virtuous cycle of productivity to train yourself to focus more deeply. Why is it so important to develop a well-defined worldview? How do I weigh the pros and cons of various ways of naming things, such as my book Design for Hackers, and this podcast, Love Your Work? How does the name of this podcast tie into landing big guests like Steve Case and Jason Fried, and how do I convince such busy people to be so generous with their time?   Sponsors http://wpengine.com/loveyourwork http://activecampaign.com/loveyourwork http://kadavy.net/audible   Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/david-kadavy-podcast-interview/    

Do you have a big daunting project that you just can't seem to get started on? Try the "First-Hour" rule. This article originally appeared on Medium. Sponsors http://wpengine.com/loveyourwork http://activecampaign.com/loveyourwork http://kadavy.net/audible   Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/first-hour-rule/    

Dr. Terry Wahls (@terrywahls) is an inspiring example of turning a struggle into an opportunity, but I was more interested in her area of expertise.   You may have already seen the inspiring TEDx talk of Dr. Terry Wahl's. She has MS, and was confined to a wheelchair for 4 years. But, using her knowledge of biology, Dr. Terry engineered a diet based upon paleo and ketogenic principles to feed the power centers of her cells. Now, she rides her bike to work, and is out of the wheelchair.   Dr. Terry is now running clinical trials based upon her diet protocol, and has written a book. I recently picked up, The Wahl's Protocol to seek relief from chronic inflammation, and I've implemented her diet with great results. I have less pain, more energy, and I've also noticed my mental performance improve. You can pick up the book at http://kadavy.net/wahls   In this interview, we cover some of the building blocks of Dr. Terry's diet: What really does "paleo" mean? How does this "ketosis" thing you've heard about so much lately really work, and what does it mean for your health – especially for epilepsy and cancer? What does someone really mean when they say a diet is "detoxifying," and how does detoxification work?   What are the challenges in proving and implementing dietary treatments, and how do you evaluate the potential upsides or downsides of experimental approaches in general. We'll even talk about stem cell transplants, fecal transplants, and the microbiome.   If you or anyone close to you is battling an illness, you may find something useful in this interview, and even if you are healthy, you'll hear interesting and exciting things on the frontiers of health.   Sponsors http://wpengine.com/loveyourwork http://activecampaign.com/loveyourwork http://kadavy.net/audible   Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/terry-wahls-interview/    

This is an article that originally appeared on Medium. It was later picked up by The Atlantic's Quartz. Give yourself permission to do nothing once in awhile. You may be surprised how productive it makes you. Sponsors http://wpengine.com/loveyourwork http://activecampaign.com/loveyourwork http://kadavy.net/audible Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/love-your-work-episode-34-productivity-hack-do-nothing/    

Elise Bauer's SimplyRecipes (@simplyrecipes) is where I go when I'm searching for a recipe. I always find something healthy and delicious, with clear instructions and beautiful photos, all posted by Elise herself. Honestly, I probably don't have to type in the "simplyrecipes" part because the site is extremely popular. It's been featured in Time Magazine and was named the #1 food blog by the Daily Meal 4 years in a row. Whatever I'm looking for, I find it, because Elise has posted about 1,600 recipes over the past 15 years. She started SimplyRecipes when she was so sick, she had to move back in with her parents at the age of 40. At first, she was hand-coding her recipes in static HTML and just posting them to her personal site, Elise.com. Now the site has grown so massive, she recently sold it to Fexy Media, but still handles all of the cooking and writing and posting of recipes. I wanted to bring Elise's story to you not only because I love SimplyRecipes, but also because she has such a great story. As you'll hear in the interview, during a difficult time, she took the little things that were good in her life and expanded on them. She doubled down on love and built something great. Sponsors http://wpengine.com/loveyourwork http://activecampaign.com/loveyourwork http://kadavy.net/audible Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/elise-bauer-interview/    

A/B testing is a really hot topic in entrepreneurship. Fortunately, I think people have started to come to their senses with it. It's not that it doesn't work if you really know what you're doing, but it can really lead you astray when you are early on in a project.   I've heard Ramit Sethi mention recently that he wasn't really A/B testing until he was at about $1 million revenue. I recently heard Noah Kagan say "almost nobody should be A/B testing."   In this article, I share my experiment with A/A testing, and some of the misleading "results" I discovered.   Sponsors http://wpengine.com/loveyourwork http://activecampaign.com/loveyourwork http://kadavy.net/audible   Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/love-your-work-episode-32-stop-ab-testing/      

How can your ego hold you back in your aspirations, your successes, and in your failures? Ryan Holiday (@ryanholiday) covers it all in his new book, "Ego is the Enemy." You can buy it at kadavy.net/ego   As Ryan talks about in the discussion, he sort of wrote this book for himself. Ryan had an unusual amount of success very early in life. He dropped out of college at 19 to apprentice under author Robert Greene. He worked for a Beverly Hills talent agency, advising multiplatinum musicians, and he was the head of marketing at American Apparel by the time he was about 21.   In addition to writing books, Ryan helps other authors market their books. He's worked with authors like Tucker Max, (who we spoke with on episode 29), Tim Ferriss, and James Altucher.   In this discussion we talk about how to recognize how ego holds you back in all aspects of life and work, and what to do about it. There are lots of helpful thoughts about how to balance your passion projects with your day job, and we also talk about so-called "pageview economics," something Ryan has a lot of insight into. If you want to know how media works, you should also read his first book, "Trust me I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator." You can find it at kadavy.net/trustme    Sponsors: http://wpengine.com/loveyourwork http://activecampaign.com/loveyourwork http://kadavy.net/audible   Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/love-your-work-episode-31-ryan-holiday-tame-the-enemy-inside/    

The places you invest your money, and the objects you surround yourself with both have a huge influence on how you spend your time and energy, and buying this $600 lamp helped me read more books. This article is available on Medium. You can just google $600 lamp, or go to http://kadavy.net/medium Sponsors http://kadavy.net/treehousehttp://kadavy.net/audible Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/love-your-work-episode-30-buy-a-600-lamp-read-more-books/    

Tucker Max (@tuckermax) is best known as a self-proclaimed "asshole." He has written three NUMBER ONE New York Times best-sellers, including "I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell." He is only the third writer EVER to have three books on the nonfiction best-seller list at the same time. Tucker is a book marketing GENIUS, and it shows in this interview. Since I've been trying the crack the positioning code for a new book lately, it was such a privilege to get Tuckers insights on what makes a book successful. As Tucker will dissect for us, there's a big difference, psychologically, between an article someone will click on and read on the web, and a book that they will dig into their pockets to pay for. It's absolutely essential to understand this if you plan on writing a book. By the way, this psychology is relevant to the conversation I had on episode 21 with Nir Eyal: just think of how differently Facebook would be designed if you were PAYING for it! Anyway, Tucker is using his book marketing Jedi-mind tricks to run a really exciting new business called Book in a Box. They help you take your knowledge, and turn it into a book. It's not ghost writing, which we'll get to in the interview. Amongst many things, Tucker will dissect for us the difference between a good click bait title, and a good book title, how to feel fulfilled in your life to break free of social media, and how Hillary and Trump brilliantly "flip the frame" on each other. In case you couldn't tell by now, this episode is more NSFW than usual. Enjoy it with your headphones on. Sponsors Treehouse: http://kadavy.net/treehouseAudible: http://kadavy.net/audibleActive Campaign: http://kadavy.net/activecampaign Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/tucker-max-podcast-interview/      

Tuesday was the 12-year anniversary of my very first blog post. On this week's show, I'm bringing you the top lesson that I've learned from 12 years of blogging.   That blog post could easily be the worst blog post I've ever written, but it's actually the best blog post I've ever written.   I'll explain why in this short article. You can find this article on my Medium profile at http://kadavy.net/medium   Sponsors Treehouse: http://kadavy.net/treehouse Audible: http://kadavy.net/audible   Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/love-your-work-episode-28-start-where-you-are/    

Jeff Goins is the author of The Art of Work: A Proven Path to Discovering What You Were Meant to Do.   In The Art of Work, Jeff explains why finding your calling doesn't always follow the neat storybook path that you expect. You have to listen to your life, engage in painful practice, and build bridges all to let your story emerge.   In this discussion, we talk about how clarity comes with action, what makes practice deliberate practice, and why frequency matters more than quantity.   He'll also share the most cringe-inducing story of asking someone out I think I've ever heard. Don't worry, there's a lesson to be learned from it. Here's the interview.   Sponsors: http://kadavy.net/treehouse http://kadavy.net/audible http://kadavy.net/activecampaign   Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/love-your-work-episode-26-jeff-goins-listen-to-your-life/      

I recently turned 37, and this is everything I've learned so far. I originally wrote this post on Medium. Here's the text of the post, in case you're reading this description: 37 LESSONS FROM 37 YEARS I have been alive for 37 years. Here is everything I’ve learned: 1. Whenever possible, act now. 2. You’re worth so much more than your eyeballs. 3. What you think is “all in your head,” may actually be in your body. Find a good doctor. 4. Trust your subconscious. It knows your path better than you do. 5. Get therapy. 6. You’re bombarded with mediocre opportunities. 7. Thus, it’s your challenge to ignore mediocre opportunities. 8. You’re bombarded with mediocre friendships and relationships. 9. Thus, it’s your challenge to ignore mediocre friendships and relationships. 10. Most people are dying to distract themselves from their own thoughts. 11. There is a lot of money to be made in distracting people from their own thoughts. 12. Thus, everything around you is built to help people distract themselves from their own thoughts. 13. So, ignore most everything, and make space for your own thoughts. 14. Nobody reads the whole article before commenting. 15. Nearly everybody is “juicing.” They’re making themselves sick trying to catch up with one another. 16. Thus, your challenge is to catch up with your self. 17. You can only know so much. 18. And, your brain is ruled by biases. 19. Thus, you can hardly trust what you think you know. 20. And, you can only know so much about a person. 21. So, if you feel jealous when comparing yourself to someone else, you’re wrong. 22. Take improv classes. It will get you out of your head, and into the moment. 23. Take voice lessons. It really is possible to improve your singing. 24. Only sing in a key that is comfortable for you. 25. Take lessons in a social dance (Salsa, Swing, Tango, etc.) You’ll learn to cooperate, and you’ll have instant community anywhere you travel. 26. Traveling sucks. It’s much better to live in different places for short bursts. 27. What you think is a personality flaw may just be the bad influence of the place where you live. 28. What you think sucks about where you live may just be a flaw in your perception. 29. If you merely suspect something is holding you back. It’s not. You are. 30. When you dream of something, that thing seems impossible. 31. When something you dream of feels impossible, it makes you unhappy. 32. Thus, be comfortable with where you are. 33. But still, dream, while being comfortable with where you are. 34. When you use a bookmark, you invite yourself to forget what you’ve read. 35. Thus, don’t use bookmarks. 36. Smart people do dumb things when the pressure is on. 37. Even though it’s cliché to end a list with something pithy, it ties it up nicely. Clichés are clichés for a reason. Sponsors http://kadavy.net/treehouse http://kadavy.net/activecampaign Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/love-your-work-episode-25-37-lessons-from-37-years/      

Steve Case is the former CEO of AOL – America Online. Many of you probably chuckle when you see someone with an email address that ends in AOL.com, but for me and many millions of others, AOL was our first contact with the Internet. Steve has a new book out called The Third Wave. The premise is that the first wave of the internet was building the infrastructure – things like getting computers with modems into people's homes, and getting them on the internet, the second wave was software-focused – things like Facebook, and now that we have all of that built out, it's time to change more entrenched industries like Healthcare, Food, and Government. Steve stresses that perseverance is going to be critical in the Third Wave, which is something for all of you Lean Startup practitioners to consider: you can't necessarily abandon your idea because you don't get traction right away. You'll also have to form partnerships – sometimes with big, entrenched organizations that are slow-moving. So, opportunities to create something world-changing by just writing a few lines of code are becoming scarce. I really enjoyed the book – especially the parts about the early days of AOL. AOL had a huge impact in the 90's, and I remember flipping through channels and seeing Steve on CNN giving some kind of Senate testimony. I don't remember what exactly he said, I just remember thinking it was really next-level stuff to my 17-year-old brain. It was the first time I had any awareness of how entrepreneurs and technology shape culture and shape humanity. I hadn't realized before reading the book that it took AOL about a decade to really get traction, so it was interesting to hear those stories of the perseverance that is going to be so critical in the Third Wave. I think Steve's theories about the Third Wave make a ton of sense. Thanks to having infrastructure, we had a good decade or so where our world was reinvented by software, but now there are big challenges in changing slower-moving industries. Even if you're a solopreneur like me, even if you're an employee for life, and you don't have interest in disrupting entrenched industries, it's important to think about these larger trends and how they effect the world around you, and your relevance. Sponsor: http://kadavy.net/treehouse Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/steve-case-podcast-interview/  

The most popular question (and answer) from my Quora session was "What tips or hacks have saved you the most time and/or energy in your life?" This answer had more than 24,000 views, and was featured in Inc.com. Inc also has tweeted it a couple of times to their 1.6 million followers. What ended up coming out was a somewhat cohesive philosophy for full output I've devised over the years, and some of the most effective ways of redesigning ones life to fit within that framework. If you're interested in seeing this answer, as well as other answers from my session, go to http://kadavy.net/quora Sponsor: ($50 off Pavlok) http://kadavy.net/pavlok Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/love-your-work-episode-24-save-time-mental-energy-with-mind-management-and-perpetual-productivity/    

Jodi Ettenberg used to be a lawyer. She took a year off to travel 8 years ago, and never went back. Her blog, Legal Nomads, won a Lowell Thomas Award for best travel blog and has been featured in the New York Times, National Geographic, BBC Travel, CNN, and more. Legal Nomads is full of tips on packing, planning, and budgeting for travel, as well as beautiful hand-drawn typographic food maps and t-shirts, and guides and translation cards for eating gluten-free while traveling. Jodi has written a book called The Food Traveler's Handbook, which shows you how to find cheap, safe & delicious food anywhere in the world. This interview is full of wisdom on the benefits and challenges that come with a life of travel. Jodi is really insightful when it comes to recognizing how travel relates to all of human experience. If you're someone who has ever thought about making a big change Jodi did, or if you've ever struggled to be more minimal and have less stuff, you'll find this conversation especially inspiring and enlightening. You may notice that there are a TON of book recommendations in this interview. There are links in the show notes for all of the books Jodi mentions. Remember, if you buy through those links, you'll be supporting the show. Sponsors $50 off Pavlok http://kadavy.net/pavlok Free install of SumoMe http://kadavy.net/sumome Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/jodi-ettenberg-2/    

The economics favor digital distraction, but we have everything we need to make humanity great. We have the behavioral science knowledge, and with increasingly ubiquitous technology touchpoints such Apple Watch and The Internet of Things at large, we have a growing opportunity to shape behavior with technology. The big question is: will this power be used for "good" or "evil?" Sponsor: http://kadavy.net/treehouse Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/love-your-work-episode-21-the-behavioral-revolution-not-the-information-revolution/    

Nir Eyal is the author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. So he is really manufacturing the drug. Fortunately, he's also concerned about the implications of digital distraction, so he agreed to have a discussion with me about it on the podcast. In this discussion, we cover our views on the potential effects of distraction. Is it making people less creative? Is it as addictive and harmful as smoking? Do we have the agency to free ourselves from technology? And, of course, is it making us vulnerable to a potential robot apocalypse? Join the discussion in the show notes at http://kadavy.net/podcast Sponsor: http://kadavy.net/treehouse Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/is-silicon-valley-leading-us-into-the-robot-apocalypse-love-your-work-episode-21-w-nir-eyal/    

Sometimes, the things you feel like you should do create so much cognitive burden you can hardly get anything done. When I feel that way, I know it's time for me to have a "Week of Want." I give myself a whole week where I can work on whatever project I want, without having to think about what goal I'm trying to achieve. This has brought me great results many times, including writing a blog post, which connected me with Timeful, which later sold to Google. I talked about the Week of Want a little in my interview with neuroscientist John Kounios, but in this mini-episode, I explain the technique in-depth. Sponsor: Get 50% off my White Hot Course when you use WHITEHOTLOVE at http://designforhackers.com/whitehotcourse before April 16, 2016. Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/love-your-work-episode-20-kill-your-todo-list-sell-your-ideas-to-google/    

Andrew's famous "Relax" app has been a key ritual for me for a couple of years now. Andrew has a whole empire of apps with guided recordings that help people not only relax, but Quit Smoking, reduce anxiety, lose weight, or build confidence, amongst many other things. His apps have been downloaded more than 10 million times. I have literally found Andrew's apps to be life-changing for me, but I've also been fascinated by these apps as a business. They seem so simple. But, behind Andrew's apps is more than 20 years as a hypnotherapist, and in this interview I'll be digging into how he got into such an unusual career, what are some misunderstandings about hypnosis, and how did he create his own luck to have the best-selling "self-help" recordings on the Apple and Android app stores. We'll also find out why he lights a candle to do his work. Andrew's Relax app: http://kadavy.net/relax Treehouse Sponsor: http://kadavy.net/treehouse Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/love-your-work-episode-19-relax-andrew-johnson-on-building-an-app-empire/    

READ ME! Lots of people beat themselves up for not being able to meditate. I think they're too hard on themselves. If you can simply make a habit of meditating 2 minutes a day, you can begin to enjoy meditation to the point where you're ready to do longer sessions.   I have little formal meditation training, but this 2-minute meditation is roughly how I do my sessions. Part of it is rooted in what I know of mindfulness meditation, and, from what I've heard of Vipassana meditation, may have some influences from that as well.   I started meditating about 10 years ago, off and on, and have "practiced" regularly for about 5 years. Progress has been very slow, but grew more profound as I grew more disciplined about doing it regularly. Meditation has helped me eliminate anxiety, and think more deeply and clearly about whatever I face in work in life. I now relish sessions that are sometimes longer than 90 minutes!   There's one BIG limitation about presenting a guided meditation as a podcast: It makes you likely to meditate using a device that is also full of distractions. If you have a device on which to play this file that isn't going to distract you with a notification – either while meditating, or while glancing at the screen afterward – I highly recommend that. It might be an iPod, or I use my iPad, because I don't allow notifications on it. If you don't have anything like this ready to go, don't let that prevent you from trying it out! Try putting your device in airplane mode, instead.   This 2-minute format is inspired by my "10-Minute Hack." The idea being that, by setting an absurdly simple goal for yourself, you can "trick" yourself into doing more than you originally set out to do. You can learn more about this trick here: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/the-10-minute-hack/   Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/2-minute-meditation/    

A 10-year-old kadavy.net classic, this "mini-episode" (or is it just an "episode?") distills eight rules of living that make me feel like I really have an edge on the world. The original post is here: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/life-hacks/ Below is the content of the post: I’ve noticed in my short existence that I tend to do many things differently from most people. Some of those things probably work just as well, whereas others make me wonder “why doesn’t everyone do this?” Here are eight things that may make you feel like you’re cheating the system, too (in no particular order): Walk – No, I’m not saying “go for a walk,” I’m saying design your life so that you walk more. Live close enough that you can walk/bike/razor scooter to something that you frequent whether that’s work, a grocery store, a friend’s house, a bar, or preferably – all of them. Why spend 15 minutes driving to a gym to spend half an hour on a treadmill? If you’re fortunate enough to have legs that work – use them. Thomas Jefferson on Walking. Smile – All of the time. Even when the cashier gives you the wrong change. People’s intentions are usually good, especially when they’re dealing with someone who isn’t being a dick. Drink Water – Or I could say “don’t drink soda orcoffee.” It’s a waste of money, health, and teeth. Save your caffeine tolerance for when you really need it. Buy Used – I’ve already told you about my philosophy as this applies to music. Buying my clothes at a thrift store yields items that are not-so-watered-down versions of what I would get at my other favorite clothing store, and that are a fraction of the price. This strategy transfers well to books and furniture. When you buy used you get the adventure of discovery, and avoid the flat artistic experience that comes with only consuming the contemporary. Underorganize – There are a number things you can apply this to, but I can’t give a better example than my “inbox/outbox” method of doing laundry. Should you keep all of your financial documents etc. in a filing cabinet? Probably, but recognize when your organizing reaches the point of diminishing returns. Live Small – What’s that, you can’t afford a three-bedroom, three bath house with a huge yard and garage in a neighborhood where #1 is possible? Good. Then you won’t buy so much crap. You’ll save money in the long run, and you’ll be happier, too. Remember How Adaptable You Are – How long could you live if you were transported to the middle of a forest? You would probably surprise yourself, so don’t be afraid of perceived “big” changes in life. It’s a part of human nature to do what is necessary to reach at least previous levels of happiness, but risks succeeded will get you there and then some. Don’t Make Lists of Rules – or Follow Them (They All End This Way) – Such things are only made by bloggers hoping to get lots of del.icio.us bookmarks. The world is too complex to be condensed into a list of rules. How do you cheat the system? What are your Eight Life Hacks? Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/love-your-work-episode-17-eight-life-hacks-for-health-wealth-and-happiness/    

This is a mini-episode based upon a previous post here on kadavy.net. The original post is over here: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/earnit/ Sponsor: http://kadavy.net/treehouse Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/love-your-work-episode-15-earn-it/    

Paul Bennett (@contextpaul) ran his business while sailing around the world with his whole family. He's CEO and co-founder of Context Travel. Context Travel organizes high-quality tours around the world, given by historians, authors, and PhDs. I took a Context tour myself when I was at The Acropolis in Athens a few months back, and it was orders of magnitude better than any large group tour I've been on. I met Paul through a friend recently, and instantly felt he was exactly the type of person I'd want to have on my podcast, were I to ever have one. In this conversations, you'll find lots of lessons about overcoming your fears, and turning nebulous dreams into actionable steps. Chances are there are some dreams you have that aren't nearly as crazy as sailing around the world while running a business, and you may find some parallels there. We also wax about some of the benefits of travel (corollaries to this can be find in the "mini lives" mini episode that I did awhile back.) Sponsors: http://kadavy.net/wpengine Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/love-your-work-episode-15-sail-around-the-world-while-running-a-business-with-three-kids-w-paul-bennett-of-context-travel/    

I'm a pretty dedicated "solopreneur" – an entrepreneur who goes it on their own: no cofounders and no investors. This is a mini-episode in which I introduce the tenets that distill the power of solopreneurship, and which help me remain confident as I move forward as a solopreneur. The content of this episode is also in this blog post: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/the-solopreneurs-manifesto/ Sponsor: http://kadavy.net/treehouse Sponsor: http://kadavy.net/audible Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/love-your-work-episode-14-the-solopreneurs-manifesto/    

Maneesh Sethi (@maneesh), is the founder of Pavlok. Pavlok is a wrist band that gives you an electric shock that helps you break bad habits. It's a crazy idea, so it's definitely gotten a lot of attention. Pavlok has been featured on Good Morning America, The Colbert Report, and Jimmy Fallon. In our discussion we talk about how I used Pavlok to break my bad Facebook habit, and I can tell you, it's extremely effective. Maneesh is a great example of someone who has taken what he used to consider his weakness, and turned it into his superpower. He has always struggled with focusing, but he's found ways to cope with that, and harness the creativity that is a product of that lack of focus. You'll find relatable things in this conversation if there's anything you've felt was your weakness. Maneesh has learned to surround himself with people who fill in his gaps, and Pavlok is an obvious product of his struggle with his attention. Sponsor: http://kadavy.net/treehouse Sponsor: http://kadavy.net/audible Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/love-your-work-episode-13-your-weakness-is-your-superpower-w-maneesh-sethi/    

Have you ever been really excited about a book you were reading, only to realize – as you tried to describe it to someone – that you had NO IDEA what it was actually about? This happened to me all of the time, until I realized I was reading the wrong way. This is a mini-episode in which I introduce the "layered" reading approach that changed the way I read books. Now I read more books than ever, while retaining more of what I read. This is a reading of my Observer article Reading for Scatterbrained People With Neither Patience Nor Respect for Authority. Article: http://observer.com/2015/04/reading-for-scatterbrained-people-with-neither-patience-nor-respect-for-authority/ Sponsor: http://kadavy.net/treehouse Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/love-your-work-episode-12-stop-reading-books-straight-through-start-reading-in-layers/    

Nick Gray (@nickgraynews) is the founder of Museum Hack. Museum Hack makes super fun museum tours such as the "Un-Highlights Tour," the "Badass Bitches Tour," and the "Big Gay Met." You've heard in previous episodes such as "Transform Stuff into Things" that I think the world moves forward when someone explores the hidden sources of value that are out there, & gives them form. I've always found Nick to be great at doing just that, not only with Museum Hack, but also with everyday things like sharing an inventive Facebook birthday greeting, or throwing a very rapid but worthwhile cocktail party. We explore this tendency for extracting hidden value in our conversation, in the context of upgrading your social life, using virtual assistants to take care of email while going for a walk, or getting yourself to read more books. This will also be a useful discussion for anyone who has struggled with whether to turn a hobby into a business, or anyone who has felt the discomfort of charging money for something they enjoy doing. Sponsor: http://kadavy.net/treehouse Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/love-your-work-episode-11-hack-hidden-value-w-nick-gray-of-museum-hack/    

Many people think their productivity struggle is one of managing their time. In reality, it's more a struggle of managing their mind. In this mini-episode, I introduce my framework for Mind Management: using knowledge from behavioral science, psychology, and neuroscience to work with the subtle fluctuations of your mind. Check out the article here: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/mind-management-intro/   Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/love-your-work-episode-10-stop-managing-your-time-start-managing-your-mind/    

Laura Roeder is the founder of Edgar, which is (or maybe I should say "who is") a social media automation tool (no offense, Edgar, but you are a tool). Edgar helps you create a library of social media updates that you can schedule to repeat.   Laura has been honored at the White House, and spoke at the White House for being in the Empact 100, which is a list of the top young entrepreneurs in the US.   I've personally known Laura for about 8 years now, and I've always admired her decisiveness. I've never seen her really agonize over a big decision. In this interview I try to dig into the source of that decisiveness, and the philosophy that drives it.   One note in here is that I ended up abandoning a story about how it is – as Laura puts it – I'm responsible for her meeting her husband and CTO. First of all, she's giving me more credit than I deserve, but secondly, wait until later on in the interview, and we do eventually pick that story back up. So be patient.   Sponsor: http://kadavy.net/treehouse   Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/love-your-work-episode-9-be-decisive-laura-roeder-of-edgar/  

Can neuroscience make you creative on command? Dr. John Kounios is the Director of the PhD Program in Applied Cognitive & Brain Sciences at Drexel University. He's also co-author of the book The Eureka Factor: Aha Moments, Creative Insight, and the Brain.   Dr. John Kounios, studies the neuroscience of insightful thinking. It turns out that insightful or creative thinking is, in fact, a different type of thinking than analytical thinking, and there are conditions that will encourage insightful thinking.   In this lengthy discussion, Dr. Kounios unpacks what is unique about insight, and what conditions will encourage insight. We also share specific techniques that each of us uses to get ourselves into an insightful state, including sleep, nutritional supplements, and sensory deprivation.   Sponsors http://kadavy.net/treehouse http://kadavy.net/audible   Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/love-your-work-episode-8-creating-aha-moments-with-neuroscientist-dr-john-kounios/  

One of the keys to creating something original and remarkable is being able to see how all of the "stuff" in the world can be created into "things." This is a must-understand for any entrepreneur. Original article: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/stuff-and-things/ Get a 14-day free trial from our sponsor, Treehouse: http://kadavy.net/treehouse Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/love-your-work-episode-7-transform-stuff-into-things/  

Adrian Holovaty (@adrianholovaty) has learned the hard way that he wants to retain control of his business. After selling Everyblock, Adrian watched in horror as it was later shut down without warning. Adrian's new business is SoundSlice (incredible interactive music notation, for music teachers and students), and he's resolved to retain control of his business.  In this episode, Adrian shares some lessons learned from watching his "'baby' get slaughtered." He shares some useful perspectives for anyone who is on the fence on deciding whether to bootstrap or take funding. Sponsor: http://kadavy.net/audible Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/love-your-work-episode-6-dont-let-your-baby-get-slaughtered-adrian-holovaty-of-soundslice-django-and-everyblock/  

"Traveling" by its traditional definition is like licking a filet mignon. You get a taste, but you don't get the nourishment. This is why I stopped traveling, and started living "Mini Lives." Original article: http://observer.com/2014/02/a-month-at-a-time-why-i-quit-travelling-and-started-living-mini-lives/ Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/love-your-work-episode-5-stop-traveling-start-living-mini-lives/  

After getting fired from her job, Saya Hillman (@sayahillman) made a list of things she wanted to get paid to do. 11 years later, she's made all of those things a reality. She gets paid to play board games, do improv, or scrapbook, for example. Her company, Mac & Cheese Productions runs events that help people face their fears, and connect with others. She shares insights on living a "life of 'yes,'" and finding your superpowers, as well as some productivity tips for running a business while wearing multiple hats. Show notes: http://kadavy.net/podcast Claim your free Audible Audiobook: http://kadavy.net/audible Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/saya-hillman/    

Jonathan Wegener (@jwegener) spent 3 months traveling to every subway station in the NYC area, meticulously documenting the fastest way to get out of each station. The app he made with the data supported him for two years, until he built Timehop. Timehop is an app that compiles your memories and sends them back to you, and Jonathan built it in a weekend hackathon with his cofounder. Since then, he's raised over $14 million, and hired a great team. He shares insights on hiring great people, creating remarkable products, and getting press that makes things go viral. Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/love-your-work-episode-3-making-something-remarkable-hiring-getting-press-jonathan-wegener-of-timehop/ Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/love-your-work-episode-3-making-something-remarkable-hiring-getting-press-jonathan-wegener-of-timehop/    

Are you holding yourself back from starting something because you're afraid you're not going to be good at it? You have to give yourself Permission to Suck. This is something that the best entrepreneurs and creators learn over time. Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/love-your-work-episode-2-permission-to-suck/    

Jason Fried (@jasonfried) of Basecamp (formerly 37 Signals) shares his wisdom on cutting through the noise to find your own voice. There are some great nuggets in here about design, and how to be a contrarian thinker. This will be a great episode for entrepreneurs, whether they're experienced, or relatively new. Also, this is the FIRST EPISODE of Love Your Work! Please subscribe, and leave us a review to help us get featured in the iTunes "New and Noteworthy" section. Show notes: http://kadavy.net/podcast   Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/jason-fried-basecamp/   Transcript: [music] David Kadavy 00:11 This is Love Your Work. On this show we meet people who have carved out success by their own definition. I'm David Kadavy, best-selling author and entrepreneur. This is the first episode of the show, so if you're not familiar with me, I wrote a book called Design for Hackers, which is a bestseller. It debuted in the Top 20 on all of Amazon. Before that, I was the lead designer for a couple of startups in Silicon Valley, and I freelanced as well. I blog at kadavy.net. That's K-A-D as in David, A-V as in Victor, Y, and you can tell how many times I've repeated that in my life. You can follow me on Twitter at @kadavy, or you can join 60,000 others and take my free design course at designforhackers.com. One thing that's really important to me is helping people build a business and a lifestyle that suits them. It's something that I've managed to do, and I want more people to experience it, and that's kind of the  idea behind the show. With this show, I want to introduce you to people who have created businesses and lifestyles that are all their own. They've achieved success by their own definition and built a life according to their own values. They're not necessarily going to be millionaires, but they will be happy people. As the name of the show would imply, they love their work, and also, I love their work. Now, to help us get the show off to a great start, can I ask you a favor? David Kadavy 01:26 In this first few weeks of the show we have the opportunity to be featured in the iTunes store in their new and noteworthy section, and this show is a bit of an experiment. I'm launching with a few episodes and I'm going to see how it goes, but this first few weeks is absolutely critical. This is the one chance in the lifetime of this show to really bring in more listeners, and more listeners means I can put more of my energy into bringing you great guests with wisdom to share. But in order for that to happen we need reviews on iTunes. Lots of them. They also have to be positive reviews, but that's, of course, up to you and the actual quality  the show. So can you please review this show on the iTunes store? If you loved it and want to hear more, please give it five stars. [music] David Kadavy 02:14 I'm very grateful to bring you this first guest. He is one of my biggest heroes, and he's the perfect example of someone who has built a business and a life according to his own values. Jason Fried - yes, the Jason Fried - hardly needs an introduction. He is the CEO of Basecamp and a New York Times best selling author. Jason co-founded Basecamp way back in 1999. It was originally a web design shop, but they built a little project management app called Basecamp, and now that's the focus of the company. In the process of building Basecamp the company also created Ruby on Rails, which is an open-source web framework that powers thousands of sites. And the thing I admire most about Jason is his contrarion thinking. Whatever the prevailing wisdom is, Jason seems to speak up and explain why that wisdom is wrong. He intentionally has setup his company small. His employees can live and work wherever they want, and they get a three day week during the summer months. The company is almost totally bootstrap. I say "almost" because they did take a little bit of investment from the one and only Jeff Bezos of Amazon, primarily just to be able to give him a call once in a while. David Kadavy 03:23 Jason has co-authored three books, one of which is the New York Times best selling Rework, in which he and his co-founder, David Heinemeier Hansson, share their rules for running a simple business. This interview is about one hour long, and there is so much more that I wanted to ask Jason. It could've been several hours easily. We talk about Basecamp in the beginning, which you may already be intimately familiar with, but stick it out and we soon start digging into the source of Jason's famously contrarion thinking. I'm really fascinated by where it comes from, because I'm someone who tends to be a bit contrarion myself, but  these thoughts, they usually come after I have this deep internal conflict, and it seems like it just comes so naturally to Jason. So that's something that I try to unpack in the interview, and you're going to find some good tips for listening to that mischievous voice in your head. If you aren't already familiar with Jason, prepare yourself. He really spews brilliance. Everything that comes out of his mouth could be quoted, or could be a Tweet or could be the subject of a blog post. He's really easy to interview, which is great because he's one of the first people that I've interviewed. So I'm very excited to bring you this interview. Let's get started. [music] David Kadavy 04:44 Okay. So I'm here with Jason Fried in the Basecamp offices, and I look around here, and there's this beautiful wood paneling and it's just a quiet office. I can't help but notice there's nobody here. Jason Fried 04:58 No one's here. One person's here, but  he's at lunch. David Kadavy 05:00 Oh, okay. That person's at lunch. Jason Fried 05:02 That person's at lunch. David Kadavy 05:03 Well, we are talking here on the day before Thanksgiving, so I wonder if that has something to do with it. Jason Fried 05:09 A little bit, but also most of the people even who work in Chicago work remotely, so we're a remote company. People across 30 some-odd different cities around the world, and, including the people who are here, we have 14 people in Chicago. Usually any given day there's five of them here, and it might be a different five each day but that's how we work here. Yeah. David Kadavy 05:28 Wow, five people. Okay. And this is a huge office. Jason Fried 05:31 It's a big office, yeah. So we have 50 people in the company and we all get together twice a year. We have an office that's built to handle the whole company, but a very small portion of the company is in the office on any given day. Half the office, too, is dedicated to public space. We have a theater. We've got a big kitchen area, a reception area. It is still a large office, though. David Kadavy 05:54 Yeah. We're in Chicago so there's a little more space available.  So you guys have had this office for how long now? Jason Fried 06:04 Since August of 2010. David Kadavy 06:07 Okay. It's quiet, there's lots of space, there's lots of private spaces as well. To what extent do you feel like this office kind of is an expression of your own personality? Jason Fried 06:19 Well, I think it's an expression of the company's personality, which is probably derived at some point from mine since I was one of the founders. But mostly we're kind of an introverted group for the most part. Definitely there's some extroverted people here though as well, but we try to be respectful of one another's space, and privacy and time. So we kind of treat the office like a library, in that the rules here are kind of like library rules, which is that you walk into a library, everyone knows how to behave. You're respectful of one another. You're quiet. You don't interrupt people. People are studying, and thinking and working, and that's the same way the office here works. So for the most part, even if it's full of people, it's pretty quiet and pretty hush, and  then people can go into these private rooms like you and I are sitting in right now and have a full volume conversation without interrupting people on the outside. Just like a library, they have little side rooms where you can sort of talk loudly and not interrupt people who are reading outside. David Kadavy 07:14 Yeah, that was always something that bothered me whenever I worked at a company. I might have a bunch of different roles, but I might be ears deep in some code, and somebody would come up, and tap me on the shoulder, and interrupt me and just lose all of it. Jason Fried 07:28 You lose it all. You lose the focus, the zone, and so we want to protect that because that's a really hard thing to get into in the first place. So if you're in that, we want to make sure that you stay in that as long as possible, versus inviting interruptions all day long, which is what a lot of modern offices are all about these days. David Kadavy 07:45 Yeah, I can definitely relate to that. I've noticed that before. So you guys started out as a software sort of consultancy, right? Or a web design company. Jason Fried 07:57 Web design. Yeah, we started as a web design  company. David Kadavy 08:01 And that was called 37signals. Jason Fried 08:02 Yeah. In 1999 we launched the company in August, and we were doing website design for hire, but just redesign work for the most parts. So we weren't doing programming. We were just doing visual redesigns. So people already had the sites and we were like, "We can make that site a little bit better," and so they would hire us to do that. David Kadavy 08:19 Yeah. And now you are concentrated entirely pretty much on this one product, Basecamp. Jason Fried 08:25 Yeah, Basecamp. And Basecamp 3, the third version of that, just launched a couple weeks ago. David Kadavy 08:30 Oh, cool. Jason Fried 08:30 Every four years or so we completely reinvent the product from the ground up. Not a single line of code, not a single piece of design is shared. We make it all over again every four years, roughly. So we just did that for our third major time. Basecamp's been around for 12 years. It came out in February 2004. So about 12 years total now. So we're on the third major version. David Kadavy 08:50 That's funny. I guess I hadn't noticed that you reinvent the whole product every four years. Jason Fried 08:55 There's similar themes. So it's a lot like-- think about  cars. We'll take the Porsche 911. Porsche 911 was released in 1963. It's about 52 years old now, but there's been seven generations of the Porsche 911. So every seven years, roughly, they do a new chassis, they do new engines, they do new technology around it. But it's still a Porsche 911. It looks roughly the same. The engines in the back. The driving dynamics are similar. You can identify a 911 that was made today and a 911 that was made 50 years ago. You can tell there's continuity, but roughly every seven years it's an entirely new car. And the same thing is true for like a Honda Accord or a Civic. These lines have been around for decades, but every four, five, six, seven, eight - in cars it's more like five to eight years because it's very expensive to make a new car - they make a new car. It's still an Accord, which means it's a four-door primarily. They have a coupe version too, but it's like a family car. And the Civic's a little bit smaller. They have these themes and these spirits around the things, but they're all new. And so  that's what we do with Basecamp, is that Basecamp today, in 2015, can trace back to base camp classic, which is the first version of Basecamp in February 2004. The themes were similar but the product is reconsidered in a big way every four years, and in between that we just sort of improve the existing version. But then there's a point where you can't pack new ideas onto an old chassis, so we kind of redo the thing from scratch. David Kadavy 10:26 Yeah, that car analogy is interesting. I'm not totally up on the designs of cars, but I imagine that, say a Honda Accord, there's certain values that are portrayed - values about what a car is and what is important in a car being portrayed in that. And then there's all this changing technology, and then there's certain trends maybe that are influenced by other-- Jason Fried 10:47 Exactly. David Kadavy 10:48 --what the drivers are used to. Jason Fried 10:52 Yes. David Kadavy 10:53 That those sort of things change, and so that sort of calls for a total redo. Jason Fried 10:59 Totally. And you think about,  like-- I think just cars are really good metaphors for this because you think about the Corvette, which has been around, I think, since the 50s, and there's like a spirit to that car. It's a two-door sports car, it's kind of a long-nose. There's a spirit to it. And even though they don't all look the same over the years, there's a language and an idea behind the Corvette which stays in the DNA of the car, but the car is redesigned and reengineered completely from the ground up every seven years or something. That's just how that industry-- most industries work that same way. David Kadavy 11:33 Yeah. I mean, they're still positioned, in a way, against other types of cars. The Corvette, it's a different thing from a Camaro, right? It's a different type of person that will drive it and it's different sort of values that person has. Right? Jason Fried 11:48 Yes. So each car has it's spirit-- it's much like-- look, you are not the same person - I'm not even talking, like, personality - you don't share a single cell in common with yourself from  ten years ago. David Kadavy 12:00 Yeah. Jason Fried 12:01 So you're actually-- but you're still David. You're still the same guy. You've changed. Your tastes have changed and your points of view have changed, but you're still you, even though you've been completely reengineered from the ground up in many ways all the time. So there's iterative tweaks, and then at a certain point you're all new. You're actually all new compared to what you were ten years ago. David Kadavy 12:23 Yeah. So let's talk about that. Jason Fried 12:24 That's a little bit of a weird analogy, let's stick to the car one. But that's kind of what we're trying to do here, instead of the alternative, which is typically how software works, which is that it's constantly iterated on. Which is good, but that's when the code base gets really difficult to work on at a certain point, because it gets old and the technologies that you build on are kind of old. It becomes hard to work on, you begin to slow down, and you can't handle brand new ideas because you try and fit them into the current patterns and it's like, "But this won't quite fit anymore." So you kind of shoehorn it in, then you make compromises, and that's how things start to get bad over a certain point  of time. David Kadavy 13:01 Yeah. So let's talk about that DNA, then. Basecamp, for those who aren't familiar, is a project management web app, basically. Jason Fried 13:14 Yes. David Kadavy 13:14 I mean, there's probably-- Jason Fried 13:16 There's iOS and android apps, yeah. All that stuff [inaudible]. David Kadavy 13:19 When you started, it's like your main competitor was maybe Microsoft Project. Jason Fried 13:26 Main competitor has always been the same: email. David Kadavy 13:28 Email, okay. Jason Fried 13:28 Email and habits. David Kadavy 13:31 But when people would think of project management, would they think of email back when you guys were first starting? Jason Fried 13:39 If you ask people even today what their primary method of working on projects with people is, it's still email. So email is still the biggest. Our industry thinks there's certain products of the time that are the big product, but the biggest of them all is email. And that's not a product, it's like a thing. David Kadavy 13:58 It's a protocol. Jason Fried 13:58 Yeah, right. But  that is the thing you're always battling against, is email, phone, in-person habits. That's the thing you're battling mostly against. The biggest thing that you're trying to do is sort of-- there's this idea of non-consumption, which is this concept that there are people out there who work with others, and they need a better way to do that, but they don't know how to do it. They don't use any products to do it yet. I mean, they use products, but they use products that are not built for this purpose, but they just use other things. And they don't even realize that there's something out there that would help them. They're non-consumers. They want to consume. They want something better, but they don't even know something exists. So our industry sometimes thinks that whatever the hot product of the moment is, that everybody uses that. But actually, all things told, a very small slice of people use that, and most people don't use anything. So that's always the biggest  competition in our opinion, is the people who don't use anything. David Kadavy 15:03 I feel like there's a parallel we draw in there between email and what we were talking about with office interruptions. The email is this sort of portal where anybody can interrupt you, and you're providing a space through which everything is about this project that you're working on right now - all the communication that's happening and all that within Basecamp. What is that DNA of Basecamp? Jason Fried 15:32 Here's the thing. So the DNA of Basecamp, there's a couple things going on here. No matter what it is that you're working on, if you have a team there's a few things you need to do. I don't care if you are building a building, or you're working on a small school project, or you are putting together a publication or you're building a website, when you work with people you've got people problems. So you need a way to divvy up and organize the work that needs to get done amongst the group.  Our take on that is to-dos, but let's forget our implementation for the moment and just get back to the fundamentals. So you've got a group of people. You want to do some work together or whatever it is. You've got chunks of work, pieces of work that need to be outlined and divvied up in some way and assigned out. You need a way to hash things out quickly. So sometimes you just need to hash stuff out and go informally back and forth really fast. Sometimes you need to slow down and present something, and think about something, and pitch something, and write a thoughtful post or something and give people a chance to write back in time. So there's moments when you need to make announcements, there's moments you need to hash stuff out quickly. You need to keep track of when things are due and what the major milestones are - what's coming up next, when is thing launching or when are we doing this thing together? So there's some dates around it. There's artifacts. There's files, and there's documents, and there's sketches, and there's PDFs and there's stuff that-- typically you need to keep track of that stuff. Jason Fried 17:00 You want to organize that stuff. You need a place where everyone knows where it is, and where to go to get it and that sort of thing, right? And then finally, you need a way to check in on people. Like, "How's it going?" And, "How are we doing?" And, "Are we doing the right thing?" And, "How do you feel about how we're doing it?" And, "Are you stuck on anything?" Those kind of things. So to me, it doesn't matter the kind of work. When you work with people, those are things, right? Hashing stuff out, divvying up work, dates, artifacts, making announcements, being able to get a hold of people when you need to no matter what their speeds are, that sort of thing, right? So that, to me, is the DNA of what Basecamp's about. It's about understanding how groups actually work together to make progress on something. There's difference too, because there's moments when you're just social and you're just kind of, like, social. You're not trying to make progress there. But when you want to make progress on something, Basecamp comes in and helps you make progress on things with other people. David Kadavy 17:51 Yeah, and I like that you're-- Jason Fried 17:52 It's a collection. Let me-- it's really a collection. That's the the thing that's always set Basecamp apart, is that it's a collection of unique  tools that work together to help a group make progress on something together. There's many ways to approach things. There's a way to piece together a bunch of separate tools, and duct tape them together and try to point at each thing, or there's a way to buy something that kind of tries to do all those things really well in a simple way, and that's kind of our side. We want to give you one thing that you can use to do all these things together with a group, versus you having to go out and shop for a bunch of different solutions, and try to tie them all together and get people on board on five or six different products. David Kadavy 18:35 It sounds like you've been able to really think about the abstract needs that are there and separate that experience from the technology itself. It's not Ajax, to use a very 2002 term [chuckles]. Jason Fried 18:50 Very early, yeah. David Kadavy 18:51 It's not Ajax. It's not about all these individual technologies or something. It is managing these sort of abstract things that are floating in  the ether and making them into something that you can get a handle on. Jason Fried 19:04 And getting your head around it and getting organized around it is a really important part of working together with people. The thing is that everyone can have their own individual messes, but if you bring someone else into your mess they're going to be like, "Woah, I don't know where things are." So you need to have an organized place, a space, a shared place where you can do this kind of work. But yeah, it's not about technologies. It's not even necessarily about individual feature sets, because when I say, "Hash things out quickly," what I actually mean is-- in our implementation is more of like chat. Campfires are now in Basecamp 3. But in five years chat might not be they way to hash things out quickly. There may be another way to hash things out quickly. So, it's not about staying true to a tool set. It's about staying true to the problems you're trying to solve. This is what gives us the opportunity to resolve those in new ways [crosstalk] Use it to [crosstalk] technology at hand. Exactly. Just like the cars that change over time with technology. Jason Fried 20:00 Totally. Yeah. Bluetooth wasn't a thing in cars eight years ago. Now it is. Navigation wasn't a common thing, and now it's in almost every car. So technology moves, ideas move and things you can do change. And that's why I think forcing yourself to reinvent yourself and be willing to look at those technologies and those new options on a regular basis is very viable. David Kadavy 20:23 Now, when I think about you reinventing the product every four years, I can't help but think about how most people would react to doing something like that or the idea of doing something like that. They would be so scared that everybody would be so pissed when you change everything that they'd be afraid to make a change like that. How do you get over that? Jason Fried 20:49 Yeah, it's a great question, and the way to get around that is to, again, get back to people. People do not like to be forced into change.  People don't mind change. People hate forced change. So we never force anyone to switch versions of Basecamp. People who've been using Base-- we have customers who've been using Basecamp for 12 years. Same version. They signed up for Basecamp when it was just called Basecamp. Now it's called Basecamp Classic, which is the original version. We've never forced anyone on Basecamp Classic to move to Basecamp Two and no one on Basecamp Two has to move to Basecamp 3. We've made a commitment to our customers to always maintain every major version of Basecamp forever. So if you're happy with Classic, our definition of new may not matter to you. New doesn't matter to you. Consistency might matter to you-- Jason Fried 21:39 But the new customers, it would be to your detriment to have the original interface with the technology of 2002 or whenever it was-- David Kadavy 21:48 2004, yeah exactly. Jason Fried 21:49 --2004, and somebody shows up and that's what you've got, that would be a problem. David Kadavy 21:53 Totally. So new customers today who go to Basecamp.com will be signed up for Basecamp 3. That's the only thing they can sign up for. The newest, latest,  greatest version of Basecamp we've ever made before. Customers who've been with us from 2004, some of them might still be on Classic if they've chosen to. Some of them might be on Basecamp 2 if they've chosen to be. Up to them completely, entirely. That's how we solve that problem. We don't force change on anybody ever. Jason Fried 22:17 You don't run into situations where that backwards compatibility is just impossible to support? David Kadavy 22:21 We don't support backwards compatibility. Jason Fried 22:23 Maybe I'm using the wrong terminology there, but-- David Kadavy 22:26 If you start on 3 you can't move to Classic, because there's not a future parity. For example in Basecamp 3, you can assign - this is a small example - but you can assign to-dos to many people. In Classic you can only assign to-dos to one person. So if you're in Basecamp 3 and you assign a to-do to six people, and you try to go back to Classic somehow, you'd lose data because we wouldn't know where to-- you can't move backwards in time. Jason Fried 22:50 So you've been doing this for a long time. Basecamp has been around for 12 years in itself. The company has been around-- David Kadavy 22:57 16 years. Jason Fried 22:57 --for 16 years. This  reinventing every four years, is that something that helps you keep it fresh and keep it being something that you want to be doing everyday? David Kadavy 23:08 Yeah, it's for everybody. It's partially for us. It's fun to make something new and it's fun to improve that thing for a while, but at a certain point you want to make something new again. The way we did it in the past was we kept making new products. So we made Basecamp, then we made Backpack, then we made Campfire, then we made Highrise and then we made the job boards. We've made a variety of things over the years. What ends up happening, though, is that making something is actually the easy part. The hard part is that once it's out in the wild you've got to maintain it. You've got customers using it. They have demands, and you've got to provide customer service, and support and all these things. So we love the act of making new things, but we've decided that we want to focus on making one new thing over and over. That's how we keep it fresh for us, also keep it fresh for the market and keep it fresh for customers, but also not ever  upset existing customers by forcing them on to something new that they're not ready for or they don't want to be in. Something I learned early on - and it's sort of a ridiculous revelation because you just expect that you would know this, but it's one of the things you just don't think about. Software companies especially almost never think about this. People are always in the middle of something, right? David Kadavy 24:19 So if I release a brand new version, and they're in the middle of a project and they're trying to work on a client project with somebody, and we release a new version, we push some them on to the new one, they're in the middle of something else. They're not ready to move to this. They don't want their software to change in the middle of their project. So once we realized that, we realized, like, "Okay, that's a deep insight and very important. Our product is not their lives. Their lives is their livelihood. The work that they do for their client is what's important to them, and they don't want their software tool that's aiding them all of the sudden changing on them in the middle, because that's really disruptive and anxiety producing and stuff." So that's why we don't  force anyone to change. You've got to get to those human insights. The thing I've noticed most is that the things that drive people away are fear and anxiety. It's not about, "You don't have this feature. You don't have that feature." It's the fear and anxiety attached to forcing me to shift, or forcing me to change, or forcing me to switch or forcing me to do something I'm not ready for - that's where people really recoil. Jason Fried 25:24 Not having control. David Kadavy 25:23 Yeah. People don't want to be in a situation where someone's changing up underneath them that they rely on. That's a really uncomfortable feeling. It's like an earthquake. You live somewhere. You rely on the ground to be solid. You trust that the ground will be solid. Then one day the ground starts to shake, and that is terrifying because you can't go hide from that. Jason Fried 25:45 Have you experienced a couple earthquakes before? David Kadavy 25:48 I have, and it's terrifying. Jason Fried 25:48 Yeah, I have too. It's terrible. David Kadavy 25:49 Terrifying. Jason Fried 25:50 And they weren't even big ones. David Kadavy 25:52 No. Right. Jason Fried 25:52 It's the worst. David Kadavy 25:53 I'm a Midwesterner, so a small one is a big one for me. But the thing is, if it's really crappy weather-wise outside you can kind of go inside and hide,  but you cannot hide when the earth beneath you moves, and that's a terrible feeling, and that's what software's like to people. When there's this thing they've been relying on that's been consistently working a certain way and all of a sudden it changes on them, that's an earthquake. We don't want to create earthquakes for customers. David Kadavy 26:14 Yeah, especially this things that they're relying upon to help them-- Jason Fried 26:19 Do their job. David Kadavy 26:20 Do their job, do their work, to manage their projects. If I'm using a bad word there, I don't know. Jason Fried 26:25 Totally fine. Actually, what's interesting is we've gone away from the word "project," which maybe we can talk about in a little bit. But yeah, fundamentally, absolutely. People use Basecamp to run projects, and they use it for other things too. Imagine if you're doing work for a client. You're a designer. You do work for a client. You've trained the client on this thing. You've told them this is how it's going to work. This is a client relationship, which is often delicate. They're paying you a lot of money. You might be friends with them, but it's still a delicate relationship at some level. And all of a sudden, this thing you told them was going to work one way, all of a sudden works a different way on Tuesday then it did on Monday. That is a  bad situations, so we don't ever want to put our customers in those situations. David Kadavy 27:04 Right. You've definitely gotten really comfortable over all these years with your particular way of doing things, but I want to step back a little bit further and get an idea of where it all comes from. I'd say that you're probably known for being a contrarian thinker. Would you agree with that? Jason Fried 27:26 Yeah, probably. It's funny because I don't think my ideas are contrarian at all, of course, but against our-- let's call it against our industry, yes. David Kadavy 27:35 Yeah. I think that a lot of people have thoughts from time to time where there's a prevailing wisdom and they think, "Well, that doesn't seem right." But then they think a lot of people-- they bottle it up inside or they don't act upon it. They don't give themselves the permission and the confidence to go ahead and say, "I don't think it should be that way. It should be this other way," and to go ahead with it. I think that that's somethin,  even if you go back and look at the 37signals - which is the former name of the company - 37signals.com/manifesto, there's all these things about, "We're small on purpose," and all these things that are against the prevailing wisdom. "We purposely are not full service," things like that. Jason Fried 28:23 By the way, even that site itself-- actually, that site is the most contrarian thing we've ever done. We're a web design company. There wasn't a piece of work on that site. It was black and white. It was all text. 37 ideas is what that was. If you think about back then - that was in '99 - web design firms, even today-- David Kadavy 28:45 1999 for those who can't remember-- Jason Fried 28:47 Right, 1999, the previous century. David Kadavy 28:50 It was a different century [chuckles]. Jason Fried 28:53 But even today, it's all the same. Basically, agency sites are portfolio sites for the most part, which is like, "Here's our  shining work and here's the work we've been doing. Here's pictures of it," and I get that. We didn't have a single picture of any work that we'd done on that site, and the whole idea was that everyone's work pretty much looks the same. If it's good, it's roughly the same, right? But what sets companies apart and people apart, I think, are the ideas that they have, and most companies don't think they way we thought we thought. And so we want to put our ideas out there to make us appear different and to attract the kind of customers that we want to work with, who were people who'd appreciate this kind of thinking, versus just someone who'd appreciate a pretty picture of a website that we made. That doesn't help us self-select our clients. So that was the idea behind that. David Kadavy 29:38 I think this is something that's so important for people to master, to be able to have a thought that's different from the prevailing wisdom and to give themselves permission to go forth with it. Take us back to 1999 when you decided to make this all text. Was that something-- did you know that it was something different from the prevailing way to do it?  How did you arrive at that and give yourself permission to do that? Jason Fried 30:04 Great question. We knew it was different. We knew no one had never done anything like that before. It's funny, they were almost like tweets or short blog posts. They were just these really short thoughts. We weren't trying to be different. We just realized that we were, and then we're like-- Originally, one of my partners in the business was a guy named Carlos Segura, who's a graphic designer in Chicago. He has a line that says, "Communication that doesn't take a chance doesn't stand a chance." That's his motto, and that drove us early on, which is like, "Let's take a shot. What do we have to lose here? What we actually had to lose is not being ourselves, and that is a bigger loss than being yourself and not getting traction." If we were trying to act like everyone else  then we weren't really being ourselves, and that's the loss. "So let's take a shoot at putting ourselves out there, doing this differently, and let's see who we attract this way. Everyone's fishing with this lure. Let's put a different lure out and see what we attract, and maybe we attract some big fish that no one else knows how to attract, because everyone things the only way to attract this kind of fish is this way." Jason Fried 31:20 And it turned out that we landed a couple big projects, and we've been profitable as a company ever since then because of that. I mean, looking back, it's a bold move, but at the time we just didn't think it was bold. We're like, "We have nothing. We have nothing yet. We have no company yet, so we have nothing to lose. So let's take a shot." It's a lot easier now, in my opinion, to be hesitant and being afraid to take a risk when you have something to lose. Like, "We have something to lose. We've got a great business. We've got a lot of customers. We've got a reputation. We could lose that now," and then you get a little bit tight.  So we've tightened up as a company over the years. I think most companies do. But when you're fresh and brand new, that's the time to take a real shot. Why not, you know? David Kadavy 32:10 It's funny to think about that thought process that you had, because I think-- how old were you then? Jason Fried 32:17 25. David Kadavy 32:19 Maybe around 25 was when I started to wise up to, "Okay, these thoughts that I have in my head that are different from the way other people are doing things, I should do something to pursue those," but I think before that I allowed other people's ideas of what success was, or what it meant to what I should be doing, I think I allowed those ideas to-- I know I did. I know I allowed those ideas to dictate my own actions and put me in situations that didn't make me happy. So did you ever experience that sort of thing where you were maybe making decisions based  what somebody else had decided? Jason Fried 33:02 Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Before 37signals, I was just a freelancer doing website design on my own, and I always referred to "me" as "we." When I was doing proposals I'm like, "We will provide a--" because I always felt like I had to act bigger. I had to act like I was a company. I wasn't a company. I was me. I was just me, and I just thought I had to be something else. I remember at the time-- you've been around for a while, too. You might remember there was something called USWeb, which was like wrapping up all these small web design firms trying to make this big web agency made of-- I don't know if you maybe remember this. I barely remember it. David Kadavy 33:46 I don't remember that. What year would that have been? Jason Fried 33:48 That was like mid-90s, late 90s sort of thing. It was like-- David Kadavy 33:54 Mid-90s I was making web pages on my AOL space and not really-- Jason Fried 33:58 Yeah, but so was I. Anyway,  it's just a thing that didn't go anywhere, but I'm like, "Man, my firm might be acquired by a conglomerate." Like, this weird, stupid shit I was thinking about at the time. David Kadavy 34:14 I remember wanting to work for Razorfish and seeing, "Oh, wow. MTV is a client, and they're doing all these good things." Actually, my thing was Communication Arts magazine. Jason Fried 34:25 Sure, CA. Absolutely. David Kadavy 34:25 As a designer, I would pour through the pages, and I'd write down every firm that was there, and I would go to the city and I would call and try to get an interview. Jason Fried 34:34 I'd do the same thing. Same thing. David Kadavy 34:37 Really? That's interesting. Jason Fried 34:37 Yeah. I'd go through these designing [annuals?] and go, "Man, I wish I could do that kind of work." That's actually how I met Carlos for the first time. David Kadavy 34:41 That's exactly the way I was. Jason Fried 34:44 Yeah. I think most people are that way. I think it's good. I think it's a good start, and then you come into your own at a certain point. I think your mid-20s are actually a really healthy moment for that. Before that I was wide-eyed, and excited, and wanted to act bigger than I was and wanted  to be more professional. This is the thing. I want to be more professional. That's the thing you have when you're fresh out of school - you want to be a professional. "I need to write really long proposals and I need to talk in a certain way. I need to act a certain way. I need to appear bigger." And that's just insecurity, and it's natural. Like, you don't know. What do you know? You're 21, you're 20. You don't know anything yet, right? So you're trying to act. You're an actor, and at a certain point you become yourself. And I think that's when it's formative, is when you begin to realize-- and I realized this at some point. I realized it by accident. I was doing these long proposals because I thought that's what you had to do. Like, 20-page proposals. I remember writing 20-page proposals about-- David Kadavy 35:47 Oh, yeah. I've done a couple of those. Jason Fried 35:47 Right? David Kadavy 35:48 Yeah. Jason Fried 35:49 And you spend-- I don't know. Weeks and all-nighters, and you write these proposals-- David Kadavy 35:53 You don't get the job. Jason Fried 35:53 You don't get the job, right? And then I realized-- first of all, I hate writing 20-page proposals. I think they're a waste of time. Because here's what  happened to me. My parents were doing a kitchen renovation at home, and they were getting these proposals from contractors. I saw them look at them, and all they did was they turned to the last page. Like, "How much is it going to cost and how long is it going to take?" That's all you care about when you get a proposal, because to get a proposal from somebody, you've already vetted them at a certain level. Like, "I'm curious about what they would do for me. I know who they are, so what would they do?" You just want to know, how much is it going to cost and how long is it going to take? So I realized this. I'm like, "I'm doing these 20-page proposals. I'm busting my ass on them. I don't like doing them. It's what you're supposed to do, right? Or is it?" So I started doing shorter, and shorter and short proposals and started winning jobs. At the end of my freelance career I was doing single-page proposals, and I wasn't losing any business over them. I realized, "Holy shit, I don't need to do what everyone else is doing. I thought this is how you had to do it, but you don't have to do it that way." That's where I gave myself permission to go, "Well, what else don't I have to do that everybody else is doing?" David Kadavy 37:01 Okay. This is exactly what I'm looking for. This is the time when you slowly started making the proposals shorter and shorter, and you realized that this thing that other people had told you was so, or somehow you had come to the conclusion was true, was in fact not true. Jason Fried 37:18 It was in fact not true. I don't even know if people told me, or I just thought you-- I don't even know. David Kadavy 37:23 It was more than not true. It was false. Jason Fried 37:24 It was false at a variety of levels. It was false that I had to do that to get jobs. It was false that I had to stay up late and  bust my ass to get work. It was also false that it would make me happy. I was miserable making these long proposals, so I realized if I can eliminate the misery, and I don't have to stay up late, and I can be concise, and get to the point and present my work clearly in a page or two, man, that's a bunch of wins, plus it's a win for the customer on the other side. And I told them that. I'm like, "Look, I know how proposals are. You're just going to look at the--" I said this in my proposal. I'm like, "I know how proposals are. You thumb through a bunch of stuff, and at the end of the day you just look at the price and how long it's going to take, because you've already seen my work because that why you've asked me to submit a proposal. So I don't need to go through all my work again. Here's how much it's going to cost. Here's how long it's going to take." That was my pitch, basically. Like, "Look, let's cut through the bullshit, because that's going to represent how I'm going to work with you. I'm not going to bullshit you. I'm going to be direct and clear, and we're going to work concisely together." It was like an embodiment of  how we're going to work also. That resonated with people. Then I started to realize, "Man, I don't have to be like everybody else. This opens up opportunities." Now, I didn't see all the other opportunities. It was just like a moment where I could poke the way you're supposed to do it and get away with it, and then like, "Oh, maybe I can do this more." So I started doing more things like that. David Kadavy 38:57 There's sort of a sense of mischief to it. It kind of makes things more fun that way. Jason Fried 38:59 Absolutely. David Kadavy 39:00 I know I'm that way where if I get stuck in a rut, I just kind of say, "I'm going to just write this silly, mischievous blog post or email," and suddenly it feels fresh and people respond more. Jason Fried 39:12 Absolutely. This is something I'm actually thinking about here right now. Next year there's some stuff I want to do that doesn't seem like it would be a reasonable thing to do. Like, it would be difficult to justify in the same way  that I think a single page proposal would be difficult to justify until you realize it works, and then you don't have to justify anymore because it becomes true. And so there's a couple things - I'm being very vague here because I don't want to talk about it quite yet because I haven't formed any ideas thoroughly - but there's a couple things I want to do that seem counterintuitive to our own company or our own way of working that I want to ruffle a bit. David Kadavy 39:58 Yeah. So it sounds like you're trying to shake things up a little bit in the office. You don't want to get too complacent in doing things a certain way. Is that going to bring some freshness, or what's driving that? Jason Fried 40:10 Yeah. Well, that's part of the whole-- reinventing Basecamp is part of that. Like, being on this schedule where we have to reinvent Basecamp on a frequent basis. It's not that frequent, but like four years. David Kadavy 40:19 Four years is [inaudible]. Jason Fried 40:20 But yeah, in this industry-- actually, it seems like a long time in some ways, but-- David Kadavy 40:25 Yeah. Jason Fried 40:26 My opinions change over the years, and I have new ideas, and a thought comes to mind, and I've been doing some--  one of the things that's been interesting is I've been doing a lot of in-person demos of Basecamp 3. I've never really done a lot of in-person demos of Basecamp before, and it's been really interesting because I'm seeing some really cool insights that come from followup questions. We've always thought about demoing Basecamp with videos, or tutorials or whatever, right? But what I've realized is that that kind of demo doesn't lead to followup questions, and followup questions are really valuable, because that is where someone requests or looks for clarity. Like, "Wait. What do you mean by that?" Or like, "Wait, how do you do that?" Or, "Wait, how do you think about that?" David Kadavy 41:21 It's kind of like where they ask the question that they were initially too afraid to ask or something like-- Jason Fried 41:26 That's a good way to put it. David Kadavy 41:27 --but they thought was a dumb question before, but somehow-- Jason Fried 41:30 Totally. [crosstalk] That's a great way of putting it.  Yeah, a great way of putting it. Those moments, I'm realizing, are extremely valuable, very valuable. In fact, it's almost all the value. Yet, when you do a lot of self-service stuff you don't get to that value because you don't talk to the person, right? David Kadavy 41:49 See their facial expressions or-- Jason Fried 41:51 Yeah, or just the things that-- it's like a comedian. A comedian writes material, and if they want to do a one-hour show on HBO, they spend a year in the clubs perfecting that material They don't know how audience are-- they think all the stuff they're writing down is funny, but they've got to try that stuff out. You've got to try it out in front of an audience and see what reactions-- and sometimes the audience give a reaction on something that you didn't think was going to be that funny, or they react to the timing or something. You've got to try that stuff out. So what's been interesting is I gave a couple of demos of Basecamp 3. One of the interesting features of Basecamp 3 is-- it's such a basic thing. You can create folders, and you drag things into folders to  organize them your own way, and I got a standing ovation from this one group [chuckles]. I was really surprised by that. It was not something that I thought was going to be like this eureka moment for people, right? But I had to be there to see that, to feel it, to know that there's something there now. Then I can follow up on that and get-- wow. I'm like, "Whoa. Why was that such a big deal for you." "Oh, because--" and then you get the because. Jason Fried 43:06 Every word after because is gold, you know? You don't get that when you just kind of like put material out there that people can do on their own. So I want to do a lot more in-person stuff next year. This is stuff that does not scale. We have well over 100,000 paying customers. We have a very big business. Tons and tons of customers, millions of people use Basecamp. I can't possibly demo it for all of them, right? But  I don't have to. What if I can demo Basecamp to 200 companies a year? What if I could do that? How much better would the product be? How much better off would they be and how much better off would we be? I think it's undeniable that there'd be a deep value there, and I want to think about doing that kind of stuff. Anyway, that's very different from how we've ever done things before. So that's just one of the things I'm thinking about, but I just feel it's really important to shake up your own thoughts from time to time. David Kadavy 44:02 Yeah, and I love this idea of these insights of these things that you are taking for granted in a way for whatever reason - maybe it was an obvious solution to make the folders draggable like that - and then it just blows away these other people. I think that that's something that-- I find that myself just in trying, or I have found that in trying to find my own entrepreneurial voice or deciding what to do in my own career, is that every once in a while somebody  will make an observation. They say, "Oh, you're really good at explaining things," or something like that. And you're like, "Well, wait. I didn't know that." Was there anything like that for you personally that helped you find your own path in the early days of 37signals or something? Things that you didn't necessarily know that you were good at but you later discovered through observations like that. Jason Fried 44:58 Yeah. I'm not sure if it's a specific thing other than like a way of looking at things. So we would do work for clients all the time, oftentimes bigger clients. Like, back in the early days we'd do work for Hewlett-Packard or something. We did a website for them. And I'd be sitting in a meeting with them, and there'd be a lot of people on the table, and they'd be talking stuff through, and they'd be like-- they'd be talking stuff through, putting the ideas through their own process, which often involved a lot of people, followup meetings and a whole timetable to get something  to try something. I'd be like, "Why don't we just try it right now? Why don't we just make the change right now and just look at it together?" That, to me, was like, "Of course. If we want to see how it looks, let's just do it, and then let's look at it." For them, that was just like a revelation. Like, "What? But doesn't it have to be this, and that and approved?" I'm like, "It could be, but it doesn't have to be. Right now, let me pull out my laptop, and I'll make the change, and I'll hit reload and let's look at the page." That came from me being a freelancer. I was working on my own. I had no one else to talk to. No one else to rely on. I had to do it all myself. I did all the HTML and design. There was no process. Jason Fried 46:18 So for me, just growing up that way in the industry, helped me realize that you don't need a lot people to get things done. You don't need a lot of process to try stuff. But a lot of the clients I worked with early on, they couldn't believe-- they're like, "You're a genius." I'm like,  "I'm not a genius at all. That is like the worst label to give me. I'm actually being a simpleton." I'm just being like, "Let's just change it and hit reload." So it wasn't like a thing. It was just a way of cutting through. So what I saw there was that process creates layers, and layers and layers, upon which you then begin to rely. And you don't realize that there was a time, when you didn't have to have all those layers, but you've become used to them and you think then that's the only way. So I think what I was good at early on was coming in and cutting through that stuff, and being like, "We don't need to do all that. Let's just do it this way." And they'd be like, "What? What? You're not allowed to do it that way." David Kadavy 47:15 Again, it goes to this contrarian thinking thing. I'm trying to figure out like how much of it is your DNA and then how much of it was-- was there ever a time--? Huh. I guess what I'm trying to figure out is-- I think that, yeah, I can show a lot of  people, "Here we're talking with Jason Fried. He sees things differently from the way other people do," but somebody can't just flip a switch and start thinking in their own way or gain that confidence. Was there ever a time when you didn't have the confidence to do that, and how'd that happen? Jason Fried 47:53 Oh yeah. I mean, I've always had a world view, I think, which is things are simpler than they appear actually. Which is funny, because they're also way more complicated than they appear. What I mean by that is that things can be simpler. Like, whatever the thing you're trying to solve, there's a simpler version of that. I've just always had that in me, that I'm like, "There's no way this is the only way we can do this. We can do this simpler. We can be clearer about this--" David Kadavy 48:18 What do you think was the earliest example you can think of-- Jason Fried 48:22 Of that? David Kadavy 48:22 --where you did that? Jason Fried 48:29 I remember back before  the web was around-- the way I got started in any of this stuff was I made this program called AudioFile, which was a music organizing tool. It was like iTunes kind of way, way back, but there was no digital music. So it was just like a way to organize your CDs and your tapes. Because I had bunch, and I was loaning them out to friends and never getting them back. David Kadavy 48:51 Tapes, for people who don't know, was this thing that had two reels on it and there was this tape-like thing that had music on it. Jason Fried 48:57 It was actually tape. It was tape that moved [chuckles]. David Kadavy 49:00 It wasn't sticky. Jason Fried 49:01 Right. It was magnetic and weird. Anyway, so I would loan stuff out to friends and never get it back. I didn't know who borrowed it and I didn't know-- so I'm like, "I need to organize this stuff. I need to get my stuff together." So I started looking on AOL, actually, because the internet wasn't around. This was like the early 90s. But AOL was around. There was software boards and stuff where you could download shareware and stuff. I downloaded a bunch of these music apps, because there was lot of other people who had this problem, and I just found them incredibly complicated, and just really  weird, and strange, and ugly and all the things that-- it's still subjective, but my aesthetic was not being satisfied by their aesthetic. I'm like, "I don't know how to do this, but I need something, and I'm going to make one myself." So I just got FileMaker and learned how to do it, and made a much, much, much, much simpler version, because I just made something that I knew I needed. And it wasn't about imagining what everyone else needed, it was just like, "What do I need?" And I was able to cut right to that, and it became very successful product. I made $20,000 off this little shareware thing. David Kadavy 50:08 Just getting checks in the mail and--? Jason Fried 50:10 Yeah, and this was the revelation that I could do this for a living. So I put in the [product?]-- just like it was shareware, which is like, "You could use it for free, but if you like it, send me 20 bucks, and here's my home address." So people started sending me $20 bills, and I'm like, "Holy shit, I can do this." David Kadavy 50:29 Were there moments of doubt along the way? Jason Fried 50:31 Never, because I  didn't care. David Kadavy 50:33 You didn't care. It just happened. Jason Fried 50:33 It was for me. The product was for me. If no one used it, didn't care. And that's how I've always tried to make it, which is like-- we still make Basecamp for ourselves. We need Basecamps to run our own business. I care a lot more now because we have tons of customers and we've got a payroll - 50 people - and the whole thing. But fundamentally it's still we want to make something for ourselves, because we know there's a lot of people out there just like us who need what we need. That's how we look at it. But with AudioFile, the first thing ever, I was in high school or whenever it was, and there was never a moment of doubt because it didn't matter if anyone used it. It was a miracle that anyone did. But I needed it for my own thing, and so it wasn't even about confidence. It was like, "I need it anyway." That's how I kind of learned graphic design, and learned a little bit of software development, and learned usability, and learned about customer feedback and all that stuff I learned through those channels because I'd made my own little software thing. David Kadavy 51:32 So there are no existential crises over like, "Should I do this or that?" Jason Fried 51:40 I think the biggest one we had recently in the company was deciding to go all in on Basecamp, and then what to do with the other products and stuff. That was like an existential thing, but it was like a moment, and there was risk involved and all that stuff. Those moments still come up. I mean, deciding what to do with a product. Do we release it this way or release it that way, and how do we price it? We have those discussions and decisions all the time, but I try not to worry about it too much. I worry about it probably more than I should still, but it's like, "Let's make a call, and move forward and see how it does." David Kadavy 52:17 All right. I've got a few questions that are a little more canned questions as we wrap up. What's the biggest compromise that you've had to make in your career to have the success that you have? Jason Fried 52:30 Well,  the biggest compromise. That's a really great question. I've never been asked that question. I love when I've never been asked a question before. Those are great questions. So I made a compromise-- I'll talk about inside the business, and this is interesting because it turned out to be a great thing. So David, who's my business partner-- I'd had two partners originally in 37signals and then they both left, and so it was just me. And taking on another partner was a compromise in some ways, because it's, to me, like, "I'm running the show now, and now I'm going to bring someone else in and someone else's opinions are going to matter at that level." So it was like-- David Kadavy 53:19 And David, by the way, could be called a contrarian thinker as well, right? Jason Fried 53:24 Absolutely. David Kadavy 53:25 So lots of opportunities for you to disagree. Jason Fried 53:27 Yeah, and we do disagree. We still disagree deeply on certain things. We agree on most things, and then there are some things that are on the edges that we disagree on deeply, which is really healthy, and that's my point. Sometimes it feels like I have to give-- it would be easier if I could just do whatever I wanted, right? But the company wouldn't be better, and that's what I've come to realize, and I realized it pretty early. I'm just talking about the moment of thinking on taking on another partner, again, was this moment where I have to make compromises, and it turns out that compromises are actually really damn good things to make sometimes. But at the time I just remember thinking, "I've got it all now." And this actually includes ownership in the company. I owned a 100% of the company, and David came on as a partner and now he owns a piece. He owned more and more over time. Looking back on it, it's one of the best decisions I've ever made, but I just remember, going back, thinking about-- David Kadavy 54:28 It was a point of tension, right? Jason Fried 54:29 Yeah, absolutely. Internally. David Kadavy 54:30 It could have gone either  way. Jason Fried 54:32 It could have gone either way. Also, I talked to my dad about it, and my dad's always been someone who's like, "Never have a partner in business. Never take on a partner because a lot of them dissolve and it gets really messy and horrible," and I've been really fortunate to always be able to work with great people. But this is not a compromise I've considered recently. I'm thrilled with how things have turned out. But I just remember at the moment really feeling like I'm taking-- David Kadavy 54:57 And the two of you had worked together before that point. It wasn't just blindly going into this partnership. Jason Fried 55:02 No. Yeah, we'd worked together, and I actually encourage people to do that. I hired David-- David Kadavy 55:06 Like dating before getting married. Jason Fried 55:07 Yeah, absolutely. And I hired David as a-- David was still in school when I first met him, and I hired him. He only had ten hours a week to give me as on a contract basis to build Basecamp. Actually, before that we were working on some client work together as a contractor, because we didn't have any programmers on staff and he was the first programmer I had ever worked with. This client hired us to build an intranet for them and we're like, "We can do the design,"  and they're like, "Well, we want you to do the back end too," and I didn't know how to do that. I found David, and he did it with us. Anyway, we had experience working together on multiple levels, but it's still-- like, the moment you decide to bring someone into your business, as the remaining founder, it's a difficult moment. Even though [crosstalk]. David Kadavy 55:58 I [?] it myself. I own 100% of my business, and it would be kind of agony to make a decision like that. Jason Fried 56:07 Totally. And I think there's still times-- I'll speak for David. I'm guessing David feels the same way, that there's times David would just like to do things his own way and there's times I'd like to do things my own way. But the fact that we can't do that and we discuss these things with each other, we end up with something better. But there's also, of course, frustrating moments for everybody in every relationship. I mean, it's a relationship, right? And that's cool, but it is important, I think, when you--  I think a lot of entrepreneurs these days look for founders. They're like, "I need a co-founder. I need a co-founder. I need a co-founder." So they just go out and try and find one. You've got to date someone first, basically, for a while. I really think that's important. Because people are complicated, money is complicated, and people and money together is extremely complicated. There are few things in the world that are more complicated than that, and that's the kind of complication you're getting yourself into when you take on a partner in a business. David Kadavy 56:59 Yeah, it's almost like this commodity approach to something that's so personal, or a person. Co-founders. Like, "Oh, I'm just going to grab some milk at the store." Jason Fried 57:11 Yeah, it's not that way. David Kadavy 57:13 "I'm going to go grab a co-founder." Jason Fried 57:14 It's not that way. Especially if you're in a business 50/50 or something, like a lot of people do. They start out co-founder for 50/50. Actually, 50/50 is the worst number in business. There needs to be tiebreakers. But anyway, that's another topic. But anyway,  as far as compromises - to get back to that - I think at the moment it was a major compromise that I had to get over, but I'm so glad that I did. But it was a big moment. David Kadavy 57:41 Yeah. Well, that's a great one. I'm so flattered to have asked you a question that you hadn't been asked before [chuckles]. Jason Fried 57:45 I love that. David Kadavy 57:47 I'm sure you've been asked a lot of questions. What was the last book that you read that changed the way that you saw  something? Jason Fried 57:52 A great questions too. I typically do not like business books. I find them boring and too long, but I read something recently which I don't even consider to be a business book. A book called-- David Kadavy 58:03 It doesn't have to be a business book, by the way. It could be about-- Adrian, who I talked to, said he read a book about ants. Jason Fried 58:11 Totally. And I know that book, and he told me about it and it's on my list. But just being honest about it, the last thing I read that really changed my mind on something happened to be a business book. David Kadavy 58:23 Got you. Jason Fried 58:23 Although, actually there's-- can I give you two answers? David Kadavy 58:26 Yeah, absolutely. Jason Fried 58:27 Okay. So one of them was a business book called Turn the Ship Around, which is a wonderful book by this guy named David Marquet, who  was a captain on a nuclear sub, and he was brought in to turn the worst sub in the Navy around. Like, turn it from the worst sub in the Navy to the best, and the way they measured this was sailor satisfaction, people who wanted to sail on that ship again. There's a variety of things. I don't remember all of the details, but it was like-- let's say there was 100 of them. It was number 100. The worst. David Kadavy 58:56 Yeah, wow. Jason Fried 58:57 And they brought him in to make it great, and he did it by doing something extremely contrarian. In the military it's all about orders. You give orders. Business is often structured a lot like military. The orders come from the CEO and we all follow the orders, right? And he realized, "Look, there's 800 people on this ship. I'm one of those 800. If I'm the one getting orders, then there's only one brain on the ship. It's mine. What a terrible waste to have 800 brains  but only one of them has to work, and everyone else just does what I say. That is a waste." So he decided not to give any orders, which is something the military-- you don't do. It's the opposite of what you do. The only order-- David Kadavy 59:47 This sounds like a great book. Jason Fried 59:47 It's a wonderful book and it's a great story, and he tells it. It's not a business book at all, by the way. It's not at all. But it's sort of like-- David Kadavy 59:54 Lots of parallels. Jason Fried 59:54 Tons of parallels. But it's not a business book. He talks about how the only order he reserved for himself was the order to fire a weapon that could kill somebody. So if they had to fire a torpedo, that was still on him. Everything else-- what he did was, he said-- and it took him a while to make this work, which is what's really cool about the book is he is very honest about the failings of it initially. After he enacted the system, everything in his bones told him to step in and fix these problems, but he's like, "No, I got to let this settle out the way I want it to." Anyway, was that people were not-- so the way that it typically worked  is people would come to him, and they'd say, "Captain, what should I do?" Or whatever it is, and he'd be like, "Turn this ship 30 degrees starboard," or whatever. I don't know. They'd be like, "Aye, aye captain," and they'd go do it. He'd give the order. But what he wanted people to do instead was to come to him and say, "I intended to turn the ship 30 degrees," and then he could okay that. But the point is that his okay would just-- they're already saying what they're going to do. They have to, in their mind, already know what they're going to do. They can't come to him to ask him what to do. They have to come to him and tell him what they intend to do. David Kadavy 61:12 They have to go through that whole mental process of taking it through which is-- Jason Fried 61:15 "Because if he says yes, I've got to do this now." David Kadavy 61:17 Yeah. Jason Fried 61:16 "And I came to him with the idea." So he got people to come with intent-- David Kadavy 61:20 Accountability there. Jason Fried 61:21 Totally, and think it through and come with intent. David Kadavy 61:25 And ownership [crosstalk]-- Jason Fried 61:25 And that changed everything. Totally. And they started thinking. It took a while because it was weird at first, and this is part of  the thing, is whenever you enact something new at a company, it's very easy to fall back on, "This isn't going to work. This is too weird." But he talked about the process of getting over that and giving it space and distance to see if it would work, and it turned out that it worked and became the best ship in the navy. David Kadavy 61:47 That's a great recommendation. Jason Fried 61:49 It's a wonderful book. David Kadavy 61:50 I will read that book. Jason Fried 61:50 He's a wonderful writer and a very honest storyteller. So there's that book, and the other book is a book which has the cheesiest cover ever and also a very cheesy title. It's called the Mayo Clinic Guide to Stress-Free Living, and it's like the cheesiest-- the book cover is someone doing a cartwheel in a field. David Kadavy 62:09 Stress-Free Living. Jason Fried 62:11 It's horrible. But it's this guy-- David Kadavy 62:13 Made by the Church of Scientology? Jason Fried 62:14 It looks like it would be, but it's actually the Mayo Clinic, which is like the world's best hospital. This guy who wrote it is a doctor there who sort of unlocked a couple of really interesting truths about the brain and how to reduce stress in your life,  and it's fascinating. It changed my life in terms of-- I haven't mastered the techniques, but they've influenced me greatly. The number one thing I'll tell you about it is that basically there's a sense-- what he's realized - and different religions and theologies have come to similar conclusions, but he's trying to make this very practical - is that there's two modes of the mind. There's the default mode and the focused mode. The focused mode is when you're working. He talks about when you're really into something, it's all you're thinking about, and you're cruising and you're nailing it, right? But when you're not focused and you're wandering, your mind tends to wander towards worry. It tends to wander towards-- you start having these thoughts in your head about the things you should be doing, the things you're not doing, and, "What's going to happen if I do this?" And, "Oh my God, global warming. We're all going to die." You just start-- because evolutionarily, you're programmed to do that, because if you just-- David Kadavy 63:31 It's amygdala taking over. Jason Fried 63:32 Yeah. It's like, "There's a tiger who's going to kill me, and I've got to be wary." But he's like, "In the modern world, most people don't have those things anymore." We're pretty safe. Not everywhere, but most places. So you've got to get your mind off the default mode, which is the wandering mode, and back into focus. So he helps you figure out ways. Some people do meditation. He's like, "Meditation's a wonderful thing if you have all this time to commit to it, and learn and really master it--" David Kadavy 63:59 Is that something you've tried? Jason Fried 64:00 I have, and I've never been able to do it very well. So this really spoke to me, because he's like, "I think meditation is a wonderful technique, but it's not a practical technique for most people." In fact, a lot of meditation's about just letting your thoughts come and go, and that's when you have a lot of the bad thoughts. It's very hard to really, really master that technique. So anyway, I'm not going to get into deeply, but the book's wonderful. It's really, really approachable, and there's just some really good fundamental things that have sort of changed my way of dealing with those moments when I race  towards bad thoughts, how to deal with those in a practical way. Anyway, those two books I highly recommend. David Kadavy 64:39 This is my first time asking this one. Do you make your bed? Jason Fried 64:44 No. I sometimes throw my bed. Like, I kind of just flop the sheets so it looks made up. But no, never been into that. David Kadavy 64:57 Just, one of these things I'd heard over and over again is, like, "You should make your bed," and I started doing it. Jason Fried 65:06 It's like a thing you just-- David Kadavy 65:08 It's one of these things I never did when I was a kid because it was like, "It's such a waste of time, mom. I'm not going to make my bed." Jason Fried 65:12 The reason why I don't do it is because I don't like made beds. When I go to a hotel the first thing I do is I tear the bed up. I don't like them-- David Kadavy 65:20 I kick sheets from under. I hate having my feet trapped. Jason Fried 65:22 Me too. I don't like things tucked in and tight that way. I like it to be semi-presentable on a certain level, but I don't  go through the details. I certainly don't tuck things in. David Kadavy 65:34 Yeah. You maybe flatten it out a little bit or something. Jason Fried 65:36 A little bit. Sometimes, but not all the time. David Kadavy 65:38 So it's not all just a bunch of-- Jason Fried 65:39 A flop. Yeah, floppy. David Kadavy 65:41 Yeah, just flop it. When have you left money on the table? Jason Fried 65:49 All the time. David Kadavy 65:50 And what did you get in return? I guess the question I'm really asking is, what sort of values have you guided-- because money is a certain value, and then there are other values. What are the values that have guided your decision making? Jason Fried 66:06 I've never ever been someone who's been interested in squeezing the last dime or penny out of anything. I don't find that to be interesting at all. I don't find extreme optimization to be interesting, like, "How can we move the numbers by .5%? Because there's money out there that we're not--" That doesn't do it for me, and also I feel like there's a moment where - this is very non-scientific - you're doing well enough.  It's about enough. And we continue to make efforts to grow the business revenues, and we always have every year. Our revenues are higher than the previous year. Our profits are greater than the previous year. I'm a fan of that level of growth, but I'm not a fan of trying to bust our ass to make 10% growth if naturally we can just do 8. If we can just do 8, I just don't need 10, you know what I'm saying? I just don't need that, so-- David Kadavy 66:57 That last 2% is what ruins your life [chuckles]. Jason Fried 67:02 Exactly, and so I've just realized that, "Hey--" I'm just making numbers here. "If we can do 5% growth, I'm actually pretty happy with that." We do more than that, but what if we did just do 5% every year forever? That's pretty damn good still. That's wonderful. Fine. What if we could do 20% with a simple change? I'd love that, but I'm not gonna bust my ass to try and go from 5 to 6. That just doesn't interest me. So those kind of things don't interest me. What interests me is having--  I do believe in creating cushion. So I do like to have room. I don't like to feel like we're so tight that payroll would be a problem. That is something I've never had to deal with, and I don't want to deal with that. So I always want to create very healthy margins and lots of room to try to experiment and not struggle through those things. I've always worked that way, but I've never looked at the numbers and felt like I need to move the numbers in a meaningful way by squeezing. So I'm not a numbers-driven CEO in terms of like, "There's got to be a way to pick up more," but I'd also think that there is plenty more to pick up, and I'm interested in picking it up as an exercise, but not because I feel like we must. That's kind of how that happens. David Kadavy 68:32 What do you feel  like you get in exchange? Jason Fried 68:33 By the way, I'm also big fan of just profit. So getting back to that, numbers for me have never been about top line growth or revenue. It's about profit, because profit to me is food, air and water for a company and it allows the company to continue indefinitely, and that's sort of what I want. Revenues do not do that, profits do. So I'm very big in the profit generation and not just trying to grow. Companies are like, "I want to get to $700,000,000 in revenues so we're worth $44,000,000,000." If they're only making $3,000,000 off all of the effort that goes into making [?], that doesn't interest me. Anyway, that was just an aside there, but I forget what else you were saying. David Kadavy 69:15 What do you feel like you get in exchange for leaving that money on the table? Jason Fried 69:19 A lot less stress. A lot less worry. Those things. And also just, I think, time back, and also a focus on more important things, like taking care of people.  We do a lot of really interesting things for employees here that, if I was financially driven, I couldn't justify these expenses. We do some very expensive things for employees. Above and beyond salary, above and beyond benefits, but just other things. I don't need to go into them specifically, but they don't make sense from a financial standpoint, but they make sense to me as someone who wants to create great experiences for employees who spend their days working for me and I get to work with them. So those are the things you get when you don't worry about those other things. David Kadavy 70:16 Do you have a final message for our listeners? Any parting words that you'd like to give them? Jason Fried 70:22 Well, tell me about the listeners. Who are the listeners? Tell me about the audience. David Kadavy 70:26 The audience. Well gosh, I don't know. You've really stumped me with that question, Jason [chuckles].  You know, I'm bringing in people like you, and the reason why you're going to be the first guest on this podcast is because you're somebody who has played by your rules and you have very clearly worked to achieve your own definition of success, which the evidence abound in this interview, I think. I'd like for people to see, through you, parallels in their own life. Not for them to do the same thing that you're doing, but for them to give themselves permission to listen to whatever contrarian voice might be in their head or whatever new way they might have of seeing something, and to give themselves permission to go forth with it. Jason Fried 71:22 If that's the sort of the goal of the show, I think the most important thing - and it took me a while to realize this in my own life - is just to be completely true to your self and recognize  that you've got to get to know who you are and then you've got to just live that life. I don't mean give up. That's not what I mean by, "Just live that life," but what I do mean is that if you believe in doing things your way and it doesn't compute with the rest of the world, do things your way, because you know yourself and that's how you want to live. If you want to take a certain chance and everyone else thinks you're crazy but you believe in it, then do it. You really have to get to know yourself and answer to yourself, versus letting other people define your own limits and your borders. It's a little self-helpy, which I don't like about it, but it's really true. You've got to get to know yourself. Something I hear from people when I speak, they're like, "Oh, I want to be like you guys." I'm like, "No, you don't. You want to be like you." You want to be like you, because  acting is hard. Acting makes you have to hold a bunch of things in your head about a different state of the world that is not natural to you. Once you stop acting, then everything becomes a lot easier. You may succeed and you may not, but at least you're being honest and true to yourself. That is the most important thing. David Kadavy 72:49 I can totally relate to that because I know, sitting across from you, you're somebody who I followed online for so long, and I was always watching what you were doing, and reading what you wrote and things. Eventually I had to find my own way of doing things. I know I'm not Jason Fried. I'm not going do things the same way that Jason Fried does things. Jason Fried 73:08 Yeah, and you shouldn't. You shouldn't. You should do things the way you do things. I think there's a lot of copying in our industry. I think there's a lot of people who try to be someone else. This is probably not even just in our-- I think this just in the world, right? I think the earlier you realize that acting and playing a part is really  hard but being yourself is really easy, then you should take the easier road. There's nothing wrong with that, and it's actually the more honest road, and I think that you'll ultimately be happier at the end of the day. So that's my advice to people. David Kadavy 73:43 That's great parting wisdom for everybody. Thanks so much for meeting with me. It's been a huge honor, and I think it's going to be a huge help to a lot of the listeners out there. Thanks so much. Jason Fried 73:54 Thank you. Let me say this, too. I think your show has a lot of legs, because you're a really good interviewer, and you have really good, deep questions and original questions. So I'm really excited to hear all your future interviews. David Kadavy 74:05 Hearing that from you is fantastic. Thanks so much, Jason. Jason Fried 74:08 You bet. Thanks. [music] David Kadavy 74:17 So there we have it. Before I go I've got to ask, do you like books? If you do, I'd love to send you my book recommendations. About 90% of them will be nonfiction on subjects spanning from biographies to neuroscience. Just go to kadavy.net/reading/, and make sure you put one more trailing slash on the end of that URL. Sign up, and you'll get my first set of recommendations right away. You'll be supporting this show if you buy any of those books through the links in the email. This has been Love Your Work, and I'm David Kadavy. The theme music for this show is See In You, performed by the Album Leaf, courtesy of Sub Pop Records. Love Your Work is a production of Kadavy Inc.