Bookworm Transcripts

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To the question of the day Mike is when are you going to stop buying pens.

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Well I stopped a little bit ago that one just took a long time to come.

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I had to come from Italy you know.

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No big deal.

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Yeah, MBD.

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It's nice. I like it a lot.

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You want me to talk about it for the actual podcast here?

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No, if they want it, they need to join us live.

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Bookworm.fm/live.

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Next time we're recording.

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Should we jump in to follow up? I have one.

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I wasn't sure what yours were, so I don't have it on here.

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I have actually a piece of long-term follow-up from Brainwash.

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Okay.

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Regarding the digital distractions and that digital declutter for day one of the Brainwash process.

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Yep.

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This was sort of unintentional.

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I thought I was done with this, but I recognized after I had gone through that process that I

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kept talking about the 10-day Brainwash with people.

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I also recognized the more I talked about it and the kind of reasoning behind it that

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I had let myself slip with the bringing the phones into the bedroom thing.

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Oh, sure.

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I wanted a way to make sure that I could still do what I needed to do from the bedroom, which

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was specifically to play a white noise.

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We had a Sonos speaker and we would always activate it from our phones with a Sonos app.

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The other thing is we have Hue Lights, which I would say, "Hey, dingus, turn off the bedroom

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lights."

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Sure.

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When it was time to go to bed.

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I tried the Siri part with just my watch and it did not go well.

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It would have like sometimes a five-second delay.

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Sometimes I'm working on it and then nothing.

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That was just not going to work.

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With Hue Lights, you can turn them on and off manually with the switch on the lamps, but

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we don't want to do that.

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We want to keep them not at 100% brightness.

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The whole idea is when you go into the bedroom, you're getting ready to go to bed.

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If you activate it on and off via the app or an electronic assistant, then it maintains

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30% brightness or whatever we had it at.

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I found an open box HomePod Mini at a local Best Buy and I'm like, "This might solve

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all the problems."

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All right?

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It does.

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The HomePod now is sitting on my nightstand.

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It's tiny, maybe the size of a softball.

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It's pretty decent as a speaker.

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Siri with the HomePod Mini for whatever reason is pretty much instant, so it's way better.

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The one downside to this is that when it is playing white noise, there is a white light

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on the top that illuminates, which isn't that bright.

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It's tied to a light sensor, so not a big deal for most people.

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You might not even notice it if you have other lights in your bedroom, but I notice

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it.

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All right.

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I had to make a custom cover for this thing.

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Okay?

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Which really is much less impressive than it sounds.

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I found one of my old faith-based productivity round business cards.

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And cut it smaller and filed it till it was round and then put that on top.

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So basically, that is now covering the light on the top of the HomePod Mini.

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I can activate things via Siri, which is great.

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I can play white noise, which is great.

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It's not keeping me up at night, which is great by the light on the top of the machine.

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Well done.

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I thought you were going to say you used to look like electrical tape and stuck it to

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the light.

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No.

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Well, I did use painters tape to keep the thing because I didn't want it sliding around

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and twisting or whatever.

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Like I wanted it to look decent because the light on the top is somewhat recessed.

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Okay.

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So if you find something that's the right size, you can put it on top and it almost looks

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like it's part of the thing.

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Sure.

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But I didn't want it to be moving around.

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I can still use the button on the top.

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I know where the plus and minus buttons are, so I can adjust the volume that way, but it's

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a voice assistant.

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So most of the time you're hating is talking to it.

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Yeah, exactly.

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So yeah, wow.

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And it has worked.

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The phones no longer come in the bedroom.

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So nice.

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Well done.

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I'm impressed.

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That is not a solution I would have gone for, but hey, no solves that go for it.

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Anytime I can justify a tech purchase, you know, I'm basically going to do it.

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And this one was less expensive than some other ones.

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Just sacrifice one pin and you're good.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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And the real takeaway from this that I have discovered is that like this is a system and

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I was kind of annoyed that I was having this problem again.

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It's like, what is wrong with me?

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I know that I shouldn't bring my phone into the bedroom, but I still keep doing it.

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My wife is doing it too.

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And we're like, we don't like this.

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We need something to support this or break this negative habit and establish a different

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positive one.

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And so finding the right tool to do that, which in this case, I was thinking the HomePod mini

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would would be a great fit for this.

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And it turns out it's probably even a better fit than I thought it would be because it's

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more responsive.

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It's the most responsive Siri device we have in the entire house, which is, you know,

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not saying it a ton, but I definitely didn't want an echo.

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Yep.

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Yep.

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So just timing wise with this thing just being released, you know, I went into the

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Apple app and noticed that they're sold out through like the end of January.

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So I figured even if I don't, even if I absolutely hate this thing, does not work at all, I can

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probably resell it.

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Get it sold.

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Yeah.

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But I'm keeping it.

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I like it.

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And it's reduced the friction and that little bit of friction, which didn't seem like a big

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deal seems like we should be able to overcome it, but we couldn't.

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Yep.

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You know, that has made all the difference.

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So fair enough.

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I'm not one that gets to been out of shape of phones in the bedroom, but part of this

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because we have a, the one and only smart device we have in our entire household is

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a water alarm.

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Sure.

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That is the only thing we have that's internet connected and it's tied to our sump pump and

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would call us, text us if it were to fail.

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Yeah.

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Because we've had cases where we get water in the basement, we're not home.

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So it would be good to know about that if I'm not home.

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That's the one and only thing we've got that does that.

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So I've got a teenage son.

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I want to set an example.

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No phones in the room.

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Yeah.

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I get it.

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I totally get it.

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So I have one piece of follow up here and nothing has come of this because this was like

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a potential follow up item that could lead to more.

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I don't even know what to do with that yet, but the one item was to talk to Becky.

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My wife about the motivation, motivation code results, the test that we took as part of

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that and then explore doing the full task is your member like you did the full deal and

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I did not.

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Mm hmm.

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I don't think I'm going to go pursue the rest of it.

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Just after having the conversations with her, I feel like I've got a pretty good handle

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on the parts that I'm interested in right now.

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And the one that was really throwing me off was the collaboration piece being number one.

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Like Joe wants to collaborate with other people.

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I don't really think of myself that way.

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So I was talking through it with her and she's like, oh yeah, that's pretty accurate.

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Come on.

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I thought I had a reason to say this book was not like to say it was off its rocker, but

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seems like that's the opposite of what I achieved in that and showing that.

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Oh, actually, yeah, it is.

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It is accurate.

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That's unfortunate because I really wanted to, you know, rail on it.

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But here we are.

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So it is accurate from what we can tell.

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And I think at this point, I am taking the pros and cons of the results that I have and

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just looking for ways to maximize those in my day job.

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That's the core place that I'm working on doing that.

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And I had a meeting scheduled with my boss this morning, but it had to be postponed.

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But my goal is to talk through this stuff with him.

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I feel like it would be good for him to understand this stuff too.

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I don't know that anything will come of that conversation, but just want to make him aware

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of what I'm doing and or at least how I think.

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If there's a follow up, that's it is to continue that conversation with him.

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But other than that, that's where I land.

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All right.

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Great.

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Fun.

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Now that all said, I feel like at least I'm somewhat itching to get into today's book,

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which is The Practice by Seth Godin.

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This is a very new book as in it's, well, at this point in time, what is it, a month

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old, 45 days old, something like that, somewhere in that realm.

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It's very, very new.

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This is Seth Godin's latest book.

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I don't have the tagline in front of me.

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Why do I always do that?

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Shipping creative work is the tagline.

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There you go.

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Shipping the creative work.

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And this, I'll say there's a couple of things that are really weird about this book.

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It's totally Seth Godin style where he does like a bunch of short form setups, like kind

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of like super short essays, I guess is the way to say that.

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Does he have them numbered?

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He does.

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There are 219.

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And then a couple like one pages at the end after that.

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So 219 of these little tiny short essays.

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Do you notice there's no table of contents?

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Yes.

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Mortimer Adler would not approve.

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Yeah.

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I was trying to put the outline together for this and wanted to, because I was trying to

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figure out how on earth are we going to go through this?

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And I was like, you know what, he's got them broken down into sections.

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Let's just run through those overarching sections.

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So I flipped the table of contents to copy those and it's not there.

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Yeah.

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I usually look for the table of contents to start and I remember looking for it.

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And then I also remember my oldest daughter asking me a question about the time I was

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doing that.

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And then I totally blocked it out, but thought I had already looked at it and I hadn't.

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And then when I came back to it, guess what?

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It's not there.

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There's not a table of contents with this one, but there are eight sections in the book where

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he breaks these little short essays into these eight sections.

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And I feel like it would be okay to go through those top levels.

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I'm sure there's probably a few individual essays we want to cover, but that's my best

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guess on it.

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Sure.

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I like that.

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Anyway, I noticed the note table of contents because I have my own version of the how to

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read a book that we covered.

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And I have a process when I create the mine node files where I drop the cover in the middle.

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And then the very first thing I do is look at the table of contents for the sections and

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then create those as like the colored child nodes underneath that.

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Yep.

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And when I noticed it wasn't there, I was like, Oh boy, how is this going to work?

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And I noticed that the side pages are shaded and those are actually the section differentiators.

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Yeah.

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So I flipped to those and then jotted them down that way.

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But you're right.

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Like this is kind of a break the mold type book.

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Mine node related.

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This is another one that's really annoying to take notes on because Seth's style.

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It's so like some of these things are so short.

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It's a couple of sentences, a couple of paragraphs.

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So in the mine node file, I have every single one of these little essays numbered.

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And then I basically just jotted down underneath those a couple of points from the ones that

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really jumped out to me, which ended up being like three fourths of them.

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Sure.

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Yeah.

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So this is another giant mine node file.

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You're getting good at these.

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I hate this.

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I'm not one that I can just read and jot down things occasionally, not try to recreate

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the structure of the book, which normally isn't that big a deal.

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But we've had some books recently where the structure has been so different.

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It's kind of like you got to figure out on the fly how you're going to attack this one.

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Right.

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And the Mortimer Adler approach kind of doesn't matter.

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Like you got to figure something else out.

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Yeah.

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I feel like we've had not the table of contents thing, but I feel like we've had a few books

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in recent months that have this style.

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Maybe it's maybe it's further back than that because I'm thinking of like, what was it

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make time was that way?

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It makes me wonder if the publishers ask for that or if it's a collection of thoughts by

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the author and they're taking like blog like in this case, it made me wonder, I don't know

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if this is true or not.

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Seth Godin went to his blog and copied 219 of his short form blog posts and put them into

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a book.

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Yeah.

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And just put it in a different package.

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I don't know if there's any truth of that or not.

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I have no idea how he came up with it or if he did sit down and write it.

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I don't know.

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Well, I think it is a collection of his blog posts because some of these and I don't have

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written down the specific ones, but he kind of has these themes throughout and you'll

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see these themes appear in a couple different little essays.

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The way he talks about them, it's almost like even though you just read about it in

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the previous one, he's introducing it for the first time.

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Yeah.

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And again, it's not like a big in depth introduction because it's Seth Godin and every word is

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very carefully selected and weighed and only the stuff that is important is going to be

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in here.

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In fact, at the end, he's got a thing, should this book have been longer?

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Yeah.

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I really appreciated it.

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Yeah.

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Because he basically was like, you know, length doesn't determine the quality.

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And I really like, I mean, we're getting into style here, but I like this style as we go

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through this and we're talking about how this book is laid out and how we're going to cover

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it.

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And it makes me wonder if I could do this same sort of thing because when you sit down and

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think about like, well, how do I write consistently?

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How do I create a writing habit?

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How do I write or blog every day?

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Well, you're only publishing a couple of paragraphs.

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That's a lot easier.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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And that's a good point.

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Like I have heard folks say how on earth does Seth Godin write a blog post every day?

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It's like, well, if you look at the length of those, you know, at two to three paragraphs,

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sometimes there are one paragraph.

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If you have a writing habit of any form, you know that sitting down and writing that paragraph,

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editing it and then releasing it, you're only talking 15, 20 minutes.

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If that, like it's not much.

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Yeah.

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He's thinking out loud.

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He's not trying to formulate everything he wants to say about the topic, write about

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it and then move on to the next thing.

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Right.

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Right.

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So it doesn't require massive amounts of work to do that.

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Now, if you were writing a blog post that is similar to something that's on like the

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newest blog or the buffer blog, you know, if you know those or even like one of your

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sweet setup articles, you know, if you were trying to write one of those every day, that's

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a different game.

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That's a whole different deal.

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That's an interesting point because the reason why most people blog is to get attention and

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SEO is a big part of that.

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I've been digging into SEO lately and it's not as sleazy as I initially thought it was.

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You can make it that way, but it's not inherently that way.

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However, everything that Seth is about to tell us in this book is kind of anti SEO.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, if you dive deep into how do you build a web page that's quickly and easily findable

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by Google and ranks high on those search engines, if you go down that path, you can learn very

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quickly how to set up a page.

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But a lot of that has to do with, you know, injecting keywords and making sure you're

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covering a certain realm of links that are also linking within your own site.

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Like, there's just a lot of different technicals that you can do to do that.

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But what Seth Godin's referring to is throw all that out the window.

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Yep.

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Don't pay any attention to that because you have work to do.

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And I think that a lot of that, you know, does come back to, well, it goes into the first

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section here, trust yourself, not yourself, but yourself.

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And it does come back to you have to instead of trying to play all the games, you're trying

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to trust your own intuition and trust yourself to do the work and continue the practice.

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And that's a lot of what this first piece is about is just being willing to set up the

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practice and trust the practice.

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Trust the habits, trust the routines, trust the structure that you have set up and continue

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to push through that.

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And when you want to play the web page game and try to get it ranking high, that's different.

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Yeah.

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Like, it's not, they don't meld together real well.

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Sure.

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One other thing about this and his style and the practice and all the advice that he's

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going to be giving you, like I mentioned, it kind of inspires me to take the same approach.

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Like, could I do this?

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The traditional approach is the SEO approach.

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Write at least a thousand words, stack it full of keywords, yada, yada, yada.

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Have a bunch of links.

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I have also seen Seth present at the Entra Leadership Summit.

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And Seth is instantly the smartest guy in whatever room he's in.

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Yes.

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In fact, he was on a Q&A panel with Donald Miller and it was kind of hilarious because

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they are so very different.

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And they're asking a question and like Seth will answer it and it's very thought out,

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very articulate.

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And then Donald's kind of like, what's that said?

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Yeah.

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But I think, you know, that's, it's a, this is one of the reasons whenever you sent me

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the link saying, hey, Seth has a new book out and I was like, yes, we need to do this.

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That's one of the reasons I've jumped on to a lot of Seth's work and it's like, like

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part of the reason that he can do stuff like that, I think is because he writes every single

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day, he has the practice and he is continually working towards releasing things all the time.

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So he's built in the, think things through as much as you possibly can immediately.

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Like he has that habit down.

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So when you ask him a question in person, even if it's not something he has prepared

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for as well, there's a good chance he's thought about it at some point.

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And therefore he has a well thought out, well worded answer because he's done it, what,

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4000 times?

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I don't even know how many times he's blog now.

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It's ridiculously high, the number of blog posts he's released.

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No, you're right.

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So there's a lot of like practice that goes into it and maybe he's just a product of the

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practice that he's established.

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But also the thing in the back of my head as I go through this is like, maybe Seth is

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the only one who could pull this off.

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I'm not entirely sure.

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Sure, sure.

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It's a solid point.

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But okay, the practice, you know, shipping creative work, you know, as we're getting into

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this and trying to start through this stuff, it's exactly what Seth does, right?

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So Seth is all about releasing things, you know, shipping things and being okay with shipping

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them less than 100% perfect.

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And he gets into, you know, and I don't, one of the things that he doesn't do in this book,

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this is all high level.

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There is no tactical practical here.

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There is no, like this is a motivation book.

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This is not a, here's a system for you.

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There is a section on how to draw an owl.

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Yeah, I don't think that counts.

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True.

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But it just to clarify that it's the classic meme where you have draw two circles is the

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first step of drawing the owl and then finish the owl is step two and it's completely filled

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in and perfect.

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So that's his how to.

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And I think so much of the practice here is this, like this is a motivation and encouragement

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to folks to adopt his method of creating and delivering things and providing, I hate

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using these terms, but providing value to people by watching or consuming or reading

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the things that you're producing.

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Like that's, that's what he's promoting here.

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It's a motivational book, which makes it a little bit difficult, I think, to discuss

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just because so much of the books we've done have some form of like a system or a process

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that they're talking through a mental state that they're discussing.

00:22:17

This is much more broad than that.

00:22:19

There is no formula for you to follow here.

00:22:22

He's basically just telling you and the point of that, how to draw an owl section is like,

00:22:27

you don't learn to ride a bike from a manual.

00:22:31

You just have to do it.

00:22:33

And what you don't know in between those two steps, you figure out as you do it over and

00:22:37

over and over again.

00:22:38

Yes.

00:22:39

One of the sections that I liked in this first part, by the way, is number four.

00:22:42

I don't know how to say this, a skida ekmek, which is from a tradition in Turkey.

00:22:49

It means there is bread on the hook.

00:22:51

And this is basically when you go in to buy a loaf of bread, you can pay for a second loaf

00:22:56

of bread and then they'll put one on the hook, which is going to be free for a person in

00:23:00

need.

00:23:01

I thought this was a cool idea.

00:23:02

And his kind of point with this section is that when you choose to produce creative

00:23:06

work, you're putting yourself on the hook, which is kind of an interesting example.

00:23:11

But I've actually seen a version of this in real life.

00:23:15

There's a coffee shop that my brother-in-law works at.

00:23:18

He actually manages the downtown Appleton drive-through for Seth's coffee, which you and I may have

00:23:25

bought coffee from when you were here.

00:23:28

That sounds familiar.

00:23:29

They've got the fancy machine.

00:23:31

They do, yeah.

00:23:32

And they have what's called a suspended coffee.

00:23:34

So you can buy two and then people can walk up and be like, "Hey, is there any suspended

00:23:39

coffee?"

00:23:40

Yep.

00:23:41

And then they'll give it to them for free, which I think is a really cool idea.

00:23:46

And that gets into this whole theme of sharing your work and sharing the process and being

00:23:53

open about everything, being one of the most generous things that you can do, not waiting

00:23:58

until you've got it perfect and then shipping the thing, which is kind of the approach that

00:24:02

I took when I self-published my book at the beginning.

00:24:07

And I kept editing it, and editing it, and editing it until I got to the point where

00:24:12

it's like, "Okay, I'm always going to find more to do.

00:24:15

I need to just get this out there."

00:24:17

I clicked the button, and then pretty much immediately I felt both relief and dread.

00:24:24

Relief and like, "Okay, there it's done.

00:24:26

It's out there.

00:24:27

People can actually get it."

00:24:29

And then dread because I knew that I did not catch everything.

00:24:34

And I'm not convinced that if I would have just sat on it for even an additional year

00:24:38

that I would have caught everything anyways, that's kind of a cess point.

00:24:41

I was like, "Just ship it.

00:24:42

Who cares if there's typos or you miss something?"

00:24:45

Well, I do.

00:24:46

My personality is I don't want someone to have to get back to me and be like, "Hey,

00:24:50

there's a typo on page whatever."

00:24:53

So a lot of what he is saying in this book, he's talking to me.

00:24:59

I know that when was this?

00:25:02

This is decades ago at this point.

00:25:03

There was a book that was released.

00:25:06

I think it was called The Perfect Book is what it was referred to.

00:25:11

So it was a full-length book, but it was perfect in that they claimed it had no typos.

00:25:17

It had no grammatical errors.

00:25:19

All the punctuation was perfect.

00:25:21

That was the claim.

00:25:23

And if I understand, maybe this is lore, it's been a long time since I've heard this story,

00:25:30

but there was a financial reward if you found an error in the book.

00:25:36

And maybe it was a hundred bucks.

00:25:37

I don't remember how much it was.

00:25:39

But if you were to report it, they would tell them where it's at.

00:25:43

And if you were the first one to report an error, they would do a payout to you.

00:25:48

And they had to cancel the program because they found so many errors in the book.

00:25:55

And it went through the editing process like an obscene number of times.

00:26:00

So I think back on that, there's a lot of this book that makes me think about that particular

00:26:08

experiment because it's impossible to make something a hundred percent perfect in the

00:26:14

world that you and I operate in with online content.

00:26:19

At some point, you have to release it, period.

00:26:23

And I love a lot of what Seth tends to do in building things in public is kind of a

00:26:28

lot of what he does and has picked up a lot of support for that.

00:26:35

And it's fascinating to see.

00:26:38

But all of that, his methodologies here from a thinking level is what this book is primarily

00:26:45

about with these first two sections.

00:26:47

I guess we're kind of blending those two in that you have to trust the practice, trust

00:26:51

yourself to follow the practice and being generous with yourself and offering yourself

00:26:56

to people.

00:26:58

If you follow Seth for very long, I don't remember what his email is, but I know it's

00:27:03

possible to email him directly, like he makes that available and you have direct contact

00:27:08

to him, which is kind of weird.

00:27:11

It reminds me of like the Gary V away of him publishing his phone number.

00:27:15

It's like, you can call Gary V if you would like and he's the one who will answer.

00:27:19

Yeah.

00:27:20

That is possible.

00:27:21

Now, granted, it's very difficult to catch him at a time, I'm told.

00:27:25

Never tried calling that phone number to see if you could talk to him, but I know that

00:27:29

like it's that process, he wants to be available and very, he's very generous with his presence

00:27:36

and his accessibility.

00:27:39

And yet he has a practice where he's publishing things all the time.

00:27:42

No idea where the man gets the time to do all this, but yet he does.

00:27:45

Yeah.

00:27:46

The distinction here between the first and second section, in my opinion, the first one

00:27:50

titled Trust Yourself is trusting that you have something that is worth giving to other

00:27:56

people.

00:27:57

He talks about imposter syndrome and a lot of other stuff in here.

00:28:01

He's got a section on finding your passion, which I thought was pretty great.

00:28:05

We talked a little bit about Passion in the Last Book by Todd Henry because his first

00:28:09

book, Die Empty, that's kind of where I first heard that idea and I thought that was really

00:28:13

cool.

00:28:14

Seth has a way that he phrases this, which is great.

00:28:18

He says, do what you love is for amateurs, love what you do is for professionals.

00:28:22

And making the point that if you commit to the process, then you will develop the skill,

00:28:29

you'll develop the passion, you'll develop the purpose behind the things that you do,

00:28:32

which I think is a really cool idea.

00:28:34

He also has a section in here about toward a daily practice and service of your identity.

00:28:40

He talks about creative people create.

00:28:42

I mean, that echoes of James Clear and Atomic Habits.

00:28:48

But the action item that I jotted down from that particular section, and I don't know

00:28:52

how I feel about this, I hesitate even to share this.

00:28:58

But I think Seth has me convinced that I should be blogging every day, which is why I am entertaining

00:29:06

the idea of trying to do something like he's doing where it doesn't have to be something

00:29:10

super long.

00:29:11

Sure.

00:29:12

Also, I'm not very good at sharing my work.

00:29:17

I'm good at publishing podcast episodes on time, but I'm terrible at linking to them

00:29:22

from my own website.

00:29:25

And if all I did was that, I've got like, if I did it every work day, so Monday through

00:29:30

Friday, if I did that alone, I've got like three out of the ten written already.

00:29:39

I've got the sermon sketch notes that I've been doing on Sundays.

00:29:42

I do those every week.

00:29:44

So that's five out of ten now.

00:29:46

If I want to shift one of those work days to Sunday instead, I mean, I'm not that far

00:29:50

away.

00:29:51

I just have to show up and write every day and then actually publish what I am writing.

00:29:56

And at the same time, I am also updating my book.

00:30:00

I think I've shared here that I have signed on with a hybrid publisher and I'm part of

00:30:05

this program where I basically have to get it done by mid-June.

00:30:09

Otherwise, I have to pay for an extension.

00:30:11

I don't want to do that.

00:30:13

So it's going to happen and I'm making progress on it.

00:30:15

I've been making good progress on it, but I know that this is the thing, this daily writing

00:30:21

habit, this is what helped me get the first version out the door and it's totally time

00:30:25

to do it again.

00:30:27

So faithbasedpredictivity.com is my personal blog is like the logical place for this to

00:30:32

happen.

00:30:33

And I'm scared that I'm talking about this and this is going to be shared publicly, but

00:30:37

I think it's something that I just got to do.

00:30:39

Sure.

00:30:40

Yeah, no, I get it.

00:30:42

And when you make things in a lot of different places online, it's easy to say, well, I'll

00:30:47

just make my blog like a connecting zone where you can post all of those things, write a

00:30:51

quick three sentences about it and post it.

00:30:54

It's very easy to do that.

00:30:55

So it doesn't take a lot to get to that point when you have things you're already doing.

00:31:01

I think it's a little more difficult if you don't have that.

00:31:04

Now, it's easy for every other Friday to write something up and post the bookworm episode.

00:31:10

It's easy for folks like what you're doing with the sermon sketch notes to post that

00:31:15

every Sunday night.

00:31:17

That's an easy thing to do.

00:31:19

So there's a couple days a week there already taking care of.

00:31:23

So it doesn't take long to get there in the scenarios like what you and I are in because

00:31:28

I'm terrible about it as well.

00:31:29

I don't post to my blog and should.

00:31:32

Yeah.

00:31:33

Got a lot of things I could post there, but I don't.

00:31:36

Well, that's the thing.

00:31:37

I am publishing the bookworm episodes, but I am not at the same time going back to my

00:31:41

website and scheduling another post to say, "Hey, go check out bookworm."

00:31:45

I ended up doing that after the fact.

00:31:49

I get a couple episodes behind and I'm like, "Oh, I should really add these."

00:31:52

Because I do want my website to be a place where this is where everything Mike lives.

00:31:57

You can find everything from this one central place, but I don't.

00:32:03

I feel like if I were to commit to publishing every day and building out that calendar,

00:32:09

then all of a sudden not only does that stuff get published, but also it assists me in the

00:32:14

goal of actually publishing every day.

00:32:17

This is a good segue for the generous section because in the generous section, a lot of what

00:32:22

he's referring to is don't hoard your thoughts.

00:32:25

Don't hoard your ideas.

00:32:27

Don't hold on to them yourself.

00:32:28

Be willing to share them.

00:32:30

It's not just being generous with your time and your availability and such.

00:32:33

I mean, that's a small piece of what he's referring to.

00:32:36

The bulk of what he's getting at is being willing to share your thoughts and what you're

00:32:39

creating.

00:32:41

Don't keep it for yourself because some people talk about this a lot.

00:32:44

I love making this for me, so I don't need to share it with everyone else because I get

00:32:49

the benefit of making it for me by myself.

00:32:54

Why would I need to share it?

00:32:55

Be generous with that.

00:32:56

Be willing to share those things.

00:32:59

This is similar to, I've shared this in a few places here and there, not on bookworm because

00:33:06

I don't think we've recorded since, but I do have OmniFocus in my mix of things right

00:33:11

now.

00:33:12

I saw that.

00:33:13

Yeah.

00:33:14

But it's not like, I mean, people are like, "Yeah, Joe's back.

00:33:17

No, I'm not."

00:33:19

I wouldn't say I'm on OmniFocus.

00:33:22

I would say that OmniFocus is supplementing my bullet journal habit significantly in that

00:33:27

way.

00:33:28

By managing checklists and templates and stuff.

00:33:30

It is doing that, but I historically have had a lot of scripts.

00:33:36

People know this.

00:33:37

I've automated a lot of things in OmniFocus.

00:33:41

I'm in the process of porting some of that stuff over to the new Omni automation plugins.

00:33:48

It occurred to me in the midst of reading this that historically I have done all of that

00:33:53

in a silo.

00:33:54

I've made these things for me and I haven't always shared the process or the result publicly.

00:34:02

I have a lot of minor scripts for OmniFocus that I have never shared.

00:34:08

At this point, I'm not going to share them because they're obsolete.

00:34:11

They don't even work, I don't think.

00:34:14

I'm in the process of porting some of that stuff over and decided to do it live.

00:34:19

That's a lot of what I'm starting to do on the live streams on Mondays is porting some

00:34:23

of that stuff over and building those scripts because of what Seth's saying here.

00:34:28

Trying to not be a hoarder of what it is I do and how I do it or the results of what

00:34:34

I'm doing.

00:34:35

It sounds like you're trying to do the same.

00:34:37

You already have some things that you're making.

00:34:39

Don't hold on to them.

00:34:41

Share them, Mike.

00:34:42

Share it with the world.

00:34:43

Well, to be honest, the one thing that I am sharing consistently from my site is the sermon

00:34:47

sketch notes.

00:34:48

Even that, I was totally hoarding that until Bodie Quirk told me, "Dude, you've got to

00:34:54

share these."

00:34:55

Yes.

00:34:56

Just to walk you through my thought process with this, I've been taking sketch notes using

00:35:02

good notes for over three years at this point with not just sermons but talks that I attend

00:35:11

conferences that I go to, whatever, just so it happens that I'm not going anywhere at

00:35:16

the moment.

00:35:17

I'm not going to sermon notes at the time.

00:35:18

What?

00:35:19

Why?

00:35:20

At the time being.

00:35:22

I have talked about how I created the big cross-reference library for all this stuff in

00:35:29

Rome.

00:35:30

That was something that my initial goals for that program, I wanted to be able to tie all

00:35:34

this stuff together.

00:35:37

I'm like, "Great.

00:35:38

I've got all this stuff."

00:35:39

Then I talked to Bodie and he's like, "You've got to share this."

00:35:43

No one wants to see this.

00:35:45

This is just for me.

00:35:47

No one else heard these messages.

00:35:49

People are going to look at the art and they're going to be like, "Well, this guy's a want

00:35:52

to be artist.

00:35:53

This is okay.

00:35:54

It's kind of cool maybe once, but I'm not going to want to look at it every single week."

00:35:57

He convinced me to try it.

00:36:01

Since July, I think I have been taking my notes from the sermon that I attend Sunday morning,

00:36:07

recording a quick screencast, making call outs for the different sections and just walking

00:36:12

through my sketch notes.

00:36:15

I try to keep them under 10 minutes.

00:36:17

Sometimes they're 11 or 12, but basically just walking through the thought process, how

00:36:22

all these things connected my brain and publishing those on my site.

00:36:28

I've gotten pretty phenomenal feedback from people saying they really like those.

00:36:34

I couldn't believe it at first.

00:36:37

As I'm going through this book, I have a real life example of what he is talking about.

00:36:43

He's like, "Dummy, just do this with everything."

00:36:45

Right.

00:36:46

That's the concept of what is it?

00:36:49

No unpublished thought.

00:36:51

Kinda, yeah.

00:36:53

Similar to that.

00:36:54

I do that with the podcast I feel like, but the blogging piece, I don't know, I kind of

00:37:03

like that anyways a little bit better because I have a chance to edit myself before I hit

00:37:08

the button.

00:37:09

I'm always scared when I sit down to record a podcast.

00:37:12

I'm going to say something stupid and get myself in trouble.

00:37:15

I feel like, "Don't start streaming.

00:37:17

Don't do it."

00:37:19

I feel like I'm not super great at thinking on my feet, but that's probably just my own,

00:37:30

I don't know, you're your own worst critic, right?

00:37:33

I've been going to Toastmasters and I've been challenging myself with one of the reasons

00:37:37

I joined it is the extemporaneous speaking with the table topics.

00:37:41

I always do pretty decent with that stuff, but it still just absolutely terrifies me every

00:37:46

single time.

00:37:49

I don't know.

00:37:50

I guess this is a long way of saying that this is a perfect fit for me to blog every

00:37:55

day.

00:37:57

I need to get over myself and just do it.

00:38:00

Do it.

00:38:01

Go Nike.

00:38:02

He talks about that too.

00:38:04

Towards the end, yeah.

00:38:07

I don't even remember the context of it now.

00:38:10

It's not a big piece of any of the other sections.

00:38:14

The main point he was making with that is just do it is not the right term.

00:38:18

It's more like merely do it.

00:38:20

Just squeak it out.

00:38:21

That's totally fine.

00:38:23

The next section here is called the Professional.

00:38:28

This is an interesting section because it takes the concept of creating and it's easy

00:38:36

for us to think about being an amateur.

00:38:38

You do think or hobbyist is probably the better term.

00:38:41

It's easy to do things when you want to do them or like to do them.

00:38:45

When the muse strikes, it's easy to write.

00:38:49

This is the opposite of that in that you don't wait.

00:38:55

Professionals don't wait until they feel like doing something.

00:39:00

How would you like it if you had a surgery planned and your doctor canceled it because

00:39:06

he just didn't feel like doing a surgery that day?

00:39:08

Yeah.

00:39:09

That wouldn't go over real well, would it?

00:39:11

He's a professional and he shows up and he does the work every day or she does.

00:39:16

I don't know who your doctor is.

00:39:20

Your professionals, they show up and do the work every day.

00:39:23

I'm an IT professional.

00:39:24

It wouldn't be a good day if I walked in and said, "You know, I just don't feel like

00:39:27

fixing viruses today."

00:39:29

I don't really want to touch a computer today.

00:39:31

Yeah, I don't really feel like working on a screen today.

00:39:35

I'm not going to.

00:39:36

It doesn't work that way.

00:39:37

Go back to my pen and notebook.

00:39:39

Yes, yes.

00:39:40

I'm going to fix your virus with my fountain pen.

00:39:43

That's going to go late.

00:39:44

Maybe by stabbing it.

00:39:45

By the way, that's what you really need is you need an analog text expander for your

00:39:50

fountain pen.

00:39:51

Then you wouldn't need OmniFocus.

00:39:53

That's called shorthand.

00:39:56

The thing here is that you show up, you do the work.

00:40:00

He has a section completely dedicated to writer's block.

00:40:03

I'll hear a little bit later.

00:40:05

You show up, you do the work, and you move on.

00:40:10

That's the sum total of what you need to do.

00:40:12

There are so many little nitpick pieces here that he covers.

00:40:18

Don't be a hack.

00:40:20

There's just a lot of things that he puts in here to encourage you to be the professional.

00:40:27

I think at the end of the chapter or the end of this section, it's just purely decide

00:40:33

what it is that you're going to commit to and be a professional about it.

00:40:38

Professionals show up and do the task regardless of circumstances or feelings or emotions.

00:40:47

Yeah, exactly.

00:40:50

There's a couple cool things in here.

00:40:52

I liked number one regarding the emotions piece you were just talking about.

00:40:56

There's a section on worrying.

00:40:58

He talks about how worrying is the quest for a guarantee.

00:41:04

There are no guarantees when you commit to the practice and doing creative work that

00:41:09

is worth producing.

00:41:12

Anything worth doing does not have a guarantee attached to it.

00:41:16

He says, "The time we spend worrying is actually time we spend trying to control something

00:41:20

that is out of our control and there will never be enough reassurance for you to be guaranteed

00:41:27

the outcome that you want."

00:41:29

Which in and of itself, I'm talking about that maybe sounds like, "Well, I don't even

00:41:34

want to try this then.

00:41:35

That sounds unsafe."

00:41:38

Yeah.

00:41:39

But it's the other things in here.

00:41:41

You talked about the hack versus the professional.

00:41:46

He's got a grid in here which talks about that.

00:41:48

The big one for me is this whole section on talent and skill because talent is something

00:41:57

that people a lot of times, I think, they believe that you're born with a talent and

00:42:04

you just have to discover it.

00:42:05

If you've read mindset like we have, you know that's not true.

00:42:08

You develop the skills based on overcoming the obstacles that are presented before you.

00:42:16

In the Cal Newport book, I think it's so good they can't ignore you.

00:42:21

He talks about Steve Martin and people coming up to him and asking him, "What's your best

00:42:28

advice?"

00:42:30

He's basically saying, "Just show up and do the work every single day."

00:42:34

He says, "It's never the advice that people want to hear."

00:42:37

Right.

00:42:38

Steve Martin, quote, in this section which totally fits with that.

00:42:42

He says, "I had no talent, none," which I thought was pretty great.

00:42:46

Because when you think of Steve Martin, you probably think, like I do, who are a pretty

00:42:50

famous actor and I admit that I'm not a huge Steve Martin fan.

00:42:55

But that's fine.

00:42:56

I mean, that goes back to the generous section where like if you're trying to please everybody,

00:43:00

you're not going to please anybody.

00:43:01

You got to serve somebody, not everybody.

00:43:04

Okay.

00:43:05

So Steve Martin and I just were not clicking, that's totally fine.

00:43:08

I still respect him as a professional and I think this is absolutely great advice because

00:43:15

he's saying basically that it doesn't matter.

00:43:18

You could be like me, you have absolutely no talent to work with.

00:43:22

If you commit to the practice, which he defines in this section as a choice, plus skill, plus

00:43:28

attitude, then you develop the talent.

00:43:32

You develop that skill piece of that equation to the point where you are now a professional

00:43:37

and you have a high enough level skill that people are seeking your services, that you

00:43:42

can get compensated for it.

00:43:46

Doesn't matter where you start, matters how you finish.

00:43:49

For sure.

00:43:50

Like a lot of things in here, this is not new.

00:43:52

There are a lot of folks who will tell you that they had nothing when they started.

00:43:58

They did not have the skill or talent when they started out.

00:44:02

But guess what?

00:44:03

They showed up, they wrote a blog post every single day for two years and overnight success

00:44:09

happened.

00:44:10

So these things happen.

00:44:13

It's not, I mean people talk about this pretty regularly and there are, I've been slowly

00:44:21

growing kind of my own streaming world and people tend to say like you're either going

00:44:27

to make it or you're not and it's all about how many folks jump in from the very beginning.

00:44:35

Like you're either going to be a great and be a huge streamer or you're not.

00:44:38

That's not the way this works.

00:44:40

This is the same as becoming a blogger, a writer, an author, a YouTuber.

00:44:44

It doesn't matter.

00:44:46

It's all the same.

00:44:48

You show up, you do the things that a YouTuber would do.

00:44:51

You show up and do the things an author will do.

00:44:54

Go to the wood shop and run the hand planes the way a woodworker would do.

00:44:59

If you do the actual physical work, the results eventually come in as long as you're willing

00:45:05

to learn and get better at it.

00:45:07

If you're terrible at it and you just do it every day the same way and you don't try

00:45:10

to get better at it, you're not going to get anywhere.

00:45:14

That's not what the professional does.

00:45:15

They try to get better at their work.

00:45:17

So I think what you're saying is absolutely true.

00:45:21

You have folks like Steve Martin who didn't have the talent or the skill, but put in the

00:45:28

time.

00:45:29

Yeah.

00:45:30

Did the work.

00:45:31

Learned how to be skilled in the practice.

00:45:35

When you're talking about YouTubers specifically, I'm thinking of NKBHD.

00:45:39

Yeah.

00:45:40

Yeah.

00:45:41

It's a good example.

00:45:42

And I don't even know how many subscribers he has.

00:45:45

A lot.

00:45:46

But I do remember seeing his 100th YouTube video.

00:45:51

And at the time he was celebrating the fact that after 100 videos he had 79 subscribers.

00:45:57

Yes.

00:45:58

I can't find it right now.

00:46:00

Try to grab it and put it in the show notes.

00:46:03

But it's pretty amazing.

00:46:04

When you think about this guy who most people, if you build a channel as big as his right

00:46:10

now, you would probably say, "Oh, well, he's talented.

00:46:15

This is just what he was made to do."

00:46:20

And he discovered this thing and it just instantly clicked.

00:46:23

No, it didn't even for him.

00:46:24

It did not click.

00:46:25

It did not click for a very long time.

00:46:27

And how many people like NKBHD who maybe started off a lot stronger?

00:46:31

They got more than 79 subscribers in their first 100 videos, but they didn't stick with

00:46:36

it because they didn't see the growth that they thought they were going to see.

00:46:41

Podcasting is the same thing.

00:46:43

I mean, it was a long time before the bookworm downloads started to creep up to where they

00:46:48

are now.

00:46:49

And we went into it kind of with the, at least I did.

00:46:53

We talked about this in episode 100 with the attitude that if people want to listen to

00:46:56

this, that's cool.

00:46:57

But at the very least, we're going to read a bunch of books.

00:47:00

We're going to hold it to their accountable to what we say we're going to get from them.

00:47:03

We've got a side effect whether you guys want to listen or not.

00:47:06

Yeah.

00:47:07

It's almost the mentality that you have to have going into any creative endeavor, whether

00:47:14

it's blogging, whether it's streaming, whether it's video, whether it's podcasting is like,

00:47:19

this is just something I got to do.

00:47:22

I got to get it out of my system.

00:47:24

And if people latch onto it and it grows, like, that'd be great.

00:47:28

But I'm going to do this for a single person, even if they're the only one who shows up.

00:47:34

And later on, I think he talks about how the best way to do this is like for your former

00:47:41

self.

00:47:42

You know, like, if you could go back and speak to a younger you and help that person figure

00:47:48

out what you know now, like, that's really the person that you're kind of best suited

00:47:52

to help.

00:47:54

But there's going to be lots of people who are going to tell you, oh, I didn't get anything

00:47:57

out of it.

00:47:58

This thing is garbage.

00:47:59

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:48:00

And you just got to not even pay attention to those people and just be like, okay, this

00:48:03

isn't for you.

00:48:04

It's totally fine.

00:48:05

Yep.

00:48:06

Yep.

00:48:07

And then just show up and serve that person the best that you can.

00:48:11

Consistently, there's a whole section in this professional section, number 87.

00:48:15

Where is your hour?

00:48:16

It talks about how the hour spent on the practice is the creative path.

00:48:21

And this is my other action item.

00:48:23

And they're basically linked, you know, publishing every day.

00:48:28

Where is the content for that going to come from?

00:48:31

It's going to come from a practice and the practice will be much more effective and will

00:48:36

stick a lot better if I figure out when that's going to be.

00:48:40

So my action item for this is like, find my hour for that writing every day.

00:48:44

Sure.

00:48:45

Yeah, no, it's solid, which I know is going to be in the morning and I'm not looking forward

00:48:49

to that.

00:48:52

Adding to the morning routine.

00:48:53

Yeah.

00:48:54

That's the way this stuff goes, right?

00:48:56

That's true.

00:48:58

One of the things you were talking about is like deciding who it's for.

00:49:02

And that's a thing that comes from actually the next section or at least is talked about

00:49:07

in more depth in the next section, which is called intent.

00:49:11

And this is where I have a couple action items out of this book, both come from this section.

00:49:19

And intent, I mean, it's exactly what it sounds like being intentional and choosing what you're

00:49:26

making, who it's for, et cetera, et cetera.

00:49:29

And I have one action item out of this just to decide who is it for.

00:49:33

I have a video course I'm working on.

00:49:37

I've got the analog Joe site.

00:49:39

I've got a bunch of things I'm working on and I need to make decisions around who is

00:49:45

the specific person I'm doing that for.

00:49:48

I know in the world of content creations, they tend to refer to that as define your avatar.

00:49:54

Like who's the avatar you're trying to make things for?

00:49:57

Yeah.

00:49:58

And I have a pretty good vision of who that is.

00:50:02

I've never defined it.

00:50:04

I've never sat down and said, this is the type of person I'm gearing this towards.

00:50:10

And I know through the way that I've been making things lately, I've been able to build

00:50:17

some personal connections with some of my audience, which is amazing and fun.

00:50:22

So I know quite a bit about the audience that follows me just because of that.

00:50:28

So I know a lot about who it is that I tend to do things for.

00:50:32

But I've never sat down and defined it.

00:50:34

That's I feel like what I need to do because it seems like Seth Godin was prue, like he

00:50:38

was nailing this hard.

00:50:40

I felt like define who your audience is and who it is you're wanting to make things for.

00:50:46

So I'm curious, Mike, like I know that like with the sweet setup, I'm sure you guys have

00:50:50

kind of something similar to this.

00:50:52

Do you have it written down though?

00:50:54

Is that a thing that exists?

00:50:55

For the sweet setup, yes.

00:50:57

Okay.

00:50:58

For the sweet setup, our goal is to help primarily Apple power users who want to use

00:51:04

their technology to be more productive or creative.

00:51:07

Sure.

00:51:08

And that is different than just whatever is shiny new, Apple news, whatever.

00:51:16

We're not going to report on every new app that ends up being big.

00:51:22

We're going to write an article on this is how you can use this to establish intentional

00:51:28

habits or through the lens of being creative or productive.

00:51:33

And that's a little bit vague and that's kind of intentional.

00:51:36

So creative could be writing every day.

00:51:39

You could also define that as productive.

00:51:41

Yeah.

00:51:42

How do you want to do it?

00:51:44

Sure.

00:51:45

But I have not done that for myself personally.

00:51:49

Yeah.

00:51:50

So I think I need to.

00:51:51

You're going to add this on as an action item now.

00:51:54

I don't know.

00:51:55

I'm not sure yet.

00:51:58

I think that my form of daily blogging is best executed or is most effective as me sorting

00:52:10

through the things that are bouncing around in my head at the moment.

00:52:15

So I think I need to create that habit and then I can start to refine that more towards

00:52:23

serving a specific person.

00:52:25

Sure.

00:52:26

But I kind of view the practice of writing as sort of a way of thinking through things

00:52:31

for myself.

00:52:32

So even if nobody else reads it and it's still valuable kind of the book on approach to blogging.

00:52:37

Sure.

00:52:38

Yeah.

00:52:39

Because this is, I mean, this is what I feel like I need to do.

00:52:42

Like I have a pretty solid view of this, but I've not actually defined it.

00:52:47

So that's, that's one of the pieces that I want to be intentional about to use his terminology.

00:52:54

One of the other aspects of, I guess it's, it might be the piece before this, the professional

00:53:00

side of it.

00:53:01

The other action I might have here is just deciding when my practice is going to happen.

00:53:05

Now it's messy for me because my day job doesn't fit this stuff.

00:53:12

And I am trying to shoehorn it in.

00:53:16

So I cannot say, I'm going to spend an hour first thing in the morning.

00:53:19

That doesn't work.

00:53:20

That's not possible.

00:53:22

I have to fit things in like over a lunch break or at night or on the weekends.

00:53:27

Like that's where the bulk of what I do fits in.

00:53:30

Sure.

00:53:31

So I need to nail down.

00:53:32

Okay.

00:53:33

If I'm going to make something every day.

00:53:35

I don't have to, in my mind, I don't have to release something every day.

00:53:38

Now the type of thing that I'm making might lend itself towards that, like something being

00:53:44

released every day, I don't know, but I at least need to be working on things daily.

00:53:50

I don't know where that's going to fit on a, on a day to day basis.

00:53:54

So that's the, that's the second piece, the second action I might have here is just defining

00:53:58

when that is getting it written down.

00:54:00

So I know when and where that time is coming from.

00:54:04

Sure.

00:54:05

I mentioned the, the who's it for.

00:54:07

And I'm sure that I don't have that specifically for my blog.

00:54:12

And ultimately that's where the writing is going to be directed.

00:54:16

I do have that though for the updated version of the book because in addition to the content

00:54:22

for the book, which is what most people think of when they think of writing the program

00:54:25

I'm going through, they walk you through the whole process.

00:54:27

You've got to have the book proposal.

00:54:29

You've got to have the marketing plan.

00:54:32

You know, so you're thinking through like who you're serving, the demographics, the

00:54:35

psychographics, like what problems are these people experiencing and how are you going

00:54:39

to help them overcome those things.

00:54:42

So I do have that sort of stuff, but in terms of the actual sitting down every day, writing

00:54:49

and then publishing to the blog, I'm kind of not worrying about those things at that

00:54:54

point, if that makes any sense.

00:54:56

Yep.

00:54:57

By the way, this section, another clue to me that this is a series of blog posts is that

00:55:03

number 120, 122 and 124 are all titled, what's it for?

00:55:13

I did not realize that.

00:55:15

Yeah.

00:55:16

Yeah.

00:55:17

And I didn't jot down in my mind not file anything specific for any one of those.

00:55:20

I got stuff for some of the other things around that in between there.

00:55:25

But I kind of think if the book was the end goal for Seth, then he would have titled

00:55:32

these a little bit differently.

00:55:34

So you think these are just his blog titles?

00:55:37

I do.

00:55:38

Yep.

00:55:39

Interesting.

00:55:40

So what we should do is search Seth's blog for what's it for?

00:55:43

What's it for?

00:55:44

That is true.

00:55:45

I did not do that.

00:55:46

Actually 109 also is what's it for?

00:55:49

Do you have all these written down?

00:55:52

I do, yeah.

00:55:53

That is intense, dude.

00:55:54

That's all for the bookworm club premium members.

00:55:57

Oh, yeah.

00:55:58

What's it for?

00:55:59

The second question.

00:56:00

It totally is.

00:56:01

I did not know this.

00:56:03

Yeah.

00:56:04

Which is fine.

00:56:05

I mean, he's not saying the exact same thing in any one of these, but he's probably speaking

00:56:11

to the same themes.

00:56:14

And just having the blog titles be the same, it feels like I didn't get everything I wanted

00:56:21

to say out about this last time, which when you recognize his practice of publishing every

00:56:26

day, you understand that.

00:56:29

But it makes no sense if you're trying to actually rebuild this stuff into a book format

00:56:35

that is not a collection of blog posts, makes no sense that you have four different essays

00:56:40

in the same section that are titled the same thing.

00:56:43

And my guess is, by the way, on his website that he did not write the numbers in the book

00:56:49

are not in chronological order.

00:56:50

Right.

00:56:51

That all of these themes are bouncing around in his head all at the same time.

00:56:56

And he's publishing these maybe six months or even years apart.

00:56:59

But when he sits down and put together this book, he grabs everything that falls under

00:57:03

those headers and groups them together.

00:57:05

Sure.

00:57:06

Interesting.

00:57:07

The next section is no such thing as writer's block, which I think is just a fascinating

00:57:12

thing.

00:57:13

I've heard this multiple times from some big name authors in history.

00:57:19

And I'm drawing a blank on the one that I think pioneered this, but they said that I

00:57:24

only write when the muse strikes.

00:57:26

Thankfully the muse strikes every morning at 8 a.m.

00:57:29

Yeah.

00:57:30

Like that concept is that it's similar to the professional piece in that you have to show

00:57:37

up and do the work.

00:57:38

That whole conversation here again, but he does get into a little bit of like, why do

00:57:43

we think writers block exists?

00:57:47

And I'm not sure I followed all of his logic, but I think some of it was that we have a

00:57:51

tendency to hunt for credentials and saying that because I am a writer, thus I should

00:58:00

never have writer's block.

00:58:02

And then when you don't know what to write, guess what?

00:58:05

We panic and don't know what to do.

00:58:08

Thus we, you know, bemoan things like writer's block when you really shouldn't be afraid

00:58:16

to write things because that's the second half of this in that we tend to be afraid

00:58:21

to write something that's not polished and perfect and solid.

00:58:25

You know, some of what we were talking about earlier, being afraid of publishing things

00:58:28

that aren't a hundred percent done, that fear can lead to something like writer's block

00:58:33

and preventing you from putting things on the page because you're afraid you're going

00:58:36

to have to edit it and clean it up and such when that's the whole point of doing the thing.

00:58:42

So I think between all of that, it makes perfect sense.

00:58:45

But I'm with him, writer's block doesn't exist.

00:58:48

Maybe that's because I'm ADD and I don't have a problem coming up with ideas, but that's

00:58:51

it.

00:58:52

Yeah, I think his main point from this whole section is that this is a myth and people

00:58:58

use this as an excuse.

00:59:00

In fact, he's even got a section 132.

00:59:03

He says, any excuse will do.

00:59:05

And he says, if a reason doesn't stop everyone, then it is an excuse, which that's kind of

00:59:12

a powerful statement because you can compare yourself to those professionals like that

00:59:17

quote that you mentioned earlier.

00:59:18

I don't remember who said it, but I remember reading about it in the War of Art by Steven

00:59:22

Pressfield.

00:59:23

And you can look at Steven Pressfield and you can say, well, that guy, he's a professional.

00:59:29

So yeah, he can do it, but who am I?

00:59:32

Like, I can't do it.

00:59:33

Steven Pressfield does.

00:59:34

And Seth is saying, yes, yes, you can.

00:59:37

The thing that Steven Pressfield has that you don't is a credential and he makes the

00:59:44

point, the very first section in here, 129, you don't need a credential to do something

00:59:49

creative.

00:59:50

And he makes the point that you are probably better off just doing the work than getting

00:59:54

the degree.

00:59:55

And maybe the degree is a published book.

00:59:58

Maybe the degree is a New York Times bestseller, whatever it is that you think you need to

01:00:04

attain before you can really consider yourself a creative.

01:00:08

I think this is one of those goal lines that keeps moving.

01:00:13

And once you achieve one thing, then you're kind of like, okay, now what do I do?

01:00:18

And Seth's advice, in my opinion, is spot on.

01:00:21

Just commit to the process.

01:00:22

Just do the thing.

01:00:25

And then doesn't matter if you've got the degree, it doesn't matter if you've got the

01:00:30

title, doesn't matter if you've got the business card, doesn't matter if you have the body

01:00:33

of work, all that stuff, the score basically is going to take care of itself.

01:00:39

There's a really cool section in here, by the way, about improv comedy.

01:00:44

This is one of the things I heard him talk about at on-trail leadership.

01:00:48

The yes and, do you remember this section?

01:00:50

Yeah.

01:00:51

Yeah.

01:00:52

It's a good one.

01:00:53

I, the whole idea of doing improv comedy terrifies me.

01:00:57

In fact, when I was in college, people would want to go, there was like a live comedy thing.

01:01:01

People would want to go, and they would always call for participation from the audience,

01:01:05

like ideas and things.

01:01:07

And I never wanted to go because I'm like, they're going to ask me for an idea and I'm

01:01:10

not going to be able to think of anything.

01:01:12

And I'm not up on this stage.

01:01:13

I'm just sitting in the audience, but I don't want to be put on the spot like that.

01:01:18

But he's saying the real training that they have is whatever you're given, you don't say

01:01:23

no to it.

01:01:24

You say yes and.

01:01:26

So even if somebody is taking this improv thing in a direction that you wouldn't, you wouldn't

01:01:32

have taken it, you can't like course correct it afterwards.

01:01:35

You have to go with what they are handing you and then you can add your own thing on top

01:01:41

of it.

01:01:42

I like this picture that I get of creative work this way.

01:01:48

It's almost like what the sermon note says an example.

01:01:53

All I'm really doing with those is taking the scriptures that my pastor is already preaching

01:01:59

and saying yes and sharing like the little blurb of insight that I get from that.

01:02:07

And that makes it seem much less threatening.

01:02:10

It's much less of a obstacle that needs to be overcome for me to publish that thing.

01:02:16

And I have not taken that approach with any of the writing that I have done previously.

01:02:20

I feel like well I have to really be inspired.

01:02:23

I have to have this great idea and I have to have worked through this pretty far already

01:02:29

before I would sit down to write.

01:02:31

And at that point the words can come pretty easily.

01:02:34

And I am terrified of sitting down at the keyboard every single morning and not exactly

01:02:38

knowing what is going to happen there.

01:02:40

And I think this is the key to making this work is just take the stuff that's already

01:02:43

there not reinventing the wheel but taking this yes and approach.

01:02:48

And that's kind of what he did and you can see it as we're going through these sections

01:02:51

and I mentioned like the four different posts or essays that had the same title.

01:02:56

He's yes anding what's it for in that section.

01:02:59

I need to yes and the sermon sketch notes stuff and the bookworm stuff and the focus stuff

01:03:04

and the intentional family stuff and just write about that stuff.

01:03:07

Yeah and just apply one small thing to it because and it doesn't even have to be your

01:03:11

own thing either.

01:03:12

Yep I'm you know as you're talking I was thinking about there's three or four content

01:03:17

creators that I've been consuming like everything they do right now.

01:03:22

And because they're working in areas that I'm trying to learn and get better at.

01:03:26

And when I think about some of their not all but maybe about half of the content that they

01:03:31

make it's always here is a thing I've made before and here's one little bit on top of

01:03:38

it or here's a press release that happened and here's one little bit that they aren't

01:03:43

talking about or here's one feature that was made and here's how that affects all the

01:03:49

things that you're going to do in this platform.

01:03:52

Here's a mistake that this company made and now here's what that's going to do for you.

01:03:58

It's not hard to come up with that once you learn how to think that way.

01:04:02

So it's it's fascinating and I hadn't connected that till you said this and we were talking

01:04:07

about yes and but it's totally true like if you want to make things it's not difficult

01:04:13

to like if you if you keep a pulse on your industry in any form we you know you and I

01:04:18

watch Apple I keep an eye on like some of the hacker communities and stuff too like I know

01:04:25

more than I probably should about certain realms I've been doing deep deep deep dives

01:04:30

on streamers and stuff lately and doing that it's easy to see oh well there's this one

01:04:36

little bit that I can improve on that thing that that other person did and that's that's

01:04:40

really all it takes it doesn't take much to to go down that path.

01:04:44

Yeah he says in section 171 show up do your best and learn from it you know as long as

01:04:50

you apply a growth mindset and you're constantly trying to learn it doesn't matter what you

01:04:56

are producing it's just the act of producing it that's important a little bit later he

01:05:01

talks about 173 protecting your perfect idea and he this part was encouraging to me because

01:05:07

he says you won't run out no one is keeping you from posting every day yeah and I think

01:05:11

this is maybe a fear that I had is that well I got this inspiration and I wrote about it

01:05:18

and now I don't know what to do and he's basically saying that if you commit to the practice

01:05:24

the well never runs dry yep which even just saying that it encourages me like down in

01:05:32

my spirit I'm like yes I need to do this and in my head it's like that can't be right.

01:05:38

Yeah keep drafts open so you can collect things when you're not there that's what the answer

01:05:43

is true true he does talk about that a little bit in here by the way like the setting up

01:05:48

your tools turning off the internet doing the work yep I think that is a point that he

01:05:55

doesn't address a whole lot in this specific book we talked about it in brainwash though

01:05:59

is like we sabotage ourselves yep so it would be interesting to see what Seth's writing routine

01:06:08

looks like and how he really sets up his environment and his tools in order for this to work because

01:06:16

the more I talk through this and the more I think about it the more I believe that the

01:06:19

process that he's talking about the practice here probably is achievable for just about

01:06:25

anybody but not without adjustments to your technology defaults.

01:06:31

Yeah yep no that's solid.

01:06:35

The next section here is make assertions which I think plays into a little bit about a little

01:06:41

bit of this yes and concept because he's saying in the midst of your making make assertions

01:06:49

you know make claims you know make bold statements and essentially be okay with being wrong.

01:06:57

Yeah that's alright and he does go into like you know these aren't you know using some

01:07:03

of his titles assertions aren't guarantees they're not answers you know but they are

01:07:09

generous you know coming back to that you're offering some of your own opinions about things

01:07:15

and you're I don't want to say guesses but your unique perspective on something offering

01:07:22

that up can be your own form of an assertion and it's those assertions that other people

01:07:29

are going to resonate with.

01:07:31

Yeah.

01:07:32

And thus slowly build your collection of fans or audience.

01:07:37

The distinction here between the assertions and the answers I like the way that he articulated

01:07:44

this and I realize that this is the thing that irks me about so much stuff in the productivity

01:07:52

space is that they are writing these listicles and these articles as this is the answer.

01:08:01

Yep.

01:08:02

Yep.

01:08:03

And not an answer it is an assertion and now when I look at those articles that profess

01:08:11

to have an answer immediately I am skeptical and trust is gone.

01:08:17

So don't write one of those Mike.

01:08:21

I don't want to do that right and I feel like I do a pretty good job of I mean the whole

01:08:26

idea behind focus is that we don't have all the answers we're fellow travelers on this

01:08:31

journey we talk about that all the time.

01:08:33

We share our mistakes and I feel like we do that here too.

01:08:38

Intentional family Rachel and I talk about you know we even had an episode not too long

01:08:42

ago but like what to do when it's not working we shared like how we had this idea where

01:08:48

things should go and it just totally didn't happen that way so we had to go back to the

01:08:52

drawing board and make adjustments and that's like a constant process like that you never

01:08:58

get out of that.

01:09:00

And when I read this section on like assertions and answers I finally had a term for how I

01:09:07

wanted to approach things.

01:09:10

So I kind of like have believed that this is the way to do it in the past in terms of

01:09:16

producing this content in a way that feels genuine and authentic not professing to have

01:09:24

all of the answers but also I mean he talks about authority too in the previous section

01:09:28

like you do want to speak authoritatively and so there's a balance there I think.

01:09:35

Don't shy away from what you have figured out and sharing the things that you have learned.

01:09:40

You have the right to do that but answers and the conversation he talks about here and

01:09:47

the goal I think with the podcast that I make and the blog post I want to write is I want

01:09:52

to continue the conversation.

01:09:55

And so that's a small difference there but an important distinction is that the assertions

01:10:02

are the generous act of seeking to make things better and I can share you know I'm seeking

01:10:07

to make things better for myself and for my family and these are the things that I've

01:10:10

worked and these are the lessons that we've learned and these are the things that haven't

01:10:13

worked.

01:10:15

That is very generous but when I frame it a little bit different way is like okay so

01:10:20

you want to do X and this is the way you do it just three simple steps you'll save an

01:10:24

hour every day for the rest of your life like Ick.

01:10:29

Yes and I think there's a little bit of a revolt against that.

01:10:32

Yes.

01:10:33

If you've read some of these articles and you've tried the things that they recommend I'm

01:10:42

pretty sure I've probably written some of these.

01:10:44

Me too.

01:10:45

Without realizing.

01:10:46

Me too.

01:10:47

I'm guilty but I'm learning and I'm growing and I'm changing.

01:10:51

But so if you pay attention to maybe you're the same way but a lot of what I've created

01:10:56

in the last probably year it has less to do with here is the way to do something and

01:11:03

I've shifted over more towards here is how I or a way to do something.

01:11:08

Exactly.

01:11:09

And I'm not going to like even some of the courses I've done in the past you know I updated

01:11:17

the working with OmniFocus course in 2019 and the beginning video of that talks about

01:11:22

how like here's how I do this.

01:11:24

I'm going to take you through how I do things and then you can pick pieces out of this that

01:11:28

you like and build your own system.

01:11:31

I'm not going to tell you this is how you should use OmniFocus like I'm not going to

01:11:34

do that.

01:11:35

That's not my way.

01:11:36

I don't want to go down that path and I think that's a lot of what Seth Godin's getting

01:11:40

at here.

01:11:41

Again this is like anti SEO because that's what people are looking for.

01:11:47

That's what gets the clicks.

01:11:48

Yeah.

01:11:49

Yep.

01:11:50

But I think you know coming back to my point a minute ago like there's a bit of a revolt

01:11:53

against that because if you look at any content creators and look at stats like if you pay

01:12:01

attention to like I've noticed this on my own analytics on the site.

01:12:07

If you look at the specific pages that are continuing to get like at least in my case

01:12:13

what's getting the page views there are the articles I've written about how I do something

01:12:19

and I'm specific about explaining how I do something like my own personal workflow.

01:12:24

If I explain my personal workflow that's what people are interested in.

01:12:28

They're not interested in copying that.

01:12:31

They're interested in learning the little tiny bits and pieces here and there.

01:12:34

So that's the distinction is you can't say here's the answer.

01:12:38

Like I've worked with all the features.

01:12:40

I know all the things and this is the best way to use it.

01:12:45

There's not much interest in that anymore and I'm pretty sure that's what he's getting

01:12:50

at.

01:12:51

I hope you are correct.

01:12:54

So that all said let's go on to the next section and I think because this one make assertions

01:12:59

is fairly short.

01:13:01

The next one here is earn your skills and earlier on we were talking about like talent

01:13:06

versus skills and he does.

01:13:11

I don't want to say he buys into old world way of thinking this but he does say talent

01:13:17

is what you're born with skill is what you acquire.

01:13:20

Like that is his definition of those two and when he gets to this point he's then talking

01:13:25

about the skills that you are working towards and acquiring.

01:13:29

That's what he's referring to here not some inborn natural talent to use his terminology

01:13:36

there and I would say this is I hesitate to say this.

01:13:42

It's almost a repeat of what we've said in some other areas here.

01:13:46

Show up to the work.

01:13:47

How many times are we going to say this?

01:13:51

That's a lot of what this is getting at is like find time put in the work and try to

01:13:57

get better at it.

01:13:58

That last piece is probably the part he's focusing on here in this section is look for

01:14:05

the things to improve.

01:14:07

Find people who can help you improve on things and focus on improving your practice.

01:14:13

Yeah.

01:14:14

A couple of things here that I liked.

01:14:17

We have talked, I have talked many times about steel like an artist by Austin Clean.

01:14:23

Yeah.

01:14:24

I've never read this by the way.

01:14:25

We need to cover this for bookworms.

01:14:27

I may pick this for the next book because it's pretty short.

01:14:32

It'd be a great format for bookworm.

01:14:35

And yeah.

01:14:37

Anyways, I've talked about the idea of like connecting the dots from that book being really

01:14:42

influential for me and basically giving me a license to consider myself a creative.

01:14:48

And Seth says something similar in this book in 202 knowing as a shortcut to skill.

01:14:54

He says creativity doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.

01:14:58

And this sounds a lot to me like the yes and approach to connecting the dots.

01:15:02

So you hear something from somebody else and you think, oh, that's pretty cool.

01:15:06

And then you're not copying that thing identically, but you are restating it in your own way.

01:15:12

And that is completely fine.

01:15:13

That is still creating.

01:15:16

And I think people need to understand that that's part of the process.

01:15:20

And that's not you stealing something and you're not a bad person if that's like how you synthesize

01:15:29

and come up with these ideas.

01:15:32

The fact that you can trace them back to a source is not a knock against your creative

01:15:37

character.

01:15:39

The other thing in here, which I liked in 192 he talks about, look for the cohort.

01:15:44

He says that when you are surrounded by respected peers, you're more likely to do the work

01:15:48

that you set out to do.

01:15:51

I like this a lot.

01:15:52

And this can manifest a lot of different ways.

01:15:59

One way it could manifest is the Bookworm Club.

01:16:03

Another way it could manifest is any sort of online community or forum that you would

01:16:10

be a part of and you engage in the conversation.

01:16:14

Another way this could manifest is in a mastermind group, which that one for me, that one resonates.

01:16:23

I have gone through in the last six months or so.

01:16:28

Well, basically when all the COVID stuff started happening, my mastermind group was I hesitate

01:16:36

to talk about this, but we basically kind of fell apart.

01:16:40

We were meeting less frequently, people were having trouble showing up when we were going

01:16:44

to have the meetings.

01:16:45

And I get it.

01:16:46

We're trying to figure things out.

01:16:48

People are busy trying to figure out how they're going to make their businesses work.

01:16:51

A lot of uncertainty, totally understandable.

01:16:55

But I also noticed at that time that that's when I really wanted that support system to

01:16:59

fall back on and it just wasn't there.

01:17:02

So I went back to the drawing board and I actually formed another mastermind group, which

01:17:10

has been absolutely phenomenal.

01:17:14

And we call it the Academy.

01:17:17

And so the Academy is totally my cohort.

01:17:20

That's immediately what I thought of when I went through this section.

01:17:24

And with masterminds, the people that you surround yourself and the people that you would

01:17:30

select to be in that sort of thing, that's super important because you want people who

01:17:35

are not going to let you get away with mailing things in.

01:17:40

You want people who are going to hold your feet to the fire and make you show up every

01:17:45

day, commit to the practice that he's talking about here.

01:17:50

And I feel like just in the last 12 months, I have had, I've seen a real life example

01:18:01

of how not having that has allowed me to slip and getting back into that has made it stick

01:18:09

again.

01:18:10

Makes sense.

01:18:11

I mean, you have to be willing to find people who are of the same mindset.

01:18:16

I mean, this is some of what we do with Bookworm.

01:18:18

You know, it's similar.

01:18:19

Now granted, it's just one V one here, but we're reading things together so that we have

01:18:25

the same background.

01:18:28

We put together actions from them.

01:18:29

It's always been like from almost day one, we've talked about how it's important to have

01:18:35

things and outcomes from these books that we're going to actually do something with and

01:18:42

not just read it and move on.

01:18:44

Like, I feel like we've done the book a disservice if we don't do something with it.

01:18:49

Thus, the accountability piece comes in and having somebody else there to, as you're saying,

01:18:55

hold your feet to the fire and make sure actually doing something with it.

01:18:59

Because when we make these action items, every time, it's like, I'm going to have to report

01:19:05

on this in two weeks.

01:19:06

So I better do something with it.

01:19:09

I can't just say a cool action item and then move on the next time because I know Mike's

01:19:17

going to ask me about it and the chat's going to say, what are you doing, Joe?

01:19:21

So you have to do something with it.

01:19:24

So I'm glad you got a mastermind working now.

01:19:26

It's good to know that that's actually happening.

01:19:28

Well, so what you're talking about, that's great, but that's every two weeks.

01:19:33

So for me personally, that just wasn't enough.

01:19:36

I want somebody who is going to get in my face if I don't do it on a regular basis.

01:19:42

So this one actually, I've got a session scheduled for Monday.

01:19:47

There's another person in there who is trying to write a book.

01:19:51

So we're going to connect on Zoom, kind of like focus mate.

01:19:54

Sure.

01:19:55

And we're going to state our intentions and we're going to stare at each other for two

01:19:57

hours and make sure that the other one is writing.

01:20:00

Nice.

01:20:01

Nice.

01:20:02

You know, that's the kind of thing where like you have it scheduled.

01:20:04

So you got to show up and then once you're there, you're on camera.

01:20:07

So I got to follow through and do what I said I was going to do.

01:20:10

Like you can't hide.

01:20:11

Yep.

01:20:12

And that's where the value comes.

01:20:14

This is totally similar to not granted.

01:20:16

There's not hardly any of this happening now.

01:20:18

But the people talk about how they get so much done if they go to a coffee shop and it doesn't

01:20:23

make sense because they're easily distractible and they don't like the noise and yet they

01:20:28

can get a ton of things accomplished at a coffee shop.

01:20:31

Well, think of it this way.

01:20:33

If you went to a coffee shop, are you going to spend two hours watching YouTube videos?

01:20:37

No.

01:20:38

No, because you're there and you've got tons of people who can see your screen.

01:20:42

You're not going to do anything you shouldn't be doing.

01:20:43

You're going to stay focused because there's other people seeing if you're focused or not.

01:20:48

So there's an accountability even if you don't know who those people are.

01:20:51

There's the social pressure of I'm here to do work and other people can tell if I'm doing

01:20:56

work or not.

01:20:57

So if I'm not doing work, I feel guilty for not doing work.

01:21:01

It's that concept.

01:21:02

And now imagine that everybody there, you have told them what you're going to do when you're

01:21:06

sitting there.

01:21:07

Right.

01:21:08

Right.

01:21:09

And they're going to ask you about it at the end.

01:21:11

Yes.

01:21:12

100%.

01:21:13

100%.

01:21:14

Cool.

01:21:15

Cool.

01:21:16

All right.

01:21:17

So seek out constraints.

01:21:18

And I think this is an interesting one because we don't often think of it this way.

01:21:24

We think of the process of being creative as having no boundaries and you can do whatever

01:21:29

you want.

01:21:30

Yes.

01:21:31

And that is not the case.

01:21:34

No.

01:21:35

It's actually better to put boundaries on things.

01:21:37

I do this all the time.

01:21:39

I learned about this concept of putting constraints on art six, seven years ago.

01:21:47

And at the time I was doing some virtual marketing work for a company and we were trying to name

01:21:53

things constantly.

01:21:55

And I would repeatedly put boundaries around what we could name those things.

01:22:00

Cannot be more than two syllables and it has to have a hard cuh sound in it in some form.

01:22:06

I would put those boundaries on things and then just ask the team.

01:22:10

And there was one time that we decided to do something fun.

01:22:15

We'd do two different teams.

01:22:18

One team had the constraints.

01:22:19

The other team didn't.

01:22:21

So one team could do whatever they want.

01:22:23

The other team we did some, you know, here's how many syllables it needs to be.

01:22:26

It has to have this letter combination and has to rhyme with, I don't know what it was.

01:22:33

So we came up with those constraints.

01:22:35

The team with the constraints was done in a third of the time and had twice as many potentials

01:22:42

as the team that had zero constraints.

01:22:45

And that fascinated me.

01:22:47

And that was kind of my first endeavor of putting boundaries on something artistic or

01:22:51

creative.

01:22:52

And from that day till now I still try to put restrictions on things that I'm making.

01:23:00

Things simple.

01:23:01

Like I have this topic.

01:23:02

I'm going to make a video about it and it has to be done in three and a half minutes

01:23:06

or less.

01:23:07

Yeah.

01:23:08

And I will do that.

01:23:09

And it is, you know this, it is really hard to cover an extended topic in three and a half

01:23:14

minutes in a video.

01:23:15

That is not simple to do.

01:23:17

It's true.

01:23:18

But I will put those boundaries on things all the time.

01:23:20

And usually the work is better time it's done.

01:23:23

One of them I did here recently was putting out a newsletter.

01:23:27

I wanted to keep it under 500 words.

01:23:30

But the problem was I had a lot of information I was trying to cover.

01:23:36

And when I wrote the first draft, it was 1200 words.

01:23:41

And I was trying to get it down under 500.

01:23:43

That was my intention.

01:23:44

I think that actually is a similar constraint to what Seth Godin does.

01:23:49

I think sometimes it would be very easy for him to put something out.

01:23:52

It's a thousand words to cover a topic, but he forces himself to keep it to like 250.

01:23:58

But I think you end up with better art when you're done.

01:24:00

If you want to call it art.

01:24:01

Yeah, that makes a ton of sense.

01:24:03

Another example of this is music.

01:24:05

I mean, I play on the worship team at my church.

01:24:08

And I can tell you from personal experience that when people are changing keys and no

01:24:14

ones paying attention to the time signature, that's when things go south.

01:24:18

When everybody is locked in together, that actually makes it a lot easier to create and

01:24:25

do new things and to go kind of off the page.

01:24:29

So sometimes that's just knowing the key that you're in.

01:24:32

A lot of times that is knowing the chord progression.

01:24:36

But whatever sorts of constraints that you have, that actually produces a better result

01:24:44

in the moment that those things are gone.

01:24:46

You're sitting there wondering like, how do I contribute?

01:24:50

You can't.

01:24:51

Yeah.

01:24:52

Right.

01:24:53

Because you don't know where to fit in.

01:24:54

You're going to kill the whole atmosphere.

01:24:59

Everybody's going one direction and Mike's over here and he's doing this guitar solo

01:25:04

in a different key.

01:25:05

That's not going to work.

01:25:07

It doesn't fit at all.

01:25:10

No.

01:25:11

No.

01:25:12

So I like this idea of seeking out the constraints.

01:25:15

This I think supports my action item of heaven that hour for writing and capping at an hour.

01:25:21

I feel like that is going to produce more in terms of quantity in addition to just the

01:25:29

quality.

01:25:31

And that feels like to your point, very counterintuitive because whenever you put a constraint

01:25:37

on something, you feel like, oh, well, my options are limited.

01:25:41

They are in a sense, like going back to the music example, I don't have every single note

01:25:48

that I could possibly play available to me when I am in a specific key or mode.

01:25:56

But that actually allows me as a creator or musician to do more with it.

01:26:02

And it's impossible to explain how that actually works until you get there and you start doing

01:26:08

it.

01:26:09

Yeah.

01:26:10

A similar, you know, if you want to go into like musical production, I'm on the other

01:26:13

side of the instruments whenever I do things.

01:26:17

So I'm on the opposite end of that cable.

01:26:19

Mike plugs into the sound system and then I'm running the sound system.

01:26:22

But it's a bit of a creative process to figure out how to plug all that stuff in sometimes.

01:26:30

In my specific scenario when we're doing full on productions, I don't have unlimited outputs.

01:26:36

I don't have unlimited inputs.

01:26:38

I can't mic a guitar four different ways to, you know, fix it four different ways.

01:26:43

I only have one so I can only do so much with it.

01:26:47

So like there's a lot of like it forces you to come up with interesting ways to build

01:26:53

an entire production.

01:26:55

And that's just a sound system.

01:26:56

If you want to think of like a live stream production for a Sunday morning service, throw

01:27:01

video, throw lighting, throw, you know, slides, lyrics on the screen, you start putting all

01:27:08

that stuff together.

01:27:10

And in transitions, there's so many different ways you could do that.

01:27:15

But if you say, I'm only going to allow two lines on a screen at a time, two like lyrical

01:27:21

lines at a time, it then forces you to choose how to break up a song correctly.

01:27:26

But you only have certain boundaries within which you can do that.

01:27:29

So anyway, there's so many different ways this comes out.

01:27:31

I love this concept.

01:27:32

It's one that I've adopted for a long time.

01:27:36

The other application of this, I think, is the belief that when you have the right tools,

01:27:43

you will be able to create.

01:27:45

That's kind of that odds with this whole constraints idea.

01:27:48

Eric Clapton with a squier strat is more creative than me with every single guitar effect,

01:27:56

whatever that I have at my disposal.

01:27:59

And that just shows that it's not the tools and that's like a limiting belief a lot of

01:28:03

times.

01:28:04

And it can not just be music, it can be video stuff.

01:28:08

I was talking to somebody just the other day and they're like, "Oh, I want to grow my

01:28:12

YouTube channel, but I really need to be able to do this with my videos and I need this

01:28:18

gear in order to...

01:28:19

No, you don't.

01:28:20

Just ship it.

01:28:21

Yep.

01:28:22

Do it over and over and over again."

01:28:23

And yeah, that type of stuff would make it better.

01:28:26

But if you can't afford those tools right now, don't let that stop you from doing your

01:28:32

thing and publishing your work because if that really is like a benefit to be had,

01:28:39

you can add it down the road.

01:28:40

But in the meantime, the real valuable thing is not to assess point throughout this whole

01:28:45

book is not that you get it perfect, but that you get it out there.

01:28:48

Yep.

01:28:49

Because you know, you're shipping creative work.

01:28:51

That's the goal.

01:28:52

Yeah.

01:28:53

One last thing on that point, by the way, 215, trust the process makes a point that we don't

01:28:58

ship to win.

01:28:59

We do it to contribute.

01:29:01

So whether it is a piece of music that you want to create or a video like I was talking

01:29:06

about with all these overlays and things, like yeah, maybe the perfect version of it,

01:29:11

the one that you think is going to help you win is this ideal in your head and you can't

01:29:16

get there yet, then don't worry about that because you're really not going to win with

01:29:21

any one thing that you're going to ship anyways.

01:29:24

He says that your work will never be good enough for everyone, but it's already good

01:29:27

enough for someone.

01:29:28

And so yeah, maybe that overlay thing like that would put it over the top in your head,

01:29:33

but for somebody else who needs what you have, it does not matter.

01:29:37

So just get it out there.

01:29:39

Yep.

01:29:40

Exactly.

01:29:41

What else do you want to say about this one, Mike?

01:29:43

That's it.

01:29:44

I thought the little essays at the end were kind of awkward.

01:29:47

Yep.

01:29:48

Very awkward after the rest of the book was very put together.

01:29:51

Yeah.

01:29:52

Really.

01:29:53

I loved section 218 Tuesdays in the anthropology department.

01:29:57

He talks about how he got invited to this meeting and challenged by this person who sounds

01:30:04

kind of like a mentor to Seth back in the day who like pulled excellence out of him.

01:30:10

That was a detail that I had never heard anywhere else before.

01:30:14

And I don't think it's necessary to have that sort of event happen to you, but I like

01:30:21

that.

01:30:22

And this is why this is kind of after the content of the book.

01:30:26

It challenges me to do that sort of thing for other people.

01:30:30

Sure.

01:30:31

You know, I'm in a position where I don't have it all figured out.

01:30:36

And in a lot of ways, I'm not a professional, but in some people's eyes, I am a professional.

01:30:41

And they're looking up to me and me reaching out to them and helping them with their thing.

01:30:46

Like that means the world to them.

01:30:49

So how can I bring people into the Tuesdays in the anthropology department in my own sphere?

01:30:54

Yep.

01:30:55

But well, I have two action items from this conversation that I need to work on before

01:31:03

our two week accountability session begins.

01:31:06

And well, the first of those is deciding who I'm doing my practice for.

01:31:12

So defining who my audience members are.

01:31:15

The second of which is when is this practice going to happen?

01:31:19

Now I have it kind of fitting in day to day already, but I have not formalized that.

01:31:25

So I'm essentially taking something that I've been doing kind of haphazardly and formalizing

01:31:30

it.

01:31:31

Those are my two, Mike.

01:31:32

We'll see what comes of them.

01:31:34

All right.

01:31:36

I technically have two, but they are linked together.

01:31:40

So one is to find my hour for writing every day.

01:31:43

And then the second one, which that one is in support of is to publish every day.

01:31:49

And again, I hesitate to share that publicly.

01:31:53

Yeah.

01:31:54

Yeah.

01:31:55

Yep.

01:31:56

Well, that brings us to style and rating.

01:31:59

Yeah, I suppose it's my pick.

01:32:01

So I have to go first this time.

01:32:02

I can't just follow you.

01:32:04

As far as Seth Godin style goes, it's Seth Godin.

01:32:07

I mean, it's dense when you're talking about what he's sharing, it's always dense.

01:32:14

It's very rare that you run across a section that it feels fluffy and that there were unnecessary

01:32:19

sentences.

01:32:20

It just doesn't happen.

01:32:21

He mixes up sentence length.

01:32:22

He mixes up stories with explanations of stories with his own assertions.

01:32:29

Like he's a master at this.

01:32:33

And it's very, very easy to read this.

01:32:38

And I found it was very easy to get in in grossed in it.

01:32:41

So great book, as far as sitting down and reading it, it was a very quick read for me.

01:32:47

Some of that's because I'm just fascinated by Seth Godin and his ways.

01:32:50

So there's definitely that aspect of it.

01:32:52

Some of that is because you didn't have to write down every single essay title in a

01:32:56

minor file.

01:32:57

It's true.

01:32:58

This is where Joe's pen and paper note taking system is amazing because I'm like, oh, that

01:33:04

was interesting.

01:33:05

Okay, what's next?

01:33:06

I don't have to sit and write every title down.

01:33:11

I just write page number.

01:33:13

Here's what I think.

01:33:14

That's all I do.

01:33:17

So that all not being an issue.

01:33:20

I loved going through this.

01:33:22

As far as how to read it, I don't think this goes up into the five oh territory.

01:33:28

It's definitely a motivational book, which I feel like is hitting me at the right time.

01:33:33

So I have to be a little careful with that because I tend to want to write things higher

01:33:35

when they resonate time wise.

01:33:38

So that's one aspect of it.

01:33:41

I think it is a little bit repetitive in some aspects.

01:33:47

At least maybe my interpretation of things becomes a little bit repetitive because we're

01:33:52

talking about the professional and no such thing as writer's block, earn your skills.

01:33:58

Those three sections really come down to show up and do the work.

01:34:03

And that's when you listen to this, that's how we summarize those.

01:34:07

Now there are nuances between those and the mindsets he's getting at between those are

01:34:12

different.

01:34:13

So I have to be a little careful with that.

01:34:16

So I don't think this hits five oh territory, but as far as my opinion of it and when I would

01:34:23

recommend it to people, like if you're trying to build some form of a creative routine or

01:34:28

habit, this is a go to, I would say, like it has a lot of the core motivational statements

01:34:36

and the core practice.

01:34:40

And what's behind those habits and routines, like it has all of that stuff in it.

01:34:43

So it's a really good like consolidated way of looking at these things coming from like

01:34:48

the Stephen Pressfield background and such.

01:34:50

So like there is a lot of solid stuff in here.

01:34:52

I'm going to put it at 4.5.

01:34:54

I feel like it fits that really well.

01:34:56

Again, I don't think it goes all the way to five oh, but as far as like a motivational

01:35:00

let me get all of the stuff that goes around building a creative practice.

01:35:04

This is solid for certain.

01:35:06

All right.

01:35:09

Well, I don't know.

01:35:13

This is difficult.

01:35:14

I felt well, first of all, let's just talk about the style.

01:35:17

I guess I love Seth Godin's style as annoying as it was to make this my node file.

01:35:25

You inflict this pain on yourself.

01:35:27

That is true.

01:35:28

I do it for the bookworms.

01:35:30

So if I had not taken the approach of I want to create this for posterity and be able to

01:35:38

like go back and reference this later.

01:35:41

I can totally see getting engrossed in this.

01:35:44

I just had to stop every page basically and jot down something else in the file.

01:35:51

However, if you were to read this as like a storybook sort of thing, just getting grossed

01:35:57

in it, I feel like you would engage with it very easily.

01:36:04

No matter who you are or what your perspective is, your background is when you come into this.

01:36:10

The title, Chipping Creative Work, I looked at that and I was like, "Oh, this book is for

01:36:17

Joe and I."

01:36:18

But I feel like it's a little bit deceiving because really it's a book for anyone.

01:36:24

And I would absolutely recommend it for anyone.

01:36:29

I love his style.

01:36:31

He is such a brilliant guy, but it's not like you read one of those academic books, maybe

01:36:37

like the one we're going to get into next.

01:36:39

I don't know.

01:36:41

And it feels like they're talking over your head or you have to go slow in order to understand

01:36:47

how profound what they're saying is.

01:36:50

Seth Godin is a master at this.

01:36:52

I don't even know how to explain it.

01:36:54

He is a brilliant guy, but he communicates in a way where even if you don't consider

01:37:01

yourself an intellectual, you can sit down and instantly understand what he is talking

01:37:05

about.

01:37:06

The stories that he tells in this book are amazing, but the way he tells them, it's...

01:37:12

I mean, there's 200-something little essays here and almost every single one has a story

01:37:17

that goes with it.

01:37:18

So it would be very easy to include all these additional details.

01:37:22

And this book is three times as long, but he teases out the exact details that you need

01:37:28

to understand the points that he is making.

01:37:32

And none of these stories...

01:37:33

Yeah, none of the none, literally zero of these stories, I was like, "Well, I don't

01:37:38

really get what he's saying here."

01:37:40

He is a phenomenally effective communicator.

01:37:45

And I also feel that this book, you could go back through this immediately and get twice

01:37:52

as much from it.

01:37:54

So I think I have to rate this five stars.

01:38:00

I hesitate to do so because we went through the episode 100 and we redid some rankings.

01:38:07

And I feel like as I went through that, my tendency was to, at the beginning, a bookworm

01:38:14

rate things too high and then I look back on it later and I kind of regret that.

01:38:18

And this is not a Victor Frankl man's search for meaning type book.

01:38:26

But it doesn't have to be.

01:38:30

I do feel like for someone like my past self who is struggling to think of themselves

01:38:37

as a creative, had I read this book back then, it might have had the same effect and maybe

01:38:43

even more of an effect than the Austin Cleon one did.

01:38:47

I can see this book completely changing people's lives.

01:38:53

And that sounds a little bit sensational considering a lot of his other books are about marketing

01:38:58

and things like marketing, changing people's lives.

01:39:02

I don't know.

01:39:03

I could be proven wrong over time with that.

01:39:06

But I don't think I am.

01:39:08

I think this is a great book as long as you go into it with an open mind.

01:39:16

If you go into it thinking, "Oh, Seth is Seth and he's a special snowflake and there's

01:39:20

no way I can be like him," then you're right.

01:39:22

Everything he's going to say in here is going to change your mind.

01:39:25

But if you go into it thinking, "I want to learn from one of the best."

01:39:30

There is tons of practical stuff in here.

01:39:32

There's tons of motivational stuff in here.

01:39:33

There's tons of inspirational stuff in here.

01:39:36

There's even some tactics in here.

01:39:39

It's not primarily what he's trying to do here.

01:39:42

But I feel like he very effectively speaks to the creative process even more so than Stephen

01:39:48

Pressfield did in the War of Art in my opinion.

01:39:50

Sure.

01:39:51

Well, I was not expecting that.

01:39:53

I didn't think you'd go all the way to Five-O.

01:39:55

I don't think I was either.

01:39:57

It's a good book.

01:39:59

Cool, cool.

01:40:00

It's a solid one.

01:40:01

All right, let's put it on the shelf.

01:40:02

What's next, Mike?

01:40:04

Next is Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam, a 500-something page tome, which is a very academic

01:40:12

book.

01:40:13

But it's got lots of charts.

01:40:16

So I'm hoping.

01:40:19

The basic idea is, and this is the one I have as the 20th anniversary one.

01:40:24

So he wrote it initially in 2000.

01:40:27

And so he's revisiting some of the ideas that he posed there.

01:40:30

And basically, it's talking about American society specifically about how we tend to

01:40:38

be loners and hopefully what we can do about it.

01:40:43

I think this is an interesting topic, especially given where we are right now with all the

01:40:48

COVID stuff.

01:40:49

So forced loners.

01:40:51

Yep.

01:40:52

Interesting.

01:40:53

Well, the one after this, have I told you, I don't have this in the outline.

01:40:58

You don't know what this is.

01:40:59

I don't.

01:41:00

It just occurred to me.

01:41:01

All right, the next one is a book from 2017.

01:41:06

Lead Yourself First by Raymond Kethledge.

01:41:10

The tagline on this is "Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude," which I think will be interesting.

01:41:14

It's rated very well on Amazon.

01:41:16

We'll see what comes of it.

01:41:18

All right.

01:41:19

There's an introduction to it written by Jim Collins.

01:41:23

So he's got a new book out too, by the way.

01:41:25

Oh, he does.

01:41:26

What is it?

01:41:27

Yeah.

01:41:28

I think it's BE, like BE 2.0.

01:41:30

Okay.

01:41:31

There you go.

01:41:32

Got a gap book this time around?

01:41:33

Probably not.

01:41:34

I would say it would boil on.

01:41:36

I'm going to tackle bowling alone first.

01:41:39

Yeah.

01:41:40

I mean, I've got a couple of them sitting right here.

01:41:43

Just hesitate to share them because I'm not probably going to get through them.

01:41:47

Sure.

01:41:48

Makes sense.

01:41:49

All right.

01:41:50

Well, thanks.

01:41:51

Thank you to everyone who's been listening and those of you who are in Twitch stream with

01:41:57

us today.

01:41:58

If you are interested in joining us on those, we'll do our best to post when we're doing

01:42:03

the recordings.

01:42:04

Usually, at least get it out day of, but Bookworm.fm/live will take you to the live video recording.

01:42:11

So also, we're always very, very grateful to those of you who have joined the Bookworm

01:42:18

memberships and that, you know, it's five bucks a month.

01:42:22

Helps significantly with like hosting fees and such.

01:42:26

So thank you so much to those of you who have been doing that, helps us buy a coffee, keep,

01:42:30

you know, buying the books we're doing for the show.

01:42:34

So thank you to those of you who are on that team and that club.

01:42:38

If you're interested in joining that club, go to bookworm.fm/membership and it will walk

01:42:44

you through the process of joining that.

01:42:46

And once you get through all of that, it's not just paying our hosting fees, but you do

01:42:51

get access to these ridiculous mind map files that Mike makes.

01:42:56

And there's a handful of other perks to like special wallpapers, some old gap book episodes

01:43:00

I did a while back.

01:43:01

So there's some extra perks in it for you as well.

01:43:05

So yes, you do get a full, what is it, 105, 105 mind maps that you've done now?

01:43:12

That's more than that.

01:43:13

There's some gap book ones in there too.

01:43:15

Oh, that's right.

01:43:16

It's ridiculous how many mind maps are in there.

01:43:18

So if you want to skip reading the book, Mike's got it all done for you.

01:43:23

I got your back.

01:43:24

Go team.

01:43:25

All right.

01:43:26

So if you're reading along with us, pick up Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam and we will

01:43:32

talk to you in a couple of weeks.