Bookworm Transcripts

00:00:00

A little nervous about today's episode, Mike.

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-Yes, why is that?

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-Because these things are so short and there are so many different little tidbits that I have no idea how we're going to cover today's book.

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-It will be interesting.

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It will be even more interesting trying to figure out where the chapters should be.

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-Yes.

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-But I guess that's my problem or Toby's problem.

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[laughter]

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-Good luck, Toby.

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This episode is going to be your test.

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We'll see how well you do with a ridiculous episode.

00:00:32

-Yes.

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-But before we get there, I was looking through our action item list from last episode and noticed there were none.

00:00:41

Remember that, yes, there were none.

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That means we have no real follow-up that I can recall.

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Unless you have something that you want to go over before we jump in here.

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-I actually have a couple of things I would love to mention if we have a space.

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-Yes, we do.

00:00:59

Absolutely.

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-The first thing is that September is National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and the relay team,

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which I am a part of, you are adjacent to, is raising funds for St. Jude Children's Hospital.

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This is a very worthwhile cause.

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I found out some new stuff from this campaign where the most common form of childhood cancer

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ends up costing over $200,000 on average.

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What makes St. Jude amazing is that none of the families of the kids that are treated there have to pay a dime.

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The treatment is free.

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The travel is free.

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The food, the accommodations, everything St. Jude just takes care of it.

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Which makes sense when you think about it from the family's perspective.

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You would really appreciate that, right?

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Because your kid is dying.

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You want to keep them alive.

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That's your whole focus.

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Who cares how much it costs, but in the back of your mind you're thinking about all those bills that are going to come do.

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And with St. Jude, none of that pressure is there.

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They have increased the survival rate for childhood cancer from 20% to 80% in the time that they've been open.

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And they're a research hospital so they share everything that they discover with everybody else.

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It's like open source childhood cancer prevention, which is pretty incredible.

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It's like all the things.

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Like everything you could possibly want out of that.

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That's them.

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Yeah, it's really an incredible place.

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And it means a lot to me because Stephen Hackett, one of the co-founders of the Relay Network who I have gotten to know over the last several years.

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He's had to go through this with his son Josiah.

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I've got a link which I'll put in the show notes to a post that he wrote two years after they found out about Josiah's diagnosis.

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And I teared up reading that even though I wasn't there and I didn't have to go through it.

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Just having to think about that stuff.

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It hurts.

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And Josiah is doing great now and it's really cool to see.

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He's now classified as a cancer survivor.

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And 80% of the cost to keep St. Jude running comes from fundraising efforts like this.

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So if you've got $1000, if you've got a single dollar, it doesn't matter.

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I would just ask that you consider donating something.

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I've done it every single year.

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My wife and I are going to do it again.

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And if you want to get involved, you can go to stjude.org/relay.

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As part of the fundraising for this, as we record this, is yet to have happened.

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If you're listening to this the day gets recorded, make sure you're paying attention to the podcastathon.

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It's happening on September 17th.

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We'll probably have a video of it after the fact.

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But they are again doing the game show stuff with Jason Snow.

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And I got to participate in a relay FM host, Baldur Dash.

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Nice.

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I did not do very well, but it was a lot of fun.

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Spoiler alert.

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But I suppose this will be out after it's done.

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Yeah.

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So there you go.

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So check that out.

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The podcastathon is like a big, long podcast livestream that Stephen and Mike do and they

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have a bunch of other people helping out with it.

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So I was fortunate that I got to participate this time.

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And yeah, it was a lot of fun.

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That's going to be broken into a couple different segments throughout the podcastathon.

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So check that out.

00:04:32

One other non-serious and way more fun thing I have to talk to you about Jobeleg.

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Do you know what this is?

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It's a key switch.

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Are these holy pandas?

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What are these?

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It doesn't look like a panda.

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No, this is the Zilios V2.

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Okay.

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And I have a box of them right over here.

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Okay.

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Which...

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And you have a hot swapable keyboard.

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Well, yes, true.

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But there is another keyboard on the way.

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Of course.

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Of course.

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And what is it?

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It's a keychron Q1.

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So this is the new one that they came out with.

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It's the same size as the K2.

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So the one MKBHD made popular.

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Same layout.

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Yep.

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Got the full function rows at the top but doesn't have all the stuff on the side.

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It is also gasket mounted and programmable.

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So basically all the fancy stuff that you would get in like the GMMK Pro.

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Yep.

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But at $150 less.

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Nice.

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So yeah, I got the bare bones kit as a birthday gift.

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My wife knows not to get me anything without talking to me, I guess.

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I'm not sure I feel great about that.

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So what do you want for your birthday?

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I'm like, "Well, there is this one thing."

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I'm keeping an eye on you.

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Oh, you want the keyboard?

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yes.

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Yes.

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In fact, I would.

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Yeah.

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So yeah, the keyboard is yet to ship.

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But it from, I've seen some different reviews and stuff.

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And basically this is like next level key-cron stuff.

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It's debatable whether even I will notice the difference with this new keyboard.

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But we're going to give it a shot.

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I have learned that some of these keyboards, unless you are borderline making a living

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off of feeling nuances and keyboards.

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You're probably not going to notice the difference.

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That's just kind of what I've learned.

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Unless you do this all the time and pay super close attention to it, you're probably not

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going to catch it on a large number of these.

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So yeah, I get it.

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I get it.

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I don't know.

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I think my next keyboard is probably a custom build, but that's what we call expensive.

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See, I'm resisting that with every fiber of my being, and I'm hoping I don't end up

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in that place.

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I've already gone down that route with Bluetooth noise canceling headphones where I tried

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like eight different kinds before I finally just bit the bullet and bought the QC35s,

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which were the big deal when they came out.

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Now there's a bunch of other really great options.

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But at the time, you know, you would always, there was that one and then everything else.

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And I tried literally everything else.

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Yep, I hear you.

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These Zileos though, these are nice.

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I like the bump is more at the top and it feels a little bit more rounded than the Holy Pandas.

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They're tactile, right?

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They're not linear.

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They are tactile.

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Well, if they've got a bump then yes.

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Correct.

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But they're not clicky and they're way better than the Gatoron Browns that ship with the

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keycron stuff.

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Yeah, that's what mine has.

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The one sitting in front of me, Gatoron Browns are my dailies right now.

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I say that and I've got a keyboard.

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I don't even know where it's at now.

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It's probably in a storage unit somewhere that has the MX, the Cherry Browns in it.

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So that one has not been used in quite some time.

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But I am slowly realizing that despite everybody going to 60% keyboards and 80% keyboards, the

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one I have in front of me is a 10 keyless.

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And I don't like it.

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I want my 10 key back.

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So I think I will probably forever and always be buying full size keyboards, which is a

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monster on the desk.

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Exactly.

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But for whatever reason that keypad is something I tend to want regularly.

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I don't know what that is.

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Well, the keypad is nice and you can do all sorts of cool automation stuff with that keypad.

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But yeah, it definitely takes up a ton of room on the desk.

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So I don't think I could make it fit.

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My desk is pretty cluttered.

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Yeah.

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You know what I probably should do?

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I've got this stream deck in front of me.

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I could probably make a page for a keypad and then use it for that.

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There you go.

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I don't know.

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It would work, I think.

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So anyway, today's book has it.

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Well, let me back up.

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Today's book is Daily Rituals by Mason Curry.

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And this book is basically a quick snapshot of great artists from like the last, I would

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say probably the last 400, sometimes 500 years or so.

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It's meaning painters, writers, philosophers in some case, poets and the like.

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And what were their daily rituals?

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What were their routines?

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What were the things, their idiosyncrasies and such?

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And there are a lot in here.

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I didn't count them.

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Do you know how many are covered in this book?

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It's got to be over a hundred would be my assumption, but I don't know what that number

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is.

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There's a lot of artists covered in this book.

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And I had the great opportunity to make an attempt to try to figure out how to go through

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all of this process and determine what this was going to look like, like what this whole

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episode was going to look like.

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So going through this, I was trying to determine like, how are we going to go through this

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whole process, this whole book?

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It's like there's no way we're going to be able to cover every single artist in this

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book.

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So I've got two sections here because I didn't want three and I have a bank of like specific

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people for us to jump through.

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And in most of those cases, I have one, two, in some cases, three little points about that

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person and what it was that they did or what their life was like that we could talk about.

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But then I also have a bank of like themes that I was starting to notice as I went through

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this.

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And probably where I think we'll spend a little more time, I feel like walking through this

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specific artist is probably going to be somewhat quick, but I don't know.

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Some of these are like one paragraph long.

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Some of these are two or three pages long, but they're usually not beyond that.

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They're fairly short sections.

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Anyway, super interesting.

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I was fascinated by a lot of these rituals.

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And I think this was a gap book of yours a while back, right?

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How long has that been since you did this for a gap book?

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It was.

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I don't remember exactly.

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If I had to guess probably about eight to 10 months, but just like when I read it as

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a gap book, I started to do my mind map and then realized there was no way I was going

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to be able to do that for this.

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So sorry team, no mind node file for this one because I literally would have rewritten

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the entire book.

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Yeah, it's intense.

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It would have been at least 85% of the volume of this book because they're very, some of

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the descriptions are very, very short.

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Most of them, I would argue there's not a whole lot of fluff in this one.

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Sure.

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Yeah.

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No, it's so true because I was, I was putting together like I've, I've got a note file where

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I was writing things down about each person so that I could try to take that and then

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somehow find themes across each of these people and realized that that was going to become

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an enormous file and it was taking me longer to build the file than it was to read the

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book by a significant margin.

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And this is the absolute wrong time in Joe's life for that to happen.

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So it was not going to get through all of that.

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I think it was, what was it?

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Mid late.

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Yeah.

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And then last week, whenever I was probably about a third of the way through the book and

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going through that process and thought, "Uh-uh, I'm not going to get anywhere close to done

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in time for us to record this."

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And then I ended up needing to put this off.

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We were going to record this past Friday and needed to put it off and barely got it done.

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I finished it this morning.

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I'll say that.

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So, super fun.

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Just like some of these people, by the way, you work better with the deadline it seems.

00:13:14

Yes.

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Absolutely.

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Absolutely.

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100%.

00:13:18

So, let's just jump in with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

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I figured this would be a good place to start.

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And I'm just kind of walking through the book itself.

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But I did not realize that Mozart was such a chaotic person.

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Like, I don't know why that is, but for some reason in my head, Mozart was someone who

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was very organized, very ritualized and very on top of things.

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And yet, he was just pure chaos, just pure chaos.

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And when I say that, basically, he ends up marrying someone who his wife's parents did

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not approve of him at all.

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And it was just a rough, rough go being able to get married.

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And what did he even say here?

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He cannot rely on being able to compose in the evening owing to the concerts which are

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taking place.

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So, because he was doing all the concerts and stuff.

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So, he couldn't compose.

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But then he's staying up late in order to compose.

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Anyway, Mozart.

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Yeah, that was the interesting thing about this one the first time I read it.

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And I was reminded of it when I read it again.

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Mozart is one of those people that you would think of.

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This guy was brilliant.

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Just look at, and maybe it says my perspective because I grew up playing classical violin.

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So, I have played a lot of Mozart pieces.

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Not well, because they are very technical.

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This guy was a genius.

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And you would think, from my perspective, I always thought he must have just been completely

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devoted to composing.

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But he totally was, composing was a side hustle for him.

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He was trying to pay the bills with all the other stuff.

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And I remember first time I read it, kind of being blown away that this was essentially

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a side project for him.

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And you think when you realize that how much more would he have been able to contribute

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to the world had he been able to be fully focused on it.

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But then also, I think maybe that's the wrong perspective to have.

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Maybe the perspective to take away from that is, well, if you could do that, you know,

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if you could do all of this stuff on the side, then it's not too late for me either.

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Yeah, and that's a good point because I know how many of us have side hustles, right?

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And we tend to think that you can only spend so much time on them.

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And so many of the productivity people like us will tell you that things like sleep and

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mindfulness and such are really important.

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And you need to make those a regular routine.

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And yet you've got, and we'll talk about this, folks here who do their best work after their

00:16:07

day job, after the kids are in bed, and then get up early the next morning and go to work.

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Like, it's just a thing that continues to come up, whether you think that's the right

00:16:18

way to do it or not is totally up to you, but that's just the way that some of these

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people did it.

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And Mozart was one of those.

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He had all of his concerts and, you know, his house parties and things he needed to do

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in order to get the income he needed to keep doing what he was doing.

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And then some time had to compose the works that were actually driving all of the concerts

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and the house parties and such.

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So yes, very, very difficult to pull off.

00:16:47

Let's let's go.

00:16:48

I really want to talk about Kierkegaard.

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I really, really, really want to talk about Kierkegaard.

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So Soren Kierkegaard, Kierkegaard, if I could get that out of my mouth, had some very strange

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coffee habits.

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Do you approve of his coffee habits?

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I'm going to read this because I cannot do this justice if I summarize it and it will

00:17:07

be faster if I just read it.

00:17:08

Okay?

00:17:09

You ready for this?

00:17:10

Kierkegaard had his own quite peculiar way of having coffee.

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Delightedly, he seized hold of the bag containing the sugar and poured sugar into the coffee

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cup until it was piled up above the rim.

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Next came the incredibly strong black coffee, which slowly dissolved the white pyramid.

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The process was scarcely finished before the syrupy stimulant disappeared into the magister's

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stomach where it mingled with the sherry to produce additional energy that percolated

00:17:37

up into his seething and bubbling brain, which in any case had already been so productive

00:17:41

all day that in the half-light, Levin, which was his cohort, could still notice the tingling

00:17:47

and throbbing in the overworked fingers when they grasped the slender handle of the cup.

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He also had sherry before he had his coffee if you didn't catch that particular part there,

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but the concept of filling a coffee cup with sugar and then pouring your coffee into it,

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I'm not sure it qualifies as coffee anymore.

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Disgusting.

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No, I do not approve.

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I will forever see Kierkegaard's name tainted because of this.

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The number of times that I see his name with quotes, and then yes, I'm just not going to

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be able to see him the same way.

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It's like, I don't trust your coffee habits.

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I'm not sure I trust you anymore.

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Yeah, that's the kind of detail that is really fascinating with some of these stories.

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I feel towards the end of the book, you start to lose some of that and it kind of morphs

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into this person got up at this time and went to bed at that time in the middle of the day

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they took a nap.

00:18:47

Yes.

00:18:48

Yes.

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They were more ridiculous stories like this sprinkled throughout.

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I mean, there are some, but I feel like he gave us a lot more of those at the beginning.

00:18:59

Yeah, which makes sense.

00:19:01

That's what I would do if I was working with a limited number of interesting routines.

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The very next one is one that I liked, that is Benjamin Franklin.

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Do you know why I liked Benjamin Franklin?

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Benjamin Franklin had his time-blocked day.

00:19:19

Exactly.

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That's kind of the classic that people have from him.

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Yes.

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Yeah, they have a picture of his daily routine from an autobiography.

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I'm assuming this is not his actual time-blocked plan from his own typewriter, but I thought

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that was cool.

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It would be impressive though.

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Yeah.

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I do like that though.

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I had seen that picture before.

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I don't know exactly where it was, but I had heard about, I had seen that when I had

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heard about time-blocking and being tied to Benjamin Franklin's routine, but I felt like

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that was a really cool detail and I'm glad that Mason Curry put that in the book.

00:20:01

Yeah.

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There are not a lot of pictures in the book, but there are some of the artists in most

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cases.

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I think this is one of the few where it's a picture of the routine itself laid out.

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I've seen this before.

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I think it's from Brett McKay over Art of Mainliness.

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I know he's got a thing where Benjamin Franklin has a whole notebook of sorts, I think it's

00:20:27

devoted to Franklin and I think this is in it.

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So I'm not certain on that, so don't quote me on that piece, but I think that's where

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I've seen it before.

00:20:36

Sure.

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The other thing with Benjamin Franklin, which this is where he loses me, is he's got his

00:20:41

12 virtues and he focused on one a month and the thought was by the end of the year, then

00:20:47

he'd be good.

00:20:48

Yep.

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It's a little bit more complicated than that.

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He didn't say it exactly that way, but basically there was an element of that, like, I'm going

00:20:56

to focus on this and I'm going to get it good and then I'm going to focus on the next

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one.

00:21:01

And so I don't think he ever thought he was going to be completely virtuous, achieved

00:21:06

a maximum virtuosity, but that is kind of implied with the strategy as outlined in this

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book.

00:21:13

That's not like, as soon as I heard that, well, that's not quite how that works, but

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okay.

00:21:20

Yeah, so I had his air baths, which was weird to me, like getting up early and sitting in

00:21:25

his chamber without any clothes on for a while.

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He's a different kind of dude.

00:21:30

That's strange.

00:21:31

That's some of those strange things that are in here.

00:21:33

Speaking of strange, Sigmund Freud, I don't know if I need to say much more about Freud,

00:21:40

but he, two things that were kind of strange to me.

00:21:43

I didn't know he was basically a chain smoking cigar man.

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I did not know that, but he had a ton, like he was basically on a cigar all day, every

00:21:55

day.

00:21:56

Freud had a barber come to his house every single day to trim his beard.

00:22:02

He had a barber that would do house calls, and he came and trimmed his beard every single

00:22:07

day.

00:22:08

That's all.

00:22:09

I just wanted to point that out.

00:22:11

Yeah.

00:22:12

Freud.

00:22:13

No one has to come trim my beard, so I can't relate to the Freud with that.

00:22:20

I mean, I would appreciate it if somebody did it for me, but honestly, it's quick, so I'll

00:22:26

do it.

00:22:27

It's fine.

00:22:28

Oh, I suppose that was probably before like the electric trimmers and such.

00:22:31

Who knows?

00:22:32

Uh, Carl Jung, we're moving forward here.

00:22:35

I'm just going to kind of keep moving because I feel like, again, the themes will be kind

00:22:38

of the fun part, but Carl Jung has a quote that I thought was interesting because he,

00:22:45

he was one of these workaholic people's.

00:22:47

It's a fairly common theme through this is a lot of these artists ran themselves ragged,

00:22:52

but Carl Jung had a quote in here.

00:22:55

I've realized somebody who's tired and needs a rest and goes on working all the same is

00:23:00

a fool.

00:23:01

I thought that was, you know, I mean, it's a, it makes sense whenever you hear it, but

00:23:08

at the same time, if you read this short story about Carl Jung, you realize that the man

00:23:16

was working ridiculous hours and did things even outside of his working hours, built a

00:23:22

primitive house such that he had to go down and grab buckets of water and boil his water.

00:23:29

And keep in mind, this is in the mid 1900s, like 1950, 1960, like this isn't 1600s, but

00:23:38

he still would take care of things as they were centuries before the time when he built

00:23:45

this house.

00:23:46

And yet despite all of that, he was still willing to take the breaks and try to make

00:23:53

sure that he got the rest that he needed.

00:24:03

True.

00:24:04

He wasn't up super early, like some of the other people.

00:24:07

Seven AM least doesn't seem super early to me, but so does this primitive lifestyle

00:24:14

have any appeal to you, Joe Bealeg?

00:24:16

Kind of sort of maybe.

00:24:18

I figured it might.

00:24:21

So partially because I just bought a house that's got some kind of primitive stuff to

00:24:26

it, I'm yet to determine what my internet situation is going to be.

00:24:31

That's here in a couple of weeks when I'll nail that down.

00:24:33

Oh boy.

00:24:34

Yeah, we'll see what I land on with that.

00:24:38

The highest internet speed I've been quoted that's hard-lined is a one-meg connection.

00:24:43

So that's after calling 12 different companies.

00:24:48

So yeah, it'll be fast internet for sure.

00:24:55

So we're not recording bookworm from home.

00:24:58

No, unless it threw a phone call, it won't happen from there.

00:25:03

I will not be live streaming from that place most likely.

00:25:08

So anyway, yes, I have some primitive tendencies.

00:25:14

I've been cutting up fallen trees and stuff and I need to get an axe at this point because

00:25:20

I got to cut stuff up for firewood and stuff and my wife is super into having chickens

00:25:26

next year.

00:25:27

Yeah, there's a lot of that happening, I guess.

00:25:31

So when I was reading this, it's like, oh, that sounds really nice.

00:25:35

And it's like, yep, that would terrify a lot of people.

00:25:37

I'm very aware of that.

00:25:40

There's a lot of these routines that would terrify a lot of people.

00:25:44

A lot of optimizing everything for the act of creating and then going to bed immediately

00:25:49

afterwards.

00:25:50

Yeah.

00:25:51

There's a lot of people who don't fit that mold too, which is kind of an interesting

00:25:54

thing about the book in general.

00:25:55

There's so many different styles here.

00:25:57

Yeah, and if, I mean, you were talking about 7 a.m. not being super early, if you want

00:26:02

somebody who is up super early, let's go to Hemingway.

00:26:06

And Hemingway was up by 5.30.

00:26:07

Though I suppose I wouldn't count as super, super early.

00:26:10

There were some in here that were up by 4 a.m. every day, and that was their routine.

00:26:15

But Hemingway was up by 5.30.

00:26:18

He's kind of the classic, methodical, ritualized, structured writer and had some tracking that

00:26:27

he did for his word counts so that he could figure out if he was not.

00:26:33

He wanted to make sure he wasn't fooling himself and thinking he was writing a lot more than

00:26:36

he actually was.

00:26:38

But yes, he was up early.

00:26:40

And even if he had been up late drinking the night before, he was still up early.

00:26:45

And his son Gregory said that he always looked great, even if he had been up drinking the

00:26:51

night before.

00:26:52

He seemed like he was immune to hangovers was what his son said.

00:26:56

But yes, he was one of these guys who had a super regular process.

00:27:03

And he did not sharpen 22 pencils, Mike, before he started writing.

00:27:07

I did catch that detail.

00:27:09

Yeah, as much as people like, and I've seen that one out there.

00:27:13

But yeah, apparently that's a myth.

00:27:17

All right.

00:27:18

What was interesting about this was the word count section to me that he's keeping track

00:27:23

of that stuff by hand.

00:27:25

Yeah, think about that.

00:27:26

He would have counted each word manually.

00:27:29

Yep.

00:27:30

Yeah.

00:27:31

Written it down.

00:27:32

Just to prove to himself that he was actually doing the work that he thought he was doing.

00:27:34

And there's so many people who refuse to even look at their screen time stats when I say,

00:27:39

you spend more time in social media than you think you do.

00:27:43

We need more having ways.

00:27:45

Yeah.

00:27:46

Another one who was super structured was BF Skinner.

00:27:49

As you would expect, you know, if you know Skinner, he's the behavioral psychologist.

00:27:54

And he totally got me whenever he was saying he would ring a bell at different times.

00:28:02

And he was one that would be like he would ding a bell at different times and have the

00:28:08

buzzers go off whenever he had different transitions he needed to go through and stuff,

00:28:12

which is exactly what you would expect from somebody who's big into the behavior psychology

00:28:15

side of things.

00:28:17

And yet he was always reliable as a result of that.

00:28:22

So anyway, BF Skinner, just what you would expect from him.

00:28:26

Yeah.

00:28:27

Another one that I liked.

00:28:28

I have a couple just like specific quotes here, not necessarily the routines that were interesting,

00:28:33

but Chuck Close said inspiration is for amateurs.

00:28:36

The rest of us show up and get to work.

00:28:39

You can definitely see that theme throughout here with a bunch of the different routines.

00:28:43

And that quote, by the way, I have heard different forms of that quote over the years.

00:28:50

And I feel like it's never attributed to Chuck Close, which got me thinking as I saw

00:28:55

these pop up again and again, and like the interview snippets that Mason Curry would

00:28:59

put in these interviews is like, these people were all ripping each other off and claiming

00:29:04

these ideas as their own.

00:29:06

Totally, totally doing it.

00:29:09

They were all stealing like an artist.

00:29:11

Yes.

00:29:12

100%.

00:29:13

That's what people do.

00:29:14

It's like if somebody else is doing it, claim it as your own and pass it off.

00:29:18

But in today's world, I mean, you had to keep that in mind.

00:29:21

Even in a lot of these cases, they could do that and people thought it was their idea

00:29:25

because things like the internet and widespread media wasn't a thing.

00:29:30

So you didn't know what the source of the idea was and you had no way to trace it.

00:29:34

Nowadays you do.

00:29:35

So you could rip people off before.

00:29:38

It's a little more difficult to do that without giving the attribution today.

00:29:42

Yeah, true.

00:29:43

I don't know how valid that is, but anyway, Charles Dickens again was extremely routine

00:29:48

and methodical.

00:29:49

If I just am drawn to that, and that's why I picked these people out because there were

00:29:52

definitely folks that were not at all, which we'll get to right after this.

00:29:57

But the one that was interesting to me about Dickens, because obviously Dickens wrote

00:30:02

a lot, but he had a very specific arrangement that he wanted his desk to be in and was like

00:30:09

a minute by minute schedule type of person.

00:30:13

And again, like what you were saying, like that's one of these themes that I think we'll

00:30:17

get to here in a bit.

00:30:18

But it's one where like if you have set times, like you're going to work, it's almost like

00:30:22

what Skinner's doing with having those triggered moments and it sets your brain into that mode.

00:30:28

Thus, it makes it easier to get into the mindset that you're after to do the writing.

00:30:34

It seems like most of these were writers.

00:30:36

I don't know if they're just the ones that I was drawn to or not, but it seems like a

00:30:40

lot of folks were writers.

00:30:41

Mm.

00:30:42

I don't know.

00:30:43

I didn't do a count.

00:30:45

I assume there's a fairly healthy balance of a lot of different things on the cover he

00:30:50

talks about.

00:30:52

Writers, composers, painters, choreographers, playwrights, poets, philosophers, sculptors,

00:30:58

filmmakers, and scientists on how they create.

00:31:03

But yeah, I think the writer once stood out the most to me too, maybe just because those

00:31:10

are the ones that have the most control over what and where they work.

00:31:16

I mean, you don't need a ton of gear and you don't need a fancy space in order to write.

00:31:22

There are people who just sat on their bed and they were prolific writers.

00:31:27

Right.

00:31:28

So I think that kind of appeals to me.

00:31:32

Another thing kind of contrasting the very rigid, this is the schedule sort of thing is

00:31:38

Woody Allen.

00:31:40

I like this quote, Woody Allen said, "Any momentary change stimulates a fresh burst of mental

00:31:44

energy."

00:31:46

And for me, I've noticed that back in the day I used to travel between coffee shop and

00:31:53

library and co-working space and I basically show up, create for like an hour and a half.

00:31:58

And then when I hit a wall, I'd get in the car and go somewhere else.

00:32:02

I never really understood why.

00:32:04

I never had any like quantifiable data.

00:32:06

Like, this is actually helping me with the creative process.

00:32:10

And then Woody Allen said that and I was like, "That's it.

00:32:14

That's what I've been doing."

00:32:15

Thanks, Woody.

00:32:17

Yeah.

00:32:18

When I read that again though, I realized I kind of missed that.

00:32:22

I've made a lot of changes to my home office and this is a great space to work from.

00:32:28

But it's at home and I have five kids who are home schooled and I recognize that maybe

00:32:35

this isn't the best place for me to be all day every day.

00:32:39

So I actually joined a co-working space.

00:32:43

Nice.

00:32:44

A different one in Appleton, which is pretty cool.

00:32:49

It's decent.

00:32:50

I mean, it's not like super fancy or anything like that, but I don't need it to be.

00:32:54

I just need a recognized, a different place to go to do writing.

00:32:59

It's kind of noisy.

00:33:00

I'm not going to podcast or record video or anything from there.

00:33:04

But if I'm honest with myself, that's not where a majority of my work happens anyways.

00:33:09

That's the stuff people see is the podcast, the videos.

00:33:15

But a lot of it is just writing.

00:33:18

I can do that from anywhere.

00:33:19

So for the last week or so, I've been grabbing my laptop, going downtown and working from

00:33:27

there for a couple of hours.

00:33:29

Even did that today before I came home to record the podcast.

00:33:31

I am much more productive that way.

00:33:35

So thanks, Woody.

00:33:36

Good job.

00:33:37

Two more and we'll get to themes because I feel like that's kind of where I'm wanting

00:33:40

to get here.

00:33:41

But the first of those two is Einstein.

00:33:44

I feel like I couldn't go through this without bringing up Einstein.

00:33:48

And you've all seen the pictures of him, like crazy hair and such.

00:33:54

And it sounds like from reading this short snippet about Einstein's, he was disheveled

00:34:00

like that so that he didn't have to take the time to trim and go do haircuts regularly.

00:34:06

If he was just shaggy haired, he didn't have to waste his time on haircuts.

00:34:12

This probably something to that.

00:34:14

Just maintain long hair.

00:34:15

You can go months between haircuts.

00:34:17

Who needs personal hygiene anyways?

00:34:19

It's unnecessary.

00:34:21

Last one here, Stephen King.

00:34:23

Now I've read his book on writing.

00:34:25

It's the title of the book on writing.

00:34:28

And some of this comes from that book that Mason Curry puts in this one.

00:34:33

But Stephen King writes to a quota of 2,000 words a day.

00:34:37

That's a lot.

00:34:38

You've heard people talk about the thousand words a day or 500 words a day, but he writes

00:34:41

to 2,000 words a day.

00:34:45

And that's how he knows when he's done.

00:34:46

He has the time when he starts and he goes until he hits 2,000 words and then he can

00:34:49

be done for the day.

00:34:51

So just kind of an interesting way to do it.

00:34:53

Instead of the time bound piece.

00:34:54

Yeah, I don't like either of those to be honest, the time bound or the specific number.

00:35:01

I've been driven by the number, the writing goals in the past.

00:35:06

And I can't say that it's helped me produce on a more regular basis, any more than having

00:35:14

deadlines for things that I publish without any sort of parameters around what they're

00:35:18

going to be are.

00:35:20

I also feel an enormous amount of pressure when I look at those numbers.

00:35:26

Like I have all these words to go, even if it's only a thousand words a day.

00:35:30

And when I get rolling, I can crank out a thousand words in 20 minutes.

00:35:35

But still just looking at that big, oh, there's so much more I have to do.

00:35:41

I just don't like it.

00:35:42

I can't work that way.

00:35:44

Which kind of leads by the way to one more point here from Annerice.

00:35:48

I thought this was maybe a really profound quote.

00:35:51

And I think it leads into the next section maybe with the themes.

00:35:55

We can talk more about Stephen King, though, if you want.

00:35:59

But Annerice said that the most important thing has been the ability to change routines.

00:36:04

So a lot of these routines are shared and they're kind of snippets in time.

00:36:08

Like this is what this person did.

00:36:09

And some of them, like this is what they did until the day they died.

00:36:12

Like they make a point to call that out.

00:36:15

But some of them changed their routines quite a bit.

00:36:19

And I feel like that's healthy.

00:36:21

I have noticed that I have done that over the last several years.

00:36:26

Some of it maybe was encouraged by a global pandemic.

00:36:32

But even without that reading this book, I left with the idea that this is something

00:36:37

that's natural.

00:36:38

Like you do something for a while, a certain way.

00:36:41

And then eventually you have to find a new way to do things in order to keep it fresh.

00:36:46

It gets a really good point.

00:36:47

And it's something that I think people tend to overlook is that you can change your routines

00:36:52

over time.

00:36:53

And that's okay.

00:36:55

And when you find yourself not actually producing what you want to produce, like changing your

00:37:00

routines is actually the exact same.

00:37:02

Like that's the thing that you need to do.

00:37:04

Like break the ritual if you're not achieving what you want to achieve.

00:37:09

And that's brought out in a handful of these stories.

00:37:11

Like they would sometimes talk about how some of their kids would remember things differently.

00:37:16

Like most of the kids remember that dad was always locked in his room when you weren't

00:37:21

allowed to go in.

00:37:22

And then a different kid would say, "No, actually that's not true.

00:37:25

Mom was allowed to go in there."

00:37:26

Like that would come up.

00:37:28

But if you pay attention to the timing of when those two stories came out, they're both

00:37:33

right.

00:37:34

Like it used to be one way and then dad changed and it was a different way.

00:37:37

Sure.

00:37:38

And kids can morph over time.

00:37:41

So yes.

00:37:43

Good point.

00:37:44

I have an action item associated with that specifically.

00:37:47

Okay.

00:37:48

Towards the end, there was somebody George's Simonon.

00:37:53

I'm probably pronouncing that last name wrong.

00:37:55

I had not heard of this person before.

00:37:58

But they had a do not disturb sign that they would put on the outside of their door when

00:38:05

no one, when they weren't.

00:38:07

Then they didn't want to be interrupted.

00:38:09

And I was like, "That's genius."

00:38:13

So I ordered from Amazon right before we recorded this two sided do not disturb sign, which

00:38:24

I will put in the chat here.

00:38:28

Really simple.

00:38:29

Just one side says, "Welcome, please knock.

00:38:33

The other side.

00:38:34

Big red X, please.

00:38:35

Do not disturb."

00:38:36

And I can't even tell you how many times I have had the door closed, which has traditionally

00:38:43

been the indication, do not disturb me.

00:38:46

And I get knocks on the door anyways.

00:38:48

I've got the LED hue light outside my door.

00:38:53

I have a button on the stream deck to turn it red when I'm recording.

00:38:57

I will still get knocks on the door.

00:38:59

Every time it happens, I'm like, "Oh."

00:39:02

So I'm adding another layer of defense for my deep focus modes.

00:39:08

Nice.

00:39:09

Yeah, I have a currently recording sign on the door, as you can tell the guys are paying

00:39:15

attention to.

00:39:17

And it's on the door currently.

00:39:20

All I've ever asked them to do is just don't bang on the walls and stuff right next to

00:39:24

this room when that's out there.

00:39:26

It's like, "That's all I'm asking."

00:39:27

And they chose to completely ignore it today.

00:39:30

So not much I can do about it there.

00:39:33

But yes, I hear you.

00:39:35

And that's actually one of the themes here is that it seems like not all, but a number

00:39:41

of the artists here in this book have rules around when people are allowed to interrupt

00:39:47

them and what are their designated work times and what are the rules of engagement at which

00:39:52

you're able to step into their creative zone and interrupt them.

00:39:58

So it seems like those rules and those patterns are pretty common amongst these folks.

00:40:05

Yeah.

00:40:06

So what were some of the patterns that you noticed or that you liked maybe?

00:40:12

Maybe some of these you're already doing them.

00:40:14

Like one thing that popped up a lot that I noticed was people tended to go for walks

00:40:18

and I know you go for your walks in the morning and in the evening.

00:40:21

Yeah.

00:40:22

So.

00:40:23

Yeah.

00:40:24

Out of my designated leave me alone time has disappeared.

00:40:28

You know, the only catch to that is the evening walks piece.

00:40:33

But the morning things probably not going to pick up until we actually move into the

00:40:36

house.

00:40:37

So I suspect that that's going to be a pickup thing at that point.

00:40:42

But yeah, I mean, those are probably the only times that I really have.

00:40:45

I'm not truly able to say you can't interrupt me and you can't step in at my day job, which

00:40:52

is where I'm at.

00:40:53

I wish there was some way for me to do that.

00:40:56

But the only other way that I can come up with that we could do recordings like this

00:41:01

and have that separation is to pay to rent a place or I don't even know what do it at

00:41:09

in the evenings or on weekends and it's painful for both of us to do that.

00:41:13

So I'm not sure what that would be.

00:41:15

But the nature of my work doesn't really allow that in the designated times piece.

00:41:23

In having those rules of engagement.

00:41:25

So I'm not sure that I'm going to be able to do anything with that one.

00:41:29

But there's a lot of them that are fascinating and I wish I could do.

00:41:33

And I'm like, hey, you know, if I can control absolutely everything about my work, yeah,

00:41:37

I would do that.

00:41:38

And I wondered if that was part of it.

00:41:40

Like the people who are able to be an artist and do these things are ones who can control

00:41:50

the entirety of that schedule and it seems like people would tend to control it to the

00:41:54

point where you're not allowed to interrupt me unless X, Y, and Z.

00:41:58

So yeah, those were the rules that they would set up if they were able to set them up.

00:42:02

But if you're not, I'm not sure what you do with that.

00:42:06

If you do set up rules and people ignore them, then you need to get one of these rooms that

00:42:11

I just shared in the chat for you.

00:42:14

What is this?

00:42:15

Room.com.

00:42:16

Yeah, it's like a little call booth, which is soundproofed.

00:42:21

So I need to get one of these and keep it as my own.

00:42:26

Yep.

00:42:27

Yep.

00:42:28

Nice.

00:42:29

It's not going to help you with the internet speed at the new place, but.

00:42:33

Not at all.

00:42:35

Not.

00:42:36

I do know, like if I could get the internet thing figured out, like I could build an entire

00:42:39

room that was soundproof off somewhere else.

00:42:42

Like I could totally do that.

00:42:43

But internet's questionable.

00:42:46

I share this partly because it's appropriate for today.

00:42:50

But also, I think the larger point here is in designing your environment to facilitate

00:42:55

the focused work, which is what a lot of these creatives were doing.

00:43:01

And there's lots of things that can cause you distractions.

00:43:05

There's self-imposed distractions by you not turning off notifications on your devices.

00:43:12

There's people drilling holes in the wall next to you.

00:43:15

There's people actually entering your space when you're supposed to be doing something

00:43:19

else.

00:43:21

And I think the big takeaway from this book is to consider your own routines and what

00:43:29

sort of creative work is valuable for you.

00:43:31

And what are the things that you can do to facilitate that work?

00:43:36

This room, this is like a thing that you assemble yourself.

00:43:41

It's got vents at the top and it's got this little bench that you sit on and it's...

00:43:45

I actually know someone who has one of these and it's pretty soundproof.

00:43:48

They put it in their office because they would always have people who would need to take

00:43:51

a call.

00:43:52

They don't want to do it in the open space where it's bothering everybody else.

00:43:58

So they hop into this little room cube thing, which looks really ridiculous because it's

00:44:04

not very tall.

00:44:05

It's probably like five feet tall.

00:44:06

You got to like duck to get in it.

00:44:08

But for some people, $4,500 or whatever it is for the cheap one of those to put that

00:44:14

in your house and block out all the distractions, that's a deal.

00:44:19

Yes.

00:44:20

Yes.

00:44:21

Or you go all the way to the top.

00:44:22

I was looking at the top one is $15,500.

00:44:26

So 16,000.

00:44:27

Yeah, they make bigger ones.

00:44:28

They make focus rooms, bunch of different versions.

00:44:32

It started off as just that little closet cabinet thing though where you could pop in

00:44:36

and take calls.

00:44:37

So it's got a nice light gray background, little desk where you can put your laptop and they

00:44:45

are soundproof.

00:44:46

When you're in there, you don't hear anybody on the outside.

00:44:48

They don't hear you, which is kind of the whole goal.

00:44:51

They're ventilated so it doesn't get to be a thousand degrees in there while you're

00:44:55

taking your call.

00:44:57

And I love creative solutions like that because my natural inclination when I need to take

00:45:07

a call at the co-working space is I look for an open office.

00:45:10

I can go in and close the door or I'll go in the conference room and close the door,

00:45:15

which they have a stat on that website.

00:45:17

46% of conference room use is by a single person.

00:45:22

It's because no one's thought creatively about solving this problem.

00:45:28

And if real estate is the, like how much square footage you have in your space is the

00:45:34

thing that's of most importance.

00:45:36

And throw some money at the problem and get one of these.

00:45:40

There are a lot of other people who throw a lot more money at problems thinking that

00:45:43

fancy technology is going to solve it.

00:45:46

And it's not.

00:45:48

The newest Mac Pro, the biggest display, the fanciest keyboard.

00:45:56

Right?

00:45:58

These are all potential solutions to a symptom.

00:46:03

If you can identify the real problem, then you can get rid of it.

00:46:08

It's a worthwhile investment, especially if you view the creative work that you do as

00:46:13

the most important use of your available time.

00:46:17

Yeah, I can see it.

00:46:19

I just think that's a pricey way to do it.

00:46:20

Now, I say that and yet I know, and I have to, this is where it gets hard for me to keep

00:46:29

boundaries.

00:46:30

I know that here at the church, we have an interest in having like a video recording

00:46:36

booth of some sort.

00:46:38

So we've looked at building something that has a lot of sound deadening and video lighting

00:46:46

and stuff that's set up in it that's made for that sort of thing.

00:46:51

But it would have to block out like all the sounds because the building is getting more

00:46:55

and more busy over time.

00:46:58

And this room is actually where we've talked about building that.

00:47:01

Okay.

00:47:02

If I do that, how do I use that for my podcasting and my streaming and stuff?

00:47:07

Like, how do I use it for that?

00:47:09

So I have to like try to keep those separate.

00:47:12

The other piece of this is that you're way more handy than I am.

00:47:15

So if you got your hands on the plans for this sort of thing, I'm sure you could build

00:47:19

it yourself.

00:47:20

Oh, yeah.

00:47:21

I get to build it.

00:47:22

I could build it way cheaper than what they're doing.

00:47:23

I'm sure.

00:47:24

So yeah, this is a solution for a nerd who doesn't know how to swing a hammer like me.

00:47:32

That's fair.

00:47:33

That's fair.

00:47:34

I just did a whole bunch of sound deadening in the ceiling of our kitchen and dining

00:47:37

room.

00:47:38

So that way, you know, if we get up and want to bang pans and pots around in the morning,

00:47:43

we won't wake people up.

00:47:44

So I have a whole system that I put in our ceiling there, which we were talking earlier

00:47:50

is dry walled today.

00:47:52

So anyway, how stuff?

00:47:54

I'm not going to go there today.

00:47:55

So some more of these themes.

00:47:58

One of these, which I think you and I would tend to lean towards now, granted, I haven't

00:48:03

been writing in quite some time.

00:48:05

So keep that in mind here.

00:48:06

But it seems like a lot of folks write first thing in the morning.

00:48:10

Yes.

00:48:11

And there are obviously, you know, these are themes.

00:48:13

These are not hard rules, of course.

00:48:16

They're definitely people who are starting their writing routine at midnight.

00:48:20

I can't fathom that.

00:48:22

That would make like, I would have migraines for a week if I did that two days in a row.

00:48:27

But people tend to write first thing in the morning that seemed to be a theme that I

00:48:31

noticed.

00:48:33

But whenever I've done writing on a regular basis, the mornings are when I need to do that.

00:48:39

Otherwise it's gone and I can't focus on it.

00:48:42

When do you do your writing?

00:48:43

I know you do a ton of this, but when do you actually do that?

00:48:47

Good question.

00:48:48

I think I write in the morning primarily, although not everything I do revolves around writing

00:49:00

like you would traditionally think of writing.

00:49:04

For example, a lot of the screencast workflow videos that I create, I don't have a script

00:49:10

for those.

00:49:11

And also my voice doesn't wake up until about 11 a.m.

00:49:15

If I record before 11 a.m., I sound like Barry Manilow.

00:49:20

Some people told me like, "Hey, your voice sounds really good today."

00:49:24

What was different?

00:49:25

Oh, I had to record before 11.

00:49:27

So you have to wait until your voice warms up and doesn't sound as good?

00:49:33

Is that what you're telling me?

00:49:34

I have to wait until my voice warms up because I personally don't think it sounds better when

00:49:40

it's lower.

00:49:41

But also it's just a lot more taxing.

00:49:44

I don't have as much control, et cetera.

00:49:48

So I know that the majority of my deep work is actual audio or video creation.

00:49:58

There's an audio component involved to it.

00:50:01

And so that deep work that I would typically want to do at the beginning of the day, I

00:50:07

can't.

00:50:09

So I do the outlining and a lot of the prep and stuff like that, yes, in the morning.

00:50:15

But essentially what I've done is I have learned to utilize these pockets of time when

00:50:22

I have them.

00:50:23

That's where time blocking is really valuable for me is yes, in a perfect world where I

00:50:28

had complete control over every hour of my day, I would be doing all this stuff at the

00:50:33

beginning.

00:50:35

But I don't all the time.

00:50:37

And if I have our weekly meeting for the Blanc Media Team from 10 to 12 on Wednesday, I

00:50:46

know that with some of the meeting prep I have to do, I'm not going to get a whole bunch

00:50:51

of writing done before that meeting.

00:50:53

But I've got three hours after that meeting.

00:50:57

And I seem to not have a whole lot of trouble just shifting that till later in the day.

00:51:04

Maybe that's weird or maybe I'm just not paying close enough attention to realize that it

00:51:09

is actually a lot harder for me later in the day.

00:51:12

But my gut feeling is that the time doesn't really bother me so much.

00:51:19

There's one other theme that's really close to this one.

00:51:22

And that's to work until lunch and then they take the afternoons off entirely.

00:51:27

This one I specifically pointed out because I noticed once I picked up on like two or

00:51:32

three of these happening, I started to realize like a lot.

00:51:36

Whenever their time schedule for the day is mentioned, there's a lot of times when people

00:51:41

are done by one o'clock, by lunch, by 11, or they start at 10 a.m. and they go till two

00:51:48

or three o'clock and then they're done.

00:51:50

It's this four or five hour period, generally a four hour, four or four and a half hour

00:51:55

period that a lot of these artists are working.

00:51:58

One of which I'm drawing a blank on her name was like shooting to get a 30 minute writing

00:52:04

slot in every day.

00:52:05

That was her one and only goal.

00:52:07

I was like, "I'm not sure when it's going to happen, but at some point today I need to

00:52:10

write for 30 minutes."

00:52:11

And that's how she wrote her books.

00:52:14

Something about that time span, that four hour time span, it struck a chord with me because

00:52:19

I know we've talked about over work, being too busy, eight hour days don't work.

00:52:25

Her theme is one that we have brought up regularly on bookworm.

00:52:31

So to see it come out in the artists' schedule over hundreds of years is interesting.

00:52:37

It's like, "Huh, maybe they figured something out and maybe this whole knowledge work thing

00:52:43

fits the whole artist's mindset, may not be considered "art" in today's world, but it

00:52:50

requires the same type of mind processing and thus leads us to a point where working

00:52:56

eight hours a day actually doesn't pan out and you actually have to shorten that.

00:53:02

That's all theories and tying dots together and stuff that I'm still processing on, but

00:53:09

wanted to share because I thought it was fascinating.

00:53:11

If I was writing this book, in addition to all the research and the interviews and the

00:53:17

collection of the little snippets and things which Mason Curry did a great job of, I would

00:53:22

be creating a spreadsheet with things like what time did they start, what time did they

00:53:29

stop, did they take a nap, how many hours did they sleep, etc.

00:53:35

And I would average all that stuff out and I would break it into sections.

00:53:39

So I would have a section for the writers, I would have a section for the artists, I

00:53:43

would have a section for the directors, and I would have the averages for the average

00:53:50

writer works this many hours, sleeps this many hours, starts at this time, ends at this

00:53:57

time, all that kind of stuff because I feel like those trends are really interesting and

00:54:03

there's nothing that speaks to that in this book.

00:54:07

I understand that's not really the point behind the book, but that's the piece that

00:54:13

I wish was there.

00:54:16

Yeah, and that's, again, that's partly why I wanted to pull out themes because to me,

00:54:21

those are the fascinating pieces.

00:54:23

Like, yes, we can talk about, you know, Kirk or Garden is weird coffee tendency and how

00:54:29

Mozart was all over the place and Skinner had his schedules and patterns and such, but

00:54:35

like those are fun little snippets and it's partly why I wanted to start with those, but

00:54:40

to me, the themes are where the meat of all this is and it's just not there and like,

00:54:45

it's not spelled out.

00:54:46

Curry didn't spell it out for us, you have to pull that together on your own, which is

00:54:51

fine, just not my preference.

00:54:54

Like, I feel like the trends is where some of the value is from a, "How do I improve

00:54:59

me?" stance.

00:55:01

Now, if you want this as just a, this is a cool way to see what people did.

00:55:06

Yeah, this is absolutely the right way to do it, which is probably his intent, but

00:55:10

we're always trying to figure out what to do with it and how do I take steps with it.

00:55:15

So I think we maybe have that tendency as well.

00:55:17

I think when you read through it the first time, the big takeaways are to look at the

00:55:23

routines and if anything in there stands out to you, try it for yourself.

00:55:29

Just as a historical example of at least one other person who has done this successfully.

00:55:35

So maybe you get a bunch of ideas for little experiments that you want,

00:55:39

you want to do on yourself and see if they improve your creative routines at all.

00:55:47

But reading through it the second time, yeah, I definitely wish there was some

00:55:51

trends or some big takeaways.

00:55:53

I did not notice the desire to see that stuff after the first one.

00:55:58

I remember after reading through it the first time, I was just like,

00:56:01

there's a lot of really interesting stuff in there.

00:56:04

There's a lot of really crazy people.

00:56:05

And a lot of this stuff, I was just, I'm not going to do that, but some of it,

00:56:13

I jotted down like, oh, that's an interesting idea.

00:56:15

I think I'll, I think I'll try that.

00:56:17

I walk away with this one with a couple different takeaways of things I want to try,

00:56:23

but I also now, having right at the second time, do wish that some of the big picture stuff was,

00:56:30

was there.

00:56:31

I think in terms of improving your own routine though, it's not that important.

00:56:37

Maybe that's just the way my brain works.

00:56:39

Maybe you're different and you want to see the averages and stuff like that.

00:56:45

Or what was the most popular piece of the morning routine for the most prolific writers?

00:56:53

Like you teased out the writing goals and stuff, things like that.

00:56:59

I don't know. If I were to look at that and someone were telling me, you really need to

00:57:06

track your writing goals, I think my initial response would be like, oh, yeah, make me.

00:57:12

Try me on that.

00:57:14

But you say that and yet, you know, another one of these themes is that it seemed like those who

00:57:22

had a very strict writing schedule, writers specifically, they would have an 8 a.m. to 10 a.m.

00:57:30

time slot, but if they did it at 8 a.m. every single day, they would report thousands of words

00:57:36

written every day. And it seemed like that number was 3000 plus. A couple of them were talking about

00:57:41

6000 plus every single day. That's a lot. That is a lot. If you know that, that means that

00:57:50

in today's terms of like books and stuff, they're writing an entire book about every week.

00:57:56

Yeah. So let me ask you this, Joe Bielig, what comes first, the writing time or the number of words?

00:58:03

No idea. Goals or habits?

00:58:07

I would say in this particular case, I think what's happening is they're putting together the schedules

00:58:11

and they're holding to that. And because of that, now, I also want to point out,

00:58:19

and this, this is, I kind of talked about this earlier, like people would work in the morning

00:58:23

and then not in the afternoon, that theme combined with the strict schedule, because those who were

00:58:28

doing that routine generally had the strict schedules, they would generally have reading time or like

00:58:35

either before or after that writing, or they would go on walks, they would do some form of manual labor.

00:58:41

It was always something that didn't involve writing and it didn't involve like a day job type work.

00:58:48

Like there was always something that they did that was kind of like a letting your mind wander mode.

00:58:54

And as a result of that, it would, I think, give them some of the creativity that they needed in order

00:59:00

to write that many words. So I think there's some form of a combination of those things going on.

00:59:05

Sure. I think if you look at individual people, you can find people like Stephen King who are

00:59:12

writing to a goal, 2,000 words every single day. Who cares how long it takes? I'm just going to get

00:59:18

to that number. I wish I could go back and talk to a lot of these people. There's a lot of

00:59:24

unanswered questions from these interviews, I feel. But if I were to wager a guess, I would say

00:59:34

that the majority of the prolific writers who did not burn out probably focused on the time.

00:59:46

And then once they got there, they just wrote and they did that enough that the results took care

00:59:54

of themselves. And so after a little while they started to realize, I don't need to spend 12 hours

00:59:59

per day writing. I can be done by noon if I get up at 6 in the morning. Again, I understand that's

01:00:08

a very general statement and there's no data to support it. I wish there was. I feel like there

01:00:14

could have been. Yeah. And you can transpose this with another side of this piece because there are

01:00:22

also people who had trouble sleeping. That's another theme that seemed to come up. People who

01:00:28

were up at 1 in the morning and would work for an hour and a half at night. In the middle of the

01:00:33

night, who was it? Frank Lloyd Wright would be up from, was it 4 to 7 or something along those lines

01:00:43

and would do all of his design work at that point would go back to bed for about an hour

01:00:47

and get up at 8. But no one realized he was up for that three hour period. So they didn't even

01:00:52

know he was working on designs at that time. So when do you actually do your work? You're on phone

01:00:56

calls and in meetings all day long. You don't actually do any of your architecture design work.

01:01:00

Like, oh yeah, I do a three hours every day. You just, I can't see it. So the whole working in the

01:01:08

middle of the night thing and having trouble sleeping, that theme is certainly in this book

01:01:16

as well and it is one I want to avoid at all costs.

01:01:19

Another theme related to Frank Lloyd Wright specifically is the impending deadlines.

01:01:28

Yes, yes. I remember that one specifically, he had a project where he had to make some

01:01:36

models or something and he didn't start working on it until the client called him two hours before

01:01:43

the meeting to say, I'm getting in the car and I'm on my way. And the way that that interview or

01:01:49

that that section was written, it made it seem to me as the reader that to Frank Lloyd Wright,

01:01:58

this was no big deal. This was just the kick in the pants he needed to actually do the work.

01:02:04

And I remember reading that and thinking to myself, I would be so miserable. I would be so stressed

01:02:13

out by just being forced to crank stuff out right before a deadline for context. I mentioned the

01:02:23

relay FM Baldur dash thing that was recorded yesterday. Well, I wasn't part of the original

01:02:32

team. There was an odd number of hosts and I was the backup basically. And so we recorded it

01:02:39

Sunday afternoon, 2pm my time. I found out 5 or 6pm Saturday the day before, hey, we need you.

01:02:49

So what did I do? I watched the video from the first one they recorded. I downloaded every

01:02:56

incomparable episode where they played this low definition game that it was based off of. And

01:03:02

I went and picked up Baldur dash from my parents house so I could play a couple of rounds at home.

01:03:06

I was practicing basically every minute I had before that for something that was really just

01:03:17

very chill, very fun. But of course, my mind is like, oh, you're going to make a fool of yourself

01:03:23

because I understand the basic premise of the game. I've never really been that good at it. I still

01:03:27

don't think I'm very good at thinking of my feet. So I was super, super nervous about it. And this

01:03:33

is a totally game. It's a game. It's a game as part of a fundraiser to help sick kids. Like,

01:03:40

there is no pressure associated with this at all. And yet that's where my brain goes. So hearing

01:03:48

Frank Lloyd Wright not even thinking about this project until two hours of raising a

01:03:52

meet with a client, if I was in that situation, I would be completely useless. You'd have to scoop

01:03:58

me up from a puddle on the floor. But just to point it out, he had thought about it. Like,

01:04:03

that's that was their point is like, he was notorious for processing and thinking things

01:04:08

through in their entirety, in his own mind, but not externalizing it in any way until he

01:04:14

absolutely had to. Like, that was the problem. It's like he just didn't communicate what he had been

01:04:19

thinking through and getting ahead of the game. He just waited until the last minute.

01:04:24

Sure. I guess. Yeah. I still that sounds stressful. I forget a lot of stuff.

01:04:31

Oh, I'm not saying it's not stressful. I'm just saying that's what he did.

01:04:34

Oh, fun times. I feel there had to have been at least one point where his memory or brain

01:04:43

wouldn't have functioned the way that he would have wanted it to. And he makes a fool of himself

01:04:50

with a potential client. Maybe he doesn't care because he's so good at what he does that there's

01:04:55

a bunch of other people just waiting to work with him. But I don't know. That's the people

01:05:00

pleaser me, I guess, where I wouldn't want to. I wouldn't want to let anybody down.

01:05:05

Well, where the place the place where that falls down is if he's got two or more deadlines that

01:05:11

line up with each other. Sure. Because if he's got two on the same day and they call and say,

01:05:16

hey, I'm going to be there in two hours and he goes and busts it out. But in the middle of

01:05:21

working on that when somebody else does the same thing and they're going to be there at roughly

01:05:25

the same time. Guess what? You got a problem. You actually aren't capable of hitting both of those.

01:05:31

Yeah. I don't know. Maybe he just shortcuts one and does the other. I don't know.

01:05:37

Does not sound appealing to me at all? No, no, not at all. And I'm with you on that one.

01:05:42

Not something I want to replicate. One of the themes that I wrote down was lots of naps.

01:05:50

Lots of people took their naps. Which is intriguing. I feel like I have heard the virtues of the

01:05:58

naps extolled from many people for a very long time and I have always resisted it. But maybe

01:06:05

maybe there's something there. I do recognize to your point, you mentioned the trends and

01:06:12

kind of this four hours of work idea that we've heard more recently as it pertains to knowledge

01:06:21

work. Maybe if you took a nap, you could increase that. I don't know. I still don't like the idea of

01:06:29

interrupting my day to take a nap. But maybe that would be a way to get more creative output

01:06:39

throughout the course of a 24 hour day. Though it did seem like the folks who

01:06:45

took a nap were ones who were definitely like up late up early. They were short cutting their

01:06:51

night on top of that. Because I know I had a period where I took naps regularly. And it seemed

01:06:57

like whenever I was doing that, sleeping at night became trickier. So I would end up going to bed

01:07:04

later. So I was getting roughly the same amount of sleep. I was just splitting it up

01:07:10

between night and day. So I don't know. I've since just dropped the nap thing. It doesn't

01:07:17

exist anymore. But don't know. You can do naps if you want. Well, the idea of naps or walks or

01:07:25

some sort of reset in the middle of the day, I think is an interesting one. And I think there is

01:07:31

some format of that which I can use strategically to get better consistent output. Maybe not

01:07:41

increase necessarily the number of hours that I'm working, but get more out of the hours that I'm

01:07:47

working by mode switching, not just changing places to do work like I talked about earlier,

01:07:54

but actually stopping the work to give myself more space just to think. Especially since so much

01:08:01

of my work is creative. I don't know. It's got me thinking about how I can incorporate some of

01:08:08

that into my daily routine. It's valid. I've been getting plenty of manual labor time in lately

01:08:14

to make up for it. So that's what I've been doing. One thing I noticed with that, by the way, is

01:08:22

if I do get in the right scenario for a walk, I can be actually very creative, even when I'm not

01:08:33

at my keyboard. I remember one of the reasons that I got this co-working space downtown is that it is

01:08:40

not that far from this really beautiful trail, which is right by the river. And so I like to walk

01:08:47

that trail whenever I am downtown. I remember last fall, maybe spring? I don't remember the exact

01:08:57

timeframe. When we were working on the time tracking course for the sweet setup, I went for a walk

01:09:03

on that trail and just walked it for like an hour and a half, two hours, one day, and dictated

01:09:10

all of the scripts for that course while I was on the walk, which I had before that point,

01:09:18

never thought that I could write quote unquote while I was on a walk. Writing happens when you're

01:09:26

at your computer with a clicky keyboard. But that just showed me that that doesn't have to be

01:09:34

the case. And I can't do that every time. But when I know that I have something specific that I'm

01:09:41

just needing to noodle on, the walks I feel can be a very powerful piece to the creative process.

01:09:50

And maybe I find when I get back from my walk where I wrote the scripts for the course,

01:09:56

I'm exhausted. Then maybe that's the time to take a nap and then get up and try to do something

01:10:02

instead of, okay, now I'm going to immediately launch into the next task. I don't know, there's

01:10:07

lots of different variables at work here, but I am thinking through how all these pieces fit together

01:10:12

in the best way for me. That's actually what prompted me to start doing my evening walks.

01:10:18

It's because I've been doing so much work on the house and there's so many problems that I'm not,

01:10:22

like, it's a puzzle, like I have to put so many different pieces together and solve so many

01:10:27

different problems simultaneously that I needed the space to come up with solutions. And taking

01:10:34

that 15, 20 minutes in the evening to go for that walk was exactly what solved a lot of that for me.

01:10:41

So I just like, I gotta keep doing this because it fixes so many things and helps me get the

01:10:48

clarity that I need in so many ways. So yes, headspace. Got any action items, Mike? Unless

01:10:56

there's something else you want to cover here? No, I'm good. Action items, I do have a couple.

01:11:00

One of the things that I've been thinking about as I think through all of these different routines

01:11:09

was how much focus and care was placed on making sure that the routine was protected

01:11:17

because they recognized that the routine was the thing that allowed them to do their

01:11:24

creative work, whether it was their full-time gig or whether it was just trying to find a little

01:11:29

bit of time like Mozart on the side for the thing that we now know him for. And I recognize that

01:11:39

my life is kind of complicated, which is what it is. Lots of different hats that I wear,

01:11:49

elder at my church, five kids, middle school assistant soccer coach, yada yada yada. But maybe

01:11:55

I can simplify in some way. I remember going through a process like this when the pandemic started

01:12:02

and asking myself, what do we really need to do? It wasn't all the things that we thought it was.

01:12:09

We found new ways to do things like piano lessons. And I feel like I need to take a look at things

01:12:16

again and just ask, what is really hitting the mark? And what can I get rid of simply so that I have

01:12:26

a little bit more margin in order to protect the creative routine? I don't think I'm on the verge

01:12:34

of burnout or anything like that, but I do want to take some preventative measures. So make my life

01:12:42

simpler is the short version of that action. Another one I have is go for walks. I used to do this.

01:12:50

I mentioned the wrote the scripts for the time tracking course while on a walk, but I still find

01:12:57

this absent in my daily routine, my daily planning with my time blocking. It's sort of something that

01:13:05

I just in the moment, I'm inspired and I'll go do the thing. And I want to start building it in

01:13:11

more regularly. I want to have something on my time blocked plan of go for a walk. That's how

01:13:18

formal I want it to become because I feel it's not going to become consistent unless I do that.

01:13:24

We've talked about the value of these walks, how many times on bookworm? And every time I go

01:13:30

for a walk, I get these ideas and then I get busy and I don't go for walks, so I don't get the ideas.

01:13:35

And then you're upset because you're not coming up with the ideas that you need to solve the project

01:13:39

at work. Well, at least that's what I do. Yeah, I don't feel I'm lacking in the ideas department.

01:13:47

So maybe that's a little bit of the reason why I don't do it because I feel I can't handle more.

01:13:53

And then the other one, which is already complete, is to get the do not disturb sign.

01:13:59

It's been ordered. It will be here on Wednesday and that's going on my studio door.

01:14:06

I would say for action items on my side, I really have one and it's been an ongoing

01:14:12

action item and I'm bringing it up again here but in a slightly different way. But this has

01:14:18

prompted me to just think through what I want my daily ritual to look like, what that time schedule

01:14:27

process looks like between hiring an assistant underneath of me here at church to handle like

01:14:33

evenings and weekends and such and having the new house which has the trails and outdoor space

01:14:40

right on the same property. Between those two, I'm transitioning here in the next month into

01:14:46

a place where I can basically rewrite what that daily flow looks like. And that was what I really

01:14:55

wanted out of this was just kind of ideas, what works, what doesn't work, what do I like, what

01:15:00

do I not like, who do I think is crazy, who do I think is genius, like that whole concept is what

01:15:07

I was really after with this and I feel like it really helped me at least try to put some of those

01:15:11

pieces together and it's one that I'm, I'm not sure I'm going to formalize it into any form of like

01:15:17

schedule like Ben Franklin did but I think just processing that and at least having that conversation

01:15:24

with my wife about here's what I'm thinking as far as what our daily routine looks like.

01:15:28

This is our chance to edit that I suppose, you know whenever you're making a big transition that's

01:15:34

the time to edit your habits and routines so I'm dead center of that process right now.

01:15:40

So that was what I was wanting to work through and that's kind of the big overarching action item

01:15:46

that comes comes out of this but I knew that's what I was going to get before I walked into this too.

01:15:51

So take that for what it's worth. I guess that brings us to style and rating and I suppose this

01:15:56

is my book so as far as the style goes here Mason Curry did I think a great job

01:16:02

of showing us a little tidbit or snippet about each of these artists and helping us to see

01:16:10

maybe an area we didn't have any idea pertain to that particular person looking at you,

01:16:16

Kirchergaard and seeing these things that I never knew about and seeing the stories that have come

01:16:25

out of that and Mason did a good job of if there was a autobiography or someone who wrote about

01:16:31

the person like he would pull snippets from those directly instead of trying to pass them off as his

01:16:37

own or rewriting them. I feel like that has actually helped in this quite a bit because you could hear

01:16:42

it from the person who had one-on-one contact with this person, with this artist or from the

01:16:48

artist themselves so I feel like that was a really good way to do that. I really really wish

01:16:56

he did some form of summarization. Come on give me a chart give me a something. I don't know what

01:17:02

it is but I feel like this is just begging to have some kind of a data flow something maybe that's

01:17:10

the data analyst in me coming out. I think you kind of mentioned it as well but I really wanted

01:17:17

something like that. I understand that it's not going to be complete and you're not going to have

01:17:22

the same data points for every single person but at least try please. So I'm hoping that would maybe

01:17:29

be a supplementary thing at some point but it's just not in this and I feel like that's a fairly

01:17:35

big obvious miss here. So as far as rating goes I'm going to put it at a 4.0 because I feel like

01:17:42

there was an opportunity and it needed to be filled and it wasn't and there's also a number of

01:17:49

these that are so short that I had a hard time figuring out who the person was in some cases

01:17:55

because I pulled out like the ones that we ran through those are all folks that I at least know

01:18:00

and have some background on like and I felt comfortable talking about them because I know

01:18:04

about you know Mozart's compositions like I know some of those things and some of the books that

01:18:11

Stephen King has written like I know those people but there's a lot of names in this book I have

01:18:16

no idea who they are and maybe you know all of them but I had a lot of them in here that that name

01:18:23

was brand new to me I'd never seen that name before and it's kind of hard for me to get my head

01:18:29

around who that person is to understand what that work was there were a couple of them like

01:18:34

yeah the prolific famed writer whatever your name is apparently not that famous I don't know who you

01:18:41

are so I'm sorry but I don't know who you are anyway I wish there was maybe some kind of a bio

01:18:48

on these that would just tell us like a two or three sentence thing of what they're famous for

01:18:55

in some form so to me that was a bit of a miss it was good he put the dates like their birth date and

01:19:02

you know what their lifespan was and such so that helped me out quite a bit so anyway all that to

01:19:08

say I really enjoyed it I think you should read it but I still think it's a 4.0 that's where I put it

01:19:13

all right well I think I disagree a little bit with the biography section because if you added those

01:19:21

this book is twice as long probably it is yeah it is maybe there's a variety to it I don't know

01:19:28

yeah the other thing that I wish this book had was some other more contemporary people I guess

01:19:42

what I really want is Tim Ferriss's interviews summarized by Mason Curry if that makes any sense

01:19:52

so I think there's a lot of value to be gotten from this book I think it can inspire some really

01:20:00

cool stuff in regards to your daily routine I don't think it's perfect and I was a little bit more

01:20:07

disappointed with it the second time that we read it than I was the the first time the first time I

01:20:12

remember reading through this and I just cranked through it because it was a really enjoyable read

01:20:18

and every chapter every section for every new person does not require any previous context because

01:20:26

it's just a glance inside of of their life I do wish there was some way to kind of tease out the

01:20:34

common themes between all of these people that Mason Curry has done these little snippets on

01:20:41

but I don't fault him for not including it in this particular book I did a quick

01:20:48

search for what other sorts of things Mason Curry has written and it looks like there's

01:20:57

different versions of this in other languages and then there's daily rituals of women at work

01:21:06

I feel like this whole idea has a lot of room to be expanded and I hope that it gets there

01:21:15

I'm not extremely optimistic that it will at least it looks like he's exploring that

01:21:22

yeah what I would love to see though because what you get from reading this book is sort of the

01:21:29

focus on the details and not just condensing it down into these are the 10 things that you must

01:21:37

do if you want to be successful when most people here have daily rituals or routines or habits that's

01:21:43

what they think of is those clickbaity titles like this is what Steve Jobs Oprah Winfrey Mark Zuckerberg

01:21:49

and all other super successful people do to start their day I that sort of thing makes me want to

01:21:57

puke this is definitely not that this is a very good book with a lot of things that you can it's

01:22:03

really well written it's very interesting does get a little bit old towards the end just

01:22:09

I should say old it feels like there's a lot of repetition in the types of things that he's

01:22:16

describing in the routines towards the end like I said a lot of it maybe it's stuff I missed but

01:22:21

a lot of it felt like this person got up at this time I went to bed at this time and in between

01:22:27

they did a couple of things but that's kind of where the focus was whereas at the beginning you

01:22:31

hear about Kierkegaard's coffee you hear about Benjamin Franklin's time blocking and I understand

01:22:35

you're not going to find those little snippets from everybody but it would have been cool to have

01:22:41

some more standout stuff like that in the back I also think it could have been cool to break it

01:22:47

down by sections so if you're picking this book up as an artist you can go straight to the section

01:22:52

that includes the artists and you can kind of do that there is a biogr or a table of contents at

01:22:58

the beginning and then also an index in the back where you can find like the specific people and

01:23:03

read those but I think breaking them down by sections could have been cool and you could also

01:23:08

summarize like these are the challenges that artists face these are the challenges that choreographers

01:23:13

faced etc and this is some of the big takeaways what they did to overcome those but overall I

01:23:20

really enjoy this book and I would recommend it to just about anybody I'm gonna rate it at 4.5 I

01:23:26

really don't have anything to say against it per se just having read it a second time I can see

01:23:35

where there's some natural extensions of some of these ideas and it did get a little bit long for

01:23:45

me this second time through. Tom's valid all right I'm good with putting it on the shelf Mike what's

01:23:53

next? Next is the extended mind by Annie Paul which is a big book so if you have not started it

01:24:02

do so immediately. I I cap him I feel like this is I saw this on some of the Amazon deals and it

01:24:12

seems like it's a very popular book is what it seemed like yeah it looked like it was one of

01:24:19

Amazon's picks for the best books of this year if I'm remembering correctly I don't have it up

01:24:24

in front of me now I heard about it from David Sparks he had recommended it and I love this whole

01:24:31

idea of neuroplasticity and this the title implying the extended mind thinking beyond your logical

01:24:41

formulaic this is how I make decisions sort of a thing I feel like there's going to be a lot of

01:24:47

insights in this into just how to interpret some of the stuff that you feel maybe like you have a

01:24:55

gut feeling I don't really trust this person but you don't know why and then later on you realize

01:25:00

oh it's because they're a lying cheat and it's kind of intrinsically you knew that you don't know how

01:25:05

you knew it but you knew that like that's the kind of thing I'm expecting from from this book there's

01:25:11

lots of other books on this topic that I I'm fascinated by I've got one on my shelf back here

01:25:16

brain rules and stuff like that so I have I have these types of books but I haven't really studied

01:25:24

this a whole lot and just based off of the recommendations I feel like this maybe is a great place to

01:25:29

start yeah no sounds good I know yeah I'm excited about it I think it'll be good for sure after that

01:25:36

if you looked at the list here already I assume you have yes I am very excited this is one you're

01:25:44

going to have to pre-order if you want to get it in time and it'll be maybe a little tight

01:25:51

for us timing wise but courage is calling by Ryan Holiday and this is the first book

01:25:58

in a four book series that he's starting based on the four these four virtues that he wants to

01:26:06

cover the first of which is courage the second is temperance the third is justice and the fourth is

01:26:11

wisdom but he's starting with courage and he's doing that because what he's saying is that the

01:26:19

beginning of a lot of religions and spiritual practices and philosophies all grapple with fear

01:26:25

and having courage to overcome that fear is where a lot of life struggles and overcoming those

01:26:34

struggles starts so anyway we've always enjoyed Ryan Holiday's books and I did not want this one

01:26:41

to slip through our fingers so knowing that the timing was going to work out to where it was going

01:26:45

to be my pick right after it comes out it's like we have to do this like I just think we have to

01:26:50

it's required well truth be told I wanted to pick this one for mine but it wasn't going to come out

01:26:55

in time so glad you did I got it all right I win yes courage is calling by Ryan Holiday we'll do

01:27:03

that after the extended mine by Annie Paul but what gapbook do you have because Joe ain't going to do

01:27:09

that for a while I do not have any gapbooks although I just ordered a bunch of books so

01:27:16

maybe I'll get to one no promises one other comment on the Ryan Holiday stuff yeah I feel like

01:27:25

any time Ryan Holiday comes out with a book we should automatically add it to the bookworm queue

01:27:31

pretty much okay it's in my vote I could get on board with that we got to get through his four

01:27:37

part series here yeah for sure all right that all said I just want to thank those of you who are

01:27:43

bookworm club members specifically you guys are awesome I know we we talk a lot about mics my

01:27:51

node files which he didn't do for this one but has tons and tons and tons of those on the bookworm

01:27:57

club and we just we're so grateful to you and and you definitely help us to keep trucking along

01:28:04

and give us the motivation there so if you're willing to join us and support the show go to

01:28:11

bookworm.fm/membership and we'd love to have you on board that membership yes and just a quick

01:28:18

shout out for people who are members and have noticed that I fell a little bit behind with the

01:28:24

mine nota files I apologize they are all up to date now so go check the member section and

01:28:32

get you some of those mine map files if you are reading along with us pick up the extended mind

01:28:38

by Annie Paul and we will talk to you in a couple of weeks