Bookworm Transcripts

00:00:00

So, Joe, how's the obsidian computer coming that I tasked you with last episode?

00:00:09

I just want to preface this with your mean.

00:00:15

Because I ended up in the middle of at least three different conversations with three different

00:00:21

people asking them and working through how difficult is it to take a base Linux operating

00:00:29

system and create my own version of the base Linux kernel.

00:00:37

And unfortunately, one person said this is really difficult and two people said, "Oh,

00:00:43

just go here and do this."

00:00:44

And it's actually not that difficult.

00:00:46

It's like, "Oh, curses."

00:00:49

So I looked into this mic and I am pretty sure I know the path forward and how to solve

00:00:57

this and make it a thing.

00:00:59

So the question is, is it worth going down that path?

00:01:04

Martin looked into it as well.

00:01:06

So Martin, maybe you and I should connect on this.

00:01:09

It's totally worth it.

00:01:10

I even went as far as digging through my bank of old beat up laptops to see if I could find

00:01:16

an old cheap Lenovo or HP, something that I could use as a test model for this.

00:01:22

And thankfully, my new custom PC that I got for encoding for live streams came in and

00:01:28

overtook the time I was going to use to dig through all that stuff.

00:01:31

So basically, Mike, you have inflicted pain upon my brain and I continue to try to solve

00:01:38

this problem.

00:01:39

Thanks for that.

00:01:41

You're welcome.

00:01:44

The world will thank you once you make these.

00:01:47

Yeah.

00:01:48

ObsidianOS.

00:01:50

There are literally three people in the bookworm audience who are just waiting for this.

00:01:55

You just got to make it and then start selling these things and then turn to profit.

00:02:02

There's demand for this, Joe Beelig.

00:02:04

Yeah.

00:02:05

I'm telling you.

00:02:06

Yeah.

00:02:07

More than 10 people.

00:02:08

Dozens of people.

00:02:09

Hmm.

00:02:10

So you're telling me, if I buy, if I can get them, base, like Linux loaded laptops, pour

00:02:18

it over ObsidianOS on it, if that can exist, and turn around and sell the laptop.

00:02:24

What would you pay for it, Mike?

00:02:26

Hmm.

00:02:27

Good question.

00:02:28

I don't know.

00:02:29

Probably a couple hundred bucks.

00:02:31

Because see, I think that would mean there's like no margin in it.

00:02:35

Just going to say that.

00:02:39

Now, if it was something that you could make available and people who know how to load

00:02:48

an operating system onto a computer, know that it is not difficult at all.

00:02:54

And if you're willing to do that, just doing the software side of it, it's actually not

00:03:00

too far out of the question.

00:03:02

The hardware side of it gets to be a whole different game.

00:03:07

Sure.

00:03:08

So.

00:03:09

Well, I'm going to talk to Martin.

00:03:10

We'll start up a Kickstarter.

00:03:12

Okay.

00:03:13

Something.

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This thing needs to exist.

00:03:19

It's a question, Martin.

00:03:20

Probably Debian would be the Linux distro to start with.

00:03:23

From what I'm reading and following, that's probably the one that you build off of.

00:03:28

What's Obsidian?

00:03:29

You guys are fine.

00:03:31

Well, we won't go that far down the rabbit hole.

00:03:36

Let's go to follow up.

00:03:39

And were you curious these last two weeks, Joe Bielig?

00:03:42

Hmm.

00:03:43

I see what you did there.

00:03:48

I have done my best to use that simple, whatever you want to call it, sound effect in my life.

00:03:57

And it is strange how powerful that is.

00:04:00

It's so weird.

00:04:01

Yeah.

00:04:02

Whenever something is going on and I'm not sure why I made the bad choice that I did.

00:04:08

If I audibly make that sound, hmm.

00:04:12

Like, forces your brain to go into problem solving mode.

00:04:16

And it's so weird.

00:04:18

And I feel like that's one little tiny trick that was worth the price of the book last time.

00:04:24

I know I wasn't a huge fan of it, but I found great value in it.

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I'm going to attempt to continue this.

00:04:31

And I know this is something that you were going to do.

00:04:32

Have you done this?

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I've done it just occasionally, though.

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It hasn't turned into a big practice for me.

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But the comment that you made about that one thing being worth the price of the book previously

00:04:47

that got me thinking about all of the books that we have not liked over the years.

00:04:52

Yes.

00:04:53

And my son Toby, who edits the podcast, he has been going through the backlog.

00:05:00

And every once in a while, I'll come home and he'll say something about an episode that

00:05:06

he listened to.

00:05:07

And he just listened to it.

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And I have no idea, because that was years ago at this point.

00:05:12

Like yesterday it was, wow, you really didn't like Zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance.

00:05:18

It's like, I could tell you were really fired up in that one.

00:05:23

Yeah, yeah, it was.

00:05:26

It's funny he can pick that out too.

00:05:31

Yep.

00:05:33

So I think I've completed this once in a while, like occasionally.

00:05:39

But it's not like a practice or anything.

00:05:42

Sounds like maybe yours is more of a practice.

00:05:45

I don't know what I would say that.

00:05:47

I have done it maybe over the last two weeks, well, not even maybe over the last week or

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so.

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I've probably done it three or four times whenever something has struck me as something that

00:06:00

I'm doing something I don't like that I do.

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Why?

00:06:04

Like, whenever I notice that, that's whenever I would do it.

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But it's not something it's definitely not daily and not multiple times a day by any

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means.

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But yes.

00:06:16

Sure.

00:06:17

Okay.

00:06:18

Well, that is it for follow up.

00:06:22

So I guess we can get into today's book.

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Start the fun part.

00:06:27

Today's book is Creative Calling by Chase Jarvis, the founder of Instagram before Instagram.

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That's fair.

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He tells some pretty crazy stories.

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I had no idea honestly who he was when I picked up this book.

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But the thing that he's, I don't want to say best known for, but the story of most interesting

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note in the circles that we run in maybe is the fact that he had worked with some developers

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and launched a photo app called Best Photo based on the belief that the best camera is

00:07:06

the one that you have with you.

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It blew up and it was at the very beginning of the app store and the developers didn't

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really think that they could make a huge living off of it.

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They thought it was just a novelty sort of a thing.

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So it kind of disappeared because they weren't incentivized to keep updating it and Chase

00:07:28

couldn't do it himself.

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Eventually somebody created something like that, but free.

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And then it was bought by Facebook for a billion dollars.

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And so he's got this like big what if, which man, I props to him for getting past that

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one.

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There's some really great stuff in here where he talks about like missed opportunities,

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things like that.

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We'll get into that as we get into the book here, but that one alone, I feel like that

00:07:57

colossal failure in his words gives him a lot of credibility.

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And so I think this is a pretty cool book that you should not disconnect from right now

00:08:07

if you don't consider yourself creative.

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That's kind of his whole point is that everybody is creative and the book is broken down into

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four different sections.

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And it goes along with this framework he has called idea where you imagine what you want

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to create.

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You design a strategy to make your dream a reality.

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E execute your strategy and smash your obstacles and then a amplify your vision to create the

00:08:35

impact that you seek.

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And so each section is essentially a step step one, imagine step two, design step three

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execute and step four is amplify.

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And I have to say as much as dislike the whole systems approach, that's kind of what this

00:08:59

seems like at the beginning, I feel like the way he laid this out is very, very effective.

00:09:04

And each one of these sections has three different chapters.

00:09:07

So we're going to try to crank through all of these today.

00:09:09

Yeah, I think we'll be able to do it.

00:09:11

There's a lot here, obviously, and I think you made a good point with if you're not in

00:09:18

a creative work environment, just remember everybody is creative in some way.

00:09:25

Even people who consider their job or the things that they do every day, monotonous and

00:09:31

not creative.

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I think Chase and likely both of us would argue that either one, you're not looking

00:09:38

at it correctly or you're just in the wrong mindset for it because I think everybody's

00:09:43

job is creative in some form.

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And even that, I think he would even say that once you connect with that, there is definitely

00:09:54

room for a traditionally creative endeavor outside of that as well.

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So he's kind of basing this off of like what you would think of traditionally as creativity,

00:10:05

which is in his case, photography is by far the big theme that runs through the book.

00:10:11

But you can easily translate that to writing, to podcasting, to youtubing, like whatever

00:10:18

that endeavor is that you want to consider.

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Now those are all the online ones that Mike and I tend to dabble in or do a lot in.

00:10:26

So that's what, of course, is going to come to mind with us.

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But you can translate that to your own scenario, for sure.

00:10:34

Yeah.

00:10:35

And the big thing is just getting on the same page at the very beginning, that's the whole

00:10:39

point of the introduction in my opinion.

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Well he does introduce idea here too, but the big takeaway from the introduction is that

00:10:48

we are all creative and unleashing your creative capacity, he says, is your highest calling

00:10:56

in life.

00:10:57

And I really like that.

00:10:59

And I would challenge everybody regardless of what your job title is or what position,

00:11:06

what season of life you find yourself in, asking yourself, how can I express creativity

00:11:14

in whatever ways that I have available to me.

00:11:19

But once you find it, then you got to get busy.

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And that's where the rest of this book comes in.

00:11:26

So let's start here maybe with chapter one, which is inside the first step, imagine, but

00:11:33

chapter one is here your call.

00:11:36

And the big point here is that we've all got these different personalities or different

00:11:43

styles when it comes to the ways that we create.

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He runs through several of them, the starter, the noodler, the prioritizer, the resistor,

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the striver.

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But what you need to do is figure out, you know, what is the way that you are creative and

00:12:04

then start to lean into that and you can't just copy what somebody else is doing.

00:12:10

You can admire somebody else's work, but you've got to find a way to make it your own.

00:12:15

But the well of potential runs deep, he says, in every single one of us and creativity is

00:12:22

actually a boundless source of energy.

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That's very intriguing to me.

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And I feel like if all you did was figure out how to tap into that energy source by

00:12:30

creating and you use that at the beginning of your worker team before you went in and

00:12:34

did your job job, that alone might be a huge benefit for you and reason why you should

00:12:41

embrace your creative calling.

00:12:43

Yeah, I think this is, he gets into this a little bit later, it's for some like watch

00:12:50

outs and such, but I think that this is a thing where if you're willing to set aside

00:12:58

like the consumption habits that we all have, it's it is way easier to come home from work,

00:13:07

turn on a TV and watch a basketball game or goof on Instagram reels or watch YouTube

00:13:14

shorts endlessly.

00:13:15

Like it's easy to do those things, but you're a lot more fulfilled if you're willing to

00:13:20

flip that table and go from consumption to creation.

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And you hear that people, you know, people talk about that a lot like create before you

00:13:29

consume.

00:13:31

And there's a lot of energy that can come from that.

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And I know that sounds a little bit through through little weird philosophical and stuff,

00:13:41

but it's not wrong.

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Like, I know that the days when I've been able to spend 20, 30 minutes writing, like, you

00:13:48

know, Mike and I read all the time, like we're reading 20, 30 pages a day, 15 pages a day,

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it doesn't take that many pages a day to read a book in two weeks.

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Like that sounds like a great big lofty goal.

00:13:59

It's really not that complicated when you break it down.

00:14:03

But if you were to spend 15, 20 minutes creating something, there's something about that that

00:14:09

makes the rest of the day go really well.

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Like, if you do that first thing in the morning, there's just something that makes the whole

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day significantly better.

00:14:15

And paying attention to that and just listening for that is a big part of this whole process.

00:14:19

Yeah.

00:14:20

And then also recognizing this is a big thing that he mentions in chapter one, but I feel

00:14:26

like the meat of this comes later, but he says that you are not your art.

00:14:30

So disconnecting your identity from the things that you make is very important, especially

00:14:37

when you're just starting off and maybe you're dealing with imposter syndrome or you find

00:14:43

yourself just gravitating towards doing something exactly the way that one of your favorite creators

00:14:48

does it.

00:14:50

And that kind of gets into the next chapter, which is walk your own path.

00:14:56

There's a acronym that he introduces here called deer, which I think is actually a pretty brilliant

00:15:03

way to analyze and look at the way that somebody who makes something you love has done something.

00:15:12

And then also envision opportunities to spin it and make it your own.

00:15:17

So it stands for deconstruct emulate, analyze and repeat.

00:15:24

And emulate does not mean do it the exact same way.

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It means that you're recognizing what the mechanics are that you really like about the

00:15:35

way that they did something.

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And then when you try to imitate that, you do have to kind of watch and make sure that

00:15:44

you're not doing it the exact same way.

00:15:45

You got to put your own spin and flavor on it.

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But I feel like the more that you do that, the easier that becomes, the more natural it

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becomes.

00:15:55

This is part of the process.

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This is what fascinates me so much about the whole PKM thing is like, if you understand

00:16:01

personal knowledge management, there has to be an output.

00:16:04

It can't just be the input.

00:16:05

You can't just read the books.

00:16:06

You can't just collect the notes.

00:16:09

There has to be some sort of output, some synthesis, some analyzing that goes on of all

00:16:16

these dots that you've collected and what does this mean to me?

00:16:21

And then you just express that and it's the natural result of the dots that you've collected.

00:16:25

You don't have to judge the output, but without that output, it's like a water wheel.

00:16:31

You have water coming in, but there's nothing going out.

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And instead of a river where there's a constant flow of things, it becomes a reservoir or

00:16:42

a cesspool because there's nowhere for the stuff that you've collected to go.

00:16:46

There's a lot in that.

00:16:51

All this to say, pay attention.

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That's ultimately what I took away, at least from chapter one here, is pay attention and

00:17:00

notice what it is that you like to do and don't be afraid to start.

00:17:06

So many times people want to judge the results of their work early on.

00:17:12

If you're getting into YouTubing, let's use that example because there are a lot of folks

00:17:18

who are really brand new to you.

00:17:20

Completely hypothetical.

00:17:21

Completely hypothetical.

00:17:22

And if you're getting into it, your first videos are always terrible.

00:17:26

Take screencasting, Mike.

00:17:28

That's probably a better example for us.

00:17:29

The first one you did, if you went back and watched it right now, you'd be real happy

00:17:33

with it.

00:17:34

Oh, dude, I could tell you a story about that.

00:17:37

So when I started creating, I got this idea to write my book, but I had no idea how to

00:17:46

write, so I started a blog and just wrote for an hour every day.

00:17:51

I took far, I went into the office, did it for two weeks.

00:17:54

Asian efficiency posted that they were hiring.

00:17:56

I contacted them not about a job, but about an opportunity to do guest posts.

00:17:59

I'm like, well, we don't really do that, but if you have anything, send it in.

00:18:02

So I sent them my blog and like, hey, this is good.

00:18:05

We'll give it a shot.

00:18:06

They also discovered a YouTube channel that I had started called Semi-Pro Workflows, which

00:18:13

had a single screencast, which I recorded on my laptop while I was sitting on my couch.

00:18:19

So no professional gear whatsoever.

00:18:22

It was complete trash, 20 minutes of me rambling about how I use TextExpander.

00:18:27

But that was the thing that Tan had identified like, hey, that's pretty cool.

00:18:32

You think you could do that for us?

00:18:35

And so I threw it out there and even at the time I thought it was horrible, but somebody

00:18:39

else saw like, hey, this has got potential at least, even if it's not very good.

00:18:46

So just the fact that I kind of accidentally shared that, you know, that these stumbled

00:18:50

upon it.

00:18:51

I wasn't proud of that at all.

00:18:52

I was kind of ashamed when you called out.

00:18:54

I was like, hey, so is this you?

00:18:55

And I'm like, oh, yeah, that's me.

00:18:58

I don't know where I saw this, but recently I saw someone say that they're not a failure.

00:19:04

They're just getting started.

00:19:06

It's not that your work isn't horrible.

00:19:11

It's just like you're, you're starting the process of getting good at it.

00:19:14

That's, that's really what it is.

00:19:15

We have to be okay with it being actually terrible to start with because it's going to be when

00:19:21

you first start.

00:19:22

Like if you were to pick up, like, if I were to find somebody who has never talked in front

00:19:25

of a microphone and try to podcast with them, I'm sure you've done this.

00:19:29

It's almost painful unless they're an extrovert and they just talk to people all the time and

00:19:33

they can ignore the microphone, which is like nobody when it's the first time they're doing

00:19:37

it.

00:19:38

It's like painful to get people to podcast with you the first time.

00:19:42

But at this point, like a lot of people are familiar with microphones and recording things

00:19:47

because people record Zoom and such all the time.

00:19:50

So like people are kind of used to that just in general.

00:19:53

So it's not as common, but still like your first one's always terrible.

00:19:57

I don't know how I got on this crappy first drafts.

00:20:00

Yes.

00:20:01

Going back to what was that book by Anlomatt that we read bird by bird.

00:20:06

Yeah, I'm going to put that in the show notes here.

00:20:11

But another big thing from this section, which I just want to use to encourage people is

00:20:19

he says that you need to start for your ready kind of to your point.

00:20:22

You're never going to be ready.

00:20:25

And he says, the risky path is playing it safe.

00:20:27

Insecurity and discomfort are integral to the growth process.

00:20:30

And he makes us comment that this is the riskiest time in history to play it safe.

00:20:37

And I agree with that because we have all of these tools available to us.

00:20:45

It doesn't matter.

00:20:46

It could be podcasting.

00:20:47

It could be blogging.

00:20:48

It could be YouTube.

00:20:49

It could be TikTok.

00:20:50

It could be the next platform which hasn't been invented yet.

00:20:56

You know, there's going to be a whole bunch of things which one of those just might click

00:21:01

for you.

00:21:03

And it might completely change your world.

00:21:07

But you will never know that unless you put yourself out there.

00:21:13

That's not something you can discover through reason and through logic.

00:21:19

You kind of just have to do it and see how it feels.

00:21:24

He talks a lot about intuition actually in this book, which I think is pretty cool.

00:21:28

But just make stuff fail fast.

00:21:32

Like just get it out there.

00:21:35

And see what happens because I think there has never been a greater opportunity for creatives

00:21:41

to find their niche and build a tribe or build an audience and make their art and be supported

00:21:50

for it.

00:21:51

Yeah, I think this is where like if you go back to that acronym, dear, like the reflect

00:21:56

part of that, like looking back on what you've done, like that is really the point I think

00:22:03

when you start digging into this really.

00:22:05

It's like, okay, make something and then evaluate it to see how you could do better next time.

00:22:12

He tells the story of him going on these big adventures from country to country throughout

00:22:17

the world to take photos.

00:22:19

But at the time you had to develop the film, right?

00:22:23

That was the whole dark room scenario.

00:22:26

And he would write notes like second shot on this reel.

00:22:30

I had these settings like what F stops, what shutter speeds like he had all of that.

00:22:35

And he would write all that down because it could be weeks or a month later before he

00:22:39

developed the film and he's not going to remember how he had it set.

00:22:43

In today's world with digital cameras, like you can just adjust the ISO, adjust the white

00:22:48

balance, all those things unless you have a black magic camera.

00:22:51

And then you can say this is what worked and what didn't.

00:22:55

And then you can lock all that stuff in.

00:22:57

And you know immediately whether or not it's going to be what you want.

00:23:00

He didn't have that then.

00:23:02

He had to write all that stuff down.

00:23:03

And if that's what you need to do to determine what's working and what's not working with

00:23:08

your craft, then go for it.

00:23:10

It's not rocket science, but at the same time, you have to be aware and just reflect on it.

00:23:16

Yeah, maybe this is the spot to go into the next chapter, which is chapter three, you

00:23:22

stand out because it kind of continues some of these themes that we're talking about

00:23:27

here.

00:23:29

But the big thing that stands out to me from this particular chapter is that a safe life

00:23:37

is a small life.

00:23:39

And he flat out says that most of us risk too little to really stand out.

00:23:46

And that's part of the formula.

00:23:48

Creativity requires risk.

00:23:50

And so there's a barrier to be overcome there for every single person.

00:23:56

But one of the things that can help you overcome that is recognizing that you will never be

00:23:59

all things to all people.

00:24:01

Not everybody's going to like your stuff and just lean into what makes you you because

00:24:08

you're not going to get a whole lot of support in that area from the traditional systems

00:24:13

that are in place.

00:24:15

The educational system, he says, is designed with efficiency, not creativity in mind.

00:24:21

And I completely agree.

00:24:23

I mean, this is potentially a tangent, but big reason why we homeschool our kids.

00:24:29

We don't want them to learn in order to pass a test.

00:24:33

And even if you go beyond like middle school, high school, like what is the path that is

00:24:39

laid before you?

00:24:41

It's go to college, get a good job, a safe job, which Chase is arguing.

00:24:49

That's not the way to go in today's digital economy.

00:24:54

And I think he's probably right.

00:24:56

When you take this book in line with a whole bunch of other stuff that we've read, like

00:25:02

Deep Work by Kale Newport comes to mind, you know, where he talks about the people who

00:25:07

are going to be successful in the digital economy.

00:25:10

And it's not the people who have a specific job title.

00:25:13

It's the people who are able to think critically and do creative things, things that can't be

00:25:19

automated, that can't be replaced by a machine.

00:25:23

And creativity is one of those things.

00:25:26

Creativity is what it is.

00:25:29

It's distinctly human.

00:25:31

And what you, I know there's AI and all that kind of stuff that can write articles for

00:25:35

you and yadda yadda yadda.

00:25:37

But I really think that it doesn't compare to true art that a person can make.

00:25:44

And so if you're able to interject that into the things that you do, what you're doing

00:25:48

is you're making yourself in Kale Newport's words more valuable to the marketplace and

00:25:54

who wouldn't want to do that.

00:25:57

That's the thing that's going to set you apart from everybody else and make you irreplaceable.

00:26:02

There's so many things that computers can do, but it's impossible for them to make the

00:26:08

connections that human brains do.

00:26:11

As much as people like to say that AI is going to take over so many different jobs,

00:26:17

I feel like it's a long ways away.

00:26:20

The more time I spend with these types of AIs and stuff, these so-called AIs, they're

00:26:25

not even close and part of the issue gets to be that it requires whoever writes that

00:26:32

algorithm, whoever writes that software, somebody has a bias somewhere.

00:26:39

And if they create that AI, they cannot help but have a bias built into it.

00:26:46

And all you have to do is have a different bias and you're now unique and different.

00:26:51

This is also why if you come back to take podcasting and that world, it's been around

00:26:59

a long enough time that there are podcasts on just about every topic, it seems like.

00:27:06

But podcasters will all tell you you should start a podcast.

00:27:11

And the reason for that is because there will always be someone interested in your specific

00:27:17

voice and by that what they mean is your particular perspective on a topic.

00:27:23

I know that there are many people who listen to the things I say in the videos, I watch

00:27:30

the videos and read the articles.

00:27:31

I know there are a lot of people who do that because they know I come from a farming background,

00:27:36

which is a bit weird to me, but they know that that's kind of a down-to-earth blue-collar

00:27:41

world that I come from.

00:27:48

I definitely have strong farm roots.

00:27:51

Even a couple of weeks ago, I had somebody that was bringing things, or it wasn't even

00:27:54

that long ago, was bringing some stuff to store in our back shed.

00:27:57

And I walked back there and leather boots and torn jeans and I'm like, "John Deere

00:28:03

Ball Cap, that's all shredded."

00:28:06

That's what I'm wearing.

00:28:07

I have never seen you wear anything other than a button-up, Joe.

00:28:11

Sorry, when you get Joe down to the raw who he is, this is kind of what comes out.

00:28:17

Apologies for that.

00:28:19

Yeah.

00:28:20

It's not far off.

00:28:21

No cowboy hat, but we're not too far from it.

00:28:25

All right, so let's go into the next section here.

00:28:31

And let's start in chapter four, which is develop your systems.

00:28:38

This is the part of the book that I didn't really care for.

00:28:45

I understand the larger point he's making.

00:28:47

I got to say that because creativity is a formula, I believe.

00:28:54

And so what he's saying is put yourself in a position where you can create consistently.

00:29:00

Let's come from establishing a consistent, creative practice.

00:29:04

And so that's really what this chapter is about.

00:29:07

There's creativity zappers, creativity boosters, which is a summary of all the productivity

00:29:11

advice that you have ever heard.

00:29:13

And he's got this triangle thing here, which kind of shows, I forget what this is called,

00:29:21

but he's got a name for this creative pyramid.

00:29:24

That's what it is.

00:29:25

Yep, thank you.

00:29:26

So at the bottom, you've got the mindset.

00:29:28

That's the foundation of achievement and fulfillment.

00:29:30

And then on top of that, you've got habits, which are behaviors that support your vision

00:29:35

and on the top, he's got goals, which is your desired outcomes.

00:29:38

I think you could probably take the top of this pyramid off and be just fine.

00:29:43

And would actually, if I were giving advice to creative people, being someone who has

00:29:49

not been insanely successful, like he has, I would say, yeah, remove that goals piece.

00:29:55

Because if you have a goal of, I'm going to grow my podcast to however many people, chances

00:30:00

are you're not.

00:30:03

Chances are when you start a YouTube channel, you're not going to end up with 3 million

00:30:06

subscribers like Ali Abdul.

00:30:10

You kind of have to catch lightning in a bottle.

00:30:11

Now you can work some principles and maybe you're not that successful, but you still

00:30:16

are successful.

00:30:19

So I think you don't really know what this thing is until you try it.

00:30:23

But if you frame it as this is my goal, what that is implicitly saying is anything less

00:30:29

than that is a failure.

00:30:31

And I think that's dangerous.

00:30:33

That's not exactly what he's saying here.

00:30:36

But if you took this chapter out of context and just looked at this pyramid, I think that's

00:30:40

kind of the assumption you would end up at.

00:30:43

See, I feel like the pyramid was one of the parts that I like the most.

00:30:46

Okay, explain.

00:30:47

Which is why I was like, huh, interesting.

00:30:49

Mike didn't like this.

00:30:50

That's totally backwards from what I thought you were going to say.

00:30:55

But like to me, we talk about habits all the time, right?

00:31:00

It's one of our favorite pet topics.

00:31:03

And when we talk about habits, it's generally in the context of how do you build consistency

00:31:09

and how do I make sure that I am doing the right things regularly, right?

00:31:15

And the only way that you can decide what the quote unquote right things are is to have

00:31:20

the right mindset.

00:31:22

If I have a mindset towards evil, just to use general terms here, my habits are going

00:31:29

to be evil, right?

00:31:31

But if I have the mindset of becoming a good writer, my habits are going to revolve around

00:31:37

the ones I'm going to focus on are going to revolve around being a good writer.

00:31:41

But the goals piece, I know, I suppose now that I'm thinking this through it, it does

00:31:47

make sense to me why you don't like it.

00:31:49

Probably the term goals by itself would be my guess.

00:31:53

But the fact that he calls it goals, at least the way he explains it, I didn't take it as

00:32:00

I want to grow my podcast to 5,000 viewers for every episode within one week.

00:32:04

Like, I didn't take it as that was the type of goal I took it as I want to become successful

00:32:10

at XYZ at being a podcaster, like in just setting a very general direction.

00:32:17

That was the way I took his goal terminology.

00:32:21

It wasn't a this is a defined stake in the ground that I'm shooting for.

00:32:24

It was like, here's the general area I'm shooting towards.

00:32:28

That's the way I took it.

00:32:29

But maybe I'm way off.

00:32:31

Maybe I generalized it too far.

00:32:33

I don't know, I think there is a bias that comes through this book because Chase Jarvis

00:32:42

has been very successful.

00:32:45

Now that being said, I think his message is great, but he's had a lot of things that

00:32:51

have blown up for him.

00:32:53

And even the one that he talked about that was a colossal failure that was still more

00:32:59

success than most people will ever realize on the app store.

00:33:05

So he's kind of coming from this based on his experience, right?

00:33:11

Where even his failures are awesome.

00:33:17

And I feel like that maybe is a little bit hard to relate to sometimes.

00:33:23

That being said, I also think that his mindset, he kind of challenges us right at the end

00:33:29

of the book.

00:33:30

Like, everybody you know that's successful has this positive mindset.

00:33:35

And I think there's truth to that.

00:33:38

And so there's probably a lesson for me to be learned there about being more positive.

00:33:44

But goals anchor your expectations in weird ways.

00:33:50

And I just don't think it's necessary at the beginning of the process.

00:33:54

I understand why it's here.

00:33:57

You know, goals are the thing that you're aiming at and the habits are the things you're

00:34:01

going to do every day as you make progress towards that thing.

00:34:03

But I don't know.

00:34:04

I think the very best thing you can do is just create and look at each thing that you

00:34:11

create in context of this thing alone.

00:34:16

But as part of a plan to get to a certain point, because there's going to be a lot of

00:34:22

stuff that you'll find that's adjacent to the things that you're doing that are not

00:34:27

going to be in alignment with the goal, but are going to be the right thing, the right

00:34:33

next step for you to take.

00:34:36

And again, that's my bias based on my personal experience because I was going to do webinars

00:34:43

and then I started doing podcasts and then I started screencasting and like my creative

00:34:49

path is all over the place because it's like, oh, this is the thing.

00:34:53

No, actually that wasn't the thing.

00:34:54

But this thing over here looks cool.

00:34:55

Oh, that was really cool.

00:34:56

Oh, that's not really it either.

00:34:57

That thing over there.

00:34:59

And you really just never know where your journey is going to take you.

00:35:04

So I think you need that flexibility to be able to chase whatever seems right in the moment.

00:35:09

Whatever seems, I shouldn't say in the moment, whatever seems like the next best thing to

00:35:13

do, that's the thing that you should do.

00:35:14

And he does say that in here based on the intuition, right?

00:35:17

You can't just crunch all the numbers and use that to determine the path forward.

00:35:22

You kind of have to just feel it out.

00:35:24

But goals work against you feeling it out, I think.

00:35:27

Maybe I think it depends on the person because like the process you're talking about of switching

00:35:32

from thing to thing, it's probably because like your mission ends up being more about

00:35:36

helping people than it is making videos because like some people making videos is the thing

00:35:42

and they want to help people through that avenue.

00:35:45

But I feel like yours is the other way around.

00:35:47

Mine's the other way around.

00:35:48

Like I want to help people that's like sometimes it's easier to write things, sometimes it's

00:35:53

easier to video record those, sometimes it's better for me to go to you in person and let's

00:35:57

talk to you in person.

00:35:59

Sometimes it's better to do a one on one coaching session.

00:36:01

Like I'll do all of those things because I'm trying to help people where they're at.

00:36:08

And that's not the creative goal for a lot of people.

00:36:13

Like some people just love to try to capture moments with a camera and that is what they're

00:36:18

after.

00:36:19

Now it might be video that they're trying to capture a moment.

00:36:22

Some people love making stock video, like that's a thing.

00:36:27

Chase would say his thing is capturing moments through stills.

00:36:31

Like that's what he wants to do and he loves to do that.

00:36:34

So that was kind of his direction, the goal that he was shooting for, like how do I make

00:36:38

this my all time thing.

00:36:41

So maybe that's the fluidity.

00:36:43

So all I'm saying is I get depends on the person and what you're after.

00:36:46

That's where that whole mission part comes in.

00:36:49

Yeah, I think if he and I were to sit down and talk through this, we're much more in alignment

00:36:54

than I'm making it sound right now.

00:36:57

But goals, I mean, come on, there's a dumb.

00:37:00

Yeah.

00:37:01

But he does follow this up with like all the buzzword stuff.

00:37:04

He's got the creativity zappers and what are the positive ones called the boosters.

00:37:11

I do appreciate that he calls out that most productivity advice is a waste of time.

00:37:16

Yes.

00:37:17

And then he rattles it off like in rapid fire, like meditation, cold showers, gratitude,

00:37:22

you know, fitness, like all these things.

00:37:23

Stay away from social media news, like it's rapid fire over the span, like five pages.

00:37:27

Here you go.

00:37:28

So the bulk of what all the productivity nerds are going to tell you.

00:37:31

Yeah.

00:37:32

But again, like this fits in the line of everything that is in this book because this is kind of

00:37:40

necessary before you get into the next chapter.

00:37:43

So let's go there actually chapter five is make your space.

00:37:47

And so if you're going to go into this without the list of the zappers and boosters, this

00:37:53

is a complicated chapter.

00:37:55

But if you recognize that there are things that you can do, just little things throughout

00:38:00

your day that are going to boost your creativity and you avoid the things that are going to

00:38:05

zap your creativity, this feels much more approachable now to create a regular creative

00:38:11

practice, which is what he's calling you to do in chapter five.

00:38:16

And in fact, that's one of the two action times that I had from this book was from this

00:38:19

chapter, which was identify when I'm going to create.

00:38:23

I want to map out my ideal week and figure out what are the hours that I have available

00:38:28

to me around all the stuff that I do with the day job where I can work on my own art.

00:38:36

And by the way, that's something that we should probably talk about at some point.

00:38:41

I read a Derek Sivers essay.

00:38:44

I think it was part of heck yeah, or no, but he talked about your work and your art.

00:38:52

And I really attached to that essay.

00:38:57

And what he talks about is you want to have a job, which is going to take care of your

00:39:01

needs.

00:39:02

And that frees you up to make your art and not worry about making it commercially viable.

00:39:07

And when I read that, I was like, yes, that makes a ton of sense to me.

00:39:11

Now that doesn't mean that you're not going to accept any sort of financial gain from

00:39:17

many of the things that you've made, but there isn't the pressure for those things

00:39:24

to feed your family.

00:39:26

And I've noticed that like when your art becomes a job, it changes the way that you

00:39:32

approach it.

00:39:34

It doesn't have to necessarily steal the joy from it, but there's the potential for that

00:39:39

where it's like, oh, this is something I have to do instead of something that I want to

00:39:42

do.

00:39:43

Right.

00:39:44

So I'm going into this chapter and based off of that essay and I was like, yes, that's

00:39:50

the thing for me.

00:39:51

I'm going to design my life around that essentially.

00:39:55

I want to identify the time that I'm going to create.

00:40:00

And the big thing he's talking about here is that you've got to show up every day.

00:40:06

In fact, he says, the times when you're stressed, those are the times when it's important to

00:40:09

stick to the schedule.

00:40:11

Every Allah, James Clear, you know, never missed twice sort of a thing.

00:40:16

The bad workouts are the most important ones.

00:40:19

That's kind of what this is.

00:40:21

This is about.

00:40:22

And there's a whole bunch of stuff in here about establishing your workspace, finding and

00:40:28

creating a schedule, not letting the lack of ideal conditions stop you.

00:40:35

And I kind of feel like I wish I had read this several years ago because at this point,

00:40:39

I don't really have my studio and my office set up.

00:40:43

Like I have all the tools that I need in order to create the stuff.

00:40:46

But it's been a long time coming and I feel like several years ago, I could have used

00:40:52

the advice of don't worry about getting the right gear.

00:40:55

Just start making things.

00:40:57

And his whole story is that I mean, he was a professional photographer and he just starts

00:41:01

taking pictures with his crummy iPhone camera, you know, and he's like, this is amazing.

00:41:07

He becomes the mobile photography guy.

00:41:10

If anybody has the credibility to say, like, don't worry about the tools, it's Chase Jarvis.

00:41:15

Right.

00:41:16

Yeah, I watched a, this is very telling.

00:41:20

If you know the name Harris Heller, I got into watching his YouTube videos for a while

00:41:26

because he was talking about gear and like making videos for YouTube and such.

00:41:30

Like he was talking about that sort of thing.

00:41:32

And he kept like having these conversations with his audience.

00:41:37

He did some live streams and stuff and was talking about how the tools don't matter, like

00:41:43

focus on your idea and use what you have when you're first starting.

00:41:47

And then if you earn money from it, take that money not to buy the gear you really want,

00:41:53

but to buy whatever it is that would take your thing to the next level, whether that's

00:41:57

graphics or a brand, a website, like whatever that is, that's what it would, he would encourage

00:42:03

you to do.

00:42:04

Well, he got finished with one of these videos where he was explaining all of this and it

00:42:09

was really well done.

00:42:10

And he got to the end.

00:42:11

He's like, just to prove to you that I practice what I preach, this entire video was shot and

00:42:17

edited on my phone.

00:42:19

And like I could have swore he was on some top in, he's got five or six DSLRs that are

00:42:26

mirrorless, he's got a black magic camera that's like the six K thing.

00:42:30

He's got all these fancy lenses and stuff and he shot that thing on his phone and I did

00:42:34

not know it.

00:42:35

So it doesn't always matter.

00:42:38

If you have a phone in your pocket, there's a good chance that it will do almost anything

00:42:45

that you can think of when it comes to the creativity world, but you just have to be

00:42:50

willing to use it for that if that's what you want to do.

00:42:54

Now, obviously if you're a painter, your phone is not going to do too well with that.

00:42:58

I don't recommend taking oil paints to your phone.

00:43:01

Not a recommended task I would put on your table.

00:43:06

Fair enough.

00:43:08

I found the link to that essay.

00:43:10

I'm going to paste it in the show notes here.

00:43:14

This is really good.

00:43:16

And basically, yeah, the lifestyle, the happiest people he knows, he says they have a well-paying

00:43:21

job and then they seriously pursue their art for love, not for money.

00:43:25

And I feel like that is very much in line with what Chase Jarvis would tell you, but

00:43:30

then he's had commercial success as well.

00:43:33

Right.

00:43:34

And it is true.

00:43:35

I know I've done code projects and website projects as a job before.

00:43:43

And I love building those things.

00:43:46

It takes all the fun out of it when it's required for my income.

00:43:51

It's just not something I like doing when I need it to work and I need it to come in.

00:43:58

But whenever it's something that I'm going to go do because it's fun, as an example, my

00:44:04

wife and I just launched a local business of sorts called Acorn Ridge.

00:44:08

We affectionately refer to our property as Acorn Ridge.

00:44:13

So we decided to start doing cooking classes and such out of our house.

00:44:17

And Becky does leatherworking and stuff.

00:44:19

So she just decided to start selling some of that stuff online.

00:44:23

And it's like, great.

00:44:24

So obviously, I'm the web developer.

00:44:27

So in this span of two days, we had a website up and running, have a store running.

00:44:31

These are all things like, I will gladly do these things and we'll perfect it.

00:44:36

But if I was being paid to do that, I'm like, it would always be about, how am I going to

00:44:40

get the money out of this to pay for my kids' shoes?

00:44:46

But when it's something like this, I love doing it for myself 100% of the time.

00:44:52

So anyway, stuff like that.

00:44:54

It just changes the game.

00:44:55

It totally does.

00:44:56

Yeah.

00:44:57

And if you're thinking to yourself, well, that's great.

00:45:00

You've got lots of time to invest in something like that.

00:45:02

That's another big theme in this chapter is that you need to understand what are your

00:45:09

priorities.

00:45:10

And he says, there's two places that we can understand our priorities are calendar and

00:45:14

our bank statement.

00:45:15

What do you spend your time and your money on?

00:45:18

And he says that we give away a lot of time to things that don't matter.

00:45:22

And I think that's true of everybody I have ever met.

00:45:25

So if you say you don't have time for your art, just take stock of where you're wasting

00:45:30

your time and you can find a little bit here or there, spoiler alert, I guess for my action.

00:45:35

I've already started working on this.

00:45:37

I was shocked at how much time I was able to find for creating when it became a priority

00:45:42

for me.

00:45:43

But that's a theme here of make your space in chapter five.

00:45:48

It's like, okay, he's not only talking about your workspace, but more the head space and

00:45:53

time space for it.

00:45:55

So if you're not setting a side time for it every day, it won't come true.

00:46:03

Just spoiler alert there.

00:46:05

Yep.

00:46:06

And there's another piece to this, which is in the next chapter.

00:46:10

So let's go to chapter six, which is do your best work because they say he says in this

00:46:17

chapter that you seem to do this over and over again, repetition is a mother of skill

00:46:21

and you don't need a blueprint just a direction because you could have the time to create and

00:46:28

you sit down, you're going to write and you just stare at the blinking cursor.

00:46:34

I've been there.

00:46:35

I'm sure you have to where you're like, okay, I've got the time.

00:46:38

I'm going to do the thing.

00:46:40

I'm ready to go.

00:46:42

And then nothing like there's no creative juice flowing.

00:46:46

And I don't deal with that a ton.

00:46:49

Most of the time I have too many things bouncing around as ideas and I can't pick the one I

00:46:54

want to work on, which is why this is where my other action item comes from because he

00:47:00

talks about creating the prompt for the next day before you leave.

00:47:07

And I think this is kind of genius.

00:47:10

This isn't the first time I've heard this idea.

00:47:12

There's a very popular blog post that Sean Blonk wrote several years ago on the note.

00:47:18

And basically it's the idea that he would take an index card, put it on his keyboard

00:47:24

and it would have the writing prompt for the next day so that when he came to write, you

00:47:29

know, he didn't have to decide it was right there staring at him.

00:47:32

And I want to start doing that because I'm recognizing that the time that I have to create

00:47:37

consistently is going to happen at the very beginning of my day.

00:47:40

And so I don't want to get here and then have to figure out what am I going to write

00:47:45

about?

00:47:46

What am I going to make?

00:47:47

I want it to be ready to go.

00:47:48

And I feel like at the end of the day, when I am tired, that's kind of the ideal point

00:47:54

for me to just pick something to work on the next day.

00:47:57

It's like, I don't care, just pick one.

00:48:01

And that's the value.

00:48:03

And it is like you get that down and then the next day you don't have to spend any effort

00:48:07

trying to figure out what is the thing that you're going to create.

00:48:10

You've already got the prompt and you just have to follow through and take action on

00:48:13

it.

00:48:14

I feel like that is going to be very effective for me, but I'll report back.

00:48:19

Yeah.

00:48:20

I've read Sean's article the note.

00:48:23

It has been years ago.

00:48:29

How old is that?

00:48:32

Four or five years old now?

00:48:34

It's been a while.

00:48:36

I remember reading that.

00:48:38

It's like, oh, that's a great idea.

00:48:43

And I did it once.

00:48:44

And I've not done it since because what happens, at least for me, and this is also why I don't

00:48:51

plan tomorrow today.

00:48:53

Because the moment I write, I did his note card thing and I did it once because what

00:48:57

happened was I wrote it on the note card, but then my brain started writing it immediately.

00:49:02

It's like, oh, that's an amazing intro.

00:49:06

Let me write that down quick.

00:49:07

30 minutes later.

00:49:08

Way to do it at the end of the day.

00:49:09

I had a rough draft done and did not leave until I got it out of my head.

00:49:15

It's like, nope, I cannot do this.

00:49:18

It will not work.

00:49:19

And even people say, time block your day, tomorrow, today, that whole concept, plan

00:49:25

tomorrow, what are you going to do tomorrow, even if it's not time blocked?

00:49:28

I can't do that.

00:49:30

I end up going down this whole process of trying to, oh, well, that one's only going

00:49:35

to take a few minutes.

00:49:36

I could just do that now and then I don't have to worry about it.

00:49:38

No, I cannot do these things.

00:49:41

That's why when I get to the office, the first thing I do is run through and decide what's

00:49:45

going to happen today.

00:49:47

And then my brain will take off and start doing those things.

00:49:50

It works way better for me.

00:49:51

So I cannot do that.

00:49:52

I wish I could.

00:49:53

It sounds great.

00:49:54

It, no, it's a bad day.

00:49:59

Well that points out kind of an important point here.

00:50:02

I think, you know, Chase has written this from his experience and he's sharing the things

00:50:08

that are working for him.

00:50:09

But I can totally understand how that is just not going to work for certain personality

00:50:17

types.

00:50:19

And you do have to kind of figure this out for yourself.

00:50:22

But just reading through this, you don't get the impression that there's any wiggle

00:50:26

room here.

00:50:27

No, no.

00:50:28

Like this is the system.

00:50:29

Correct.

00:50:30

Yeah.

00:50:31

The way I took it was like, no, you have to do this.

00:50:32

If you consider yourself a creative, this is what you have to do.

00:50:34

It's like, nope, that ain't happening.

00:50:37

Even says in this chapter that if inspiration strikes, you write it down and you go back

00:50:42

to the task at hand.

00:50:44

And I think for you probably that's just not going to work.

00:50:48

No, because that's, again, that one day I tried to do it.

00:50:51

I was trying to do that.

00:50:53

I was trying to write down the ideas I had so that I could go back to what I was doing.

00:50:58

But then 30 minutes of like incessant ideas for how it was going to like, I should have

00:51:02

just finished the thing.

00:51:05

It was better off that way.

00:51:06

Yeah.

00:51:07

I've mentioned to you, Jesse J. Anderson, he writes a lot about ADHD and he is writing a

00:51:16

book about the things that he's learned with his own diagnosis with ADHD and how he's, I

00:51:25

don't want to say overcome it, but like the productivity systems that work for him and

00:51:29

the productivity systems that don't.

00:51:30

From a perspective of like neurotypical, this is what I was taught growing up to.

00:51:35

This is what actually works for me dealing with ADHD.

00:51:39

And I'll put a link to the book in the show notes.

00:51:44

It's not out yet.

00:51:45

He's in the process of writing it, but he's got like the table of contents and stuff available

00:51:50

if you are interested in that sort of thing.

00:51:53

But I instantly thought of that when I got to this section two where it's like very cut

00:51:58

and dry.

00:51:59

This is the process that you follow.

00:52:00

It didn't spend a whole lot of time thinking about it, but in the back of my mind, I was

00:52:04

like, I bet Jesse Anderson and Joe Buelegg would have issues.

00:52:09

Correct.

00:52:10

Yeah.

00:52:11

I just signed up for Jesse's.

00:52:12

He's got an email newsletter called extrafocus.

00:52:14

Extrafocus.io I think is where you go to do that.

00:52:18

That's all it is is just a sign up page for the newsletter.

00:52:22

So I just signed up for it.

00:52:24

Can't tell you if it's any good or not, but I assume it is.

00:52:28

Well, I really appreciate his style and his writing.

00:52:32

He's been a guest on the Focus podcast.

00:52:35

And I think he does a real great job of just sharing the struggles that he's gone through

00:52:43

and the lessons that he's learned and having to figure this out for himself.

00:52:50

I go back and forth with this.

00:52:52

Every time I hear somebody talk about their experience with ADHD, it plants the seat in

00:52:58

my head of maybe I have this and I should go get it checked out, but I've never done

00:53:02

it and I don't want to self-diagnose myself because certainly my symptoms, if you'll

00:53:07

call them that are not to the extreme level of some of the stuff that like Jesse's described.

00:53:12

But I do empathize with being told, especially like growing up like you just got to focus.

00:53:17

Just stand task.

00:53:19

You can't do it.

00:53:21

But at the same time, like physically not able to.

00:53:23

He's got to hack his own system and it's totally not fair.

00:53:27

But at the same time, and I'm learning this, it's very easy for people who are diagnosed

00:53:33

ADHD to use that as an excuse.

00:53:39

And I hesitate to even say this.

00:53:43

A lot of people that I talk to myself included will use that as kind of a, it almost puts

00:53:49

like the victim mindset and there's like, I have this thing.

00:53:53

I'm stuck with it.

00:53:54

I have to deal with it and it makes life so much harder for me.

00:53:58

So obviously I'm not going to be as productive as someone else.

00:54:01

If I can get the laundry done today, it's a successful day.

00:54:04

People have that victim mindset whenever they're diagnosed.

00:54:09

And I don't want to just accept that negative mentality.

00:54:13

Like, yes, I know that it makes some things harder, but there are a lot of times when

00:54:20

I choose to make it harder unknowingly at times.

00:54:26

But if I will step back and acknowledge that that was harder, but it was because I chose

00:54:31

to make it harder or accepted or use this victim card to make it harder and hoping somebody

00:54:38

else will just magically set me free from this thing.

00:54:41

Like, you know what I'm saying?

00:54:43

Like, I don't want it to be an excuse.

00:54:45

Like, yes, it's something that I struggle with, but even that, like, it's a thing where

00:54:52

I struggle with it in some areas, but it's a very big benefit in other areas.

00:54:56

And I'm aware of that.

00:54:58

But we like to focus on the negatives a lot of times.

00:55:00

Like, the creativity piece.

00:55:03

Coming up with ideas on what to write about, that has never been a problem for me.

00:55:08

Just sit down and look at, like, I wrote down, I think, 12 ideas earlier today just because

00:55:13

I realized, oh, my idea bank for what I'm going to write about is quite low.

00:55:17

Okay, well, here's some more to add to it.

00:55:20

It was that simple.

00:55:21

Yeah.

00:55:22

So I don't ever have that blinking cursor problem, really at all.

00:55:25

I don't think I've ever dealt with that.

00:55:26

Yeah, I don't think it's...

00:55:28

I think there's a difference between playing the victim card and recognizing your natural

00:55:36

tendencies.

00:55:38

And I think that's the thing that kind of rubs me wrong about this is there's no room

00:55:42

for that.

00:55:43

You know, and creative calling is just, this is the way you create because this is the

00:55:48

way that I create.

00:55:51

But I think you do got to figure it out for yourself.

00:55:52

And that actually leads into the next section in the next chapter.

00:55:58

Chapter seven is make it till you make it.

00:56:00

Well, if you never figure out how to flow in the way you're wired, you're never going

00:56:08

to establish a consistent routine.

00:56:11

And that's really what this is all about is you just make your art, you do it consistently.

00:56:18

You don't judge it.

00:56:19

You just keep getting it out there.

00:56:21

And the fact that you keep getting it out there, that's the thing that makes it good.

00:56:25

I mentioned to you before we started recording, I am going through Ali Abdahl's part-time

00:56:31

YouTuber Academy.

00:56:33

And he shares some statistics in one of the sessions about the number of videos that it

00:56:40

takes to reach a million subscribers or something like that.

00:56:45

And it was an insane amount of videos.

00:56:48

It's like 1,300 videos before you would hit a million subscribers.

00:56:52

Like the average channel that has a million subscribers.

00:56:55

Now you can learn faster and you can get there sooner.

00:57:01

You may take you longer too.

00:57:02

But the point is that you can't worry about the quality of the stuff that you're publishing

00:57:08

at the beginning.

00:57:09

And you just have to make stuff.

00:57:12

And you've got to make a lot of stuff.

00:57:14

You just got to get it out there.

00:57:16

And you've got to get the feedback.

00:57:18

And when you start doing it, I think the chart that Chase Jarvis shares in this section

00:57:23

is pretty accurate.

00:57:26

The joy goes up at the beginning.

00:57:29

You've got this great idea.

00:57:31

You add design and detail to the vision.

00:57:33

You begin executing and then it gets hard and then it dips below the line.

00:57:36

And you're like, "This project is terrible."

00:57:39

I suck at this.

00:57:40

And then you start to come back up, "Oh, maybe I can do this.

00:57:43

I think I'm going to get through this."

00:57:44

And then you come back up at the end and you're like, "Hey, this is pretty good and I'm so

00:57:48

glad that I stuck with it."

00:57:50

And that's kind of been the story that I've heard from everybody who has done any sort

00:57:56

of creative practice consistently and become successful at it.

00:57:59

There was always that valley.

00:58:02

And that's the point where you've got lots of logical reasons to give up on the thing.

00:58:06

But you just stick with it and eventually you come out of that.

00:58:10

And that only comes through consistency.

00:58:13

And you're never going to be consistent if you don't recognize what you are fighting

00:58:17

against, especially yourself.

00:58:19

Yeah, because the thing that a lot of people do is stop when they're in that valley because

00:58:23

it's too hard and it doesn't look like what they want.

00:58:27

And so they quit.

00:58:28

And guess what?

00:58:30

Then they don't ever get to the point where, "Hey, this is pretty good."

00:58:33

Or, "I'm so glad I did this."

00:58:35

Like, you never get to that point if you quit early.

00:58:38

So you have to keep going.

00:58:39

I mean, it's the same thing with blogging, right?

00:58:42

People tell you, when you're first starting, you want to blog a ton.

00:58:46

Like, every day, kick out a blog post.

00:58:48

Well, it's not because that is the release schedule that you need to be successful.

00:58:55

It's because you're trying to hone a craft and you're trying to do it fast.

00:59:00

That's why.

00:59:01

And posting every day can get you there, but you're also trying to build a backlog.

00:59:07

When you first start a blog, you have zero blog posts.

00:59:11

And the people who have been blogging for a long, long time who have great big followings

00:59:14

have 4,000 blog posts on their site.

00:59:17

So you can go search and find a backlog and there's tons of stuff to look through.

00:59:21

But if you have one, there's only one thing to go there for and there's nothing to come

00:59:26

back for and learn more from and look forward to the next thing.

00:59:29

So you have to get a lot out there.

00:59:31

But at the same time, like the faster and the more often you can do your thing, the better

00:59:37

you get at it faster.

00:59:38

Like, I think the only time I've seen that you mentioned YouTube being like, how many

00:59:43

videos it takes, there are some exceptions to that, of course.

00:59:47

But generally those exceptions are when the people involved either have been doing video

00:59:54

work prior to going to YouTube or have done YouTube elsewhere, there's usually not a

01:00:01

shortcut.

01:00:02

And if you think there is and like, oh, they came out of nowhere and they did really well.

01:00:05

I've heard that from some folks.

01:00:07

It was a couple of folks that found Bookworm that I met this past Sunday at church and they

01:00:14

said something about podcasting.

01:00:16

It's like, yeah, I do some podcasts.

01:00:18

She's like, oh, I found this really good one lately.

01:00:19

It's called Bookworm.

01:00:20

It's like, hey, cool.

01:00:21

Who's on that?

01:00:22

That's me.

01:00:23

And this guy, Joe and Mike, and they read books like every two weeks.

01:00:31

Dude, it's from America.

01:00:32

It's a really cool concept.

01:00:33

And I was like, hi, I'm Joe.

01:00:35

And they're like, what?

01:00:37

Like just blown mind.

01:00:38

And it was really cool.

01:00:40

It's kind of the first time I've had that experience with Bookworm.

01:00:44

But it was so fascinating.

01:00:46

It's like, okay, like, well, Bookworm just kind of came out of nowhere.

01:00:49

Like, no, we've done this for years.

01:00:52

Like, we have a--

01:00:53

Yeah.

01:00:54

In the realm of podcasting, we have a big backlog of episodes that you could go listen to.

01:01:00

And when it takes two weeks to make one, like, it takes a long time to build that up.

01:01:05

So anyway, it just takes time.

01:01:07

I'm rambling.

01:01:08

As it does.

01:01:09

You ever think about how much effort has gone into that Bookworm backlog?

01:01:16

Way more than I ever imagined it would take.

01:01:19

But I also didn't know how long we'd last.

01:01:21

Yeah.

01:01:22

So this is episode 141.

01:01:24

Each episode is like an hour and a half times two for two people.

01:01:29

And then you have to read all the books.

01:01:31

And then we have to edit the episodes, publish them.

01:01:34

Like, it's an insane amount of work.

01:01:37

In no world is this quote unquote worth it.

01:01:41

Correct.

01:01:42

Yes.

01:01:43

Other than this is how we learn.

01:01:46

I mean, there's intrinsic reward from creating this, which goes beyond the monetary reward

01:01:55

we get from it.

01:01:56

Yeah.

01:01:57

I mean, if you look at just like the work hours to release, like to record and release an

01:02:00

episode, like by the time we make the outline, like forget reading the book.

01:02:05

We make the outline.

01:02:07

We do the recording.

01:02:08

You do the editing.

01:02:09

You do the posting.

01:02:10

You've got three hours in the recording because there's two of us.

01:02:14

There's probably 15, 20 minutes you'd say in outlining, maybe a little bit more than that

01:02:19

depending on the book.

01:02:21

The editing is probably on average what?

01:02:24

Time and a half, two times as long as the episode.

01:02:28

So time you get posting.

01:02:30

There's somewhere around seven hours in just the recording and publishing for one episode.

01:02:37

Now I'll count for how many hours do you think it takes to read the book in two weeks, Mike?

01:02:42

If it's...

01:02:43

Oh, it depends on the book, but...

01:02:46

Maybe four and a half, five hours, five hours or so over the span of two weeks.

01:02:50

At least, especially the way I take notes.

01:02:52

Yeah, so if you call it five hours times two of us, that's 10.

01:02:54

So now we're at like 17.

01:02:56

There's probably some fluff in there, so call it 18 hours.

01:03:00

Every episode is the amount of time it takes to do that.

01:03:03

What is that?

01:03:04

18 times 141.

01:03:05

So if you go into it thinking that I'm going to do this for a while and then it's going

01:03:12

to be giving me a pretty nice paycheck.

01:03:16

You don't get into a podcast.

01:03:17

You don't get into a blog.

01:03:19

You don't...

01:03:20

I would argue you probably don't even get into YouTube at this point because it's not

01:03:24

new enough.

01:03:25

There was a point where if you just appeared on YouTube and it didn't matter the quality

01:03:30

of the stuff you were making, just the fact that you were there, you were being rewarded

01:03:36

for that.

01:03:38

But now you've got to put in the work and the only way it makes sense is if you're not

01:03:44

doing it for monetary gain or you're leveraging an audience or a tribe that you've already

01:03:49

created.

01:03:50

That's kind of getting into...

01:03:51

For what it's worth.

01:03:53

Later chapters in this book.

01:03:54

That number was just over 2,500 hours to get to 141 episodes.

01:03:58

It's a lot of hours.

01:04:00

It's a lot higher than I thought it was.

01:04:04

Yep.

01:04:05

But the real reason that we do the podcast is that you and I learn a ton.

01:04:10

Oh yeah.

01:04:11

Which is kind of what gets into chapter 8 here.

01:04:14

University, spelled Y-O-U.

01:04:18

This is my favorite chapter in the entire book.

01:04:21

Probably because it reinforces some things that I had already felt.

01:04:25

A big reason why we homeschool our kids is that we want to teach them to be lifelong

01:04:30

learners.

01:04:32

And we want them to learn in order to solve problems that they are experiencing.

01:04:37

Not learn to pass a test.

01:04:40

And he mentions that school is kind of set up as something that you endure in order to

01:04:45

get a job.

01:04:46

And that's not the thing that's most helpful.

01:04:50

You need to develop this lifelong learning mindset.

01:04:53

You've got to identify your own learning path.

01:04:56

And he said that the primary struggle of today's learners is figuring out what you want to

01:05:00

do because there are so many opportunities.

01:05:04

And I think that is really true.

01:05:07

But the way that this fits into the creative process is this formula where you create,

01:05:14

you learn from it, and then you repeat.

01:05:17

Create, learn, repeat.

01:05:19

Create, learn, repeat.

01:05:22

I mean, that's the whole goal.

01:05:25

I mean, that is why you would create.

01:05:29

And then if you do that and you do it long enough, eventually the score is going to take

01:05:34

care of itself.

01:05:35

But again, you're not doing it, I would argue, with a goal in mind of I want to build an

01:05:41

audience.

01:05:42

I want to have 10,000 downloads per episode or I want to make so much money from ads or

01:05:49

anything like that.

01:05:50

If you have a goal like that, you're just going to be disappointed at how long the thing

01:05:53

is going to take.

01:05:55

You do have to learn to love the journey and when you approach it with that mindset of

01:06:00

just curiosity and like, what can I learn from this and how can I get 1% better, there's

01:06:06

a lot of value to be had there.

01:06:08

Yes.

01:06:09

I think you're right.

01:06:10

This is probably one of the most important in the book.

01:06:14

And that's because you have to pay attention to yourself.

01:06:17

When do you work best?

01:06:18

What gives you the fuel the best?

01:06:23

Here's an example.

01:06:24

Whatever I want to come up with a whole bunch of ideas for something, if my race car brain

01:06:29

hasn't already come up with 45 million of them, then what I do is go look through, let's

01:06:37

take blogging, for example.

01:06:38

If I want blog post ideas and I don't have them, I go cycle through my RSS news reader,

01:06:44

which is Net News Wire.

01:06:45

If you don't use that, you should use that.

01:06:48

I will run through all of my RSS feeds because what happens is I'll be reading those articles

01:06:54

and like, oh, they do this, but I do something slightly different.

01:06:58

And then I'll write down that idea.

01:06:59

And then like, oh, one password released this.

01:07:01

I use that this way.

01:07:03

I should write about that.

01:07:05

All of those things become blog post ideas.

01:07:08

If I wanted to come up with screencasting ideas, like, well, go watch some of Mike's

01:07:13

screencasts because surely he's done better than me.

01:07:16

So I can find the thing that he didn't talk about.

01:07:19

That's definitely very developer Cody.

01:07:22

And he doesn't do that.

01:07:23

So I'm probably, I can fill in that area.

01:07:25

Like, that's what I could do.

01:07:26

So like, I could take some of what he does and build on it.

01:07:29

That's the sort of thing I would do to get those ideas.

01:07:33

Use the consumption side of the equation to drive the creativity side of it.

01:07:38

So like, that's a lot of what I do.

01:07:41

I have learned that just by understanding how I operate.

01:07:44

And I wouldn't know that had I not developed kind of the growth mindset piece to go back

01:07:49

to Carol Dweck.

01:07:50

If I hadn't done that, I wouldn't be anywhere near capable of doing the type of thing I

01:07:55

do now.

01:07:56

So that's, that's what I do.

01:07:58

But again, the whole point is just learning about yourself.

01:08:00

Yeah.

01:08:01

Learning about yourself, continuing to make your stuff.

01:08:04

And then chapter nine is you must fail to succeed.

01:08:11

And the big point here is that even if you're doing everything right, lots of opportunities

01:08:19

are going to get away.

01:08:20

And this is where you find out all the details about best photo and your heart kind of breaks

01:08:25

form at that point.

01:08:26

Yeah.

01:08:27

Because he was totally doing it before Instagram.

01:08:30

It was a paid app, but they still had a crazy amount of users.

01:08:35

And the developers just decided the way the contract was written.

01:08:38

They were never going to get rich off of this thing.

01:08:40

And they just stopped updating it.

01:08:43

And then a couple people got together after best photo was gone, did what best photo was

01:08:48

doing?

01:08:49

Facebook buys them for a billion dollars.

01:08:51

Man, that's thanks.

01:08:55

But there's some really cool quotes in here.

01:08:57

He mentions Richard Branson who said that opportunities are like buses.

01:09:01

There's always another one coming.

01:09:03

Really like that.

01:09:04

And I want to try to internalize that because I tend to fall into that category where I

01:09:09

beat myself up on missed opportunities.

01:09:13

But being able to release those things I think is important if you're going to engage with

01:09:17

the next one and really make the most of going forward, not living in the past.

01:09:22

He also says on page 206 that most great ideas are never realized because we talk ourselves

01:09:26

out of them before we even give them a chance.

01:09:29

Guilty.

01:09:30

Perfect is the enemy of the good.

01:09:33

That's not something that is brand new.

01:09:36

But if you have perfectionist tendencies like I do, you never get the thing out there because

01:09:42

no one's going to like this.

01:09:43

It's not good enough.

01:09:44

That's my big struggle with YouTube.

01:09:46

I look at the people that I like on YouTube and I'm like, they just look so confident in

01:09:52

front of the camera and I don't think I could do that.

01:09:56

Even though when I take a step back and I think about it, like what do you need to do

01:10:00

in order to be successful on YouTube?

01:10:03

I have the skills.

01:10:06

The Toastmasters experience is a big thing.

01:10:09

That's a whole section of Ali Abdahl's course and he's actually making a separate thing I

01:10:14

think on just like camera confidence.

01:10:17

I've gotten up and spoken in front of enough people that I can do that and still I get

01:10:25

nervous about publishing a YouTube video.

01:10:28

Come on, get over it.

01:10:30

Just do it, right?

01:10:31

Lean into it.

01:10:32

Yeah, it's scary but it's always going to be scary.

01:10:35

That's kind of the thing from here.

01:10:37

That's why I signed up for that course as I was thinking about it.

01:10:40

That's the next thing for me.

01:10:42

The next thing in my journey.

01:10:43

I don't know exactly what this is going to look like and as I'm thinking through what

01:10:47

are the types of videos that I want to make.

01:10:48

I'm already doing the sermon sketch note stuff but I want to go beyond that obviously.

01:10:51

I want to create videos where I'm speaking to the camera and I'm sharing different things

01:10:56

and there's probably screencast stuff in there too about how I'm doing things in Obsidian

01:11:01

or whatever but one of the things that I was thinking about is we get on and we record

01:11:08

these episodes where we talk back and forth about these different books but I take all

01:11:12

these crazy notes and I try to summarize it in a couple of sentences and my most successful

01:11:17

newsletter I ever sent was the best book I read this year which was about the great

01:11:22

mental models, spoiler alert.

01:11:25

I could totally record a quick YouTube video about that.

01:11:28

Say hey we mentioned this in bookworm episode, whatever if you want to learn more about what

01:11:32

I think about this.

01:11:35

It doesn't have to be hard and I've created all these obstacles in my own head and I

01:11:42

just got to start doing it.

01:11:43

This is one of the, remember we were talking about personal Socrates, whenever we went

01:11:49

through all that I mentioned one of my action items was I wanted to go through all those

01:11:52

questions.

01:11:53

One of the things I did was write down a question that I asked myself every single morning

01:11:57

now.

01:11:58

This is a whole process thanks to you Mike and one of those questions is what limits

01:12:02

am I setting on myself?

01:12:06

I hate answering that question.

01:12:11

The moment you answer that question is the moment that you can't allow that limit to

01:12:16

last any longer and it is very common for me to place the limit of I don't do this on

01:12:25

social media because it's too complicated or I don't post on my website because I made

01:12:31

it too much of a process to do that or I don't write because I feel like I have to have this

01:12:36

particular system in place.

01:12:38

So much of my stuff is systems based and this is a big action item for me.

01:12:44

I've got a handful of things I spent this last week with my entire content creation space

01:12:52

and just automating as many of the small tiny steps as I can get.

01:12:57

It's nuts the type of things I've just put in place.

01:13:00

I've got a script now.

01:13:01

I can type in Twitter handle and just hit a thing and it automatically makes a markdown

01:13:06

link for that person's YouTube or Twitter handle and links to their Twitter.

01:13:11

It's just stupid simple stuff like that.

01:13:14

It just makes the process so much quicker.

01:13:16

So yes, all the things, all the things.

01:13:21

All right.

01:13:22

So we're in agreement that we're going to be creating.

01:13:24

Yeah.

01:13:25

The next section here is step four amplify and the first chapter in this section is chapter

01:13:33

10.

01:13:34

Find your people.

01:13:36

And this is really about the importance of a community.

01:13:40

And one of the biggest aha moments I got from this book was from this chapter because

01:13:46

there is a Venn diagram in here, which maybe you're rolling your eyes when you hear the

01:13:51

words Venn diagram, but there's a Venn diagram it talks about in his experience, the craft

01:13:58

community, which for him was photography, the focus communities, other circle.

01:14:03

And that is for him, action sports and the core community action sports photography.

01:14:10

That's where those two overlap.

01:14:13

And I don't know why the lights finally went on for me when I saw this because I have this

01:14:20

whole brand of faith based productivity, right?

01:14:24

So I've got the faith circle on the one side and the productivity on the other side.

01:14:30

And I think if I were to define this for myself, my craft community is probably the productivity

01:14:35

one and the focus community, that's probably the faith one.

01:14:40

And then the core community is the place that those overlap.

01:14:43

I don't know why maybe this is obvious to you and everybody else is looking at this

01:14:47

from the outside in, but I never realized how those two overlapped and I was having so much

01:14:54

trouble trying to define like, who is it really that I'm trying to help me to go through

01:14:58

all the abdels course, you're crafting like your intro and finding your niche and things

01:15:03

like that.

01:15:04

And it's like, hi, I'm X and I help.

01:15:05

Why do Z right?

01:15:06

That's kind of like the standard intro for if you're going to have one in your YouTube

01:15:11

videos and so I've been really been thinking about this.

01:15:14

And when I saw this Venn diagram, it just clicked for the first time and I was like,

01:15:17

Oh, this is easy.

01:15:20

Like this is how these things line up in my life.

01:15:24

So if I got nothing else from this book, that was worth it.

01:15:27

Oh, Mike, like when you first told me faith based productivity.com, like what you just

01:15:34

explained was immediately where my brain went.

01:15:36

I wish I could have, I wish I'd known you were struggling with this.

01:15:39

I probably could have explained it to you.

01:15:40

Like I feel like I've known this for a long time.

01:15:42

I knew it.

01:15:43

I don't know how to explain this.

01:15:46

I knew it, but I didn't know it if that makes any sense.

01:15:50

Like I understood it logically, but it finally clicked for me when I saw this Venn diagram

01:15:56

and I've been challenged by some of the people in my mastermind group to really lean into

01:16:00

this.

01:16:01

And so in order to lean into it, like got to figure out who are these people and how do

01:16:05

I help them.

01:16:06

And I kind of knew stuff happens over here.

01:16:10

Stuff happens over there, but didn't really know how it aligned in a way where I could

01:16:15

really make something of value for the people in the middle.

01:16:19

And this was seeing this Venn diagram was kind of when the lights went on and I got excited.

01:16:26

It was like, oh, I did it.

01:16:28

Yeah.

01:16:29

There's something about this because it struck a chord with me as well.

01:16:33

Like I know that like I definitely have like the digital space coding scripting world

01:16:38

that I do, but then I've got this like analog Joe thing over here that I haven't done much

01:16:42

with in the last, I don't even know how many months.

01:16:46

And I've been like, okay, I'm like in a spot where I want to like revamp all this and like

01:16:51

kick it off again and make this a long term play.

01:16:58

And I think I've got some of that in my head, but it has a lot to do with this concept of

01:17:03

like, what is this focus group?

01:17:05

What is the, what are these two spheres and how do they, how do they overlap?

01:17:10

And it doesn't have to be two.

01:17:11

I feel like it could be more than that, but the more spheres you put in place, the smaller

01:17:15

that overlap is, which means the more niche of an idea that you have.

01:17:22

So I'm still kind of wrestling with what that exact niche is, but I feel like I'm really,

01:17:27

really close to that because I've never really had like a unified brand across everything

01:17:31

I do.

01:17:33

And based on what I'm working through, I think that finally clicked for me.

01:17:37

So maybe at some point I should talk to you about this, but it's still something I'm working

01:17:42

through at the moment.

01:17:43

Anyway, all that to say, finding your people, like this particular chapter is one that's,

01:17:50

I think important once you start getting some traction in your craft, but I don't know that

01:17:57

it's going to matter as much until you have like something repeated that you're doing.

01:18:01

You know what I mean?

01:18:03

Like if you're making, like if you spend all your time trying to figure out who your

01:18:07

audience is before you ever make anything, like there's no point.

01:18:10

Like, I don't know how many times like sometimes you're better off just, like, I don't know

01:18:13

writing blog posts and then seeing what gets traction and figure out what part of you people

01:18:18

resonate with more and then go towards that.

01:18:21

Like that's how I got kind of deep into OmniFocus back in the day.

01:18:25

It's like, well, I wrote some blog posts about OmniFocus because I was learning it at the

01:18:29

time and that's what got traction.

01:18:32

And so I kind of went down that road and that's what took off.

01:18:35

Here we are.

01:18:36

Yeah.

01:18:37

And that's the thing in this chapter.

01:18:38

He's really just talking about find those craft communities and your focus communities

01:18:44

and just hang out there.

01:18:47

And this is kind of before you identify that core community.

01:18:51

And he says that the way that you become interesting is that you show that you're interested.

01:18:57

And so you hang out at the MacPower users forum and the obsidian forum and the productivity

01:19:04

forums and listen to the podcast and connect with the people that are in those places.

01:19:09

And that's the part like I've done that for a while.

01:19:12

I understand totally the craft community and the focus community.

01:19:15

Like that part clicked with me.

01:19:17

But I never, the aha moment for me was like how those two intersected and that kind of

01:19:22

gets into the next chapter.

01:19:24

So let's go there now.

01:19:26

The next chapter is chapter 11, build your audience.

01:19:31

And this is where you lean into the core community there and you find those people who are interested

01:19:42

in your work.

01:19:43

This is where like all the all the advice about finding your niche and niching down like that's

01:19:50

what you have to do.

01:19:51

But I feel like you can't really do that until you've participated in these other communities

01:19:57

for a while and you start to see how these things overlap.

01:20:01

This really is the point in the book where it starts to get into some things that are

01:20:07

beyond where I'm currently at.

01:20:09

I feel like he says that to succeed, you need an army of people who love what you do.

01:20:15

I'm not at that point.

01:20:16

I do want to start building that community around faith based productivity.

01:20:20

I recognize that's my core community and just figuring out how I can serve those folks.

01:20:25

To sustain your audience, you need to consistently deliver value, charge the trust batteries,

01:20:30

all that kind of stuff.

01:20:32

And I like the direction that this is forcing me to go from chapter 10, having identified

01:20:38

that core community, I feel like the path forward is clear.

01:20:42

But I also feel like this is the point where he's talking about things that I have not

01:20:47

experienced quite yet.

01:20:49

And it gets even worse in chapter 12.

01:20:51

I shouldn't say worse.

01:20:52

I'm not trying to paint it like this is beyond me.

01:20:56

He has nothing else for me at this point.

01:21:00

But this is the point where it starts to become more conceptual and less practical in my head.

01:21:07

Yes.

01:21:08

Yeah.

01:21:09

Absolutely.

01:21:10

Because I feel like the whole finder people that you and I have been at this long enough

01:21:14

that we kind of know that, even with Bookworm, we kind of know where that lands.

01:21:20

But you get to this and it's like, okay, well, now we've got this big community aspect of

01:21:25

it.

01:21:26

And I feel like right now in just culture and society, we're kind of like as a society

01:21:34

trying to make that more of a thing, even the Web 3.0 thing, even that has kind of an

01:21:40

homage to this concept.

01:21:43

And it's trying to bring people together and build that communication and connection to

01:21:48

people.

01:21:49

Gary Vee has this nailed, I think.

01:21:51

But obviously he's at this a lot longer than, been at this sort of thing a lot longer than

01:21:55

we have.

01:21:57

Because he's really good at connecting with people.

01:22:00

As much as we can give Gary grief for the things he does and how insanely energetic

01:22:06

the man is.

01:22:08

And he's done talks with a phone number that you can text on his shirt like he wants to

01:22:13

text with you.

01:22:15

And if you text him, he will text you back.

01:22:17

Like that's what he does.

01:22:18

Like he wants to connect with his audience.

01:22:20

And that is just at a whole nother level that I can't even process.

01:22:26

And I don't know that Chase is saying go do that, don't put your phone number on your

01:22:31

shirt and walk around.

01:22:32

I don't like that's what he's saying.

01:22:34

But at the same time, when you're connecting with everybody, this has now become a great

01:22:39

big ordeal.

01:22:42

And that's a whole nother level.

01:22:44

I feel like we could only aspire to hit that point right now anyway.

01:22:47

Yeah.

01:22:48

And I guess the thing that strikes me from this is that this is going to take a while.

01:22:53

There's some good principles here about building that audience, that community.

01:23:00

There was a gap book that I read about building community.

01:23:05

I forget what it is now.

01:23:06

It was a colorful book.

01:23:07

If I can find it, I'll put it in the show notes.

01:23:10

But there's lots of little things that you do.

01:23:13

You build it like one person at a time and you just got to stay on your path and not

01:23:19

worry about how long it takes.

01:23:23

And that's kind of leading into the last chapter here, which is chapter 12 launch, maybe mistitled

01:23:34

chapter here based on what we just shared.

01:23:36

This is not something that you just build up to plan and then do once.

01:23:40

When I hear launch, I think of Jeff Walker and the product launch formula.

01:23:47

That's not what he's talking about here at all.

01:23:51

So basically saying like you got to keep doing this.

01:23:53

He's got another visual here of a circle where you create, share, promote, cultivate community.

01:23:58

And then that's just you just keep going.

01:24:01

He says you should be soft and vulnerable in creating, but bold and ferocious and sharing.

01:24:05

I think sharing is the thing that I struggle with.

01:24:08

It sounds like reading this chapter.

01:24:10

I'm not the only one who struggles with this, but recognize that you're not your work going

01:24:14

back all the way to chapter one.

01:24:16

So what you make is not, you're identity is not tied to that.

01:24:19

And that you're never going to make everybody happy.

01:24:23

And then combine that with the fact that mistakes are part of the process.

01:24:28

That means you did something wrong.

01:24:30

It doesn't mean that you are wrong.

01:24:33

He shares a really hilarious story, by the way, in this chapter of when he's a kid at

01:24:37

a wedding and he intercepts the tossing the bouquet and everybody's laughing at him because

01:24:44

he like makes this big diving catch in front of all the ladies and holds it up triumphantly

01:24:48

because he's like, oh, this is a game.

01:24:49

I just won.

01:24:50

It doesn't realize what just happened.

01:24:54

But the big thing for me from this chapter is enthusiasm is more powerful than confidence.

01:25:01

So that is the thing I need to work on when it comes to sharing is even if I'm not confident

01:25:08

in the things that I am creating, I can still share them with enthusiasm, believing that

01:25:14

I'm making these in order to build my community and help people like me, people who are struggling

01:25:19

with some of the same things that I've struggled with.

01:25:23

That I can get on board with, just telling me, hey, be confident when you share stuff.

01:25:27

Yeah, I'll try.

01:25:29

But when you say be enthusiastic and sharing stuff, okay, that I can do.

01:25:33

Yeah.

01:25:34

As long as you're genuine and you're excited about it, the rest of it just kind of comes

01:25:40

along for the ride because people, generally speaking, are really, really, really, really

01:25:44

are willing to go along and they can see your heart behind it, whether we'd like to admit

01:25:50

that or not.

01:25:51

You can tell when people are faking their way into marketing and when they're genuinely

01:25:56

excited about something that they're releasing.

01:25:58

Like, you can tell the difference.

01:25:59

You really can.

01:26:00

So don't do the farmer.

01:26:01

Do the latter.

01:26:03

Right.

01:26:05

There's one additional part of this book called read this last, at least in my version

01:26:11

there was, where he tells a sad story about somebody that he connected with who died in

01:26:18

an avalanche.

01:26:19

And I guess that's a whole story that we missed in the beginning.

01:26:22

He actually got caught in an avalanche, but he survived it.

01:26:26

So he tells this story at the end of the book of this person that just loved life and was

01:26:31

very creative and got caught in this avalanche and ended up dying and kind of uses that as

01:26:37

a way to instill this feeling in you that life is short.

01:26:44

You don't know how much longer you've got on this earth.

01:26:47

So you better start creating and I'm doing a bad job of communicating.

01:26:50

He did a much better job.

01:26:51

There is a very strong call to action at the end.

01:26:53

Like you really need to create this thing that's inside of you because you don't know

01:26:58

how much longer you're going to be able to do it.

01:27:01

And if you don't do it, you're robbing not just yourself, but the world of your contribution.

01:27:06

I feel like it's a very effective way to end the book.

01:27:09

Yeah, I would agree with that.

01:27:11

Basically it's a story to encourage action and not just complacency.

01:27:17

It's like, I don't have time to create.

01:27:19

Like no, you do.

01:27:22

You just got to be willing to give up something to do it, generally speaking, whether that's

01:27:28

- It's always going to cost you something.

01:27:30

Like it's giving up watching a football game or giving up going out for dinner.

01:27:37

Like you know what I mean?

01:27:38

Like that's a bad example.

01:27:39

But you get my point.

01:27:41

You can make the time.

01:27:43

If it's really that important to you, you can make the time.

01:27:46

Yep, exactly.

01:27:48

All right, action items.

01:27:50

Let's do it.

01:27:51

All right, so I've got two of them and I think I mentioned both of them already.

01:27:57

The first one is I want to identify when I am going to create.

01:28:01

I've kind of already been working on this, but I want to create a schedule and I will

01:28:05

consider this complete when I have actually been able to follow through on that schedule.

01:28:10

But I have been thinking about this and I'm excited about the - I'm optimistic about how

01:28:16

I'm going to be able to slot this into my day.

01:28:19

The other thing I want to do, and this is kind of related, is create my prompt for the

01:28:22

next day before I leave.

01:28:23

I've got my index cards right here and so I actually have been using the Uggmunk analog

01:28:34

to write out my five tasks that I'm going to be working on today.

01:28:40

And I'm doing that not on the cards that come with the Uggmunk analog though.

01:28:46

I think I shared with you.

01:28:48

I went through a big long search after talking to Patrick Ronan focused to find some fountain

01:28:56

pen friendly index cards.

01:28:59

And I stumbled upon - they are exacompta blank cards which you can't even find online

01:29:07

in the U.S. but Anderson pens is going to get them for me.

01:29:11

So that's cool.

01:29:12

Nice.

01:29:13

So I have these cards and I want to start writing the prompt on one side and then I'll

01:29:21

write the test on the other so I can have the prompt staring at me when I sit down at

01:29:24

my desk at the beginning of the day and then just flip it over when it's time to actually

01:29:28

work.

01:29:29

So those are my two.

01:29:30

What about you?

01:29:31

Nice.

01:29:32

I have two as well.

01:29:35

I have one - I'm trying to automate all of these small things to try to make those a

01:29:40

little less of an issue so that way I can actually get through things.

01:29:46

So that's one thing.

01:29:48

Two - I guess I've got three here.

01:29:51

Two is I want to make sure I've got my routine in place as well and trying to just make that

01:29:56

something that I'm - like I know when I'm going to create, I know when I'm going to do

01:30:01

all the different pieces.

01:30:03

That's what I want to make sure that I'm doing.

01:30:06

So I just want to make sure I have that routine in place.

01:30:09

And then the third one is that I'm kind of working through this personal branding bit

01:30:14

and that's something that I know - I feel like I've struggled with it in the past.

01:30:20

I have had a lot of things that should be very obvious to me at this point but for whatever

01:30:27

reason has been complicated when it comes to branding.

01:30:31

So that's something that I really want to make sure I'm keyed in on and nailing.

01:30:37

So really, really close on that one but those are the three that I'm on right now.

01:30:43

That's what I'm going to do.

01:30:44

All right.

01:30:45

Then I guess style and rating, my book, I'll go first.

01:30:50

I really enjoyed the style of this book.

01:30:55

I mentioned at the beginning seeing the four parts and laying out the system and the introduction

01:31:01

harken to the system's format that we typically don't like.

01:31:05

However, I feel it really works because of the subject matter.

01:31:10

It's talking about being creative which a lot of people feel, I think inherently they

01:31:15

believe that this is just something that is inspiration based and you create when you

01:31:20

feel it and I don't feel it so I don't create.

01:31:23

So I feel there's a lot of value in taking a systems based approach to your creative

01:31:28

routine.

01:31:30

I feel like the chapters themselves contain - I mentioned this to you and I was putting

01:31:34

you in the outline, there's 12 chapters here but I think there's a single big idea in each

01:31:38

chapter and I feel like we've got to just talk about all of them rather than just talk

01:31:42

about the different sections which is how we would typically tackle a book like this.

01:31:50

So I feel like the chapters are digestible.

01:31:53

I feel he does a really great job tying them together.

01:31:57

Most of the chapters end with a single sentence that sets the stage for the next chapter,

01:32:02

using the key terms in the chapter title itself.

01:32:06

So I feel it's very cohesive and he's got a ton of cool stories to share.

01:32:13

And I think it's a very entertaining book.

01:32:16

I feel it's a very worthwhile book for anybody to read because I feel there are a lot of

01:32:20

people who don't consider themselves creative in reading through this would probably change

01:32:25

your mind.

01:32:27

That being said, I don't think this had the impact on me that I was expecting it to have.

01:32:35

Maybe that's just the length.

01:32:36

And there were a couple things that really kind of rocked my role.

01:32:40

I mentioned the Venn diagram and that was like a big aha moment for me in terms of thinking

01:32:45

about faith-based productivity.

01:32:48

But it's 280 pages and that's a lot of words to get through for a couple of aha moments.

01:32:55

I don't know how you felt, but there were points in this book where I felt compelled

01:33:00

to just kind of skim things and move it along quicker.

01:33:04

I had to fight against that.

01:33:06

And so it wasn't boring.

01:33:09

It wasn't that the stories he was telling.

01:33:11

I was disengaged with them.

01:33:14

It was just kind of like, okay, let's just see where you're trying to get to with this.

01:33:18

I feel like it could have been shorter basically, I guess is what I'm getting at.

01:33:23

That being said, I really like his style.

01:33:26

Maybe it's just the format for Bookworm.

01:33:29

We have to create through these books in a week, two weeks.

01:33:33

If you're reading a gap book in between, it's a week.

01:33:35

And so I think I read this one like seven or eight days.

01:33:39

And maybe that works against us sometimes.

01:33:42

I could see that being the case with this one.

01:33:45

I also think there's probably other books which are better in this genre.

01:33:52

At least better in the place that I find myself.

01:33:56

And like I said, if you don't consider yourself creative and you're like, why would I even

01:33:59

read a book on creativity?

01:34:00

This is probably the one to start with.

01:34:03

But I've got an upcoming book, which I talked to you about already, which I feel is going

01:34:07

to be more impactful than this one was just based on what I've heard from other people

01:34:13

who have read this book.

01:34:15

So I liked this book.

01:34:18

I would recommend it.

01:34:20

I'm struggling with where to rate it.

01:34:23

I think I'm going to rate it 4.0.

01:34:26

Just because, like I said, it felt a little long.

01:34:30

And I have a feeling that there is room at the top in this genre.

01:34:37

So it's good.

01:34:39

I would recommend people read it.

01:34:41

It's not going to be on any like top 10 lists for me.

01:34:45

But I am glad that we read it and we had the conversation that we had about it.

01:34:49

Sometimes I feel like a book is almost worth more in the conversation you get to have about

01:34:56

it afterwards, at least for us.

01:34:58

Yeah.

01:34:59

There are a lot of times we go through a book and it's like, okay, I'm really looking forward

01:35:02

to talking to Mike about this because like that's how I process things like, you know,

01:35:07

thoughts disentangled themselves over lips and pencil tips.

01:35:09

Like that's the thing that I've kind of held on to and I've yet to see that debunked.

01:35:14

But whenever I write out my thoughts on it, that's one way of doing it.

01:35:17

But the other one that seems to work really well is just talking to somebody about it.

01:35:21

And I feel like in this case, I know that I gleaned quite a bit from this book, reading

01:35:27

it on my own.

01:35:30

But I feel like going through this recording, I feel like I've been able to synthesize some

01:35:35

of my thoughts on it quite a bit more.

01:35:37

And this is definitely that type of book for sure.

01:35:41

And I think there's a lot of gold in this, you know, like you were talking about the

01:35:45

Venn diagram.

01:35:47

To me, honestly, that pyramid that creative pyramid made a lot of sense.

01:35:50

I hadn't really thought about the whole mindset habit goals, consider it a direction or mission,

01:35:55

whatever you want to call it at the top.

01:35:58

And like whenever you have those in place, like I haven't really processed that creative

01:36:03

world in that way.

01:36:05

So I'm grateful for some of those takeaways.

01:36:09

And I've got, you know, if you look at some of these action items that both you and I have

01:36:15

down here for what we're going to take on, like these aren't necessarily small things.

01:36:20

Like these are fairly large endeavors to take on.

01:36:24

Like when you think about the ramifications and the two and threefold results from what

01:36:30

could happen from these action items, like it's quite large.

01:36:34

These are not just, I want to go on walks in the morning.

01:36:38

Like, like these are definitely some big, big tasks.

01:36:41

So I don't want to downplay the book too much because of that.

01:36:48

That said, you're absolutely right.

01:36:50

Like he's got some interesting stories in here, but I didn't find myself like totally

01:36:55

engrossed in them because they were so short.

01:36:58

He had like, there's lots of stories, but they're like not even a paragraph long sometimes.

01:37:03

And because of that, it was hard for me to stay connected with him.

01:37:07

Because especially in the first, you know, couple parts there, it's like, okay, you're

01:37:12

about to lose me.

01:37:14

And like it was kind of hard to stick with it.

01:37:16

Now I don't know if that's because you and I understand creativity quite a bit, I feel.

01:37:24

We've thought through how to do a creative endeavor a lot.

01:37:32

And this is kind of reiterating those things.

01:37:35

And that's okay.

01:37:36

It just means that we're probably not the best judge of the book because of that, because

01:37:42

we have our own preconceived notions and could probably write half of this book as well.

01:37:47

So we haven't.

01:37:48

He did.

01:37:49

So here we are.

01:37:51

And you know, all of that said, like I feel like it could be very helpful for somebody

01:37:55

who's brand new to the creative world or wants to start making something regularly.

01:38:01

Like this could be very helpful as a base if you've never thought about this or never

01:38:06

read up on it at all.

01:38:08

It could be very good in that if you have a background in it and you've understood like

01:38:13

you need to be consistent, you've got to be, you know, routine based.

01:38:16

Like if you understand some of those things about creativity, you're probably going to

01:38:19

have the reaction we do in that like there's some gold in here, but there's like a lot of

01:38:25

like, why is this 280 pages?

01:38:27

That's probably the reaction you're going to have with this.

01:38:31

So all of that said, I think you rated it absolutely correct.

01:38:33

I'm going to put it at 4.0 as well.

01:38:36

I think you're right.

01:38:37

There's some head space where you could do better than this.

01:38:41

But at the same time, I think there is a lot of good in this.

01:38:44

So again, if you're interested in taking on a creative role or an endeavor of some kind

01:38:49

of side thing, this could be a good jumping off point for you, for sure.

01:38:54

All right.

01:38:55

So let's put this one on the shelf.

01:38:58

What's next, Joe?

01:38:59

Yeah.

01:39:00

I'm kind of excited about like genuinely Yes to Life by Victor Frankl.

01:39:06

And for as much as we've held up Man Search for Meaning as like a, this doesn't equal

01:39:11

a 5.0 because it doesn't add up to Man Search for Meaning.

01:39:14

I would love to know if that's Victor Frankl or if that was just that particular book.

01:39:20

And I'm excited to go through this and just kind of figure out what, you know, because

01:39:25

this was all, this was a series of essays that was written after he wrote Man Search for Meaning.

01:39:30

So yes, I'm kind of excited to go through this one with you, Mike.

01:39:34

I'm excited to go through it too.

01:39:36

I've had it for a while, but I haven't read it.

01:39:39

I don't know why.

01:39:41

So yeah, we're going to read that one next.

01:39:42

And then after that is the book that I foreshadowed, The Messy Middle by Scott Belsky.

01:39:51

And I have heard from so many people that I admire creatively that said that this book

01:39:58

is amazing.

01:40:00

It's also very long.

01:40:02

It's like 380 pages or something like that.

01:40:05

I mentioned to Joe, it's kind of in between the current book, which Creative Calling is

01:40:11

280 pages.

01:40:12

So it's not a short book and paid to think, which is ginormous.

01:40:17

I can't believe we actually covered that book.

01:40:23

But this one's kind of in between that and it is going to take a while.

01:40:26

So I wanted to ask you before I sprung it on you, I will mention if you're going to

01:40:31

read along with us, you're going to want to start this one a little bit early.

01:40:35

I appreciate you not just springing it on me.

01:40:37

I'm going to make up for it after that I think with a super short book.

01:40:42

So all right, you got any gap books?

01:40:45

I don't.

01:40:46

For some reason, this book, Creative Calling, it took me a while.

01:40:48

I don't know why that was.

01:40:49

It took me a lot longer than I was planning.

01:40:52

But yes.

01:40:53

So no, I do not.

01:40:55

You?

01:40:56

I actually read this one already.

01:40:59

I read The Coaching Habit by Michael Bongay Stanye.

01:41:03

I don't know how to say his name.

01:41:05

It's a great book though.

01:41:07

It's about asking better questions when it comes to coaching.

01:41:12

And this is not just like, I used to think of coaching as like productivity coaching.

01:41:17

I'm realizing that coaching actually is an essential leadership skill.

01:41:21

And this is a very effective book on just asking specific questions which open up really

01:41:28

effective conversation.

01:41:31

It is kind of crazy how simple it is in its approach.

01:41:38

But I can totally see how this works.

01:41:40

And I've actually started applying some of this in my life already.

01:41:44

And it's really, really good.

01:41:48

So I would definitely recommend this one.

01:41:50

It's pretty easy read if you are interested in upping your leadership game.

01:41:56

All right.

01:41:58

Thank you to everyone who has tuned in for this episode.

01:42:02

Thank you specifically to the folks who have joined us live.

01:42:06

Always some cool conversation on the YouTube chat when we do that.

01:42:11

And a special thank you to our Bookworm Club Premium members who are willing to support

01:42:16

the show financially, five bucks a month, 50 bucks a year to keep the lights on.

01:42:21

We really appreciate all of you.

01:42:23

If you want to sign up, you can go to bookroom.fm/membership and you get a couple of perks.

01:42:28

I do my best to upload all of my Mind Node files.

01:42:33

There have been a couple of times where I've been a little bit behind.

01:42:35

Eventually they do all get up there though.

01:42:37

And so there are PDF and Mind Node files so you can edit them yourself if you use the

01:42:42

Mind Node app.

01:42:44

All of the books that we cover and a bunch of the gap books that we cover, I upload those

01:42:47

as well.

01:42:48

So those are all there.

01:42:50

There's also some gap book episodes that Joe recorded back in the day.

01:42:54

There is a Bookworm 4K wallpaper that I created.

01:42:59

But the big benefit you get is our undying gratitude.

01:43:02

We really do appreciate the people who are willing to help us keep the lights on here.

01:43:07

We've outsourced the editing.

01:43:09

You help us buy some of the books.

01:43:11

I mean, this is not going back to the thing about your work versus your art.

01:43:16

This is definitely art for both Joe and myself.

01:43:19

And so every little bit helps and we really do appreciate everyone who is willing to support

01:43:23

the show financially.

01:43:24

Absolutely.

01:43:25

We love you.

01:43:26

And if you are one of those who reads along with us, you know, to pick up Yes to Life by

01:43:32

Victor Frankl and we'll cover that in a couple of weeks.