Active Recall!

Podcasts, videos, and iPad art

Picking activities

Some Creative Pages will turn into full posts. This one seems like a pretty good outline for a full post.

I’ve been reading about writing again. After listening to a bunch of Psychotactics stuff I’ve started reading content by a few copywriters. I started with The Brain Audit by Sean D’Souza (who makes Psychotactics) then I got Everybody Writes and Content Rules by Anne Handley.

I’ve been thinking about how to write things that help other people. It’s better in a lot of cases to be direct with the reader. Too often, I write about how I’ve tried applying things. Which is useful as part of a post, but it should only be a part of it. If it’s going to be useful, the directives should be clear.

This year, I’ve continued reading about happiness. I’ve seen some common themes between books and wanted to boil that down to a few steps. Your day-in day-out activities mean a lot more than some random goal.

For example, if your random goal is to own a Ferrari, at least make sure you drive it when you get it.

Here are some steps to picking your daily activities:

  • Write down all of your activities
  • Put them in buckets
  • In each bucket, rank the activities against each other
  • Schedule the top activities
  • Purge the bottom activities

My full post would detail these steps with incredible stories to make them sticky.

First, I need to become a better writer.

Creative Pages: Morning Creativity Routine version 2.0


Here’s the first of what I’m going to call Creative Pages — aka the Morning Creativity Routine version 2.0: 

  • Notability: I’ll write and draw whatever comes to mind. Sometimes I’ll use a template.
  • Evernote: I’ll paste that page in and write about it. Sort of like what this post is. 

I can make these in under an hour, so it’ll be possible to share 2-3 each week. They also can help with future video posts and podcast segments. For example, the page I made today has initial thoughts a couple chapters into The 5-Second Rule by Mel Robbins. I can use this for a future book notes video.

Why the name change? “Morning creativity routine” sounded a little robotic. I had the fantastic idea of calling these things “Creative pages”, paying homage to Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages.

As with any fantastic idea, I researched and found out someone thought of it years ago. There used to be an online companion to The Artist’s Way and one of the tabs was called “creative pages”. 

I’m going to use that name until there’s reason not to. But back to the process.

I’m switching from starting with typing then going to handwriting. There’s power in writing by hand. It’s much easier to really focus, mostly because it’s harder to switch context or jump around. 

I have a few blank templates that I use regularly in Notability. For example:

  • 5 panels with text
  • 6-up storyboards with text
  • Crazy 8s

Some have lines for text. Some don’t. I want to create more of these and share them.

Yes, I’m an adult creating worksheets for basically a kindergarten class. I am also attending the class. 

How to live as an artist: 1000 fans, 10000 readers, but it all starts with ten

How do people make a living through writing? Find 1,000 true fans. There are a few milestones along the way.

1,000 true fans?

Kevin Kelly wrote about the importance of finding 1,000 people who will pay for what you make.

A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version.

Paul Jarvis calls them his rat people:

Not literally “rat people”, unless rats really are your thing. I’m talking about the people that get what you do, appreciate it, and love you for it.

How do you get to 1,000 true fans? They’re going to be a subset of your wider audience. So you’ll need more normal fans. How many? Let’s take a look.

10,000 people who will read your work

You need people who check out your work regularly. They probably won’t pay for it, but they’ll give you some of their time. You can have a money-back guarantee, but you can never give readers their time back.

Let’s say they’re your mailing list subscribers. That’s a clear metric with a higher barrier than a Twitter follow or a YouTube subscribe.

Shawn Coyne says 10,000:

How hard is it to find 10,000 people who when handed a free copy by a friend would actually read it? If you can’t give ‘em away for free, chances are you won’t sell very many

Okay, so how do you get there? Let’s go back to the other end. Not 1,000. Or even 100. Find an audience that could fit in your living room.

First, ten

Seth Godin says you should focus on finding ten people who trust, respect, need, and listen to you.

And if they love it, you win. If they love it, they’ll each find you ten more people (or a hundred or a thousand or, perhaps, just three). Repeat.

If the first ten share with another ten, you’ll get to 100 and if they share with another 10, you’ll get to 10,000.

The great thing about the first ten is that they’re also true fans. They’ve into your empty restaurant and enjoyed it. They took a risk and you didn’t waste their time.

07: When did you realize wrestling is fake?

0:00:00 • Welcome! Wally talks slow motion
0:06:42 • Ces stumbles through explaining what keto is
0:19:04 • Wally recommends something manly
0:26:52 • When did you realize wrestling was fake?

Is that… Jason’s music?!

0:30:44 • Jason dials in before the biggest weekend of his life
0:39:15 • Which wrestler does Jason feel like?

We’re re-thinking the book-a-week format because we can’t read fast enough. Instead, we each recommend a couple of podcasts. Ces recaps the Iron Man Match between Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels.

Video: Book notes for “Barking up the Wrong Tree” by Eric Barker

Check out the full notes for Barking Up the Wrong Tree

I want to keep things consistent and I want to prioritize consistency over quality right now. I’m going to look that story of the pottery teacher whatever it was. Right now I am making those first few dozen garbage ceramic cereal bowls.

Hopefully by episode say 20 things will start looking less like they’re full of trash plain Cheerios and more like bowls worthy of a Honey Bunches of Oats. I’m focusing on making things easy for myself right now so that I can get the reps in.

I made this with Notability. I used a storyboard template then I copied and pasted the images to a blank page to hide the storyboard lines. I then recorded while panning around the screen.

I would rather get really good at process than get really good at, say, After Effects. Quick math: I think After Effects would mean the video would take 5X as long but it wouldn’t be more than 2X better.

The outline, structure, and words are more important to how good the video is, so I’m going to focus my time toward improving there. I’ll write a little bit more before doing the actual recording. That means that I’ll know what I’m going to say and I can keep it more concise.

I don’t want to start editing the “umms” and “likes” and things like that out. That’s tedious. I’ll practice not saying them in the first place.

One day I hope I will look back at this and the embarrassed by it. Actually I’m already a little embarrassed by it right now so I can put the check that one off immediately.