Active Recall!

Podcasts, videos, and iPad art

Easy to assemble (vs. fully assembled)

From “Effortless” by Greg Mckeown:

It’s striking to me that Hartman spent months trying to make each step in the online ordering process simpler but never thought to try removing steps to make the process itself simpler. There is a huge difference between the two. No matter how simple the step, it’s still easier to take no step.

It’s similar to putting things away vs. throwing things away when you try to de-clutter your home.

No matter how organized you get things when putting things away, a larger mental weight is lifted if you actually get rid of the stuff altogether.

I’m constantly shuffling things around to get my bookshelf in order and to have my electronics in the right bins. But the best place to gather things is into a garbage bag to take to Goodwill or the trash.

Auditing your time works similarly.

After you write down all the stuff that you do, you have a giant pile of stuff. You can try to organize it into adjacent buckets. But the more effective thing would be to start by just looking at which things you can remove altogether.

Can you simplify some busy, repetitive part of your day into the equivalent of a 1-click ordering system? The end result is a package at your doorstep. What steps before that aren’t necessary.

And are there hidden steps?

I’m happy to manually type my credit card number into Herman Miller’s website if it means I don’t have to assemble the chair after receiving the package. They come fully assembled.

How to develop your own style (even if you’re not a young Jony Ive)

From “Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products” by Leander Kahney:

“As for aesthetics, there were influences, but the Tangerine group never clung to a style for its own sake. “It was important for all of us, including Jony, that we were designing things for a reason,” said Grinyer.”
“Jony was interested in getting things right and fit for a purpose. He was completely interested in humanizing technology. What something should be was always the starting point for his designs. He had the ability to remove, or ignore, how any product currently is, or how an engineer might say it must be. He could go back to basics on any product design, or user interface design. And we all shared this similar philosophy at Tangerine. It was not so much due to our formal design education, but more a reaction to seeing the ways that other people were designing.”

Sometimes it’s too early to develop your own style. Sometimes you definitely don’t want to use someone else’s style. The important thing is learning to be deliberate with the style you’re using.

  • Paul Kunkel, author of AppleDesign, described Ive as a chameleon: During his agency days at Tangerine, he was not trying to exert or develop his own design signature.
  • Ali Abdaal starts and stops with titles (for when you do want to have your own style): He’s said that one technique he’ll use when researching for video ideas is to look at titles of popular videos. He’ll try to think of how he can do a slight twist on the title and do his own video without watching the video itself. That way he’s keeping his own style in place.
  • Elon Musk starts with first principles: If you’re coming into an established industry, say space or car manufacturing, there are some constraints that might exist for reasons other than physics. Musk has talked about how he starts with first principles: what order of atoms would provide the optimal result? Ok, now what are the limits to getting there? They might be legal, expenses, material, etc. But if it’s possible with physics, there might be a way.
  • David Perell provides a sequence: imitate then innovate: First you follow trends, then you’re aware but avoid them, then you can set them.

Perell points to our fear of plagiarism:

The problem is that our tormented fear of plagiarism has clenched its claws around the things that are actually good for you. Out of excessive trepidation, we’ve lost touch with the subtle, but important distinction between stealing other people’s work without giving them credit (which is obviously a bad thing) and mirroring the style or values of a writer you admire (which should be praised and promoted).

Learn to apply elements of other people’s styles into your own work. Do it over and over. More elements, more people. Do it over and over and over and over.

Now you’ve got your own.

Super Bowl, “The Nineties”, “NITRO”, “The Daily Laws”

Meta notes about recording this episode (aka yes blogging about podcasting)

Feels very good to turn the mic on again and finish this episode. It’s a small thing that feels big to be able to finish an episode after so many weeks not really publishing anything other than blog posts I’m writing on the treadmill.

Some notes to myself that I’ll inevitably forget:

  • I can write an outline for recording in 30 minutes and probably much less. Three quotes and a story is enough.
  • I just need to keep going.
  • Podcasting is energizing just about every time and that means a lot. That’s something that I should really keep in mind. I enjoy writing the outline and I enjoy recording. I enjoyed recording with Wally. I even enjoy writing this short retrospective about doing the episode.

Long-term goal: Build the blog/podcast/YouTube/Twitter up to be one of the top book resources. Not like for any book. But if it’s a book in whatever wheelhouse I’m reading in, then it hopefully will be on the front page of search results.

Some podcasts to aspire toward: Not Investment Advice (smart, hilarious, and consistent), Alex and Books, Founders, How to Take Over the World

Mostly because they’re all tiny operations and do basically seem to really enjoy podcasting.

Anyway, on to the rest of the show notes.

Show notes

Book quotes I mentioned:

Lending from a famous commercial for Paul Mitchell hair products, it was determined that the first such vignette would be shown in black-and-white – a paradoxically new mode of display within the context of a wrestling show.   And so, on the July 27th edition of WCW Saturday Night, a four-minute video aired featuring the fearful threesome; instantly, however, viewers registered that this was hardly any run-of-the-mill promo.

That evolution is easy to comprehend, unlike the profound structural dissonance between consumer life in 1990 and consumer life in 2020. A person native to the twenty-first century can’t really reconcile why anyone would pay $13.25 for twelve fixed songs that could only be played on specific high-end electronics serving no other function; the majority of all recorded music can now be instantly accessed anywhere for less than $10 a month.

For instance, when we look up at the night sky, we can let our minds try to fathom the infinity of space and the overwhelming smallness of our planet, lost in all the darkness.

Links

 

When the product generates its own stories (NFTs, the infinite content engine)

“Some sites are capable of generating publicity on a continuing basis. The crazy auctions that happen every day on eBay are an endless source of stories. A recent headline in the National Enquirer: “He buys $3 pickle jar at garage sale & sells it for $ 44,000.” (On eBay, naturally.)” — The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding: How to Build a Product or Service into a World-Class Brand by Al Ries, Laura Ries

The Super Bowl happened a few days back. If you’re reading this a few years from now for some reason, it was the one with Dr. Dre & Snoop and the Coinbase ad.

There’s the ads themselves and then there’s all the attention generated the next few days. It’s not quite winner take all, but there’s usually 1–3 winners of the night.

  • The Coinbase QR code seems to have won the night. I thought it was just the echo chamber of my various algorithm but it seemed to be what neighbors and friends mentioned the next few days.
  • All the electric vehicle ads blend together… and it’s impossible to watch them without thinking of Tesla.M

The goal of a Super Bowl ad is to have people writing stories about your ads.

NFTs are able to generate publicity on a regular basis because they overlap with a few different cultures. Each of those cultures has people on either side of an NFT debate.

Some think crypto is dumb and therefore think NFTs are dumb. Some think fashion is dumb and therefore think NFTs are dumb. Some think fashion is dumb but can relate to NFTs because of their link to technology.

Buying a $3 pickle jar and selling for $44,000 on eBay will make headlines. Snoop selling $44 million of his NFT collection will make headlines.

By the way, if you actually are reading this a few years from now, is it hilarious that NFT collections were making headlines for being worth $100k?

Is it hilarious because they’ve all gone to zero?

Or hilarious because it’d be silly to write about the norm?

Podcast Notes: Lex Fridman Podcast “#264 – Tim Urban: Elon Musk, Neuralink, AI, Aliens, and the Future of Humanity”

  • Podcast
  • Lex Fridman Podcast
  • Episode Title
  • #264 – Tim Urban: Elon Musk, Neuralink, AI, Aliens, and the Future of Humanity
  • Episode links
  • Apple Podcasts • YouTube

Tim Urban writes “Wait, But Why” which is the blog where calling it a “blog” is one of the great understatements in history. There’s putting a dent in the universe and he’s certainly put a dent in the internet through his mega posts on space, tech, and how to approach life.

Some of my favorite points from the interview were around his own productivity as he’s tried finishing a book over the past few years.

  • You really (really) only need a few hours a day: It adds up. It’s clear it’ll add up. If you sit down and write for a focused 3 hours a day you’ll get where you want, eventually. Some days you’ll write less. Some days more. And still, much of the time you’ll just find some other thing to do instead. One thing he’s found effective: have a teammate watching him work from 9am-noon. It’s worth trying all the different approaches to focus if you can eventually find one that works.
  • Audiobooks are fine: Both Tim and Lex agree that (1) audiobooks are great for learning and entertainment and (2) physical books are still a better learning experience. But (3) you’ll just get through way more audiobooks than print books.
  • Revenge against your procrastination (but it’s too late): When you don’t have the right tools, instead it’s easy to let the day go by doing a little work here, a little work there, and never really getting into a focused state for any good chunk. Until it’s time for bed. Then the distractions are done and you can focus. But taking revenge against your procrastination then means you’re taking energy from tomorrow.
  • The dark playground (and how you shouldn’t spend five years there.): The dark playground is the state where you know you have work to do, but you put it off with some “leisure” activity. Scare quotes because the thing you should be doing for fun ends up not being fun and not being productive. You’re not really living life. And it’s easy to go on like that for long spans. Tim Urban says he spent maybe five years like that and kicks himself for the opportunity cost. Some people go their entire lives in that state.

The first step to get out of the dark playground is to recognize you’re in it. Figure out the triggers that take you there. Then learn how and do the work to avoid it.

(Hint: the “work harder” answer might be a trap door straight into it.)

Can’t miss content (and Hulk Hogan losing the title on a Monday Night)

From “NITRO: The Incredible Rise and Inevitable Collapse of Ted Turner’s WCW” by Guy Evans

“The final point was of particular importance to Bischoff. An earlier discussion with Siegel led to the implementation of a research project to devise Nitro’s creative formula (Ted Turner, presumably, was kept in the dark). The outcomes of the study were clear-WCW’s target audience wanted a feeling of spontaneity to permeate the new program. They wanted ‘can’t miss TV’, a drastically different television format (as compared to the WWF strategy of giving away ‘squash matches’, i.e. bouts where established superstars predictably beat up on hapless underdogs), and an avoidance of the tried-and-true tactic of reserving the major, often more unpredictable match-ups for pay-per-view.”

People want to be surprised. It does become boring knowing that titles will only change hands at PPV events.

If there was a title match on a Monday night show, you were just waiting for someone to run in and cause a disqualification.

Some creative lessons…

  • There’s room to differentiate (even if both products looks like giant men in scripted fights): WWE definitely felt different from WCW. Even when DX was a bit of a clone of nWO, it was more punk rock where Scott Hall and Kevin Nash were going for west coast gangster rap. One bald star in black tights talked his ass off and now, of course, has a wrestling podcast. The other bald star in black tights built one of the hottest runs in wrestling without talking much at all.
  • Better to create a category than to compete in SEO for the term “productivity”: Dickie Bush and Nicolas Cole (pretty solid starts for wrestling names, by the way) created Ship 30 for 30 for learning to write online. One of their main lessons is getting more and more and more specific when you can. That’s in terms of individual essays and in terms of your own set of category buckets. Vince McMahon couldn’t compete with major sports but he became a billionaire leading “sports entertainment”.
  • Don’t save your best idea for Wrestlemania: It might never come around. You’ll have other good ideas. Especially if you’re working in an online medium, you probably have plenty of chances to launch things. Go ahead and get that good idea out there in some way. (1) It might not be good and it’s better to find out now. (2) If it’s the execution that matters, you can really just run that idea back later. Nobody will notice if you aren’t big enough in the first place. (3) I promise, you’ll have more good ideas and a better one will come along.

Some of the most memorable title changes happened on Monday nights.

Some of your most popular content will be the least expected.