Active Recall!

Podcasts, videos, and iPad art

Notes on visual notes (as I try to learn in public)

I have a couple weeks off where I wanted to batch a year of weekday tweets. This seemed somewhat doable and I got a head start leading up to it.

Figma

Then we got a puppy.

I scaled back the goal a bit from 250 of these (1 for every weekday in a year) to 100. Which might still be possible, but I’ll probably scale down further.

Having the buffer of scheduled posts is good, but the buffer should be the fall back for when I can’t make a daily post. 

There are a couple things I’ll need to do to maintain a consistent posting schedule:

  • (A) Build a system to execute from start to finish on a single idea each day — Ideally I’d be able to get to where I can share a note every day with something like a 30 minute block of time. It should basically be purely the execution portion. I also need to be disciplined in respecting the time block. Some posts will be better than others. All are a step toward improvement.
  • (B) Build a system to batch parts of the process — Whatever I can do to get started on (A) right away every day that I sit down to make something. If I have 30 minutes blocked off, I shouldn’t spend 25 minutes choosing a quote. Or spend 15 minutes finding and transcribing a sentence from a podcast.

If I have a longer block of time, I can repeat (A) to increase the buffer.

This doesn’t quite fit in time to share the process, but things like screen recording and using Procreate timelapses could help make that more of a passive process.

Okay I should probably get back to actually working on this instead of writing about working on this.

More thoughts soon!

Book Notes: “The Practice” by Seth Godin

Check out the full notes for “The Practice” by Seth Godin

I made a few videos about Seth Godin’s latest book, “The Practice”. I know it’s probably useful to put the videos I make on my site as well, but just haven’t done it. Same with the podcast and things like that. I want to start making sure that this is one place to get all the things that I’m making. But one step at a time.

So here’s the video I put together about “The Practice”.

A decent chunk of the time was putting the Leatherface illustration together. Here’s a timelapse of that. I use Figma a lot for work  and thought it could be a nice flywheel opportunity to also start learning to do some digital illustrations.

2020 12 06 timelapse 2020 12 06 20 00 18

This, of course, isn’t good quality but I’m sharing now in hopes that I get better and can share that journey. The whole “learn in public” thing.

Oh yeah so I made a few other videos about “The Practice” in an attempt to do some shorts. These are about one minute each.

This one is about desirable difficulty — Desirable difficulty is finding the right level to practice at. Example I have is table tennis but I think I’m more common one would be regular tennis. If you play regular tennis with someone who is much much better than you then it can be pretty frustrating for both sides. If the opponent is much worse than you’re not learning anything because you aren’t challenged. If the opponent is much better than you and then you’re not learning anything because you don’t have the opportunity to get quality reps.

This one is about constraints creating creativity — Constraints creating creativity is an idea that constraints are the only way to lead to creativity. An element of creativity is finding solutions within the constraints that you’re given. I don’t mention it in the video but one thing I have been looking back to you as a tool lately is Crazy 8s. It’s where you try to sketch out 8 solutions to a problem in 8 minutes. Systemizing the constraints of time and also tools (a Sharpie works well here) allows you to focus on finding creative solutions rather than making the image pretty.

This one is about doing the work without waiting for flow —This topic reminded me of a couple other writers’ thoughts on not relying on perfect conditions. Ryan Holiday writes about not relying too much on routine and discipline:

Discipline is a form of freedom, but left unchecked becomes a form of tyranny.So the key is the ability to rotate from routine to routine, discipline to discipline, according to the needs of the day and the moment.

And in an appearance on Tim Ferriss’s podcast, Josh Waitzkin talks about deliberately practicing in chaos:

So, from a young age when I started playing chess, I would create chaos on the board like I described. I would play in chess shops with people blowing smoke and music. I’d play chess with loud Gyuto monk chants bursting into my head from speakers.

[…]

I was creating chaos everywhere to train at being at peace in chaos. That was kind of part of my way of life and I found it to be a huge advantage that I had competitively.

Flow is nice for plenty of reasons. But a mistake is thinking you can only get good work done when in a flow state.

As the book suggests, it’s time for me to hit publish and put myself on the hook.

Ramblings (December Damage Control #1)

My theme for the month: damage control. I usually go nuts with eating and all that for the holidays.

  • I won’t be traveling home this year for family events and celebrations and all that, so that has the silver lining of potentially healthier eating.

What does it mean…

I guess if I break it to 3 lead/lag goal pairings…

  • Movement: Daily workout -> 160 pounds Dec 31
  • Nutrition: More protein/fiber/greens -> 160 pounds by Dec 31

And some making goals without any outcomes attached. I’d attach some subscribes or something but the leading indicator (making stuff) doesn’t really have a direct effect on the metrics.

It’d probably be more like commenting on other stuff and deliberately promoting these things.

  • Making: 4 videos to YouTube
  • Making: 4 podcasts published
  • Making: 30 sketch timelapses to Instagram
  • Making: 12 sketch posts to Twitter

I have, of course, switched programs 3 times in 3 days.

I want to build up some momentum for the new year.

I also started listening to Atomic Habits again, so maybe I’ll share a habits quote with each of these posts. Here’s one from James Clear:

Furthermore, it’s not always about what happens during the workout. It’s about being the type of person who doesn’t miss workouts. It’s easy to train when you feel good, but it’s crucial to show up when you don’t feel like it—even if you do less than you hope. Going to the gym for five minutes may not improve your performance, but it reaffirms your identity.

This reminds me of this short video I made about doing your practice. Figuring out a way to show up every day is important. It’s especially important when you don’t have ideal conditions.

You might think you need flow to get good creative work done. You might also need ideal conditions to get into flow. It’s going to be hard to be consistent if you need the perfect environment to get started.

In “The Practice”, Seth Godin suggests a re-frame: Do the work first to allow flow to appear as a symptom. (But not every time.)

 

The Notepod #8 – SF, M1, OQ

Just turning the mic on and recording to start to kick the rust off this whole podcasting set up. Let’s goooo — talking about moving to SF, the MacBook Air M1, and the Oculus Quest.

Notecards and ideas for the next 5 posts (or next 2 posts)

I made a tag for this ongoing goal: 64 posts in 64 days.

Alright so in my last post, this is what I said my next post would be:

My next post: A bunch of notecard drawings and the ideas for the posts.

I’m going to set an interval timer: 5 x 2 minutes

The goal: 5 topics to write about over the next 5 days.

I used Photo Booth so I can stay on my laptop (instead of finding my iPad or camera to take a photo of it) and in FLOW for this writing session

And here… we… go:

Okay so I ended up writing 10 topics to try to narrow things down from. I’ll just re-write the text for easier reading.

  1. Ray Croc – The Founder
  2. D. Perell x Seth Godin – Typepad to WordPress
  3. Lessons from 100 in 100
  4. Why I use WordPress
  5. 3 easy meal prep
  6. Getting slightly back into cooking
  7. Swings, get-ups
  8. My podcast habit change
  9. The Big Picture
  10. NBA x Hollywood

Then the idea was that I’d actually stick to the intervals and sketch a concept from five of the topics.

Instead I just drew 2. One with a rough animation idea and then spending most time on the second animation idea. (I wasn’t planning to do any of the animation at all initially.)

Definitely failed the batch goal but am happy with one of the animations, so overall it’s a fine outcome.

This is the notecard for “Ray Croc – The Founder”

his blogThis post would be about how I watched “The Founder” last night and how the big reframe became looking at McDonald’s as being in the restaurant business to really being in the real estate business. Lesson: Know what business you’re (really) in.

This is the notecard for “D. Perell x Seth Godin – Typepad to WordPress”

This post would be about Seth Godin’s appearance on David Perell’s podcast (“Seth Godin: Writing every day”). This is the animation I was happy about. I’m trying to convey Seth Godin talking about the importance of location. When he’s got his blog editor UI open, he knows exactly what he’s there for: to write that day’s post. He also mentioned he switched from TypePad to WordPress. I’ll write about how I always return to that idea of writing in the editor.

Simplification (when aiming to write every day)

 

I spent a little too much time on the header image. But I think it was worth it. The book quote I’m trying to illustrate is from“High Output Management” by Andy Grove:

But in both widget manufacturing and administrative work, something else can also increase the productivity of the black box. This is called work simplification. To get leverage this way, you first need to create a flow chart of the production process as it exists. Every single step must be shown on it; no step should be omitted in order to pretty things up on paper. Second, count the number of steps in the flow chart so that you know how many you started with. Third, set a rough target for reduction of the number of steps. In the first round of work simplification, our experience shows that you can reasonably expect a 30 to 50 percent reduction.

I have a current goal of writing 64 posts in 64 days. I’d link to the post where I explain why and what the plan is and all that, but I didn’t write it yet.

The first few days of a challenge are easy because you’re excited, you’re motivated. To successfully keep the pace up, I know I’ll need to simplify the process for when that initial motivation is gone.

With writing, there can be a bunch of steps and it’ll be important to eliminate some or learn to batch single steps ahead of time. Here are some of the steps involved in a post

  • Choose a topic
  • Grab a relevant quote from a book or a podcast
  • Write a draft
  • Think of something to draw
  • Draw the notecard
  • Animate the notecard (optional)
  • Revise
  • Put everything on WordPress
  • Publish

Some of the steps have sub-steps. Many of the steps can come in any order (I can draw the notecard right after the topic). There are tradeoffs doing the steps in any order. For example, sometimes a step will need to be repeated depending on how a different step goes.

  • If I write the draft then draw the notecard: Then other ideas might come up in the notecard and sometimes I’ll need to re-write with references to the drawing.
  • If I draw the notecard before writing the draft: Then other ideas might come up while writing that aren’t captured in the image. I might need to re-draw the notecard.

These are small things that sort of move where the revision has to happen (either revise the writing after drawing or revise the drawing after writing). Or I can just build up more discipline about not adding ideas when working on a step.

No sure answer and it could even depend on the topic.

With that said, it’s probably better to just pick one order and stick to it. Because there’s a thinking tax to always having various open steps to pick from.

My hunch: whichever step is easiest to do in batches should come first.

I’ll choose a topic and aim to always draw the main concept before writing. It’s easier to batch topics and notecard drawings than it is to batch writing. (Unless it’s just outlines, but let’s leave that out for now.)

My next post: A bunch of notecard drawings and the ideas for the posts.