Active Recall!

Podcasts, videos, and iPad art

Why is television a good thing? (Rob McElhenny)

You’re reading a self-development book and it says you should cut out TV to get that time back.

Then, of course, you go cold turkey after that and only read business books and journal articles.

No?

You just continue watching but sometimes feel guilty? Don’t feel bad. Some of the best modern stories are in TV shows.

(If you’re watching 8 hours daily week in and week out, that’s another story.)

It’s okay if it’s not some philosophical drama. It’s well worth the time if you end up relaxed and laughing.

Always Sunny in Philadelphia has made people laugh. For years. And I started to feel pretty old realizing it’s entering it’s 15th season.

On an episode of The Writer Files, Rob Mcelhenny talks about the evolution of Always Sunny and the writer’s room for Always Sunny and Mythic Quest. (They’ve gotten to a process where they work reasonable hours and can go back home to spend time with their families.) The motivation to continue going mostly comes from everyone working on it still enjoying making it.

He also touches on where he gets most of his inspiration. Kelton Reid (host of The Writer Files) asks Rob what influences him and what gives him creative inspiration:

Rob McElhaney: Yes. Well, I can tell you that all of my inspiration has come from watching television.

So when I was a kid, I watched a ton of television. Mostly comedy. What I realized was… even early on when I was in high school… that it wasn’t just that I felt like it was bringing me joy—which it was—but I felt less alone. And felt like I was… it’s experiencing something with other people even though I was alone watching it in my room.

So every Thursday night, I would tune into Friends and Seinfeld and would feel like I was a part of something. And I feel like at the at the very least that’s just bringing, you know, an hour of fun into someone’s life.

Putting a dent in the universe is one thing. Making other people laugh for an hour can be just as good.

In Creative Calling, Chase Jarvis writes about the value of cross-pollinating. Whatever you create, consume things from other genres and other disciplines.

It also helps to cross-pollinate. If you’re a musician, consume film. If you’re a web designer, attend the ballet. This is one tactic that helped me find my unique voice as an artist: most of my influences come from beyond the world of photography. To learn about light, I studied oil painting for years. To learn how to shoot lifestyle images, I studied balanced body positioning through figure drawing. The list is a mile long.

One of my favorite things about hosting my own podcast is welcoming musicians, artists, designers, writers, speakers, travelers, entrepreneurs, business titans, and more to chat for an hour at a time. This informs my art, my work, and my world and fuels new passions beyond my current comfort zone.

The best nonfiction books have stories spanning chapters and usually some thread through the entire book. David Epstein, author of Range (excellent book!), has talked about how taking a fiction writing workshop helped out his nonfiction writing tremendously.

From an Epstein interview with The Morning Brew:

Favorite hobbies? Running for sure. I was a national level runner, and I like outdoor stuff in general. For one of my monthly experiments, I decided to take a beginner’s online fiction writing course. We had to write a story with no dialogue and I realized I had been leaning on quotes when I didn’t totally understand something. I went back into the Range manuscript and stripped a huge number of quotes. So now I’m taking some more fiction writing courses.

If you actually did go Cold Turkey and haven’t watched TV in a while, dip your toes in a little bit. You can always tell yourself that you’re just doing it to learn about storytelling.

And you just might enjoy it a bit.

Until then, check out that Writer Files episode (“How ‘It’s Always Sunny…’ and ‘Mythic Quest’ Co-Creator and Star Rob McElhenney Writes”).

The Notepod #3 – “Chasing Excellence”

This week, I’m talking about Ben Bergeron’s book “Chasing Excellence”

If you have Netflix and also don’t like reading: check out The Redeemed and the Dominant. I watched this midway through and you get some of the behind the scenes.

How do you write an entertaining nonfiction book?

I definitely wanted to keep reading. The narrative is following two of his athletes as they compete in the 2016 CrossFit games. (They both also win.) Each chapter focuses on a characteristic (Commitment, Grit, Positivity…) that’s needed to win the games. Then the chapter usually jumps from the present day event back to the months of training in a session where they focused on that movement.

Would you start with someone with above-average talent or someone who’s mentally tough?

The book focus on the mental side of competing at that level. Everyone that makes it to the games is physically world class. Nobody there is perfect.

From “Chasing Excellence”:

“Given the choice between coaching an athlete with above-average talent or one who is mentally tough, it might surprise you to hear I’d pick the former. Not because I believe talent is more important, but because I know I can teach someone to be mentally tough.”

As much as I like the idea that you can practice and work hard to become great at something, there are limits in different disciplines.

I always like the simplicity of the NBA comparison. If you want to make it to the NBA, it’s better to start with a 6’5″ who is mentally weak than someone who is 5′ and 10x tougher mentally.

It reminded me of this Greg Jackson quote in Sam Sheridan’s “The Fighter’s Mind”

“Mental toughness is learned. It’s not a skill that everyone has, or is born with. There are people that are born tougher than others mentally, or figure things out earlier in their life. But if you have motivation you can acquire mental toughness, it’s just about what your body gets used to putting up with.”

Why is it a good thing to get some experience at the top level?

Because you might realize you’re already there. “Chasing Excellence” mentions Mat Fraser not qualifying for the Games earlier in his career:

“At the North East Regional that year, Mat, a former Junior National Weightlifting Champion, did well in events involving moving a barbell, but had obvious holes in his game. He finished fifth overall, two spots out of contention for the Games. Instead of being demoralized, he was heartened—it was his first time interacting with Games-caliber athletes up close, and he walked away thinking, If I work hard and practice, I could beat them.”

This reminded me of Mark Hunt’s book “Born to Fight” (which I need to do a Notepod episode on), where he talks about his fight with someone at the top level:

“The bell rang and as I walked back to the corner it occurred to me this prick didn’t even hit that hard – I’d been hit harder than this my whole life. I even managed to drop the dude in the second round with a running leg kick, but as the last seconds of the third and final round ticked away I knew I’d lost on points. In those moments one thought spun around my head over and over again. That was it? The guy couldn’t throw fireballs from his hands or Dragon-Punch twelve feet into the sky or do anything I couldn’t do. If that’s all those guys had, I could get my hands on them. If I could get my hands on them, I could certainly put them to sleep. They weren’t the characters from Dragon Ball Z, and Jérôme wasn’t Super Saiyan”

Have I personally experienced this? Look, no. Not athletically.

But there are definitely those moments in life where you realize someone is human. Or that some group of people is made up of… humans.

(For more on “Born to Fight”, check out these posts. For more on “The Fighter’s Mind” check out this Notepod episode.)

Reading Log: 9 takeaways from Mark Hunt’s “Born to Fight”

Check out the full notes for “Born To Fight Book” by Mark Hunt

1. He grew up in a nightmare of a home

Nothing good happend in that home: he and his brothers were physically abused by his dad and his sister was sexually abused by his dad. On top of that, they never had food.

I try to remember any light, fun moments we shared as kids, but it’s hard to find anything. If there were any board games, or holidays, or trips to the movies, or the rugby, or the museum, or anything that parents and little kids do together then I don’t remember them. All I remember about that house is a shitload of beatings and what felt like endless days of hunger.

2. He became a Japanese celebrity very fast

He won the K-1 tournament which pretty much made him one of the greatest fighters in the world. He had commercial gigs that he enjoyed doing.

3. K-1 was kickboxing, Pride was MMA

So, yes, I’m a casual. I didn’t know the difference between the different Japanese organizations. He talks about the transition from K-1 to Pride. Basically: ground game. He had no ground training and everyone let him know it coming in. They’d seen a lot of people try to transition and they couldn’t do it.

4. Multiple fights on the same day

It’s really crazy how they’d just do tournaments in the same day. So with that K-1 tournament that he won, he actually lost one match by decision but moved on because his opponent was injured.

5. No 12 week camps (or 1 week camps)

He would pretty much take fights and train between them. It didn’t sound like he’d go off with a team and train for a few months leading up to fights. And often times he’d find out about fights pretty late. Being a heavyweight, he wouldn’t need to cut until later years when he was even beyond the heavyweight limit.

It was just one of those things. I fucked up in that Miočić fight. I fucked up the weight cut and I went in to the fight weak and powerless. At the top of the tree it’s a long way down to hard ground if you lose your grip like that. I used to be able to just kind of roll into my fights. I used to be able to turn up fat or underprepared, knowing my fists would get me through. It’s not like that anymore, though. The fight game’s changed, and I’ve changed too.

6. What if (but oh well)

He talks about how little he trained for some fights and kicks himself for some of it. He didn’t always take ground training as seriously as he should have for transitioning to MMA. But he’s happy with the career he had. Fighters respect him. He has a happy family.

7. Ongoing battle with fighters on steroids

Pride basically said, hey, we don’t test for anything. You can take whatever you want. He stayed away from them though because he knew he was strong enough and had power and was worried about losing coordination.

At the time I believed that if I worked harder I could beat anyone in Pride, but I now realise there was another aspect of professional Japanese MMA that I hadn’t embraced, which probably put me at a disadvantage.

When I first met with Sakakibara-san and the Pride officials in Japan after signing my contract they gave me a rundown of the guidelines the company expected me to stay within, but there was no mention of performance-enhancing drugs.

When I asked what the story was with PEDs, they laughed uniformly. ‘Mark, you can take whatever you want,’ one of them said.

8. Videogames were a constant in his life

He mentions Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, Counter-Strike, and probably a few other games. Here’s how he spent money from one of his early large paydays:

I wanted a ‘Cribs’ crib, man. I found a guy to build a completely specced-out computer for me and set up a dedicated gaming room. That year I managed to put 40 Screaming Eagles on my Counter-Strike account, an honour that’s only possible with more than 60 hours of play a week.

9. He always wanted to challenge himself

He had the mentality that he was the best fighter in the world. When he switched to Pride, he had his eyes on getting the championship. That meant going through Fedor. (He lost to Fedor, but got some shots in!) Toward the end he had his eyes set on fighting Cain. Even when Cain vacates the title, Mark is considering the paths that would lead to being able to fight Cain and get a chance to test himself against the best. (He’d have to beat Stipe, but he got destroyed. He details getitng destroyed in the book.)

The Listener #8 (by the Notepod (by Active Recall (by Francis (typing at his computer(but sometimes talking to it so a robot can turn it into text)))))

Some of what I listened to this week. With some notes. 

Chris Best founded Substack, which makes it easy to create subscription newsletters. In part of this interview, he talks about how social media has become this thing that you’re addicted to but often times wish it was better. He describes the information diet and how he wants to give people choice:

“But our job is not to sit here and make you eat your vegetables and say, you know, you should be reading high-fiber information dense scientific reading and nothing else. Our job is to let to put the decision back in your hands and let you make it as your best self. So instead of deciding what you’re going to spend your time on by, you know doing one more scroll through your Twitter feed as you’re about to fall asleep and clicking on the thing that you know that pokes your lizard brain the hardest we like to take a step back and look at your life and think.”

Pat Flynn and Dan John discuss fat loss. Movement guidance: High intensity followed by long walks. Nutrition guidance: More protein, more fiber. Plenty of plans will get you to something like that, so it’s a matter of seeing what works for you from there.

Shaan and Sam talk about how they go about generating startup ideas. Some concepts mentioned: James Altucher’s tip for writing 10 ideas a day, looking for old solutions and applying them to new problems, and reverse engineering things (and actually going and just talking to people about it!)

Kevin Systrom talks about Instagram and has the full experience of taking a startup from a pivot of another idea through to selling it and now talking about it with some separation after leaving Facebook.

They also revisit his podcast appearance nearly a decade ago to discuss what he thinks about the advice turned out to be correct. He’d double down on the importance of people.

And he has some advice for his younger self as well: enjoy it a little more and relax.

In 2012, Daniel Ek talks about starting Spotify. It needed to be better than pirated music. Since then, Netflix has made streaming movies better than pirating movies and then moved into original content. Spotify made streaming music better than pirating music. And now they’re moving into original content by getting exclusive podcasts. Ear domination.

This is a great one because Seth gives a stock answer for the “talk about your failures” where it’s the sort of “my rough drafts are failures”. The host starts suggesting Seth’s failures are all in private (mostly referring to the blog).Seth then starts listing off his private failures—he even tried like selling videos with footage of aquariums.

I’m going to interrupt you. This is your lizard brain talking; you’re looking for an excuse, right? I started more than 100 businesses before I had one that really worked. I was three weeks away from bankruptcy for six years in a row. I went window shopping in restaurants. I launched a video tape with fish swimming back and forth for people who couldn’t have an aquarium. I had a business selling light bulbs door-to-door to raise money for marching bands. There’s a really long list of failures.

Great solo episode that goes over a written list of different ways to get the most out of your workout. Lots of tactics worth trying out. (As always: consistency is key!.)

Podcast Notes

Chris Best founded Substack, which makes it easy to create subscription newsletters. In part of this interview, he talks about how social media has become this thing that you’re addicted to but often times wish it was better. He describes the information diet and how he wants to give people choice:

“But our job is not to sit here and make you eat your vegetables and say, you know, you should be reading high-fiber information dense scientific reading and nothing else. Our job is to let to put the decision back in your hands and let you make it as your best self. So instead of deciding what you’re going to spend your time on by, you know doing one more scroll through your Twitter feed as you’re about to fall asleep and clicking on the thing that you know that pokes your lizard brain the hardest we like to take a step back and look at your life and think.”