Active Recall!

Podcasts, videos, and iPad art

Notes: “Hyperfocus” The College Info Geek Podcast

In this episode of The College Info Geek Podcast (“Hyperfocus”), Thomas and Martin talk about Hyperfocus by Chris Bailey.

A few notes.

  • People are super super distracted (distracted every 40 seconds, probably by email) — People find a hard time getting any work done during the majority of time working. They mention the stat that work email is opened, on average, within 6 seconds of receipt.
  • Scatterfocus (hard to connect the dots if you don’t have dots to start with) — Here’s how it’s described in Hyperfocus, by Chris Bailey

”Just as hyperfocus is your brain’s most productive mode, scatterfocus is its most creative. Entering scatterfocus mode is easy: you simply let your mind be. Just as you hyperfocus by intentionally directing your attention toward one thing, you scatterfocus by deliberately letting your mind wander. You enter this mode whenever you leave attentional space free around what you’re doing in the moment—whether going for a run, biking, or investing time in anything that doesn’t consume your full attentional space.”

  • Connection: Range by David Epstein — Thomas mentions this book and says he’s halfway through it but he completely recommends it. It’s about top performers in fields getting there by integrating experience from many disciplines. There’s a sampling period before specializing.
    • Something Epstein mentions is that one of the working titles was Woods vs. Federer. Tiger Woods being a poster child for starting to specialize when you’re still in a crib and Federer is an example of someone who tried a bunch of different sports before becoming the greatest tennis player of all time.
    • And I’m going to continue my recent run of Starcraft mentions in blog posts by dropping an excerpt here from Range:

In 2019, in a limited version of StarCraft, AI beat a pro for the first time. (The pro adapted and earned a win after a string of losses.) But the game’s strategic complexity provides a lesson: the bigger the picture, the more unique the potential human contribution. Our greatest strength is the exact opposite of narrow specialization. It is the ability to integrate broadly. According to Gary Marcus, a psychology and neural science professor who sold his machine learning company to Uber, “In narrow enough worlds, humans may not have much to contribute much longer. In more open-ended games, I think they certainly will. Not just games, in open ended real-world problems we’re still crushing the machines.”

This also relates to the notes I wrote yesterday about a Quentin Tarantino interview. They talk about the importance of enjoying things from different genres and different mediums. You’ll be able to pull from all those different things you’re taking in and use them in your own work. Thomas Frank mentioned how the main character in Avatar learns new skills from different regions. I’m currently reading Born to Fight, and recently read a part where Mark Hunt (MMA fighter) describes switching from K1 (kickboxing) to Pride (MMA) early in his career. Everyone in Pride knew the importance of the ground game. He had no experience with the ground game.

From Born to Fight:

A few months later I returned for my first Pride fight, which was to be part of an event called Critical Countdown at the 50,000-seat Saitama Super Arena. I would end up fighting more than half of my MMA fights at this arena.

In the press conference preceding the fight I was asked how much time I’d had fighting on the ground, and I replied honestly.

‘About eight hours.’

There was a ripple of laughter through the crowd, and also from my fellow fighters up on stage. The one who was really giving out a good old belly laugh was Fedor.

‘It was a good eight hours though,’ I said. That was the moment I realised eight hours probably wasn’t enough.

  • Reading, audiobooks — He mentioned that if there’s a book that he’s taking notes on he’s not going to listen to it as an audiobook. Except for a current experiment wehre he’s currently listening to Hit Makers and will read the book after listening to it to see how that goes.
    • My own experience has been that if I listen to a book first and try reading it afterward, I just have no motivation to read it. But if I read the book first and then listen to it, it helps reinforce things a lot and is just a better way to review a book.
  • Be intentional by picking fewer things to do today — It’s really important to set a deliberate intention for every working session. I’ve found the pomodoro technique can be useful for this. I also find that I never stick to doing the pomodoro technique for too long.
  • Create a distraction-free ritual — Set up a sequence of steps to get into a focus mode. Those things that distract you probably aren’t complete surprises. You can plan for those things. If most of your distractions come through your phone, then you can set things up so that you don’t have access to your phone for some period of time that you want to focus.
  • Summary of Thomas‘s focus ritual:
    • Blocking sites (with Freedom)
    • Setting a timer (with Be Focused)
    • Letting people know he’s going into a focus period and asks to not be interrupted

Notes on Quentin Tarantino 2014 Interview with Robert Rodriguez pt 2

Notes from 0:00 to 21:00 in this interview with Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez.

  • Used to see himself as a director who writes himself stuff to direct – 1992 “I don’t want to write. I never consider myself a writer. I consider myself a director who writes stuff for himself to do.”
  • Now sees how writing became more and more and more important – The first real flash of excitement is when inspiration comes and the story takes a turn for the unexpected. Doesn’t feel like he was put on earth to adapt other people’s novels.
  • He’s here for the blank page – You take a blank page and pen and pull a story out of yourself.
  • Rodriguez’s experience with the Kill Bill reading (8 years before work on the movie) – I just really liked this because Rodriguez has footage of this reading. (You hear Rodriguez next to the camera saying things like, “Oh shit.”) He just loves documenting things through his journaling and through his camera. In “Rebel Without a Crew” he writes about his first experiences with Hollywood luxury. One of his actors from El Mariachi is going to join him on one of these trips and he takes his camera just to record the actor’s first experience with that luxury.
  • Is reading to other people part of the process? – The only feedback he wants at that point is: it’s great. He does those readings because he’s excited about it. He can hear what’s wrong with it as he’s reading out loud. He doesn’t need the feedback from the audience at that point, he just needs the audience. This is an important thing when making an effort to get more feedback: make it clear to people what kind of feedback you’re looking for. Even if it’s just “It’s great.”
    • Connection: Koppelman talks about feedback with Tim Ferriss – He can give really harsh feedback to people who are seeking that. For other people, he knows to just be supportive. And he respected that Tim Ferriss in that when he’s asking for it he’s really asking for that tough feedback and will truly use it.

Brian Koppelman: And so the thing I said to you, I now have learned to say to somebody, “Describe the kind of feedback you want. Is this finished?” If it’s finished — Penn Jillette said this to me once — he said, “If you tell me it’s finished, all I’m going to say to you is ‘Congratulations,’ because you can’t do anything about it, and I don’t want to –” and this is important, right? But I said, “Is this finished?” If they say — because if I show you something and it’s finished — a finished movie that I’ve just made, but it’s not out yet — honestly, what is your feedback? Really, all I need at that point is a pat on the back for accomplishing something, right? But if somebody should — the first thing I say to somebody is, “What kind of feedback are you looking for?” Now you preempted that because your initial note, you said, “I want harsh feedback.” That’s great. So I’ll say to somebody, “Do you want the kind of feedback I will give to a peer? Because the feedback I give to a peer has very little positive in it, not a lot of praise.”

  • Rodriguez: Strange being your friend – He talks about how it can sometimes be weird knowing someone as just that normal person. You’re friends with Clark Kent. Then once in a while you’re reminded: oh yah he’s Superman.
  • Doing a Hong Kong style movie the Hong Kong way – He wanted to do it their way. For a big fight, can’t keep it all in your head. You break everything into 2-4 fight moved. The doubles redo it a few times for you to look at it. Then you set up the cameras. If you do 4 movies then that becomes the first move of the next 3-4 moves. It’s shot in continuity but you can still keep some flexibility. You’re not planning every single thing before hand. You add to the chaos in a regimented way.
  • Robert Rodriguez: If you can work for Quentin Tarantino for $1, do it (and write stuff down!) –  Rodriguez scored off of the movie. Rodriguez made sure to write things down when Tarantino would come into a room and give some orders. You mention something as a perhaps, but you don’t  remember it was a perhaps. You remember it as a direct order as the director.

iPad Writing Apps: My favorites for different use cases (and why I use Shortcuts for pretty much everything)

This was going to be a video but it got a little long so I’m posting as a blog post first and will probably break this up into smaller videos.

Here’s how I use my iPad for writing

This includes video outlines, podcast outlines, and blog posts. I’m going to share how I use it for:

  • Quick entry
  • Longhand writing
  • Mind-mapping
  • Outlining
  • Writing long things

Quick entry (Evernote & Shortcuts)

One bullet keep it short
Just write a sentence or two here and there.

I use Evernote to store highlights of things, links, thoughts, and all sorts of things. It’s a hodgepodge in there. It syncs well and I’m able to write things on my iPad and on my iPhone and on the MacBook.

Some notes I write are just a couple sentences. That’s also where I put ideas for different things that I don’t end up making but some of those things I do end up making so I have a lot of outlines in Evernote.

I’ll often start notes using Shortcuts

One shortcut takes one text input and then creates the note with the date in the title. It’s my go-to when I want to journal some thoughts down.

I’ve also tried (and enjoyed) using Day One as a dedicated journaling app along with The Five-Minute Journal. I’ve enjoyed them as well but do usually find myself returning to Evernote for a ton of writing.

Another shortcut a quick entry one that prompts for one single text input. I’ll write one or two sentences and then it adds it to a note for that day. If it’s my first time running the shortcut, then it creates a new note that will then get appended to with time stamps after that.

I made this shortcut to try and minimize at least some of the clutter in Evernote. Before the shortcut, I would have a bunch of 1 sentence, 2 sentence notes. I’d never really review these. Having the single note with all those for the day makes it really quick to review.

Pre pandemic, I used this shortcut when taking walks as sort of a walking blog. I’d put a podcast or audiobook on and when there was some story or idea I wanted to remember for later, I’d press the shortcut.

Then I could write a couple sentences and then keep it moving. After the walk I could review one single file with the timestamps.

Longhand writing (GoodNotes and Apple Notes)

Longhand
One of my favorite ways to pass time is to open up a blank sheet on my iPad and write with the Pencil.

The iPad and Pencil shine when it comes to longhand writing. I made a few GoodNotes templates for daily writing. That’s definitely something fun to do when you get the chance. Take whatever text editor or graphics editor you enjoy and then export it as a PDF to make a GoodNotes template for yourself.

It’s great and similar to Shortcuts because it helps give structure to the writing.

I use an ever-evolving daily template in GoodNotes. In the latest version, I have a spot where I drop a recent photo in, a section for free writing, and then a box at the bottom where I’ll write down some things I read, watched, or listened to recently with an idea from it.

In the past couple weeks, I’ve started using Apple Notes more and more. Again with the quick entry, it’s really nice to be able to tap the pencil on the screen and then get a new note.

Apple Notes eliminates all the friction

When I want to just writing something down, it can be faster than my analog notebook (currently a moleskine) because it can take a moment to find the next blank page.

Admittedly, this is a difference of like 3 seconds max. It’s not like it adds up to a year of your life saved. It’s more about the cognitive friction andcan be the difference between writing something down or not.

The physical notebook also has the effect that using MacOS has — seeing what I was working on previously. Which, of course, can be a good thing for review but it can be a distraction depending on the situation.

Notes also has a minimal set of tools. You have a pen, a highlighter, and a pencil. I’m not messing around with like brush sizes and grids and things like that.

GoodNotes has minimal tooling but sometimes I get distracted with picking the right template or what notebook I should be using.

Notes is nice for whenever you just need a blank page. Free writing and doing something like 3 pages of morning pages can be really nice in Notes to just get thoughts out of your head.

Sometimes I’ll use Procreate for writing, but it’s usually when I know I want to share something some kind of visual artifact of writing. It’s always able to generate the timelapse so it can be great to create an animated mind map.

Mind mapping (with MindNode)

Mindnode
Mind mapping is a great way to come up with a bunch of ideas and then work them into some kind of shape.

For longer mind mapping, I enjoy MindNode. It’s a great mind mapping app. Every time I use it, I think I should use it 10x as much as I do.

It’s combines the spatial benefit of longhand writing with the speed of typing.

When you’re writing something by hand, you can use the space. You can jot something down in the corner of the page, make a note, draw an arrow here, connect it there… whatever you want.

When typing in a text file, you only have the vertical space. You can have a scratch area at the bottom or top of the page. Some editors allow you to add comments and things, but it’s just not as quick as writing things on a page.

MindNode bridges that gap. I have the speed of typing while being able to rearrange different chunks of text and show connections between different ideas. You can store a thought off to the side or write a bunch down and categorize them quickly later.

Definitely try it out for mind mapping. If you have a bunch of different ideas, it’ll be the tool to start putting those things together.

Outline (with Shortcuts)

Screenshot 2020 05 31 at 12 40 51 PM
This Topics notebook has a bunch of the outlines that I make with Shortcuts.

Sometimes you have a topic in mind and you can start generating ideas from there. You can give it a spine with an outline.

As mentioned, I rarely just create a new blank note directly in Evernote.

I mentioned some shortcuts I use for quick entry but I have a bunch more that generally follow the following steps

  • Go through a bunch of prompts
  • Create a text outline from those prompts
  • Put that outline in Evernote

You could also use Apple Notes as your output. I used to do this when I had a subway commute since Shortcuts sending to Evernote would break if I didn’t have internet access.

Shortcut I use daily: Remembering things I read, watch, or listen to

I’ve talked about these shortcuts in previous videos, but here’s the one I use every single day.

  1. Prompts me to write down three sources. Where a source is something I’ve read, watched, or listened to.
  2. Goes back through each source and asks me for a takeaway or a story from that source
  3. Creates a text outline and saves it as a note in Evernote

I’ll take a few minutes with that and I try to write 3 bullet points for each source, either to expand the story, write other takeaways, or find connections to other sources.

Shortcut: Sub-topics

Sometimes I’ll just take one of those topics and then run a slightly altered shortcut that prompts me for:

  1. What’s the topic?
  2. What’s one subtopic?
  3. What’s a second subtopic?
  4. What’s a third subtopic?

Then it creates another note with that outline.

Yes, you could do this in any text editor or on a post it and just write the bullets out.

But there’s something about just tapping the icon and then being able to just answer one prompt at a time.

One analogy: it’s like a personal trainer. You outsource the thinking around what you need to do so you can focus on the movements. You’ve done some pre-thinking for yourself that you can use over and over.

Even if it’s the same workout everyday, it helps to not have to think about what it is.

Same with writing with the same structure. You have that outline set up and a way to go through it and focus on one question at a time.

It’s really easy to adjust the prompts. I have the shortcut set up so that I just edit one text block at the top and make a duplicate of it. Each new line in that text block creates a new prompt.

I have a bunch of different outlines with this.

One is a who, what, where, when, why, how that helps me write short descriptions of links I’m sharing in newsletters.

Another is specific to recommending podcast episodes. After listening to a podcast episode, I’ll tap a button and then it will run me through the prompts to fill out what show it was, who was interviewed, what a takeaway is, and so on.

Another is something I’ll tap in the morning plan out the day.

Again, I have a bunch of these. Here’s another…

The Starcraft shortcut

Just starcrafting 2020 05 31 15 23 22
I’ve been doing a lot of this lately so I thought it’d be good to at least pull very stretched, tenuous analogies to concepts you can apply to life.

I’ve been playing and watching a lot of Starcraft lately and I’ve been thinking about, oh, hey what like what life lessons are there in Starcraft?

So I have a shortcut that is just two prompts.

  1. What’s the Starcraft concept?
  2. How does this apply to life?

And it’s just to get these ideas down and out of my head.

starcraft life lessons

Writing longer things (Docs and Ulysses)

Writing in shortcuts
Longer things still often begin with outlines started in Shortcuts

For longer things, like the script for this video — which is a little over 1500 words — I’ll use a few different things.

For this, I started with an outline made with a Shortcut and then just kept writing Evernote. I have another Shortcut that lets me publish this text post from Evernote to WordPress.

For other long writing, I’ll use Docs and the web version works really well in Safari.

For iPadOS apps, I use Ulysses and iA Writer for the focused writing modes and being able to break longer pieces down into individual chunks. With Ulysses, you can break something really long into different files for each section and set word count goals for each of those. It’s really helpful for chipping away at a larger writing goal and seeing that progress.

It can also publish to WordPress if I’m writing a blog post.

That’s that: Main tools for my iPad writing system

  • Quick entry with Evernote and Shortcuts
  • Longhand writing with GoodNotes and Apple Notes
  • Mind-mapping with MindNode
  • Outlining with Shortcuts
  • Writing longer things with Docs, Ulysses, and iA Writer.

Thanks a lot!

Kevin Hart (Ozark motivation) x Brian Koppelman (Stoke the flame)

In his interview with Tim Ferriss, this is what Kevin Hart had to say about consuming good content:

Kevin Hart: You’re able to get lost in something good. Like, I remember when this first hit and Ozark came on and the season was available and I was like “I wanna watch Ozark.”

And I sat and I watched Ozark and for that time, I just enjoyed a good show. A good show was enough. It was… it was enough for me.

And it motivated me after watching and I was like I got to get up and I got a write. I gotta write. I gotta create. I gotta write. And watching that show made me do that.

Now, of course… this is my profession. This is what I do. So it’s where I can grab energy from. But there’s content all around that can amplify a person’s mood.

I can make it to pay attention to how different content makes you feel. Building this awareness well help you tune your personal filter. You can continue taking in energizing information and avoiding things that just don’t make you feel good.

There’s a balance, of course. You don’t want to just completely ignore what’s happening in the world. But if you find yourself jumping to the comments specifically to find things that you disagree with, it’s worth considering whether that’s a good use of your energy or not.

Find things that helps motivate you to create whatever it is that you’re trying to create.

I’m not a copywriter, but I read and listen to a lot of stuff about copywriting. It’s often directly tied to how to make money. Sometimes I question whether that’s a good thing to be thinking about. (To be clear, I don’t think money is toxic or anything — just that my attention could go toward other things.)

At the same time, that content has always motivated me to just keep writing and putting stuff out into the world.

Watching Starcraft makes me want to play Starcraft. Watching basketball might make you want to watch basketball. (But watching MMA makes me never want to fight at any sort of level.) Listening to fitness podcasts makes me want to work out. Listening to The Indie Hackers Podcast makes me want to make… anything.

Hart’s thoughts about motivation pair well with some thoughts from Brian Koppelman, answering a listener question about keeping the creative spark alive:

Brian Koppelman: That’s related and it’s also back to those things I said earlier: the meditation, morning pages, long walks, cardio, listening to music, reading, watching movies.

I want to keep stoking the flame by taking in great work. I want to engage with that great work and ask myself questions about it and let myself get stirred up. As you get older it gets harder to allow yourself to get stirred up emotionally by art. But it remains really worth it.

(I wrote more on those other steps in this post.)

A trope in some of the nonfiction business/self-development things I read is that TV,  movies, and video games are a waste of time.

I love seeing the counterpoints to this from very successful, productive people who watch a ton of stuff that is strictly entertainment. Yes, as people paid to create and tell stories in different forms, they can pull things out of it and consider how they can apply those concepts to their own work.

But a lot of it is just motivation coming from seeing high quality work.

Here’s something you can do: Write a list of things you read, watched, or listened to in the past week.

Then ask:

  • Which of these things motivated you positively?
  • Which of these things got you out of your head and let you just enjoy something in leisure?

Then take more of that in.

(And watch Ozark, btw, it’s great!)

The Notepod #2 – “Rebel Without a Crew”

Here’s the second episode of The Notepod. This is another book notes episode. Each episode might be about a book. I’m still figuring it out but wanted to get started with consistency.

Which sort of relates to the book this episode is about, “Rebel Without a Crew” by Robert Rodriguez.

writing-like-a-dog

Here are some links to things mentioned in the show

Correction to something I said in the audio. I mentioned he journals with Apple Notes and possibly a hardbound journal. He’s always done his journaling in Word on his Apple laptop and uses Notes for todos. No physical journal. As he explains when Tim asks him if he journals longhand:

No, I do them all in the computer. I have a little alarm that goes off at midnight, because around midnight is usually a good time and I’ll write something down. Because I found that even when I just wrote some items down, I could go back and fill them in later because I would remember, and it always would shock me. What kept it going is when I would go back and review the journals, and how many life changing things happened within a weekend. Or things that you thought were spread out over two years were actually Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and that Monday. So many occurrences happened in chunks hat could blow you away; things that kind of define you.

Really good point. Of all the days in a year, how many of them could you swap with each other without noticing? So many days can be nearly identical. It’s always interesting to review some pivotal period of your life and see that what you thought was a few weeks was really just a couple important days. (Or the opposite where a change over time could really be pinpointed to a single day.)

  • El Mariachi trailer — I mentioned a quote from the book where he talks about starting postproduction by putting the trailer together.

Start with the trailer

 

  • Ten Minute Film School: The Making of “El Mariachi” — Really really cool that this is available online. Robert Rodriguez gives director’s commentary on some scenes in the movie, explaining framing and equipment choices. Similar topics to what his diary entries cover in the book, but in this video it’s from the perspective after it’s all put together.

embrace-technology