Active Recall!

Podcasts, videos, and iPad art

Short retro on my unfinished iPad Journal video

Right now I’m about to close a ScreenFlow file in progress because I need to take a break from editing this. Lots of false starts this morning.

Screenflow in progress

What went well?

I mean, I think it’s good that I at least got started and dedicated some time to making the video and recording it.

What went poorly (and how can you improve it next time)?

  • Tried to do the meta thing again. This happens pretty much every time I get a new iPad and want to make a video with it. I start recording using it but I start documenting the making of that same video. It just ends up with me going in circles in a lot of ways. To improve on this next time, I’ll make a video about a non-iPad topic and just document creating that.
  • Didn’t follow through on doing it in 1-minute chunks. Before starting, I knew it’d be really important to just do it in 1-minute pieces and have each of those pieces in a finished state so that the final edit is just compiling the pieces together. They should be able to mostly stand alone without me referencing things in other clips. The reason for this is getting toward a sustainable and consistent process with videos. Taking a break with video and jumping back into it is difficult for me. By probably a magnitude compared to other things I make (podcasts and blog posts). I’m guessing it’s because it’s a combination of audio and video and different pieces are in different states. It’s not obvious opening a video file what is complete or not. To improve on this next time, I’ll make the video in one minute chunks by recording one minute presentations in Keynote.
  • Didn’t really have an end in mind. I outlined a few times but didn’t settle on one. I recorded audio a few times and each time it was too long and I didn’t plan out what the visual would be for each one. To improve on this next time, I’ll have a single outline with each one-minute chunk titled. I’ll also set a timer for making each topic section.

I spent a few hours making a video and all I got was this blog post…

Typing bw

… and this GIF of me typing so maybe it’s worth it!

Fitness

There’s currently a kettlebell shortage.

Writing a post earlier today, I remembered an episode of The Pat Flynn Show where he talks about building a minimal home gym.

His recommendation:

On a later episode, Dan John gives his answer as well. I’ll need to dig up what he picked but it was similar to Pat’s recommendations.

Here’s what I currently have at home.

  • Kettlebells 16kg, 20kg
  • Ab wheel
  • Pull-up bar
  • A bunch of bands
  • A treadmill <— Recent addition, quarantine purchase

A few days ago I wanted to add a 28kg kettlebell to add to the setup. Onnit, Kettlebell Kings, Rogue, Dicks… sold out for most sizes.

(Finally found one at Rep Fitness if you happen to be looking at the moment.)

Just picked up The Great Mental Models 2

Check out the full notes for “The Great Mental Models, Volume 2: Physics, Chemistry and Biology” by Rhiannon Beaubien and Shane Parrish

I just picked up the Volume 2 of The Knowledge Project’s “The Great Mental Models”. The hardcover is on the way but I just saw that the Kindle version is available so I got it to check it out now. When I was a kid, my parents bought a World Book Encyclopedia set (decades later I learned that door-to-door encyclopedia sales are adjacent to door-to-door knives sales).

I used to think these books were some sort of source of truth for the world.

That core set of books also came with other book sets. All my friends also had encyclopedia sets but they either had more extra sets or just the core sets. Likely based on how convincing the upsell pitch was to their parents.

One of the extra sets was a science one that I would open once in a while but it always seemed too advanced. Then there was another science set with red spines that had the same topics but the books had more illustrations and were more fun to read.

That’s how “The Great Mental Models” feels: easy to read while learning new concepts.

(A level below that was another set called Childcraft which had a “Mathemagic” book with a logic puzzle at the start which probably had some influence on eventually one day learning to program.)

A different mental model book I return to often is “Superthinking” by Gabriel Weinberg and Lauren McCann. I enjoy both. Superthinking is more skimmable, with each model getting 1-2 pages. (“The Great Mental Models” dedicates a full chapter to each mental model so it’s a deeper dive into each with multiple stories.) Superthinking also helped me understand that there isn’t a formal, authoritative list of mental models. They’re the concepts pulled out of disciplines that are most applicable across disciplines.

Creativity often stems from applying a concept from discipline to another.

Podcast Notes

Writing this on the treadmill after a kettlebell workout – a small modification of the routine that Joey Yang put together in his article here.

Listened to Jimmy Kimmel on the Bill Simmons Podcast. I linked to the video because it capture the current situation: celebrities making a bunch of content from home. Just like everyone else sharing things from home.

Figuring out new routines — They talk about their new routines now that they’re working from home. Interesting perspective from people with large teams of creatives. Also cool because they’ve each been working in media, changing roles, and adjusting as the internet changed everything. Kimmel mentions a couple times that it feels like going back to his roots working in radio where a lot of it was done alone.

Buying some gift cards — Food has always been a part of The Ringer in some way. David Chang’s Podcast is in their podcast network. (And don’t forget House of Carbs!) Kimmel‘s hobby is cooking. (I need to remember where it was, maybe when he was on Conan Needs a Friend, but he talks about cooking large meals for groups of friends and Conan suggests that it’s probably part of the reason Kimmel is known as very happy amongst comedians.)

Ending TV as we know it? — As more and more people stay inside for extended periods, they’re seeing how entertaining low production stuff can be. Simmons points out that social video and phones have lowered the expected production standards people have. Some of the entertainment is the “just like us!” novelty of these celebrities at home.   It’ll be nice to see shows return to higher production. Simmons points out that he watched a talking head news show with people dialed in with video chat and… it’s pretty much fine. The at-home nature of it doesn’t overshadow the discussion. (While the whole angle of other content is being at home.)

Just like us! — They do a parent corner segment and discuss their family lives changing with all the time spent together at home.

Mental model: Second order effects — As COVID became more and more serious, I did start think about what life would be like working from home and then maybe needing to stay home entirely. It never crossed my mind that…

  • … sports (and pretty much all live events) would be affected. I had tickets to UFC 249 and didn’t think about the possibility of not going until the NBA postponed all games.
  • … I would play so much Mario Kart. Maybe that more people would play videogames. But Mario Kart has been the default for separate groups of friends. I think because it’s fun when mixing drastically different skill levels. (Smash, not as much.)
  • … everyone would just start working out from home. I didn’t expect to see so many people doing push-ups on social media. I went to order a heavier kettlebell a couple nights ago. Weights in the standard progression (16kg, 24kg, 32kg) were out of stock on most of the sites I checked. Not sure entirely if it’s because of this but kettlebells are great for at-home workouts. Hey that reminds me of an episode of The Pat Flynn Show where he talks about building a minimal home gym for ~$100.

I’ll start a new post for that.

Podcast Notes

Here’s a Michael Lewis and Malcolm Gladwell conversation from 2016. (When Michael Lewis was on tour for The Undoing Project.)

I will now just pull from my own post (notes about Chip and Dan Heath’s “Made to Stick”) for something this reminded me of.

All this talk of metaphor and models reminded me of this episode of egghead.io’s podcast with their illustrator, Maggie Appleton: “Turning Technical Concepts into Approachable Illustrated Metaphors with Maggie Appleton”

I think the mistake would be to believe that understanding the metaphor means you fully understand the concept.