Active Recall!

Podcasts, videos, and iPad art

Removing friction

Okay so I said “I’m bringing the podcast back.” in a standalone sentence to try to be bold. Then I didn’t actually follow through on finishing up the podcast.

I’m going to think out loud (aka try to type some thoughts out here) to get down to why1 I haven’t actually recorded the podcast. Pretty much trying to find where the friction is.

  • The friction is all over. There isn’t really one single reason explaining why I haven’t made the podcast. I don’t want to record because I want to record at home on my mic with my laptop (when I’m probably fine recording on the Shure MV88 and my iPhone). I don’t want to edit because it takes a long time (this is a boohoo one because I actually know this time is really worth it but maybe I can time box this to get to some nice 80/20 spot). I don’t want to post because I’m worried that it’s going to be bad in the end (probably just need to read some stuff like ).
  • Starting something new is more fun than finishing things. I’ve started shooting a bunch of video for different ideas but then when it comes to editing I don’t actually want to go through with it. Because I’m pretty slow at video editing right now. And I’m probably actually writing this to procrastinate and not work on the podcast episode.
  • Matt D’Avella talked to Thomas Frank about how he works (video). He focuses on removing friction from everything in his work. Video is his main thing and there’s so much more room for friction when working with both video and audio equipment. Cutting that down goes a long way toward creating consistent content.
  • There’s mental friction from your schedule. The College Info Geek podcast changed their schedule from weekly to bi-weekly. I think I have some kind of mental friction here but probably not from the schedule. It’s me being worried that it won’t be worthwhile for other people to listen to. But I can take steps toward improving that by, well, actually doing it.

I’m making it hard (aiming for shows that require lots of editing), unsustainable (aiming for a daily schedule in my head), and inconsistent (because I let the friction rule over everything).

I need to remember what I’ve written about before: Make it easy, sustainable, and consistent.

 

Improving my solo episodes

I’m bringing the podcast back.

Which I’ve wanted to do before, but this time I’m going to document the process as I put the work in to improve it. This will be in the same spirit as the long journal post that I wrote about the first eight weeks of our podcast.

(Also, Wally and I are still planning to do episodes together. But for consistent weekly episodes, some portion will need to be solo episodes.)

Here’s some audio I recorded yesterday thinking I’d just jump back into the podcast. It’s an episode about Nir Eyal’s latest book, Indistractible

Well, it was going to be an episode about that. This is just the raw audio, recorded on my phone with the Shure MV88.

I put these notes together in Keynote:

Then I talked through them. The process I’m trying to get to looks something like this:

  1. Write plain-text notes: Or sort of plain text. I’ll probably start in something like Cold Turkey Writer and then move that into Keynote.
  2. Create podcast based on notes: I think this order makes sense because a podcast can generally be longer than a video. It also takes less time to make audio than video. Because a video also needs good audio. And you still need to make the video part.
  3. Create video based on notes: Well, based on the notes and the podcast. I’m going to start listening to the solo podcasts to figure out which points would translate best to video.

But it should start with text. Just going to put a couple links down here that came to mind:

  • Always bet on text – “We can read texts from five thousand years ago, almost the moment they started being produced. It’s (literally) “rock solid” — you can readily inscribe it in granite that will likely outlast the human species.”
  • The future of education is plain text – “Plain text is easy to mix and match If your lecture materials are in a simple plain text format like markdown you can copy and paste the materials from one lecture into another and when the document is compiled make all the formatting/colors/etc. match.”

But I didn’t post the episode above to the actual podcast feed. It’s only embedded here. I want to take the time to revise and give the same topic another go.

What I’ll do the next time through

  • Convert the 21 notes format into 5 takeaways: The idea was that I’d have 21 notes and 20 seconds for each note for a nice round 7 minute episode. I think that could work for a video with auto-forwarding slides that reveal the format and make the pace of it more forgiving.
  • Add some quotes: I want to make a self-development podcast and the best of those have expertise involved. Usually (A) the host is an expert or (B) the host interviews experts. There’s an episode of the “My First Million” podcast where Sam Parr says that there’s still room to create value if you’re a novice. Reading a book someone else hasn’t read can be far enough ahead to share something someone else might find valuable. So I’ll try (C) importing expertise with quotes from experts.
  • I’ll aim for 18 minutes: I think a 7-minute podcast is too short. I want to make things similar to the things I enjoy and I can’t think of any podcast I really enjoy that are less than 10 minutes. On the other end, I think anything beyond 20 minutes is too long for a solo podcast. (Unless you’re Bill Burr or some other form of professional speaker.)

I pulled 18 minutes from TED’s limit

Rest assured, you can accomplish a lot in 18 minutes. John F. Kennedy persuaded a nation to reach for the moon in 18 minutes at Rice University in 1962. Steve Jobs gave one of the most popular commencement speeches of all time in 15 minutes at Stanford. And in a TED talk that’s been viewed more than six million times, historian David Christian explained the history of the world in 18 minutes.

I’m likely never going to give a TED talk but if I’m going to pull a number out of the air, the 18-minute limit seems like a good one to steal.

Anyway, that’s the first post in this process of trying to improve the solo podcast.

Next up, I want to write a post that’s an overview of some of my favorite solo podcasts and some lessons from them viewed through the “I want to start a solo podcast” lens.

As a preview, here’s a note I wrote a few months ago with a list of some of my favorite solo shows. (Some are usually interviews but they do solo shows in between.)

solo-podcasts

Oh yeah and I’ll also do another take of the Indistractible episode!

Podcast Notes – “My First Million”: Don’t make lists

Podcast: My First Million by Shaan Puri & Ishan Haque

Episode: Bonus episode! Answering listener questions (Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Google Podcasts)

I’ve been binging on “My First Million” the past few days. It’s fairly new (first episode is June 2019) so it was nice to not be overwhelmed by a library of like 400 episodes.

In this Q&A episode, Shaan Puri talks about lists and how making lists can be a big waste of time:

And people love making lists rather than actually just reaching out and trying to make the thing happen. I have a rule when we do this whenever we’re trying to do a project. I will tell the guys: what we want is to, in the next hour, we want to reach out to a customer or we want to reach out to a vendor. or we want to reach out… We want to actually fire the bullet we don’t want to spend a full day just loading the chamber of the gun. So making lists, I’ve found, is the biggest waste of time.

Making the list typically involves a lot of research and a lot of writing down things and it’s this false sense of productivity because you look at this giant spreadsheet and you say, “Oh man now we’re really prepared. Now we’ve got this huge list. That was a lot of work.” But the reality is it was just easy work because you didn’t have to get out there and actually, you know, interact with the market in any way. You were just doing research on your computer. So the biggest time waster I’ve seen is making lists.

This part reminded me that I’ve mostly just been making lists of ideas without actually finishing anything. I want to get some momentum with making and actually finishing things again.

The specific list is my list of podcast highlights. Here’s a glimpse of this list:

NewImage

There are a few more columns to capture the URL, date, and timestamp. The idea was that it’d make it easier for me to write posts like this one you’re reading right now. A single podcast link with a quote.

And here are a few more rows that aren’t so Joe Rogan heavy:

podcast-highlights 

This list is approaching 400 items. I’ve written maybe a dozen posts using this list to help.

Time to stop loading the chamber. I actually do have a huge list and am prepared. Time to actually start hitting publish.

Back to basics (and writing in the editor)

It’s been a while since I published anything on this blog. So I’m just going to write for a few minutes and post it to shake some of the cobwebs off.

I want to get back to the fundamentals. After all, the fundamentals are fundamental. I read Adam Savage’s book, Every Tool’s a Hammer, this past month. (Check out my video about it!) In one chapter, he talks about the importance of drawing in his process. It’s one of the fundamental skills in creative work. It was useful 1000 years ago and will likely be useful 100 years from now. It’s one of the most effective ways to transfer an idea from your head to somebody else’s. (Though it might be lower resolution than inception.)

I do want to draw more. But it’s the publishing muscle that I need to get reps in with. For me, publishing a blog post has the least friction of everything I make.

Maybe friction isn’t the word. A couple things come to mind that could better describe things. 

First, I went to a Chuck Klosterman book signing (go pick up Raised in Captivity, I’m loving it so far) — he talks about how writing has changed for him. It used to be that he could work on a piece, send it out into the world, and that was the end of it. There’d be a few reviews after, but there wasn’t really an outlet to respond. Now the release is the middle of the process. You then have to monitor people’s reactions and you have the means to react to each individual reaction if you feel like it. One of the luxuries of posting to a blog that nobody reads is that there’s nothing to monitor after hitting “publish”.

Second, time craters. This is a phrase from Make Time by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky (go pick that up too!) — I read it last year and recently picked the audiobook up to go back through again. It’s great. I used to always appreciate when authors narrate their book. Then I got to some books where the author probably shouldn’t have narrated their book. Make Time is very heavily a good case of the author narrating their own book. Or co-authors, in this case. The back-and-forth translates really well to the audiobook.

Oh yeah, time craters. An example of a time crater is a tweet. You post to Twitter. It takes a minute. Then it makes the dinosaurs go extinct. Or your attention, at least. That tweet can occupy some part of your mind for the next few hours. How is it doing? Did people laugh? With me or at me? Did they react at all?

So I’m going to try to write more in the short term. Just get comfortable hitting publish with no reactions. And hopefully move on to where I’m a little more scared to hit publish.

67 – “Finish” — PAO: Mr. Perfect cutting food in a kitchen with an invisible cloak on

We’re continuing on with the episodes about Jon Acuff’s books, this week’s book of the week is “Finish”. It’s filled with different approaches to help you finish what you start. Your brain will get really creative in finding ways to not finish things, so I think it’s good to expand your toolbox against Resistance. Some of the strategies here: make your goal smaller, make it fun, re-frame the rules in your head.

Links

  1. Jon Acuff: “Finish” — Our book of the week.
  2. Jon Acuff: “Do Over” — Mentioned one of Jon Acuff’s other books. We’ll talk about this in a future episode. One of my favorites to put on if I need a little boost of motivation in the day to day.
  3. BJ Fogg: Floss one tooth (video) — We talk about cutting your goals down and the “floss one tooth” idea.

Some quotes from the book that we mention on the episode and some additional thoughts.

Overview

  • I’m good at starting, bad at finishing. I don’t usually have writer’s block, but I certainly have finisher’s block. By that, I mean that I’m able to outline and outline and outline a bunch of ideas. And even get to drafts of things. But then actually finishing the thing and releasing it becomes a challenge.
  • We discuss hiding places and noble obstacles. Wally talks about how he can get caught up editing a certain point of a video. But we also discuss that video editing work for a client deserves perfectionism more than something like a blog post does.
  • Picking between good and bad is easy, between good and good is hard. This is where it’s a noble obstacle. If I want to finish editing and scheduling this podcast, I need to edit and finish these notes. That’d be good. But I’m tempted to just leave and head to the gym, because that’s also good. And it also gets me away from the resistance I feel toward finishing these notes.
  • One tip to finish: set a timer. We don’t talk about this tip specifically, but it’s what I’m using to cut the goal down to something that can be finished.
  • I create a memory palace room to remember some of the tips: Mr. Perfect cutting food in a kitchen with an invisible cloak on

Two types of obstacles: Both bad, but one disguises itself as good

“But more than just analysis, perfectionism offers us two distinct distractions: Hiding places Noble obstacles A hiding place is an activity you focus on instead of your goal. A noble obstacle is a virtuous-sounding reason for not working toward a finish. Both are toxic to your ability to finish.”

  • You’re probably aware of your main procrastination outlets. These are your hiding places. I like “hiding places” as a way to describe them, because of the connection between “place” and environment. The phrase acts as a reminder that changing your environment and removing the hiding place entirely is going to be one of the most effective ways to avoid it.
  • Noble obstacles are more difficult because you might not be aware of them at all. They are good things for you. But not in the context of finishing the current project you’re working on. Hitting the gym it’s probably a good idea overall. If you’re trying to finish writing a draft of an article, then heading to the gym right after you sit down to write probably means it’s a noble obstacle. The reverse is true as well. Let’s say you plan to work out in the morning. But you start writing in the gym lobby right when you get there, then writing is now the noble obstacle.

Hiding places

“If you’re watching Netflix every time it’s time for you to do X, that’s a hiding place. You’re afraid to face the fear of imperfection that comes along with every endeavor, so you’re hiding from it by doing something that requires no skill.”

  • As mentioned above, changing your environment is the best way to avoid hiding places. You’re aware of the hiding places, but you can build even more awareness. There are probably a few things surrounding the hiding place, pulling you in to enter. Sometimes it’s not even all that tempting, but you just mindlessly wander in. These are the cues in a habit loop.
  • It’s also important to realize that you’re carrying around a hiding place. Not only that, your phone is a hiding place with many many many (many) more hiding places. Find ways to improve your digital environment.

Perfectionism

“developing tolerance for imperfection is the key factor in turning chronic starters into consistent finishers.”

  • Learn to lower your bar. Consider how much time will go into perfecting whatever it is you’re working on. If it leads to you not finishing it at all, that’s a sign that you probably want to lower the bar. This is where I could be good too start with a time boxed input goal. You’re going to spend one hour on something and whatever you have by the end of that will be good enough. (Remember: A lot of times, good enough is good enough.)
  • Don’t lower it too much, though. I think “floss one tooth” is good because you’d never really actually just floss one tooth. On the other hand, you can swing too far the other way on the imperfection scale. And I’m definitely talking about myself here: I’ve put things quarter-baked things out into the world that I should’ve taken just a little more time with. Instead of lowering the bar of what_finished_ means, I became okay with publishing things that just weren’t really finished at all. Bad analogy: If you’re serving up burgers, it’s the difference between serving an okay burger and serving up a burger but forgetting the patty.

Also check out our previous episode about “Quitter”! (One of Jon Acuff’s other books.)