Active Recall!

Podcasts, videos, and iPad art

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.)

Podcast Notes: Start winning, become passionate (Ramit Sethi)

I followed my passion and it worked out. Growing up, I wanted to make websites for a living. Today I make websites for a living.

The cookie could’ve crumbled a different way.

I was passionate about a bunch of other things growing up. What if I followed those instead? What if I tried to be a Counter-Strike professional? Or Brood War? Twitch and influencer culture were about a decade away, so your only route was to be really, really, really, really good at the game. That wouldn’t have panned out well.

Ramit Sethi on The Fizzle Show – “How to Start A Business Without A Passion w/ Ramit Sethi (FS314)”

I would say: pick something where you can win and start winning. I get passionate when I win. And so do most people. You can win by earning 1 dollar, or a thousand dollars. You can win by being able to go to a movie on a Thursday afternoon. Or you can win by helping one person achieve their goals, one of your customers. It doesn’t matter, you define what winning is. But stop waiting for passion to come around. You get passionate when you start winning.

My wins came through side projects. My definition wasn’t earning any money with them. Just knowing someone was looking at it was a win. So I made more things and shared them. I didn’t build up to an enormous audience. But a few of the people looking at what I was making were able to help me make it my main thing.

Here’s something else you can define: the “follow” in “follow your passion”. A lot of people take “follow” to mean end-all-be-all. But you can follow your passion on the side. One of my favorite articles on this is from Derek Sivers: “How to do what you love and make good money”. Spoiler: do them separately.

Don’t try to make your job your whole life. Don’t try to make your art your sole income.

Listen to some more of my thoughts on passion in the latest episode of Active Recall: “Quitter”. Wally and I talk about passion on our latest episode: Quitter. We talk about Jon Acuff’s book “Quitter”, which is about following a passion and not quitting your day job. (At least not quitting right away.)

We also talk about Ramit’s idea of money dials. Which is sort of like “follow your passion, but the right way” advice scoped to personal finance.

And also check out that Fizzle episode, because they bring up the Steve Jobs commencement speech about following your passion. And Ramit has the best response: “… so I was in the audience…”

66: “Quitter”

Book of the Week: “Quitter” by Jon Acuff

As Acuff suggests in “Quitter”, we will not be quitting our day jobs. A day job gives you flexibility with your passion:

Most of it would not have been possible without a day job that allowed me to duck the Dons, keep my no’s, stay dangerous, and stabilize my marriage.

Our plan was to do an episode for each of Jon Acuff’s books: Quitter, Do Over, Start, Finish. We started with Quitter (this episode) and Finish (next week’s episode)

Links

  • “So Good They Can’t Ignore You”  by Cal Newport (book) — This is my favorite book about the topic of following your passion: mostly because it presents a good argument against the idea. It isn’t that it’s bad to be at a job you’re passionate about, but it can be bad to just blindly follow your passion expecting a career to appear out of nowhere.
  • “Money Dials: Why you spend the way you do” article by Ramit Sethi — We discussed Ramit’s concept of money dials. These are the things you’re happy to spend money on, while you cut costs on everything else. One of mine is books. One of Wally’s is videography equipment.
  • Joe DeFranco’s Industrial Strength Show (Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts)
  • Short Story Long: “#159 – Tim Grover | Relentless” (Apple Podcasts, Stitcher)
  • It’s about passion. We talk about both sides of the ‘follow your passion’ argument. We are both in a place doing work that we’re passionate about. It doesn’t mean there aren’t parts that don’t feel like work. There are also things we’re passionate about that we weren’t able to turn into careers.
  • We batched a couple episodes. We were going to try to get to 4 episodes. (One for each of Jon Acuff’s books: Quitter, Finish, Start, Do Over. We didn’t finish all 4 episodes, but we did finish two. So an episode is scheduled next week for Jon Acuff’s “Finish”

Analog conversations and digital detoxes (Cal Newport on “Hurry Slowly”)

Topic: Cal Newport (Hurry Slowly)

Link: https://hurryslowly.co/cal-newport/

Episode Title: Cal Newport: Using Technology with Intention

Jocelyn K. Glei (@jkglei) and Cal Newport discussed his latest book, Digital Minimalism.

  • Digital detox — It’s worth taking a look at your digital life and then taking a break from parts (or most) of it. First suggestion: uninstall anything with pull-to-refresh or any sort of feed. (Yes, this might mean limiting your email use.) Whether the complete detox is possible for you and your work situation, there’s some version of your life that you can come up with where you’re not looking at a screen quite as much.
  • Analog communication — Have a conversation with a friend. You know, with your voice. This is where I dislike hard stances on video games being addictive and bad for you. Yes, I think they can be those things. But I also think games and voice chat can be a great way to keep in touch with friends in other states. Frequency matters in friendships. “But when we get together, even after years, it’s just like before!” Sure, but consider if you spoke to each other weekly during those years. (A reminder that I need to call my mom. It’d be a lot easier if she played CS:GO.)
  • The anxiety machine — Yes, phones are super useful. Yes, they can also be positivity machines. But a lot of times they can lead to anxiety and worry (re-reading the same bad news in some different form) or they just let you waste huge chunks of time that could have gone toward something that lessens your anxiety and worry (like meeting up with friends or doing the work you’ve been putting off).

I like how Justin Kan put it:

You have voluntarily decided to carry around a toxic, time-wasting Skinner-box in your pocket at all times, from the second you wake up in the morning to right before you fall asleep at night. This is incredibly stupid, and yet every smart person does it.

Need some entertainment? Just be more like Cal Newport and listen to baseball on the radio. Which sounds like a past time older than scribbling on a papyrus scroll. (It also sounds very soothing.)

Podcast Notes: Thomas Frank on building up College Info Geek

Thomas Frank walks through his career and the history of College Info Geek in the latest episode of their podcast.

From The College Info Geek Podcast episode “The CIG Story: From Dorm Room Project to Full-Time Business” (iTunes, YouTube): 

I think at the time I wanted to call it College Beat, because it was going to be college tips. That name was taken—and I actually started following that blog when I found it. But I was like, I need a new name. I don’t want to spend too much time thinking of a name. I’m a management information systems major… so I’m just gonna call it College Info Geek.

That was it. I registered the domain, I set up WordPress, I found a free theme that looked terrible but it was okay, and I put up my first article.

I always enjoy hearing these kinds of histories and “how we got to now” beat-by-beat descriptions of periods in the company’s history.

One thing I appreciated in the story is that he didn’t picture what College Info Geek has grown into when he started. It really was a thing of just getting started. And it doesn’t sound like that idea of “try and fail fast to learn”. Eventually there was the mindset of learning from failure and building systems and self awareness to stretch and grow in different areas and all those personal development things.

But it really was just a blog at first. By “just a blog” I mean that in the sense of one person making a website to share a journey. Not setting out to create a business with an audience of hundreds of thousands. He started out just documenting his journey through college.

They mention the book The Motivation Hacker by Nick Winter. I remember reading it years ago (I just checked and I bought it in 2013). One idea that stuck with me is aiming to create success spirals. It’s similar to concepts like foundational habits, the slight edge, and habits compounding.

From The Motivation Hacker:

The converse is true, too: success begets confidence and motivation, which begets more success, and pretty soon you’re fearless on wheels or look forward to crushing spelling tests. To start as an adult, after your identity is set and your “limits” clearer, this is a fragile staircase and requires climbing, but it can take you just as high as the pits are deep, and quicker than you’d think.

One thing leads to another which leads to another. But you have to stick with each thing long enough.

Make your bed, take a morning walk, and read 15 pages every day. Then increase gradually so you’re reading 25 pages every day and running a mile. (Soon enough you’ll be making 15 beds every day!)

Or start a blog and write one post after another and try out audio and video. Then, like Thomas Frank, with persistence, focus, and some luck in there, you’ll have a million subscribers. (And if not, you’ll still learn a whole lot.)