Active Recall!

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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.)