Active Recall! – Page 73 – Podcasts, videos, and iPad art

Seth Godin: Write in public, change your brain

January 31, 2019

Seth Godin talks about the power of blogging every day, whether people know it’s you or not (full episode of “The Moment” with Brian Koppelman).

At 22:00:

One of my favorite paths is: start a blog under an assumed name and blog every day. There’s zero fallout from this. No one will know it’s you. If no one reads it, if everyone reads it, it doesn’t matter. But if you write every day in public, things will happen. Your brain will start to behave in a different way.

Writing every day in public is different than writing every day in private. To get better at writing in public, it’ll help to actually write in public. To get your reps in and feel the mindset shift.

It’s also more difficult to write in public than it is to write in private. If it’s too difficult, then use Seth’s advice to make it easier. Do your writing then send it out into the world with your baseball cap and Ray Bans on.

There’s a good chance you’ll find out that nobody cares about your writing. Look at that as a good thing.

Now you can practice without worrying so much. With more practice, you might not feel the need to hide all the time. Then you’ll probably find a few people who care about your writing.

(You might want to start with ten and work your way up.)

Be a demanding reader (and listener)

January 28, 2019

Check out the full notes for “How to speak, how to listen” by Mortimer J. Adler

Mortimer Jerome Adler explains how to get the most out of speeches and lectures in How to Speak How to Listen:

The essence of being a good reader is to be a demanding reader. A demanding reader is one who stays awake while reading, and does so by asking questions as he reads. Passivity in reading, which really renders the process null and void, consists in using one’s eyes to see the words, but not using one’s mind to understand what they mean.

The good listener, like the good reader, is a demanding listener, one who keeps awake while listening by having in mind the questions to be asked about the speech being listened to.

I spend a good amount of time each day listening to audiobooks and podcasts. I’m often listening to things with retention in mind. The next day I’ll sometimes find it difficult even thinking of what podcast episodes I listened to the day before. If I can’t do that then how can I expect to remember any specific takeaways.

Start writing things down — The steps for listening follow the steps Adler explains in How to Read a Book. You take sets of notes. For books it’d be while reading and then reviewing things after reading to elaborate on things. For listening, you take notes while listening (or as soon as you can after if you can’t do it during for whatever reason) and then again to elaborate on the points that you have.
Start asking questions — By having questions in mind while listening, you’ll be able to pull out answers. You should try as quickly as possible to get a sense of the overall structure of what you’ll be listening to. With a book, you would skim things. For a speech, hopefully the speaker provides the overview near the beginning. If it’s an audiobook, you can probably find the table of contents online. Depending on the piece, you should also know what point the speaker is trying to make. While listening, consider what parts you agree or disagree with. And when you’ve got all that, then ask yourself “and what of it?” Whether you agree or disagree, what will you do with the gained knowledge? Is there action you can take?

I’ve had an iOS Shortcut for the past year or so that prompts me for a source then a list of topics and then it creates a new note in Evernote. I’ve started using this more often recently (increased from 1-2 times a day to probably 3-5 times a day) to capture topics on the go. I’ve been trying my best to open the shortcut up whenever I finish a podcast.

I have a bunch of notes in a “Topics” notebook. The next step will be reviewing this notebook regularly. I might try to use Zapier to email a compilation of these each week or two.

This is aspirational but here’s the system I’d like to have:

Write notes (Topics go into a “Topics” with iOS Shortcuts) — I’ve got this going. I can continue finding cues to add more notes throughout the day.
Review notes (Reminders for now but eventually automated) — Just seeing the list of topics could be good. The iOS Shortcut I have allows me to pick a few of the topics as headers to fill in. This would be a good time to write some bullets for those main topics.
Elaborate on notes (Blog posts) — When reviewing the notes, I’m guessing some will stick out a little bit more than the others. At that point I’ll grab an excerpt and write a post and schedule it.

Joe Rogan: Podcasting as an art form

January 24, 2019

Joe Rogan had Mike Tyson on his podcast. After the interview wraps up, Rogan talks about how big a moment it was for him:

Whoo, we did it. Damn. I just sat down and got high with Mike Tyson. I gotta tell you, out of all the podcasts that I’ve ever done that were weird, that might’ve been one of the weirdest ones. Because… you know podcasts are strange anyway. I’m trying to steer the conversation. It seems a highfalutin word to call it an art form. But there is some artistic and creative aspect to it. There’s some engineering to it. Not always, sometimes it just flows. Sometimes it’s just fun.

It’s great that all these conversations are available free through podcasts.

I’m currently reading How to Speak How to Listen by Mortimer J. Adler. In it, he explains how to be effective in one-way communication (speaking, listening) and two-way conversation. He breaks the two-way talk into four types:

This gives us four main types, as follows: (1) social conversation; (2) the personal, heart-to-heart talk; (3) the impersonal, theoretical talk that is instructive or enlightening; and (4) the impersonal, practical talk that is persuasive with respect to action.

Podcasts come in all of these forms (along with some of the one-way types from solo, non-interview shows).

I like that Joe Rogan is able to move between those different types of conversations between episodes (and sometimes within an episode).

Social conversation — Most of Rogan’s episodes have some element of this. His MMA-focused episodes usually have some upcoming PPV as the overall topic for him to discuss with a fighter. He’s got deep knowledge about fighting so this allows you to listen in on two experts talking to each other.
Heart-to-heart — Of course, you won’t get the full heart to heart on a public episode. There’s always going to be a difference between fully private conversations and a conversation that millions will listen to. Still, he has friends on that he’s known for years, sometimes decades. It’s great to hear how two stand-up comedians talk when they’re not talking about comedy. That said, go listen to Joe Rogan breaking down Brendan Schaub for something close to a full heart-to-heart conversation. (Schaub walked away from fighting shortly after this. Not entirely because of it, but it’s an element.)
Impersonal, theoretical — I admire that Rogan is so enthusiastic about talking to smart people. He knows that he knows very little about certain fields and that the best way to learn about it is to talk to an expert. (Sometimes he’ll have two experts on and will act as moderator. These can end up pretty infuriating.)
Practical two-way talk — Adler describes this as “Practical two-way talk may also be motivated by one person trying to get another or others to do something”. Rogan isn’t trying to hard-sell the audience on things (except when literally doing ad reads). But in some episodes, he’ll be pretty persuasive in getting guests to try floating, cryotherapy, going hunting, or whatever else he’s up to lately.

I added a new “Podcasting” category that I’ll try to add to with thoughts on podcasting as an activity.

You don’t have a choice (Yes you do!)

January 21, 2019

My new TV came in last night and I threw Creed on it while cleaning up the styrofoam and box.

Creed says he doesn’t have a choice. He has to fight.

The people around him remind him that, hey, it’s actually a choice. You’re kind of stretching “have to” here.

It’s nice when a choice is clear. I gave in to Black Friday ads and bought a TV. That was clearly a choice. (Though I’m sure you’ve seen a deal that made you feel like you had no choice. Time to buy.)

Sometimes you don’t realize you had a choice. If you’re unhappy, you’ve made some choices leading to that state. There are choices you’ll make today that can continue that. Or you can make choices to start turning the ship around.

This reminds me of a question Tim Ferriss brought up in a podcast episode with DHH. He also mentions it in Tools of Titans:

TF: Have you outgrown your systems or beliefs? Is it time that you upgraded? Or, on a personal level, as Jerry Colonna, executive coach to some of the biggest tech stars in Silicon Valley, would ask: “How are you complicit in creating the conditions you say you don’t want?”

A lot of things feel automatic but you probably made choices to create whatever system it is that made it automatic.

In Choose the Life You Want: The Mindful Way to Happiness, Tal Ben-Shahar explains that you have choices all the time:

“In fact, at every moment in our life we have a choice.

RMaybe this realization shouldn’t have come as such a surprise to me. After all, research in psychology illustrates that about 40 percent of our happiness is determined by the choices that we make—what we choose to do and how we choose to think directly impact the way we feel.”

But they’re still choices. And the accumulation of your small choices day in and day out has a lot more power over a lifetime than most single choices.

To make a good choice, practice recognizing that everything is a choice in the first place.

And be grateful that your choices today will probably be smaller than choosing to live your GOAT-boxer father’s legacy and try to rise out of his shadow.

Atomic Habits, Chrono Trigger, and making time your ally or enemy

January 18, 2019

Chrono Trigger used time travel really well so that your actions in the past affect the world in the present and future.

Compared to today’s huge open world games and MMOs with no fixed narrative, though, Chrono Trigger is actually pretty linear. Some of the choices actually do matter, though.

Magus is initially presented as one of the main villains in the game. Depending on your actions, you kill him or he joins you as one of the good guys.

Magus came to mind after reading this passage in Atomic Habits:

Time magnifies the margin between success and failure. It will multiply whatever you feed it. Good habits make time your ally. Bad habits make time your enemy.

Like Magus, time will be your ally or your enemy.

However you define success, you’ll get there based on your habits over time. We’re not in Chrono Trigger. You can’t change the progression of time, but you can change your habits.

The tiny things compound over time. That goes for tiny good things and tiny bad things. If you want to make a big change, there’s a tiny chance that you can make a giant change overnight. Otherwise it’ll be that tiny positive change over and over. Time becomes your ally and works in your favor.

Another great book about small things is The Slight Edge, by Jeff Olson. While we often think about good and bad habits, what if you just stay neutral? Stay on a level course. The Slight Edge emphasizes that stagnation over time can end up negative:

You know what you need to do to stay healthy and feel fit and live a long life. Get your heart rate up, a little over normal, for twenty minutes, three times a week. You know it, I know it, everyone knows it. And it’s easy to do.

But it’s also easy not to do. And if you don’t do it today, or tomorrow, or the next day, you won’t suddenly drop dead, and you won’t suddenly put on twenty pounds, and you won’t suddenly lose all your muscle tone.

The next time you face a small choice, imagine that choice propagated over weeks and years. How does that affect your decision?

63: “Atomic Habits”

January 16, 2019

14:02 — Topical three
18:48 — Book of the week intro
21:45 — 4 step to building good habits and breaking bad habits
29:40 — Stop eating bad food, start working out and vlogging

Links

– Atomic Habits (James Clear, Amazon)

– Better Than Before (Gretchen Rubin, Amazon)

– The Power of Habit (Charles Duhigg, Amazon)

Also check out this video I made about Atomic Habits: