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Book Notes: “Tranquility by Tuesday” by Laura Vanderkam | Audiobook Summary

Here’s a 3 bullet summary of “Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters” by Laura Vanderkam. Through a time diary study of 150+ people, she shares that…

  • You have more time than you think
  • You should be more deliberate with your time
  • You have time to get things done (and still enjoy life)

I enjoyed “Tranquility by Tuesday” as a nice year-end read in the same way that I enjoyed “Four-Thousand Weeks” by Oliver Burkeman to end the year last year.

It’s a reminder that there’s plenty of time to do things and that we should be more deliberate with time.

Where “Four-Thousand Weeks” points out how pointless it can be to try and completely control time (unless you also want to entirely remove relationships from your life), “Tranquility by Tuesday” shows how to be deliberate with the time you do have left.

You probably have time for that thing you want to do (if you’d just quit staring at your phone)

First, it’s worth looking at where your time is going in the first place.

To calm the chaos, we need to think about how we’d like to spend our time. We need to think about any stretch of time before we are hurtling through it. We need time to pause in the calm shallows and think about what we need to do, and what we want to do.

Vanderkam has tracked every half hour in a spreadsheet since April 2015.

You don’t have to do the same—but it can be good to track closely for a couple weeks. Similar to tracking calories and macros for a few weeks, you’ll get the slap of reality and also get a better grasp estimating things. That 5 minutes snacking mid-day was actually 400 calories.

That 2 hour writing session you were looking forward to actually ended up in only 30 minutes actually writing. That chore you were dreading taking hours only took 20 minutes. Etc.

I shudder to think of how much time I spend on the couch (not wanting to floss)

Vanderkam points out something that probably sounds stupid to many people but which resonates deeply with me:

…people mentioned the difficulty of mustering the energy to begin the bedtime process; one person wrote of being “too tired to get ready (stupid as that sounds).” But silly as it seems, the struggle is real; some research has suggested that we become less disciplined as the day goes on. Turning off the TV and going upstairs to brush teeth takes energy at a time when most people are depleted. It is easier to push the decision later, and then crash on the couch.

I’d wager a guess that I spend maybe 2 hours a week in this pre-floss state. Not all hours are the same. This is one of the worst states because it’s just about the least deliberate state to be in. It’s not leisure, it’s not productive, and it’s actively cutting into sleeping time.

It might be worth actively practicing getting out of this state.

One step forward: I have floss in all rooms—traditional thread in the bathroom and floss picks in the other room to just get things kicked off.

Plans have benefits even when the plans don’t happen

Plan, plan, plan:

There is a famous quote from Dwight Eisenhower (who himself called it a statement he had heard long before in the army) that “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” In a normal life context, just as on the battlefield, things seldom go exactly as planned. However, when you have thought through the logistics, you can pivot more easily than if you’ve never even pondered the possibilities.

One great practice from the book for longer-term planning: one big adventure one small adventure.

Each week, plan one big thing and one small thing to do that is out of your ordinary routine. Without this, multiple weeks can blend together and you’ll look back and the time has vanished/ With this, you’ll have more memories when looking back on the year.

It takes effort but it’s worth it.

Effortful fun is the best use of time (that people often don’t make time for)

Leisure is important. But we often default to spending free time on things that aren’t actually recharging. They take some effort but they’re worth planning for:

It might help to think of your favorite effortful fun as a quest. How can you find a handful of moments through the day to advance in this adventure? This nudges the mindset toward curiosity, rather than forced productivity. No one needs to use every minute. But on the other hand, I believe that even mere minutes are worthy enough not to be wasted. Anything we want to do in life takes time. Being willing to use the little bits opens up possibility—and far more joy than we might have imagined.

It doesn’t need to be skydiving to be effective.

These are more like suburban adventures. Try that workout class. Meet with the same friends but in a different location. Take that book you want to read but go to a coffeeshop to read it.

Go on the weekend hike with your dog, but pick a new hike each month.

How to podcast by yourself

I’m going to continue updating this post with notes about podcasting alone.

Podcasting with Wally is still the most fun I’ve had making things in anything related to Active Recall. But we both got busy for a season in life and we still haven’t got back to podcasting regularly. (It’s like how Drake and the Weeknd are always supposed to do something together, but for a podcast with maybe 5 listeners.)

One key success to podcasting: consistency.

One key to consistency for me has been to do solo episodes. I’m going to collect quotes and episodes here that are good examples of solo podcasts and solo episodes.

Some quick notes for where I’ll try and search for quotes.

  • Most large podcasts have some solo episodes to learn from: For interview podcasts, there are often solo Q&A episodes or celebration episodes (e.g. 100th episode special) where the person talks about their podcasting journey. On My First Million, they do short solo episodes on Fridays where Shaan or Sam will break down some kind of framework or mental model.
  • Many podcasters do interviews on other shows: Even if they know the audience might not care about the topic, they’ll talk about podcasting for at least a few minutes.
  • A lot can be learned from solo YouTubers: It’s more the norm for someone to be doing solo monologues over their video. One example: Ivan from Squat everyday shares solo thoughts every single day and probably doesn’t call himself a podcaster.
  • You can still learn things from non-solo podcasts: For example, I learned from WVFRM where MKBHD talks about how they use the podcast to workshop video ideas. It allows him to do some divergent thinking to branch out and find what might be most interesting. This can shape the narrative before he and his team distill it into a video.

My personal goals with Active Recall for 2023?

  • Input (completely in my control): Improve Active Recall by making 40 podcast episodes in 2023
  • Output (less in my control): 1000 downloads per episode?

Some posts I’ve written previously about podcasting.

In the “Improving my solo episodes” post, I pasted a screenshot of a list of solo podcasts. I’ll write them out here with some quick thoughts.

  • Bill Burr: He’s a stand-up comic—their job is to talk alone. He’s been podcasting for a decade. He could riff on whatever and it’d be great, but he still comes each time with topics in mind.
  • Seth Godin: These seem to be scripted so writing is a key thing.
  • Pat Flynn: He brought Dan John here and there and now the weekly show is always with Dan John. One of my favorite podcasts but it’s no longer solo. They always do some Q&A.
  • Joe DeFranco: Seems like he does a bulleted list and goes through that along with Q&A.
  • Mike Matthews: Often a main topic and sometimes some Q&A.
  • Mark Rosewater: Writes a Magic: The Gathering topic down and then talks about it on his drive to work. Then he switched to just talking about it before going to his home office.
  • Sean D’Souza: Writes his entire episode out before recording.

My main takeaway: don’t just ramble thinking topics will come to mind through the rambling.

A few more solo podcasters I’ve added to my regular rotation…

  • David Senra: “Founders” is must-listen for me each week.
  • Ben Wilson: “How to Take Over the World” is also must-listen.
  • Andrew Huberman: Of course

I feel about their podcasts the way a lot of people talk about “Hardcore History”.

Main takeaway: Another reminder that research, writing, and entertainment is key

You can’t just spit out a bunch of information and expect people to enjoy that. Unless it’s completely unique and valuable information, the packaging matters.

(Dec 14, 2022: More to come)

Book Notes: “Never Finished” by David Goggins

Above is a 6-minute video with some of my takeaways.

Working on a rat animation.

3 sentence summary: Goggins is still an uncommon man among uncommon men. From what I understand, Goggins started with audio for the first book and it was massaged into a book. This follow-up book seems more structured than that. It has its pros and cons.

But for Goggins, cons are pros.

On to some takeaways (and YouTube Shorts)

Some are born winners, some are born losers (who then fight to become winners)

…I was born a loser. There are a lot of born losers out there. Every day, babies are born into poverty and broken families, like I was.

Goggins went through abuse of all types throughout his life.

The main enemy: his dad

Your demons don’t die with you. They try to carry on. If the demons are strong enough (and they often are), they’re passed on to family members.

This makes it doubly important to work through your own demons: once for yourself and again for the people in your life.

This reminds me of another person I very much never want to fight: Mark Hunt. From his biography, “Born to Fight”:

I try to remember any light, fun moments we shared as kids, but it’s hard to find anything. If there were any board games, or holidays, or trips to the movies, or the rugby, or the museum, or anything that parents and little kids do together then I don’t remember them. All I remember about that house is a shitload of beatings and what felt like endless days of hunger.

(Yes. I definitely feel how soft my life has been and become when I come into the book looking for motivation to think up 1 second hooks for short-form videos and then read about a dad alternating beating his son in front of his mom and beating his mom in front of his son.)

The 2 Rats

They swam their hearts out…for an average of sixty hours without any food or rest. One swam for eighty-one hours.

Goggins shares a story about research in the 50s with two groups of rats. Both get tossed in water. The first set drowns within 15 minutes.

The second set get rescued and dried off, returned to normal. Saved.

They then return to water and are able to survive far longer than 15 minutes.

Some attribute it to hope. Goggins says it’s belief.

Hope is fleeting. Belief built from resilience is his ultimate fuel.

The mixtape (of hate)

Some people avoid reading comments at all. Goggins records himself reading them and listens to them when he’s down.

I loved those comments. I loved them so much I made a mixtape. I printed them all out, recorded myself saying each one, and then I looped it. Whenever I have a bad day, I listen to it. Sometimes, I walk around the house savoring it in full stereo.

One of my favorite books on self talk is Jon Acuff’s “Soundtracks”, where he relates the voice in our head to music. And a lot of what we listen to all day is negative broken records.

From “Soundtracks”

Your brain builds on overthinking’s habit of negativity by doing three additional things: (1) Lying about your memories, (2) Confusing fake trauma with real trauma, (3) Believing what it already believes

Goggins leans into other people’s negative talk and learns to cringe at his own negative self talk.

The lesson here: whether you’re focusing on negative (like Goggins) or trying to sway things to the positive (like Acuff), it’s incredibly powerful and worth learning to focus on controlling your self talk at all.

(While grabbing the cover for this post, I realized I bought the clean edition. I knew something was off. Off to Amazon to re-buy the proper edition.)

Alright I’m back with the parental advisory version.

It’s okay to quit (just don’t rage quit)

It’s not always the wrong move to quit. Even in battle, sometimes we must retreat. You might not be ready for whatever it is you’ve taken on. Perhaps your preparation wasn’t as thorough as you’d thought. Maybe other priorities in life need your attention. It happens, but make sure that it is a conscious decision you’re making, not a reaction. Never quit when your pain and insecurity are at their peak. If you must retreat, quit when it’s easy, not when it’s hard.

Quitting often makes sense, but you want to make sure that it isn’t just a reaction to something.

In “Grit”, Angela Duckworth talks about her own family’s 3 rules for hard things. One of them is that everyone in the family has to do a hard thing—the Duckworths aren’t doing 100-milers in the desert but they have pursuits that require daily deliberate practice. Another rule is that each member picks their own hard thing.

The last rule, similar to what Goggins advises, is that you can’t just rage quit.

From “Grit”:

This brings me to the second part of the Hard Thing Rule: You can quit. But you can’t quit until the season is over, the tuition payment is up, or some other “natural” stopping point has arrived. You must, at least for the interval to which you’ve committed yourself, finish whatever you begin. In other words, you can’t quit on a day when your teacher yells at you, or you lose a race, or you have to miss a sleepover because of a recital the next morning. You can’t quit on a bad day.

In other words: You must make it to the finish line but that’s when you can choose not to do another race.

118: The Psychology of Fitness: 1, 2, 3

Transcript

All right. I’m going to workshop this idea called the psychology of fitness. I wanted to write like a blog post or something like that. It’s been a while. It’s always been a while. Going to try to get back on a regular cadence. I say that every single time, but anyway, maybe I won’t make any promises here.

I hope everyone’s having a good holiday. Heading into December. I heard this rule from Dan, John. He’s a fitness coach. He invented the goblet squats. So if you’ve done a goblet squat, he. Is the person that named it helped to popularize it. Add. He has this rule called or like this goal that sounded dumb too. If he acknowledges it sounds a little unconventional and.

Yeah, a few years ago, I was like, ah, that seems like a dumb goal. Not dumb, but it seems too easy.

Now it really applies. And I wish I had followed it. His rule is. Try to lose one pound a year. Basically, don’t let it tick up over the decades. It adds up very slowly, but those years can go fast. Heading into 2023, of course, going to try to. Clean things up, especially in December This time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is crucial because it can feel like the holidays, but.

There’s three holidays. Let’s say for, so let’s count Christmas Eve. For me, of course I do celebrate this thing. So Thanksgiving, Christmas, Eve, Christmas day. New year’s Eve new year’s day. So five but then. Certainly in some years, I’ve just been like it’s the holidays. And then just eat crazy.

want to clean it up for December. That’s why I’m thinking. A good thing to focus on would be psychology of fitness and what I’m going to do. I’m just going to set a timer for four minutes for three ideas. And then eventually my goal would be to get through 20. Maybe that can be my goal for December or something like that.

So I’ll do let’s call it a four minute timer for each of these ideas and just to be clear. The w the source of these quotes will be. This book called the psychology of money by Morgan Housel. I’m guessing it’s like one of the best-selling books of the last few years for like non-fiction I think

There’s a few so that there was of course, like subtle art and then atomic habits. And I think David Goggins book is some insane bestseller as well. Of course, plenty of other books, but Psychology of money by Morgan Housel is one of these on personal finance and great book if you haven’t checked it out, but it’s yeah. Different chapters and he just talks about

Some principle about or I dunno the principal, but Just, he tells stories about. Money and then relates it to personal finance and why we all have these different views of finance and how you should invest your money, spend your money, save your money. Anyway. I’ll take a quote from that.

And then trying to relate it to fitness. I think a lot of it is just like psychology, how you approach fitness and health and eating?

Because we all know, like it is. Somewhat as simple as move more, eat less, but it’s never as simple as that. And the thing to remember, or The thing that often gets lost is that. Eating it like, oh, abs are made in the kitchen. That’s a pretty common thing. But that’s why it’s the hardest thing is that.

It’s somewhat simple, straightforward, almost easy to. If it, all it took was to work out for an hour a day. And that was the only thing you needed to do. That’d be great, but you have to. For 23 other hours of the day, you have to eat right and not snack and do all these things. So good to talk about that. I’ve been talking for four minutes already.

I was hoping to make this intro one minute, but maybe this is good for introducing the idea of catching up. A little bit on what’s going on. I’ll talk about maybe like my home gym as I go along with this. Like those different things. Let me just get started. Okay. Sending this timer four minutes.

Times three. So these first. Three things. Psychology of fitness. Number one. Y everyone is doing everything wrong. Nobody’s crazy. And these are the subtitles from the psychology of money. So here’s the quote he says. No one is crazy. We all make decisions based on our own unique experiences.

That seemed to make sense to us in a given moment. In the buckets basically your parents teach you money values early on. And a lot of that can carry through. The rest of your life. And you’ll eventually get like more and more influences from there, but I don’t want to talk too much about like the fitness acts.

Or the finance. View of this ideas how this applies to fitness.

There’s so many different approaches to it. So so many different beliefs about. How to exercise properly. How to eat properly, what you should be eating. And a lot of it does come. From our parents to begin with this does remind me of the book. Wanting by Luke Burgess, where he talks about memetic desires and that the order of.

That you become influenced in like pickup. The things that you want first it’s from your parents and then it’s from your friends. And then eventually like more and more it’s by The media that you’re consuming. So if you are.

Scrolling through social media. Then that’s going to influence like the things that you want and.

And yeah, it is the thing that like personal experience just starts to shape different things. So this is why you get so many different opinions, so many

You just grab like a group of your friends and they’ll all have probably like somewhat different. And maybe some extreme. Differences between them. But here we go. I wrote a list of examples. So if you’ve hurt yourself doing CrossFit, you might have sworn it off. This was a personal experience of mine. I had, I didn’t swear it off. Actually. I tried it like three or four times.

Always would get injured within few months, but I still think it’s good. I think it was one meat, like it’s on me to just be better. Like not lifting as heavy. Or not trying to push it too much or practicing my form. But then. Other times it was just like what I would see is like a very good coach that but let it, and then, or owned the gym.

And it does that good coaching doesn’t necessarily always trickle down. Yeah. Or just trying to do it, just trying to do too much. That’s on my end. Once you get like that unlimited. Membership, you want to make the most of it, then you go on like multiple days in a row.

When you, your body’s really not ready for it, you haven’t progressed up to that. Okay. So more of them. If you’ve lost weight. Doing Quito then sometimes it’s it can seem like everyone. Not doing it is nuts. Like why wouldn’t they want to like, do this? It’s so fun to eat steaks and that sort of thing.

I’ve lost weight doing that. And then the thought like, wow, everyone should do this. If you’ve gained weight back doing keto, then you might think that everyone else on it will eventually gain it back. And that’s not true either. If you’ve maintained good health running daily. You might never understand why people lift weights. So this example is.

My dad always asks like me and my brother, like w

How we expect to be healthy at all, if we’re not running, because running has been like a core aspect of his life and more and more, I think he’s right. Like I should probably do more cardio. And that’s something that I will add in, but I won’t swap it out entirely for running or for yeah. Swap out like weightlifting for that.

And he doesn’t lift weight. And my dad doesn’t lift weights has good energy though. And it does just become like the trade offs that you want to

Except. So then another one, if you’ve maintained good aesthetics while weightlifting, you might never consider cardio for health and. This is. I guess the stereotype is probably if you’re in college, twenties, you care more about aesthetics. And if you. Are able to get to the physique that you want with weights. Then maybe you don’t consider cardio for health and you don’t understand why anyone would do it.

And yeah, just seeing this, like in my own life, just. All these different beliefs through every year of my life. And every decade where I think five years ago I was thinking, oh no, I just want to. Or even like, when I started this podcast, it was oh, I just want to feel good.

But then over like the past couple of years, I’m like, Oh, no, I should probably add muscle while I can, before. I get into an age. I’m probably almost there now. It was like before I get into an age where it’s extremely hard to put muscle on there’s just like a lot of leverage to. I don’t know if leverage is the right word, but like a lot of value to putting muscle on early.

When you can, and then you can it’s easier to maintain that through your life than to try to add it on later. Okay. I went over the timer there. So this next one, maybe this will be short. Psychology of fitness. Number two. I call this the weak bodybuilders, the wind powerlifters, the frail marathon runners.

And the subtitle here, luck and risk. Nothing is as good or bad as it seems. And here’s the book. From psychology of money. But more important is that as much as we recognize the role of luck, And success. The role of risk means we should forgive ourselves and leave room. For understanding when judging failures, nothing is as good or bad as it seems.

The story he tells in there is that. Bill gates had this wild success and had a lot of things going his way early on his parents and his neighbor. Say like neighborhood or like where he grew up. What his parents did. Set him all up. And that was a lot of luck, but the other side of that was risk and he had a best friend who passed away, had this kind of the same upbringing. And because of that

Wealthy upbringing. He was able to go, I think it’s like mountain climbing. So that’s a part of his life and then died during that. And that’s just like the opposite, like the, or like the reverse of luck that like the chances of that happening were as low as the chances of war. Four. Bill gates to become.

The richest person on earth. So how does this apply to fit there? So I’m trying to become elite in a sport is probably not the healthiest thing.

Even though playing sports regularly. Is one of the healthiest things you can do. It’s movement you’re with other people. So there’s the community aspect, but too if your a goal growing up is to be an Olympian and you don’t really like when you’re a kid, you don’t understand how hard that is.

And if you make that your singular goal and you don’t reach it, it’s very unlikely. Just percentage wise that you’ll reach it. And if that was what you’re dead set on and you think you’re, you have nothing to go. To turn to after that, that would be a pretty unhealthy thing.

Then there’s this. The more common thing is like, Everyone. That’s not everyone, but if you’re the best basketball player in your high school, you can get to college. You might start thinking like you might have a shot at the NBA, but it’s impossibly hard to like, Make it to the NBA.

But if you make it the goal Hey, I just want to get like a full ride through college. That’s great. And don’t put all of like the. Like your singular goal to. Making it to the NBA. Because yeah, Loxo genetics play a role, not the entire role. For SLA. I like fitness things like bodybuilder steroids play a role, not the entire role. There’s a ton of hard work and

They do have to just work out four hours a day. Yes. Drugs, help them recover, but they’re still like putting all the work in. And especially when it’s say bodybuilding where it’s like fair play, everyone else is doing that then. Yeah. Yeah. Like they know what game they’re playing.

Then. Let’s see. What else? What else did I have here?

Here we go. People with the six pack and this idea of Would you sacrifice all the good food that you eat? And the main question is how much are you willing to sacrifice? A lot of people are willing to sacrifice it. Like I said, the hour working out every day.

Because it can feel good to do that. In the moment or even But in the moment, maybe there’s like some pain in it, but if you’re playing sports, like it feels good to do that. And then after there’s the after glow of it but. Avoiding good food. He loved eating that’s just like painful.

Most of the time. So that becomes pretty difficult and then eating all that junk food. Say like someone that is out of shape. So an example I’ve seen is like Warren buffet, drinks, like regular Coca-Cola. I think he has a can a day, maybe multiple cans a day. So you can look at that and say like eating all that junk food is unhealthy.

But how unhealthy. Am I to like obsess over food. All the time and not that. I do but it is the thing of probably better to Relax. Have that Coke then too. Obsess over not having it for the rest of the day. I’m seeing, this is why I was saying like, I’m workshopping this. I don’t know that this all applies to luck and risk anyway. So working out at 4:00 AM every day can seem like torture. So that’s

The downside of it, but the feeling of discipline. Can be carried through the rest of the day. This is of course like Jocko, Willink talks about the importance of. Of discipline. And then he takes a picture of his watch many days, 4:30 AM doing his workout. Next up psychology of fitness, number three.

Never enough when rich people do crazy things. This is a book quote from psychology of money. Number one, the hardest financial skill is getting the goalpost to stop moving. Number two, social comparison is a problem here. And you see this in fitness that like Good health is one goal, but then if you.

You have like social media and you keep seeing like these people with perfect bodies over and over and over. And it’s oh no, you know what? Like maybe feeling good. Isn’t good enough. Maybe I need to look better. And then Oh, I look pretty good, but then like you start comparing it to the.

The entire rest of the world. And this is where the social comparison can be a problem that like, oh man I can look even better. And you can see like someone online did it faster. And the comparison used to be like to magazines. Like I’m not getting it done fast enough. This said I could get it like six pack and 12 weeks. But.

Actually, I couldn’t, there’s no six pack under there. Just. Should have focused on adding more muscle and then feeling good throughout the day is enough until it isn’t you want more and more. And I guess this also applies, I would say to the home gym. I’ve thought like they do joke about once you start the whole journey, you just will continue to add to it.

I used to always think, oh yeah. If I got Yeah, kettlebells enough to get a good workout. And so I got a few different kettlebells and then now I was like, oh no, you know what? If I get like a rack with a barbell, then I can do everything with that. And then, yeah, it just becomes comparison. You start looking at like different home gyms and I’m like, oh no, I need like a perfect lighting in there. Now I need a bike. I need some cardio equipment just adds up. And then I remember like when I was picking out like what rack to buy, just the ridiculousness of spending more time looking like each day for a couple of weeks, probably where I was just like looking at different home gyms for a longer.

In each day, then I was actually working out. So this was a thing of like priorities and getting that straightened out. With fitness. There’s never enough. It seems you can always do more. And. That’s. For this episode and next week, or hopefully like through the rest of December, I’ll keep working.

On these ideas, psychology fitness, definitely check out psychology of money. If you haven’t. It’s a great book.

Ramblings: Some questions to answer on this site

I’ve been thinking about evergreen content and how I might be able to use this site for rough ideas. Going to brainstorm some questions.

Things I did 5 years ago that I’ll still do 5 years from now…

  • Listen to a bunch of podcasts (though I might not ever beat the listening time that a NYC subway commute gives)
  • Work out (hopefully at some point I’ll actually lose that 10 pounds)
  • Read books (hopefully a little more fiction than I usually do)
  • Write somewhere online (and mayyybe there will be some form of an audience at some point)
  • Design/draw (being employed is a good thing!)
  • Watch videos/TV/movies

So if I turn each of those into questions…

  • Listen → How can you learn from listening?
  • Work out → How can you finally lose 10 pounds?
  • Read → What books are worth reading?
  • Write → How can you build a writing habit?
  • Design → How can you visualize ideas?
  • Watch → How do you tell good stories with video?

There are some useful intersections between all of those things.

3 Takeaways: “Control Freak: My Epic Adventure Making Video Games” by Cliff Bleszinski

Check out the full notes for 3 Takeaways: “Control Freak: My Epic Adventure Making Video Games” by Cliff Bleszinski

I grew up playing video games and computer games. I have some hazy NES memories, but mostly SNES to Xbox 360. Then I just sort of stopped for 10 years. I’d pick CS:GO and Starcraft back up here and there for a few weeks. I got curious about the Soulsborne series (a coworker would take a day off on every release day) and eventually tortured myself with Dark Souls III for about a month. That’s the last single player game I beat.

Gears of War was one of the last games I was playing as video games slowly left my life.

I mention all of that to say that I have video game memories but read this book with no preconceived notions about CliffyB. A quick Twitter search and I learned he’s polarizing, to say the least.

He has incredible insight into what it’s like making games in different eras. (Yes, he loves Lamborghinis and a good name drop.)

Anyway, I loved his book and will recommend it alongside The Making of Karateka, The Making of Prince of Persia, The WoW Diary, and of course, Masters of Doom.

The power of a live demo (when others demo things held together with duct tape)

And I was going to play it live. Which is just not done. Not when your microphone can shut down. Or your controller can fail. Or the monitor you’re playing on can go on the blink.

Cliff was the face of Epic Games and one of his biggest demo’s was the Gears of War demo at E3 (18:20 in this MTV documentary).

A lot of demos were pre-rendered without actual gameplay. Some had gameplay but they were recordings. Cliff practiced and played it live. A lot can go wrong: a bug could show up, you could just mess up and die instead of making it to the end of the stage, it might just be boring, etc.

But he demo’d perfectly and it built up to a chainsaw kill.

Nothing better than an engaging live demo.

The feeling of getting something (anything) moving on the screen

My little Thunder Burner game had a helicopter that scrolled upward and took out enemy aircraft carriers and supporting ships. It was crude, but it gave me that same excitement of manipulating things on the screen, except now I was making them.

Always cool to hear about the early days of personal computing.

There’s a recent Neal Stephenson interview with Steph Smith where Stephenson talks about how there was a period where one person could create something as impactful as large companies. Tooling got better, team workflows got better, and now a single person can’t create at the same scale as a AAA game studio. (Yes, indie hits can sell better than a AAA flop, but the games will just be entirely different in scope.)

This reminded me of learning HTML. I wish I could remember exactly what I was reading to learn. But I remember feeling excited to change the page background and then get some text to show. I ran to my aunt (I’d go to their house after school) and pulled her to the room to show her and she wasn’t quite as mind blown.

That’s probably how some of the generative AI things will go for a bit. They’ll be amazing for people who are familiar with how hard it is. For the rest the AI will just be creating somewhat interesting images.

Dogfooding (endlessly)

Getting Jazz Jackrabbit ready to ship that summer required endless patience and a devotion to perfection. The only way to find all the bugs, errors, misspellings, and glitches was to play it. Endlessly.

One pattern through all of the game development memoirs is that playing your own games is just a known part of the process.

I did an internship one summer writing technical documentation for a database (DB2 for z/OS, to be exact) and wrote it without having an emulator to actually see the interface. We would translate very technical documentation to less technical documentation.

There must be great joy in building a game and having fun playing that same game.

That said, there’s also something similar to learning game testers aren’t exactly having fun playing the games—dogfooding the game in its early stages often isn’t fun.

For example, in the World of Warcraft diary, John Staats says things like combat and quests weren’t added until many many months into development. So you just have characters that can move but not do much around a world that exists but doesn’t have much.

Still, it sounds way more fun than inputting dummy text in a a form over and over and checking that the right things were sent over the network.

Money, money, money

All of us already had our own magic number that corresponded to a percentage of whatever went into the bonus pool, so I quickly did the math. After taxes, I wasn’t going to be a millionaire, not yet, but I would be able to pay off my mortgages and have a tidy six-figure sum left, and the game was still selling! So this is it, this is happening, I thought. I knew how it felt when life changed suddenly in a tragic way. But this, I told myself, this is what it feels like when life changes in an incredible way.

For whatever reason, this was surprising. I just assumed leading design and being the face of the studio when Gears of War came out would mean millions already. (That did come pretty soon after, along with much more money.)

He’s also another example where you work all your life on some craft but your biggest windfall comes from some investment later on. (Though you need the initial work to set yourself up to (1) run into the opportunity and (2) be able to afford to invest.)

He made the Gears of Wars games and started his own studio but the big payout came through an early investment in Oculus, which of course Zuck bought a few years later.

Sloppily tying things together, I started listening to The History of the Future, a book about VR and Oculus. In it, there’s a story about Palmer Lucky and how excited he was that John Carmack wanted one for demo-ing at E3. Carmack was really gracious in how he did it—he gave Palmer a heads up that he would make sure to mention that it was Palmer’s headset, not his, but invariably (and he was right) some of the press would get it wrong and credit it as Carmack’s headset.

Years before all of that, Cliff was studying Carmack and Romero, masters of rocket launcher feedback:

Carmack and Romero had perfected gibbing. I mean, it was the first time a rocket strike would explode someone into chunks of flesh. To this day, that’s one of the most satisfying ways to take someone out in a first-person shooter. It’s also one of the most misunderstood elements of gaming.

Check out Control Freak, it’s a fun read.