Podcasts, videos, and iPad art
We congratulate DC on upgrading from 12 pounds to 24 pounds of UFC championship belt.
Then we express a bit of gratitude that the things we discuss about sacrifice are peanuts compared to what our parents had to give up leaving their homes for different worlds.
Books mentioned
You bought an iPad and a Pencil, and you’ve been using it to browse the internet and watch videos. Now you’re thinking of making some things with it.
I’ve been making videos and presentations with my iPad Pro for a year now, so I wanted to share the apps that I use regularly in my process.
If you’d rather just watch some videos showing the process in action, you might find these three useful.
I hope it helps you if you’re trying to create. If you haven’t yet, try making a presentation on your iPad. It might take some time getting used to it but you just might:
And even if you don’t go start using all of these apps, you can still cherry pick parts of the process.
Here are the steps I’ve organized the apps into:
Let’s get started.
Do you watch hockey?
Okay I don’t, but there’s a great Stanley Cup commercial from a few years back showing how much emotion people can share without using words at all.
But the people in the video just won the Stanley Cup.
Your presentation is probably going to need some words.
Here’s what I use.
Mind map with MindNode: Every time I use MindNode, I leave thinking that I should be using MindNode every day. If you need to generate ideas, you can start with the main idea and expand out in MindNode. If you’re already overflowing with ideas, you can start dropping them in as their own nodes and then group and organize them into shared themes after.
Outline in GoodNotes or Notability: Here’s the main difference that mattered to me: GoodNotes presents a single page at a time and Notability shows them in a scrolling view.
I’ve used both of these note-taking apps extensively. These apps allow you to get the benefits of thinking on paper. It’s good for slowing down and figuring out the structure of your presentation.
Why not just use a fully featured drawing or painting app? Fully featured drawing and painting apps create the temptation to explore brush settings instead of exploring ideas. That comes later.
Write longer parts with Ulysses: I don’t always write full scripts out for video, but many people do. Ulysses will help you write and organize anything long form. (I’m writing the first draft of this post in Ulysses.)
You have plenty of options here. There’s iA Writer, Bear, Docs, Pages, Scrivener. I like that Ulysses Focus mode, iCloud syncing, word count goals, and the export options. (And yes, the other apps mentioned also have these things so try them out and find one you enjoy.)
And some apps that I use all the time for capturing ideas:
Gather with Evernote: In Creative Quest, Questlove talks about how his MP3 collection is his garden. He takes some time every day to prune it and to organize it.
Evernote is my garden. I throw a ton of stuff in there. I’ll put things that are a single sentence to capture a thought about an article I’m reading to full PDFs. This is where I try to keep excerpts to build presentations, videos, and posts around.
Capture with Workflow: This could use its own post, but I wanted to mention that I use Workflow just about every day. I have a workflow on my home screen to run through some prompts to create basic outlines or capture stories from things I’ve been reading lately.
You’ll probably watch at least one blockbuster this summer.
Remember the shot of the brachiosaurus in grabbing leaves from the top of the tree in Jurassic Park?
Blockbusters also start with words in a script. (Or in a Michael Crichton book.) But they’re not blockbusters without visuals.
You might not be Steven Spielberg, but you’ll want to create some images to go along with your presentation. Here are the apps I use regularly.
Procreate: There are many many tutorials about Procreate. It seems to be able to do just about anything 2D. I am not a professional artist. I still enjoy using Procreate. The killer thing for your presentations is that it’s able to playback and export video time-lapses of everything you make. I’ve started using those and chopping them up in video to add to slides.
Use MindNode, GoodNotes, and Notability again: Mind maps can create interesting visuals. Definitely better to show that than a bulleted list.
As for the note-taking apps—I used to do entire presentations in Notability. I’d export the slides as PDF files, convert them to Keynote files, then use that to present or record a video on my iMac. Now I usually use GoodNotes to drag images to other iOS apps.
My point here is that you don’t need to use fully featured art apps if all you need is a few words on screen. You can still make them visually interesting. And simpler drawings can be more clear if you’re expressing an idea.
AirDrop (iOS feature): You probably already know about AirDrop. If so, skip to the next section. It was something I knew about but didn’t use regularly until I started making more and more things with the iPad. If you have an iPad, I’m guessing you have an iPhone that you use to take way more photos with. Remember to use AirDrop for transferring things between devices.
I’m guessing you might also have a Mac. It’s handy for sharing things between devices. This is particularly useful if you make most of your presentation on a Mac but want to add drawings made with your Pencil. Just use AirDrop to send the drawing from your iPad to the Mac.
Keynote, Keynote, Keynote: I love Keynote. You can start making slides earlier in the process. If you have a good outline in your head then you skip mind mapping and outlining and just start creating slides in Keynote.
When I have an outline I’ll jump to Keynote and create slides that just have text placeholders describing what will be on that slide. If you’re doing a live presentation, this is a great way to start practicing early. You can do a really early test run to see if the structure really makes sense and cut or add things before you start locking things in by adding images to it.
PDF to Keynote (if you have Mac): For a majority of videos I’ve made, I create slides on my iPad and export them as PDFs. Then I AirDrop those to my Mac and use the PDF to Keynote app to create a Keynote deck. With that, I can use the MacOS “record slideshow” feature to record a video of the presentation with narration.
Screen recording (iOS feature): I wish iOS Keynote had is the MacOS option to record your slideshow. It’s probably redundant with the screen recording feature. I just learned you can turn the mic on for screen recording (long press the screen recording button in the control center). You’ll have to trim the ends off the video but it does the trick. I’ve started doing this to make IGTV videos.
On this week’s episode, we talked about Grit, by Angela Duckworth. (Also check out a video I made about Gritand of course the last time we talked about it in our second episode ever.)
Wally and I are trying to have themes for each week. We tried this before but we’re just going to go ahead and try it again.
These are the themes we’re tentatively looking at for the next few weeks:
I talked to Wally about trying themes out. For a second we thought maybe we might run out of ideas for themes. Then we realized that we have pretty much every word in English to use. We won’t run out of themes.
Anyway, we’ll see how it goes.
Grit: The treadmill (What is grit?)
“The only thing that I see that is distinctly different about me is I’m not afraid to die on a treadmill. I will not be out-worked, period. You might have more talent than me, you might be smarter than me, you might be sexier than me, you might be all of those things you got it on me in nine categories. But if we get on the treadmill together, there’s two things: You’re getting off first, or I’m going to die. It’s really that simple, right?.” — Will Smith
In Grit, Angela Duckworth describes a study about running on a treadmill and a follow up a few decades later. The gist? People who stayed on the treadmill longer ended up more mentally adept later in their lives.
She points out, though, that getting off the treadmill is when you can actually start showing your grit. Making the choice to get back on the treadmill the next day is how you display perseverance. And the next day and the next day.
(If you want to start actually running, I can’t recommend the Nike and Headspace collaborations enough. Check out this Headspace podcast episode with Nike‘s headrunning coach. And remember, just like showing grit, it’s important to celebrate the start (getting on the treadmill, hitting the road day after day) and not just the finish.
Grit: Steps for passion (Growing grit from the inside out)
“To the thirty-something on Reddit with a “fleeting interest in everything” and “no career direction,” here’s what science has to say: passion for your work is a little bit of discovery, followed by a lot of development, and then a lifetime of deepening.”
Okay, so why would you get on that treadmill? Not to just get on it. You’re not passionate about treadmills. It might align to something else you might be passionate about. You might think you’re passionate about losing those 10 pounds. But that often isn’t enough to show up day after day.
If you survive through a heart attack, you’ll get passionate about heart health quickly.
Okay let’s get off the treadmill for a second.
In our episode, Wally and I talk about things we’re passionate about. It can often be helpful to look to your past. What did you do when you were younger for fun that you don’t do anymore today? There’s a chance it’s something you could still be passionate about.
Does there mean there’s a direct career in it? Not necessarily.
Flipping that, what if you have a career in something you’re not passionate about? Does it mean it’s not worth mastering? Same answer: not necessarily.
If you take the time to learn more about the field you’re in, you can build your skills up and then grow passionate about it.
If you read business books for long enough, you’ll eventually see Cal Newport’s So Good They Can’t Ignore You pop up in your shopping algorithm. It’s a great book that really analyzes passion and mastery. Hint: focus on getting good instead of finding a passion.
Grit: Flow vs. Deliberate Practice
Cal Newport also has a more recent book: Deep Work. It’s about working with focus. It’s about improving. A lot of it aligns with Anders Ericsson’s research into deliberate practice. This is where you stretch yourself in the skill you’re developing. It should be hard. You should struggle. Then through session after session of it, you improve.
On the other end of this is flow, which Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has written about extensively.
(Go check out our very first episode where we talked about the book Flow and autotelic and exotelic activities.)
Flow, of course, is getting in the zone. This is where you make hard things look effortless. It’s Kevin Durant pulling up four feet behind the three-point line.
Deliberate practice is hard. Flow seems effortless. Can they exist together?
Ericsson is skeptical that deliberate practice could ever feel as enjoyable as flow. In his view, “skilled people can sometimes experience highly enjoyable states (‘ flow’ as described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) during their performance. These states are, however, incompatible with deliberate practice. . . .” Why? Because deliberate practice is carefully planned, and flow is spontaneous. Because deliberate practice requires working where challenges exceed skill, and flow is most commonly experienced when challenge and skill are in balance. And, most important, because deliberate practice is exceptionally effortful, and flow is, by definition, effortless.
Angela Duckworth set up a talk between Ericsson and Csikszentmihalyi where they would each argue for the importance of the opposing forces of deliberate practice and flow.
(They pretty much didn’t argue.)
You have to be proficient in a skill to experience flow. You get there through deliberate practice.
Putting together what I learned from this survey, the findings on National Spelling Bee finalists, and a decadelong inspection of the relevant research literature, I’ve come to the following conclusion: Gritty people do more deliberate practice and experience more flow. There’s no contradiction here, for two reasons. First, deliberate practice is a behavior, and flow is an experience. Anders Ericsson is talking about what experts do; Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is talking about how experts feel. Second, you don’t have to be doing deliberate practice and experiencing flow at the same time. And, in fact, I think that for most experts, they rarely go together.
How’d he get good enough to make it look automatic? By doing it thousands of times and making the right adjustments after misses in session after session.
Flow takes practice.
Grit: From Barking up the Wrong Tree
Okay so your grit reserves are low. How do you give them a bit of a boost? Give yourself a story. Give your work some meaning.
So what is meaning? Meaning, for the human mind, comes in the form of the stories we tell ourselves about the world. This is why so many people believe in fate or say things were “meant to be.” Having a story about the meaning of life helps us to cope with hard times. Not only do we naturally see the world this way, but frankly we can’t not tell stories. If I asked you how your day was or how you met your spouse, what would you tell me? A story. What’s your résumé? A story. You even tell stories when you sleep: dreams. And research shows you have about two thousand daydreams every day, telling yourself little stories about this or that.
What’s your story? If not, take a look at what you’re working on and ask why over and over until you have a little more clarity around your story. (It’s also good to hit pause if this leads you to questioning reality.)
Once you’ve found a good story to align things to (doing the work today means a little more security for your family tomorrow) then write it down somewhere to remind yourself of it when the going gets tough.
If you can’t figure out why you’re doing something or you find out the story just isn’t good enough, I’ll give you one: you’re building your reputation as someone who finishes their commitments.
Now get back on that treadmill.
Thanks for checking this out
The theme for next week’s episode: QUESTIONS (What are good questions to ask other people? What are good questions to ask yourself?)
Theme of the week: Questions
Questions are powerful and we discuss questions we use that have been helpful in life.
Spoiler: “What would this look like if it were easy?” makes the cut.
Things we mention: