Active Recall!

Podcasts, videos, and iPad art

Whoa!

We got our question up on Ask Pat! 

AP 0977: Do You Write Posts Based on Your Podcasts or Vice Versa?

If this is your first time here, I’ll share these three links if you want to poke around. 

  • Podcast journal of our first 8 episodes: These are a little different from show notes.  It’s a collection of diary-style entries I wrote the day of or day after recording the podcast. Mixed in are recommendations of some of my favorite podcasts. 
  • Better Than Before (Ep. 17): This was our most organized episode. We’ve had highs and lows and this was one that came together pretty well. We talked about Gretchen Rubin’s book Better Than Before
  • Grit (Ep. 2): A personal favorite episode of ours. We talked about Angela Duckworth’s book Grit and we showed a little bit of grit ourselves. We had to get scrappy because I was traveling and forgot to bring my equipment. It would’ve been easy to just skip that week but we knew it would set a bad precedent if we missed our personal weekly deadline only two weeks in. 

Thanks for checking this out and thanks a ton to Pat!

Are you picking the right goals? (And my quick foray into competitive Counter-Strike)

Jessica Abel in Growing Gills:

For example: While making a living as a cartoonist will definitely include making comics, there may be a lot less of this than you might imagine and a lot more entrepreneurship, including building your audience, marketing, and sales.

Something that’s stuck with me from listening to many hours of Tim Ferriss’s podcast is the notion that you might want to think twice about turning your leisure into a job.

“But I’d never work a day in my life!”

Maybe. You might also never do that thing for fun again in your life.

Tim’s example is that someone interested in surfing might want to make a career out of surfing. If they’re not good enough to be a professional surfer, they might end up teaching various vacationers how to surf day-in and day-out.

If you like teaching, great. If you don’t, well…

I experienced a small version of this. In high school, more and more you’d hear about people getting paid to play games. Streaming wasn’t a thing yet, so it was through sponsorships and tournaments. I did a tryout for a Counter-Strike clan that was in CAL-IM. Think of this as a good rec league. We’re not even talking minor leagues.

I did one scrim with the team and played pretty well. Then the guy said okay we’re going to do this tomorrow but it’ll be 4 scrims. Each was about 45 minutes.

I was out.

Getting paid wouldn’t really increase the amount of fun that comes with taking something fun very seriously.

It applies to more than surfing and games. It also applies to more traditional work. Let’s say you want to write. (I do!)

Jessica’s book has a lot of great questions you’ll want to ask when thinking through your creative goals.

What do you want to write? Do you want to get paid for it? Would you do it if you weren’t getting paid for it? How does getting paid for it affect the content you’ll make?

I’m thinking through some of these now. Lately I’ve felt a lack of focus. There are a few things I’m working on which means most of them aren’t the most important things to work on.

Quick things this reminded me of:

  • In Designing Your Life Bill Burnett and Dave Evans take this idea of envisioning your life and turns it up a few notches. You essentially create a prototype of your future life to try out.
  • In So Good They Can’t Ignore You, Cal Newport writes about the opposite case of this. I wrote about growing out of love with something you’re passionate about because you turned it into work. He writes about becoming passionate about something you didn’t love at first by becoming very, very good at it.
  • Derek Sivers talks about a great way to make money and do what you love: don’t mix them up.

22: We Can’t Make This Up

  • Send your questions in on Twitter
  • Weekly fitness update: my weight isn’t great! But I’ve started going Simple & Sinister. Trying to do a daily workout. The approach is that it’s moderate exertion instead of some programs where failure is pretty much the goal for each workout.
  • Wally has some mimosas at a bridal shower

Laughing at the hardship

From I Can’t Make This Up:

“In life, you can choose to cry about the bullshit that happens to you or you can choose to laugh about it. I choose laughter.”

Have you ever been bullied or have you been the bully? Kevin Hart says he was bullied as a kid but knew that it was important to stand up for himself. Even once. Take the beating and then move on. They’d rather find someone who won’t put up a fight at all.

We’ve both been bullied. I talk about when I was sort of bullied. Wally talks about when he was definitely bullied.

Bully by association. There was a time that I was sort of the bully, but not really.

Take action!

  • Try to laugh at it. It won’t work for everything. But think back to the hardships you’ve been through in the past that you laugh about now. You can find strength in that. Hopefully it gives you some perspective
  • Stand up to that bully. If you’re one of our very young listeners and you’re being bullied, remember to stand up for yourself. Now that I think about it, it’d be better if I didn’t give this kind of advice. Talk to your parents about this.
  • If you’re the bully… grab the other kid’s bag and throw it over the fence. Just like Wally’s bully did. It sounds like a very strong move.

Our parents were right

From I Can’t Make This Up:

“It turns out that the things I hated most as a child are the same things that serve me the most as an adult.”

Keep a schedule. Kevin Hart says that his mom would maintain a very strict schedule to make sure that he was in the right places at the right time. She would rather take the bus 2 hours than ask for a ride. Hart learned how valuable this mindset was.

Find a group of people who you meet with regularly. It doesn’t have to be church, like me and Wally went to growing up. 

Take action!

  • Be like my dad: run, sit in the sauna, eat beef broth. I’m slowly turning into my dad, as we all are. My dad was in the Navy so he established the habit and can’t really go a day without working out. He loves that routine. I started using the sauna to relax after hearing Joe Rogan and Tim Ferriss mention it more than a few times. I should’ve just listened to my dad.

Kevin Hart is persistent

From I Can’t Make This Up:

Persistence: More than anything, my willingness to be persistent is responsible for the success I’ve had. My mindset is: It’s okay to fail, but it’s not okay to quit. Struggle, rejection, failure, and doubt break most people. Your goal is to learn from these challenges without letting them diminish your motivation. The secret to accomplishing this is simple: Let yourself be driven by your will to succeed rather than your fear of not succeeding.

We talked a lot about persistence in our Grit episode. This book is great because you get to see how many obstacles he runs into and how he overcomes them. Wildly successful people make it seem easy. It never is as easy as it seems. Hart knows he’s lucky. He also knows he works very hard to keep a lot of irons in the fire.

Take action!

  • Remember that the answer to ‘Luck vs. Skill’ doesn’t matter. Kevin Hart says he got lucky. He also says he worked hard to get lucky. If you’re frustrated when comparing yourself to other people’s success, remind yourself that it takes luck. If your head has become humongous because of your success, remind yourself that you got lucky. In either case, go work hard again.
  • Remember that this moment builds into the next moment. Hart gives a lot of insight into the television industry. He talks about his experience with TV pilots. He started learning that auditions matter even when you know you won’t get the part. Because there’s a chance that someone watching you will see you again. If you can make a good impression the first time it can help down the road.

None of these look like Kevin Hart

These aren’t the first three attempts either. I’ll keep at it. I also need to post the latest podcast episode, where me and Wally discuss Kevin Hart’s I Can’t Make This Up.

He talks about persistence so I’ll have to show some.

The power of the first day on the job

I’m reading The Power of Moments by Chip and Dan sheath and they talk about the first day on the job. 

What was your first day like at your current (or most recent) job? Is it fair to say that it was not a defining moment?

It got me thinking about my different first days. Some are way better than others. At my first job in New York I definitely had the situation described in the book. I pretty much set up my computer and that was all I had to do. None of that “you’ll be pushing code to production by the end of your first day!” business. 

It reminded me of an episode of the Scriptnotes podcast: 317 First Day on the Job. In my attempt to make a not-bad podcast with Wally, I’ve listened to a lot of other, much better podcasts. Some I listen to and think oh ok someday we can get to that. 

Scriptnotes is excellent. I know we won’t get to their level and that’s fine. They have so much knowledge about filmmaking. I’m glad they’re sharing it with the world. This is one of those podcasts that makes me happy that podcasts are free, for the most part. I just started paying for their premium version ($2 a month) to dig into the archives. 

I’m more interested in writing in general than I am in film. If you like writing or film or hearing about the inner workings of Hollywood, you should listen to Scriptnotes. 

Oh yah, that specific episode. They break down different ‘first day on the job’ scenes. Most of them make the first day seem like a rush of overwhelm. One scene they go over is from The Devil Wears Prada. That’s how I felt the first day I worked at Subway. My first day at a fashion company was more like, well, setting up my computer and heading home early.