The Notepod

Podcasts, videos, and iPad art

Rick Rubin: 3 creativity lessons

Continue until it’s possible

Rick Rubin: “That’s the way I like to work. I go in with kind of a blind belief that something good will happen. Until it’s proven impossible I will continue banging my head against the wall.”

Rubin is optimistic that good things will happen if he keeps working on a project. His book, for example, wasn’t easy but it was an unraveling of his process over 6-7 years.

He started to take notes after sessions with artists. When he got home he would:

  • Describe the problem the band ran into
  • Describe the solution they came up with

Over many different sessions, he was able to codify the process.

In a year, he can work with a handful of artists. A book provides leverage—people around the world will be able to apply some of his methods to their own projects.

You might not get a grammy in the end, but it might help you stop banging your head against the wall.

Iteration

Rick Rubin: “I would never assume … because you put more time in something it’s getting better.”

It’s accepted that revisions improve work.

Tim Ferriss popularized the idea of “two crappy pages” as a daily writing goal. You can’t revise something that doesn’t exist yet.

But there’s diminishing returns on revision.

And sometimes the first go is actually the best.

Still, it’s essential to go through multiple iterations if you want to end up with the best product. Even if it’s just to validate that the first attempt was best—you need multiple iterations to compare the first iteration to.

This reminds me a little bit of the Crazy 8s sketching exercise. Yes, the 6th, 7th, and 8th sketch are harder to get to and that’s when you’re really stretching and getting creative.

But sometimes they’re not as good as the first thing you jot down.

From “Sprint” by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky

Sometimes Crazy 8s leads to a revelation. You might come away with several new ways of looking at your ideas. Other times, it feels less productive. Sometimes that first idea really is the best idea.

Sometimes obvious is best.

Everyone is a creator

In the book, Rick Rubin says creativity isn’t limited to a select few. From “The Creative Act: A Way of Being”

“Creativity is not a rare ability. It is not difficult to access. Creativity is a fundamental aspect of being human. It’s our birthright. And it’s for all of us.

Creativity doesn’t exclusively relate to making art. We all engage in this act on a daily basis.

To create is to bring something into existence that wasn’t there before. It could be a conversation, the solution to a problem, a note to a friend, the rearrangement of furniture in a room, a new route home to avoid a traffic jam.”

We get real creative real fast when we think of reasons to skip a workout or to hit snooze on the alarm instead of getting up to do the work.

The Source vs. The Resistance

Steven Pressfield has The Resistance. Rick Rubin has The Source.

The Source is out there. A wisdom surrounding us, an inexhaustible offering that is always available.

We either sense it, remember it, or tune in to it. Not only through our experiences. It may also be dreams, intuitions, subliminal fragments, or other ways still unknown by which the outside finds its way inside.

The Source itself isn’t enough to fight the resistance. He compares the Source to clouds. It’s a shapeshifter.

You can absorb The Source and then it’s up to you to harness it and make your art.

MrBeast: 3 creativity lessons (Lex Fridman interview)

Notes from MrBeast’s interview with Lex Fridman.

Consume a lot (and filter with taste built through obsession)

MrBeast talks about his obsession and building taste and how he thinks of new ideas. He compares his mind to a neural network. All of the things that he’s taking in help to inspire him, and that’s where he finds the inspiration for future videos.

“You need just a constant stream of ideas. And the only way I’ve really found that I can consistently come up with a hundred million view videos is to intake inspiration and then see what my brain outputs.” — MrBeast

Lex asks if he’s generating the video, the title, the thumbnail, all of that jointly in his head.

And I think that’s the interesting part here as far as being specific to Mr. Beast, is that he thinks with these three components in mind. Someone whose life has been spent making music, that they’re thinking in different components.

Someone aiming for traditional media, they’re not thinking in thumbnails and short videos.

They’re thinking bigger in scope.

That said, what makes Mr. Beast different is that the scope of his videos has become huge. The productions for his videos rival that of traditional studios in TV and movies further on

Lex: the video, the title, the thumbnail, jointly, Right?

MrBeast: Exactly. And that only comes because I spent 10 years of my life just obsessively studying all that stuff.

From “Laws of Creativity” by Joey Cafone

…however it makes sense, begin to amass a targeted library for the task at hand. As you do so, keep in mind the following principles,

Volume: Gather a lot. Don’t find two examples and move on. Instead, grab dozens. The more you find the better (as long as it is in the literal sense, inspiring).

Contrast: Make sure that you don’t just gather many things, but many different things. The more unrelated and varied, the better.

MrBeast talks about this, he’s just taking in so much stuff.

The variety that YouTube has helps nail this volume and contrast aspect of things.

All of that goes into his mind where he’s built taste and thinking in the components of a YouTube video.

As Lex said. The video, the thumbnail, the title, and then that gets compressed into an idea. Then he writes a bunch of those ideas down and then continues to do that filtering again.

Just starting out? Make 100 videos (and improve something with each one)

First he addresses this idea that some people come out flying out of the gate.

MrBeast: There are very freak cases like Emma Chamberlain who have really good personalities and it doesn’t take them so as many videos and it’s just like people who are seven, five and making the NBA like, yes, there are freak cases you can find, but for the average person like us, you know, who don’t have these exceptional personalities and you know, backgrounds in filmmaking, just make  100 videos, improve something each time. And then talk to me on your 101st video.

I thought this was the best actionable advice from the podcast as far as doing anything. Specifically for if you want to create something online, is start making things.

He’s talking about this common case where people will plan and plan and plan. You want your first video to be a hit. But the first video is really not going to get any views.

You have to get the repetitions in. Just make 100 videos. Improve something each time.

The book I’ll recommend here is “The First 20 Hours” by Josh Kaufman. It’s a book about learning. And he goes through how he tried to learn a few different things and comes up with this framework and he says, these are the five steps to learning something.

1.) Deciding exactly what you want to be able to do.
2.) Deconstructing a skill into the. Smallest possible = sub-skills.
3.) Learning enough about each sub skill to be able to practice intelligently and self-correcting during practice.
4.) Removing physical, mental and emotional barriers that get in the way of practice.
5.) Practicing the most important sub-skills for at least 20 hours

Or for 100 videos.

If we step right back through this, deciding what you wanna be able to do, make videos, you can deconstruct it into sub-skills of making videos: scripting, filming, editing, and learning about each sub skill.

That’s the great thing about creating things online, you have this opportunity to pick a sub skill and then learn that

number four, removing physical, mental, emotional barriers. This is good because Mr. Beast talks about how a big hangup for creators is going to be,

hey, you’re gonna get negative feedback.

It’s not gonna happen instantly. This is something that you’re gonna try to learn with the hundred videos is one. No one’s gonna watch so you have to learn to be okay with that.

Number two, once people do start watching, you’re gonna start to have videos that don’t do as well as your earlier videos and you have to deal with that.

And then negative feedback. Comments. Learning to detach from that… be able to look at that feedback and figure out what you can learn from it and apply to your future videos.

Back to this First 20 Hours framework, practicing the most important sub skills for at least 20 hours. Mrbeast says 100 videos… That’ll take way longer than 20 hours. You’ll be able to practice the subskills.

The part that I really liked in this interview is Lex says,

Lex: You say make a hundred videos and improve something each time. Improve something each time is the tricky part. How would you do that?

And then Mr. Beast just starts firing off different ways, rapid fire.

MrBeast: The second one, just, I don’t know, put more effort into the script. The third one, try to learn a new editing trick. The fourth one, try to figure out a way that you can have better inflections in your voice. The fifth one, try to, you know, study a new thumbnail tip and implement it. The sixth one, try to figure out a new title.

There’s so many different elements that are involved, which can be exciting and figuring out which ones you wanna focus on. It is nice to know that there’s always going to be some element that you can improve.

When thinking of video ideas, figure do-ability later (focus on whether it would make a good video)

This last takeaway coming up with future ideas and this idea of feasibility in a video. It used to be just talking to the camera.

As his channel has grown, he’s invested more and more into his videos and now it’s millions of dollars that go into a video. He has to reduce risk. He has to be able to release a video and have the confidence that it’s gonna be viral.

Starts with a brainstorm. Lex Fridman was invited to one of the brainstorms to observe and he talks about going how he found it so interesting.

Lex: One of the questions is, is this even doable? Right?

MrBeast: Yeah. First off, come up with ideas you think would do well, and then ask yourself later if they’re doable. Yeah. Because there’s, there’s different ways you can accomplish something.

He can’t film something on Mars. He can’t film something on the moon.

But maybe he can do something with that idea of space.

This reminds me of creative work once you’re starting to work with a team on larger projects. In building software the three approaches to it are is it viable, is it usable? Is it something consumers would want?

In “Creative Selection” by Ken Kocienda. Ken talks about his time at Apple. He he was responsible for the first iPhone keyboard.

But he talks about a project before the iPhone and iPad and they were working on the Safari web browser. Of course later versions of this mobile version is in the hands of hundreds of millions of people.

He was working on the beginnings of that. He talks about a teammate where they weren’t sure if something was doable, so they had to try to build that.

From “Creative Selection”

Next, Richard resolved to produce a result on the shortest possible schedule.  He downloaded an open source project that held genuine promise, the Konquerer code from KDE a browser that might well serve as the basis for our long-term effort in getting this code running on a Mac. He decided to make the possible approximation of a real browser that was feasible on his short schedule. He did, he identified three features: loading webpages, clicking links, and going back to previous pages.

He gets this thing working and it’s enough to prove the idea. This is kind of like one step after the brainstorm.

Back to what MrBeast said, first, off, come up with ideas you think would do well, and then ask yourself later if they’re doable.

What you can do is take that idea and break it down into smaller pieces. You can look at that and see, hey, which pieces of this idea are doable? Which pieces of these ideas Be the basis for a video that people would be interested in.

That can be one way to start testing how doable your idea is.

Check the full interview out. It’s one of my favorites for the year, even though it’s like six days in it’ll stand the test of time just as far as the future of entertainment and understanding the process of making videos and thinking through ideas.

The Psychology of Money x Home Gym

“The Psychology of Money” was the best book that I read last year.

My home gym was collectively the best purchase that I made last year. In “The Psychology of Money”, Morgan Housel explains our sometimes odd financial behavior through stories from recent history.

In my home gym, I try to work out between checking my phone a gazillion times. Let’s take a look at this purchase through The Psychology of Money’s chapters.

1. No One’s Crazy (even if their home gym looks like a commercial gym)

Your personal experiences make up maybe 0.0 0 0, 0 1% of what’s happening in the world and maybe 80% of how you think the world works.

LeBron James spends a million dollars on his body every year. It’s crazy, but he’s LeBron James and it’s not crazy for him.

We’re not all LeBron James, but it doesn’t mean that we should spend $0 on our body every year.

For some people home gym makes sense. For others, it looks crazy for some people.

Going to a luxury gym makes sense. And for other people it’s crazy.

I’ve tried all sorts of different gyms. I’ve had the home gym. All of them have made sense in different ways.

2. Luck and Risk (it’s super convenient to work out and even easier to stop and walk back to the couch)

When I was researching what equipment I should buy the most useful videos were the ones where people had had their gym for a year or two years, five years, and then talked about their experience with it.

I’m excited about mine. I think it’s been a great purchase, but, that also is like recency of it.

One of the downsides of the home gym that seemed to be a pattern across these different videos, was that the convenience of it is great.

But that has a downside because as easy as it is to walk in, get the workout in,it’s just as easy to walk out and then go sit on the couch.

3. Never Enough (you can always add more equipment)

The internet, as mentioned, makes it possible to see home gyms around the world.

And an important thing to remember is that everyone has a different situation. So I probably shouldn’t compare what I have to someone like a CrossFit competitor, and then it’s also a good reminder that it really doesn’t take that much equipment.

I follow a few people that just use kettlebells. That’s what I started with was a few kettlebells. And that can be all you need, or even just body weight and a track or something like that.

You could get a lot done with no equipment at all. So that’s been a good reminder that the internet has provided.

4. Confounding Compounding (it’s almost always worth it if it’s better for your health)

In finance, the compound effect is huge. Same thing with fitness. It is the other side of the coin though. We tend to have this negative compounding that we let our health slide. Sit in chairs all day and then eat snacks.

For me, the home gym made sense because it would hopefully, hopefully, hopefully… you know, it’s not gonna prevent me from snacking, but it will hopefully help me get at least a small workout in every day.

5. Getting Wealthy vs. Staying Wealthy (optimize for a space that motivates you enough to be consistent)

Good investing is not necessarily about making good decisions. It’s about consistently not screwing up.

That’s huge. That applies directly to fitness. But it does help to justify this purchase.

You can’t just have one excellent workout for the month and then not work out the rest of the month. The consistency matters and spending money on. Equipment that will hopefully motivate me to come out here and work out.

Will help me get into that mode of consistently not screwing up.

[Note: I just sort of skipped a couple numbers because they didn’t quite relate to the home gym in the moment. I’ll try to re-do the video in a few months when I’m better at making videos.]

7. Freedom (financial freedom isn’t immune to poor health)

Controlling your time is the highest dividend money pays. Controlling your health is just as important and even more important because if you have financial freedom, all the time in the world, but you don’t have your health you’re not mobile, then that can take away some of the freedom.

Fitness is one thing that money can’t buy.

It can help, but it’s not going to put the work in. I haven’t put the work in. I haven’t put enough work in.

Unfortunately, my own discipline matters at this point. Actually using this equipment.

8. Man in the car paradox (you won’t impress anyone with fancy equipment so get stuff you’ll actually use)

I’m under no impression, especially compared to the rest of the internet, that any of this will be impressive on that level. Pretty normal setup, like a rack and then kettlebells and barbells.

The more important thing to me was just that it would be this motivating space for myself.

The bigger thing for me was getting these lights set up. It made the space feel much better. It was kind of dingy and like dark in here initially which could feel cool, but that wasn’t really what I was going for.

It is nice to have good lighting here or at least have it be very bright so that it was a space that I would want to walk into.

9. Wealth is what you don’t see (reversal: you can actually watch a bunch of people work out now)

A reversal here is nice. You used to not really be able to see the work people put in behind the scenes. But now pro athletes have podcasts. Bodybuilders have vlogs. You can see other people working out and build up that motivation.

I’m not sharing like workouts publicly, but I do have a group chat and it’s been fun to be able to show each other, our workouts, that we are working out that day and having that motivation from friends and that social component.

10. Save money (fitness is as simple as building wealth but our brains make it hard)

What I was hoping to accomplish with the home gym was being able to make fitness something that was more in my control. That the weather or a gym being closed or these other outside factors wouldn’t be things that would make me want to cancel my workout for the day.

With finance, saving money is one of the only things that matters. With health it’s like three big components, at least for physical health.

It is your movement, what you’re eating, and then your sleep.

Those are three big components and I wanted to make this one component more in my control with the home gym.

11. Reasonable Over Rational (You don’t actually need all that much stuff to get fit at home)

With finance, aiming to be reasonable works better than trying to be coldly rational. You can optimize things in the spreadsheet, but if they don’t work in practice, then it doesn’t matter in the end.

Figuring out like what equipment I wanted, you have endless decisions. What I just looked at was what I have done in the past, what equipment and I’ve actually used in the past.

Because I was thinking, should I get a rower or a bike or a better treadmill?

I got the things that I knew I’ve used in the past, and I’d be more likely to use in the future.

I’ve never really consistently used a rower. So I ended up not buying that . Got a bike because I’ve gone for longer periods biking regularly, than using a rower, so it seemed like a more reasonable purchase.

And then another thing with reasonable… In more recent years I’ve thought aiming to be reasonably fit—and that’s the name of a different podcast—but that seems to be a good goal.

And I was thinking, okay, what equipment do I need to be reasonably fit? And I think I’m having barbells for lifting and then a bike for a harder cardio and then a treadmill desk for long slow cardio.

It seemed like all the equipment that I needed to be reasonably fit.

12. Surprise (and trying to avoid it with fitness)

Actually, I kind of wrap this up in the previous one. It can be that you don’t want to use history for the things on a macro scale.

There was a nice reversal here for me — I looked at my own history of fitness and bought equipment I’ve used in the past that I would use in the future.

One decision I made was to get a full cage instead of a squat rack. It added a little more peace of mind for me.

Injury is one of the worst kinds of surprises. For the first few months with the rack I chose not to use it much because I had golfer’s elbow.

13. Room for error (the absolute best thing about a home gym is that it makes you more flexible)

The most important part of every plan is planning on your plan not going according to plan.

That by far is the best reason to have workout equipment at home. The flexibility and proximity of it make it possible to fit into the rest of the day, even if the rest of the day is chaotic.

More recently, I did get that bike and that has really helped for those days where it’s getting towards the end of the day and I’m feeling kind of unmotivated to try to fit a workout in.

It becomes kind of mindless, which I like. The trainers are there. You can outsource your motivation a little bit. I know I just need to put the shoes on, clip in and then get going and that will fit into a chaotic day.

14. You’ll change (but fitness principles rarely do)

I know I’ll change. Even in just a few months that I’ve had it, I’ve changed what my goals are, but not by much. I want to lose weight.

Over the course of years, the fundamentals of fitness won’t change. This equipment will still be useful then.

But maybe my mood will change that. I’ll want to start doing workouts outside. Going to a gym. I still have that option in the future, but having a flexible option at home will never not be useful.

15. Nothing’s free (and man I didn’t realize I’d have to vacuum so much)

If I were comfortable posting a shirtless picture of myself I would’ve done this thumbnail

  • Left side: Before the home gym
  • Right side: After the home gym

And I’m the same on both sides because the gym doesn’t do the work for you.

It can be cool to look at all this equipment that other people have but yeah it was important to remember: it’s not their equipment that they’re putting way more work in.

That was the idea with a lot of the purchases is just whatever would get me to work out more.

Everyone’s different, context matters. I felt like at this time in my life having the home gym would help me do the work and I have been definitely more consistent with working out.

Another thing is the hidden work of maintaining the gym. It seems to be constantly cluttered and even though my dog doesn’t go in there often her hair is always there so I shop vac it multiple times a week.

16., You and Me (Beware the envy of looking at gyms of sponsored fitness influencers)

This is the whole thing of making equipment decisions based on people who aren’t doing the same types of workouts that you’re doing.

I don’t do CrossFit myself, but I loved watching CrossFit competitors and seeing the crazy setups that they have.

But it was more entertainment than anything. I know that I’m not going to do the same workouts that they’re doing. They’re playing a different game.

The more useful stuff was trying to find people that more closely represented my goals of losing some weight, seeing what they bought, and then that helped me pick out equipment.

[Note: similarly skipped Number 17 here…]

18. When you’ll believe anything (appealing fictions and using narrative on yourself)

Rocky has motivated more people to work out than any replicated double-blind study.

That’s the power of narrative. It was something that I wanted to use. It was all about motivation.

The narrative that I bought into is that if I build out this home gym, I’m going to want to work out more. I will. And then I will have better health.

We’ll see if that plays out in the future.

Also now I’m more motivated by this vision of being mobile in older age and that has become the more important narrative to me than how I look at the beach. Which I will never show a picture of.

19. All together now

In the last two chapters of “Psychology of Money”, Morgan Housel gives some guidance for what people should do with their own money.

Reasonable principles that will last for a long time. A lot of it is switching your thinking to the long-term thinking, saving and using the compound effect and remembering how effective that is over time.

The guidance that seems common across all the different workout and nutrition plans:

  • Eat whole foods
  • Walk a little bit every day
  • Lift weights a few times a week

I seem to have enough equipment to do those last two things. Now I need to use it and eat better.

20. Confessions (the psychology of my own home gym)

In the final chapter of “The Psychology of Money”, Morgan Housel talks about why he paid off his mortgage.

We’re so far committed to the independence camp that we’ve done things that make little sense on paper. We own our house without a mortgage, which is the worst financial decision we’ve ever made but the best money decision we’ve ever made. Mortgage interest rates were absurdly low when we bought our house. Any rational advisor would recommend taking advantage of cheap money and investing extra savings in higher-return assets, like stocks. But our goal isn’t to be coldly rational; just psychologically reasonable.

The independent feeling I get from owning our house outright far exceeds the known financial gain I’d get from leveraging our assets with a cheap mortgage. Eliminating the monthly payment feels better than maximizing the long-term value of our assets. It makes me feel independent.

It doesn’t make sense on a spreadsheet. He should just pay off the loan according to schedule, but it frees up so much psychologically for him that he found that it was worth it.

Good news: I did my heaviest weighted pull-up the other day.

Bad news: It’s because I weigh my heaviest right now.

At this point, everything that moves the needle in the positive direction for my health seems worth it. So the home gym feels worth it.

(At the same time, some other things that would move things in the positive direction require no money at all: eating less, drinking less, and sleeping more.)

I’m hoping I can find a reasonable approach to fitness in the future that will be something that I stick to.

This home gym is a part of it and I’ll keep sharing as I go along.

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.