The Notepod

Podcasts, videos, and iPad art

iPad Journal: A Notability time lapse 

I started sharing time lapse videos while making slides for the sketchnote videos. I’m curious how this video will look if I just post it straight into the WordPress iOS app.

Relaxed attention #ipadpro #ipad #ipadlettering #ipadproart #sketchnotes

A post shared by Active Recall! (@activerecall) on

My current flow looks something like this. Wait, I’m on my iPad. Let me just draw it:


We’re running out of books that we read and we can’t really read a book a week so we’re considering flipping things around so that if the podcast episodes or recommendations for other podcasts that we are learning things from. The other half of that is that I would be making the schedule now it’s about things I’m learning from books.

iPad Journal: An intro


MacStories has a section called iPad Diaries. Each post highlights different apps or different tasks, talking about what that workflow looks like on an iPad. In the past year I’ve become kind of an iPad enthusiast. I guess the proof is that I’m typing this on a 10.5″ iPad Pro in its first week of release. At the same time I’m wondering what I’ll do with the 9.7″ and the 12.9″. I’m thinking through the right combination.

I also really wish apple didn’t discontinue the silicone case for the latest generation iPad Pro. Yes, it didn’t feel great paying $80 for a case but the case sure felt great. I’ll probably sell my 9.7″ and keep the first generation 12.9″. 


It looks like there’s going to be more and more people moving to an iPad as their primary system especially with iOS 11 on the horizon. People don’t claim as loudly that tablets are for consumption only. 

When I was initially deciding which one to buy, I came across MacStories’ iPad Diaries and couldn’t get enough of it. I’m writing these iPad Journal posts thinking that there’s room for more here. My main use cases for the iPad are different from Federico Viticci’s. It’d be great to have someone write about their iPad use as a high level digital artist. 

That person is not me. But I can give my perspective as a very low level digital artist. I do use the Pencil a lot. I have a background in design. (And a job in it, too!)

I love looking into other people’s workflows. I’m hoping other people might enjoy glimpsing into mine.

Starting this site a little too early

This should probably be a tweet. Actually it should be one of those tweets that’s a screenshot from the iOS Notes app. Like the kind that you do if you’re a B-list celebrity making a public apology.

I’m going to write on this site from now on. It seemed like the right time to do it. A lot of this really is just trying to put into action some of the lessons from the most recent podcast that I did and the most recent sketchnotes video that I did.

The most recent podcast episode was about Creative Confidence. The book talks about taking action a little bit early. Instead of planning and planning and planning you want to try things out and fail and learn from that quickly.

Our point? The first step toward being creative is often simply to go beyond being a passive observer and to translate thoughts into deeds. With a little creative confidence, we can spark positive action in the world. So the next time you start to say “Wouldn’t it be great if …?” just take a moment, remember John Keefe, and tell yourself, “Maybe I can finish it by the end of the day.”

I was about to plan was plan for a few weeks leading up to our 8th episode before launching. Instead I’m just going to do this soft launch, try putting content in and seeing what works.

My most recent sketchnotes video was about Austin Kleon, author of Show Your Work. I’ve been writing and posting things for a full year now. I’ve been putting it online but I haven’t been finding people to look at it. I wasn’t really showing it at all. I’m hoping this site will be the central place to show my work and get feedback on it.

I never had comments enabled on my previous sites. I’m going to go ahead and do that and see what that leads to.

I made a previous video about a conversation between Tim Ferriss and Chase Jarvis. They talk about this focusing question: what would this look like if it were easy.

They both used that question when starting their shows. Wally and I try to remember it when we make our podcast episodes. I’ve used in the past when trying to write daily.

Last year I wrote 100 posts in hundred days using a static blog engine to publish it. That started easy. As the number of posts increased it became not-easy. It also became tempting to tinker on page layouts and write code instead of writing paragraphs.

After the initial 100 posts, I moved everything to a WordPress installation to make things easier. That really helped me focus on creating posts. I took the time to make a custom theme and I had ideas for long posts requiring flexibility for different kinds of imagery and videos and custom designed sections.

Then I made none of those custom designed posts. But ran into hiccups with normal posts. There were too many times where I was trying to update my theme and trying to do custom things in WordPress without actually being a WordPress expert.

I’ve done what I could to focus on making things easy. Now I can focus on making things.

05: The Obstacle is the Way

This week’s book: The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday. We tried following a lot of the advice in the book and it continues to be helpful.

(On the other hand, we didn’t follow some of his other advice: Please, Please, For The Love Of God: Do Not Start a Podcast)

Chapters

00:00 — Wally goes to Disneyland, Ces doesn’t renew: We start this off with the usual weekly updates. Wally talks about his trip to Disneyland. Ces gives an update on fitness and nutrition.

04:40 — Listener questions! How do you keep things balanced?
Wally grabbed a question from an offline conversation during the week and we run it as a listener question. We set up an email address for actual listener questions.

10:50 — Book intro: The Obstacle is the Way (TOITW)
We start talking about The Obstacle is the Way, which we’ve both found really useful in our lives during hard times. We try talking about when we specifically apply these things in the past

21:53 — TOITW: Will and Vegeta
Ces goes long on a bad Dragon Ball Z analogy.

28:50 — TOITW: Terrell Owens’s 3 Ds
Wally takes a concept from an NFL receiver and changes what the letters stand for to create the premise of our future ebook littered with newsletter links.

38:54 — Wally offers Ces a donut
One episode ago, Ces talked about having non-coffee dessert Frappuccino. He continues giving unsolicited nutrition advice.

47:56 — Quote vs. Quote — Wally claps BACK
Wally closes the show with a great quote from the book. Ces rambles.

Links —

Make it easy, sustainable, and consistent: Tim Ferriss and Chase Jarvis — Active Recall Sketched

Last year, I listened to this Tim Ferriss and Chase Jarvis interview. I originally listened to it on Tim Ferriss’s podcast, not realizing it was really from Tim Ferriss’s appearance on Chase Jarvis’s CreativeLive show. The day after listening to the episode, I started writing a daily post and continued to 100 days.

This year, I’ve spent weeks and weeks jumping around from different types of projects. I’ve finally gotten focused and am trying to make one podcast episode (with my friend Wally) and one sketchnotes video each week. I thought it’d be good to listen to this episode again and make sketchnotes about it.

What would this look like if it were easy?

Tim talks about starting his podcast and talking to other podcasters. He looked at patterns between them and had a focusing question: what would this look like if it were easy? People often quit podcasting because post-production takes so long. To avoid that, he decided his show would be long-form interviews with minimal editing. He’s gotten to over 200 episodes so that seems to be working.

When trying to post daily, I also put a lot of effort into making things easy. I automated a lot of things so that publishing was easy. Then I over-automated things and it got hard again. Eventually I moved things to WordPress to prioritize that idea of making things easy.

I started a podcast with a friend and we’ve made some choices to make it easy, like going long. We’re learning as we go along and are trying to figure out the right amount of outlining and planning. There’s a balance, because too much planning turns it into a not-easy thing. Too little planning makes recording sloppy and then post-production turns into a not-easy thing.

Is this harder than it needs to be?

Tim presents that question to identify things in your system that could be made easier. Those are the things that are harder than they need to be. Another reason podcasters quit podcasting is that the equipment setup creates too much friction to want to record new episodes. Lots of beginner tutorials suggest different mixers, digital recorders, audio editing programs, hosts.

It gets complicated. It can be harder than it needs to be. What did Tim focus on? Intelligible and loud enough. That’s it, because most people will listen through headphones while doing something else. Sure, you can have audio quality that’s unlistenable. Unlistenable is a very low bar that you can hop over with a USB mic (or even stock iPhone headphones) and Audible for software.

Nobody’s favorite podcast is their favorite because of audio quality.

Now that I have a decent process for podcasts, I’m really focusing on figuring out how to make these sketchnote videos easier. Using Procreate, I can make really engaging visuals but it can take a very long time. With Keynote I can record video but editing requires some back and forth. Now I’m using Notability and Screenflow. Things still aren’t quite easy, but I’m getting closer.

Some things should be hard

Tim’s hard work is in batching things. His first best-seller, The 4-Hour Work Week, popularized email batching. He batches podcasts also, doing 2-3 interviews on Monday and 2-3 interviews on Friday. They’re released weekly so that already gives him a month and a half of content. It’s sustainable and consistent.

I want my hard work to be learning to present thoughts clearly and improving at storytelling. The other things are unimportant and I can try my best to make them easy. That way I have more time to focus on the important hard things.

Sum up

Ask these two questions:

  • What would this look like if it were easy?
  • Am I making this harder than it needs to be?

They both go toward the same end: making things sustainable to create content consistently.

I made it to episode 4 of my podcast with Wally. This is episode 3 of the videos. I’ll make sure to ask those questions so I can get to episode 4, 5, and then 10 and 20.