Love Your Work

Hello, Love Your Work listeners, those who still have this pod in your feeds – thank you for staying subscribed! I do not have a new episode for you, per se, though I've certainly thought about making new episodes, the bandwidth hasn't been there, because I have been long and hard at work on my next book, Finish What Matters! In short, you can buy the preview edition at https://kdv.co/fwmpre, but also let me tell you about it. Yes, after all the talk I made on this show about the subject of finishing projects, after all the mini episodes I published with various ideas such as the project halfpipe, the foundation effect, and Leonardo and Raphael, I finally have something ready to show you. Ironically, it has taken me a very long time to finish – or at least get close to finishing – this book. I thought I had the answers going into this one, but after digging deep into why projects – creative projects specifically – don't get finished, I have learned so much. Basically, there are really good reasons we don't always finish what matters. The creative process is open-ended, some of us have more open-ended cognitive styles, and we just don't know if finishing is going to be worth it! So it's no wonder we succumb to shiny object syndrome and struggle with motivation, and second-guess ourselves when we receive criticism. I have surveyed you in the hundreds, I've interviewed you by the dozens. I have studied the great creators throughout history, I have traveled to Italy to immerse myself in the worlds of Leonardo and Raphael. Most important, I have locked myself in a cabin in the mountains, pondering these obstacles to finishing, and what to do about them. And now, after five years of work, I have something ready to show you. I have a publicly announced schedule of deadlines by which I will deliver to you every chapter. I have on the calendar a lecture series through which to share these concepts, and even a small-group finishing cohort to help a handful of you get a project done in Q1. So if you are interested, please visit kdv.co/fwmpre to learn more and buy the Preview Edition. This is the third and FINAL book in the Getting Art Done series, which I started ten years ago, and which has taught me so much I can't believe. I cannot wait to share it with you, and I can hardly wait to speak to you again here or on some other podcast or some other podcast-like-thing at some date in the future. Thank you, happy new year, and here's to you getting it done in Q1.

After nearly eight years of the Love Your Work podcast, I'm quitting. Here's why, and What's Next. Podcasting is a bad business This is not the immediate reason I'm quitting, but it is at the root: Podcasting is a bad business. When the indirect benefits of an activity run out, it's hard to keep doing it if it's not making money. I realized long ago podcasting is a bad business, but I kept going for other reasons. I'll explain why in a bit. Though I didn't start my podcast with dollar signs in my eyes, I did at least hope I would grow to earn money doing it. I've earned about $32,000 in the eight-year history of Love Your Work. More than half of that has been from Patreon supporters, many of whom support for reasons other than the podcast. During that time, I've spent: $1,008 on hosting $11,749 on assistance with editing and publishing $241 on equipment And some other expenses, for a total of about $13,000 In raw numbers, I've made a "profit" on the podcast. But, as I broke down in my latest income report, my "wage" was about $6 an hour. My podcast comprised about 5% of my income over these eight years, and took much more than that portion of my time and energy. Of course, I don't think about whether the podcast was worth it in terms of an hourly rate. Creative work happens in Extremistan, not Mediocristan, and I've made massive life choices to be free to explore creatively without worrying so much what I'm earning in the short-term. Ways to make money podcasting But there are many different ways to make a podcast a solid business, and none of them worked for me, for various reasons. Here are some of these business models, as they apply to the "thought-leader" space (I'll ignore the more entertainment/infotainment space that podcasts like Gimlet's inhabit). Be so massively famous, you can pick-and-choose advertisers, while demanding a lot of money. This is where Tim Ferriss and Joe Rogan are. They both started with large platforms, and applied whatever talents that helped them earn those platforms to make their podcasts huge. After more than fifteen years as a creator, I have a modest platform, but orders of magnitude smaller. Build a "content machine" that manufactures ad slots. I won't name names, but you've heard these podcasts. They're formulaic and don't seem to discern much who they have as a guest, nor what sponsors they accept. This business model is why my inbox is still full of pitches – they think I actually want more guests, because more guests would mean more ad slots. It takes a very rare set of circumstances for me to be excited to interview someone. Share information that directly helps people make money. If you have tactical and actionable information that's useful to professionals in a specific industry, you can charge for premium podcast content. I'm not as interested in the tactical and actionable as I am in the abstract and exploratory. Cover a niche topic. If you have a leading podcast about a very specific topic, advertisers within that niche will be willing to pay high rates to reach that audience. I didn't want to build my podcast according to a specific topic – more on that later. Have a "back-end" business. If you have a thriving consulting business, or training programs to sell, you can attract more clients and customers through your podcast. As I wrote in my ten-year reflections, "I want to make a living creating. I don't want creating to be merely a marketing strategy for other things. Is that completely insane?" I flirted with success in a few of these business models. Early on, I hoped my podcast would be famous enough to pick and choose advertisers at high rates. For a while, it looked like I had a chance. I was approached by a podcast network, and I had some reputable advertisers such as LinkedIn, Skillshare, Casper, Audible, Pittney Bowes, and University of California. Various times, I thought I was on the cusp of my "big break" – such as when Love Your Work was featured on the Apple Podcasts home screen. But the more I tried to go the "get famous" route, the louder the siren-song of the "content machine" route got. There were plenty of opportunities to do "interview swaps" with hosts I wasn't interested in interviewing. There were a few advertisers that had money, but whose products felt sleazy. Joining a podcast network would have pressured me to crank out content even if I didn't feel like it. There was (and still is) the never-ending stream of pitch emails for guests. I had too much wax in my ears to go the "content machine" route. Not included in my lifetime revenue-estimates for Love Your Work is money I made through the "back-end business" route. I was somewhat comfortable with this model, but I haven't made a course in years, as I've been focused on writing books. And as bad a business as people say writing books is, it's better than making a podcast. The podcast has helped me sell books in more ways than one. One way is that people who listened to the podcast boug

You've probably heard that, in a blind taste test, even experts can't tell between white and red wine. Even if this were true – and it's not – it wouldn't matter. I was in Rome last month, visiting some Raphael paintings to research my next book, and stopped by the Sistine Chapel. I've spent a good amount of time studying what Michelangelo painted on that ceiling. There are lots of high-resolution images on Wikipedia. But seeing a picture is nothing like the experience of seeing the Sistine Chapel. You've invested thousands of dollars and spent fifteen hours on planes. You're jet-lagged and your feet ache from walking 20,000 steps. You're hot. When you enter, guards order you to keep moving, so you won't block the door. They corral you to the center, and you can finally look up. When you hear wine experts can't tell between white and red wine, you imagine the following: Professional sommeliers are blindfolded, and directed to taste two wines. They then make an informed guess which is white, and which is red. In this imaginary scenario, they get it right half the time – as well as if they had flipped a coin. If it were true wine experts couldn't tell between white and red wine, the implication would be that the experience of tasting wine is separate from other aspects of the wine. That the color, the shape of the glass, the bottle, the label, and even the price of the wine are all insignificant. That they all distract from the only thing that matters: the taste of the wine. There's some psychophysiological trigger that gets pulled when you tilt your head back. Maybe it stimulates your pituitary gland. When you have your head back and are taking in the images on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, you feel vulnerable. (You literally are vulnerable. You can't see what's going on around you. You'd be easy to physically attack.) What you see is overwhelming. As you try to focus your attention on some detail, some other portion of the imagery calls out and redirects your attention. This happens again and again. After a while, your neck needs a rest, and you return your gaze to eye-level. And this is almost as cool as the ceiling: You see other people with their heads back, their eyes wide, mouths agape, hands on hearts, tears in eyes. You hear languages and see faces from all over the world. You realize they all, too, have invested thousands of dollars and spent fifteen hours on planes. They, too, are jet-lagged and hot and have walked 20,000 steps. You can look at pictures of the Sistine Chapel ceiling on the internet. You can experience it in VR. In many ways, this is better than going to the Sistine Chapel. You can take as much time as you want, and look as close as you want. You don't have to spend thousands of dollars and fifteen hours on a plane, take time off work, or even crane back your neck. But seeing the Sistine Chapel ceiling on the internet or even VR is only better than seeing it in person, in the way that a spoonful of granulated sugar when you're starving is better than a hypothetical burger in another iteration of the multiverse. We've seen an explosion of AI capabilities in recent months. That has a lot of people worried about what it means to be a creator. Why do we need humans to write, for example, if ChatGPT can write? The reason ChatGPT's writing is impressive is the same reason there's still a place for things created by humans. Anyone old enough to have been on the internet in the heyday of America Online in the 1990s will remember this: When you were in a chat room, most the conversations were about being in a chat room: How long have you been on the internet? Isn't the internet cool? What other chat rooms do you like? Part of the appeal of the question "ASL?" – Age, Sex, Location? – was marveling over the fact you were chatting in real-time with a stranger several states away. Or maybe you remember when Uber or Lyft first came to your town. For the first year or two, likely every conversation you had with a driver was about how long they had been driving, about how quickly the service had grown in your town, which is better – Uber or Lyft?, or which nearby cities got which services first. The first few months ChatGPT was out, it was seemingly the only thing anyone on the internet talked about. But it wasn't because ChatGPT's writing was amazing. ChatGPT is a bad writer's idea of a good writer. It was because of the story: Wow, my computer is writing! Now that much of the novelty of ChatGPT has worn off, many of us are falling into the Trough of Disillusionment on the Gartner Hype Cycle. We're realizing ChatGPT is like a talking dog: It's impressive the dog can appear to talk, but it's not talking – it's just saying the words it's been taught. ChatGPT is very useful in some situations, but not as many as we had originally hoped. What made us talk about the internet while on the internet, talk about Uber while in Ubers, and talk about ChatGPT while chatting with ChatGPT was the story. Once the s

We trust the food we eat, the drinks we drink, and the air we breathe are safe. That in case they're unsafe, someone is working to minimize our exposure, or at least tell us the risks. In The Triumph of Doubt, former head of OSHA David Michaels reveals how companies fight for their rights to sell harmful products, expose workers to health hazards, and pollute the environment. They do it by manufacturing so-called "science." Most this science is built not upon proving they're not causing harm, but by doing whatever they can to cast doubt. Here, in my own words, is a summary of The Triumph of Doubt: Dark Money and the Science of Deception. Products we use every day cause harm Chances are you've cooked on a pan coated with Teflon. Teflon is one of many polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. When introduced in the 1940s, they were considered safe. We now know they're linked with high cholesterol, poor immune function, cancer, obesity, birth defects, and low fertility. PFAS, it turns out, have such a long half-life, they're called "forever chemicals." PFAS can now be found in the blood of virtually all residents of the United States, and have been found in unsafe levels worldwide – in rainwater. You've probably heard that, in moderation, alcohol is actually good for you. But even one drink a day leads to higher overall mortality risk. More than one drink, greater risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer. Alcohol is a causal factor in 5% of deaths worldwide – about 3 million a year. 13.5% of deaths between ages 20–39 are alcohol-related. If you're in pain after an injury or surgery, your doctor might prescribe for you an opioid. But the rise in opioid addiction is responsible for the first drop in U.S. life expectancy in more than two decades. It's sent shockwaves throughout society. It's helped launch the epidemics of fentanyl and heroin overdoses, and the number of children in foster care in West Virginia, for example, rose 42% in four years. You might love to watch professional football. But NFL players are nineteen times more likely to develop neurological disorders, and thirty percent could develop Alzheimer's or dementia from taking so many hits. The "product defense" industry sows doubt How have they done it? How have companies been able to manufacture and sell products that cause so much harm, for so long? They do it by defending their products, when the safety of those products are questioned. On the surface, that's not so bad. But besides lying and deliberately deceiving, they abuse society's trust in so-called "science," and our lack of understanding of how much we risk when we move forward while still in doubt. The tobacco industry is a pioneer of product defense There's an entire industry that helps companies defend their products from regulation: It's called, appropriately, product defense. The tobacco industry is most-known for its product defense. In 1953, John W. Hill of the PR firm Hill & Knowlton convinced the tobacco industry to start – one floor below his office in the Empire State Building – the Tobacco Industry Research Committee (TIRC). The TIRC was supposed to do rigorous scientific research to understand the health effects of smoking, but mostly they just attacked existing science, doing what they could to sow doubt. Just a few years earlier, in 1950, a study had found heavy smokers were fifty times as likely as nonsmokers to get lung cancer. With the help of the TIRC, it would take a long time for these health risks to influence public policy. About thirty years later, most states had restricted smoking in some public places such as auditoriums and government buildings. Smoking had proliferated in American culture when cigarettes had been provided in soldiers' rations in WWI. Michaels describes one surgeon who, in 1919, made sure not to miss an autopsy of a man who had died of lung cancer, because it was the chance of a lifetime. He didn't see another case of lung cancer for seventeen years, then saw eight within six months. All eight had started smoking while serving in the war. Today, more than a century after cigarettes were widely introduced, we've finally seen a massive reduction in smoking in the U.S. We can fly on planes and go to restaurants and even bars, without being exposed to secondhand smoke. The sugar industry has been at it even longer Predating the product defense efforts of the tobacco industry is actually the sugar industry. The Sugar Research Foundation was started in 1943. Scientific evidence first linked sugar with heart disease in the 1950s. In 1967, as Dr. Robert Lustig told us, Harvard scientists published in the New England Journal of Medicine an article blaming fat rather than sugar for heart disease. Fifty years later UCSF researchers discovered the scientists had been funded by the Sugar Research Foundation – which they hadn't disclosed. Even more misleadingly, they had disclosed funding that actually made them look more impartial – from the dairy industry. C

According to philosopher Isaiah Berlin, people think in one of two different ways: They're either hedgehogs, or foxes. If you think like a hedgehog, you'll be more successful as a communicator. If you think like a fox, you'll be more accurate. Isaiah Berlin coined the hedgehog/fox dichotomy (via Archilochus) In Isaiah Berlin's 1953 essay, "The Hedgehog and the Fox," he quotes the ancient Greek poet, Archilochus: The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one thing. Berlin describes this as "one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general." How are "hedgehogs" and "foxes" different? According to Berlin, hedgehogs relate everything to a single central vision. Foxes pursue many ends, often unrelated or even contradictory. If you're a hedgehog, you explain the world through a focused belief or area of expertise. Maybe you're a chemist, and you see everything as chemical reactions. Maybe you're highly religious, and everything is "God's will." If you're a fox, you explain the world through a variety of lenses. You may try on conflicting beliefs for size, or use your knowledge in a wide variety of fields to understand the world. You explain things as From this perspective, X. But on the other hand, Y. It's also worth considering Z. The seminal hedgehog/fox essay is actually about Leo Tolstoy Even though this dichotomy Berlin presented has spread far and wide, his essay is mostly about Leo Tolstoy, and the tension between his fox-like tendencies and hedgehog-like aspirations. In Tolstoy's War and Peace, he writes: In historic events the so-called great men are labels giving names to events, and like labels they have but the smallest connection with the event itself. Every act of theirs, which appears to them an act of their own will, is in an historical sense involuntary and is related to the whole course of history and predestined from eternity. In War and Peace, Tolstoy presents characters who act as if they have control over the events of history. In Tolstoy's view, the events that make history are too complex to be controlled. Extending this theory outside historical events, Tolstoy also writes: When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall? Because of its attraction to the earth, because its stalk withers, because it is dried by the sun, because it grows heavier, because the wind shakes it, or because the boy standing below wants to eat it? Nothing is the cause. All this is only the coincidence of conditions in which all vital organic and elemental events occur. Is Tolstoy a fox, or a hedgehog? He acknowledges the complexity with which various events are linked – which is very fox-like. But he also seems convinced these events are so integrated with one another that nothing can change them. They're "predetermined" – a "coincidence of conditions." A true hedgehog might have a simple explanation, such as that gravity caused the apple to fall. Tolstoy loved concrete facts and causes, such as the pull of gravity, yet still yearned to find some universal law that could be used to predict the future. According to Berlin: It is not merely that the fox knows many things. The fox accepts that he can only know many things and that the unity of reality must escape his grasp. And this was Tolstoy's downfall. Early in his life, he presented profound insights about the world through novels such as War and Peace and Anna Karenina. That was very fox-like. Later in his life, he struggled to condense his deep knowledge about the world and human behavior into overarching theories about moral and ethical issues. As Berlin once wrote to a friend, Tolstoy was "a fox who terribly believed in hedgehogs and wished to vivisect himself into one." Other hedgehogs and foxes in Berlin's essay Other thinkers Berlin classifies as foxes include Aristotle, Goethe, and Shakespeare. Other thinkers Berlin classifies as hedgehogs include Dante, Dostoevsky, and Plato. What does the hedgehog/fox dichotomy have to do with the animals? What does knowing many things have to do with actual foxes? What does knowing one big thing have to do with actual hedgehogs? A fox is nimble and clever. It can run fast, climb trees, dig holes, swim across rivers, stalk prey, or hide from predators. A hedgehog mostly relies upon its ability to roll into a ball and ward off intruders. Foxes tell the future, hedgehogs get credit What are the consequences of being a fox or a hedgehog? According to Phil Tetlock, foxes are better at telling the future, while hedgehogs get more credit for telling the future. In Tetlock's 2005 book, Expert Political Judgement, he shared his findings from forecasting tournaments he held in the 1980s and 90s. Experts made 30,000 predictions about political events such as wars, economic growth, and election results. Then Tetlock tracked the performances of those predictions. What he found led to the U.S. intelligence community holding forecasting tournaments, tracking more

Many creators and aspiring creators struggle not because they don't have enough ideas, but because they have too many. Their situations, in summary, are "Too many ideas, must pick one." Embedded in this belief are assumptions that, if challenged, can help you feel as if you have just enough ideas. In my recent AMA, I got a question I'm asked about creativity, probably more than any other: How can you pick a creative project when you have too many ideas? I've experienced, "too many ideas, must pick one," many times. I still often do. I of course answered this question in the AMA, but here I'll answer more in-depth. This is the thought process I guide myself through when I'm in the land of "too many ideas, must pick one." There are three assumptions embedded in, "too many ideas, must pick one." All these ideas are equally likely to succeed. I'm equally capable of succeeding at each of these ideas. I can't work on multiple ideas at once. Let's look at each of those. Assumption 1: "All these ideas are equally likely to succeed" If you feel you have too many ideas, you must think they're equally likely to succeed, which is the first assumption. That might not sound correct at first, but think about it. If you were starving, and only allowed to eat one of various sandwiches, you would probably pick the biggest and most calorie-rich. You might not be able to tell so easily which is the biggest and most calorie-rich sandwich. In fact, there may be other factors that play into your decision. Maybe the avocado and pork belly sandwich is the most calorie-rich, but you're craving roasted duck in this moment, and there happens to be a roasted-duck sandwich amongst the selections. While satisfying your hunger is one objective of choosing a sandwich, there are other goals in mind, such as satisfying cravings, which may compete with one another. If you have a hard time deciding amongst all the sandwiches, you expect eating one sandwich to be equally likely to succeed as eating any of the others. As with projects, "success" may come in many forms. We'll get to that in a bit. Assumption 2: "I'm equally capable of succeeding at each of these ideas" If you feel you have too many ideas, you must think you're equally capable of succeeding at each of these ideas, which is the second assumption. If assumption one weren't correct, and you didn't feel each idea were equally likely to succeed, you would probably pick the one most likely to succeed. The avocado and pork belly sandwich would clearly be more filling than peanut butter and jelly. Now, if you weren't equally capable of eating each of the sandwiches, that would make your decision easier. If you're choosing between avocado and pork belly and peanut butter and jelly, but you're a strict vegetarian, the decision is easy. Same if you're not a vegetarian, but allergic to peanuts. But since you feel each idea is equally likely to succeed, and you feel you're equally capable of succeeding at all of them, you feel you have too many ideas. As with projects, you may have little information about your capability of succeeding, which is why, for all you know, your capability to succeed is equal across all ideas. We'll untangle that later. Assumption 3: "I can't work on multiple ideas at once" If you feel you have "too many ideas," you feel they're equally likely to succeed and you're equally capable of succeeding at each of them. If you feel you "must pick one," you feel you can't work on multiple ideas at once, which is the third assumption. In our sandwich scenario, you've been told you have to pick one sandwich. If there's no one else around and the sandwiches will go to waste otherwise, you might as well taste all the sandwiches, then pick one. Or eat a little of each, until you're full. But, in that case, you wouldn't finish any of the sandwiches. Challenging the assumptions With all three of these assumptions, you're in a deadlock. Your ideas are equally likely to succeed, you're equally capable of succeeding at each, and you must pick one. Well, how can you pick one if they're all equally appealing ideas? There are five questions that can help you challenge these assumptions: What is success? What is my risk profile? What am I good at? What's necessary to succeed? What pain do I pick? Let's look at each of these. Question 1: "What is success?" Success can come in many forms. Maybe you want to make the most money possible. Maybe you want the most freedom possible. Maybe you want to do what you're most passionate about. You may feel each idea is equally likely to succeed, because each idea is likely to get a different kind of success. One sandwich will fill you up, another will taste great, still another seems like the healthy choice. If you have a clearer picture of what forms of success are more important to you than others, your many ideas will no longer be "equally likely to succeed." Question 2: "What is my risk profile?" Not only can success come in many forms, it can come

Today I have a special episode for you. If you missed last month's AMA/Livestream, I'm delivering it right to your ears. In this AMA, I answered questions about: What's the best self-publishing platform, and how did I publish 100-Word Writing Habit, non standard-sized, outside of Amazon? Buenos Aires versus Medellín, which is better for mind management? How to pick a creative project when you have too many ideas? What's surprised me most in the past two years? What task management software do I use for mind management? How to focus on one project when you have multiple curiosities? How to keep from falling down a research rabbit-hole? How many half-formed ideas do I have captured somewhere? There are some parts where I refer to visuals, for the best experience, watch on YouTube. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email New bonus content on Patreon! I've been adding lots of new content to Patreon. Join the Patreon » Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/four-sources-of-shiny-object-syndrome/

Shiny object syndrome can be evidence of a problem, or it can be a normal part of the creative process. If you can identify the four sources of shiny object syndrome, you can tell the difference between being lost, or simply exploring. Three first three sources are problems The first three of the four sources of shiny object syndrome hold you back from finishing projects. They are: ambition, perfectionism, and distraction. Ambitious shiny object syndrome is starting projects that far outpace your abilities and resources. Perfectionistic shiny object syndrome is endlessly tweaking a project that could otherwise be called done. Distracted shiny object syndrome is juggling so many projects, you finish none. Before we get to the fourth source, a bit more about these three most dangerous sources. Ambitious shiny object syndrome You probably have a friend with ambitious shiny object syndrome. One day they proclaimed they were writing an epic fantasy novel. A few months later, they had dropped that and had a new plan: a feature film. A few months after that, they were starting a health-tech startup. All the while, you were shaking your head, because your friend clearly didn't have the experience or resources to take on these projects. They were writing the epic fantasy novel, yet had never written a short story. They were working on the feature film, yet had never made a short film. They were working on the health-tech startup, yet had no experience in technology, the health industry, nor raising funding. Delusional optimism can be an asset. Maybe your friend will get lucky, and one of these projects will click. They're more likely to get struck by lightning. Instead, you know what's coming when you ask how the latest project is going. They've abandoned that, and are taking on something new. Conveniently, your friend always has a great excuse for why. They find a scapegoat: You can't get a million dollars for a feature-film without a rich uncle. They claim to have never been serious about it in the first place: Oh, that silly book? I was just dabbling. More likely, they shift the conversation to another subject: Oh my god, did you see the article about the celebrity! If they had made a public prediction about their potential success in the project, you could hold them accountable. Yet they didn't, so you have to take their word for it. Interestingly, you'll never hear, That was foolish taking on that – I didn't know what I was doing! Perfectionistic shiny object syndrome Or maybe you have a friend with perfectionistic shiny object syndrome. They endlessly tweak a project that could otherwise be called done. The "shiny objects" in this case aren't other projects, but rather details within one project. Your perfectionist friend has one project they've been clinging to for years. Their novel has been through eleven revisions. It started as a memoir, but after becoming an urban-fantasy novel, it's now a thriller. They had a great-looking cover for each of these. But they've changed some details about the plot since the latest world-building workshop they traveled to attend, and they want to try a different cover designer. But before they spend money on another cover, they want to decide whether they're going to publish in places besides Amazon, because that affects the design specs. So they're taking a cohort-based course so they can ask a successful author what she thinks. There's nothing you could tell your friend to get them to ship this project. By now, they could be on their third book, having learned lessons from the previous two. Instead, they've convinced themself it has to be perfect. Distracted shiny object syndrome Or maybe you have a friend with distracted shiny object syndrome. They're taking on projects they could conceivably complete, given their skills and resources. They don't seem to suffer from perfectionism, but you can't tell, because none of their projects get anywhere near the finish line. Instead, once they make a little progress on one project, they switch to another, then another. Once their screenplay is completed for their short film, they start recording demos for their album. Once they've recorded demos for their album, they write their memoir. Once they've finished a draft of their memoir, they're writing a business plan for a non-profit. This "friend" may be you, and it certainly has been me. Shiny object syndrome is difficult to cure, because these sources are often mixed together. You may take on projects that are too ambitious, but also be distracted by the many other projects you're taking on. The perfectionism that is keeping you from shipping one project, may divert you to one overly-ambitious project, or a mixture of smaller projects. The fourth source is only natural Yet there is a fourth source of shiny object syndrome that doesn't have to keep you from finishing projects: Natural shiny object syndrome. Natural shiny object syndrome is the diversions and dead-ends that are a na

Writing a tweet is a microcosm of writing a book. If you think deeply and carefully about every word in a tweet, and what the tweet as a whole communicates, you can extend those skills to all your writing. In this article, I'll break down how to think about every word in a tweet, nearly tripling its performance. Step 1: The first-impression tweet The tweet we'll work on came to me like most tweets, a thought that popped into my head. It was this: Ironically, strong opinions are the ones that are easily argued against. I could have just tweeted that. But I've made a habit of instead writing down my first-impression tweets in a scratch file, and later working on them before publishing. Here's what my thought process looks like. As a tweet, this phrase is a little wordy, and weak. It starts somewhat nonsensically with an adverb: "Ironically." What action is being performed ironically? Step 2: Improving word economy There are also some extra words that could be cut out. Do we have to refer to "strong opinions" again, by using the word "ones"? The word "that" is often not necessary, and it doesn't seem necessary here. If we cut out all those extra words, we end up with: Strong opinions are easily argued against. Step 3: Adding back in meaning That's shorter, more elegant, and economic. But now it's weaker. It's a simple statement of fact, without presenting what's remarkable about that fact, or how anyone should feel about it. At least when it said, "ironically," it pointed out the irony that strong opinions are those that are easily argued against. Also, since I've removed the second reference to "strong opinions" by removing the word "ones," the statement no longer pits "strong opinions" against other types of opinions. Before, I was implying the existence of opinions that weren't strong, and describing what was different about opinions that were. Our shortened statement is also in the passive voice, which makes it weaker. "Strong opinions are easily argued against," by whom? Who is doing the arguing? It would be more direct to say: It's easier to argue against strong opinions. But still, this statement doesn't pit strong opinions against other types of opinions. Fixing that, we could instead say: Of all opinions, strong ones are easiest to argue against. Finally, I think we at least have an improvement over the original, "Ironically, strong opinions are the ones that are easily argued against." It's more direct, and pits strong opinions against opinions at-large. It also has the important quality, in tweet format, of delivering the most surprising – or ironic – thing about the statement at the end. There's a bit of misdirection in this statement. We've addressed all opinions, homed in on the strong ones, which primes you to expect them to be lauded in some way. Instead, the statement points out the irony that what makes an opinion "strong" is that it's easy to argue against. Step 4: Tweaking for the audience But this tweet is still not ready. The most glaring problem is, nowhere in the tweet is the term, "strong opinions," and, as a tweet, that's where its potential lies. "Strong opinions" is a term in the parlance of some sections of Twitter. This term became popular after Marc Andreessen appeared on Tim Ferriss's podcast, where he advocated for, "strong opinions, weakly held." By trying to be economical with words in our tweet, we've broken apart this term. In our latest iteration, "Of all opinions, strong ones are easiest to argue against," it's simply referred to as "strong ones." Depending upon how prevalent the term "strong opinions" is in the minds of our audience members, we could stick with that more subtle hint. Sometimes that's more effective. In my experience, on Twitter, you have to bash people over the head with what you're saying to cut through the noise. So we could instead say: Of all opinions, strong opinions are easiest to argue against. We've replaced "strong ones" with "strong opinions." It's less economical, but includes the term "strong opinions," pits them against opinions at-large, and delivers the counterintuitive element at the end, like the punchline of a joke. Step 5: What are we trying to say? This is probably as economically as we can write this, meeting that criteria. But it's still not ready. Now it's not clear from this observation how the author wants us to feel about strong opinions. It's, ironically, not a strong opinion. Is the upshot that you shouldn't hold strong opinions? Is it that when you hold strong opinions, you have to be comfortable with the fact they are easy to argue against? What makes an opinion "strong," anyway? Is it the force with with which you express the opinion? If so, the statement, "strong opinions, weakly held" would mean you express the opinion with force, but are quick to change it if presented with contrary evidence. Or maybe it means that you should take decisive action on your opinions, and if that action presents you with contrary evidence, y

Here's a bonus preview of a new podcast I've brewed just for Patreon supporters. It's Coffee w/ Kadavy. In this episode, #4, I talk about: I talk with special guest ChatGPT about why we will (or won't) see another AI winter An inventory of things I believe (at least more than 50%) A cool thing that makes reading paper books way more comfortable! A (controversial?) history book about an amazing clash of civilizations For more episodes of Coffee w/ Kadavy, join the Patreon! There are three more episodes waiting for you, and a sneak audiobook preview of a chapter from my next book.

Every message is shaped by the mechanics of media. Whether it's a tweet, a TikTok video, a news article, or a movie, the characteristics of the medium determine how it's made, how it's consumed, and whether it spreads. If you understand the mechanics of media, you can more effectively communicate in a wide variety of mediums, and protect yourself from being manipulated by media. The message is the mechanics of media As media theorist Marshall McLuhan said, "The medium is the message." In Understanding Media, he wrote: The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium...results from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs.... In other words, it's not the content of the medium we should be worried about, but the way the characteristics of that medium determine its content – the mechanics of media. The five characteristics of media I propose that there are five characteristics present in any medium, which determine these mechanics. These characteristics affect the creation, consumption, and distribution of media. (In other words, what message is delivered, how that message is received, and whether or not that message spreads.) Those five characteristics are: Incentive Sensory Physical Social Psychological The mechanics of media are so complex, these characteristics naturally interact with one another. I'll give a brief introduction of each, then show how these characteristics work in the popular mediums of podcasts, Twitter, and TikTok. 1. Incentive The Incentive characteristics of a medium are sources of motivation, whether money or otherwise, that shape the creation, consumption, and distribution of messages in that medium. The creator of a piece of media is motivated by various incentives, such as money and relationships. Whether or not someone is able to consume a piece of media depends upon whether its affordable or otherwise accessible. Whether or not a piece of media spreads depends upon whether incentives are aligned for the distribution platform to allow it to spread. So, a journalist may be motivated to write a story that gets page views, because that's how they're paid. That's how they're paid, because the newspaper doesn't have paying subscribers and thus relies upon ad revenue. The stories with click-bait headlines spread and get more page views because they increase engagement for the social media platform they're shared on, which increases the social media platform's ad revenue. 2. Sensory The Sensory characteristics of a medium are the ways in which the medium engages senses such as sight, hearing, and touch. Marshall McLuhan wrote about how so-called "sense ratios" were engaged by a medium. Sensory characteristics primarily affect the consumption of the medium, but those effects overlap with creation and distribution. Written content, for example, can be absorbed at a reader's own pace. As Neil Postman pointed out in Amusing Ourselves to Death, the written word is especially well-suited to careful review and comparison, which makes it easier to convey the truth. Audio content can be replayed to be reviewed, but it's more work than simply moving your eyes back over the content. 3. Physical The Physical characteristics of a medium are the ways in which the medium engages the body. The subtitle of Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media is Extensions of Man. As a medium extends our abilities, it also removes or "amputates" abilities. When you listen to a podcast, your entire body is free to do other things. You may be cooking, showering, or fighting your way to the exit of a crowded subway car. So, audio with dense content may not be absorbed as well as if the same content were printed in a paper book – which can still be read on a subway car, but not likely while walking. Podcasts became distributed more widely as they became easier to download on smartphones, which people physically carry around. 4. Social The Social characteristics of a medium are the ways in which the medium facilitates interactions amongst people. In the age of social media, these interactions affect creation, consumption, and distribution, in concert. Algorithms that drive distribution on platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok are designed to distribute a piece of content based upon its engagement. Much of that engagement is social. If you comment on, like, or share a piece of content, that social interaction leads to further distribution. Additionally, the level of privacy involved in consuming or sharing content has social consequences. You may be reluctant to even "like" certain content, for fear of who might see. But you might share the same content with a close friend through a text message – so-called "dark social" – or even a dinner conversation. 5. Psychological The psychological characteristics of a medium are the ways in which a medium interacts with human psychology. Cognitive biases affect the way people interpret a piece of media, and med

Submit your questions and mark your calendars for my upcoming AMA/Livestream.

Making, recording, and evaluating predictions is a simple way to improve your thinking and decision-making. But the way to properly make and record predictions isn't obvious. In this article, I'll share some predictions I've made, what I've learned, and how you can improve your thinking by making predictions. Making predictions has grown my business Five years ago, I had been running my business for ten years, and it wasn't going great. Then, I started publishing monthly income reports, and along the way, making predictions. My income has nearly doubled, and I attribute much of that success to my habit of making predictions. I began by predicting how much money I'd make in a product launch, and grew to predicting how much traffic articles I had written would gain, and how many copies books I'd written would sell. I now routinely make predictions for things as seemingly mundane as whether I'll enjoy a conference, whether I'll still be publishing on TikTok a year from now, or whether an avocado is ripe. On the surface, making predictions seems like a pointless game. This is, indeed, true of making predictions the wrong way. But making predictions the right way helps you deal with uncertainty you otherwise have no hope of handling. Predictions help you bet your life, better Each of us has limited resources, such as time, money, and mental energy. We're constantly making decisions about how to use these resources, and when we make those decisions, we are expecting outcomes. If we go on this date, will we find the love of our life, or wish we'd stayed in? If we write this book, will we achieve fame and fortune, or feel as if we've wasted years of our life? If we spend an hour on social media, will we make valuable connections, or spiral into self-hatred over our lack of discipline? As Annie Duke, author of Thinking in Bets wrote: In most of our decisions, we are not betting against another person. Rather, we are betting against all the future versions of ourselves that we are not choosing. —Annie Duke, Thinking in Bets Each decision we make is a bet. We bet a resource, and expect something in return. Most of us don't recognize or express the expectations of our bets. But we should. Some bets are clearer than others If you bet a dollar on a coin flip and only win $1.50 for guessing correctly, you'd easily recognize that as an unfair bet: There's a 50% chance of guessing correctly, so you clearly should receive two dollars. But the more variable the odds, and the more vague your wager and winnings, the more difficult it becomes to think clearly. What's the value of finding the love of your life? What other benefits can you get writing a book besides fame and fortune? What are the chances that during this hour of social media you'll make a life-changing discovery? Making objective decisions taking into account all these variables becomes so complicated you might as well throw up your hands, surrender to randomness, and do what feels right in the moment. And that's what most of us do. Case in point: The multi-billion-dollar gambling industry, propped up by people doing what feels right in the moment – their decision-making shrouded by the smokescreen of ever more complex and variable bets. The key to making predictions in a way that helps you evaluate your decisions is to avoid what Annie Duke calls "resulting." If you wager a dollar on a coin flip, with a chance to win $10, and lose, the result of your decision was bad, but your decision was good. The odds were clearly in your favor. Mathematically, you were sure you'd win that bet one of two times. If you had won, you were going to win ten times your money. Now how do you apply this thinking to more complex and vague situations, such as a product launch, your Saturday night plans, or whether or not your new hobby is a passing obsession? The key is to make a prediction, the right way. How to make predictions the right way There are two components to making predictions the right way. Turn it into a coin flip. Identify the odds. 1. Turn the outcome into a "coin flip" First, turn the prediction into a coin flip. I don't mean in terms of odds, but in terms of result. When you flip a coin, it comes up heads or tails. When you make a prediction about a result, that result must either happen or not. For a prediction to be useful, it has to be falsifiable. This is not easy to do, which is why few of us make predictions the right way, if at all. If you think it's going to rain, in what area will it rain, by what time? Does a single raindrop count? If you think you'll still be doing bird photography in six months, how many bird photos will you have taken, within the previous month? If you think you'll enjoy going to the party, how many good memories will you be able to recall a week later? You can define a successful result in whatever measurable way you want. The important thing is that to make a prediction, you need to turn the result into a coin flip. Not in terms of odds

In the midst of the Great Depression, cereal manufacturer Kellogg's switched to a shorter, six-hour day. This continued a trend that seemed inevitable: people would work less and less. But economic policies, management strategies, and cultural attitudes changed. The story of the rise and fall of Kellogg's six-hour day is a microcosm of these changes, as well as of our attitudes about the roles of money, leisure, work, and women and men. In the book, Kellogg's 6-Hour Day, historian Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt shares his findings in studying Kellogg's shorter workday. His main sources of information were 434 interviews conducted by the Women's Bureau of the Department of Labor, 124 interviews he himself conducted of workers, and 241 responses to a survey he had sent. What follows is a summary of the story, and Hunnicutt's findings. Kellogg's switched to a 6-hour day to create jobs During the Great Depression, American businesses took on a policy of "work sharing." The idea was that fewer would be unemployed if everyone shared jobs – more workers, working fewer hours. So, on December 1, 1930, W. K. Kellogg changed most departments in Kellogg's Battle Creek, Michigan plant from three eight-hour shifts to four six-hour shifts. A shorter workday had seemed inevitable This continued a decades-long trend of shorter working hours. Labor activist William Heighton had written in 1827 that the workday should be reduced from twelve hours to ten, eight, and so on, "until the development and progress of science have reduced human labour to its lowest terms." John Stuart Mill had written in 1848 about his vision for a "Stationary State": After necessities were met, people would seek progress in mental, moral, and social realms. John Maynard Keynes would predict in the same year Kellogg's switched to six hours, 1930, that we'd have a fifteen-hour work week by 2030. George Bernard Shaw and Julian Juxley had predicted a maximum two-hour workday by the end of the 1900s. Other businesses shortened their workdays, too Other businesses followed Kellogg's' lead. A survey by the Industrial Conference Board in 1931 estimated 50% of American businesses had shortened hours to save jobs. President Herbert Hoover was considering making a 6-hour day a national policy. In the 1932 presidential campaign, both major parties were advocating shorter hours. The 6-hour day was the hot business topic Not only did the six-hour day help create jobs, it seemed for a while like it was a better business policy. Forbes called it "the topic of discussion in the business world." Business Week concluded it was profitable. The New York Times called it "a complete success." Factory and Industrial Management magazine called the six-hour day, the "biggest piece of industrial news since Ford announced his five-dollar-a-day policy." At Kellogg's, 15% more shredded wheat cases were being packed per hour. Profits had doubled in 1931, versus three years prior. After five years with the six-hour day, overhead costs had been reduced 25%, labor costs 10%, with 41% fewer accidents. W. K. Kellogg said, "We can afford to pay as much for six hours as we formerly paid for eight." (That should be taken with a grain of salt. W. K. Kellogg took pride in crafting a public image as a "welfare capitalist," as evinced by the full-page newspaper ads he took out, boasting how Kellogg's had done its part. In reality, nearly half of workers later surveyed recalled that their wages were reduced.) Kellogg's returned to an 8-hour day for WWII In 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order to direct the maximum amount of manpower toward supporting the country's fight in WWII. Kellogg's responded in kind by temporarily returning to eight-hour shifts. A rift formed between Kellogg's management and the labor union This was actually an opportunity the company had been looking for. Kellogg's management and that at other companies were beginning to resent the six-hour day, and workers were becoming divided over whether they wanted a shorter workday, or more pay. In 1936, the National Council of Grain Producers had started a union chapter in Kellogg's Battle Creek headquarters. W. K. Kellogg had been proud to pay what he considered the best hourly wages in town. During the first meeting with union officers, he wept, and kept saying, "If only they had come to me, I would have given them what they wanted." The union got an inch, and wanted a mile After this point, the relationship between Kellogg's workers and management became adversarial. W. K. had left in 1937, after the union came in, and at that point the union leaders had been pushing to not only have a six-hour day, in which they could earn a bonus based upon productivity, but they had also wanted time-and-a-half pay for working more than six hours in a day. Hunnicutt wrote, "More than any other union demand, this position would come to haunt Kellogg workers." Demanding overtime pay on a six-hour day helped turn manageme

Desire paths are trails left on the ground, by anything that frequently travels along a route. There are subcultures fascinated by desire paths as symbols of collective wisdom, disregard for authority, or mere evidence of existence. Desire paths are also celebrated as a design technique. Desire paths in their pure form are about what you can see, but the characteristics of desire paths – which you can't always see – can help you optimize your life and gain clarity in your creative projects. Desire path examples Desire paths are also known by a number of other names: cattle trails, cow paths, elephant paths, just to name a few. In forests or grassy meadows, it seems pretentious to call them desire paths – they're just paths. Desire paths that question authority Desire paths are most interesting when they show up in places where a man-made path has already been put in place. A sidewalk turns a corner at a ninety-degree angle, but as people cut the corner, a desire path develops at forty-five degrees. An overgrown hedge encroaches on a sidewalk. To avoid squeezing between the hedge and a tree, people walk off the sidewalk and around the tree, and a desire path develops. A landscape architect tries to get fancy by building a curved path, but people instead take a straight path, and a desire path cuts through the grass. These desire paths that eschew the suggestions of man-made paths are like visual jokes that show a disregard for authority. Desire paths that acknowledge existence But some desire paths acknowledge the existence of a single being. A dog leaves a desire path where he's cut across the yard a thousand times. A woman leaves a desire path where all summer she's walked off the end of a dock, into the shallow water, to the shore of a lake. When a single being who has left a desire path passes away, the desire path remains as a reminder of their existence. The thought of nature reclaiming the desire path – for example, the grass growing back – is a sad reminder of how long they've been gone, and a reminder one day we'll be gone, too. But the being doesn't even have to be a living one. Delivery robots have left desire paths, their tire tracks marking the sidewalk with GPS precision. Desire paths as a design technique The most striking thing about desire paths is they can be used as a design technique. As I said, desire paths are like visual jokes that show a disregard for authority. They poke fun at civilization's feeble attempts to plan, make decisions for others, or control people. Sometimes "authority" surrenders to the crowd and lets desire paths do the decision-making for them. University campuses are often full of desire paths. With so many students migrating from one of many buildings to one of many other buildings, there's no way to predict what routes exactly will be the most efficient. So some schools, such as Ohio State University, held off on creating paved paths. Once the desire paths showed up, they then paved on top of them. The result is a latticework of criss-crossing paths, of varying widths, that no single human would have designed. Desire paths aren't always good But sometimes "authority" has a good reason for building a path that seems inefficient. On the leading subculture of desire-path enthusiasts – Reddit's desire paths community – parks planners have explained that nature trails often have switchbacks going back and forth across steep inclines, because such a design prevents soil erosion. When people cut across these switchbacks, hiking directly up the hill, they hasten erosion. Additionally, desire paths express the desires of the majority. Sometimes the path expressed by desire paths don't work for people in the minority. That curved path that looks like the result of a landscape architect gone wild might soften the incline for people in wheelchairs – and how does that work out when path installation is delayed until desire paths form? Ultimately, people are going to tend toward their desires to get to their destinations quickly. Whatever practical reasons "authority" has for designing a path, the wisdom carried by desire paths can't be ignored. The power of invisible desire paths Desire paths, in their pure form, are about what you can see. It seems the use of desire paths in design projects originated with analyzing data you can't see. A 1942 transit study in Detroit charted origins and destinations of commuter trips, to determine where best to build roads. If you break the phenomenon of desire paths down to its essential components, you can find desire paths you can't see, and harness their power to optimize your life and achieve clarity in creative projects. When used as a design technique, a desire path essentially does four things: A good-enough solution Collects data Exposes a pattern in the data Which leads to an ideal solution The unmodified ground is a good-enough solution people can use. Through the usage patterns of that good-enough solution, data builds up. Each fo

The term, "vulnerability" has spread into realms where it's not an accurate description of what's going on. The case for being vulnerable often doesn't make sense. In the creative realm – and possibly in others – we should pursue something beyond vulnerability. When I wrote about vulnerability to my Love Mondays newsletter, saying some of what I'm about to say, I got a lot of pushback. In the current – and what I believe to be incorrect – parlance, some might say I had made myself vulnerable. I don't agree. I'll build up to why in the course of examining the vulnerability movement. I'll try to keep this organized, so that if you disagree with my line of thinking, it's easier to identify where. It's hard to talk about vulnerability in an organized way, because the more the term is abused, the more vague its definition gets. Vulnerability means "open to harm" Let's start by defining vulnerability. In the most basic terms, vulnerability means, "open to harm." If you want to be more technical and specific, "open" in this case doesn't mean "inviting" harm, but rather "susceptible" to harm. Now I'll paraphrase some examples of how vulnerability is espoused in the current movement: "Be vulnerable at work. If you need help, don't be afraid to ask." "Be vulnerable in relationships. Share your feelings, even if it means you might be rejected." "Be vulnerable in your writing. Share your struggles." (Anyone familiar with my work might be surprised to hear me tee up this last one.) I don't deny that a person might feel vulnerable in these situations. I'm not convinced they are vulnerable. I'm definitely skeptical that striving to be or even feel vulnerable is helpful. Emotional harm is the most-subjective harm If being vulnerable is being open to harm, to understand vulnerability we have to define what harm is. There are many types of harm, but I think most are covered in three categories: physical, economic, and emotional harm. Physical harm is the least-subjective realm of harm. Yes, people might perceive their physical wounds differently, and someone can have physical pains with an emotional cause, but for the most part, you can measure physical injury. Economic harm is slightly more-subjective. If you lose your job in a flourishing modern economy, you won't necessarily have scars, such as if you experienced physical harm. You may ultimately be better off. Emotional harm is almost entirely subjective. What seems like emotional harm to one person may not to another. Some can't stand to be looked at by a stranger. Others don't care if someone criticizes them. Importantly, what causes emotional harm to a person when they're inexperienced in a realm may not – later, to that same person – cause emotional harm after they become experienced in that same realm. More on that later. The vulnerability movement: "Be vulnerable, and benefit" Now that we've defined vulnerability as "open to harm," and identified most harms as physical, economic, or emotional, let's try to identify the case being made for vulnerability by the vulnerability movement. When I say vulnerability movement, I'm not talking about any one person, but rather my perception as a very-confused outsider, trying to make sense of the conversations being had about vulnerability in TED talks, on social media, on podcasts, and at cocktail parties. As far as I can understand, the pitch of the vulnerability movement is, "be vulnerable and benefit." To paraphrase, using the prior examples from work, love, and art: "If you need help at work, ask for it. You risk looking like you don't know what you're doing, but you and your team will perform better." "Be the first in a relationship to say, 'I love you.' You risk rejection, but otherwise you'll have a deeper relationship." "Share your struggles in your writing. People may laugh at you, but your words will help others." To be clear, I think these actions can be wise. But I don't believe they're objectively vulnerable, and you don't have to make vulnerability a goal – and maybe you shouldn't make vulnerability a goal – to catalyze these actions. These are all cases to "be vulnerable and benefit." To be vulnerable is to be open to harm. If you ultimately benefit from an action, were you vulnerable – were you open to harm – in the first place? Is it vulnerability if it needs boundaries? Some might say, Well, you don't know the outcome of these actions in advance, so you're risking harm by taking them. Yet anyone who speaks intelligently about vulnerability rightly says it should come with boundaries. A CEO shouldn't freak out about the potential fate of the company, in front of employees and shareholders. You shouldn't spend your first date complaining about your ex. You shouldn't share your struggles with depression in writing a user manual for a Bluetooth speaker. Too much vulnerability is oversharing. So, according to the movement, vulnerability should be a calculated risk, one you're likely to benefit from, and one that

The Prince is a political treatise, written by Niccolò Machiavelli, first distributed in 1513. It's infamous for its apparent advice to political leaders to lie, murder, and manipulate. It's still a fascinating read today, and is thought-provoking when considering any context where the true motives of actions may not be what they seem. Here, in my own words, is a summary of Niccoló Machiavelli's, The Prince. Is The Prince advice, satire, or sabotage? Machiavelli wrote The Prince while in exile from Florence. Since he opens it with a letter to Lorenzo d'Medici it seems like Machiavelli was trying to get a political position with the Medici, by demonstrating his political knowledge. (The Medici had recently returned to power in Florence, after themselves being exiled fifteen years.) But, some scholars think The Prince is satire. Others think the advice within was a ploy, in that if it were followed, the actions would weaken the power of the Medici. "The ends [justified] the means," in Renaissance Italy Though the phrase isn't in the book, The Prince is the origin of the saying, "the ends justify the means." In other words, if you have an important goal, morality doesn't matter. It's also the inspiration for the name of the personality trait of "Machiavellianism", which is characterized by manipulativeness, insensitivity, and an indifference to morality. Psychologists include Machiavellianism in the "dark triad" personality traits, along with narcissism and psychopathy. Sixteenth century Italy was the perfect environment for advice like that in The Prince to flourish. There was constant conflict amongst small governing bodies, including the most-notable city-states of Florence, Milan, Rome, Naples, and Venice. Additionally, there were frequent invasions by Spain, France, or the Holy Roman Empire. If the numerous examples Machiavelli cites in The Prince are any indication, if you didn't lie, murder, and manipulate, you wouldn't stay in power, and probably would be murdered yourself. You don't have to be Machiavellian to learn from The Prince As you listen to this advice, it's not hard to think of similar, less-violent situations in our everyday lives, as we build relationships and careers, or watch others vie for power. So what is some of this juicy advice that has made The Prince and Niccolò Machiavelli so infamous? I'll break down this summary into two sections, followed by some historical examples Machiavelli cites, peppered with some quotes. Those two sections are: Gaining power Retaining power (Note this isn't how Machiavelli organizes The Prince.) 1. Gaining power First how to gain power. Machiavelli points out that the people within a state are eager to change rulers. People naturally expect change to improve their lives, so, they're willing to join in armed resistance against the ruling power. This attitude extends from the people, to other states. If a powerful foreigner invades a country, the states within want to help overturn the rule of the most-powerful state. But you have to be careful. It's normal to want to acquire more land, but when you try to do it by any means possible, you end up making dumb mistakes. How this applies to other domains As you hear this, you may already have some parallels to other domains bouncing around in your head. How many times have you bought a product just slightly different from one you already had, because you believed the change would make your life better? Marketers take advantage of this. I've read one marketing book that advised to think of the product you're marketing as a "new opportunity." Changing leadership is a "new opportunity," that temporarily makes you optimistic, like how we feel when a New Year comes around. But often, the new product, the new ruler, or the New Year doesn't make your life better. We get stuck in a cycle of wanting change and striving for it, only to find we aren't better off than before, which drives our desire to change once again. This is why, to quote Machiavelli: There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. —Niccolò Machiavelli The Prince In other words, you might get short-term support in the change you're trying to introduce, but the support you once had will soon wane, and those who were doing well before will try to overthrow you. 2. Retaining power This brings us to the second section, about retaining power. Being able to retain power starts with choosing carefully where and how you gain power. This is why Machiavelli warns: He who has not first laid his foundations may be able with great ability to lay them afterwards, but they will be laid with trouble to the architect and danger to the building. —Niccolò Machiavelli The Prince Any new sta

Which would you rather have? Mild success, or wild success? Most of us would prefer wild success. But we pursue mild success. And you can't have one when you're going for the other. The struggle of an aspiring novelist A more specific version of the scenario I mentioned in episode 253: Imagine you're working at Starbucks during the day, and at night you're writing novels – not just any novels, but your favorite kind. You call it Care Bear Fanfic Urban Fantasy. As far as you know, you're the only person who writes Care Bear Fanfic Urban Fantasy. Judging by your sales, you're also the only person who reads it. You've written three novels in this genre you've created, and there have been hardly any sales, aside from the handful of copies you've sold to your mom and close friends. After a couple years writing and promoting your Care-Bear novels, you decide it's time for a change. You told yourself when you started writing that as soon as you made as much as your Starbucks job, you'd quit and write full-time. You're not even close. Your hourly Starbucks wage isn't great, but you've actually lost money writing your three novels, after investing in cover designs and some ads. A new opportunity Fortunately, one of your friends is a pretty successful author. She makes a middle-class living writing in a genre called Sweet Romance – mostly read by retired women, some of whom read a new Sweet Romance novel every day. You buy your friend a coffee – or rather steal it from work – sit her down, and drill her to tell you all about writing and selling Sweet Romance novels. She's super helpful, and tells you everything you need to know about the story structure readers expect, what tropes each novel has to hit, and even what keywords to advertise under. Armed with your knowledge of the Sweet Romance genre, you get to work. It's not your favorite, but it would beat serving coffee, you figure. The first couple novels are a challenge, but once you get it down, you're cranking out a new one every several weeks. You've got it down to a whole system: You change the character names, the locations, and a few scenarios from your last novel, and they practically write themselves. Making it, as a middle-class novelist Three years later, you, like your friend, are a middle-class Sweet Romance novelist. You've written eighteen novels, in three series, and in the past year have profited $70k. You quit your job at Starbucks a couple years ago, and you were right: Writing Sweet Romance is way more fun than serving coffee. Still, something is missing. You're getting tired of writing the same stories over and over. New ideas for Care Bear Fanfic Urban Fantasy stories keep coming to you. But you keep pushing them down. Why would you bother writing another Care Bear novel, when you're sure you'll sell none? Why would you not write another Sweet Romance novel, when you're sure you'll sell some. Besides, you've upgraded your life: You now have a mortgage and a car payment, and your dog eats Purina instead of the off-brand stuff from Aldi. These novels don't sell forever. If you don't keep the Sweet Romance machine going, you'll make less and less money. A missed opportunity But, one day, you discover something that changes everything you thought you knew about the business of being an author. As you're tallying up your earnings at the end of the month, you realize that your Care Bear Fanfic Urban Fantasy series has started selling. In fact, you've sold a hundred copies in the past month! That's more copies than you've sold in all the previous years. You dig a little deeper, and discover another author, writing under the name Brave Heart Brian, has written seven Care Bear Fanfic Urban Fantasy novels. You're filled with excitement, confusion, and envy. You're excited to have some Care Bear novels to read, confused as to how Brave Heart Brian seems to have popped up out of nowhere, and envious that – judging from the Amazon ranks of his books – he's making more money than you are! You take a deep breath and wash away the envy – it is fanfic after all, it's not like you invented Care Bears. You email Brian to congratulate him on his success, and ask him how it all happened. It turns out Brian stumbled upon your Care Bear series last year. He loved it, and wanted to read more Care Bear Fanfic Urban Fantasy, but since you clearly weren't active anymore, he decided if he wanted to read more, he'd have to write the novels himself. Not only has he built up a nice following of readers, he just sold film rights for his series, for millions of dollars! The good news is, Care Bear Fanfic Urban Fantasy is quickly becoming a popular genre. The bad new is, you're not the author who will reap most of the benefits. Where did you go wrong? You wonder, Where did I go wrong? You tried writing Care Bear Fanfic Urban Fantasy for years, and the writing was on the wall: Nobody cared. The problem was, Sweet Romance was a sure bet – or at least one of the surer bets writin

You can't get through a project on momentum alone. But there are mechanisms you can use to tweak your motivation and make better use of what momentum you have. These motivation mechanisms aren't one-size-fits-all – you have to choose which ones work for you. Motivation requires self-mastery As I talked about on episode 291, getting through a creative project is like skateboarding through a halfpipe. You have a lot of motivation going into a project, due to your high expectations. Even if your expectations were to be met, it would still be impossible to coast through to the end of a project. There's too much friction along the way. Experienced skateboarders know how to soar out of halfpipes, because they know how to tweak their momentum. Experienced creators know how to follow through on creative projects, because they know how to tweak their motivation. But gaining this experience is a catch-22: You can't finish projects if you don't know how to tweak your motivation, and you don't know how to tweak your motivation if you haven't finished projects. You have to learn, through trial-and-error, what keeps you motivated. Finish smaller projects and build your shipping skills along the way. But it doesn't have to be guesswork. If you know what motivation mechanisms are at your disposal – and the strengths and pitfalls of those mechanisms, you can more quickly gain an understanding of your motivation. Three motivation mechanisms There are three main motivation mechanisms: carrots, sticks, and blinders. The carrot and the stick are classic motivation mechanisms that have been in the scientific literature on motivation for a long time. If you're riding a horse, there are two ways to motivate him: dangle a carrot in front of his face, or strike him in the flank with a stick. The carrot represents the promise of potential reward, the stick represents the threat of potential punishment, and what I call blinders block out distractions and keep the horse focused on the road ahead. We're attracted to rewards, and we avoid punishments. If we set up our projects so action leads to carrots and inaction leads to sticks, we'll get motivated and maintain the momentum to finish – in theory. Carrots: internal and external One way to work carrots into your projects is to have promising data. If you have market research that suggest you'll earn a lot of money if you finish the project, you might have an easier time getting motivated. Or, you might merely be so curious about the outcome of the project, that motivates you to follow through. You can also use external rewards as carrots. For example, you might promise yourself a vacation if you finish a project. On a more granular level, you might promise yourself a piece of chocolate for every 100 words you write. Sticks: internal and external One way to work sticks into your projects is to do part of a project that will result in a punishment if you don't finish the rest of the project. I called this "The Whip," in my book, The Heart to Start. When I create a new email course, for example, I use the whip. I set up a landing page promising emails on a schedule, then send traffic to the landing page. Once I have sign-ups, I'm highly motivated to finish writing all the emails in the course, as the promised dates approach. This same tactic has worked for other people who have tried my "Explosive Email Course" formula. You can also use external punishments as sticks. You can promise to pay your friend $100 if you don't finish your project by a certain date. On a more granular level, you can punish yourself for behavior that doesn't drive your project forward. Maneesh Sethi, who I interviewed on episodes 13 and 117, created Pavlok, a wristband you can program to shock you when you do things you'd rather quit. I once used it to quit Facebook, and it was shockingly effective. Blinders: physical and mental Carrots can reward you for the behavior you want to be motivated to do, and sticks can punish you for what you don't want to be motivated to do. Blinders can keep you more focused on what you want to be motivated to do, while blocking out what you don't want to be motivated to do. Blinders can be physical, or mental. If you have a dedicated office, or space you do your work, that's a form of physical blinder. By working in that space many times, your mind has been trained to focus on work when in that space. As I talked about in Mind Management, Not Time Management, even if you don't have much space, you can set up certain cues in your environment to serve as blinders. When I was first starting on my own, in a tiny bedroom in San Francisco, I transformed that space from bedroom to office through strategic use of a room divider, aromatherapy, and lighting. Physically separating yourself from a potential source of distraction is another type of physical blinder. If you put your phone in another room, or in a lockbox with a timer, that's a blinder. By using a "grippy" instead of "slippy" tool

The Network, by Scott Woolley, tells the history of wireless communications, and the stories of the characters that were a part of it. It's the first book strictly about media history that I'm summarizing and adding to my best media books list. Wireless communications start with wired communications Wireless communications today of course include cell phones, but The Network takes us from the wireless telegraph, to radio, to television, and finally to satellites. First, it gives a little background on the history of the electric telegraph, the invention which suddenly made it possible to move, in minutes, messages that used to take weeks to reach their destinations. The electric telegraph was able to change the world thanks to one simple action: The ability to move a piece of metal at the end of a wire. That was enough to develop codes that could transmit messages, based upon the simple movement of that piece of metal. This process started in 1822, when Christian Órsted attached a copper wire to a battery and saw a nearby compass needle move. There was a several-decade-long race to develop an electric telegraph. The first transatlantic cable was opened for business by 1866. A big customer of these telegraph services were stock traders, who could buy shares in London, sell them a few seconds later in New York, and always profit if their trades were executed in time. Morse code was the winning format for turning the movement of a piece of metal into messages that could travel around the world. A claim in The Network I couldn't find a source for, but that sounds pretty cool: The clouds in New York City at night used to have projected on them news, election results, and sports scores – in Morse code. From a worthless accidental discovery to worthwhile wireless The history of wireless communication started with a discovery as accidental as Christian Órsted's: Heinrich Hertz noticed that metal objects moved slightly when lightning struck nearby. He later conducted experiments where he successfully generated sparks through the air. It was pretty cool, but he concluded that the invisible waves he had discovered were "of no use whatsoever." Electrical signals that traveled through the air were made very useful, indeed, by Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi. For much of its early years, most people thought his Marconi Company was a scam. Like the dot-com and crypto booms, many companies at the dawn of wireless technology made off with investors' money. One article, with the headline, "Wireless and Worthless," pointed out that more criminals were being prosecuted from wireless companies than from any other industry. Besides, what did we need wireless technology for, when there were companies such as The Commercial, which was probably the hottest tech company in New York in the early 1900s? It owned five of the sixteen cables crossing the Atlantic Ocean, and one of the two that crossed the Pacific – which was 10,000 miles long. 10,000 miles was pretty impressive, especially when you consider that in 1896, Guglielmo Marconi could only send a wireless message one mile. What was the point? The pseudo-events of Guglielmo Marconi Marconi was good at building buzz for his wireless technology through public demonstrations – you could call them pseudo-events, a la Daniel J. Boorstin's The Image, which I talked about on episode 257. In front of an audience, he'd ask a volunteer to carry around a "magic box." He'd build tension from the stage, then push a lever, which would make the magic box buzz from afar. In 1898, when his wireless range was somewhere around ten miles, Marconi set up a telegraph receiver on the yacht of the prince of Wales. Queen Victoria sent the first mundane wireless text message, asking, "Can you come to tea?" The prince replied, "Very sorry, cannot come to tea." After all, he was on the ocean. By 1899, Marconi could send a message over the English channel, and by 1901, he could send a message 225 miles. Marconi had competition in trying to send a wireless message across the Atlantic, which was 3,000 miles. Nikola Tesla, with the money of J.P. Morgan, was working on a fifty-five ton, 187-foot-tall steel super-antenna. And Marconi didn't have the funding to build something like that. Marconi won that race across the Atlantic. In one of his publicity stunts, he was able to relay "Marconigrams," as he called them, from celebrities in London to celebrities at a dinner party in New York. But, that wasn't enough to impress stock traders who relied on wired telegrams – the messages took ten minutes to arrive, with pre-arranged help in expediting them as they traveled to and from coastal locations on wired connections. And radio waves are easier to transmit at night than during business hours, when radiation from the sun interferes with wireless signals. As the Titanic sank, Marconi rose But in 1912, the day before Marconi Company investors were to vote on whether to further fund the company, the Titanic sank. Us

A creative project is like a halfpipe. The depth of the halfpipe from which you must ascend to finish a project is equal to the height of the optimism that prompted you to begin. But there's a way to build your project halfpipe so the project itself keeps you moving forward. The gravity of optimism pulls you into a project When you begin a project, you are optimistic. Why else would you start? You're interested in the subject matter, and you expect to succeed. This optimism serves as the gravity that pulls you into the project halfpipe. Without experience, you can't maintain the momentum to finish The momentum you build from this drop into the halfpipe may get you through much of the project, but will eventually run out. By the time you get to the other side of the halfpipe – the end of the project – you've forgotten the optimism you once had, and the friction of reality has sapped your energy. The project isn't as fun as it once was, and it hasn't been as easy as you had expected. You face a steep incline, and don't have the momentum to ascend. Experienced skateboarders know how to tweak their momentum, so they have enough energy to ascend the other side of a halfpipe. Like kicking their legs while riding a swing, they're able to climb higher and higher, as they go back and forth. Experienced creators know how to tweak their motivation, too, to ascend the other side of the halfpipe. They've finished enough projects, they know how to harness their momentum to make the most of their efforts, and coast through the tough parts. But the need for this experience is a catch-22: You don't know how to tweak your motivation to follow through if you haven't finished projects, and if you haven't finished projects you don't know how to tweak your motivation. A halfpipe is a closed system A halfpipe, with nothing but a skateboard rolling back and forth, is a closed system. The first law of thermodynamics states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. The energy from the descent into the halfpipe is not enough to get to the other side of the halfpipe, because much of it is wasted on friction. When you put a person on the skateboard, that adds a new energy source to the system. The skateboarder can move their body in ways that overcome the loss of energy from friction, thus maintaining enough momentum to get out of the halfpipe. But the skateboarder is a closed system, too. They require energy to move. Shiny object syndrome sets in when projects get tough Shiny object syndrome often sets in toward the end of a project. There are other halfpipes all around. The excitement of dropping into one and once again experiencing effortless momentum is a lot more fun than putting forth effort to get out of the current halfpipe. So, you switch projects – you switch halfpipes. Some creators, after dropping into enough halfpipes, figure out how to tweak their motivation to get through one – whether due to luck or experimentation. More often, they get frustrated with the endless cycle of shiny object syndrome, and burn out. They stop "skating" altogether. You learn to maintain momentum by finishing projects But, you can turn the closed system of a halfpipe into an open system that maintains your momentum, propelling you to the finish. If you use this method to finish more projects, you'll gain experience tweaking your motivation. Maybe you need an accountability partner – or maybe you hate obligation. Maybe you gain momentum by building prototypes – or maybe you prefer to develop a detailed plan. Maybe you like to talk about ideas with friends – or maybe you discover it causes you to lose your momentum. Do smaller projects, finish more projects If you aren't finishing projects, you can't learn what works for you. A great way to finish more projects is simply do smaller projects. When you do smaller projects, two things happen: One, you make the halfpipe shorter, and less shallow, so you don't run out of momentum so fast, and you can more easily find the internal motivation to get out of the halfpipe. Two, you can more easily get momentum from the project itself, in the form of feedback loops. For example, when I'm working on a new book, I don't just sit down and write a book. That's too long and deep a halfpipe. I might be excited going in, but I'll soon lose momentum, and I'll forget why I began in the first place. Instead, I break the process of writing into tiny projects, which feed into progressively larger projects. I write and share an idea on Twitter. If it does well on Twitter, I expand it into a newsletter. If it does well as a newsletter, I expand it into an article and podcast episode. After I complete this process enough times, I have a large collection of ideas I can share in my book. There's still a lot of work to be done: I need to weave the ideas together into a cohesive whole, not to mention edit the book, lay it out, design the cover, and market it. But that bigger halfpipe of writing the book is much easier

The world expects us to be Raphaels, but some of us are Leonardos. Don't hold your Leonardo mind to Raphael standards, because this Raphael world would be nothing without Leonardo minds. There's an inscription in the Pantheon in Rome that says, "Here lies that famous Raphael by whom Nature feared to be conquered while he lived." In other words, Raphael was such an amazing painter, Nature was supposedly shaking in her boots, afraid he would learn all her tricks. (Ironically, Raphael's remains are sealed away in a sarcophagus, where Nature can't get to them. Who's afraid of who?) But Nature had nothing to fear. Raphael could not outdo her. As Raphael was being buried, the painter Nature should have feared lay hundreds of miles to the north, in a little church on the grounds of the King of France's chateau. Raphael the young phenom, Leonardo, the old has-been Several years before Raphael's early death, he was getting paid thousands of ducats to paint one fresco after another in the Vatican. Meanwhile, the aging Leonardo da Vinci was nearby, living off a meager 33 ducat-a-month stipend, not doing much of importance. The pope had tried hiring him to paint something, but ended up frustrated, saying, "This man will never get anything done!" When the prolific art patron, Elizabeth d'Este, who had hounded Leonardo for a portrait for decades, came to visit Rome, she didn't bother getting in touch with Leonardo. He was a has-been, who couldn't be counted on to follow through. Who was she there to see? The young phenom, Raphael. Raphael was very similar to Leonardo, but also very different. His most important difference was that he was a master executor. If you hired Raphael, he got the job done. He also had been raised in the workshop of his father, a court painter for a Duke, so Raphael was refined and well-mannered. He knew how to schmooze with nobility. He had the connections that came along with that background, and could get a letter of recommendation from one powerful person to another with ease. Leonardo, on the other hand, was born out of wedlock – which made him "illegitimate" at the time – and didn't get much education. While he had gained a reputation as a brilliant engineer and architect, he had also gained a reputation as an unreliable painter. Raphael: A reliable Leonardo As Raphael continued his career as the pope's wunderkind, Leonardo worked his way north. He left yet another project unfinished in Milan, then impressed King Francis I enough to be invited to join him at the Chateau d'Amboise, as the official painter, architect, and court pageantry designer. While a gig with the King of France wasn't the worst thing in the world, it was a step down from what Leonardo could have been doing if he hadn't been reputed as someone who couldn't get things done. The pope and all the nobles in all the principalities of Italy just watched him go. He'd never return again. While Raphael had some clear advantages that helped his career advance, he couldn't have done it without the ways he and Leonardo were similar. The frescoes being painted by the young Raphael – such as his most-famous School of Athens – were exactly the kinds of projects Leonardo would have been great for, if only he could have been counted on to finish them. In fact, there was no person in the world to whom Raphael owed his own painting style more than Leonardo. When it came to painting, Raphael was mostly a reliable Leonardo. Raphael's "Leonardo period" Art historians call the years during which Raphael spent a lot of time in Florence his "Florence period." But they might as well call them his "Leonardo period." That's the four years during which Raphael's work started looking less like that of his mentor, Perugino, and more like that of his idol, Leonardo. During Raphael's Florence period, Leonardo was in a public face-off with another young phenom, Michelangelo. Leonardo had been commissioned to paint a battle scene in the Florence Council Hall. As usual, the first deadline came and went. Meanwhile, Michelangelo had done such a great job with his David statue, the council decided it would be a great idea to have him paint a battle scene, too. It was a pretty awkward situation for Leonardo. He was already struggling to finish, and a committee of which he had been a part had gone against his recommendation for a less-conspicuous location and put the David right outside the entrance of the council hall. Michelangelo was an arrogant prick who openly taunted Leonardo for his past failures, and now Leonardo had to walk through the shadow of Michelangelo's latest triumph to get to his mural. Oh, and Michelangelo's battle scene mural was directly across the room from his. By all accounts at the time, this was a painting competition – a battle of battle scenes. Leonardo wasn't competitive by nature, but this was supposedly going to motivate him to finish his mural. Today, we might say putting Leonardo in this position was pretty machiavellian. Which i

Today I have a special episode for you. If you missed last month's AMA/Livestream, I'm delivering it right to your ears. In this AMA, I answered questions about: How should I start marketing my books? How can you cope with burnout that gets in the way of creative work? How can you market your books when it doesn't come naturally? How did you build your audience and how long did it take? (How can you build an audience without "niching down"?) What's the difference between an accountability partner and a creativity partner? How did you get your first book deal? How can you stay motivated and get help from others when you work in isolation? How can you create luck in creative work? Which is better: Medium, or Substack? Do you use editing software, such as Grammarly? How did you come up with the Seven Mental States of Creativity? Have you made soap lately? How are you improving your fiction and storytelling skills? How do you hack learning a new language? Why are you using a pen name to write fiction? What are good writing goals for a beginner? Why do you prefer self-publishing over traditional? How can you pick a creative project when you have too many ideas? How do you make foreign-rights deals for your books? What should do with lots of different content on different topics? I also mention in this my new giveaway, and I'll tell you briefly about it now. I'm giving away 20 of my favorite creativity books. As you know from this show, I'm a creativity enthusiast. I love to think about how to tap into your creativity and motivate action, and I love stories about how all creators do that, whether they're writers, painters, musicians, scientists – or do any kind of creative work. I've compiled a list of my favorite creativity books, spanning mindset, creativity science, biographies, and more. I'm reaching into my own pocket and buying all twenty book for one lucky winner. Find out which books are on the list and sign up at kdv.co/giveaway. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon » Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/ama-september-2022/

The book, Old Masters and Young Geniuses shows there are two types of creators: experimental, and conceptual. Experimental and conceptual creators differ in their approaches to their work, and follow two distinct career paths. Experimental creators grow to become old masters. Conceptual creators shine as young geniuses. University of Chicago economist, and author of Old Masters and Young Geniuses, David Galenson – who I interviewed on episode 105 – wanted to know how the ages of artists affected the prices of their paintings. He isolated the ages of artists from other factors that affect price, such as canvas size, sale date, and support type (whether it's on canvas, paper, or other). He expected to find a neat effect, such as "paintings from younger/older artists sell for more." But instead, he found two distinct patterns: Some artists' paintings from their younger years sold for more. Other artists' paintings from their older years sold for more. He then found this same pattern in the historical significance of artists' work: The rate at which paintings were included in art history books or retrospective exhibitions – both indicators of significance – peaked at the same ages as the values of paintings. When he looked closely at how painters who followed these two trajectories differed, he found that the ones who peaked early took a conceptual approach, while those who peaked late took an experimental approach. Cézanne vs. Picasso The perfect examples of contrasting experimental and conceptual painters are Paul Cézanne and Pablo Picasso. Paintings from Cézanne's final year of life, when he was sixty-seven, are his most valuable. Paintings from early in Picasso's career, when he was twenty-six, are his most valuable. A painting done when Picasso was twenty-six is worth four times as much as one done when he was sixty-seven (he lived to be ninety-one, and his biographer and friend called the dearth of his influential work later in life "a sad end"). A painting done when Cézanne was sixty-seven – the year he died – is worth fifteen times as much as one done when he was twenty-six. Cézanne, the experimenter Cézanne took an experimental approach to painting, which explains why it took so long for his career to peak. Picasso took a conceptual approach, which explains why he peaked early. Cézanne left the conceptual debates of Paris cafés to live in the south of France, in his thirties. He spent the next three decades struggling to paint what he truly saw in landscapes. He felt limited by the fact that, as he was looking at a canvas, he could only paint the memory of what he had just seen. He did few preparatory sketches early in his career, but grew to paint straight from nature. He treated his paintings as process work, and seemed to have no use for them when he was finished: He only signed about ten percent of his paintings, and sometimes threw them into bushes or left them in fields. Picasso, the conceptual genius Picasso, instead, executed one concept after another. He had early success with his Blue period and Rose period, then dove into Cubism. He often planned paintings carefully, in advance: He did more than four-hundred studies for his most valuable and influential painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. One model described how he simply stared at her for an hour, apparently planning a series of paintings in his head, which he began painting the next day, without her assistance. Cézanne said, "I seek in painting." Picasso said, "I don't seek; I find." Cézanne struggled to paint what he saw, and Picasso said, "I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them." Experimental vs. conceptual artists Here are some qualities that differ between experimental and conceptual artists: Experimental artists work inductively. Through the process of creation, they arrive at their solution. Conceptual artists work deductively. They begin with a solution in mind, then work towards it. Experimental artists have vague goals. They're not quite sure what they're seeking. Conceptual artists have specific goals. They already have an idea in their head they're trying to execute. Experimental artists are full of doubt. Since they don't already have the solution, and aren't sure what they're looking for, they rarely feel they've succeeded. Conceptual artists are confident. They know what they're after, so once they've achieved it, they're done, and can move on to the next thing. Experimental artists repeat themselves. They might paint the same subject over and over, tweaking their approach. Conceptual artists change quickly. They'll move from subject to subject, style to style, concept to concept. Experimental artists do it themselves. They're discovering throughout the process, so they rarely use assistants. Conceptual artists delegate. They just need their concept executed, so someone else can often do the work. Experimental artists discover. Over the years, they build up knowledge in a field, to invent new approaches. Conceptu

Do you want to build an audience online, but have such a wide variety of interests, you don't know what to focus on? I think you'll like this interview with David Perell. David Perell (@david_perell) calls himself "The Writing Guy." He runs the cohort-based online writing school, Write of Passage (I love that name). His marketing is very specific, but he has incredibly diverse interests, and enthusiastically shares content related to those interests online. I went through his links on his website (no longer posted) to prepare for this conversation, and just my highlights of his links were over 6,000 words long! The topics included economics, art, urban planning, golf, music, and much more. I've been really impressed watching David's online presence, so I brought him on the podcast for my first interview episode in more than two years! We'll talk about: The four grants David has gotten from Tyler Cowen's Emergent Ventures. How did he get those grants, and for what projects? Have all the opportunities to grow your audience online passed? David will share what he thinks is the biggest growth opportunity right now. We'll talk about how to please the Twitter algorithm. What about it is "so brutal," as David says? Topics mentioned Write of Passage David Perell Twitter David Perell's podcast "The Hedgehog and the Fox" by Isaiah Berlin David's viral logo thread Tyler Cowen Tim Ferriss Joe Rogan David Galenson Old Masters and Young Geniuses Pablo Picasso Paul Cézanne Andy Warhol Leonardo da Vinci Raphael Michelangelo Cézanne's studio Claude Monet Impressionism Cubism Space X Mark Manson Tim Urban on Tim Ferriss Hacker News Patrick Mackenzie Quantitative Easing Dodgeball Foursquare Mark Manson Twitter James Clear Twitter "Fake Take" Don't hate the player, hate the game Emergent Ventures Renee Girard lectures Naval Ravikant on leverage The Age of Leverage Nat Eliason on speed versus mass Warren Buffett spends one year deciding The Barbell Strategy for content marketing – Alex Birkett Matthew Fitzpatrick Mark Broadie Strokes Gained Trackman Titlelist Performance Institute About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon » Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/david-perell-podcast

Submit your questions and mark your calendars for my upcoming AMA/Livestream.

In 1977, Richard Bachman published his first novel. In an unusual move for a first-time author, Bachman made his publisher promise to release his books with hardly any marketing. Bachman stacked the dice against himself Bachman's books were to skip the hardcover format and go straight to bargain-bin paperback – the kind you'd find mixed in with other nobody-authors, at a truck stop on I-80, somewhere near Grand Island. He also insisted he was unavailable for interviews, which cut his books off from a key marketing channel. Most publishers wouldn't agree to such bizarre terms, but they were especially excited to release Bachman's books. But he still did pretty well Today, forty-five years later, most people have unsurprisingly never heard of Richard Bachman. His books did alright, though: His fourth was optioned for film rights, his fifth sold 28,000 copies, and he got a couple letters a month from fans of his writing. Bachman wasn't Bachman But his books were so good, one Washington D.C. bookstore clerk was suspicious. Steve Brown dug through the Library of Congress copyright records, and confirmed his suspicion: Richard Bachman was Stephen King. Why did one of the world's hottest authors publish – in the same genre – under a pen name? At the time, King's publisher had an almost-superstitious belief that if they published more than one of his books in a year, they would distract readers from This Year's Book (that they let King publish Bachman books with so little fanfare speaks to their conviction in this belief). King later described it as like being married to someone with a drastically-smaller sexual appetite: He had to find an outlet somewhere else. "Either find an audience or disappear quietly" While he was publishing under a pen name, he figured he'd conduct an experiment. He wondered, to what degree was his massive success due to luck? So, as he has said, Stephen King "stacked the dice" against Richard Bachman. He wanted Bachman's books "to go out there and either find an audience or just disappear quietly." After word got out that Richard Bachman was Stephen King, his books sold even better. That book that sold 28,000 copies for Richard Bachman – Thinner – quickly sold ten times that as a King title. Is seven years & five books long enough? At first glance, King's Bachman experiment is an open-and-shut case: Bachman's books sold way more copies with Stephen King's name on their covers. But King himself feels his experiment got cut short. He said of Bachman, who he killed off in a press release by "cancer of the pseudonym," "He died with that question – is it work that takes you to the top or is it all just a lottery? – still unanswered." Bachman worked in anonymity for seven years, and released five books – how is that not enough? Even the pros don't know William Goldman was a two-time Academy-Award-Winning screenwriter. He wrote the screenplays for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Princess Bride, and Misery (which was supposed to be Richard Bachman's sixth book, but instead was released by Stephen King). In Goldman's book, Adventures in the Screen Trade, he pointed out that in one typical movie season, sixteen major films were released by the major studios. One was a runaway success, and ten of those sixteen lost more than ten million dollars. Why did those studios bother making the stinkers? Because, as Goldman said: Nobody knows anything...... Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what's going to work. Every time out it's a guess and, if you're lucky, an educated one. Nobody knowing anything takes the appeal out of King's Bachman story. It sounded like the perfect story for aspiring creatives to point to and say, "Look, the universe is conspiring against me. If you don't have a big name already, you're screwed." Nothing guarantees creative success But really, nothing can guarantee success. You could say you have to have connections, and I could point out that Richard Pryor's son played at the Apollo, and got booed off the stage. You could say you need name recognition, and I could tell you that the 28,000 copies Bachman's fifth book sold was four-thousand more than Stephen King's own fourth book sold. You could say all you need is your big break, and I could remind you that Steve Martin was on The Tonight Show – the big break in the comedy business at the time – sixteen times before someone recognized him in public. Nobody knows anything. If movie studios knew blockbusters, that's all they'd make. If record companies knew hits, that's all they'd release. If publishers knew bestsellers, that's all they'd launch. And if venture capitalists knew "unicorns," they'd just be called capitalists. Quality can't hide Nobody knows anything, but somebody knows something. As Goldman himself said, you can make an educated guess. I bet he'd agree that a ninety-minute cellphone video of a ham sandwich sitting on a plate is unlikely to fill theaters. There was another aut

"Crumb time" is the little pieces of time that get lost throughout the day. Instead of giving away your crumb time to unproductive distractions, build systems that complete big projects with small actions. Today, I'll tell you how. Crumb time is everywhere throughout our days. Whenever we do something substantial with our time, little chunks of time of various sizes and shapes fall to the floor. What is crumb time? Crumb time has a combination of the following qualities: Short amounts of time. Crumb time can be less than a minute, or several minutes. Unknown lengths of time. You often don't know when your crumb time will be over. It could end in a few seconds, or a few minutes. Distracting environments. It's hard enough to focus when you don't know when you'll be interrupted, but the environments in which crumb time take place are often noisy, with lots of activity. Some examples of crumb time: Standing in line at an airport: Lots is going on, you're waiting for your boarding call. Riding in a cab: The scenery is changing, but you might have a good idea how much time you have. Waiting for a friend to meet you for lunch: They could come in the door in two seconds, or twenty minutes. Why do we give away crumb time? Crumb time feels insignificant, and we think we need a controlled environment and a big block of time to do anything useful. You don't have the time or mental bandwidth, it seems, to make substantial progress reading a book, or writing an article. So, we doomscroll on Twitter, blow off steam with a game such as Wordle, or do something pseudo-productive such as check email once again. Productive uses of crumb time We just give away our crumb time, but we could turn it into something useful. Here are some things you could do with crumb time: Review highlights in your Zettelkasten: My favorite use of crumb time is reviewing my highlights from a book. I export them to Markdown, and whenever I have a moment, I scroll through the highlights in a plain-text app on my phone. I bold any of the highlights that are extra interesting. When my crumb time is over, I mark my place and lock my phone. Learn about something: A crumb-time list is a key component of a system of curiosity management, which I talked about on episode 284. Keep a list of subjects you'd like to learn about, and when you have crumb time, read a Wikipedia page. (I'm not a fan of read-later apps, because the easier it is to save articles, the harder it is to read all of them). Brainstorm social media updates: Twitter is a great place to share ideas, a terrible place to have them. Brainstorm potential tweets in a text file, to polish and schedule later. How about doing nothing at all? Another valid use of your crumb time is simply doing nothing. But when you choose to do something, you may as well do something useful. Anything other than giving away crumb time is better than building that bad habit. The more you give away crumb time, the easier that becomes the default use of your crumb time. Take a seven-day crumb-time challenge You don't need to change your crumb time habits all at once, forever. Instead, try a seven-day crumb-time challenge. Here's how: Delete social media apps. You can do most things on Twitter or Instagram from desktop. Get them off your phone, to force yourself to make good use of crumb time. Block social media websites. Use the parental controls on your phone to block websites to which you give away your crumb time. For me that's twitter.com and instagram.com. On the iPhone, use the "Limit Adult Websites" feature, and add whatever sites you want to the block list. (You can also add adult websites to the allowed sites if that's your thing.) Set up crumb-time actions. If you have a Zettelkasten, you know what to do. If you don't have one, for a quick-start you could export your highlights from your favorite book and have them available on your phone. Set up a list of things you'd like to look up when you have crumb time. Set up a scratch file for brainstorming social media updates, or set up anything else you could make progress on when you have a minute. Audio crumb time You're of course not always able to use your hands during crumb time, such as when you're driving. This is actually a great reason to have a podcast. Sharing your ideas with others is nice, but if you want to review your own ideas during crumb time, with a podcast you already have a convenient format in which to do so. But, you can also listen to articles or text you'd like to review using the text-to-speech feature on your phone, or an app, such as Otter. Crumb time becomes something bigger I like the term "crumb time" not only because it implies crumb time's perceived insignificance, but also because substantial things consist of crumbs. Bakers talk about the "crumb structure" of a cake, which is the mix of air and pastry that makes up the cake. In agriculture, soil has taken on a "crumb structure" when it has the right amount of moisture for the soil

Do you ever feel like you don't have the time and energy to learn about everything you want to know? Is it hard to stay focused on reading one book, when there's ten others you want to read? You need curiosity management. Curiosity management is the management of your thirst to know things. In a world with unlimited access to information, and finite time and energy, it's impossible to read every book, watch every documentary, or take every online course. Unmanaged curiosity leads to "curiosity pressure" This leads to a feeling of "curiosity pressure." Curiosity pressure is the feeling you'll never learn all the things you want to learn. When you're under time pressure – curiosity pressure's close cousin – and feel you don't have enough time to do everything, your anxiety makes it hard to do one thing. When you're under curiosity pressure and feel you can't learn everything, your anxiety makes it hard to learn one thing. A good curiosity-management system matches your level of curiosity with an appropriate level of engagement with the topic, given your available time and energy. The downward spiral of poor retention, & feelings of inadequacy A day in the life of a curious mind looks like this: Think of thing you want to learn about, such as the chemical processes behind making soap. Instantly go to Wikipedia. Follow every link and every footnote. Regain consciousness four hours later, with one-hundred tabs open, and no recollection of what you've consumed. Inexplicably, one of the tabs is about the Lorena Bobbitt scandal. Feel bad that you got nothing done, and didn't learn much either. Surplus curiosity When you don't satisfy your curiosity, despite doing the activities of investigation – such as reading or watching videos – you're overcome with "surplus curiosity." Surplus curiosity is a feeling you should always be investigating more topics. The anxiety and inadequacy you feel from not satisfying your curiosity cause you to be curious about even more things. This drives a downward spiral: You feel bad for not knowing all you want to know, you want to know more things, but poorly managing your curiosity makes it impossible to satisfy your natural curiosities, much less your surplus curiosities. The goal of curiosity management: Learn just enough, and remember it You're not going to stop being curious. Your curiosity is a good thing. But if you can manage your curiosity, you can remember more of what you consume and reduce curiosity pressure. If you successfully reduce curiosity pressure, you'll reduce the anxiety and feelings of inadequacy that actually drive some surplus curiosity. The fundamental error: All-or-nothing curiosity The fundamental error most curious minds make is they want to learn everything about a topic the moment they become curious about it. Instead of spending five minutes perusing the Wikipedia page, they watch the four-hour documentary. Instead of reading the book summary, they try to read the whole book. This drives the downward cycle: At some point, the media they're engaged with calls for more time and energy than their actual curiosity for the topic merits. This causes fatigue and frustration. Yet there are still so many things they want to learn about, and feelings of anxiety and inadequacy flare up. The most immediate solution seems to be to read more, watch more, consume more – surplus curiosity. Yet little of it is absorbed, and the original curiosity that began the cycle is only vaguely satisfied. The right engagement for the level of curiosity To engage appropriately with what you're curious about, first assess the level of curiosity. There are three: Compulsory curiosity is a feeling that you should know about this. Like, "What is this TikTok thing about?" Cursory curiosity is a feeling you'd like to know something about this topic. Like, "What is Marie Curie's story?" Compulsive curiosity is a driving obsession to learn everything you can about a topic. If you need an example, you don't need curiosity management. Of course, as you learn about topics, your level of curiosity may progress. You try TikTok a few minutes and are intrigued. You read the Marie Curie Wikipedia page, and want to learn much more. Your compulsive curiosity may be more intense for one topic than another, or change from day to day. Three basic components of curiosity management The main mechanism behind curiosity management is categorizing topics about which you're curious according to the level of curiosity, and engaging with those topics only to the point that your curiosity is either satisfied, or further aroused (with some exceptions). I propose four components to a good modern curiosity-management system: A rule: Never consume information upon first encountering it: (With one exception, coming up.) Take only a quick glance to assess your level of curiosity about the information, and the informations' potential for satisfying that curiosity. Then put it in the appropriate place, for later processi

Five years ago, I wrote about how - after ten years as a self-employed independent creator - I hoped to "make it." I now realize, I never will. Five years ago, I sat at my keyboard to have a serious conversation with myself. It had been ten years since I had woken up to a day with nothing scheduled, and wondered how I was going to fill it with something that both made life worth living, and also paid the bills. In this conversation, I asked myself, How did you end up here? Have you made a big mistake? I had spent a good chunk of my retirement savings, left Silicon Valley in the midst of a boom, and now found myself barely getting by in South America. About a thousand words in, I stopped and cracked into tears, not only because I was scared out of my mind, but because still – despite not seeing a clear path to making this work - I couldn't see myself giving up. I concluded: Take it from me, a ten-year veteran self-employed creator: If you are looking for security or reassurance, I do not recommend this line of work. However, if you are burning with curiosity – if your heart and intuition lead you to do things that don't make sense – well, then you don't really have a choice in the matter, do you? When I was done with that conversation, I had a massive vulnerability hangover. I felt embarrassed to publish it, but since I had resolved to be writer, I felt I had to. However, I didn't do anything I normally did to promote a post: no Medium publication, no email blast, no podcast episode, not even a tweet. I just quietly pressed "Publish" and got on with my day. It slowly, then quickly, became the most popular thing I had ever written. Now, five years later, I've been a full-time creator for fifteen years. (It wasn't called that when I started. I was just a weird guy who wouldn't get a job.) Not long after publishing my personal conversation, I started publicly reporting my income on my blog. While more famous bloggers were excitedly reporting six- and seven-figure months, I was reporting one three-thousand-dollar month after another. One month I even lost money. However, about a year ago, my numbers started to climb. I recently reported a six-figure-year for the first time. I had made six-figures before the reports, but most of that was from an uninspiring blog I had written under a pseudonym. This was the first time I could look at every dollar I had made and say to myself, "I made this money doing exactly what I want to be doing. I am officially me for a living." I looked in the mirror later that day at the gray hairs that have come to dominate my beard and the stray ones sprouting from my temples. I thought back to when I was twenty-five and I'd stare in the mirror, looking at the young man I felt was full of potential, but who had no idea how to get out of Nebraska. Every cell of skin and hair on my body had regenerated since then, but I figured I still had the same eyes. So I looked into them and said, "You did it, kid. You made it." Not the next day, nor the day after that, but soon after, I felt a deeper emptiness than I had before. I thought back to my twenty-five year old self hearing for the hundredth time the CAD technician with hair as tall as the man was wide yell out, as he waddled through the break room, "Kadavy, with another Banquet meal!" Those microwaveable meals had been frequently on sale at Hy-Vee, ten for eight dollars, and the best strategy I could come up with in 2004 had been to save up and buy Apple and Google stock. As I had rolled my eyes and sighed at the Office-Space-like monotony of my existence, I would have gladly traded places with my current life. I had struggled for so long, so hard, and had passed up so many other opportunities a normal person would have taken. I risked failure, and hadn't failed. Why did I feel a lack of inspiration, a malaise? Around that time, I read and resonated deeply with an essay by Joan Didion, where she marvels at how a six-month stay in New York crept into eight years, "with the deceptive ease of a film dissolve." Young, foolish, and non-committal, she felt she "could stay up all night and make mistakes, and none of it would count." It wasn't until it was over she had realized, "it had counted after all." The dozenth friend said to me recently, "If you can sell 25,000 copies of a book, do you have any idea how much you could make on a course, consulting, or coaching!?" I politely explained I had heard the same many times before and I had tried courses, consulting, and coaching, and didn't enjoy them. Basically, what I wrote five years ago: I want to make a living creating. I don't want creating to be merely a marketing strategy for other things. Is that completely insane? This friend, like seemingly all I had at the beginning of this fifteen-journey, is now a millionaire. Did I feel this emptiness because it had taken so long to get here? Because there are many more definitions of "making it," financially, beyond a six-figure income – that everyone

I recently advertised my book on a billboard in Times Square. It was cheaper than you think, and was up for less time than you might expect. But it's still paying dividends. Times Square is a big deal (duh) Times Square is the epitome of mainstream success. The biggest brands have locations there, and any big brand you can name advertises there. 350,000 people walk through Times Square on a typical day. It's also one of the most-photographed places on Earth, with many of those photos and videos being shared on television shows such as Good Morning America, and on TikTok or Instagram. A lowly self-published book advertised next to the biggest brands When my friend, Robbie Abed, told me you can advertise in Times Square for cheap, I knew I had to run an ad for Mind Management, Not Time Management. A book about a new approach to time management, in a city obsessed with time management, in a place with "time" right in the name? It was a match made in heaven! The very thought of my lowly self-published book advertised on the front of Forever 21, above a Sunglass Hut, across from the Disney store, next to McDonald's, in Times Square made me laugh the maniacal laughter of an evil villain plotting to take over the world – in some Disney movie, of course. Will a billboard sell books? Before I explain how I advertised in Times Square for cheap, I'm sure some of you are thinking, "Will advertising on a billboard sell books?" You're right to think that since people are walking or driving through Times Square, even if they noticed my billboard in this place that is nearly all billboards, they're not going to stop what they're doing, take out their phones, and order my book on Amazon. The making of a pseudo-event But that's not the point. By advertising my book in Times Square, I was creating a "pseudo-event". I talked about pseudo-events in my summary of Daniel J. Boorstin's The Image on episode 257. A pseudo-event is a reality constructed just so it can be covered in media. By being covered in media, the constructed reality becomes reality. Pseudo-events can be funny, or horrifying. They can be based upon truth, or lies. But our media is full of them. Most "leaks" you see, every talk-show interview, and every planned event are pseudo-events. Instagram is one pseudo-event after another. Reality is constructed for media, and media constructs our reality. My book really was advertised in Times Square. My lowly self-published book really is a "big deal." How much does a Times Square ad cost? People want to know, how much does it cost to advertise your book in Times Square? Some people guess five-thousand dollars. Some guess twenty-. I advertised my book on a Times Square billboard with Blip Billboards. Blip is a platform that lets you buy short displays of an ad on electronic billboards across the U.S. Each "blip" lasts fifteen seconds. I paid about nine cents per blip in tests I ran in Chicago, and had a blip run in Times Square for as little as twenty dollars. "As little as" twenty dollars? I'll get into my exact costs in a bit. But first, was my pseudo-event worth it? Here are some of my wins from this fifteen-second ad so far. Win #1: A retweet from Tim Ferriss My first big win from my Times Square billboard was a retweet from Tim Ferriss. Tim Ferriss asks his podcast guests what message they would advertise to the world. I've always thought if I were asked that question, my answer would be the title of my book, Mind Management, Not Time Management. So, I made sure one of my billboards was as plain as possible. It just said, "Mind Management, Not Time Management." Then, I shared a video of the billboard on Twitter, making sure to tag Tim (whom I've never met nor talked to). It was a long shot, but it worked. Tim retweeted it. Tim has 1.8 million followers. I did see a decent spike in sales. Hard to know if this was the cause, but I didn't have competing promotions. Win #2: Speaking for the New York Public Library My second win was speaking for the New York Public Library. When I emailed my readers to let them know my book was advertised in Times Square, it turned out one reader organizes events for the New York Public Library. This reader was excited to hear about my book being advertised in Times Square, and this prompted them to invite me to speak over Zoom to the library's audience. They promoted the event to their email list of one million subscribers, and the day before the event, my new friend there informed me that: The NYPL stocked all of my books, in paper, ebook, and audiobook formats. My event was featured on NYPL's home page My book was selected as the NYPL Business Center's "book of the month." The video of my speaking event is now listed on the library's CEO series page, along with talks by Marie Forleo, Seth Godin, and A.J. Jacobs. I also got a couple links to my website from nypl.org, high-authority links which boost my site in search rankings. Win #3: Advertising that paid for itself My third win is th

In fifteen years as a self-employed creator, I've learned how to finish what matters. I follow a nine-step process that makes an easy-to-remember acronym, that also describes what this process does: E.R.A.S.E. F.E.A.R. Fear is Resistance Fear is at the root of most struggles to finish creative projects. Even when you think you're merely getting interested in another project, that's often fear masquerading as curiosity. Steven Pressfield calls it Resistance. It can cause the dreaded shiny object syndrome. But if you can break down most of the sources of fear, you can clear the way for decisive action. You can erase fear. The E.R.A.S.E. F.E.A.R process First, what does "erase fear" stand for? Envision the outcome Rehearse the process Ask questions Search for answers Enjoy the process Face the obstacles End perfectionism Assess the outcome Record the process A little more about each of those. 1. Envision the outcome. If you have a clear picture of the outcome you want, you can reverse-engineer your way to making it happen. Executing visions is a skill to work on, because we usually have a vision that outpaces our current abilities and resources. To get better at envisioning, work on your vision muscle. Practice having a vision, then carrying it out. You do this every time you cook a recipe or plan a party. Write down the outcome you'd like to see. Use the methodology I described on episode 245, about the avocado challenge, to rate your odds of success. 2. Rehearse the process. Once you have a vision, mentally rehearse the steps. Do you have any idea what steps to follow to make this vision a reality? I want "Goldilocks" fear in my projects. If you know exactly what to do, it won't be fun. If you don't know where to begin, you'll be paralyzed. You want just the right amount of fear, to keep it interesting. If you're too familiar with the process, ask yourself, How can you scale up your vision? If you're too unfamiliar, ask yourself, How can you scale it down? 3. Ask questions about the gaps in your knowledge. Now you have a vision that challenges you just the right amount. There are parts of the process you don't understand. These unknowns can be sources of fear: They could turn out to be way more complicated than you expected, which would put in jeopardy your ability to follow through. Write down the questions you have about the process. 4. Search for answers. Look at your questions about the process. Set aside time and energy to answer them. You can make a surprising amount of progress just guessing. Before you ask anyone else, ask yourself, How would I do this? You might find a new way of doing things. If too much is unknown, you may have to scale back your vision once again. If it's all too easy, you may need to scale it up. But don't get frustrated if you don't find all the answers. You'll learn them in the next step. 5. Enjoy the process. You've planned and worked to pick the right project. But you can't go into it without some unknowns. Otherwise, by definition, it wouldn't be a creative project. You'll find the rest of the answers to your questions in the act of doing. This is where you need to do a little mental wrestling. Whatever fear you have, flip it over and slam it on its back. Turn that fear into excitement about discovery. If you've done the first four steps well, picking the right-sized project with the right amount of uncertainty, you'll be able to pull this off. 6. Face the obstacles. As hard as you try to take on a project you can handle, you're going to run into obstacles. Fear often manifests itself as convenient excuses. The most dangerous excuses are the true ones. Yes, your project hasn't gone as planned or a bomb went off in your personal life, but that doesn't mean this is impossible. Slaughter your scapegoats and move forward. Anything worth doing requires some grit. 7. End perfectionism. You're nearing the end of your project. In fact, you could ship it right now. That is, if it weren't for perfectionism. Perfectionism can turn the final five percent of a project into a hundred-five percent. Just when you put on one "final touch", you notice another that needs to be improved. Part of this is due to the Finisher's Paradox, which I talked about on episode 267: You learn in the process of a project, so by the end, you can already do better. Another part of it is fear. Fear makes you anxious. When you're anxious, you notice imperfections. Some of those imperfections are figments of your imagination. You've done all you can up to this point to erase fear, but there's still going to be some in the final stretch. Know perfectionism is there, and push through to ship. Like I talked about on episode 265, shipping is a skill. 8. Assess the outcome. Even though we're done with the project, we're not done erasing fear. Now that your project is out in the world, ask yourself, How did it turn out? Look back on the vision you wrote down, and your predictions about success. Does it fit that vision

When Facebook was first expanding, they used a timeless military strategy to win their most-crucial first users. You can use this strategy to attack your toughest projects, by leveraging hidden complexity to lend devastating power to simple actions. Facebook faced tough competitors When Facebook was starting, in the mid-aughts, it was only available at colleges. It wasn't easy to win new users on campuses that had their own social networks. Who wants to join the network nobody is on? That's not where you find the big parties. That's not how you spy on your crush. There was no point in promoting to students who already had better alternatives. Facebook would waste their limited resources, driving themselves out of business. There were plenty of competitors they needed to outlast. An established network at a college was a barrier to winning over any user at that college – a "defense," if you will. Facebook needed to break through those barriers. The surround strategy: Attack from the flanks So they used what they called a "surround strategy". Instead of directly trying to get users on a given campus, they got them indirectly. The strategy that decimated the Roman army 1800 years ago Facebook's surround strategy was borrowed from the "pincer" military strategy. When you're up against an opponent with strong defenses, it's often not the best use of your resources to attack them head-on. It's better to focus on the flanks. Hannibal used a pincer strategy in one of the greatest military upsets in history, at the Battle of Cannae, in 216 B.C., sending the Roman empire into a panic. As the Romans attacked from a concentrated center, the center of Hannibal's forces fell back, creating a "crescent" shape that helped them attack the flanks. Eventually, Hannibal had the Romans surrounded. The Romans lost so many men that day, they had to lower the draft age to replenish their forces, and they reverted to using human sacrifices to try to please the gods. How Facebook won key users indirectly Facebook used this pincer strategy to indirectly win users at Baylor University, in Texas, which already had its own social network. Instead of promoting Facebook to users at Baylor, they focused on campuses near Baylor There weren't already competing social networks at UT Arlington, a one and a half-hour drive to the north; Southwestern University, a one-hour drive to the southwest; and Texas A&M, a one and a half-hour drive to the southeast. To get the dirt on their exes, they needed to be on Facebook While Facebook wasn't wasting resources trying to get Baylor students to switch social networks, those students started to hear about Facebook, anyway. The students in these surrounding colleges were former high-school classmates of the Baylor students. They were driving to one another's campuses to bong beers and eat jello shots. They were hearing rumors their high-school sweethearts were getting naked with half the campus. They were laughing maniacally upon hearing the former bully was found passed out, naked with an armadillo. To get the dirt, to creep on one another's profiles, or, sometimes to just stay in touch, they too needed Facebook accounts. So, without any promotion at Baylor, Facebook started winning users at Baylor. The birthday problem reveals the hidden complexity that make the surround strategy work This surround strategy works better than people expect it to. To understand why, think about the birthday problem, which I talked about on episode 237. How many people have to be in a room for a fifty-percent chance two of them have the same birthday? Most people guess 180 or 150, but the real answer: only twenty-three. The odds of shared birthdays climb rapidly as you add the first few dozen people to the room. Network effects between each person's potential birthdates quickly add potential matches. Adding one person to a room of twenty people doesn't add just one potential match, it adds twenty. Network effects...outside the network Facebook's surround strategy leveraged these network effects. The colleges they focused on didn't have social networks, so Facebook quickly became very appealing, as they added users. Meanwhile, Facebook also became more appealing to the students at Baylor. Who wants to use a social network that only has students from your college?! With each new user Facebook added in a neighboring campus, they added multiple contacts to potential new users at Baylor. After someone heard about Facebook enough times, they had to sign up. As Hannibal's men surrounded Rome's, there were more angles from which each soldier on Hannibal's front could attack soldiers on Rome's front, but not vice-versa. A complementary strategy to the pincer is also the "pocket," or isolating small portions of a battalion to conquer them bit by bit. Surround & conquer your dreams Now, how can you use this surround strategy on some of your biggest and most-intimidating visions? When you want to accomplish something that's too big t

Industrial Society and Its Future, is otherwise known as "The Unabomber Manifesto," written by Ted Kaczynski. Kaczynsnki is a terrorist who killed three people, and injured twenty-three others, by sending bombs through the mail, between 1978 and 1995. He used his terror campaign to exploit the negativity bias of media and pressure the Washington Post and New York Times into publishing his 35,000-word anti-technology manifesto. Obviously, what Kaczynski did was horrible, but his manifesto is a thought-provoking, albeit extreme, perspective on technology. And so here is my summary of Industrial Society and Its Future. Leftism creeps towards totalitarianism The manifesto begins with a seemingly out-of-place rant about leftism creeping toward totalitarianism: According to Kaczynski, leftists have low self-esteem, are defeatist, and hate themselves. They hate success, and feel the groups they try to protect are inferior. They are overburdened by guilt over their natural drives, and so want to turn into issues of morality things that don't have anything to do with morality, such as policing the use of words to which they themselves have applied negative connotations. Anti-left is not far-right When people hear anti-leftism, they tend to assume the person with those views is far-right. But it's worth noting that's not Kaczynski's view. A quote, for example: [Leftists] want to preserve African American culture. But in what does this preservation of African American culture consist? It can hardly consist in anything more than eating black-style food, listening to black-style music, wearing black-style clothing and going to a black- style church or mosque. In other words, it can express itself only in superficial matters. In all ESSENTIAL respects most leftists of the oversocialized type want to make the black man conform to white, middle-class ideals. In sum, Kaczynski is anti-left, because ultimately leftists still work to preserve the industrial system. This appears to come out of "left-field," but the meat of the manifesto is more coherent, and later we'll better understand why he brought up his views on leftism. Industrial society robs us of the "Power Process" As industrial society progresses, Kaczynski says, people lose more and more freedom. This makes them miserable, because it robs them of what he calls the "power process." The power process consists of four main elements: A goal Effort put forth toward that goal The attainment of that goal Autonomy in pursuit of that goal To be happy, a person needs goals that require effort, a reasonable rate of success in achieving those goals, and personal control throughout that process. We replace the power process with "surrogate activities" You might think we, in industrial society, have many goals we pursue and attain through effort, but Kaczynski says we merely pursue what he calls "surrogate activities." Surrogate activities are artificial goals, because they aren't for the purposes of meeting our basic biological needs, and so aren't totally fulfilling. He says we merely think surrogate activities, such as our jobs, are fulfilling, because we have to do very little in industrial society to meet our basic biological needs – such as eating, or having shelter. So, we've never felt true fulfillment. All we do is either easy or impossible He says there are three kinds of drives we experience in the pursuit of goals: 1) minimal effort, 2) serious effort and 3) impossible. The power process, he says, is more about group two, or serious effort. Our surrogate activities require minimal effort. But at the same time, many other things are impossible in industrial society, because we don't have control over them. For example, our security depends upon decisions made by others, such as safety standards at a nuclear power plant, how much pesticide is in our foods, and how much pollution is in our air. Somebody else makes these decisions for us, and in many cases we can't even know if what we're being told is true. As technology grants freedoms, it takes them away He points out that technology seems to grant us freedoms, but it really takes them away. As each advance in technology is collectively accepted, we lose control in some new area. Cars have become so ubiquitous you can't walk in many places. So you need to get further integrated into the industrial system by getting a drivers' license, insurance, and registration. Or, you can take the bus and have even less freedom. As we're increasingly able to alter our genes, it will become harder to enforce a code of ethics. First, genetic engineering will be used to treat genetic diseases, then further alterations will be seen as "good." The upper class will decide what's good or not, until we have a genetically-engineered upper class, and a distantly-lower class taking genetic rolls of the dice. (This is already happening, as gene splicing is being used to treat diseases such as sickle-cell anemia, meanwhile a scientist in China

There are some invisible structures in language, and using them can be the difference between your message being forgotten or living through the ages. These are The Elements of Eloquence, which is the title of Mark Forsyth's book. I first picked this up a couple years ago, and have read it several times since then. I think it's one of the best writing books, and has dramatically improved my writing. Here is my summary of The Elements of Eloquence: Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase. How powerful could this stuff be? Can hidden patterns in language really be the difference between being remembered and forgotten? The technical term for the study of these patterns is "rhetoric," and yes, it can make a big difference. Misremembered phrases While it's hard to find data on what has been forgotten – see 99.9% of everything ever said or written – there are examples of things that have been misremembered. You've heard the expression, "blood, sweat, and tears." That comes from a Winston Churchill speech. He actually said he had "nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat." Remember when, in The Wizard of Oz, the Wicked Witch of the West said, "Fly, my pretties, fly!"? Well, it never happened. She actually merely exclaimed "Fly!" four times in a row. The line remembered as "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned", was actually "Heav'n has no rage, like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury, like a woman scorned." I'll get into some theories about why these phrases were misremembered in a bit. Non-sensical expressions You can also see evidence of the power of rhetoric in expressions that have spread through culture. Sometimes they don't make literal sense, but have appealing patterns. It "takes two to tango," but why not "it takes two to waltz"? People go "whole hog," but why not "whole pig"? Why "cool as a cucumber"? Why "dead as a doornail"? Alliteration You may have noticed these phrases all have alliteration, which is the simplest of rhetorical forms. You're probably already familiar with it. All you have to do to use alliteration is start a couple words in a phrase with the same letter. I've noticed some evidence of the power of alliteration looking at expressions across English and Spanish. For example, if you directly translated "the tables have turned," which is said often, nobody would know what you were talking about. But they would understand if you directly translated "the things have changed," which nobody says. In Spanish, that's "las cosas han cambiado." See? Alliteration. Tricolon So, why was Winston Churchill's quote misremembered as "blood, sweat, and tears." Forsyth thinks it was probably because the tricolon is more appealing than the tetracolon. A tricolon is when three things are listed, a tetracolon, four. Famous tricolons include, "Eat, drink, and be merry," and "It's a bird! It's a plane! It's superman." Barack Obama's short victory speech in 2008 had twenty-one tricolons. Forsyth points out that tricolons seem to be more memorable if the first two things are short and closely-related, and the final thing is longer and a little more abstract. Like, "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Isocolon Tricolon is three things, tetracolon is four, so is isocolon just one? In a way. An isocolon is not one thing, but one structure, repeated two times. For example, "Roses are red. Violets are blue." Epizeuxis When you do repeat one thing, that's called epizeuxis. So, when the Wicked Witch of the West said, "Fly! Fly! Fly! Fly!," that was epizeuxis, but it didn't turn out to be memorable. Diacope People think the Wicked Witch of the West said "Fly, my pretties, fly!" That structure is called a diacope, which is essentially a verbal sandwich. It's one word or phrase, then another word or phrase, then that same word or phrase once again. So "Burn, baby burn," from the song "Disco Inferno" was diacope, and so was one of the most famous lines in film, "Bond. James Bond." Why do people think the Wicked Witch of the West said, "Fly, my pretties, fly!"? Probably not only because diacope is a more memorable form than epizeuxis, but also because there's other diacope in the film, such as "Run, Toto. Run!" Zeugma So, why did the phrase "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," live on? I notice there's some alliteration in the phrase ("Hell hath..."), but Forsyth doesn't attribute any rhetorical structures to the phrase. However – besides the sweeping generalization about women that can't help but tickle the tribal human mind – the actual, original phrase came in the form of zeugma. Zeugma is using one verb to apply action to multiple clauses. So if you write "Tom likes whisky, Dick vodka, Harry crack cocaine," you're using the verb "likes" one time for all three clauses, instead of repeating it. So the original phrase was from a seventeenth-century play called The Mourning Bride, and, once again, went "Heav'n has no rage, like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury, like a woman scorned." The h

In Trust Me, I'm Lying, Ryan Holiday reveals the media manipulation tactics he used as Marketing Director of American Apparel, and for his PR clients. Meanwhile, he exposes the inner workings of a modern media machine in which incentives make it impossible for the version of reality depicted in the media to come close to resembling the truth. I think it's Holiday's best book, and one of the best media studies books. So, here, in my own words, is my Trust Me, I'm Lying summary. Yes, this book is about lying Before Ryan Holiday became known as an author of modern stoicism books, he dropped out of college at nineteen to apprentice under 48 Laws of Power author, Robert Green. He later was the marketing director for American Apparel, and now has a PR agency, Brass Check, where he advises corporate clients and authors. As the title of the book suggests, the tactics Holiday confesses to might make your skin crawl. They involve deliberate provocation, bribery, impersonation, and – since it's called Trust Me, I'm Lying – making stuff up. But everyone should read it This may turn people off to the book, but if you're an author, marketer, entrepreneur, musician, filmmaker, or comedian, you're in the business of trying to get your message into the world. So, ignore this book at your own peril. The people with whom you compete for attention are using these tactics. Understanding these tactics is a good way to understand the mechanics of media. You can use this knowledge to get your message out in less nefarious ways (more on that later). And, if you're someone who thinks it's your duty to read the news, to "stay informed," you owe it to yourself to read this book. But be prepared to have that belief challenged, and your conception of reality altered. Media is a "racket" Holiday describes the modern media system as a "racket," the word which Major General Smedley D. Butler once used to describe war. He defined it as something "where only a small group of insiders know what's really going on and they operate for the benefit of a few and at the expense of basically everyone else." Journalists are poor, busy, and desperate for a story The main insider in the modern media system is the journalist, more generally, a "blogger," who might be someone writing articles for a small blog, or even a major media outlet such as the Huffington Post. Holiday uses "blogger" and "journalist," interchangeably, and I will, too. Journalists are poor To help you understand the motivations of many of these journalists, Holiday points out this: They might have gone to an expensive grad school, and now live in a big, expensive city, such as NYC, San Francisco, or Washington D.C. They've been close enough to taste a $200,000-a-year journalism job. But now they're churning out articles at a breakneck pace, without even getting health insurance. Meanwhile, the people they cover are rich and successful, and may include talentless reality TV stars. New York magazine called the result "the rage of the creative underclass." Journalists are busy These bloggers have to write a face-melting amount of content. When journalist Bekah Grant left VentureBeat, she wrote a post saying she averaged five posts a day – more than 1,700 articles in twenty months. Henry Blodget, founder of Business Insider, said his bloggers need to generate three times their salary, benefits, and overhead costs to be worth hiring. So, an employee making sixty-thousand dollars a year needs to produce 1.8 million page views a month, every month. (1.8 million page views is a lot. At my current traffic, it takes me about a decade to generate that much on my blog, and I make more than sixty-thousand dollars a year.) Journalists are desperate for a story Most sites that journalists write for make their money from ads, and the way to make money from ads is to generate page views. As such, many journalists are paid by the page view. I've personally heard this from a friend who worked for a newspaper with a good reputation, covering news for a major city. So, journalists are desperate for a story that will generate page views. So, if you give them a juicy story that will generate page views, they will generally publish it. They're too busy to fact check it, and since they're compensated by the page view, they aren't motivated to care whether or not it's true. Readers want to be entertained, and don't care what's true So you've got poor, busy, and desperate journalists paid by the page view, and the people they're writing for want to be entertained. Negativity attracts attention In 2010, Jonah Berger analyzed 7,000 articles from the New York Times' most-emailed list. He found that the best predictor of virality was: how much anger does the article evoke? Increasing the anger rating of an article had two-and-a-half times the impact of increasing its positivity rating. The human mind is irresistibly attracted to negativity. When subjects of a study were shown footage of war, airplane crashes, and

In 2018, Matthew Walker was on a media blitz, promoting his book, Why We Sleep. I was one of the many people who picked up the book. It slowly ruined my sleep. But recently, I fixed it. No, this is not a takedown Before I go further, this is not a "takedown" of Why We Sleep, like the one that's been floating around. I've read that takedown, and I didn't find it convincing. I trust that Why We Sleep is mostly full of accurate information. I say "mostly," because I understand Walker has been on a mission to elevate the importance of sleep. Sometimes you have to say something like "the shorter you sleep the shorter your life span," for a sleep-deprived public to get the point, when, technically, research shows people who sleep longer than the recommended 7–9 hours live shorter lives. It's called rhetoric. When FDR said "we have nothing to fear but fear itself," thankfully there weren't blogs to write pedantic takedowns of his logic. My complaints about Why We Sleep don't involve ill intentions. I'm sure Walker wants people to get more sleep. But I don't think the book has the effect he expected. Why Why We Sleep will scare the sleep out of you In Why We Sleep, Matthew Walker, PhD says if you don't sleep enough, you are at risk of the following: Obesity Cancer Dementia Alzheimer's Heart disease Depression Anxiety Diabetes Car crashes Lower income Low sperm count Deformed sperm Female infertility Not being able to jump as high Longer workout recovery Vulnerability to colds and flus (today, that also means COVID) Low testosterone Smaller testicles So, yeah, Walker makes not getting enough sleep sound extremely scary. If that's not enough to keep you awake at night, Walker also points out there's also a rare sleep disorder that develops in mid-life, where a person cannot sleep, and eventually dies. Again, I get that society is full of a lot of ignorant or toxic beliefs about sleep, such as "I'll sleep when I'm dead". I may be in the minority in that I had the luxury of being able to take Walker's recommendation of 7–9 hours sleep to an extreme that actually harmed my ability to get enough sleep. I was doing everything right After reading Why We Sleep, I, like many people, decided I was going to take sleep more seriously. But, as a creative with an interest in the neuroscience of creativity, I had already been taking sleep pretty seriously. I already slept with earplugs and a mask. I already avoided screens before bedtime, and had for years worn blue-light-blocking goggles before bed. I already didn't read or watch TV in bed, and didn't allow electronics in my bedroom. I already didn't consume caffeine and rarely drank alcohol. I already lived a low-stress lifestyle with plenty of exercise and friends. I didn't and don't have kids that wake me up in the middle of the night. I already had a bedtime, and a nighttime routine, like I talked about on episode 259. I tried to do it right-er I was doing everything right. Where I went wrong was trying to follow Walker's recommendation of 7–9 hours of sleep per night. The way I went about that: Stay in bed until I got eight hours of sleep. At first, it wasn't a big deal. I would occasionally wake up much earlier than I had intended. But I brought to mind a graph from the book, which showed that sleep cycles come in ninety-minute increments. Now, this wasn't a recommendation from Dr. Walker, and was my big mistake: I figured that since sleep cycles came in ninety-minute increments, if I happened to wake up too early, all I had to do was stay in bed until I could fall asleep again – which could take as long as ninety minutes. Yes, I understand I'm incredibly privileged to have the luxury of being able to stay in bed an extra ninety minutes just to fall asleep again. But, as an author, my ability to be productive is more a matter of mind management than it is of time management. It doesn't matter, to some extent, how long it takes me to get enough sleep, but I need that sleep to get in the right state of mind to do my work. At first, this technique worked. When I woke up too early to get eight hours of sleep, I stayed in bed until I fell asleep again, and got my eight hours. Eventually, I settled on a rule: Most people use an alarm clock so they can get out of bed early. I, instead, set a time until which I had to stay in bed. For me, that was 8 a.m. If I slept past 8 a.m., that was fine, but if I woke up before 8 a.m., I stayed in bed until then. So, I was going to bed around 11 p.m., and staying in bed for nine, sometimes ten hours. If I was sleepy, I'd go to bed earlier, but I'd still stay in bed until 8 a.m. This went fine, until early-morning insomnia kicked in. It's 3 a.m. I must be lonely (and awake) There are many kinds of insomnia, but they mostly consist of either sleep-onset insomnia or early-morning insomnia. I didn't and still don't have much trouble falling asleep (thanks to my nighttime routine). My problem was, waking up way too early. Not 5 a.m., but 3 a.m., an

One thing I hear from a lot from readers of The Heart to Start, is that many people have no problem starting new projects. They instead struggle with finishing them. I can relate. Like many creative people, I once struggled to finish projects. I always had new ideas, I left books half-read, projects half-finished. I had done lots of creative work, and had little to show for it. Now I still always have new ideas, and I still leave books half-read and projects half-finished. But now, I have lots of finished projects to show for all the work I've done. What's changed? I've learned to finish what matters, and forget the rest. Embrace your inner Perceiver A turning point in my own creative journey came when I learned to embrace my inner Perceiver. As much flak as the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator gets for being pseudoscience, it's still a useful lens for understanding your own tendencies. The concepts of Introversion and Extroversion have wide scientific support, but also useful I think are the concepts of "Perceiving" and "Judging." If you watch in awe as one friend after another executes on ideas and achieves success, while you flounder, working on one idea after another, but never truly following through, your friends are probably "Js", and you might be a "P." This is the position I was in, until a friend at a party explained this dichotomy to me. Why was this other friend of ours so great at follow-through, while we both struggled to find our paths? This friend was a J. We were Ps. Another way of thinking about being a Perceiver is you're someone who sees Possibilities. You can't move forward with one idea, because you keep having other, better ideas. Meanwhile, your "Judging" friends find an idea, make the judgement to stick with it, and see it through. Shiny objects aren't shameful Perceiving Possibilities is a necessary part of being creative. For DNA to be discovered, the researchers had to entertain the Possibility that they should pursue something other than the original intent of their grant application – which was to study cancer treatments. For Alexander Fleming to discover antibiotics, he had to see Possibilities in experimental petri dishes that were contaminated. If you want a treasure trove of Perceivers, look no further than nearly every person Walter Isaacson has written a biography on. For Leonardo Da Vinci to paint the Mona Lisa, he applied his knowledge of optics to his sfumato technique, which allowed him to model the painting with no hard lines. He applied his knowledge of anatomy to crafting the Mona Lisa's mysterious smirk. He had dissected humans and animals, studying exactly which muscles were recruited to express various emotions. In episode 272, I talked about how Steve Jobs and the engineers and executives at Apple had to consider the Possibility that while a trackwheel served as a useful interface for an iPod, it might not be such for the iPhone. Isaacson himself has said, "People who love all fields of knowledge are the ones who can best spot the patterns across nature." So if you're someone who beats themself up over Shiny Object Syndrome, consider the Possibility that it's a necessary component of creative thinking. Creative success happens in Extremistan On the rare occasion that someone with shiny object syndrome does finish a project, it might not be successful, and that can make matters worse. Why bother following through with anything, you might think, when you aren't assured of success? But, creative work calls for a different approach to success. As I talked about in episode 253, creative work happens in Extremistan. Nobody knows anything It's impossible to predict which creative projects will be successful. If record companies knew hits, that's all they'd release. If movie studios knew blockbusters, that's all they'd produce. If publishers knew bestsellers, that's all they'd launch. If Venture Capitalists knew unicorns, that's all they'd fund. And they wouldn't be called "Venture" Capitalists – they'd just be Capitalists. As two-time Academy-Award-winning screenwriter William Goldman said, "Nobody knows anything." The sky is the limit Even when a creative project is released into Extremistan, there is a huge range of potential outcomes. When Art De Vany analyzed the box-office proceeds of various movies, he found that the top 1% of movies accounted for 20% of sales. My latest book, Mind Management, Not Time Management is a success. Book-marketing expert Tucker Max calls a self-published book that sells 2,500 copies in its first year a "home run". Mind Management, Not Time Management sold 10,000. But, Mark Manson's Subtle Art has sold more than ten million. This podcast episode will get more downloads than about 97% of other podcasts, but it's not unusual for an episode of Joe Rogan's podcast to get 1,000 times the downloads of this one. It's a long night to overnight success When you follow through and put a creative project into the world, you may have mild s

What will the future look like? In his most recent November appearance on the Tim Ferriss Show, entrepreneur and investor Balaji Srinivasan presents a cohesive explanation of the current world, and plausible scenarios of how things will play out. I found Balaji's theories so mesmerizing, I listened to the four-and-a-half-hour podcast several times, then read and took notes on the transcript. Listening to this episode was like reading a book, so – like I do with my book summaries – I wanted to improve my own understanding of the content. So, here is a podcast summarizing a podcast, in my own words. Needless to say, the podcast is worth listening to, and since this is just a summary, you should absolutely listen to it – over on The Tim Ferris Show – to get the full context. The decline of the nation state One of the main forces at play in world events, according to Balaji, is the decline of nation states. He presents this idea in reference to a prescient twenty-five year-old book called The Sovereign Individual, which he cites in this podcast appearance and others. Since the nation state is declining, it is becoming increasingly difficult for countries to control their citizens. When it's hard to control citizens, it's hard to collect tax revenue to fund institutions. This loss of control is accelerating with the rise of remote work, catalyzed by the coronavirus pandemic. As more people have been able to work from anywhere, they've become increasingly aware of how local laws and taxes affect their lives. The power of "exit" The control of a nation state over its people is limited to the extent that people have the right to what Balaji summarizes as "exit." If you're unable to leave a place, either because the government is oppressive, or because you're tied down because, say, you have land to tend and a flock of sheep, the government has more leeway in what policies they can enforce. Citizens as "customers" If people can exit their jurisdictions – whether that's a country, a state, or a city – then citizens stop being "subjects" that jurisdictions can extract resources from, and start being "customers," that jurisdictions want to appeal to. We've of course seen this for a long time, as cities have given tax breaks or other perks to compete over companies shopping for jurisdictions in which to place their corporate headquarters. But citizens are starting to look more like customers as smaller players have exited en masse. For example, lots of people and companies have been leaving California for Texas, in search of less state control. Balaji points out that not everyone has to exit to influence policies, but the fact that some do is tremendous leverage on any system. Crypto entrepreneurs call New York's bluff An example Balaji cites of this struggle happened when New York state introduced the BitLicense – a series of regulations required for companies to do certain kinds of cryptocurrency transactions. Balaji characterizes New York's posture in introducing these regulations as "We're New York. What are you going to do? We're the center of the world." At least ten crypto companies then left New York, including Kraken, Bitfinex, and Poloniex. In some cases they had to pack up and move. In other cases they just stopped servicing New York customers. New York apparently overestimated their leverage, and companies left for other jurisdictions, who were more accommodating to their "customers." Declining returns on state violence Something Balaji doesn't talk about much but that is a major theme in The Sovereign Individual – and is relevant to the decline of state control – is declining returns on violence, at least at the state level. You can think of a nation state as a collection of people who contribute taxes in exchange for protection. Serfs used to pay, to their feudal lords, the returns of farming on their plots of land, in exchange for protection. Businesses in organized-crime-controlled neighborhoods pay a fee to the mob so their businesses won't "burn down." U.S. taxpayers pay taxes, the U.S. keeps a strong military that defends the interests of those taxpayers, and protects U.S. taxpayers' green-bill privilege by ensuring the U.S. dollar remains the world's reserve currency. A relevant observation that stands out to me: Sapiens author Yuval Noah Harari once essentially said that wars used to be about control over natural resources. You can invade a country and get control over such resources, and maybe even control over labor. But China can't invade Silicon Valley, force all the engineers and entrepreneurs to work, and by doing so extract the resources there. That's a decline in the returns on violence, on the state level at least. Centralized China vs. decentralized world The main conflict Balaji sees playing out in twenty to forty years is between "centralized China" and "decentralized world." China is a nation-state, and one of the main forces at play is the decline of the nation state, so how does that

It seems even the most devout techno-utopiasts carry around a Moleskine notebook. They appreciate the way writing longhand on paper alters their thought processes. Yet the same people think writing on a typewriter is absurd, performative, pretentious, or a deliberate troll. Over the past year, I've grown to love writing on a typewriter. I didn't write my first three books on a typewriter, but I am my next one. I use my typewriter to write articles (yes, this one), email newsletters, and even tweets. I think you should try it. Write on a typewriter. The typewriter is the best writing tool ever If you've followed my work a while, you've seen me experiment with progressively more-primitive writing tools. I first used an AlphaSmart – a portable word-processor – seven years ago. Readers of my latest book, Mind Management, Not Time Management will recognize the typewriter as another "grippy" tool. It helps you get a grip on your thoughts, without letting them slip. But, I think the typewriter is the end of this road. I won't be making cuneiform impressions on clay any time soon, and I won't even bother experimenting with a chisel and stone tablet. As the musician John Mayer – who writes his lyrics on a typewriter – has said, "I'm not picking the typewriter because I think it's hip. It's the best version of the idea that's ever come around." Or, as I say, there is no more pure writing device than a typewriter. Before you dismiss that statement, think about it carefully. Notice I said "writing," not "editing," nor "publishing." Computers are great for publishing A computer is the greatest publishing device ever. I have a computer to thank for my career as an author. It not only helps me lay out the interiors of my books and design my covers, but without my computer, I couldn't then publish my books to a market of hundreds of millions of readers around the globe. None of it could be done without my computer. And since my computer is also what I use to crowdsource editing from my readers and prepare manuscripts, the computer is not only the best publishing device, it's the best editing device. Typewriters are great for writing Write, edit, publish: Those are the steps you must repeat to be a writer, and they have to be done in order. You can take a step backward, but you can't skip a step forward. No device does the first step better than a typewriter. It's for writing, not research Some will protest that you can't look things up on a typewriter. Well, that's "research," and it can be done before writing, or after writing, while editing. Research, however, is not writing. Only writing is writing. Your first draft doesn't belong on the cloud Some will point out that when you write on a typewriter, your work isn't stored on a hard drive or backed up to the cloud. It's too easy to lose sheets of paper. These people fundamentally misunderstand the writing process. As Ernest Hemingway said, "The first draft of anything is shit." The typewriter is where you say everything you might want to say and explore how to say it. While it shows up on a page, the real work takes place in your mind – daydreamt in your own personal cloud. As you write, you print Not that your first draft isn't handy to have. This makes the typewriter the better writing device than its cousin, the AlphaSmart. The AlphaSmart has a tiny screen, which is a good forcing-function to keep your fingers moving. But once the writing is done, you mostly have to rely on what new connections you've made in your mind. As you write on a typewriter, you also print. When you're done, you have a page you can pick up and mark on while you pace around or read parts aloud. By the way, if you're thinking that piece of paper is bad for the environment, consider that one hour of computer use is worth about seven sheets of paper. We all have scrap paper lying around with a bare side we can type on. You can save that from a landfill – and a typewriter, too! When you write longhand on paper, you also get something tactile you can review. That is, if you have great penmanship. I, for one, still have illegible handwriting, even after forty years experience holding a pencil. I love how no matter what you write on a typewriter, it always looks the same: Invectives, tirades, and vituperations are printed with the same font as love letters, manifestos, and fan mail. The shapes of the letters impart no meaning, leaving only the words to do their jobs. Typewriters are faster than longhand As someone who wrote a book about how time management is overrated, I have to admit, it isn't the most important thing in the world that you can write faster on a typewriter than by hand. The way longhand writing slows down your thought process has its place – as does the nimble qualities of writing on a computer in those rare cases where you merely need to record something you've already thought through. A typewriter sits right in the sweet spot between speed and deliberation. The keys require more fo

There's a reason the expression, "unfinished business" has such provocative power. Unfinished projects stack up like skeletons in our cluttered mental closets. We know if we crack open that door, we'll be reminded of our failed intentions, our foolish optimism, and our broken promises – to others and to ourselves. But unfinished business doesn't get the credit it deserves. Unfinished projects are a valuable and necessary part of the creative process. They build skills and plant seeds of ideas for future projects. And even when a project seems as if it's unfinished, sometimes it's not. The iPhone came from unfinished business We wouldn't have the iPhone if it weren't for unfinished business. When Steve Jobs set out to make a phone that didn't suck, he drew upon unfinished projects, and he left unfinished projects in his wake. The iPhone we know and love – and all the imitation ancestor smartphones it spawned – may seem like an obvious invention. But at the start of the project, it was far from obvious. A trackwheel phone!? From the beginning, the iPhone was built upon the foundation laid by the iPod. The iPod had transformed Apple's business. iPod sales were forty-five percent of Apple's revenue in 2005. But in the early 2000s, when you left the house, you had a dilemma: Do I bring my phone, my digital camera, my iPod – or some combination of the three? Jobs had seen how the digital camera market was getting eaten up by phones that had cameras. That was one less device you had to carry with you. He knew the iPod's market share would erode, too, as soon as there was a decent phone that could hold music. If Apple could develop that phone, they could stay alive. So the first iPhone prototypes looked like iPods. You'd use the iPod's then-famous trackwheel not only to navigate through menus, but also to select letters to type with, or numbers to dial the phone. Fortunately, this trackwheel phone became unfinished business. But the winning prototype also created unfinished business. The iPhone killed the iPad After toying with the trackwheel phone for months, it became apparent that Apple might want to explore another approach. So, Jobs and the other executives assigned another team to develop a different prototype. This time, they would develop a multitouch prototype – one where you'd actually use your fingers on a screen to interact with the phone. Apple had been experimenting with touch for many years now, such as when they developed their trackpad. There was one project they already had in the works that they borrowed from to develop the iPhone we know today. Apple had been working on a tablet computer with multitouch technology. Not only would you touch the screen on this tablet to "click" on items, or drag them around, but it could also sense various gestures, such as swipes, or even multiple fingers. So, Apple drew upon the technology from this tablet-computer project to use that technology in their phone project. They essentially placed what would become the iPad on hold, thus making more unfinished business. Creativity is messy Let's stop for a second to think about how horrible it would be to use a trackwheel phone. You'd have to run your thumb over a trackwheel circle to find the letter you'd want to type, then click on the center of the wheel to select the letter. Or, you'd have to click on the right part of the circle to activate the corresponding letter. You'd have to do this to dial phone numbers, or select applications, enter names into your address book, or – God forbid – to write text messages. It's obvious to us now this is a horrible idea. But that's because we've used the iPhone. Creativity is a messy process. What will later seem an obviously bad or great idea will not be obviously such when you're in the thick of a project. Want proof? In the process of making history, the smartest product designers and engineers in the world, including Steve Jobs, spent months exploring a trackwheel phone. Not only that, but at the end of those months, they said to themselves, "Hey, maybe there's a better way?" They didn't kill the trackwheel phone, though. They merely started working on another prototype in parallel. You'd think that as soon as they saw multitouch, it would have been obvious it was the better solution. But instead, even after six more months, working on both the trackwheel and multitouch versions of the phone, the solution still wasn't clear. As Walter Isaacson describes in his biography of Jobs, the executives had a meeting to finally commit to one of the paths – and it still wasn't an easy decision. They hadn't figured out how to make the trackwheel experience elegant. They saw potential in the multitouch experience, but they weren't sure it was technically possible. Isaacson says this was what Jobs liked to call a "bet-the-company moment." They finally killed the trackwheel phone, and pursued the multitouch phone, unsure if they could make it work. Professionals make unfinished business

There's something I want to talk about, but frankly, I'm a little embarrassed to do so. However, I write with my former self in mind, and my former self would want to know about this. So here I go. I want to talk about how to be somebody. What do I mean by "somebody?" To be somebody is to be known for your work. To have your name synonymous – or even better, eponymous – with your accomplishments. I used to be "nobody." Now I am "somebody." I am known in some circles for my work. My work has led to accomplishments I'm proud of. My work and I are one. There have been many steps on my journey to becoming somebody, but if I had to pick one day, it was September 14th, 2011. That was the day my first book debuted in the top 20 on Amazon. It's hard to overstate what a massive change it was, in every aspect of my life, to overnight go from an unknown tinkerer to a "best-selling author." The day I became somebody, my life changed. The benefits of being somebody Being somebody comes with some benefits. Here they are: Career success: This the best reason to become somebody. Name recognition helps you make money for the work you do. The money for the work you do helps you do more of that work. But career success can come in other forms. Being somebody has meant that I've gotten speaking invitations all over the world. Thanks to the ones I've been able to accept, I've spoken all over the U.S., and in eight countries. Respect: When I became somebody, everyone started to show me more respect. Introductions went from, "This is David, he is weird and I'm not sure what he does" to "This is David, he's a famous author." (Prior to becoming somebody, I was introduced by a well-known Chicago entrepreneur – right in front of my face – as a "malingerer.") When I became somebody, my idiosyncrasies and lifestyle choices suddenly weren't viewed as odd. Instead, they were seen as something you would expect from a creative person who is somebody. Connections: Because I am somebody, I can make connections with other somebodies. If I'm interested in the work of another somebody, I can reach out to that person, and they will generally respond. Or, I can ask for an introduction from another somebody. I'm rarely more than a degree or two away from the somebody I want to meet. This is how I managed to interview many somebodies I admire for my podcast, such as Adam Conover, Elise Baurer, David Allen, James Altucher, Seth Godin, and many more. Dating prospects: When I became somebody, my dating prospects improved immediately. This admittedly has downsides, because you don't want to be with anyone who wants to be with you because you're somebody. And if you think being somebody entitles you to love you'll become a horrible person. But being somebody serves as a signal that you're trustworthy. Even though, in recent years, many much-bigger somebodies have turned out to not be trustworthy, the social proof that your accomplishments have gained you name recognition counts for a lot in at least getting someone to acknowledge you as a potential mate. Random perks: I'm only known for my work in small circles, but that doesn't prevent me from being "somebody" outside those circles. I don't flaunt my somebody-ness, but people Google. Oh, do they Google. There have been many situations where someone has discovered I was somebody, because they Googled me, and then they commented on it. Which means there have been many other situations where they didn't admit to it. This improves your prospects in a variety of situations. Sometimes that's intangible, but I know it once at least helped me rent an apartment for a couple months during a mini life. Being somebody isn't all upsides. I'll get to more of the downsides later. But if you want to become somebody, how do you do that? Why do you want to become somebody? Before you try to become somebody, ask yourself why you want to become somebody. This can be a hard question to ask and it gets to the heart of why I'm a little embarrassed to even be talking about this. American culture is driven by people desperate to become somebody, but it's unfashionable to openly admit it's something you want. What do you want out of being somebody? If you want to become somebody, ask yourself what you expect to get out of it. It might not even be necessary to become somebody to get those things. The best reason to become somebody is to get paid to do what you love, so you can do it more. Being somebody is a job requirement behind many creative professions, such as an author, musician, or entertainer. It's hard to substitute the benefits of being somebody in these cases. But if you want respect, or for various parts of life to become easier, there are other ways to get those things. For example, you can make connections with somebodies simply by being more outgoing and intentional. A dirty little secret about the benefits I mentioned earlier is that much of the value of becoming somebody doesn't come from being somebody in the e

Systems save energy. Especially if the system helps you with something you do every day. This is why I have a system for cooking. When you're hungry, you make bad decisions, such as grabbing the quickest food you can find – which often happens to be unhealthy food. My cooking system ensures I never have to think about what to eat, or how to prepare it. It frees my time and my mind, so I can focus on creating. A little disclaimer before I begin: I'm not suggesting you eat what I eat. I have a mysterious chronic illness and am sensitive to damn near everything. This particular diet is optimized for very specific things that apply to me. If you build a system for yourself, you might want to eat something different. The basic principles still apply. Three principles of a cooking system My cooking system is based upon three principles: Batch what you can To batch, prepare what you can beforehand. You save time and energy, and – since many of your ingredients are already ready – you have a healthy meal in no time. As I'll explain in a bit, in my system, I cut and store vegetables beforehand. This is a little extra work up-front than cutting vegetables before any one meal, but over the course of several meals, it's less time and hassle. You sometimes have to make compromises for the sake of a system. Pre-cut vegetables are ever-so-slightly less tasty and fresh than vegetables you've just cut, but cutting in advance is still a net-positive. Never run out A good system prevents emergencies. After a long day, you don't want to suddenly discover you have no food, or are missing a crucial ingredient. Even if you had the energy to do so, it would be a waste to run to the grocery store. But you probably don't have that energy, so you'll probably order delivery – and that delivery food will not be as healthy as a home-cooked meal would have been, and will cost more. My system is designed to never run out of ingredients. I know the minimum amount of each ingredient I can have before its time to order more. I also know my ingredients won't go bad because I've had them too long. As you use your system, pay attention to just how perishable your regular ingredients are. How long can you keep them? At what minimum supply is it time to order more, so you won't run out? For example, I have two jars of coconut oil. When I run out of the first, coconut oil goes on my shopping list. I know I'll buy again before I run out of the second jar. Monotony first (variety later) To start your cooking system, make the same things every single meal. Through repetition, you can gradually sprinkle in variety. Many people think this sounds boring. "I could never do that," they say. "I could never eat the same thing every meal!" Well, you don't have to. Eating the same thing every meal is only temporary. It allows you to put together the pieces of your cooking system, such as how often you'll order ingredients, and what compromises you're willing to make to have ingredients ready. Making the same things with the same ingredients and the same processes gives you one opportunity after another to optimize your system. When you run out of ingredients or they go bad, you learn how often you need to order. You can also experiment with different processes, and learn how different trade-offs affect the quality of what you cook. Once you have the building blocks of a system in place, you can start adding in variety. Through many iterations of my cooking system, I no longer eat the exact same thing every meal. Many components, such as the vegetables, garnishes, spices, or proteins, can easily be substituted in the same processes to make different dishes. Many people think they couldn't eat the same thing every meal, but then they continue to do what I used to do: Wait until I was famished, then desperately look for whatever food I could find to shove in my mouth – making bad decisions in the process. If you do this, too, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. You don't have to eat the same things forever. Try it for a while, then mix in some variety. Categories of ingredients While you may not want to eat my exact diet, there are categories of ingredients that are nearly universal: protein, vegetables, spices, and garnish. Here's how those apply to my cooking system. Protein I eat a variety of meat-based protein sources. I mostly alternate between ground beef and ground pork, but I also occasionally eat ground turkey. My butcher in Colombia has both beef and pork, and packs them into bags of individual serving sizes. I stack them up in my freezer. At the end of each day, I take a couple packs from the freezer, and transfer them to the fridge. The packs are thin enough, they'll be thawed by the next day. Vegetables The main vegetable in my system is zucchini. I eat a lot of zucchini. My other staple vegetables are carrots, red bell peppers, mushrooms, cucumbers, and celery. Variability in the sizes of zucchinis has had a big effect on my cooking sys

Many people think our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived short and miserable lives. In fact, that's what most anthropologists thought. Until the 1960s, when they looked more closely at how foragers got by. The way foragers "worked" can tell us a lot about the way we, as creators, work. Farming gets a lot of output with little effort No one can be exactly sure when a human first planted a seed to grow food, but this one act was one of the most revolutionary in human history – up there with the invention of fire, or the internet. The agricultural revolution meant humans no longer needed to roam around, searching for food. But, with the innovation of agriculture came some trade-offs. We had to wait for our crops to grow, so we had to stay in one place. But staying in one place didn't work out-of-the-box everywhere. As anthropologist James Suzman points out in his book, Work: A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots, the first successful cities sprouted up in floodplains. These areas flooded regularly, and that refreshed the nutrients in the soil, which was a must for successful farming, as crop-rotation hadn't yet been invented. Which brings us to another drawback of farming. Yes, farming gets you a lot of food with little effort, but eventually your once-fertile soil runs out of nutrients. Creative "farming" grows ideas into finished products As creatives, it's useful for us to "farm." Plant seeds of ideas. Give them water, sunlight, and fertile soil, and eventually you'll have a crop of creative products to harvest. I talked in my book, Mind Management, Not Time Management, about "creative systems." Cultivating ideas takes time. By working with the cycles of your energy to do short bursts of work, and letting incubation do the rest, you can always have creative products to ship. (I talked specifically about my creative system for Love Mondays newsletters on episode 260.) Creative farming is a great way to consistently turn ideas into finished products. But foraging is where you get the ideas in the first place. Foraging is more effective than you think In the 1960s, anthropologist Richard Borshay Lee lived with a hunter-gatherer tribe in the Kalahari desert. He carefully tracked what they spent time on, and what they got out of it. Lee found these tribes met all their needs for food in just fifteen hours work a week. They consumed well over the daily recommended intake of 2,000 calories, and they did it all without farming. They did it by foraging. Fifteen hours a week to get everything you need. That sounds appealing to many of us. Fifteen hours a week is ironically the number of hours economist John Maynard Keynes once predicted we in the industrial world would work. In 1930, in the midst of the Great Depression, Keynes had the guts to predict that by 2030, we would at least quadruple our productivity. As a result, he said, we would work only fifteen hours a week. But foraging doesn't lead to progress We reached that quadruple-productivity mark way back in 1980. But we still work way more than fifteen hours a week. Why? We can make philosophical arguments about the hedonic treadmill, and how we buy too much junk. But one thing is for sure: We want to see "progress." These hunter gatherer tribes, who have sadly been all but completely driven off their foraging land by the industrial world, did lead rich lives. They worked for what they needed, they had plenty of leisure time, and everything they did was deeply integrated with their families and communities. But they didn't have running water, electricity, or modern medicine. Many lived as long as anyone in the civilized world – if they reached adulthood. But they had a high infant-mortality rate, which pushed down the average lifespan. They didn't have what we consider "progress." They didn't wonder if their children would live in a world with human flight, space exploration, or the internet. Each generation's life was essentially the same as the previous. Creatives need to forage As creatives, we can't just farm. We need to "forage," too. We need to wander around, follow our curiosities, and see what surprises we can find. The hunter-gatherers of the Kalahari lived in such a rich ecosystem, they could always feel confident they could find something to eat if they went and looked for it. But as a creator, happening upon a feast is less common. It's not every day a song comes to us in our sleep, like it did when Paul McCartney wrote "Yesterday." Or that a happy accident occurs, like when Charles Goodyear spilled chemicals and developed vulcanized rubber. This is why you need to farm what you forage. Forage, then farm, to have great ideas, then make them real Farming what you forage isn't just a good way to do creative work. If you want to be consistent, it's the only way. This is hard to see, because we're working in a world that's a relic of the assembly line. Doctors, lawyers, accountants, and software developers, themselves, are produced on as

There's a story I think of every time I'm in the throes of a difficult project. It's from the movie, Catch Me if You Can, about the infamous con artist, Frank Abignale, Jr. Frank's Father, Frank Senior, tells him a story: Two little mice fell in a bucket of cream. The first mouse quickly gave up and drowned. The second mouse wouldn't quit. He struggled so hard that eventually he turned that cream into butter, and crawled out. You hear the story several times throughout the movie. It's really the theme of the movie. When Frank Junior's parents separate, he feels like the mouse drowning in cream. He runs away and poses as an airline pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer, forging paychecks and flying all over, like a little mouse, frantically and desperately moving his little legs, trying to find his place in the world. You face The Void at the beginning of a project Whenever I start a creative project, I feel like a mouse in a bucket of cream. Every time I move one of my little legs to try to get traction, it just keeps floating in space. But, I've found, if you keep moving fast enough and long enough, that cream turns into butter. I talked on episode 265 about how there are a lot of different sub-skills to the skill of shipping. One of those sub-skills is overcoming your fear of shipping. In other words, facing the Void. The Void is the empty space you need to fill for your project to become complete. The Void is a figurative place. It mostly lives in your mind. But it has literal representations, too, such as the blank page or the blank canvas. The Void is present at the beginning of a project, and that prevents many creators from even getting started. But the Void has other, less obvious, effects. The Void doesn't just prevent you from starting a project. It also prevents you from finishing projects. The Void holds you back from shipping There are plenty of things to fear as you're about to finish a project and ship. You fear criticism of your work. You fear later seeing something you want to fix, after it's too late. As I talked about in episode 267, you face the Finisher's Paradox: You learn throughout the project, and by the time you're done, you can already do better. But as you prepare to ship, and you see your perfectionism taking over, or you get shiny object syndrome, if you look deep within yourself, you'll probably find a fear of the Void. Even though you face the Void at the beginning of a project, your fear of the Void can hold you back in the end of a project. Being in the "butter" is comfortable The fear of the Void gets in the way of shipping for two reasons. One: being in the "butter" of a project is comfortable. When something nebulous starts to solidify, we also sometimes say it "gels." In either case, where there was once empty space where you couldn't get traction, you're now enveloped in something solid. When you're in the final stages of a project that has gelled it's like being in a warm blanket on your couch, with a bowl of popcorn, watching Netflix. When you finish this project, you have to face the Void on the next Reason number two the Void gets in the way of shipping: When you finish the project, and start the next, you have to face the Void all over again. Deep down, you know after you let go of that first project, and start the second, you'll feel, once again, as if you're drowning. Is it perfectionism? Maybe it's the Void. So what are you to do? Simply being aware of your fear of the Void is a good start. When you catch yourself, in the final stretch, second-guessing or catastrophizing, simply remind yourself that you're trying to a-void the Void, and that will help you snap out of it. What looks like perfectionism may not be perfectionism. It may be fear of the Void. Another great way to overcome your fear of the Void is to make sure you never have to face it again. As I talked about in episode 261, we're taught shiny object syndrome is a bad thing. Working on a project, then quickly getting excited about and switching to another project, is not how traditional work gets done. But it has value in creative work. Starting projects on the side helps you a-void the Void If you get comfortable having a bunch of projects incubating on the side – and you don't beat yourself up about the fact you may finish few, if any, of them – those projects on the side serve as buffers against the Void. Once you prepare your current project for take-off, you already have another project waiting in the wings. Your excitement for your other projects can even get you more excited about finishing your current project. But every once in a while, you're still going to find yourself floating in space – or drowning in cream, if you will. When that happens, do whatever you can to keep forward momentum. Brainstorm and prototype, and be okay knowing most of what you come up with will suck. In other words, remember the little mouse, and get those legs moving. Image: After the Floods, Paul Klee About Your Host, Davi

When Michelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling, he designed and built his own scaffolding. But, it only covered half of the ceiling. So he painted the first half of the ceiling, then removed the scaffolding. When he finally got to view his work from the floor, seventy feet below, it was as if he were seeing it with new eyes. After two years work, he didn't like what he saw. Michelangelo faced what I call "The Finisher's Paradox." There's a contradiction that happens when you try to ship your creative work: By the time you're done, you can already do better. You learned in the process. Michelangelo learned on the job As I talked about in episode 262, Michelangelo "aimed left" when he started painting in the chapel. He had little experience as a painter, and even less experience in the wickedly-difficult "fresco" method. He knew the first panel he painted wouldn't be his best. So, as art historian Ross King explained on episode 99, Michelangelo started in an inconspicuous part of the chapel. It was the last place the clergy entering the chapel would see, and the last place the Pope would look when sitting on the throne. Michelangelo did have at least one false start. A few weeks into painting the first panel, he wasn't satisfied with his work. The salty sea air in Italy was staining the mixture of plaster he had chosen. There were probably also some things he wanted to change about his painting style. Once the plaster on a fresco dries, it's literally set in stone. But, like stone, you can get rid of it if you destroy it. And that's exactly what he did: Michelangelo chipped away three weeks of work and started over. If Michelangelo learned a thing or two in the first few weeks painting the Sistine Chapel, you can bet he learned even more painting the rest of the 12,000 square-foot fresco – which, in total, took him four years. Michelangelo faced the Finisher's Paradox So after Michelangelo removed his scaffolding from the first half of the ceiling, he was faced with a dilemma: There was something he didn't like about his work. Since, while painting on his scaffolding, he was very close to the work, the work looked very different from the floor. He realized the scenes he had painted were too complex. There were too many people on each panel, and, as a result, the people were too small. You couldn't make out very well, from the floor, what was going on in the paintings on the ceiling. The dilemma then was that he was two years into the work. His patron, Pope Julius II, was a nasty man, known for going on tirades and beating people who disagreed with him – perhaps even worse. He's gone down in history as "il papa terribile," or "the terrible" Pope. He had probably even beaten Michelangelo by that point. Additionally, the project was taking a toll on Michelangelo. His back was killing him, from literally bending over backwards to paint the ceiling. So, would Michelangelo do as he did when he first started the project? Chip away all that work, put the scaffolding back up, then start over? Or, would he keep going and ship the work? Michelangelo was faced with the Finisher's Paradox. He had learned a lot throughout the project, and he had learned even more by finally seeing his work from a distance. Would he fix what was wrong with his work, or would he just ship it as it was, flaws and all? The tale of two (Sistine Chapel) ceilings Since the Sistine Chapel ceiling has lived on as one of the greatest masterpieces in art, it's surprising Michelangelo saw something wrong at all. It's even more surprising that what he saw is still there in the final product. If you look closely at the Sistine Chapel ceiling today, you'll notice something different about the two halves of the ceiling. On one side of the ceiling, the scenes are complex. There are lots of people, and the people are small. On the other side, the scenes are simpler. There are fewer people in each panel, and the people are bigger. When the first half of the ceiling was unveiled, it didn't seem to matter to others that the people in the paintings were small. Raphael was so impressed by what he saw, he went back to one of his own fresco's, The School of Athens, chipped away a spot, and in its place painted a likeness of Michelangelo. But Michelangelo, himself, made some big changes to his approach. And these changes seem to have paid off. The very first panel he painted on the second half of the ceiling is one of the most famous paintings ever. In The Creation of Adam, you see God himself, giving life to Adam, from fingertip to fingertip. Like other panels on the second half of the ceiling, there are fewer main figures – in this case, two – and, as a result, they're bigger, and easier to see from the floor. Do the best you can until you know better In the process of doing your creative work, you learn. This is especially true because nobody can teach you how to do your creative work, with the unique style and idiosyncrasies that make it yours. Yes,

On October 10th, 1901 – 120 years ago, almost to the day – the grandstand was full at the horse track in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. But not to see horses. There was a parade of more than 100 of these new things called automobiles, and several other events, including races of automobiles with electric engines and with steam engines. But the main event was a race of gasoline automobiles. By the time the event took place, it didn't look like it would be much of a race. There had originally been twenty-five contestants. Only three made it to the starting post, then just before the race, one broke down and had to withdraw. So there were just two cars, driven by the men who had built them. One was the country's most famous car manufacturer. The other, was a local. A failed car manufacturer, named Henry Ford. At the time of this race, the most famous car-maker in America was Alexander Winton. He had made and sold hundreds of cars. He had gotten tons of press driving from Cleveland to New York. At the time of this race, Henry Ford was a failed car-maker. He had made and sold a handful of automobiles, but his first car company had failed. It was clear who was going to win this race: Moments prior, Alexander Winton had set the world record for the fastest mile traveled in an automobile, going around the dirt track in a little more than a minute and twelve seconds. Winton's car was seventy horsepower. Ford's was twenty-six. He had never taken it on a turn, and it didn't have brakes. The race was supposed to be twenty-five laps, but just before the event, the organizers shortened it to ten. According to Richard Snow, author of I Invented the Modern Age: The Rise of Henry Ford, they probably didn't want to see the local loser lapped over and over. This race was more of a sprint. The Foundation Effect Has this ever happened to you? You pass by a construction site for months, and there's nothing going on. There's just a wall with a project logo, peppered with graffiti. Then one day, there's a six-story building frame there. Now, each time you pass, it's gotten taller. There was no visible progress for months, then there was rapid progress. You saw what I call "The Foundation Effect." The Foundation Effect is the delay in your progress, as you build your foundation. You have false starts and failures, and it looks as if you're going nowhere. But once you have your foundation built, you progress rapidly. Back to the races Henry Ford, the failed carmaker, won the sprint. But it wasn't until much later he also won the marathon. Eight years after that race, Henry's Ford Motor Company released a car that changed everything. It was durable enough to make it over rough country roads, lined with horse-drawn-wagon tracks. It was versatile enough farmers could use the engine to run a wheat thresher or move hay bales down a conveyer belt. It was twice as good as any car out there, at half the price. The first year, they sold 10,000. The second year, 20,000. A few years after that, they sold almost 200,000. By the time the "Model T" went out of production nearly twenty years after introduction, the Ford Motor Company had sold nearly 15 million. More than half of all cars in the world were Fords. Meanwhile, Alexander Winton's company kept building custom cars, made-to-order. He just couldn't compete with Ford's Model T, and had to shut down. Despite having over 100 patents on automobile technology, few today have ever heard of Alexander Winton. You need a foundation How did Henry Ford create such an incredible car, that sold in such incredible quantities? He built a rock-solid foundation. Over and over, he rejected the mere illusion of progress to scrap everything and start over. As a creator, you may feel as if you're getting nowhere. You're starting projects, but not finishing them. The ones you do finish are failing. You're throwing iterations in the fire, like Radclyffe Hall. From recent episodes, you know creative waste is part of the process. You're building the underwater part of your iceberg, so some future masterpiece will be that much better. But you're also building your foundation. The foundation of a building holds it in place. Even when the building sways in the wind or shakes in an earthquake, the foundation is there to bare the stress. Architects and engineers can design a foundation using knowledge about the laws of physics. Many buildings have been built before, so there's a lot of collective experience to draw from. You, as a creator, need to build your foundation from scratch. It's what makes your work unique. As a creator, your foundation is made of the change you want your work to make, the medium through which you'll make that change, and the process you'll follow to make your product. These things take time to develop. It will look as if you're getting nowhere, but once they're in place – like a skyscraper once the foundation is laid – your progress will be rapid. How to build your foundation To build your foundat

Leonardo da Vinci is easily the most-accomplished procrastinator who ever lived. He finished hardly any projects at all. He was great at many things, but he wasn't great at shipping. The world would have been better off if Leonardo da Vinci had treated shipping as a skill. Far be it for me to criticize anything Leonardo da Vinci did. Despite his repeated failure to ship, he lives on today as one of the greatest geniuses who ever lived – enough so that I'm talking about him in a podcast 500 years after his death. What Leonardo da Vinci procrastinated on He foreshadowed the first law of motion, saying two-hundred years before Newton that, "Every movement tends to maintain itself." He made a number of discoveries about the circulatory system: He was the first to notice the heart was the center of the blood system – not the liver. He described how an area of the aorta functioned, but since he never published his observations, it's named after a different scientist, who re-discovered this area two-hundred years later. He correctly described how blood flow affects the opening and closing of heart valves – findings that were proven correct only recently – 450 years later. He wrote or planned to write treatises on topics including painting, anatomy, human flight, geology, and astronomy. Much of what he wrote would have broken new ground in these fields, and set them ahead a couple centuries – if only he had published it. Even his greatest masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, Leonardo never finished. His patron never got their painting, and Leonardo never got paid. It was still in his studio when he died, more than fifteen years after he had begun the painting. Okay, so some of Leonardo's procrastination was iceberg-building Much of Leonardo's failure to ship was a part of his creative process. It was the creative waste that made the underwater part of his iceberg – as I talked about in the past couple episodes. There could have been practical reasons he didn't ship. Remember, once Leonardo delivered one of his paintings, it was gone forever. He couldn't snap a photo of it for safe-keeping on the cloud. One reason he clung onto mostly-finished paintings was so he could refer to them, borrowing a trick he did painting a smile from one painting, and a trick he did to make it feel like the eyes are following you around the room from another painting. But it's hard to say Leonardo couldn't have been better at shipping, when you look at all he could have contributed if only he were. And if you want to be a great creator, it makes sense to ship. Most of us would rather have our genius recognized in our lifetime, rather than marveled at hundreds of years later for what it would have contributed. Shipping is a skill Shipping is a skill. The act of having a vision, planning to achieve that vision, and executing on that vision is a skill you should cultivate, just as you would practice a programming language, writing, or macramé. Treat shipping as a skill, and you'll finish more projects. Shipped projects have a better chance of having an impact on the world. The sub-skills of shipping Shipping is a sub-skill of creative work. But the act of shipping itself has its own sub-skills. It's hard to see what you're missing out on by not treating shipping as a skill, unless you look closely at the sub-skills of shipping. Here are the sub-skills of shipping: Vision: Can you visualize the outcome you'd like to have? Planning: Can you imagine the steps you need to follow to make this vision a reality? Resourcefulness: Can you assess what resources you have that can help you achieve this vision, find what resources you don't have, and use all those resources wisely? Adaptability: Can you adapt your plan when some part, inevitably, doesn't go as planned? Overcoming Perfectionism: Your final product won't be a perfect execution of your vision. Can you overcome perfectionism and ship anyway? Fear of Shipping: Once you ship your project, there will be a void in your mind where that project once lived. Can you "let go" of the project and overcome the fear of that void? Facing Failure: Once you ship your project, you give it a chance to succeed or fail. Can you face potential criticism or failure? Reflection: How well can you reflect on the project, and process what you've learned, so you can apply it to the next project? Project-independent shipping skills Many shipping skills are project-independent. You can practice shipping, and many sub-skills of shipping, with any kind of project. Any time you have a vision, execute on that vision, and bring it into the world, you are practicing the skill of shipping. Some examples of small projects on which you can practice the skill of shipping: Cooking a recipe: Can you figure out how to get all the ingredients? Can you execute the plan? Did it turn out how you expected? What can you do differently next time? Planning a party: What kind of vibe do you want this party to have? Should it have a theme? Who shoul

When Vincent van Gogh began his career as an artist, he had already failed at everything else. He even got fired from his own family's business in the process. Not seeing any alternative, he completely immersed himself in art. In one two-week period, he created 120 drawings. But exactly none of those drawings are famous today. What feels like waste is not waste Last week, I talked about the Iceberg Principle – the idea that any masterpiece you see is just the tip of the iceberg. There's far more knowledge and experience beneath the surface, giving that masterpiece confidence and grace. But as you're adding layer after layer to your iceberg, it doesn't feel like that's what you're doing. It feels like you're wasting your energy. But you're not. After Van Gogh's frenzied first couple weeks seriously pursuing art, he settled in to a more conservative pace. Instead of 120 drawings in two weeks, he was instead shooting to make just twenty a week. He figured that's how many he'd have to make to end up with one good piece each week. "Waste" takes many forms What feels like "waste" can take many forms: Failed projects: You made something, and nobody likes it. Off on timing: Nobody like it yet, but some day someone will. Unfinished projects: You started, got a little ways, and maybe Shiny Object Syndrome took over. For whatever reason, you didn't finish. Research and Preparation: You don't always know what you're trying to learn, but all sorts of tinkering may seem like a waste. Creative waste is part of the creative game Sometimes what feels like "waste," makes it directly into a current or future project, thus making it clearly not waste. But even the stuff that never becomes a part of your body of work is part of the creative game. I talked in episode 256 about the Barbell Strategy. To succeed in creative work, put most of your efforts toward "sure bets" that protect your downside and keep you in the game. With the rest of your time and energy, play "wildcards," that have a chance of big upside. Creative work happens in Extremistan, not Mediocristan. Success won't be a steady climb up-and-to-the-right. Instead, it will look more like a poorly-shaved porcupine. Long periods of time where it doesn't seem like much is happening, punctuated by big spikes that level up your career one at a time. Yes, you're showing up every day and putting in the work, but all that is a series of small bets. You hope for one or two or a few to turn into positive Black Swans. Projects that take off, and take on a life of their own. In the course of playing this strategy, you can't tell what will be wasted, and what will not. You have to trust that "waste" is part of the process. Projects will fail, projects will go unfinished, and iterations will burn in the fire. That doesn't make you a procrastinator or a dilettante – that makes you a creator. Waste in Van Gogh's first masterpiece Vincent van Gogh's first masterpiece was full of waste. He did not just a sketch, but a small study, a medium study, and a print he could give out to test his idea. This was all before working on the final canvas. And that had many iterations, and four coats of varnish. He left it in his friend's studio to prevent himself from "spoiling it." Then he still came back and worked on it some more. All that waste was on top of the years of work he did leading up to the project. The painting was about peasants, and he wandered around living like a peasant himself, begging people to model for him. And, there was the twenty drawings a week he had done. And those 120 drawings he did in a two-week period? We don't even know what they look like, because he destroyed them. Once this first masterpiece, The Potato Eaters, was done, it must have felt like a waste to Vincent. Everyone hated it. He got in a fight with his brother about it, and he completely cut off a friend who attacked it, viciously. Vincent van Gogh's first masterpiece was the result of a lot of waste. Each of those drawings was a failed project, surely many were left unfinished. He did a massive amount of research and preparation, and he was certainly off on timing. The Potato Eaters is regarded as a masterpiece today. Creative waste adds to the iceberg You already heard last week about how any masterpiece is just the tip of the iceberg. There's far more below the surface. So what new do you learn from creative waste? Sometimes, you can't see the tip of the iceberg. Sometimes it all just feels like waste. Your projects are failing, and your preparation and planning isn't getting you anywhere, causing you to leave projects unfinished. Just remember that other creators have embraced creative waste. I told you last week about how Margaret Mitchell re-wrote nearly every chapter of Gone With the Wind at least twenty times, Jerry Seinfeld says joke-writing is "ninety-five percent re-write," Meredith Monk's charts and graphs go to waste and don't end up in the final performance, and Stephen King reminds you to "

1920s, London. Radclyffe Hall was pacing around her study. She wore close-cropped hair, a tweed skirt, and a man's silk smoking jacket and tie. Her partner, Uma Troubridge, sat in a nearby chair, reading the writing of Radclyffe – or "John," as she preferred to be called. But just as Uma's voice wavered a bit, John grabbed the papers from her hand, and threw them in the fire. In the 1920s, throwing writing in the fire meant it was gone forever. These weren't print-outs of digital files, safely backed up to the cloud. But Radclyffe still often threw her writing into the fire, if she didn't like the sound of what Uma was reading. Radclyffe Hall, like many great creators, understood the Iceberg Principle Any masterpiece is just the tip of the iceberg What I call the Iceberg Principle is this: What you see of any masterpiece is just the tip of the iceberg. There is far more knowledge and work beneath the surface, giving the piece confidence and grace. The Iceberg Principle is inspired by Ernest Hemingway, who said, "The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water." He explained further: I've seen the marlin mate and know about that. So I leave that out. I've seen a school (or pod) of more than fifty sperm whales in that same stretch of water once and harpooned one nearly sixty feet in length and lost him. So I left that out. All the stories I know from the fishing village I leave out. But the knowledge is what makes the underwater part of the iceberg. In other words, when Hemingway wrote The Old Man and the Sea, he didn't need to include every story and every detail about the life of a fisherman. He had already lived it. His experiences fishing were the underwater part of the iceberg. The stories and details he did include were only the tip of the iceberg. They were more powerful because they were held in place by everything beneath the surface. What isn't revealed gives power to what is revealed If I say, "I'm David. I grew up in Nebraska. I now live in Colombia," I've only said three statements, but each of those statements is held in place by a massive amount of knowledge and experience. When I say, "I grew up in Nebraska," eighteen years of open skies and snow drifts and cornfields flash in my mind. When I say, "I'm David," more than forty years of being called David are behind that. I've never had a different name. When you read a book by Daniel Kahneman, and he tells you something about human behavior, there's a lot of authority behind everything he says. Each statement he makes is backed up by mountains of data, and decades of running experiments and seeing it with his own eyes. While he maintains the humble uncertainty of a real scientist, there's confidence and grace behind each statement. Just think of how much work, experience, and knowledge went behind Einstein writing the simple equation: e = mc². This is something Radclyffe Hall seemed to understand. It didn't matter if she threw her writing into the fire and started over. When she heard Uma's voice waver, that signaled to her that her stories or her characters weren't flowing on the page confidently. The same way snow and ice layers onto an iceberg, making it bigger over time, pushing more of it underwater over time, it took many iterations for Hall to write classics such as The Well of Loneliness – the first great novel of lesbian literature. Each time she threw writing into the fire, the paper burned, but the iceberg didn't melt – it only gained mass. Keep the Iceberg Principle in mind Why should you keep the Iceberg Principle in mind? The Iceberg Principle helps you manage expectations about your work. It also takes some of the mystery out of great masterpieces you see. The product is not the process That last part, first: When we see a masterpiece, we can't help but marvel at how it must have been made. What we see is deceiving, because we tend to mistake the product for the process. This is because the way we consume the product is very different from the process through which that product is produced. When we read a novel, we read one word after another. When we see a painting, it hits our eyes all at once. When we watch a movie, the images flash on the screen in order. But that's not how any of it is made. The novel wasn't written one word after another. The painting wasn't laid down in orderly brushstrokes. The events in the movie weren't shot, much less conceived, one after another. And no, Michelangelo did not "simply remove everything that wasn't David." As I talked about in Mind Management, Not Time Management, an enormous amount of "Preparation" went into carving the David. So when you see a great masterpiece, and marvel at how it must have been created, know that the product is not the process. What you see is only the tip of the iceberg. Manage your expectations It might feel intimidating to know that what you see of any masterpiece is only a small amount of the work and experience it took t