Love Your Work

As I kicked and punched at the man, I glanced at the knife in his right hand. And I felt it dig into my side. It all started as I crossed paths with the man. He reached in his pocket, and pulled out the knife. I then did what surely only an idiot would do. I began to fight him. A few seconds earlier, as the man approached me on the path, he stared at me fiercely. He charged toward me, and bared his gritting teeth. His eyes reduced to snake-eye slits, and glowed under the harsh night lamplight. He shook his head from side to side, growling. When the man transformed from just another passerby into a mortal threat, I felt something I had never felt before, and that I haven't felt since. A bolt of lightning rose from my stomach, to my chest. I heard a deep growl grow into a roar. An authoritative "NOOO!" It wasn't until I heard that roar echo off the surrounding buildings that I realized -- it had come from me. It's worth noting, I've never been a "tough guy." I had never been in a fight. Yes, my older brother beat me up more times than I can count, but if someone at school threatened me, I would always meekly back down. So as I watched myself, from outside of my own body, kicking and punching at this man with a deadly weapon in his hand, I was saying to myself, What are you thinking!? But there was no going back. The struggle had begun, and for the first time ever, I was literally fighting for my life. Is this how I die?, I asked myself. But the snake-eyed man suddenly didn't look so fearless and dangerous. His eyes widened, his eyebrows soared, his mouth gaped open -- its corners bending downward. I guess he thought he had picked an easy target. It turned out, he was wrong. As the man evaded my frantic kicks and punches, an economist took over my mind. I was fighting for my life. He -- was fighting for -- what? An iPhone? Some money? He still hadn't said anything, so I didn't know for sure. And that's when I felt the knife dig into my side. Right between my left ribs. Only, thankfully, it didn't happen. The knife was still by the man's side -- dangling from his right hand, as he repeatedly grabbed at me with his left. I had only imagined him stabbing me. It must have been a simulation run by the economist that had taken over my mind. And that simulation had brought the economist to this conclusion: I had way more to lose than this guy. And that was my advantage. All I had to do was make some space, and this guy would cut his losses and move on. But the pavement was wet. I hadn't run more than a few paces before I slipped, head-first, down the sloping sidewalk. The flesh of my left hand was being ground off by the concrete, as I used it as my brake pad. As I slid down the hill, I glanced over my left shoulder. I hadn't gone far, but maybe this was enough distance to get him to give up. But he didn't give up. He was following me. I still don't know how, but I somehow got to my feet faster than he could catch me. I vaulted myself over one guardrail. I vaulted myself over another guardrail on the next path over. I scurried down a steep hill, slammed into a chain link fence, and ran like hell. When I arrived at home, only a couple of blocks away, my hand was bleeding, my toe was bleeding, my shoes were ripped, and a button was broken off of my favorite shirt. But, I was safe. We all know what you're supposed to do when someone pulls a knife on you. Give them your wallet. Give them your phone. Do what they tell you to do. "Your life is more valuable than your iPhone," people will say. Yeah, no shit. Just because I got away with my decision, doesn't make it a good decision. Annie Duke would call that "resulting" -- rating the quality of your decisions on the outcome, rather than, well, the quality of your decision. You should not fight a guy who pulls a knife on you. That would be a bad decision. Except that, you aren't making a decision. You're merely reacting. It's a non-decision. This is the error we make when we play armchair quarterback to other people's "decisions." "Why didn't the cop shoot the assailant with the deadly weapon in the kneecap, instead of the chest?" "Why didn't they just leave the room when the sexual assault began?" We know what the ideal action would be. We don't know shit about what it's actually like to be in that situation. That feeling I felt that night. That feeling I hadn't felt before, that I haven't felt since, and that I hope to never feel again, is a well-known phenomenon. It's called "fight or flight." It's what happens when you are in a seriously dangerous situation, and your sympathetic nervous system takes over. I didn't stop and politely ask the man with a knife what he wanted. I didn't then simply hand it over. "Have a nice evening!" That would have been the right "decision." But I wasn't making a decision. I fought, then I "flought." In the book Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky introduce us to two different types of thinking. There's System 1 thinkin

Things were not going well for Neil Pasricha (@NeilPasricha). He came home from work one day, and his wife told him she no longer loved him. Around that same time, Neil's best friend committed suicide. Neil needed something to lift his spirits. Something to remind him, every day, that there was something good in the world. That's when Neil started his blog, 1,000 Awesome Things. At the end of each day, he wrote about one little awesome thing from life. Today, Neil has written several awesome books, including The Book of Awesome and Awesome is Everywhere. His blog, 1,000 Awesome Things was named Best Blog in the World two years in a row from International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, Neil is the Director of The Institute of Global Happiness, and he has a fantastic podcast called 3 Books, on which he's interviewed titans such as Judy Blume, Malcolm Gladwell, and David Sedaris. Neil's new book is You Are Awesome, and it's all about resilience. In this conversation, you'll learn: Neil says "You never know when you're making art, who in your own personal life is going to resonate with it." What surprised Neil about the difference between running a blog, and a podcast. Neil also says "no one should be embarrassed of any book ever." What is "book shame," and why does Neil feel it should be wiped off the face of the planet. Neil also says "A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one." (And he admits he stole that from Game of Thrones). Hear the fascinating science behind how reading cultivates emotional intelligence. Listener Showcase June designs patterns for really cool crocheted figurines. I've seen them. They really are amazing. Check out June's work at planetjune.com and on all of the socials at @PlanetJune. My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher 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 » Sponsors https://honeybook.com/loveyourwork https://linkedin.com/loveyourwork Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/neil-pasricha/

There's an expression, to burn your boats. It originated with a military strategy. Hernán Cortés famously "burned the boats," after arriving in the New World to conquer the Aztec empire. (He actually "scuttled" his ships. He sunk them.) I recently burned my boats, when I killed off a $150,000 passive revenue stream. The birth of a passive income muse In March of 2007, I was sitting with some friends on the cable-locked chairs and tables – at two in the morning – on the porch of a closed restaurant in Austin, Texas. We were doing the kind of thing that we did at the time, after a night of parties at the SXSW conference: We'd sit around and talk about our ideas. Facebook and Twitter were still fringe services – most of the mainstream world knew nothing about them. The internet seemed full of opportunities. The subject of my dating life came up. I was terrible at finding a girlfriend, but I was good at finding dates. I described in great detail to my friends the way I had optimized my process of online dating. I had something to say about what you should write in your profile, what your pictures should be like, and what to say in your messages. I've since learned that this is the way I approach many things. I like to get deep into the details, to break it down into a framework, then do my best to explain it in a clear way. I thought I was talking about something very obvious or unexceptional, like tying your shoes, but my friends were on the edges of their seats. As was standard at SXSW at the time, whatever you talked about, there was an idea for a business there. "You HAVE to blog about this," one friend said. Then, of course, the rest of them piled on. Now, almost 13 years later, I've made well over $150,000 off of the blog that I created because of that conversation. I burned my boats Last month, I killed this blog. I didn't so much kill it as I let it expire. Literally, I simply let the domain expire. I burned my boats. At the height of this blog's revenue, I earned $11,000 in one month. The amount of work I did on the blog during that month: approximately zero. It was a passive income "muse" as Tim Ferriss would call it. In the days before I killed this blog, I wasn't earning near that much, but I was earning something. Why burn your boats? Intuitively, it makes no sense to burn your boats. Intuitively, it makes no sense to kill off a passive income stream. Something that's earning you a profit, without you needing to do any work. But our intuitions aren't always correct. Our intuitions sometimes see opportunity where there is no opportunity. Our intuitions sometimes see harm where there is no harm. Opportunity where there is no opportunity First, the opportunity where there was no opportunity. The revenue was way down on this site. I made maybe $300 in 2019 off of this site. But, I didn't do any work on this site. I had a couple of opportunities there. I could invest some time, write a little content, build a few links, and maybe I could bring that revenue back up. I also could sell the site. I even had an interested buyer. But these opportunities weren't the opportunities they seemed. This has a lot to do with the perception of harm where there is no harm. The real pain of loss aversion In behavioral economics, there's the concept of "loss aversion." That losses feel about twice as bad as gains feel good. Losing a $300 a year income stream feels about as bad as gaining a $600 a year income stream feels good. Which is to say that it hurt to kill off this passive income stream. But I reminded myself that the reality was probably not as bad as it actually felt. Added onto that hurt was that this passive income stream held a special emotional significance. This passive income stream made possible the business that I have today. The start I didn't have the heart for First of all, it wasn't easy for my friends to convince me to start this blog. I didn't write a book called The Heart to Start because starting things always came easily to me. I was full of objections. Primarily, I didn't want to build a personal brand around online dating tips. I didn't want to be known as the "online dating" guy. But my friends pushed me to start the blog. When I presented this objection, that I didn't want to be the "online dating" guy, they said I could make up a name. So that's what I did. I started the blog under a pseudonym on WordPress.com, and began to write. It wasn't until I really got rolling that I even bothered to buy a domain, and eventually started hosting the blog on my own server. And I'm glad I got started. Early days So, I worked on this blog for about three years before I made any money on it. Yes, I knew that the revenue potential was there, but mostly it was something I did on the side. I enjoyed the freedom of writing under a pseudonym. I enjoyed the focus of writing on only one subject. Most of all, it was a good outlet for me. I'd come home from a disastrous or depressing date, and there'd be emails in

How's it going? Really, how are things going for you? If things are going pretty good, you might want to tear everything down, and start all over again. Nick Kokonas (@nickkokonas) is Co-Owner of The Alinea Group and CEO of Tock. The Alinea Group is a collection of restaurants Nick started with world-class chef Grant Achatz, including their first restaurant, Alinea – a three-Michelin-star restaurant that received the James Beard Foundation Award for Outstanding Restaurant in 2016. Alinea is also ranked in the top restaurants in the U.S. and the world on numerous lists, including World's 50 Best Restaurants. Tock, Nick's other company, is a reservation system for buying tickets to some of the best restaurants in the world. With Tock, Nick has completely re-thought the economics of restaurants, eliminating wasted seating inventory, and making available variable pricing based upon the popularity of reservation times. Nick is a truly original thinker. He's demonstrated this on his appearances on some other podcasts, including The Tim Ferriss Show and Noah Kagan Presents. But this conversation is full of fresh insights, including: Nick says "people are far more afraid of success than failure." What drives Nick to tear everything down and start over, even when things are going well? Nick also says "if you're trying to innovate. A/B Testing things as a terrible idea because people won't know what they want." But there's an important distinction he draws. Find out when he tests, and when he doesn't. At Alinea, they intentionally make the first moments of dining there incredibly awkward. Seriously, I was cringing hearing him describe this. Nick said "there are people who hate us for it, and I'm okay with that." Find out why. Thanks for sharing my work! On Instagram, thank you to @booknotes101 for doing a giveaway of The Heart to Start. Thank you also to @characelik, @5wisdomsproject, and of course @tomjepsoncreative. On Twitter, thank you to @mischievousmali, @geekosupremo, @Palle_Schmidt, @LouisSzabo, @LovinDaLife, and @LWCvL. Our Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher 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/nick-kokonas/

Four years ago, almost to the day, I moved to Colombia. Four years ago, I decided to become a writer. Four years is how long it takes to get a college degree. Today, I'm graduating. It might seem strange that I didn't think of myself as a writer. By the time I set out on this mission I had already written one best-selling book. But writing was still frightening to me. Every time I sat down to write, I felt a sense of agony and fear, and I wanted to run away. Today is my "graduation day" Now that I've dedicated myself to writing for the past four years, I feel confident in calling myself a writer. Since it takes four years to get a degree in something, I declare today, January 9th, 2020, to be my graduation day. Something to ask yourself as you listen to this: What transformation have you made? What commitments and changes and sacrifices did you make to make that transformation? My quest to becoming a writer took some big commitments, changes, and sacrifices – but by making these changes, I was getting something I wanted. Why I moved to Colombia to become a writer By moving to Colombia, I was doing two primary things things: One: I was choosing a place where I knew I could build routines I wanted to build to do the things I wanted to do. I wanted apply the things I had learned about how to be more productive in producing creative work. Second, really, wrapped up in the idea of being able to build the routines I wanted to build, was a behavior-shaping constraint: By moving to Colombia, I was also moving myself far away from distractions. When I lived in Chicago, for example, I could easily fly across the country on a whim, just because there was a neat conference going on, I got a speaking opportunity (usually not paying much, if at all), or even a friend was having a cocktail party in New York. But now I can't fly to any major U.S. city on a whim. From Medellín, I have to connect through Miami or Panama City. What might have been a two-hour journey, now is usually seven at the least. Sometimes I even have to spend the night at a hotel in a connecting city to get to my destination. That extra friction means that if I want to go somewhere, I better have a damn good reason. Instead, I stay where I am, and I write. Another thing I did to make myself a writer was I started wearing really ridiculous glasses. Friends made fun of me, and some people straight up told me that I looked ugly in the glasses, but I didn't care. It was what I was going for, honestly. I was using my manner of dress to influence my behavior. As I talked about on episode 172, I was changing my identity so that I could change my actions. Now that I've done the action a lot, my identity is solidified. I was very strict with how my habits and routines helped me write for the past four years. I made sure to not waste any time in beginning to write each day. I didn't eat breakfast, I didn't shower. I simply put on some comfortable clothes, meditated, then sat down to write. For the first few hours of each day, I made sure to face a blank wall (which I talked about on episode 46). I knew the morning was my most creative time, but it was also my least-disciplined time. I needed to face a blank wall so I could be sure not to get distracted. My identity as a writer wasn't solidified. Each time I sat down to write, I wondered whether I would manage to write anything at all. After four years, I can finally say "I am a writer." Here's what that changes Now, four years after I started this mission, I declare that I am a writer. I have graduated. I no longer wear the dorky glasses. Much of the time, I even wear contacts (You'll never convince me to voluntarily slice my eyes to fix my vision). Each morning, I no longer face the blank wall. I no longer put in ear plugs. I know that I am a writer, so I know that I can write, and I'm not in a panic each morning trying to convince myself that I can write. After I meditate, I take a shower, put on some less-comfortable clothes, and go to a cafe. Even with noise and people, and even though I'm groggy, my writing muscle is strong enough that I can write. Sometimes I do have trouble getting started, and I want to put in ear plugs, but just as a challenge, I won't put them in and I'll see if I can write even with all of the conversations going on around me (It helps, by the way, that most of those conversations are in Spanish, which is not my native language. If I hear a conversation going on in English near me, it's much harder.) Many things that I picked up while transforming myself into a writer, I still do. I still try to choose a tool that will reduce distraction. Right now, my favorite writing tool is an iPad with an external keyboard – one that actually plugs in. I still manage my work according to mental states. I still don't eat breakfast. But I simply have more comfort and confidence in my ability to write. I know that I wrote yesterday. I know that I wrote every day for a thousand days before that. I know

This is the time of year when we make resolutions. Very few of us will actually keep them. The reason we can't keep resolutions is that resolutions don't work. We would be better at reaching their goals if they built habits, instead. BJ Fogg (@bjfogg) is a behavioral scientist at Stanford University. He specializes in "Behavior Design." BJ has a new book coming out, right now in the beginning of 2020. It's called Tiny Habits. I wanted to have him back on the show to announce the book. But then I realized that this episode on how to build good habits is so good that it's worth running again. Here's what you'll learn: You need to pick habits with the right characteristics to be successful in building those habits. What are the components of a habit that will stick? What are the most common mistakes people make in trying to build habits? You've probably heard that it takes 21 days to build a habit. That's actually a myth. How long does it really take to build a habit? Our Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon » Sponsors https://honeybook.com/loveyourwork Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/bj-fogg-bestof/

Socializing is good. But socializing as a default – out of some Fear of Missing Out – is not good. David's voice double fills in for him once again – and it's getting better. Image: Still Life With a Burning Candle, Pieter Claesz Our Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger 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/art-staying-in-bestof/

Twelve years ago, David met Rob Hunter (@vegashacker) on Craigslist. They had both left their jobs at the same time. They were both determined to make it. So, David and Rob spent several months wandering from cafe to cafe in San Francisco. They put in twelve hour days, not making a dime. David says it was one of the most exciting times of his life. Today, David has this podcast, best-selling books, and lives in South America. Today, Rob is one half of Focused Apps, makers of hit iOS games including Hit Tennis and Emoji Me, which has more than 40 million downloads. Our Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger 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/tale-two-bootstrappers-bestof/

Here's an essay from a few years ago. It helps explain why David likes to step back from his work during the final weeks of the year. Puny humans. Also, for the first time ever, hear David Kadavy's voice double, created using Descript's "Overdub". Image: Pere Magloire on the Road to Saint-Clair, Etretat, Gustave Caillebotte Our Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondaysss About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger 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/see-you-next-year-bestof/

I decided last December that I would be taking this December off. I like to give myself some space toward the end of the year so I can recharge, and come into the New Year with a fresh perspective. So, I'm reaching into the vault of more than 200 episodes, and pulling out some of my favorites – especially ones that are good for this time of year. This is a fantastic conversation with Sean Stephenson, and it takes on special significance this time around. Though what you're going to hear is the only conversation I ever had with Sean Stephenson, I always felt a special connection with him. So when I discovered that he was born exactly one day after me, it seemed fitting. When this episode debuted, my mother sent me a text message. She said, "Listening to interview with Sean Stephenson on my walk. Very good. I was struck at the very beginning that he was born the day after you, and what a different experience his parents were thrust into." When Sean Stephenson was born, he wasn't expected to make it through the night. He was born with brittle bone disorder. Throughout his life, he suffered hundreds of bone fractures. Even as an adult, his limbs were twisted, he never grew larger than three feet tall, and he was confined to a wheelchair. In July, I rushed from Medellin to Scottsdale to be by my mother's bedside. She had suffered a brain hemorrhage, and – as you may have heard on other episodes – she later died. About a month and a half later on August 29th, I was still in Scottsdale – where, it happens, Sean Stephenson also lived. I was sitting in a cafe, and I took a break from writing to open up Instagram. And I was instantly saddened more than I was already. The first photo in my feed was of Sean, and it said "in memoriam, Sean Stephenson 1979–2019". His wife, Mindy, had posted it that morning. When Sean Stephenson was born, he wasn't expected to make it through the night. But he made it through forty years. In those years, through his work as a therapist and through his writing and public speaking, Sean inspired a ton of people. I was one of them, and when I returned to my parents house, from the cafe, I saw one of Sean's books sitting on the shelf. Get off Your "But". My mother had bought it after hearing Sean on the show, so I guess he inspired her, too. Listening to this conversation in preparation for writing this intro was even more powerful than it was the first time around. I always try to get a superpower from my guests, and listening again helped me realize that I had internalized some of the lessons I learned from Sean. Mostly that Sean has a way of helping you realize the limiting beliefs you put on yourself. The ways that you tell yourself you're the victim. The scapegoats you create, on whom you can blame your shortcomings and failures. I always felt there was something messed up about that: Sean was dealt a tough hand in life, and so now I feel better about my own situation? That does sound messed up, but it works. And now that Sean is gone, this conversation serves as another reminder. A reminder to make the most of each day you're here on this earth. Sean did that. I'm trying. One fun thing I didn't realize until I listened to this conversation again: In this conversation, Sean recommends the book One Small Step. One Small Step is of course the book by Dr. Rober Maurer, who you heard on episode 187. That episode is a hit. It's worth listening to. I had discovered Dr. Maurer's work through another channel. It made me realize there's so much valuable knowledge in the Love Your Work catalog. Even listening to each of these conversations several times, there's always something new to discover. So if you're craving new episodes, try re-listening to some of your old favorites, as we head into the new year. Our Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondayss About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon » Sponsors https://honeybook.com/loveyourwork Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/sean-stephenson-memory/

In the 1840's Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis noticed a pattern. He noticed that too many new mothers were dying of a fever. And it didn't seem like a coincidence to him that many of these women who were dying shortly after childbirth had something in common. The doctors who delivered their babies had just performed autopsies. The death rate – by this fever – of new mothers, whose babies were delivered by doctors who had just handled dead bodies, was sometimes over thirty percent! That's incredibly high, even by the standards of the 1840's. The death rate of this clinic, where doctors performed autopsies and delivered babies, was so high that some women gave birth on the street, rather than go to this clinic. So Dr. Semmelweis performed an experiment. He tried one simple thing. This one simple thing dropped the death rate from this fever from the double digits to the single digits. Some months the death rate was zero! The one simple thing Dr. Semmelweis did: After doctors were done performing autopsies, before they delivered babies – he had them wash their hands. Today, Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis is recognized as a pioneer in antiseptic procedures. I wish I could tell you the same was true during his lifetime. Instead, he was ridiculed. He lost his job. He eventually moved away. Nearly twenty years after his experiment, Dr. Semmelweis still couldn't convince most of the medical community to wash their hands. He was committed to a mental institution, where he died fourteen days later, after being beaten by guards. The guards didn't beat Dr. Semmelweis to death, though. You can't make up cruel irony like this. He died from an infection in his wounds – an infection which could have been prevented with antiseptic treatment. The antiseptic treatment for which he is now known as a pioneer. Image: The Death of Marat, Jacques-Louis David Our Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon » Sponsors https://offgridmindfulness.com Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/cell-phone-emfs/

On July 4th of this year, I was finally hitting my stride. After a year of visa troubles, I had secured a three-year visa. I was finally back in the writing rhythm I had been in before my visa troubles started. Things had been fucked, and they had become unfucked. Little did I know, everything was about to get even more fucked than it was before. One thing that got me through the fuckedness that ensued – you'll hear about it in this conversation – was that I had read Everything is F*cked, by Mark Manson (@iammarkmanson). In this conversation, you'll learn: How can a book called Everything is F*cked possibly be, as the subtitle promises, A Book About Hope? Everything being fucked doesn't require hope. Hope requires everything to be fucked. I've talked before on the show about living an "antifragile" life. Learn how to avoid having what Mark calls "fragile values." Mark says "if there's no reason to live, then there's no reason to not live." How can what Mark calls "the uncomfortable truth," be liberating, instead of deflating? Photo by Maria Midoes Listener Showcase Palle Schmidt has a new book, SOLO - Survival Guide for Creative Freelancers. Palle is giving it away to Love Your Work listeners, for a limited time. Check it out at http://bit.ly/kadavy Our Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon » Sponsors https://offgridmindfulness.com http://linkedin.com/loveyourwork Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/mark-manson-everything-fucked/

You are what you surround yourself with. When your environment changes, your mind changes with it. We recently talked about how your environment can put you in a creative mental state, when we talked to Donald M. Rattner, on episode 201. But what about the objects you surround yourself with? They're a part of your environment, too. The devices we use are a part of our environment, and the devices we use affect our mental state, too. We're already pretty intentional about how we change our environment for the exact activities we're doing. You cook in your kitchen, and you sleep in your bed. You wouldn't sleep in your kitchen, so why do you meditate with your smartphone? Image: View Across the Bay, Juan Gris Thanks for sharing my work! Thanks to the 80,000 Hours podcast for syndicating my conversation with Rob Wiblin to their podcast. Thanks to the Traction Growth & Income podcast for interviewing me. Thanks to the Big Gay Author podcast for mentioning my interview with Robbie Abed. On Twitter, thank you to @mrlacey, @giftedguru, @LWCvL, @dbarrant, @kierantie, and @thepixelgrid. On Facebook, thank you to Sean Corbett. On Instagram, thank you to @jamesonbairesq, and @realba88. Our Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon » Sponsors https://offgridmindfulness.com Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/dont-meditate-smartphone/

Dan Ariely (@danariely) has more opportunities than he knows what to do with. As a James B. Duke professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University and author of New York Times best-selling books, such as Predictably Irrational, he has lots of demands on his time. Dan has to say "no" to a lot of opportunities that don't have a clear payoff. But, surprisingly, he also says "no" to a lot of opportunities that do have a clear payoff. That's because, as Dan tells us in this conversation, he gambles with his time. He intentionally does some small amount of things that don't have a clear payoff. In order to have the space and time for those gambles, he needs to say "no" to some sure bets. In this episode, we'll learn more about how Dan gambles with his time. We'll also learn: How did "gambling" with his time lead Dan to publish his exciting new graphic novel, Amazing Decisions: The Illustrated Guide to Improving Business Deals and Family Meals? The creative process for Dan's new graphic novel is a big departure from that of his research papers and books. How did he navigate the uncertainty when collaborating with an artist? With everything Dan knows about human behavior, how does he design his habits, rituals and routines to optimize creative output and spark motivation? This isn't the typical conversation with the living legend of behavioral science, Dan Ariely. If you want to know more about his groundbreaking work on irrationality, check out our first conversation on episode 51. A quick note here: Dan and I talk about "Timeful" a number of times throughout this conversation. If you're not familiar, Timeful was a productivity app that Dan and I collaborated on. It later sold to Google and some of the Timeful features are integrated into Google Calendar. Our Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondayss About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon » Sponsors https://offgridmindfulness.com https://honeybook.com/loveyourwork Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/dan-ariely/

Over the past four years, I've been trying to "make it" as a creator. Yes, I was on my own for another eight years before that, but this past four years has been when I really doubled down on creating. To make the things I create not just a marketing tactic for some other thing. For the creations themselves to be the thing. Each month for the past two years of this journey, I've been reporting my income on my blog, kadavy.net. Sometimes, it's been pretty embarrassing. These aren't your usual income reports, where someone reports making six or seven figures in a single month. These are the income reports of a creator struggling to make it. This week, I'd like to give you a preview. This is a preview of something you get at some levels of Patreon backing. An audio version of my income report, delivered right to your favorite podcast app through your own private RSS feed. These income reports are where I think out loud about why I do one thing, or why I don't do another thing. Hear how I build this business. Hear the exact thinking behind my decision-making, as it happens. This is the income report for August of this year. By the time you hear this, the income report for September will be out, too. If you'd like to hear it, just go to patreon.com/kadavy, and look for the proper backing level. I would appreciate your support so much. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger 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/income-report-patreon-preview/

Donald M. Rattner (@donaldrattner) is an architect, and author of My Creative Space: How to Design Your Home to Stimulate Ideas and Spark Innovation. I've talked a lot on this podcast about matching your work to your mental state. If you're in the mood to do the work you're doing, everything is going to be easier. But you can also match your mental state to the work. You can change your mental state so the work you need to be doing gets done. One powerful way to change your mental state is to change your surroundings. If you design your space to think more creatively, for example, you'll do better creative work. In My Creative Space, Donald draws upon mountains of research from the field of environmental psychology, to show you how to change your space to change your creativity. In this conversation, you'll learn: How has the field of environmental psychology shown how the spaces where you work can change everything from your thinking to your physiology? Research shows that the optimal light level for creativity is 150 lux, and the optimal noise level for creativity is 70 dB. Just how bright and loud is that, and why does it work? Travel posters – especially vintage travel posters – may help you think more creatively. Donald explains why – when it comes to creativity – "construal level theory" (something you might remember from my conversation with David Rock) favors things far away in distance and time. This conversation is packed with knowledge, and so is Donald's book. Image: The Moneylender and His Wife, Quentin Massy New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon » Sponsors https://kadavy.net/motivation Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/donald-m-rattner/

If you had asked me when I first started Love Your Work why I was doing it, I don't think I could have given you a straight answer. I simply felt compelled to create a podcast. Sometimes it's through the act of creation that we discover what it is that we're creating. This is a special 200th episode of Love Your Work. Over the past four years, I've been on my own creative journey in making this show. Today I want to reflect on that journey – share what I've learned along the way, and hopefully that will reflect some of what you've learned. I didn't know for sure why I was starting Love Your Work when I first started, but if you were to ask me NOW why I started Love Your Work, I'd tell you that it's because I was struggling with a conflict. It's a conflict that you might struggle with yourself. On one side of the conflict is who you are expected to be. On the other side of the conflict is who you really are. The process of self-actualization – the process of "making it", is a process of becoming that person who you really are, through your creative work. Image: The Nap, Gustave Caillebotte Music in this episode by MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License: "Perspectives", "Nowhere Land", "Satiate Strings", "Inspired", "Immersed", and "Prelude and Action". New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger 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/200th-episode/

Scott H. Young (@scotthyoung) is best known for learning the entire MIT Computer Science curriculum, on his own, in only a year. He did it through "ultralearning" It's a way of organizing your learning so each moment you spend learning is much more effective than it would be otherwise. If you're like me, you love to learn new things. If you're like me, you'd also like to learn more in a shorter amount of time. In Ultralearning, Scott shares how to break down learning projects into their component parts, and how to choose the most effective ways of learning each of those individual parts. In this conversation, you'll learn about: How can "meta learning" – or planning your learning projects – make the process more enjoyable, and prevent burnout and procrastination? Learn why when you feel like you're learning more, you may actually be learning less. Which is right for you? Free recall, or repeated review? If you're like me, the term "ultralearning" may sound a little exhausting. Learn how you can apply ultralearning principles to even the most casual learning projects. You can use ultralearning principles to learn a new language, learn to dance, or to get more bang for your career-building buck. Thanks for sharing my work! On Twitter, @martinstellar, @DaveCohencomedy, @kosherjellyfish, @mischievousmali. On Instagram, @alexandbooks_, @icoknick, @nathan.guitar. Elsewhere, thank you to Al Chen for building the todos by mental state Coda template, and Mavericks Thoughts for including me in the article, How 10 Top Writers on Medium Start Their Day. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon » Sponsors http://linkedin.com/loveyourwork https://kadavy.net/motivation Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/scott-h-young/

If you're going to get an edge, you have to be aware that the prevailing wisdom is almost always wrong. You have to know when to go against that wisdom. One place I'm glad that I went against the prevailing wisdom is in my decision to not buy a house – especially when I was in my early twenties. The prevailing wisdom was that a house was "the best investment you can make." Instead, I decided to invest in myself. This post is from more than ten years ago, and it's talking about decisions I made fifteen years ago, which makes this a fun episode for two reasons. One, I wish I would have had more confidence in my point of view earlier on. I was definitely onto something. I'm always struggling to trust my instincts, and this is a good reminder that my instincts have been right at least one time in the past. Two, I'm reading this as it was written ten years ago. Notice that my writing style has gotten much better – my writing was definitely not as audio-friendly, but I'll be reading it as it was written. I wasn't a good "prompt talker" as I call it. Lots more ten-cent words in this one. Image: The Open Window, Juan Gris New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger 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/self-investment-podcast/

When something bad happens, it's tempting to think that you made a bad decision. But the quality of your decision making doesn't always align with the quality of your outcomes. Sometimes you make a good decision, and you have a bad outcome. Even more dangerous, sometimes you make a bad decision, and have a good outcome (you'll learn why). Annie Duke (@AnnieDuke) is a former professional poker player, and a decision strategist. She's dedicated to improving decision-making skills around the world amongst adults and children. She's author of Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts. In this conversation, you'll learn: We often think of life as like a game of chess. Why is it actually more like a game of poker? How do we separate luck from skill? Learn the most common mental error people make that holds them back from ever learning to make better decisions. Why do strong opinions make you dumber? Learn how to overcome "motivated reasoning" to make more accurate predictions, and better decisions. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger 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/annie-duke/

We hate to lose. But if we don't take risks in life, we never win. The more we protect ourselves from loss, the more we stagnate. Like economist Tyler Cowen told me, if you want to be "dynamic," you have to develop a thick skin. I've been thinking more and more lately about the importance of having a thick skin. The importance of being – Antifragile. I'll tell you more about it in this week's episode. Image from: Head of a skeleton with a burning cigarette, Vincent Van Gogh New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger 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/antifragile-life-podcast/

What if your smartphone didn't distract you? What if your focus couldn't be shaken by social media, by the latest news story, or even by your coworkers? What if you could be indistractable? Imagine what you could accomplish. Nir Eyal's (@nireyal) new book will help you do just that. Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life will lead you away from dis-traction, so you can get traction. You may remember Nir being on Love Your Work a couple of times before. We talked about the societal implications of distracting technology more than three years ago, on episode 21. And now he's back to show you how to fight back distractions – whatever the source. In this conversation, you'll learn: Nir wrote the Bible on building habit-forming products: Hooked is a Wall Street Journal best-seller. So why would he also write the book on how to avoid being distracted by these products? How can you reimagine distraction to short-circuit it at its source? Nir helps you redesign your triggers, your task, and your temperament. Why is the myth of multitasking a myth in itself? Nir shows you how "multichannel multitasking" can help you do two things at once while being as focused as ever. Links Nir mentions: Schedule-maker tool Distraction guide Full disclosure, Nir is a book marketing client of mine. I consulted for him on some marketing tasks for this book, Indistractable. Of course, I rarely take clients, and I only did so because I respect Nir so much as an author and a thinker, and because I loved the book! Thanks for sharing my work! On Twitter, @noidentity_uk, @MPozdnev, and @JeffPossiel. On Instagram, @tomjepsoncreative. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger 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/nir-eyal-indistractable/

To make it as a creative, you need to make the most of very limited resources. Your most valuable resource as a creative is your creative energy. You only have so much creative energy, but if you use that energy wisely, you can be leaps and bounds more productive than you could be otherwise. To manage your creative energy well, be intentional about how you use it. One way to be intentional about how you use your creative energy is to categorize and label different types of creative energy. Today, I introduce two types of creative energy. "Front burner" creativity, and "back burner" creativity. If you think of your creative energy in terms of "front burner" and "back burner," you can have more creative output on your smaller projects, while still tackling those bigger projects – all without procrastinating or burning out. I'll tell you more in this week's episode. Image: Guitar and Music Paper, Juan Gris New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger 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/front-burner-creativity/

Robbie Abed (@robbieab) is author of Fire Me I Beg You: Quit Your Miserable Job (Without Risking it All). Robbie is also one of the early influencers on LinkedIn's publishing platform, he's had over 500 coffee meetings, and he's one of the key catalysts – along with James Altucher – behind why this podcast exists at all. (You'll hear the story.) How would you feel if you got fired today? If the answer is "relieved," you should re-think your job. I took a short visit to Chicago, and sat down with longtime friend Robbie Abed. In this conversation, you'll learn; Thinking about quitting your job? What's one question you should ask yourself to know if you should pull the trigger? How do you quit your job without committing career suicide? Robbie says "Never lie on your resume, but lie like hell in your exit interview." Find out why. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »

Have you ever wondered to yourself: How the the hell did I end up in this situation? I asked myself this question once. I was changing my clothes in the bathroom of a filthy Fuck My Life laundromat in Chicago. It was a terrible situation. But I learned an important lesson. I'll tell you about it in this week's episode. Image from: A Bar at the Foiles-Bergére, Edouard Manet New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays Listener Showcase This week, we're featuring Luke Freeman of positly.com. Positly.com is a platform for recruiting and managing research participants. Sign up to be featured at kadavy.net/showcase About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger 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/problems-worth-having-podcast/

Ryan Evans (@ryanevans) wanted to make easy money. Growing up on a pig farm, Ryan was used to making little money for lots of hard work. But Ryan would soon learn an important lesson about the dangers of easy money. This is, in my opinion, the most powerful conversation I've had on the show yet. In it, we'll talk about: Are there good ways to make money, and bad ways to make money? Ryan's hard lesson gives him a unique perspective that few people have. Hear the story of what it's like to get investigated by the SEC for insider trading. What's it like to serve hard time for making easy money? If you've ever wondered what federal prison was like, Ryan will tell you. I had to cut a third of this conversation out, in order to fit our production budget. We pay by the minute for editing, so there isn't room for the whole thing. Patreon supporters got access to the raw uncut conversation weeks ago, delivered straight to their favorite podcast apps. Support Love Your Work on Patreon to hear the whole thing, and get other goodies in the process. Join at patreon.com/kadavy. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »

You may have heard that you should assign yourself an "aspirational hourly rate." That you should tell yourself you're worth, say, $300 an hour; and if you can spend $300 to save yourself an hour, you should do so. That's a powerful idea for making the most of your time and energy, but is all of your time equally valuable? In this week's essay, I propose a variable money value for your time. Image: Glass and Checkerboard, Juan Gris Thanks for sharing my work! On Twitter, @EvryLovelyThing and @tchassakamga. On Instagram, tomjepsoncreative of The Sideman Designer podcast. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger 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/variable-money-value-time/

Rob Wiblin (@robertwiblin) is the Director of Research at an organization called 80,000 Hours, and host of the 80,000 Hours Podcast. 80,000 hours being the amount of hours you will spend working in a typical career. 80,000 Hours is dedicated to finding out just how effective various careers are, and who is suited for those careers. We all want the work we do to matter. But how do we really know whether the work we do does matter? The foundation of 80,000 Hours is a philosophy called Effective Altruism. The EA community asks tough questions about what are the most important issues facing humanity, and how best to address those issues. EA tends to come up with counterintuitive conclusions that go against most people's first instincts. You're going to hear some of those counterintuitive conclusions. You're also going to learn: Why did Rob insist on having a much longer conversation than the typical one-hour conversation you hear here on Love Your Work? He has data to back up his suggestion. Why should you stop listening to your gut instincts about what actions have an impact? Following the research can increase your impact a thousand times over. Why are the highest-profile issues some of the last issues you should be giving your attention to? Rob provides a framework for making the most of your money, time, and attention. This is a much longer conversation than usual. I'd like to thank Rob Wiblin and 80,000 Hours for offering to cover the extra production costs over our usual shorter conversations. We pay by the minute, and they were happy to chip in to make this conversation more in-depth. You'll find out why early on in the conversation. Links mentioned The benefits (and lack of harm) of nicotine Nature.com: Impact of plastic straw ban on oral health advice? Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean by Jambeck et al,. Science (2015) What you think about landfill and recycling is probably totally wrong by Rob Wiblin Population ethics Population axiology The Non-Identity Problem How many lives does a doctor save? Simplifying Cluelessness, by Philip Trammell Crucial Considerations and Wise Philanthropy, by Nick Bostrom A year's worth of education for under a dollar and other 'best buys' in development, from the UK aid agency's Chief Economist 80,000 Hours Key Ideas New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger 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/robert-wiblin-interview/

We're so accustomed to operating in a time management world, we can't imagine it being any different. We all have our calendars full, and even then we can't seem to manage it all. Believe it or not, it wasn't always this way, and if you want to stay relevant in the coming years, I think you'll have to learn to operate under a completely different paradigm. We need to stop thinking so much about how to better manage our time, and start thinking about how to better manage our minds. I'll tell you more in this week's episode. Photo by milan degraeve on Unsplash. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays Listener Showcase Vidas Pinkevicius is not only one of our top-contributing Patreon backers, he's also an organist who draws. Vidas is author of Pinky and Spiky comics. You can check out his work on Steemit. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger 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/mind-management-world-podcast/

Dr. Robert Maurer (@Dr_RobertMaurer) is author of One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way. He's also Director of Behavioral Sciences for the Family Practice Residency Program at Santa Monica UCLA Medical Center and a faculty member with the UCLA School of Medicine. In One Small Step, Dr. Maurer shows you how to make really big changes with ridiculously small steps. I first discovered One Small Step on the Amazon page for my own book, The Heart to Start. Amazon kept showing me that people who bought my book were also buying Robert's book. After it had been sitting there for week after week, I thought to myself, I've gotta see what this is about. You've heard me talk about taking small steps on this podcast, including my episode on how to build good habits with B.J. Fogg. It turns out there's a name for this practice. The Japanese call it Kaizen. In this conversation, you'll learn about: How do large goals put us into fear mode? Learn about the neuroscience of why we don't take actions. How can you start doing anything with small steps? You can start an exercise habit simply by standing on a treadmill, or a flossing habit while flossing only one tooth. How did Dr. Maurer himself write his book by committing to only ninety seconds per day of writing? Support the show Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon » New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/robert-maurer-kaizen/

Breaking through resistance to be creative is a battle with your own mind. We learned last week from Dr. Robert Lustig about how commerce is set up to hack your mind into a state of constant wanting, wanting, wanting. But the more you seek satisfaction from the outside world, the harder time you'll have finding it. That's why I think you should shut off the consumer mind, and fire up the creator mind. Photo by Paul Skorupskas on Unsplash Thanks for sharing my work! On Instagram, tammylynnmcnabb, and tomjepsoncreative of The Sideman Designer podcast. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/creator-mind-podcast/

Dr. Robert Lustig (@RobertLustigMD) is Professor emeritus of Pediatrics, Division of Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), where he specializes in the field of neuroendocrinology – in other words, how the brain regulates hormonal activity in the body. His research and clinical practice has focused on childhood obesity and diabetes. Dr. Lustig believes the food business has hacked our bodies and minds to pursue pleasure instead of happiness, by pushing processed food loaded with sugar. As you'll see, the way sugar triggers our brain chemistry isn't a whole lot different from the way technology triggers our brain chemistry, which is relevant to prior discussions I've had on the podcast about how technology shapes behavior. Dr. Lustig points to this confusion between pleasure and happiness as having fostered today's epidemics of addiction and depression. Getting your creative work out into the world, and finding a way to love your work, both require that you have a healthy relationship with your mind, and your definition of happiness. This is why I was extremely excited to come across Dr. Lustig's book, The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains. It really brought a scientific explanation to much of what I've been searching to explain here on Love Your Work over the past few years. In this conversation, you'll learn: Why are pleasure and happiness neurologically different phenomenon? How do we confuse them for one another? How does the pursuit of pleasure reduce your ability to experience pleasure? The more pleasure you pursue, the harder it becomes to be happy. You've heard that Coca Cola used to have one addictive substance in it – cocaine. Hear the story Coke doesn't want you to know about why the original formula had FOUR addictive substances. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/robert-lustig-podcast/ #share2steem

Curiosity is powerful fuel. If you want to make it as a creative, you need to follow things you're curious about. It's your best shot at being able to put in the work necessary to succeed. But curiosity can be so powerful, it can take you off track. In this week's article, learn how to use curiosity strategically. You can harness the fuel of curiosity while driving toward your goals. Image by Steve Johnson New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays Listener Showcase Frafri makes "music for entrepreneurs." Visit frafri.com to find all of the places you can listen. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/strategic-curiosity-podcast/

We're living in a time of exciting technological innovation. But just because technology can do something for us, doesn't mean that it should. Cal Newport is author of the new book Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World. Digital Minimalism is a philosophy of using the power of technology only in the ways it serves us best, while eliminating use of technology in ways it harms us, or even in ways it only has a marginal benefit. Aside from Digital Minimalism, Cal Newport is an extremely prolific author. He's written books such as So Good They Can't Ignore You, Deep Work, and How to Become a Straight-A Student. He's a tenured computer science professor at Georgetown University. Cal has accomplished all of this in spite of – or maybe because – he's never had a single social media account. This is a fantastic conversation with Cal. He and I overlap a lot in our interests, so I was very eager to discuss with him the implications of technology usage, and also to dig deeper into his relationship with Deep Work. As you know if you listen to Love Your Work regularly, I'm always searching for ways to get more out of my mind, and to maintain a healthy relationship with technology that helps me get more creative work into the world, without distracting me from doing that creative work. In this conversation, you'll learn: How did we all get so addicted to Facebook? For many of us, it was an accident. For Facebook, it was no accident. How do Amish communities survive, despite being surrounded by a world with a rapid pace of technological innovation? It's all about using technology for its benefits, without damaging the community. Cal goes beyond "Deep Work" to talk about the different "flavors" of Deep Work he uses to power his wildly successful career as both an academic and an author. Links and resources mentioned Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport Tragedy of the commons Ten arguments for deleting your social media accounts right now by Jaron Lanier Pavlok Mouse Book Club Moleskine Medieval Technology and Social Change by Lynn White Technological instrumentalism Technological determinism Dynamical system Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport The Hedgehog and The Fox So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love by Cal Newport Cal Newport Photo Credit: Penny Gray Photography New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative entrepreneur. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/cal-newport-podcast-interview/

If you want to be a master of your craft, you need to be able to see your skills and accomplishments objectively. You need to always be on the lookout for ways you might fool yourself – for ways you might cause yourself to feel as if you have accomplished something, when in fact you have accomplished nothing. One of the ways you can distort your vision of the truth is by identifying too strongly with the place you live. I talk about it in this week's article. Thanks for sharing my work! Thank you to the Meshed Society Newsletter; to @LivC2012, @rhysbmorgan, and @wes_mister on Twitter; and to @Aliceswalsh and @Maxam1 on Instagram. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative entrepreneur. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/stop-loving-city-podcast/

Eric Zimmer (@etzimmer) was living in a van. He had Hepatitis C and weighed 100 pounds. Then he got arrested and lost his job. He was facing up to forty years in jail time. He had a $300-a-day addiction to heroin. Today, Eric is host of the popular podcast, The One You Feed, which was named one of the best podcasts on iTunes in 2014, and has more than 10 million downloads. The One You Feed is based upon an old parable about a good wolf and a bad wolf at battle inside each of us. The one who wins is the one you feed. Eric straightened out his life and has overcome addiction. He helps others not only through The One You Feed, but also through behavioral coaching work. How did Eric go from a $300-a-day heroin addiction to 13 years clean and sober? We'll find out today. We'll also talk about: The delicate relationship between creative pursuit and self image. How can creativity become a scapegoat for self-destruction, or a vehicle for self improvement? How was Eric able to integrate friendship and his love for music into his podcast? The One You Feed helps him feed his "good wolf."" Why is Eric grateful that he was drawn to heroin? Counterintuitively, the victory of a ""bad wolf" can spring the "good wolf" into action. Links and resources mentioned One You Feed Podcast The Two Wolves parable Keith Richards Kurt Cobain Vincent van Gogh Leonard Cohen Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Arthur Ashe What should be our next Patreon goal? Take our survey at kadavy.net/goals. Start supporting Love Your Work at patreon.com/kadavy. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative entrepreneur. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me [email protected]. Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/one-you-feed-podcast-eric-zimmer/

I often have listeners write to me, lamenting that they have "too many interests," or that they "lack focus." They've been taught to feel ashamed of their curiosity. It's interesting, the personality types of "introvert" and "extrovert" get a lot of attention. But I think equally as important is the difference between "perceiver" and "judger." What is that? Well those hopelessly curious people, they would fall into the perceiver category, and they should stop feeling ashamed about it. I'll tell you more in this week's article. What should be our next Patreon goal? Take our survey at kadavy.net/goals. Start supporting Love Your Work at patreon.com/kadavy. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative entrepreneur. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me [email protected]. Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/perceiving-judging-podcast/

Srdja Popovic (@SrdjaPopovic) is a revolutionary. He played a big part in overthrowing Serbian president Slobodan Milošević. He now coaches activists around the world in non-violent resistance techniques, through CANVAS (Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies). This may seem out of left field to have a political activist on the show. It's not meant to be some thinly-veiled political statement. Rather, I think anyone who is trying to get people on board with their message can learn a lot from the techniques of revolutionaries. I recently read Srdja's book, Blueprint for Revolution: How to Use Rice Pudding, Lego Men, and Other Nonviolent Techniques to Galvanize Communities, Overthrow Dictators, or Simply Change the World, and was blown away by the inventiveness and deft strategy of the techniques he shared. It's a fascinating book whether you're trying to overthrow a dictator, or you're merely trying to get people to read your blog. In this conversation, you'll learn: We think Rosa Parks's courageous stand was a spontaneous event. Learn how it was actually a strategic hit, designed for maximum effect. If you're trying to get people on board with your message, branding is everything. Learn how a movement like Occupy Wall Street missed a golden branding opportunity. Effective activists choose tactics that have the most influence, with the smallest risk. Learn Srdja's brainstorming techniques for homing in on these tactics. It's a valuable exercise for any influencer. Links and resources mentioned Blueprint for Revolution: How to Use Rice Pudding, Lego Men, and Other Nonviolent Techniques to Galvanize Communities, Overthrow Dictators, or Simply Change the World by Srdja Popovic Slobodan Miloševic The World's Greatest Unreported Hyperinflation The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien Otpor! Occupy Movement Democratic Opposition of Serbia Blitzkrieg Multi-level Marketing 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action Gene Sharp Montgomery bus boycott NYU Harvard Kennedy School Colorado College Arab Spring Civil Rights Movement Laughtivism Ghandi Salt March Why Dictators Don't Like Jokes Toys cannot hold protest because they are not citizens of Russia, officials rule Occupy Wall Street We are the 99% Orange Revolution Milk Harvey Milk James Lawson Sudanese protests Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies Image Credit: Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung What should be our next Patreon goal? Take our survey at kadavy.net/goals. Start supporting Love Your Work at patreon.com/kadavy. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative entrepreneur. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me [email protected]. Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/srdja-popovic/

We live in a world rich with information, and algorithms help us find the things that fit us. Algorithms help us decide what books to buy, what music to listen to, and even who to date. But are algorithms always a good thing? If they aren't, how can you be "anti algorithm." I talked about this concept a little bit with Tyler Cowen back on episode 155. Now I'll expand on it. What should be our next Patreon goal? Take our survey at kadavy.net/goals. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative entrepreneur. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me [email protected]. Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/anti-algorithm-podcast/

How do you market something when you don't know what it is, or who it's for? If you're anything like me, you feel driven to create, but it's only through the process of creation that your vision takes form. It's only through putting that creation out into the world that you begin to realize what it means. This makes it a challenge to market your creations. If you don't know what it is, you don't know how to sell it. If you don't know who it's for, you don't know how to speak to those people. I'm honored to have the legendary Seth Godin back on the show. His first appearance was exactly one-hundred episodes ago, on episode 77. My first conversation with Seth proved to be a breakthrough moment for me. The things Seth said to me gave me the courage to self publish The Heart to Start, as well as other, shorter books. I'm still digesting this conversation, but I think it will prove to be another breakthrough. It helped me answer a lot of questions I had from reading Seth's most recent book, the instant classic, This is Marketing. In this conversation, you'll learn: What are "status roles," and how can you use them to help your product spread? Seth will tell you why status is more than just money and materialism. Why is "specific" a kind of bravery? If you don't know "who it's for," you might simply be hiding from a fear of failure. Seth calls me out with very direct advice that will stick with me for the rest of my life. Find out why Seth doesn't want me to sell out to easy money. Links and resources mentioned This Is Marketing by Seth Godin Paul Cézanne Jackson Pollock Permission Marketing Seth's Blog The Marketing Seminar In search of the minimum viable audience Myers–Briggs Type Indicator Samuel Beckett Waiting for Godot Kickstarter Keith Johnstone Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre by Keith Johnstone The Godfather Breaking Bad Microfinance WaterHealth International Akimbo The Podcast Fellowship J. K. Rowling Harper Lee Earnest Hemingway Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by Seth Godin Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin Free Prize Inside: How to Make a Purple Cow by Seth Godin How blind auditions help orchestras to eliminate gender bias Can 10,000 hours of practice make you an expert? Akimbo - The Big Sort: Why taxonomy matters Akimbo - Interoperability Becoming by Michelle Obama The Martian by Andy Weir The Domino Project altMBA What should be our next Patreon goal? Take our survey at kadavy.net/goals. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative entrepreneur. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me [email protected]. Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/seth-godin-podcast-2/

I'm launching a new email series. Summer of Starting will help you get out of your own way, stop procrastinating, and start creating. Sign up before May 24th at summerofstarting.com

Big creative projects are daunting. It's easy to burn out, and procrastinate. The problem is, creative problems don't get solved in one go. In medicine, there's a concept of the "minimum effective dose." It's the minimum dose at which the medication will elicit a response. If you follow Tim Ferriss, you hear him mention minimum effective dose often. You heard about the minimum effective dose of weight training back on episode 160. Now I'm going to tell you about the concept of minimum effective dose, as applied to your creative projects. I call it "Minimum Creative Dose". What should be our next Patreon goal? Take our survey at kadavy.net/goals. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative entrepreneur. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me [email protected]. Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/minimum-creative-dose-podcast/

Vincent Van Gogh was a loser and a failure. He failed as an art dealer, and as a preacher. He even got fired and banned from his own family's business. On top of it, Van Gogh had terrible health problems. His gums were sore, he was losing weight, and he had a hacking cough. He was also prone to psychotic episodes, during which he was institutionalized for months at a time. Vincent never really found his place in the world. He died young, at only 37. I recently read an incredible biography of Van Gogh. By the end, I was left wondering, what can you possibly learn from this tragic life? Steven Naifeh is co-author if the incredible [Van Gogh: The Life] (@VanGoghTheLife). It's a 900-page treasure chronicling the life of an artist who is so revered, tourists bring their relative's ashes to spread over his gravesite in Auvers, France. Steven and his co-author and partner Gregory White Smith spent more than a decade compiling Van Gogh's biography. To do so, they had to sort through mountains of letters and literature from the period of Van Gogh's life. Since neither of them spoke Dutch, they worked with more than twenty translators and researchers to complete the book. The result is a Van Gogh biography of unparalleled depth, painting in intricate detail the outer and inner life of Vincent Van Gogh. In this conversation, you'll learn: Most people think Vincent Van Gogh died in obscurity, but that's not true. Why is it that, as he languished in an asylum, Vincent's work was actually exploding in popularity. Many people also believe that Vincent Van Gogh committed suicide. How did Naifeh and Smith come to change the opinion of even the most studied Van Gogh historians. What can you possibly learn from the tragic success of Vincent Van Gogh? Steven shares insights about what he and his late partner and co-author learned from studying Van Gogh's life. It's surprising, and touching. Links and resources mentioned Steven Naifeh Van Gogh: The Life - Book Van Gogh The Life - Website Van Gogh The Life - Instagram Van Gogh The Life - Facebook Claude Monet Jackson Pollock: An American Saga Jackson Pollock - Is he the greatest living painter in the United States? Theo Van Gogh Van Gogh Letters Albert Aurier Article Grave of Vincent and Theo van Gogh The Potato Eaters Van Gogh Museum Paul Gauguin German Expressionism Pierre-Auguste Renoir Georges Seurat A Sunday on La Grande Jatte Camille Pissarro Émile Bernard Paul Signac Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Salon Paul Cézanne Alfred Sisley The Eight Impressionist Exhibitions, 1874-1886 Temporal Lobe Epilepsy Manic Depression Absinthe Syphilis Syphilis and the use of mercury Gregory White Smith Wheatfield with Crows Tree Roots Museum unconvinced by Van Gogh death theory John Rewald Loving Vincent At Eternity's Gate Don McLean - Vincent ( Starry, Starry Night) Vincent Di Maio NCIS: Provence: The Van Gogh Mystery Luck Unites a Couple for a Lifetime of Great Collaborations Almond Blossom What should be our next Patreon goal? Take our survey at kadavy.net/goals. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative entrepreneur. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me [email protected]. Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/vincent-van-gogh-podcast/

Do you want to love Mondays? If you already love Mondays, do you want to keep loving Mondays? I'm launching a new newsletter that will help you do just that. It's called Love Mondays, and it's a weekly boost of inspiration to help you find the mindset to make it as a creative entrepreneur. If you're already on my email list, you've already been enjoying these. Many of them include one of the more than 11,000 highlights I've built up over years of reading about how history's greatest artists and thinkers have carved out their own unique places in the world. Others are the gems pulled out of conversations you've heard right here on Love Your Work. Those of you already getting these emails know I told you about how Georgia O'Keeffe decided to quit modeling to double down on art. I've told you about how professor Dean Simonton's work shows that quantity of creative work leads to quality of creative work. I've shown you how neuroscientists have discovered that the best predictor of so-called "insight machines" is brain patterns that show a high level of self awareness. Today, I'm going to give you an insight from comedian Steve Martin. If you ever feel like your big break will never come, this will keep you going. And if you'd like to get a boost in your inbox every Monday morning, go sign up for the Love Mondays newsletter at kadavy.net/mondays What should be our next Patreon goal? Take our survey at kadavy.net/goals. New Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative entrepreneur. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me [email protected]. Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/introducing-love-mondays/

Austin Kleon (@austinkleon) woke up one day and realized two things: The world seemed to be filled with more and more anger and distraction every day, and – to make matters worse – consistently doing creative work wasn't getting any easier. Austin had already written three New York Times bestselling illustrated books. Millions have already learned to Steal Like an Artist – the title of his first book – and they'd learned to put their work out there with Show Your Work. Austin wasn't sure how much more he had in him. That inspired him to write his new book, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad. In this conversation, you'll learn: Why making something for yourself is technically making something for someone else. Learn about the many different ways that focusing on your own creative expression can reach others. How can you be a valuable asset to the creators you admire? Austin shares a specific story that shows you why you have more to offer than you might think. What one thing can you do in the morning – or rather, not do – to do your best work yet? Links and resources mentioned Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad by Austin Kleon Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon Austin Kleon Austin Kleon Newsletter A/B Testing The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter by David Sax Leave A Message Studs Terkel Radio Archive Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do by Studs Terkel Richard Scarry's What Do People Do All Day? by Richard Scarry Honoré de Balzac Seth Godin This is marketing by Seth Godin Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson Stephen King The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien The Complete Tales of Winnie-The-Pooh by A. A. Milne Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren Newspaper Blackout by Austin Kleon Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative by Austin Kleon Lynda Barry Dan Chaon Saturday Night Live Five-Timers Club Role Models by John Waters Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book by Walker Percy Walker Percy's problems of reentry Frankenstein Ryan Holiday Morning Pages What should be our next Patreon goal? Take our survey at kadavy.net/goals. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me [email protected]. Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/austin-kleon-podcast/

If you do particular actions on a regular basis, you'll change your identity. For example, if you make it a habit to write every day, you'll eventually see yourself as a writer. But it can work the other way around, too. If you change your appearance, you can change your identity. If you change your identity, you can change your actions. In this week's episode, I share my own experience of changing my identity, in order to change my actions. What should be our next Patreon goal? Take our survey at kadavy.net/goals. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me [email protected]. Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/identity-actions-podcast/

David Allen (@gtdguy) has built a legacy. He's created a system that helps millions of people get more of what they want out of life. Getting Things Done, the book, has sold millions of copies. And there's an entire cottage industry of GTD apps and consultants, all over the world. Even if you've never read or heard of GTD, you or someone you work with probably operates with "next actions," and "contexts." David and I talked more about the GTD system back in his first appearance on the show on episode 85. This time, we'll be talking about David's accidental legacy. How does somebody create something that spreads like wildfire and changes the culture? Today, we'll talk about: Your day to day actions are guided by meaning on various levels. How can you think about the different levels of what's meaningful to you, and how can you think about what actions you need to take to make those things happen? Why does David's screensaver say "let go?" Following a system like GTD may feel like it's for control freaks, but learn the difference between being in control, and under control. What was the one email David got that made him decide that GTD was ready to scale globally? Links and resources mentioned GTD Getting Things Done Summit Getting Things Done Coaching Programs Merlin Mann 43 Folders Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen Franklin Covey VitalSmarts Top Gun Howard Stern Will Smith Robert Downey Jr Julie Flagg GTD Summit Marshall Goldsmith Dan Pink Charles Duhigg Cady Coleman We've reached a new funding goal! We now have detailed show notes, starting with next week's interview episode. Start supporting Love Your Work at patreon.com/kadavy. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me [email protected]. Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/david-allens-getting-things-done-legacy/

Lots of people want to build a "legacy." They want to be remembered when they're gone. It's a natural product of our fear of death. But is it realistic to want to build a legacy? Is it realistic to believe you can control whether or not you're remembered? And might aiming to build a legacy prevent you from doing the type of work that builds legacies in the first place? I examine these questions in this week's episode. We've reached a new funding goal! We now have detailed show notes, starting with next week's interview episode. Start supporting Love Your Work at patreon.com/kadavy. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me [email protected]. Sponsors https://kadavy.net/motivation Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/no-legacy-podcast/

To me, Andrew Warner's (@andrewwarner) Mixergy podcast created the entire category of entrepreneur interview podcasts – a category this podcast here falls within. I started listening to Mixergy something like ten years ago, and it was one of the main podcasts that got my gears turning to eventually start this podcast – after putting it off for years, of course. Andrew has created over 1,700 interviews and courses with top entrepreneurs. People like Jimmy Wales, Barbara Corcoran, and Paul Graham. He's known for getting his guests to open up and reveal exact numbers in their businesses. Sometimes I find myself squirming at the direct questions he asks, but it works! I recently took a trip to San Francisco to be on the Jordan Harbinger Show (look out for my appearance on that show toward the end of the month, I think you'll like what I prepared specifically for that show). While I was in town, I was trying to think of who I would like to interview. The first person who came to mind was Andrew Warner. In this conversation, you'll learn: Monetization: Andrew was the first podcaster I can think of to put his past episodes behind a paywall. Why does Andrew think that was a great decision, what drove that decision, and why does he hate the word "paywall?" Did Andrew create the category of the entrepreneurial interview podcast? I was dying to know who inspired Andrew to interview entrepreneurs in the first place. We'll find out. Why is harsh criticism a gift? Andrew shares his perspective which helps him keep improving. Also, the day before the interview, Andrew messaged me. He wanted to change the location of the interview. We were originally going to do it in Mixergy's offices in the Financial District of San Francisco, but now Andrew was inviting me to his HOUSE. He said he'd explain why later. You'll hear why in the interview – it's pretty cool. Links and resources mentioned Pagerduty Crescent Hotel NEA Mixergy Hero's Journey Venture Voice Rosalind Resnick Howard Stern This American Life The Biography Of WordPress with Matt Mullenweg shorty awards Everyone is Accessible – interview with Gregory Galant VV Show #40 – Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn Anchor techstars AngelList Paul Graham Readwise Airtable Kindle Direct Publishing We've reached a new funding goal! We now have detailed show notes, starting with next week's interview episode. Start supporting Love Your Work at patreon.com/kadavy. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me [email protected]. Sponsors https://ce.uci.edu/ https://backblaze.com https://kadavy.net/motivation Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/srini-rao-unmistakable-creative-podcast/

To optimize your creative output, you need a creative productivity system. If you can identify the building blocks of your daily work, you can construct a system that works for you. One of those building blocks is what I call "task transitions." Task transitions are those little spaces between finishing one task, and starting another. Each transition is a critical moment. It's when you decide whether you'll keep moving, take an intentional break, or simply fall off the tracks. I'll tell you more in this week's episode. We've reached a new funding goal! We'll have detailed show notes, starting with next week's interview episode. Start supporting Love Your Work at patreon.com/kadavy. Free Creative Productivity Toolbox I quadrupled my creative productivity. Sign up and I'll send you the tools I count on: kadavy.net/tools Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me [email protected]. Sponsors https://ce.uci.edu/ https://kadavy.net/motivation Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/task-transitions-podcast/