Book Notes: “The Practice” by Seth Godin

I made a few videos about Seth Godin’s latest book, “The Practice”. I know it’s probably useful to put the videos I make on my site as well, but just haven’t done it. Same with the podcast and things like that. I want to start making sure that this is one place to get all the things that I’m making. But one step at a time.

So here’s the video I put together about “The Practice”.

A decent chunk of the time was putting the Leatherface illustration together. Here’s a timelapse of that. I use Figma a lot for work  and thought it could be a nice flywheel opportunity to also start learning to do some digital illustrations.

This, of course, isn’t good quality but I’m sharing now in hopes that I get better and can share that journey. The whole “learn in public” thing.

Oh yeah so I made a few other videos about “The Practice” in an attempt to do some shorts. These are about one minute each.

This one is about desirable difficulty — Desirable difficulty is finding the right level to practice at. Example I have is table tennis but I think I’m more common one would be regular tennis. If you play regular tennis with someone who is much much better than you then it can be pretty frustrating for both sides. If the opponent is much worse than you’re not learning anything because you aren’t challenged. If the opponent is much better than you and then you’re not learning anything because you don’t have the opportunity to get quality reps.

This one is about constraints creating creativity — Constraints creating creativity is an idea that constraints are the only way to lead to creativity. An element of creativity is finding solutions within the constraints that you’re given. I don’t mention it in the video but one thing I have been looking back to you as a tool lately is Crazy 8s. It’s where you try to sketch out 8 solutions to a problem in 8 minutes. Systemizing the constraints of time and also tools (a Sharpie works well here) allows you to focus on finding creative solutions rather than making the image pretty.

This one is about doing the work without waiting for flow —This topic reminded me of a couple other writers’ thoughts on not relying on perfect conditions. Ryan Holiday writes about not relying too much on routine and discipline:

Discipline is a form of freedom, but left unchecked becomes a form of tyranny.So the key is the ability to rotate from routine to routine, discipline to discipline, according to the needs of the day and the moment.

And in an appearance on Tim Ferriss’s podcast, Josh Waitzkin talks about deliberately practicing in chaos:

So, from a young age when I started playing chess, I would create chaos on the board like I described. I would play in chess shops with people blowing smoke and music. I’d play chess with loud Gyuto monk chants bursting into my head from speakers.

[…]

I was creating chaos everywhere to train at being at peace in chaos. That was kind of part of my way of life and I found it to be a huge advantage that I had competitively.

Flow is nice for plenty of reasons. But a mistake is thinking you can only get good work done when in a flow state.

As the book suggests, it’s time for me to hit publish and put myself on the hook.