Active Recall!

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Notes on “The Power of Starting Something Stupid”

I hope you don’t think it was dumb to start reading this.But hold on, you might find some power in it.You’ll definitely find some power in reading The Power of Starting Something Stupid by Richie Norton. Here were some takeaways.

  • No time? No experience? No money? No problem! I’m with this with the caveat that you’re not currently living paycheck to paycheck. That can definitely be a problem. Time-wise, I always think back to how the creator of del.iciou.us built it in 15-30 minute blocks of time that he had free from day to day. One chunk at a time. As experience goes, you’ll probably need it to get some specific job at some specific company. But if you’re starting up something on your own, there’s plenty to learn by doing. After all, you have to at least learn enough to move from “don’t know what you don’t know” to “know what you don’t know”.
  • What if you were 80? Richie Norton talks about Jeff Bezos’s approach to prioritizing. When you’re trying to start out and create things, you’re going to have plenty of ideas that you think are worth pursuing. You’ll pick one, work on it for a few weeks, then start questioning if one of those other ones was better to focus on. So you start working on that one, work on it for a few weeks, then start questioning and on and on. Instead, try thinking about when you’re 80 and looking back on this time in your life. Which of those activities would you think “Hey that was a great use of time”? It’s probably the right one to pursue. It’s at least another tool in your decision-making toolbox.
  • Digital vs. film photography—both are good, both are bad. One of my favorite sections involved describing two different photographers. One of them switched entirely to digital when the jury was still out and it looked like it might just be a passing trend. (Imagine if you triple downed on 3D movies after seeing Avatar.) The other one has stuck to film photography even now. Both of them are successful. Richie Norton credits it to their sticking to their authentic selves. If the photographer who truly loved film switched to digital and was half-hearted in it then he might not succeed. And the same is true if the digital pioneer just half-heartedly stuck to film.

Anyway, those are just a few takeaways from the book. I enjoyed it. I originally picked it up after seeing Benjamin Hardy recommend it (along with a few others) as something to listen to in the morning for continual motivation.I’m trying to figure out my own stack of books to use for that. So far it’s probably something like… Essentialism, Barking Up the Wrong Tree, The Slight Edge, and… actually this sounds like a different post. So stay tuned for that.

In the meantime, go work on something stupid. It’s worth it.

A case against flow

You enjoy flow states.

So do I. So does everybody. It’s a great state to be in to be. “The Zone” might be one of the best places you can get into. And you can get into it at a desk.

But it might not lead to the best quality work. At least not all the time. I’m currently reading Robert Martin’s Clean Coder. My general thought was that programmers want to get into flow states as much as possible. I was surprised to see that it might not be the case. From Clean Coder:

Here’s a little hint from someone whose been there and back: Avoid the Zone. This state of consciousness is not really hyper-productive and is certainly not infallible. It’s really just a mild meditative state in which certain rational faculties are diminished in favor of a sense of speed.

I was surprised by this, because programmers (I’m generalizing) hate meetings and love getting focused blocks of time. That’s probably still true, and the difference here is what I pictured as a good use of that focused block of time.

It’s great to hear another perspective. Uncle Bob’s forgotten more about programming than I’ll learn in my lifetime. I’ve programmed on an off through my life, professionally and not. I’ve consistently found programming to be one of the most effective ways to get into flow.

In Deep Work, Cal Newport writes about finding focused blocks of time. As expected, flow comes up:

This, ultimately, is the lesson to come away with from our brief foray into the world of experimental psychology: To build your working life around the experience of flow produced by deep work is a proven path to deep satisfaction.

Flow is satisfying, but it might not be the end-all, be-all if the output is writing good code.

In Clean Coder, Robert Martin points to pair programming as one of the best ways to keep quality high. And it’s almost as anti-flow as you can get. But he isn’t entirely anti-flow. From Clean Coder:

Well, that’s not quite true. There are times when the Zone is exactly where you want to be. When you are practicing. But we’ll talk about that in another chapter.

I haven’t got to that other chapter yet. So I’m interested in getting to that part to see what his take is on flow and practice.

Coming into this, my understanding is that it’s the opposite: practice is when you shouldn’t be in flow. Practice should be hard. You shouldn’t be entering the zone when you’re practicing. You should be failing, getting feedback to know how to fix the error, then trying again. Over and over.

I’m disappointed to find out that, hey, that might feel good but it doesn’t lead to the best results. But it does make more sense as I’m writing this and thinking more about it.

If you’re playing basketball, you can get in flow by playing pick-up games at your YMCA all the time. But you won’t get as good as if you drilled and worked with a coach in a non-flow setting.

Anyway, I’ll continue sharing thoughts about this in a future post—aka I need to actually get to that other chapter first.

Life Lessons from Watching Videos of Jim Lee Drawing

Over the weekend, I watched a bunch of videos with Jim Lee drawing. He streams on Twitch (jimlee channel).

I enjoy comics but in no way can I say I’ve been keeping up with them beyond watching the movies. I probably stumbled on Jim Lee videos as recommendations after watching various MCU theory videos. Then I watched, and watched, and watched. And I’m pretty eager to keep watching more.

Not that I want to become an artist, but I’ve been enjoying drawing lately. I enjoy that their art is part of a process. They draw scenes in bigger stories.

I’ve been seeing a lot of good lessons watching interviews with different comics artists. (Oh yeah! Now I’m remembering that a lot of these interview recommendations were probably kicked off by watching a Todd McFarlane interview with Complex.)

Oh yeah, one of the biggest lessons seems to just be applying a blue collar mentality to the creative field. If you’re paid to do this, you’re not sitting around waiting for inspiration. You’ve got to get your 22 pages out that month.

I made that video above to talk about a few other lessons from Jim Lee:

  • Draw from your elbow—in one of his tutorial videos at a conference, he says “draw from your elbow”. Meaning that early on, focus on the overall layout and not the details. That resonates a lot with some of the design and writing I’ve been thinking about lately. I easily get caught up in details that don’t matter (yet).
  • Need some ink? Break your pen—in one of his streams, he starts out saying he only has a pen so he won’t be able to do big solid blocks of black. It’ll be a lot of cross hatching. Eventually he decides to just take the cartridge out and squeeze ink onto the paper to start fingerpainting.
  • Draw glass well—there’s a series of videos from the 90s where Stan Lee interviews different artists and then they show their process while Stan asks questions. (Another thing: Stan Lee does a great job asking questions that the viewer is probably thinking. I’m guessing he already knows the answer to some of them.) Anyway at one point Stan Lee says that Jim Lee is known for his glass. I’m not sure if that was just a joke or not, but Jim goes on to explain that the best artists care about the small things. Their passion goes through all the layers so that they care to draw a broken window right. To remember to put broken glass pieces on the ground.

How you do anything is how you do everything. So draw with your elbow and finish with good pieces of broken glass.

As mentioned, Jim Lee continues to share his process on Twitch. It’s pretty amazing that the internet makes it possible to watch Jim Lee making Kirby Krackles in the 90s and then again 25 years later.

I tried following along in Procreate while watching one of the streams where he draws Magneto.

This is probably one step above tracing, but I’m pretty happy with it!

You’ve got 2 seconds, what advice would you give to a new graduate?

You’re reading this sentence. Done. A couple seconds is all the time that you get.

For what?

Someone’s walking across the stage. You hand them a diploma. You shake their hand. And now you say something that they can take with them as they finish college and enter the real world.

You have a couple seconds.

What would you say?

This is the scenario that Chris ‘Drama’ Pfaff gave to his guests on the (very special) 100th episode of his podcast (YouTube, iTunes), Short Story Long. Three of his favorite guests (Keven Stirdivant, Tom Bilyeu, and Rob Dyrdek) come back on to have a discussion together.

Through 100 episode, Drama’s become great at interviewing people. He steers the conversation really well to create two solid hours of wisdom.

I’m sure I’ll write a few more posts about this episode but the first thing I wanted to write about was their answers to this question.

My question is this: In the spirit of college graduation, if you could have two seconds with a kid who just walked off the stage at his college graduation, and tell him anything, what would you tell that person?

Keven Stirdivant: “Stick to your gift”

If you’re passionate about basketball but you shoot hoops like I draw, you might want to reconsider your dream of playing in the NBA. (It doesn’t mean you can’t find a way to make basketball your life, though.)

One thing that I really enjoyed here is that Keven starts with “stick to your craft” but makes it more specific and says “stick to your gift”.

He doesn’t say passion.

And he explains that he can be as passionate about basketball as anyone on the planet and it won’t get him to the NBA. You have something in your life that comes easier to you than it does for other people. Whether you believe it’s god’s gift or that you were raised in the environment doesn’t really matter: you have something that you excel at.

If you pursue that, you’ll have a career that will allow you to pursue your passion on the side.

Idan Ravin was passionate about basketball. Best player on his his school squad.

“I’m not going to pursue another career, I’m passionate about basketball and I’m going to play in college and then the NBA and it’s that way or the highway.”

Guess who said that? Not him.

Didn’t get to play a minute in college. Studied law and was good enough to be a working attorney. He still stayed passionate about basketball. He started coaching at lower levels and fast forward a few years and he’s in an Adidas commercial training Carmelo Anthony.

(It’s not exactly an overnight path to go from lawyer to doing private training sessions with Carmelo and LeBron. Check out my video about his book, The Hoops Whisperer, for more.)

Tom Bilyeau: “What you build your self-esteem around matters”

Tom, on the off chance that you see this, sorry for the misspelling

Alfred, I have this CEO job at Wayne Enterprises but it’s not really making me happy, what should I do?

“Endure.” – Alfred, if he’s like your parents

Tom tells a story about a job that sounds like a job everyone has at some point. If you’re a new college grad, you might be stepping right off the stage and into one of these kinds of jobs.

You have a job that pays the bills and has a path up the ladder, but it doesn’t make you happy. There are different levels of this. The lower levels can be bearable for an entire career.

At a certain level, you need to stop and consider leaving.

Tom looked at his situation. There were two options:

  • Just feel good: Leave this company because he felt he couldn’t add value
  • Not worry about feeling good: Clearly unsustainable

He went with the third option that many people would miss: “Change what I feel good about myself for.”

Rob Dyrdek: “I’m a big believer in Tony Robbins’s theory on this one. That’s the idea of the earlier you figure out what you want to master, the better.”

Clarity, clarity, clarity. That’s a huge theme in this episode.

It can take a lot of time to find clarity. (For instance, some people never find it in their lives.) But it’s worth the time you put into it.

When you know what you want to master, then you’re able to get through the day to day. With clarity, you’ll be able to plan well and know what you need to focus on at every level.

If you want to succeed, there are going to be challenges. You might want to quit. But if you can align what you’re doing to a clear vision, then you’ll be able to—like Alfred would suggest—endure.

With that clear vision, you can skip some dead ends. Yes, there are lessons in challenges. But it’s a better use of time skipping some challenges to get to the harder ones. (Don’t worry, the world will never run out of challenges to give you.)

All of that is from like 10 minutes of the episode

It’s 150 minutes and packed with insights like that. Go check it out: Short Story Long episode #100 (YouTube, iTunes)

Now I’m gonna go listen to some podcasts so that I can continue pursuing my gift: saying “I heard this on a podcast…”

Write right in the editor (in this case it’s Evernote)

I automated this a long time ago.And then I never used it. I have this thing where I tend to jump into creating a workflow for something a little too early. I think it’s something I’ll do a bunch of times and then I end up not using it all that often.

Here are some examples:

  • Workflow (iOS) flow to grab a photo and then add text and write topics related to it then select those topics to create headings and send it to Evernote. I did this for the notecards I was drawing a few weeks ago and then I stopped drawing notecards as often.
  • Automator (MacOS) script to make a Keynote presentation quickly from a plain text list. It was useful but I haven’t gotten the time back that I put into learning how to make it.
  • Workflow (iOS) flow to turn an Evernote note into Markdown and find and replace things to eventually post it as a draft to WordPress.

I’m using that last one right now. And… I think it’s going to work pretty well. I forgot I had it at all but looking at it I’m remembering that it took a good amount of trial and error to get it to work.

It might even handle this image properly. (Update: it didn’t!)

I made these things that I don’t end up using. And that’s okay.

There are plenty of other things that I automated or made a little bit easier that I actually do use daily or at least weekly. I learned things through these other unused automations that allow me to make the ones that I use.

There’s value in that. And there’s value in keeping the mindset of looking for ways to make things that much easier.

Fixing a broken window here and there, leaving the campsite a little cleaner than when you arrived—it all adds up.

Describe Your Restaurant in a Single Sentence (Dave Chang and “Perennial Seller”)

Why does a single sentence matter?

That’s about all the time you’ve got to explain something.

One sentence for this post: Dave Chang says you need to be able to explain your restaurant quickly and it reminded me of something from Ryan Holiday’s book “Perennial Seller”

I’ll start with the Dave Chang part. In the first few episodes (The Pre-opening Diaries) of his new podcast (iTunes, Stitcher), Dave Chang talks about Majordomo in conversations with Bill Simmons. They were recorded a few months ago so it was before Majordomo opened and actually even before Ugly Delicious came out on Netflix.

Oh yeah, the particular bit about having a sentence is in the first episode. (It starts at 14:52)

Bill: Do you feel like the food has to be… the customer can describe it in a sentence? Or the customer will just tell a friend “The food’s great just go there.” Does it have to have a brand I guess is my point.

Dave: Yes. I can expand upon this much more. It’s important that you can explain what you’re doing in a sentence. Or two sentences, tops.

“I’m opening up a steakhouse.” That’s clear.

(In “Creative Quest”, Questlove writes about the importance of deciding what you’re not. I wrote about it here. Dave Chang does not want Majordomo described as “It’s a Korean restaurant.”)

Dave Chang talks about knowing a dessert was bad and not serving it at a test dinner Bill Simmons was at. I know this drawing doesn’t look like him but I’m going to go ahead and serve this up anyway.

In Perennial Seller, Ryan Holiday writes about making creative work with longevity. He also suggests being able to explain it in a sentence. (Then a paragraph and then a page.)

When you’re starting out, it helps you re-align. You can’t move toward a vision if it’s not clear. One sentence is clear.

Then, when you release it, you can check the results against your initial intent. From Perennial Seller:

The most important part of the process is comparing the results of the exercise against the product we’ve made. Does your one-pager really describe what makes your screenplay worth producing? Would your one sentence capture an investor’s attention in an elevator?

In Dave Chang’s case, the investor is instead that friend you’re trying to pick dinner with. If you can’t describe it in a sentence, how will other people describe it to their friends?

If you need a few prompts, you can start with these questions from Perennial Seller: (1) Who is this for? (2) Who is this not for? (3) Why is it special? (4) What will it do for them? (5) Why should anyone care?

So what would a good sentence be for Dave Chang? From The Dave Chang Show (starts at 16:30):

“I think the best way when someone says ‘Hey, what kind of food are you serving?’ or your friend and goes to you and says ‘Let’s go out to dinner Thursday night, where do you want to go?’ Let’s say ‘We want to go to Majordomo’ they’re like ‘What do they serve?’ it’s like, ‘It’s hard to describe, but you want to go. It’s awesome. I don’t know how to talk about it. It’s awesome.'”

If you’re opening your first restaurant, your first sentence should be as clear as “it’s a steakhouse”. If you’re writing your first novel and expect it to be published and sold, have a genre in mind. Genres become that because a collection of people decided they like some particular collection of things.

If you’ve had success with that, then go ahead and start breaking the rules. Be bold, but understand the challenge. From Perennial Seller:

But you need to know that this will likely make your job harder— and you’ll need to compensate for it in various ways during the creative process, in your packaging and positioning, and certainly in your marketing.

Dave Chang has the career capital to aim for “I don’t know but it’s awesome.” He knows he can deliver on the “it’s awesome” part. He’s done it before. Sometimes he’s failed trying to repeat it. He’s learned from those failures.

He’s sharing his thoughts on all that (and plenty more) on The Dave Chang Show.

Go check that out. I’m gonna go work on my one sentence.

(“Active Recall is sort of like those good podcasts attached to a good blog but instead replace ‘good’ with ‘A for effort’ and then mix in a little…”)