Liana Finck going through her illustration process
Currently reading ‘Wanting’ by Luke Burgis. Actually I’m trying the method of listening to the Audible version but adding highlights to the Kindle version. There are some fun illustrations in the book so I wanted to see who made them and came across this video showing the work.
In the personal theme of the week of looking at everything I want and figuring out where that desire comes from…
I have a bunch of gear and have been striving for the perfect desk setup to write and draw. Which means I’ve definitely spent more time watching desk setup videos than writing or drawing.
Much better to at least watch people talking about their writing or drawing process.
#18 Book Stack: Creativity (The Notepod)
Trying something new: book stacks.
Quotes from 3-5 books centered around a single topic. For this one: creativity.
I also talk about the 3×3 practice I’ve been doing
Books in this episode
- Creativity by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
- Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace
- Creative Confidence by Tom Kelley & David Kelley
- Principles by Ray Dalio
Other links
Podcast Notes: Bill Simmons and Chuck Klosterman on UFOs, the evolution of the NBA, and pop culture on how we think
One of my favorite podcast duos. Others that come to mind that aren’t just the regular hosts
- Jacoby and Wildes
- Parr and Wilkinson
- Puri and his cousin
- Flynn and John
Anyway, great episode again.
UFOs
They talk about all the recent UFO stuff and the most frightening thing being the reactions of the pilots themselves.
Why didn’t they come out about this earlier? They still had their entire careers and whoever spoke about it would become the UFO guy.
They talk about growing up with aliens in pop culture and Klosterman points out that they were awesome at first, including Superman. Then things turned and they were nearly always evil. Still fun movies. Simmons sums it up: “But I didn’t think I’d have to deal with them!”
(They also talk about ghosts and Simmons re-tells the story of staying at an OKC hotel. Not the MVP ghosts of past present and future. But the horrible one that jumped out of the window with her baby.)
Mimetic desire and the NBA
For the 20th time this week I’ll mention that I’m reading Luke Burgis’s “Wanting” so that’s currently my main lens for things. But mimesis is so clear in the evolution of the NBA from a league where you follow one team primarily to many individuals.
I grew up with my dad working the night shift so some mornings I’d be getting ready for school and he’d be watching a recorded Sonics game.
The Sonics don’t exist anymore so now he mostly roots for good passers.
He loved Larry Bird.
Simmons points out that, back then, a photo of Larry Bird smoking a cigar was this big thing. Because it was a glimpse of what a player is like in real life.
Now we have a better sense with all the access the internet and social media gives us. But a mistake is that the combination gives us the full sense of who they are. We think that they’d make decisions the same way we would.
We enjoy “Just Like Us!” moments because it brings the celebristan models appear closer to ourselves.
To the point that we can forget they aren’t like us at all.
Pop culture was how we thought of stuff
They talk about learning things through pop culture. That’s where we learn what aliens are like. Or what people who would be able to fight aliens are like.
Some narratives are passed through centuries of culture. Dan Carlin compares Clint Eastwood to the Spartans. His characters follow the laconic model the Spartans did.
“Stand down and disengage your thermo lasers.”
In the Drone Wars of 2039, one drone lights up, leading the other 299, and sends a reply.
“Come and get them.”
Tips for daily sharing
Pick a format where polish isn’t necessary
You can’t make a feature film in a day, it’ll just be terrible every time. Same thing with a long-form article.
But you can probably do a thread, an email, a short video, and even a podcast episode.
If your cadence goal is daily, you can’t do something that requires a lot of prep, a lot of drafting, and a lot of private feedback for revision. The intention is to post it publicly and get public feedback.
That feedback helps you improve tomorrow’s piece, not today’s.
Daily makes things forgiving. Because the following day you can do some housekeeping if a reader pointed out an error.
Set a timer
Work will fill the time you give it. You know that already.
But do you take action on that?
Setting a timer is a reminder of that law. You’ll learn what to do with that time.
You can also start with some output like word count but still set a timer. Then you can compress the time little by little and see if the quality drops.
250 words in an hour
250 words in 45 minutes
250 words in 30 minutes
250 words in 15 minutes
250 words in 5 minutes
250 words in 1 minute
You’ll find a sweet spot somewhere in there.
Practice some structure
Not 10,000 kicks 1 time.
And no, not 1 kick 10,000 times
More like 5 kicks 2,000 times
John Danaher is one of the top BJJ coaches in the world. He teaches his students to master 6 submissions. 6 submissions with 98% confidence you’ll finish someone is better than 30 submissions with 20% confidence.
You won’t get that many chances for the percentages to stack well.
Oh yeah, writing.
Have some go-to…
- Openings
- Transitions
- Body formats
- Bullet formats
- Closers
Practice those over and over.
More writing, more revision
I always get tempted to dictate or transcribe audio and create an enormous wall of text. You really can get to 250 words in 1 minute.
1000 words in 10 minutes is not really a problem when you’re just talking.
The problem is trying to revise 5000 words of garbage in the 10 minutes I have left for the hour I blocked off.
Listen log (June 07, 2021)
I’ll try to make this a regular thing but also we’ll see.
In the morning I:
- take my dog for a walk
- work out at the gym
Aka: lots of time listening
Do audiobooks count as reading?
- No, if you’re doing some X books a year reading challenge
- Yes, if you’re doing some other X books a year reading challenge
Can you actually learn from audiobooks?
Now, I remember the first time I read about CrossFit and someone was describing it from an aesthetics standpoint.
Their model was something like
- Bodybuilder split (aka bro split) + steroids = Best results
- CrossFit with steroids
- CrossFit without steroids
- Bodybuilder split without steroids
The point being: if you want results naturally then CrossFit is a good route.
I then probably did LL Cool J’a 60-day workout plan for 4 days.
You didn’t answer the question at all
Okay so here’s what it has to do with reading.
The model I have in my head is (from best learning to worst)
- Print book with notes
- Audiobook with notes
- Print book without notes
- Audiobook without notes
- Audiobook at 3X without notes to fulfill some X books a year challenge
(Notes here includes highlights)
The idea that you can’t learn from listening at all is dumb, otherwise we wouldn’t ever talk.
But I’ve listened to my fair share of audiobooks too fast while doing too much other stuff that I didn’t listen. Which is a worse kind of dumb, because it’s disguised as doing a smart thing.
So with all the listening I do, I’ll try to make writing notes a when-then habit:
- When I do cardio
- Then I’ll journal
- Then I’ll write a public listen log
These are supposed to actually log what I’m listening to with some notes, but instead I’ve just written notes on writing notes.
Quick log without thoughts:
- Bill Simmons w Ryen Russilo talking about Mayweather and Logan Paul: People care about storylines, especially in sports when it’s not the top competition. The best of the best is a good storyline in itself. Below that you need narratives. This had a couple underdogs in some sense. Logan has no experience. Mayweather weighed 40 lbs less and was 20 years older. Formula 1 is much more interesting to watch if you have the Netflix show as spark notes for who to care about.
- Wanting by Luke Burgis: This will shape my thinking for the next month and I think for the rest of my life. Why do I want to write the notes I’m writing now? Some of it to learn, some of it to share with the world that I’m someone who learns, some of it to share the ideas with the world.
- Talk Therapy with Alex Lieberman: I definitely listened to this through a wanting lens. Alex talks through selling The Morning Brew, which is a general career outcome plenty of other people want. BUT then seeing that he still wants other things. You can always, always compare up. And you’ll always, always compare just a little bit up or laterally.
Shaan Puri talked about something similar: it’s easier to feel good about friends’ successes when they’re not in the same field as you.)
Far less wanting that way.