Speaker 1: Shouting the destination at somebody doesn't really help them with
Speaker 1: their journey. Welcome to the one you feed throughout time.
Speaker 1: Great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
Speaker 1: Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think ring true, and yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf Y.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Speaker 1: David Cadeby, a best selling author, blogger, podcaster, and speaker.
Speaker 1: Through his blogging at cadeby dot net and his podcast
Speaker 1: Love Your Work, he helps people find satisfaction through following
Speaker 1: their crafts, even if it takes them down an unconventional path.
Speaker 1: His book is The Heart to Start, Stop procrastinating and
Speaker 1: start creating. Hi, David, Welcome to the show, Eric, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for having me. Really a pleasure to
Speaker 1: be here. Yeah, it's a pleasure to have you on.
Speaker 1: We talked not too long ago on your show, so
Speaker 1: I'm excited to have you on here. To continue the discussion,
Speaker 1: we're gonna primarily talk about your book, which is called
Speaker 1: The Heart to start stop procrastinating and start creating, which
Speaker 1: are topics that are very near to my heart. But
Speaker 1: before we get into the book, let's start like we
Speaker 1: always do, with the parable. There is a grandfather who's
Speaker 1: talking with his granddaughter and he says, in life, there
Speaker 1: are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 1: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness, bravery,
Speaker 1: and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the
Speaker 1: granddaughter stops and thinks about it for a second, looks
Speaker 1: up at her grandfather, and she says, well, grandfather, which
Speaker 1: one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Uh. I'm probably not supposed
Speaker 1: to say this, but the first time that I heard
Speaker 1: the parable, it rung hollow for me. It didn't it
Speaker 1: didn't really hit me like the way that a parable
Speaker 1: is supposed to hit somebody. I think, and I've come
Speaker 1: to realize. I think that it's because there was another
Speaker 1: parable that did really strike me when I heard it,
Speaker 1: and it was the parable that I'm sure everybody's heard.
Speaker 1: A out a farmer and a string of things happens
Speaker 1: to him, like a horse comes to his farm, and
Speaker 1: then his son breaks his leg riding the horse, and
Speaker 1: then his son gets passed up, uh for fighting in
Speaker 1: the war. The village is going into and all along
Speaker 1: the neighbors saying, oh you're you're so lucky, or oh,
Speaker 1: this unfortunate thing happened to you, and the whole time
Speaker 1: the farmers saying, who's to say what's good or bad?
Speaker 1: And I remember that was something that really uh struck
Speaker 1: me when I heard it, and I think that that's
Speaker 1: part of the reason why when I first heard this
Speaker 1: parable of the two wolves, it didn't really mean a
Speaker 1: ton to me. But I have thought about it a
Speaker 1: lot more since then, especially you know, and preparing to
Speaker 1: interview you for my show, and it started to make
Speaker 1: a lot more sense to me, especially in the context
Speaker 1: of you know, your struggle with addiction and and things
Speaker 1: like that. But then I've also found that for me
Speaker 1: it's it's a useful parable because I realized that there's
Speaker 1: a certain kind of courage in deciding that something is
Speaker 1: good or bad. And like, I think that's easy. That's
Speaker 1: probably an easy decision to make if you're struggling with addiction. Uh.
Speaker 1: I mean maybe not mentally, but from the outside it's
Speaker 1: an easy it's an easy judgment call that you know
Speaker 1: that that's a bad thing, that's your bad wolf. But
Speaker 1: I think in everyday life there's all these sort of
Speaker 1: shades of gray where we can very easily rationalize to
Speaker 1: ourselves that oh, you know, this isn't good or bad,
Speaker 1: this is just the way that it is. But there's
Speaker 1: some benefit to saying that something is a good wolf
Speaker 1: or saying that something is a bad wolf, because when
Speaker 1: you start doing that, then you start to be able
Speaker 1: to make some sort of a judgment call, and you
Speaker 1: start to be able to make some kind of a measurement.
Speaker 1: You start to be able to to improve your your
Speaker 1: behavior because you can say, well, that didn't work because
Speaker 1: I did this thing that I've decided to bad for me,
Speaker 1: or that didn't work because or that did work because
Speaker 1: it helped me do this thing that is good for me.
Speaker 1: And so since then it really has come to resonate
Speaker 1: with me in that way, and that you know, maybe
Speaker 1: it's a cop out sometimes to say who's to say
Speaker 1: what's good or bad? Like maybe it's better to say that, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is good and this is bad. Like
Speaker 1: you can argue your way that that that maybe it's not.
Speaker 1: But for the thing that you want to see happen,
Speaker 1: then you have to make that judgment call. And for me,
Speaker 1: that's that's about creative work. Is like creative work creating
Speaker 1: things is my good wolf for sure, and then the
Speaker 1: things that keep me from creating would be my bad wolf.
Speaker 1: So that's a little bit about what the parable means
Speaker 1: to me. Yeah, and I love that story you told
Speaker 1: about the you know, the old Taoist story about the
Speaker 1: farmer and who says what's good and bad. I think
Speaker 1: it's a very wise tale because I think that in
Speaker 1: the short term view of events that happened to us,
Speaker 1: we don't really know what comes next. So so I
Speaker 1: I think it's really wise in looking at the events
Speaker 1: in our lives and not giving them a permanent meaning.
Speaker 1: You know. So I totally agree with you there, and
Speaker 1: I agree with you that I think in my own life,
Speaker 1: you know, addiction being a clear example. But there are
Speaker 1: other things that I know are good for me that
Speaker 1: aren't necessarily I don't need to wait and see the
Speaker 1: um long term result from them to know. Like you said,
Speaker 1: like creating, like I know when I create something, it
Speaker 1: has an immediate benefit to my you know, for lack
Speaker 1: of a better word, my soul right or my spirit.
Speaker 1: And regardless of what whether that thing that I created
Speaker 1: goes anywhere does anything, I know that it's good for
Speaker 1: me in doing it. In the same way, like a
Speaker 1: very prosaic example is like I know when I exercise
Speaker 1: that that's a good thing for me because I tend
Speaker 1: to feel better. It tends to bring up life enhancing
Speaker 1: qualities in me. So so I I agree, But I
Speaker 1: am also um reticent to to assign anything too much
Speaker 1: of a good or bad label because I think we
Speaker 1: don't often know. Yeah, but I mean it's still it's
Speaker 1: useful because there are those shades of gray where you know,
Speaker 1: creating is a good wolf for me. But I mean,
Speaker 1: it can actually it can become a bad wolf for me.
Speaker 1: But also it's not always pleasant, especially when you're trying
Speaker 1: to do it professionally. It's not always a pleasant thing
Speaker 1: in the moment. And so there can be these things
Speaker 1: that maybe they don't make you feel that good right away,
Speaker 1: but they're a good wolf. Or there's things that do
Speaker 1: feel good, like maybe you love to scroll through Instagram
Speaker 1: and that can be fine, but you know, eventually, uh,
Speaker 1: you maybe start feeling bad about yourself and you're you
Speaker 1: aren't quite sure why, and it turns out it's actually
Speaker 1: a bad wolf in some way, and and it maybe
Speaker 1: it pulls you away from feeding your good wolf. And
Speaker 1: so there are these gray areas, and that's where I
Speaker 1: think it can be useful to you. I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe it's not so much who's to say what's good
Speaker 1: or bad, but maybe it's it's more like you can
Speaker 1: look at anything and say that's good and that's bad. Uh,
Speaker 1: you can say that's good or that's bad, and um,
Speaker 1: it really depends upon the context and what you're trying
Speaker 1: to achieve, uh with your own self talk. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: let's talk about the heart to start stop procrastinating and
Speaker 1: start creating. You say, just get started. It's good advice
Speaker 1: if you can follow it, but I was always left wondering, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but how do I start? And so I think that's
Speaker 1: a really great place to jump off into this. So
Speaker 1: what are the things that stand in the way of
Speaker 1: us starting to do creation? Yeah, I want to address
Speaker 1: that idea of just get started or you know, Nike
Speaker 1: says just do it. And it took me a really
Speaker 1: long time to come to clarity on this, actually, probably
Speaker 1: even after I had written the book, before I really
Speaker 1: saw this, which was that that's really pithy advice. It's
Speaker 1: advice that we hear a lot from people who are successful,
Speaker 1: uh and say, like an entrepreneurial context is you know,
Speaker 1: just get started on this, that or the other thing
Speaker 1: and sort of a vicious cycle, and that there is
Speaker 1: a survivorship bias, and that advice is that the people
Speaker 1: to whom we look up are giving us that advice.
Speaker 1: But most of them probably didn't really struggle with the
Speaker 1: type of level of procrastination that some of us who
Speaker 1: get stuck did, you know, Like there's some people who
Speaker 1: just have no hesitation. And I talked about my conversation
Speaker 1: with James Altitcher, and how that helped me come to
Speaker 1: that realization was that was that he's somebody who is
Speaker 1: a writer and seems very fearless, and that's because he
Speaker 1: actually is fearless. It wasn't that he had to fight
Speaker 1: through some sort of things. And and myself, it's the
Speaker 1: complete opposite, is that I've I've always been filled with
Speaker 1: so much self doubt or fear of judgments, and I
Speaker 1: think those are probably some of the main things. Or
Speaker 1: perfectionism is another thing that causes people to not get
Speaker 1: started on something. Is that they can sort of mentally
Speaker 1: perfect this thing that they want to create, and they
Speaker 1: can feel good in the process about that, and they
Speaker 1: can tell themselves that, well, one day they'll get the
Speaker 1: opportunity to do this, and time passes and that day
Speaker 1: never comes and you know, next thing, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's too late. And so those are just some of
Speaker 1: the things that cause anybody to procrastinate, especially on creative work.
Speaker 1: And it's the things that I've struggled with myself, and
Speaker 1: it's the reason why I wrote the book was to
Speaker 1: to help myself, uh, stop hesitating, to stop progress nating,
Speaker 1: and to start creating things. Yeah, I think just get
Speaker 1: started is advice. It's similar to to use addiction and
Speaker 1: alcoholism as a reference to you know, just don't drink
Speaker 1: at the end of the day. That is the fundamental truth, right,
Speaker 1: Like just stop being depressed is like the is the
Speaker 1: perfect example as well, is that these people who are
Speaker 1: saying just get started, who don't struggle with, uh, with
Speaker 1: the type of hesitation and self doubt that a lot
Speaker 1: of people do, are saying just get started. It's easy,
Speaker 1: you know. It's like it's like telling somebody who's clinically depressed,
Speaker 1: just stop being depressed. You know, like you know it's
Speaker 1: all in your head or something like that. But you
Speaker 1: know there's actual steps that you can take that that
Speaker 1: can help you. Uh, you know, but shouting the destination
Speaker 1: at somebody doesn't really help them with their journey, that's right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And what I was saying with you know, just don't
Speaker 1: drink is that ultimately that is the end of the road.
Speaker 1: That is what it all comes down to that at
Speaker 1: the end of the day. However, there can be a
Speaker 1: lot of instructions along the way to that that make
Speaker 1: that a more likely destination. Right. Your first law of
Speaker 1: art is that there is art inside you. But let's
Speaker 1: define art for a second, because a lot of people
Speaker 1: are going to hear that and think, well, I'm not
Speaker 1: an artist, right like I don't I don't paint, I
Speaker 1: don't make music. So when you're using that term, what
Speaker 1: are you referring to. I believe that you could make
Speaker 1: music and you can paint and have it not be art.
Speaker 1: Uh you know to some extent, you know, paint by number.
Speaker 1: To some extent, it's the craft. It's not art. So
Speaker 1: to me, art is that you're taking your individual unique
Speaker 1: personality and and skills and experience and throughout live no
Speaker 1: matter what, we always interact with the world in some
Speaker 1: way in the world creates the sort of potential energy
Speaker 1: in us. Our influences are experiences, uh tech technology that
Speaker 1: we're exposed to, and it creates this potential energy in us.
Speaker 1: And when we create something and put something out in
Speaker 1: the world, that's our art. And that can be a painting,
Speaker 1: that could be music, that can be a podcast, that
Speaker 1: can be a business, it can be a nonprofit, it
Speaker 1: can be it could be a relationship or or or
Speaker 1: a trip that you plan. It's this creating of something
Speaker 1: that's uniquely yours that nobody else could could do it
Speaker 1: the same way that you're doing. Is that's what it
Speaker 1: means to me. One of the things that you say
Speaker 1: is that when we're going to create art, it's a
Speaker 1: process of self actualization and that whenever we do that,
Speaker 1: we are going to face resistance. We're going to face
Speaker 1: internal chatter that um is gonna stop us from doing that,
Speaker 1: and that the ego will come up with reasons not
Speaker 1: to start. So why is the ego coming up with
Speaker 1: reasons for us not to start? Where is this resistance coming? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So you've mentioned the word resistance, which I mentioned in
Speaker 1: the book, which comes from something I think a lot
Speaker 1: of your listeners are probably familiar with, which is Vid
Speaker 1: Pressfield wrote The Legend of Bagger Vance and a number
Speaker 1: of other books, and he's a tremendous writer. But he
Speaker 1: also identified this this force that has resonated with so
Speaker 1: many people, including oprah Uh of resistance, and resistance really
Speaker 1: comes from this conflict between your actual self and your
Speaker 1: ideal self or as you try to achieve this future self,
Speaker 1: your ego is there holding you back the whole time.
Speaker 1: So when you want to create something and you come
Speaker 1: up with reasons not to do it, that's often your
Speaker 1: ego holding you back, because your egos there to protect you. Right. So,
Speaker 1: if you say you want to start blogging or you
Speaker 1: want to start a podcast, and you're thinking about all
Speaker 1: the different things that people might say, and you then
Speaker 1: decide not to start, that is your ego protecting you
Speaker 1: from this, this fear of judgment or fear of failure. However,
Speaker 1: it's often not so simple and obvious, like it can
Speaker 1: manifest itself in a lot of ways. I was on
Speaker 1: a podcasting board, uh the other day on message board
Speaker 1: I'd like to go on there and see if I
Speaker 1: can help people out, And there was somebody on there saying, Hey,
Speaker 1: I've got all this podcast equipment. I want to know
Speaker 1: what's the right podcast table for me to get? What
Speaker 1: kind of table should I get for my podcast? And
Speaker 1: thankfully people were chiming in and saying like, hey, you
Speaker 1: know something else is going on here. Um, you haven't
Speaker 1: started your podcast yet and you're worried about what table
Speaker 1: you need. You are procrastinating, You're you're finding a way
Speaker 1: to let your neuroses go into some other direction. That's
Speaker 1: going to be ultimately protective because you aren't going to
Speaker 1: have your work out there, your work will be free
Speaker 1: of judgment, and all the while you have this perfectly
Speaker 1: good reason that you've come up with about why you're
Speaker 1: not doing it. So in addition to protecting yourself from
Speaker 1: that criticism or from that failure, your ego is also
Speaker 1: protecting you from understanding the way that you're willing yourself,
Speaker 1: in the way that you're ultimately cheating yourself. And that
Speaker 1: can drag on for years and years and years before
Speaker 1: you realize what's going on. And so that's why it's
Speaker 1: so dangerous. And so what are some techniques to to
Speaker 1: work through that. One of the best techniques is something
Speaker 1: that I call motivational judo. And in the martial art
Speaker 1: of judo, I believe you, I'm not a judo master myself,
Speaker 1: but basically you're using your opponents uh energy against your opponent.
Speaker 1: So your opponent comes at you with a punch, you
Speaker 1: use that punch to throw them over your shoulder, so
Speaker 1: to speak. The the the forward energy you're you allow
Speaker 1: that to propel them over your shoulder onto the mat.
Speaker 1: And we can do this with ourselves because we all
Speaker 1: have some way that we're made fooling ourselves. But we
Speaker 1: all often have some other mechanism of preserving our own
Speaker 1: self perception that we can then use to counter whatever
Speaker 1: way we are uh holding ourselves back. I'll give you
Speaker 1: an example that works for myself, and it's it works
Speaker 1: for a lot of other people. But some people have
Speaker 1: different ways that work for them. It's all about knowing
Speaker 1: yourself and knowing the ways that you can hold yourself
Speaker 1: back and the ways that you UH like to maintain
Speaker 1: a positive self perception. So, for myself, if I really
Speaker 1: just cannot get started on something, say just a task,
Speaker 1: not even necessarily a project, but a task, I'll set
Speaker 1: a timer for ten minutes, and then I will say,
Speaker 1: let's say for writing. So I'll say, okay, I have
Speaker 1: to write for ten minutes. I can't do anything else,
Speaker 1: make sure my phone is off, etcetera, and I We'll
Speaker 1: just right for ten minutes, and when I'm done, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna pat myself on the back and congratulate myself for
Speaker 1: having done a good job. Well, what happens is by
Speaker 1: the time I get to ten minutes, I have momentum
Speaker 1: going that ten minutes usually turns into ah, you know,
Speaker 1: twenty minutes, thirty minutes, an hour, sometimes two hours, and
Speaker 1: The reason that it even worked was because I first
Speaker 1: started with this goal where I was really kind of
Speaker 1: lying to myself. I knew when I set the timer
Speaker 1: for ten minutes that this was going to happen. But somehow,
Speaker 1: my you know, some other little part of me is like, well,
Speaker 1: ten minutes. I mean, that's ridiculous. I can totally do that.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's so easy that if I were to
Speaker 1: fail at ten minutes, my own need to see myself
Speaker 1: positively uh would be offended to such an extent that
Speaker 1: I just am not going to accept that happening. It
Speaker 1: could be two minutes, it could be ten minutes. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, it can be any sort of thing where
Speaker 1: you're kind of telling yourself that you're that you have
Speaker 1: this very small goal, when an actual actuality what's going
Speaker 1: to happen is you're gonna do this larger thing. And
Speaker 1: a lot of it is just understanding what is it
Speaker 1: about your own personality that you are able to use
Speaker 1: UH for your own benefit that way. Yeah, I love
Speaker 1: that when I use it all the time for all
Speaker 1: kinds of things, and I do think that it is
Speaker 1: effective to some degree because I will say to myself, like, oh,
Speaker 1: for crying out loud. You can do anything for five minutes,
Speaker 1: Like you know, there's there's a just enough self bride
Speaker 1: that's like I can push through five minutes. It It
Speaker 1: is such a useful tool. And it's funny because I
Speaker 1: know on one hand that I'm tricking myself, and yet
Speaker 1: it still seems to work. Yeah, I mean it's I mean,
Speaker 1: we have I don't know if you ever heard about
Speaker 1: split brain studies. It's it's it's pretty fascinating. Have you
Speaker 1: heard about this. You know, if somebody who has a
Speaker 1: their corpus colossom, I think I'm or how you pronounce
Speaker 1: it is severed, you know, to stop seizures. So it
Speaker 1: speaks their left and right brain aren't talking to each other,
Speaker 1: and like the left brain can be doing one thing
Speaker 1: and the right brain just has no idea. So I
Speaker 1: mean that may extend to a lot of other things
Speaker 1: where you know, consciously we're telling ourselves yeah, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna do this, but in reality something else
Speaker 1: entirely happened. So I think whenever you can take advantage
Speaker 1: of that, uh, that's that's great for me. It's the
Speaker 1: it's the sort of low balling thing. I even do
Speaker 1: it on my task management, where if I have a
Speaker 1: task that I need to do that is pretty large
Speaker 1: and hard to break up into chunks, I'll say, you know,
Speaker 1: brainstorm this for five minutes and I'll just write that
Speaker 1: in the task and that alone is enough to reduce that.
Speaker 1: I guess it's your your your nervous system, your amigela
Speaker 1: kind of taking over and saying, hey, hey, no no, no,
Speaker 1: no no no no, that's that's that's too much. We
Speaker 1: can't handle that. So getting getting around Yeah, feeling overwhelmed. Yep.
Speaker 1: So another one that you mentioned, and I think this
Speaker 1: can be helpful when where you know our ego is
Speaker 1: trying to protect us, right, is giving ourselves permission to suck.
Speaker 1: Tell me about that. Yeah, And that's another little kind
Speaker 1: of lie that you tell yourself. Um, I mean it's
Speaker 1: in some ways it's it's not a lie because when
Speaker 1: you first start doing any type of work, it's not
Speaker 1: going to be up to your standards. Like there's this
Speaker 1: famous video of Ira Glass, the the podcasting pioneer, UH
Speaker 1: where he talks about this thing called the gap, and
Speaker 1: the gap is essentially that whenever you start doing some work,
Speaker 1: some kind of creative endeavor, you're into it because you
Speaker 1: have good taste, because you know, maybe you're starting a
Speaker 1: podcast and there's some podcasts that you really love, or
Speaker 1: you're a musician and there's a musician some bands that
Speaker 1: you really love. You have good taste, and that's why
Speaker 1: you get into it. But then you start doing the
Speaker 1: work and it's nothing like, uh, it does not live
Speaker 1: up to your tastes, right, So it's it's it's not
Speaker 1: good and it takes a very long time for it
Speaker 1: to become good. Well, you can't do good work without
Speaker 1: first doing bad work, and so the great remedy for
Speaker 1: that is permission to suck. Just the very act of
Speaker 1: giving yourself permission just it sort of shuts off that critic,
Speaker 1: that internal critic that keeps you from getting started. And
Speaker 1: then the trick that happens is that after you have started,
Speaker 1: after you are doing work, well, you know, in part
Speaker 1: part of the reason why you stopped yourself from doing
Speaker 1: the work is maybe because you're a bit of a perfectionist,
Speaker 1: you're imagining in your brain how great it's going to be.
Speaker 1: And now you've put the work out there and it's
Speaker 1: not that good. Because you gave yourself permission to suck.
Speaker 1: But you know you're perfectionist. So you have the work
Speaker 1: out there and it sort of calls you and it
Speaker 1: causes you to keep doing it or to iterate on
Speaker 1: what you have out there, and the next thing you know,
Speaker 1: you're getting better and better and better at it and
Speaker 1: you've gotten past that fear. So that's what the way
Speaker 1: the permission to suck really helps to to make somebody, uh,
Speaker 1: get started and then improve upon what they've put out there.
Speaker 1: Such an important thing to be able to do is
Speaker 1: just to allow ourselves to be as good as we
Speaker 1: happen to be at the moment, and without losing sight
Speaker 1: of the fact that that's how we get better by
Speaker 1: by kids kind to do it. You know, even Michelangelo
Speaker 1: has has done this. Michelangel when he started painting the
Speaker 1: Sistine Chapel ceiling, he hadn't painted anything in like twenty years.
Speaker 1: But then the Pope says, hey, you've got to paint
Speaker 1: the ceiling and it's probably going to have bad consequences
Speaker 1: if you don't. And so one interesting thing happened with
Speaker 1: assisting chapel ceiling, which was that after he got halfway
Speaker 1: done with the ceiling, he took off the scaffolding off
Speaker 1: of that half so we could put up on the
Speaker 1: other half. And it was the first time that he
Speaker 1: ever got to see the work that he had done
Speaker 1: from the floor, looking up at his work, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't quite right. So he had kind of painted his
Speaker 1: too many figures and too small of an area. Things
Speaker 1: looked a little bit muddled. And you know, he could
Speaker 1: have just said, I'm just gonna chop it all off
Speaker 1: and start over again. Well that probably wouldn't have worked
Speaker 1: out too well, but he he didn't, you know, complain
Speaker 1: about it. He just started on the second half. He
Speaker 1: allowed himself to adjust. And the very next panel that
Speaker 1: he painted is a panel that I'm sure that all
Speaker 1: the listeners have have seen before. It's called the Creation
Speaker 1: of Adam. It's the old you know, his representation of
Speaker 1: God touching fingers with his representation of Adam, you know,
Speaker 1: the moment of creation. It's one of the most famous
Speaker 1: pieces of art in all of art history. And uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, I like to think that part of the
Speaker 1: reason why it became that way was because when he
Speaker 1: wasn't such a perfectionist that he said, oh, I can't
Speaker 1: paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Uh, he went ahead and
Speaker 1: painted it, and believe it or not, even though it's
Speaker 1: one of the great masterpieces. Uh, you know, one of
Speaker 1: the great wonders of the world. Believe it or not,
Speaker 1: it wasn't perfect by his own standards. He allowed himself
Speaker 1: to adjust to this day. You can look up the
Speaker 1: Sistine Chapel ceiling. You can see that the two halves
Speaker 1: of the ceiling are very different in terms of approach
Speaker 1: in that way. And uh, I mean, it just goes
Speaker 1: to show you. I find it comforting to know that,
Speaker 1: even you know, when you're painting one of the wonders
Speaker 1: of the world, you're still giving yourself kind of permission
Speaker 1: to suck in a way. So tell me about what
Speaker 1: the fortress fallacy is. I wasn't able to find anything
Speaker 1: to describe this phenomenon that I suffer from all the time.
Speaker 1: And that is one of the most common things that
Speaker 1: I see when people come to me looking for help
Speaker 1: in overcoming their own procrastination, is that when we first
Speaker 1: have a vision for what we want to create, the
Speaker 1: scale of it is usually a lot more than anything
Speaker 1: that's anywhere near what we're capable of. And I was
Speaker 1: just talking about permission to suck, which kind of helps
Speaker 1: you overcome perfection paralysis. This isn't so much about quality,
Speaker 1: this is about scale. So this is you know, I
Speaker 1: want to make a feature film someday, but I've never
Speaker 1: made a short film, or you know, I want to
Speaker 1: start this podcast that has all this music coming in
Speaker 1: and out and all these people that I've interviewed and
Speaker 1: all this research that I've done, but I haven't even
Speaker 1: done like a small little audio thing. I want to
Speaker 1: open a restaurant, but I've never even run a dinner
Speaker 1: party before and cook for some people. And it's another
Speaker 1: way that our ego protects us in a way is
Speaker 1: that we have this grand fortress in our mind. That's
Speaker 1: what I called the fortress fallacy, this grand fortress that
Speaker 1: we want to build. But we can convince ourselves all
Speaker 1: along like, oh, I'm not quite ready for that. I
Speaker 1: still have to do this research, I still have to
Speaker 1: kind of plan things out, and then all along we're
Speaker 1: not we're not getting started at all. We're not we're
Speaker 1: not doing anything, and we're feeling just fine, and we're
Speaker 1: feeling like we're on the right track, but really time
Speaker 1: is just going by and we're not getting any closer
Speaker 1: to making that vision a reality. And so for me,
Speaker 1: the solution to that is, instead of building the fortress,
Speaker 1: start with a cottage. And that cottage doesn't have to
Speaker 1: like become a part of the fortress. It can just
Speaker 1: be that, you know, you learn a little bit about
Speaker 1: building and you know, applying for city codes or whatever
Speaker 1: while you build build this cottage um and as you
Speaker 1: do that, you build up your skills. So with with
Speaker 1: the podcast, you know, maybe you make a two minute
Speaker 1: clip or something like that beforehand you share it with
Speaker 1: your friends. Or if you want to write a book,
Speaker 1: well you might want to start doing some writing and
Speaker 1: maybe build a habit where you're writing a hundred words
Speaker 1: a day. Or if you want to start a restaurant,
Speaker 1: have that dinner party, go ahead and charge people for it. Uh,
Speaker 1: do some type of little thing that your nervous system
Speaker 1: can handle that your ego isn't going to push you
Speaker 1: back and say, oh wait, wait, wait, we're not we're
Speaker 1: not ready for this. In fact, try to come up
Speaker 1: with something that's so small that your ego can't even
Speaker 1: get in the way, because your need to sort of
Speaker 1: see yourself positively is stronger than any sort of distortion
Speaker 1: field that your ego can possibly put up in your way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that idea of just like you know, I
Speaker 1: think of them as little experiments, like you know, try
Speaker 1: like a very small version of what you want to
Speaker 1: do and see where it takes you. And a lot
Speaker 1: of times I think this can be really helpful because
Speaker 1: a lot of times we have, to your point, this
Speaker 1: fortress fallacy. We dream of doing this grand thing, right,
Speaker 1: and since it's so grand, we never really start on it.
Speaker 1: But the dream sort of sticks around and occupies us.
Speaker 1: And sometimes when we do some small version of it,
Speaker 1: we go I don't even really like doing that that much, right,
Speaker 1: like all of a sudden, but what we could have
Speaker 1: spent the next five years thinking that's what we're gonna do, right,
Speaker 1: And and it can be really helpful to do some
Speaker 1: small experiments and be like, huh, okay, great, I learned,
Speaker 1: and I want to do more, or I might have
Speaker 1: learned this isn't even the thing for you know, and
Speaker 1: that's really and I have a little simple thing that
Speaker 1: I've done. I'm somebody who can. Fortunately I'm fortunate enough
Speaker 1: to be able to live um kind of where I
Speaker 1: want to or at least I certainly was a few
Speaker 1: years ago. And I think that we all have these
Speaker 1: sort of fantasies about living in different places, like I
Speaker 1: what would be like to live in New York, or
Speaker 1: where would it be like to live in London for
Speaker 1: a while, a Rome for a while. Well, I I
Speaker 1: kind of do this thing I call many lives where
Speaker 1: I'll set up and plan like a month or two
Speaker 1: months or or three months, and I'll go live in
Speaker 1: this other city and see what it's like. And you know,
Speaker 1: I did that in New York a couple of times,
Speaker 1: and I enjoyed it was wonderful. But one of the
Speaker 1: things that was most valuable about it was that it
Speaker 1: helped me shut off that part of, uh, the fantasy
Speaker 1: in my brain of living in New York, because it
Speaker 1: helped me realize, like, hey, I love New York. I
Speaker 1: don't want to live there. I've I've I've experimented, I've
Speaker 1: had a little taste of it in some ways. So
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's still a relatively grand thing to do.
Speaker 1: And I guess I built up to it with with
Speaker 1: with smaller trips and such. But I mean I kind
Speaker 1: of wonder about you and this podcast because I've I've
Speaker 1: heard the first episodes of this podcast and they're quite good. Uh.
Speaker 1: Were there's some sort of tests that you did when
Speaker 1: you first started? There were not. But I started it
Speaker 1: from an experiment perspective, like I'm gonna do this and
Speaker 1: just see if I like doing it. Now. I had
Speaker 1: Chris who had been an audio engineer in previous live,
Speaker 1: so we had some professionalism going in right out of
Speaker 1: the gate that helped having him do that. Um. But no, UM,
Speaker 1: I had not done it before. But I really approached
Speaker 1: it in a low risk way, like I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: try this and see if I like doing it, and
Speaker 1: if I do, I'll keep doing it. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: I knew a lot of people around that time who
Speaker 1: were doing things like I'm going to become a podcaster
Speaker 1: and they quit their jobs and and you know, and
Speaker 1: they were you know, the this big bet, right and
Speaker 1: and I was much more in a like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna start this as sort of a hobby
Speaker 1: and see what what I think. And then I did
Speaker 1: it and I realized, oh, I really like doing it,
Speaker 1: and you know, and and then that eventually built to
Speaker 1: to where it is today. But so I started it
Speaker 1: in a really low risk kind of way, like I
Speaker 1: just want to try this, and I'm always thinking about
Speaker 1: how to categorize that. So I don't know whether they
Speaker 1: say that that was a permission to suck thing or
Speaker 1: whether that was a probably a combination of that and
Speaker 1: and uh and just looking at it with a sense
Speaker 1: of curiosity. Yep, I think I think both, you know,
Speaker 1: I think both. I think definitely curiosity was the main driver.
Speaker 1: You know. I just sort of thought like, I think
Speaker 1: this would be fun. Now I don't know if it
Speaker 1: would be fun, right, I might have done three interviews
Speaker 1: and be like, I don't like doing this, but it
Speaker 1: turned out I loved doing it. Um, So yeah, it
Speaker 1: was I think it was both. I think it was
Speaker 1: giving myself permission for them to just be what they
Speaker 1: were in the beginning. But and then also just following
Speaker 1: what made me curiyah. I love that. And because I'm
Speaker 1: personally huge on curious, there's a chapter in the book
Speaker 1: called Curiosity First, which is kind of like my principle
Speaker 1: of how I operate is to always be trying to
Speaker 1: ask myself and my curious about this thing that I'm doing,
Speaker 1: because curiosity is this wonderful fuel. You can work harder
Speaker 1: on the things that you're curious about, then then you
Speaker 1: can on on any other thing. And no matter what
Speaker 1: you do, even if you are curious about it, it's
Speaker 1: going to be challenging at times. And so curiosity can
Speaker 1: kind of can kind of pull you through ye at
Speaker 1: the same time, it can take you to all these
Speaker 1: like really interesting places that you you never expected, Like
Speaker 1: I'm sure that this podcast, uh, you didn't expect it
Speaker 1: to take you to places that it has, absolutely, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I love that you talk about that in the book.
Speaker 1: You mentioned that you know that we have this tendency
Speaker 1: to be told to exploit what we've learned. So we've
Speaker 1: learned something, and now it's time to use that thing
Speaker 1: to be what you know, that becomes our career, that
Speaker 1: becomes our craft, that becomes our thing. But you talk
Speaker 1: about balancing between exploitation, exploiting the things that we already know,
Speaker 1: as well as exploration, and balancing those two because if
Speaker 1: if all you ever do is explore, right that that
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily lead anywhere. But if all we ever do
Speaker 1: is sort of exploit or build off what we already know,
Speaker 1: that doesn't lead us to very interesting places. Yeah, when
Speaker 1: you're exploiting and knowledge. I mean, I hate the word
Speaker 1: the way that sounds, but I don't mean for it
Speaker 1: to sound derogatory. But when you're exploiting your knowledge, you're
Speaker 1: that's kind of like what a job is for a
Speaker 1: lot of people, or what jobs have been. I think
Speaker 1: that is going to be changing more and more as
Speaker 1: the world moves fast, or as we have more automation
Speaker 1: and artificial intelligence going on. It's going to be a
Speaker 1: lot more about exploring and and finding these things that
Speaker 1: that nobody's ever done before. And that's a place that
Speaker 1: curiosity can take you, because um, you know, curiosities converge. Uh.
Speaker 1: I love the story of Steve Jobs when he dropped
Speaker 1: out of college and he started dropping in on various
Speaker 1: classes just whatever it was that was interesting to him.
Speaker 1: And one of the things he dropped in on was
Speaker 1: this calligraphy class and it was just you know, totally impractical,
Speaker 1: useless arts that he was just fascinated with. And he
Speaker 1: learned all about the beauty of letters and he and
Speaker 1: he learned all about um spacing and turning and typography,
Speaker 1: which are I mean, those are all passions of mind.
Speaker 1: So I can certainly relate to that, that feeling of
Speaker 1: love for that craft, and it had no application whatsoever
Speaker 1: in his life at the time. There was no way
Speaker 1: to tell how he might use that. But as he
Speaker 1: described in his Stanford commencement address, uh years later, when
Speaker 1: he was building the Mac, he built all of that
Speaker 1: sort of typographic intelligence into the Mac and it became
Speaker 1: the first computer that had optically space typography. And as
Speaker 1: he as he says, uh, you know, since Microsoft copied
Speaker 1: the the Mac, then it's very likely that maybe no
Speaker 1: computer would have optically space typography if that hadn't happened.
Speaker 1: So that's just one example of where curiosity can take
Speaker 1: you two places that you never expected because one curiosity
Speaker 1: in this case typography or or calligraphy, converge with this
Speaker 1: other curiosity of computers, and and that that created this, uh,
Speaker 1: this sort of groundbreaking innovation. And so I think that
Speaker 1: it's important to give yourself a little bit of permission
Speaker 1: to all your curiosity. You know, we live in a
Speaker 1: culture where we're kind of ashamed of our curiosity. I
Speaker 1: can't tell you the number of times that I've had
Speaker 1: somebody write me and say, oh, you know, I'm curious
Speaker 1: about so many things and I just can't seem to
Speaker 1: focus on one thing. And uh, and these are brilliant
Speaker 1: people and they feel bad about themselves because of it,
Speaker 1: and uh, I think it. I think it should be
Speaker 1: the other other way. I think that you should be
Speaker 1: embracing your curiosity. Uh, you know, maybe you'd spend a
Speaker 1: little bit of time doing the exploiting, you know, put
Speaker 1: food on the table, but give yourself a little bit
Speaker 1: of extra space for that discovery to happen, because that's
Speaker 1: where you can have incredible things that you never expected
Speaker 1: to take place. Excellent. Well, I think that is a
Speaker 1: wonderful note for us to leave this on. So David,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for taking the time to come on.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed the book and I really enjoyed this conversation.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much Eric for having me on and
Speaker 1: for coming on my show too. So anybody who wants
Speaker 1: to hear the interview with Eric, it's already on. Love
Speaker 1: your work. So thank you, wonderful, Take care bye. If
Speaker 1: what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider
Speaker 1: making a donation to the One you Feed podcast. Head
Speaker 1: over to one you Feed dot net slash support. The
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