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Speaker 3: Shouting the destination at somebody doesn't really help them with
Speaker 3: their journey.
Speaker 4: Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 4: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 4: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 4: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 4: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 4: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 4: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 4: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 4: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 4: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 4: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 4: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. We
Speaker 4: hope you'll enjoy this episode from the archive. Thanks for
Speaker 4: joining us. Our guest on this episode is David Kadovey,
Speaker 4: a best selling author, blogger, podcaster, and speaker. Through his
Speaker 4: blogging at kadovey dot net and his podcast Love Your Work,
Speaker 4: he helps people find satisfaction through following their crafts, even
Speaker 4: if it takes them down an unconventional path. His book
Speaker 4: is The Heart to Start, stop procrastinating and start creating.
Speaker 2: Hi, David, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Eric. Thank you so much for having me. Really a
Speaker 3: pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2: 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 going to primarily talk about your book, which is
Speaker 1: called The Heart to Start, Stop procrastinating and start creating,
Speaker 1: which are topics that are very near to my heart.
Speaker 1: But before we get into the book, let's start like
Speaker 1: we always do with the parable. There is a grandfather
Speaker 1: who's talking with his granddaughter and he says, in life,
Speaker 1: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 1: a battle.
Speaker 2: One is a good wolf, which.
Speaker 1: Represents things like kindness, bravery, and love, and the other
Speaker 1: is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
Speaker 1: hatred and fear. And the granddaughter stops and thinks about
Speaker 1: it for a second and looks up at her grandfather
Speaker 1: and she says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the
Speaker 1: grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to
Speaker 1: start off by asking you what that parable means to
Speaker 1: you in your life and in the work that you do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm probably not supposed to say this, but the
Speaker 3: first time that I heard the parable, it rung hollow
Speaker 3: for me. It didn't really hit me like the way
Speaker 3: that a parable is supposed to hit somebody, I think,
Speaker 3: and I come to realize. I think that it's because
Speaker 3: there was another parable that did really strike me when
Speaker 3: I heard it, and it was the parable that I'm
Speaker 3: sure everybody's heard about a farmer and a string of
Speaker 3: things happens to him, like a horse comes to his farm,
Speaker 3: and then his son breaks his leg riding the horse,
Speaker 3: and then his son gets passed up for fighting in
Speaker 3: the war. The village is going into and all along
Speaker 3: the neighbors saying, oh, you're so lucky, or oh this
Speaker 3: unfortunate thing happened to you, And the whole time, the
Speaker 3: farmer's saying, who's to say what's good or bad? And
Speaker 3: I remember that was something that really struck me when
Speaker 3: I heard it, and I think that that's part of
Speaker 3: the reason why when I first heard this parable of
Speaker 3: the two wolves, it didn't really mean a ton to me.
Speaker 3: But I have thought about it a lot more since then,
Speaker 3: especially you know, in preparing to interview you for my show,
Speaker 3: and it started to make a lot more sense to me,
Speaker 3: especially in the context of, you know, your struggle with
Speaker 3: addiction and things like that. But then I've also found
Speaker 3: that for me it's it's a useful parable because I
Speaker 3: realize that there's a certain kind of courage in deciding
Speaker 3: that something is good or bad, and like, I think
Speaker 3: that's easy. That's probably an easy decision to make if
Speaker 3: you're struggling with addiction. I mean maybe not mentally, but
Speaker 3: from the outside it's an easy it's an easy judgment call,
Speaker 3: right that you know, that's a bad thing, that's your
Speaker 3: bad wolf. But I think in everyday life there's all
Speaker 3: these sort of shades of gray where we can very
Speaker 3: easily rationalize to ourselves that oh, you know, this isn't
Speaker 3: good or bad, this is just the way that it is.
Speaker 3: But there's some benefit to saying that something is a
Speaker 3: good wolf or saying that something is a bad wolf,
Speaker 3: because when you start doing that, then you start to
Speaker 3: be able to make some sort of a judgment call,
Speaker 3: and you start to be able to make some kind
Speaker 3: of a measurement. You start to be able to to
Speaker 3: improve your behavior because you can say, well, that didn't
Speaker 3: work because I did this thing that I've decided is
Speaker 3: bad for me, or that didn't work because or that
Speaker 3: did work because it helped me do this thing that
Speaker 3: is good for me. And so since then it really
Speaker 3: has come to resonate with me in that way, and
Speaker 3: that you know, maybe it's a cop out sometimes to
Speaker 3: say who's to say what's good or bad? Like maybe
Speaker 3: it's better to say that, yeah, this is this is
Speaker 3: good and this is bad. Like you can argue your
Speaker 3: way that maybe it's not. But for the thing that
Speaker 3: you want to see happen, then you have to make
Speaker 3: that judgment call. And for me, that's about creative work.
Speaker 3: Is like creative work creating things is my good wolf
Speaker 3: for sure, and then the things that keep me from
Speaker 3: creating would be my bad wolf. So that's a little
Speaker 3: bit about what the parable means to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I love that story you told about the
Speaker 1: you know, the old Taoist story about the farmer and
Speaker 1: who says what's good and bad. I think it's a
Speaker 1: very wise tale because I think that in the short
Speaker 1: term view of events that happened to us, we don't
Speaker 1: really know what comes next. So so I think it's
Speaker 1: really wise in looking at the events in our lives
Speaker 1: and not giving them a permanent meaning. You know. So
Speaker 1: I totally agree with you there, and I agree with
Speaker 1: you that I think in my own life, you know,
Speaker 1: addiction being a clear example. But there are other things
Speaker 1: that I know are good for me that aren't necessarily
Speaker 1: I don't need to wait and see the long term
Speaker 1: result from them to know. Like you said, like creating,
Speaker 1: like I know when I create something, it has an
Speaker 1: immediate benefit to my you know, for lack of a
Speaker 1: better word, my soul right or my spirit. And regardless
Speaker 1: of what whether that thing that I created goes anywhere
Speaker 1: or does anything, I know that it's good for me
Speaker 1: in doing it. In the same way, like a very
Speaker 1: prosaic example is like I know when I exercise that
Speaker 1: that's a good thing for me because I tend to
Speaker 1: feel better. It tends to bring up life enhancing qualities
Speaker 1: in me. So I agree, But I am also reticent
Speaker 1: to assign anything too much of a good or bad
Speaker 1: label because I think we don't often know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I mean, still it's useful because there are
Speaker 3: those shades of gray where you know, creating is a
Speaker 3: good wolf for me, But I mean it can actually
Speaker 3: it can become a bad wolf for me. But also
Speaker 3: it's not always pleasant, especially when you're trying to do
Speaker 3: it professionally. It's not always a pleasant thing in the moment.
Speaker 3: And so there can be these things that maybe they
Speaker 3: don't make you feel that good right away, but they're
Speaker 3: a good wolf. Or there's things that do feel good,
Speaker 3: like maybe you love to scroll through Instagram and that
Speaker 3: can be fine, but you know, eventually you maybe start
Speaker 3: feeling bad about yourself and you aren't quite sure why,
Speaker 3: and it turns out it's actually a bad wolf in
Speaker 3: some way, and maybe it pulls you away from feeding
Speaker 3: your good wolf. And so there are these gray areas,
Speaker 3: and that's where I think it can be useful to
Speaker 3: I don't know. Maybe it's not so much who's to
Speaker 3: say what's good or bad, but maybe it's it's more
Speaker 3: like you can look at anything and say that's good
Speaker 3: and that's bad. You can say that's good or that's bad,
Speaker 3: and it really depends upon the context and what you're
Speaker 3: trying to achieve with your own self.
Speaker 1: Talk yep, So let's talk about the heart. To start
Speaker 1: stop procrastinating, start creating, you say, just get started. It's
Speaker 1: good advice. If you can follow it. But I was
Speaker 1: always left wondering, Yeah, but how do I start? And
Speaker 1: so I think that's a really great place to jump
Speaker 1: off into this. So what are the things that stand
Speaker 1: in the way of us starting to do creation?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I want to address that idea of just get
Speaker 3: started or you know, Nike says, just do it. And
Speaker 3: it took me a really long time to come to
Speaker 3: clarity on this, actually, probably even after I had written
Speaker 3: the book, before I really saw this, which was that
Speaker 3: that's really pithy advice. It's advice that we hear a
Speaker 3: lot from people who are successful in say like an
Speaker 3: entrepreneurial context, is you know, just get started on this,
Speaker 3: that or the other thing, and sort of a vicious
Speaker 3: cycle in that there is a survivorship bias, and that
Speaker 3: advice is that the people to whom we look up
Speaker 3: are giving us that advice. But most of them probably
Speaker 3: didn't really struggle with the type of level of procrastination
Speaker 3: that some of us who get stuck did, you know,
Speaker 3: Like there's some people who just have no hesitation. And
Speaker 3: I talk about my conversation with James Alton and how
Speaker 3: that helped me come to that realization, was that he's
Speaker 3: somebody who is a writer and seems very fearless, and
Speaker 3: that's because he actually is fearless. It wasn't that he
Speaker 3: had to fight through some sort of things. And myself,
Speaker 3: it's the complete opposite, is that I've I've always been
Speaker 3: filled with so much self doubt or fear of judgments,
Speaker 3: and I think those were probably some of the main things.
Speaker 3: Or perfectionism is another thing that causes people to not
Speaker 3: get started on something. Is that they can sort of
Speaker 3: mentally perfect this thing that they want to create, and
Speaker 3: they can feel good in the process about that, and
Speaker 3: they can tell themselves that, well, one day they'll get
Speaker 3: the opportunity to do this, and time passes and that
Speaker 3: day never comes and you know, next thing, you know,
Speaker 3: it's it's too late. And so those are just some
Speaker 3: of the things that cause anybody procrastinate, especially on creative work.
Speaker 3: And it's the things that I've struggled with myself, and
Speaker 3: it's the reason why I wrote the book was to
Speaker 3: to help myself stop hesitating, to stop procrastinating, and to
Speaker 3: start creating things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think just get started is advice. It's similar
Speaker 1: to to use addiction and alcoholism as a reference to
Speaker 1: you know, just don't drink. Oh yeah, at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, that is the fundamental truth, right, Like.
Speaker 3: You just stop being depressed? Is like the is the
Speaker 3: perfect example as well, is these people who are saying
Speaker 3: just get started, who don't struggle with uh, with the
Speaker 3: type of hesitation and self doubt that a lot of
Speaker 3: people do, are saying, just get started. It's it's easy,
Speaker 3: you know. It's like it's like telling somebody who's clinically depressed,
Speaker 3: just stop being depressed. You know, like, oh, you know,
Speaker 3: it's all in your head or something like that. But
Speaker 3: you know there's actual steps that you can take that
Speaker 3: that can help you, you know, But shouting the destination
Speaker 3: at somebody doesn't really help them with their journey, that's right.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And what I was saying with you know, just
Speaker 1: don't drink is that ultimately that is the end of
Speaker 1: the road. That is what it all comes down to
Speaker 1: that at the end of the day. However, there can
Speaker 1: be a lot of instructions along the way to that
Speaker 1: that make that a more likely destination. Right. Your first
Speaker 1: law of art is that there is art inside you.
Speaker 1: But let's define art for a second, because a lot
Speaker 1: of people are going to hear that and think, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not an artist, right Like 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.
Speaker 3: I believe that you could make music and you can
Speaker 3: paint and have it not be art, you know, to
Speaker 3: some extent, you know, paint my number to some extent,
Speaker 3: it's a craft. It's not art. So to me, art
Speaker 3: is that you're taking your individual unique personality and skills
Speaker 3: and experience and throughout life, no matter what, we always
Speaker 3: interact with the world in some way, and the world
Speaker 3: creates the sort of potential energy in us. Our influences,
Speaker 3: our experiences, technology that we're exposed to, and it creates
Speaker 3: this potential energy in us. And when we create something
Speaker 3: and put something out in the world, that's our art.
Speaker 3: And that can be a painting, that can be music,
Speaker 3: that can be a podcast, that can be a business,
Speaker 3: it can be a nonprofit it it could be a
Speaker 3: relationship or or a trip that you plan. It's this
Speaker 3: creating of something that's uniquely yours that nobody else could
Speaker 3: could do it the same way that you're doing it.
Speaker 3: So that's what it means to me.
Speaker 1: One of the things that you say, is that when
Speaker 1: we're going to create art, it's a process of self
Speaker 1: actualization and that whenever we do that, we are going
Speaker 1: to face resistance. We're going to face internal chatter that
Speaker 1: is going to stop us from doing that, and that
Speaker 1: the ego will come up with reasons not to start.
Speaker 1: So why is the ego coming up with reasons for
Speaker 1: us not to start? Where is this resistance coming from?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you've mentioned the word resistance, which I mentioned
Speaker 3: in the book, which comes from something I think a
Speaker 3: lot of your listeners you're probably familiar with, which is
Speaker 3: David Pressfield wrote The Legend of Bagger Vance and a
Speaker 3: number of other books, and he's a tremendous writer. But
Speaker 3: he also identified this force that has resonated with so
Speaker 3: many people, including Oprah, of resistance, and resistance really comes
Speaker 3: from this conflict between your actual self and your ideal
Speaker 3: self or as you try to achieve this future self,
Speaker 3: your ego is there holding you back the whole time.
Speaker 3: So when you want to create something and you come
Speaker 3: up with reasons not to do it, that's often your
Speaker 3: ego holding you back because your ego is there to
Speaker 3: protect you. Right, So if you say you want to
Speaker 3: start blogging, or you want to start a podcast, and
Speaker 3: you're thinking about all the different things that people might say,
Speaker 3: and you then decide not to start. That is your
Speaker 3: ego protecting you from this fear of judgment or fear
Speaker 3: of failure. However, it's often not so simple and obvious
Speaker 3: like it can manifest itself in a lot of ways.
Speaker 3: I was on a podcasting board the other day on
Speaker 3: message board I like to go on there and see
Speaker 3: if I can help people out, and there was somebody
Speaker 3: on there saying, Hey, I've got all this podcast equipment.
Speaker 3: I want to know what's the right podcast table for
Speaker 3: me to get? What kind of table should I get
Speaker 3: for my podcast? And thankfully people were chiming in and
Speaker 3: saying like, hey, you know something else is going on here.
Speaker 3: You haven't started your podcast yet, and you're worried about
Speaker 3: what table you need. You are procrastinating. You're finding a
Speaker 3: way to let your neuroses go into some other direction
Speaker 3: that's going to be ultimately protective because you aren't going
Speaker 3: to have your work out there. Your work will be
Speaker 3: free of judgment, and all the while you have this
Speaker 3: perfectly good reason that you've come up with about why
Speaker 3: you're not doing it. So, in addition to protecting yourself
Speaker 3: from that criticism or from that failure, your ego is
Speaker 3: also protecting you from understanding the way that you're fooling
Speaker 3: yourself and the way that you're ultimately cheating yourself. And
Speaker 3: that can drag on for years and years and years
Speaker 3: before you realize what's going on. And so that's why
Speaker 3: it's so dangerous.
Speaker 1: And so what are some techniques to work through that.
Speaker 3: One of the best techniques is something that I call
Speaker 3: motivational judo. And in the martial art of judo, I
Speaker 3: believe you, I'm not a judo master myself, but basically
Speaker 3: you're using your opponent's energy against your opponent. So your
Speaker 3: opponent comes at you with a punch, you use that
Speaker 3: punch to throw them over your shoulder, so to speak,
Speaker 3: the forward energy. You allow that to propel them over
Speaker 3: your shoulder onto the mat. And we can do this
Speaker 3: with ourselves because we all have some way that we're
Speaker 3: maybe fooling ourself, but we all often have some other
Speaker 3: mechanism of preserving our own self perception that we can
Speaker 3: then use to counter whatever way we are holding ourselves back.
Speaker 3: I'll give you an example that works for myself, and
Speaker 3: it works for a lot of other people, but some
Speaker 3: people have different ways that work for them. It's all
Speaker 3: about knowing yourself and knowing the ways that you can
Speaker 3: hold yourself back and the ways that you like to
Speaker 3: maintain a positive self perception. So, for myself, if I
Speaker 3: really just cannot get started on something, say just a task,
Speaker 3: not even necessarily a project, but a task, I'll set
Speaker 3: a timer for ten minutes, and then I will say,
Speaker 3: let's say for writing. So I'll say, okay, I have
Speaker 3: to write for ten minutes. I can't do anything else,
Speaker 3: make sure my phone is off, et cetera, and I
Speaker 3: will just write for ten minutes. And when I'm done,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna pat myself on the back and congratulate myself
Speaker 3: for having done a good job. Well, what happens is
Speaker 3: by the time I get to ten minutes, I have
Speaker 3: momentum going that ten minutes usually turns into you know,
Speaker 3: twenty minutes, thirty minutes, an hour, sometimes two hours. And
Speaker 3: the reason that it even worked was because I first
Speaker 3: started with this goal where I was really kind of
Speaker 3: lying to myself. I knew when I set the timer
Speaker 3: for ten minutes that this was going to happen. But somehow,
Speaker 3: you know, some other little part of me is like, well,
Speaker 3: ten minutes. I mean, that's ridiculous. I can totally do that.
Speaker 3: In fact, it's so easy that if I were to
Speaker 3: fail at ten minutes, my own need to see myself
Speaker 3: positively would be offended to such an extent that I
Speaker 3: just am not going to accept that happening. It could
Speaker 3: be two minutes, it could be ten minutes. You know,
Speaker 3: it can be any sort of thing where you're kind
Speaker 3: of telling yourself that you're that you have this very
Speaker 3: small goal, when in actual actuality, what's going to happen
Speaker 3: is you're going to do this larger thing. And a
Speaker 3: lot of it is just understanding what is it about
Speaker 3: your own personality that you are able to use for
Speaker 3: your own benefit that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that when I use it all the
Speaker 1: time for all kinds of things, and I do think
Speaker 1: that it is effective to some degree because I will
Speaker 1: say to myself, like, oh, for crying out loud, you
Speaker 1: can do anything for five minutes, Like you know, there's
Speaker 1: a just enough self pride that's like I can push
Speaker 1: through five minutes. It is such a useful tool, and
Speaker 1: it's funny because I know on one hand that I'm
Speaker 1: tricking myself, and yet it still seems to work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's I mean, we have I don't
Speaker 3: know if you've ever heard about split brain studies. It's
Speaker 3: pretty fascinating. Have you heard about this? Yeah, if somebody
Speaker 3: who has their corpus colossum, I think, I'm not sure
Speaker 3: how you pronounce it is severed, you know, to stop seizures,
Speaker 3: so to speak to their left and right brain aren't
Speaker 3: talking to each other, and like the left brain can
Speaker 3: be doing one thing and the right brain just has
Speaker 3: no idea. So I mean that may extend to a
Speaker 3: lot of other things where you know, consciously we're telling
Speaker 3: ourselves yeah, oh yeah, I'm just gonna do this, but
Speaker 3: in reality something else entirely happens. So I think whenever
Speaker 3: you can take advantage of that, that's that's great for me.
Speaker 3: It's the it's the sort of low balling thing. I
Speaker 3: even do it on my task management where if I
Speaker 3: have a task that I need to do that is
Speaker 3: pretty large and hard to break up into chunks, I'll say,
Speaker 3: you know, brainstorm this for five minutes, and I'll just
Speaker 3: write that in the task and that alone is enough
Speaker 3: to reduce that. I guess it's your your your nervous system.
Speaker 3: You're amignala kind of taking over and saying, hey, hey
Speaker 3: no no no, no, no no no, that's it's too much.
Speaker 3: We can't handle that. So getting getting around that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, feeling overwhelmed. Yep.
Speaker 1: So another one that you mentioned, and I think this
Speaker 1: can be helpful when we're you know, our ego is
Speaker 1: trying to protect us, right, is giving ourselves permission to suck?
Speaker 2: Tell me about that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's another little kind of lie that you
Speaker 3: tell yourself. I mean, it's in some ways it's it's
Speaker 3: not a lie because when you first start doing any
Speaker 3: type of work, it's not going to meet up to
Speaker 3: your standards. Like there's this famous video of Eyraglass, the
Speaker 3: podcasting pioneer, where he talks about this thing called the gap,
Speaker 3: and the gap is essentially that whenever you start doing
Speaker 3: some work, some kind of creative endeavor, you're into it
Speaker 3: because you have good taste. Because maybe you're starting a
Speaker 3: podcast and there's some podcasts that you really love, or
Speaker 3: you're a musician and there's some musician some bands that
Speaker 3: you really love. You have good taste, and that's why
Speaker 3: you get into it. But then you start doing the
Speaker 3: work and it's nothing like. It does not live up
Speaker 3: to your tastes, right, so it's not good and it
Speaker 3: takes a very long time for it to become good. Well,
Speaker 3: you can't do good work without first doing bad work.
Speaker 3: And so the great remedy for that is permission to suck.
Speaker 3: Just the very act of giving yourself permission just it
Speaker 3: sort of shuts off that critic, that internal critic that
Speaker 3: keeps you from getting started. And then the trick that
Speaker 3: happens is that after you have started, after you are
Speaker 3: doing work, well, you know, in part part of the
Speaker 3: reason why you stopped yourself from doing the work is
Speaker 3: maybe because you're a bit of a perfectionist. You're imagining
Speaker 3: in your brain how great it's going to be. And
Speaker 3: now you've put the work out there and it's not
Speaker 3: that good because you gave yourself permission to suck. But
Speaker 3: you know, you're a perfectionist. So you have the work
Speaker 3: out there and it sort of calls you and it
Speaker 3: causes you to keep doing it or to iterate on
Speaker 3: what you have out there, and the next thing you know,
Speaker 3: you're getting better and better and better at it. And
Speaker 3: you've gotten past that fear. So that's what the way
Speaker 3: the permission to suck really helps to make somebody get
Speaker 3: 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: kids to do it.
Speaker 3: You know, even Michelangelo has done this. Michelangel when he
Speaker 3: started painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling, he hadn't painted anything
Speaker 3: in like twenty years. But then the Pope says, hey,
Speaker 3: you've got to paint the ceiling, and it's probably going
Speaker 3: to have bad consequences if you don't. And so one
Speaker 3: interesting thing happened with assisting chapels ceiling, which was that
Speaker 3: after he got halfway done with the ceiling, he took
Speaker 3: off the scaffolding off of that half so we could
Speaker 3: put up on the other half. And it was the
Speaker 3: first time that he ever got to see the work
Speaker 3: that he had done from the floor, looking up at
Speaker 3: his work, and it wasn't quite right. So he had
Speaker 3: kind of painted as too many figures and too small
Speaker 3: of an area. Things looked a little bit muddled, and
Speaker 3: you know, he could have just said, I'm just gonna
Speaker 3: chop it all off and start over again. Well that
Speaker 3: probably wouldn't have worked out too well. But he didn't,
Speaker 3: you know, complain about it. He just started on the
Speaker 3: second half. He allowed himself to adjust. And the very
Speaker 3: next panel that he painted is a panel that I'm
Speaker 3: sure that all the listeners have seen before. It's called
Speaker 3: the Creation of Adam. It's the old you know, his
Speaker 3: representation of God touching fingers with his representation of Adam,
Speaker 3: you know, the moment of creation. It's one of the
Speaker 3: most famous pieces of art in all of art history.
Speaker 3: And I mean to think that part of the reason
Speaker 3: why it became that way was because one he wasn't
Speaker 3: such a perfectionist that he said, oh, I can't paint
Speaker 3: the Sistine Chapel ceiling. He went ahead and painted it, and,
Speaker 3: believe it or not, even though it's one of the
Speaker 3: great masterpieces, you know, one of the great wonders of
Speaker 3: the world, believe it or not, it wasn't perfect by
Speaker 3: his own standards. He allowed himself to adjust. To this day,
Speaker 3: you can look up the Sistine Chapel ceiling. You can
Speaker 3: see that the two halves of the ceiling are very
Speaker 3: different in terms of approach in that way, And I mean,
Speaker 3: it just goes to show you. I find it comforting
Speaker 3: to know that, even you know, when you're painting one
Speaker 3: of the wonders of the world, you're still giving yourself
Speaker 3: kind of permission to suck in a way.
Speaker 1: So tell me about what the fortress fallacy is.
Speaker 3: I wasn't able to find anything to describe this phenomenon
Speaker 3: that I suffer from all the time. And that is
Speaker 3: one of the most common things that I see when
Speaker 3: people come to me looking for help in overcoming their
Speaker 3: own procrastination, is that when we first have a vision
Speaker 3: for what we want to create, the scale of it
Speaker 3: is usually a lot more than anything that's anywhere near
Speaker 3: what we're capable of. And I was just talking about
Speaker 3: permission to suck, which kind of helps you overcome perfection paralysis.
Speaker 3: This isn't so much about quality, this is about scale.
Speaker 3: So this is you know, I want to make a
Speaker 3: feature film someday, but I've never made a short film,
Speaker 3: or you know, I want to start this podcast that
Speaker 3: has all this music coming in and out and all
Speaker 3: these people that I've interviewed and all this research that
Speaker 3: I've done, but I haven't even done like a small
Speaker 3: little audio thing. I want to open a restaurant, but
Speaker 3: I've never even run a dinner party before and cook
Speaker 3: for some people. And it's another way that our ego
Speaker 3: protects us in a way is that we have this
Speaker 3: grand fortress in our mind. That's why I call it
Speaker 3: the fortress fallacy, this grand fortress that we want to build.
Speaker 3: But we can convince ourselves all along like, oh, I'm
Speaker 3: not quite ready for that. I still have to do
Speaker 3: this research. I still have to kind of plan things out.
Speaker 3: And then all along we're not getting started at all.
Speaker 3: We're not doing anything, and we're feeling just fine. We're
Speaker 3: feeling like we're on the right track, but really time
Speaker 3: is just going by and we're not getting any closer
Speaker 3: to making that vision of reality. And so for me,
Speaker 3: the solution of that is, instead of building the fortress,
Speaker 3: start with a cottage. And that cottage doesn't have to
Speaker 3: like become a part of the fortress. It can just
Speaker 3: be that, you know, you learn a little bit about
Speaker 3: building and you know, applying for city codes or whatever
Speaker 3: while you build this cottage, and as you do that,
Speaker 3: you build up your skills. So with the podcast, you know,
Speaker 3: maybe you make a two minute clip or something like
Speaker 3: that beforehand you share it with your friends. Or if
Speaker 3: you want to write a book, well you might want
Speaker 3: to start doing some writing and maybe build a habit
Speaker 3: where you're writing one hundred words a day. Or if
Speaker 3: you want to start a restaurant, have that dinner party,
Speaker 3: go ahead and charge people for it. Do some type
Speaker 3: of little thing that your nervous system can handle that
Speaker 3: your ego isn't going to push you back and say,
Speaker 3: oh wait, wait, wait, we're not ready for this. In fact,
Speaker 3: try to come up with something that's so small that
Speaker 3: your ego can't even get in the way, because your
Speaker 3: need to sort of see yourself positively is stronger than
Speaker 3: any sort of distortion feel that your ego can possibly
Speaker 3: put up in your way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that idea of just like you know,
Speaker 1: I think of them as little experiments, like you know,
Speaker 1: try like a very small version of what you want
Speaker 1: to do and see where it takes you. And a
Speaker 1: lot of times I think this can be really helpful
Speaker 1: because a lot of times we have, to your point,
Speaker 1: this 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 we could have spent
Speaker 1: the next five years thinking that's what we're gonna do, right,
Speaker 1: And it can be really helpful to do some small
Speaker 1: experiments and be like, huh, okay, great, I learned, and
Speaker 1: I want to do more, or I might have learned
Speaker 1: this isn't even the thing for me, you know, And
Speaker 1: that's really why.
Speaker 3: And I have a little simple thing that I've done.
Speaker 3: I'm somebody who can. Fortunately, I'm fortunate enough to be
Speaker 3: able to live kind of where I want to, or
Speaker 3: at least I certainly was a few years ago. And
Speaker 3: I think that we all have these sort of fantasies
Speaker 3: about living in different places, like, oh, what would be
Speaker 3: like to live in New York? Or where would it
Speaker 3: be like to live in London for a while or
Speaker 3: Rome for a while? Well, I kind of do this
Speaker 3: thing I call mini lives, where I'll set up and
Speaker 3: plan like a month or two months or three months
Speaker 3: and I'll go live in this other city and see
Speaker 3: what it's like. And now I did that in New
Speaker 3: York a couple times, and I enjoyed it. It was wonderful.
Speaker 3: But one of the things that was most valuable about
Speaker 3: it was that it helped me shut off that part
Speaker 3: of the fantasy in my brain of living in New York,
Speaker 3: because it helped me realize, like, hey, I love New York.
Speaker 3: I don't want to live there. I've experimented, I've had
Speaker 3: a little taste of it in some ways, so I mean,
Speaker 3: that's still a relatively grand thing to do, and I
Speaker 3: guess I built up to it with the smaller trip
Speaker 3: and sage. But I mean, I kind of wonder about
Speaker 3: you and this podcast because I've I've heard the first
Speaker 3: episodes of this podcast and they're quite good. Were there
Speaker 3: some sort of tests that you did when you first started?
Speaker 1: There were not, But I started it from an experimental perspective,
Speaker 1: like I'm going to do this and just see if
Speaker 1: I like doing it.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I had Chris who had been an audio engineer in
Speaker 1: previous lives, so we had some professionalism going in right
Speaker 1: out of the gate. That helped having him do that.
Speaker 1: But no, I had not done it before. But I
Speaker 1: really approached it in a low risk way, like I'm
Speaker 1: just going to try this and see if I like
Speaker 1: doing it, and if I do, I'll keep doing it.
Speaker 3: 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 you know, and they
Speaker 1: were you know, this big bet, right and and I
Speaker 1: was much more in a like, well, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: just going to 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.
Speaker 3: And side I'm always thinking about how to categorize that.
Speaker 3: So I don't know whether to say that that was
Speaker 3: a permission to suck thing or whether that was a
Speaker 3: in probably a combination of that and and uh and
Speaker 3: just looking at it with a sense of curiosity.
Speaker 1: Yep, I think I think both, you know, I think both.
Speaker 1: I think definitely curiosity was the main driver.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I just sort of thought like I think this would
Speaker 1: be fun. Now I don't know if it would be fun, right,
Speaker 1: I might have done three interviews. I've been like, I
Speaker 1: don't like doing this, but it turned out I love
Speaker 1: doing it, So yeah, it was I think it was both.
Speaker 1: I think it was giving myself permission for them to
Speaker 1: just be what they were in the beginning, but and
Speaker 1: then also just following what made me curious.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that. And because I'm I'm personally huge,
Speaker 3: I'm curious. There's a chapter in the book called Curiosity First,
Speaker 3: which is kind of like my principle of how I
Speaker 3: operate is to always be trying to ask myself, am
Speaker 3: I curious about this thing that I'm doing? Because curiosity
Speaker 3: is this wonderful fuel. You can work harder on the
Speaker 3: things that you're curious about than you can on any
Speaker 3: other thing. And no matter what you do, even if
Speaker 3: you are curious about it, it's going to be challenging
Speaker 3: at times, and so curiosity can kind of can kind
Speaker 3: of pull you through. Yet at the same time, it
Speaker 3: can take you to all these like really interesting places
Speaker 3: that you never expected, Like I'm sure that this podcast
Speaker 3: you didn't expect it to take you to places that it.
Speaker 1: Has absolutely Yeah, and I love that you talk about
Speaker 1: that in the book. You mentioned that you know that
Speaker 1: we have this tendency to be told to exploit what
Speaker 1: we've learned. So we've learned something, and now it's time
Speaker 1: to use that thing to be what you know, that
Speaker 1: becomes our career, that becomes our craft, that becomes our thing.
Speaker 1: But you talk about balancing between exploitation, exploiting the things
Speaker 1: that we already know, as well as exploration, and balancing
Speaker 1: those two because if all you ever do is explore,
Speaker 1: right that that doesn't necessarily lead anywhere. But if all
Speaker 1: we ever do is sort of exploit or build off
Speaker 1: what we already know, that doesn't lead us to very
Speaker 1: interesting places.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when you're exploiting and knowledge, I mean, I hate
Speaker 3: the way that sounds, but I don't. I don't mean
Speaker 3: for it to sound derogatory. But when you're exploiting your knowledge,
Speaker 3: you're that's kind of like what a job is for
Speaker 3: a a lot of people, or what jobs have been.
Speaker 3: I think that is going to be changing more and
Speaker 3: more as the world moves faster, as we have more
Speaker 3: automation and artificial intelligence going on, it's going to be
Speaker 3: a lot more about exploring and finding these things that
Speaker 3: nobody's ever done before. And that's a place that curiosity
Speaker 3: can take you, because you know, curiosities can urge. I
Speaker 3: loved the story of Steve Jobs when he dropped out
Speaker 3: of college and he started dropping in on various classes
Speaker 3: just whatever it was that was interesting to him. And
Speaker 3: one of the things he dropped in on was this
Speaker 3: calligraphy class, and it was this totally impractical, useless art
Speaker 3: that he was just fascinated with. And he learned all
Speaker 3: about the beauty of letters, and he learned all about
Speaker 3: spacing and kerning and typography, which are I mean, those
Speaker 3: are all passions of mine. So I can certainly relate
Speaker 3: to that feeling of love for that craft. And it
Speaker 3: had no application whatsoever in his life at the time.
Speaker 3: There was no way to tell how he might use that.
Speaker 3: But as he described in his Stanford commencement address years later,
Speaker 3: when he was building the Mac, he built all that
Speaker 3: sort of typographic intelligence into the Mac and it became
Speaker 3: the first computer that had optically spaced typography. And as
Speaker 3: he's as he says, you know, since Microsoft copied the Mac,
Speaker 3: then it's very likely that maybe no computer would have
Speaker 3: optically spaced typography if that hadn't happened. So that's just
Speaker 3: one example of where curiosity can take you to places
Speaker 3: that you never expected because one curiosity, in this case
Speaker 3: typography or or calligraphy, converge with this other curiosity of computers,
Speaker 3: and that created this this sort of groundbreaking innovation. And
Speaker 3: so I think that it's important to give yourself a
Speaker 3: little bit of permission to follow your curiosity. You know,
Speaker 3: we live in a culture where we're kind of ashamed
Speaker 3: of our curiosity. I can't tell you the number of
Speaker 3: times that I've had somebody write me and say, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm curious about so many things and I
Speaker 3: just can't seem to focus on one thing. And these
Speaker 3: are brilliant people, and they feel bad about themselves because
Speaker 3: of it, And I think it should be the other way.
Speaker 3: I think that you should be embracing your curiosity. You know,
Speaker 3: maybe you're spend a little bit of time doing the
Speaker 3: exploiting and put food on the table, but give yourself
Speaker 3: a little bit of extra space for that discovery to happen,
Speaker 3: because that's where you can have incredible things that you
Speaker 3: never expected take place.
Speaker 2: Excellent.
Speaker 1: Well, I think that is a wonderful note for us
Speaker 1: to leave this on. So, David, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for taking the time to come on. I really enjoyed
Speaker 1: the book and I really enjoyed this conversation.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much Eric for having me on and
Speaker 3: for coming on my show too. So anybody who wants
Speaker 3: to hear the interview with Eric, it's already on. Love
Speaker 3: your work, so thank you wonderful, Take care bye.
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