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Speaker 1: You've heard it a million times by now. You need

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Speaker 1: to start meditating. Maybe you've tried like I have, but

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Speaker 1: perhaps it just won't stick. Maybe you can't sit still

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Speaker 1: for longer than five minutes, or maybe the whole thing

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Speaker 1: feels a bit too hard. But for Brian Koppleman, the

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Speaker 1: showrunner of hit TV show Billions, meditation and his routines

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Speaker 1: are critical. So what are Brian's daily routines and how

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Speaker 1: do they help his wandering mind stay focused on the

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Speaker 1: task at hand. My name is doctor amanthe Imber. I'm

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Speaker 1: an organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium.

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Speaker 1: And this is how I work a show about how

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Speaker 1: to help you do your best work. On today is

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Speaker 1: my Favorite Tip episode, we go back to an interview

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Speaker 1: from the past and I pick out my favorite tip

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Speaker 1: from that interview. In today's show, I speak with Brian

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Speaker 1: Koppleman and we start by talking about his morning pages routine.

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Speaker 2: I do it exactly as Julia Cameron describes. The only tweak, sorry,

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Speaker 2: the only tweak is I meditate first. And I asked

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Speaker 2: Julia when she was on my podcast, and she'd prefer

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Speaker 2: if I did the pages first. And then meditated. But

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Speaker 2: so I do meditate first. But then the next thing

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Speaker 2: I do in my day is I open a journal

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Speaker 2: and I write three Longhand pages, and I just do

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Speaker 2: not stop my pen from moving. I don't race through it,

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Speaker 2: but I'm I'm keeping my so I take a breath

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Speaker 2: and I'm in it. I'm aware of what I'm doing,

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Speaker 2: but I am just allowing myself to write. Any thought

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Speaker 2: that comes down, I will not stop moving the pen,

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Speaker 2: and I don't read it over. You know, if an

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Speaker 2: idea come up during it that I think is useful

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Speaker 2: for something, some creative project or something, I'll immediately transfer it.

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Speaker 2: But then I do not go back to those pages,

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Speaker 2: as she says, don't go back for five years, or

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Speaker 2: maybe never go back. And it is a way to

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Speaker 2: get your subconscious going. It kind of I think of

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Speaker 2: it as tipping my subconscious out onto the page. It

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Speaker 2: also gets rid of the detritus. Man, it's like the

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Speaker 2: I think it's like the mental equivalent of drinking the

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Speaker 2: water first thing in the morning and rehydrating. I somehow

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Speaker 2: just feel better having done it. So that and meditation

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Speaker 2: and also walks, like walking helps, exercising helps all that stuff.

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Speaker 2: That just gets rid of the wanderlust or whatever it

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Speaker 2: is that keeps me from doing the work. Books sometimes,

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Speaker 2: I mean sometimes I'm picking up the guitar and noodling

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Speaker 2: around and putting on music and reading a book. I mean,

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Speaker 2: you know, straightening up there. Look, No, I don't want

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Speaker 2: to paint a picture that's impossible to attain. Like, it's

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Speaker 2: hard to get yourself to do the work when you're

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Speaker 2: someone with ADHD and your job is to produce pages

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Speaker 2: and television. It's like a hard for me. You know,

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Speaker 2: it's not hard work compared to like real backbreaking work

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Speaker 2: that a lot of people do, But for me, that

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Speaker 2: stuff's hard. But I've gotten better and better at it

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Speaker 2: and it's something I continue to work at. And I

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Speaker 2: think also having a partner where I have to deliver

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Speaker 2: for him helps because Dave can't hand in the script

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Speaker 2: until my part's done right, so I can't be the

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Speaker 2: person that's making our team suffer. And like when I

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Speaker 2: wrote the one movie that I wrote alone that we made,

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Speaker 2: Solitary Man with Michael Douglas, I wrote that by myself,

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Speaker 2: and it was a much harder process it was before

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Speaker 2: I meditated. That was twenty two thousand and nine. I

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Speaker 2: think that we made that movie, and I started meditating

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Speaker 2: in twenty eleven.

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Speaker 1: So.

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Speaker 2: Maybe that would have helped. But that took me years

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Speaker 2: to write that movie, and partially partially, I think because

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Speaker 2: it wasn't like, well, Dave's going to have his pages

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Speaker 2: one Sunday, so we agreed on that, so I have

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Speaker 2: to get mine one Sunday too.

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Speaker 1: If you want to hear more about Brian's creative process,

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Speaker 1: check out my full interview with him via the link

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Speaker 1: in the show notes. If you're looking for more tips

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Speaker 1: to improve the way that you work, I write a

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Speaker 1: short fortnightly newsletter that contains three cool things that I've

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Speaker 1: discovered that helped me work better, ranging from software and

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Speaker 1: gadgets that I'm loving through to interesting research findings. You

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Speaker 1: can sign up for that at Howiwork dot com. That's

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Speaker 1: how I Work dot co. How I Work is produced

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Speaker 1: by Inventing with production support from Dead Set Studios, and

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Speaker 1: thank you to Matt Nimba, who does the audio mix

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Speaker 1: for every episode and makes everything sound so much better

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Speaker 1: than it would have otherwise. See you next time.