Focused - 221: A Focus on Creativity

Episode Date: January 14, 2025

Welcome to Focus, the productivity podcast, but more than just cranking widgets. I'm Mike Schmitz and I'm joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. David Sparks. Hey, David. Hey, Mike. How are you today? I'm doing great. How about yourself? Excellent.

Always happy to sit down and record the Focus podcast. We've got a fun topic today, all about creativity. Yeah, absolutely. I'm excited to dive into this one. Before we get to that, though, I want to mention just real briefly, I'm going to be spinning up my PracticalPKM cohort very shortly as we record this. By the time this goes live, you will be able to join it if you want by going to join.practicalpkm.com. It's basically a four-week cohort where I work with a small group to dial in your PKM system and help you get more out of your notes and ideas with an emphasis on the creativity aspect of it. So I go through my my PKM stack framework and then my creativity flywheel framework which will probably actually hit on a little bit here today when we talk about how we create. All the details are on the web page,

but there are three sessions each week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday for four weeks as we dive through the different levels of the PKM stack. And the goal is that at the end you have a very clear system for how information flows into and out of your PKM system. So if you're looking to get more out of your PKM system in order to help you do your best creative work, this is the best way that I know how to help folks do that. I've got a couple different options for this one. It's not cheap, but it does include access to all of my courses and then also the Life HQ product that I mentioned a couple weeks ago or a couple months ago. I've been talking about that a lot. That's my Epic done for you. Obsidian Vault, that's basically my version of applying the PKM stack

framework for myself. So if you sign up for the cohort, you get access to that as like a scaffolding that you can build on top of and then a whole bunch of other stuff that you can get access to support along the way, including the library, my community. So the details are on the webpage. It's $1,000 for the cohort with all the stuff that you get with it. If you already bought Life HQ, I'm gonna be emailing out a coupon code so you can actually credit the whole cost of Life HQ

towards joining the cohort if you want. But there is a $200 early bird discount, which is why I wanted to mention it on this podcast because up until a week before the Cohort starts you can actually save $200 on that making it $800 instead of a thousand And again, you can you can apply the the discount if you've already purchased life HQ towards doing this if this is something that you wanted to do So you can find out more like I said by going by going to join.practicalpkm.com and it kicks off January 27th.

So if you're curious at all about working with me to develop your Obsidian-based PKM system, all the details are over there and I'd love to have you join. Yeah, I feel like your customers are gonna get every penny out of it though. I feel like knowing you and how hard you worked on this, I bet it's gonna be a great course.

So good luck, buddy. Thank you very much. I'm really looking forward to it. Yeah, today we wanted to talk about creativity and productivity. Like are they adverse to one another? How do they fit together? And what are our individual kind of systems

and thoughts on creativity? So why don't we just get started? Let's do it. The relationship between creativity and productivity. I've felt like we should talk about this first because they seem to be at odds a lot of times, at least in my opinion. Do you feel that way, at least kind of the popular perception of creativity? kind of the popular perception of creativity? No, but I've been tainted by creativity for so long that to me, they, they work together. It's fine.

Well, I agree with you. I don't think that's how maybe a lot of people think about it though. Yeah. Maybe I'm wrong, but yeah. So like when I first thought about creativity, and I've even heard it described this way as like productivity is when you know exactly what you need to be working on and you're focused on that but creativity is kind of like on the other end of a spectrum and I've heard it described as like anti-focus or scatter focus where you're just kind of like opening up all the options and you're letting your attention drift and I think there is an element of that, but I don't think that that in and of itself is an accurate view of

creativity. I think creativity is more of a process just like productivity is. And it sounds like you agree. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But, but I do think there is a common misconception about them being against each other, right? Or even like the whole idea, and I know we're going to get into it later in the show, that focus and productivity tools get in the way of creativity. Like you can't be creative if you have a to-do

list or something. Yeah, exactly. And I don't think that's accurate at all. As I've been thinking about, you know, what is the real relationship between creativity and productivity? I think they actually are very similar. They kind of follow the same process. And the process, I think, is one where there's a divergence where you are considering a whole bunch of options and then there's a convergence where things come together in the productivity system what that looks like is this is the thing that I should be doing right now and then you go and you take action on the thing but with creativity I think it's this is the thing that I'm going to be working on right now when you create I think regardless of this is the thing that I'm going to be working on right now. When you create, I think regardless of the individual steps of the process, you do kind of have to go through that

process where first you're just collecting a bunch of dots. And then eventually you are connecting them and you're bringing it to a point. But it's not just, you know, I'm going to expand my options and something's going to grab my attention out of left field. And that's going to be the answer, which is honestly what I thought creativity was for a long time. It was like this divine flash of inspiration. I actually think now, a lot of the most prolific creators that I know, they are creative because they are productive. The productivity is kind of the expression

of the creativity and the creativity is the work that they do. Yeah, and I think we should also just take a minute to talk about the scope of creativity because another common misconception is like, I'm an accountant, I sit here and do taxes all day, I don't have the ability to be creative. Well actually that's probably the wrong example.

Let's say you're a lawyer and you write legal briefs and you're like I can't be creative with that. I felt like almost everything I've done in my life, there has been a window of creativity available to me. And I've always kind of looked for that because I felt like that was where my humanness could count the most. And so this isn't talking about just writing, you know, creating art or writing for the internet or any of the things Mike and I do.

Uh, this is about being creative in no matter what pursuit you have in life. Yeah, and I use you as that example because I followed your work for a long time while you were a lawyer. And I heard you talk about the workflows that you had as a lawyer. And I would use the lawyer and the accountant examples, the two that you hit on whenever I would talk to people.

And I personally believe that everyone is creative, but people will push back and say, well, not in my, not in my profession that you can't afford to be creative in whatever, you know, fill in the blank. But then what you did is you figured out how to use things like text expander and mind node and fancy animations in keynote when you're doing your presentations. That is a form of creativity. There are certain rules that you can't bend, but actually I think that is actually a benefit

to creativity. That's not a hindrance of it. In fact, there's a quote that I came across just this week from Tim Ferris who said that if you want to be more creative, you need more constraints, not less. And I think there's actually a lot of truth to that. Oh yeah. I mean, you see it all the time. I could give you a whole lecture on why Disneyland as opposed to Disney World is more interesting because of the constraint constraint of space. They don't have as much room and they have to do all sorts of weird things,

but they all come out making it better. Usually. Usually. Yeah. The other thing that I really want to hit on here when we're talking about creativity is what, what exactly is it? And it's, it's not, it's not making something completely original. It's really just connecting dots in new and interesting ways. And that was a revelation that I got at one point when I actually thought that I was

not creative. I actually said that at one point. And the short version of that story is that in college I liked writing songs on my guitar and then I would you know go grab a burrito at Chipotle or something and I'd hear the song on the radio and realize that I had ripped off the chord progression or the melody from something that already existed and it was kind of in the back of my mind. Like I had heard that before I was familiar with it didn't come to mind when I was creating and I thought to myself, well,

I guess I just don't have that creative gene because these people that I'm looking up to, they're able to pull something out of nothing, but I'm not able to do that. All I'm able to do is kind of mix things up. And it wasn't until I read Steel Like an Artist by Austin Kleon, where he kind of talked about how when you are creating something new, all you are doing is you are connecting those preexisting dots and new and interesting ways that I realized, Oh, if I want to be more creative, all I really need to do is collect better dots,

whatever those dots are for you. If you're a musician, you know, there's scales and melodies and hooks and things like that. If you're a writer, it's ideas. And so that's what I did. I started reading more books. That's why I will continue to do the Bookworm Podcast as long as I possibly can because it's so important, I believe, to my creative process. Reading those books, getting those ideas, you know, those aren't completely original ideas, but when I compare those with all the other ideas that I've collected, they're bouncing around in my brain

and then I create something out of that stuff that I've collected, that thing that I create has my own spin on it, that is original. It is a remix, but it is original. And so it took me a while, but I'm at the point now where, yeah, if you're remixing something, that's still a very valid way of creating. Yeah. If you're curious about this, there's a great video by Kirby Ferguson called Everything is Remix. And I put a link for it in the notes. It just, I mean, this is just such a universal truth.

Nobody, almost nothing is new, right? And like when you hear something from someone and you think, wow, that was such a great idea, and you get through it and you find out, oh, wait a second, they got that from somewhere else. Just this week, this summer, I went to Edinburgh. Never been over there before. My daughter had a play there, so I'm like, okay, I'm a dad, I'm gonna go watch her play in Edinburgh.

And as background, I read all the Harry Potter novels, and one of the things I loved about them was the universe. I feel like this whimsical universe where the buildings are crooked, and everything is just kind of weird, of Harry Potter, like if you're watching the movies, or read the books, you know what I'm talking about.

I thought what an ingenious invention Joe Rowling had. And then I went there to Edinburgh and I realized, no, this is just Edinburgh. She just, she went there and that is the world of Harry Potter. All the buildings are crooked. They built bridges on top of streets with buildings on it. Nothing is, you know, it's just like the Harry Potter universe.

And it's like just one more example to me. It's like, nobody comes up with anything new. We all remix. Exactly. And then I was at Mac stock a few years ago and there was somebody there who actually is like a legit musician and they were talking about their process of making this electronic music and they were doing it using loops and it hit me as they were

talking about these these loops that they were using to make this music and they did it kind of live on stage you could see the the piece kind of coming to be and I realized like this is totally creative. This is completely valid. Just because all these loops pre-exist does not mean that this person is not creative. If you're a DJ, that doesn't mean that you're not creative just because all the songs that you're playing are pre-existing. And even with writing, I feel like there's a lot of templates and things

that and structures that you can use. The fact that you use those doesn't mean that you're not creative. In fact, if you were going to discredit everybody who copied some structure or form that somebody else has ever used, there would be no new creative fiction because there's like seven or eight different story arcs that all stories follow. And are there only seven or eight different story arcs that that all stories follow. And one, you know, are there only seven or eight books then? Because those are the those are the ones that originated that that structure. Absolutely not. So the more I think about it, you know, the more I realize,

you know, creativity is everywhere and we have to recognize how we are creative. We have to lean into the things that that we do that are creative. And I feel like as we do that, that is actually how we make sense of a lot of things. So as it pertains to me with like personal knowledge management and obsidian and stuff like that, the whole idea of like the opinion note, that was really important to me because I would hit this mental squeeze point where it's like, I don't know what I really think about this. I've read this and I've read that and these are competing ideas. And what do I really think?

Well, there's this quote by Dawson Trotman that says, thoughts disentangle themselves, your lips and pencil tips. But I will add to that also clicky keyboards, because the minute that I sit down and I force myself to write out what I think about something, that is really when my thinking becomes clear on it. Yeah, and I would, for me personally, the lips don't really count.

It's like, lips are how I work through it, but pencil tips and clicky keyboards are where I really get to the bottom of my thoughts on the topic. Sure. But yeah, I mean, creativity is the mixture of other things in your own unique way. It's not that you're coming up with everything original.

Another example, Quincy Jones has a great quote that there's 12 notes in the Western musical scale. Mozart used it and so did Thelonious Monk, but there's just 12 notes. Yep. The other quote that I really like here is by Hugh McLeod. He said that everyone is born creative. Everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten. And then when you hit puberty, they take the crayons away and replace them with

dry uninspiring books on algebra, history, et cetera, being suddenly hit years later with the creative bug is just a wee voice telling you I'd like my crayons back, please. And as I was prepping for this episode and thinking about where I was, where I didn't think that I was creative. That's the thing I really want to just instill in people listening is that you are creative and you won't really know that until you ask for your crayons back and you try to start making something. And it can be scary.

There's a lot of reasons. I think that people put that stuff away. And I think a lot of it is you share something and maybe you don't get the validation that you were after. And as someone who makes stuff on the internet, I can tell you that life gets a lot better when you learn to get over that. Yeah. Because the real value in creating for me

is not that I can share something with other people. That's a byproduct. I want to do that. That is a valuable part of creating for me. But the primary reason that I create is for myself. Well, I would even argue that it's deeper than that. The book, The Creative Act by Rick Rubin, which came out last year, is one I'd really recommend

if you want to do some navel gazing on creativity, but it's the expression of your human soul. I mean, it really is, as a human, what do we do? We create. I mean, granted, creativity is a remix, but it is the thing we do. We bring our unique taste and flavor to life and all the pieces of it as we put it together. And I think the act of creativity is an expression of

humaneness. If you feel like you're not doing it, you need to find a way to do it because I think it's very fulfilling. And also I think it's good for your mental health. 100%. Another thing that came to mind, you're talking about the Rick Rubin book, which is really, really good. Another book that's really good is The Laws of Creativity by Joey Cofone. And I remember when we interviewed him

for the Focus podcast, he told us the story. Do you remember this? When he was in kindergarten and they had to create a caterpillar drawing or a worm or something. And he was scared he was scared that his was going to look just like everybody else's. So he grabbed some of the paper scraps and quick made a boom box and put it on the, on his drawing, you know, and how something simple like that, you know, uh, is, is enough.

I think that that's the struggle that everybody has. It's not, you know, just certain people who are born with this ability. The people that you see creating are really the ones who have learned to overcome the inner critic that keeps telling them that they're not good enough. I think imposter syndrome is going to show up no matter who you are whenever you start to create something. But there is really something that it does inside of you when you create something. And it's the best that you can do.

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So Mike, you have teased us with your creativity flywheel framework. Give us the details. What is it? Sure. Well, I'm gonna keep this as short as I can. This is a framework that I first presented at the MaxDoc conference several years ago. And I actually just released a video course about this that I recorded in Boise at the

Kit Studios. But the short version of this is I was thinking about how I was able to create consistently when I started off as the person who didn't think they were creative. And I kind of had this epiphany when I was working with Asian Deficiency and I was creating an outline and recording and editing and doing everything for a podcast episode every single week, a blog post about every other week, and a full video course for the membership community every single month. And that sounds like a lot. And if I look back on it now, it feels like a lot.

But in the, in the moment, it was just something that I enjoyed doing it. That the process was, was able to, that I was using was able to sustain that, that cadence. But then I was thinking, well, how was I able to do that? And then I kind of realized there are these different phases that things go through. And that is ultimately what has allowed me to continue to do a couple of podcasts now,

a YouTube channel, newsletter, all the things that I do as an independent creator. It's all leveraging this creative system, which I guess side point here, you know, creativity is a formula. You connect these dots. It is also a system. And just like you can get good at productivity, you can get good at creativity. So as I was reflecting on how does my creative process work, I realized that there are really five different steps. And I'll just outline them and then I'll dive into them a little bit. Feel free to jump in at any point and interrupt me and ask questions if you want.

Sure. But the first step is capture. The second step is curate. The third step is cultivate. The fourth step is connect. And then the fifth step is create. And I call this a flywheel because I really do believe by the time I get to the create phase that actually makes it easier to capture relevant information

at the beginning of this. Okay, so I'll try to break this down real briefly and just call out a couple of important things at each one of these steps and then what I do in terms of the apps that I use and things like that for these different steps. But capture is pretty straightforward. I mean, everyone listening to this podcast

has probably heard of GTD. This is the first step of GTD, capture what has your attention. I spin this a little bit though because it's not just the things that you think might be important, it's the things that resonate. So when I am reading a book I'm not trying to capture everything the author says. I'm capturing the things that kind of reverberate in my soul. I grew up playing the violin. It's a resonant instrument. You draw the bow across the string and then the instrument vibrates. So I know what that reverb feels like. And that's the picture I get is like when I'm listening to something or reading something,

that is kind of what's going off inside of me. And that's an indication that maybe there's something that's important or useful here. And so I'll capture that stuff most of the time just using drafts on my phone. If I'm out for a run, I'll use drafts on my Apple watch and I'll dictate stuff. A lot of times it's like idea, colon, and then fill in the blank. And then that just sits in my drafts inbox

until I process it. I try to process it every week, but it's not always every week. But that leads to the second step then, which is curate. You know, I don't bring over all that stuff that I capture into obsidian, which is my note taking app. I only bring over the stuff that is kind of the best of the best. And that word curate I use intentionally because I like the image of a

curator of a museum. I say it this way in the cohort, you are the curator of the museum of your mind. And so what is in the collection is important, but what's not in the collection is also important. So when I'm curating, I'm cutting like 90% of what I've captured. Unless I'm really excited about it, when I go back and I look at that stuff that's in my drafts inbox, I just delete it. And I trust that if it's really important, it's going to come back to me later. So I'll bring this stuff over from drafts into Obsidian, but this is why I don't actually recommend just capturing things into Obsidian.

I feel like with this intentional friction, I get a lot more signal and a lot less noise with the things that are in there. So I've got a lot of quality seeds that I've planted in the greenhouse of my mind, which is then leading to the third step, which is cultivate. When you have ideas, I believe, you can't just force them. I've, I've tried that. I've tried it with, uh, with articles. I've tried it with newsletters. I've probably tried it with podcast episodes too. And, um, when you try to force something, it's like trying to ring water out of a stone. It's so hard, but that has the approach like this idea

I have to make something out of it when you've got a system for developing ideas if this one doesn't work out Oh, well, because there's gonna be more that are gonna be coming and at any given moment I've got a whole bunch of potential things that I can work with. And if something's not working, I'll just grab a different one. So it's kind of like, I'm gonna let this mature. I'm gonna let it develop. I'm not gonna force anything, but I'm gonna give it the right conditions

and then I'll see what comes with it. But I'm gonna hold things lightly. I'm gonna be willing to discard them and move on to something else if it's not really there. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. I mean, the underlying problem you're addressing, and I think something a lot of people experience,

is they're afraid of creativity because they sit down and say, OK, Sparky and Mike told me I need to be creative. I'm going to be creative. And then they sit down with a pencil and a blank piece of paper, and they're like, what do I do? And you need structure to get to that creative act. I mean, you've got five C's listed here. Creation is the last one.

And I do think that putting some sort of process together to get you to the point where you start creating is a, is a nice way to do it. Uh, not only does it make the process easier, it also, I think, makes the product better. Yes, absolutely. And so you've got these seeds, which are for me inside of Obsidian, but then the way that I cultivate these usually is by mind mapping. So if I've got things in my Obsidian, which are ideas for newsletters or video scripts or podcast episodes. Those are just notes that are sitting in my Obsidian inbox and then when I decide

I'm gonna do something with them that's when I'll put them into a different system. So I actually have the projects plug-in and I have like the Kanban boards for the different folders. So I've got one for YouTube scripts, I've got one for newsletters. And if I decide, you know, I'm going to take this idea, I'm going to make a newsletter out of it. I'll actually just create a new note in that newsletters folder.

It'll populate the template and then I'll develop it from there. But I won't develop it by just sitting down to write the thing most of the time. If I know what structure I want already for that thing, then I might do that. I might skip the mind node step, but for the most part, I'll create a mind node for the thing that I want to make. And then I'll just spend maybe an hour flushing things out. And I wholeheartedly believe that every hour I spend mind mapping saves me two hours when I sit down to write because just playing with my ideas visually like that, I'm able to see connections.

I'm able to develop things a whole lot further than I am just in the text based editor window inside of obsidian. But I'll develop things usually in my node. Then I'll come back and I'll create them in Obsidian. But also that's where the connection phase happens. So Obsidian is kind of built for this phase in my opinion. It's a connected notes app. I will say though that when it comes to the connect phase, it's not always just like surfing the links between my different notes. That's not necessarily how I connect things.

I do connect things that way sometimes. But remember, I was using this long before I was in Obsidian. So what I was realizing was that my brain was connecting things in different ways. And that was going to be expressed when I sat down to create something. As an example, I've read a whole bunch of books on the topic of habits. And I've taken a little bit from the Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, Atomic Habits by James Clear, Tiny Habits by B.J. Fogg. There's different elements of all of those that I like and dislike. And so the whole idea, Mortimer Adler, the author of How to Read a Book, describes this as syntopical reading, where you compare what you are reading in one book against all the other books that you've read on the topic. That's kind of what I do in my brain is I kind of just, okay, I want to write about this. What are

the pieces that I have? I lay it out on the workbench and then the final step create. That's where I actually write the thing. And I have an emphasis on writing here because I realize that even though I podcast, even though I have a YouTube channel, even though I create a lot of video course material, the basis of all that stuff is writing. And so if I were to tell 18 year old me, what's the one thing that you should get better at

if you really want to be an independent creator, it would be to develop your skill as a writer. And that's essentially what I, what I did. You don't have to have any sort of formal training for this. When I started, I decided I wanted to write a book and I had never written before. So I spun up a blog and started publishing, uh, after writing for an hour every morning before I went to the office. So I spun up a blog and started publishing after writing for an hour every morning before I went to the office. That's literally how I got connected with everybody and everything that I do right now

is just starting to do the thing. If I had really understood what all went into it, I probably would have chickened out. I'm like, oh, I think I can do this. I'll just figure it out by doing it. That's exactly what happened. Now the last the last part of this, you know, all of my writing happens inside of obsidian. That's not where it ends up, obviously, uh, if it's going to be YouTube video podcast episode, things like that. Um,

that's not text-based, but that's what I consider to be the create phase for me is the obsidian writing basis of that. When I do that, the reason I call this a flywheel, when I create something and I synthesize my thoughts on a topic, that is when a whole bunch of additional open loops appear. And then I've kind of primed the pump for the things that I'm looking for. And that makes it easier to capture things going forward. Does that,

does that make sense how that all ties together? Yeah, I mean, it's a system. And I think that's, like I said earlier, I think that's what a lot of people need. We all come up with them over time because creation is hard. And it's an expression of your humanness, but it's not as easy as sitting down on the TV in front of the TV and eating a Twinkie, right?

You've got to like, what do you think about this? You create all these ingredients and how do you put the soup together? And that's the part that I feel like is most rewarding. As a human, you actually are able to do stuff like that. And, but it's hard. And I think systems are such a great crutch

to kind of get everything going. And I think anybody who's creative has them. They may not have documented them to the degree you have, but they have them. And I guess one of the things I would caution people is, I don't know that you need the as particular system, like you have to map out every piece of it. Sometimes I think, especially when you're learning this stuff,

you've gotta be willing to be flexible about trying tools and ideas, but ultimately you will have a system. Yes, 100%. You do have to just try a bunch of things at the beginning. The whole process again for creativity and productivity is divergence and then convergence. But you do have a system, whether you realize it or not,

you know the systems of your life are perfectly designed to get you the results that you've been getting and you can tweak those systems to get different results, which you can define as better or worse. That's kind of up to you. What I would argue with is the idea that you have perfected the system, especially if you haven't brought any intentionality to it. I think it's very easy sometimes to have very inefficient

creativity systems. And that's what I like about what you've done is you've really kind of nailed it down. Well, I've nailed it down, but it's not, uh, I don't know how to, how to frame this necessarily. Um, it's a framework, but the specifics of how people would do this can be very different. And I recognize that a lot of people may not have the exact same steps

that I have, but I think they would be very similar if you were to create something from scratch. I'm actually with the cohort that I mentioned at the beginning, I have a second tier of this, which includes, it's even more expensive, but it has lifetime access to the library and also a small group coaching program. I'm actually going to be doing a pilot with some folks who want to not just dial in the PKM stack and their own creativity flywheel, but they want to use that to create consistently and then

sell something online. So I kind of want to take, you know, what I know about these frameworks and creativity and productivity, but then also some of the online stuff where, okay, I'll help people by working with them in a small group, identify where, where are you going to publish something? And then we're going to, you know, attract attention. We're going to set up a newsletter. So we'll build an email list and then ultimately, uh, even build and sell a digital product, uh, from that.

And it's kind of designed to take people from zero to one, you know, this isn't for people who want to quit their jobs and become independent creators, but who maybe have an idea for a side hustle that they don't, you know, they, they want to make something, but they're really not sure how to create the systems that are going to allow them to do that. The B at the beginning, when you do it, it's going to feel like a lot. And that's kind of the whole idea behind the flywheel is when you first start

spinning a flywheel, it takes a lot of effort to get it going. But then once you get it going, each rotation produces more and becomes easier. And so after you get some momentum, this becomes a lot more sustainable. Yeah. And I like that the way you go through it, you also have identified tools for each step,

which is nice because you know where to go to do each step of your creative process. Yep. The last step is the one you call create, but the whole thing is part of the creative process. Yep. The, you know, the last step is the one you call create, but the whole thing is part of the creative process. You've got to acknowledge it's all in a piece. Yeah, exactly. And that the last step, by the way, just one last point on this, because you call it something very important.

When most people think of creating, they think of the sitting down and the writing. But for me, there's so much work that happens before that that makes that the easy part. When you just sit down at the keyboard and I'm going to write something right now. That's when you get freaked out by the blinking cursor. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, for me, creativity, I like to think about it kind of on a per medium or content basis, right? So let's use a very vanilla example, legal briefs.

I was very proud of the legal briefs I wrote. I started as an intern for a judge. I read a lot of briefs. I realized very early in my career that if you write good briefs and interesting briefs that you're gonna be more convincing for your client. So I spent a lot of time not only doing the legal research and making my arguments together, but tying it together to tell a story, to use good examples, to use the English language in a way

that was argumentative, but also convincing. And that is a whole creative process I would go through to do that, right? You know, I mean, you'd start with the bones and work your way up to the skin, and the bones would be the hard research and the arguments, and then you'd build the story on top of that. So it's just as an example, but the thing I do for a blog post or for a newsletter

or for a field guide might be a little bit of a different story but For me the key has always been storytelling like when you're when you're talking to other people about ideas of any sort like is there a story in this that I can share that's interesting and Maybe it will convince them to change the way they do something or reconsider something about the world. So the creative process for me always starts with getting to the basics but then getting

to the story. And it really depends on what the deliverable is. For a blog post, one of the easiest things I do, sometimes blog posts for me are a couple sentences, sometimes they're a thousand words, but kind of generally in that category. I am always thinking of ideas of things I'd like to explore on the blog. I've got a omni-focused list that I can add to very quickly, and I just dump ideas in there.

And then once a week, I try to write several blog posts for the following week, so it's not like a daily thing. And I'll sit down for a couple hours and go through that list and find things that are interesting to me. But they're not that difficult to write. I don't need to make a mind map for them. Usually the second step I would get to would be putting it going from OmniFocus to a draft,

a blank draft, and I'd write up a little outline there and get it written. So it's not that hard for me to do stuff like that. More complex stuff like the productivity field that I'm working on the new edition now, it's like a hundred page ebook. Actually now it's a little more than a hundred pages, but that's much more involved on the creative setup.

You know, there is a mind map for it. but that's much more involved on the creative setup. There is a mind map for it, there's a bunch of research notes, I have a notebook LM that I talk to, giving it all my prior research. So stuff like that takes a lot of work before you get to the point that you even know what you wanna write. And so I have a more complex system for that.

But what I try to do is just be kind of aware of the deliverable in relation to the creative act. So does that make sense? It does. And I like that you have kind of diverging paths for, in your words, the easy stuff and the hard stuff. Yeah. I think that's important. diverging paths for in, in your words, the easy stuff and the hard stuff. I think that's important.

Your system should be as simple as possible, but no simpler. And if you try to make it too simple for some of the hard stuff and skip the, you know, the, the mind node planning diagram, for example, and the productivity field guide, you're going to make it a lot harder on yourself when you actually try to produce that product and get it out the door. But that's the thing that in your mind, you can convince yourself, oh, I really don't need to do this stuff. And you won't really know where those traps are until you fall into them a couple of times.

But pay attention to that stuff and figure out, you know, this is where the boundaries need to be established. And once you identify like, this is the path that I'm supposed to follow when I'm doing this thing, then it makes it a lot easier, but you got to kind of create those boundaries and those constraints for yourself, I think. Exactly. And, and you also, you learn this through experience. Like if you try to start with the blinking cursor,

you're just not gonna get very far. And so I do that research. Something I've learned over the years because I made my living through going to trial and arguing cases, I'm very verbal. And I do also have made a couple podcasts in my day. So I'm good at talking through an issue. And so when I get towards the actual creative process, and this has been even more so now

that the AI transcription models are available, is I really like to do the first draft with me just talking it out. And so what I'll do is I'll have an outline in drafts or I'll have a mind note that's pretty detailed and I'll just open up whisper memos and I'll just start talking. And it might be a 15 minute talk and then at the end I've got this clump of lousy text

but it's a starting point told verbally, which again, getting back to the idea of telling stories, I find that when I talk, I do a better job of telling stories is when I do just starting with the cursor. So I've learned over the years that for me, and this is me only, talking it through is actually a really excellent first step

of the actual creative process. And then I edit the heck out of it and move things around. And it changes a lot. I mean, the first version you do with your mouth is not going to be the version that you publish, but it is going to get you started. Sure. And honestly, the talking through things, I think that's kind of a different form of, of writing in my opinion. Yeah. I wish I wish I could do that like you do. I am intrigued by there's a whole bunch of those, uh,

whisper memos is one, um, Ali Abdaal had one too, that I was looking at. I forget the name of it, but just like you talk through your ideas and that just doesn't really click for me. I do it occasionally, but my default is still hands on the clicky keyboard. I don't know why. But the takeaway here, I think is figure out what is the, the process that provides the least amount of friction for you to make sense of

these things and then find a way to do that and eliminate the roadblocks, eliminate as much friction as you can at that point. So you can do it as often as possible. Yeah. And I should clarify that deliverable to me sometimes is self-facing like, like you, I have what I call the Sparky OS where I decided several years ago to start documenting my thoughts on a lot of things. Whatever it is, I've kind of had

my personal operating system and I just write it up. I write about what the process is and it feels really good when I'm done because then I know what that means to me. Here's an example from 122824 on making decisions. I wrote up my personal system for making decisions. Number one, make them. Ignoring the decision is a form of decision making, just a really bad form of it. I won't go into all the things I wrote.

Number two, you have to act on them. It's not enough to decide in your head. That doesn't count. Three, even small decisions count. I've got a little essay under each one of these points. And I think part of this was inspired by the Oliver Berkman book, but some other stuff I had read. But I have in the system now, how do you make decisions?

And that's just an example. I wrote that out. And in that case, I wrote it by hand because the ones I do by self-facing, I just write them by hand. It slows me down and forces me to think about the words a bit more. But yeah, so all these creative systems

have different processes. And I think there is some merit to auditing those once in a while to see if something can be done better. The big change for me in the last year really is the dictation. When I first started as a lawyer, we would talk into a machine that would usually record it on tape,

and then it would get sent to another office where somebody would transcribe the tape. And then software hit where it would transcribe as you spoke the words. And that's the way like Siri dictation still does that. What I discovered going back to these AI models is actually I really like the system where it doesn't transcribe for you while you talk.

I like that you just talk and then when you're done, it gives you back the dictation because then you don't get hung up on that and you're more free to just talk through something. So like that has evolved some of my creative processes because that's a new technology available to me. Did you ever use those dictation machines? I wonder if that's why you prefer that way. Well that's how I started. That's what that was the modern technology back in 1993, you know? Yeah. I remember my dad had one of those and he would, he would dictate, uh, he,

he was a kind of the creator before it was cool. He was making software programs. And I remember him just with his piles of books and research and a little, well, tape thing, you know, he'd say something. And then he had such a feel for the rewind and fast forward buttons that if he wanted to rewind it and restate something, he could do it to the exact spot without having to check it and then just record over it again. No, that's the way the recorders had a slider on it.

And I mean, just to get kind of in the old school tech, you could slide back and it would play the audio so you could hear yourself in reverse. So you would know where to stop. It was very, for what it was, it was great. But now, so you've got this with AI that does essentially the same thing. You just talk through it and then within seconds, depending on the length of the transcription,

you're gonna get that back and then be able to work with it. If you haven't tried that and you do a lot of writing, I'd recommend giving it a shot. I do realize that having spent 30 years being a lawyer made that an easier skill for me because I had to learn it in the early days. But also when we talk about creative systems, I want to talk about the liberal again

because in contrast for me is furniture. I make furniture for fun on the side and there's a lot of people, especially in the computer age, that use computer aided design to design a piece before they build it. It's really useful. You get to see the proportions exactly. You can even like take that 3D design

and send it to a 3D printer and get like a little mock-up of it. And I've tried that, but what I really find the best creative process for me is I start with the dimensions that I know I want, and I kind of make it up as I go along in terms of what is the joinery going to be, what is the edge treatment. I don't know if we can even share documents in the show notes, but I just took a picture

of the edge treatment I'm working on, working on a bookshelf, and I wanted to figure out the edge treatment. I had no idea what it was until earlier this week, and that's because the project is now at the point where I need to put an edge treatment on the shelves, and I just didn't decide going in. And as I look at the grain pattern of the wood, I scratch out a few on a piece of paper and I see the one I like, and then I just go from

there. So that process is really kind of build your parachute as you fall to the ground. But I find for me, it's creatively more fulfilling if you do it that way. That's a world I know nothing about, but the whole idea of building the airplane on the way down as you described it is terrifying to me. But I think I can kind of see how that would actually be kind of fun if there wasn't a whole bunch of pressure on the delivery. Yeah, this isn't how I earn my living. And the thing is the wood kind of tells you what it wants as you work it out. The treatment I ended up with is very Japanese, kind of a sharp relief, but because of the grain pattern in these shelves, it's going to look really good. In fact,

I know it looks good because I ran them yesterday. I planed them out yesterday. So yeah, I just kind of like, I had a couple ideas, but then when you look at it compared to the material, you're like, oh yeah, this is what'll look best here, and then you go with it. This episode of the Focus Podcast

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of the Focus Podcast and Olive Relay. All right, so you got any shiny new objects, David? Sort of. Mac Power users listener lives very near me and she is selling her monitor. She's got a, what is it? The Apple, what they call the Apple studio display. Hmm. Yep. I have one of those. Yeah. She has a visa one and she wanted to get to a stand one, so she offered it to me. And I said, I don't need a second monitor. And I said, well, she says, try it.

So I've got it hooked up here. And I've been running it for a few days. And by the time she listens to this, she'll know that I'm gonna probably buy it. I've tried a couple of times to do a second monitor, like as a reference monitor. I haven't used one in the past, but just with kind of different ways I've set up couple times to do a second monitor like as a reference monitor. I haven't used one in the past, but just with kind of different ways

I've set up my desk recently, I actually now have the space for it. And just sitting here recording this podcast and being able to keep all the recording tools off to the right on the reference monitor and have everything else I need to do the show on my main monitor just reminds me, yeah, you know what,

a little extra screen real estate's kind of nice. But it's definitely gonna be treated as a reference monitor. Nice. That is a big reference monitor. Yeah, it is, but it's kind of nice, right? Cause I can put like, audio focus, calendar, recording tools.

I can fit a lot of stuff on it. Yeah, I mean, I've got that running right now. I think we talked about it in deep focus last time, but I've got the crazy vertical monitor inspired by you from a couple of years ago when you had the wings on your iMac. Yeah, well, I've turned it on its side, so it's vertical. Yeah. Nice.

Well, it's closer to you. One of the problems I had, because I tried this once before, and it was so far that it was out of my focal length. So I had to refocus my eyes to see what was on it. And the only way I could use this is vertical. Sure. But yeah, so there you go. I know I'm a two monitor guy.

I haven't told Steven yet. He's going to get a nice surprise at some point on Mac power users. Nice. Well, I've got a shiny new object, but it's not quite as shiny maybe. It's a fairly inexpensive shiny new object, all things considered. We've had Jeff Sheldon on the podcast a couple times before,

the creator of Vogue Monk. And I am a fan of the analog system and he recently created a disk bound analog system that is like 20 bucks. It's got a couple of those brass rings and then it's got the analog cards but they are disk bound in this this little thing that you can kind of prop up on your desk but you can also there's a cover little thing that you can kind of prop up on your desk, but you can also there's a cover on it so you can fold it close throw it in your bag. And I don't know that this is going to replace my fancy note cards at all, but I really do

like this this little thing. And I can totally see where people who go back and forth between multiple locations and want to use something like the analog system or have a note card where they have their tasks that they're working on for the day. This is a stand as is per standard for the Uggmunk brand. Everything is really well done. This is just, you know, finely crafted. The disks are great and the cards can pop in and

out so it's kind of designed that you know you keep a month's worth of cards in there and then as you work through them you can take them out and fill them with with new ones but I think this is actually pretty cool and I like the idea of having the last you know 30 days worth of things that you can bring with you. And again, the UGMUNC analog system has some different types of cards. So there's like this week card, I think, and a Sunday card. So it really is, you know, if you wanted a full analog productivity system, you can certainly use it that way. But I think, you know, if you are working from a single laptop and you go back and forth,

the coworking space like I do or something like that, this is kind of a cool tool to just be able to throw in your bag and, and have that, uh, have that with you as opposed to trying to bring these flimsy cards back and forth. Yeah, nice. Yeah. It's such a natural fit for all the other products they've made. And, and because Jeff made it, it's going to be really good. You know, the quality is going to be right there.

I actually gave one of these away for a Christmas gift. And so someone who I wasn't sure was going to be real excited about this. Um, I wasn't sure if they were really into the productivity at all. I wasn't sure if they were really into the idea of analog, but they work on their computer most of the time. And I can tell you when I gave it to them, they absolutely loved it. So I think if you haven't tried this, you know, don't knock it till you try it. It may not be for you, but it may absolutely be for you. And, uh,

as we've talked about many times in the podcast before, there's a lot of value to doing the creative work on the computer, but having your, your to-do list be in a separate medium. Yeah. My wife is not like technically she's good. I mean, she can manage technology, but she's not really into like, she's not going to run a task manager the way I do. And she is responsible for a lot of little projects at her day job.

And so I gave her a pack of these augment cards and she loves them because she can put, each project gets its own card. And then she can track the status of the project on the cards or just like lean them up at her desk and lay them out and see what's going on. And there's a lot to say for all of the Uggmunk products for analog technology. That's also really good as a like kind of a final step.

I always think of them for me because I do use the technology. Too much of the stuff I do involves links in the internet to go full analog, but I do like to put it into analog as I actually do the work. AC What are you reading, Mike? AC I am reading a fiction book, believe it or not. I say that because I'm actually reading a rereading a book that I've mentioned before for a bookworm. Corey picked simple marketing for smart people. So I'm rereading that, but then I've also started reading a fiction book at night.

And the genesis of this was right before Christmas, Toby comes up to me and he says, I have a challenge for you. And I'm like, Oh boy, what is this? And then he hands me the tale of two cities Toby comes up to me and he says, I have a challenge for you. And I'm like, oh boy, what is this? And then he hands me a tale of two cities by Charles Dickens. He's like, read this during Christmas break. Well, I didn't get through it during Christmas break, but I am working my way through it. And I think that I have found the spot for fiction

in my life, which is before I go to bed. I don't like bringing my phone into the bedroom, but I like the idea of reading before I go to bed. And so with a fiction book, I don't feel like I need to take notes. And so I can leave my phone charging in the little charger that we have in the kitchen where all the devices go. And then I can read a fiction book, a chapter or two before I go to bed. And I'm actually really liking this book. I'm not that far into it because I actually got super sick over, uh, over a Christmas vacation. And then also, uh, before that we had family in from Hawaii. So we're spending a lot of time with them. Didn't have a lot of discretionary time during the holidays,

but this I think is going to stick this time. And, um, the classic fiction I like way more than the modern fiction, at least, you know, so far, uh, limited sample size. I know, but he's already got like four or five other fiction books that I should read next. So. Good, good. That's a great book too. I mean, Charles Dickens was so popular in his time. People don't realize. All right, since you talked about fiction, I have one too. Nick Harkaway has a book called Carla's Choice.

It's interesting because it picks up off of the George Smiley series from John Lake Array who recently passed away and it's written by his son Nick Harkaway is his son. I read an article that he decided to write, you know one more book about John le Corre's most famous character and I was a little worried because I really like the character but Nick is writing him perfectly and I'm really enjoying it I should say though. and I'm really enjoying it.

Uh, I should say though, I'm not really reading it. I'm, I've got it on audio books. So I listened to it while I pull weeds. Well, I, I guess that counts. Yeah. Well, I mean, we're talking fiction. Yeah. Yeah. For fiction, I actually think that's, that's a kind of cool way, especially if it's read by the author,

because I feel like the author knows exactly how they intended these, uh, these sentences to land. And so they're going to read it different than somebody who picks up a manuscript and reads it. So, um, I dunno, I, I'm, I'm okay with it. Mike, you're such a snob. You're such a snob. I am. I am. This is read by a professional actor who does a great job. But yeah, if anybody out there remembers the old John Lake Hoarey Smiley books, there's a new one by his son, and it's kind of good.

Cool. All right, so that's it for today on the Focus Podcast. You can find us at relay.fm slash focused. Thank you to our sponsors, ZocDoc and Squarespace. If you are a Deep Focus supporter, first thank you. We really appreciate your support. Deep Focus subscribers get the ad free extended version of the show.

In that ad free extended version, today we're gonna talk about a little bit of a creativity crisis I've been facing and how I've been getting around it, so stick around to hear that. Otherwise, we'll see you next time.