#728: Seth Godin — Coaching Tim on Overcoming Resistance, Lessons from Isaac Asimov, Writing Secrets After 8,500+ Daily Blog Posts, The Dangers of Authenticity, Practices for Consistency, and Much More

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3:43 Now it is. Cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal enough scalar. Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show, and this is one of my favorite types of episodes. Of course, I'm speaking to world class performers. of all different disciplines all the time.

4:13 But one of my favorite people To ask for advice. Is Seth. Gooden. And this is a walk and talk, which means Seth and I were walking and talking while we recorded this.

4:27 And I had many burning questions I wanted to ask. He did not fail to deliver. a lot of sage advice, tactical, practical wisdom and What more can I say? The guy's a gem, he delivers every time. Who is Seth Godin, you might ask? Seth Godin is the author of twenty one international bestsellers that have changed the way people think about work. His books have been translated into thirty-eight languages, and Seth's books include Tribes, Purple Cow, Lynchpin, The Dip, and This Is Marketing. Seth writes one of the most popular marketing blogs.

5:01 8500, 8500 plus daily blog posts, just to put that into perspective. And two of his TED Talks are among the most popular of all time. He is the founder of the Alt MBA, the social media pioneer Squid and Yo-Yo Dine, one of the first internet companies. His latest book is The Song of Significance. A new manifesto for Teams. You can find him at SethGoden.com and you can find Seth's blog at Seth's dot. blog. So you can go to both of those for a lot of resources. And I'm gonna just reiterate why we did this format the way we did it. Because there's too much sitting in the world. It's not good for you. We weren't evolved to do it. And I am trying to counteract the Trend the impulse, all of the incentives

5:49 to do podcasts in a fixed location. This isn't good for my health. And it's certainly not good for your health to force you to consume it that way. So I'm at least experimenting with being out and about doing something that we are designed to do, and that is walk. So without further ado, please enjoy. My wide ranging conversation where I ask for a lot of help from Seth?

6:10 Gotten. All right, here we are. So thank you. Again. And the Subject suppose relates to time, attention, all these good things. Which is

6:24 How to make it Tim Ferris is incredibly long form writing. Shorter or how those two things fundamentally are different in terms of long and short. I texted you asking if if there's any secret sauce any tips or tricks for writing short blog posts'cause I consider you

6:43 The undisputed king. Of consistently good. Sure blog posts. And that kind of unquirked all of this. So Here we are.

6:52 And uh I suppose where I I might want to start is with our initial text thread. And one of the points that At least as I Reddit seemed to resonate was

7:02 Treating blog posts more as a Question. than an answer or a provocation rather than a prescription. Could you expand on that a little bit? Because I think it relates also to the posts that you So kindly proofread where you're

7:19 I may have misinterpreted. How best to think about that. I would be delighted to dive in. There's so many places to start. I'm gonna start with this. You are a gifted and generous writer.

7:30 And you have been since I began tracking what you do. And blogging is inherently A generous act.

7:38 Because it's hard. In twenty twenty four to Justified as a financial endeavor. You're doing it. To eliminate.

7:47 And What does it mean? To write in this form. A short story. Attributed to Ernest Hemingway.

7:55 Probably not. For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn. Six words.

8:02 It's perfect. In six words. Your heart breaks. That's Not

8:09 Scalable, practical, repeatable. You can't sign up. To write six word short stories that break people's hearts every day. Because That level of

8:21 Condensing Being able to get at the heart. None of the words had more than seven letters. None of the words have more than two syllables. That's magic, right? We can't repeatedly do that.

8:34 So When we look at the form of a blog, we say well You know, Seth's blog posts have a hundred to thousand words in them. All I have to do is take my idea and make it shorter. And when we try to do that.

8:47 Resistance kicks in, Pressfield's resistance, and we say, but I need to clarify this sentence and add a parenthetical to that sentence. Or else I will be misunderstood. So This First sentence in this paragraph.

8:59 Which is rich and detailed. And recursive And layered. Goes like this. Growth agents have a place in medicine.

9:07 Parentheses. Some types of hypo Popularitarianism Wasting syndromes, diseases, surgical care, et cetera. And some sports effectively require them at higher levels. But there are always trade offs when you turn on the dials on complex hormonal cascades and feedback loops.

9:24 Yeah. Everything in that is true, and someone could study that sentence in college. For a month because There's layers below layers below layers. And unfortunately

9:37 The blog reader in general is not ready to consume That level of condensation. Mm-hmm. And so We shouldn't even try.

9:47 Because That's not what a blog is good at. Mm-hmm. What a blog is good at Is what Scott McCloud taught us about

9:57 Comics. Scott McCloud's book about comics, which is a must read. I have read it. Or understanding comics is the one that I read. Understanding comics. Thank you. Yes. The key

10:07 Lesson is this. Comics work because something happens between The panels. Right. In panel one, Superman sees a problem. In panel two, Superman is with the villain. We don't see how Superman got from panel one to panel two. That happened in our brain.

10:23 So The reason bad comic and bad graphic novels are bad is because the creator didn't understand that. They didn't let our brain Do the leaping. They just decided to add a lot of pictures to a story that would be better in words.

10:37 So What a blog post does. Is it says here's a sketch over here. And now I'm over there. You figure out how I got from here to there, and by you figuring it out, the reader

10:48 You will grow, you will explore, you will be A voice In this dialogue it is not Just me. Talking. Mm-hmm.

10:56 So When you asked me to review your writing. Some people are tempted To proofread. And they don't really mean proofread, they mean copy edit. And copy editing means

11:08 Fix The errors. And What I'm trying to do When I'm editing a friend's work, is say

11:15 Are they even asking the right question?'Cause they can fix their own errors. They don't need my help to do that. And so here What I'm trying to say is what is this post for? And what it's for, I think.

11:29 is to help someone who's not paying attention. To realise That there are seven things They might want to think about. And

11:38 Seven is a lot. So what I pitch back to is this is actually seven blog posts in a series. And what The first one says is you know, there's some things you're not thinking about that you might want to think about. Here's one of them. And

11:52 The idea of If I just say to somebody Biceps are temporary, baseball helmets. Sizes are forever. They visualize that immediately and then they're like

12:03 Hmm, what? And then they wanna Think about what you meant by that. It's a haiku. It's a puzzle. It's A shadow, where is the light and what is being reflected? So

12:13 Now you've gotten permission to tell me In a paragraph or two what you meant. And then I can You get to say tan ta na And I say ta

12:23 And That is the form. That is what Blogs are good at But

12:28 And I'm gonna end my rant now. The downside. Is you will be misunderstood. And That is why there are no comments on my blog.

12:38 Because people who misunderstood a post would then respond by making me feel bad. So I would overwrite and overwrite so they wouldn't do that anymore. And then it wasn't a blog anymore, so I had to stop.

12:49 And basically what I'm saying is if you don't get it, ask a friend. And if they don't get it either come back tomorrow and we can discuss Gus a new thing. And I think

13:00 The king of this Is actually the magic of X K C D. Which is a blog in graphic form. Yeah, it's outstanding. I agree on that. And as you're talking, a few things come to mind for me and maybe as a backdrop the Impetus for a lot of this.

13:16 For me at least, is Number one, to get back into writing and to experiment with a new form, a new style, a new approach to writing. And Number two is to explore ideas. to explore ideas in various ways to clarify my own thinking.

13:32 Yep. Which ended up happening in this short piece, the no biological free lunch piece that you Proofred. A very different thing. In this particular case. If you were writing this

13:46 Would you be inclined to make it a series? Or would you Make each of these a standalone. Peace. In other words, of those seven bullets.

13:56 As you're thinking through Not just the word count, right? This is my mistake, where I basically said okay, instead of writing a five thousand Word blog post. I'm gonna make it less than a thousand, but I'm gonna try to still Somehow get all of the concepts into this shorter form.

14:11 Seems like there's a Conceptual. Constraint. that makes things powerful, but would you take those seven, make them into an interrelated series? Would you make them all

14:21 kind of independent after you introduce them in this one piece. How would you think about Divvying this up conceptually. For yourself. And I should also just add one more thing, which is Fundamental to all of these observations and questions and goals and dreams of mine.

14:37 is how do I make this sustainable for me? Right. gave in the comments on the draft of this blog post was I'm paraphrasing, but

14:47 If you try to just make the five thousand words thing a thousand words, it's gonna be exhausting for you and most likely also exhausting for your readers. Which I agree with. It's about genre. So my blog is a long running series. It has been a series of eight thousand five hundred daily posts.

15:06 So If I was starting today, I have to figure out what is the genre Of My work. If you think about

15:13 David Letterman's TV show. Mm-hmm. He needed to have A series called Stupid Pet Tricks'cause the show wasn't Stupid Petrix. But there was a regular recurring stupid pet trick. The show. was a series of David Letterman shows.

15:29 Mm-hmm. So if your genre as you re enter blogging is Uh There is a post from Tim on a regular basis, and all of them Are about

15:41 the things we put into our body and performance, then you're fine. If that's not the case Then the question is When the reader shows up. Do you need to do a lot of throat clearing to get them back on track for what you're writing about today?

15:56 And so Since you're starting with largely a blank slate. I said Well. If the first seven of these

16:03 Are in this Series. Then you only have to Clear your throat once on the eighth day. And say, Okay, now we're talking about this.

16:11 And you could do one of those or six of those or twelve of those. Mm-hmm. But People Do better if they understand That they're going to see Dune.

16:20 Not read the power broker. Those are different genres and you need to give them a hint as to what they're gonna get. I like the idea of Recognizing that my tendency is to How should I be generous with myself? Be comprehensive. But let's be nice.

16:38 Три тобі компресів. I would rather As we talked about earlier, I'm I'm walking by tennis courts right now and I remember taking a tennis lesson and I kept hitting the ball into the net and the coach said to me, He's like, You can do anything now Next step. You can hit the ball straight up in the air, you can hit a home run.

16:55 The one thing you cannot do is hit it into the net. And I was like, Okay, I got it. And I kind of feel like I need to give myself some marching orders like that for writing to Counterbalance some of my tendencies. So I like the idea of writing. Self. sustaining sort of independent pieces to restrict myself from the desire to say, you know what, I'm not gonna overwrite this, but it's gonna be part one in a twelve part series. Which is uh

17:22 Maybe a workaround uh for Tricking myself. I'm gonna interrupt you for a little bit. Please do. You Are extraordinarily skilled at not

17:33 overcomplicating your writing or your narratives. That's how you got this far. Yeah. There's Very little that you have published where you were the

17:43 primary researcher and the breakthrough creator of the original science. What you've done Is helped people Simplify understand. What's happening here is resistance.

17:55 You are Adding parentheticals to protect yourself. Hundred percent. Uh-huh. So

18:02 What I'm pushing you to do is to come up with boundaries. So that you can say I did a good job. And Ship the work.

18:11 Now that could involve Having Very Like the rules of haiku. very significant rules where

18:20 You must have A tagline, a come on line. That's less than eighteen words. And You are allowed to have two footnote links.

18:28 But the rest of it has to be A narrative that you would say to somebody on the telephone. And instead of typing them, you are just recording each one. And letting someone on your team type them. If that would be the model.

18:40 You would have To let go of it because you only have a five minute phone call. You're gonna say it as clearly as you can. You can add two links when you're done. And it's Done. You gotta ship it.

18:50 Right? Mm-hmm. But Yeah. That's not letting the reader down because you've announced to them that that's what this is. The genre matter. I asked you one question.

19:00 related to How you know when you're done. And I'd love for you to Answer that again because I suspect I'll have some follow up questions. And

19:12 Either before or after that. I would love to know for yourself. What type of Rules you. Have imposed or constrained slash boundaries. When you have

19:23 Had your better streaks of writing, let's just say. Alright, well do the first part first'cause it's easier. You asked How do you decide or know when a post is done? And I texted back.

19:35 I don't. That's the point. And then I wrote Imagine how hard it would be to have a conversation or even a text thread. If we had to think through

19:47 Whether our turn to talk was over. Before we stop talking. Right? So My model my ritual is

19:56 I write blog posts in advance and then the night before I review them. I rewrite them. I delete them. So if I get the stomach flu, there's still gonna be a blog post tomorrow.

20:06 And When I rewrite a blog post The rule is You wait get points if you make it shorter. You don't get points if you make it longer.

20:16 And If I can't Boil it down more than it already is. And it's Not deliberately Deceptive.

20:25 It's done. Because the purpose is Tell people something they already sort of know. In a way that they would be Grateful for the chance to forward to other people.

20:35 Can you say that one more time, Seth? That seems important. If I can show up With something in your Bones you know. To be True or interesting or worth thinking about.

20:47 But I can say it in a way. That would benefit you if you could share it with your friends and colleagues. That's a great blog post. Benefit you in what possible senses. I will give you a

20:59 Trivial one. First. Which is More than once I have blogged about how stupid it is that there's a pull down menu when you're checking out of a shop. And there's all fifty states listed.

21:11 That isn't helping Anybody. We have AI that can speak English. It knows how to turn NY into New York. And We do this. Because

21:23 Forty years ago, or whenever the web was young. Twenty five years ago. It was a hack that made life slightly easier for certain programmers. And it's just been sticking around ever since. There are people like me, it really vexes.

21:37 And if I say this and you are one of those vexing people Now you can forward it to your webmaster and say, See, see, I said we shouldn't do this. And so I just gave you A useful thing to share. That's trivial, but that's sort of the idea. Is that

21:53 If you have a brother or son or colleague or daughter or sister Who would benefit From the insight. That you think I'm on to You're gonna forward it to them and

22:04 You're gonna have a connection with them. Because I opened the door and made it Possible for you to do. Every once in a while. I do post something.

22:12 about clawed AI. That you didn't know about. And oh you go, Oh great, I use Claude, thank you very much. But that's not really the service my blog offers. The service my blog offers is not

22:22 I'm breaking news. It's I am trying to illuminate things that already resonate with people. Not to add too many parentheticals to this conversation, but what is claw But what is Claude AI?

22:34 Claude. Dot AI. I can't believe I know something you don't know. Claude.ai. Is Significantly better.

22:43 Than chat GPT at certain functions. Mm-hmm. I think part of it is Doesn't read the web or it says it doesn't read the web, so it's not easily distracted.

22:53 But I'm launching it at software. project in six weeks and Yeah. Business plan.

22:58 Took more than a year and a whole bunch of contributors. It's forty pages long. And I uploaded the business plan to Claude. And I said Please review this. highlight contradictions

23:09 Paradoxes and obvious errors. And In less than ten seconds it wrote me a page and a half MBA quality memo. That nailed it. It just nailed it, nailed it, nailed it. And I was like

23:21 Okay. Uh, you got me. That's great. That's great. So I use cloud AI every day. To Weed. Other people's writing, my writing.

23:30 Critique it. Give me insight. You could send your post to Claude and it might not have the insight I had, but it would definitely have something to say. Incredible. All right. Well in parentheses.

23:41 What are some other Elements or practices or constraints. Or fill in the blank that Have helped you with consistency in terms of Blog.

23:54 Writing because I have Attempted. And failed a number of times to build up momentum writing. Shorter posts.

24:04 And I think a lot of what we've already discussed will help. Is there anything else that you would add to the It helped my Consistency streak category. Well, I would say two things. First, I think you're talking about consistency in terms of

24:17 Showing up at the ballpark every day. Cadence. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I'll do that one second. The first one. I have never met Larry David. But I'm guessing that there are some days that Larry David is actually a nice thought person. And

24:32 There is a character. Named Larry David as well. So The person who writes my blog is a character named Seth Godin. And

24:42 I am the only person who has ever written My blog, I'm the only person who ever will write my blog, but when I am doing it I am playing the character named Seth Godet. So If it doesn't sound like me

24:54 If it's just Me authentically being tired or Annoyed. Mm-hmm. I don't publish those. Because

25:02 That's not what my character would do. It's this is not Mie exposing Some Mystical Mythical

25:09 Seth Godin to the world, it's me portraying the character Seth Godin,'cause it's a service. And then the second thing is Streaks are usually used against us by software. And if they make you feel bad, it's not a helpful thing. But

25:23 I right. Blog post every single day, whether I use them or not. And I learned that from Isaac Asimov when I worked with him all those years ago. If you know That tomorrow morning you have to start typing.

25:36 Tonight when you go to sleep. Or today when you're walking around, you will be noticing things. So that You have something to type. And

25:46 You know, I've Have enough in reserve that I don't Have to do it every day. But I do it every day. Because I eat lunch every day.

25:54 And because I take a shower every day. Two follow ups. So the first is related to the playing the character of Seth Goden. It sounds like If I heard you correctly. You're saying Your writing should reflect.

26:07 How you feel in the world at the time that you're writing. Am I hearing that correctly? No. It's the opposite of that. It's the opposite.

26:15 There's no should here, first of all. If someone wants to write a blog That's just The unvarnished version of them in the moment? Go for it. I don't care. I'm not the blog, please.

26:26 What I'm saying is I can read a blog post I wrote fourteen years ago. And I might not write the same one today, but it rhymes. With the one I would write today. Because

26:38 There's a voice. That this character has that I am very comfortable with. I did the first thing that All writers do.

26:46 when I got chat GPT, which is I asked it to write like me. And I was pleased to discover it. Was a parody of me. Mm-hmm.

26:55 Being able to be parodied is a really good sign. Mm-hmm. And That's what It is to have this voice is to say

27:04 I could exaggerate it in six different directions and people could tell I would be parodying it. But Like You know, the Peanuts comic strip. Charles Schultz did it every single day and it's very hard to tell

27:17 Which decade A peanut strip is from. Totally. And that's that's what I'm after. So just to unpack that a little bit more, I know we've talked before, or I should say I've asked and listened to you discuss How?

27:30 The authenticity fetishizing. It goes on is often not always, but often very misplaced. And just kinda overvalues this. Oversharing. What are the things that make Set the character. Set the character.

27:44 Is it eighty percent? Voice that you've developed. Such that Chat GPT can imitate you and power to you? What are the other ingredients?

27:53 That make. Set the character who writes. On Set Splag. You know, I'm not Ever

28:00 pushed myself to name them. Because Seeing is forgetting the name of what one sees. But I guess I'd highlight a couple of things. The first one is

28:11 I try to begin from a place of the benefit of the doubt. Uh There probably aren't bad people. There's just situations that cause people to do things that Are troubling? And

28:22 A level of optimism to go with it. I tried to reduce ideas. Two Their essence without becoming hyperbolic.

28:33 Because The voices. Uh Social media Amped up the hyperbolic part.

28:39 That's not a simplification, that's an exaggeration. Right. I tried to Eliminate Parentheticals unless I really have no choice.

28:50 So I will Avoid saying something like All tall people are very brave. Because

28:58 That's ridiculous. But I will not write Tall people are brave parentheses except for this person, this person, this person, and this person. Because now it's not worth reading. Right. So there's an assertion at the beginning that creates a tension.

29:14 And then a release Of that tension. That lands an idea. So The shortest blog post I ever wrote.

29:21 Which I'm really proud of. Is First line is You don't need more time. So that's an assertion. It's controversial. People who feel overwhelmed.

29:34 Wanna challenge it. And then the delivery is You just need to decide. So that flips it upside down.

29:43 Off the system and the people who are making you busy and puts it right back on you Giving you agency And authority and responsibility To simply

29:53 Decide. And then get back to what needs to get done. And so in just a few words That's an example of A short

30:02 Seth Doden blog post. And a longer one. Is one Where I will try to teach somebody details about something they didn't know. But

30:12 Frame it. in a way that they're comfortable with because that's how they might have framed it as well. Let me ask uh Quick question, and maybe that I've Cut back on my caffeine too significantly, but

30:25 Ha. You don't need more time. You just need to decide. What are people deciding? Well Folks who say I'm gonna figure out which college I want to apply to soon. I just need to do more research. I just need to think about it. Right. Close the open lips, get it done, make it Yeah, exactly.

30:44 Mm-hmm. That makes a lot of sense. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn.

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31:51 For free. Terms and conditions apply. Alright, the other bookmarks follow up I had and I'm sure I've asked you this, so I apologize, but I can't

32:03 Remember the answer if we have discussed it. What are some other things you picked up from Isaac Asimov? I mean this guy's a demigod. At least a lot of people would consider it one. What are other things you absorbed or observed? With Isaac.

32:16 Isaac was in his seventies. I was twenty. Four and a half. Maybe twenty five. It was one of my first projects. It was one of his last ones.

32:24 And we would hang out at his apartment. Near Lincoln Center. And I Got to spend time with his wife. The thing about Isaac Asimov is

32:33 The character of Isaac Asimov Was it no it all Egomaniac for the time. Today he would be seen as humble. But Hm.

32:44 published four hundred books. He invented the modern conception of a robot. He wrote. Seminal. work on an enormous number of topics, a definitive book about the Bible. I mean all over the place. But in person.

32:59 Hm. Was humble And funny. And as a project partner. He was comp

33:06 Completely hands off. He spent Time with me to make sure I understood the The boundaries.

33:15 And Isaac Asimob project was. And then he said Go for it. And he didn't micromanage a thing because he trusted me. And my

33:25 understanding of where The robots universe could go. And It spoiled me'cause I thought that was gonna happen again and again and again. And you know I got Stanley Kaplan into the test prep book business.

33:39 And it took seven years. And by the time we published the book, Stanley was long gone from the project'cause he had sold the company. But Talk about micromanaging with a well known name. So on one end of the expectrum was Isaac Asimov and then the other end was Stanley Kaplan. Go figure.

33:55 You know your story about Asimov. Makes me think a little bit of Rick Rubin, where Right out of the gate. L Cool J B C boys. He's like, Oh, this is easy. This is how it works. Fantastic. What was the project that you're working with? Isaac on. Okay, so before D V D's

34:11 Lots of people at V CRs. And Yes, I remember. A company called Parker Brothers took their board game Clue. And they made it into a V CR game. And it was dumb.

34:21 And it sold more than a million copies at forty dollars. Wow. Good for them. And so Peter Alatka, the greatest game designer of his generation, and I invented a murder mystery game you could play on your V CR. So there was a movie. Shot with real union actors in a set in New York City. It lasted thirty eight minutes.

34:43 It took place on another planet. About robots and murder and detectives. And Six times during The

34:50 Short film. A screen came up that said hit the pause button and play a card. So you would hit pause. And you had a stack Of six cards.

34:59 And each card had two sides. And you would throw a card down. And It would be a clue. Like

35:05 There are no fingerprints on the gun. Which might mean it was a robot'cause robots don't have fingerprints, right? And on the other side of the card it said there were fingerprints on the gun. So now you know it's not a robot. So it turned out that Two to the power of six.

35:19 Is uh hundred and fifty six or whatever. And if you added up the code numbers on the top of each card you played. It told you which page in the answer booklet. Had the answer to that. Thread through the game.

35:32 So you could play the game hundreds of times and it would be a different outcome. Each time. And we sold the rights to Kodak. And Sisklin Ebert gave it two thumbs up. And advertised it on the Olympics like the full thing.

35:45 It was fascinating. Wow. Where were you in your career? that that opportunity presented itself or you found that opportunity. When it led up to that. Outside of what you just described.

35:57 So before I did that, I had only one real job. And my job was at Spinnaker Software. We invented educational computer games and I built The first Brand of illustrated Computer adventure games. I worked with

36:10 Arthur C Clarke and Ray Bradbury and Michael Crichton. I got rights to games. I worked with Byron Price, he had a team of programmers and I had a team of programmers We did the Wizard of Oz. And

36:21 I loved it. I could still be doing it to this day. But the world changed and I was out on my own after a couple years. As a book packager. But Peter and I knew each other.

36:32 And the momentum from the interactive game thing. Led me To Isaac's Editor

36:39 And no one had ever asked for the rights. The rights weren't expensive. And then once I had the rights I found Kodak. And Kodak was able to put up the money so we could build this thing.

36:50 And own part of the back end. So if I zoom out I've uh Macro level question for you, which has been on my mind a lot. If you don't mind. Which is

37:00 The question of how you choose next chapters or projects because I'm coming up on the tenth anniversary of the podcast next April. So in A few months. And Figured that would be a good

37:13 The time is any to pause and reflect on things and think about where I want to go. Love doing the podcast, don't plan on stopping it, but there are a lot of trends. Driving it towards the Effectively. podcasts into fixed location television shows and I don't have much desire to do that.

37:30 Yep. I don't want to be contrarian just for the sake of being contrarian. That's its own trap. Or set of traps. But I know you've been very deliberate, for instance, in choosing not to start A dozen startups. And in favor of

37:44 Choosing to spend your time on other things. How do you choose Or think about kind of next chapters or how what advice might you Give me as I contemplate. But what's next type of question.

37:56 You know, I think It's very kind of you to say I'm very good at it. I don't think I'm good at it, but because I'm sort of in public and I do it in a certain way. It's noted.

38:07 You know, I did five years of Akimbo, it was in the top one percent of all podcasts, and then I just stopped. And I stopped. Not because I didn't love it, I did love it. I stop because if I kept doing it, there's something else I wouldn't do instead. And

38:23 Creating a vacuum. Is required So that I will do the hard work of filling the vacuum. But if I

38:32 Just keep doing the thing. Then there is no vacuum. And Sometimes the technology changes. That's why Spinnaker went away.

38:41 That's why you couldn't keep making V CR games. It's why my head start in the CD rom business was worthless'cause CD ROMs went away. I'd like to In every s time I did this being a pioneer in a new media space'cause that's For me to find a spot.

38:56 And then when the technology changes, I gotta move on. But Podcast technology's never gonna change. I mean you're noting there's a Change in the production format, and that is a change.

39:07 So in my case What I'm trying to do It's not maximize. My Income per hour spent.

39:15 Nor am I trying to maximize the size of my audience. What I'm trying to maximize is Are the people I'm serving Glad that I did. That I showed up to solve an interesting problem. And two.

39:29 As I build the stack of things on the bookshelf behind me Can I point to them and say That was interesting and generous, and I'm glad I did it. And Yeah, that's part of it.

39:39 Limited attention span theater. So it's not for everybody. But my whole point of view is that life is projects. It is not a job. And when you

39:48 Stop the podcast and created that vacuum. Did you already have something That Was pending that you need to create that vacuum for, or did you create the vacuum and then wait for something to get pulled into it? Not to strain the metaphor, but you get the idea. No, you're not straining it. If there's something pending, it's not a vacuum. There have been times when something so good came along I did it and then how to remove things so I could do it. You know, when a few of us started Squiddoo, which was one of the first social networks

40:19 I had a completely org reorganized my life because we built the fortieth biggest website in the US with only eight employees. So we were busy. This is not what I'm talking about. I am talking about an actual uncomfortable Vacuum.

40:32 Where you feel like you're never gonna work again. Where nothing can possibly be worth What you gave up. And That's hard to do.

40:41 Yeah, it is hard to do. So just to put a Put a microscope on that. I have as means of Backstory. Done this for periods of time and

40:53 have found it deeply, deeply uncomfortable. Sometimes fruitful, oftentimes not terribly fruitful. In part I think because when I create that vacuum I don't know if the best way to embrace the vacuum is to basically just stare at the wall and watch paint dry or to do something else and

41:09 My mind just kind of folds in on itself. You create the vacuum. And then what do the next few weeks look like in terms of how you spend your time day to day or week to week? I think a fundamental difference between you and me. There are so many of them.

41:22 But one of them as I am here talking to what? The world tango champion? Former world record holder. Yes. Is The only thing I have a world record in. Is

41:35 Being part of the largest Co author. Book signing in history in which me and four hundred other people all signed our book at the same time. Because I am not a high performer.

41:47 I am interested. And being interesting is really important to me. But I am not holding myself to the standard you hold yourself in so many ways. And so I could imagine

42:00 That The thing that gives me comfort. Might Not make you happy. Right.

42:05 For sure. I agree with all of that. And how does that difference translate to what you would do in the weeks following creating The vacuum after, say, stopping the podcast. 'Cause I guess you have activities that you're still carrying forward. It's not like you're

42:18 Completely idle. You're writing stuff. Presumably. If someone Looked at me. From the outside. I think that they would see that

42:27 My days Aren't That different I am not shipping public Work.

42:34 Because I don't ship junk. But I am internally creating lots of mediocre work. And Basically creating straw people.

42:44 And saying, What would this be like? And then what would that be like? And here's this thing and I sat with my sixty or eighty watt laser cutter and I cut this thing out. What do I think of that? And Um That

42:57 invention cycle Is Joyful. But I can't do it forever. Because

43:03 I also need the satisfaction of shipping the work and not giving in to resistance. So What I'm doing. When I was a book packager We sold

43:13 Hundred and twenty books in ten years, a book a month. But I had more than eight hundred books on my hard drive ready to go. Not finished but Two page, five page proposals. Because The only way to have a r finished proposal for me

43:25 is to have an unfinished one that you didn't ship. What is it and this is probably a fundamental question I should have asked earlier, but What did you get from writing And having written as consistently as you Heaven do.

43:39 What is the payoff? Like why do that? Okay, so the biggest payoff is simple. Not in terms of Equity is stock value, but in terms of The noise in my head.

43:49 The biggest benefit is I will be writing tomorrow because it's Friday. Not because I've written the perfect blog post. That Every single day.

43:59 Something gets published by me'cause I decided that twenty four years ago. Not because I have reconsidered each day whether this one is good enough. Mm-hmm. And

44:10 Even if no one read my blog. I would still do it. And I'm very fortunate that people give me the benefit of the doubt. Know it. Then I am not guaranteeing this is the best thing I ever wrote, and they're still willing to look at it.

44:23 So that's lovely. In terms of My professional practice Again, back to genre. Having

44:33 A sinecure, a platform. Where For a long time if you type blog into Google, I was the first match. Because I just showed up more than just about anybody.

44:43 There's a lot of value to saying This is my lane. And you can count on me in this lane. And for someone who is as peripatetic as I in there.

44:54 Creative pursuits. Having those turned out to be a really useful thing. You mentioned a word that I don't recognize but I love the sound of. Sinecure. What is that? It's a safe haven, a niche, a place to hide. A fortress.

45:09 What a great word. Yeah. Mental note to use Cinecir. I don't want to take up. A ton of time here, Seth. This is all incredibly, incredibly. Best part of my day, and I know that you're not

45:24 Publishing this as written, but I just wanna say as For the people Who were wondering what's in this magical thing you wrote. It includes the line. Like Patagonian toothfish has become Chilean sea bass.

45:36 On fashionable menus worldwide. Right there. That's gold, Jerry. That's just gold. And so You need to liberate these things and explain to people What the h I know what you're talking about.

45:51 But the fact is Та інтайс Are becoming extinct. Because somebody figured out a clever way to market An animal that we eat.

46:01 There's a lot to be said about that one little riff and you have tw Forty of them in one post. Thanks, man. Yeah, the the no biological free lunch. It's one of those things that I've said so many times to friends in conversation and I was finally like, you know what? If not for any other reason than I am tired of repeating this Gettysburg address speech to every wayward friend who calls me up about to consume.

46:27 Yeah. I have some of those. If you go to Seth's dot blog and type advice for authors. Yeah. There are two posts with the same title'cause that's the I wasn't Being clear.

46:39 That I wrote a year and a half apart and they have Each like a dozen or fifteen bullet points. And now I have a Sig and superhuman that I can Call up if when someone sends me a note, a friend or whatever, I can say, Oh, I've already thought about this question. Here you go.

46:56 Uh Oh I love it. Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kinda like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading.

47:33 Albums, perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests, and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim.blog slash Friday. Type that into your browser, Tim.blog slash. Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by Eat Sleep. Temperature is one of the main causes of poor sleep, and heat is my personal nemesis. I've suffered for decades tossing and turning, throwing blankets off, pulling the back on, putting one leg on top, and repeating all of that ad nauseum.

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