Well, hey there. Welcome back… to everyone who is an old pro at this podcast and those who are just beginners because at some point you are a beginner and we tend to forget that don’t we? In fact, there’s a phenomenon I would like to raise your awareness on and then do our usual discussion of.

So, let’s think about this. There are skills and methods and things that you have immersed yourself in, things you’ve gotten better in, things that you have been doing for quite some time, things you take for granted. And one of the interesting things that happens when you are really good at something or you’ve amassed a certain level of skill in something or you may have put together some disperate skills and abilities and created a brand new thing and because of that you forget what it was like to be a beginner. To me, you get so far ahead in your skill, you just completely become out of touch what it even feels like to not be good at it, to be nervous about it, to wonder what you’re doing wrong, to wonder if you’re doing anything right, to even search to find answers to how to be better at it, or to look at someone who’s really good at it and think, “I could never be like that.” If you are someone who’s really good at something, and I know you’re really good at more than one thing,

you may have become out of touch with what it’s like to actually reach the level you’re at, to be at the very beginning stage.

Here’s the interesting thing. Being a beginner in something can be really kind of well, exciting. If you’ve played video games or really any games, including cards or board games, you know what it’s like to sort of reset and start from scratch. Now, board games and card games may be a little bit less intense of an analogy because everyone kind of starts at a at an even playing field, but if you’ve amassed a lot of something, whether it’s wealth or knowledge or skills or experience, it can be sort of exciting to have that voluntarily, let’s underline that, taken away from you. or if you voluntarily decide not to take advantage of it. But see, if you still have the knowledge that you have the skill or the wealth or what have you, it’s not exactly the same thing. Truly feeling like you don’t have something and then needing to go forward with it is the feeling I’m talking about. It’s the beginner feeling. And it’s that beginner feeling that someone who’s excelling in something gets disconnected from.

So here’s what happens with that from the position of the let’s say the learner. Let’s say you are a beginner and you’d like to learn something from the master. Well the master can be excellent at what they do but they can be completely out of touch with how to relay that because they may process things very very quickly. And you’re probably thinking about this in in your own world of of whatever it is that you’re really good at. Something that takes you a minute to do that would take them an hour or maybe they’d never be able to do it because they simply haven’t learned that particular method that you know. Uh, hey Mark, write a fivepage article on this subject. Oh, okay. You can’t use chat. No, I’m not going to use anything. I’ll just sit down. Can Can you leave me alone for just a few minutes? I mean, someone else would say, “Well, wait, what’s the subject again? And why do I like this? And what’s the outcome? And and can I research this? And I don’t know what all sounds the same, and oh my god, I can’t get started. I don’t know what the first sentence should even be. Is how does this even work?” Like, those are all questions that are instantly answered in someone’s mind if they’ve used to doing that, including writing books, including creating a podcast episode. I’ve actually worked with a few people recently about starting a podcast and had some interesting discussions with them about what to talk about.

Also, the the length of it uh what format should they be visual? Should they just be audio like me since I have a face for radio? Thank you very much. But we are learning and adaptable to a fault kinds of beings. It’s especially notable at the two ends of the spectrum. Uh the the hands-on trades and the cerebral pursuits like being a professor, a teacher, etc. In the hands-on trades, you have the old guy who’s been doing this forever that somehow can just get through something. He does something with his hands and there there you go. Might even seem like he doesn’t measure a lot and yet it’s always perfect. In the other end of the spectrum, there’s the professor that seems to know the answer to everything. You can’t trip them up. You can’t confuse them. They just happen to know. But in both cases, statistically speaking,

they make really bad teachers.

And you can say, “Wait, Mark, you just said a teacher could make a really bad teacher.” Well, yes, because people who are professors sometimes aren’t really teachers. To me, teaching is a separate skill unto itself. And part of that teaching is putting yourself in the mindset of the beginner

because you can’t just be aloof as a professor and say, well, you know, read this and read this and you come back to me when you understand that or be the the old hands-on guy with grimy giant fingers that says, oh, you got to work at that. You’ll figure it out.

Neither of those things are helpful for the person who is in the beginner mindset.

And how do you cross that gap? Well, you as the teacher become the beginner. This is all probably sounding very zen to you. And it sounds zen to me. You know, the the teacher must become the learner and stuff like that, but it’s very true. I spend the majority of a podcast episode like this being the beginner. I want to see it through the eyes of you and say, “Okay, well, if I’m listening to this, I don’t know any of the stuff I know. I what would I what would I want to know and and in what order? And how quickly would I need to ramp up?” And that’s part of my my goal of saying, “Okay, I want to raise your awareness and then talk about what’s next.” So the raising of your awareness means I sort of drop my awareness because if I didn’t do that, I would just say, “Hey, you know, there’s this thing that’s happening here. Here it’s called this. Let’s talk about it. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.” But if you don’t know what it is, you don’t know how to even look for it. And so that’s the raising awareness part of these 10-minute episodes.

So the the bullet list would be you are an expert in something or extremely good at it to the point where you may have forgotten what it’s like to not even know that to be at square one. And and just thinking about square one might not be exciting to you as it might be to someone like me. It might actually be kind of scary. And it’s that being at square one that can scare people in many ways. If they’re starting out in a relationship, if they’re retiring, you I have a number of episodes on that. They’re starting a brand new job, they’re starting in an entirely different field. But the scary fear of not knowing something and once again being a beginner can quickly turn to sort of excitement in which you start learning and you start going up the levels and you’re like, “Oh yeah, that’s how this feels. It feels really good to learn things cuz now I look back and now I’m sort of a level three on this and now I learned this stuff and oh my god, this part was driving me nuts. I read it in a book over and over and over again.” And then I talked to another person who does this for a living and they and they told me something that I that that allowed me to make the connection. Oh, well that makes sense.

So from the perspective of the teacher. So if you’re put in the position and hopefully you are because everyone should be teaching something to someone. If you’re in the perspective of teaching someone, whether you’re onboarding someone new at your company, you have a friend, you’re helping, it’s your kids, you’re mentoring, what have you,

understand that you need to be in the mindset of the beginner, it will make you a far better teacher. If you are the beginner in something, and hopefully everyone continues to be a beginner in something because that’s a very exciting life to lead. Try to embrace the excitement of being the newbie. Don’t put yourself down and say, “Yeah, I’m new at this. This is dumb.” But understand that if you’re working with others and they’re in a position to help you a little bit, you don’t need to put yourself down. You could just simply say, “I am new at this and I’m willing to learn.” It’s a very powerful mindset to be in. Sometimes we put ourselves in this position quietly alone in a vacuum. You learn something from YouTube videos. You research something. You get selftaught. As someone who’s a self-taught individual in a number of ways, I spent a lot of time learning something in the dark, if you will, without a lot of human interaction. I learned things and just kept learning it myself. And there are times when you’re learning something new where you you tend to beat yourself up like, “Oh my god, why can’t you do this? Why is this so hard for you to learn?” Well, sometimes it is. So combining the understanding the beginner mindset with be being both a teacher and a learner can be very fulfilling in your life. It can make you a better teacher. It can make you a better learner…and everyone wins.

So if you like learning then feel free to check out some more of my episodes. And as always thank you very much for listening.

It sounds like I’m talking about the surface dwellers and we’re all the people who live underground. Well, hey there. Welcome back.

You may have figured out by now that I like to know things and I like to learn things. And I’ve probably figured out by now that you’re the same. You also like to know things and you like to learn things. And I’m honored that this is one of your sources for information. While this isn’t necessarily an encyclopedia, it is a source for you to have thoughts and maybe challenges to the way that you think. It may introduce something that you weren’t aware of and then may challenge you to do something with that knowledge. In my book, Because, I talk about the causes of preferences and desires like this. I I figured out the cause of why I need to do this. Well, let’s talk about what this is. What this is is I don’t like to not know something.

I know it’s a double negative. I also don’t like to partially know something. In fact, I think I my my distaste for partially knowing something is stronger than my desire to know something. And if you want to put that in terms of my book, it means the monster is stronger for me knowing more than just a little bit than the unicorn for me desiring to know something. If you’re the same way, you may find yourself going down rabbit holes all the time. You may find yourself dwelling on something that that other people just pass by.

You may even get accused of overthinking, fixating, and dwelling. And you are doing none of those things. Because if one person says it’s a combustion engine, and you go, “Well, what do you mean combustion? What what’s combusting? Is something blowing up? What does that mean? How did that work? How do the things blowing up make something turn? When did that when did we invent this? Where did this come from? What other versions of that are there available?” You just want to know because a combustion engine isn’t enough. You feel like you just opened up a folder in your brain, but now it’s empty. And that doesn’t feel good. At least that’s the way it works for me. And if it works that way for you, that explains why you have a lot of very full folders in your brain.

Now, there are people who segment this, people who have learned to segment this. In fact, I encounter people like this all the time. They segment it into the thing that they do for a living. Sometimes it’s a job, sometimes it’s a career, sometimes it’s a calling. And there’s a whole podcast on that.

I find people like that very interesting. And maybe you’re one of them. And I apologize. I don’t mean to be offensive in when I say I’m fascinated, but also I can’t relate. When someone in their free time, off time, lifetime stays on the surface of everything, but then for their job they take pretty deep dives into things.

I wonder why they don’t take deep dives into other things. And you could say, “Well, Mark, because we don’t have the time for it.” And I would counter as I always do. No, you mean you don’t have the energy, which is fine because we’re still on the same page and in agreement as to why you don’t do that. You just don’t have the energy. You’re busy doing other stuff.

But I find that if you have the capability and the desire to take these deep dives into knowledge in the way that I’m describing in which you say it’s not enough to know something on the surface or it’s not enough, God forbid, to use a buzzword. I want to know more about this. I want to know the background. I want to know what I’m saying when I say that buzzword. If you have that within you, it’s probably going to come out some other place. And I’ve encountered this in people that I think are just okay, they’re fully into their job or their career. And then it comes time for them to be on their off hours. You’re going to find that they have some hobby that they really, really know a lot about. And it doesn’t matter what the hobby is. It doesn’t matter what the flight of fancy or the excursion is that they’re that they’re doing that. It’s going to be something that they’re like, “Yeah, no, I know a lot about this. I get really deeply into this. I It It could be something like, you know, it could be something incredibly innocuous and yet they know the best pieces and parts to order online for this thing that they like or do or the place that they go or even this little sporty sport that they like to do, even hiking, what have you. They’re seriously seriously into it in a way that just will floor you. And I applaud that because it speaks to me.

And as I’m talking about this, I assume your brain is thinking, well, what do I do this with? Am I just a a work person that gets heavily involved things? Maybe I’m not a work person that gets heavily involved in things. Maybe I’ve been on the service a lot. Or maybe you’re thinking of a person that you know that you either work with or know personally that tends to be a surface person.

And you will find that conversations end very quickly with surface people.

It sounds like I’m talking about the surface dwellers and where all the people who live underground. I guess maybe in a way we are.

You’ll find that as soon as conversations get even slightly deep, they will make a comment and in a way it’s sort of a defensive comment. And I have a famous interaction with someone I know that anytime I would get remotely deep on something remotely, they would say, “Well, I don’t know about that.” And I would think, “Well, right, that’s what we’re fixing.” And no, I wouldn’t go into scholar mode. I wouldn’t get up on my soap box, and granted, those are things that are really easy for me to do. It would just be literally to say something more than a buzz word, and they would say, “I don’t know about that.” and that would be the end of the conversation because they didn’t want to know about that.

So, you will indeed find that these people won’t let you go that far. It’s kind of like it’s kind of like an elevator chat with someone. They know that the doors are going to open shortly, so they’re not going to get into anything deep. And that’s where the whole elevator pitch comes from, in which you can make your pitch within a certain amount of time, a very, very short amount of time.

So, now that we’ve defined it as we usually do, let’s let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about let’s talk about you. Is this something you do? Do you tend to just stay on the surface of things because that’s good enough, or do you tend to fall down rabbit holes?

Are the things that you’re interested in the things that you go deeper on, or do you just go deeper on everything that allows you to? And with the LLMs that are out there with Google, with this advanced connection to knowledge that we now possess, it’s easy to do that. Now, it’s easy to start it, but even with LLMs and so forth, there’s a lot of hallucination going on. And if you don’t know what hallucination is, it’s when you talk to something like Jack GPT or the others and they tell you something with supreme confidence and you say, “No, wait, no, no, you made that up. You made that up. I know you made that up.”

And when there’s the chance of them hallucinating and making things up, it puts a lot more burden on your shoulders and requires a lot more energy to pursue knowledge. So, what do you think? Does this have to do with intellectual stamina? And that sounds fancy and highbrow, but is that what this has to do with? Does it have to do with your your mind’s ability to keep going on something for you to not be so tired? Does it have to do with a desire to learn? Does it have to do with a discomfort like me with only knowing a little bit about something?

To be clear, I am not faulting anyone who decides to just be surface dwelling on most things. That’s fine. Different personalities, different strokes, different folks, all that stuff. I would guess that you’re probably not one of those people. Are they Are they listening? Are they in the room? Oh, they’re not in the room with us. Okay. Yeah, I’m not a big fan of those people. Sorry. I just I’m not. And I know you’re probably not one of them because you don’t listen to podcasts, especially this one, if you just go, “Oh, yeah. I just want a little know a little surface.” Now, someone might say, and I don’t know who, “Well, Mark, this is only like a 10-minute thing. Just how deep can you get?” Well, okay, this podcast is only 10 minutes, but I do get deep, and I have references, and I refer books that are deeper, and I refer to other podcast episodes. So sometimes we’ll talk about something that will then connect up and link up with two, three, four, even five episodes. And we do have a panel, a dashboard if you will, of almost 300 episodes to draw from. So yeah, 10 minutes may seem like a surface, but it’s not.

So what do you do now? Think about the stuff that you might be surface on. Think about the stuff that you go deep on. and think about why is it just jobreated stuff? Have you given yourself a license to go deep on stuff that’s only jobreated that only makes you money?

I think that’s the big question with this.

Well, as always, thanks for listening and take care of yourself.

(Music Outro) be happy. How to get there? Glad that you asked me. I think it’s different for everyone. Some of us need work, others need fun. Some of us need purpose to overcome. But try to do what you love when it’s said and done. Cuz there’s so many differences in each of us. Trust your gut. It can show you what you want. Living life every day, late at night, not okay. All I want and I pray. All I need are some better days.

“Well, what do you mean combustion?”

“Am I just a a work person that gets heavily involved things?”

“Do you tend to just stay on the surface of things because that’s good enough, or do you tend to fall down rabbit holes?”

“Are the things that you’re interested in the things that you go deeper on, or do you just go deeper on everything that allows you to?”

“Does this have to do with intellectual stamina?”

“is that what this has to do with?”

“Does it have to do with your your mind’s ability to keep going on something for you to not be so tired?”

“Does it have to do with a desire to learn?”

“Does it have to do with a discomfort like me with only knowing a little bit about something?”

“Just how deep can you get?”

“So what do you do now?”

“is it just jobreated stuff?”

“Have you given yourself a license to go deep on stuff that’s only jobreated that only makes you money?”

I want to announce that my new book, my 10th, is out. It’s called because the fundamental psychological building blocks that enable you to or prevent you from accomplishing anything, everything, and nothing. Check it out on Amazon. It’s only $9.99.

I think I found the perfect question.

Well, hey there. Welcome back.

I think I found the perfect question. No, really. I found a question I can ask almost anyone. It will elicit a genuine, honest, thoughtful response. It’s a useful subject. It’s something that they think about regardless of what they do for a living. And it’s something that most people struggle with because they know they haven’t quite gotten it right. And I’m included in that. And the question is, what do you use for a to-do list?

You’re thinking about that now and feel free to pause it and then continue. But the answer typically is well I use a number of things. You know sometimes there’s some frustration there where someone says well this is what works best for me so far and I know it’s not the best. They’ll use a combination of a calendar post-it notes notes emails to themselves. Uh maybe they use an old style paper planner. Maybe they try to go without one and it adds even more stress to them. They put things into a document, but there’s typically not this universal perfect answer. And again, I am one of those people.

So, I thought long and hard and I thought, you know what? I I I miss having a Franklin planner from a long time ago in which I could write down my to-do items and then I could transfer them to the next day, the ones that I didn’t fill out, and they’d be there waiting for me the next day. Plus, I’d sleep better. So, then I got thinking about what my ideal to-do list would be. Like, if I got my wishes, what would I do? Well, I’d want something that was small enough to carry with me at all times. And I already carry my phone with me at all times. So, maybe it should be something my phone can do. I’d want to be able to just make a simple list with really no limits. When I check off an item, it leaves it in the past so that the next day, the stuff I didn’t check are automatically there waiting for me. I would probably want to be able to color code things because you can pick out differences in things with colors far faster than you can in any other way.

I wouldn’t want to prioritize things because I’m already prioritizing things. I don’t want to do master project planning with a to-do list. That’s a whole separate set of software tools and so forth. And as I talk about in my book, because prioritization is something you’re already doing anyway in your head. And even if you put something at number one and you agree with it, you’re still going to scan the list and go, “Well, which one of these is kind of fun and feels good to do and it’s kind of easy? I’ll do that one right now.” So th that’s basically it for my core desire features.

So then I got thinking about, well, what would an ideal to-do list do? Well, besides it automatically carrying stuff forward to the next day, what if I could look back at a previous day and go, oh wait, what did I accomplish yesterday? And it unlike the written planner, it wouldn’t have the stuff I didn’t do. It only would have the stuff I did do. What if there was something that I was staring at and I thought to myself, you know what? I got to take care of that tomorrow. I would love to just send it into the future to tomorrow. Speaking of tomorrow, what if it was Wednesday and you thought, you know what, I got to do this thing on Saturday. What if you could go to Saturday and then you could put a task on there and then when Saturday showed up, that task would be there waiting for me. Oh, that’s right. I got to take care of that today. That’s cool. I haven’t thought about that for the last 3 days. But wow, that was cool. What if it knew how long I had been doing at least one thing per day? In other words, every day that I check something off, it kind of maintained a streak like like XNAT chat did. Find that kind of motivating. I’d find that I’d find at least a way to check off one thing per day that way and it would make me kind of look at the list every day. Okay, this sounds crazy, but since I’m color coding stuff, what if I could look somewhere and I could see a pie chart of the colors? Like I’d be like, “Oh, this I seem to do a lot more purple. I didn’t realize I was doing so much yellow.” You know, and let’s say yellow is chores. And you go, “Yeah, that’s Saturday. That’s when I do all my mostly a lot of chores and things.” And what if there was even like a bar graph for the last 30 days that would show the breakdown of everything and see how my productivity was and and so forth. Okay, since we’re talking about motivations, what if you had oh, I don’t know, like a trophy case. And let’s say once you hit 50 tasks, you’d get like a little shiny trophy that would be, you know, animated or something. I don’t know, right? And when you hit 100 and imagine doing something and using it long enough to do that. But a paper planner can’t do that. You’re not going to go back and count up stuff. That’s silly.

And if I’m getting my wish list, what if what if someone writes experimental psychology books like Because and three voices and so forth that helps you to get stuff done and their mission in life is actually to help you understand yourself and get stuff done. Wouldn’t it be cool if there was an area where those books were listed as well in some way? And what if that same person had 250 plus episodes of a podcast? Wouldn’t it be kind of cool to sort of have those in that same area?

This is just getting crazy and fantastical.

So about 26 days ago or probably previous to that, I put on my coding hat again and I decided to selfishly make exactly what I just described. I wanted the core features and then I wanted to add the really cool stuff. And I didn’t in any way, shape or form want to detract from having a very simple, easy to use experience.

So, I built my very own to-do app. And I built it selfishly for myself so that I could use it.

Because it’s not an app, but rather a website. It’s available on my phone. It loads instantly. Okay, there’s no installation. You don’t have to worry about the the app store or anything like that. You don’t have to put in any of your information, use a credit card, any of that stuff because it’s a site. It’s also visible on my desktop, which is super cool because I can look at that everpresent task list on my desktop and it’s sometimes easier to type something on there than it is to type something on your phone. If I get rid of a task on my desktop, it’s no longer on my phone and vice versa.

And yes indeed, I can go back in time and see how many tasks I’ve done every single day. I can color code with five different colors and change them at any time. I can swipe to the right on a task and it’ll immediately send it one day into the future, which is super helpful and super easy. I can move a few days into the future and put a task there and it’ll just lie there quietly, silently waiting for me. I can click on a dashboard which will show me my trophies for 50 tasks, 100 tasks, etc.

It does indeed check out my streak and maintain a streak and it shows it in the form of a little flame with a number on the main screen as as well as that screen because it’s very motivating to go, I don’t want to lose my streak. I better check off one of these things. And that can be the difference between doing something or feeling very guilty about saying, “Oh, I should have done that yesterday.” It does indeed have a bookshelf of all the books that I’ve written. They’re cute little tiny covers. And if you click the cover, you can say, “Hey, I read this.” Or you can go see it on Amazon. It has a section that shows 250 plus episodes of my podcast that you can click on. It’ll take you immediately to the podcast. You can click on the iTunes link. It’ll take you right to iTunes. It’s searchable, so you can start to type some of the words in the title and it’ll keep narrowing it down for you in real time. And it includes two bonus buttons. One of them is Mark’s favorites in which you can click the button and you can see the ones that I curated as the ones that are kind of my favorite episodes because people keep asking me that question. Well, which ones are your favorite episodes? There’s also a button for interviews because sometimes people just want to go, “Oh, I want to hear the interviews.” Which who who have you interviewed? You click that button, it immediately lists all the interviews. And sometimes I have interviews that are favorites, too. There’s also an expanded achievements area. And these are achievements that I don’t really define. They’re kind of fun things. They’re kind of Easter eggs built into it so that when you do things, it tracks it and says, “Oh, that was a that was a cool thing. you’ve you’ve unlocked this.

It didn’t take me long into me designing and creating this selfishly where I thought, you know, I think other people would like this. So, I expanded the way that I was designing it so that other people could indeed use it. So, back to that conversation, when I would have conversations with people and ask them, “What do you use for your to-do list?” I would then share same frustrations. I would tell them what I selfishly built, which would inevitably lead to them saying, “Well, I want some of that. How do I get that?” And so, I built a little entry page that allows me to use a QR code on my phone. People can scan that and boom, they get a form with exactly three fields. It’s their first name, it’s their last name, and it’s the particular code I give them that allows them to instantly create their own instance of it, which they can then save on their phone screen so that they have a little app icon that instantly works. And it also works on their desktop. No login, no payment exchanging hands, no credit card on file, not even an email address, and it doesn’t even cost anything.

So, because you listen to my podcast, because you’re the kind of person who does want to get things done, because you seem to like my stuff, I’m going to make this available for people who are listening to this particular episode.

I’m going to have a link in the article that accompanies this. When you go to the link, you need only type your first name, your last name, and then the code that I will provide you in this episode because it’s for people who listen to my stuff because I value people who like to get things done. And it doesn’t mean it doesn’t mean necessarily you’re a giant mover and shaker. It just means you’re actually able to make decisions. And we talked about this a couple episodes ago about how the CEO mindset in my opinion is something people don’t talk about which is the ability to say yes or no very quickly and not waste their time and other people’s time. And I mentioned about how people who are well-known people, people who are famous people, you know, and so forth sometimes say yes to me and when they do they say it quickly. In fact, the last episode is with Joseph Malazi, who is the executive producer, and he said yes very quickly. He probably would have said no very quickly as well because he likes to make decisions just like other people in that position. And so, I appreciate and respect that to the point where if you’re one of these people and you want to benefit from a list like this, then I’m happy to share it with you. The code will only accept a limited amount of people by design.

The same design which is preventing me from posting this out to the internet to a billion people. I don’t want a billion random people using this. (CODE REVEALED IN PODCAST)

And you have your own to-do app designed by me to my selfish specifications.

Because this invite is not to be shared out into the wild and it is specifically for people who actually do like to take action, which are the people that would benefit the most from this. This link will expire in about 48 hours after this podcast is published. (see QR Code below)

The app has feedback built into it. So if you do use this and you have some kudos or you have something you want to pass on, feel free to use that. I spent a huge amount of time making the help very extensive on it so that you can learn quite a bit from that.

So if you do use it, enjoy it. I’m excited that it might help you with your productivity and might help you enjoy getting stuff done in your life. If it’s not for you or you you’ve decided not to pursue this, that’s fine, too. But maybe I at least got you thinking about what makes your ideal to-do list and why. And it might just help you in the way that you use whatever it is you’re currently using. I also want to apologize cuz I did go about 3 minutes over my self-imposed 10-minute limit, but I had a lot of stuff to tell you on this and I’m very excited about it.

So, as always, take care of yourself. You’re important. and I’ll see you later.

(Music Outro)

Well, I just want to be happy to get there. Glad that you as work, others need fun. Some of us need purpose to overcome, but try to do what you love when it’s said and done. Cuz there’s so many differences in each of us. Trust your gut. It can show you what you want. Living life every day, late at night, not okay. All I want.

I want to announce that my new book, my 10th, is out. It’s called BeCAUSE!: The Fundamental Psychological Building Blocks That Enable You to or Prevent You from Accomplishing Anything, Everything, and Nothing. Check it out on Amazon. It’s only $9.99.

To get the todo ap, scan this with your phone and use the code provided in the episode. The code expires in about 48 hours.

As a longtime fan of Stargate SG1 and Stargate Universe I’d come to really appreciate so many elements of the storytelling that were done—the continuity, the characters, the character interaction, the dialogue, the growth, the well-done sets, the subtle and non-jarring humor, and more.  As someone who writes, I enjoyed on a whole different level.

So you can imagine that I had both the pleasure and honor of sitting down with Joseph Mallozzi, the Executive Producer and writer for Stargate SG1, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate Universe, and Dark Matter in which he is the Show Runner (he literally runs the show).   

We covered everything from character development, to his thoughts on music, the untimely cancellation of Dark Matter on season three (a show I’d only recently discovered and thoroughly enjoyed), his journey as a writer, what it means to have a writing partner, the challenges of writing a movie script versus writing for an episodic series, the difference between science fiction and fantasy and why he is very much not a fan of the latter, 

He was a very kind and energetic guest, and I just keep getting lucky with having people like him on my show.

It was not only informative and fascinating, but some moments were actually touching (e.g. discussing cancellation of Dark Matter and it’s affect on both him and the cast and crew. He clearly is not only passionate about is creative work, but cares about the cast and crew).  I truly appreciated his openness, willingness to share and vulnerability when needed.

There are one million topics I would have loved to cover with him things like AI in both the real world and how it affects writing and it’s use by certain authors as well as its implementation in sci-fi, his loves outside of writing, and who this Sharky person is.  

Hopefully he will return for another episode and even better, I can take him up on his offer to have dinner.

I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did.   

My Patreon will have some video excerpts from the discussion.

Note that this transcript may have errors due to sounds and interpretation variations. I have edited it to add some of the headings as well as links to things mentioned, but editing for accuracy and grammar is not fruitful in a normal conversation. Hopefully you gave this a listen!

Oct 3, 2025

 
Mark Bradford: I’m here with Joseph Mallozzi. Hi, Joe!
Joseph Mallozzi: Hey Mark, how are you doing?
Mark Bradford: I am just lovely. I’m so happy to have you. I’m absolutely thrilled to have a chat. So, as I ask everyone that I have on the show, tell us who you are and what you do.
Joseph Mallozzi: Sure. I am Joseph Mallozzi. I’m a writer, uh, producer, and showrunner with, uh, a little over 400 hours of produced television to my credit. Uh, notable productions includes the Stargate franchise SG1 Atlantis Universe, as well as my own show, Dark Matter.
Mark Bradford: Awesome.
Joseph Mallozzi: That’s the 2015 shipbased show, not the more recent Apple series. That is also a sci-fi show with the exact same name and title font.
Mark Bradford: Very awesome.

 
Mark Bradford: Uh, as someone who enjoyed SG1 and just finished Dark Matter, uh, I I applaud your work very very much so.
Joseph Mallozzi: Thank you.
Mark Bradford: And and a lot of people probably may have heard the term showrunner.
Joseph Mallozzi: Sure.
Mark Bradford: And again, you’ve probably been asked this a lot, but uh the difference between a showrunner and producer
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Well, producer could actually mean a lot of things. producer can range from a vanity credit like maybe you suggested someone pursue the rights to a book and then they ended up you know securing the rights or they name you a producer or you know you bring money to the table you know you that could make you a producer or you could be a hands-on producer someone who’s involved in production either you know dealing with budget or the creative process uh in my case I was an executive producer and a showrunner. Now, showrunner entails pretty much what you know what it implies, the fact that you run the show. So, as a showrunner, I am the de facto cap.
 
 

 
Joseph Mallozzi: I say capoi cap. My my my job is to kind of oversee production, everything from uh casting uh and construction, the building of sets to costumes and final edits.
Mark Bradford: Wow. Wow. That’s impressive. Uh, I think the best way to put it is the the person who runs the show because, oddly enough, the term showrunner doesn’t sound like it’s on the level of a producer, but it’s sort of above what a producer is.
Joseph Mallozzi: Well, showrunners are usually executive producers of a show and you know we go through the various distinctions of producer. Everything from associate producer to co-producer to producer to supervising producer, co-executive producers and ultimately executive producers. Again, they can all mean very different things. Uh, but for the most part, a showrunner is usually also an executive producer. The show’s executive producer.
Mark Bradford: And so you were also were you the executive producer of um start uh SG1
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. So, my writing partner and I, Paul Mullie, joined during the show’s fourth season as co-producers and ultimately worked our way up.
 
 

 
Joseph Mallozzi: Um, again co-producers, just kind of an entry level credit and then we became producers and we began to oversee our own produce our own episodes, meaning we would write the scripts and then we would uh oversee prep. So prep week usually takes place before the beginning of production and prep week is comprised of all the department heads getting together going through the script uh and then attending the various meetings. You go to the costume meetings and you tell the costume uh people what you need for every scene in in the script. You go to the props meeting and you decide what props you want to see and you go to the art department meeting and you discuss this various sets that need to be built. Uh and so you know you you become essentially a supervising producer and then a step up from that is co-executive producer and then finally when you get executive producer that’s when you know you’ve hit the big time. That’s the uh the ultimate uh credit amongst producer credits.
Mark Bradford: That’s right. So, and as the executive producer, you’re still writing.
 
 

 
Mark Bradford: You’re besides all that other stuff.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: So, you were above high above and in the trenches at the same time.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Yes. Again, executive producer can mean a lot of things, but most of the executive producers on Stargate were uh writers as well, writer producers. So Brad Wright, uh, Robert Cooper, Brad Wright was a co-creator of SG1, Atlantis and Universe, uh, Rob Cooper was a co-creator of Atlantis in Universe, and Paul and I were exec producers. Ultimately, Carl Binder, Martin Garrow, all worked their way up to the exec producer uh, role, but at the end of the day, they were creative producers. We all wrote, we all we all spun stories, we all gave notes on each other’s scripts, each other’s episodes. Um, so very hands-on.
Mark Bradford: So you mentioned uh Paul as the as your writing partner. What what did that really mean to you to have a writing partner? Because I think for different people it means different things.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. And for us it did mean different things.
 
 

 
Joseph Mallozzi: We no longer write together, but uh when we did in the very beginning, I mean, we take a lot of the pressure off. Uh, so when we initially started as a writing team on on SG1, we would actually sit in the same room and write together, I mean bounce dialogue off each other and and run the scripts back scenes back and forth. And then as we got kind of busier, we started to pitch the script back and forth between us where, you know, I would write maybe the first three pages, send it to him, and he would rewrite it and
Mark Bradford: Oh,
Joseph Mallozzi: write the next, you know, three pages after that. And we would, you know, go back and forth. Uh because we started to get kind of busy with other aspects of production. Uh, and then ultimately got to the point where we’d be working on our own se separate scripts and I would write a first draft or he would write a first draft and we’d swap and do re revisions on each other’s drafts to the point where in the end we were essentially writing uh as individuals.
Mark Bradford: independent.
Joseph Mallozzi: Um so even though we were writing partners I mean very much so in the beginning uh we did less uh as creative uh partners as as creative script writers co coowwriters as the show uh evolved just because our roles evolved in the show we got busier and it just didn’t make sense to um you know write the way we used to write just in the room together and pitching ideas back and forth.
Mark Bradford: Right. Did did you did you miss that at all when things when you had so much more on your shoulders?
Joseph Mallozzi: Uh, not really because it was kind of new and exciting exploring things like editing and and like I said the various aspects of overseeing production. You getting to have the final say on things like casting and costumes was uh was was a treat. So I mean um you know I always love to write and I’ve always been a very prolific writer. So I don’t feel like we wrote any less at the end of the I think we always average about seven scripts per per season out of out of 20 or so.
 
 

 
Mark Bradford: Okay.
Joseph Mallozzi: Um, but it, you know, it was rewarding in many other ways, I would say.
Mark Bradford: Very, very cool. So, you also mentioned um Dark Matter, which I I can say I I definitely loved that. And I just have to say that it it was such a neat hearkening back. It it reminded me of like role playing days many years ago. There’s role playing games like like uh Space Opera and Travelers and things where like you’re out in your ship alone and you can do what you want that it’s an empty big universe.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: And I I got that feeling out of nowhere when I was watching the show and it was just such a cool thing. You explore you explore amnesia and personalities and and a whole bunch of things to the point where I almost thought of the show as like gray matter versus dark matter. And I know that’s a silly pun, but it it was such a it was such a cool thing to see.
Joseph Mallozzi: Mhm.
Mark Bradford: And so that was that was your project then. And I noticed that you also just recently found that these are books that you wrote. And that’s where this is from
Joseph Mallozzi: No. Well, um I’d written Dark M I’d written the pilot to Dark Matter uh while I was working on Stargate and the the idea was to you know kind of springboard once once once SU Stargate ended we would springboard onto our own show Dark Matter. Uh the only problem was that Star kept on getting picked up year after year after year. Then we did Atlantis, then we did Universe. And one of the great things about that is that it allowed me to sit with this idea for so long that I ended up mapping out a five-year plan for the series. I mapped out all the arcs for all the characters and all their backstories. Uh, and what that allowed me to do when the time came, not only to write the scripts fairly quickly because I knew what I wanted to see and what I wanted to do, but allowed me to drop in clues like seed clues throughout the early goingings in the episode uh in the early episodes that would pay off sometimes uh episodes sometimes seasons later.

 
Joseph Mallozzi: And as as a uh as a viewer, I find those type of like that kind of storytelling just very satisfying in that instead of the writers kind of making it up as they go along, you re realize they have a plan and they’ve taken care to construct, you know, a a a an interesting uh narrative with with uh setups and payoffs. One of the things I also wanted to do is dark matter. There were so many mysteries in Dark Matter that we set up in very early going and I didn’t want to do kind of like what what Lost did where they set up these mysteries and most of them never get paid off uh in the end. So I would kind of pay off these mysteries as we went along but set up other mysteries and and and kept these other mysteries alive. Um and so that was kind of a lot of fun. Again, a lot that had to do with the fact that I sat on that that idea for so long that I was able to really flesh everything out in my mind.

 
Joseph Mallozzi: And then when it came down came time to take the the script out. Like I said, I had the script. I had the idea for the show. Um, but I decided to do it kind of another way.
Mark Bradford: Mhm.
Joseph Mallozzi: I decided to essentially establish it as an IP first as IP being intellectual property because I got my start in development. And one of the things I learned very early on in development is that everyone loves an established property in IP because then they can say, look, there’s already an audience for this. This makes sense. Uh so I reached out to Darkhorse and I pitched out um a gentleman by the name of Keith Goldberg my idea for Dark Matter. The idea being that you know we would launch as a comic book and then we would use a comic book to sell the TV show. And he loved the idea and they didn’t want to commit to more than four issues. So those first four issues were the first two episodes of what would be the series.
 
 

 
Joseph Mallozzi: Uh, and so, you know, we launched the comic book and they collected the first four issues in a trade paperback and then Jay Firestone of Prodigy Pictures went out and pitched the show and uh, he would leave the comic book behind and it was such a great visual aid to allow executives to kind of envision what the show would look like, what the show would be about. And based on that, we ended up selling uh, the series. And so I already had kind of a pilot script already in my back pocket and and you know this show was green lit and we were ready to go.
Mark Bradford: Yeah, it seems I mean it it explains how grounded it feels. It feels it feels like it’s been around forever when I watched it. It didn’t feel like what are they going to make up next time, which would be the opposite end of the spectrum, kind of like what you’re saying. and the whole payoff thing. I I am thrilled by someone who’s as someone who enjoys writing and um also reading and seeing really good stories like they stand out.
 
 

 
Mark Bradford: There there’s such a difference between stories that create clues and don’t insult the viewer. They don’t insult the reader.
Joseph Mallozzi: Nothing.
Mark Bradford: And that’s something that I tried really hard with what I wrote and that I didn’t want to insult the reader and I wanted the payoffs to be there. that the longer and the more you paid attention, the more you’d be excited about. It’s almost like a sense of productivity. It’s just such an interesting feeling to get that
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes, a sense of dramatic satisfaction and it’s it’s hard to walk that fine line. So, as a writer, you know, you you want to make it a challenge for the viewer or the reader, but you don’t want to but you on the other hand, you want to make make it too too difficult to get there. And and this is one of the critiques I would always get back from my fellow writers when I worked on Stargate is the fact that, you know, I I always gave the audience too much credit. I I I needed to explain more and I was always loathed to explain and, you know, offer too much exposition.
 
 

 
Mark Bradford: Come on.
Joseph Mallozzi: That that was always kind of, you know, the bane of of my existence as a writer. And that’s why I so love Dark Matter. you know, it it at the beginning had it pros and cons because these characters wake up with no memories of who they are or how they got on board. So, you can’t explain anything. There’s gonna be, you know, there’s no, you know, telling their story or or or them uh, you know, through flashbacks them telling their stories. They’re on the ride at the same time as a viewer. And while that’s a good thing, on the other hand, like the early critiques I got from the show was the fact that, oh, these characters feel like stock uh like two-dimensional archetypes.
Mark Bradford: All right.
Joseph Mallozzi: And I agree, they necessarily are because they have no backstory. So, for instance, character of three, everybody’s like, “Oh, he’s just like Jane and Firefly, kind of the the the, you know, the lung type gunslinger.” And initially, he is. And everybody hated the character.

 
Joseph Mallozzi: I remember when when the episode uh when the when the pilot first came out and I remember talking to Anthony Leky who played three and and he laughed because he had read the first nine scripts so he knew where we were going and sure enough by the end of the you know the show’s third three seasonason run sadly cut short. uh he and the android were the two fan favorites because you go on that journey with the character and you you think they’re one thing and then as a story progresses they become someone else and that’s that that’s you know whether it be like the big you know kind of chestnut sci-fi concepts or just these characters always kind of liked undermining audience expectations if you can a surprise an audience and b make them laugh that’s another big thing about about dark matter and I learned quickly in in Stargate just uh humor goes such a long way towards allowing audiences to connect with characters. So I wanted all the characters to be kind of funny in different ways, subtle, sometimes more overt.

 
Joseph Mallozzi: Um and and sure sure enough that that that’s you know I I I think that’s what uh that’s why the show was as popular as it ultimately was. the fact that the character, you know, viewers are really able to connect with these characters.
Mark Bradford: I think that’s yeah, that’s ultimately what you want to do. And I guess I’m like everyone else because those are my two favorites as well. And uh Android was was easier uh to because there was that obvious arc there of of that you the way that worked.
Joseph Mallozzi: Great. Yes.
Mark Bradford: But but he was someone who definitely seemed not two-dimensional, but he was so he had so many barriers up about not wanting to believe or experience things. He just wanted to be him. But then you found this super tender side of him and and and that he was such a genuine person. He almost became like the everyman. So that that was your connection as the viewer uh to like as if you were there.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
 
 

 
Mark Bradford: Like that’s how it almost felt.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Yeah. And and obviously I I always liked um kind ensemble shows. So SG1 and and Alas, you know, very much ensemble shows. And that’s another thing you can kind of be you’re able to explore characters through their relationships with other characters. One of my favorite relationships was this this relationship three had this gruff, you know, gunslinger had with the kid five who kind of this precocious and there’s that wonderful scene where, you know, he’s off to sort of join
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: his, you know, his former family and uh and he has to take out a loan and basically she charges him, you know, compounding interest and you can tell sort of like there’s that kind of banter and fun between the big brother little sister relationship. But, you know, even though she’s kind of taking advantage of him. Yeah. You know, you can see that, you know, they they really care about each other. And at the end of the day, that’s one of the most important things I think all great sci-fi does, you know, does very well.

 
Joseph Mallozzi: There’s a kind of found family concept, whether it’s the crew of the Enterprise or, you know, team SG1 or the Rosa crew.
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: They’re they’re all kind of these disperate individuals thrown together by circumstance who come together and kind of, you know, form a bonds and and and become kind of this found family us against the universe or the galaxy in
Mark Bradford: Right.
Joseph Mallozzi: this case.
Mark Bradford: It’s sort of that whole family you chose kind of concept and that it it feels it and you choose it in front of the viewer so they get to see that.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes, exactly.
Mark Bradford: And then when you’re talking about how people relate and their characters grow, it’s really cool and it look it’s really good writing when you see a character change but only around certain people. So like six and he became very protective of shoot um five.
Joseph Mallozzi: Five.
Mark Bradford: Thank you.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: um you know how he how he became protective and his personality would sort of change. If three was in the room, he’d be a little more manly with with him and so forth.
 
 

 
Joseph Mallozzi: Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: Yeah. But you could see that and that was such a such a cool thing and and I I felt like she was definitely the glue that held everything together as well.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: I think I think that was probably one of her jobs and she she did it really well. It was just it’s such a it was really cool. And so I watched the last episode and I went no Wow.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes, I know. Well, I can send you like I I I wrote up some uh we were actually in the writer room for season 4 when we heard that we’d been cancelled. Um, so I ended up uh writing up these uh what I call the virtual episodes. So the first three episodes of season 4 what we have planned. So basically it it it it you know respon you know answers that cliffhanger.
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: Um I I can I can give you a link.
Mark Bradford: And they’re in what directory that I can get to?
 
 

 
Mark Bradford: Where?
Joseph Mallozzi: It’s on my blog but I I always post it online.
Mark Bradford: Oh, I was kidding.
Joseph Mallozzi: I’ll post it online. Then someone was actually very nice on YouTube. They ended up I ended up posting photos to go along with with the like the breakdown of the episodes like a C by scene breakdown and they put it to video.
Mark Bradford: Wow.
Joseph Mallozzi: So, it’s kind of fun. I’ll send that your way so you can have some uh closure.
Mark Bradford: Okay. Thank you.
Joseph Mallozzi: But I was kind of bitter. I will admit admit I was bitter with uh not just a cancellation. The fact that as I said I I had approached the show was kind of a five season arc. Uh each episode dealing with a different theme beginning, middle and end. I mean, the first episode, the end of the first episode, you find out they’re cutthroats and criminals. And and the first season ends with them, appropriately enough, being arrested and being carted off to prison.

 
Joseph Mallozzi: And then season two was kind of this redemption arc where where they’re going to sort of try and be, you know, better people and and it blows up literally in their face with with the destruction of the EOS 7 space station. Then season three was um you know one of them goes dark side and and you know four becomes a big bad it’s a battle against against him and season four was going to be the alien invasion and season five was going to be the android revolution and uh just the way the the whole um uh cancellation went down just left a bad taste in my mouth.
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: Um, I mean I I I understand this is the business and uh um you know I mean this is reality. No, you know shows guaranteed uh you know a five you know a five-year order. Uh having said that I would argue that um if you are asking audiences to invest of themselves in a series, you should offer them the opportunity for closure. And so when we found out we had been um we we had been cancelled, we reached out to Sci-Fi and requested like can we just have a a movie so we can just wrap things up and they didn’t even dain to respond to the email.

 
Joseph Mallozzi: Uh and that set me off. So I was um pretty uh pretty peeved and again just the way it it went down.
Mark Bradford: Wow.
Joseph Mallozzi: As I said I I um I have about 400 hours of produced television to my credit 350 of it in science fiction. almost all of it for the sci-fi channel. Uh, in fact, at the time, I don’t think anyone produced more TV for Sci-Fi for that network than than I did.
Mark Bradford: Come on.
Joseph Mallozzi: And instead of reaching out to me to tell me, hey, we’re going to be have to cancel the show and have a discussion with me, they just just contacted the president of the produ our production the production company who had to relay the information to me. Um, said they did not respond to our request for the movie. And then after cancelling us, they ended up giving Killjoys, which was our lead in kind of we it was always Killjoys and and Dark Matter, our Sci-Fi Friday uh kind of sister show. They gave Killjoy this two season order.

 
Joseph Mallozzi: So everybody was coming into my office saying, “Oh, so they they essentially gave our, you know, clearly I felt as though they um intentionally or not sent a message.” And so once that happened uh kind of the gloves were off and I was uh pretty uh uh pretty vocal about my displeasure, shall we say.
Mark Bradford: Well, that that says a lot. I mean, that says a lot for your passion for the thing that you created that a lot of people, you know, bless their hearts, won’t really understand the involvement, the emotional, intellectual involvement in creating something. And that’s that’s a whole subject that I’m fascinated with is like where that even comes from. Like it’s one of the only things in life where we don’t really we can’t explain the origin of like real creativity. Like, and I see you shaking your head. It’s like the same thing. It’s like you can create something yourself and go, “Wait, how how did I manifest that because it’ll impress, you’ll impress yourself.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. Yes. And and a great example is that you know I was working on on an episode called ripple effect for staring at SG1 and usually when we sit in the room we come up with ideas.
 
 

 
Joseph Mallozzi: The the episode ripple effect involved um various SG1 teams from alternate realities coming to our reality and then us I think teaming up with a team from like the black universe. We call them the black universe because they were the black uniforms who were after I think I don’t know what they were I I forget what they were after but but we had we had beaten out the episode meaning you know uh the writers sit in a room and and basically break down the episode scene by scene and there’s a a twist at the end where our team has to turn the tables on you know black uh Stargate SG1 and we couldn’t figure out how to do it and then I went off and wrote the outline and I didn’t know how to do it. Then I I sat down and wrote the script. I’m like, I don’t know if I’m going to know how, you know, when the time comes, is it going to come to me and magically somehow it came to me and I found the solution. It’s like um uh the time loop episode in Dark Matter.
 
 

 
Joseph Mallozzi: We tried to break that episode in the room for like days and we couldn’t do it. And then I just sat down one day and pretty much the entire episode came to me. I just wrote it without an outline just in kind of in a white heat and it all fell together and it turned out to be the fan favorite and I don’t know where it came from. I don’t you know I there there are times when I’ve actually sat down and tried to write and I’ve gone days unable to write and then sometimes when I do write I’m never happy with with what I have and then there are other times when like you said it’s like magic.
Mark Bradford: Yeah. Yeah. And if if if you’ll allow me because I don’t want this to be about me at all, but if you’ll allow me on that.
Joseph Mallozzi: No, but please Yeah.
Mark Bradford: So, I um I wrote a bunch of books and they were all actually non-fiction, experimental psychology stuff. And then one day, my mind was unusually clear and it’s never clear because I’m always thinking about something.
 
 

 
Mark Bradford: There’s a um a cemetery by my house. I took a walk in the cemetery completely. And all of a sudden, I heard voices, not like crazy dead people voices, but like the conversation between the two main characters at the end of a movie.
Joseph Mallozzi: Mhm.
Mark Bradford: And I was like, “Okay, tell me more.” Like I like played out the dialogue, and I’m sure you understand completely what that is.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: And then I just started to write a poem in my head, like a sing songy kind of medieval poem d. And I thought, I can’t I got to go home. So I went home. I wrote this long piece of paper. And I looked at my god, that’s an outline for a book. And I ended up writing this fantasy, this epic coming of age heroes journey set a thousand years in this dystopian future thing. I’m like, what is this? And I wrote the whole thing and it just came out of somewhere like out of nowhere.

 
Mark Bradford: And then I ended up writing the sequel. And then I wrote the prequel because everyone was wondering what happened in those thousand years. And it was amazing. It was just and I and and I have no explanation for it and I never will.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: It was just the most amazing wonderful thing.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. And and you know, like I said, I I wish that I could find an explanation for exactly that because if it if if I could find an explanation, I feel as though I I would I would be much more successful. But the fact is, you never know when it’s going to hit you. And you know, sometime usually like when you’re doing something completely different, like you said, you were taking a walk. For me, it used to be when when I I would drive or when I was in the shower or when my ex used to talk to me over dinner, that’s when all the ideas would come and I would
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: run dialogue in my head.
Mark Bradford: Yeah. It’s almost like it it’s almost like you have to be occupied in a way, but you don’t need to give it your all of your attention. And then your your brain wanders and it feels free, like you gave it a license to do whatever the heck it wants, and it goes, “Oh, I can do that now.”
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: Um, and and I was so terrified when I started on the sequel to it because I ended the book midway.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: It was almost like the whole Star Wars thing where Star Wars is a self-contained movie but it’s part of a trilogy.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: It was the same the way that it ended up. But I was terrified to start the SEC sequel because I thought, well, this won’t work again, Mark. You’re not You can’t just sit here and continue.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah, excellent.
Mark Bradford: And and by the second chapter, I was right back in. And I felt even more comfortable because I was so the the first book was more of like you’re in a fog.
Mark Bradford: And that’s why I love Dark Matter so much because the the the viewer and the characters are in the same kind of what the heck is going on. And that’s how that book is is that it you know and again it rewards people for paying attention and not going please hold my hand too much.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: And so it was it was that way. And then the second one was more of an exploration now that you know what you’re what the universe looks like. And then and so it was is such a cool thing and I’m glad to be able to to relay that to you because it was amazing an amazing experience.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. Exactly the same way for me. Exactly the same way.
Mark Bradford: Wow.
Joseph Mallozzi: I think with a lot of writers as well.
Mark Bradford: Well, and and I also wanted to say thank you for being vulnerable about your experience with with with dark matter. Not everyone would talk about that, you know, about how you were sort of bitter and angry and how that made you feel because I would imagine most people who are humans would feel that way. 
Mark Bradford: People who are dedicated and invested in in their in in their story. So, I appreciate you sharing that. That’s that’s some pretty cool stuff.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. No, I I like you said, I I’m also tend to be very protective of my cast and crew. Um, and I I felt just the way it all went down, it was very disrespectful across the board.
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: So, yeah.
Mark Bradford: Right. Because because you’re also a family in that way, I guess, right? Like you’re Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: Oh, yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: And you’re and you’re you’re sort of the caretaker in a way because you’re what’s you’re again the glue.
Joseph Mallozzi: Mhm.
Mark Bradford: You’re the five. Was it five?
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I’m the five
Mark Bradford: You’re the five in the story. So that should be a good phrase. I’m going to say it and people like what are you talking about? So, um the speaking of like the um the family and the actors and things like that, it’s it’s probably very Is it different depending on the project and how you connect with them, communicate with them, um dialogue, stuff like that?
 
 

 
Mark Bradford: Does it is there different
Joseph Mallozzi: it. You know what it really depends on the actors. So, uh, as a showrunner, you know, I always told them I have a very open door policy. if anybody anyone could come up to my office and talk to me if they had any issues or wanted to talk things through. And each actor had a different approach. Now, we would have cast readroughs uh usually like a week before we went to camera. Uh and the reason most productions do that is is to uh ensure that all the cast has actually read the script. one, but two to uh hopefully uh push them to uh come, you know, if they have any concerns or issues with the script to come to us early so we can change it, you know, before we you get too heavily into prep uh rather than waiting for the last minute.
Mark Bradford: Mhm.
Joseph Mallozzi: And so it depended on the actor. So Roger Cross, who played six, wonderful guy, uh every time he’s in Toronto, we get together for dinner. 
Joseph Mallozzi: uh he after every um read through would come and sit in my office and be like, “Hey, can I say this? Can I say this? Why do we do this? We do this.” And that was great. Uh the opposite end of the spectrum was Anthony Lenkkey who played three uh who was a gunslinger and Anthony who I keep in touch with all the time as well. In fact, we were we just spoke I think last week. um he would basically come to set and he didn’t want to have big changes but he would always like to like try something new like instead of doing this as scripted how about we do this and I used to tell him do what’s in the script and then do a take where you do what you want to do I was g give him the creative freedom to do that and then uh Zoe Palmer who I’m supposed to get together with lunch with uh maybe the end of this this month who played our Android she would just text me she She would review the script.
Joseph Mallozzi: She’d be like, “Hey, and I have my questions.” And then finally, five, Jodell, um, Jodell Furland. She never had questions, never made any changes to her lines of dialogue, and always delivered the lines exactly as I had imagined them uh, when I wrote the script. And, and you know, for better or worse, actors will always deliver a line differently, but she was always dead on. Exactly. like I would I would imagine it or as you know just I guess she really embraced her character and in her mind her character was very much the vision I had in my mind of of this character this
Mark Bradford: So what do you attribute that to her ability to to do that? Like what? What I’m familiar with?
Joseph Mallozzi: this and I mean you know I this character was was inspired you watch Cowboy Bebop the the anime okay well the character of Radical Edward who’s this kid who’s kind of a kooky, you know, she’s very much, you
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: know, patterned after after Radical Edward, but a lot of like the these anime characters, kind of the kooky kid characters. 
Joseph Mallozzi: And Jodell herself is a huge anime fan. So, I think she got what I was trying to, you know, what I wanted from this character. So, she very much got that. And also, I mean, in terms of Jodell, um, you know, I worked with her very early on in her career. I want to say very early on, but that’s not true. She was actually, I think, 13 at the time. She’d actually been in in working in the business since she was actually being three. She always played like kind of a creepy kid in horror movies, but she played Princess Harmony in an episode of Stargate Atlantis. And I remember being on set with her and her mom, Valerie. Uh, and she just amazed me because she played this precocious uh, spoiled brat princess character, but Jodell knew all of her lines and she knew all of uh, Joe Flanigan and David Hullet’s lines. So, if they ever like stumbled over a line, she would prompt them. So, she knew everything and she was brilliant.
Joseph Mallozzi: And so, in my mind, it was 13-year-old Jodell Furland when I was writing the character. And then when it came time to cast, I thought, why don’t I get Jo, you know, the character we can play her a little bit older, um, you know, I’ll reach out to Jodell to audition. She did and she nailed it and she was fantastic. Um, you know, and it just kind of made Jodell was like 19 at the time. It’s very tough to cast a child actor on any show just because they’re kind of labor laws and they only have they can they can only spend a certain amount of time on set because they have to pursue their their uh you know their high school classes. I mean if you can find like a high school dropout wonderful then you’re set. But it’s very rare that that happens. So you know better to cast like you know 18 and over.
Mark Bradford: That’s funny. Yeah. So, that makes sense that sort of you that she nailed lines that sort of you envisioned her saying to begin with that were almost patterned after her in a way.
 
 

 
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: Okay. That’s I I have to say too that like she’s probably played one of the only hackers that are believable. Like hackers hackers in movies are just, you know, it’s sit in front of the keyboard and type a lot kind of thing, but they don’t really sell what they’re doing, but she could kind of sell it and just
Joseph Mallozzi: Oh, really? Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: just just such a neat dynamic with that. So very very cool.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: you mentioned um um uh screenplays and things too in a way that writing for TV and writing for movies. Um h have you and pardon me if I if I missed that you’ve that you’ve produced a number of movies but have you written for movies and TV?
Joseph Mallozzi: I have written features but nothing produced.
Mark Bradford: Okay.
Joseph Mallozzi: um ju just getting a film produced is just such a long shot. And to be honest with you, as a writer, um you know, you sell a script and then the director takes over and and film is really a director’s game.
 
 

 
Joseph Mallozzi: You know, you always see that directed by or a a Spike Lee film or a so and so film.
Mark Bradford: right?
Joseph Mallozzi: the writer um you know sort of the writer union um allows them to be on set to visit set but they’re not really treated very well and often they’re rewritten and uh but but TV is really the writer’s realm because as a writer you can work your way up to the showrunner position and become the boss something that you you that rarely ever happens in film Mhm.
Mark Bradford: Okay. I I I had a um I I had to try to see what it was like to write a screenplay. So, I decided to use my book to So, I had to rewrite my book again and it hurt my brain because there are things that you do on a screenplay that you don’t do in a book and vice
Joseph Mallozzi: Mhm. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: versa.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: like having like hearing someone’s thoughts in a book is is pretty normal.
Joseph Mallozzi: Mhm.
Mark Bradford: Uh but you know that’s a lot of exposition in a movie and like no one like I think of Dune the original Dune and how there was a lot of lot of you could hear the thoughts of people
 
 

 
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: and so for some reason that worked because it was an interesting movie but there’s so much that you don’t describe in some ways and so much you do describe in some ways and that I also learned that you
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: don’t tell people where they’re pointing their cameras. You don’t do any of that stuff in there.
Joseph Mallozzi: No. No. That that is all up to the director. It’s funny because very early on in my career as as most first time writers, you think, oh, you know, you know, high angle shot, then we go on to go to the bird’s eye and then the two shot. And I mean you can learn all that and it’s very interesting but you don’t want any camera angles on your uh you know in your script.
Mark Bradford: Yeah. In your in your script. Yeah. So, and in a book though, you have such you can completely control the attention of a person and what they’re experiencing, what they’re imagining.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: You can even you could even use um metaphors and and um you know comparisons to to get them to see something in a way that you can’t really do visually in in a movie.
 
 

 
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: So it’s a very interesting medium for that sort of thing. Yeah. Very cool. Do you um when it comes to creating and so the so you mentioned the writer’s room before just to just to kind of put a picture in people’s people’s minds when you’re working on a project let’s say if someone’s working as a writer are they typically one of many writers in a room is that kind of
Joseph Mallozzi: Uh if they’re if they they’re hired to be on a production, uh then yeah, they’re in writer room. So that’s what Paul and I did and all the other writers did on on Stargate is at the end of every season, we would we would gather and throw out ideas for the for the next season. And best idea wins and you just sit in the room for several days and you you spin or you beat out the story. You just put it up on the whiteboard and you break it down. It was five acts.
 
 

 
Joseph Mallozzi: You know, each act ends with that dun dun scene or moment that sends you off into the commercial, but is so compelling that, you know, you want to stick around and and see how things are resolved. And though each act is made up of four to five scenes each, and then you would, you know, break down each scene, what happens in each scene? Um, and then once you would have this out, this essentially a beat sheet, you would go off and flesh it out into a full outline. And then you’d hand it off to the writers and they would provide notes and you would rewrite it and hand it off back to them. They would have more notes and then you would head off to write your first draft.
Mark Bradford: Wow. Wow. That’s pretty set design and everything else you said you you’re involved in. Um, and I have to make one comment not to not to dwell on on on dark matter, but sometimes I thought, how big are these sets?
Joseph Mallozzi: Mhm.
Mark Bradford: Like like when they’re running through hallways, and I know there’s a lot of camera tricks you can do and you stop people and you around and stuff, but very very impressive sets on that show.
 
 

 
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: very like it made me think of like the next gen but even far far more impressive the Raza
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Yeah. Ian Brock was our production designer and he was absolutely brilliant. I love the look. The interior of the uh of the uh Laza looks more kind of Nostromo than than Enterprise and darker and a little bit of steam here and there. Yeah, we had we that one quarter that we just redressed and and so we were able to, you know, and kind of reposition the walls all moved and so we could just kind of transform the the halls into
Mark Bradford: Oh,
Joseph Mallozzi: different looks with different lighting as well and different kind of wall um you know textures. And it’s the same thing we did in Stargate. I remember Stargate the Detilus. We did this long I think it was like a two-minute walk and talk with uh uh Colonel Caldwell and I I forget who else. And and it was just they were actually going around in a circle, but the the way you know when they would pass through a section of the of the hallway, you know, the the the the crew would come in and and readjust so that by the time they came around it would it looked like a completely different hallway.
 
 

 
Mark Bradford: Oh, real time.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. So it it was it looked like like endless endless hallways on that bedless, but it was really just kind of that circular hallway that really only went one, you know, went around and around very it’s absolutely very important.
Mark Bradford: Wow. Wow. So, how how important is is music to you when it comes to the your creative projects?
Joseph Mallozzi: But I’m a guy who uh finds a lot of the time just music I find music is intrusive.
Mark Bradford: Oh, Mhm.
Joseph Mallozzi: Um, and I think a little goes a long way for me. Uh, Ben Pinkerton was Benjamin Pinkerton was our, you know, did the music, all the original music for Dark Matter, and I love what he did. Uh, Joe Goldsmith was a genius on on on Stargate and I love what he did. Um, but I just find a, you know, a lot of the shows I watch, the music is just so um, it it it just commands my attention when I want to sort of listen to the dialogue, you know, it it sometimes it it, you know, music is there to kind of at times sort of tell you how to feel, right?
 
 

 
Mark Bradford: kind of Yeah, it Yeah, I think I think Yeah, for me it’s kind of like the audio version of
Joseph Mallozzi: You know, uh, you know, or to kind of enhance the dialogue. Um, but a lot of times just so overt and in your face that it it just I find it distracting. So for me a little goes a long way.
Mark Bradford: too much handholding, like right like it’s like you said it’s telling you how to feel and it’s what it’s supposed to do and and I think I think Marvel movies are are a bit that way where they where
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: they tell you okay this is the good part and this is the you know you know and their and their handling of humor sometimes too and I know they get a lot of flack for that too that when
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: it comes to the humor sort of like breaking someone out of a out of a position that they’re in I think I think those are elements that they have in common with music so I’m a huge fan of
 
 

 
Joseph Mallozzi: Mhm.
Mark Bradford: of that kind music to begin with. Like I’ll I’ll kind of clamp onto something from a show and just like put it on my workout tape and I’ll just love it for like a week.
Joseph Mallozzi: Right.
Mark Bradford: And Dark Matter is one of those like they I found I found uh I found a YouTube video that just was basically the end credits of it. And I just that’s just such a fun kind of and and it’s and it’s interesting too because you actually teach yourself psychologically how to feel when you feel the end credit.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: It’s like like there’s that sigh and that expectation of oh my god what am I what’s going to happen in the next episode sort of thing.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: How do you, Speaking of that, um, how do you feel about like binge watching?
Joseph Mallozzi: Uh I Um, I have no problem with it.
Mark Bradford: Not you personally, but when people binge watch your stuff.
 
 

 
Joseph Mallozzi: I mean, you know, I often said, you know, people have sort of go back and forth in terms of serialized versus, um, uh, episodic. And for me as a creator, I love the episodic format because it allows you to, as I said, sort of set up and pay off along the way.
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: Um, you know, you know, one of the big arguments if they go back and forth is, you know, a lot of fans are upset because you don’t really see these 20 plus uh season sci-fi shows anymore. They’re either like 10 or 13 or six or eight. And you know, I tell them for me as as a writer, uh, if I was working on someone else’s show, if I was hired to be in someone else’s room, I would rather do like a 20 plus episode season because, you know, just more scripts to go around. As a creator of a series or writer, I think 10 to 13 is perfect for season. is just creatively that is like a you know a great kind of target to hit in terms of being able to tell a story over the course of a of a full season.
 
 

 
Joseph Mallozzi: As a viewer I like the six to eight episode uh format in that I don’t want to have to invest you know an inordinate amount of time on a show uh you know to to to get like a season under my belt.
Mark Bradford: Wow. So, so both Stargate and um Dark Matter I sort of found after the fact. I think Stargate was in its fourth season when I actually discovered it. Uh and it was such a bizarre thing for me because up until then I had never binge watched anything and I found it and it was such an amazing thing. I think it had just switched from sci-fi to another network.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: And that’s and that’s right when you came aboard with season 4, right?
Joseph Mallozzi: Sixth season SG1 um move to sci-fi. Yeah. Season four. So yeah, we Paul and I joined in the show’s fourth season and and the producers told us, well, we’ll do five more. We’ll do we’ll do one more season.
 
 

 
Joseph Mallozzi: season five and that’s what shows usually do and then we’ll be done and go our separate ways and then we heard oh you know uh sci-fi is going to pick us up for sixth season. were like great. And of course that was going to be the final, you know, final uh season and the show surpassed our expectations and we ended up getting picked up and then we get picked up for season 8 and then we get picked up for season 9. Then we got picked up for season 10 and you know and what I’m saying that every time, you know, we got picked up.
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: I always assumed this would this is the last season we’re going to do until the 10th season when I convinced myself we were going to come back for season 11 and then we did not.
Mark Bradford: You didn’t.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. Although we almost did. Uh, you know, I did I have mentioned before that Apple had actually reached out. This is, you know, when they were first establishing iTunes and they had reached out about the possibility of saving SG1 and doing a final 11th season.
 
 

 
Mark Bradford: Wow.
Joseph Mallozzi: Uh, and then Sci-Fi uh exercised a clause in their contract that prohibited uh MGM from pursuing other um uh uh homes. So we almost could have had another decision if not for sci-fi’s general spitefulness. So this is a sort of another uh you know mark against them, a black mark against them.
Mark Bradford: Yeah. Wow. Wow. All right. Very, very interesting. Very interesting stuff behind the scenes. So, because I picked it up after the fact, I went back and just started watching. It was like discovering something that you love and there’s four seasons already of it.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: like that was unheard of.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: So, I went out and I bought the DVDs at the time. The same thing with Dark Matter where I discovered that and I I saw your name on it.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: I saw I I saw um I I watched a little bit of it and and I thought, “Wait a second. I don’t know what’s going to happen.” Perfect.
 
 

 
Mark Bradford: Like, I’m like, “Please don’t let me run into anything, you know, because it seems like every um uh uh trailer for a movie now tells you the entire movie.”
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: Like in the olden days they’d tell you little bits bits of it, but now half the movies you don’t need to see.
Joseph Mallozzi: Mhm. Yes. Yes, it’s it’s it’s very annoying. I hate being so far ahead, you know, of the characters on screen. It was just driving me nuts. And and they used to sci-fi used to do that on SG1 all the time. We did an episode called The Curse where in in like the final, you know, you know, third act third act, you find out that Sarah Gardner, uh, you know, this this woman from Daniel Jackson’s past is really Osiris, a a god. and uh they reveal it in in in the uh promo and it’s kind of the same way when we we um the character of Carson Beckett was killed on Atlantis.
Mark Bradford: Right.
Joseph Mallozzi: Uh we brought him back and and it was the final reveal at the end of this two-parter, the kid two-parter where they break into a jail cell and they you know they’re shocked and it’s him and he’s like, “What took you so long?”
 
 

 
Joseph Mallozzi: And uh and that’s like the final scene of that that episode. And then they’re doing the promo for the episode and they were like, “You won’t believe the last five minutes.” And then they show it and I’m like, “Of course they’re going to of course they’re going to believe the last five minutes. You showed it to them, you know?” Yeah.
Mark Bradford: because you just showed it to them. Yeah. You won’t believe what we’re about to show you right now.
Joseph Mallozzi: I I just again I don’t want to go off on on sci-fi, but they used to do stuff like that. They just drive me crazy and and and you know their marketing department like I always felt like we never get they would never really market our show enough. It was the same with Dark Matter because we were an acquisition and uh and they would be like hey you know um we’d be like are you going to market the show at all? And they’re like yeah I mean is there something you could like tell us that could get the marketing like our marketing team excited?
 
 

 
Joseph Mallozzi: I’m like you know you know what could get your marketing team excited? Pay them. Tell them they’re actually working for a paycheck and if they don’t want to do marketing, you know, friendly fire them. That should excite them.
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: I mean, I can’t believe like they had to be excited. They have to be excited about something, you know, in order to properly market it.
Mark Bradford: Wow. Dang it.
Joseph Mallozzi: Market doesn’t really excite me.
Mark Bradford: Yeah. You think you think like step one learn about products, step two, get excited, step three, market, step four, profit. You know, that whole thing like, wow.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Yes. Yes.
Mark Bradford: Yeah. You know, it’s interesting. I think the average viewer has no clue that those are separate entities. Like, I remember years ago thinking that, why did they tell me that? Why did they show me that? And I thought, well, it’s not a they, it’s a it’s a it’s segment.
 
 

 
Mark Bradford: It’s the PE. It makes writers angry.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: It makes creators angry sometimes when when the marketers do that.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: And I remember reading something, I think it might have been on X, about someone involved in Marvel who was very upset by his story being revealed because of the trailer.
Joseph Mallozzi: Mhm. Mhm.
Mark Bradford: And he’s like, I told them not to put that in the trailer and it just gave away the whole thing.
Joseph Mallozzi: Mhm. Yeah, they won’t listen to you. The marketing department just like in movies. It’s it’s terrible in movies. They just, you know, want to get they think that that this will get, you know, seats in theaters or eyeballs on screen if you tell them as much as possible.
Mark Bradford: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s interesting too now about how how many ways people view things. They you know the actual theatrical release and the and the um you know re-releases and stuff like that and and series and then box sets and all that stuff.
 
 

 
Mark Bradford: So it’s it’s it’s interesting seeing how people consume things now and how that affects the way that they they market them.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: But so you’ve would you say you’ve always written sci-fi.
Joseph Mallozzi: I would say, you know, I grew up reading comic books and then my mother diverted me to sci-fi, actual novels. And so I grew up Yeah.
Mark Bradford: Oh wow.
Joseph Mallozzi: Uh, I’ve always I was always a fan of horror and sci-fi. I mean, a big fan of like the old Twilight Zones uh uh show and so, you know, I would write short stories uh when I was in high school, very much in the sci-fi realm. Uh, but most of my career, I like 350 of those 400 hours in my credits are are sci-fi. But having said that, um, I don’t watch a lot of sci-fi. I I enjoy watching horror. For instance, every October I do I try to do like a horror movie a day countdown through the 31 days of uh of uh uh you know of October and I’m three horror movies in so far. 
Mark Bradford: What?
Joseph Mallozzi: Um and uh but I love the crime genre. I’m also like almost like I’m about 225 books into my 2025 uh crime fiction uh uh release. Uh, but I don’t watch and I say 225 seems very impressive, but like a quarter of them I do not finish just because after a while I’m like I just I cannot um it’s just not very good. But I appreciate the books that are not very good much more the books that are mediocre because books that are not very good, you know, they’re not very good very very early on and you set them aside. The ones that are mediocre, you’re always wondering, is this going to pay off somehow or is is this going to turn around?
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: And more often than not, it doesn’t.
Mark Bradford: Right.
Joseph Mallozzi: You have to read the entire book to to come to that conclusion.
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: I’m also about 800 uh shows into this uh international crime binge I’ve been doing for like over like several years where I watched like every crime show um you know from from you know foreign language and and obviously from the US and u in the UK.
 
 

 
Joseph Mallozzi: So, if you need any recommendations for an Argentinian prison show, a uh a great Indian procedural, or a uh or a Dutch mob series, I’m your guy.
Mark Bradford: Oh yeah, I was just saying that. Wow. Wow. Okay, so Kohlshak the Nightstalker.
Joseph Mallozzi: Oh, yeah. Classic. Yeah. The best of both worlds.
Mark Bradford: Yeah. Yeah. That that really that just has such an aura to it.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: I don’t know. I don’t know why, but it just has it just it’s funny how some older television just has such a creep factor that you almost can’t attain now.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: It just it can just do even though like the special effects are horrible, but like it just has a creep factor.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Yes, there’s this there’s something about the 70s 70s horror in general that that has kind of that kit quality, that kind of luredness that is just deeply unsettling that, you know, I agree.
Mark Bradford: Lord, yes.
Joseph Mallozzi: It’s just, you know, not the same.
 
 

 
Mark Bradford: Yeah. and you can’t really attain it now because it just seems too overproduced or too clear like it’s too clear and it’s just it there’s not enough left of the imagination.
Joseph Mallozzi: No. Yes. Yes. Exactly. Yes.
Mark Bradford: So, I’m I’m really thrilled that you are on that page that you love to like give the payoff to your audience and you love to not overly handhold and things like that and your your um your outlook on
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Mhm.
Mark Bradford: music is fascinating actually that you it makes complete sense about how it’s intrusive. So, that it surprises me and doesn’t surprise me. So, I think that’s that’s a really cool thing.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. I mean, no, I I think it’s it’s it it’s absolutely it, you know, it really helps a lot. Like I said, Joe Goldsmith was brilliant on on Stargate. Um, but I mean, Stargate, I think, is a good example where we didn’t over, you know, overuse or, you know, oversaturate the episodes with music.
Mark Bradford: It’s a beautiful, right?
 
 

 
Joseph Mallozzi: A little went a long way.
Mark Bradford: And I and I think like especially what is it? Um I is there a um I think each character sort of has their own theme and there’s a Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. Yes.
Mark Bradford: And and when you hear the notes Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. Composers will do that. They’ll give each character their own theme, and it’s very subtle.
Mark Bradford: And you you once you get it, you get it. It’s just another one of those subtle things that once you get it, you’re like, “Oh, I get it now.”
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: And a Jack and Isn’t there like a Jack and Carter theme, too?
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: And that like what?
Joseph Mallozzi: I think so. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: That hits you really hard when that plays because that almost never plays.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Yeah. It’s kind of subliminal, but Yeah.
Mark Bradford: It’s It’s really It’s really hard. Yeah, that is uh really really good stuff.
 
 

 
Mark Bradford: Um, do you have an episode, let’s say, and this is just such a silly thing to ask you. Do you have an episode of SG1 that is kind of your favorite that you’ve Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: Well, the one I mentioned, ripple effect, was a favorite of mine. uh just because I you know I it’s it was I’m a big fan of um just general sci-fi concepts and I love the alternate universe concept that you kind of turned it on its head instead of us visiting the alternate universe which is what most shows do the alternate universes come to us in like you know myriad ways and again in terms of like a very satisfying um you know I love the fact that I was able to sort of figure out that plot point that it just kind of came to me whenever look back at that episode. It’s just as a writer very satisfying. And also, I mean, I I just kind of love the idea of the road not taking. This is something that alternate universes allow you to do.
 
 

 
Joseph Mallozzi: And so, that episode kind of allowed us to explore um certain aspects of the show that you would thought like story lines we had left for dead.
Mark Bradford: Right.
Joseph Mallozzi: Like literally like the Janet Frasier character came came back, the Mart character came back, you know, just and kind of like a a reward for longtime fans as well.
Mark Bradford: Yeah. Yeah. That’s and that’s what you can do. That’s what people look are excited about like alternate universe stuff where they do get to see how someone lived. And there was the the episode about the mirror. Um, yeah, to see where like they actually did get together and how sad that was.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. The quantum mirror. Yes. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: Uh, and because she still lost him.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: Oh my god. You know, to say to kind of give the audience what they want and then take it away and it’s just a because that whole the whole tension, the whole romantic tension is not an easy thing to do between
 
 

 
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. No. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: characters because you it’s like two magnets and you get them too close together and you’re like, “Okay, I ruined it.”
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. Yes.
Mark Bradford: Wow.
Joseph Mallozzi: Exactly.
Mark Bradford: and and I and I want to we’re coming up on an hour and I promised you I wouldn’t take more than an hour of your valuable time.
Joseph Mallozzi: That’s fine.
Mark Bradford: So So please uh don’t let me go any further if if you don’t have the time for it.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: But um I do I had a question about was it I think production of um oh that’s okay now I know it is this is a this is going to be an interesting question.
Joseph Mallozzi: No, please.
Mark Bradford: So the difference between science fiction and fantasy, simple question, right?
Joseph Mallozzi: Um, yeah. I mean, it’s it’s funny. I’ve uh over on X, I’m fairly active on X as this is how we got in touch.
Mark Bradford: You are.
Joseph Mallozzi: And I always tell like if you’re a first-time writer or you’re like a fan, get on get on X. I find X a as as a platform with all the respect to the other platforms just the easiest one
 
 

 
Mark Bradford: You absolutely are.
Joseph Mallozzi: to be able to contact creators and and and you know just interact with them and and you know comment on their posts and some are more uh willing to you know interact than others and and it’s just sort of a great way to sort of you know um you know interact with like with some of your favorite uh creators. Um but uh you know one of the things I’ve been doing is I’ I’ve been doing this uh spaceships. So, so basically classic spaceships and having you know uh fans vote on them and and I know I saw this kind of interesting discussion uh Moya was was up there from Farscape and I love Farcape and it’s interesting
Mark Bradford: Yeah. Yep.
Joseph Mallozzi: one of the one of the commenters was you know said something to the effect of you know I love Farscape but it’s not science fiction it’s really more fantasy and the way they broke it down in terms of sort of like you know the the things they explored and how they explored them he made a very good point to me it’s sci-fi but in his mind it’s fantasy fantasy uh for me I mean fantasy uh is is essentially without rules if you will and and I’ll kind of explain it and and I think science fiction at least has the grounding of theoretical science whereas fantasy is magic for the most part and nothing drives me
 
 

 
Joseph Mallozzi: like crazier than magic. I hate magic as a an element in any story because more often than not there are no rules to magic you know so I mean I I’m watching Lord of the Rings a great movie uh and it’s like why why doesn’t Gandalf teleport them out of the cave when they get into danger it’s like well Gandalf doesn’t know that spell oh well how fortuitous for the writer that you know he doesn’t know that spell so I I just I don’t I don’t know I I I find magic um unless there’s a very clear framework. It just I I find it a cheat and and it’s it offers opportunities for contrivances and and conveniences and storytelling. And that’s just something that I I personally find dramatically unsatisfying.
Mark Bradford: So very interesting that you say that because that that’s sort of how I felt too in that and then I kind of learned that there’s sort of hard magic and soft magic if you will and that the the
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: soft magic is that anything can happen because I’m the I’m the author and yeah, it doesn’t work that way or it’s never going to and the hard magic is more of you establish rules of that sort of thing.
 
 

 
Joseph Mallozzi: Mhm. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: I’m I would be more of a fan of like the hard magic thing where like no, you said this is the way it works so it’s not going to work that way.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: Don’t don’t change the rule now.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t care anymore.
Joseph Mallozzi: I need the rules. I need the rules.
Mark Bradford: Yeah. Right.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: I I need I need the rules and that’s why Right.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: Sci sci-fi is that way. In fact, that’s all people are doing and sci-fi is explaining. Well, the reason that this is because the plasma shield works this way and so on and so forth.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: So that does make sense because it feels it feels right. But um I feel like there’s still this blurry line with um sci-fi and and and fantasy at least where you know and it’s the whole you know any any sufficiently advanced civilization and and and so forth.
 
 

 
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: I get that. So there is a little bit of that. It’s just like with the um the Knox you know that was that was you don’t know you know and then you see the giant city and so forth.
Joseph Mallozzi: Mhm. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: So, you know, is it still magical or is it not?
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: Is it just super, you know, and typically we take sci science fiction and we assign it to objects? Like even like, okay, well, why are you able to do that?
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: Well, nanites, you can’t see them, but there’s nanites, you know, as opposed to I am I am superpowered.
Joseph Mallozzi: Right. Yes. Yes.
Mark Bradford: Even like, you know, Captain America had this super soldier serum, but that’s still science, but you could just say I took a potion of strength or whatever, you know, right?
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. Yes. Yes. Exactly. As long as there’s that scientific theoretical underping opinion, I will allow it.
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
 
 

 
Mark Bradford: One of the Yeah, one of the things that I think uh is kind of annoying even past that is the the author didn’t think past a few years like oh there’s this magic and and people float around with
Joseph Mallozzi: I give it a lot of, you know,
Mark Bradford: this thing. Well, if they can do that then you just ruin the economy. Like so if if they’ve had this for hundred years there’d be no animals anymore or whatever. Like they’ll introduce a thing and you’ll be and you’ll think there’s no sustainability, there’s no longevity with that. nothing would be like the way that you’re talking about it at all. So, that’s the part that really removes me out of a story. But, uh, I don’t read a huge amount of fantasy and while I was writing, I didn’t do that sort of thing. But, I you amaze me in that you seem to absorb and and and and gravitate towards so much fiction at the same time. And you talk about it on on X. You’re very active on X at the same time.
 
 

 
Joseph Mallozzi: Mhm.
Mark Bradford: You’re starting polls, the things with the ships and things like that. Um, I I think you shouldn’t sell yourself short because most people aren’t like you in your position.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: Most people on X um larger accounts usually cut and paste things and then they let people fight about it.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: But like you you actually interact with your audience and I mean I I mean it says so much about you that you it’s a big it’s a big kudo to you to to do that.
Joseph Mallozzi: Right. Oh, thank you.
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: But I got I have something in my eyes, so I’m not sure what’s going.
Mark Bradford: Oh yeah. No, I I I really got to
Joseph Mallozzi: But but yeah, I uh No, I appreciate uh I appreciate the fandom, you know, and you know, one of the things I always say about fandom is that, you know, it’s they’re amazing because they’re very passionate uh about what you produce. Um but it’s a double-edged sword, right?
 
 

 
Joseph Mallozzi: So on the one hand, if they love what you produce, uh you know, they’ll get behind you 100% and it just feels great. But if you cross them, you kill off a character or what what have you, they will cut you.
Mark Bradford: They will cut you literally.
Joseph Mallozzi: That double-edged sword, you know, they uh you know, they have very long memories.
Mark Bradford: Yeah. Wow. That’s that’s that’s true. Yeah. That that’s sort of a Yeah, you’re up on that high high place and can be praised or knocked over, I suppose, and roll down the other side.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: So, I’m glad I really got to you there.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: It really hit you emotionally.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. I’m I’m tearing up. I think uh at first I thought it was because uh I had something spicy or got sunscreen in my eye, but I think it’s actually your words are uh yeah, very emotional.
Mark Bradford: Oh, that’s Oh, well that’s very kind.
Joseph Mallozzi: Makes me very emotional.
Mark Bradford: That sounds completely sincere, too.
 
 

 
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: I really appreciate that. Well, well, very cool. Um, so I want uh Is there an upcoming project that you’d like to talk about at all?
Joseph Mallozzi: you know in this business as feast or famine. I was very lucky to work 12 years uh on Stargate and then well actually it was 17 years 12 seasons and then almost immediately followed that with Dark Matter for three years.
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: Uh and then I did another project which was a kind of a friends project. Uh and then since then I’ve just kind of been writing and going out and pitching. Uh, I’m not really interested in going uh and working on someone else’s show unless it’s like a friend of mine gets a show or unless let’s say Amazon calls me up and is like, “Hey, we’re we’re rebooting Stargate. We would love to have you come into the room and, you know, unless that happens, uh, I think I’d rather just keep, you know, kind of slugging away and trying to get my own project off the ground.” And
 
 

 
Joseph Mallozzi: and so I’m out with actually uh uh two three projects actually and and uh all three of them are actually in the crime realm. So uh you know again but but very much like what I do in sci-fi uh kind of quirky characters colorful characters the kind of undercurrent of humor. Um but uh again I mean who knows what uh what the future holds. Maybe something will land or you know maybe five years from now when we do this again I’ll you know I’ll tell tell you I you know I’ll be working on another string of uh projects I have in development
Mark Bradford: Well, I’m very encouraged that you’ve already agreed to appear again, but I’m disheartened that I have to wait five years.
Joseph Mallozzi: yes well maybe you don’t have to wait five years this has gone well so you know we could we could certainly do this again sooner than later no it’s it’s my pleasure Yes.
Mark Bradford: Oh, good. I’m glad. I appreciate that because I’d love to because you have so much to talk about. It’s so it’s so fun and I’d love to but I don’t want to take up too much of your valuable time.
 
 

 
Mark Bradford: So, I think it’s it’s so I would I would encourage anyone uh listening to this that uh to to definitely seek you out on on X and and give you a follow and uh and you’ll see that you’re very much interacting with people and you just it’s fun because you’re engaging people to ask their questions to to get to get answers to them and then you respond to their answers sometimes.
Joseph Mallozzi: Mhm.
Mark Bradford: I mean, that’s that’s crazy.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. I like to be honest with you, I was amazed. I I I’m I’ve I’ve gone through I think seven rounds of these four ship uh questionnaires and one round had Andromeda Ascendant, the ship from the series Andromeda, a show that I never watched that is totally off the radar as far as I’m concerned. And that ship overwhelmingly beat out some some pretty heavy hitters and and that really surprised me. So, I mean, I love doing these to find out sort of like, you know, where this where the sci-fi fandom is at.
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
 
 

 
Mark Bradford: Yeah. I think I’ve I saw two episodes of Andromeda. Actually, I made it through sort of like what’s really the the genesis of it and I was like, “Okay, now this is how it’s going to be.”
Joseph Mallozzi: Mhm.
Mark Bradford: So, that was I did like the ship.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: The ship is very pretty. So, I did like the ship.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: So, cool. Uh, any any other shout outs or anything you’d like to to mention to people since they’re we’re listening.
Joseph Mallozzi: Uh, no. Just come find me @BaronDestructo on X. I also have a blog, josephalasi.com, where I blog. I’ve been blogging every day. uh since 2007, back in my Stargate days. So, usually when I’m in production, most of my blog will have to do with whatever show I’m in production on. I’m I I’m kind of the antithesis of a lot of producers and that a lot of producers like Star Start Trek, God forbid you release anything about the show prior to uh you know, when it airs, whereas I’m the opposite.
 
 

 
Joseph Mallozzi: I unless it’s a spoiler, I love to get like get the fans excited about stuff. So I I I posted ship designs and and you know uh uh sketches and you know behind the the scenes uh stuff uh for all my productions. So when I’m in productions or gearing up for production and post that’s what I usually blog about. When I’m not I will blog about everything from for inance the horror movies I’m watching now to the crime books I’m reading to uh you know uh videos of my of my pugle sharks.
Mark Bradford: to food.
Joseph Mallozzi: Uh so uh you know anything goes.
Mark Bradford: Yeah. I’ve even seen posts about food where you ask about soups and pizzas and things like that.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: I’m a I’m a foodie as well.
Mark Bradford: That’s what’s very very very impressive. So again, I want to I want to keep my word. So, it’s been about an hour. So, I’m thrilled that you were able to make it and thank you.
 
 

 
Mark Bradford: Thank you for the the the the cander. Uh I appreciate that very much, too.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for having me. This was a lot of fun. Where are you, by the way, Mark?
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: Where are you situated?
Mark Bradford: Oh, I’m in uh Wisconsin.
Joseph Mallozzi: Wisconsin.
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: Excellent. Should I ever find my way in Wisconsin? We have to do dinner.
Mark Bradford: Please, please, let’s do dinner.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: I would love to do that.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: Yeah. And you’re on the East Coast?
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. I am I’m in Toronto.
Mark Bradford: Toronto.
Joseph Mallozzi: Toronto, Canada.
Mark Bradford: Oh, very nice.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: Very nicely done.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: Okay. I would love that. Let’s Let’s do that, please.
Joseph Mallozzi: Excellent.
Mark Bradford: All right.
Joseph Mallozzi: Good luck to your Packers.
Mark Bradford: Well, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
 
 

 
Mark Bradford: Thank you again for for joining us and take care of yourself.
Joseph Mallozzi: Nice work. Bye.
Mark Bradford: Thanks. Perfect. Thank you so much.
Joseph Mallozzi: Excellent.

Have you ever noticed that when there’s something you really, really love and really speaks to you that when you look at the backstory for it, the person that created it said that they “selfishly” just made it for them?

Here’s why selfishness, like the comfort zone, gets a bad rap it doesn’t really deserve

Selfishness, like the comfort zone, takes a lot of crap.

Well, hey there. Welcome back.

Have you ever enjoyed the work of someone else and thought, “Man, this this really speaks to me. I I love it’s like perfect for me. It’s it’s really well done.” Or you think, “I I couldn’t like this more.” And that can range from anything like a a creative work or movie or or a book or even the way somebody took care of your plans. Have you ever noticed that more often than not when you follow up on this stuff, you hear someone say the phrase, “Well, I kind of selfishly did it for me the way that I would like to have it done.”

So, let me go off on a side quest and continue. So, I had been thinking about the to-do list, and I have a lot of holy grail quests myself, and one of them is the to-do list. It’s one of those things that not sure if you can ever attain the perfect to-do list. It’s something everyone needs. It’s something everyone uses in one way or another, whether it’s on a piece of paper or planner or digitally or in their brain. I missed the days of having a Franklin planner in which you would have this little book and you’d have your to-do lists among other things and then at the end of the night the ones that you didn’t check off you would flip the page and you’d transfer those to the next day and then you would actually sleep through the night. Having recently created my behavioral mapping software that I can use in really cool ways that’s currently patent pending, I had the confidence to sort of do something else. So, I thought, I’m going to make a to-do list. So, I did. I made a little app for to-do list that looks great on my phone and and my desktop. I thought selfishly, what do I want to do since I’m the only person that’s going to use this? I want to do color coding. I want it that when I check something off, it automatically doesn’t go to the next day. I want everything to go to the next day that I don’t check off to be super easy and super frictionless to use. No real login and blah blah blah. So, anyway, I did all that. I ended up showing it to a couple people and a few of them were really interested in using it. So I built it in such a way that multiple people can use it. Every time I described it, I said I selfishly made this for me. Selfish, selfish, selfish. I kept saying that because it was with me and only me in mind. Now is it extremely usable for other people? Yes. But it was made for me selfishly. And once again, it felt like one of those projects or things that someone does that people say, “Wow, that’s really great.” and it’s because it was done selfishly. Do you think that’s counterintuitive?

So, getting back off of our side quest, if you’re in corporate America, you may not have a lot of opportunity to do something selfishly. If you’re a probate attorney, you’re not going to be doing it with a lot of flare. If you’re laying down asphalt, there’s probably a specific way you need to do that. And plumbers going to plum. However, if you’re a probate attorney doing probate for your grandmother, you might spend a bit more time on something or you might throw out a rule and say, “I know that’s best practice, but not in this case.” If you’re a plumber, you may allow x amount of time because of a price to do something in someone’s bathroom. But if it’s your bathroom and your wife is going to be using this, you may spend an inordinate amount of time to make sure it’s absolutely right. You will selfishly do it. And not because you’re afraid your wife’s going to yell at you, because you could say, “I’ll just patch this up. It’s just it’s just family. It’s just my wife.” But because you enjoy the validation that you get for being good at your job and the validation you get for showing your loved ones that you are so good at this sort of thing and you take pride in it.

Selfishness like the comfort zone takes a lot of crap. There’s a lot of bad PR about both of those things that’s kind of undeserved. I understand what people say about comfort zones and obviously if someone is just simply selfish, yes, that’s probably a bad thing. But there are elements to both and you can check out the episode on comfort zones if you want to learn more. Feel free to pause now or listen to it after this. There are some really good things to learn on not avoiding something that has some really positive aspects. And this kind of selfishness is is one of them. I would ask you if there’s something in your life that you do that you avoid being selfish in the way that you do it. In other words, you don’t do it to absolute perfection or the way that if you’re doing it for yourself, you would do it and you get paid for that.

Ask yourself what the reason is that you don’t do that. And like my examples, you may say, well, look, it’s just not it’s not profitable in any way for me to spend 3 hours on doing something that I can typically get away with doing in 1 hour. And if it’s something you love, you would sort of do that anyway. And you’ll counter and say, “Well, yeah, Mark, I can’t go to the grocery store and say, I did something selfishly and I didn’t get paid for it. Can I have some bananas?” And they’ll say, “Well, of course, no. Please leave.” But there is sort of you’re sort of trapped between the book end of I really do enjoy doing this and gee, I really like eating. Right? And obviously there’s some variance in there. Obvious you get to a point with certain things where it’s all just a lot of gravy. And do you want more gravy or less gravy or or how much time and effort and time, energy, and perhaps resources you want to put into something to get it done the way that you like doing that.

We see people who do something for a while and they really start to adopt this attitude. The attitude of well I’ve kind of learned the way that I really like to do things and people really like the way I like to do things. Now a perfect example of people who are pretty much untouchable in this and can adopt that attitude from day one are people who are artists and when I mean artists I mean what people think of as an artist. Somebody who’s who paints, right? Someone who works in that medium. They they just they do what they do and that’s their style. Period. End of discussion. No, I’m not going to paint differently because you’re my sponsor. We don’t ever question that. We know that’s just the way this person paints. When it comes to books, movies, other creative endeavors, jobs, and so forth, well, we sort of become a bit more skeptical on that. We’re a bit more critical on that. But it is where words like artisan come from, right? We know it’s somebody who took their time. They did it the old timey way, and it’s going to be done well. and we’ll probably have to pay a lot more for it. Like the places you go for your craft beer and your $35 hamburger, your 3ml metal container of ketchup.

It’s an interesting guide, isn’t it? If you allow this selfishness to guide your productivity and your creativity, it may take you in a very interesting direction. It may start to be selfiltering. You may say, “Well, the things I really want to do the way that I want to do them are not particularly profitable. So, I have to find a different way to do it or I have to get people to pay a lot more for this.” You may end up actually forking in the road. It’s really none of my business. And having your standard way of doing things and then you have your selfish way of doing things and you may throw on a label like premium or elite or or you only do that for a handful of clients or or whatever, right? But you may actually have two different ways to do something. That’s not a bad thing. That’s an explorative fun thing that you can do with your skills and should. It can be the same way for you moving up the ranks in what you do. You’ll get better and better at something. You’ll become more meticulous and you’ll be in a position to do something the way you want it to be, which may be commanding an entire team or legion of people to do things the way you’d like them to do.

So many mission statements talk like this, but in practice, it doesn’t really work that way. But it can for you and it depends on what your perspective is and it depends on you really taking stuff like this to heart. Maybe all the stuff that you selfishly do is stuff that is not part of your career calling or job. It might just be the way you cook for your family. It might be the way you vacuum. Or it may be the way that you write books and get raging undying fans because you do it for you. And that same selfishness is what they are experiencing. And that’s really when the magic happens is that someone feels the same selfishness you do for doing something. They enjoy it as if they are you. Think about that. Think about how powerful it is for them to feel the way you feel. When you’re like, I’m just doing this the way I look. I’m doing it the way I want to. I don’t care what other people want. I don’t care if this is the right or wrong way. It’s just my way of doing things. I can tell you I feel that way about my fiction and how I write dialogue, the way that I produce podcast episodes and write the articles for it and a bunch of other things.

The invisible barrier you must cross to switch modes and why it fools you into thinking it would take too much effort to complete a task.

Do you multitask? Wait, we we already covered this. In a previous episode, we talked about how energy is really the glue that holds together various multitasking tasks that when you switch between one and the other, there’s a certain amount of energy you have to expend. And the studies recently done add a lot of credence to it and that you’re really not getting more done. You’re in fact getting less done and not as well. So, anyone who’s multitaskked probably found this and and multitasking is one of those holy grails that I look for in my talk and podcast about something called do it to a fault, which is one of my fun acronyms and I love me some acronyms. I explain how people can connect two things together and get a couple things done at the same time. Now, that’s not multitasking per se because it’s really using two different brain systems. Having a conversation on the phone while you’re emptying the dishwasher is not necessarily multitasking because they’re two different modes of operation. Doing your taxes while you’re driving, well, yeah, that’s not a good idea. If you haven’t listened to that one, go listen to it. It’s it’s a good episode. Having said that, I want to talk about something related but different.

So, have you ever had something that you need to do and you realize you haven’t been doing it or you forgot about it and then when you remember it, you have a little bit of a a dread or a sigh. But if you examine how much energy it takes to do the thing, it doesn’t really take all that much energy. So, it’s almost confusing as to, well, why don’t I just do that? What you’re feeling is the invisible barrier of energy that’s preventing you from switching into that mode. And that’s kind of what we talk about in in multitasking is that there’s this energy you have to expend to switch and kind of clear your mind and say, “Okay, now I’m a chef. Okay, now I’m a mom. Okay, now I’m a corporate individual like a CFO and I have to speak a certain way and so on and so forth.” And we talked about that a bit in an episode about switching modes. So check that out as well. But getting back to this invisible energy barrier and and that’s what it is. You think about a task and you think, “Oh, well that’s not that.” And then you just kind of feel it. You feel that you don’t want to do that cuz it’s different. You’re in a different mode. And it’s not that it’s a bad thing. It’s not that you don’t even necessarily not want to do it, but our brains like to trick us and we think, “Oh, I’m only not doing that because my wife this is going to happen or this happens with my kids or I’m just so drained from this.” And and you’re not. You’re not drained from the thing because this might even be something that in a way might be rewarding, but you have to switch modes. And you can feel that energy of switching modes and it might be disorienting for you.

If you’re at work in a corporate environment and you’re in a conference room and your boss says, “Hey Janelle, be funny. Be as funny as you can possibly be right now.” And it’s a it’s a very somber, serious, financially oriented environment. As much as it sounds fun and empowering to just sort of be funny and be silly, it feels disorienting because you normally aren’t in this situation. And it feels like you’d have to push yourself into being funny. And guess what happens once you push yourself into being funny or being in this different emotional mode. You would then have to push yourself back out.

Something that might be a little closer to home is if somebody you’re working with is going through something. They’re going through a divorce or something horrible happens to them or or or somebody they care about and they kind of pull you into their world and you’re like, “Oh, that’s right. Tomorrow Denise is going to tell me about her her ex-husband or what she’s going through and it’s just so draining and I just want to focus on my spreadsheet stuff.” Now, just to clarify, you might very much look forward to going and grabbing some wine with Denise after work next Thursday to talk about all this nonsense. You’re you’re going to get into it. It’s going to get really juicy, but not in the middle of work because besides it being inappropriate, it’s also something that causes you to switch modes. Hit the wall of energy going in and hit the wall of energy going out.

Is this starting to clarify why some things are difficult for you to get accomplished to check off your to-do list? It could explain a lot if you are bouncing around between a lot of different things. And when I say a lot of different things, I mean maybe switching between being a single parent or an entrepreneur and somebody who wants to be creative and somebody who wants to get stuff done around the house and somebody who wants to be romantic for their partner and so forth. All of those are different modes. Each one of them has a barrier of energy that you have to cross over.

You’ve probably also noticed that the more willing you are to do a thing, so in other words, it’s something you really want to do. And in terms of my latest book, it’s a it’s a unicorn that’s pulling you to this pleasure. The more you want to do it, the easier it is to do it if you know it’s going to be a while before you go back. So, in other words, if there was something fun you wanted to do and you were going to kind of sneak it in like across your lunch hour, it would be hard because you’re going in and going out again. But if you said, “I’m taking a half day,” you’d say, “Oh, yes, take me. Finally, I can go and do that thing I want to do that I’ve really been looking forward to.” And the thing might be gardening. The thing might be cleaning up a closet, but it just might be weighing on you. And like again, it requires you to put your head down and to get into it. And those should all be key phrases for you. Putting your head down, getting into it, letting yourself go, being in a certain frame of mind. All those things mean the same thing. They mean that you are driving and adjusting your intellectual, emotional, and physical energy to perform this task to the best of your ability.

That brings up another subject to the best of your ability because you can push back and say, “Mark, I can switch things like this. I’m not like some crazily committed person to something as opposed to a committed person who’s crazy.” You say, “Look, it’s it’s you’re making a big deal out of it.” Yeah, I’m making a big deal out of it. If you like to do things shoddily, if you like to do things kind of phoned it in and say, “Well, that’s good enough.” Well, sure. Then you could switch all day long sucking up your energy where you’re still kind of half in one world while you’re half in this other world and you just kind of get it done. You could be inattentive. You can be that way for your parenting. You can be that way for your taxes. You could be that way for your relationships. You can be that way for your career. Yes, you can be fairly inattentive, but do you want to be? I don’t think so. Especially if you’re listening to this. I think you’re really someone who likes to hear new ideas, likes to better themselves, likes to think about what’s the best way to do something, and likes to think about behind the scenes, especially when it comes to getting things done and the fun of experimental psychology, which is really kind of cool.

So, what did we learn then? Well, as always, I try to raise your awareness and then I try to give you some homework or something that maybe you could do that that would help. And the awareness is that there is this invisible barrier between us switching modes. And the bigger the difference in the modes, the larger the amount of energy. We learned that if you want to go off halfcocked and or just not be so committed or just phone it in, then yes, you can kind of cross that barrier back and forth, but you’re not really doing a good job on either one of the things you switch into or all of the things you switch into. If you keep switching into 20 different modes all day long, that’s you’re just going to be burned out and you’re not going to feel good about anything you’ve accomplished.

So what we can do moving forward is be aware of this energy and then decide how we want to commit to that. And one of the tricks is that if there’s a mode that you know like let’s say gardening mode or whatever, right? And you’ve been wanting to do that but you just have to be in that that mood. You’ll find that once you get into the mode, it’s a lot easier to stay there. So if you have two or three tasks that are of the same mode, you’ll find that well I was already dirty outside, so I just went ahead and took all that stuff over but to the dump. Oh, okay. That’s shocking that we would do two things that are nearly identical in energy without having to cross a barrier. So you’re going to learn, you’re going to find and learn that that is going to happen as well. So welcome that. You know, maybe leave more time than you think you need to accomplish this thing because once you’re in that mode, you might want to stay in it for a while. And in general, it just becomes a more fulfilling thing. In general, it becomes very fulfilling if you decide that Saturday is your day for such and such. And you can leave your mode early and say, “Oh my god, it’s I was done by 11. I mean, the rest of the day, I just did other stuff I wanted to do.” But just keep that in mind when you’re accomplishing things. And as always, thank you for listening.

I appreciate you. If you want to talk more about this kind of thing and you want to engage me, feel free to click on my Calendly link or write me an email. And as always, take care.

I want to announce that my new book, my 10th, is out. It’s called BeCAUSE! the fundamental psychological building blocks that enable you to or prevent you from accomplishing anything, everything, and nothing. Check it out on Amazon. It’s only $9.99.

Do you know what your learning style is? Did you know you have one? For a long time I have known about the diferent ways humans learn. People not only have aptitudes (someone is good with mechanical stuff, or math, etc.) but also differ in the way they learn. Same resulting information, different ways of it to enter your head.

I truly wish we would explore this in the schools because it would make all the difference in the world for kids and people trying to learn. What I have come to recognize any time I am teaching (conversations, consulting, teaching, coaching, workshops) is that I can detect the style just by watching the person as they learn. Here are the styles I’ve come across and what I notice.

Audio – people who learn this way learn mostly by hearing the information. They are watching you, sure, but they focus mostly on what you are saying. These people may make facial gestures as they listen. They might seem to be staring at you. They really prefer audiobooks instead of regular print books. They might seem to be ignoring what you are putting on your white board. They are waiting for you to tell them something.

Visual – You hear this a lot – “Im a visual learner.” Obviously this means they are watching very carefully and pay most of their attention to what they see. So, your diagrams and text on the board is devoured. They will talk with their hands typically. I’m Sicilian so I do this anyway. Some teachers seem to think that everyone is one of these kind of learners.

Conceptual – The conceptual learner is really inwardly focused on what he/she is processing. I know when I am talking to one of this tribe because they tilt their heads and usually look up at the upper right. I know because I’m a member of this tribe. It’s sometimes disorienting for others as it looks like I might not be listening, or that i m doubting what they are saying. In a way they are right—I am testing the concept they are relaying with what I know, and creating it in my head to see. Conceptual Lerners tend to “take things to heart” immediately. They learn faster and harder, but will be quick to lose interest if they are not engaged.

This list is from experience, anectotal evidence, and a bit of research. Your results may vary, but knowing this can be very useful and not only help you communicate better but prevent misunderstandings between different learners.

Like the love langauges, people aren’t just one of these and can be a mix.

This podcast, unlike most, comes with an article typically. The article is written in an authoritative manner to make the reading and absorbing of the concepts easy. The recording is me speaking in a more conversational tone.

Maybe when I get more patrons I’ll start creating videos as well. They I’ll have all of y’all covered.

Q: Which kind of learner are you?

Q: Have you ever run into difficulty learning because it was presented one way and that way was not a style you favored?

Well, hey there. Welcome back. What’s this episode about? Who cares?

So, many years ago, I was with a few of my friends and one of my friends said, “What’s apathy?” And my other friend said, “Who cares?” And it took a little while to realize that he was actually answering the question.

As you may or may not know, I’ve written patent-pending software now that actually can help me to do behavioral mapping. It’s an offshoot of my latest book called Because. And I’m finding there are many, many offshoots of the whole concept of Because, which is based on Freud’s pleasure principle: seek pleasure, avoid pain. The software has allowed me to visualize all of these interesting concepts that might be kind of hard to visualize. And in doing so, it’s allowed me to see things that even I didn’t see while writing the book.

Let’s talk about your to-do list to make this a little clearer. You can create a to-do list and then you can assign priorities. You can create a to-do list and then you can convince yourself that the one you really want to do is the one you should do. I talk about this in one of the chapters. You’ve probably made many to-do lists. Some of them grand, some of them small.

But like most people, you don’t have a sort of a grand overarching to-do list. Like your life list, if you will. You can get complicated. And on that life list, you can have, “I’m going to climb a mountain.” “Here’s my bucket list.” “Here’s me finding love.” Here is, “Oh, that’s right. I have to get groceries. I have to cut the grass.” Like, all these things are to-dos, and some of them are of a grander scale or not.

If you think about your own list, there might be something that you keep putting on there, but you never do it. And so if we apply monsters and unicorns and we mapped it out, we could probably see that maybe there’s something painful about it, that there’s just too much pain that this thing generates and you feel like there’s no return on investment. Or there’s just not enough pleasure generated, or there’s not enough pain being generated if you don’t do it.

Let’s take an example. Let’s say you have an awesome life doing what you do. You have your full-time job. You’re invested. You have a career and all that stuff. And one day you’re thinking, “You know what, I wouldn’t mind writing a novel, a fiction.”

So, you put that on your little to-do list and you think about it sometimes. And once in a great while, you write a few words here and there. And finally, after seeing it on your list and looking back on the fact that you’ve been writing this novel for almost a year now and have almost nothing to show for it—you know, you never really made an outline, you don’t really have much in the way of the characters or any research or anything like that.

You look at it and you might realize, if you had access to the kinds of things we talk about here on the podcast all the time, “Oh, I’m afraid of failure. That’s so strong I’m never going to finish this novel.” Or, “I’m afraid I can’t write realistic dialogue.” Or, “I’m afraid it’s going to take too much time away from me,” and so forth. And we’re defining monsters and monsters and monsters.

But let’s say instead of that, when you do your self-examination, you’re like, “Well, I guess I could work on it. I don’t know. I just don’t care.”

Now, that’s apathy.

If you just don’t care, it means there aren’t any monsters and unicorns at all. There’s nothing that says, “Ooh, this will be pleasurable.” “Ooh, my friends will think better of me when I do this.” Or, “Ooh, this I’ll feel good because I’ll have accomplished something.” Or, “Oh, I’m afraid of embarrassment if I don’t finish it,” and blah, blah, blah. You won’t have any of that because you just simply don’t care.

You can be a fairly dynamic individual interested in a multitude of things, whether it’s improving skills or hobbies or creativity or what have you. And you can have things that you simply don’t care about. You can’t like everything. You can’t care about everything.

I don’t want to jump out of a plane. It’s not because I don’t care. It’s because I have a monster that says, “That’s going to hurt when you hit the ground.” And any unicorn that might be there that says how cool it would be to do that is really tiny compared to the giant monster that says, “The sudden stop is really bad. Don’t do that.” So, I’m not doing that.

I’m also not, for the most part, going to go to an opera. And there’s really no monster-unicorn waiting for me there that says, you know, “Don’t go, it’s going to sound terrible,” or, “You should go because it’ll improve your culture.” I just… I don’t care. And I know this is going to shock you, but I kind of feel that way about sports. I don’t keep up on sports and things. So, I don’t care how certain teams do or anything like that. And I know that’s shocking and I’m sorry and I apologize, but I’m kind of the same way with that, too. It frees up a lot of time, I’ll tell you that.

So, I’m apathetic towards going to the opera. I’m apathetic towards sports for the most part. But if I place something on my list and I look back and I eventually realize I’m apathetic towards that, I have to think about that. And you should too. You should also be thinking about the things in your life that you have apathy towards.

And by defining these things and defining what apathy is, as opposed to what it could be—which is laziness, or at least something you could define as laziness and say, “You know what, I don’t want to do that right now. I’d rather eat some chips. I’d rather go do that fun thing. I’d rather do that thing that makes me feel more productive.” Maybe it’s not even fun at all. “I’m going to put in an extra hour of work,” or, “I’m going to go help my friend move instead of doing that thing because of your value system.” Your monsters and unicorns tell you that’s the thing you want to do.

So that’s about prioritization and, again, seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, but not being indifferent or being selectively indifferent. When I say I’m not particularly interested in sports, I’m selectively indifferent to it. It’s just not something that turns me on. For the most part, I can be dragged to it. It’s fine. Not something I seek out. Like a million other things in life that we don’t seek out. We just don’t seek it out.

I’m trying to drive home the point of how important it is to sort of look inwardly and say, “Am I being lazy or am I being apathetic?” So before we go any further on anything, that sounds like really good homework to have. Are there things in your life that you’re thinking, “I thought I was going to do this by now. I thought I was going to do this,” or, “Why am I struggling so much to get this off the ground, change careers, what have you?”

There’s probably a bunch of things in your life that you’d either like to do or can’t do, and it might be disappointing you.

And here’s the thing. If it’s something that you’re not doing and you should be doing and you really want to do it, but you have some monsters and unicorns in the way, well then that’s something we can get through. And if you read Because, you’re a lot smarter on how to get through that. But if it turns out to be selective indifference, chosen apathy, well, that’s a win. Because now you can stop beating yourself up. You can stop giving yourself a hard time because you’re not doing that thing. “Well, I just don’t… I’m not… I don’t care.”

Does that make sense?

But having said all that, I have to raise one other little flag. If you find that you have apathy, whether it’s selective or not, towards a lot of things, and you have for more, and then more, and then more… well, that’s going to be a problem. And that is a problem for a lot of people. They end up having a lot of that selective apathy towards a lot of things, and there really is, unfortunately, no limit as to how much apathy you can have. And it’s very sad.

I don’t want anyone to have to experience that. I want people to live vibrant lives. I want people to have both the pleasure and the pain because that’s what makes us human. It’s what makes failing still feel better than nothing, because you’re feeling something as opposed to feeling absolutely nothing.

And there are things that can put us in this state. There are protective things. There are things that our psyche does to put us in a state of apathy sometimes. But again, that’s not really apathy, is it? It’s avoidance based on the pleasure principle. It’s based on the monster and the unicorn.

So, if you have something that you think you’ve been wanting to do, but you’re not… If you’re, as they say in the industry, “stuck”—I hate that; check out a number of my podcasts on that. Reach out to me. Maybe we can even work together, because I want to see you pursue that thing.

And it’s okay if you stumble because even the stumbling can show the direction that you’ve been going, and you should be proud of yourself.

So take care of you, and remember that you matter.

I’m going to ask you a simple question: Are you available right now? Of course, you’re listening to this, so your immediate answer is “yes.” But are you?

For years, I’ve talked about the constant negotiation between our time, energy, and resources. Today, I want to zero in on a nuance that seems small at first but has massive implications for our work, our relationships, and our own well-being. It’s the difference between being merely present and being truly available.

Think about a typical corporate scenario. You ask Mike and Sarah from HR if they are available for a 3:30 meeting, and they agree. They show up. They are physically in the conference room or logged into the video call. They have made their time available. But is their energy available?

You know what I’m talking about. You see the vacant nods, the lack of retention. On a video call, you see the tell-tale white glow on their face from another screen or the reflection of scrolling text in their glasses. They are physically present, but their energy—their focus, their mental capacity—is somewhere else entirely. Maybe Sarah has a problem at home, and her mind is there. In that case, no matter what her calendar says, she’s not really available for your meeting. The time is there, but the energy isn’t.

This becomes even more obvious when you’re a speaker or a teacher. You can have a room full of people who showed up for your 10 a.m. workshop. Their time is committed. But you see them fidgeting, looking at their phones, their minds clearly elsewhere. Their energy is being siphoned off, and as a result, they aren’t available to receive what you’re trying to give them.

This concept doesn’t just live at the office. It follows us home. You and your spouse might set aside two hours to sit in the same room and “spend time together.” You are technically available, right? But if you’re staring at your phone or have your laptop open, and every question they ask is met with a distracted, “Huh? What?” then you aren’t available for them. You’re available for your screen. Your energy is flowing toward your device, not your partner.

This is why an activity like playing a video game together can feel so connecting. You are both intensely available for the game, which means your energy is focused on the same goal. You are, in fact, available for each other.

This brings us to the most crucial relationship of all: the one you have with yourself. How often are you truly available for you?

This isn’t some esoteric concept. It’s profoundly practical. You might think, “I have free will. I’m always available for myself because I choose what to do.” But that’s not how life really works. How often have you committed to a task at work, but your brain is already on vacation? Or you come home from the office, but you haven’t mentally clocked out?

That drive home used to be a forced decompression period. For many who work from home, that buffer is gone. It takes a microsecond to walk from the “office” to the kitchen, but your mind is still at work. You are home, but you are not yet available for your family or for yourself.

Life is full of things we don’t plan for—a spill, an emergency call, an accident. That lack of availability is often the root cause of problems. A driver fiddling with their phone isn’t available to pay attention to the road, and the result can be a crash. At home, not listening to your spouse may not cause a physical accident, but it creates a relational one over time.

So, how do we fix this? It starts with awareness and is followed by self-control.

Being available for yourself means taking a breath and asking: What do I want to do right now? What do I need to do? What would make me happy?

In my new book, BeCAUSE!, I talk about the “monsters” (things we do to avoid pain) and “unicorns” (things we do to seek pleasure) that constantly pull our energy in different directions. When we live in a purely reactive state—bouncing between avoiding the boss’s anger and chasing the thrill of completing a project—we leave no space for ourselves. We become robots, always on, with no room to look up and ask, “Wait, what’s going on in my life? What do I really want?”

To become truly available, you must first create that space. You have to be willing to put your head up and check in with yourself. You must become available for you first. Only then can you genuinely offer your energy and availability to everything and everyone else in your life.

Thank you for being available for this message—not just with your time, but with your energy. The people who get the most out of this are the ones who truly engage. If you make yourself available for ideas like this, I’m sure you also make yourself available for yourself. And I hope you continue to do so.

Well, hey there. Welcome back. Hey, are you available for this podcast? Well, of course you are. You’re listening to it, right? Or are you?

Let’s talk about this whole concept. I’ve talked about time, energy, and resources so much. You can pretty much recite that. What I’m about to talk about is one of those things that when we look at it in its native situation, it may seem that I’m just being overly nuanced, but when we transfer it to a different situation, it becomes blatantly obvious. And I love that.

If you work in corporate America and you have to pull someone from another team or department or what have you and you’re like, “Hey, are you available at 3:30 for just a half hour meeting?” and they say, “Sure.” And so then they show up in the conference room or even, god forbid, on some sort of video call, they’re available, right? Well, their time is available, but is there energy?

And this is the nuanced part because you may say, “Well, yeah, I I met with Mike and Sarah from HR and they were available from 3:30 to 4 and we talked about whatever it is we talked about.” But if you find that there wasn’t a lot of retention or there was just a lot of nodding, or if it’s a video call, as you may be very well unfortunately aware of, if their face lights up with, suddenly lights up with white or changes or you can see things in their glasses, then you know they might not really be available. And you know what I’m talking about. Their energy is going somewhere else or it’s focused somewhere else. Or they may actually be in a meeting with you, but because Sarah has an issue going on at home, her mind may be elsewhere. And if her mind is elsewhere, her energy is elsewhere.

Let’s make it even less nuanced. If you’re teaching a class of 10 individuals, say a seminar or you’re giving a a talk or or what have you, say it’s a 1-hour, a 1-hour situation, whether it’s a workshop or a class or something, everyone who shows up at 10:00 a.m. for the 10 to 11 class is available, right? They they’re spending their time with you. Do you see how I paused there when the nor next word was going to show up? If people are fidgeting or looking at something else or they have their phones out, well, they may actually not be all that available for you. And it can be very frustrating as a speaker or a teacher that your students aren’t actually available for you. They’re physically there. They’re spending their time with you, but their energy is somewhere else or their energy is being siphoned off by something else, or they can’t seem to focus their energy on you. Obviously, if this same issue is affecting the actual teacher, then it can be very clear to the students that this person, they’re just not all that interesting to listen to. They’re just, “I I don’t get what she’s saying.” You would say, “I I I I’m trying, but you know, she’s not all that available because she’s focused on something else.”

This concept doesn’t just apply to your work life. And as you know with time, energy and resources and most of, most if not all of the concepts we talk about, it applies to you as the whole. And part of the whole is your non-work life. So if you’re available for your spouse, you know, you’re sitting in the same room for 2 hours, that’s being available, right? But if you’re staring at your phone or the time that you want to spend together watching a movie or talking or even sort of having that quiet we’re-just-existing-together time is always with you with your laptop open, and every time he or she asks you a question you go, “huh? huh? what?” and you have to switch gears from what you’re actually doing, then you’re not really available for them. You’re available for whatever it is that you’re doing. If you guys are playing a video game together or something, then you’re usually intensely available for the game, which means in fact you’re available for each other.

This availability affects everyone in your life, including someone who’s always with you. You. How often are you available for yourself? Oh my god. Is this like some weirdly esoteric concept or does that make immediate sense to you? Well, you may ask, “Well, how can I not be available for myself? I I have free will and I decide I’m going to work on work or play or this or that. Whatever it is I’m doing, I’m available for.”

Yeah, but that’s not how life works. You may commit to being available for work, but you’re just not there. Your your your brain is somewhere else. Especially people who go on vacation, you know what it’s like a couple days before vacation, they were already there mentally, right? Or someone who has trouble at home or someone who brings their work home with them. They don’t decompress from work. And I talked about this many years ago when we went through the lockdowns and all that fun stuff on how the disadvantage of someone who works at home is that it takes them a microsecond to work from their home office into the kitchen and to the rest of their house as opposed to someone who has a drive home. And the drive home is usually the decompression procedure. So, if you don’t get the decompression or you don’t participate in it or you don’t actively do it, you may come home and you’re still at work. You’re still there. You’re still on.

But back to you again. You may think, “Well, I’m always available for myself because I choose to do this, that, or the other thing.” Except we don’t choose to do this, that, or the other thing. How much of our lives realistically in a normal life is really you doing exactly what you want to do at every single moment? I would submit to you that even the most planned out, even the most prestigious life that you could live would still include things that you hadn’t really planned on doing. I mean, sometimes you spill something. Sometimes you get an emergency call from your kids or your spouse or what have you. Some there’s an accident, whatever it is, at some moment you may not be doing exactly what you want to do. In fact, it’s that lack of availability that is the cause of a lot of accidents. People weren’t there. They weren’t available to pay attention and drive. They’re fiddling with their radio or they are messing with their phone or they’re texting while they’re driving or they’re focused on something else and then boom, they’re in an accident. You don’t get into an accident, per se, at home because you weren’t listening to your husband, but it does eventually get noticeable when you always have to say, “Huh, huh? Yeah, yeah, that sounds great,” every single time there’s a conversation.

And let’s go back to ourselves. Being available for yourself means you truly take a breath and say, “What is it that I want to do right now? What is it that I should do? What is it that I need to do? What would make me happy?”

And we can talk all about the monsters and the unicorns if you’re familiar with my book Because which just came out. Thank you. And that how they pull you in different directions all the time. The pleasure of completing a project or the pain of thinking about being late or how you have to deal with your boss can very much make you not available for your spouse and yourself. You may decide to do something fun and your brain is somewhere else.

There are ways to get yourself to be more available for yourself, but it comes down to having a certain level of awareness and self-control. And I guess that’s probably what most of these podcast episodes boil down to. The awareness first and then the control of working with what we just became aware of. There’s a chapter in Because that I use magnets as an analogy of the pushing back towards the monsters and unicorns in your life and that if you push them too far, you’re just sort of floundering and existing. And if you let them slam together, there is none of this between space in which we can kind of take a breather because all we’re doing is reacting between seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. And we’re just like a robot. It’s we’re always on. We’re always doing that stuff. And there’s never any space to grow or to put our heads up and go, “Wait, what’s going on in my life? What is this? What do I really want?” And you have to do that first before you even say, “Okay, I’m just going to be available for myself.” You have to kind of put your head up and go, “What what am I doing here?” And you have to be available for you first and then available for everything else in your life.

So, first of all, thank you for being available for this episode. And if you truly are available for these episodes, meaning you are committing energy to it, and you can commit all the brain power energy you want while you’re cutting the grass or emptying the dishwasher. It’s two different brain systems. And I covered that in another episode. But in doing so, you will get the very most out of these episodes. And I can tell because the people who communicate with me, the people who have the comments, the people who actually reach out to me, or even people that I happen to know that said, “Hey, I caught your last episode.” Those are people that made themselves available for the podcast. And if they make themselves available for the podcast, I’m pretty sure they make themselves available for themselves.

I hope you do, too. I hope you enjoyed this. And as always, you’re important, and I appreciate you. Thank you.

In the world of productivity and time management, we’re often told to optimize our calendars and to-do lists. But what if the single most effective habit of top performers isn’t about complex systems, but about one simple principle? A fast “no” is always better than a time-wasting “yes.” This core idea reveals the true CEO mindset—a way of thinking focused on decisive action that has nothing to do with your job title and everything to do with reducing stress and reclaiming your time.

You might think that world-renowned authors, tech luminaries, and presidential candidates are the hardest people to schedule. The reality is often the exact opposite. The common thread among these high-achievers is their ability to make a decision—and make it fast.

When presented with an opportunity, they don’t leave it lingering in their inbox. They respond with a definitive “yes” or a respectful “no,” often within days. This isn’t because they have more free time; it’s because they have mastered their time by eliminating indecision. People who are hard to pin down are often drowning in a sea of non-committal “maybes,” a cycle that creates more work and anxiety for everyone involved.

Every task you put off—every email you promise to “get back to”—occupies valuable mental real estate. This constant loop of unfinished business is a major source of hidden stress. It’s like having too many apps open on your phone; eventually, everything slows down.

Conversely, taking immediate action, whether it’s tackling a task or simply scheduling a firm time to do it, frees up that mental space. The goal isn’t necessarily to do everything at once, but to decide its fate immediately. By converting a vague “I’ll do that later” into a concrete calendar event, you give your future self a clear command and your present self the gift of peace.

Adopting this leadership mindset is straightforward. The next time a request or task comes your way, you have two powerful choices:

By becoming a decisive person, you’ll find that the stress leading up to a decision was always the worst part. You’ll accomplish more, feel better about the commitments you make, and finally gain control over your most valuable resource: your time.

A fast no is much better than a time-wasting yes.

Well, hey there. Welcome back. It was a good decision for you to come back. See what I’m doing there? Now that we’ve passed 300 episodes, I want to give you a little behind-the-scenes look, which I think applies to everyday life. I want to apologize in advance that I’m about to use a word I hate using, and that is mindset, but it actually applies here. I want to talk about the CEO mindset, the leader mindset, the decision-maker mindset, and it has nothing to do with your position. It has to do with your, well, mindset.

So what does this have to do with my experience? I have interviews on this show periodically. I put a lot of effort into selecting and approaching people that I think are very interesting, dynamic, and can present something to my audience that’s unique and from a perspective that you won’t see anywhere else. I’ve been fortunate to have discussions with world-class musicians, presidential candidates, brilliant minds, famous authors, and technical luminaries. In addition to that, I have people that you may have never heard of, but I think they have a story to tell.

While all that’s going on, I am typically turning down people who are applying to be on the show because I need to act as a filter for you.

Do you know the one thing that the luminaries and world-renowned people have in common? I know that sounds so clickbaity. “The one thing these people have in common… you’d never guess.”

It’s their ability to make a freaking decision. That’s it.

That’s the one thing I think they all have in common. They have an ability to make a decision and they have integrity backing that up. The statistics are the opposite of what you would think. The people with the CEO mindset are the people that just get it done. We get it done because they can make a decision, stick with a decision, and be honest about the decision. And sometimes that decision is no.

When the decision is yes, they act upon it and they have control over their schedule. I will tell you it’s almost always days. Yes, days between contact, acceptance, and recording. That sounds insane, right? You would think the high-level CEOs are the people that are the hardest to nail down.

I have found that the people that are hard to nail down are the people who simply aren’t being honest with you, or they’re so bad at controlling their schedule that they just react to whatever is making the most noise. That’s a terrible way to live. Putting things off creates more work for you.

I did an episode about how doing things quickly when they come to you actually frees up a certain memory space, which feels like less stress. You can get to the point where you have these little mini-panic attacks and go, “Oh my god, I forgot… oh wait, no, I didn’t. I did it immediately.” I’m so used to thinking, “I’ll take care of that later,” that when I handle it right away, I later think I’ve forgotten it.

Think back to school when you were given a month for a project. Most people wait until the last few days because they become motivated by pressure. Well, imagine if you do it immediately. On the 28th day, when everyone else is panicking, you might panic too, thinking you forgot, but then you realize, “No, I did it on the first day.”

I understand you don’t always have the time slot in your day to do something. You might be running around like a chicken with your head cut off. But there’s a solve for that, too. You can schedule it. You see the difference? We have control over our future selves. We can schedule it. That’s the whole point of a calendar.

Don’t believe me? Fine. I’ll name names.

Now, you might say, “What if someone’s busy?” Then you schedule for when you do have time. If you’re out of the country for two weeks, you schedule it for when you come back. People schedule things months, and sometimes years, in advance. Anyone who’s had a formal wedding knows you have to book a hall a year-plus in advance.

In all 300 shows, there have only been two instances of people who did the opposite. And I knew the second they agreed that they weren’t going to be on the show. And again, as I’ve said, a fast no is much better than a time-wasting yes.

These, of course, will remain anonymous. One person was the very voice of a certain appliance that you probably have. The other was someone who told me to contact them in a month. To the very day and almost hour, I contacted them and got absolutely no response. A simple “no” would have been great and would have saved a little bit of my time and theirs.

Do things happen? Of course. But in your life, you will find that the things you have made decisive decisions about are the things that cost you the least stress. The pain is in the stress leading up to the decision, not the decision itself.

No one completes a marathon because they put it off. While some songs and books may take forever to write, it’s typically the ones you dive into and make a decision on that get done.

When you become decisive and realize that time is not a big sandbox you throw stuff into, but rather a road in front of you that you place objects onto, you’ll have so much less stress. You’ll feel better about what you do, and you’ll even feel better when you say no.

I hope that was helpful. Thank you again for listening and don’t forget that I appreciate you. Take care.

(Outro Music/Lyrics)

How to get there? I think it’s different for everyone. Some of us need work, others need fun. Some of us need purpose to overcome. But try to do what you love when it’s said and done. Cuz there’s so many differences in each of us. Trust your gut. It can show you what you want.

New Book Announcement: BeCAUSE!

I want to announce that my new book, my 10th, is out. It’s called Because Cause: The Fundamental Psychological Building Blocks That Enable You to or Prevent You from Accomplishing Anything, Everything, and Nothing. Check it out on Amazon. It’s only $9.99.