Love Your Work

Ari Meisel (@arimeisel) created a productivity system out of necessity. He was suffering from a chronic and life-threatening illness that was so severe, he had no choice but to make the most out of every ounce of energy he had.

He took everything in his life and he applied what he now calls "OAO." He Optimized, Automated, and Outsourced everything he could. Through his own system, which is now called Less Doing, he was able to track the symptoms of his illness, and what triggered those symptoms.

This helped Ari work his way to a clean bill of health. He eventually competed in an Ironman competition.

I talked to Ari several years ago, after I first discovered the Less Doing system. That webinar conversation is available to Patreon backers of certain levels.

Now, as I am working on my next book, Mind Management, Not Time Management, I wanted to talk to Ari again. I realize that so much of what I've learned and developed over the past several years is built upon what I learned from Ari's Less Doing system.

If you're going to love your work, you have to do less of what doesn't matter, and more of what does matter.

In this conversation, you'll learn:

• Why does OAO – Optimize, Automate, and Outsource – have to be done in order. Avoid the common mistakes people make when they try to "scale up" broken systems?
• Ari says there are deep-seated psychological reasons behind why we procrastinate. What are some of those reasons? You might learn something surprising about yourself.
• You've heard me talk about weekly routines instead of daily routines on the podcast before. We'll dig deep into how Ari organizes his three-day, fifteen-hour work week. For example, why is Thursday his content day?

Photo: TechCrunch

My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays

Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays

About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative.

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Shownotes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/ari-meisel/

As the nineteenth century was turning to the twentieth century, Frederick Taylor grabbed a stopwatch. He stood next to a worker, and instructed that worker on exactly how to pick up a chunk of iron.

Over and over, Taylor tweaked the prescribed movements. Grip the chunk of iron in this way, turn in this way, bend in this way.

Once Taylor found the optimal combination of movements, he taught the process to other workers. Their productivity skyrocketed.

"Taylorism," as it came to be called, brought us leaps and bounds forward in productivity. Today, the remnants of Taylorism are ruining productivity.

After Taylor's intervention, the workers who were moving only twelve tons of iron a day were now moving forty-eight tons of iron a day. They quadrupled their productivity.

Only a few decades before Taylorism, most people's concept of time was more closely linked to the movement of the sun than it was to the stopwatch hand. The availability of daylight, the height of a stalk of corn, or the day of first frost that signaled the coming of winter, ruled the work of farmhands.

Many of Taylor's workers objected to having their movement so closely watched and timed, down to the second. Actually, more accurately than that -- Taylor's stopwatch timed according to the hundredth-of-a-minute.

But, "scientific management", as it was called, swept through the industrial world. Companies couldn't stay in business without adopting it.

The goal of Taylorism was to produce the most work possible in the minimum amount of time. As Taylor watched the movements of the workers, he was trying to reduce waste. He wanted each motion to be as quick and efficient as possible. He wanted each hundredth of a minute to bring the job closer to being done.

But, Taylor discovered there was a limit.

Logically, there's no point in a worker sitting idle. Logically, if the worker keeps moving iron, he'll move more iron than the worker who stops for a smoke break.

Intuitively, if you want to get the highest output possible out of the minimum amount of time, take your efficient movements, and fill all of the time with those movements.

But, Taylor discovered, it didn't work that way.

The point of diminishing returns

There's a concept in economics called the point of diminishing returns. We can see the point of diminishing returns in action if we imagine Frederick Taylor filling the yard of Bethlehem Steel with workers.

Imagine Frederick Taylor has one worker moving iron in the yard of Bethlehem Steel. Thanks to following Taylor's prescribed movements, that worker is moving forty-eight tons of iron a day.

Then, Taylor adds another worker. Now, the workers are moving ninety-six tons of iron a day. Taylor can keep adding workers, and the productivity in the yard will keep going up by forty-eight tons for each worker Taylor adds.

Until...

Until they start to run out of space. There's just not as much room in the yard for the workers to pick up the iron, and move it from one place to another. They get in each other's way, they run into each other, or one worker will have to wait for another worker to finish his job before that first worker can finish his job.

At first, it's not a huge problem. Taylor has merely reached the point of diminishing returns. The point of diminishing returns is the point at which each additional production unit -- in this case, the production unit is workers -- each worker doesn't return as much benefit as the previous production units did. The return is diminishing.

At some point, Taylor adds a worker, and doesn't get an additional forty-eight tons of production. He gets only forty. Like I say, it's not a huge deal. They're still moving more iron than they were before they added that worker. Their margins are high enough on the labor costs that they're still making more profit.

Now, let's apply this concept to a single worker. Only now the production unit isn't the workers themselves. The production unit is time. As Taylor filled the available time with motion, the output of a worker rose.

But at some point, Taylor hit the point of diminishing returns. As he filled the available time with efficient, optimized motion, at some point, the additional time filled didn't bring the returns that the previous units of time did. Maybe he tried instructing the worker to move three chunks of iron in ten minutes, then had no problem adding a fourth chunk of iron within that ten minutes. He could string together these ten-minute units, one after another. He could fill up a day with those units, and get the output he expected.

But then, at some point, moving an additional chunk of iron in that same unit of time didn't bring Taylor the returns he expected. In this case, let's say that number was five chunks of iron within ten minutes. Maybe the worker could keep it up for an hour, but soon the worker would get tired. Eventually, the worker couldn't move that fifth chunk of iron within a ten-minute unit. The worker got too fatigued. Taylor had reached the point of diminishing returns.

The point of negative returns

Let's go back to the steelyard, where Taylor is adding workers. At some point after the point of diminishing returns, Taylor isn't getting forty-eight tons of output per additional worker, nor is he getting forty tons of output per additional worker.

At one point, workers were waiting for one another or getting in each other's way once in awhile. But now the yard of Bethlehem Steel is nearly gridlocked. The workers are constantly in each other's way. They're getting fatigued holding the chunks of iron. Injuries are skyrocketing. Productivity in the steel yard collapses.

Taylor is way beyond the point of diminishing returns. Not only is he not getting the output he expected from adding an additional worker. That would be the point of diminishing returns.

Taylor has now hit the point of negative returns. He's now getting less output overall per additional worker. For each worker Taylor adds, he'll get less output than he would have if that worker had just stayed home.

Creative work is not industrial work

Scientific management is simple enough when you're moving chunks of iron. Simply experiment with the amount of iron moved in a given amount of time. Eventually, you'll find the right formula.

But creative work is different in a number of ways. There are three ways:

One: Some ideas are more valuable than others.

Two: It doesn't take time to have an idea.

Three: In creativity, actions don't link to results.

Some ideas are more valuable than others

First, some ideas are more valuable than others. Imagine you write two 50,000-word novels, in parallel. Let's say you work equally as hard on the first novel as you do on the second novel. You spend just as much time typing the first novel as the second.

The first novel sells zero copies. The second one sells a million copies.

They're both free of misspellings. They're both quality writing. Why does one sell a million copies, while the other sells zero?

If the performance of the traditional publishing industry tells us anything, it's that nobody has any idea why one novel falls flat and the other takes off.

But, you can know this: Not all ideas have equal market value. In fact, the difference in market value, for the same amount of work, can be infinite.

So, words typed, while a worthy unit of output to track if you're trying to convince yourself you're a writer, is not the only thing to optimize for. The quality of ideas matters.

Ideas don't take time

The second thing that makes creative work different from moving chunks of iron is that moving chunks of iron takes time.

Yes, all of the things leading up to having an idea take time -- we'll talk about that next. But the act of having the idea takes no time at all.

Neuroscientists can look at people's brains and give them a creative problem. The people can go from being nowhere near solving the problem, to solving the problem, in an instant.

Again, sitting yourself down and forcing yourself to come up with ideas is a worthy exercise. It will increase the output of ideas you have, it will build your skill in your craft, and it will increase the chances that one of those ideas is a hit.

But you may be just as likely to have that idea while not working at all. Remember Helmholtz's speech from episode 218, about the Four Stages of creativity? He said his ideas didn't tend to come to him "at the writing table."

The moment of having an idea takes no time at all. Technically, you could have nearly unlimited ideas in a given "production unit" of time.

Actions aren't linked to immediate results in creative work

Now, the third thing that makes creative work different from moving chunks of iron is that, in creative work, actions don't link to results.

By that I mean that if you grip a chunk of iron and pick it up off the ground, you have done work. You have moved that chunk of iron a little closer to its destination.

Creative work doesn't work that way.

Say you have an idea for that novel that sells a million copies. Where did it come from?

Think about Paul McCartney's song, "Yesterday." McCartney famously heard the melody for "Yesterday" in a dream. At first, he was convinced it was a melody he had heard before. He thought it was an old Jazz tune his father had played when he was a kid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCV9oqtwyVA

"Yesterday" has stood the test of time as an original song. But musicologists have found numerous similarities to other songs.

One such song is called "Answer Me, My Love."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhr94uOdElU

"Yesterday"'s lyrics are as such:

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away, Now it looks as though they're here to stay,

"Answer Me, My Love"'s lyrics are as such:

She was mine yesterday, I believed that love was here to stay.

McCartney didn't steal from "Answer Me, My Love." But it's almost certain that he heard the song before. In 1953, when McCartney was eleven years old, a version of "Answer Me, My Love," by David Whitfield was the number one song on the UK charts.

Then, it got knocked from the number-one spot -- by another version of "Answer Me, My Love," this time, by Frankie Lane. It was the first time in UK pop chart history that a song was replaced by another version of itself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00uPMWDEeZE

Was McCartney inspired by this song? It's impossible to know for sure, but it's certainly plausible.

So this idea you have for a novel that sells a million copies. Maybe you're in the right state of mind to have this idea because you took a vacation last month. Maybe you're more relaxed because you got a massage two days ago. Maybe you're thinking more clearly because you went on a hike earlier that day. Yet it was the funny red hat worn by the woman who walked by the cafe that sparked the idea. Meanwhile, it could have been inspired by some book, buried deep in your unconscious, that your mom read to you when you were three.

We're done with time management

Taylorism was the birth of "time management." It was when we started to look at time as a "production unit."

When we look at time as a production unit, we assume that each additional unit of time we spend doing something will get us the same gain in output as the previous unit of time.

But it doesn't work that way. Even in work as simple as moving chunks of iron, Taylor learned that human energy doesn't neatly pack together to fill all available time. We have our limits.

Today, we're still treating time as a production unit. Our calendars are filled up with boxes, sometimes overlapping. Jason Fried calls it "calendar Tetris." We live according to that calendar.

"There's only twenty-four hours in a day," you'll hear people say. The conclusion we're supposed to draw from that is that time is precious, so you better fill it all up.

Filling up that time was a big leap forward, but now we need to draw a different conclusion. If there's only twenty-four hours in a day, that tells you there's a limit. That tells you that eventually, "time management" is squeezing blood from a stone. When it comes to creative work, that stone is a very fragile stone, indeed.

Image: Dynamism of the Human Body, Umberto Boccioni

My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays

Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays

About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative.

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Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/end-time-management/

Andrew Mason (@andrewmason) started a little website called The Point. An investor friend of his gave him a million dollars in seed money.

The Point failed, but Andrew then used that seed money to pivot his idea into the fastest-growing company in history. Groupon hit a $1 billion valuation in only sixteen months.

For someone with no entrepreneurial experience at all, this was crazy. Yahoo! offered to buy the company for $3 billion. Google offered more than $5 billion. Early on, the media wanted to adore him. After the company went public, the media wanted to abhor him. Groupon's current valuation: a modest $400 million.

After Groupon, Andrew started a company called Detour. Once again, the idea failed. But once again, he was able to find a great clue for a new company in the company he was already building.

Now, Andrew is the CEO of Descript. Descript is like a word processor for audio. If you've ever tried to edit spoken-word audio, you know how time-consuming and frustrating it can be. Descript makes editing spoken word audio as easy as editing a Word doc.

With Descript, not only can you edit spoken-word audio by copying, pasting, and deleting text, but you can also edit by typing words. Descript's Overdub feature can actually create audio based upon your voice. All you have to do is feed it several hours of training data. If you listened to the episodes here on Love Your Work in December, you heard my Descript Overdub voice double fill in for me on the intros.

If you're going to love your work, you have to read the signals the market gives you. Sometimes plan "B" is a billion-dollar idea.

In this conversation, you'll learn:

• After going from having no experience as an entrepreneur, to founding the fastest-growing company ever, how has Andrew approached building his new company differently from how he built Groupon?
• Andrew says at Groupon there was "more tolerance for assholes." What has Andrew learned about building a company culture where the mission doesn't get in the way of kindness.
• Andrew said he had a "useful naïveté" about the money that he first raised. How does he still hold onto this naïveté, even as a seasoned entrepreneur?

Thanks for sharing my work!

On Twitter, thank you to @dbarrant, @keozdev, @podcastally, and @JeffNartic.

On Instagram, thank you to @frekihowl, @_imperialpurple, @daizymann, and @paych_arte.

Our Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays

Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays

About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative.

Follow David on:

• Twitter
• Instagram
• Facebook
• YouTube

Subscribe to Love Your Work

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Support the show on Patreon

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Sponsors

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Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/andrew-mason/

First of all, I hope that you are taking good care of yourself during these unprecedented times. I hope that you and the people you love are safe and healthy. I have something I've been working on for a looong time. And it's very relevant to what we have going on today. Many people are working from home. They're thrust into unstructured days, and trying to make the most of them. So, I don't want to delay. I want to get this thing in the hands of people ASAP. It's my next book, and it is a BIG one. Since you're a loyal podcast listener I want you to have the first chance to read it. It's called Mind Management, Not Time Management, and it chronicles my decade-long quest to find the keys to the future of productivity. Learn how to:

• Quit your daily routine. Use the hidden patterns all around you as launchpads to skyrocket your productivity.
• Do in only five minutes what used to take all day. Let your "passive genius" do your best thinking when you're not even thinking.
• And, very relevant to today's world, Keep going, even when chaos strikes. Tap into the unexpected to find your next Big Idea.

If you feel like you have the TIME, but you struggle to find the ENERGY. If you feel like the more time you save, the more overwhelmed, stressed, and exhausted you feel, then this is the book for you. Mind Management, Not Time Management, will help you learn faster, make better decisions, and turn your ideas into reality. I'm offering a very special Preview Edition of the book to my loyal listeners. Read the chapters that are available right now, and get the rest of the chapters as I finish them. The First Edition is scheduled to come out in Fall, so this is a chance to overhaul how you get things done before anybody else does. Learn more and buy at kdv.co/mind This is a limited-time offer, so do it now. That's kdv.co/mind

Many businesses have "SOP's" It sounds very official as an acronym, and what it stands for sounds even more official: Standard Operating Procedure. It's a document which outlines a process within a business. What's the purpose of the process? What are the steps to follow? Who will do different parts of the processes, and which parts can't begin until another part is finished?

I was telling a friend about the process documents I have for running my business, and he said, "oh, you mean SOPs?" I could feel a visceral reaction to that term. It made the muscles in my back and neck tense up.

"Yeah, SOPs," I said. "But they aren't Standard Operating Procedures. They're Sloppy Operating Procedures."

Processes make businesses possible

Every business has processes. The employees of that business follow these processes to build a product, or perform a service.

Processes make businesses possible. Processes help the business create a consistent product, at scale. Through repetition, processes allow businesses to create more of their product, at higher quality, with lower expenses -- to increase profits. Each time a process is followed is another opportunity to reduce error, or to simplify the process.

It took me a really long time to realize that processes are important for creatives, too. I thought that process was the enemy of creativity. I've come to learn that process is creativity's best friend.

For creativity, forget the Standard Operating Procedure -- try the Sloppy Operating Procedure

I wasn't completely wrong in thinking that process was the enemy of creativity. My problem was that I was thinking about process in the wrong way. I was thinking of process as an SOP -- Standard Operating Procedure, when I needed to be thinking of a process as the other SOP -- Sloppy Operating Procedure.

Whenever I sat down to try to writing a Standard Operating Procedure, my brain would shut down. It wasn't until I gave myself permission to suck -- permission to create a Sloppy Operating Procedure -- that I really made progress.

The Sloppy Operating Procedure is not a neatly-edited list of steps and standards and dependencies that help you deliver a product.

No, the Sloppy Operating Procedure is a living document. It's disorganized. It has free-written paragraphs that might be incomplete or end mid-sentence. It's full of grammar and spelling mistakes. The Sloppy Operating Procedure is, well, sloppy.

Sloppy Operating Procedures kill procrastination

There are two important mechanisms that make the Sloppy Operating Procedure powerful.

One is that the Sloppy Operating Procedure kills procrastination. It does this in a couple of ways.

One way the Sloppy Operating Procedure kills procrastination is that it gets you started on creating a process document. If you're expecting to sit down and crank out a polished Standard Operating Procedure document, you're going to put it off.

The second way that the Sloppy Operating Procedure kills procrastination is that it makes it easier to do things that are boring or repetitive. This point requires some more explanation.

SOPs kill boredom and drudgery

I may dread collecting data for my monthly income reports, but the reason for the dread can be found in a document called "How to Be a Hacker." A document dating back to 1996, which outlines the values of the "hacker" -- a word which has gained a lot of baggage over the years, but which to me still means someone who likes to know how something works, who will tinker around to find new ways of doing things.

I shared this hacker credo in my first book, Design for Hackers, and rule number three of this credo explains the second way that the Sloppy Operating Procedure kills procrastination. That rule is as follows: Boredom and drudgery are evil.

Boredom and drudgery are evil. Anything that you've had to figure out one time, you shouldn't have to figure out a second time. And this, I've found, is at the root of why I procrastinate on some tasks in my business.

So the reason I used to dread collecting the information for my income reports is that I've already figured out how to collect information for my income reports, and I don't want to figure it out again.

I don't want to ask myself again, "are book sales cash-based or accrual-based? What are all of the places my books are published again? How do I get a report from this aggregator?" I've already answered these questions once. I don't want to answer them again.

Since I create Sloppy Operating Procedures, the second time I do a process, I don't have everything all figured out from the first time I did that process. I have some sloppy notes. My notes might say:

"Collecting Amazon book sales: Have to convert currencies from each country into USD. Maybe there's a way to automate this?"

That's what it might say after the first time I collect Amazon book sales. And because it says that, the next time I have to collect Amazon book sales, there's just a little less boredom -- just a little less drudgery.

In fact, it makes the task more interesting. I know that as I do the task again, I'll have a little less boredom and drudgery, but I'll also have a new task: I'll improve a little on these notes. I'll improve a little on this process.

The first time I did the process, I didn't have the time or energy to think about automating the process of converting currencies. I just wanted to get the task done. A Sloppy Operating Procedure was all I could muster.

But between doing the process the first time and the second time, maybe I've heard about reporting software that can automate it for me. Or maybe I've tasked myself to look up some spreadsheet formulas.

So the second time I do the process, I have to think less about some parts of the process, and so I have more mental energy leftover to better automate and document other parts of the process.

Ideally, the first time you do a process, write some quick notes; the second time you do a process, write instructions and make a training screencast; the third time you do a process, delegate it.

Now, I don't even collect the Amazon book income for my income reports anymore. I have instructions and even a screencast showing how to do it. My assistant does this process now.

So, the Sloppy Operating Procedure kills procrastination because it gives you permission to suck in writing your SOP, and the mere existence of that SOP removes the boredom and drudgery from the task.

SOPs help you produce more with less

I mentioned that there were two mechanisms that make the Sloppy Operating Procedure powerful. The first mechanism is that it kills procrastination. The second mechanism is that the Sloppy Operating Procedure helps you produce more work with fewer resources.

How does it do that? You're doing the same amount of work, after all. Eventually, your Sloppy Operating Procedure is a clean and clear list of steps to follow in order to produce something.

At this point, it's not so different from a Standard Operating Procedure. What's different, is how you produced it.

But once you have a process that you can follow, without fail, to produce your product, that process does much of the work for you. This is especially true if you use the process in order to delegate the task, but it's also true if you use the process simply to assist yourself in doing the task.

This is especially important with the most creative parts of your work. Your own mind is the secret sauce -- the proverbial secret mix of eleven herbs and spices -- that make your product special, and you want your process to highlight your secret sauce, not to water it down.

SOPs take you from "front burner" to "back burner"

As your Sloppy Operating Procedure evolves into a Standard Operating Procedure, the task evolves, too. The task evolves from requiring Front Burner Creativity, to requiring only Back Burner Creativity.

I talked about the distinction of Front Burner Creativity and Back Burner Creativity back on episode 194, but here's a short refresher.

Front Burner Creativity takes your very best creative energy. It's like you're stir frying some vegetables, and you want to get them just right.

Back Burner Creativity still requires creative energy, but it doesn't necessarily require your very best creative energy. It's like you're boiling some pasta. You know about how long to let it boil to get it al dente. You'll stir it here and there, and you'll check in on it in about seven minutes.

As your Sloppy Operating Procedure becomes a Standard Operating Procedure, the tasks involved in creating your work go from needing Front Burner Creativity to needing only Back Burner Creativity.

And when you can keep a project cooking on the Back Burner, that frees up your Front Burner.

When I started this podcast four years ago, it was Front Burner Creativity -- big time. It took my very best creative energy, every day, just to keep it coming every week.

But now it's Back Burner Creativity. My Sloppy Operating Procedures have become Standard Operating Procedures. I have a checklist I follow every time I record. I have a spreadsheet I use to share the relevant information with my production team. My production team has a detailed checklist and standards document to follow. Finally, I have a spreadsheet that generates the relevant tasks for each episode, and my assistant has a screencast to follow to upload those tasks to my task manager.

Even though each episode still requires creative energy, it requires much less creative energy. My SOPs save that energy for me, and I even keep some of those SOPs a little sloppy. I let myself mix things up, creatively, so long as they don't screw up the process that helps me keep this show coming each week.

Sloppy Operating Procedures boost your creative output, bit by bit

So now that the podcast is a Back Burner project, I've been able to develop other projects on the Front Burner. I've published a book, several short reads, and I'm writing another book. Along the way, I also brought my Love Mondays emails from Sloppy Operating Procedure to Standard Operating Procedure. I keep those coming each week, too.

I'm still one person, one creative, but I'm able to create more, with the same -- even fewer -- resources.

The next time you find yourself in boredom or drudgery, try making a Sloppy Operating Procedure. I hope it helps you cook up something delicious.

Image: Still Live with Gingerpot 2, Piet Mondrian

Our Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays

Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays

About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative.

Follow David on:

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Support the show on Patreon

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Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/sloppy-operating-procedure/

Megan Devine (@refugeingrief) is the author of It's OK That You're Not OK, and runs the Writing Your Grief workshop. It wasn't until Megan, a therapist, experienced grief herself that she discovered how we as a culture utterly fail to support the grieving.

As loyal listeners know, I experienced a tragedy several months ago. My healthy, active, 69-year-old mother died suddenly. An abnormal blood vessel – which she was born with, but didn't know she had – burst in her brain.

I lost my grandparents long ago, but losing my mother was by far my most profound experience with grief. For the first time, I found myself on the receiving end of attempts to acknowledge my own deep state of grief.

Some attempts – which you'll hear in today's conversation – made me feel supported. Other attempts – which you'll also hear – not so much.

I also went to some grief support groups with my father, and was shocked at what I discovered: It was like a hidden underworld of grief. People who lost someone six months ago, or six years ago – all in pain, all struggling to feel supported by friends, coworkers, or even family.

It helped me realize how poorly I, myself, had handled other people's grief. Which is okay. Grief is by definition impossible. But we can always do better.

If we're going to love our work, we have to be kind to one another. And part of being kind is supporting others when they're hurting.

In this conversation, you'll learn:

• What are the top things to never say when trying to support the grieving? The list could get impossibly long, so Megan will share a quick shortcut.
• You may have heard of five stages of grief. I won't bother listing them, because these stages are horribly misunderstood. Learn why thinking of grief according to stages just makes things worse.
• The #1 thing that's broken about how we respond to grief is that we treat it like a problem to be fixed. There's one simple mindset shift that can help us do better.

Chances are, you've had grieving people in your life. If you haven't, you most certainly will. Now is the time to build these skills, so let's get started.

Photo Credit: Stephanie Zito

My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays

Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays

About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David helps you make it as a creative.

Follow David on:

• Twitter
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Subscribe to Love Your Work

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Support the show on Patreon

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Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/megan-devine/

What are you doing?! Didn't you read the title of this episode?

I'm begging you: Stop listening to my podcast.

You're still here? Okay, I'll see what I can do to persuade you to stop listening to my podcast.

I'll admit it: It bums me the fuck out that there aren't more people listening to my podcast. I've been delivering an episode every week for the past four years, and I haven't seen any growth at all for the past three of those years. If anything, my stats tell me I get fewer downloads than I did three years ago.

Before I get to why I want you to stop listening to my podcast, I have to be clear: Sometimes it makes me sad that more people aren't listening to my podcast. And it's not that I want to be rich and famous.

I decided what I wanted when I made the decision, four years ago, to double down on being a writer and a podcaster. I told myself, "I want to make a living creating. I don't want creating to be merely a marketing strategy for other things?"

So, I sold everything I owned, and moved to the "third world". I knew I would struggle to make money for awhile, but I never knew the struggle would take this long. I never knew it would be this hard.

That's the reason I wish more people listened to my podcast. I don't need to make enough money to buy a Bentley, or even a Toyota. I just want to make enough money from my writing and podcasting that I can do more writing and podcasting.

I wrote my first book ten years ago. I moved to South America four years ago. I don't want to write so I can make money, I want to make money so I can write. And that's the only thing that makes it fucking heartbreaking about not having more people listening to my podcast.

What I learned on my media fast

But there's no denying that people shouldn't be listening to my podcast. At the beginning of this year, I tried an experiment. I went on a "media fast." I stopped listening to podcasts. I stopped checking Twitter. I even stopped reading books. I stopped multi-tasking, and I started uni-tasking.

At first, it was agonizing. I felt like I needed more stimulation. But I powered through it, and it was like rummaging through the junk piled up in your dead grandmother's dusty attic. I was surprised what I discovered underneath all of that clutter: My own thoughts.

Instead of listening to a podcast while cooking and eating lunch, I simply focused on cooking and eating lunch. If I was chatting with a friend on WhatsApp, I wasn't switching to Instagram between messages. I was only chatting with that friend. I watched the sunset almost every day, and I didn't post pictures of those sunsets to Instagram. I just sat there and watched the colors change, like some enlightened Neanderthal.

Eventually, things started bubbling to the surface. After lunch, I would jot down ideas on a little whiteboard. While watching sunsets, ideas would come to me for my next book, or for podcast episodes like this one.

Creating is better than consuming

It was hard to admit it to myself: Creating is better than consuming. The more you consume, the less you can create.

Some people will protest: "If you aren't consuming, where are you going to get inspiration!?" "Inspiration" is bullshit. You've seen enough things in your life, and you've had enough damn ideas -- you never did shit with most of them (neither did I). Your need for "inspiration" is a fear of your own thoughts. It's a fear of doing the hard work of processing what's in your head, breaking out of the bullshit scripts that society writes for you, and having an actual thought. A true, sometimes uncomfortable, original thought.

You don't need inspiration. You need action.

I can't deny, from my own experience of going on a "media fast," that much of the time, when I was consuming, it was standing in my way of creating. And wasn't "creating" what I wanted to do in the first place?

This was an uncomfortable realization. I even had a couple of friends point out that reading books is a form of procrastination. Sacrilege! But, they're right. How many books have you read? Can you recite what you learned from those books? Have you truly taken action on what you learned, or did you just move on to the next book?

Everyone's trying to get a piece of you

As you can see, for me, as someone who creates, as someone who writes books, and makes a podcast, this was a tough realization.

I had to search myself for why I create what I create.

I concluded that, more than anything, I create for my own self-development.

In this world, everyone is trying to get a piece of you. Facebook wants your eyeballs, and your browsing history. The news media wants your attention. They'll manipulate your emotions. They'll try to fool you into thinking there's something virtuous about "being informed." But it's all bullshit.

On top of it, addictive substances are all around us. How many lives have been destroyed by alcohol, or addictions to prescription drugs? Go to a hospital and look in the vending machine: Sugar, sugar, and more sugar. It's so pervasive, we assume sugar isn't putting us in the hospital. And how many of us swear we can't function in the morning unless we have a piping hot Thermos of a psychoactive drug? Yeah, caffeine. This shit ain't right.

Stoicism is not the cause of meaning. It's the effect of meaning.

You're probably wondering what the fuck the news, Facebook, and coffee have to do with my podcast. As I said, I primarily make this show and write my books to help myself.

Because it brings me meaning. That meaning is strong enough to motivate me to take a break from listening to podcasts and reading books, to say fuck the news, fuck Facebook, fuck alcohol on every corner, fuck the sugar all around us, fuck the caffeine in every cup.

Some people would describe my mindset as "stoic." My unpopular opinion is that Stoicism isn't useful as a philosophy. It rings hollow in my ears. Stoicism is not the cause a meaningful life. A stoic mindset, instead, is the effect of a meaningful life.

All of the things I described can be pleasurable. You could call my media fast a "dopamine fast." As Dr. Robert Lustig taught us on episode 185, pleasure -- which is triggered by dopamine, is different from happiness, which is triggered by serotonin. In fact, pleasure and happiness are polar opposites.

I don't shun pleasures by way of stoicism. I don't shun pleasures for the sake of shunning pleasures. I do it because none of that "pleasurable" stuff will help me be the human I want to be. None of that will help me with this journey. This journey of creating. I create so that I can create.

If you don't consume, maybe you'll create?

And so who would I be if I expected you to listen to my podcast?

I'll reiterate: Yes, I want podcast listeners -- and Patreon supporters. Yes, I want to sell books. When I make money, I can do more work.

But the thing I hope for myself is the same thing that I hope for you: I want you to break out of the "matrix" of bullshit that rules the thoughts and actions of so many of us. I want you to stop consuming, and start creating.

And if you're trying to escape the bullshit through your own discipline, A.K.A. "stoicism" -- you're going to have a bad time. There's nothing I can say to you, no "inspiration" I can provide, which will make it happen.

So, yes, it makes me sad sometimes that I don't have more podcast listeners. But then I tell myself, "David, if they aren't consuming, maybe they're out there creating." I have no choice. That has to make me happy.

The reasons that are strong enough to help you break free -- you can only find those in yourself. You have to listen to the voice inside your head, and have a conversation with it. And you can't hear that voice, if mine is still ringing in your ears.

So if you can find the meaning within you, if you have the motivation to become a better you, you have everything you need. Stop listening to my podcast. Go make your own podcast! But I'll still be making mine, as long as I can.

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David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David helps you make it as a creative.

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Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/stop-listening-podcast/

Dylan Evans (@evansd66) had an intense experience with uncertainty. He was fifty percent certain that civilization would collapse within several years.

So, he sold his house, gave up his job, and set out to learn how to survive the apocalypse. He tells the story in his book, The Utopia Experiment. He and a team of volunteers constructed yurts on the Scottish highlands, and started growing their own food and making their own clothes, trying to see if they could disconnect themselves from civilization.

Civilization didn't collapse within the period of time that Dylan had predicted, and as he looked at what remained of his life, he started to ask himself, "where did I go wrong?"

This led Dylan to study what he calls Risk Intelligence – he now has written a book by that title. Risk Intelligence is the ability to navigate uncertainty. That is what we'll be talking about today.

Navigating uncertainty matters in creative work

Imagine you serve coffee at Starbucks. Starbucks knows exactly how much to pay you each hour. They know exactly how much coffee you can make, they know exactly what that coffee costs them, they know exactly what profit margin they want.

Creative work is not serving coffee. You never know how long it takes for an idea to brew. When a breakthrough does come to you, the results can be unpredictable. Sometimes a project takes off, and sometimes it doesn't. Some of that is due to skill, a lot of that is due to luck.

If you're going to love your work, you need to know how to deal with uncertainty.

If you write this book, what are the chances it will sell? When you launch this product, how much money will it make? Questions like these help you choose: Amongst the countless actions you can take, what actions are worth it?

And when you do finally make a choice, and you look back at the results, do you really have a clear picture of whether you made the right decision? What can you learn from the decision you made which can make your future decisions wiser, more clear – better?

When you're trying to love your work, you're dealing with uncertainty. Part of dealing with uncertainty is knowing how to be at least a little more certain in an uncertain world. It's as close as you can get to predicting the future.

In this conversation, you'll learn:

• How can you make falsifiable forecasts on your creative projects? When you make falsifiable forecasts, you can start to score your ability to predict the future. If you improve your forecasting skills, you'll make better predictions, and better decisions.
• Dylan says, "The difference between a good decision maker and a poor decision maker...is that a good decision maker will rate the quality of his or her decision by the actual thought process going into the decision, not 'Did it turn out to be the correct decision?'" Well, how do you rate the quality of your decisions?
• You may have fantasized yourself about unplugging from civilization. I was curious: What's the one thing about civilization that Dylan realized he was taking for granted?

Thanks for sharing my work!

On Twitter, thank you to @CapeHornCHI and @analydiamonaco.

On Instagram, thank you to @sonny_enslen.

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About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David helps you make it as a creative.

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Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/dylan-evans-utopia-experiment-risk-intelligence/

In the 1600s, Penelope Kent boarded a ship from Holland to the New World with her new husband. Their ship wrecked off the coast, but still, Penelope and her husband made it to shore.

There, they were attacked and tortured by the natives who lived on the land. By the time the natives were done with them, Penelope's husband was dead. Penelope was still alive, but partially scalped, with her stomach sliced open. She took shelter in a hollowed out tree.

Days later, some other natives found Penelope. These natives were fortunately friendly, or at least enterprising.

They sewed shut Penelope's wounds with fishbone needles and vegetable fibers. What happened next depends upon the source you read. By some accounts the native tribe released her to New Amsterdam -- now New York. By other accounts, they sold her into indentured servitude.

Somewhere way up my family tree, Penelope was my first ancestor to come to America. Given all she went through to make it to what would become the United States -- a hundred years later -- it's astonishing that I would ever leave the U.S., in search of a better life. In fact, I moved to the so-called "third world." Sorry, Penelope.

In 2016 I sold my possessions and moved from the United States to Colombia, looking for a better life. Four years later, it's safe to say that I've found that better life.

The irony isn't lost on me: Centuries ago, my ancestors moved to America for a better life. And in the twenty-first century, I moved to the "third world" for a better life.

I use air quotes for "third world," because I recognize that the designation of some countries as "third world" is passé and even offensive. I also recognize that many parts of Colombia -- even parts not far from my doorstep -- are very much "third world" by most people's standards.

Finally, as many Colombians have pointed out to me, if I were Colombian, I'd probably want to do the opposite: I would want to move to the U.S. for a better life. I appreciate my blue-passport privilege more than most Americans I meet, and I know that the U.S. has a lot going for it.

I don't write this article to gloat. This is not going to be about me working on a laptop on the beach, failing to mention the Malaria-ridden mosquitos that snuck under my bed net while I slept last night. I write this to offer some perspective: That if you're clear about what you want in life, that you can often get those things -- as long as you're also clear about what you don't want or, more important, what you can live without.

Why Colombia?

First, why did I think that Colombia was the place where I could find a better life? My primary motivation for moving was to double down on my career as a writer and podcaster. It wasn't just that the low cost-of-living in Colombia would provide me with the financial runway that I knew I would need, I also knew that the lifestyle that was possible in Colombia would support the habits and routines I needed to build in order to make it as a creative.

Medellín, the Colombian city in which I live, is a popular destination for digital nomads. They spend the six months they are allowed on a tourist stamp -- depending on their nationality -- then they move on to other hotspots such as Bali or Budapest.

While plenty of people have described me as a digital nomad, I don't consider myself one. I'm committed to building my life in Colombia, if for nothing else, because I'm more productive staying here than I am scrambling around the world. I haven't even visited many of the digital nomad hotspots, but the friends I've made who live that lifestyle all agree that Medellín is a fantastic place to build a consistent work routine.

You can rent a furnished apartment for less than the price of an unfurnished apartment in most major cities, you can get just about anything delivered -- even a haircut -- for a fraction of the price of delivery in the U.S., and the temperature steadily stays at around room temperature year-round (In fact, Medellín is known as "the city of the eternal spring.")

One friend who was visiting commented that Medellín isn't so much about seeing anything in particular, but rather witnessing the laid-back lifestyle. The cafes in the upscale Poblado neighborhood get packed at 3 p.m. every afternoon. A high ratio of the people are there talking to each other, rather than escaping into their devices. Colombians place a high value on spending time with family. They want everything to be tranquilo (peaceful or relaxed). If you're taking a cab home after dark, there's a good chance your driver will wish you to descansar (to rest, literally, to "un-tired" yourself).

Designing my life around consistent writing

About a decade ago, I got my first book deal, with little experience as a writer. I discovered through that process that writing is hard. I found that the more consistent I could be, the better my writing was.

At the time, I was living in Chicago, where consistency is nearly impossible. If I could pick one word to characterize living in Chicago as a writer, it would be "friction." Everything gets in the way. The rent is cheap for a major American city -- in fact, I moved to Chicago from San Francisco for that very reason -- but it's still expensive for what you get. The public transportation is infuriatingly unreliable, and then there's the weather.

Don't get me wrong: I love Chicago, and visit frequently. It's just that, for what I wanted to accomplish with my life, Chicago got in the way. On one hand, there are lots of things to do, and bustling arts and startup scenes. On the other hand, there are lots of things to do, and bustling arts and startup scenes. There are lots of opportunities to distract yourself, and you pay for those opportunities with traffic, high prices, and lots of noise.

After I escaped the worst months of a couple of Chicago winters -- a practice I call "mini lives" -- I found myself looking back at the work I had done while hiding away in Medellín. It was my best work. So, I moved.

I love my "third world" health insurance

By choosing the things that I wanted in life, I also had to make a lot of compromises -- what I call the principle of "good enough." A good segue into compromises is healthcare. One of the things I like most about living in Colombia is having affordable healthcare.

As a 40-year-old single male, I pay less than $140 a month for the best health insurance money can buy here. I suffer from chronic health issues -- part of the reason I've chosen writing as a career -- and I have gotten a ton of diagnostics. I rarely have to pay anything more than my monthly premium, and when I do, it's like $9. I'm covered worldwide -- for stays less than a few months -- and pre-existing conditions are accepted, with a few major exceptions.

Being a self-employed writer, getting health coverage in the U.S. is prohibitively expensive. One 30-year-old digital-nomad friend told me he investigated the minimum coverage if he moved to New York State: nearly $1,000 a month, and he'd have to pay the first $10,000 of any health expenses throughout the year.

It wasn't until I visited the doctor several times here in Colombia that the mental effects of having health coverage really sank into me. For the first time in my decade-plus self-employed career, I felt secure from a healthcare standpoint. If I noticed a symptom, I didn't have to debate with myself whether it was worth a $300 visit to the doctor. If the doctor recommended a diagnostic, I didn't have to decide whether to shell out $1,000, or play Russian Roulette with my prospects of having a serious illness.

How many of us apply 80/20 to our lives?

Healthcare is a good topic through which to introduce one of the key principles that make my life in Colombia a "better life." That principle is the principle of the "good enough."

In the United States, we're obsessed with making things "better." We want faster cars, more convenient apps, nicer restaurants, a drug for every symptom under the sun, and faster service. This leads to lots of truly useful innovations -- innovations that the rest of the world can then easily implement for a fraction of the cost.

But the problem with "better" is that it's not always worth it. Sometimes, something that's 20% better costs 200% more. If you can carefully pick and choose the 20% less good -- the "good enough" -- you can design a life where you get more of what you want, and less of what you don't really need.

The idea of the 80/20 principle gets a lot of lip service these days: Do the 20% effort that will get you 80% of the result. But when it comes to our lives, few of us apply the 80/20 principle, or the "good enough" principle. We can't have the 80% mobile phone -- we need the 100% new iPhone. We can't have the "good enough" clothes, we need the 100% most fashionable brand.

We strive for the 100% healthcare, because so much is at stake, but maybe we'd be better off with the 80% healthcare? The healthcare I get in Colombia is great, in that I can afford it. Yet in many ways, it's also merely "good enough." Sometimes it's hard to get an appointment. Instead of seeing the same doctor every time -- a doctor you build a relationship with -- you see whatever doctor is available. Prescription drugs are much cheaper in Colombia -- but sometimes they can be expensive, and you have to pay for them out-of-pocket.

If you're unlucky enough to end up with a rare disease that calls for a cutting-edge experimental treatment, Colombia is probably not the place to get that treatment. But established treatment protocols for common conditions are available, and affordable.

My girlfriend's mother had a heart attack a few years ago, and needed a quadruple bypass. This event, which would financially ruin many American families, cost this middle-class Colombian family -- which would very much be lower class by American standards -- essentially nothing. Today, my girlfriend's mother is alive and well, toasting arepas, frying up empanadas, and playing with her grandchildren.

The 20% that gets me 80% in Colombia

Extend this principle of "good enough," and you can see why my life in Colombia is a better life. There's no Whole Foods in Colombia, but you can get organically-raised vegetables for a fraction of the price. Every zucchini isn't the pristine green torpedo you'll find at Whole Foods, but it's "good enough."

If you need to buy something, Amazon (the website, not the river) is not the first place you'll look. You have to go to a mall, and see what they have. It's like a scavenger hunt. If it's "good enough," you buy it. If it just won't do, then you order on Amazon. It will cost you 30% extra in shipping and import taxes, and will take two weeks to arrive. That's not two-day (or same-day) Amazon Prime shipping, but it's "good enough."

Just managing to stay in Colombia, as an immigrant, is sometimes extremely difficult. I had a visa rejected twice, and am in the throes of an apartment search with maddening requirements for foreigners. It can be a real productivity killer for periods of time, but in the end, it's worth it for me.

Isn't Colombia dangerous?

Most people's first question about Colombia is about safety. They've watched Narcos, they've heard the horror stories about when Pablo Escobar and his henchmen ruled the streets of Medellín, and FARC ruled the jungles of Colombia.

I won't tell you that Colombia is a crime and violence-free utopia, but I will tell you that it's "good enough."

This is an area where people are easily deceived, and I think it has to do with our perception of risk. When Americans do gain the courage to visit Colombia, they are amazed. "I never once felt unsafe," they'll say. Even expats who have been here a long time will say, "been here for twenty years. Never had a problem."

In actuality, Medellín has a homicide rate a smidge higher than my former home of Chicago. And the robbery rate in my neighborhood is fourfold that of Chicago as a whole. I've had at least one terrifying robbery attempt, as shared in episode 216.

Things you do that are more dangerous than visiting Colombia

So, yes, living in Colombia is more dangerous than living in most places in the United States. However, the risk isn't much higher than many risks that Americans take on a daily basis.

According to data.world's crunching of State Department data, in the seven-plus years between October 2009 and June 2016, more than eight-and-a-half million U.S. citizens travelled to Colombia, and twenty-five were killed. That's 0.29 deaths per 100,000 U.S. travelers.

Contrast that with traffic deaths in the U.S. They aren't 0.29 per 100,000 -- they're almost 11 per 100,000 inhabitants, per year. More than thirty times the rate.

If you assume that the average person travels 10,000 miles in a car each year, that makes traveling to Colombia as dangerous as riding in a car for 266 miles. Traveling to Colombia is about as dangerous as driving -- one time -- from Boston to New York City.

The U.S. government doesn't want you to know you could find a "better life" (or maybe they're just clueless)

Interestingly, when data.world crunched this data, they found Colombia to be one of the countries with outsized travel warnings. Some countries that people travel to, the State Department issues travel warnings that are about on-par with the actual danger of traveling to that country. Pakistan, Philippines, and Honduras, for example, are dangerous places to travel, and travel warnings are issued for them accordingly. Colombia, by contrast, gets about as many travel warnings as those countries, but is maybe one-tenth as dangerous.

Sometimes I wonder if it's a conspiracy: Scare people out of discovering that they can have a good life somewhere else, keep the U.S. economy chugging along.

Then again, maybe it's just blind hubris that the American government thinks Colombia is such a bad place. My girlfriend -- according to Colombian law, my spouse -- has been rejected for a visa just to visit the United States twice. (And no, it's not a Trump thing. She was rejected during the Obama administration as well.) Each of these attempts, by the way, is a thousand-dollar roll of the dice. We have to hire a lawyer, pay the application fee, get on a plane and fly to Bogotá and stay in a hotel.

The reason they reject her: She doesn't make enough money. They think, "surely, when you see how much money you can make in the U.S., you won't go back home. This is clearly more important than the job you have, the property you own, the businesses you're invested in, and even your relationships with your friends and family." Give me a fucking break, America. If you'd stop blowing yourself and look up for a second, you might be surprised what you see.

What can you get that's "better," if you're willing to accept what's "good enough?"

Living in a place like Colombia does carry some small extra risk. And repeated exposure to small risks can add up to big risks. Consider the fact that the average life expectancy for a man in the U.S. is 76 (women live longer: 81). Yet if you're a 76-year-old man, what are your chances of dying in a given year? Only about 4%. It's not being 76 that kills people, it's repeated exposure to those small risks, which add up over time.

But, that repeated exposure to small risk is part of my equation. I have things I want out of my life. I'm willing to forego certain luxuries to get those things, and I'm even willing to expose myself to other risks in pursuit of the things I want.

Think about this for yourself. What do you want out of your life? Are there ways you can have those things, if you're only willing to sacrifice other things? If you can settle for "good enough" in some places, and even take risks in other places, you can ultimately build a "better life", not by "first-world" or "third-world" standards, but by the only standards that really matter -- your standards.

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About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David helps you make it as a creative.

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Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/third-world-better-life/

Dr. Aziz Gazipura is author of a great book, Not Nice: Stop People Pleasing, Staying Silent, & Feeling Guilty... And Start Speaking Up, Saying No, Asking Boldly, And Unapologetically Being Yourself.

What does it mean to be a "good person?" If someone asks you to do something, do you have to do it? If someone invites you to hang out, do you have to make the time? If someone shares an idea, do you have to pretend to like it?

Some people think that to be a "good person," you have to be "nice." You can't make someone upset. You can't hurt their feelings. So you withhold criticism, you don't express what you want.

Eventually, you start to forget who you are, what's important to you, and what you truly want to get out of your life.

You'll be a better person if you aren't too "nice"

If you're going to love your work, you need to be authentic. And that's hard to do if you're too busy people pleasing to think about what it is you want.

To be a good person, you don't have to be "nice" – at least not in the way many people think about what it means to be nice. In fact, to be a good person, you can't be too "nice."

How being treated "not nice" led to a breakthrough in my career

I can think of a time when someone was not "nice" to me, and it was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

I was trying to come up with an idea to present at the SXSW conference. I wasn't famous for anything, but I had a number of accomplished friends who were authors or ran successful businesses.

So what do you do when you have no credibility, but you know people who do? You put together a panel. You get well-known people together, and moderate a discussion amongst them.

So I came up with an idea for a panel, and I pitched it over email to one of my accomplished friends.

He got back to me almost immediately. I still have the email. It said, "Hey man, I appreciate the intro but I don't think this is the best fit for me."

I was really devastated for the rest of that day. But the very next day, I looked back over this email, hated my life, and sighed. I really felt like a loser.

Finally, I said to myself, "okay, enough bellyaching. Time to come up with a different idea."

This sounds like I'm making this up, but I swear this is 100% true. The very next moment – the very next idea I had – was for me to do a talk called "Design for Hackers."

Through the process of pitching that idea to SXSW, I got my first book deal. To write a book called Design for Hackers. That launched my career as an author. That changed my life. That took me from being just another nobody to a respected, published, best-selling author.

It was all possible because my friend was not "nice." He didn't try to protect my feelings. He didn't try to go along with something that wasn't right for him. He was authentic.

By being authentic, he freed me up to be authentic. If he hadn't been honest, or if he had gone along with my first idea, just to be "nice," I would have been caught up doing something that wasn't right for me.

By doing what was right for him, my friend allowed me to do what was right for me.

Do what's right for others, by doing what's right for you

But how do you find the courage to do what's right for you, even if it might upset people in the short term?

I loved Not Nice so much. It really helped me see the ways I am too nice in my life. It helped me see how that doesn't just hurt me, but it hurts others, too. More important, it helped me see the fear and desire for approval at the root of my motivations to be too "nice."

In this conversation, you'll learn:

• Dr. Aziz says, only apologize "when you act out of accordance with your own values." Easier said than done? Dr. Aziz will show you how to start with an "apology fast."
• Dr. Aziz says "someone having hurt feelings does not automatically equal you doing something wrong…. You could hurt someone's feelings by giving them a compliment." Learn how to let go of "over-responsibility." You'll be more authentic, and you'll ultimately help others get what they truly want.
• Dr. Aziz says "If you haven't asserted yourself very much...the idea that you're going to somehow glide into this really smooth way telling people no and asking for what you want, is a fantasy that's trying to deny the growth that's needed." Learn what you can do today to start getting comfortable saying no, ultimately have clearer boundaries, and living a more authentic life.

Listener Showcase

Jeffrey Mason self publishes books and tools that help create conversation, break down barriers, and inspire expanding one's parameters. You can learn more at www.jeffreymason.com.

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About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David helps you make it as a creative.

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Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/dr-aziz-gazipura/