Love Your Work

If you're going to get an edge, you have to be aware that the prevailing wisdom is almost always wrong. You have to know when to go against that wisdom.

One place I'm glad that I went against the prevailing wisdom is in my decision to not buy a house – especially when I was in my early twenties. The prevailing wisdom was that a house was "the best investment you can make." Instead, I decided to invest in myself.

This post is from more than ten years ago, and it's talking about decisions I made fifteen years ago, which makes this a fun episode for two reasons.

One, I wish I would have had more confidence in my point of view earlier on. I was definitely onto something. I'm always struggling to trust my instincts, and this is a good reminder that my instincts have been right at least one time in the past.

Two, I'm reading this as it was written ten years ago. Notice that my writing style has gotten much better – my writing was definitely not as audio-friendly, but I'll be reading it as it was written. I wasn't a good "prompt talker" as I call it. Lots more ten-cent words in this one.

Image: The Open Window, Juan Gris

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

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 explores what it takes to make it as a creative.

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Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/self-investment-podcast/

When something bad happens, it's tempting to think that you made a bad decision. But the quality of your decision making doesn't always align with the quality of your outcomes.

Sometimes you make a good decision, and you have a bad outcome. Even more dangerous, sometimes you make a bad decision, and have a good outcome (you'll learn why).

Annie Duke (@AnnieDuke) is a former professional poker player, and a decision strategist. She's dedicated to improving decision-making skills around the world amongst adults and children. She's author of Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts.

In this conversation, you'll learn:

• We often think of life as like a game of chess. Why is it actually more like a game of poker?
• How do we separate luck from skill? Learn the most common mental error people make that holds them back from ever learning to make better decisions.
• Why do strong opinions make you dumber? Learn how to overcome "motivated reasoning" to make more accurate predictions, and better decisions.

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

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 explores what it takes to make it as a creative.

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Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/annie-duke/

We hate to lose. But if we don't take risks in life, we never win. The more we protect ourselves from loss, the more we stagnate.

Like economist Tyler Cowen told me, if you want to be "dynamic," you have to develop a thick skin.

I've been thinking more and more lately about the importance of having a thick skin. The importance of being – Antifragile. I'll tell you more about it in this week's episode.

Image from: Head of a skeleton with a burning cigarette, Vincent Van Gogh

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

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 explores what it takes to make it as a creative.

Follow David on:

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Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »

Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/antifragile-life-podcast/

What if your smartphone didn't distract you? What if your focus couldn't be shaken by social media, by the latest news story, or even by your coworkers?

What if you could be indistractable? Imagine what you could accomplish.

Nir Eyal's (@nireyal) new book will help you do just that. Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life will lead you away from dis-traction, so you can get traction.

You may remember Nir being on Love Your Work a couple of times before. We talked about the societal implications of distracting technology more than three years ago, on episode 21. And now he's back to show you how to fight back distractions – whatever the source.

In this conversation, you'll learn:

• Nir wrote the Bible on building habit-forming products: Hooked is a Wall Street Journal best-seller. So why would he also write the book on how to avoid being distracted by these products?
• How can you reimagine distraction to short-circuit it at its source? Nir helps you redesign your triggers, your task, and your temperament.
• Why is the myth of multitasking a myth in itself? Nir shows you how "multichannel multitasking" can help you do two things at once while being as focused as ever.

Links Nir mentions:

• Schedule-maker tool
• Distraction guide

Full disclosure, Nir is a book marketing client of mine. I consulted for him on some marketing tasks for this book, Indistractable. Of course, I rarely take clients, and I only did so because I respect Nir so much as an author and a thinker, and because I loved the book!

On Twitter, @noidentity_uk, @MPozdnev, and @JeffPossiel. On Instagram, @tomjepsoncreative.

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

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 explores what it takes to make it as a creative.

Follow David on:

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Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »

Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/nir-eyal-indistractable/

To make it as a creative, you need to make the most of very limited resources. Your most valuable resource as a creative is your creative energy. You only have so much creative energy, but if you use that energy wisely, you can be leaps and bounds more productive than you could be otherwise.

To manage your creative energy well, be intentional about how you use it. One way to be intentional about how you use your creative energy is to categorize and label different types of creative energy.

Today, I introduce two types of creative energy. "Front burner" creativity, and "back burner" creativity. If you think of your creative energy in terms of "front burner" and "back burner," you can have more creative output on your smaller projects, while still tackling those bigger projects – all without procrastinating or burning out.

I'll tell you more in this week's episode.

Image: Guitar and Music Paper, Juan Gris

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

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 explores what it takes to make it as a creative.

Follow David on:

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Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »

Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/front-burner-creativity/

Robbie Abed (@robbieab) is author of Fire Me I Beg You: Quit Your Miserable Job (Without Risking it All). Robbie is also one of the early influencers on LinkedIn's publishing platform, he's had over 500 coffee meetings, and he's one of the key catalysts – along with James Altucher – behind why this podcast exists at all. (You'll hear the story.)

How would you feel if you got fired today? If the answer is "relieved," you should re-think your job.

I took a short visit to Chicago, and sat down with longtime friend Robbie Abed. In this conversation, you'll learn;

• Thinking about quitting your job? What's one question you should ask yourself to know if you should pull the trigger?
• How do you quit your job without committing career suicide?
• Robbie says "Never lie on your resume, but lie like hell in your exit interview." Find out why.

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

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 explores what it takes to make it as a creative.

Follow David on:

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Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »

Have you ever wondered to yourself: How the the hell did I end up in this situation?

I asked myself this question once. I was changing my clothes in the bathroom of a filthy Fuck My Life laundromat in Chicago.

It was a terrible situation. But I learned an important lesson. I'll tell you about it in this week's episode.

Image from: A Bar at the Foiles-Bergére, Edouard Manet

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

This week, we're featuring Luke Freeman of positly.com. Positly.com is a platform for recruiting and managing research participants.

Sign up to be featured at kadavy.net/showcase

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 explores what it takes to make it as a creative.

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Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »

Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/problems-worth-having-podcast/

Ryan Evans (@ryanevans) wanted to make easy money. Growing up on a pig farm, Ryan was used to making little money for lots of hard work.

But Ryan would soon learn an important lesson about the dangers of easy money.

This is, in my opinion, the most powerful conversation I've had on the show yet. In it, we'll talk about:

• Are there good ways to make money, and bad ways to make money? Ryan's hard lesson gives him a unique perspective that few people have.
• Hear the story of what it's like to get investigated by the SEC for insider trading.
• What's it like to serve hard time for making easy money? If you've ever wondered what federal prison was like, Ryan will tell you.

I had to cut a third of this conversation out, in order to fit our production budget. We pay by the minute for editing, so there isn't room for the whole thing. Patreon supporters got access to the raw uncut conversation weeks ago, delivered straight to their favorite podcast apps. Support Love Your Work on Patreon to hear the whole thing, and get other goodies in the process. Join at patreon.com/kadavy.

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

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 explores what it takes to make it as a creative.

Follow David on:

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Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »

You may have heard that you should assign yourself an "aspirational hourly rate." That you should tell yourself you're worth, say, $300 an hour; and if you can spend $300 to save yourself an hour, you should do so.

That's a powerful idea for making the most of your time and energy, but is all of your time equally valuable? In this week's essay, I propose a variable money value for your time.

Image: Glass and Checkerboard, Juan Gris

On Twitter, @EvryLovelyThing and @tchassakamga. On Instagram, tomjepsoncreative of The Sideman Designer podcast.

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

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 explores what it takes to make it as a creative.

Follow David on:

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Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »

Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/variable-money-value-time/

Rob Wiblin (@robertwiblin) is the Director of Research at an organization called 80,000 Hours, and host of the 80,000 Hours Podcast. 80,000 hours being the amount of hours you will spend working in a typical career. 80,000 Hours is dedicated to finding out just how effective various careers are, and who is suited for those careers.

We all want the work we do to matter. But how do we really know whether the work we do does matter?

The foundation of 80,000 Hours is a philosophy called Effective Altruism. The EA community asks tough questions about what are the most important issues facing humanity, and how best to address those issues. EA tends to come up with counterintuitive conclusions that go against most people's first instincts.

You're going to hear some of those counterintuitive conclusions. You're also going to learn:

• Why did Rob insist on having a much longer conversation than the typical one-hour conversation you hear here on Love Your Work? He has data to back up his suggestion.
• Why should you stop listening to your gut instincts about what actions have an impact? Following the research can increase your impact a thousand times over.
• Why are the highest-profile issues some of the last issues you should be giving your attention to? Rob provides a framework for making the most of your money, time, and attention.

This is a much longer conversation than usual. I'd like to thank Rob Wiblin and 80,000 Hours for offering to cover the extra production costs over our usual shorter conversations. We pay by the minute, and they were happy to chip in to make this conversation more in-depth. You'll find out why early on in the conversation.

• The benefits (and lack of harm) of nicotine
• Nature.com: Impact of plastic straw ban on oral health advice?
• Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean by Jambeck et al,. Science (2015)
• What you think about landfill and recycling is probably totally wrong by Rob Wiblin
• Population ethics
• Population axiology
• The Non-Identity Problem
• How many lives does a doctor save?
• Simplifying Cluelessness, by Philip Trammell
• Crucial Considerations and Wise Philanthropy, by Nick Bostrom
• A year's worth of education for under a dollar and other 'best buys' in development, from the UK aid agency's Chief Economist
• 80,000 Hours Key Ideas

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

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 explores what it takes to make it as a creative.

Follow David on:

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Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »

Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/robert-wiblin-interview/