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What will the future look like? In his most recent November appearance on the Tim Ferriss Show, entrepreneur and investor Balaji Srinivasan presents a cohesive explanation of the current world, and plausible scenarios of how things will play out.

I found Balaji's theories so mesmerizing, I listened to the four-and-a-half-hour podcast several times, then read and took notes on the transcript. Listening to this episode was like reading a book, so – like I do with my book summaries – I wanted to improve my own understanding of the content. So, here is a podcast summarizing a podcast, in my own words.

Needless to say, the podcast is worth listening to, and since this is just a summary, you should absolutely listen to it – over on The Tim Ferris Show – to get the full context.

The decline of the nation state

One of the main forces at play in world events, according to Balaji, is the decline of nation states. He presents this idea in reference to a prescient twenty-five year-old book called The Sovereign Individual, which he cites in this podcast appearance and others.

Since the nation state is declining, it is becoming increasingly difficult for countries to control their citizens. When it's hard to control citizens, it's hard to collect tax revenue to fund institutions.

This loss of control is accelerating with the rise of remote work, catalyzed by the coronavirus pandemic. As more people have been able to work from anywhere, they've become increasingly aware of how local laws and taxes affect their lives.

The power of "exit"

The control of a nation state over its people is limited to the extent that people have the right to what Balaji summarizes as "exit." If you're unable to leave a place, either because the government is oppressive, or because you're tied down because, say, you have land to tend and a flock of sheep, the government has more leeway in what policies they can enforce.

Citizens as "customers"

If people can exit their jurisdictions – whether that's a country, a state, or a city – then citizens stop being "subjects" that jurisdictions can extract resources from, and start being "customers," that jurisdictions want to appeal to.

We've of course seen this for a long time, as cities have given tax breaks or other perks to compete over companies shopping for jurisdictions in which to place their corporate headquarters. But citizens are starting to look more like customers as smaller players have exited en masse. For example, lots of people and companies have been leaving California for Texas, in search of less state control.

Balaji points out that not everyone has to exit to influence policies, but the fact that some do is tremendous leverage on any system.

Crypto entrepreneurs call New York's bluff

An example Balaji cites of this struggle happened when New York state introduced the BitLicense – a series of regulations required for companies to do certain kinds of cryptocurrency transactions. Balaji characterizes New York's posture in introducing these regulations as "We're New York. What are you going to do? We're the center of the world."

At least ten crypto companies then left New York, including Kraken, Bitfinex, and Poloniex. In some cases they had to pack up and move. In other cases they just stopped servicing New York customers. New York apparently overestimated their leverage, and companies left for other jurisdictions, who were more accommodating to their "customers."

Declining returns on state violence

Something Balaji doesn't talk about much but that is a major theme in The Sovereign Individual – and is relevant to the decline of state control – is declining returns on violence, at least at the state level.

You can think of a nation state as a collection of people who contribute taxes in exchange for protection. Serfs used to pay, to their feudal lords, the returns of farming on their plots of land, in exchange for protection. Businesses in organized-crime-controlled neighborhoods pay a fee to the mob so their businesses won't "burn down." U.S. taxpayers pay taxes, the U.S. keeps a strong military that defends the interests of those taxpayers, and protects U.S. taxpayers' green-bill privilege by ensuring the U.S. dollar remains the world's reserve currency.

A relevant observation that stands out to me: Sapiens author Yuval Noah Harari once essentially said that wars used to be about control over natural resources. You can invade a country and get control over such resources, and maybe even control over labor. But China can't invade Silicon Valley, force all the engineers and entrepreneurs to work, and by doing so extract the resources there. That's a decline in the returns on violence, on the state level at least.

Centralized China vs. decentralized world

The main conflict Balaji sees playing out in twenty to forty years is between "centralized China" and "decentralized world." China is a nation-state, and one of the main forces at play is the decline of the nation state, so how does that work?

What is centralized China?

As Balaji describes it, China is the most centralized government. It has "root" access to everything – much like you have over your computer if you have the root password. We're seeing that in the coronavirus pandemic: If there's a couple cases in a city, China can and will shut down everything, and they have total surveillance over their citizens.

This high degree of centralization will be, according to Balaji, an advantage in the short- and medium-term. It's been an advantage in the coronavirus pandemic. I think the implication is that in an interconnected world with so much technological power, being highly-centralized is the only way for a government to retain control over its citizens, and thus extract resources to keep itself running.

How do we get to "decentralized world?"

If Balaji thinks it will take twenty to forty years for China's centralized model to cease being an advantage, that implies that a "decentralized world" will emerge as an opposing force within that twenty to forty years.

So as less-centralized governments lose the ability to stay together and fund themselves from their citizens, that will fragment into smaller jurisdictions – sometimes based upon geography, other times based upon ideology.

From that no-doubt messy process would emerge new models for organizing people and resources. These new models would rise to become so much better that they rival the reigning world power in this scenario – China.

Sidenote from me on guns, germs, and innovation

The idea of fragmented jurisdictions competing and developing "better" models makes me think of the theories presented by Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel. Diamond theorizes that Europe came to dominate the West hundreds of years ago because Europe had itself fragmented into many competing nation states.

Europe's east-west orientation also meant new methods of agriculture or livestock management easily travelled from one jurisdiction to another. If a new method was developed in Spain, it could be used in France. Those two nation-states would then compete to improve that method, along with other neighboring countries, and any improvements could easily be traded back and forth, thus optimizing a "better" method.

(I say "better" in air quotes because obviously European dominance of the West is morally unsavory. Their methods were "better" merely from a game-theory standpoint: If there is one playing field – in this case, the world – the player with Europe's set of characteristics probably gains control over that playing field in most scenarios. Other methods could be considered better, depending upon by what criteria you rate them.)

Since agricultural technology was so important to the success of a nation at that stage of global development, the portability of technology depended a lot upon climate – thus Diamond's theory that continents with long east-west axes, and thus similarity in climates amongst jurisdictions – innovated rapidly. But in a world where innovation in digital technologies is so important, technological innovations are more portable, and so an idea can be iterated upon and improved within every jurisdiction in the world.

The three-way struggle for power: woke capital, communist capital, crypto capital

Balaji presents a theory of three forces that are and will continue to be struggling for power over the coming decades. I think the implication here is many "jurisdictions" will emerge with various levels of these values. As these jurisdictions compete, some will emerge as "winners" that collectively act as a "decentralized world," which competes with centralized China.

Those three forces are: woke capital, communist capital, and crypto capital. The three organizations that represent each of these, respectively are: The New York Times, the Chinese Communist Party, and Bitcoin.

A little more about each of these:

• Woke Capital: As embodied by NYT, says, "you should sympathize."
• Communist Capital: As embodied by CCP, says, "you should submit."
• Crypto Capital: As embodied by BTC (or Bitcoin maximalists, in its extreme), says, "you should be sovereign."

Both woke capital and crypto capital essentially say "you are powerful…" But woke capital finishes that sentence with "…and you should apologize for that power."

Crypto capital finishes "you are powerful..." by saying "…and you should be self-sufficient."

Communist capital instead of "_you_ are powerful," says "_we_ are powerful…" but, like woke capital, encourages a posture of submission or bowing down as you make yourself subservient to that power. Crypto capital on the other hand encourages a confident posture with head held high.

An optimal "decentralized center"

Any of these forces taken to their extreme is bad. Different jurisdictions will embody different mixes of these values, and, Balaji hopes, we'll reach an optimal "decentralized center." We'll hopefully have a decentralized world, with a good mixture of concern for one's fellow human, self-sufficiency and personal responsibility within the populace, and some degree of control by competent leaders and organizations who are qualified to make decisions for large swaths of people.

State-controlled press, or a press-controlled state?

The New York Times, and the American press at-large, seem to be the incumbents in America, and maybe it's because Balaji leans toward crypto capital himself – he's the former CTO of Coinbase – that he spends a good portion of the conversation criticizing the press.

A resonant quote Balaji says is common: "If China's got a state-controlled press, America's a press-controlled state." In other words, in China, politicians fire journalists. In the U.S., journalists get politicians fired.

Are journalists competent?

If journalists have so much influence over politics, Balaji poses the question, Why isn't the U.S. establishment led by more competent people? The media has so much influence over American politics, our remaining leaders are those who are best at using the media to gain power, not those who are actually competent in their domains.

By contrast, Balaji says, the Chinese system is led by people who think more like Venture Capitalists or technologists. They can think ahead and plan for various scenarios. He cites China's decision to block outside social media companies starting way back in 2009 as prescient, probably preventing an Arab Spring-like uprising.

Since the U.S. establishment do not think like VCs or technologists, they don't actually know how the world works. So everything is a surprise. As Balaji says, "the U.S. establishment [is] always behind the eight ball. Lehman is a surprise. Bear is a surprise. COVID is a surprise. Trump is a surprise. Afghanistan's a surprise. Everything is a surprise."

He presents as examples various article titles by American journalists, such as "Why Facebook Will Never Make a Significant Profit," "Amazon.bomb," or "Google's Toughest Search is for a Business Model." He says, "These journos are not off by 50 percent. You can't just read their article and think you're being sophisticated by discounting it. Their mental model of the world is often off by 10,000 or a hundred thousand X."

Yet news organizations, which are for-profit endeavors, advertise themselves as arbiters of facts. Fox News used the tagline, "fair and balanced." The Washington Post's masthead says, "Democracy Dies in Darkness," and The New York Times ran a billboard in Times' Square that just said "Truth."

Russell's conjugation

A weapon in the struggle amongst the forces of woke, communist, and crypto capital is Russell's conjugation, also known as emotive conjugation.

Russell's conjugation is using different words, with different emotional valence, to describe the same thing. When philosopher Bertrand Russell talked about it on a BBC broadcast in 1948, he used the example, "I have reconsidered the matter, you have changed your mind, he has gone back on his word."

Balaji uses the example, "he doxes, she leaks, but the New York Times investigates," pointing out that newspapers are essentially for-profit intelligence agencies. An average person can't just dig through somebody's trash and put them under surveillance, but that's what newspapers do.

Obviously anyone can use Russell's conjugation, but since the media has so much power to shape our conception of reality it's especially dangerous in their hands. (If the idea of the media shaping our reality is news to you, read my summaries of media theory books such as Understanding Media, The Image, and Amusing Ourselves to Death).

An example Balaji cites of Russell's conjugation in action is that the New York Times, in 2012, published an article called "How Punch Protected the Times", about how dual-class stock helped keep the newspaper in the hands of the Sulzberger family. But in 2019, they criticized Facebook's use of dual-class stock by publishing "You Can't Fire Mark Zuckerberg's Kid's Kids". (To be fair, they were both opinion columns.)

Will the U.S. seize Bitcoin?

The main force that will lead the move toward decentralization is Bitcoin. But will Bitcoin keep growing in influence, or will it be made irrelevant?

Since China recently cut off mining of Bitcoin within their borders, Balaji says it's unlikely there will be a successful technical attack on Bitcoin. China was the biggest potential threat on that front, and Bitcoin survived.

Threats to Bitcoin

There's still some possibility of software attacks, such as a "zero day" attack, a very popular client having a vulnerability, a supply chain attack in which a library is included in the code and isn't caught, or quantum decryption being developed before quantum encryption.

One potential threat to Bitcoin is the U.S. government seizing Bitcoin, much like F.D.R. did with gold in 1933. With executive order 6102, F.D.R. made it illegal to "hoard" gold coins, bullion, and certificates (which I notice was a nice Russell conjugation: Instead of "hoarding," he could've called it "saving.") Everyone had to turn in their gold, in exchange for a low, fixed price, so the Federal Reserve could issue more gold-backed money. Could the government do the same for Bitcoin?

History running in reverse

Balaji considers this an unlikely scenario, or at least a scenario unlikely to be successful, because "history is running in reverse." That is, in 1933, the world was moving toward centralization, and today, the world is moving away from centralization.

Balaji sees the peak of centralization as 1950, when there was one telephone company (AT&T), two superpowers (U.S. and U.S.S.R.), and three television stations (ABC, CBS, and NBC). Moving toward that, the Western frontier closed, the Spanish flu pandemic spread, there was the rise of the "robber barons" and private banking, the right and left were fighting in the streets, and inflation ran rampant in Weimar, Germany. Moving in reverse, we have the internet frontier opening, the COVID pandemic, the rise of tech billionaires and crypto, the right and left fighting in the streets, and what Balaji describes as "Weimar, America," with accelerating inflation. Additionally, in 1933, F.D.R. had the world's smartest people helping him in his Brain Trust. Today, the smartest people are no longer working with the government.

So, Balaji feels that if the U.S. were to attempt to seize Bitcoin, they wouldn't be able to pull it off, because history is running in reverse. I'll add that it seems that would be a tough thing to justify to the public. Executive order 6102 was at least ostensibly for the purposes of making sure the currency was backed by enough gold. I struggle to imagine a palatable justification for seizing Bitcoin from private citizens.

The DeFi Matrix

A big idea Balaji talks about and that Tim Ferriss agrees is a big idea is the "DeFi Matrix." Turning an asset into money is called a "liquidity event," because money is a liquid asset. But, increasingly, every asset can simply be traded directly for another asset, on the DeFi Matrix. For example, it's extremely easy to exchange any cryptocurrency for any other cryptocurrency.

Supposedly, the DeFi Matrix will make it possible to price things we couldn't price before. Balaji uses examples such as a megabyte on your hard drive, a JPEG, or a minute of your time (which I already do on Clarity.fm). He describes this as being like when every newspaper went online and Google News was indexing all of them. Suddenly they were all competing against each other, and local newspapers that were just syndicating AP stories couldn't compete anymore.

Bitcoin as a world government

Are you struggling to see the connection there? If all assets can be exchanged directly for one another, then currencies are no longer dependent upon geography. Suddenly, smaller countries such as Switzerland, Singapore, or Dubai, have an opportunity to compete with their currencies on a global scale. They can add privacy features or Bitcoin backing. So even if you don't trade a megabyte on your hard drive directly for a cup of sugar, you can at least more-easily choose what liquid currency you convert to.

This makes Bitcoin as like a world government, placing a constraint on every state. If a country spends more than they have, people who hold the currency can "exit" to BTC, or the DeFi Matrix.

Honorable mention

I've covered the main thread of this conversation, but it's extremely wide-ranging, and this summary is of course no substitute for actually listening to the conversation.

Some ideas I'd like to give honorable mention, which you'll learn more about if you listen to the episode, are:

• Bitcoin as a "money battery," that uses the surplus of renewable energy sources
• Blockchain explorers as the stealth threat to search engines
• How data becomes money when stored on the blockchain, thus making blockchain companies more secure
• How data stored on the blockchain makes it difficult to spread falsehoods
• What it means to be a "capital allocator," and why we need more of them
• The principle/agent problem, and how automation will relegate management to the arrangement of automation
• Unbundling and rebundling
• Why San Francisco is like a terrible product with great legacy distribution
• How city coins will turn NIMBY into YIMBY
• Bitcoin as a parallel to the Protestant Reformation

There you have it. I wish I knew enough to intelligently disagree with Balaji somewhere, but I personally wanted to digest the conversation, as it's a wide-ranging and cohesive picture that gives the appearance of being correct. Go listen to the full episode to learn more.

Image via Flickr: TechCrunch

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About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, 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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It seems even the most devout techno-utopiasts carry around a Moleskine notebook. They appreciate the way writing longhand on paper alters their thought processes. Yet the same people think writing on a typewriter is absurd, performative, pretentious, or a deliberate troll.

Over the past year, I've grown to love writing on a typewriter. I didn't write my first three books on a typewriter, but I am my next one. I use my typewriter to write articles (yes, this one), email newsletters, and even tweets.

I think you should try it. Write on a typewriter.

The typewriter is the best writing tool ever

If you've followed my work a while, you've seen me experiment with progressively more-primitive writing tools. I first used an AlphaSmart – a portable word-processor – seven years ago. Readers of my latest book, Mind Management, Not Time Management will recognize the typewriter as another "grippy" tool. It helps you get a grip on your thoughts, without letting them slip.

But, I think the typewriter is the end of this road. I won't be making cuneiform impressions on clay any time soon, and I won't even bother experimenting with a chisel and stone tablet.

As the musician John Mayer – who writes his lyrics on a typewriter – has said, "I'm not picking the typewriter because I think it's hip. It's the best version of the idea that's ever come around." Or, as I say, there is no more pure writing device than a typewriter.

Before you dismiss that statement, think about it carefully. Notice I said "writing," not "editing," nor "publishing."

Computers are great for publishing

A computer is the greatest publishing device ever. I have a computer to thank for my career as an author. It not only helps me lay out the interiors of my books and design my covers, but without my computer, I couldn't then publish my books to a market of hundreds of millions of readers around the globe.

None of it could be done without my computer. And since my computer is also what I use to crowdsource editing from my readers and prepare manuscripts, the computer is not only the best publishing device, it's the best editing device.

Typewriters are great for writing

Write, edit, publish: Those are the steps you must repeat to be a writer, and they have to be done in order. You can take a step backward, but you can't skip a step forward. No device does the first step better than a typewriter.

It's for writing, not research

Some will protest that you can't look things up on a typewriter. Well, that's "research," and it can be done before writing, or after writing, while editing. Research, however, is not writing. Only writing is writing.

Your first draft doesn't belong on the cloud

Some will point out that when you write on a typewriter, your work isn't stored on a hard drive or backed up to the cloud. It's too easy to lose sheets of paper. These people fundamentally misunderstand the writing process.

As Ernest Hemingway said, "The first draft of anything is shit." The typewriter is where you say everything you might want to say and explore how to say it. While it shows up on a page, the real work takes place in your mind – daydreamt in your own personal cloud.

As you write, you print

Not that your first draft isn't handy to have. This makes the typewriter the better writing device than its cousin, the AlphaSmart. The AlphaSmart has a tiny screen, which is a good forcing-function to keep your fingers moving. But once the writing is done, you mostly have to rely on what new connections you've made in your mind. As you write on a typewriter, you also print. When you're done, you have a page you can pick up and mark on while you pace around or read parts aloud.

By the way, if you're thinking that piece of paper is bad for the environment, consider that one hour of computer use is worth about seven sheets of paper. We all have scrap paper lying around with a bare side we can type on. You can save that from a landfill – and a typewriter, too!

When you write longhand on paper, you also get something tactile you can review. That is, if you have great penmanship. I, for one, still have illegible handwriting, even after forty years experience holding a pencil. I love how no matter what you write on a typewriter, it always looks the same: Invectives, tirades, and vituperations are printed with the same font as love letters, manifestos, and fan mail. The shapes of the letters impart no meaning, leaving only the words to do their jobs.

Typewriters are faster than longhand

As someone who wrote a book about how time management is overrated, I have to admit, it isn't the most important thing in the world that you can write faster on a typewriter than by hand. The way longhand writing slows down your thought process has its place – as does the nimble qualities of writing on a computer in those rare cases where you merely need to record something you've already thought through.

A typewriter sits right in the sweet spot between speed and deliberation. The keys require more force than those of a computer, and you can only write a dozen words or so before a bell rings, bringing you back to the present moment and reminding you to push the carriage to the start position.

Typewriters are tools for thought

The typewriter is the best writing tool, which makes it a great thinking tool. This is less about what the typewriter makes you think and more about what the typewriter doesn't make you think.

When I wrote about my AlphaSmart seven years ago, I was bombarded with comments about how it was weak to want a device that didn't connect to the internet. If I wanted to avoid distraction, I should just suck it up and focus – at best disconnect my laptop from the internet.

By now, more people have realized they aren't infallible masters of their actions, and are prone to distractions. So, the first thing people usually appreciate about the typewriter is that it will prevent them from checking email or their favorite social media vice. The only web you'll find on a typewriter might be made by a spider, but you'll only have those if you aren't a writer.

Typewriters are great for what they don't have

The typewriter has no software and no firmware – it only has hardware. This means not a single software-update notification. My Smith-Corona has been running on the same hardware since the Truman administration.

And isn't it true, man, those annoying software updates, while they promise to improve the interface, are really for security? The typewriter is immune to attacks and hacks. And the NSA can't touch it because there's No Software Aboard, and so No Suspect Apps, thus No Snitching to Apple. No thought crimes will be committed on the typewriter. You can write your thoughts, No Strings Attached.

You don't get lost on a typewriter. There's no main menu, no hamburger navigation, no apps to sample – just a writing feast. The only thing that crashes are the keys.

Since the typewriter lacks modern features such as the internet or software, that means no spelling- or grammar-check. If you make a mistake, you have three choices: strike it out, paint on whiteout (if you can still find some), or my personal favorite: live with it and move on.

There's no fooling yourself when writing on a typewriter: This is a first draft. It will not be televised. Do not collect 200 edits. You can only pass "Go."

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David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, 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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There's a reason the expression, "unfinished business" has such provocative power. Unfinished projects stack up like skeletons in our cluttered mental closets. We know if we crack open that door, we'll be reminded of our failed intentions, our foolish optimism, and our broken promises – to others and to ourselves.

But unfinished business doesn't get the credit it deserves. Unfinished projects are a valuable and necessary part of the creative process. They build skills and plant seeds of ideas for future projects. And even when a project seems as if it's unfinished, sometimes it's not.

The iPhone came from unfinished business

We wouldn't have the iPhone if it weren't for unfinished business. When Steve Jobs set out to make a phone that didn't suck, he drew upon unfinished projects, and he left unfinished projects in his wake.

The iPhone we know and love – and all the imitation ancestor smartphones it spawned – may seem like an obvious invention. But at the start of the project, it was far from obvious.

A trackwheel phone!?

From the beginning, the iPhone was built upon the foundation laid by the iPod. The iPod had transformed Apple's business. iPod sales were forty-five percent of Apple's revenue in 2005.

But in the early 2000s, when you left the house, you had a dilemma: Do I bring my phone, my digital camera, my iPod – or some combination of the three? Jobs had seen how the digital camera market was getting eaten up by phones that had cameras. That was one less device you had to carry with you. He knew the iPod's market share would erode, too, as soon as there was a decent phone that could hold music. If Apple could develop that phone, they could stay alive.

So the first iPhone prototypes looked like iPods. You'd use the iPod's then-famous trackwheel not only to navigate through menus, but also to select letters to type with, or numbers to dial the phone.

Fortunately, this trackwheel phone became unfinished business. But the winning prototype also created unfinished business.

The iPhone killed the iPad

After toying with the trackwheel phone for months, it became apparent that Apple might want to explore another approach. So, Jobs and the other executives assigned another team to develop a different prototype.

This time, they would develop a multitouch prototype – one where you'd actually use your fingers on a screen to interact with the phone. Apple had been experimenting with touch for many years now, such as when they developed their trackpad. There was one project they already had in the works that they borrowed from to develop the iPhone we know today.

Apple had been working on a tablet computer with multitouch technology. Not only would you touch the screen on this tablet to "click" on items, or drag them around, but it could also sense various gestures, such as swipes, or even multiple fingers.

So, Apple drew upon the technology from this tablet-computer project to use that technology in their phone project. They essentially placed what would become the iPad on hold, thus making more unfinished business.

Creativity is messy

Let's stop for a second to think about how horrible it would be to use a trackwheel phone. You'd have to run your thumb over a trackwheel circle to find the letter you'd want to type, then click on the center of the wheel to select the letter. Or, you'd have to click on the right part of the circle to activate the corresponding letter. You'd have to do this to dial phone numbers, or select applications, enter names into your address book, or – God forbid – to write text messages.

It's obvious to us now this is a horrible idea. But that's because we've used the iPhone. Creativity is a messy process. What will later seem an obviously bad or great idea will not be obviously such when you're in the thick of a project.

Want proof? In the process of making history, the smartest product designers and engineers in the world, including Steve Jobs, spent months exploring a trackwheel phone. Not only that, but at the end of those months, they said to themselves, "Hey, maybe there's a better way?" They didn't kill the trackwheel phone, though. They merely started working on another prototype in parallel.

You'd think that as soon as they saw multitouch, it would have been obvious it was the better solution. But instead, even after six more months, working on both the trackwheel and multitouch versions of the phone, the solution still wasn't clear.

As Walter Isaacson describes in his biography of Jobs, the executives had a meeting to finally commit to one of the paths – and it still wasn't an easy decision. They hadn't figured out how to make the trackwheel experience elegant. They saw potential in the multitouch experience, but they weren't sure it was technically possible. Isaacson says this was what Jobs liked to call a "bet-the-company moment." They finally killed the trackwheel phone, and pursued the multitouch phone, unsure if they could make it work.

Professionals make unfinished business on purpose

So, by deciding to pursue the multitouch phone, instead of the trackwheel phone, Jobs and the other executives deliberately created two kinds of unfinished business. One: they killed the trackwheel phone. All the time and energy they put into that project essentially went to waste. Two: They killed their multitouch tablet computer. They had to divert resources from that project, to give this multitouch phone a shot.

But notice none of this is a surprise. Notice we use words like "prototype," and when you're making two different versions of the same product, you're pretty sure one of those paths will become a dead end.

This is very different from the way most of us work when we're first learning how to be creative. We start a project assuming we'll finish it. But when we realize it won't turn out as we envisioned, we quit. And we feel bad. We lament our "shiny object syndrome", and fall into a downward spiral of guilt. We feel bad that we can't finish projects, so we don't start projects, to avoid feeling bad if we don't finish them.

But professional creatives and dilettantes aren't so different. Both professionals and dilettantes start projects, and fail to finish them. But professionals know what to expect. They try multiple approaches, knowing they'll scrap some. They also know that even when it looks like a project is over, it's not over.

The unfinished business that was the key to iPhone's success

The day after Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone to the world, he called VP of operations, Jeff Williams. There was a problem with the phone. He said, "I've been carrying this thing around and it's scratched in my pocket."

Those of us who had a first-generation iPhone know, it's always had a glass screen. But once again, the obvious solution isn't always obvious – or possible. The iPhone that Steve Jobs introduced on-stage in January of 2007 didn't have a glass screen – it had a plastic screen.

Jobs told Williams, "We need glass." Williams explained that yes, it looked like as technology evolved, it would be possible to have glass screens on future iPhones, but all the current technology they had tested broke when dropped, every time. "No, no, no," Jobs said. "You don't understand. When it ships in June, it needs to be glass."

"Shut up and let me teach you some science"

Jobs called the CEO of Corning, Wendell Weeks, who came to visit Apple in California. Weeks probably wondered why Jobs had bothered, because he started going on about how it was impossible to make a strong, scratch-resistant glass, good enough for a mobile phone. He had learned a lot about glass, building Apple retail stores around the world.

Weeks finally said, "Can you shut up and let me teach you some science?", then drew on the whiteboard, explaining an ion-exchange process that made a super-strong compression layer on the surface of the glass.

Jobs wanted the glass, but there was a problem: This glass was unfinished business. Corning had developed it way back in the 1960s, but, it was a failed project. They never found a market for it, so they stopped making it. When Jobs told Weeks he wanted this glass for the iPhone launch in six months, Weeks had to break the bad news to him. "We don't have the capacity," he said. "None of our plants make the glass now."

Jobs is of course famous for his reality-distortion field, so he pushed Weeks, telling him, "Yes, you can do it. Get your mind around it. You can do it." Weeks converted Corning's Harrisburg, Kentucky plant into a full-time factory for iPhone screens, practically overnight.

"We couldn't have done it without [your unfinished business]"

So the iPhone that has transformed the way we communicate and live came from unfinished business. Apple had to start work they knew they wouldn't ship to make it happen. And they had to create unfinished business by diverting resources from that tablet-computer project – which of course finally became finished business years later, in 2010, when it launched as the iPad.

Thankfully, Corning had gone through the trouble of making a super-strong glass, not knowing what they would need it for. It sat on the R&D shelf for decades before it became finished business – now known as "gorilla glass."

Corning CEO Wendell Weeks received a memo o n the day the iPhone launched, which he later framed and hung in his office. It was from Steve Jobs, and it underlines the power of Corning's unfinished business – which they later made finished. The note said, "We couldn't have done it without you."

Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone image: Dan Farber

Thank you for having me on your podcasts!

Thank you to Andrew Skotzko for having me on Make Things That Matter. As always, you can find all podcasts I've been on at kadavy.net/interviews.

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About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, 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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There's something I want to talk about, but frankly, I'm a little embarrassed to do so. However, I write with my former self in mind, and my former self would want to know about this. So here I go.

I want to talk about how to be somebody.

What do I mean by "somebody?" To be somebody is to be known for your work. To have your name synonymous – or even better, eponymous – with your accomplishments.

I used to be "nobody." Now I am "somebody." I am known in some circles for my work. My work has led to accomplishments I'm proud of. My work and I are one.

There have been many steps on my journey to becoming somebody, but if I had to pick one day, it was September 14th, 2011. That was the day my first book debuted in the top 20 on Amazon. It's hard to overstate what a massive change it was, in every aspect of my life, to overnight go from an unknown tinkerer to a "best-selling author." The day I became somebody, my life changed.

The benefits of being somebody

Being somebody comes with some benefits. Here they are:

1. Career success: This the best reason to become somebody. Name recognition helps you make money for the work you do. The money for the work you do helps you do more of that work. But career success can come in other forms. Being somebody has meant that I've gotten speaking invitations all over the world. Thanks to the ones I've been able to accept, I've spoken all over the U.S., and in eight countries.
2. Respect: When I became somebody, everyone started to show me more respect. Introductions went from, "This is David, he is weird and I'm not sure what he does" to "This is David, he's a famous author." (Prior to becoming somebody, I was introduced by a well-known Chicago entrepreneur – right in front of my face – as a "malingerer.") When I became somebody, my idiosyncrasies and lifestyle choices suddenly weren't viewed as odd. Instead, they were seen as something you would expect from a creative person who is somebody.
3. Connections: Because I am somebody, I can make connections with other somebodies. If I'm interested in the work of another somebody, I can reach out to that person, and they will generally respond. Or, I can ask for an introduction from another somebody. I'm rarely more than a degree or two away from the somebody I want to meet. This is how I managed to interview many somebodies I admire for my podcast, such as Adam Conover, Elise Baurer, David Allen, James Altucher, Seth Godin, and many more.
4. Dating prospects: When I became somebody, my dating prospects improved immediately. This admittedly has downsides, because you don't want to be with anyone who wants to be with you because you're somebody. And if you think being somebody entitles you to love you'll become a horrible person. But being somebody serves as a signal that you're trustworthy. Even though, in recent years, many much-bigger somebodies have turned out to not be trustworthy, the social proof that your accomplishments have gained you name recognition counts for a lot in at least getting someone to acknowledge you as a potential mate.
5. Random perks: I'm only known for my work in small circles, but that doesn't prevent me from being "somebody" outside those circles. I don't flaunt my somebody-ness, but people Google. Oh, do they Google. There have been many situations where someone has discovered I was somebody, because they Googled me, and then they commented on it. Which means there have been many other situations where they didn't admit to it. This improves your prospects in a variety of situations. Sometimes that's intangible, but I know it once at least helped me rent an apartment for a couple months during a mini life.

Being somebody isn't all upsides. I'll get to more of the downsides later. But if you want to become somebody, how do you do that?

Why do you want to become somebody?

Before you try to become somebody, ask yourself why you want to become somebody. This can be a hard question to ask and it gets to the heart of why I'm a little embarrassed to even be talking about this. American culture is driven by people desperate to become somebody, but it's unfashionable to openly admit it's something you want.

What do you want out of being somebody?

If you want to become somebody, ask yourself what you expect to get out of it. It might not even be necessary to become somebody to get those things.

The best reason to become somebody is to get paid to do what you love, so you can do it more. Being somebody is a job requirement behind many creative professions, such as an author, musician, or entertainer. It's hard to substitute the benefits of being somebody in these cases.

But if you want respect, or for various parts of life to become easier, there are other ways to get those things. For example, you can make connections with somebodies simply by being more outgoing and intentional.

A dirty little secret about the benefits I mentioned earlier is that much of the value of becoming somebody doesn't come from being somebody in the eyes of other people. Much of it comes from being somebody in the eyes of yourself. If you want to be somebody, and you feel you are not, you will have little confidence. If you don't want to be somebody in the first place, nothing stands in the way of your confidence. And confidence is a big part of success.

What are the downsides of becoming somebody?

Being somebody comes with downsides and risks, and you should have these in mind if you're going to try to become somebody.

I think I have about the right amount of somebody-ness. The vast majority of people have no idea who I am. A small circle of people respects what I do, and when I meet them, they are always interesting and nice people. As of yet, I have few vocal haters.

I am not enough of a somebody to frequently be recognized in public, outside of industry conferences. (One time in my life, I was recognized in a gym, and that went just fine.) I'm not enough of a somebody for it to impede my daily life, such that I would have to be wary of going to public places, or worse yet, followed by paparazzi. I would see those as downsides.

The main risk of being somebody is reputational damage, known today in its most-extreme form as being "cancelled." For many professions, reputational damage can be devastating, but mostly only if your career depends upon others risking their reputations by working with you. If you are an actor, comedian, and perhaps a musician, if your reputation is damaged, you may have trouble getting work. If you are an author, you have to be pretty heinous to have a publisher drop you. If you are a self-published author, you'd have to be even worse. If anything, an author should be so lucky to be "cancelled" (considering it's for an unfair reason). You'd have to be pretty successful to even qualify to be cancelled, and you'd sell even more books.

The best way for someone to prevent being cancelled is to not do awful things. But "tall poppy syndrome" does exist. People may want to cut you down just because you are somebody, because they would benefit by doing so, or other reasons that are beyond your control. Even if the majority of reasonable people are on your side, there are a lot of psychopaths in the world who could make your life hell, and being somebody likely increases the chances of that.

Should you become a pseudonymous somebody?

More and more people are becoming pseudonymous somebodies, in what Balaji Srinivasan calls "the pseudonymous economy." Depending on what work you do, you can build a reputation for that work without anyone laying eyes on you or your real name.

So, you can reap the career benefits of being somebody, without the personal risks of reputational damage. If your pseudonym's reputation is damaged, you still lose those career benefits, but hopefully your true identity is still safe. You won't get the public-facing benefits of being somebody, but you might get the boost in your self-perception that comes along with doing work good enough to be recognized.

You can also work under a pseudonym without remaining totally anonymous. In other words, people might recognize your face, but not know your real name. This way, you get some of the public-facing benefits, but prevent your privacy from being violated. I have no idea what Tynan's real name is, and I don't need to know.

If I could start over, I would write under a pseudonym, but probably still show my face. A big benefit of pseudonyms is you can improve your chances of becoming somebody by making your name easier to remember, and perhaps even associated with the area in which you work. Joanna Penn uses her real name, which would have been a perfectly-chosen pseudonym, since she writes about writing. I can't help but wonder if some of the success of authors such as James Clear, Ryan Holiday, and Mark Manson can be attributed to their memorable and easy-to-spell names. So many entertainers work under "stage names", it feels silly to even present an example, but Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jeane Mortenson.

Are you trying to fill a hole in your heart?

The older I get, the less I care about being somebody. I want to be somebody to the extent that it helps me sell more books, so I can write more books. But when I was nobody, I wanted very badly to become somebody.

I may think I don't care about being somebody, in part because I've gotten used to being somebody. It's the "water," that I, a fish, swim in. Some of it may be that being somebody isn't quite as amazing as I had expected it to be when I was nobody (though it's still good). But I have to admit – and this is part of where my embarrassment comes from – I to some extent wanted to become somebody to fill a hole in my heart.

If you don't have enough love in your life, you may search for it in becoming somebody. There are many examples of celebrities who had absent or abusive parents or traumatic upbringings, though I don't know for sure if that comes out to a higher rate than the rest of the population. I would guess many of them wanted to become celebrities to fill holes in their hearts.

Wanting to become somebody because you have a hole in your heart can be great motivational fuel. It can be, like I talked about in The Heart to Start, That Which Pulls You Through. But becoming somebody will not fill that hole.

I feel bad for celebrities I see who are constantly in the news, acting out in destructive ways. I hope they're just playing the "there's no such thing as bad publicity" game, but what I fear is happening to them is they wanted to become somebodies to fill holes in their hearts. They became somebodies, but still had those holes, and now they keep throwing everything and everyone in their abundant lives into those holes – which are really endless pits of despair.

Go ahead and use the hole in your heart to motivate you, but once you achieve somebody status, you better figure out how to fill that hole – because becoming somebody won't do it. Better yet, get therapy and work on yourself while you achieve somebody status.

I hate to give people the wrong idea, but becoming somebody does at least help to fill the hole in your heart. It helps you skip levels on Maslow's Hierarchy: by achieving self-actualization through your art, you're better equipped to backfill the lower levels of the hierarchy, such as a sense of belonging.

It's a lot easier to feel like you belong in the world when people respect you more, and when the sacrifices you've made and the work you've put in for years on end lead to success, and aren't what you fear they are: the desperate thrashings of a drowning lunatic. But that's as far as it goes.

Beware the somebody cycle

I feel bad for big celebrities because I think they've probably experienced what I'll call "the somebody cycle." I only lightly experienced this myself, but fortunately escaped being sucked in by the maelstrom (perhaps, thankfully, because I didn't become a big enough somebody to make that maelstrom too powerful to escape).

Here's how the somebody cycle works:

1. You want to become somebody to fill a hole in your heart
2. You work hard, and nobody recognizes your work, for years on end
3. You think to yourself, "I'll show them," and work even harder
4. Your hard work (and luck) leads to you becoming somebody
5. Suddenly you get more respect, and people want to be near you
6. People want to be near you, in part, because you have more respect for yourself. So you may interpret even normal behavior from others as a higher level of respect.
7. You think to yourself, "Where the hell were these people when I was nobody?"
8. You get suspicious of people who want to be near you. They're only "using" you.
9. You become awful to be around
10. The only people who still want to be around you are the ones who want to be around "somebody." They don't actually respect you or your work.
11. Your suspicions turn out to be true. The world is full of blood-sucking leeches who only want to use you.
12. Repeat steps 8–11 until you die of a drug overdose

Sounds awful, right? I think it's still possible to become somebody, and not get sucked in by the somebody cycle. Stick to the principles of becoming somebody.

The principles of becoming somebody

If you want fewer of the downsides of being somebody, and more of the upsides, make sure you're becoming somebody for the right reasons. Here are four principles to follow on your quest to become somebody.

1. Be curious and passionate

By far, the greatest benefit of being somebody is you get paid to do what interests you, and you get to do it more. But success can be a trap. If you become somebody doing something that interests you, the world will expect you to keep following that thing. But what made you successful might not have been your passion for that exact subject, but rather the process of discovery.

My first book was about design. I quickly became known as the design guy. I stuck with that for a while, but became less and less interested in design. I've since embraced that what I'm actually curious about changes. The passion that actually drives me is the process of getting really curious about a subject, and digging into it, then sharing what I've learned. I could still be juicing the design thing, but I wouldn't be happy.

Keep asking yourself if you're truly curious about your work, and whether you feel passionate about the process you're following. If not, change something.

2. Do great work

You can let your desire to become somebody drive you to work hard, but the ultimate goal must not be to become somebody, but rather to do great work.

Somebodies are attracted to other people who are curious and passionate about what they do, and who do good work.

3. Play the long game

Jon Bokenkamp, creator of NBC's The Blacklist, has been on this show, on episode 93. How did I land him as a guest?

When I was nobody, and Jon was less of a somebody than he is now, Jon emailed me out of the blue. He liked some design work I had posted online, and wanted to know if he could use it.

I did him a favor, and more than a decade later, he returned the favor by being on my podcast. In the meantime, he had created one of the biggest shows in primetime television. From the time we first met, we were both curious and passionate people, trying to do good work. If you stick with being curious, passionate, and doing good work, you'll be surrounded by many future somebodies.

Everyone else is looking for the closest sure win. Play the long game, and you'll become somebody.

4. Understand media

Naval Ravikant says there are three kinds of leverage: you can have lots of capital, you can manage labor, or you can be savvy with media. The books and articles we read, the social media channels we consume, and the videos we watch, are just some of the media that shapes what we assume to be reality. This is easy to miss, because media is the "water" that we, the fish, swim in.

It's possible to get lucky and become somebody without understanding media, but it's a lot easier if you do understand media. Pay close attention to how the somebodies you admire use media to increase their exposure, and shape how others see them.

I've written summaries of a few classic media-theory books: The Image, Amusing Ourselves to Death, and – the best book for understanding media – Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media.

Go forth and become somebody

I feel much better now, having shared that. I risked reputational damage by coming off as self-obsessed, but I think my former self would have appreciated reading this.

If you feel you have something to offer the world, and would like to be recognized for it, go forth and become somebody! But remember to make it about enjoying the process, and doing work you can be proud of.

Image: Evening Shows, Paul Klee

Mind Management, Not Time Management now in hardcover!

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About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, 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/how-to-be-somebody/

Systems save energy. Especially if the system helps you with something you do every day. This is why I have a system for cooking. When you're hungry, you make bad decisions, such as grabbing the quickest food you can find – which often happens to be unhealthy food. My cooking system ensures I never have to think about what to eat, or how to prepare it. It frees my time and my mind, so I can focus on creating.

A little disclaimer before I begin: I'm not suggesting you eat what I eat. I have a mysterious chronic illness and am sensitive to damn near everything. This particular diet is optimized for very specific things that apply to me. If you build a system for yourself, you might want to eat something different. The basic principles still apply.

Three principles of a cooking system

My cooking system is based upon three principles:

1. Batch what you can

To batch, prepare what you can beforehand. You save time and energy, and – since many of your ingredients are already ready – you have a healthy meal in no time.

As I'll explain in a bit, in my system, I cut and store vegetables beforehand. This is a little extra work up-front than cutting vegetables before any one meal, but over the course of several meals, it's less time and hassle.

You sometimes have to make compromises for the sake of a system. Pre-cut vegetables are ever-so-slightly less tasty and fresh than vegetables you've just cut, but cutting in advance is still a net-positive.

1. Never run out

A good system prevents emergencies. After a long day, you don't want to suddenly discover you have no food, or are missing a crucial ingredient. Even if you had the energy to do so, it would be a waste to run to the grocery store. But you probably don't have that energy, so you'll probably order delivery – and that delivery food will not be as healthy as a home-cooked meal would have been, and will cost more.

My system is designed to never run out of ingredients. I know the minimum amount of each ingredient I can have before its time to order more. I also know my ingredients won't go bad because I've had them too long.

As you use your system, pay attention to just how perishable your regular ingredients are. How long can you keep them? At what minimum supply is it time to order more, so you won't run out? For example, I have two jars of coconut oil. When I run out of the first, coconut oil goes on my shopping list. I know I'll buy again before I run out of the second jar.

1. Monotony first (variety later)

To start your cooking system, make the same things every single meal. Through repetition, you can gradually sprinkle in variety.

Many people think this sounds boring. "I could never do that," they say. "I could never eat the same thing every meal!" Well, you don't have to.

Eating the same thing every meal is only temporary. It allows you to put together the pieces of your cooking system, such as how often you'll order ingredients, and what compromises you're willing to make to have ingredients ready.

Making the same things with the same ingredients and the same processes gives you one opportunity after another to optimize your system. When you run out of ingredients or they go bad, you learn how often you need to order. You can also experiment with different processes, and learn how different trade-offs affect the quality of what you cook.

Once you have the building blocks of a system in place, you can start adding in variety. Through many iterations of my cooking system, I no longer eat the exact same thing every meal. Many components, such as the vegetables, garnishes, spices, or proteins, can easily be substituted in the same processes to make different dishes.

Many people think they couldn't eat the same thing every meal, but then they continue to do what I used to do: Wait until I was famished, then desperately look for whatever food I could find to shove in my mouth – making bad decisions in the process. If you do this, too, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. You don't have to eat the same things forever. Try it for a while, then mix in some variety.

Categories of ingredients

While you may not want to eat my exact diet, there are categories of ingredients that are nearly universal: protein, vegetables, spices, and garnish. Here's how those apply to my cooking system.

Protein

I eat a variety of meat-based protein sources. I mostly alternate between ground beef and ground pork, but I also occasionally eat ground turkey. My butcher in Colombia has both beef and pork, and packs them into bags of individual serving sizes. I stack them up in my freezer.

At the end of each day, I take a couple packs from the freezer, and transfer them to the fridge. The packs are thin enough, they'll be thawed by the next day.

Vegetables

The main vegetable in my system is zucchini. I eat a lot of zucchini. My other staple vegetables are carrots, red bell peppers, mushrooms, cucumbers, and celery.

Variability in the sizes of zucchinis has had a big effect on my cooking system. The zucchinis in Colombia are not like Whole Foods, in the U.S., where every zucchini is pretty much the exact same. When I am in the U.S., I can quickly enough make zucchini noodles on-demand with a small handheld spiralizer. But since there's so much variance in zucchini thickness in Colombia, I use a table-top spiralizer, and store the noodles in a container.

You can also buy pre-cut zucchini noodles at some grocery stores, generally not in Colombia, so I'll sometimes buy these if they're available and I'm feeling lazy.

Carrots, I spiralize if they're big enough for the table-top spiralizer. Otherwise, they're cut down to a small size that can cook quickly. The bell peppers and mushrooms are also cut down to size for cooking. Celery is cut into short sticks for garnish. Cucumbers are cut into half-moons, separated from the seeds for longer storage.

Spices

By changing the spices in a dish, you can totally change the flavor. But, I have one go-to spice mix that I make over and over. It's a taco mix from a keto cookbook, consisting of chili powder, non-sugar sweetener, salt, black pepper, and some other spices. I fill a Tupperware container with the mix every few weeks. Each time I make the mix, I pay attention to my supply of each of those spices, and put on my shopping list any which are low. This way, I never run out of key spices.

Garnish

I already mentioned that I garnish my dish with cut celery and cucumber, but I have other things I use in each meal.

First, I put on a seed mixture. It's made of various high-fat seeds: hemp, sunflower, and pumpkin seeds, and sometimes flax seeds.

Then, I put on oil. It's usually coconut oil. Sometimes it's flax oil. Less often, it's olive or sunflower oil.

My body hates me if I eat a carb, so these seeds and oils help add fat to my dishes, which gives me hard-to-find calories, and helps keep me in ketosis.

I also get some extra calories (and fat) by accompanying each meal with avocado. This is as freshly-cut as possible – unless there is some left over from a prior meal. Avocados are just a little too perishable to systematize much, though I've gotten better at identifying ripe ones through the avocado challenge I talked about on episode 245.

Starches

Honorable mention goes to the starches category. As I said, my body hates carbs, but starches would be a key part of a cooking system for most people. You could use a rice-cooker, and always have hot rice available. Pasta would be a little more work, as it wouldn't be too good if you didn't cook it fresh every time. The same probably goes for potatoes or sweet potatoes. Then again, you might be able to make all these starches in a rice cooker, which could save a lot of time.

My cooking process

Now that I've talked about the principles and categories of my cooking system, here's the process I follow. As I talk about some of the decisions I've made in this system, you'll get an idea of how you can build your own system.

Step 1: Begin cooking protein

To begin, I start the burner and put the pan on the stove. I pull a bag of meat out of the fridge, slice it open, and put the meat on the pan. I then put some of my spice mix on the meat, turn it over, and turn up the heat a bit. I want to burn some of the spices onto the ground meat, for extra flavor.

Step 2: Take out other ingredients

Through repetition, I've figured out the exact order to do each step in my system. Notice that I started the burner first. That gives it a little time to heat up, while I'm removing the meat and unpacking it to cook.

It takes time to take so many containers of ingredients out of the fridge, so I do that after I've started cooking the meat.

Step 3: Begin cooking "round 1" vegetables

I could add all my vegetables at the same time, but then they wouldn't each be optimally cooked. So, I take the extra effort to add my vegetables in "rounds," based upon how long they will take to cook. At this point, I add my "round 1" vegetables: mushrooms, and if my carrots are sliced and not spiralized, I'll also add them. Otherwise, they get added later, which I'll explain in a later step.

Step 4: Prepare plate with garnishes

While the meat and first round of vegetables are cooking, I prepare the plate, with garnishes. I take a plate out of the cabinet, and add some celery and cucumber to the edge of the plate.

Step 5: Break up protein, and add "round 2" vegetables

Now that the meat and round 1 vegetables have cooked a bit – while I prepared the plate – I break up the ground meat, and stir it up with the vegetables. I then add the "round 2" vegetables, which is usually just sliced up red bell peppers.

Step 6: Cut avocado

While the red bell peppers are cooking, I cut an avocado, and add half of it to the plate as garnish.

Step 7: Add "round 3" vegetables

Finally, I add the "round 3" vegetables. This is my zucchini noodles and – if the carrots were large enough to make noodles – my carrot noodles. Since carrots and zucchinis are of different consistencies, the carrot noodles are sliced thinner than the zucchini noodles. This way, I can add both at the same time, and they will both cook to the right point, in parallel.

I've been cooking without a cover on the pan this whole time (otherwise the dish would get too watery). But at this point, I cover it, so the noodles get steamed by the trapped moisture.

Step 8: Serve

Within a couple minutes, the round 3 vegetables have steamed, and all the other ingredients have cooked to their perfect points in the meantime. While that was happening, I've put a glass of water on the table, and grabbed a fork. I've gotten a measuring spoon and my seed mixture ready, and I've gotten the oils ready, too.

I serve the entire contents of the pan onto my plate, add my seeds and oils, and I'm ready to eat.

Clean up

Clean up after this is easy, because I do this all in a single pan.

I'm mindful of health effects of my cooking materials, and it seems every one is potentially problematic: Teflon is toxic; once aluminum is in your body, you can't get it out; ceramic-coated cookware doesn't last; and materials that are already in our diets, such as copper or iron, may impart too much of those substances into your food. That leaves stainless steel, but then you're eating nickel. Thus, I use a "21/0", nickel-free stainless steel pan. This could be the wrong choice for some reason I'm not aware of, but I'm trying.

"But I like grocery shopping/cooking"

Many people object to this cooking system, saying they actually like grocery shopping, so don't want to do less of it, and that they actually like cooking. You don't have to cut down on anything you don't like to follow a system – just design your system accordingly.

This is my default meal, and I can always make it when I want to use my time and energy thinking about something else – such as writing my next book. But, I sometimes make a new recipe, and I have a grab-bag of other recipes I make if and when I want variety – which turns out is not terribly often.

When friends hear about my system, they often ask what my partner thinks of it. She actually loves it. I left her out of my description of the process, but when we make this together for dinner, we're like poetry in motion – our moves are perfectly coordinated, with me cooking things as she cuts vegetables or takes containers out of the fridge. She has grown to like it so much that when I'm not in town, she follows the same system.

Start your cooking system

Hopefully this gets you thinking about how the processes you follow affect how you use your time and energy, and the decisions you make about what to eat.

(A special thanks to Nelson Quest, who once made a YouTube video that no longer exists, which inspired this system.)

Mind Management, Not Time Management now in hardcover!

Mind Management, Not Time Management has now sold 10,000 copies! Order your hardcover "souvenir" from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or your favorite bookstore.

About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, 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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Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/my-coooking-system/

Many people think our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived short and miserable lives. In fact, that's what most anthropologists thought. Until the 1960s, when they looked more closely at how foragers got by.

The way foragers "worked" can tell us a lot about the way we, as creators, work.

Farming gets a lot of output with little effort

No one can be exactly sure when a human first planted a seed to grow food, but this one act was one of the most revolutionary in human history – up there with the invention of fire, or the internet. The agricultural revolution meant humans no longer needed to roam around, searching for food.

But, with the innovation of agriculture came some trade-offs. We had to wait for our crops to grow, so we had to stay in one place. But staying in one place didn't work out-of-the-box everywhere. As anthropologist James Suzman points out in his book, Work: A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots, the first successful cities sprouted up in floodplains. These areas flooded regularly, and that refreshed the nutrients in the soil, which was a must for successful farming, as crop-rotation hadn't yet been invented.

Which brings us to another drawback of farming. Yes, farming gets you a lot of food with little effort, but eventually your once-fertile soil runs out of nutrients.

Creative "farming" grows ideas into finished products

As creatives, it's useful for us to "farm." Plant seeds of ideas. Give them water, sunlight, and fertile soil, and eventually you'll have a crop of creative products to harvest.

I talked in my book, Mind Management, Not Time Management, about "creative systems." Cultivating ideas takes time. By working with the cycles of your energy to do short bursts of work, and letting incubation do the rest, you can always have creative products to ship. (I talked specifically about my creative system for Love Mondays newsletters on episode 260.)

Creative farming is a great way to consistently turn ideas into finished products. But foraging is where you get the ideas in the first place.

Foraging is more effective than you think

In the 1960s, anthropologist Richard Borshay Lee lived with a hunter-gatherer tribe in the Kalahari desert. He carefully tracked what they spent time on, and what they got out of it. Lee found these tribes met all their needs for food in just fifteen hours work a week. They consumed well over the daily recommended intake of 2,000 calories, and they did it all without farming. They did it by foraging.

Fifteen hours a week to get everything you need. That sounds appealing to many of us. Fifteen hours a week is ironically the number of hours economist John Maynard Keynes once predicted we in the industrial world would work. In 1930, in the midst of the Great Depression, Keynes had the guts to predict that by 2030, we would at least quadruple our productivity. As a result, he said, we would work only fifteen hours a week.

But foraging doesn't lead to progress

We reached that quadruple-productivity mark way back in 1980. But we still work way more than fifteen hours a week. Why? We can make philosophical arguments about the hedonic treadmill, and how we buy too much junk. But one thing is for sure: We want to see "progress."

These hunter gatherer tribes, who have sadly been all but completely driven off their foraging land by the industrial world, did lead rich lives. They worked for what they needed, they had plenty of leisure time, and everything they did was deeply integrated with their families and communities. But they didn't have running water, electricity, or modern medicine. Many lived as long as anyone in the civilized world – if they reached adulthood. But they had a high infant-mortality rate, which pushed down the average lifespan.

They didn't have what we consider "progress." They didn't wonder if their children would live in a world with human flight, space exploration, or the internet. Each generation's life was essentially the same as the previous.

Creatives need to forage

As creatives, we can't just farm. We need to "forage," too. We need to wander around, follow our curiosities, and see what surprises we can find.

The hunter-gatherers of the Kalahari lived in such a rich ecosystem, they could always feel confident they could find something to eat if they went and looked for it. But as a creator, happening upon a feast is less common. It's not every day a song comes to us in our sleep, like it did when Paul McCartney wrote "Yesterday." Or that a happy accident occurs, like when Charles Goodyear spilled chemicals and developed vulcanized rubber.

This is why you need to farm what you forage.

Forage, then farm, to have great ideas, then make them real

Farming what you forage isn't just a good way to do creative work. If you want to be consistent, it's the only way. This is hard to see, because we're working in a world that's a relic of the assembly line. Doctors, lawyers, accountants, and software developers, themselves, are produced on assembly lines. They follow curricula. They take exams. These exams have bubbles they fill out, so a machine can read them – as long as they're filled out with a number-two pencil.

But, like farming, these professions grow stale, like soil being sapped of nutrients. The curricula have to change, as do the exams. But those curricula don't change from farming over and over. Someone has to farm what they forage, to change the field.

Remember from episode 266 that for Henry Ford to put workers on the assembly line, he had to first farm what he foraged. It took a lot of experimentation and tinkering – from Model A to Model S, in addition to the work he did in two previous failed car companies – before the Model T was ready to be produced en masse. But the soil eventually got sapped of its nutrients. While Ford refused to change the Model T until sales dwindled, other car companies were farming what they foraged – innovating to build better cars.

We're not used to farming what we forage. It's not how work has gotten done in recent history. But as automation and AI threaten more and more jobs, we're freed from the drudgery of just farming. We need to forage, too.

I talked in episode 250 about how I farm what I forage with my digital Zettelkasten (that article has since expanded into a successful book by the same name). To forage, I explore what interests me – reading books, listening to podcasts, and having conversations. To farm, I take notes, then categorize and connect them. These seeds of ideas grow over time, until I'm ready to harvest them. An idea can grow into a tweet, then a newsletter, then a podcast episode, maybe eventually even a book.

Farming = clock time; Foraging = event time

Farming and foraging call for different ways of thinking about time, too. In episode 235, I talked about the difference between "clock time," and "event time." Clock time's most recent roots come from Frederick Taylor's scientific management. Breaking actions down to split seconds was a big departure for farmers who moved to cities to work in industry. But farming, too, was a likely predecessor of clock time.

Foragers could usually be confident that if they were hungry, they could find something to eat. When you live in a diverse ecosystem, if one thing is not doing so well, something else is. In fact, when Richard Borshay Lee was studying foragers, there was a drought. The nearby farmers couldn't grow crops. To survive, they had to rely on outside food aid. The tribe he was studying did not. They got by on foods they had found in the wild.

When you're farming, you can't count on finding food whenever you're hungry. You have to grow it. So, you have to think carefully about time. If you don't plant your seeds, pull weeds, or water crops today, you'll be hungry a long time from now. This is probably one reason cultures close to the equator tend to think more about the present, whereas cultures in climates with changing seasons think more about the future. When surviving tomorrow depends upon what you do today, you think ahead.

If you focus too much on farming, you'll always be on clock time. If you keep planting the same seeds and growing the same crops, your soil will become sterile.

If you focus too much on foraging, you'll always be on event time. If you only rely on what you find in the wild, you'll always be living hand-to-mouth. You'll be waiting a long time between one idea and the next, and you'll struggle to develop them into finished products.

Find a seed with potential, then plant it

To farm what you forage, make space to wander. Follow your curiosity, even when it feels as if it will take you nowhere. But when you find something interesting that might have potential, plant the seed. Build creative systems that help you keep ideas growing, without sapping your soil. If you do those two things, you'll never have famines, and always have feasts.

Image: Southern Gardens, Paul Klee

About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, 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/farm-forage/

There's a story I think of every time I'm in the throes of a difficult project. It's from the movie, Catch Me if You Can, about the infamous con artist, Frank Abignale, Jr. Frank's Father, Frank Senior, tells him a story:

Two little mice fell in a bucket of cream. The first mouse quickly gave up and drowned. The second mouse wouldn't quit. He struggled so hard that eventually he turned that cream into butter, and crawled out.

You hear the story several times throughout the movie. It's really the theme of the movie. When Frank Junior's parents separate, he feels like the mouse drowning in cream. He runs away and poses as an airline pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer, forging paychecks and flying all over, like a little mouse, frantically and desperately moving his little legs, trying to find his place in the world.

You face The Void at the beginning of a project

Whenever I start a creative project, I feel like a mouse in a bucket of cream. Every time I move one of my little legs to try to get traction, it just keeps floating in space. But, I've found, if you keep moving fast enough and long enough, that cream turns into butter.

I talked on episode 265 about how there are a lot of different sub-skills to the skill of shipping. One of those sub-skills is overcoming your fear of shipping. In other words, facing the Void.

The Void is the empty space you need to fill for your project to become complete. The Void is a figurative place. It mostly lives in your mind. But it has literal representations, too, such as the blank page or the blank canvas.

The Void is present at the beginning of a project, and that prevents many creators from even getting started. But the Void has other, less obvious, effects. The Void doesn't just prevent you from starting a project. It also prevents you from finishing projects.

The Void holds you back from shipping

There are plenty of things to fear as you're about to finish a project and ship. You fear criticism of your work. You fear later seeing something you want to fix, after it's too late. As I talked about in episode 267, you face the Finisher's Paradox: You learn throughout the project, and by the time you're done, you can already do better.

But as you prepare to ship, and you see your perfectionism taking over, or you get shiny object syndrome, if you look deep within yourself, you'll probably find a fear of the Void. Even though you face the Void at the beginning of a project, your fear of the Void can hold you back in the end of a project.

Being in the "butter" is comfortable

The fear of the Void gets in the way of shipping for two reasons. One: being in the "butter" of a project is comfortable. When something nebulous starts to solidify, we also sometimes say it "gels." In either case, where there was once empty space where you couldn't get traction, you're now enveloped in something solid. When you're in the final stages of a project that has gelled it's like being in a warm blanket on your couch, with a bowl of popcorn, watching Netflix.

When you finish this project, you have to face the Void on the next

Reason number two the Void gets in the way of shipping: When you finish the project, and start the next, you have to face the Void all over again. Deep down, you know after you let go of that first project, and start the second, you'll feel, once again, as if you're drowning.

Is it perfectionism? Maybe it's the Void.

So what are you to do? Simply being aware of your fear of the Void is a good start. When you catch yourself, in the final stretch, second-guessing or catastrophizing, simply remind yourself that you're trying to a-void the Void, and that will help you snap out of it. What looks like perfectionism may not be perfectionism. It may be fear of the Void.

Another great way to overcome your fear of the Void is to make sure you never have to face it again. As I talked about in episode 261, we're taught shiny object syndrome is a bad thing. Working on a project, then quickly getting excited about and switching to another project, is not how traditional work gets done. But it has value in creative work.

Starting projects on the side helps you a-void the Void

If you get comfortable having a bunch of projects incubating on the side – and you don't beat yourself up about the fact you may finish few, if any, of them – those projects on the side serve as buffers against the Void. Once you prepare your current project for take-off, you already have another project waiting in the wings. Your excitement for your other projects can even get you more excited about finishing your current project.

But every once in a while, you're still going to find yourself floating in space – or drowning in cream, if you will. When that happens, do whatever you can to keep forward momentum. Brainstorm and prototype, and be okay knowing most of what you come up with will suck. In other words, remember the little mouse, and get those legs moving.

Image: After the Floods, Paul Klee

About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, 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/the-void/

When Michelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling, he designed and built his own scaffolding. But, it only covered half of the ceiling. So he painted the first half of the ceiling, then removed the scaffolding. When he finally got to view his work from the floor, seventy feet below, it was as if he were seeing it with new eyes.

After two years work, he didn't like what he saw.

Michelangelo faced what I call "The Finisher's Paradox." There's a contradiction that happens when you try to ship your creative work: By the time you're done, you can already do better. You learned in the process.

Michelangelo learned on the job

As I talked about in episode 262, Michelangelo "aimed left" when he started painting in the chapel. He had little experience as a painter, and even less experience in the wickedly-difficult "fresco" method. He knew the first panel he painted wouldn't be his best. So, as art historian Ross King explained on episode 99, Michelangelo started in an inconspicuous part of the chapel. It was the last place the clergy entering the chapel would see, and the last place the Pope would look when sitting on the throne.

Michelangelo did have at least one false start. A few weeks into painting the first panel, he wasn't satisfied with his work. The salty sea air in Italy was staining the mixture of plaster he had chosen. There were probably also some things he wanted to change about his painting style.

Once the plaster on a fresco dries, it's literally set in stone. But, like stone, you can get rid of it if you destroy it. And that's exactly what he did: Michelangelo chipped away three weeks of work and started over.

If Michelangelo learned a thing or two in the first few weeks painting the Sistine Chapel, you can bet he learned even more painting the rest of the 12,000 square-foot fresco – which, in total, took him four years.

Michelangelo faced the Finisher's Paradox

So after Michelangelo removed his scaffolding from the first half of the ceiling, he was faced with a dilemma: There was something he didn't like about his work. Since, while painting on his scaffolding, he was very close to the work, the work looked very different from the floor. He realized the scenes he had painted were too complex. There were too many people on each panel, and, as a result, the people were too small. You couldn't make out very well, from the floor, what was going on in the paintings on the ceiling.

The dilemma then was that he was two years into the work. His patron, Pope Julius II, was a nasty man, known for going on tirades and beating people who disagreed with him – perhaps even worse. He's gone down in history as "il papa terribile," or "the terrible" Pope. He had probably even beaten Michelangelo by that point. Additionally, the project was taking a toll on Michelangelo. His back was killing him, from literally bending over backwards to paint the ceiling.

So, would Michelangelo do as he did when he first started the project? Chip away all that work, put the scaffolding back up, then start over? Or, would he keep going and ship the work?

Michelangelo was faced with the Finisher's Paradox. He had learned a lot throughout the project, and he had learned even more by finally seeing his work from a distance. Would he fix what was wrong with his work, or would he just ship it as it was, flaws and all?

The tale of two (Sistine Chapel) ceilings

Since the Sistine Chapel ceiling has lived on as one of the greatest masterpieces in art, it's surprising Michelangelo saw something wrong at all. It's even more surprising that what he saw is still there in the final product.

If you look closely at the Sistine Chapel ceiling today, you'll notice something different about the two halves of the ceiling. On one side of the ceiling, the scenes are complex. There are lots of people, and the people are small. On the other side, the scenes are simpler. There are fewer people in each panel, and the people are bigger.

When the first half of the ceiling was unveiled, it didn't seem to matter to others that the people in the paintings were small. Raphael was so impressed by what he saw, he went back to one of his own fresco's, The School of Athens, chipped away a spot, and in its place painted a likeness of Michelangelo.

But Michelangelo, himself, made some big changes to his approach. And these changes seem to have paid off. The very first panel he painted on the second half of the ceiling is one of the most famous paintings ever. In The Creation of Adam, you see God himself, giving life to Adam, from fingertip to fingertip. Like other panels on the second half of the ceiling, there are fewer main figures – in this case, two – and, as a result, they're bigger, and easier to see from the floor.

Do the best you can until you know better

In the process of doing your creative work, you learn. This is especially true because nobody can teach you how to do your creative work, with the unique style and idiosyncrasies that make it yours.

Yes, there will be creative waste. Much of it goes into building the underwater part of your iceberg. As you get shiny object syndrome and switch from one project to another, as you scrap iterations by throwing them into the fire, and as projects simply fail (for now), there will be delays in achieving success, as you build your foundation. But just because waste, false starts, and failures are a part of the creative process, doesn't mean you can hide away forever, toiling on a "perfect" masterpiece you will one day unveil.

Shipping is a skill, and learning new skills is sometimes scary. Remember from episode 265 that one of the sub-skills of shipping is overcoming perfectionism. Perfectionism is a "humble brag" of a quality. It's far easier and more comfortable to say you're still working on your masterpiece, than it is to put it into the world and see how it's received.

But as Maya Angelou once said, "Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better." In other words, beware the Finisher's Paradox. When you work on a creative project, you learn. Once it's time to ship, you can already do better. You can't ship your work without some small part of you saying, "this sucks."

It is better to build in enlightenment than to daydream in darkness.

Image: Concert by Louis Marcoussis

Thank you for having me on your podcasts!

Thank you to Chris Parker at Easy Prey, and Joyce Ling at The Abundance Podcast. You can find every podcast I've been on kadavy.net/interviews.

About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, 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/finishers-paradox/

On October 10th, 1901 – 120 years ago, almost to the day – the grandstand was full at the horse track in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. But not to see horses. There was a parade of more than 100 of these new things called automobiles, and several other events, including races of automobiles with electric engines and with steam engines.

But the main event was a race of gasoline automobiles. By the time the event took place, it didn't look like it would be much of a race. There had originally been twenty-five contestants. Only three made it to the starting post, then just before the race, one broke down and had to withdraw.

So there were just two cars, driven by the men who had built them. One was the country's most famous car manufacturer. The other, was a local. A failed car manufacturer, named Henry Ford.

At the time of this race, the most famous car-maker in America was Alexander Winton. He had made and sold hundreds of cars. He had gotten tons of press driving from Cleveland to New York.

At the time of this race, Henry Ford was a failed car-maker. He had made and sold a handful of automobiles, but his first car company had failed.

It was clear who was going to win this race: Moments prior, Alexander Winton had set the world record for the fastest mile traveled in an automobile, going around the dirt track in a little more than a minute and twelve seconds. Winton's car was seventy horsepower. Ford's was twenty-six. He had never taken it on a turn, and it didn't have brakes.

The race was supposed to be twenty-five laps, but just before the event, the organizers shortened it to ten. According to Richard Snow, author of I Invented the Modern Age: The Rise of Henry Ford, they probably didn't want to see the local loser lapped over and over. This race was more of a sprint.

The Foundation Effect

Has this ever happened to you? You pass by a construction site for months, and there's nothing going on. There's just a wall with a project logo, peppered with graffiti.

Then one day, there's a six-story building frame there. Now, each time you pass, it's gotten taller.

There was no visible progress for months, then there was rapid progress. You saw what I call "The Foundation Effect."

The Foundation Effect is the delay in your progress, as you build your foundation. You have false starts and failures, and it looks as if you're going nowhere. But once you have your foundation built, you progress rapidly.

Back to the races

Henry Ford, the failed carmaker, won the sprint. But it wasn't until much later he also won the marathon.

Eight years after that race, Henry's Ford Motor Company released a car that changed everything. It was durable enough to make it over rough country roads, lined with horse-drawn-wagon tracks. It was versatile enough farmers could use the engine to run a wheat thresher or move hay bales down a conveyer belt. It was twice as good as any car out there, at half the price.

The first year, they sold 10,000. The second year, 20,000. A few years after that, they sold almost 200,000. By the time the "Model T" went out of production nearly twenty years after introduction, the Ford Motor Company had sold nearly 15 million. More than half of all cars in the world were Fords.

Meanwhile, Alexander Winton's company kept building custom cars, made-to-order. He just couldn't compete with Ford's Model T, and had to shut down. Despite having over 100 patents on automobile technology, few today have ever heard of Alexander Winton.

You need a foundation

How did Henry Ford create such an incredible car, that sold in such incredible quantities? He built a rock-solid foundation. Over and over, he rejected the mere illusion of progress to scrap everything and start over.

As a creator, you may feel as if you're getting nowhere. You're starting projects, but not finishing them. The ones you do finish are failing. You're throwing iterations in the fire, like Radclyffe Hall. From recent episodes, you know creative waste is part of the process. You're building the underwater part of your iceberg, so some future masterpiece will be that much better.

But you're also building your foundation. The foundation of a building holds it in place. Even when the building sways in the wind or shakes in an earthquake, the foundation is there to bare the stress.

Architects and engineers can design a foundation using knowledge about the laws of physics. Many buildings have been built before, so there's a lot of collective experience to draw from.

You, as a creator, need to build your foundation from scratch. It's what makes your work unique. As a creator, your foundation is made of the change you want your work to make, the medium through which you'll make that change, and the process you'll follow to make your product.

These things take time to develop. It will look as if you're getting nowhere, but once they're in place – like a skyscraper once the foundation is laid – your progress will be rapid.

How to build your foundation

To build your foundation, you need to clarify your vision and master your execution, so you won't topple over.

Here are some ways to do that.

1. Keep shipping

This seems counterintuitive, because when a skyscraper goes up, they only build one building. They aren't putting up a few stories, scrapping it, and starting over.

The reason they can build a foundation to support the skyscraper is, millions of other buildings have been built before that skyscraper. Architects and engineers can design a strong foundation because they have tons of data.

You need to collect tons of data about your unique way of doing things. How do you get it done? How do people react? Does it express your unique point of view? What is that point of view? Overall, how do you make what only you can make?

Henry Ford's hit car was the Model "T." Why was it called the Model T? Because he had already built the Model S, the Model R, Q, P, O – you get the idea. He started with Model A. It took until Model T to build the foundation for stratospheric success.

The way you build your foundation as a creator is to keep shipping. Remember, shipping is a skill. And each time you ship, you make your foundation stronger.

2. Don't just build. Experiment.

It's funny that when most people think of Henry Ford, they think of the assembly line. A bunch of guys on a line, each doing one tiny job, such as placing a nut on a bolt, or merely turning the nut on the bolt. But for Ford to create those tasks, he first had to design the product that could be broken down into those tasks.

Ford treated each car he designed and built as an experiment. He made them as good as he could, but knew they couldn't be perfect. They were going to break down, or have annoying maintenance requirements that needed to be improved.

We can design buildings that don't collapse because other buildings have failed. Ford made new and better cars because his cars failed. That's how he improved the transmission, lubrication, and spark plugs. That's how he found a steel alloy that would be lightweight and strong – and countless other improvements to the design and manufacture of his cars. And that's how, even as he improved the Model T, he kept making it cheaper. When he introduced it in 1909, it was $825. Sixteen years later, inflation be dammed, it was only $260.

3. Walk away from failures (guilt-free)

Henry Ford wasn't afraid to quit. Yes, he went from Model A to Model T, but that was in his third car company. He had one failed company before the race, and after he won that race, he gained enough notoriety to attract investors for a second car company. But he walked away from that company, too – only four months later.

By the way, Ford went from A to T, and not all those cars were introduced to the public. Many were internal experiments that he walked away from – or, if you will, iterations thrown in the fire, like Radclyffe Hall's drafts.

4. Have a vision

You can't walk away from failures for no reason. You can't learn from experiments if you don't know what you're looking for. You need a vision.

You don't have a crystal-clear vision from the start. That's why you're doing all that shipping and experimenting and quitting in the first place.

Why did Henry Ford walk away from the car company he started after the race? It wasn't going to help him carry out his vision. Ford had a vision to create an affordable automobile for the masses. His investors, on the other hand, wanted to build high-end cars for the wealthy. The company wasn't a foundation that was going to help Ford achieve his vision, so he stepped back, to build a foundation that would.

Keep building your foundation

If you're frustrated with your progress as a creator, maybe it's because you're still working on your foundation. If you're scrapping iterations and walking away from half-finished, and failed, projects, make sure it's in the pursuit of a vision. If it is, keep learning, until you get it right. Once your foundation is in place, the sky is the limit.

Image: Monument by Paul Klee

About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, 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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Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/foundation-effect/

Leonardo da Vinci is easily the most-accomplished procrastinator who ever lived. He finished hardly any projects at all. He was great at many things, but he wasn't great at shipping. The world would have been better off if Leonardo da Vinci had treated shipping as a skill.

Far be it for me to criticize anything Leonardo da Vinci did. Despite his repeated failure to ship, he lives on today as one of the greatest geniuses who ever lived – enough so that I'm talking about him in a podcast 500 years after his death.

What Leonardo da Vinci procrastinated on

He foreshadowed the first law of motion, saying two-hundred years before Newton that, "Every movement tends to maintain itself."

He made a number of discoveries about the circulatory system: He was the first to notice the heart was the center of the blood system – not the liver. He described how an area of the aorta functioned, but since he never published his observations, it's named after a different scientist, who re-discovered this area two-hundred years later. He correctly described how blood flow affects the opening and closing of heart valves – findings that were proven correct only recently – 450 years later.

He wrote or planned to write treatises on topics including painting, anatomy, human flight, geology, and astronomy. Much of what he wrote would have broken new ground in these fields, and set them ahead a couple centuries – if only he had published it. Even his greatest masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, Leonardo never finished. His patron never got their painting, and Leonardo never got paid. It was still in his studio when he died, more than fifteen years after he had begun the painting.

Okay, so some of Leonardo's procrastination was iceberg-building

Much of Leonardo's failure to ship was a part of his creative process. It was the creative waste that made the underwater part of his iceberg – as I talked about in the past couple episodes. There could have been practical reasons he didn't ship. Remember, once Leonardo delivered one of his paintings, it was gone forever. He couldn't snap a photo of it for safe-keeping on the cloud. One reason he clung onto mostly-finished paintings was so he could refer to them, borrowing a trick he did painting a smile from one painting, and a trick he did to make it feel like the eyes are following you around the room from another painting.

But it's hard to say Leonardo couldn't have been better at shipping, when you look at all he could have contributed if only he were. And if you want to be a great creator, it makes sense to ship. Most of us would rather have our genius recognized in our lifetime, rather than marveled at hundreds of years later for what it would have contributed.

Shipping is a skill

Shipping is a skill. The act of having a vision, planning to achieve that vision, and executing on that vision is a skill you should cultivate, just as you would practice a programming language, writing, or macramé. Treat shipping as a skill, and you'll finish more projects. Shipped projects have a better chance of having an impact on the world.

The sub-skills of shipping

Shipping is a sub-skill of creative work. But the act of shipping itself has its own sub-skills. It's hard to see what you're missing out on by not treating shipping as a skill, unless you look closely at the sub-skills of shipping.

Here are the sub-skills of shipping:

1. Vision: Can you visualize the outcome you'd like to have?
2. Planning: Can you imagine the steps you need to follow to make this vision a reality?
3. Resourcefulness: Can you assess what resources you have that can help you achieve this vision, find what resources you don't have, and use all those resources wisely?
4. Adaptability: Can you adapt your plan when some part, inevitably, doesn't go as planned?
5. Overcoming Perfectionism: Your final product won't be a perfect execution of your vision. Can you overcome perfectionism and ship anyway?
6. Fear of Shipping: Once you ship your project, there will be a void in your mind where that project once lived. Can you "let go" of the project and overcome the fear of that void?
7. Facing Failure: Once you ship your project, you give it a chance to succeed or fail. Can you face potential criticism or failure?
8. Reflection: How well can you reflect on the project, and process what you've learned, so you can apply it to the next project?

Project-independent shipping skills

Many shipping skills are project-independent. You can practice shipping, and many sub-skills of shipping, with any kind of project. Any time you have a vision, execute on that vision, and bring it into the world, you are practicing the skill of shipping.

Some examples of small projects on which you can practice the skill of shipping:

• Cooking a recipe: Can you figure out how to get all the ingredients? Can you execute the plan? Did it turn out how you expected? What can you do differently next time?
• Planning a party: What kind of vibe do you want this party to have? Should it have a theme? Who should you invite? What do you need to tell them in the invitation to set the tone? What will you do differently for the next party?
• Planning a trip: Do you want to relax, or have an adventure? What's your budget? How much time do you have? How long will it take to get there? What do you need to pack? What should you do first and second and last to make it the trip you imagined?

How I built my shipping skills

When I first started on my own, I had almost no shipping skills. So, I started treating shipping as a skill. Any chance I had to have a vision, try to execute that vision, and ask myself what I could have done differently was a chance to practice the skill of shipping.

The simplest way to practice shipping is trying to cook a recipe. I can tell you, it's quite hard if you're terrible at shipping. Fortunately I lived two blocks from a grocery store, because I had to make lots of trips back.

Planning parties was one of the more fun ways to practice shipping. I experimented with different themes. I learned who to invite first, and who to get involved in the planning, to get people interested in coming. One of the biggest hits was the "Inexplicably Overdressed Bar Crawl." We'd go to various dive bars wearing suits and evening gowns. It was fun to imagine what would happen if a bunch of overdressed people went to dive bars – and it was fun to see what actually did happen.

I eventually worked up to planning my mini-lives, which I talked about on episode 5. If you're going to try living in the city you dream about a couple months, how do you want it to go? How do you make the most of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?

Any project is an opportunity to work on the project-independent shipping skills and sub-skills.

Project-specific shipping skills

On August 7, 1974, as groggy New Yorkers were on their way to work in the morning, they couldn't believe what they saw in the sky. It was a man – Philippe Petit – on a tightrope. For nearly an hour, Petit performed on a cable strung between the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

Petit didn't just show up and do a performance a quarter-mile in the air. What became known as "the artistic crime of the century" took a lot of planning. Yes, Petit had project-independent shipping skills he was practicing. He had the vision to tightrope walk between the towers when he saw them in a magazine in a dentist's office in France six years prior.

But, performing a tightrope-walk way up in the sky has lots of project-specific shipping skills, too. Besides the obvious challenge of balancing on a wire without falling, Petit had to figure out how to gain access to the twin towers, what materials to use to handle the wind and the weight of his body, and how to build buzz about his performance so more people would see it.

So, leading up to his performance at the World Trade Center, Petit did performances on other landmarks around the world. He did a tightrope walk on the Notre Dame cathedral, in Paris, and between pylons of the Sydney Harbor Bridge, in Australia.

Practice the shipping skills for your project type

If you have a big vision you want to execute, take on smaller projects that will help you practice not only general shipping skills, but also skills specific to shipping that kind of project.

This is why Seth Godin told me on that if I wanted to publish a successful book, I had better start cranking out "a book a week" on Kindle. I didn't publish a book a week, but I did publish – and continue to publish – "short reads." They're great shipping practice specific to book-publishing projects.

This is why I encourage people who want to self publish to upload to KDP a really short Kindle book – even if they do it under a pen name. It teaches you lots of shipping skills specific to self-publishing books. How do you format the book? How do you get a cover design? What keywords do you want to put in the back-end? What categories will your book be in? These are all questions you have to answer whether you're publishing a book that's five pages long, or five-hundred pages long.

Practice shipping, and shipping will be easier

Publishing a book that's five-hundred pages long will always require some skills you don't get to practice when publishing a book that's five pages long. Tightrope walking a quarter mile in the air will always require skills you don't practice when tightrope walking a hundred feet in the air. But the more skills you master before your grand performance, the easier it is to handle the new skills you're testing for your current project.

Practice shipping, and shipping will get easier. Shipping is a skill.

Image: Revolving House by Paul Klee

About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, 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/shipping-is-a-skill/