For example, fasting stimulates the natural production of growth hormone. So does vigorous exercise, particularly resistance exercise with a strong anaerobic component (not cardio though). And, to the surprise of many people, deep sleep stimulates the natural production of growth hormone, perhaps more than anything else. (Although only once every 24 hours; sleeping all day does not seem to work.)
But, when you work in six week cycles, or relatively short time frames, later means something else entirely. There’s no time for later. It’s now or not. Later doesn’t mean we’ll get to it at the end of this cycle. It means we’ll drop it. Later means another time, not this time. Later isn’t an obligation, it’s a maybe. Later isn’t a cage, it’s freedom. It’s not a debt to pay off, it’s an asset. There’s no pile of pile ups, there’s no guilt, there’s no feeling of late nights and crunch time ahead. Later simply means not now, not soon, and not for sure.
I read this and it really landed. Six weeks. Six weeks is an amount of time I can truly apprehend and plan for. Six weeks has become my new project size. If it cannot be done in six weeks, it needs to be broken down into multiple projects.
The movie is also missing (though it very nearly captured) a fascinating archaeological sidenote to the story: the extraordinary investigations of Dutch archaeologist Hendrik Robert van Heekeren while he was a prisoner of war.
Sure, it’s a film from the 50s, so it’s going to gloss over some things. But it’s interesting to learn about what really went on in that theater [of war.]
What foundation is needed to create a sustainable and successful podcast without becoming overwhelmed by the complexity of the process?
Small, continuous improvements differentiate successful podcasters from those who fade.
When the first computers showed up at the school, they didn’t even know how to teach it yet. So you get those tools and you start layering them into your process. Then you learn how to break it and make something your own. That’s where your art, your style, your uniqueness comes through. But if you didn’t have that foundation, you don’t really have a right to jump to those other things— It just doesn’t work out most often.
~ Tracy Hazzard (11:47)
Tracy Hazzard explores the importance of building strong foundational skills before layering on tactics in podcasting, using examples from art and design education. The conversation highlights the ongoing challenges of rebooting a podcast show, particularly the unexpected complexity of shifting to a deconstructed review format. Attention is given to how applying design thinking can help evaluate what parts of podcast production should be simplified or improved.
Other topics include the value of owning a website and email list to control audience relationships, with personal anecdotes about SEO dominance and long-term content value. The discussion also covers practical strategies for sustainable podcast production, including the benefits of small team workflows, using AI to streamline writing tasks, and the pitfalls of overcomplicating production processes.
Takeaways
Building a foundation before innovating — Learning and mastering the basics leads to better long-term podcasting results.
Owning your audience relationships — Maintaining a website and email list provides resilience against algorithmic shifts on platforms.
Complexity of show format changes — Shifting from interview-based episodes to detailed show deconstructions introduced unexpected preparation challenges.
Value of authentic podcasting — Creating authentic and improvised moments makes shows more memorable and unique.
Sustainable workflows for podcasters — Streamlining production using AI tools and focusing on tasks only the creator can do is critical for maintaining momentum.
Podcast websites and searchability — Properly built podcast websites can continue driving traffic and discoverability years after a show ends.
Long-term SEO value — Strategic website naming and content accumulation lead to sustained search engine ranking.
Challenges of coaching podcasters — Continuous improvement through small, layered learning sessions proves more effective than overwhelming new podcasters.
Pitfalls of early distractions — Podcasters today face a landscape where getting distracted by tools and tactics can quickly derail progress.
Alternative monetization pathways — Even niche podcasts can achieve strong monetization through SEO dominance and strategic audience engagement.
Resources
Podetize — A syndication platform providing podcast hosting, production, and coaching services.
Feed Your Brand — A podcast focused on strategies for building and growing brand visibility through podcasting.
The Binge Factor — A podcast dedicated to uncovering the factors that make podcasts binge-worthy.
Smartcuts by Shane Snow — A book mentioned as a favorite, discussing how lateral thinking and smart shortcuts lead to success.
SmartLess Podcast — A podcast noted for its effective use of improvisation and co-host dynamics.
3D Start Point — The website for the WTFFF?! 3D printing podcast, demonstrating long-term SEO success.
Our self-awareness as actors is pretty missing in that way! There are plenty of times where I thought, “That was something…” And then nobody thought that was anything. (Laughs) And then there’s other times where I said, “Oh, I don’t know about that.” And everybody loves it! So it’s not that easy.
I decided to retire in 2021 because, after such a long career, I had done enough, and it was time for something different. My art was much more interesting and challenging to me (and still is).
Interestingly, when people ask me “what do you do?” I used to say, with snark, “As little as possible.” These days? Still that, but now without the snark.
In the Greek story of Sisyphus, the king was condemned for eternity to move a massive rock up a hill but never reach the summit. Albert Camus famously saw it as a parable of the human condition: Life is meaningless, and consciousness of this meaninglessness is torture. This is how I’d remembered Camus’ essay The Myth of Sisyphus, which describes an afterlife as devastating as that of Prometheus having his liver pecked out by an eagle anew every day. But when I reread it recently, I was reminded that for Camus, the king isn’t entirely tragic; he has some power over his existential predicament. Once he grasps his fate—“the wild and limited universe of man”—Sisyphus discovers a certain freedom; he gets to determine whether to face the futility of it all with joy or sorrow.
Ironically, it is actually far easier for us archaeologists to investigate the monument now than it was before the fire. Although the fire released a lot of lead, making it necessary for researchers to don protective clothing and abide by procedures to avoid lead toxicity, we no longer face the obstacles presented by floods of tourists on the site, and materials damaged by the fire are now more available for analysis. Together, we have learned a lot about the building, its materials, and the possibilities for reconstruction.
After ending on a startlingly inconclusive note in 1991, Twin Peaks returned in 2017 to extend the story for one more season. Yet audiences who’d hoped for a traditional ending were again denied one. Again, Lynch seemed to be imploring them to stop seeking clarity and embrace the moments whose overarching connections are far less obvious. What mattered to him, it appears, was the experience itself: the feelings they evoked, the uncanny images whose significance were difficult to parse yet impossible to forget. David Lynch didn’t want to leave his viewers with an interpretation, but with something more visceral—like the taste of cherry pie and a cup of hot coffee, black as midnight on a moonless night.
I watched Twin Peaks in real time on ‘ol broadcast TV. It bent my brain in the best way possible. But . . . there’s another season?! Shut up and take my money— I was reading this, thinking it was simply interesting. Until I got to this line… excuse me while I run to whatever streaming service it takes . . .
Paper is good. Somehow, a blank page and a pen makes the universe open up before you. Why paper has this unique power is a mystery to me, but I think we should all stop trying to resist this reality and just accept it.
Paper is good is a colossal understatement. The magic of writing comes from being forced to slow down; One has to hold on to a single-sentence sized thought long enough to write it. You’ve never held one thought, clearly in mind, for 10 seconds… unless you were writing it down.
[I]t’s important to have a sense of urgency. But there’s a difference between urgency and rushing, hurrying, going quickly for the sole sake of speed. There is an old Latin expression that I think captures the balance here nicely: Festina Lente, which means, Make haste slowly. A sense of urgency…with a purpose. Energy plus moderation. Measured exertion. Eagerness, with control. It is about getting things done, properly and consistently. They like to say in the military that slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
We’re told to “just ship it,” but also to “make it great.” Where do you draw the line? When do you prioritize polish, and when do you hit publish?
I had to learn—the way you learn to ride a bicycle: do it over and over, the “principle” of the thing doesn’t help you do the thing—that the tension is a good sign. Now when I feel the tension between quality and consistency I know I’m in the correct place.
This morning, I’m thinking about a rowing metaphor: One oar is quality and the other is consistency. Pull evenly and the boat goes straight-ish. Also, if you try to row too hard, you get exhausted. The best way to make long-term progress is to row these two things, in balance, at a sustainable pace.
Well, I trust that if I’ve got a night’s sleep, if possible, and have had something to eat, and have worked on the part, I can kind of just show up. It’s of course a case-by-case basis, depending on the part and the scene. But just put some attention and some good honest effort into trying to solve the puzzles of the scene and it will work out, without overly trying to inflate my condition, my inner thinking and feeling — without overly abusing myself.
I do love that the first item on that list is sleep. But yes, absolutely, there’s magic in preparing, and then letting go of that preparation. In thinking: I’m prepared, smiling, and looking forward to this adventure.
Along the way, over years of practice, I lost faith that awareness was always curative, that resolving childhood trauma would liberate us all, that truly feeling the feelings would allow them to dissipate, in a complex feedback loop of theory and practice.
I read somewhere that what likely makes any therapy work is the effort one puts into creating the relationship with the therapist. Striving to be a better person seems to lead to—wait for it—slowly becoming a better person. To that end, I recommend deploying tools like discovery and reflection to attempt to ground your self-assessment in reality, and to give yourself a force multiplier for the incremental insights.
When companies face real competitors, then some enshittificatory gambits are unprofitable, because they’ll drive your users to competing platforms. That’s why Zuckerberg bought Instagram: he had been turning the screws on Facebook users, and when Instagram came along, millions of those users decided that they hated Zuck more than they loved their friends and so they swallowed the switching costs and defected to Instagram. In an ill-advised middle-of-the-night memo to his CFO, Zuck defended spending $1b on Instagram on the grounds that it would recapture those Facebook escapees.
There’s a lot of value in being able to just hop onto some platform and do what you need or want to do: easily organize a group of friends, say, while not having everyone know where your baby shower will be. It turns out that building complex systems is difficult, not easy. Any time you find something is easy to do (using some piece of technology) first, marvel at that. Because doing the difficult work of building that whatever-it-is enables the other things you want to do to seem to be easy.
And the second thing should do it think about why would anyone want to do all that difficult work and perhaps you should (at least sometimes) just directly do that difficult work yourself.
You stand back and in a way, the reason it’s interesting is because it stands out, it doesn’t fit in, it doesn’t look like anything you’ve seen. But this is not really my position — generally. There might be moments where such a performance is necessary but we like to find a stronger relationship between the familiar and the unfamiliar. My feeling is that when a building is too self-referential, the audience is distanced; architecture becomes something that you look at. [Like in a cathedral or a monument?] Right, it’s a spectacle — whereas I think for 99% of the time, architecture is something that you should be inside and absorbed by. It’s something which convinces you by experience more than impresses you by image.
Set a recurring date on your calendar to get together. And then stick to it.
Some people might find this tactic a little soulless and formal, the same way that some couples deride the idea of scheduling sex. Yet when your life is ruled by your phone and nothing gets done unless it ends up on a to-do list, booking repeat friend dates is practical—a way to carve out real time not just for errands and work, but also for engaging with the people you love.
I once had a long-running dinner with a few of my cousins and our spouses. We all liked to have dinner in, rather than out… but we couldn’t settle on a strict schedule. So instead, we made sure to start each gathering by having the “when do we next meet” discussion? :) Sure it took time to do that, but it has the advantage that everyone is in the room. We’d end up planning 4 or more weeks out, but it got on the calendar every time. And yes, we stopped because the last time we met up, we didn’t plan the next time.
This is a perennial struggle for me. My ability to imagine things that I’d like to create, vastly and consistently exceeds my ability to actually create.
The standard advice is to narrow one’s focus. Choose one thing to focus on— especially if we’re talking about charging for a product. But even more generally, in podcasting, the standard advice is to choose one thing… one show… one format…
I’ve come to the conclusion that I am not that sort of creative. A while back I stood up a new “home” for myself on the Web at craigconstantine.com and as I was deciding what to put there, this occurred to me:
I create a ton of free, public stuff. Each of my current projects is its own rabbit hole to explore.
After decades of struggle against my own nature, I’ve given up trying to focus on just one thing. Instead, I’ve learned to relax—or at least, to be slightly more relaxed. When the creative energy is flowing, I channel it. And sometimes I simply pause.
That’s how I keep my podcasting sustainable. I create processes and move things along when I feel engaged and motivated. And sometimes I pause.
Many podcasters burn out. What’s a pace that actually works for you? How would your show change if you prioritized sustainability over growth?
