Scree

noun : an accumulation of loose stones or rocky debris lying on a slope or at the base of a hill or cliff.

The Work

October 12

After reading the first “book” in Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art, I’m inspired to define, for me specifically: What is “the work?”

In a specific moment, on a specific day, when I feel that odd uneasiness, I will not try to identify the specific form Resistance is taking. Instead as Pressfield mentions on page 12:

[…] We can use this. We can use it as a compass. We can navigate by Resistance, letting it guide us to that calling or action that we must follow before all others.

Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.

As a real example of my own experience, Resistance’s compass guides me towards watching sci-fi entertainment (“a harmless relaxation,” I think after working in my yard for hours). So the opposite would be to… organize and streamline my writing environment and processes so tomorrow I can write more easily! No. My hiding in preparation and perfection is just another form of Resistance.

The best way for me is to look at all the possible things I could do, rather than follow Resistance’s compass. Then boil that down to a list of positive, actionable, directions in which I can sit down and work.

In a specific moment, on a specific day, when I feel that odd uneasiness, I can glance at my list and simply do a bit of The Work.

To defeat Resistance I can simply sit down, and do a little bit of any of the following…

  • do guest outreach for podcasting
  • write the next issue of 7 for Sunday
  • write the next Open + Curious article
  • write new blog posts

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PS: I’ve listed “do guest outreach” because—for me—once I do that consistently for a few weeks, all the rest of the podcasting process follows automatically.

What is intention?

October 10

Friend and fellow podcaster Angie Flynn-McIver published a book, Before You Say Anything, in 2021…

Your intention should be something that really lights you up. You need to feel it in your chest, in your gut. It is the verb that connects you to your audience, the umbilical cord that takes your energy to them and brings theirs back to you. Intention is action.

~ Angie Flynn-McIver

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Another quote from the book, was a seed for a recent post to Open + Curious…

Active, not passive

Little Box of Quotes — For those who don’t know: The quote at the top is now included in my collection, which I call the Little Box of Quotes — number 1,471 to be exact. There’s a daily email available with just exactly one quote, and nothing more. For several years it was also a daily podcast which to more than 1,000 episodes (still available wherever you listen). All free, just because I like to create things that make the world a better place.

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Changing the name of a podcast?

October 5

My podcasting-friend, and coach, David Nebinski has a question for podcasters over on his Substack…

Should I change the name of the podcast? I have gone back and forth on changing the name… What do you think? Reply back and let me know!

~ David Nebinski, from Should I change the name…

I don’t have a login for Substack (an intentional choice) so I cannot reply there. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I have changed the name of a podcast. The Movers Mindset show had a very different name in the beginning. For me, I realized I was always spending time explaining the meaning of the name— and I realized I wanted to spend that time explaining the show itself rather than the odd name I had.

So I think that’s one reason to change a name: When the name just doesn’t fit.

When people ask me this, I direct them first to Eric Nuzum’s classic question: Can you describe your show in 12 words? …10 words?

Our show titles don’t have be our one (or 2 or 3 even) word answer to that question. But I think they have to at least not detract from describing our show.

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Appearance on the Visible Voice podcast

October 4

Mary Chan is a skilled hostess with a gift for great conversation. Her show is laser-focused on helping other podcasters grow and excel. She recently invited me to join her— …actually, stop reading. Go listen!

Even if we’re lucky enough to “do what we love,” work tends to have tedious aspects we don’t like. Craig Constantine is a passion podcaster who, through the creation of thousands of episodes and rigorous reflection, has built a workflow that simplifies every step of his method, from prep to publication.

~ Mary Chan, from The Podcaster’s Guide to a Visible Voice

Simplify Your Workflow to Keep Your Podcasting Passion Alive with Craig Constantine – Episode 84

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Cultivating a richer life

October 3

Are you feeling overwhelmed by the never-ending noise and distractions of our modern world? You’re not alone. In today’s fast-paced environment, finding inner peace has become more crucial than ever.

~ from Cultivating a Richer Life with Craig Constantine

Back in early 2023, I was delighted to be invited to again join Vivian Carrasco on her show, The Within (U) Podcast. I think those of you who’ve heard a lot of me, will find this episode a little different. (Thanks go to Vivian for being such an open and inviting hostess!)

So glad that Vivian was able to hit the ship-it button recently on this, and a bunch more episodes! It’s great to see you back on the bicycle Vivi. :)

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I know what to do

September 26

For me, fully internalizing this one powerful piece of inspiring profanity has been transformative. But I still find that returning regularly to the well makes all this work even better. So I downloaded both of the Goggins’s audiobooks and worked through them in little chunks on my morning walks over the period of a month. Then I moved on to Peter Attia’s Outlive, and Jocko Willink’s Extreme Ownership.

~ Peter Adeney, from The Ultimate Life Coach

I really do know what I should be doing. (I have no idea if you, or anyone else, does too.) But I can tell you that even though I know… it’s still tough to do the soul-crushing work. I’ve not read any of the books above—although Outlive is on my to-read pile.

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You can totally just say you don’t know

September 24

Our mission, as podcasters is to say “I don’t know” when that is the case, and even more importantly, to make our guests feel delighted to say they don’t know when that’s the case.

At the end of the day there’s an awful lot of what I do as an actor that I don’t necessarily understand – nor should I. One of the necessary evils of acting is doing an awful lot of interviews, which is interesting when you’re asked good questions but it can sometimes be mind-numbing. You feel like, “Why do I have to explain myself? I have nothing to say.” You’re not allowed to say, “I don’t know,” but you don’t always know why you did what you did.

~ Jude Law, from Jude Law: “It’s Not You”

‘nuf said.

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Self less

September 22

Let’s bend relationship advice to apply to podcasting: Feeling stuck in a rut with your podcasting? Go have a conversation with a guest where your entire intention is to be of service to them.

The asymmetry between wanting to know others and being known by them presents an inherent problem, because relationships require reciprocity: If I don’t do the work to know you deeply, a relationship doesn’t form in which you will know me. This vicious cycle—Poe syndrome again—is made much worse when you are lonely to begin with […] In other words, if no one knows you well and you are thus lonely, that may make you more self-focused and less interested in others, making it much less likely for others to want to get to know you well.

~ Arthur C. Brooks, from Why It’s Nice to Know You

Question: What would happen, if your intention with a podcast episode, was to help some else’s well-being— if your intention was only to demonstrate to them that you care? What if you go into it hoping for nothing for yourself?

So not an intention of, “I want to know X, so I’ll ask good questions.”

But rather, “I think they’d enjoy talking about X, so I’ll ask good questions.”

Answer: It’s totally amazing. It alters your own life. You should go do it 500 times.

(Wether or not you turn those conversation into podcasts is irrelevant of course.)

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Humans being

September 20

The How Sound episode, “Getting inside someone else’s skin” (May 14, 2019 from the Sound School Podcast) contains insightful comments regarding why in-person is so great.

(Sorry, I cannot find a web-page specifically for this episode. You’ll have to find it in your favorite podcast app.)

Too long; didn’t listen? Here are my thoughts and opinions…

Listeners can tell when we have captured “humans being” and that can only be done when we humans are in our natural environment. That’s field-recording… pointing a mic at someone in the real-world.

Anything else is not the same thing. Wether that’s in a full studio, over a call even with video on, or when I carry a bunch of gear and give them a mic and great headphones sitting in their home… none of those are the same as field-recording a human being (and I intend both meanings there.)

Anything else is some degree of “disembodied and silenced” — quoted because that is a nugget taken from the podcast.

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Do more than just take the photo

September 18

I’ve given a lot of birthday gifts in my years. (I’m sure you have too!) But this photo is a gift I’m particularly proud of.

First, a map: My mother is one of 27 first-cousins. (Her mother was one of eight children.) My mother is one of the youngest of those first cousins (perhaps the youngest, I forget.) Two of my mother’s first-cousins are the man seated center (in the front row, his wife’s arm interlocked) and next to him is his sister, Cocetta (who everyone called Connie).

Several years ago, Connie had a birthday party. An enormous party. An enormous party of boisterous people. At one point, I started going around and forcefully demanding family members proceed into the other room. This wasn’t appreciated by many in the moment, but once I got a dozen people moving, it caught on. And then many people passed their phones to a few volunteers to start snapping. I expect you’ve experienced being corralled into a group photo such as I’m describing. It’s not the greatest family photo ever taken. But it was taken.

Then—and this is the part that few do—after the party I hounded several people until I found the best photo and I ordered professionally printed and framed versions of this photo. I ordered one, quite large version of this photo which was given to Connie for her home. Several smaller versions were given to her closest relatives (like the one in my hallway, shown above.)

Don’t just take those photos, considering gifting them as physical mementos too.

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What’s our five-paragraph essay?

September 14

The article I’m linking to below is about AI — wait don’t run away. It made me actually think about: What is the purpose of the five-paragraph essay? How does one write such a thing—what exactly am I doing when I go through the soul-sucking process of doing it?

So you don’t have to read the short, linked article… but I recommend it.

The five-paragraph essay is a mainstay of high school writing instruction, designed to teach students how to compose a simple thesis and defend it in a methodical, easily graded package. It’s literature analysis at its most basic, and most rigid, level.

~ Emma Camp, from Rethinking the 5-Paragraph Essay in the Age of AI

Back to the question in my title:

In podcasting, what is our five-paragraph essay?

The five-paragraph essay is a blunt tool, sure. But it is clearly one, important but small, piece of a large puzzle called “learning to write well.” You do it very early in “learning to write well” and then you leave it behind.

What is our five-paragraph essay?

Any one of the following could be our five-paragraph essay…

  • Write a terrific, single, “hook sentence” from a podcast episode.
  • Write a paragraph of 3-5 sentences from a podcast episode.
  • Find at least one quotable portion from a podcast episode.
  • Write a list of takeaways in a specific style and with specific formatting.

Why do I say those things? Because once I understood how to do them by hand, turning to tools like AI is not cheating. The AI does a solid B+ (ref article above) job, which I can then finish to my A-level.

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Good questions

September 1

You can’t say that it’s a question of national peculiarities or even entirely political peculiarities. I mean, I think when the technological and applied scientific means are developed they just tend to be used. I mean, I think one can say that the whole history of recent times […] shows that if you plant the seed […] it grows and it tends to grow according to the law of its own being, and the laws of its being are not necessarily the same as the laws of our being.

~ Aldous Huxley, from 1961: Aldous Huxley on the power of TECHNOLOGY!

It’s interesting to hear an author speak about his own ideas. I’ve read Brave New World and a selection of his essays (Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow). That short video—I’m linking to YouTube, I hope I don’t regret that in another decade ¯\_(ツ)_/¯—contains a few questions; Huxley presents more questions than answers. And they’re just as relevant more than half a century later.

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100 issues of my “7 for Sunday” email

August 28

As some of you know, I write a weekly email that isn’t related to my podcasting efforts. On Sunday, Sept 1, issue 100 of 7 for Sunday will go out. (See https://7forsunday.com to sign up or to simply read any issue.)

From the first issue of 7 for Sunday, I’ve always wondered if I’d make it to 100, and I’m glad I stuck with it. Some weeks it was a right struggle to get it done. In a very real sense, knowing there were readers out there gave me a goal to get through some dark days. Yes, external validation is not a great idea. But also, the life preserver that saves you is necessarily thrown by another.

Thanks to a suggestion from 7 for Sunday reader Wayne, the centennial issue is about books. 7 books, of course. Each book is presented with bibliofervor (the urge to leap out of one’s chair, race to find a friend, and press a book into their hands, see Issue № 60.)

Sometimes people express amazement at all that I get done—

Please realize that I struggle just as much as everyone does to create. And, boy howdy!, do I hope that any part of anything I ever do somehow helps you, in even the slightest way, to move forward!

I appreciate your time and attention, and I don’t take it for granted.

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Benevolence

August 22

Benevolence and self-direction (described below) are usually near the top of the values we all share. Each of us also has an internal hierarchy of values, where we rank our values based on those we find extremely important to those that don’t really motivate us at all.

~ Chris Bailey, from There are just 10 basic values

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Benevolence—in my opinion—only pops up on our radar once we have enough time, energy and resources. Whether or not it’s clear in that moment, that’s because we, for the first time, manage an honest look back and actually realize all the places where we’ve received help from others. So that’s nice for ourselves, but also for the entire human race.

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Victims of our own technology

August 20

Just a cou­ple of days ago, Apple CEO Tim Cook tweet­ed out a video pro­mot­ing, “the new iPad Pro: the thinnest prod­uct we’ve ever cre­at­ed.” The response has been over­whelm­ing, and over­whelm­ing­ly neg­a­tive: for many view­ers, the ad’s imagery of a hydraulic press crush­ing a heap of musi­cal instru­ments, art sup­plies, and vin­tage enter­tain­ment into a sin­gle tablet inad­ver­tent­ly artic­u­lat­ed a dis­com­fort they’ve long felt with tech­nol­o­gy’s direc­tion in the past cou­ple of decades. As the nov­el­ist Hari Kun­zru put it, “Crush­ing the sym­bols of human cre­ativ­i­ty to pro­duce a homog­e­nized brand­ed slab is pret­ty much where the tech indus­try is at in 2024.”

~ Colin Marshall, from Aldous Huxley Explains How Man Became “the Victim of His Own Technology” (1961)

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Setting aside the marketing brouhaha, I was gobsmacked by the phrase, “Crushing the symbols of human creativity to produce a homogenized brand-slab […]” Yes, “homogenized brand-slab” is brilliant and feels like a line of dialog from THX-1138. But I was really fish-hooked by the “symbols of human creativity” part. I talk a lot and often these days about creativity, but I’d never really considered the question: What are symbols—images, place holders, iconography—of creativity?

Because it doesn’t seem to make sense to me why a paint brush, or a trumpet (for example) represent creativity. It’s the mind of the person that does the creativity part… and so: What are symbols of creativity?

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I wish

August 18

I wish when I was younger I knew what I know today, what I feel like today, a kind of ease with myself. Because when you’re younger you are much more intense and everything’s much more important and you look back and you think, “Oh what was that all about?” Nothing is that important, just live your life because we’re here so briefly.

~ Anthony Hopkins, from Anthony Hopkins

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Oh good, it’s not just me who thinks this. Because, if I could take that knowledge with me, I’d really like to again be the age I was, when I thought I’d surely have my shit together by the time I was the age I am now.

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Tic-toc?

August 16

When a person relies heavily on the clock to determine what to do and when to stop, research suggests they might also have a looser relationship with their own sense of control. This is because they look towards an external cue to guide their actions, according to Sellier, and that external cue, rather than something within them, is what seems to control the world around them. Event-time people appear to believe, more than clock-time people do, that their actions make a meaningful difference in determining what happens to them.

~ Shayla Love, from Is it better to live in ‘clock time’ or ‘event time’?

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This feels closely related to my point above about shifting my focus to longer time frames. I definitely use clock-time a lot. How would I go about being intentional about choosing one style over the other? I suppose simply asking myself: Is this thing better done in clock-time or event time? Because my default is clock-time.

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What will change your mind?

August 14

What are you working on? When will you change your mind? What can you learn, what can you challenge?

~ Seth Godin, from What are you thinking about? | Seth’s Blog

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As is often the case, Godin asks really good rhetorical questions. Me? In recent weeks I’ve been challenging myself to shift my focus to longer timeframes. I’ve reached a level of sophistication where—give or take—what I do on any given day does not matter; I don’t go off the rails. What I do, is get anxious about “all the things” when I get lost thinking about too many things.

Instead of hyper-focusing on the right-now, I need to zoom out. What I just accomplished moves me towards a goal. Yes, even if I just blew off some scheduled thing to go play outside; That moves my health forward energizing me for another day. And each day making some progress is just exactly the right thing to be doing.

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13th birthday

August 13

I go to great lengths to build processes which remind me of my past. This year, I’ve decided to start posting to remind myself of this blog’s birthday; August 13, 2011. Today is 13 years, and 4,841 posts.

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