Process with James Fricker →

Published March 15, 2022  ·  All posts on Mar 15

What strategies can podcasters use to manage the complexities of content creation and sustain their passion over time?

The conversation explores how podcasters balance creative ambitions with practical constraints.

I think what would be a nice way to wrap it— would be, to create some kind of an ebook, or something like that, to condense a lot of the learnings into something.

~ James Fricker (12:24)

The conversation discusses the challenges podcasters face in managing their creative ambitions alongside time and resource constraints. Strategies for prioritizing tasks, such as focusing on specific platforms and using tools to repurpose content efficiently, are explored. The discussion also touches on how podcasters can manage information overload and set boundaries to maintain sustainability.

Career growth and the role of podcasting as a learning tool are significant themes. The potential for podcasting to foster connections within organizations is considered, with an example of private podcasts enhancing workplace culture. Inspirations like Tim Ferriss demonstrate the importance of preparation and structure in creating impactful episodes. The idea of consolidating podcast learnings into formats like ebooks is presented as a way to conclude a series thoughtfully.

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Relaxed concentration →

Published March 15, 2022  ·  All posts on Mar 15  ·  ,

The player of the inner game comes to value the art of relaxed concentration above all other skills; He discovers the true basis for self-confidence; And he learns that the secret to winning any game lies in not trying too hard.

~ W. Timothy Gallwey

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Starting where I am →

Published March 15, 2022  ·  All posts on Mar 15

I love the proverb: If there’s somewhere you need to be, you need to start walking. And the only place where I can start walking? …is right where I am now.

I’ve written a smattering of stuff about my training over the years. Once, in college, (age: 20) I was briefly in shape thanks to several semesters’ of effort put into Taekwondo. But in all that time since, I’ve always done well when someone else tells me what to do. “Do this today at this class. Come back for more.” I’ve also done well following the pack. There was an epoch where I was riding my mountain bike excessively, but I really got in shape when I started meeting up with others and trying to keep-in-sight people much better than me.

Last year, as the sun disappeared in a Pennsylvania grey winter, I began plotting a way to take what I had experienced when a seriously dedicated friend of mine had been planning my training, and turn it into something I could use in a self-directed fashion. I’m not a professional athlete and I don’t want to train like one. And on the other hand, simply “living my life” being active when I find those opportunities arising is not enough. I need some planning. So I’m working on that. Today, I’m just talking about the first piece of my plan: Tracking activity.

I have an older FitBit. It works fine, it’s not fancy-schmancy… but critically, I refuse to pay them monthly for extra bells-n-whistles. So this tracking sheet lets me take some notes about what I did each day, and to simply copy down the totals of time from the 4 zones that that FitBit tracks. Simply having the tracking system encourages me to be more mindful about activity—for example, it’s rather nice today, and I’ve a run in mind for later this afternoon.

The next piece of the puzzle is to begin working in activities that are more strenght-training in nature. A QM session, (there is one there on Tuesday,) some simple free-weight exercises, some bouldering, etc..

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Silence →

Published March 14, 2022  ·  All posts on Mar 14  ·  

Be the silence that listens

~ Tara Brach

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Toe-tal recall →

Published March 14, 2022  ·  All posts on Mar 14

When viewed through an evolutionary or naturalistic lens, to walk, run and move barefoot is, of course, the default human condition. Any alteration of this is an alteration of not just millions of years of bipedal hominid function, but hundreds of millions of years of natural selection’s honing and refining of foot structure.

~ Matt Wallden from, Toe-tal recall – What on Earth are our toes actually for?

This is a stupendous deep-dive into our feet. I love the clarity of, “[a]ny alteration of this”. Am I barefoot? (At this instant, yes. With my feet on very rough, old, worn concrete, on my patio, in 50°F weather.) If I am not barefoot, I want that to always have been a conscious choice—some specific reason for why I’ve chosen to alter the function of my feet.

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Thinking through →

Published March 13, 2022  ·  All posts on Mar 13  ·  

Ignore advice to simply follow your intuition or gut without thinking through whether the course is likely to be fruitful and rewarding.

~ Steven Pinker

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Gone already?! →

Published March 13, 2022  ·  All posts on Mar 13  ·  

I just want to say that sometimes the things we do online have outsized consequences in the real world. It’s easy to forget that there are real people behind every screen. I forget about that almost every day but better people than me provide some good reminders.

~ Gabriel Weatherhead from, «http://www.macdrifter.com/2021/09/thank-you-this-will-be-rough.html»

My title refers to the fact that it’s only been four months, and this link has already rotted. In September 2021 I marked this for later reading, (note the /2021/09/ in that URL,) and I only just got around to reading it. I read it as a locally-cached copy in my read-later software, and then realized the link was dead when I tried to write this blog post… :(

I’m so sorry. It was a nice piece about how he had reread some Vonnegut over the pandemic year and… and… it’s already gone?!

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Discipline →

Published March 12, 2022  ·  All posts on Mar 12  ·  

Everyone wants freedom. We want to be physically free and mentally free. We want to be financially free and we want more free time. But where does that freedom come from? How do we get it? The answer is the opposite of freedom. The answer is discipline. You want more free time? Follow a more disciplined time-management system. You want financial freedom? Implement long-term financial discipline in your life. Do you want to be physically free to move how you want, and to be free from many health issues caused by poor lifestyle choices? Then you have to have the discipline to eat healthy food and consistently work out. We all want freedom. Discipline is the only way to get it.

~ Jocko Willink

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Everything is figure-out-able →

Published March 11, 2022  ·  All posts on Mar 11  ·  

No matter what challenge or obstacle you face, whether it’s personal, professional, or global, there’s a path ahead. It’s all figure-out-able. you’ll find a way or make a way, if you’re willing to be relentless, stay nimble, and keep taking action. It’s especially useful to remember when things go wrong, because rather than wasting time or energy on the problem, you shift immediately to brainstorming solutions.

~ Marie Forleo

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Information loss →

Published March 11, 2022  ·  All posts on Mar 11

Our lack of perfect information about the world gives rise to all of probability theory, and its usefulness. We know now that the future is inherently unpredictable because not all variables can be known and even the smallest error imaginable in our data very quickly throws off our predictions. The best we can do is estimate the future by generating realistic, useful probabilities.

~ Shane Parrish from, The Value of Probabilistic Thinking

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It’s a good article—of course, why would I link you to something I think you should not read?

To be fair, I skimmed it. But all I could think about was this one graduate course I took on Chaos Theory. It sounds like it should be a Star Trek episode. (Star Trek: The Next Generation was in its initial airing at the time.) But it was really an eye-opening class. Here’s this simple idea, called Chaos. And it explains a whole lot of how the universe works. Over-simplified, Chaos is when it is not possible to predict the future state of a system beyond some short timeframe. Somehow, information about the system is lost as time moves forward. (For example, this physical system of a pendulum, hanging from a pendulum… how hard could that be?)

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