It matters that you stop

“I wonder what would happen if I created a daily podcast, and did nothing else— if I didn’t tell anyone, didn’t share on social media, nothing. Just publish the thing every day.” So I went and made it happen, over 1,300 times. The answer to “what if?” is: I would receive a cornucopia of benefits simply from doing the work, even if no one heard a single one of them. I received: practice speaking extemporaneously, lessons in dramatic reading, countless tiny lessons of microphone technique, countless nuanced insights of physiology, and much much more.

Unfortunately, over the years, I became fixated on the least-important part of my original question: Daily.

I think this dynamic, to one degree or another, impacts anyone who has been fortunate enough to experience some success in their field. Doing important work matters and sometimes this requires sacrifices. But there’s also a deep part of our humanity that responds to these successes — and the positive feedback they generate — by pushing us to seek this high at ever-increasing frequencies.

~ Cal Newport from, Danielle Steel and the Tragic Appeal of Overwork

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It’s become clear that maintaining the pace is a problem, and so I’ve changed the pace. And in a blink, I feel I’m again focused on that still-overflowing cornucopia of benefits.

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Graphic

I’ve been stumbling more over graphic depictions and graphic novels. There’s this fun book Out on the Wire by Jessica Abel which describes the storytelling secrets of the new masters of radio. I’ve read another graphic novel about finance and the visual element really brings the stories to life. (See Craig learn, sorry.) In hindsight, I don’t understand at all why this would have surprised me. I spent gobs of time reading comics like Calvin and Hobbes and Bloom County in book form and they’re graphic novels if you read the entire arc in one go.

Our thoughts are a composite process. We really do think with our entire bodies.

~ Alex Pavlotski from, Habit Change and the Embodied Mind | alexpavlotski

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Pavlotski is another example. I had a wonderful conversation, Ethnography, leadership, and trajectory, with him for the Movers Mindset podcast. He is probably best-known for his work visualizing Parkour, but there’s much more to his work than just the drawing portion. This is not just a guy who does parkour, who also happens to draw kewl cartoons.

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Why ever stop?

Every day, the Little Box of Quotes podcast publishes a super-short recording of a quotation. For over 3 years—1,247 times and counting—I’ve said, “Hello, Craig here! Today from my little box of quotes…”

Why do all this work? It’s fun! I love sharing quotes (and in podcast form is just one way.) The total listens is north of 60,000 and some have been heard many hundreds of times. I like to imagine all the people who smiled, or went “hunh“. Each episode is only downloaded a dozen–or–so times when published. But then each episode slowly gets heard, as people randomly stumble upon them (I know not how.)

Which episodes are popular? Here are the top 10…

  1. Habit ~ Jim Rohn
  2. Ignorance ~ Vincent Thibault
  3. Fear ~ Cus D’Amato
  4. Motivation ~ (unknown)
  5. Freedom ~ Michael Diamond
  6. Struggle ~ James Terry White
  7. Revenge ~ Marcus Aurelius
  8. Positive ~ (unknown)
  9. Stand ~ Marcus Aurelius
  10. Torment ~ Seneca

What do I think of that top-10 list? Listening to them—especially the number-1 “Habit” quote—makes me squirm. I can hear so much about them that I’d do differently now. Maybe that’s a good thing? And they all seem so silly… it’s just… Craig reading quotes. But there’s definitely something to this, about the resistance and making art.

How do I record them? They’re pretty raw. I say the entirety of what you hear in one pass. If I make a horrible mistake, I just do it over. There’s no editing—I simply have some basic export settings to set the overall level. The point of the entire thing (when I started) was to practice doing the thing. Talk to the mic. Don’t clean it up in post-production… rather, figure out how to not make mouth-noises, how to breath more quietly, how to sound comfortable, etc.

Where do I still struggle? Saying people’s names! (Pronunciation is difficult too, but that’s not what I mean.) The specifics of how I say the name carries a tremendous amount of information. The tiniest change has a huge affect. Do I sound incredulous that that person ever said something that clever? Do I sound overly reverential? Dismissive? And how long do I pause before saying their name? Faced with endless options, I just do my best and then ship it.

What’s my favorite part? (I have a rapid process: record, replay, save/export, schedule podcast episode. I can do one episode in a few minutes.) Sometimes, maybe 1 in 10, when I play it I get chills. Sometimes, the quote itself, combined with countless other details, makes something I just love.

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Movers Mindset’s purpose

Back in 2018 I traveled to an event at Gerlev in Denmark. I gave a brief presentation one morning explaining the Movers Mindset podcast. The other day, I stumbled over my notes, and felt this was worth a fresh posting.

When we move through the world we can move in an ordinary or an extraordinary way. Ordinary movement is easy; it follows established paths; and it is boring. Extraordinary movement requires excellence, knowledge, and independence. When I talk about movement, I am talking about extraordinary movement because it is much more interesting. Movement—whether that is Parkour, ADD, Freerunning—is a celebration of freedom in the context of an unforgiving reality that cannot be ignored.

These ideas form the foundation of movement: Pay attention to reality, learn as much as you can and practice. With parkour–as with just about everything in this world–the true beauty of the practice can be fully appreciated only by taking a deeper dive into it. This means we have to understand not just the physical aspects of movement but the mental and philosophical basis for movement.

As a mastery discipline—something that can be practiced for a lifetime with continued improvement—movement focuses more on the journey than the destination. Understanding the values, interests, and challenges in the minds of the best practitioners is the best way of showing the path of movement in a meaningful and accessible way. Our podcast, with its audio format and transcripts, naturally emphasizes the mental and psychological aspects of movement.

The podcast brings out the more intellectual elements of movement. My goal is to emphasize the value that movement and movers create and develop through their practice. In pushing the limits of human potential, movers demonstrate objectively that such achievements are possible. Since the physical aspects of practice can be directly observed through images and videos, the visible part is already well covered. But I believe the mental aspect is where the real magic happens, and it is less well covered because it is not spectacular. Video will grab your attention, excite you and may even get you to try some new things, but to get really good at movement you need a deep understanding.

When you listen to the podcasts, I hope you will notice a distinct difference in our approach. Our goal is always to show the guest in the best possible light. We aim to illuminate and showcase their values, ideas, and principles in a way that makes them accessible and relevant to the listener while showing the proper respect for their achievements. Each interview is a collaborative effort with that guest. Our shared goal is to clearly communicate ideas that will be useful to each listener in the context of their personal journey of exploration.

Yogis, martial artists and chess masters often describe how much they’ve learned about life from in-depth practice and mastery in their disciplines. We hear similar sentiments from musicians, sculptors, painters, hunters, and chefs. Movement as a mastery discipline is no different. A big part of its value comes from the lessons it teaches us about life and reality. Knowing your own strengths and limitations is critical. Reality is unforgiving. Physics always works and is important. You cannot fake competence. Courage is required to overcome self-imposed limitations. The list of lessons is limited only by our ability to think and to understand movement.

I am passionate about creating and promoting rational discussion. I am passionate about sharing others’ stories, wisdom, insights, accomplishments, goals, visions and delusions. Describing and illuminating the ideas behind extraordinary movement and human exceptionalism can help us all to improve our experience and appreciate the richness and beauty of life.

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Photography from Seattle

For several years I’ve been attending the Art of Retreat events in North America. Originally they were held in New York City, but the latest three were held outside of Seattle. I’ve been recording conversations for Art of Retreat’s own podcast over the years. If you’re interested in what goes on behind the scenes, I tried to unpack some of it over on a topic in the Podcaster Community, Field Recordings at Art of Retreat 2022.

I have a habit of trying to capture interesting photos from airplane windows. Often it’s solar or weather phenomenon, but on this trip out to Seattle I was surprised to see these forest fires. Fortunately, they weren’t very close to where the event was held, but “fire fog” was thing during much of the time I spent in Seattle and all of the time at the event.

A few shots from the location where the event was held…

And one last random shot from a cool, mushroom–infused coffee spot in Seattle, Wundergrond Coffee.

Quite the knitting project for someone.

Random, but fun photos — hope you enjoyed them.

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I’ll be podcasting and presenting Art of Retreat 2022

During the Sept 24th weekend, I’ll once again be recording conversations with community leaders and movement enthusiasts at a retreat in the Cascades outside of Seattle. Follow that link If you’re interested in the nuts-and-bolts of what I do in order to create some conversations. Over there, I’ll be posting replies as the project progresses over the next two weeks. I’ll be showing my work—preparation, packing, gear, field recording, and post-production. I’ll try to cover everything from ideation to the final deliverables.

The first piece of context is, what is the event that I’m attending? It’s an immersive gathering celebrating leadership in parkour. We bring remarkable leaders from the global parkour community together for 4 days of learning, sharing, and play.

https://www.artofretreat.com

The event is a concept which has been held in various locations over the years. It’s near and dear to me both in the sense that I’m into parkour and I’m into podcasting. I’m also leading an interactive session about Creating Better Conversation.

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Or not

There’s no getting ahead with your podcast. There’s only adjusting your calendar and developing the discipline to keep separation between your production schedule and your publishing calendar.

~ Evo Terra from, «https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/why-youll-never-get-ahead-with-your-podcast»

Terra is laying out the eternal struggle which everyone who takes up podcasting soon discovers: You are beholden to the publication schedule. I mean, sure, you get to set your own schedule, right? …but then you…

Wait, why is that again? You know you can just publish whenever you feel like it. That’s what I do and hundreds of published conversations later across multiple different shows… literally no one ever has asked me when the next episode will be out. Nor why I don’t publish on a schedule. Maybe they’re all just ignoring me, or think I’m a weird podcaster. But know what I definitely am not? …beholden to a schedule.

Instead I can do what I want to do (have great conversations) when I am able to arrange that. And then I publish them. *mic drop*

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Your best

To me, quality means doing the best you can with what you have to work with. Your environment. Your equipment. Your voice. Your experience. Your level of comfort. All of those things are part of your overall “working with” toolset.

~ Evo Terra from, «https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/making-your-commitment-to-quality-podcasting»

This is something I often struggle with. Terra is writing about podcasting specifically—something I spend a lot of time doing—but I have this problem more generally. It would serve me well to be thinking: Is this the best I can do now, with the tools, knowledge, situation, and skills I have now? If so, terrific! That’s great enough.

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Because enough people know

there are enough users who understand how it is supposed to work. They expect to be able to listen to any podcast anywhere they want. Most probably don’t understand why they have this ability, about the history and technology design that made it possible, but they understand that they have the ability. And it doesn’t have to be all of them or even most of them, just enough of them, whatever that means. And for right now, at the end of 2021, there are enough. Podcasting has always been and remains an open platform. I can’t say it will be for the future, but so far so good.

~ Dave Winer from, Why podcasting isn’t dominated

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I like Winer’s point that the web (websites, web browser, blogs—not asocial media platforms) and podcasting are not dominated by any one large company. He’s pointing out that we’ve two examples of things not centrally controlled—two examples of success (so far, things could always change.) And therefore it’s quite possible that we could build something else, another new media format, which is also free, open, and not centrally controlled.

But I don’t like that Winer has glossed over the fact that podcasting only appears to be open, (in the way that the web is open.) Podcasting appears to be open, and isn’t yet dominated by one large company, because the podcast creators individually go to great lengths to make their shows available everywhere. There are multiple large companies trying to leverage the listeners against the creators. I’ve given up on trying to lead podcasting to be open, the way the web is open; I simply hope that someone else sees what I see and that I live to see podcasting grow to be a first-class, truly open, platform, (the way the web is.)

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Safety netting

I spend a lot of time trying to imagine people’s experiences of things I create. Partly that happens as a direct result of my having empathy and being compassionate—once you start, you can’t stop. (“My mission is creating better conversations to spread understanding and compassion.”) Sometimes my efforts pay off big with a blinding flash of clarity.

I’m regularly doing outreach to people who know me well, a little, or often not-at-all. I’m inviting someone to join me, for a recording of a conversation… which I’m going to immediately publish, without editing. It turns out that scares the crap out of most people. (Are your palms sweating just thinking about it?)

Well, I solved that problem a while ago: When we’re chatting, before we start recording, I explain there’s a safety net. They get the option to veto. I explain that after we stop recording, I will ask them if they’re okay with what we recorded. If they’re not happy, it just gets deleted. And I’ll still be happy because the conversation we had becomes that much more special because I got to experience something that no one else will ever hear.

Today it occurred to me that I should explain that even farther up front. Like right up front on the invitation page that I send people to. If your palms were sweating up there, thinking about being recorded, consider this…

Safety net
After we stop recording, you decide if I publish it. Seriously. You get a big, safe, veto option. Published or vetoed, I’ll still be glad we had a chance to have a cool conversation.

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Eureka

But this moment cannot come without the days of frustration at the blackboard. “You can’t really blame the storytellers,” Rockmore writes, “It’s not so exciting to read ‘and then she studied some more.’ But this arduous, mundane work is a key part of the process.”

~ Cal Newport from, On the Myth of Big Ideas – Cal Newport

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And Niels Bohr said something similar about Painful experience. And I bet your experience agrees. I know mine does.

Nobody sees how much time I spend working on podcasting. Every facet is complicated. I’m regularly noticing new things, picking up interesting skills and ideas from nearby areas of expertise. Structural wisdom from the field of authors. Empathic skills from the field of therapists. New kinds of questions from the field of hosts. New vocal skills from the field of speakers. And teachers and mechanics and on and on.

The eureka moments get the attention but they’re very few and very far between.

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Difficult questions

What would be a good question to ask? How do I evaluate a potential question, in real time during a conversation, to decide if it’s good? What can I do to make this guest enjoy this conversation? In the same vein: What should I do? And what, if anything, must I do? What does this person really want to talk about? What don’t they want to talk about? And if I figured that out, is the right thing to, to honor their desire to avoid it, or to help them face it? Can I help them more by letting them find their own energy level, or by trying to help them change their energy level? Would calming down enable them to communicate more effectively? Would riling them up help them work through their feelings? Should we explore how they are feeling, or how this event we’re discussing made them feel? Should I be more open, and share more with them? Or would my consuming our time doing that, block them from doing what they need to do, or from saying what they need to say? Should we be having more fun? Should we be more serious? Should we instead do the opposite, (make light of a serious subject, or vice versa,) of that society would normally expect? Should I ask them a deep question? Should I ask a question on the same line-of-thought and take us even deeper? Deeper a third time? Or should I pivot to indicate that I want to follow them, not drive them into a corner?

What’s that? …oh, you thought I was going to be talking about the actual questions one might ask another person. Yeah no that’s another question altogether. :)

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Tetris

As I mentioned last week, I was recently on a rather long road trip doing some recording for the Movers Mindset project. I took a lot of stuff on the trip, but here’s the two bags which comprised the complete podcast setup—everything I need to press record is in these two bags. The rectangular bag is a proper, no-cheating, most-stingy-airline carry-on size.

And here’s what’s inside: Two full-size (albeit lightweight) mic stands, 2 sets of full-size headphones, and 3 containers of all the podcast recording and listening electronics. (And it’s all battery powered to boot.)

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Persistent, but not lonely

To create anything of beauty, daring, and substance that makes the world see itself afresh — be it a revolutionary law of planetary motion or the Starry Night — is the work of lonely persistence against the tides of convention and conformity, often at the cost of the visionary’s aching ostracism from the status quo they are challenging with their vision.

~ Maria Popova from, Coltrane on Creativity, Perseverance Against Rejection, and How Hardship Fuels Art – The Marginalian

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To be clear, I don’t feel I’m out to make the world see itself afresh. I am out to create better conversations to spread understanding and compassion. And while I understand, now having read a bit more about John Coltrane, how a certain type of genius might need a certain type of loneliness to do their work. That’s not me and my work.

I’m finding that I’m thriving on podcasting. It is a stupid amount of work; Yes, I’ve chosen to set things up, and to set challenges and goals, to create that amount of work. It’s even physically challenging, for example, I’m on a road-trip this week with multiple +4-hour driving days. But I know what I’m in for, and I know what’s going to happen once I press record. Magic. Obviously, a big part of that comes from me, but a critical part of it comes from the other people. I’ve always heard talk of how “creative types” can get lonely. I’ve come around to accepting the label of “creative type.” I recharge in alone time. But I think I thrive when creating in concert with others.

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What if I just did the thing a bunch more times?

7. Consistent and repeatable results come from a process. “True style does not come from a conscious effort to create a particular look. It results obliquely—even accidentally—out of a holistic process.”

~ Shane Parrish from, 7 Things I Learned in Architecture School

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That articlette is about a book, 101 Things Things I Learned in Architecture School. The 7th point, in bold, is the penultimate of a best-of-the-best selection from the book. The inner-quoted part is Matthew Frederick, the book’s author.

This point about a holistic process—the idea that mastery isn’t some higgledy-piggledy mish-mash of throwing things together—is an idea I’ve held dearly for a long time. Every time I see it, like in this articlette, I want leap up, flipping my desk over and scream, “Hear! Hear! …and again, louder, for those in the back staring at their handheld devices.”

Every single time that I’ve decided to take a process, and repeat it in search of understanding, (for example, my 10,000 rep’s project,) the learning and personal growth has paid off beyond my wildest dreams. At this point, I’ve done nearly 200 recorded conversations—I’m not stretching the truth, it’s actually hard to figure out exactly how many I’ve done. I’ve started another show recently as part of the Podcaster Community (25+ episodes and counting) and I’ve set up all the moving parts for yet another show as part of Movers Mindset “shorts”. And I keep wondering…

What would happen if I did 500, 1000? …what about 10,000? Not because I want to be famous and whine, “but I did 1,000 episodes why doesn’t anyone love me?!” But because I can see, in myself, how much I’ve learned and grown after 200. What would happen if I did a lot more?

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This might get personal

these nine principles for interviewing people about tender, personal, tough subjects are tactics that are helpful in any hard conversation. You want to be clear about your objectives for the conversation, to be prepared to listen closely and actively, to prepare the person you are talking to for a different, deeper sort of exchange. You need to respect the dignity of the person you’re talking with, and respect yourself enough to speak up when you disagree.

~ Anna Sale from, Treat an Interview Like a Relationship – Transom

Whether or not you’re doing recorded conversations with guests, there’s a bunch of great advice in that article. I’m particularly drawn to Sale’s point about how her interviews are enabled by the fact that she is creating a relationship with the guest. In any conversation, everything we do either builds up, or tears down, a relationship bit by bit.

In any conversation, it’s my experience that the more intentional I am, the better it goes. Part of that is intentional listening; listening primarily to understand. Another part is being mindful of the other person; deploying empathy and compassion. Another part is keeping sight of where you are headed, and also where it is not possible to get to; knowing what to stretch for and what to let pass is critical.

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Community for podcasters

So I went and built a new thing: The Podcaster Community.

If you create podcasts — whether you’re thinking about it, just starting out, or are publishing your 100th episode — we’d love for you to join us. It’s free to create an account. Logging in enables the platform features and you can immediately begin posting/replying in the public categories.

I don’t idle well. I get an idea in my head, and I start thinking about all the ways it could be realized. Recently, I’ve had a few separate conversations with podcasters who were looking for something—what they each wanted was different. And so I set off to build it.

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