The Listen #10 — Shooting 3s, more than one way, visualizing your day, open source superfans, and going through 1000 articles a day
Airplane Mode, My First million, Hurry Slowly, a16z, and The North Star
That's the mobile solo podcast setup. I also got a portable camping chair to try and stay creative ready, as Chase Jarvis puts it in "Creative Calling":
"Think about modifications or purchases you might make to become “creative ready” in as many environments as possible. This might mean carrying a sketch pad in your bag at all times, investing in a mobile audio rig or a digital tablet, or renting a spot at the local work-sharing space. Instead of wishing for a twenty-fifth hour in the day, ask how a relatively small investment of money might make it easier to get work done when you actually have the time to work."
I took that picture yesterday on a break in the middle of this:
Eventually I'd love to get the 10-mile walk in weekly. Lots of listening time.
On to this week's episodes!
The NBA star who finally missed the playoffs — Okay so this episode was from earlier this year, way before the bubble and actually missing the playoffs. J.J. Redick was on GQ's Airplane Mode podcast ("NBA Sharpshooter J.J. Redick on Keeping Your Confidence Under Pressure"). They discuss shooting confidence coming from preparation, being the most hated and hateful player in college, setting big career goals with realistic expectations, and more. (GQ | Apple | Spotify)
I always talk about shooting being sort of broken down into three things to be a great shooter. You have to have some semblance of good form. The second part of that is repetition and that's just the practice component of it, doing things over and over again until you really develop a skillset.
And then the third part is confidence. But for me, you can't have confidence without having that second part. That second part of repetition and work and practice over and over again, that's ultimately what gives you confidence and it's no different in anything else in my life.
There are many ways to get it done — Shaan Puri hosts My First Million and on a recent episode ("#101 with Ryan Begelman - The Genius Behind Virgin’s Business Structure"), he talks about why you might get whiplash when learning from different people. It's important to remember that there's more than one way. (Apple | Spotify)
But that's the point of the podcast, right? We're going to have people on who are like, yeah, this is the way. Cause they believe it, they live it. They've had success with it. And then if you listen to 10 episodes, you're going to be like, wait, I heard "This is the way" 10 times.
Oh, what that really tells me is that there's 10 ways and I should pick and choose the one that resonated the most with me. And maybe it changes in my twenties versus my thirties versus my forties. And, you know, I'm cool to be flexible with that over time.
Visualizing your day — Julie Zhuo, author of "The Making of a Manager", was on Jocelyn K. Glei's Hurry Slowly in 2018 ("018: Visualizing Your Day"). They discuss picking what’s important in different time scales, becoming a new manager, and visualizing your upcoming day. (Hurry Slowly | Apple | Spotify)
"What are some habits or practices that I either want to avoid or get deeper into? For me, thinking about January. It's a new year, new time to think a little bit more long term about the year. And then all the way down to the micro level. Which, as you know, okay I wake up, look at the schedule, think about what I want to do that day. Then, you know, Sunday nights, Monday mornings, think about that week."
Creating an open source platform — On the a16z Podcast: "Turning Open Source Developers into Superfans", a GitHub co-founder talks about identifying and removing as much friction as possible, growing through the Ruby community, betting big on Git, and the effectiveness of physical events. (a16z | Apple | Spotify)
I also started reading Nadia Eghbal's "Working in Public" this week. In it, she writes about how there's more to successfully sharing code than just sharing the code. From “Working in Public”:
"Rather than the users of forums or Facebook groups, GitHub’s open source developers have more in common with solo creators on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, or Twitch, all of whom must find ways to manage their interactions with a broad and fast-growing audience."
Looking through 1000 articles a day — Robert Cottrell writes The Browser. He was on David Perell’s North Star Podcast ("The Secrets of Reading"). They discuss the importance of the first paragraph, keeping a broad information diet, the value of newsletters, and more. (Perell.com | Apple | Spotify)
One part I was particularly interested in was Cottrell talking about coming around on audiobooks:
I used to think of audio books as lower status. I used to think of them as cheating, you know: real people read, lazy people listen. What changed my mind there was when I downloaded an Audible's version Ulysses—James Joyce's Ulysses. Because I'd known that it was a book that everybody, people said was life changing, that it had to contain a colossal amount of wisdom and pleasure, but I must've made five or six attempts to read it at various points in my life.
And, you know, I never got into it. I never lost myself in the drama. I was just reading and getting some very etiolated, some very distant impression of what was going on, but then when I listened to a strongly read voiced version of it, it just went straight into my mind. I was there. I was feeling the drama.
Perell mentions one of his favorite audiobooks, "The Goal" by Eliyahu Goldratt. I started listening to that this week and it really does show what you can do with the format with sound effects and a cast of narrators. It reminded me of what Malcolm Gladwell did with "Talking to Strangers" where it was more like a well produced podcast with various audio clips weaved in.
I'm, of course, really looking forward to how the format evolves.
That’s that for now. Wally and I finally recorded a new episode of Active Recall which should be coming on Tuesday. And I'm recording some solo episodes for the weeks we can't record together. Building up the weekly consistency muscle. Until next week, thanks for checking this out!