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The world expects us to be Raphaels, but some of us are Leonardos. Don’t hold your Leonardo mind to Raphael standards, because this Raphael world would be nothing without Leonardo minds. There’s an inscription in the Pantheon in Rome that says, “Here lies that famous Raphael by whom Nature feared to be conquered while he lived.” In other words, Raphael was such an amazing painter, Nature was supposedly shaking in her boots, afraid he would learn all her tricks. (Ironically, Raphael’s remains are sealed away in a sarcophagus, where Nature can’t get to them. Who’s afraid of who?) But Nature had nothing to fear. Raphael could not outdo her. As Raphael was being buried, the painter Nature should have feared lay hundreds of miles to the north, in a little church on the grounds of the King of France’s chateau. Raphael the young phenom, Leonardo, the old has-been Several years before Raphael’s early death, he was getting paid thousands of ducats to paint one fresco after another in the Vatican. Meanwhile, the aging

Today I have a special episode for you. If you missed last month’s AMA/Livestream, I’m delivering it right to your ears. In this AMA, I answered questions about: How should I start marketing my books? How can you cope with burnout that gets in the way of creative work? How can you market your books when it doesn’t come naturally? How did you build your audience and how long did it take? (How can you build an audience without “niching down”?) What’s the difference between an accountability partner and a creativity partner? How did you get your first book deal? How can you stay motivated and get help from others when you work in isolation? How can you create luck in creative work? Which is better: Medium, or Substack? Do you use editing software, such as Grammarly? How did you come up with the Seven Mental States of Creativity? Have you made soap lately? How are you improving your fiction and storytelling skills? How do you hack learning a new language? Why are you using a pen name to write fiction? What are g

The book, Old Masters and Young Geniuses shows there are two types of creators: experimental, and conceptual. Experimental and conceptual creators differ in their approaches to their work, and follow two distinct career paths. Experimental creators grow to become old masters. Conceptual creators shine as young geniuses. University of Chicago economist, and author of Old Masters and Young Geniuses, David Galenson – who I interviewed on episode 105 – wanted to know how the ages of artists affected the prices of their paintings. He isolated the ages of artists from other factors that affect price, such as canvas size, sale date, and support type (whether it’s on canvas, paper, or other). He expected to find a neat effect, such as “paintings from younger/older artists sell for more.” But instead, he found two distinct patterns: Some artists’ paintings from their younger years sold for more. Other artists’ paintings from their older years sold for more. He then found this same pattern in the historical significanc

Do you want to build an audience online, but have such a wide variety of interests, you don’t know what to focus on? I think you’ll like this interview with David Perell. David Perell (@david_perell) calls himself “The Writing Guy.” He runs the cohort-based online writing school, Write of Passage (I love that name). His marketing is very specific, but he has incredibly diverse interests, and enthusiastically shares content related to those interests online. I went through his links on his website (no longer posted) to prepare for this conversation, and just my highlights of his links were over 6,000 words long! The topics included economics, art, urban planning, golf, music, and much more. I’ve been really impressed watching David’s online presence, so I brought him on the podcast for my first interview episode in more than two years! We’ll talk about: The four grants David has gotten from Tyler Cowen’s Emergent Ventures. How did he get those grants, and for what projects? Have all the opportunities to grow

Submit your questions and mark your calendars for my upcoming AMA/Livestream.

In 1977, Richard Bachman published his first novel. In an unusual move for a first-time author, Bachman made his publisher promise to release his books with hardly any marketing. Bachman stacked the dice against himself Bachman’s books were to skip the hardcover format and go straight to bargain-bin paperback – the kind you’d find mixed in with other nobody-authors, at a truck stop on I-80, somewhere near Grand Island. He also insisted he was unavailable for interviews, which cut his books off from a key marketing channel. Most publishers wouldn’t agree to such bizarre terms, but they were especially excited to release Bachman’s books. But he still did pretty well Today, forty-five years later, most people have unsurprisingly never heard of Richard Bachman. His books did alright, though: His fourth was optioned for film rights, his fifth sold 28,000 copies, and he got a couple letters a month from fans of his writing. Bachman wasn’t Bachman But his books were so good, one Washington D.C. bookstore clerk was s

“Crumb time” is the little pieces of time that get lost throughout the day. Instead of giving away your crumb time to unproductive distractions, build systems that complete big projects with small actions. Today, I’ll tell you how. Crumb time is everywhere throughout our days. Whenever we do something substantial with our time, little chunks of time of various sizes and shapes fall to the floor. What is crumb time? Crumb time has a combination of the following qualities: Short amounts of time. Crumb time can be less than a minute, or several minutes. Unknown lengths of time. You often don’t know when your crumb time will be over. It could end in a few seconds, or a few minutes. Distracting environments. It’s hard enough to focus when you don’t know when you’ll be interrupted, but the environments in which crumb time take place are often noisy, with lots of activity. Some examples of crumb time: Standing in line at an airport: Lots is going on, you’re waiting for your boarding call. Riding in a cab: The sce

Do you ever feel like you don’t have the time and energy to learn about everything you want to know? Is it hard to stay focused on reading one book, when there’s ten others you want to read? You need curiosity management. Curiosity management is the management of your thirst to know things. In a world with unlimited access to information, and finite time and energy, it’s impossible to read every book, watch every documentary, or take every online course. Unmanaged curiosity leads to “curiosity pressure” This leads to a feeling of “curiosity pressure.” Curiosity pressure is the feeling you’ll never learn all the things you want to learn. When you’re under time pressure – curiosity pressure’s close cousin – and feel you don’t have enough time to do everything, your anxiety makes it hard to do one thing. When you’re under curiosity pressure and feel you can’t learn everything, your anxiety makes it hard to learn one thing. A good curiosity-management system matches your level of curiosity with an appropriate lev

Five years ago, I wrote about how - after ten years as a self-employed independent creator - I hoped to "make it." I now realize, I never will. Five years ago, I sat at my keyboard to have a serious conversation with myself. It had been ten years since I had woken up to a day with nothing scheduled, and wondered how I was going to fill it with something that both made life worth living, and also paid the bills. In this conversation, I asked myself, How did you end up here? Have you made a big mistake? I had spent a good chunk of my retirement savings, left Silicon Valley in the midst of a boom, and now found myself barely getting by in South America. About a thousand words in, I stopped and cracked into tears, not only because I was scared out of my mind, but because still – despite not seeing a clear path to making this work - I couldn't see myself giving up. I concluded: Take it from me, a ten-year veteran self-employed creator: If you are looking for security or reassurance, I do not recommend this line o

I recently advertised my book on a billboard in Times Square. It was cheaper than you think, and was up for less time than you might expect. But it’s still paying dividends. Times Square is a big deal (duh) Times Square is the epitome of mainstream success. The biggest brands have locations there, and any big brand you can name advertises there. 350,000 people walk through Times Square on a typical day. It’s also one of the most-photographed places on Earth, with many of those photos and videos being shared on television shows such as Good Morning America, and on TikTok or Instagram. A lowly self-published book advertised next to the biggest brands When my friend, Robbie Abed, told me you can advertise in Times Square for cheap, I knew I had to run an ad for Mind Management, Not Time Management. A book about a new approach to time management, in a city obsessed with time management, in a place with “time” right in the name? It was a match made in heaven! The very thought of my lowly self-published book advert

In fifteen years as a self-employed creator, I’ve learned how to finish what matters. I follow a nine-step process that makes an easy-to-remember acronym, that also describes what this process does: E.R.A.S.E. F.E.A.R. Fear is Resistance Fear is at the root of most struggles to finish creative projects. Even when you think you’re merely getting interested in another project, that’s often fear masquerading as curiosity. Steven Pressfield calls it Resistance. It can cause the dreaded shiny object syndrome. But if you can break down most of the sources of fear, you can clear the way for decisive action. You can erase fear. The E.R.A.S.E. F.E.A.R process First, what does “erase fear” stand for? Envision the outcome Rehearse the process Ask questions Search for answers Enjoy the process Face the obstacles End perfectionism Assess the outcome Record the process A little more about each of those. 1. Envision the outcome. If you have a clear picture of the outcome you want, you can reverse-engineer your way to maki

When Facebook was first expanding, they used a timeless military strategy to win their most-crucial first users. You can use this strategy to attack your toughest projects, by leveraging hidden complexity to lend devastating power to simple actions. Facebook faced tough competitors When Facebook was starting, in the mid-aughts, it was only available at colleges. It wasn’t easy to win new users on campuses that had their own social networks. Who wants to join the network nobody is on? That’s not where you find the big parties. That’s not how you spy on your crush. There was no point in promoting to students who already had better alternatives. Facebook would waste their limited resources, driving themselves out of business. There were plenty of competitors they needed to outlast. An established network at a college was a barrier to winning over any user at that college – a “defense,” if you will. Facebook needed to break through those barriers. The surround strategy: Attack from the flanks So they used what th

Industrial Society and Its Future, is otherwise known as “The Unabomber Manifesto,” written by Ted Kaczynski. Kaczynsnki is a terrorist who killed three people, and injured twenty-three others, by sending bombs through the mail, between 1978 and 1995. He used his terror campaign to exploit the negativity bias of media and pressure the Washington Post and New York Times into publishing his 35,000-word anti-technology manifesto. Obviously, what Kaczynski did was horrible, but his manifesto is a thought-provoking, albeit extreme, perspective on technology. And so here is my summary of Industrial Society and Its Future. Leftism creeps towards totalitarianism The manifesto begins with a seemingly out-of-place rant about leftism creeping toward totalitarianism: According to Kaczynski, leftists have low self-esteem, are defeatist, and hate themselves. They hate success, and feel the groups they try to protect are inferior. They are overburdened by guilt over their natural drives, and so want to turn into issues of

There are some invisible structures in language, and using them can be the difference between your message being forgotten or living through the ages. These are The Elements of Eloquence, which is the title of Mark Forsyth’s book. I first picked this up a couple years ago, and have read it several times since then. I think it’s one of the best writing books, and has dramatically improved my writing. Here is my summary of The Elements of Eloquence: Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase. How powerful could this stuff be? Can hidden patterns in language really be the difference between being remembered and forgotten? The technical term for the study of these patterns is “rhetoric,” and yes, it can make a big difference. Misremembered phrases While it’s hard to find data on what has been forgotten – see 99.9% of everything ever said or written – there are examples of things that have been misremembered. You’ve heard the expression, “blood, sweat, and tears.” That comes from a Winston Churchill speech. He actuall

In Trust Me, I’m Lying, Ryan Holiday reveals the media manipulation tactics he used as Marketing Director of American Apparel, and for his PR clients. Meanwhile, he exposes the inner workings of a modern media machine in which incentives make it impossible for the version of reality depicted in the media to come close to resembling the truth. I think it’s Holiday’s best book, and one of the best media studies books. So, here, in my own words, is my Trust Me, I’m Lying summary. Yes, this book is about lying Before Ryan Holiday became known as an author of modern stoicism books, he dropped out of college at nineteen to apprentice under 48 Laws of Power author, Robert Green. He later was the marketing director for American Apparel, and now has a PR agency, Brass Check, where he advises corporate clients and authors. As the title of the book suggests, the tactics Holiday confesses to might make your skin crawl. They involve deliberate provocation, bribery, impersonation, and – since it’s called Trust Me, I’m Lyin

In 2018, Matthew Walker was on a media blitz, promoting his book, Why We Sleep. I was one of the many people who picked up the book. It slowly ruined my sleep. But recently, I fixed it. No, this is not a takedown Before I go further, this is not a “takedown” of Why We Sleep, like the one that’s been floating around. I’ve read that takedown, and I didn’t find it convincing. I trust that Why We Sleep is mostly full of accurate information. I say “mostly,” because I understand Walker has been on a mission to elevate the importance of sleep. Sometimes you have to say something like “the shorter you sleep the shorter your life span,” for a sleep-deprived public to get the point, when, technically, research shows people who sleep longer than the recommended 7–9 hours live shorter lives. It’s called rhetoric. When FDR said “we have nothing to fear but fear itself,” thankfully there weren’t blogs to write pedantic takedowns of his logic. My complaints about Why We Sleep don’t involve ill intentions. I’m sure Walker

One thing I hear from a lot from readers of The Heart to Start, is that many people have no problem starting new projects. They instead struggle with finishing them. I can relate. Like many creative people, I once struggled to finish projects. I always had new ideas, I left books half-read, projects half-finished. I had done lots of creative work, and had little to show for it. Now I still always have new ideas, and I still leave books half-read and projects half-finished. But now, I have lots of finished projects to show for all the work I’ve done. What’s changed? I’ve learned to finish what matters, and forget the rest. Embrace your inner Perceiver A turning point in my own creative journey came when I learned to embrace my inner Perceiver. As much flak as the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator gets for being pseudoscience, it’s still a useful lens for understanding your own tendencies. The concepts of Introversion and Extroversion have wide scientific support, but also useful I think are the concepts

What will the future look like? In his most recent November appearance on the Tim Ferriss Show, entrepreneur and investor Balaji Srinivasan presents a cohesive explanation of the current world, and plausible scenarios of how things will play out. I found Balaji’s theories so mesmerizing, I listened to the four-and-a-half-hour podcast several times, then read and took notes on the transcript. Listening to this episode was like reading a book, so – like I do with my book summaries – I wanted to improve my own understanding of the content. So, here is a podcast summarizing a podcast, in my own words. Needless to say, the podcast is worth listening to, and since this is just a summary, you should absolutely listen to it – over on The Tim Ferris Show – to get the full context. The decline of the nation state One of the main forces at play in world events, according to Balaji, is the decline of nation states. He presents this idea in reference to a prescient twenty-five year-old book called The Sovereign Individual

It seems even the most devout techno-utopiasts carry around a Moleskine notebook. They appreciate the way writing longhand on paper alters their thought processes. Yet the same people think writing on a typewriter is absurd, performative, pretentious, or a deliberate troll. Over the past year, I’ve grown to love writing on a typewriter. I didn’t write my first three books on a typewriter, but I am my next one. I use my typewriter to write articles (yes, this one), email newsletters, and even tweets. I think you should try it. Write on a typewriter. The typewriter is the best writing tool ever If you’ve followed my work a while, you’ve seen me experiment with progressively more-primitive writing tools. I first used an AlphaSmart – a portable word-processor – seven years ago. Readers of my latest book, Mind Management, Not Time Management will recognize the typewriter as another “grippy” tool. It helps you get a grip on your thoughts, without letting them slip. But, I think the typewriter is the end of this ro

There’s a reason the expression, “unfinished business” has such provocative power. Unfinished projects stack up like skeletons in our cluttered mental closets. We know if we crack open that door, we’ll be reminded of our failed intentions, our foolish optimism, and our broken promises – to others and to ourselves. But unfinished business doesn’t get the credit it deserves. Unfinished projects are a valuable and necessary part of the creative process. They build skills and plant seeds of ideas for future projects. And even when a project seems as if it’s unfinished, sometimes it’s not. The iPhone came from unfinished business We wouldn’t have the iPhone if it weren’t for unfinished business. When Steve Jobs set out to make a phone that didn’t suck, he drew upon unfinished projects, and he left unfinished projects in his wake. The iPhone we know and love – and all the imitation ancestor smartphones it spawned – may seem like an obvious invention. But at the start of the project, it was far from obvious. A track