How to Become More Creative | Chase Jarvis on Conversations With Tom

[Music] welcome to another episode of conversations with Tom I am here with my dear friend Chase Jarvis dude it is yes much fun getting to know you so I'm excited to have you likewise in a more informal yeah and we're facing each other versus like the chairs with the audience and that yeah I love it thank you for having me on the show oh man for cooler for man I'm psyched I'm excited it's been a lot of fun we're talking about that just a second ago it's nice to be able to to really have a conversation and my goal is always to push my own thinking so we were just talking about Facebook and one of the things that I think is problematic about where Facebook is going there's a documentary out I think it's called the great hack the big hack the something hack and it's talking about all of our data and how it's being collected and how one of the problems with the Facebook algorithm and this I think is the problem is that what they found is things that are that rile people up that gets lamonsoff yeah the inflammatory stuff is like man it [ __ ] gets people commenting it gets them on the platform and so that platform has sort of become that yeah and when I look at the difference between comments say on my youtube stream or comments on my Facebook channel it's radically different and there's something I've been thinking about this lately I'm actually super curious to get your take on this so I I'm obsessed with neuroscience so I always want to know like what the neuroscience is behind something but there is something about and maybe this would fall into two what Jordan Pederson calls the dark triad of personality traits there's a reason that people use the word dark on that so when I think about inflammatory stuff there's just a negativity to it so if a platform is more and more inflammatory like even though I feel the same instinct to like go [ __ ] rage out yeah it's not an energy I like yeah so I'm like I'm just gonna step back finish it yeah so maybe here's something you like neuroscience obviously and that the human biology is negatively oriented out of survival bias yeah and so maybe there's a lens that's going on there with but if we if Facebook priority if it's algorithm prioritizes those things and it's aartsen and then rewards that behavior it's holding a candle or if it flame leads yeah and it's not necessarily dissimilar to if it bleeds it leads from this you know 60s 70s 80s TV but the part that it's we're hardwired to engage in negativity bias so if it bleeds its leads that's something bad happened to someone else this is like it's because it allows for her for an exchange of ideas in a really inflammatory way so I don't know but here's here's my question and this is what's got me thinking about this lately when I really think about that it is not an emotion that I enjoy yeah like I don't want to be involved in something that makes me feel that way that has that dark energy like it's it's gross even so anger has real something real to it and it there are times where anger has made me feel more powerful and so I fully understand the range of human emotion I totally get it yeah but there's something about like wanting ill for people like I don't know how else to say like wanting your enemy to [ __ ] get it that I don't I don't share in whatever makes people want that I shy away from that socially like yeah I think about building this business I mean and I suppose this won't come as a surprise to anybody and this is maybe interesting to me because I'm trying to be self-aware about the things that are driving me and make sure that I'm here in the right direction which is something you talked about in your new book yeah is just creating this company I see how if I used inflammatory techniques I would grow faster yeah but when I think about what neurochemical marinate in exactly what I post so I literally don't understand yeah I I think for the people who are more and whatever is underpinning the desire for growth or recognition or come up and sir whatever the label is that that outweighs what they want to bathe in every day their neuro chemistry we can there's probably a thread to pull on there but I think that's probably what you're tapping into is like you know you can look at that you know like and I don't like how it makes me feel there are times when I will just be holding my phone and not conscious of holding my phone and even that timming is gross yeah I get that I liked when you talked about that in your book you're saying alright you got a time machine my rules go with me and I forget was frita is that the caller yeah yeah you're with her and she's like should I go and paint or do I go to deal with the car and you're like you know that's a very easy thing for me to prioritize and understand about her word right given given that context from if from a distance yeah which is is pretty interesting and I want to pull on the thread of what you're saying that there's probably a thread to pull there and I think the thing that makes me really interested in this is thinking about like personality types and how much of this is like hardwired how much of this is is some people actually want to marinate in that and how much of it is that that it is just the the human survival instinct and it's universal to all of us right and so your your book makes a pretty bold it has a pretty bold base assumption so I find when to articulate intelligent people disagree there's usually a disconnection on a base assumption yeah and the base assumption that your book is predicated on is something that I'm really thinking a lot right now partly because I'm writing my own book and it has its own set of base assumptions and the base assumption that your book has is that basically creativity isn't a skill it's I think you call it a habit or a routine habit so how much do you practice how much do you really really think that anybody could and do you think anyone could get as good as you I think that's my real question at photography which is your specific discipline I think we all have tendencies and we have skill sets but I think part of the problem is the definition of creativity that most people chuck around on a regular basis is the one that's a base assumption on the the negative side of my argument of the argument that a counterpoint to my book would make which is like what wait a minute I'm not going to be as good at this well maybe I'm not as good a Potter or maimie night guys good at Archer maybe I'm not as good at building businesses but the underpinning the underlying creativity is unquestionable we've all got it it's what differentiates us you like neuroscience it's what differentiates us from every other species on the planet we are uniquely able to put disconnected ideas together to form something new and useful you know you could argue that that like chimps can do that and build tools but there's a limited capacity there and and for what we know right now that this is a distinguishing characteristic we are literally creating machines that is what we're that is what we do and to me that that whether I'm better at photography there's aptitude there are environmental there's a million different things and I'm not actually arguing that we can both be the same quality photographer I'm saying that we've all got creativity as a base characteristic of what it means to be human not dissimilar to language like if you study Chomsky or anything you can say language is part of what has helped us helped our universe the human universe happened and my assumption in the book is that it was basically there are three assumptions one is that every person has creativity in it here's the baseline litmus test for this ask any first-grade classroom who wants to come to the front of the room and draw me a picture a hundred percent of the hands go up 100 percent because there's no judgement there's no there's and they haven't been programmed or it's it's really early on in their programming rather is probably a better way of saying it and we haven't trained it out because we think it's cute so there's this everybody's it yep I want to do it it's fun I enjoy it it's expression that's native in human in the same way like a kid talks and you're like oh well same way that most able-bodied people will walk when a kid falls down 50 times they don't say oh yeah I guess my kids not a walker you know we just don't say that we just like okay great you keep doing it and imagine if we did that with creativity so the that's one base assumption is that so well let's go a little deeper on that yeah so you're saying that there's something inherently pleasurable or fulfilling about the creativity what is it about creative expression that is is so important that you want to make sure everybody sort of Rico alessa's around that and becomes that first grader again and goes up to the chalkboard yeah it to me it's as fundamental as nutrition it's as fundamental is that well yes yes interesting and I think that's true sort of biologically in survival but also in joy and pleasure I think I want to get through my three assumptions before we go too deep on any one so that assumption is that everyone's creative when you see it empirically we feel it in our bones when we make something even if we don't love the outcome we feel there's a sense of like okay great you can see people like oh it feels good in my gut right even just like it felt good to do this to express myself to make something the thing to is that this is a characteristic that is moldable and adaptable it's a habit that it's just like I'm less adaptable in that it you will improve in your output yes you will and you will get just like a muscle it is in muscle it is a practice not a product and if you use it it will get stronger so I mean that's why I think it's it's very I use a biological concept of a muscle because it's an anatomical right define stronger for me are you saying that your output will be more interesting to other human beings it will be of a higher quality or your level of joy will be higher I believe all of those things are amplified okay so that's premise 2 and premise 3 if you buy you know point one in the argument by point two the argument point three the argument is that in the act of creating on a regular basis using your muscles you actually there's a cognition that happens an awareness that you have agency so in creating small things on a daily basis whether to photograph a meal a business a lemonade stand anything you've just made something and the making of something in that small way it's the same muscle that we use to make our life so it's just creativity at a different scale same set of muscles different time horizon different you know daily operation different lens if you're talking about a camera to move different aperture but the muscle is the same muscle it's all creativity and that's why people get bound up in is this an art book I'm sure yeah if it will supercharge all of your creative skills you'll become a pure painter become a better painter if you're building a business you'll be a better at building businesses but it's also it's like a manual for life it is like the people that you aspire to be like or admire or would say have some sort of success creativity is a core capability they have acknowledged it they have strengthened that practice and it is driving is making what they are doing possible it's really interesting so is there something in there about so going back to your first grader they go up to the board it sounds to me like when you said maybe they're just so early in their got I forget the exact word rogram yeah the programming perfect so the that's a softball there before you do thank you that so as people are getting programs from a beaten out of them through the traditional education system you talked a lot about this previously that you were just sort of on a track when you were a kid sure without even really thinking about it so when I think about human flourishing is I'm guessing that sort of where you're going with this idea sort of everything in your life has been geared towards that is some of this a thesis on the the sort of creativity destruction mill that is sort of the classical education shares here in the US where it's like you're taught to stay in line and do what you're told and all that stuff so like it's only it's only partly on purpose there are it's it's also convenient it's you know it's it's it especially it's based on the schooling systems based on a Prussian model that is literally modeled after a factory where you put widgets in one end you move them through a system at the same rate and then ideally at that they come out the other end with the same skills at the same level doing the same things and that's very efficient in a world where the the the highest ideology is the factory and what we have now we have evolved beyond the factory that as a means of production as the most efficient way to make something for example and so the system has to change I don't there's someone sitting in a room somewhere the puppetmaster saying no no we got it schools have to stay this way I think certainly that is a that is factual and that it's an easy way to control people and you give them all the same information you feed them all the same thing but I don't think that that that's not actually a corollary to the book it's not a trashing of the educational system I I have done a lot of schooling my wife was a teacher I went to public schools it's just a reality of the system it's like a byproduct of pop culture or mass culture I also throw a similar set of stones at at the at employment at the job universe and and the work force and it's counterproductive to have someone who doesn't sit down shut up use a number-two pencil go to you know start at this job at this time go to work for 40 years get the gold watch retire fit into this system that then government knows how to quantify and qualify and can tag you and put you in a box so I just think that that's it's I'm not really trying to attack I don't want to spend a lot of time attacking school and I want to spend a lot of time attacking the world those are just the way they are this is very practical it's them we're in a free market that's what happened mostly free and this is a new rule book this is the black box that the people that you look at how they have sort of managed it having figured and I've basically made every mistake you can in the book hundreds of thousands in student loans disappointed every major figure in my family parents included grandparents friends like lost a ton of money like did did all of the things and yet here I am I'm okay and it's part of the the to me a an opening if you will of the black box of how everybody that you look up to and admire has deconstructed their success and it all follows a really similar pattern that is available to us all starts with creativity we use it as a muscle and then if you think you can if you can start to manage creativity on a small scale with us with a small C and creativity with a capital C the ability to create the living in the life and the ark that you want is more within your reach than ever before that's super interesting so let me see if I understand all this so the punchline is basically we get there's no evil man behind the curtain but we get our creativity beaten out of us we all have it as a kid we all have the propensity for it it is like a muscle you can develop it you could get better not only at the art that you're creating but you can also get better at a genetic be agency perfect at having the creativity and exploring that and doing things that are creative and the punchline to all of that is it's basically the you wouldn't use the word antidote but it's the way to counteract some of the realities that we are the consequences of the reality in which we live which is a school system that is making less creative a job way of being that's making you less creative which is diminishing your or your flourishing and so taking something whether it's taking photos or building a Gundam robot or whatever you're doing something creative every day yep that's going to allow you to go from small see creative to big see creative to begin to like plan out your life boom okay there's a couple of corollaries a little small twist in there I won't go into it but I think I'm gonna I'm gonna put an asterisk in there which is this does not mean you have to quit your day job this does not mean you have to smoke as a cigarette then move to Perry you don't have to paint you don't have to it is really about the intention of just awareness of creating and putting yourself back into that awareness as much as possible so I'm I'm betting that the whoever's listening watching the show right now that 90s north of 90% have taken a photograph with their phone in the last 24 to 48 hours and even if it was a park photograph of the parking spot at the grocery store so you remembered where you parked or the airport or whatever and you know if we just shifted a moment and pause just for a millisecond and acknowledge that this is an act of creativity that making dinner like you don't have to have a room that's the painting room and pull out your paints and you know you don't have to find an extra 30 minutes all these things are in the same way that like carve time out to work out or to plan your nutrition or how all those things have amplified value when you do at the baseline it's just this awareness of creativity and doing more of it acknowledging that it's a muscle and that this path this muscle not only is it an antidote but that it's the most powerful function that a human can do that plus love interesting okay that was a curveball there with love so this is this is not it's like I don't talk a lot about love but I just think it's a powerful function in our inner cognition and our you see love like a process as well can we make it bigger better faster stronger I don't know I didn't write a book about love I just I just know it's powerful just from my own experience but well I'll just say it's to me we I'm happy to stay with creativity but I just it is creativity is like that moment this is a line in the book when Dorothy steps out of black-and-white Kansas into Technicolor and Munchkinland and when you turn that on and it's literally like you start to see possibility in the quantum field for example I know you like quantum lights it's like when you've realized that you've created something and you've done that and then you shaped something and another thing and another thing you start to look at the journey that you have a head as doable as possible and if you didn't make anything you would have like by contrast sometimes that's a good way to learn things are to test the program right by contrast if you're not actually accomplishing a goal if you're not moving if there's no progress right a bike it's very hard to ride a bike without moving forward right creativity is X this at this act of moving forward and you can still be still in mindful I want to respect the Eastern tradition it's not about accomplishing but it is about agency and realizing that even if your aspiration is to be still you had to realize at some point that you were capable of making yourself still that is a creative act so I will one I want to get back to love I'm not gonna let you look that easily with that once you're [ __ ] interested but I do want to talk about what I'm saying about about moving forward sure so that to me the thing that I really struggle with in creating impact theory and all the stuff that we're doing is I don't want to [ __ ] people I really want the no [ __ ] answer of what it takes to live a fulfilling life that I'll call my punchline okay now I think that an absolute cornerstone of a fulfilling life is the ability to what you just called moving forward you have to be able to say okay there's this thing that I want I'm gonna go and get better at it and then I'm gonna be able to actually do things in the real world so the thing I talk about all the time is skill acquisition sure and what I want to impress upon people is skills have utility so there's there is no reason to get a skill to tick a box there is only a reason to get a skill to actually be able to do something so I am NOT using this example in the context of creativity being a muscle I'm just saying for you fair enough getting good at photography was a way for you to get checks from some of the biggest companies in the world to send you around to do things that are extraordinary that you would not have been able to do if you didn't get really [ __ ] good at photography for sure like you even talked about you dad has this great eye as a penciler but it's like he never made a career to that now I don't know if he never made a career out of that because he never got that good or if he just didn't pursue it but I know that you're never going to have a career at that thing unless you actually get that [ __ ] good yeah so like my obsession in life dude is how [ __ ] malleable are we yeah and I for a long time I sort of accidentally thought and talked like we were blank slates though I never actually believed that I think there are just things that are fundamental to human being and and there are sort of traits and tendencies that we're never going to be able to escape but the more that I go down this road the more that I'm like a little freaked out by the notion of free will maybe isn't even really a thing the fact that there's like all this sort of underlying stuff that is different from person to person to person and some of it is Oh God like they're just gonna be some people that are better at some things than others yeah that is not a judgment on their worth as a [ __ ] human and that's one of the reasons that I talk about this dark energy is so many people that talk about this stuff they have some [ __ ] dark energy about them I want beautiful things for every [ __ ] buddy yeah because I want to be in that beautiful energy I want to think about that which is why gonna get back to love great but it's like how malleable are we really like is you you've looked at so many people trying to like live a creative life or do what you do and you must look at some of them and I say following statement with a caveat I don't want them all to win yeah I want to be convinced sofa and badly run out with her but my gut instinct is some people just suck at photography sure you might suck a photography but it doesn't sucking in photography might it's not it's not an S it's as necessary and sufficient that you actually don't love it right you can suck a photography and love it and why wouldn't that be enough it's a great [ __ ] question so I will give you the answer it that is absolutely true and I really hope people end up there based on the potential mistakes I have made with my own belief system in my own values yeah I love painting really really enjoy it like the act of painting except for the fact that I'm not good at it and so how many hours you get behind the canvas fair very good question I will call it that was written 200 No yeah less than a thousand pressure so a thousand percent I could get way way way better yeah but there is something that I'll call disproportionate returns so whenever I put energy into verbal skills I get a disproportionate return on my time totally that's so you have that's because you're inclined to that we're all inclined to think when you say inclined what do you mean you're saying that you're born with it I think you were like what I really think is you got certain rewards as a kid go back to you think we're blanks like no I do think that we were we are because a blank slate would not imply language and I'm we're Laine Thompson yeah the rest yeah have you read Steven Pinker's book blank slate no but I know enough about Pinker to be able to probably argue around it but interesting oh please yeah tell me because I plus B of language so my background I was very happy to drop out of the PhD in philosophy program along with all lots of other things in my life to become a photographer but we got too many things in the air right now so I think we're not a blank slate I think there are some things like we're hardwired to do you could call it biology and that is like the negative bias survival bias language I'm specifically at what was the the threat that we were following what am I really trying to figure out it is how malleable you then regard now I get unless I'm not talking about the book I think your presence on the book that's why I wanted to say yeah I understand it okay now I want to go somewhere else so as kids I think a lot of our psychology is molded through early wounds where we were either rewarded or chastised and you were rewarded for being articulate and at the dinner table at the birthday party whatever and so that you have again it's not you might still get joy from painting and you said you're not good at it I would also say you haven't you you could probably get much better yeah but you might have a disposition that Orient's you toward verbal skills and I I don't know too many people who hate the thing that they're great at because of we're social animals so I actually I make a point in the book like you have two things in life figure out we were supposed to do and then do the thing and the thing that you're when you're figuring it out certainly what I my experience is looking backwards and this is there are times I talk about hearing the call the creative calling and the call is not necessary to be a poet in in Berlin the thing it might be building businesses it might be cooking it could be writing computer code and when you stepped on that path that's another big metaphor in the book it felt what I call effortless hard work you've it the hard work was there but it was joyful and you had just enough ability just enough you could see yourself doing the thing which creates propulsion and momentum and to me that is the the the the tranche under which you're sort of are my is everybody good at everything no well now I'll get it everything because we have childhood wounds and we have a vision of ourselves I'm not I'm asking a different question because I know we're not all good at everything I don't think anyone on the face of the earth would ever take that stance but can we get good at anything yeah I think we can get more dependent obviously there's the definition of good yeah maybe I'll even push that a little bit can we get world-class at anything no interesting you would have gone with you can get good just but you stopped shy of world class yeah because I put world class in the top 1% okay you know it's like and I don't think it's our mission to try and be world class I don't think we have a disposition to try and get good at things that we don't love because the because of the the social animal component to our psychology our biology we're you know there's those things are chemicals that are released when you get rewarded for you get a pat on the back you get some drugs going in your system from mother nature and so that biology sort of predisposes that we're gonna have a we're gonna drift towards things that bring us joy and that we're good at and those things tend to coincide more over time that becomes a rut that becomes a neural pathway sure can you break yourself out of it like I was in the top just you know small teeny little handful of people are the best in the world that commercial photography making you know huge visions come true for big brands for high dollars that got seen by a lot of people and I can still burn out on that I don't have to continue to do it I was in what they would call a rut I didn't want to do it anymore and so I had to expand my consciousness to do some other things like build a business around helping tens of millions of other people do that and that was not easy this is my painting maybe I stepped in I'm 200 hours in I feel like I'm 200 years in the dark circles under my eyes here but and that's part of I think if I'm trying to couch this in some of your but what I know about you and your passion for learning and the fact that it says always be learning or something up in the green room up there like that's joyful the grass learning even if you don't want to become real class so I don't you know I don't know quite where you want to take this but I do think that based on our experiences in life we have felt what it was like to be on the path whether it was telling jokes in second grade or it was Foursquare on the playground in eighth grade or band or you know the first time you made a meal and your grandma said oh my gosh you know Jody you you are so good at pastries and then you know you felt really good you know like then you started thinking of yourself in that term and and you know fast forward ten years if you're trying to figure out what to do and you feel sad inside sometimes you go home and you make some nice cinnamon rolls so yeah it's interesting to me what where I'm I'm not necessarily going anywhere but the the reason that this question remains so all-consuming to me is I don't think we're blank slates so I might gut instinct one of my earliest memories is faking not seeing Easter eggs so that my sister would win the Easter egg hunt and because I knew it meant more to her than it did to me I am wired to enjoy seeing other people win that doesn't mean that I don't want to win it doesn't mean that I don't want to be the best it's just that I really love seeing other people win as well so like I gravitate towards being on the team and winning with other people and like being able to share that is so much more interesting to me yeah so I think that that is a predilection that I was probably born with understanding that I wish we were blank slates and you'll get why in a second but I don't think that that is true so I had a predilection that Preta Lucien then was fed by experience so I'm sure because my mother is very much like this like I was definitely rewarded as a kid for being kind to other people and so that would have been something my mom would a lavish praise on me for doing like oh my gosh you let your sister win like that's so kind and thoughtful and you know so definitely there was also then the reinforcing of it and when I think about okay there's things that I have a predilection for that then were rewarded that I then invested energy into and it becomes a neural pathway like you were saying so that's the background to why I'm so driven to answer this question and why it'll it'll almost certainly be one of the driving forces behind this entire show is me trying to learn as much as I can to get to the following in 30 seconds or less to be able to change the course of someone's life forever by being able to say some magic [ __ ] word I get that this probably isn't possible so people need to write me about it I'm just saying like when you take it out to it's like really what do I want to do I've worked in the inner cities a lot I've seen extraordinary people absolutely waste away and be [ __ ] destroyed by their environment and I'm trying to as fast as I can undo a lot of shitty programming to get them on the right path I can't babysit everything I can't be their energy I can't want it for them these are very painful lessons by the way that I did not acquiesce to easily I'm [ __ ] in my 40s now and I'm only just now beginning to let go of the death grip of if I spend enough time with somebody that I could help them and realize and it just doesn't [ __ ] scale yeah so it's like I'm always looking for that insight man when some like if somebody has some part of that magic formula of like knit or nope get them to pain every day and like that's the thing that's the breakthrough moment then I'll [ __ ] kidnap people if I have to and put them in a room and make a paint like whatever it is but I I am so compelled to understand the human mind yeah to understand human behavior to understand the layer of culture like I feel like if I can understand that well enough I'll know what's [ __ ] so I can avoid that right and I'll find out what actually works so I can put more time and energy into that because I have dedicated my entire life due to a [ __ ] thesis and that thesis is you start with a story you hit people with narrative you give them [ __ ] robots and stories Dragonball Z like whatever you hit them when they're a kid Disney obviously is a perfect example for this you give them Spider Man and Thor and Iron Man you draw them in with [ __ ] emotion and storytelling you plant ideas in their mind and then my thinking is and nobody's done this before that you graduate them then to like the can read this book go paint go take photographs go code whatever your creative thing is like and let me lay the stuff out for you because right now I am so [ __ ] distressed by how much the zip code you were born into the number one predictor dude the number of walking gnarly gnarly yeah so like I could I wouldn't like this either because I don't think I have a very high IQ but I could at least get behind that if you had a high IQ no matter where you're born you're gonna find your way sure but it doesn't even seem to be that it seems to me you can really [ __ ] people up so my hope is if you can really [ __ ] people up how much can you very rapidly get them on a path where they can do red [ __ ] well I gotta take take grain of salt with what I'm about to say so just like pinch the salt and it salt bay that [ __ ] right now so it's I talked earlier about making a lot of mistakes and I think those mistakes were largely correlated with trying to find social acceptance I'm a hard-charging type a kind of just cliche to the bone and I hate it and yet because you get so [ __ ] my up leaking my own sister and it's just I don't know there's a lot of negative characteristics around that kind of a personality trait I think and but as soon as I acknowledge that I started working on this but it's been good but kind of yeah to disappoint everybody in your life virtually everybody and well let's use disappoint with a low D low to small D okay and to also still to be fair that was the hardest thing I did was acknowledge that I'm a creator in a world that historically and I think this is changing and I'm trying to this is the stake I want to put in the ground is that in a world that used to think of creativity and or art as a nice-to-have helpful playful naive even but now with the premise that that I've personally experienced that I've watched in sitting down in my show like this with a almost 200 of the world's top performers the world's greatest entrepreneurs thought leaders create and numerous disciplines the trait that I'm I believe is that we are of course we're creative machines and if we can unlock that aspect of it of our selves that it's not a nice to have it's like nutrition it's like air it's like oxygen it is it is our superpower just and yet it's manifesting itself in really interesting ways look at the best companies in the world used to be the ones that had the best supply chain or the before that it was the ones that we don't need I don't need to do a regression but like Apple Computer wildly creative very you know everyone's else's digging their zagging it's just also a trite example but I'm trying to use a trite example because it's like okay you start to see that creativity is not just a nice to have and when I have experienced it personally I started to see this bubbling up in culture it was the hardest thing I've ever done to disappoint all the people who want me to be a doctor or a lawyer a professional athlete or all the things that were socially acceptable to become a photographer so it was hard for me knowing go back to your inner city think I was born white I was born in America I was born in the 70s I was you know I have virtually every privilege my parents are still together to this day male and it was the hardest thing I've ever done of course it's gonna be harder for other folks who have less advantage that being said if that were easier if it were easier to acknowledge this part of ourselves culturally a norm not thought of as a nice-to-have not naive and my are you in the book very simply that this is the most practical thing to be able to figure your way out of whatever into something different by putting two things that used to not go together together to form something new and useful that is ultimate power what do you think is the purpose to life Oh Nintendo I think some sort maybe unexpected is very um what I think is the purpose so not a non sequitur this this knows exactly related to what you're saying yeah well I'll kick it back to you because you get you got an answer the tip here to I do so but the reason I'm asking is because I I am trying to be very conscious that I have an agenda and I push that [ __ ] agenda but it has everything to do with the world I want to live it or not necessarily the world everyone else wants to live in so I believe the purpose of life is to find out how many skills you can acquire that have utility and then put that utility to the test and service of something bigger than yourself so basically get good at [ __ ] that matters to you and go [ __ ] make something awesome okay now that's something awesome can be a company that's something awesome can be art that's something awesome be the greatest school teacher ever it doesn't matter to me what you do notice I said make something yeah none here's the thing I buy into the whole creativity thing I [ __ ] love it I think okay go hundred percent like I'm on board with your book I think your book is [ __ ] great I think people should read your [ __ ] book I think that you're right on the money so my thing is like it's definitely a piece of something yep and now I want to plug it into like the the bigger picture the like where do we go from here kind of thing okay and so when I was hearing you talk I thought okay it's interesting cuz you were talking about there's problems to being a type a hard-driving or a person and I just thought I don't know that that's true but that may one it's not true from the perspective of what I'm trying to create a world that I want to see all of that it may very well be perfectly true because you may be trying to live a different life and my one of my favorite quotes is from Ray Dalio wrote a book called principles gotta read largest hedge fund in the [ __ ] world peanuts amazing and he said look I don't know that the way that I've lived my life is the right way maybe living a stress-free life is actually the way to go I just know that the way that I've lived my life is only way I could have done it I thought that is exactly how I feel like I cannot I have no interest in that's a more truthful thing I've no interest in stepping outside of my bias on this yeah so why do you want to back off being a type-a hard charger just because I think it creates blind spots can you be real specific sure if we are only one way I believe it is largely based on the stories that we've told ourselves and you define type a now I think I was using sort of a trite colloquial like what was the thing in you that you didn't like or that you thought had negative associations or it had real problems in your life um I think that it is it potentially creates blind spots when there's only one speed one of the things I realized I crave is intensity and if you're only if you crave it and you're able to supply it to yourself and you continue to get good results and you've been into over-index on it is it fair to say that there's something other than intensity that you might be missing out on that is has to do with the rich balanced whole meaningful fulfilled life and so to me that is that was for example through the lens of what you're just asking about that was a blind-spot that I would be missing out on some things and what I found is a couple things one that this that that belief was continually fulfilled and escalated by the story I told myself and speaking of narratives and how were hardwired for story when I started telling myself as a different story and I started providing some space and some tools to do something other than that and I'll just use a very simple example of meditation that my life didn't get less awesome it got more awesome and you know Tim Ferriss and I have talked a lot about it he in in his book tools for Titans I had a chapter in there and we talked about meditations on myself and Rick Rubin were the two people that got Tim to take up Transcendental Meditation and when I think the way Tim articulates it was way that I felt it as well which is I've been rewarded my whole life for intensity being good at whatever I would want to focus on and it's rewarded and if I meditate and that might take away my edge that might take away the very thing that created all this and whatever this is right whatever I was happy with in my life and what I realized is that intensity in some places in some ways in some shapes was a huge anchor and so the thing that that experiment that thought experiment if we're talking about here and my actual experiment realized to me that there are there's more than one way and I am NOT a one-dimensional person and the story that I tell myself should it should expand to include some other aspects can you get specific I have obviously guesses as to what precisely you're talking about but so here I guess I'll give you my guess and tell me if I'm right so in always being intense and always going hardcore to be the greatest photographer to have the biggest business or build the biggest school or whatever there was a and now I'm painting you with my brush great there was a neural Armenia painter by the way yes that's I am far less than mediocre painter dude I'm a god-awful paint me when I had 10,000 hours no yeah that that is a very first thing on this though I have I have my tent outdoors thinking about some of these idea so my my guess is that there was a neurological state a neurochemical state may be a better way to say it that you were not able to experience that you have found intensely pleasurable may be the wrong word valuable valuable perfect so that you found valuable and living using your words a balanced more or you didn't surround it but you said the holistic or fulfilling fulfilling life now when you say that is it is it a sense of relaxing of letting go would you use words like surrender like what is that state and does it come with like is it you recently posted photos of somewhere in Washington which I can't believe I'd never even heard of [ __ ] stunningly beautiful obviously out in the middle of nowhere or the sunset you could just feel you guys unwind relaxing is that the kind of state that had previously been absent from your life and now makes your life better I think that might be too far but let me try and maybe just click back a couple notches and it was the thing that it gave me was awareness flowing down yeah and I don't even say like slow has a connotation that's the opposite of fast and then you place value on one of those two spectrums so I just think awareness and when you're in your I don't know if I'd call it an addiction because that's that word you're gonna pick up and run with so I'm just gonna I'm gonna navigate around that but when you're in your story then you I think you end up going all-in on that and there's a benefit of flow state of a you know forgetting about all these things but it's not only positive that's pause that's positively oriented around productivity and accomplishment and all the things that flow state you know good feeling is good neural chemistry but there's also an awareness as I'm just gonna not fully juxtapose those two things but just like put awareness in there as it feels good to be aware this is this moment feels good being aware of my desire or my ability or my fear that you know what what's what's the mechanism that's operating underneath is it fear of not being loved because if I'm not the best at a thing you know I don't know but that's why I don't want to try and actually do the work to juxtapose it perfectly but it's just something other than the neurochemical pathway that you've been programmed for there's other cool [ __ ] off the road you know yet to me the the thing that I worry about is all right so have this message I put it out and put it out very aggressively and I always worry that people don't hear the part about you have the the goal of all of this is neuro chemistry plain and simple so the punchline of life the definition of success to me is not money it's not fame it's not glory it is it is entirely neuro chemistry how do you feel about yourself when you're by yourself the the neuro chemicals that your Oh wash and do they feel good is it like positive and uplifting we just it it's a lighter feeling it's it is as far as I can tell as close to objective objectively being better as you're going to get to but to to get to that state via OneNote is almost certainly never going to happen play sure there's a great way of thinking about it I want to I want the symphony correct I don't just want my one C sharp which is very intense and I'm very good at playing that note over and over yeah and if you can listen to yourself if you if you you talk a lot about intuitions if you listen to I wouldn't call it intuition but maybe that's a great word for it I would just say it starts to feel shitty like you you don't feel right anymore like I always tell the team here if you need a random Tuesday off take a random Tuesday off like [ __ ] listen to yourself yeah it I'm gonna come to you and expect you to get your job done at a certain level but if you're not listening to your own body if you're not experiencing life in a way that is awesome like this is all for naught yeah like it wouldn't make any sense for us to implode an entire group of people trying to help other people if like you don't have those you know here at the company are [ __ ] miserable like it doesn't make any sense so my thing is like I really believe people should go hard why should because I think that there are objective truths to the human condition about what is gonna make you feel good yeah but I think the progress is one of them I think going hard is one of them I think doing hard things is one of them sure and I think if you don't do these things just like if you're not creative you you are wired for this [ __ ] and if you're not doing it then you're not gonna get the neurochemical result that you want that I will say is success right that you're feeling good about yourself and you're by yourself you were awash in chemistry that makes you feel good it's that lighter energy that we talked about so I think you have to do those things but if you're charging hard like that and your body starts going I'm not having fun right now and you just keep [ __ ] doing it it's like I get it like I'll always push a little bit extra just to make sure that like I'm I'm not just being lazy because I also know that I have a propensity to be lazy yeah but and I'll use cold showers as an example so 99 times out of 100 a I don't want to take the cold shower and be I'll try to I'll come up with excuses but one time out of a hundred I'm actually like no I really like today what I need to live the fulfilled life that I want to live is to not take the culture yeah I mean and when I know it's not about laziness it's about like it's about fulfillment or if you're sick yeah I made that mistake I made that mistake yeah don't do that I even tried to research that one to see cuz I was like I don't like taking cold showers ever so I really feel like I have an excuse to not take a cold shower when I'm sick I looked it up jury was out so I said [ __ ] it alright I got to take it because I don't want to be making excuses I definitely felt worse yeah so for anybody out there wondering well part of what I love about what you're the rant that you were just on is the book it covers all of those things that the value of risk the value of hard work the value of giving yourself permission to suck as a painter is there's like because you went there and you did a thing and you even if you realize you don't do a thing and it talks also about like when to quit so all these aspects I've grounded everything that you've just said and fundamentally it's we're creating something and you're either creating a thing right now PowerPoint for work Amil Sonata whatever or you're creating your life and all of the things that you just said are I would say aspects that sit on top of creativity and I'm trying to get to the bottom of it like let's go to the foundation what is it is it breathing no no it's not quite a holistic enough is it nutrition no no it's not quite is it you know that all these other things that we think of is foundational and that's really how I arrived at creativity interesting so you're putting creativity below biological functions well I'm putting it as a it is it is sort of part of what the definition of being human is and by ignoring this creativity your your your giving up on yourself Wow I don't know if I can give you that one you're saying that it's that fundamental do tell me what you have done yeah you like progress you like you listed a lot of stuff that doesn't have creativity as an essential element of those things well so I'll answer that in a different way because you're breathing which maybe if you said breathing tongue-in-cheek I'd add I said okay fair enough and I won't derail us because again the only thing I would say is if I haven't thought through it enough to know if so don't breathe you don't get to create day fair enough I was just gonna say at the end of the day people need to root I just taught a class on this people need to root their [ __ ] in biology yeah like you you why do you need to exercise because your body has the same called mitochondria mitochondria makes ATP without ATP your cells actually die like they they die they break apart they no longer holds your form together you become dirt again yeah so it's like there there is a very real thing to be faced with we are and and this is one of those depending on what your baseline perspective is it can be really [ __ ] hard to talk to people like if when I talk to somebody who doesn't think that if they believe in a ghost in the machine writer then I am gonna sound like a crazy person because all I'm ever trying to do is go I need to understand the biology of that because once I understand the biology of it then I feel I feel like I can take advantage of that so for instance if I understand the biology of ATP then I'll work out because I understand that I can create more mitochondria if I create more in mitochondria then I'm able to not only make the energy system more efficient but I actually create more of energy because I've got more mitochondria now I might not have come to that conclusion if I didn't understand the biology sure so and speaking of that I'm gonna take us back to love okay because when you said that that was part of what made me so curious is I don't I certainly would not be able to explain the specific biology of love but what I want to know is how much do you think you can if I wanted to use a romantic word I would say manifest love if I wanted to use a more grounded word I would say connection if well no just like that you can you can feel love like if you close your eyes and I say imagine smiling sure you can do that and you actually feel something yeah even though you're just imagining smiling so like to just capture the sentiment of love so you likened creativity and love is the the two most powerful things I wish I could remember the word you said but if something like to do like we could do love which I found very interesting is that the right way of describing it probably not and that's why you know I'm kicking myself now that we're getting critical that I was I was casual what the word love but I do I do with all your buttons there we go with all your biology and mitochondria I want to ask you a question and to me that's why connection is a really good stand-in at least for this you know in terms of argument here are positioning do you know that a human being a baby who's recently born if they are not held they will die yeah it's bananas okay so how do you put that in your mitochondria and smoke it and smoke it well what's interesting is are you saying is there something about when I break it down to biology that bothers you but no I'm stew sterile no I mean I remember I was a scientist for the first three quarters of my or for the first half of my life and would you say that there's is there some I'm reacting to you saying how do you put that in your mitochondria and smoke it so I'm trying to figure out it sounds like there's something maybe too cold no no to me it's just it's it is a I'm looking at an exception is there something mystical about connection for you I don't know this is what this is why I'm asking the question so for me I don't have an answer but I was curious what your answer was so mine would be it while I am not yet the person I want to be because the person I want to be would be able to give you the neuro chemistry of that so I'm not yet that person but I firmly believe that it would be a pretty off-the-shelf thing for a David Eagleman for instance to explain where he could who's a neuroscientist he could tell you exactly what's happening the cascade of events that causes you to secrete whatever it is serotonin dopamine it's probably there's three I think neuro chemicals that are pretty implicated and lusher forgetting the third one right now so my gut instinct is that would be a pretty easy thing for a certain type of person to explain but here's the the fun of life for me that I love this sort of like almost mystical like not understanding it as I think that when I can grapple with the science of something sure becomes a more malleable thing for me right but without that like it's still like you said earlier that I like quantum physics now the thing that I find interesting about quantum physics is I don't pursue it in any meaningful way whatsoever but it tickles a part of my brain that I is makes it so clear that there's something so fundamental that I don't understand and I like that sensation now I don't entirely know why I like sensation but I find it deeply pleasurable yeah and I get the feeling that it's the same things that astronauts have when they look back at the earth and they think oh my god like we're so insignificant but there's there's a real there's a beauty to that somehow there's no holder to that for sure that's what I see in in quantum physics is I'm so [ __ ] stupid compared to somebody who really understands this stuff and I don't make a value judgment on I'm just talking like from an IQ my brain can't process that sure I'm not being humble like I and I would get better I would get let's say 11 times better sure if I went and studied and all that so I get it I'm I haven't clocked my 10,000 hours but none of that comes easy none of it is intuitive it all seems so [ __ ] weird yeah but it gives me a beautiful feeling headache' and a feeling of like well I don't [ __ ] understand this this is so weird and it's how is it a particle and a wave at the same time how does one photon go through two slits this is [ __ ] weird and then David Deutsch this whole thing about oh you keep going with an infinite number of slits it'll go through all of them yeah so that is so crazy here yet so beautiful so I love this sort of majestic side yeah and and quantum physics posits the mystical that's ultimately what it's doing are we defining mystical as we non-local interactions the idea that a butterfly flaps its wings on the other side of the world then yes that does create a hurricane on the other side like non-local interactions I think it's bells bells theory is you can make it up I don't know yeah okay it's I think I think it is I don't know but non-local interactions basically like things that are not connected in space when one happens something a long ways away or in some laboratory in a different room in a different box again flips one way and that flips up on the untangle Minh that's crazy so I think the to use your world your word like surprise delight joy aww all these things that are just like magnets in those places crazy in a good way now here's the thing that I was curious about and it says oh maybe a little bit divergent it goes into the philosophy of science which is all science is ultimately consistently proving itself to be wrong yes yes so the most simple in interest the most simple example that I can give is let's just go to physics yeah we used to think that Newton nailed it right things fault or earth 8.6 it went 2 meters-per-second-square whatever and and that worked really good for everything they could measure around Newton's time and you know 50 years after and then oh no this is tiny guy comes along and Einstein Einstein II in physics comes along and says no no it's not eight point two meters per second squared because if you take you up an aisle up in a plane and you you know doesn't actually follow it at eight point two meters per day I'm hoping getting this right I'll remember my eighth grade physics but that things don't actually fall at that rate it's just a little bit different by the way if you covered this in eighth grade your schools okay maybe is college and then the the quantum mechanics and ultimately all these things are proving the thing that came before it be inaccurate we don't know [ __ ] totally yeah and that it's a constant realization that what you said you knew two weeks ago two months ago two years ago two centuries ago is false right what is false about the mitochondria then your you can be so passionate about it right now yeah and it works good and I have a sigh of a sign in my yard that says black lives matter that no human is illegal that science is real like you know I put it on that level and yet you know math even requires that we make up some rules in order to play it but here's what's interesting to me about science and I am NOT a scientist manner so just this is one man's follow my logic I think that the best advice ever got is when you don't know something well just tell people here's my logic sure so my logic about science is this science is the quest to find out why we're wrong and the second you stop asking I mean what don't we know what's wrong here sure that's not [ __ ] science for sure like saying this is this is definitive we know this [ __ ] oh and I think it was Max Planck who said if you think that science advances because people recognize the truth of some new piece of information you were wrong science advances because the old guard dies yeah and the new guard grows up believing it to be self-evident and it's like what the [ __ ] if you know that's true why why cling to share so dogmatically yeah so I love the saying I have strong convictions loosely helped so I have strong convictions for sure because they seem true like and one you have to operate based on what you believe in the moment based on the best information available if if your dumbass sits paralyzed because you know that we don't know everything that's [ __ ] stupid in my opinion if your dumb ass is like I could never be proven wrong and therefore I'm closed-minded that's all so stupid totally because to me this is the answer and this is like if you not to interrupt but I'm gonna I'm gonna grab it here which is the ultimate what I took out of one of my philosophy of science classes in whatever whatever oh yeah I wish I'm glad it wasn't rather is exactly what you just said right there and it's not that it's false its degrees of false like it was it's not entirely untrue it was true for what they knew at the time and as the tools get better and as knowledge expands and etc etc that it's getting more refined answer sometimes we do a 180 on things but usually it's a linear progression it's a curve that we're like oh we're getting you could say we were getting smarter so I don't want to has an interesting idea a culture stacks man yeah that we're getting smarter yeah I'm really [ __ ] interested by that concept of standing on the shoulders of giants and then what what are those shoulders those shoulders our culture and this is why like I'm I'm so [ __ ] afraid of like and that is the right word I am I'm embarrassed to admit but I'm so afraid of the culture wars because it's so [ __ ] dogmatic yeah but when I think about that it does matter it's like at some point if you're doing something that doesn't uplift people if you're doing something that doesn't allow knowledge to stack and carry on from generation to generation like you're holding [ __ ] back yeah like that that one really freaks me out and and I hope people smarter than I get it together and if I can figure out how to disseminate a culture that's that's really empowering to and honestly like not to take it back to the book but let's talk about the create no but that's like but it to me the books that I had experienced about creativity were so inaccessible right it was either Austin clans like see like in ours which is amazing it's a long did you just say Austin Kleon steal like an artist it's an Austin as a friend any wrote a cool book and it's about creativity and it's a and he's got a series of them that's like it's beautiful and simple and but all the other ones are so academic and you know even like the fear of our art and fear the artists way it's a lot about doodling and the doing and the and it's work bookie and and to me I wanted to write I needed to write a book that I felt like had was ruthlessly practical and that's why the found a and I put it so fundamental that creating and putting things together gives you an in doing it in small ways gives you the ability to see to a not betray yourself and to actually give yourself the ability to have the living the life that you believe you are capable on that how do you betray yourself if you deny your creativity I posit that you've betrayed yourself because you'll never fully discover the life that you could have because you have the creativity to map it out yeah or not not just to map it out but to actualize it interesting you know and it's I think to me it's also very it has to be rooted in popular culture like these are very I'm trying to make it ruthlessly practical in a world in a sea that thinks of it as berets in Paris and poetry and it's not those things sure it that is a subset a teeny-weeny little subset of creativity but it is this we are you know talk about not being a blank slate we have this creative plutonium in us that is good for a thousand lives and if we just like anything like you fuel that and it gets more powerful you if it's a spark and you blow oxygen on and it gets brighter and to me to be able to think of creativity is as so practical so pragmatic is that's where the sort of the bit flips and you're like oh wait a minute I was told and we're not taught this right we're certainly not taught that we're given platitudes like you can do anything but we're never told where to point it and it's also if you juxtapose again it's a good way to see contrast is like oh painting or art or creativity is so whimsical you're never really actually told what to do otherwise like play the stock market science it's just that creativity it's and and it's because go back to the mystical thing it's just just got this crazy power we don't understand it sometimes it really works sometimes it doesn't work so good some people handle it some people don't we just sort of like label it and so I'm trying to in a very pop culture simple way hold up the thing and look at it and say crazy pragmatic crazy power what do you mean when you say in a pop culture way um just uses contemporary examples like if you are creativity there's value to creativity in and of itself but if you want to for example progress to go back to your word then not sharing your creativity is going to undermine your ability to progress not just in skills but to take those skills and put those skills to use like you like skills and skills create your ability to achieve or to manifest or whatever the right word is and that's why there's a huge piece in this book about community and about there are communities that you join that are further along than you are where you can tap into some juice and some mojo and like oh I'm joining the photography community or the neuroscience community in your case and there's also the community that you build around your own work even if you're a blacksmith in Jackson Hole Wyoming and your community is the 10 restaurant tours that come to you to hammer out your knives like it doesn't it's not about having a million Instagram followers it's but we are social animals and taking your craft the thing that you're creating and having it be a part of something larger than you is valuable in your word you would use progress so I think part of when I say it's it's couched in popular culture it's like well these are this is it there's the tactical it talks about cold showers and here it talks about permission to suck it talks about taking swings it talks about managing risk like an entrepreneur they're stories of fail at my own failures my own massive failures and the ways that people like Richard Branson protect their downside I'm not like we've painted failure as this cute thing and sure you got to take some swings but it'd be nice if you didn't fail and here's some ways to protect against that so it's just it is tries to be a guide through that black box it was so hard and I used to not be creative and now I'm I have a company impact Theory and we have millions of people that pay attention to what we do great I want it necessarily it's nice that now I've bought into the story the arc of the story a and B and I want to know what happened between a and B so the book also is very tactical and like here's literally the steps that one would take it the book is written in a framework so that it's a repeatable creative process whether you're talking about baking a cake or building a dream life are you familiar with transcranial magnetic stimulation no I'm I've had a lot of cranial sacral massage in my time so a little bit different okay I get it so when I think about creativity drum I naturally gravitate towards the visual arts which which may be a mistake but one of the things that I am intrigued by is you can take somebody and put one of these devices up to their head and you aim it at a certain place and zap them it shuts off a part of their brain and then they can draw better mmm which I find really interesting inhibition yeah there's like a shot of of I don't know kes amigos tequila or something I mean is it well they have very different effects but yeah same idea so you've got the corpus callosum which connects the two hemispheres of the brain and some of the new stuff coming out and brain sciences like look it's [ __ ] impossible to tell you what region of the brain does what but because it's it's deeply complex yeah and it's like a lot of different regions in a certain pattern at a certain level of intensity gives you a certain thought feeling emotion whatever but the fact that the corpus callosum is largely an inhibitory pathway isn't really the right way to think of it there's something there about training for creativity about there being possibly and and again follow my logic I'd yeah you know what I'm sorry but I just find this particularly interesting so if transcranial magnetic stimulation knocks out a region of the brain and that is what allows some people to be able to drop better how much of the process of becoming more creative is actually turning things off whether it's part of the narrative which may be a little bit simplistic compared to the like true neuroscience of it but you know how much of that is gonna be an unlearning process I don't know if you've thought about that at all haven't I dude I dunno the judgment is like it you know that there's all kinds of I think their words apocryphal stories that are we don't necessarily know if they're true or not but like the pottery teacher had to we had took divided their class and to divided a class into two groups you were graded on one piece you better get really good make one amazing piece and you all are measured on the volume the number of pieces that you output and when looked at the results not only did the people who made a lot of stuff make a lot of stuff but it was also way better and so there's this volume and a reduction in inhibition when you realize that you're not being judged and you can call it flow you can call it lack of inhibition you can call it electromagnetic shotgun whatever the hell you just called it like but well I don't know what's going on there but that's certainly a thing and then again that's an area that to me it's an important part of the book which is ultimately part of you know there is certainly an ego and self-expression and this is my stamp on the world this is the lens that Tom wants to bring to build the new Disney to do the thing like the best way to do that is you have to experiment you have to take a lot of swings in order to feel what your thing is I talked about a system of deconstructing I call it dear deconstruct emulate analyze and repeat the deconstruction is like looking what's working for other people emulate those people and then analyze what's working for you for them for your process and what's not and then repeat and the logical a logical question that follows is like well wait a minute are you just gonna then look like everybody else because you're deconstructing them analyzing them and no no the repeat is that's where you get you what you are because you can only really do you if you do it a bazillion times and both on saying that on the positive and the negative like you only get to be good if you do it so many times and realize that hey your skills are getting better but it's also in the doing that you realize who you actually are because that's that's something that comes from in here so to me the I don't remember how I got started on this thread but like those are that that's that's a material tactical thing that is happening in the black box that it's not just how did I start here and get there like what does give me some stuff and so big big lofty ideas like creativity is a foundation to basically your ability to create the living life that you want so yes actually painting makes you a better surgeon but also like here's how to do it cold showers matter you know taking care of yourself the starving artist is a myth the that you're when you're super high you're really creative that's you know that's that's a very short tale to that so we we got started on the X we're talking about the corpus callosum inhibitory impulses which I want to get back to judgment that's why yeah but this the notion of art by the pound I find that story so [ __ ] incredible I I am so I'm in such violent agreement with the idea that if you want to do you you have to do it like a billion times like you've got a ideas in equal ideas out I think it's one of the most important sort of foe math equations in the world and I used to think that oh man like I've come along too late you said you're born in the 70s that's like an advantage not the [ __ ] I'm born in the 70s and so let me finish this thought and I don't want to forget the Unabomber sure so I'm born in the 70s [ __ ] like it's too late all the original ideas have been thought and all that which is what that's why the Unabomber was bombing people by the way he thought that the universities were destroying this sweet spot of accomplishment where it's like really [ __ ] hard but it's doable and he was like universities are roading that there's gonna be nothing left and humans can't flourish unless they're able to do that now I don't know how the [ __ ] I got there when I was a kid I had this whole Salieri complex where if you've seen the movie Amadeus it was like this guy's whole area who I think was a real person was cursing God because he was like why did you make me just talented enough to realize how much more talented Mozart is in me and that'll never be that good and so that was like this place that I got stuck in was like oh man like I'm just smart enough to realize that I'm never going to be that good or that talented at something and that like really really [ __ ] with me and finally being able to change that story get out of that space so that you can begin to realize okay you're gonna take in a lot of ideas you don't need to worry if you have any original ideas you're a synthesizing machine so even if all you're doing is a new combination of all these old ideas that's absolutely fine yeah and you will create something that is never seen before and will never be seen again because you're such the unique product of your initial wiring the parents that you were raised with the environment that you grew up in the time that you grew up in it all makes for this really unique cocktail and if you stop thinking of putting the weight on your shoulders of having to come up with something original bring this all back to the art by the pound yeah if you stop by trying to create this one [ __ ] great masterpieces nothing nothing like this has ever existed before and you just realize look I I am in a unique moment as a unique person and I'm going to stuff my face full of a lot of different stuff and then I'm just gonna create and create and create and create and create and get through the thousands of bad ideas that you have to get through I certainly as a writer I felt that when I first started writing I was god-awful oh my god and you it's it is like a law of nature that you have to write all the really bad ideas to start getting to some of the good ideas but as you're doing that in the failure and the embarrassment and the pain and there is a lot of psychological pain if you if you cuz I fancy myself an artist like that is my self-identity as as an artist and when you fancy yourself an artist and you were creating [ __ ] and schlock but you're really [ __ ] trying man like I was really trying I was spending a lot of hours I was not like doing anything other than really going after it and so when you're putting yourself out there and it doesn't come out well and you're looking at it and you're judging to forget what anybody else is saying and you're just like this is objectively terrible and you know like I will say I was not being humble it was objectively terrible and being able to have a narrative that tells you and in the book I think you call it make it till you make it yeah - just keep going keep making sure yep art by the pound baby art by the pound everything that you just said is in the book like in spades I think it's that was maybe that I wish I needed I need to download that so I can play that in my headphones on my way to my you know - Oprah so like that is to me that is just beautiful everything you described and let me give you one mind [ __ ] writing a book about creativity when writing is not your primary mechanism for expression I'm just good enough to get by not good enough to be great it crushed me and it also saved my ass interesting so here's how it crushed me all the same things you just said like I am NOT fast I'm a slow writer I in you know a ph.d program and philosophy you learnt how to write pretty good it's very technical it's very it's sort of jargony and and it's just like and that's not the voice that I have isn't it and then I wrote a thousand blog posts on my blog and that helped me develop my voice then you sit down to write a book you'd get just good enough to you know to have the the agent and the publisher high five and like that we got a great one and then you're writing a book about creativity and in a major thesis again in the book is that the way to get back to yourself is just to create and I was I have come to find out that I've been doing a lot of other work a lot of work on creativeLIVE and a lot of work in things that are not native to me and writing actually had this profound effect because I got up at you know 4:30 5:00 in the morning wrote on weekends and it's been doing this for a couple years it had the it had the profound effect of just I'm use the word cash I'm just it like fixed the broken part of me that wasn't tapped into my creativity it was like it was like therapy and here's the crazy part is I'm writing how the true this [ __ ] is I'm in a mode that I'm really not all that creative right now cuz I got my brain too many things and the act of just sitting down and writing every day what Anne Lamott in bird by bird calls shitty first drafts I it was basically like therapy and so the the act of writing a book of creating through writing a book about creativity where I was reaching all the things I knew but wasn't actually doing and then I did the process part of it which is just sitting down and cranking out shady first drafts it was like gold it was like a slingshot that's really interesting so putting this in context of you becoming one of the like elite elite photographers and deciding yet I need something new was writing the book therapeutic precisely because it was at that area where it's like this is really [ __ ] hard yeah I'm really stretching and I'm uncomfortable and is this a failure and you know I traced the the psychology of the creator oh my god I can't this is amazing I can't wait to get this idea out there oh my god this is kind of hard wait a minute what have I done you know this sucks I suck you know that's the low point right and then you're like okay maybe it's survivable okay I'm just gonna get it done oh hey this is kind of good oh my gosh I'm so proud of this so that and I I went on that journey big-time with the book and so it was like talk to me about going from the the trough the I suck were past this sucks we're now at I suck yeah how does the therapy begin well it takes the whole thing because you have to take the other with the bad the actual upswing at the end there after I suck is you just keep writing and again writing or fill in the blank on it is what is it it's very music though that you started getting better I don't know and it doesn't matter and this is the cool part it does it literally doesn't matter if you just keep going and then a little glimmer and then a little more glimmer and then I improve a thing and then I mean like I actually said this to myself at like 5:15 in the morning on some Sunday you know I'm really good at now I'm really good at typing because I was I had written to 150,000 words for an 80,000 word book I just like and that's like that is a terrible thing to be to desire to be good at maybe and certainly wasn't on my list of top 100 things to do but when you're in that mode and you're in your darkest hour and you're like hey I got good at typing at least that to me it's again this just the doing the work part of it you can package I would park that in the ten thousand hours you're getting better and you're also I'm a big believer in the book has a bunch about mindset in there like you start to be able to control yourself talk if something potentially really powerfully here though so I'm gonna have to push you past that if the answer is it doesn't matter then I want to give you a chance to maybe reinforce that and I'm asking this because one thing that I get a lot is people will reach out to me they're following me they're trying to do the things that I advise them to do about gaining skills and getting better and applying them and some percentage of them lose steam because they're at the this sucks I suck right so they they hit that part and my gut instinct would have been what you need to keep doing is keep going until you get better and if you find that you're trying to attack something where you don't have the prerequisite sort of underlying ability whatever that is however much of the equation that is I don't know but like for me I could probably get I could get better at singing I don't think I'll ever be a beautiful singer so that could be a limiting self talk and I actually don't know I've not spent the time but if that is true that there are just certain things like you said that we can get good but maybe we're never gonna be world-class if they're I have always assumed that they are stuck there that either they just haven't continued going to garner the necessary skills or they're in a vein where they're never going to get good enough to for it to be therapeutic so it is not in my experience that's simply continuing is therapeutic but maybe because I've just never done it so I'd love to know if you think now reflecting on it if because your book is well written so if you say that like sure like there are writers that are much better I will grant you that you and I both suffer from the same things there there are better writers that existed on this planet but it's it's well done it's very well done so I wonder if that's part of the or if you have a breakthrough moment for people right now who they're doing something and and maybe they just need to keep going even though they're never going to get to the level that they want to get to it simple two by two is it working do I love it if it's not working you don't love it the [ __ ] you doing if you love it and it's not working keep going if it's working and you don't love it then you have a question to ask yourself and then let's say they're two by two it's it's not working and you suck it's working in it's just do the two by two and the answers present themselves is from a friend of mine Chris Chris Caleb oh and I think there's a couple of other folks that have thought about it so if you are finding joy and you or if you're not finding joy because it just gets so hard but you believe there's value then keep going have you read grit by Angela Duckworth 40 pages of it oh man it's worth it finish it yeah there's there's a really cool part in there because this is where so my whole no [ __ ] what would it take right getting beyond the platitudes and all that or getting to like the real sort of the the ugly parts and being able to push past those she talks about part of grit is its passion and tenacity over time and a lot of times people will get really into something at the beginning and then they quit and they just tell themselves well this is one of the two pi2 is I wasn't enjoying it and so then they go to the next thing and they're really into it for a minute and then they're like I'm just not enjoying it and they go to the next thing not enjoying it not enjoying it not enjoying it and she said at some point this is a you problem this isn't a truly like oh this is just you found another thing you don't enjoy this is a you succumbing to the friction of like this is also hard yeah and it's it's kind of like when people mistake being thirsty for being hungry and so they just keep eating when a glass of water would have done the trick yeah and what do you say to people who they keep hitting the oh this I just like it I don't like it I don't like it I would tend to agree with her that there is a point where it's a new problem I think that point is pretty far down the road for most people especially if the reason if you got better at starting things that you thought you might like because I think if you're if you're starting things you might like and you realize that you hate everything it's pretty clear it's a you problem it's rare to me that I've again having been somewhat of a counselor or a career adviser or whatever if through through distance universe with creativeLIVE where tens of millions of people have learned stuff or in my own tribe I think it's I find that when people turn to things their first couple swings are usually things that they should or ought to do would be helpful or valuable or all these things that culture has program them their parents or whatever oh you're creative great why don't you create a really cool and very valuable company around computer programming whatever versus the thing that they actually love and that goes back to my you know your you your correct assertion that I'm big on intuition and that's it the book is called creative calling not for an accident because it's we do have this calling and it's in there we've tapped into what it feels like before and my experience with people who will come to me with the problem that you're posing right now which is like you know I just I start and then I just and I start and I'm here you know it's like you think you're starting in the wrong place well you take a little another beat and the answers aren't out here somewhere your mom's not gonna tell you what you're good at in fact your mom's probably gonna be the worst advisor mom dad close friends brothers sisters it's it's very hard to get really good advice from that subset of humans best stuff is this quiet internal you know compass that we have and I think we get there not with a map but with a compass and that compass arrow is going as you walk around the corner the compass arrow points over there but the trail doesn't go over there give me the reality what that is in real life and so we don't get anywhere in a straight line but I'm saying so you've got a compass what's it pointing out what's the Noir that it's wobbling towards I would say you know in your heart it's the thing it's pointing at your heart and you've got yourself close enough you're on the path and you started walking on this path and was pointing due north and for a while it was straight and then it you had to diverge from that path and you saw if you were paying you're just walking and then you look down and you're like oh [ __ ] my troop my heart says I should go a little bit left hard core thesis about this so cool curious to see what you think so I think people many many people at least in their adult lives they don't want anything and I think that wanting is it is a process I don't think that were born with really strong wants so for instance I want to be a filmmaker and I would not have wanted to be a filmmaker 600 years ago or a thousand years ago that would never have occurred to me right because it didn't exist so I think that we are born with a propensity to desire but I don't think that that is pointed at anything in particular whatsoever sure and I think that you have to cultivate it so you gave the analogy earlier of you have this little spark and you blow air on it and it's it's gonna burn brighter I think the big problem is people don't know how to make that little ember one they don't know how to hear it so the the intuition the voice actually I may be with you on that one I think that most people hear a whisper and they just they're not able to connect that oh I could make something meaningful out of shirt as the programming says that whisper naive ignorant not the thing you should be doing it's not practical it's not all those lists of things so they hear it and then the programming shuts it down and the book is trying to get you to know know that that is gold that little thing that's gold is it weird great whatever may be weird as a kid is gonna make you great as an adult it's interesting what ever made you weird as a kid that's James victori whatever made you weird as a kids make you make you great now so look at your look into the weirdness wait what were you sort of afraid of our ashamed of your whatever and you know for me I loved of performing I loved helping create a narrative taking people on a ride as a first second grader I used to tell jokes and do magic in front of my class and then I overheard my second-grade teacher tell my mom at an open house that chases way better at sports than he is at art and I was like okay later art I'm gonna go to the thing that I'm getting I'm gonna get rewarded for and like I don't know just III think you're picking up when I'm putting down that that we have these it's it's inside of us we can listen to it we're told not to and I'm trying to build up enough of a callus enough of a muscle and awareness and basically some hutzpah to actually do the thing to disappoint to be willing to disappoint all the other people in your life in order to do the thing that you're supposed to do because when you do that thing when you're on your path and you're listening to that call and if the call is not always loud and it's not always right in front of you but it's always there get good at the inside part that that is an incredibly valuable process and I grew through so diving in though this [ __ ] is complicated construed it takes a lot of [ __ ] time yeah you have to make money you have to eat you have to pay rent sure it usually starts as a whisper so the the quote-unquote calling is and I'll flash you back to when I was a kid okay I loved video games and now kids today that's like yeah you can be a millionaire playing video games dude back in the 80s you were a [ __ ] bonehead and you're Terry 16-hundred yeah I got it hit pitfall not yet exactly so it was just a different a different time yeah and so the whisker eight bit yes even before that Jesus worse yeah but the whisper in my mind was always like oh well I would love to play video games that would be rad like if I could make a living playing video games I would be the happiest person alive so that's the whisper that I hear then it's when I think about trying to make a living though I'm like oh [ __ ] like yes of disappoint my parents so that's already a big thing check the whole world thinks that you are [ __ ] if you're pursuing that because there's no logical path to making money doing that and when you start thinking about like whoa like how would I make a living how would I really face down all the disappointment and stuff it gets really hard to move forward because it's not this burning desire and that's why I think a big part of this is people have to figure out like what are you gonna choose to make the burning desire so maybe part of what we can follow the path of you going so far down the athletic road so you overhear that comment you decide to do something you're getting rewarded for and I'm sure you got rewarded more and more and more you said you got into photography because so many people are taking pictures of you were so [ __ ] good at soccer yeah so it's like that's a lot of rewards so you get how that then becomes like this intensified magnified desire so the question is how do you do that when you're not getting rewarded so you have a little [ __ ] whisper in your heart you still have to eat but like how are you going to like fan those flames because no one in the outsider is gonna fan those flames for you for sure they're gonna throw mud right so what is your recommendation for people who they hear the whisper and it does not feel like a calling it feels like a [ __ ] whisper and they're not getting any external reward for it yet don't betray yourself I stand big in the word betrayal and I think you ignore your suppress your creativity it's a betrayal and that calling and you know I think about it in terms of I made a film I think I was either seven or eight it's called the Sons of Zorro washed washed cars on the neighborhood raised enough money to buy film to borrow a neighbor's camera to shoot direct act and my first film screened it made money and I remember thinking God wouldn't it be cool tip if I could just do this I mean I was like eight like why would I do anything but this like my parents say that money is good I had to work really hard doing things I didn't really love washing cars in order to do this and when I had money I did this and I made money I mean this is like little eight-year-old entrepreneur right and I just think of I nearly betrayed that kid because I got caught up as everyone does in the sheds the aughts the musts and those are everybody else's sheds odds and musts I got pulled in to know I enjoyed sports but it was a pressure to keep going even when I didn't want to keep going I got sucked in to medical school because it's prestigious no it costs me a hundred grand to not do it I got pulled into graduate school in philosophy because there was another way to become sort of a half doctor a PhD instead of the MD and all of these things were basically society's way of they were negotiating the thing that I like derivation zuv the thing that I really wanted to do and I just couldn't say it out loud because I felt ashamed I felt scared I felt I didn't want to disappoint the people that were closest to me notice that I have all the privilege that we talked about earlier so if you're not me white male how much even harder it would be to pursue those things if you can tap into that even for a moment and do the thing that the answer to your question is show don't tell if someone you love's sees you doing the thing and you get joy you don't have to say like this overt outward declaration I'm going to become a youtuber you're like you are a surgeon what are you doing we have a mortgage our house is 10,000 bucks a month are blah blah blah blah like if you just started making videos and sharing them within the doctor community or whatever community wanted to make videos at first it what are you doing Marv and they're like Marv that's a pretty good video Marv you have thousands of people watching your videos and then you said you know what I want to actually turn on my ad monetization on YouTube and he started earning money like Marv's now making money on YouTube Marv is the the you know this the sir for the Seahawks what show don't tell if you're really and I think we all are especially folks that are they've painted themselves in the corner where they're uncomfortable having a conversation with your parents or your friends or your spouse or your whatever and if you've done that then the conversation on changing your lifestyle pursuing a different thing following your passion your dream is so obvious and you've done something for yourself as well you've figured out that it's not some whimsical thing that you're just like I'm bored of being a doctor so I'm gonna make youtube videos up and then you do something else two weeks later and something else two weeks later show don't tell it's interesting I have a slightly different mantra on that cool Show and Tell ooh so oh I get it I had to go there didn't ya I'm there again I think people have to like the realities of trying to get something made and all that is you have to tell everybody what you're up to like if people are gonna be able to help you and you were certainly gonna need just an unimaginable amount of help if you're gonna pull something big off and even though in the beginning a lot of times you're gonna lose credibility with people you're not going to gain credibility like when I first started telling people we're gonna build the next Disney people weren't like yeah you are they were like that's [ __ ] absurd what are you doing like you already have this big company it's thriving why the [ __ ] would you leave like it just seemed like utter madness to people yeah and I fully understand there there are times in a person's life where they're not ready to push back against that they're not ready to disappoint people probably largely in their youth maybe they haven't quite suffered enough if I'm that suffering like being unhappy is not a game that I like to play so it's possible I have a low threshold for that understanding your personality type is a very good thing understanding if you're hyper agreeable which I am by nature so I had to fight against that and so in forcing myself to push back against my agree ability I swung very hard in the other direction and so now I have absolutely no problem being disagreeable but when I first started telling people that we're gonna build the next Disney and I talked about the plan and how we're gonna go about it it I even now I still lose credibility and part of why I posted it on the website was so that when I execute against that people be like whoa what the [ __ ] like he called this 15 20 years ago and then the other part is I need help so it's like for if you're able to shut people out which not everybody's going to figure out where you are having self-awareness to figure out what's gonna work for you at this moment if you need to be under the radar beam at the [ __ ] radar sure but at a certain point to really supercharge what you're doing or get people to glom on and to come be a part of your dream you're gonna have to [ __ ] tell people and I that I cover that transition that we just went through in the book and I think it's very wise for you to say it because the show don't tell that is a very narrow period where you have filled with self-doubt and you're especially sensitive around the people that are close to you because if you flip the script and you're Marv's wife and you've you've grown yourself accustomed to a certain lifestyle or Marv's kids like they want to go to private school or fill in the like I'm being as cliche as possible yeah but now you talking about the real traps yeah and the reality is that if they see you doing something that threatens them it will create fear and so the fear if maybe if it's a kid like oh my gosh what's dad doing and in the spouse like maybe she burned up her dreams and so she's worried about you actually tapping into yours in a jealousy sort of way and those are there's a lot of psychology in there so they don't have to unpack all of it but that I do like the showing first because you're not just showing them you're also showing yourself there's some tipping point where screaming what you're doing from the mountaintops is so valuable and that goes into the community part and when you like I anytime you you share a video and I see it and I'm snapping that heart or the like or the comment or congrats they did a million subs like I'm I'm on I'm along for the ride on you making the next Disney like and that's the effect that it has because people want to connect with something they want to be a part of something bigger than themselves and that's a very powerful vehicle that is a it's like I call it the talk about it being this pull you know you the tractor beam you just so it's like oh my gosh it's a it's a movement you know and that's part of what I'm trying to unpack around creativity is okay you have it's great nice book but I will bet all of the money in my bank account that the concept of creativity especially as machines continue to elevate and the role their role in our culture that things like creativity become extra interesting so this is only gonna accelerate dude have you seen the AI painting selling yes that is what do you think about that I think it's interesting I think the still a long way to go how'd you get into that could you pay for a painting created by AI not really only because I like to have a connection with the the piece and/or the artist it's interesting because some part of my mind does flash to who wrote this algorithm because I feel now a little bit connected to them yeah actually really get into it like if it was especially there's something so [ __ ] interesting to me if there's like the sense of the ghost in the machine well it's like it feels soulful and you're looking at it like this [ __ ] moves me like a holy [ __ ] this is made by AI so it is I try I try to temper my enthusiasm for because I fully recognize the potential problems yeah but yet it is very interesting to see where AI is gonna creep into will it creep into the creative domain well that well for sure the last place but it does feel like it's I'm getting asked to consult on stuff like that really tell me more not too much other to say about it but that just because I can't what would they want you to do and I don't know if you can come into this but so this is the philosophy of photography right like mom I posited in creating the first iPhone app that shared photos to social networks to a touch of a single button oh yes and it's called best camera and it was scoffed it was laughed out the door and I said no no the best camera is one that's with you it's not about the quality the megapixel photos are about stories and moments it's not about dynamic range or the the megapixels and in the future everyone's gonna have a camera and it's not gonna be about like the photos that are hanging in museums and on gallery walls are actually going to be a sloppy approximation of what culture is actually saying and what culture is saying is gonna be captured in the snapshot and you're gonna see it in things like best camera where you have a real-time feed of images just to be ticktick to qualify this I had to get special permission because there hadn't been a feed of images in Apple software and they were worried that the concept of a feed was not something that they could stand behind feet they didn't yet if the concept of a photo feed in an app didn't exist and this was real-time you could see it unfolding in around the world and I remember I launched it in September it did go on to become a half of the year and in on New Year's Eve in September 2009 the real power hit me which is I am watching culture unfold in real time all over the world I'm watching firework shows in Tokyo and in Auckland and then before they're happening where I am we are predicting trends I can tell what the colors are what but things that are like photographs of people and fashion and they're like it just was like a kaboom so don't get too too rathole here but the philosophy of photography being able to say own and not only are we going to be taking pictures and everyone's going to have it but we're also going to be using photography to find out where we parked our car in the airport we're taking pictures of receipts and we're gonna be taking you know and and if there are 7106 languages which that's the current number that's a real number yeah there's one that is universal it's photography you might be able to argue that music is universal but I can show you a photograph of a new mother with a new baby doesn't matter where you're from color of your skin your sexual orientation nothing your identity you instantly get it and so I like that photography is this universal language I wanted to get into that and to me that is part of what put me into the position to be thinking and talking about what is the future not just of AI and art it's like I'm less involved in the painting side in one the future of photography side cameras everywhere kind of world I think that's fascinating equally fascinating Jack Ma founder of Alibaba arguably one of the most data-centric you know it's like mega Amazon basically like if you listen to his speech at the World Economic Forum last year he said my kids they don't learn computer programming that's for computers my kids creativity painting movement human connection all the soft skills Wow this is from Jack Ma it's a fascinating you can just look it up Jack Ma or all that kind of form creativity it'll blow your mind it's like 90 seconds long and he basically lays out that you would think he'd be saying computers you know no computers their computers are currently writing their own software a robotic arm when one hand bumps into something and it didn't predict that that was going to happen it writes the software on the code that tells the other arm hey next time you bump into it here's how you should treat it that's writing code on the fly so writing code just Bad's yesteryear man creativity that's next year yeah that's it's interesting I'm very surprised that Jack Ma of all people is saying that I would think that that it would almost become de rigueur that people would be able to code like that the the ability to manipulate a computer is where you want to end up because even if computers are writing their own code if you don't understand what they're doing you're more likely to be taken advantage of it but do you need to understand how your water gets to your faucet yes so this do back to do really I'll make a very bold statement electricity do you work do you really wonder another thing that you want to be in control of you must understand how it works at a fundamental level this is why I'm obsessed with the brain it may be a weird thing of wiring in me this may not be universal but I will tell you this once I understand something at a biological level at at a Newtonian level right I may never get to the licensed Indian level I certainly may not get to the quantum level okay but when you get to an approximation that's close enough that gives you a visual image that you can hold on to which allows you to then because when you can manipulate the image you can manipulate certainly the story sure so when I understand like take meditation once I understood oh I'm trying to get out of the sympathetic nervous system into the pair of that ik diaphragm breathing for whatever reason is an evolutionarily designed trigger this is a seesaw effect you can't be in the sympathetic and the parasympathetic at the same time so anything I do physiologically that pulls me over to the parasympathetic aah now I know how to meditate I actually understand what I'm doing okay and so once I understand that same thing with exercise right once I understand the ATP system in mitochondria then I understand what I'm trying to do with the exercise and wonder why I understand why hit cardio is important so it's like I'm not a [ __ ] plumber so no I don't need to know how water gets to my tap so that one I'm just gonna take it take for granted okay but I could be manipulated by a plumber if nobody else sure and if a computer [ __ ] speaks the language but I don't speak and they're doing all kinds of crazy [ __ ] it does feel like I'm more likely to be caught off guard by something so going back to the great hack if you don't understand how your data is being collected so I had a guy named Brian Johnson on impact theory and he was like Tom I need to come on the show I need to tell people that like data should be a universal human right it's gonna be the most monetizable asset ever like in all of human history what you do as a data will be they'll eventually be able to turn it into a brain basically your brain all of your behaviors will boil down to these things that are programmable into a neural network or whatever it's ultimately gonna be and then if somebody wanted to essentially rent your brain if you don't control that if you don't control the data upon which that is built then somebody else is going to control that information I thought what the [ __ ] like that had never occurred to me and so I thought Jesus you want to talk about something where I'd I literally didn't spend a second thinking about what my data was worth and what it could lead to so in terms of like I love there's there's a romantic nature to like my kids are learning movement and human connection and that's rad that like that is rad and if you don't do that just you're never gonna have like a kind of life if you want to have sure but man it feels like there's other things there's so much technology you take for granted that you don't even have that picture of that is sadly for sure right so like you're just you're then you're [ __ ] because then you're paralyzed I know that I have a flag if I need to go to the airport pretty soon I gotta fly at 7:25 can I get to Burbank like how far is Burbank from Burbank will take you 40 minutes okay yeah we had to we gotta be set we're nearing the end we are yeah so but I just use flying for example as you understand maybe the Simplot picture is so simple that when you accelerate and you create a wing that's a certain shape that air moves underneath faster than it moves over the top which very it's a lift I guess what I'm saying is there are certain things that will meet a threshold of importance flying probably not one of them computers maybe if computers end up being the thing that run everything but all right with that I'll stop there just because I know that we have to get you to the airport but man tell people where they can find your wonderful foundational book awesome it's available anywhere you buy books and also at creative calling there's a few packages right now I don't know when we're gonna build route this episode but if you want some special stuff we're gonna do some professional a special class where I'm creative live for the people who purchase the book but just conceptually wherever you buy books thank you for supporting me and the book it's been a labor of love it's been years in the making and I think create creativity is it's it's powerful medicine well said very very well said I love the format of the show man Thank You Man I want to keep going if only you didn't have to get in a giant flying bus I know it's so sad but like two hours one's a man [ __ ] goes fast isn't that crazy yes very alright everybody thank you for joining us go get the book it's really fantastic everything you've done has been amazing dude I've loved following your career everything your photography is [ __ ] ridiculous but honestly creativeLIVE is is a testament to what you're trying to bring to the world so this is the why I realized I was built I became a creator identified as it I started building tools the iPhone app about the platform for people to learn the book is house like it's the instruction manual for putting a lot of [ __ ] together it's the why I love it there it is go get it thank you brother thank you I have never seen or felt the world more alive the people around me more alive than when they are doing the thing that makes them feel great