From Season 3 of "art for all," the Sketchbook Skool podcast. Join artists/authors, Danny Gregory and John Muir Laws in rich discussions about the creative process.
This week, John and Danny talk about beginning and what it is like to start a new project. They explain why whatever it is you're dreaming of doing, you should do it, along with advice on how to get started and how to know when to give it up.
Video recording available on Youtube.
Strategies for beginning creative projects.
3:43: The Every by Dave Eggers
5:32 Time travelers towel
From Season 3 of "art for all," the Sketchbook Skool podcast. Join artists/authors, Danny Gregory and John Muir Laws in rich discussions about the creative process.
This week, John and Danny talk about beginning and what it is like to start a new project. They explain why whatever it is you're dreaming of doing, you should do it, along with advice on how to get started and how to know when to give it up.
Video recording available on Youtube.
Strategies for beginning creative projects.
3:43: The Every by Dave Eggers
5:32 Time travelers towel
Hi, welcome to the curious sketchbook. I'm Danny Gregory. I'm a writer and an author and both a writer and an author and an artist. And I'm also a teacher and the founder of sketchbook skool. And I'm joy joined today by my friend, John Muir laws.
Jack:Hello there I'm John Muir Laws. I'm a wildlife biologist, scientist and illustrator with a curious mind.
Danny:Excellent. So today we're going to talk about beginning and what is it like to begin a project? What is the best way to begin? What are perhaps various strategies for beginning? What else we're going to talk about different ways of. Of deciding whether or not you should begin something. And also perhaps when you should give it up and not conclude it and what you're going to learn out of it. And ultimately our goal, I think, is to tell you that whatever it is you're dreaming of doing, you should do it. And we're going to talk about why that is and how you should begin. So here we go. Let's begin. This is our second episode of this, whatever it is, the creative sketchbook or whatever it is. And. You know, we, we recorded our first episode last week without really much of a game plan. And now we're picking up from there, but in the meantime, we're so
Jack:much more mature and learned that learned from the experience. So
Danny:it's true. We're older. We just don't know how much older cause we can't remember. But in theory, yes, we are wiser or much
Jack:whole week wiser and we're going to make the most of that. Well,
Danny:I'm a bit wiser because we've made this first episode and I've had a chance to listen to it and I gather you've had a chance to listen to it too. And we've we have, we've learned that we learned from that experience. What do you think of what you've heard so far?
Jack:Well I know that I had fun doing it. I had fun listening to it. And so I'm still all in on this project. I'm having a good time with it. So I was really looking forward to getting a chance to talk with you again today.
Danny:Yeah. Excellent. Good. Yeah, me too. Me too. Yeah, it was, it was interesting when I listened back to it a day later, I was, cause I was sort of when, when you do these things, you often have no idea what you were doing, you know, and then you look back at it and you go, oh, that was actually kind of, I actually liked that. And I actually probably would listen to that. So, so, and I did, so I've now gone through it twice and I think that that's good enough as you say, we're doing this to enjoy it and there's really no other particular
Jack:purpose yet. That's right. And conversation is first to kind of, to get to play with your brain, with another person who likes to play with their brain. I think that's an absolute gift. So I like the chance to talk to somebody. Who's going to think about things in a way that will be different than the way that I think about things and can push me to challenge or to, to ask the kind of questions that I might not ask myself and vice versa.
Danny:I think it's true. Yeah. That's that I I've thought back on our conversation a number of times. And what's nice about it also is having a record. Like a lot of times you have a good conversation to go out to dinner with somebody, but imagine if you were simultaneously doing a podcast, you know, I think eventually we're going to get to that point where we're all wearing black body cams and we'll recording every moment of our lives. just finished reading this new book by Dave Eggers called the every you ever read Dave Eggers? No,
Jack:I've, I've actually, because of my dyslexia, I have read much less than you would have.
Danny:Yeah, he's, he's a really interesting writer. He wrote a, he wrote an early memoir when he was like in his early twenties and he then went on to create a magazine and a publishing company. and then he went on to write a lot of other books, but he also created these really great readings reading and writing centers for kids. And there's one in Los Angeles has one in San Francisco. I believe. I think there's one bar. So it
Jack:was just the physical space that kids will, can come into a clean well-lighted place for their books.
Danny:Well, it's way beyond that. So for instance, the one in Los Angeles is I know the one in San Francisco is a pirate supply store,
Jack:Pirate supply store, right?
Danny:Literally it has like eye patches and cutlasses and all that kind of stuff. And then the, and then the one, oh, the one in Los Angeles is a time travelers supply store. So you go in there and you can buy everything you will need depending on where, what point of time you travel to
Jack:it has
Danny:yes, of course. Exactly. Yes. So yeah, so it has so, so, and these are like, and at the back of it is like a creative space for kids to practice. Learning to read, learning, to write and so forth. So, yeah, he's a really, he's a really interesting person and he's written a lot of books and he wrote a book called the circle, which was then made into a movie. I wrote another anyway, several of his books have been turned into movies, but the circle is about this company that kind of takes over is essentially Google and Facebook combined. And then yeah, this new book is about Google and Facebook combined with Amazon. That's why it's called the every, and it's about what happens if this, these technology companies basically dominate every aspect of life, which they do, but what that's about and what the people are like, who will work there. And it's, it's really a great book. I thought it was a lot of fun to read. But, yeah. So in that thing, one of the things is one of the virtues is transparency. So the people who are basically the most virtuous just wear body cams and stream their entire lives constantly. So it's kind of like illustrate
Jack:when we all start doing this, then who is watching
Danny:everybody. It's not, when it's not being done for like big brother, it's more that it's kind of like, it's sort of like when people on Instagram take pictures of their food, you know, and people document more and more and share more overshare every aspect of their lives. This is sort of the ultimate conclusion of that. But it's also about. Creating huge amounts of data, basically our lives, our data. And we have so many ways of gathering data. So, you know, you might have like an apple watch that is monitoring your location and your heart rate and your messages that you're receiving and your blood pressure and all that stuff. Right. We already have those things. But imagine that being combined with you know, this basically part of what happens in the book also is that they have smart speakers, you know, like Alexa with one of those kinds of things. And those smart speakers are also recording. And it turns out that they, the company is lying, but all that information is being sent back to their servers. So basically everybody has one of these speakers in their house, which is the majority of people. Everything is being recorded. So all that data is being gathered and that, and it's not necessarily just to spy on you, but it's really to come up with themes and you know, network all this data and information and, and kind of come up with ways of getting people to buy stuff is the initial goal. But ultimately it turns out into ways of controlling people and controlling their perceptions and their relationships and their goals in life and so forth. It's a pretty familiar story. It's not,
Jack:yeah, it's, it's, that's the, probably the most scary part of that is that it doesn't seem farfetched because our data is being mined to sell us more things are, and then when we are being influenced to think specific things we have a very particular profile from what we have clicked on of the things, which, which resonate with us and the things that don't and the, you know, which which arguments of emotion will really appeal to us to get us really fired up, to make us do irrational things or, or, or vote against our own self-interest. Yeah, and
Danny:it's, it's much larger than that and more complex in this book because it's not just, I mean, already the way the data is gathered and shared has a little bit to do with you and your behavior, but it also has to do with all the people who you're networked with and their behavior. So it's all aggregated in that way. So you're not just an island, you are a part of a network. And so. The assumption is that your friends share interests and values, and that therefore, that might be part of your consideration set too. So they can serve you information and assess what you're doing. You know, this is a thing that people have been saying for a long time, which is I, I talked about such and such, and then suddenly I got an ad for that thing. And I know that I never searched for a typed into my phone about that. You know, and it's actually like a very complex set of data mining. That's going on that isn't just about you and recording you through your phone, but it's also about everything that you've ever searched and everything, everybody around you has ever searched. So anyway, that's, we're off on a weird tangent already and we're just starting, but that's the way these conversations seem to. Because you and I talked via email about some plans for what we would talk about today. So she, and also about whether or not we should try to be structured and focus. What is your feeling about that? Should we try and have structure for this podcast or should we just manned or whatever?
Jack:I, I think let's, let's try to have structure, but if we find ourselves on a side road that seems pleasant, let's, let's go there too. But sort of, I think that we have sort of a general idea of you. You mentioned the idea of talking, talking about kind of beginning and beginnings. And I think that that idea has there are lots of, sort of sub parts of that that would be really fun to explore and impact. And I think that'd be also really helped.
Danny:Yeah, I agree. So, so yeah. So the whole idea of beginning, beginning, let's start with beginning creative projects, which is what you and I are doing now. We're beginning this project and we we kind of plunged into it, which to me is, is the way to do it, but there are different ways of doing it. Like you can, you can just have a notion of doing something and you can just start doing it, or you can do a lot of preparation and you can, you know, develop outlines, do research, gather tools, you know tell the world that you're about to embark on this journey. You know, I, I often think about like books that I read that I like, like the Hobbit Lord of the rings wind in the willows. So those are some of my favorite books from that I've read, you know, over again in my whole life. And those books all start with somebody going on a journey. I mean, that goes back to. The Odyssey. It's like a, it's a classic
Jack:hero's journey
Danny:hero's journey, right? Yeah. So, so in, in all those cases, and I think that that even goes back to the Odyssey is you have a person who basically is their life is fine, right? Our lives were fine before we had a podcast. We didn't need to have this. Everything was fine. We're doing what we're doing. And then something happens to disrupt sometimes to disrupt it in, you know, in the case of like star wars, Luke Skywalker's, you know, family gets obliterated. And you know, in the case of, of wind in the willows, the mole kind of wakes up and realizes that it's spring. And so he leaves his house and decides that he has to go on a journey. You know, in the case of the Hobbit, you know, strangers appear and. Prompt him to try this new and different thing. In our case, we were prompted by an idea, let's try this thing, you know, that w that was the disruptor as it were. Right. Do you think that that's the case, do you think that, that that's what ideas do is, or that's how beginnings happen or other ways?
Jack:I think from my, my, my personal kind of experiences that might my head swirls around with all sorts of different possibilities and ideas and all the time, all the time. Yeah. I'm constantly getting kind of wild and notions of, of of, of, of something that, you know, probably should ought to there's, there's sort of the things that you probably should do. And then there are the things that you really want to do, and. There are the things that you are then also doing by habit that a lot of those, you know, it's, they, they somehow got into our routines, but, but they but, but not necessarily through a process of deliberation and reasoning. And when you kind of look at them alongside all the other things you can doing, or you could be doing, you wonder like, why, why is my, why am I so focused on this? But there's, so there, there, there's all sorts of ideas. There's, there's the things that you're doing. There's the things that you really wants to do. There are the things that you think you should do. And I guess for, for me, I find that some of the things that I have that I think I, I have to do some of those get done, done But it's easy for me to kind of bop along and not really initiate one of the fruit to leave the things that I really want to do in that pile of, oh, someday, I really I'm going to get to do this. And then those things that they will stay there for forever, because that, that little category of, you know, someday I'm going to do this. It's, you're not saying to yourself, I'm not, I'm giving up on this dream, but you're saying I'm just sort of shelving that for now, but that for now kind of keeps stretching on and on and on and on and on. So when
Danny:does that mean? It's not that you don't really want to do those things cause
Jack:I don't think so. Let me be specific and concrete For years and years, I wanted to make a field guide about the Sierra Nevada. And I always saw myself walking through mountain Meadows with a sketchbook and the process would be, you know, a backpack along, find a flower, sit down and paint it, then backpack till the next flower, sit down and paint it. And I thought like that, that's how you should be living your life. I really, really want to do that. And that, that vision of that life sort of sat in my head. And but in order to initiate that there's a lot of inertia and routine and other commitments that would have to kind of go by the wayside. So, but just knowing that that was on my list of like someday. I, but, but I wasn't doing anything about it when my When my grandmother died, one of the big insights that I had was that life is short and all these things that are on that list of someday. At some point, there are going to be, instead of someday, I'm going to do this. They're going to be transferred to a list of, you know, what I really should have done
Danny:regrets. And it's a regret turning
Jack:to regrets. Oh, I like that. Yeah. Those plants that I love that exactly. The plants turned to regrets and that, that, that was going to be, I would be that when I was in that same depth. I would be thinking to myself, you know, what I really should have done. I should. I really wish that I had hiked through the mountains of the Sierra and painted every wildflower that I found. And so my grandmother's final gift to me was the permission or perhaps the motivation to quit my job and start that project. And that launched a completely different trajectory for me. I was working at the California academy of sciences had, was in a really interesting job and position and it kept me fully occupied, but it wasn't this thing that I really, really wanted to do. And so it was being faced with. Grandmothers mortality. And therefore my mortality that then helped me kind of shake me out of that. And I think a lot of people will sometimes there, there are these sort of these moments where if you really realize that this life is short, that can motivate you to start to try things, to do those things that you always wanted to do to be living the life, this short life, that in a way that is going to turn those, those, those things that you always wanted to do into the things that your life becomes.
Danny:That's interesting. Yeah. I mean, I I heard somebody say recently that the way that they look at their projects is they figure that most of their projects, and these are big, big, significant projects are going to take something like five years to accomplish. It seems like a, quite a long time, but let's say that that's the case five years for some big project that you want to undertake. And then they said, think about how old you are and how much longer you're probably going to be alive in the context of those projects. Right. So are all these things like, yeah, you could do your Sierra, Nevada. Is it Sierra, Nevada, Sierra, Nevada book, but maybe all in all, it would take you two or three years. And then you think, well, you know, my, my grandfather lived to be 98. I grew up, my parents are both alive in their eighties, so, but I know that I'm not going to have. Be in good enough shape to work that whole time. So maybe I have, I dunno, 10 years, maybe 10 or 15 years. So what, what realistically can I accomplish in that time? And I tend to just jump into things and start doing them and piling them on and more and more. I mean, I have, I'm starting like this podcast with you, I'm starting like two or three other fairly time involving projects on top of everything else I'm doing now, just because I can't not. Some things exciting and interesting to me. I can't, I can't, if I put it aside, I've come to realize that if I put it aside, it's probably cause I don't really want to do it. It's not really important.
Jack:Well then I'm honored to be here with you right now.
Danny:Yeah. I just jumped, jumped into it. Cause it was like, this sounds like a good idea. Let's try it. Yeah. And then if it, if it turns out not to be a good idea, then let's drop it, move on, you know? Cause I don't. Yeah. That, because again, it's about, as you said earlier, it's about having fun and having interesting experience. So let's go back to our, our, this notion of beginning, how much thought and preparation do we have to have before we start this journey? Like do we, do we need to, I mean, this podcast being an example of it, we could have spent an awful lot of time preparing for this. Right. We could have, we could have done a lot of things to sort of. But I sometimes worry that that kind of preparation is procrastination and and can just stifle it, that you're just afraid to jump in as opposed to jump, go taking the first step immediately. And then perhaps at some point in the future realizing, oh, I've only I've thought about this at the beginning that I wouldn't have to kind of backtrack and redo all this part of it. But I'm, I'm offered just going and doing things lots of times, and I'm not sure if that's the best way of doing it, but that's kind of the way I function.
Jack:I think I'm kind of a yes. And on that that there is, there are, there are times when your impulsivity just gets the ball rolling and beautiful things happens. And there are times when that gets me into. There are times when you know, this, this, you know, that we're planning is really going to be helpful. There are times when but there are also things, however, they work themselves out are going to work themselves out. I don't believe in any kind of, you know, meant to be kind of thing, you know, like, well, if this was really meant to work, then, you know, it would have, because that kind of does get us totally off the hook for doing planning. And the, you know, for instance, when I jumped into my project of going to draw all the flowers in the Sierra, Nevada, I hadn't figured out a lot of things like, how am I going to eat? Right. Am I going to maintain an apartheid? And if so, how am I going to pay for that? What about gasoline to, and from the the Sierra and back, and what about relationships? What about all these sorts of things? I just, I just started doing this thing and in hindsight, things did work out. That doesn't mean that it was, it was, it was meant to be, and probably a lot of the struggles that I had in making that work might have been avoided by better organization and planning. But I think that, that let's just kind of go do things is, is a wonderful motivation to launch, but it sometimes doesn't have the follow-through and the thinking about because you're going to, or just let's use the analogy of a new relationship. Right. And emotional love relationship at the start. Everything is new and wonderful, and you're caught up in it and, and have luck, love goggles on. And then there comes a certain point where you have to roll up your sleeves and do work and make compromises and those sorts of things. And if you are unprepared to do that, when you get those feelings of like, oh, I now have to make some compromises and I have to, and there's, there's there's work. You might say to yourself, well, this, this doesn't feel like love because this is, this is wrong. And then bail, you know sort of being ready to do that work and being kind of emotionally ready enough to, to handle a relationship is going to help that thing go so much.
Danny:I think that's true, but, but here's the thing is who is it? That's assessing a lot of these decisions that we have to make beforehand. Like who's deciding the person who's deciding is the you before you've had the experience, the, you who hasn't had the experience. Right. So, so it's kind of like to use your relationship analogy. It's like you your, your assessment is based on a person who hasn't necessarily had this relationship before and it's, it's difficult to figure out what exactly it's going to be like. And it's difficult to figure out how exactly you're going to react to it, depending on how self-aware you are. So I think. I think that's often the case with the decisions that we make is you can go on, like my son left on a journey this morning, he and his girlfriend are driving for five weeks down to Baja in Mexico. They're going to spend five weeks on the road. And you know what I've been thinking about him on this trip is I've been thinking he's going to learn a lot of things. Like not, everything's going to go well, and he's going to learn a lot of things and he's going to be different when he comes back. Right? So you go and you have an experience. And as you had that experience, you change that you experience changes you and your decisions change too. Because a lot of times before you go on the journey, again, thinking about the Hobbit or thinking about the mole there, you know, home bodies who would never do these kinds of things. Right? So if you ask that home body, what do you think about going on this adventure to mow more door that somebody would say absolutely not no way, but once you start on the journey. You start to realize things about yourself and you start to realize that your vision of what things were going to be like is completely inadequate. You know, that you kind of have to be on the road to know what it's like. And you know, that, that doesn't mean that you're not going to make horrible mistakes. And it also doesn't mean you necessarily should plunge into everything. But you know, I think if you think, if you prepare too much and you think too much you, you're not only threatened the whole journey, but also you're not right. Like thinking a lot, thinking it all the way through doesn't necessarily guarantee that you're making the right decisions anyway, which
Jack:isn't absolutely right. And if you think it all the way through, when it actually does start happening, it's going to take a different course than what you predicted. And
Danny:I mean, and if it doesn't, why bother, like, if you knew exactly what.
Jack:Like
Danny:this conversation we're having, which we had a very tight schedule and a plan for exactly how we were going to go minute to minute in this conversation, having a do it for a second anyway. Yes. Carry on. Sorry.
Jack:Well, the, so I, I guess for, for there, there's, there's, there's a, there's a billion things that one could do. And and the time that you have to do those is limited and short. And what, I guess, what you, you, you said that you was going to go on this journey at your, your, your son is going on this journey to Baja, and it's going to learn things along the way is going to come back a different person. I think that if the goal. Is actually that kind of growth,
Danny:right? That's why we do it as they see travel expands the,
Jack:or, or, or, or taking up any, any new skill. Like, let's say you're not currently a sketcher or a journaler. Right. And you're thinking of, I want to take this on if the goal is that I want to do something that is going to push my brain, challenged my brain so that it changes it's shaped so that it grows. And I emerge out the other side, a human being who is perhaps more insightful or more observant or takes greater pleasure in little subtleties happening around me. If that growth becomes the. I think you are setting yourself up for success in whatever you do. If there's a particular product outcome that I am going to go to Baja and this, this, this specific outcome is going to happen because of it. That's, there's more, it's more likely that we're going to be disappointed by reality. If I say to myself, I'm going to take up drawing. And my goal is that by this point, I'm going to have you know, this level, a certain level of skill in graphic rendering. And so I'm going to expect to get there in one month by all my calculations that might happen, or it might not. And so then with that kind of product it is, there is there's real disappointment that can easily happen in that space. And, but if my goal is this, this process, I think that the, the process of journaling is going to open up worlds to me. I think that the process of traveling is going to challenge me and push me, and I'm going to grow in a way that I can't even see now. And I'd want to be open to that. I think you're, you're, you're then setting yourself up for a positive experience and one that's going to reinforce itself. And one that's going to make you want to do it again and again and again.
Danny:Yeah. I think, I think that you're right. I think that. If you, if you have a very hard goal, very hard set goal and you assess success or failure based on achieving that goal, chances are you're going to be disappointed. But here's the thing I think a lot, like I think when I first started to keep a sketchbook I, I was keeping a sketchbook, like I wasn't planning on keeping a hundred sketchbooks. So when I look back decades later, I think if I had started out by saying one day, I want to have a giant cupboard full of sketchbooks that would have just been overwhelming. I would have no, no idea how to do it. And God knows if I would've, I probably would've failed because of that. You know? But I think a lot of times when you look at what other people accomplish you think that, you know how they got there. So I could look at you and I could say, oh, you know, he's been doing this, you know, this he's been doing this every day. So if I do it every day, I'll get to that same place. Or not even that, or just like, I would like to have a whole show. I'd like to have books with my name on the cover. So let me sit down and start doing that, you know? And the reality is that that's impossible. It's impossible to take, to hold up somebody else as an example and try to achieve their goal or, and that probably wasn't even their goal. Anyway, they just got to a
Jack:place where that's that's, that's the thing that we, in hindsight, it looks like there is. So it looks like there's, if you look in hindsight, like there has been direction to my life and my process. Right. And I also can, in my own head come up with a little narrative that I can kind of take the events of my life and kind of, well, you know, I did this because of this, because of this, because of this. And then I ended up here look, and then that's where you kind of get this whole kind of meant to be idea. We sit at the end and we look back and we kind of post-talk make explanations
Danny:for our behaviors, reverse engineer our way back to the beginning.
Jack:And so that, so that was my intention, but no, it wasn't the but, and, and so if you then kind of tried to motivate yourself by what you think was that kind of end goal motivation of the other person. That's not even how they got there you know, before,
Danny:and they may not, even if they told you how they got there. That wouldn't necessarily be either true or complete or helpful or accurate. So you're on your own, you're on your own and your journey is your own. Just like you can't, you know, set up you know, a kid's life and say, all right, I want this kid to have this kind of an outcome in their life. So therefore I'm going to do this, a bunch of stuff for them. That's going to definitely put them on that. You know, they're going to achieve that goal. It's, you know, it's life is too complex and
Jack:we're yeah,
Danny:and
Jack:we're yeah,
Danny:If you and I both share this point of view that I think frankly, a lot of people don't share, which is. You know, just get on the road, do a bit of prep, but get on the road. I mean, cause you and I did spend, I mean, we had like one conversation where we kind of vaguely talked about scheduling and stuff like that, but we didn't plunge into this thing.
Jack:Right. Yeah. I absolutely agree that. I think that the thing that has worked for me the most is just to get started on things and then you're going to figure out while you're in what it's like, and then you're going to make it and then just be open and ready to modify things as you're bopping along that trail.
Danny:Right. So agreed. We're we're on this trip. We're we're moving along the road. When do we say to ourselves? And I'm not talking specifically about this podcast, but when do we say to ourselves, this we should stop. This is a mistake. Like have you, have'you had projects that you've embarked on wholeheartedly and then you say. All right, this is a waste of time. And how do you, how do you decide that? And, and also what, what happens when you go through that? Like what, like what's the outcome is, is, is it a failure? What, what do you think, can you think of a concrete example of that?
Jack:Oh, oh, sure. So both in, in, in creative process and in life decisions the, there are all up here. Here's one, one example of that. I once I finished the once I finished creating the Sierra Nevada field guide, I decided I'm not going to make a field guide to the coast range of California, between Montessori Monterey and Mendocino and. I thought to myself, you know you know, the, the I'm going to just sort of do it the same way and, and get going with that. And, but found that by this point, big changes was that I was now no longer it just sort of Jack on his own, who could go wherever he wanted whenever he wanted. I was, I'm part of a family and I'm making decisions that don't just affect me, but affect other people. And that changed the flow of kind of how work could go and so disappearing into the mountains for the next month. Coming back with a pile of pictures is logistically, it's just not going to work. I then thought to myself, you know, I I'll figure out a, a way of just kind of doing this from, from home. And I am going to, I got some friends who were really good with likens to collect all these likened specimens for me. And I had this big plan of like, I'm now going to illustrate all of these lichens. And then those will go into the book and I'll just put this I can do at home. And so I, I still have right over here on the floor. There's a box there filled with those lightened specimens. But my drive to do that had it, it, it wasn't enough to get me then past the inertia of opening up the box. And so I now have inconvenienced, a bunch of other people who collected these specimens for me, I've made all sorts of grand plans. And, but I think that that book on natural history of the coast range it's, it's, it's still on my list of something that I would like to do, but between now, and when that happens, there are several other projects that are more exciting to me and I think more important. And I, you know, I, I, I think to myself, maybe that would be a great project once my kids leave for college. But it had been this thing that I was, I was, I was, you know, I, I knew how to do it because I had made the Sierra Nevada one. And then that. Part of it is I think that the, the, the, the big motivation just to, to, to do that, it wasn't as exciting for me to, I'm going to draw a whole bunch of plants right now. I'm really excited about the idea of helping other people draw a whole bunch of plants. For me right now, teaching people and teaching teachers, how to do journaling and sketching with their students, I am almost at, at, at, at, at a sort of life mission level, excited about this idea. And I can wake up in the middle of the night with a bunch of ideas, jot them down on a piece of paper next morning, put them into action. Those sorts of ideas are just popping in the T in my head, but this, this other, you know, whole project that I've got vials of stuff in boxes of lichen, kind of waiting for me to kind of give them attention, you know, it's. It's having to take a back seat right now to some of these, these, these other projects. So that
Danny:wasn't exactly a mistake. It was just you, your enthusiasm for it kind of waned a bit because of initially because of life's realities, but then ultimately cause other things cropped up. But I can also think of things like where I did, where I put in a fair amount of time or went down a road and then one day it was just like, this is a disaster. Or I've got to cut my losses. And I don't think that that's necessarily, I don't necessarily regret having gone down that road though. The only time I've ever regretted. I think making creative decisions, creative projects is when ultimately they weren't authentic. They've been times, you know, like, I mean, I know that feeling that you, you just express and maybe, maybe this is my own version of it, but when you do a book or a project and then you go, oh, there could naturally be. A whole bunch of these that could come out of this, right? Yeah. Like I did a, I did a book called new illustrated life, which is about illustrator journaling. And then I did a book called mills called an illustrated journey. And then I was going to do one called illustrate a world that was going to be about nature journaling.
Jack:I could think of
Danny:like, I'm thinking of, there's like more, you know, this, I can think of all different kinds of ways that people use sketchbooks. And I could imagine it being like a whole section of the bookstore and a whole shelf of matched spines, you know, all that kind of thing. But in the end it's like, no, like I, I'm not going to get that much out of that experience. I also wrote a book. The very first book I ever had published was about ham radio, ham radio enthusiasts. Yeah. It was, it was actually a really interesting book, although it doesn't sound like it, but it was called hello world, a life in ham radio. And it was about actually about. Sort of graphic design and visual creativity as well among what ham radio fans anyway. But then I did another book about S filmstrips educational film strips and that whole world of film strips. And I thought, okay, maybe I'll carve. My niche will be, I'm like the guy who writes books about obscure, irrelevant technologies, like ham radio, and S and illustrate and educational film strips. And then I was like, no, that's like, that's, that's a thing I could do, but that's not a thing that I should do. That's not where I want to spend my time, not excited about that. So I think that that often can happen with me where I can have an idea, like, theoretically, you could do X, Y, or Z. I could make 500 of these, and then you sit down and you say, no, that's not. But on the other hand, I will say that every one of those projects, I, even the ones I abandoned have taught me stuff. And like, I don't really regret doing. But w the reason I bring up in authenticity is like, is when you say I could do this, but do I really need to, that that is when it feels inauthentic, you know? Or it's like, if somebody came to you and said, Hey, I'm going to write you, give you a contract for 10 books on, you know, obscure technology. And I would say, oh, that sounds exciting. But then it would immediately feel like a sentence, a life sentence for hallway,
Jack:someone once gave me the idea of, as you are kind of going along in your career, you're, you're building skills. And there are times when, as your, as your skillset has developed that you are able to then turn in cash in those, those, those skills. For a change in your working environment. So essentially you to maybe go to the boss and ask for the raise or get the promotion and that for a lot of folks that promotion or if you're sort of on a regular career path and you're sort of following the money it leads you into progressive situations where you're, you don't have as much interest in what you're doing and your skills are not as good. For instance, I ended up being a managing budgets at the California academy of sciences for field studies programs, rather than being out in the field, geeking out on nature with a bunch of kids and. The idea of hind this person's thesis was that when you do get these opportunities to kind of cash in your, your, your, your work, this kind of the collateral that you've collected from your experience, that there are three ideas that are going to contribute to your being happy in what you do. And instead of kind of going forward towards the next step in the hierarchy, instead of going towards the next largest paycheck to cash it in for being involved in projects that you care about more so that it is more kind of central to your mission. So the purpose of what you're doing, you really, really believe. So, if you are, you know, have this opportunity to do the series of books on obscure technologies, but that is not your purpose. That's not going to lead to greater sort of satisfaction in your life. And you also have a harder time following through with it because you don't care about it as much. Right? The other two ideas.
Danny:So the
Jack:three ideas were there were autonomy mastery and purpose,
Danny:mastery, and purpose.
Jack:So autonomy, meaning that you're more and more able to not do what somebody else is telling you is important. And to do what you are really feeling is is, is, is valuable in the way that you want to do it. So you've got greater autonomy. Your mastery is that you're able to take skills and develop those. And that is inherently satisfying and wonderful to be able to do it makes you better. So you feel yourself getting better by developing these skills. And the last piece is, again, is purpose. So four things that develop that that's where you want to, to sort of cash in. And if this, you know, can I take this hard work that I've done and I'm going to trade that in for being for doing something that is more kind of my core mission or it's going to help me develop my, my, my skills, or is going to allow me to not have to be jumping when somebody else says jump, but to be able to do that myself, those three things will give me sort of intrinsic motivation. So that I'm driven by my own fire inside. I think that that has a lot to do with the success of projects that we undertake. How well do they align with my purpose, with my mission? How well do they align with me being able to personally develop new skills? How well do they align with me being able to be not at somebody else's back in call, but at my own pace and my own drive. If there is a project that you're doing that is going to tie into your own personal sort of sense of autonomy, mastery and purpose is probably going to be much easier for you to keep up with that and to follow through with it. And because there are going to be parts on any project that are going to be really hard. Where you're going like, ah, this is just, this is really, really rough. And at those points you're going to need, you're going to need to need a little jet pack to kind of help you get through those. And the more that you're kind of intrinsically driven, you're driven by your own fire inside. That's, what's going to really help with those, those projects.
Danny:I like that. I was reading recently about the idea of that. You sh that there, there are things you're good at and things you want to do that is there are four quadrants. So things you want to do or you're passionate about you may be good at, and if you are, if you're good at that, that's the kind of thing that you should be doing. Then that's, that's an arena you want to play in, but there are also things which you would really like to, to do, but you're not good at it. And you're not going to be good at. In which case you might want to get somebody else to do it for you. Then there are also things where you are really good at it, but you don't really like doing it. And then there are also things that you are neither good at nor want to do, which case you usually won't be called upon to do them or not for long. So, you know, fortunately life, we don't always have that choice of doing the things we're good at and things we want to do, but you can hold out for those things and make, decide that that's what you, what you want to do. So those are the things that you decide. I read this thing recently. Somebody said planning is useful, but plans are useless. So like being in a planning mindset, thinking about it, planning it out, you know, always thinking about what the steps are going to be. The thinking that if you have a plan, like that's it, we've got the. You know, we're ready to go. And I don't know if this just applies to create a project, but I thought it was sort of interesting. I'm not sure entirely sure that I agree with it, but I
Jack:things like this, I've always, I'm always was it just a clever language? I'm always skeptical of things that sound good. Right. It sounds kind of pithy and like, yeah. And because you know, like on this one, actually I think that plans can, you know, I, I, I, I think I totally disagree, but not totally disagree, but I think there's a, there's a big chunk of disagreement in there that, that certainly if there is a plan and you think you have to stick by that plan and not change it, when situations change, where you get more information, then. That plan is not very helpful, but that, but plants don't have to be like that plans can continue to be something that is flexible. This is like, here's, here's the best course of action given what we know now, and that's our plan, then you get new information, then you can change your plan.
Danny:Also maybe that's being in a planning mindset as opposed to having a five-year plan.
Jack:But you know, but once you create that plan, you put it out on the table in front of you. You can now look at it and there's a concrete thing. There, you can that document because you've gotten it out of your head and onto that piece of paper that is going to help you sort of think about it. And, and, and that, that actually having that plan physically in front of you. Helps you be able to then kind of move along on it, but then the trap is that you don't want to start thinking that that's the only way to go. But
Danny:the ideas is how concrete is your plan or how iron client is your plan. Perhaps that's the issue.
Jack:This might be kind of a fun thing to, to, to share. There's a, there's a poem that I love by
Danny:his poem time.
Jack:I've actually got two poems for you today. One is one is appropriate in here at this this point. And it's a poem called the plan by Wendell Berry perfect tan. And in this case, I think you can sort of see that there is, there's something you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're mentioning that sometimes you like you sort of the backstory to this is sometimes when you have a plan that. Kind of gets in that if you think that you have, have solved the problem now but you don't execute the plan. That's, that's not very helpful, but this, this, this little poem kind of takes a kind of slightly different spin on it. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. So he says my old friend, the owner of the new boat stops by to ask me to fish with him. And I say, I will, both of us knowing that we may never get around to it. It may be years before we're both idle again on the same day, but we make the plan anyhow in honor of friendship and the fine spring weather and the new boat and our sudden thought of water shining under morning fog.
Danny:It's beautiful and true and simple.
Jack:So there there's, there's a plan that they made, you know, they may never get around.
Danny:Yeah, I think, I think that you can have that it's, it's almost like having a plan, having a dream. You may not want it to come true. You may not actually want to do that. Make, you know, it's like, they always say you know, don't meet your heroes cause they'll, they'll probably disappoint, you know, it's like this idea that you you know, you can just want, like, I remember when I was in college, I had this fantasy about moving to Micronesia. I was like, when I graduate, I'm going to move to Micronesia. I was going to move to an island called truck and I had all these plans for it. And I read books about it and all that. And then once I graduated, went and got a job in advertising and never, never seriously considered going to Micronesia at all. But it was like a sustaining idea. This notion that like, oh, that's a thing that I will do. You know? I think that that's, that's perfectly okay. Right. It's perfectly okay to have it's a fantasy in a way. Plan that you may never fulfill.
Jack:Yeah. Sort of these, the connection between sort of plans and ideas. And then the follow through on them, I think is, is really, really interesting and useful to unpack. I think of there's you know in, in in sort of pop culture, there's this idea that has popped up of, if you want something enough, you can, you can make it happen in your life by thinking about it and sort of bringing that idea to yourself,
Danny:manifesting
Jack:it. Yes. Yes. That's the term they use this idea, by the way, it just drives me up a tree. And there's some interesting you know, it's an interesting hypothesis, but the, the evidence actually where it has been tested it doesn't pan out. So if you, for instance, get students to think about getting good grades in, in a, in an upcoming test, you have them visualize that and think about how much they really want it. And then you compare that with another group of people who you have them think about the work that you need to do in order to get, what is the, what would you do in order to get good grades? So the process, so not the product, the process of what you need to do. And then you're with another group. You have them just not think about either of these things. Well, it turns out that. The people who imagine themselves getting good grades, they studied less because they're already there. They're envisioning them themselves with those great grades and they study less, they do worse on the test. So then the students who aren't really don't really have this online, but the ones where you actually get people to think about what would you need to do in order to get that good grades? Because they're visualizing that process. They're actually more likely to study for the test and they do better. So there is, and that kind of ties into this idea of, you know, starting projects and wanting to do things. And those sorts of connections. Sometimes if you, you know, how you think about something, it really changes the work that you do is that planning. So I think it is so w so visualizing your, the work that you need to do to do something.
Danny:Yeah. I think that, I think that one of the things I wanted to sort of say in one, one of our last sort of points I wanted to make was a lot of times we are confounded by the scale and the scope of what our plans are. No, the goal seems so been, we dream so big that we are overwhelmed by the thought of it. We can't imagine how to plan our way to that thing. Right. So we say, I would like to be really good at drawing, for instance, or I would like to have a book published, or I'd like to have 10 books published, or I'd like to be really successful at something. And those ideas are just so big. That they're not really, they're not, they're not plans, they're not goals. And then they're very, very difficult to begin because it's like I'm at the base of Mount Everest. And what you need to do is you need to go, you know, from base camp to the first, whatever the first camp level is, you need to work your way from camp to camp, to camp, to get to the top. You need to have as a goal, some incremental accomplishment and an accomplishment that is satisfying enough in and of itself to ins to motivate you. Right. So, you know, you want, you might want to say, I want to just get to that next horizon. But you also have to enjoy getting to that next horizon. So that horizon has to mean something to you. And you have to say, I'm going to enjoy this. And even if it's challenging, even if there are unexpected things, even if I screw up and get lost along the way, it's going to be an adventure, it's going to be really cool because of that. And that's what I'm looking forward to is I want to be in that mindset of what's going to happen today. This is going to be really cool as opposed to, oh, I'm never going to get there looking out far away. It is. And I think if you keep thinking about how far away things are and how difficult it's going to be, you don't want to begin. You don't start.
Jack:I think you're absolutely right. So something that I learned from being a boy scout is that the path to being an Eagle scout is made by. By all these little steps. So they set up the program so that you first become attentive foot. And and that, you know, you get these little awards, you get this little first state award, then you're going to get a citizenship one. And then you're going to get all these little, these, these different little sort of micro skill builders. And those build up to kind of moving through the ranks. And eventually, you know, with persistence, you you become an Eagle scout, but all the way along the line, the little steps are recognized. And so too, if they re, if you just had this sort of Eagle scout badge at the end of the line, no boys would get there. Or a couple of them might. But. But you can, you can do, you can do like this little thing of, of getting this little kind of learning this first aid skill. I can do that. And then they say, congratulations, you've just done this little first aid skill. Here's your little patch for that. And then I sewed that little patch on, I got my first date. Okay, great. And then I can build on that and all the way along the line, I'm moving towards a clear goal, but there's also, there are these little kind of pleasures along the way. I think that that's one reason why I was. So when I look at the, let's go back to the book about the Sierra Nevada. There are thousands of watercolor paintings in this book. It's years of work and research. And if I think about that in terms of I'm now going to write a book. About the Sierra Nevada, and it's going to be like this whole big thing that feels really overwhelming. But if I think about it in terms of, oh, here's a wild flower, I get to draw this wild flower. I'm going to draw this wildfire and I can sit down and with I sort of in a, a fast scientific illustrator. So it takes me about maybe an hour to paint a wildflower. So I would sit down in the meadow, spend an hour. And at the end of that, I looked down and here's this painting of this wildflower. And then I can go on and do another one. And then by the end of the day, I can then look at that piece of paper. And when I finished that drawing of the wildflower, I get a little shot of dopamine. Like had a boy, you just drew wildflower and out there in the middle of a mountain meadow painting wildfires that that's, that's fun. That's. Then at the end of the day, I look at this big pile of papers that I've done. And I said to myself, like, hi, truce, that today was a seven flower day. Wow. Check that out. There's seven flowers. I just drew several flowers. So there's another little hit of dopamine that I get from that. So that is a, another sort of little, instead of the, the, the big goal. I have this little sort of mini these, these, those sort of mini victories that helped me be present along the way, the whole time I'm hiking in the mountains and looking up at stars at night. And so similarly, if I just looked at it, like my goal is to finish this book. When the book is done, I don't have as much time in the mountains anymore. So I want to be as present as I can while I'm making that book and like, oh wow, I'm alive. And I'm here in these mountains and, and isn't it amazing to be here?
Danny:What reminded me of a poem? It did Belinda may by Shel Silverstein check. We ever heard of tiny Melinda may who ate a monstrous whale. She thought she could. She said she would. So she started in right at the. And everyone said you're much too small, but that didn't bother Melinda at all. She took little bites and she chewed very slow, just like a good girl should. And in 89 years she eat that whale because she said she would. So I mean that analogy of eating a whale, you know, just one bite at a time you can take on anything. And presumably she liked eating whale too. So
Jack:she had a kind of an affinity for blubber.
Danny:Yes, no. I mean, I think that, that, that is, to me the best piece of advice that we can give to people who are beginning to sort of summarize what we've been talking about, which is to say that you should just begin, you should just begin. You should be prepared to have missteps that those missteps are. Ultimately learning opportunities that you need to, what they call them, software businesses, gamify the experience. So gamification means like you get, you get little rewards along the way, and you have little miniature goals so that you have a sense of accomplishment. It's really important to feel like you're getting somewhere, but you don't have to get to the end. And in fact, getting to the end and may not be a goal as Jack was saying, it's like, that means that the fun is over. So don't rush to the end, but just enjoy the view while you're going. Right. And then ultimately, you know, just think of it in terms of these incremental accomplishments, incremental progress, and know that even if you do go horribly a field, you will still have gained something really valuable from the experience. Whereas if you choose not to begin. And if you choose to spend a lot of time deterring and planning and procrastinating and thinking of reasons not to do something, you're going to be missing out on your passion, on your fun on great experiences, learning and growth. So begin. Do you want to add anything to that?
Jack:I think that, yeah, the idea that I'd love to underscore your idea, that it's not about that, like the target of finishing the project as opposed to the target of, of being alive while you're doing the project. When you're out there, imagine yourself by the side of some road sketching, a little road and the. The, the, the buildings along the way or the, the, the birds and the wayside, the purpose of doing that is not so much about that sketch of the bird, but in that one moment, you are more deeply alive and that it's a, it's a door into being present in the world that you otherwise might not be able to step through. That's beautifully
Danny:put too well. I think we've achieved our goal, which was to, but I've got one more poem flow, please, before I conclude then before.
Jack:So so this is my My, my favorite poem by Mary Oliver. Yes. And this is the poem that I, I hit actually at the point in my life when I was trying to decide whether or not to leave my permit position at the academy of sciences and to start this project of making the field guide and launching that, and she writes one day, you finally knew what you had to do and began though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice, though. The whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles meant to my life, each voice cried, but you didn't see. You knew what you had to do though? The wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations though, their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough and a wild night and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little as you left their voices behind the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds. And there was a new voice, which you slowly recognized as your own that kept you company. As you Strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do, determined to save the only life you could save. What's the name of that poem? That is the journey by Mary Oliver.
Danny:Beautiful. Well, that beginning poem is a great way for us to end. Thanks for chatting with me. It was it was very interesting. A lot of fun. I hope we can do it again soon, maybe next week.
Jack:Thank you so much, Danny. It's really fun talking with you.