The Little Rebellion

  • Inbox Zero Sickness (and Mailman)

    Inbox Zero is a sound concept, but even the term’s coiner (@hotdogsladies) came to learn that when Inbox Zero becomes the end itself, it’s just an avoidance behavior.

    My inbox has hit zero every day for 10+ years… I’ve spent far more attention on it than is helpful.

    Even good habits can become unhealthy.

    If I look for the device I’ve used most often to avoid an uncomfortable feeling, a difficult problem I needed to solve, or an important bit of work that felt heavy… it wasn’t video games or eating… it was clearing out my inbox.

    Getting to a clear inbox makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something. And in a way, I have. Not anything important or even urgent, nothing that gives me real satisfaction, but hey, no one can say they never got an email back from me!

    That’s something, right?!

    One problem with habits that are deeply ingrained is that it’s very difficult to trick your way past them. There’s an entire category of “productivity” tools that attempt to control the compulsion to check inboxes by cutting off the Internet, or certain parts of the Internet.

    Over the years, I’ve tried all of the apps that cut off your access to email for a time, but here’s the problem: There’s ALWAYS a way around them. And that inbox is enticing…

    The first tool I ever found that actually works is Mailman, which I’ve been using for many months.

    Mailman has several features, but the revolutionary one that addresses a core problem with how the world uses email (and what exacerbates so much Inbox Sickness) is that it can deliver email on a schedule, like a Mail(person)man.

    I have my email delivered at noon and 4:30pm.

    But what about cheating with Mailman? Can’t you just look ahead to see what’s lurking in the inbox ahead of delivery time?

    Of course! But here’s the thing: You can’t PROCESS those emails to Inbox Zero. They hang out in archive until delivered.

    This short-circuited my habit.

    There’s still a tendency to check things when there’s anxiety about something hard (or usually when I’m applying stupid pressure on myself), but with Mailman, I can take that glance but I can’t DO anything until later, so I can get back to my task rather than get lost.

    If you don’t know what Inbox Zero is, God bless. I used to think you were living like an animal (and part of me still thinks that), but if you’re happy and your messy inbox doesn’t jam you up… I’m certain my Inbox Zero has taken more bandwidth than any background mess ever could.

  • Ten Things My PEN (Personal Email Newsletter) Has Done For Me

    I believe this is officially the 26th week in a row that I’ve sent out a Personal Email Newsletter (PEN) to a little over 100 people. Here’s this week’s: pen.zachphillips.blog/p/2021-we…

    And here are 10 things this insignificant little weekly ritual has done for me.

    1. The PEN has kept me connected to people I care about in a way that I can control.
    2. The PEN has reconnected me with many people I haven’t spoken with in years.
    3. The PEN has gotten me into a regular publishing habit that feels more and more effortless. I’m now publishing an average of 500+ words a day and even adding some videos/more to come.
    4. The PEN has given me a low-pressure way to reconnect with the simple creative act of making something and sharing it. I cannot express just how valuable this is, not just for my personal artistic aspirations, but for my professional aspirations too.
    5. The PEN has allowed me to live more in line with my values. I tell people (customers and others) all the time about the importance of putting their thoughts, ideas, and expertise out there. Now I can begin to actually stand behind those recommendations with personal experience.
    6. The PEN has seeded the beginning of a library of my thoughts, ideas, and expertise that every third day I am now pulling from to add to conversations, help someone out, or start something new.
    7. The PEN has made me trust myself, that I can actually do the things I’ve committed TO MYSELF to do, not just those things I’ve committed to others to do.
    8. The PEN has made pretty much everything else in my life easier. I’m no longer feeling frustrated or mentally absent from this magical period of my life with little kids and everything nascent/growing. I’m even working out every day and doing my jobby-jobs better.
    9. The PEN has turned the Dread knob at least 5 clicks to the left and the Hope knob at least 5 clicks to the right.
    10. The PEN has made me regularly happier than I have felt in some time.

    Thanks to @fortelabs, @david_perell, and all the Second-Brainers and WOPpers who gave me the kick to get started.

    If you want to come along for the journey and sometimes see cute pictures of my kids, you can sign up at pen.zachphillips.blog.

  • Why I'm Not A Programmer Anymore

    This morning I was reminded why I quit software development 5 years ago. My experience, always:

    • “Let’s do this!”
    • (5 mins) “I’m actually making this thing!”
    • (6 mins) smash into pain wall
    • (28 hrs no sleep, eating, lose touch with everyone/everything I love) “It works!”

    Repeat.

    The Eureka at the end was always the greatest feeling, but I never found a way past that middle part, even after years of experience.

    I consider that experience to be the Flow State’s evil twin. It’s SORT OF like Flow (lose all sense of self, dive deep) but just very, very bad.

    Another thing I always hated about programming: There’s ALWAYS another deeper layer of abstraction to remove, and that moving-between-layers-of-abstraction is the ONE thing that programmers, for whatever reason, never communicate to each other, even when trying to be helpful.

    A thing that hangs up a programming task is far more likely to be a simple misunderstanding about how a shell interprets a certain command in this mode a missing curly brace, not the figuring out of the real problem.

    Constantly getting hung up on dumb shit made it excruciating.

    Now, I may simply have learned to program wrong. I may not have a mind for it. I may have just never crossed the rubicon where things start to trend easier (I tried hard…).

    Or I may just be so obsessive that I don’t switch enough to pursue a different way to the same place.

    Anyway, as I was writing this thread, with the help of my friend and colleague Carlos, I figured out how to get this node task working to control an external video switcher via the serial port.

    The feeling is really good. But I burned up my whole morning worried about this shit.

    I will continue to stick to designing things, writing stories, and coming up with ideas, but build them in software, I will not. At least not in current programming environments.

    Thank God for Carlos and all you superstars like him.

  • Michael Ashcroft Has Been Coaching Me

    Just want to take a moment to say how great it has been to meet weekly with Michael Ashcroft over the past many months.

    In my life, I’ve had a dozens of coaches, therapists, and mentors, each of whom has been helpful in some way.

    But Michael is on to something goofy…

    I refuse to draw conclusions from such a small data set, but I anticipate that soon I will report some of the most dramatic, sustainable creative progress I’ve ever had in my life.

    Granted, much of it has little to do with Michael’s Alexander Technique mumbo-jumbo, and yet…

    I’m a guy who has basically been yelling at himself for his entire adult life, attempting to generate output: MAKE THINGS, ZACHARY, YOU KNOW HOW AND LIKE TO DO IT SO WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH YOURSELF?!

    I’m the opposite of Johnny Five from Short Circuit: I need Output.

    I’ve learned dozens of skills/trades, read all the productivity books, developed nuanced opinions about the efficacy of different systems, methods, and lifehacks. I’m a very lucky guy with a great life… but I’ve been creatively unfulfilled. I wrote a bit about that here: zachphillips.blog/2020/08/h…

    I stayed up deep into the night reading, watching, listening to the secrets of the Masters and how they were able to get their creative spark to generate real fire.

    The harder I pressed, the less I actually created and the worse I felt.

    This is similar to my experience with addiction (18 years sober). The harder I tried to NOT do drugs (which I wanted more than anything), the more drugs I did, until it almost killed me.

    The only way to stop drugs was to stop trying to not do them. Which took a LOT.

    “Surrendering” to the fact that I would not be able to will myself to stop drugs took a total rearrangement of my life, psychology, spiritual shit… but more than a decade later, I guess I never considered that the same approach could be taken to my “VERY IMPORTANT WORK.”

    Then I met Michael Ashcroft, and he was talking about some shit that seemed to relate to the Buddhist meditation practice I’d been doing for some years, but he was talking about applying Non-Doing to WORK.

    Huh? How can you Non-Do the Work You Must DO?

    Anyway, I’m not going to make any grand declarations before all the facts are in, but it’s beginning to appear that, indeed, you not only can, but MUST (if you’re like me) Non-Do your work. And perhaps suddenly you will find yourself producing a lot. And feeling happy.

    If you are sick like me in this very specific way that I appear to be sick, I can’t recommend enough that you read @m_ashcroft’s writings and take his course (even though I haven’t taken the course yet… that’s how well this shit is working for me… I don’t even need the course).

  • Healthcare, Childcare, and Entrepreneurship

    If US leaders were actually interested in talented people starting businesses, they would implement these two policies IMMEDIATELY:

    1. Universal healthcare not tied to employment

    2. Universal childcare

    Right now, we needlessly eliminate most businesses through dumb policies. 👇

    The idiotic lack of these wildly popular, zero-downside policies destroys potential jobs, INNOVAY-SHUN, and particularly scalable businesses.

    Even those with the moxie and hubris and acumen to succeed in business have to hedge their bets and start non-scalable services companies.

    Now, there’s nothing wrong with non-scalable services companies and many business starters (and potential ones) love the work, but in my anecdotal experience a solid percentage of them would (and have tried to) pursue more scalable concepts but couldn’t risk healthcare/family.

    “But that’s what venture capital is for. Raise the money.”

    91% of VC money goes to men, and 94% of VC money goes to white or Asian (17%) people. And the biggest checks always go to the same guys from the same colleges cycling through the same circuit.

    “But immigrants with nothing start businesses all the time. We’re just lazy.”

    Immigrants with nothing have two choices: Work the jobs Americans aren’t interested in for low wages or start businesses chosen from a proven list of formulas a la franchising.

    “But real entrepreNEURRRS will take the risks necessary to succeed.”

    Dude, I’m probably the riskyest risktaking riskyboy I know, but I’m not risking my children’s lives. No one should.

    Hundreds of thousands of potential JAHHHB creators are stuck in a job for the healthcare.

    “They shouldn’t have kids if they want to start a business!”

    Go think about that and wait for the heat death of the universe.

    Also, having been both a parent and a non-parent business owner, I can assure you that parents are better at business (sorry non-parents, you’re great).

    There are many reasons why US leaders will never do these obvious things, but it’s actually worse than that (and I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt): They will actually never even UNDERSTAND why they might do these things.

    The Venn Diagram of US leaders looks like this.

    PEECphH So

    I’m done with leaders saying that small business is important while standing in the way of everything that actually leads to more and better businesses.

    Both parties are complicit. One is just shameless while the other lies through its teeth and wonders why people don’t trust it.

  • Failure Mode

    As someone who has frequently felt like a failure, I’d like to talk about the importance of Failure Mode: No system can truly be trusted if it has not yet failed. And the more times it has failed without dissolving, the more it can be trusted.

    Common example: For better mental health, you decide to go to the gym for one hour, five days a week, every week. Six weeks in, you are perfect…

    6 weeks is a long time. There is cause for optimism. But this is an unstable system. You have no idea what failure mode looks like.

    Something goes wrong. You get sick, lose momentum. A week passes. Next week comes and your engine is stalling out. You wake up late. There’s a big project at work…

    Six weeks later: “I feel terrible. Remember when I was taking care of my mental health by going to the gym?”

    You can extrapolate this out for any length of time and it’s still true. You’ve exercised five days a week for 146 weeks, no exceptions. Your system is probably pretty good, BUT YOU CAN’T BE SURE, because you haven’t seen what happens yet when it fails.

    You’d much rather be in a position where you’ve exercised 5 days a week for 118 of the previous 146 weeks and had two missed months and a whole bunch of weeks that got blown up by a variety of excellent failure modes.

    THAT is a stable system that you can trust.

    In some systems, failure means death or worse, so it isn’t an option.

    My friend Dustin runs a nuclear reactor and he follows what we all hope is a good system when running that reactor. He has never had the reactor melt down on him (which is good).

    When she crosses the street, I make sure my three-year-old daughter always holds my hand and we both look to see if any cars or trucks or buses are coming before we step out.

    We haven’t yet been crushed by a motor vehicle. 🤜🪵

    These systems that MUST NOT FAIL can never fully be trusted which is good because fear and caution are desirable features in matters of life and death.

    But in most cases, not only is failure NOT a matter of life and death, it is the most important component of the system.

    To be clear, I’m not talking about “learning from failure” or “there there little one, we all fail and that’s okay” (true as that is). I’m talking about failure mode as THE MOST IMPORTANT TEST of any system, because it is inevitable.

    The post-failure message of “Go easy on yourself” misses the mark. Failure is in fact the only reassurance we can have that our system works.

    “Two steps forward, one step back” isn’t a compromised reality we all just have to live with… It is, in fact, the only path to success.

    How many systems do we set up for ourselves that don’t account for (or softly welcome) their failure modes? For me, it’s too many. I need to stop that shit.

  • "No Pain, No Gain" Is a Lie

    “No pain, no gain” is a lie. At least in the way it’s conventionally presented.

    The truth is more like “You will probably experience lots of self-inflicted pain unless and until you realize that you can stop punching yourself in the face.”

    The Puritan fetishization around pain as part of your penance for being a no-good slobbery sinner must have served some purpose at some time, but it certainly wasn’t the purpose of happiness or even getting more work done. Pain leads to less work getting done.

    Adding pain to any endeavor is the surest way to cause the part of you that actually cares for yourself to avoid that endeavor. This avoidance comes in many forms. People who believe in “no pain, no gain” usually call it “procrastination” or “laziness.”

    This doesn’t mean that it’s not usefull to do things hard (vigorously), but the way to “go hard” is by first going softly, easily, and the easily naturally warms up to vigorously, all by itself, faster and more fruitfully than you can get there by “going hard.”

    And because your body and mind got to this state naturally, easily, without any pain from “pushing yourself,” you didn’t encode any painful cues that could tend to make you want to avoid this activity in the future.

    And to be clear, you went just as hard.

    Most self-inflicted pain isn’t muscular or cardiovascular (though its manifestation is whole-body). For me, it’s a voice that says COME ON, WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH YOU? YOU’RE NEVER GOING TO ACTUALLY DO ANYTHING ARE YOU? THERE YOU ARE WASTING TIME AGAIN.

    To date, this voice has never once helped me get a single thing done, but for most of my life I didn’t know there was an alternative way to “get myself to work.” It always seemed the only option was to press harder, the exact opposite of what would help.

    I never NOTICED that the part of me that would occasionally get into a flow state and make cool things would do that all on its own as long as the scary voice wasn’t around. When I let that part of me run free, without pain, I’m both happier and more prolific.

    “No pain, no gain” is bullshit.

    “Hustle” is bullshit.

    “Work ethic” is bullshit.

    Not because gaining or getting things done or being prolific is wrong, but because all of these slogans/attitudes produce the OPPOSITE of what they claim.

    And more importantly: They make you sad.

  • Learning Dvorak and Learning in General

    I didn’t (really) learn to type until I was almost thirty.

    I was always a fast typist but I had bad habits. There was no chance that I would ever touchtype on QWERTY. I tried hard.

    So I learned Dvorak. Here’s why it was a great decision and what it taught me about learning.

    It’s much harder to learn to do something BETTER than it is to learn to do something NEW. It’s helpful to be bad at something for a while.

    “Picking things up quickly” is a specious talent. It means you can gouge bad habits into your brain and become an Arrogant Novice fast.

    I pick things up quickly. This means that I usually skip fundamental steps like:

    • Stopping my palm from touching the basketball during a jumpshot (or a dribble)
    • Positioning my wrist properly when touching the fretboard of the guitar
    • Always using my pinky to type a P or a Q

    Once you’ve gone a certain distance with bad habits, it’s very unintuitive to improve because a big step backward is required before you can go forward.

    This is why when it came time to touchtype (I’m a writer and a developer, my job is the keyboard), I had to switch to Dvorak.

    The first few weeks of typing Dvorak could be excruciating at times. I was SO slow and made tons of errors. I had no crutch to lean on. The keyboard had no labels on it to guide me.

    But when I relaxed into it, the process of learning/carving new pathways felt awesome.

    It’s conventional wisdom that learning new things gets harder as you get older. I no longer believe this is necessarily true.

    The reason it FEELS true is because when we’re older we get the idea that we already know things. It’s disorienting to access Beginner’s Mind.

    The good news is that Beginner’s Mind can be accessed at any age. There are many techniques to get there, but a really simple one is to just slow way, WAY down, to the point where what you’re doing becomes foreign and doesn’t even make sense to your brain anymore.

    This is a great way to practice almost anything. Slow it down until it requires all of your attention to make a single move, ring a single string, touch a single key. Relax into that kind of focused attention and get comfortable not focusing on ANY resulting song, move, or skill.

    A lot of meditation practice can be seen as simply accessing Beginner’s Mind, not becoming attached to all the things you think you already know. Letting them become new to you, objects of curiosity. With this kind of attention, you can learn, or relearn, anything.

    Aside from touchtyping, here are a few other Dvorak benefits:

    • It’s an objectively better layout, with all the vowels on the lefthand home row and the common consonants on the righthand home row
    • If someone asks to touch your computer you can say “but you don’t know the layout”

  • How I List Things on ebay

    Since the beginning of eBay (mid-90s), I’ve consistently gotten MUCH higher prices for items I sell online than I expect, sometimes as high as 50% above the market rate.

    I list things differently than most. I follow two principles that I think can apply to selling anything. 👇

    Principle 1 that seems to work for selling on eBay (or anywhere else): Let Them Know You’re A Human

    When I’m buying anything, the most important thing to me is trust. Reviews do little more than check a box for me (⭑⭑⭑⭑⭑ A+++++ SELLER). I’d much rather hear an authentic voice.

    Letting Them Know You’re A Human means that you convey who you really are, even exposing faults e.g. “I have two kids under the age of 3 so I might take a couple days to ship. Apologies in advance.” I instantly trust this seller 10x more than a listing that says “FAST SHIPPING!”

    Principle 2 that seems to work for selling on eBay (or anywhere else): Convey That You Care About What You’re Selling More Than They Do

    This is also about trust. As someone selling a thing, you know much more about it than the buyer does. Convey your true feelings about it!

    Restaurant servers take note (I can speak on this because I’ve waited on 1000s of tables): If a customer asks if they should order this or that, THEY WANT YOUR EXPERT OPINION. “Well, it depends what you’re in the mood for” is not an answer.

    I’m in the mood for your expert opinion.

    Often, a buyer is excited to buy but they have doubts and fears and they just need to ask “Should I really buy this? I REALLY THINK I WANT IT, SHOULD I?” You know the answer. Be honest with them. Address caveats and drawbacks as enthusiastically as features and benefits.

    This runs counter to the way most sellers talk. They focus on representing only the rosy stuff and say things like YOU CAN TRUST ME BECAUSE which is inherently untrustworthy.

    Know the questions people have and be generous with your knowledge.

    Another benefit of selling things this way is that you might make a friend. That someone is buying your thing is a good indicator that you share interests. I’m still in touch with people I’ve bought things from or sold things to years later.

    You could sum up these principles for selling things online as “sell it like you would to a friend.”

    I think these principles carry over to sharing ideas and even online behavior generally. “How would you say this to a friend?” This has me thinking about @visakanv’s work.

    I’m going to experiment with getting even MORE human with how I list stuff to sell: I’ll record little videos about each item. Listing things can feel like such a chore so maybe this will make it fun?

    I’ll call them Farewell Reviews and post them unceremoniously.

  • Google: Driving vs. Bicycling

    I’m going to attempt to explain one of many reasons I have a dead-inside feeling when I use Google. I’ll use the analogy of Driving vs. Biking (vs. Walking).

    I had a nice phone call today with a film professor from my time at Syracuse, Richard Breyer. I haven’t seen him in 15 years. An intern I had is a student of his. We reconnected on Facebook.

    Professor Breyer had a reputation for always bicycling. In Syracuse, that’s not normal.

    Syracuse is both the snow capital of the USA (125 inches/yr) and a town with LOTS of hills (called “drumlins”). It’s a tough city to bike.

    It wasn’t until halfway through my 20s that I discovered just how superior a mode of transportation the bicycle really is. Even in Syracuse.

    The problem with driving is that there’s very little experience of the journey. There isn’t time to take in the senses of neighborhoods you pass through, whether familiar or new.

    All drivers have had the experience, a little scary, of arriving not even remembering the drive.

    Walking, on the other hand, is wonderful, the most natural human movement and best exercise currently known, and you really get to experience that journey, but we’re all kind of busy, and it can take FOREVER. Once you get beyond a couple of miles you get to impractical territory.

    Then there’s the bicycle, or as Goldilocks would call it, the mode of transportation that is “just right.” You get there fast (in a city like Philadelphia, often faster than driving). You get some gentle exercise. You use no power.

    But most importantly, you are IN that journey.

    Professor Breyer and I talked about Google and how little true exploration it facilitates. It’s like only driving and only ever using a GPS. Its algorithm is designed for everyone to get to the same, clean, “good enough” answer. It’s just… autopilot.

    Just before COVID hit (my timing is awesome) I rediscovered the Library, which is goddamn MAGIC.

    Walk up to a librarian and ask them about a thing and they will show you WAY cooler stuff than Google ever could.

    And here’s the thing: There are other books around!

    Along the library aisles leading to your book are OTHER books. Sometimes just arbitrarily related, alphabetically, by subject, and sometimes, as happened to Professor Breyer, a book will literally drop off a shelf into your hands on a page relevant to a film you’re making.

    Google is driving blind, with only a GPS guide that you’re watching the whole time. It’s just not a satisfying thing, and as the algorithm gets “better,” there’s less and less serendipity, less journey, less human experience.

    I can’t wait to ride my bike to the library again.

  • Computer Brain vs Bonfire Brain

    I’m very excited! I figured out why pretty much all “frameworks” can never spark creative work. They all look exactly in the wrong direction.

    They address the Digital Brain rather than the Analog Brain.

    Better frame: They address the Computer Brain vs. the Bonfire Brain.

    Admittedly, I never got through Twyla Tharp’s book, The Creative Habit, but I’ve realized that you only really need the very first couple of pages where Tharp talks about GETTING WARM.

    Getting Warm is about the Bonfire Brain and it’s so exciting I can’t contain myself.

    So I have some bad news about the Computer Brain, but it will be accompanied by some world-changing, joyous-reunion-of-peace-love-joy-and-everything-transcendent good news about the Bonfire Brain.

    Computer Brain: It can process tasks, hold about five things, but beyond that…

    1. It’s always the same, in all contexts, and as long as you’re awake, it works… fine.

    2. It never changes. It’s always just as you left it.

    3. It doesn’t actually know how to do or create ANYTHING.

    Most task systems/habit frameworks/productivity hacks focus on the Computer Brain and try to satisfy its binary bits in the hope that if it can somehow just be clean/organized/processed/planned enough then the Bonfire Brain will be freed up to get going.

    This is FUCKING WRONG.

    Computer Brain can NEVER get Bonfire Brain going. It has nothing whatever to do with it. It produces no heat, no signal, nothing analog at all. It’s pure binary. Done/not done. On/off. Yes/no. 1/0.

    Computer Brain won’t be satisfied. It doesn’t even have feelings to satisfy.

    So that’s the bad news about Computer Brain… It can never spark or warm up the Bonfire Brain. It’s got nothing. And yet pretty much every framework being sold in the Productivity Porn Industrial Complex targets the Computer Brain.

    Here comes the good news about the Bonfire Brain.

    The Bonfire Brain is analog, messy, chaotic, and generative. It knows how to do EVERYTHING. And here’s the amazing explode-the-whole-universe Good News about the Bonfire Brain: All it needs is heat and fuel. And it already has unlimited fuel.

    SO ALL IT ACTUALLY NEEDS IS HEAT.

    The heat that Bonfire Brain needs isn’t something you can just turn on the way you can turn on Computer Brain. You need to warm it up. But here’s the AMAZING THING:

    1. You can warm it up with ANY sustained creative or embodied act.
    2. It heats up faster/better with LESS difficulty.

    When I say “creative or embodied act,” this applies to everything from walking to writing to singing.

    The first few steps are stiff and cold. Once you get warmer, you could go forever. This is an analog process. Take it easy and it will burn brighter and brighter all on its own.

    I won the fire-building contest every year at nature camp as a kid. A well-tended bonfire can get as big or as hot as you like, and it takes care of all the hard parts itself. You can use yesterday’s embers to start today’s big blaze. The hotter they remain, the faster it goes.

    Forget habit trackers and todo lists. JUST GET WARM and stay warm. When you cool off completely, just get warm again. Something easy, and if it’s ANY EFFORT AT ALL, even easier.

    Before you know it, you’ll have a blazing, magical Bonfire that can create absolutely anything.

    By the way, the Bonfire isn’t “you.” It’s the same thing we all have access to. All it needs is a gentle little spark and some very light tending and it’ll keep itself going.

    The even more positive news is that it’s going whether you’re all caught up in your Computer Brain or not.

  • The Fully Mechanical Bolex

    I love mechanical things, both for their objective coolness and their implications for a green future. A future with nice things that we take care of, less waste, and dignified manufacture.

    Among my top 5 mechanical favorites is the Bolex H16 16mm camera. I made a video about it:

    My friend (and filmmaking colleague) Mauro and I and our baby daughters and our pregnant wives went to Avalon, NJ and Mauro shot me explaining how the Bolex works. I included some Bolex footage of my daughter Louisa on the beach. Here’s one roll/100 feet/3 minutes of Kodak 16mm:

    Here are a few mindblowing things about the Bolex.

    Better than HD resolution (arguably better than 4k)

    The thing is 50 years old and still works perfectly

    It’s FULLY MECHANICAL, NO BATTERY, NO POWER, just a spring that you wind up and it goes

    We don’t make things like this anymore.

    A Bolex isn’t for most people. Developing and scanning movie film is… costly. BUT it’s perfect for these home movies and it’s my most common wedding gift. I shoot 100 feet, add music, and voilà, A very special document of the day (also helps when you don’t know anyone).

    And here’s a more somber occasion shot on the Bolex: The spreading of my grandmother Geema’s ashes at Skaneateles Lake. This was when I had a (really) cheap lens. Still awesome. Music composed by my sister.

    Now, the quality of film is beyond the scope of this conversation, but it’s undeniably (and literally) organic. The colors, the dynamic range, the grain… The stuff that comes out of the Bolex just always feels great and has this “forever” quality to it.

    The Bolex is as cool as it gets, but while film is practical for 92% of photography (yes, moreso than digital), it’s IMpractical for 96% of cinematography.

    But the reason it’s so fascinating is… if we can make something that does THIS with zero power, what else can we make?

  • My Wilmington/Philly Experience with the 2020 Election

    Now that @JoeBiden is safely inaugurated, I want to talk about how crazy it has been to be a Wilmington/Philadelphia (née Syracuse) person through this past year.

    The word “surreal” has grown soft through overuse, but… this shit has been surreal.

    I’ve met Hunter and Beau and I worked on a project (incidentally the project I’m most proud of) with Ashley. But here’s what you need to understand about Delaware: That’s not special. Everyone knows everyone in Delaware. Truly. We have this thing called “The Delaware Twist.”

    “The Delaware Twist,” coined by Kristen Kuipers, is this thing when you’re about to talk about someone in Delaware and you look around because it’s entirely possible the person is right behind you.

    XmyZdaJX7U

    Here’s a picture of my wife. She and the guy behind her both went to Syracuse Law.

    WsvRRDOuek

    I’m not exaggerating about The Delaware Twist. It is a physiological, pre-cognitive, reptilian response. You just check who’s behind you before speaking.

    This picture of my wife (girlfriend at the time) was at lunch in our building in Wilmington in 2010. I was in my pajamas:

    I spent four years with an office IN the Joseph R. Biden Railroad Station in Wilmington. Our office was ON the platform. When he was VP, we’d have black SUVs pull up in the alley, Biden would get off the train, wave to us, and disappear. I’ll never have an office that cool again.

    0BGMLrWlEl 6H3nNz6PDz

    My current office has a network link and Senator Chris Coons uses it to go on TV.

    In March, my COO, in a not-good-joke way, asked Coons “So, are we all gonna die?” He responded: “We’re about to experience the greatest disruption of civilian life since the Second World War.”

    “Oh.”

    Then I got a call from one of my nerd heroes in California that they potentially wanted to use our studios as Biden Media HQ. I met with the Biden team several times, and I recommended The Queen for one of the things they needed. They ended up using it for everything. 🤦‍♂️

    Then, on election night, when I knew Biden had won Arizona and Georgia (yes I called Georgia election night, I have proof, texts showed the Trump team knew it… use Twitter, it’s amazing), it became clear this thing was going to be called for Biden when Philadelphia was counted…

    I live in Philadelphia. Our count put Biden over the top. There was no better place to be in America the day they called the election. It was a lot like the other good thing that happened in the last four years (the Eagles winning The Greatest Game Ever Played).

    0WyVxuDMRc

    Then there was Four Seasons Total Landscaping, objectively the funniest thing that happened in the last four years. Here’s the worst brag in this whole unintentional bragthread: My wife and I had stayed in the actual Four Seasons for our one date night of the year that week!

    Then there’s this guy, who fixed everyone’s Macs, and whose shop (“shoppe” 🙄) I personally hung out in, nerding out about Steve Jobs/Apple lore with him.

    John Paul Mac Isaac

    He never gave any indication that he was bananapants aside from the hat. For any doubters, he is, definitely, blind.

    There’s more but I’ll stop. This thing has just felt really… close to home. Thanks for allowing my unbearable indulgence. Needed to purge this. Philadelphia, Wilmington, and the 30 minutes between them got a front row seat for a really important fight.

    Thank God it’s over for now.

  • My Friend Cameron Made Me A Guitar

    My friend/twice-roommate Cameron told me he was building guitars. I’m an acoustic player, mildly interested in electric, but I wanted to support him, so I ordered one.

    I just got my guitar. I was NOT expecting this. I think this may truly be the finest guitar ever made.

    Cameron made this guitar with chisels and sandpaper. Every detail is perfection. In some ways beyond perfection. Anything above 320 grit sandpaper is considered overkill. He hand-sanded this to 2000.

    I can’t even believe what he’s done.

    The body is made of thick (thicc) quilted maple, the most beautiful piece I’ve ever seen. It’s a 3-dimensional holographic aquarium of delights. The back is book-matched walnut. The lumber guy called Cameron months later to tell him it was the nicest tree they’d ever processed.

    The neck is Brazilian Rosewood. The fret board is a piece of Kingwood with its bottom edge being this perfectly thin strip of sapwood.

    The headstock is seamlessly integrated maple, for its weight, so that the guitar is perfectly balanced.

    The whole guitar weighs 6 pounds, and he achieved that by using titanium for some of the components and playing with the walnut (heavy) to maple (light) ratio. Parts of this guitar he built multiple times before getting it just right.

    There are honestly too many details to go into here. The electronics cover fits perfectly flush, attached by four rare earth magnets. The tuning pegs are geared so that no matter which string, a half turn is a half step. Even the knobs are carefully crafted.

    The fret markers are custom stainless steel and brass mosaic pins filled with luminant resin… Yes, the fret markers glow in the dark (for when I’m on stage one day).

    The fifth fret marker is flanked by 18 karat gold pins, denoting that this is the fifth guitar Cameron has made.

    I specifically requested that my guitar be the fifth (I have a weird brain about numbers), and that he sign it. He apparently doesn’t believe in signing, so these gold pins were his way of signing.

    As someone who makes tools, I don’t know if there’s any way I can adequately express what a masterpiece Cameron has achieved with this guitar. I have never seen its equal.

    I expect this guitar might be played by my children’s children’s children one day.

    I tried to capture the spirit of the guitar at my desk with these video clips but I intend to give it a truly proportionate cinematic treatment later. I also interviewed Cameron about its genesis (resentment at every guitar he’s owned, the most common asset of a great toolmaker).

    Cameron is on Instagram (llewellynguitars) and Twitter @llewellynguitar. If 1. you have the means, 2. want one of the finest guitars ever built, and 3. don’t mind waiting, I recommend you contact him before he becomes unreachable.

    And if you know a rockstar, please pass along.

    Again, this really isn’t hyperbole… To my knowledge, I have in my possession the greatest guitar ever built. I do not deserve this thing. And to pre-answer the most common question, I’ll quote Cameron: “It plays like it looks like it plays.”

  • A Reason Martin Luther King Jr. Moves Us

    As someone who spends a lot of time writing words for other people, I’m very interested in why speeches and performances like the one Martin Luther King Jr. gave at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom inspire so much emotion in us.

    Here’s the answer I’m pretty settled on.

    I don’t think it’s because the “I Have A Dream” speech is so well-written (it is) or because MLK is such a talented orator (he is) or even because the stakes of the historical moment are so high (they are).

    All of these make the speech perfect, but they aren’t what move us to tears.

    I don’t think it’s because of the hopefulness of Dr. King’s message or the sadness about so much injustice or the devastation of still being where we are.

    Here’s why I think Dr. King’s speech moves us so deeply: His willingness to open up his Dream, his deepest desire, in the most vulnerable way, shows us that we have the same desire, and it’s one that most of us don’t allow ourselves to experience.

    MLK’s speech evokes qualities in us that are already present. It reminds us of our own core goodness which our egos, and particularly our cultural conditioning, don’t allow us to see.

    To be sure, we could not recognize that goodness if it were not who we are.

    The moral clarity of this desire burns so hot that it cuts right through to the core of our being and we’re reminded of our own true nature and purpose.

    As we consider MLK’s unimpeded truth (and our own deepest desire) that the world be rid of the Evil of racism, let’s also consider the other two great Evils of society that King spoke on with every bit as much moral clarity: the Evils of poverty and war.

    Racism should not ever exist.

    Poverty should not ever exist.

    War should not ever exist.

    We already deeply believe this. All the power we need to permanently obliterate these Evils is already within us.

    Thank God for people like Martin Luther King who show that to us.

  • A Mechanical Writing Device That I'd Like To Exist

    There’s a product that I want to exist. While it possibly could exist today, it wouldn’t be quite good enough yet: A mechanical writing device that will last 100 years and will build up an entire market ecosystem around it.

    Here are the only three requirements:

    1. There’s no charging, or even a charging cable. Minimal electronics of any kind. Every press of a key on the mechanical keyboard ever-so-slightly winds a mainspring (or series of mainsprings) which mechanically power the screen/interface/wireless connection via an escapement.

    2. It needs to run @RoamResearch (or, even better, the eventual open protocol which comes from Roam’s hierarchical, zoomable, referenceable outliner, which stands on the shoulders of All The Great Outliners That Came Before).

    3. Because its software is based on the most robust writing environment ever created, perfectly flexible and better today than the tools most people still write in 40 years later… this device will never need to be replaced. It should last 100 years or longer, like a Leica.

    I am aware of products like the Freewrite by Astrohaus (I have both of them) and the AlphaSmart (I have every model). Both have issues and neither thinks big enough.

    A writing-only device that has access to the power of the world’s best writing environment, and nothing else, would change everything.

    Boutique companies could build their own versions of this, with different finishes and key feel and screen technologies. They could charge incredible amounts of money because the device would last forever, be handed down for generations.

    Watchmakers and typewriter repair people and others like them, who have fewer and fewer things to feed their passionate mechanical craft, would have a whole new class of products to work on.

    Any comparisons to steampunk are mistaken, because this is the opposite of steam. Not only is there no filthy hot steam… there isn’t even a battery. Just mechanical bliss and the soft whirring of some mainsprings if you put your ear against the device.

    I dream of a world where one of the most urgent initiatives to combat waste, pollution, resource depletion, and climate change is to build things that last FOREVER, like film cameras and lenses, bicycles, knives, musical instruments, etc..

    Digital is almost ready. THIS close.

  • Transcendental Meditation™ for Beginners

    I’ve practiced many forms of meditation over the years. While my current practice doesn’t include it much, I’d like to offer my experience with Transcendental Meditation™ and why it’s such a great “beginner” meditation for a certain kind of person (and definitely was for me).

    First let’s make fun of Transcendental Meditation™ and the ™ which I went through the “proper channels” and paid $$$ to learn. It smacks of grift at best and Scientology at worst—it’s “just” basic mantra meditation—but I’ll argue that even this is part of why it works for some.

    Just as religious and spiritual practices the world over have had to incorporate customs of the local heathen, the genius of Maharishi’s Transcendental Meditation™ is that it properly judged the religion of America/Americanized countries, not as Christianity, but as Money.

    The surest way that Americans express their values is by buying things and the amount they pay is the measure of their commitment. Paying for TM™, getting your own secret mantra, celebrity marketing, what better way for a spiritual practice to find its purchase in the USA?

    And this is another reason why TM™ appeals particularly well to productivity-obsessed American artists/entrepreneurs: When you look up the list of celebrities who espouse TM™’s virtues, it’s like the who’s who of the most successful and most creative people ever.

    Some Transcendental Meditation™ celebrities: The Beatles, Oprah, David Lynch, Jerry Seinfeld, Russell Simmons, Howard Stern, Tom Hanks, Mick Jagger, Ellen DeGeneres, Clint Eastwood—

    So, $$$, fame, creative excellence. But what about the TM™ practice itself?

    My anecdotal experience is that many Driven™ people, claiming a strong desire to build great structures/make great art/change the world, have a pretty loud, not too helpful internal dialogue going. This internal dialogue is addressed in a pretty elegant way by mantra meditation.

    My understanding of how TM™ worked well as a beginner practice for someone like me goes like this:

    The mind thinks, like the heart beats. That’s what it does.

    Rather than “stop thinking” (unhelpful) or “simply observe” (advanced/huh?), TM™ provides a sound for the mind to DO.

    While most meditation instruction is simple but a mindfuck (what do you mean “notice”?), mantra meditation instruction is actually simple. Just keep your eyes closed and keep making the sound. When you realize you’ve stopped making the sound, just make the sound again. That’s it!

    Most people I introduce to TM™ have a similar experience. The short version is “I feel like I just meditated.” This is helpful and positive, again, for a certain type of person.

    I rarely use it now, I’m doing other practices, but TM™ was a super important leg of this journey.

    Of course, eventually you’ll need to separate meditation from any and all notions of “productivity” or “improvement” or even “doing,” but to start with, if you’re in this culture and have had trouble connecting with meditation, TM™ might be the best practice to start with.

    If you want a mantra to play with, I hear you can use the sound “rum” and it works pretty good.

    And no, I’m not telling you my mantra. You kidding me? I paid $600 for that shit!

  • The Filmmaking Creative Feedback Loop

    The most important difference between “thinkin’ about stuff” and a generative creative process is the feedback loop: Building something outside your brain, looking at it, and iterating.

    The tricky thing with filmmaking is just how much work it requires to externalize a film.

    Even if you remove all non-visual filmmaking elements: dialogue, sound, music. Even if you remove environments and performances… Left only with blocking/staging of characters, camera movement, and cuts/shot flow, it is crazy difficult (expensive) to build, “see,” and iterate. The more elements in a medium that need to work in concert, the harder it is to create a meaningful feedback loop.

    There are three unusual people that do this well for filmmaking:

    1. Genius Visualizers
    2. Genius Sketchers (who draw real fast)
    3. Super Patient and/or Rich People For the rest of us, it’s easy to get stuck in a single facet of the movie: the dialogue, the performance, the shots, the sets, the music.

    Without the ability to quickly write or sketch these elemental dances and iterate on them, we get stuck thinking about one or two at a time. I’m now 100% convinced that the problem with the filmmaking feedback loop is not about talent or will. It’s about tools. Seriously.

    The technological solution that visual storytelling has been waiting on for 100 years can now be had for $300 (the cost of a VR headset). I can now scan an environment (or not), walk into virtual space, pose characters, set cameras, build and iterate story, intuitively, like I’m playing with dolls (or $25,000/day worth of cast and crew).

    The scale of this shift in accessibility to filmmaking cannot be overstated. My friend Charles Forman and his team created a storyboarding app called Storyboarder. The cool kids already use it. But an unbelievably robust set of VR features that I’ve been playing with is shipping imminently. It even has multiplayer…

    Storyboarder is free, by the way.

    I’ll share some more visuals of how this all works next week, and then you’ll start to see me streaming on here and everywhere as I filmmake (actually filmmake, not think about/talk about/write about, but FILMMAKE).

  • Paper and Pen

    There are several things I’m ashamed to have discovered way too late in life.

    One of them is the incredible problem-solving and generative power of a quiet hour with nothing but a hard or amorphous problem, a single sheet of paper, and a pen.

    Features of this set up (uninterrupted 60-90 minutes, single sheet of paper/notebook spread, pen, nothing else), in order of importance:

    1. The boundaries at the edge of the paper.
    2. Nothing else to do but fill the paper or stare at the wall (no devices).
    3. Known ending time.

    I have never discovered a better method for increasing clarity. And increasing clarity is tied with exercise as the best way I’ve ever found to reduce anxiety. And anxiety is the greatest impediment to me enjoying anything that I’m doing, which greatly affects how much I can do.

    It is remarkable how well a paper and pen work.

    As a computer kid (started on a Macintosh 512 in 1988), I sort of skipped that for most of my life. I’m glad I gave it another shot in my 30s, because it’s something I turn to now for the hardest problems, and it never fails.

  • Idea Accessibility

    One lesson from design is that there’s no downside to focusing on maximum accessibility. If a website or a kitchen utensil is easier for someone with a disability to use, benefits, many unconsidered, will carry over to everyone else.

    This concept also applies to ideas.

    The reason to focus on making your idea translate to the hardest-to-reach person isn’t necessarily because you need to reach that person. It’s because the process will strengthen your communication of the idea to everyone else. It will probably even strengthen the idea itself.

    Richard Feynman, genius physics lecturer and the subject of many of my most gratifying YouTube spelunks, said that if you can’t explain something in simple terms to a freshman (or better yet, a sixth grader), you don’t understand it yourself.

    This also applies to ideas core to identity: our seemingly disparate understandings of morality, right and wrong.

    Sometimes, there is something irreconcilable at the root of our disagreements, but often, it’s mostly a lack of understanding.

    The whole culture could benefit from expressing our feelings, positions, and beliefs on hard mode, with the intent of reaching the least reachable.

    Not because they “deserve” it, not to succeed/change them, but because it helps us reach EVERYONE better and grow in understanding.

  • Being Earnestly Wrong

    The most offensive thing to most people is having their views “misrepresented,” sort of.

    “Because you THIS you must be ALL OF THAT.” —> 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬

    What I think this is really about is an innate knowing of ourselves: That we’re complicated, much more than any one facet.

    The fear of being misrepresented doesn’t have a lot of good outcomes. In fact, I think they are all bad. We’re in an especially fraught time for this now, when it can be really scary to question one’s own thoughts out loud, which is a lot of what conversation is about.

    One result of so many “afraid of saying the wrong thing” is a growing anger against what used to be called “political correctness” and is now called “cancel culture.” But even those of us who scoff at those terms: There IS a feeling in the air, isn’t there? What do we do with it?

    The answer can’t be to “get rid of cancel culture.” That’s a cop-out, as is any solution that requires a whole bunch of people (who aren’t you) to change.

    Those of us who are afraid of saying the wrong thing—what can WE do?

    I think we need to be willing to be Earnestly Wrong.

    Being Earnestly Wrong means being curious about what parts of your ingrained thoughts and beliefs might be wrong, being willing to share them with others, and most importantly, being willing to sit with the uncomfortable feeling of being wrong, even publicly wrong.

    Judging others for being offended is really just being offended that others are judging you.

    You probably aren’t righteously angry at them. Your feelings are hurt.

    Whenever you find yourself thinking “that person really needs some thicker skin,” it’s probably you who needs the thicker skin.

    Why does it feel so uncomfortable that you made them uncomfortable? You can sit with that. You don’t need any permission. It won’t be the last time.

    Being Earnestly Wrong isn’t about prostrations and false apologies and demonstrations of guilt. These are defensive postures. They are about protection from judgment. There’s no earnestness, no humility, no willingness to engage or undergo any real change.

    Being Earnestly Wrong, you will at some point be mistaken for being maliciously wrong. Rather than retreating into defensive position or lashing out, notice: If this is happening to you, maybe it’s happening to others as well, and maybe you’re the one doing it.

    Breathe a little.

  • My Sister Liz's Baby Pattern Gift

    My sister Liz is a genius. In addition to being a dance instructor, a composer who plays all instruments, and one of the best improv performers I’ve ever seen, she’s now doing surface pattern design.

    For Christmas, she pulled photos of my kids off Instagram and made this fabric:

    ErfpOn4XcAMFIWo

    Somehow, this pattern manages to maximize cuteness, tastefulness, and versatility. Fully personalized, just stuff she found on my Instagram.

    ErfpPGTW4AAS uf ErfpPHAXAAAv0J2 ErfpPH2XYAMs2Ju

    I think people would pay for this (and she would want that). I’m curious if the price that feels fair to the consumer would be enough…

    The reason I think it works as a product is that it’s one-of-a-kind but totally repeatable. Send photos, Liz makes the pattern, choose color and items—sheets, napkins, wallpaper—there’s an issue of proofing and “notes” which add to the cost—but this is a serious amount of work…

    Here’s a side-by-side of a photo I took and how she treated it. It’s just so cool. If there are any people with business knowledge in this space that could help my sister evaluate the opportunity, I would be most grateful if you hit her up: www.elizabethand.co/.

    ErfpQG7WMAICLaB ErfpQH2XUAADx4a

  • Political Games

    I can’t get away from games/sports analogies when discussing democracy and economics and friends have told me it leaves a bad taste in their mouths.

    “This isn’t a game.”

    Honestly, I think it IS a game, and that’s not a pejorative. Games are really, really important.

    What is a constitution or a set of laws if not rules for a game we can agree that we’re playing to cultivate or lose power and influence without resorting to brute force violence?

    Even animals have games. Games are foundational.

    Certainly, games can be terribly designed, like this current type of capitalism or like a government run completely by private campaign donations and a revolving door of hard regulatory capture and soft corruption, but that just means the rules need to be amended.

    In a representative democracy, it’s critical that voters (the fans) are invested in the game. The rules can be dumb, the Yankees can have 10x the money as everyone else but when THE PLAYERS THEMSELVES (the representatives) can’t be trusted, the fans lose all interest in the game.

    One of the reasons sports are so popular everywhere is because it’s the one place where everyone is playing by the same rules and where even underdogs can win. For too long our democracy has been an opaque box where popular things never pass and unpopular things pass unanimously.

    There are some real opportunities ahead to reform this game (I really do believe that) but one thing we can start doing now, without any permission whatsoever, is simply play the game better. Draft better players, win more votes, meaningfully change lives, and then do it again.

    There’s no way to win the game if we’re just distracted by our hatred of the other team’s fans. We need to remember that they’re not in the game and neither are we. They can do what they want to hold their team accountable. The only team we have any input on is our own.

  • The Cobbler's Dilemma

    “The cobbler’s children have no shoes” is a phrase that rings true for most businesses. My 8-year-old production house has no video about itself 🤦‍♂️.

    The assumed reason is that we’re working on customer work so we don’t have time for our own. This assumption is wrong.

    The reason the cobbler’s children have no shoes isn’t because the cobbler is busy making shoes for customers. It’s because the cobbler is paralyzed by the impossible task of making shoes for her children.

    This is The Cobbler’s Dilemma: “My children’s shoes must be THE BEST.”

    “What will people think if my children’s shoes aren’t the very best shoes they’ve ever seen? I’m a cobbler! I better do a truly perfect job on these shoes and then I need to make sure my children wear them right and keep them clean and don’t pair them with the wrong outfit…”

    This cobbler is totally screwed. There’s no way she’s ever going to make shoes for her children.

    This type of perfectionist thinking is the surest way to never get a single thing done. Instead, she’ll shrug her shoulders and joke that “the cobbler’s children have no shoes.”

    Meanwhile, the cobbler’s children have the best treehouse in town. She loves building treehouses almost as much as making shoes. She could’ve made 28 pairs of shoes in the time it took to build that treehouse.

    But no pair of shoes could possibly be good enough for her children.

  • Social Media Monopolies as National Parks

    It might be a fun few years for antitrust. The monopolies who control everything and who govern with absolute power might be the biggest reason we’re here.

    I have one idea about what to do with a highly visible one like Twitter: Make it into a National Park.

    “Breaking up” a social media monopoly can only be accomplished in one way: By opening the protocol it runs on, returning ownership of the data to its users, and allowing them to portably take their data to any network that using the protocol. Anything less is tepid posturing.

    This is why network-effect monopolies are so strong. The core value of the company is that so many people are on it (stuck using it). The product itself can objectively suck (Facebook) and it doesn’t matter. “Breaking it up” just creates a vacuum for another one.

    In the case of most monopolies, the product being sold is a commodity but the company is proprietary. In the case of social media, the companies (and their shitty apps) are a commodity but their product (billions of entrapped users and their surveillance of them) is proprietary.

    So as much as there are risks to nationalizing things, the government isn’t always great at stuff, etc., etc., the best way to deal with social media monopolies is to nationalize them, with strict regulatory oversight, privacy, and at least a chance of due process.

    Twitter is perfect to use as a test case:

    1. It’s relatively small (less than 200m daily users) while still 100% a monopoly.
    2. Everything that makes Twitter great was built by its community: developers like Loren Brichter and The Icon Factory and users who invented @s, retweets, threads…

    When Twitter becomes a National Park and the protocol is opened up for people to take their portable data to open communities (or stay on the main government one), Trump’s account can be cancelled because he broke 8,310 laws on it, not because Jack Dorsey is getting some heat.

    If you’re as interested in monopolies and antitrust as I am, you should get on Matt Stoller’s Substack. He would almost certainly think this thread is ridiculously dumb, but I posted it freely. Complain to Jack and Mark. They own this shit.

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