You can write a book

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making these choices in a book is a lot like teaching.
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You have to figure out the sequence of ideas that's gonna work in someone's brain.
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You're kind of using like backwards design, like you're actually saying, if at the end of the day I want someone to be wearing a suit of armor, first they need a breastplate and then they need the fancy shoes.
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I don't know what those are called.
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This makes it sound linear.
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It ended up, it was using a very non-linear process to get a linear structure,
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mm-hmm.
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anybody who's built something complex might resonate with a little bit.
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Always holding yourself accountable to that going up a level and looking at that chain of logical choices you've made.
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Some of the questions that came into us for this episode were about why did you decide a book was the right shape, a book was the right holder for your ideas.
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You know, a book was the right kind of project to take on.
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There's so many other ways of putting content out there and I'm really curious to hear what you think about this.
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Ashley, I think about it like books are this very enduring technology separate from the concerns of the market.
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You know, humanity loves a book.
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I mean, they're still around and they've been around for so long and there are book shaped, book length things you have to say sometimes, you know, and so there's like a, a real, a.
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Density and efficiency to a book that, and it allows you to unpack things and kind of be there with a reader.
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And you know, I think there's many, many valid ways of creating content, but that was something that was in my mind, like, why write a book?
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Well, because people like books and I have a book shaped thing to say.
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I think you should be sure that what you wanna say is a book length thing, like actually in this, like really nice.
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Substack by Jeff Shreve, who's an agent at, uh, what was formerly called the Science Factory, but they have since changed their name.
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Um, it's an agency for nonfiction books.
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He says in the very first post before even teaching you how to write a book proposal that you need to think long and hard about why it is that your thing is a book and why you want to write a book.
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Because no one should just stumble into this territory without really thinking through it.
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'cause it is a lot of work.
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And I think there are a lot of books you might wanna read that you're not necessarily the person to write and you might even have ideas for books that you're not yet the person who can write I mean, I feel like that and that kind of ability to, you know, imagine this future creative self, that, that's been really important to me.
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'cause I've had a lot of ideas that I've tried to execute and then kind of come back to.
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And, you know, a lot of the ideas that are in my book are such a validation.
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It's such a, like, it's almost like a celebration to me of things that I used to wonder about or talk about or try to articulate when I was younger, but didn't quite have the right angle for.
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And so it actually surprised me how much the same ideas came up, but they came up in their specific form and I then I had like the skill to actually meet that idea and, and shape it in the way that it needed to be heard.
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And so that was really cool.
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And I think for someone like you who's done so much research, which is in these little pockets.
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Of questions, right?
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Like does code review cause anxiety and like how are developers doing at work on all these other metrics, right?
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Like it's in these pockets.
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And then writing the book allows you to synthesize all of that in a way that you can't do in a single paper because you're only answering the specific experimental question in one of those papers.
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Or, you know, you can, like, it's in, in the background of your mind, like if anybody would ever ask you, you have this overarching.
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Kind of library of theories that are driving your work and how you see the world, but then the sort of output that we have to kind of strip so much of that away and meet the convention of the output, you know?
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I thought it was super, super fun to have the many degrees of freedom that a more creative project gives you to make choices I can actually talk to you about the emotions, like you read the part of my book where I said I was anxious about studying anxiety, right.
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Yeah,
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know, to say there's like a human journey here too.
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And I can, it's very valid in a book to say, well let me tell you a little bit about how I was doing this study and it seemed important to me for these reasons, but I also worried about it.
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And so then you're, you're able to tell this like human side of the story.
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You're often not able to tell in a paper.
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yeah.
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I love that so much, and I think we need both because obviously papers.
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Are the way they are, because we have the scientific method and we're trying to ask questions carefully, use methods carefully, interpret the results carefully.
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Right.
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But in that process, like, you know, we strip a lot of the human side of it.
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So I think whether it's like the blog about the paper or the talk about the paper, or the book that contains many papers, like I always find those mediums maybe even more satisfying than the original paper itself because it gives you like what the researcher thought and what they're feeling and like.
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Yeah.
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In your case, I, I love the parts of your book where you are clearly the narrator, you know, you have a clear point of view, and I just feel like, I don't know, the human side is the most important thing, and it is the thing that you can bring through when you're writing a book.
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My friend Dave said, getting a book written and published sounds like one of the most arduous things you can do to yourself.
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Which, which I think we received that question and we were like, oh gosh.
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Is it, you know, I don't know.
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I think sometimes we don't even notice, uh, how much we're signing up to do extra work.
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But, you know, I am really curious.
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How would you answer that?
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Why were you motivated to write a general audience science book?
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You know, it's a, which is a lot of work.
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I think there's three main reasons for me.
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The first is the reason I am in the field I'm in.
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The reason I pursued neuroscience to begin with was a book by Steven Johnson that was a public facing science book called Mind Wide Open.
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That's reason number one.
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I read that book and I was like, I loved this.
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It motivated me to get in the field.
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Reason number two is I think I have things to say.
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Yeah,
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I, I think I have an interesting perspective and I'm really excited to be tackling stuff that people are thinking about right now.
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Like, so the book's about Mind Over Matter.
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It's engaging with stuff like mindfulness and placebo effects and how much we can think our way out of getting sick.
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Like, all of these different topics that I just think are really, really interesting and that I think through a lot more research than is my own research.
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I, I think I have some things to say.
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And the third thing is just I enjoy writing actually.
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Like, and, and honestly think this is like a prerequisite for writing a book, obviously, is like, you have to enjoy the process of writing and sometimes
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it's not obvious.
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I mean, everybody wants to say that they enjoy writing
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a lot of people don't.
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And in fact, like a lot of scientists don't, you know, like they don't wanna write papers and grants.
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It's like the last thing they wanna do.
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There are many valuable forms of work in the world that you could be doing that aren't just writing.
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But I do think you have to just figure out what is enjoyable about writing for you.
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And it's okay to be a person who actually doesn't put your output into books.
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I think it's not just even writing, it's also the research that comes before the writing and like the writing as thinking
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it's the work of writing.
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yeah, like I just love a day where I go into some weird ass rabbit hole I did not even know I was gonna end up in, and I find this study that's about people doing reiki on rats and I'm like, oh my God.
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What did I just find?
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What is happening?
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And that is like the best day of my week when something like that happens.
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True facts.
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I've seen it up close.
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There's two papers actually.
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It's not even just one.
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You're now like the reiki on rats, expert because you were so curious about this and if, if I were to describe why I think you were the person to write your book, it is because you have this joy and you're just this absolute bottomless joy.
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Like Bill Nye the science guy out there with old neuroscience papers and turning them into something fun for
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man.
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Like I got, there's even like, like the image is just this black and white image of two hands, like being held out in front of the rat cage because someone is doing reiki on.
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I got, I'm probably gonna put the same picture in the book because I just love like old timey science pictures that are like hand drawn.
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You just can't replace that shit.
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It's so good.
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Yeah.
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I, I need to ask, does, does the reiki on the rats work?
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Thank you, Danilo Voice of God.
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Yeah.
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Um, you know, according to this paper, yes it does.
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Um, gotta say small sample size.
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So they didn't just like, so they, they, this is a whole separate episode,
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No, you have, you're in, you have to
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I can't believe I, I, here we are, we're in the rabbit hole altogether.
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Um, we, uh, they, they like measure like changes in the vasculature.
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So, so they, they don't just like do reiki on rats and ask if they're like less stressed or whatever they actually like, cut them up afterwards and look at their blood vessels
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you're saying this is rigorous?
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uh, no, it is exactly the, it is exactly the example of doing something extremely biological right?
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Like looking at blood vessels.
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But this being none the more rigorous than any other study.
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Just that doesn't make it rigorous.
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an RCT of a wild idea.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, exactly.
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Yeah.
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Um, yeah, I'm actually grappling with how to talk about this study'cause
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are you saying that there's a positive result but you don't believe it because, uh, it, the, the burden of proof is so high.
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Because the burden of proof is so high and it's only like five rats or something.
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So, you know, it's just
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Yeah.
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So this is
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like one study.
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Yeah.
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this is a good scientist note because it's like, you can say, listen, you have all the form and function of science.
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You did an RCT, but the, the mechanism, the thing you're trying to show, there's no believable mechanism for it that we know about.
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And so you have to show it such a strong strength of evidence to get us to believe it.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, totally.
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I think the other thing you need to know about this study while we're on it, is that.
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The control condition was people who weren't trained as Reiki practitioners.
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So like it was just people that they brought in to like wave their hands in front of the rats,
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You gotta control for your trainer effects, you know?
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which, you know, like, okay, they, they did a control like.
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Okay.
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You know what's funny is we got a review comment when I was publishing our code review anxiety paper, where we did an intervention and the person, you know, who led the intervention was a clinician.
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So clinicians have this background training and like doing psychology with people.
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And so, you know, we said in our, in our limitations section, we were saying, well, it could be that this provides a lift.
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Like we didn't compare a person who wasn't a clinician giving this same intervention to developers, and we got like these very long review comments back that were like, what do you mean?
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Like, this was very alarming to them.
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Can you describe like all of the features you know, of a clinician that you might wanna control for?
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And so then I had to go on this kind of search to, well what, what are the defining features of a clinician?
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You know, I don't know he that we could test.
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Here are a few of them,
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Oh, that's so funny.
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It could be any number of things they've learned to have more empathy, you know, but I mean, there's some large things you might start with, like they, they are skilled, they have more experience at facilitating.
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There's also an effect where maybe the participants trust them more or something like that.
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totally.
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sorry, that's a distraction, but,
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Yeah.
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No, I mean, I think what people believe about the person helping them is probably just as important.
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And that's, yeah.
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Placebo effects are very real.
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So back to your book,
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Hmm.
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there's a good question that somebody also asked, Dawn asked a number of really great questions and, and one thing was, you know, do you stick to writing the book that you planned in the past or do you react to unfolding or unfolding changes in the ever present is what she said, which was beautiful.
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Um, a lot of people had questions about having a project that takes place over a long amount of time, especially when things change, like science changes and yeah.
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How is that for you?
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'cause you're writing a research backed book where you have an idea and then you go in and you research it, right?
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Oh, it has to change.
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There's, there's no way it's rigid.
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I mean, it's not science if it's rigid, right?
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Like you have to update the ideas based on new science that comes out.
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And so I guarantee up until the very last minute I get any say over the text in my book, I will be editing it based on new stuff that comes out.
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And it could just be a small thing like, oh, we now know an additional thing.
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Like, nothing's probably gonna uproot everything in the book.
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But, um, no, it has to change.
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And actually the interesting thing about my project, which I think is different than yours, is
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Mm.
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I.
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Am, you know, obviously a trained neuroscientist, but on a very particular field, I was trained in visual neuroscience or like what we might call systems neuroscience.
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So a certain level of analysis, understanding like cells and circuits.
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But I'm talking about a lot of research that's like way outside of that ballpark.
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And so I have had to also learn a ton in the process of writing.
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And that means I'm updating my own ideas as I go along and I'm learning things and I'm kind of challenging my own ideas or even like existing ideas in the field as I read new things.
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So that really feels like a process.
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How do you know if you're right?
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You don't,
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Well, what is, what are the, what's like the quality control control you bring when you're tackling new science?
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Like what?
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What's your process for trying to understand?
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You're diving into an area you don't know, and you don't have to answer the whole thing, but
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No, that's a really good question.
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And actually one of my goals in this book is not only to find answers to questions that I think are really interesting, but also to illustrate my process in doing so.
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And so I also talk really explicitly about, you know, if I wanna know if alternate nostril breathing impacts brain function, how am I gonna answer that question?
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Right?
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Here's, here's what I'm gonna search, here's the kind of papers I'm gonna look for.
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Um, so I actually really explicitly like walk readers through this process.
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And so, yeah, there's some stuff in there that's like, what journals do we trust?
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We look for meta analyses, we look for preregistered studies, all of that good stuff.
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But I also talk to a lot of scientists in their respective fields and every chapter is like reviewed by multiple scientists.
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That are in that same field.
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So, um, that's been really, really great.
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So I interview people, I sit down with them about their research.
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I ask them about other people's research, and they review the chapters that I'm writing.
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Yeah, I see your journalism side come out of this, you know, because you, you decided to do that, right?
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I mean, this isn't your editor, giving you people to talk to.
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This is all you, right?
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Yeah, no, I, I love this part of it.
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Honestly, like in my first book, the thing I think I enjoyed the most was interviewing people.
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So yeah, there is like a small part of me that feels like I wanted, maybe I want to be a journalist, like I'm sort of trying on like a journalist hat.
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Um, so yeah.
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Yeah, definitely.
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I think about when I think about you writing this book and what I've seen you do, I think about like shows like the, the myth busters.
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You know, I think about, I mean, I use Bill Nye for a reason.
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It's like, you're not doing science, you're not setting up a full laboratory to study every one of these things, but you are doing like backyard science.
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You are doing like, what is the small mini test of this?
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And I wanna also, like, I think you should share some, some things about how you're doing this just as an end of one, right?
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Like you're trying out fun things for the book, you're like allowing personal experience to be part of the, you know, content in the book.
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And I think that that's also really beautiful and speaks to your like, philosophy here.
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Yeah, I mean, because so much of the book covers content that's like wellness hacks and things like that.
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You know, one big question I have in my mind is just like, how.
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Workable are these for a single, normal, median human being?
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Uh huh
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You know?
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And so it's like, okay, if I wanna try some breath work technique, like can I even do it or,
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you know what?
00:17:15.272 --> 00:17:18.663
You have access to one particular body right here.
00:17:18.813 --> 00:17:20.042
Yeah, exactly.
00:17:20.042 --> 00:17:23.583
And like, you know, I went and worked out at a hypoxic workout studio.
00:17:23.613 --> 00:17:24.782
'cause I was like, what is this?
00:17:24.782 --> 00:17:28.563
Like, like is it even a reasonable thing to ask someone to do this?
00:17:28.923 --> 00:17:29.373
Right.
00:17:29.678 --> 00:17:30.097
Did it seem
00:17:30.182 --> 00:17:31.593
those are important questions.
00:17:31.712 --> 00:17:38.012
I liked it, but, um, yeah, I think it's definitely not for everybody.
00:17:38.403 --> 00:17:38.853
Yeah.
00:17:39.752 --> 00:17:43.383
And, and the, I actually interviewed the owners of that studio too, and they'll tell you the same thing.
00:17:43.383 --> 00:17:45.093
I mean, um, it's really interesting.
00:17:45.093 --> 00:17:48.813
Some people have obviously really strong anxiety responses to not being able to breathe
00:17:49.428 --> 00:17:49.758
Yeah.
00:17:49.758 --> 00:18:06.198
But like, that was really interesting'cause you went to this gym and then, and then what Ashley's not telling you is that I'm the second rat in this experiment because Ash, Ashley's, Ashley's coming back from doing the oxygen deprivation gym and the alternate nostril breathing and like the cold plunges.
00:18:06.198 --> 00:18:08.357
And then she's telling me that I should do things.
00:18:08.357 --> 00:18:08.807
And so
00:18:09.617 --> 00:18:10.847
Oh, 100%.
00:18:11.147 --> 00:18:13.428
I'm like, yeah, but do you believe that
00:18:13.458 --> 00:18:17.897
you're doing the, the reiki hands on me and I, you're like, Hey.
00:18:17.897 --> 00:18:26.738
And so what this means in my life practically is Ashley's kind of looking over at me and saying I think you're breathing wrong, which is Just probably true.
00:18:26.917 --> 00:18:29.228
Mouth breathing, just genuinely bad for you.
00:18:30.008 --> 00:18:35.603
Not that you're a mouth breather, but there's, there are things that people should know, and that's why we're writing the book.
00:18:36.367 --> 00:18:37.688
Look, it's really, really funny.
00:18:37.688 --> 00:18:43.117
So there's just like constant mad scientist vibes in the house right now as Ashley's writing this book.
00:18:43.448 --> 00:18:43.897
Yeah, yeah.
00:18:43.928 --> 00:18:44.137
Okay.
00:18:44.137 --> 00:18:56.073
But let's, let's, let's not let you off the hook here, because I live with a social scientist who's, uh, constantly asking about the environmental pressures in my life and, you know, whether.
00:18:57.383 --> 00:19:01.282
Scale of one to seven and you can give a neutral.
00:19:01.823 --> 00:19:04.573
Yeah, just likert quizzes all over the place.
00:19:04.663 --> 00:19:06.222
How did that make you feel?
00:19:06.653 --> 00:19:08.123
So I'm also writing a book.
00:19:08.153 --> 00:19:11.782
I've, I've just turned it in for people who don't know, which is really exciting.
00:19:11.813 --> 00:19:24.292
And, um, and, and all the, the, while I was plaguing Ashley, as the person who's published a book in our household, plaguing her with questions about the process and whether I was gonna embarrass myself with my editor.
00:19:24.292 --> 00:19:27.563
But, um, I loved writing a book actually.
00:19:27.563 --> 00:19:31.042
And so now I'm a huge fan in, in typical me fashion.
00:19:31.042 --> 00:19:36.653
I want to like publish the hidden curriculum about it, you know, because I think there's a lot of bad.
00:19:37.218 --> 00:19:39.167
Book writing and book publishing advice.
00:19:39.167 --> 00:19:44.387
And there's, there's actually many, many kinds of books too, you know, out there and many kinds of publishing you could do too.
00:19:44.387 --> 00:19:56.057
So it's been really fun to write a nonfiction book on psychology for software teams in a genre space that doesn't really have a, a, you know, a place for that.
00:19:56.478 --> 00:19:58.548
Um, and going through the process was really fun.
00:19:58.548 --> 00:20:28.577
So going through it as like a creative process was also super fun for me as a psychologist, because where you're out there going to hypoxic gyms and whatever, I guess I have been doing a lot of small personal experiments for myself to just say, what helps me stay creative and what blocks my creativity and how am I gonna hit these deadlines and how am I gonna write a book while I'm doing like, full-time intellectual work, you know, and, and all of this.
00:20:28.587 --> 00:20:45.778
One thing I wanted to share was, you know, I really learned to respect the power of what fuels and feeds your creativity, because I would have a lot of moments where I had my initial burst of, oh my gosh, I love writing, I love this book, I love these ideas, and I get it out.
00:20:45.778 --> 00:21:12.837
And then I would hit my like, burnout moment and I would realize I need to just go consume some piece of story somewhere else that like really feeds me because I think my biggest hangup with writing a nonfiction book was that it, it had to feel creative and meaningful and I really didn't want to get into just writing what I thought other people wanted to hear and trying to like tone match all of these.
00:21:13.663 --> 00:21:25.782
Business books in the genre, which I think would've diluted and distorted, like the psychology would've made it, you know, it would've been me trying to fit what I had to say into the jargon of like, this other field.
00:21:26.143 --> 00:21:35.383
So it was really, really important to me as, as weird as it was to be like, watching sci-fi movies and like playing video games.
00:21:35.383 --> 00:21:40.923
And I, I recognized that I needed to protect my own voice while I was doing this project.
00:21:41.462 --> 00:21:50.673
And that was just like, I didn't expect that, you know, I kind of went in with my head like, this is a business challenge and I need to complete this task.
00:21:51.032 --> 00:21:55.653
And then it ended up being a very creative project in a way I didn't expect.
00:21:56.462 --> 00:22:03.363
So related to this, someone actually asked if we could describe each other's process from our own point of view.
00:22:03.423 --> 00:22:11.432
And I think this is really fun because like what you just described of like, okay, you hit a block and you need inspiration, you're gonna go like read other things.
00:22:11.823 --> 00:22:14.972
And this is exactly what I see from the outside.
00:22:15.032 --> 00:22:24.272
Because what happens is Cat is like, okay, I'm gonna take a break from writing and pull up, I don't know, usually like an academic paper or maybe a blog post from someone else or something.
00:22:24.333 --> 00:22:26.887
And then she's like, babe, babe, babe, babe.
00:22:27.022 --> 00:22:29.032
This paper is so good.
00:22:29.093 --> 00:22:31.462
They measured X, Y, and Z and like they just this.
00:22:31.462 --> 00:22:33.702
And you get so excited.
00:22:33.702 --> 00:22:41.472
And then I know that you're like in the process where you're like getting inspiration and stewing on some new stuff before you're gonna go back to writing.
00:22:41.847 --> 00:22:45.238
it's constant raving about the sources hours over here.
00:22:45.268 --> 00:22:45.928
Yeah.
00:22:46.468 --> 00:23:03.038
I love to find a really good paper where I thought someone took a very big swing at something and a ll of these other really good psychology books came out in the year where I was writing my book and they were very inspirational to me.
00:23:03.097 --> 00:23:10.748
And I don't know if it's just the age of this cohort of psychologists or what it is, you know, or the moment maybe.
00:23:10.827 --> 00:23:12.688
I was really inspired by those books.
00:23:12.688 --> 00:23:14.067
I got a lot out of sharing them.
00:23:14.067 --> 00:23:16.137
I think about, I read The Power of Us.
00:23:16.137 --> 00:23:19.428
I read Belonging, I read, the Collective Edge.
00:23:19.458 --> 00:23:20.827
I read, gosh, what else?
00:23:20.857 --> 00:23:26.468
Like Whistling Vivaldi, just a bunch of really interesting mainstream psychology books.
00:23:26.877 --> 00:23:30.627
It was really fun to read work that actually.
00:23:31.153 --> 00:23:37.363
Was a nonfiction book about studies that I knew really well and that I had read many, many times over.
00:23:37.452 --> 00:23:55.843
And then to see how each person translated it and made choices that were in their own individual voice and weighted the part of the story that they wanted to tell, um, that I thought was a really beautiful opportunity for me because you usually don't get to like, see the backstage of anybody else's book.
00:23:56.202 --> 00:23:57.853
You know, you don't get to see the process.
00:23:57.853 --> 00:24:01.903
They went, of course, I still don't get to fully see the actual process they went through.
00:24:02.333 --> 00:24:12.583
Oh, 10 to 25, the Science of Young People book, is another good one where I had read a whole bunch of the research coming out from this scientist and then I got to read, his book.
00:24:12.613 --> 00:24:18.522
And that was so fun for me because I was following a along the journey for many years.
00:24:18.522 --> 00:24:26.712
And so I don't know that anybody else was, but I guess that's a long ramble to say I would love to also be that kind of person, like when I.
00:24:26.998 --> 00:24:28.048
Publish this book.
00:24:28.097 --> 00:24:44.587
I also am very excited to publish the lit review that I did for the book and to tell people like you do, I have a section in the beginning that says, here's how I think about evidence and the criteria that I had in my mind for what papers would go into this project.
00:24:44.617 --> 00:24:46.657
And so these are the choices that I made.
00:24:46.657 --> 00:24:51.337
You could make different ones, but you know, it's a lot of decisions strung together.
00:24:51.337 --> 00:24:59.278
A book is just like many, many, many branching logic decisions and some of those decisions will funnel you towards a very different.
00:24:59.623 --> 00:25:05.053
Project and sometimes you have to roll back, you know, to an earlier decision.
00:25:05.212 --> 00:25:09.623
My sense of my book as like a logical project was very interesting.
00:25:09.623 --> 00:25:14.333
I started to feel like I developed this like spatial awareness.
00:25:14.363 --> 00:25:20.782
Uh, this is also how I organized it in a kind of very visually spatial tree of decisions, the chains of argument.
00:25:20.782 --> 00:25:26.032
And, um, I maybe I'm sounding like a, a, you know, not well person right now, but
00:25:27.053 --> 00:25:27.413
no.
00:25:27.623 --> 00:25:29.272
I think you have to get this way.
00:25:29.722 --> 00:25:30.053
Will I
00:25:30.053 --> 00:25:32.573
this is not how I think about, well, no, that's a lie.
00:25:32.573 --> 00:25:32.992
Actually.
00:25:32.992 --> 00:25:39.653
I do have like the big picture, one pager diagram of ideas in the book sort of thing.
00:25:39.722 --> 00:25:40.563
Is that what you mean?
00:25:40.613 --> 00:25:40.903
Yeah.
00:25:41.823 --> 00:25:42.262
I had.
00:25:43.952 --> 00:25:58.792
You know, I had this corkboard that you put up for me in my office and I had post-it notes on it for every chapter and in every chapter I knew I had, this chapter has to certain hit certain beats of psychological evidence, and you can't hit it all.
00:25:58.823 --> 00:26:00.053
It's a huge field.
00:26:00.083 --> 00:26:03.982
And so each, each piece of evidence has to earn its place.
00:26:04.042 --> 00:26:06.472
And for me, how does it earn its place?
00:26:06.472 --> 00:26:09.803
Well, it's part of this like really coherent story.
00:26:09.803 --> 00:26:27.863
I'm trying to build this like Voltron suit of armor for somebody reading this to be able to put on to say, I know enough good psychology to make my next job better and make myself feel better and win another argument with my boss or whatever challenges that they have in this realm.
00:26:28.643 --> 00:26:33.173
So, you know, there are like many, many choices you could have made about what piece of armor to put in.
00:26:33.923 --> 00:26:34.792
Hmm.
00:26:34.913 --> 00:26:38.913
were mine and I felt that there had to be connections between them so that it was not just.
00:26:39.998 --> 00:26:42.998
Arbitrarily what Cat thinks is really fun and cool.
00:26:43.508 --> 00:26:45.788
Um, which is another way to write a book, but
00:26:45.982 --> 00:26:47.542
I love this so much because it's like.
00:26:47.948 --> 00:26:52.667
I actually think making these choices in a book is, is a lot like teaching.
00:26:52.698 --> 00:26:57.857
Like you have to figure out the sequence of ideas that's gonna like work in someone's brain.
00:26:57.857 --> 00:27:09.327
And it sounds like you're kind of using like backwards design, like you're actually saying, like, if at the end of the day I want someone to be wearing a suit of armor, you know, first they need a breastplate and then they need the fancy shoes.
00:27:09.327 --> 00:27:10.228
I don't know what those are called.
00:27:10.528 --> 00:27:10.857
Um
00:27:10.857 --> 00:27:13.438
And it's very, it was, this makes it sound linear.
00:27:13.438 --> 00:27:18.538
It ended up, it was using a very non-linear process to get a linear structure,
00:27:18.722 --> 00:27:19.143
mm-hmm.
00:27:19.468 --> 00:27:22.738
anybody who's built something complex might resonate with a little bit.
00:27:22.778 --> 00:27:30.688
Always holding yourself accountable to that going up a level and looking at that chain of logical choices you've made.
00:27:31.228 --> 00:27:38.157
An example of this is I end every chapter with a set of questions, and it's such a simple artifact.
00:27:38.157 --> 00:28:01.383
And this was in a, a piece of advice that Greg Wilson gave me actually, you know, who's written like, I don't know what, probably more than 12 books or something, and said, you know, something really simple that is really useful is you can end every chapter with saying what questions should somebody be asking themselves as they look around their environment to try to recognize the things that you just described in your chapter.
00:28:01.923 --> 00:28:05.522
And so that felt so hokey.
00:28:05.522 --> 00:28:13.262
The first time I did it, I was like, this felt, it felt embarrassing, almost like kind of personal and.
00:28:13.577 --> 00:28:22.607
I loved these questions, and the reviewers loved these questions, and they became a thing that I wrote and a thing that I refined.
00:28:22.708 --> 00:28:26.278
I'm not a fan of bullet point thinking because it can force you to oversimplify.
00:28:26.278 --> 00:28:30.958
But, you know, question driven chapter development is I think really good.
00:28:31.647 --> 00:28:40.968
So I have these five or seven questions at the end, and then I can constantly ask myself, well, did I provide some useful answers, you know, to these questions?
00:28:41.133 --> 00:28:41.883
totally.
00:28:41.883 --> 00:28:43.502
They're the learning objectives.
00:28:43.758 --> 00:28:44.268
yeah.
00:28:44.357 --> 00:28:44.627
Yeah.
00:28:44.627 --> 00:28:46.157
That's your version of it, I think.
00:28:46.637 --> 00:28:47.928
Yeah, absolutely.
00:28:48.482 --> 00:28:48.932
Yeah.
00:28:49.603 --> 00:28:50.532
I think that's amazing.
00:28:50.532 --> 00:29:04.843
And I, I think this orientation towards something equipping people is really like, like we both share this with our books like these, these are books designed to equip people with skills to move forward skills and evidence.
00:29:04.873 --> 00:29:05.202
Right.
00:29:05.442 --> 00:29:08.472
To move forward in their lives in different ways.
00:29:08.573 --> 00:29:12.952
I was sometimes wrong about the ideas that other people would find most useful.
00:29:13.373 --> 00:29:13.913
You know?
00:29:13.972 --> 00:29:25.093
And sometimes I have this emotional struggle because like anybody who's gotten a PhD in something and spent so long with these ideas, you're like, this is obvious.
00:29:25.153 --> 00:29:27.762
And it's no longer interesting, you know?
00:29:28.573 --> 00:29:45.012
And so I went through a lot of moments where I just wrote out every idea that I thought I had, like a general chapter idea, and I said, okay, here's the different research areas that seem really cool and interesting and important to me, and wrote them all out in a big list.
00:29:45.073 --> 00:29:46.603
And then triaged that list.
00:29:46.603 --> 00:29:50.923
Like, okay, now I need to not be Cat thinking about this.
00:29:50.923 --> 00:30:00.042
I need to be the staff engineer who's reading my book, really hoping it'll give them something for tomorrow, I need to be that person out of this topic.
00:30:00.042 --> 00:30:01.992
What's the one thing that person wants to hear?
00:30:02.353 --> 00:30:09.353
And then I would think, I've talked to all these junior developers, they send me emails, what would that person be immediately wanting to hear?
00:30:09.772 --> 00:30:13.282
And so, you know, you can only have your book go out to so many reviewers.
00:30:13.282 --> 00:30:19.792
But I do feel like I really benefited from the thousands of conversations that I have with engineers.
00:30:20.123 --> 00:30:23.123
'cause I could remember like, so many things that came up from them.
00:30:23.752 --> 00:30:27.923
And that was an interesting process because there were ideas I was very fond of.
00:30:27.923 --> 00:30:31.073
And then I made myself go through this review and I, I chopped them out.
00:30:31.192 --> 00:30:33.952
I was like, that's, for Cat, that's not for these
00:30:33.952 --> 00:30:34.462
Yeah.
00:30:34.522 --> 00:30:36.952
Like that's just inside baseball or whatever.
00:30:37.282 --> 00:30:40.883
And I think it's really nifty, but I'm gonna put that in a blog post.
00:30:40.883 --> 00:30:41.962
You know, not the book.
00:30:42.373 --> 00:30:43.542
Yeah, totally.
00:30:43.603 --> 00:30:44.113
Totally.
00:30:44.833 --> 00:30:55.303
I think that's such a benefit you have in writing your book, is that you have all of this experience talking to people who are the intended audience members for the book.
00:30:55.542 --> 00:31:00.823
And I think that that is like an empathy building process where you're like, what do these people care about?
00:31:01.512 --> 00:31:08.583
Um, that's something I've been trying to do, but it's, it feels hard, I can't go ask people on the street what they think about reiki, you know?
00:31:08.613 --> 00:31:17.053
But like, I will give these sort of public talks and then I try to pay attention to like, the kinds of questions people ask afterwards.
00:31:17.083 --> 00:31:18.762
And that's been really helpful.
00:31:19.482 --> 00:31:27.873
I thought about doing an open mic where I just say I'm a neuroscientist, ask me anything, you know, at the local open mic where sometimes I go play guitar.
00:31:27.873 --> 00:31:30.423
But yeah, it's extremely risky, which is why I haven't done it.
00:31:30.722 --> 00:31:34.262
Um, pretty sure a lot of the questions would just be about drugs or something.
00:31:34.893 --> 00:31:35.553
I'm not sure,
00:31:35.853 --> 00:31:36.542
Or health.
00:31:36.573 --> 00:31:39.782
It's either gonna be like ill illegal or immoral for you
00:31:39.813 --> 00:31:40.202
Yes.
00:31:41.012 --> 00:31:41.702
Yeah, exactly.
00:31:42.063 --> 00:31:42.423
Yeah.
00:31:42.722 --> 00:31:46.952
Like I, I don't know how to cure everything, and that's just gonna be disappointing.
00:31:47.393 --> 00:31:59.782
But anyway, I, I think that's like a, an amazing benefit that you have and, and really a superpower is that you have talked to so many people and that's really driving the content of the book in a, in a really specific way.
00:32:00.022 --> 00:32:12.893
But I wanna answer like, describing your writing process from my perspective, because I, I think there's an individual way to do this too, and like to have the beginner's mindset that you have, you know, is, is a big part of this.
00:32:12.893 --> 00:32:24.542
I'm an applied scientist out there doing this engagement with people in the public, but, you can also be like, the journey of this book is you taking someone along your mind, you know?
00:32:24.603 --> 00:32:28.292
And, and that is like the journalist approach in a lot of ways.
00:32:28.343 --> 00:32:32.603
You're gonna be really transparent about every step of that journey with people.
00:32:32.603 --> 00:32:34.803
And also just tell a specific story.
00:32:34.863 --> 00:32:36.903
Tell an individual specific story.
00:32:37.262 --> 00:32:38.403
This is an adventure.
00:32:38.462 --> 00:32:38.972
You know?
00:32:39.272 --> 00:32:48.303
And you're doing it around all of this teaching and service and all of these like versions of you that are not the you, that is an author.
00:32:48.863 --> 00:32:48.982
Hmm.
00:32:49.653 --> 00:33:02.792
And I think that you also have cared a lot about like, accessing the culture of nonfiction writers and thinking about, you know, what are, how can I understand this community of practice?
00:33:02.792 --> 00:33:09.133
And that is something that I think is very smart, and that sort of teaches you a lot of practical wisdom.
00:33:09.932 --> 00:33:10.053
Hmm.
00:33:10.363 --> 00:33:30.982
I think about how you love to listen to musicians who are like, I think I said the other day, like musician musicians, you know, like they, they care about like the craft of music and you care about the craft of writing, and paying attention to that and finding people to talk to who have really pulled the curtain back a little bit for these big nonfiction projects.
00:33:31.432 --> 00:33:46.512
So that's been a serious part of your process is like thinking about, where do I find a platform as a scientist from which I can reach the public and like your TikTok videos, or part of that and protecting your voice there.
00:33:46.512 --> 00:33:54.833
I think it feeds back into the book because you, you start to get that, sense of like a different way of being than like is just your professor self.
00:33:55.313 --> 00:33:55.702
Mm.
00:33:56.002 --> 00:33:56.393
Yeah.
00:33:56.573 --> 00:33:57.563
Yeah, I think that's true.
00:33:57.893 --> 00:34:00.893
I mean, I think what you were saying about reading all these other books, right?
00:34:00.893 --> 00:34:05.512
Like you listed off multiple books that you've read and, and I've been doing the same a little bit.
00:34:05.512 --> 00:34:13.072
And I think, yeah, there is like a studying process of like studying the craft of how people write books like this, and I think that's really important.
00:34:13.253 --> 00:34:15.983
Something I worry about, and I wonder if you worry about this too, is like.
00:34:18.047 --> 00:34:23.867
Obviously what you put in your brain while you're writing is gonna directly influence like how you write and what you write.
00:34:23.867 --> 00:34:30.588
And so I worry a little bit about like, okay, if I read a bunch of Mary Roach, like God, I love Mary Roach, would love to be
00:34:30.918 --> 00:34:31.398
You gotta be
00:34:31.518 --> 00:34:37.157
I also don't wanna just, you know, like echo and just be like a puppet.
00:34:37.217 --> 00:34:37.547
Right?
00:34:38.552 --> 00:34:39.932
No, I worry about that a lot.
00:34:39.992 --> 00:34:46.413
I think there's a, there's a pattern matching that your brain does if you're too surrounded by a certain way of writing.
00:34:46.413 --> 00:35:08.757
There's something that Maggie Stiefvater said that I really liked about writing, which is that at first you have to learn to just imitate things and copy things and for a while, you're just producing copy of other people or like reproductions, you know, and then you start to learn how to actually do your own original creative work.
00:35:08.818 --> 00:35:11.007
So I completely agree.
00:35:11.007 --> 00:35:15.657
I notice that I will pick up turns of phrase if I'm reading the same person.
00:35:16.047 --> 00:35:31.547
I think this is a reason it's really important to not just have the only things that you read be on social media, because social media is very mimetic and you'll get these turns of phrase burned into your mind and it will polish off your like rough edges.
00:35:31.547 --> 00:35:36.277
I feel like that are very interesting, specific rough edges that say who you are, you know?
00:35:36.722 --> 00:35:37.682
I totally agree with that.
00:35:37.682 --> 00:35:44.302
And I think like, something I think a lot about is how do you inject novelty into your life?
00:35:44.523 --> 00:35:54.313
This is such a dumb example, but if I go to a hotel room and I know this annoys Cat a little bit, I just put on the TV because I just wanna know, like,'cause,'cause we don't really watch tv, right?
00:35:54.552 --> 00:36:00.492
So I just wanna know like what's on the tv and I wanna be like just randomly presented with something,
00:36:01.092 --> 00:36:02.773
This is the sociologist in you.
00:36:03.012 --> 00:36:03.463
Yeah.
00:36:03.583 --> 00:36:06.503
Which like, and I'll do, I'll do this with radio stations sometimes too.
00:36:06.503 --> 00:36:08.842
Like, just gimme like whatever's randomly on the radio.
00:36:08.842 --> 00:36:11.532
Like it's a way to inject a little bit of.
00:36:12.043 --> 00:36:12.822
Randomness.
00:36:12.882 --> 00:36:28.413
And I think that's really different than so much of, like you said, social media is mimetic, but also you go in, you choose the shows you watch, so you always kind of watch the same sort of television you know, you live in a more narrow pop culture domain than you even realize, probably.
00:36:28.563 --> 00:36:38.623
So anyway, I, I just think about injecting that, and I think about it in terms of creativity being fueled by that kind of randomness.
00:36:38.623 --> 00:36:47.632
And we know this from research, we know this from like how other things impact the brain and just kick it into a slightly different state.
00:36:47.632 --> 00:36:51.512
And I just think that's the precursor in a lot of ways for some creative thinking.
00:36:51.932 --> 00:36:52.382
Yeah.
00:36:52.382 --> 00:36:55.983
There's some fun stuff like, do you know the concept of functional fixedness?
00:36:56.643 --> 00:36:57.182
Mm.
00:36:57.213 --> 00:37:00.693
Like that you can, like, if you have a hammer, it's like only a
00:37:01.007 --> 00:37:06.197
All, all you can ever imagine doing with a hammer is hitting a nail that's functional fixedness.
00:37:06.197 --> 00:37:13.907
You are, you're fixed about the function that you can see for something so functional fixedness is a blocker to creativity and it, it's natural.
00:37:13.907 --> 00:37:17.273
Like We benefit from having highly pattern matching brains.
00:37:17.273 --> 00:37:17.432
Right?
00:37:17.813 --> 00:37:22.947
But it's really interesting to look at what helps people overcome functional fixedness.
00:37:22.978 --> 00:37:29.677
And so there's a paper I was just reading with this great title called, Innovation Relies on the Obscure.
00:37:30.077 --> 00:37:34.398
I, it's, I don't think it's like the most massive generalizable evidence ever.
00:37:34.398 --> 00:37:45.467
I mean, creativity's really hard to study, but in this paper they talk about how people who are able to notice obscure kind of niche features.
00:37:45.737 --> 00:37:54.527
In the sort of landscape and then apply those, you know, that's a step toward, it's a pattern you can try to do for innovation.
00:37:54.557 --> 00:38:01.347
So, notice what has been made obscure and then see if you can find new unexpected uses for it.
00:38:01.708 --> 00:38:05.697
And you can kind of train people, help give them more practice to do this.
00:38:06.128 --> 00:38:12.398
They have this technique in this study they called the generic parts technique, which I have to say they abbreviated it as GPT.
00:38:12.427 --> 00:38:15.938
And I first read it, I was like, what are we talking about?
00:38:15.938 --> 00:38:21.327
But it's actually a study from 2012 about a different GPT, which is the generic parts technique.
00:38:21.838 --> 00:38:34.057
So you can train yourself to kind of look at all of the parts of a thing, imagine them as parts, not as the function that you know them as and try to recombine them.
00:38:34.117 --> 00:38:40.538
And I love that because, I think a lot of technical problem solving gets you to that step, right?
00:38:40.538 --> 00:38:47.108
You become someone who's used to uncoupling features from their intended function a little bit more.
00:38:47.108 --> 00:38:51.038
And so it's a fun strategy for creativity.
00:38:51.757 --> 00:38:54.398
Where did they that even start, why am I talking about this?
00:38:55.432 --> 00:38:58.913
because we were talking about, you know, just like staying creative a little bit,
00:38:58.927 --> 00:38:59.978
Yeah, right?
00:38:59.978 --> 00:39:00.338
Yeah.
00:39:00.818 --> 00:39:03.007
I, sorry, I got so into talking about that paper.
00:39:03.007 --> 00:39:03.307
I just
00:39:03.322 --> 00:39:04.342
No, no, no.
00:39:04.342 --> 00:39:05.572
I think that's really interesting.
00:39:05.572 --> 00:39:11.032
I mean, can you say more about how people study creativity?
00:39:11.213 --> 00:39:13.313
Like how do you, how do you even do that?
00:39:13.958 --> 00:39:15.637
People study it a lot of ways.
00:39:15.688 --> 00:39:20.637
I looked a little bit into the creativity research before this episode, and honestly it's chaotic.
00:39:21.538 --> 00:39:24.958
Maybe that's to be expected if you're the kind of person who studies creativity.
00:39:25.438 --> 00:39:29.398
Um, so some, like some warning labels on the can of creativity.
00:39:29.398 --> 00:39:31.288
Research might include.
00:39:31.768 --> 00:39:33.628
There's a lot of publication bias.
00:39:33.657 --> 00:39:40.228
I mean, people love the idea of creativity and so they love to publish positive results and not negative results about it.
00:39:40.228 --> 00:39:43.827
They love to say these little games increase your creativity.
00:39:44.307 --> 00:39:49.047
Um, defining it like what's a good outcome measure of creativity, that's really hard.
00:39:49.047 --> 00:39:53.378
So, some classics might include something like the unusual uses test.
00:39:53.378 --> 00:40:00.217
So you give people like a set of little objects and see how many unusual uses they can actually come up with.
00:40:00.518 --> 00:40:04.777
But that's a very specific kind of creativity that's like divergent thinking, which is.
00:40:05.123 --> 00:40:07.463
Maybe its own things, not the whole thing.
00:40:08.103 --> 00:40:12.452
There'll be studies that are like, only with gifted and talented students and things like that.
00:40:12.452 --> 00:40:16.773
So it's hard to kind of see studies across a wide range of people.
00:40:17.253 --> 00:40:18.333
Um, yeah.
00:40:18.362 --> 00:40:24.023
But we know some things like, there's really interesting role that mind wandering might play in creativity.
00:40:24.293 --> 00:40:31.983
So there's like mind wandering literature, that, you know, we've kind of ignored the function.
00:40:31.983 --> 00:40:37.443
I, I think a study said, you know, I'm gonna look in my notes actually,'cause this was so interesting.
00:40:37.983 --> 00:40:44.193
Like, maybe, like half of your thoughts in a given day are mind wandering.
00:40:45.257 --> 00:40:45.378
Hmm,
00:40:46.038 --> 00:41:00.257
So we study like goal directed, highly intentional cognition, but a lot of your cognition is just kind of like floating out there, mind wandering, and it's really understudied.
00:41:00.648 --> 00:41:07.818
And so some of these papers are, have these really fun arguments that are like, it seems unlikely that this thought plays no role in our lives.
00:41:07.847 --> 00:41:09.137
It might be really important.
00:41:09.527 --> 00:41:11.177
I think this is really interesting because there's a lot of.
00:41:12.766 --> 00:41:29.027
neuroscience of attention, literature on mind wandering too, actually research that I'm reading for my book, and it's kind of interesting because if you're thinking about the need to pay attention, then mind wandering seems like the enemy in that situation.
00:41:29.056 --> 00:41:29.387
Right?
00:41:29.387 --> 00:41:35.177
But I think what this is pointing out is that the thing you need is the balance between the two.
00:41:35.177 --> 00:41:43.847
You need like the moments where your mind can wander and you can think, and then the moments when you're focused and you need the sort of metacognition to know which state you're even in.
00:41:44.896 --> 00:41:46.726
Yeah, that's kind of what my read is too.
00:41:46.757 --> 00:41:50.956
There's a great paper I read for this called Inspired by Distraction.
00:41:51.347 --> 00:41:51.856
Hmm.
00:41:52.157 --> 00:41:55.757
so they did this paradigm that they call an incubation paradigm.
00:41:56.067 --> 00:42:02.527
They have some people rest,, they have some people engage in what they call an incubation period.
00:42:02.586 --> 00:42:05.166
So you're doing like a non-demanding task.
00:42:05.507 --> 00:42:17.237
And so the people who have this incubation period where they basically have like the chance to mind wander, this is what happens you give people like a really boring task to do and they're just mind wandering the whole time.
00:42:17.237 --> 00:42:27.947
So it's basically a way to create that, um, those people performed better on like this after that incubation period compared to even just rest plain resting.
00:42:28.367 --> 00:42:31.097
Um, and certainly better than the demanding task condition.
00:42:31.097 --> 00:42:44.056
So, you know, I don't think it's been super robustly studied, but there's like some really interesting suggestion here that incubation periods do really matter for our performance, which really matches what people say.
00:42:44.056 --> 00:42:44.327
Right?
00:42:44.327 --> 00:42:50.987
Like that kind of like, oh, I took a walk and I was doing something else, and then the solution came to me.
00:42:51.086 --> 00:42:53.427
Many, many people have had that experience.
00:42:53.487 --> 00:42:55.856
The shower thoughts, you know, I know that happens to me.
00:42:56.452 --> 00:42:57.532
No, absolutely.
00:42:57.561 --> 00:42:58.282
Absolutely.
00:42:58.331 --> 00:43:01.811
This is something I think about a lot with nature.
00:43:01.842 --> 00:43:10.632
Like the power of nature to be a stimulus, but a stimulus that is, kind of boring, like, just like a walk through a park or something.
00:43:10.632 --> 00:43:15.342
It's, it's like some sort of stimulation, but not too much, not too distracting.
00:43:15.762 --> 00:43:26.181
For me, even just like sitting in a coffee shop, that kind of like low level noise of people are around and I'm staring out the window, like that's my, like mind wandering state, you know?
00:43:26.871 --> 00:43:34.371
Do you feel like in your writing process you are intentionally taking breaks like that?
00:43:34.371 --> 00:43:35.632
Like how does that look for you?
00:43:36.277 --> 00:43:36.847
Yeah.
00:43:37.086 --> 00:43:48.936
When I'm good, I am, when I'm good about following my own processes and self-regulating, definitely I, you know, I really found it to be true.
00:43:48.936 --> 00:43:55.476
The thing that people say about, you can't do highly engaged creative work for longer than four hours a day, or something like that.
00:43:55.851 --> 00:43:56.181
Yeah.
00:43:56.556 --> 00:43:58.206
I really found that to be true.
00:43:58.237 --> 00:44:09.577
I would just notice this degradation in the quality of my thinking and, and then it, it made me very acutely aware of my highest value cognitive hours, and, which for me is the morning.
00:44:09.577 --> 00:44:10.476
I'm a morning person.
00:44:10.476 --> 00:44:15.637
I am so awake in the morning, you
00:44:15.786 --> 00:44:16.237
true.
00:44:16.717 --> 00:44:17.197
It's true.
00:44:17.197 --> 00:44:18.902
Even before coffee, it's kind of amazing.
00:44:19.552 --> 00:44:26.931
And, and then I was having this realization that, gosh, these would be the best problem solving moments for my book.
00:44:26.931 --> 00:44:28.371
Like, I better get in there.
00:44:28.371 --> 00:44:35.842
So there were a lot of interesting choices like that, and some of it conflicted with the previous habits that I'd had for myself.
00:44:35.891 --> 00:44:39.672
I mean, at least I really value trying to have a good weekend and things like that.
00:44:39.672 --> 00:44:45.012
But, you know, there's something really magical and wonderful about that open Saturday.
00:44:45.092 --> 00:44:47.942
You've released the obligations from the week you're ready to write.
00:44:48.001 --> 00:44:54.541
So you and I have both made choices to say, well, we've gotta like actually prioritize the creative push right now,
00:44:55.331 --> 00:44:58.452
And I think that is, that is a key thing.
00:44:58.572 --> 00:45:06.552
With any big project, some stuff has to go, it has to be a priority above other things if you want it to happen.
00:45:07.092 --> 00:45:09.552
I don't know, maybe that's just true of big projects in general.
00:45:09.552 --> 00:45:09.791
Right.
00:45:09.791 --> 00:45:10.302
But I think
00:45:11.157 --> 00:45:13.317
I think it's very, very true about a book.
00:45:13.347 --> 00:45:13.766
Yeah.
00:45:14.322 --> 00:45:14.771
Yeah.
00:45:14.952 --> 00:45:27.731
I mean, what you just described too about like knowing your peak hours, knowing how long you can work for, like, there's a lot of self knowledge that really helps before embarking on a big project like this.
00:45:27.731 --> 00:45:29.382
And like it changes a little bit.
00:45:29.742 --> 00:45:34.621
But I do feel like that's super helpful because I, I feel similarly, I wanna do things in the morning.
00:45:35.072 --> 00:45:45.302
I also really want to have a lot of time blocked off because of wearing so many hats in my life, like I need like an author day, it really doesn't work for me.
00:45:45.302 --> 00:45:48.152
Like some people have a thing where they just try to write every single day.
00:45:48.632 --> 00:45:57.112
That hasn't really worked for me because I can't, it, it becomes task switching in a way that is more arduous than is even worth it.
00:45:57.141 --> 00:45:57.442
Right?
00:45:57.442 --> 00:46:01.282
So even if I get 30 minutes of writing, it took me 30 minutes to get there.
00:46:02.181 --> 00:46:04.521
Um, it's really inefficient.
00:46:04.521 --> 00:46:20.811
And so I find it really easy to just have like, okay, this is author Ashley Day, where I pretend I don't have anybody else needing anything from me for that one day and they are blocked outta the world and like, you know, but I need that space, that bucket to work in.
00:46:21.581 --> 00:46:24.097
I, I had to like, treat myself like an author.
00:46:24.152 --> 00:46:33.121
There's kind of this like self-effacing, self-deprecating, I don't know, thing that some people get stuck in that's like, oh, my little project, you know, whatever.
00:46:33.121 --> 00:46:37.442
And, and, and it's kind of like, no, you have to take up space.
00:46:37.472 --> 00:46:44.132
You have to say, this is a piece of work and I am an author, and how, at least for me, this helped.
00:46:44.402 --> 00:46:45.931
Like how would an author behave?
00:46:46.891 --> 00:46:49.862
You know, nobody is gonna do that.
00:46:50.237 --> 00:46:51.137
For you.
00:46:51.186 --> 00:46:57.126
Well, nobody's gonna do that for people of our demographics, let's say, you know, maybe other people get that done for them.
00:46:57.697 --> 00:47:05.706
We have to take up that space and say, this is really important actually, and, and I deserve this time and space.
00:47:05.706 --> 00:47:08.197
And that, that just mattered as a motivational push.
00:47:08.226 --> 00:47:16.896
And then, yeah, I think some of the stuff you only learn as you go through it, because you're gonna think that certain cadences will work for you and find out that they don't.
00:47:16.896 --> 00:47:23.097
And if anybody is listening to this as they write a book, I mean don't give up.
00:47:23.166 --> 00:47:24.697
So many people give up.
00:47:24.847 --> 00:47:25.536
Yeah.
00:47:25.552 --> 00:47:26.362
Oh my gosh.
00:47:26.362 --> 00:47:31.461
Like we have both had days where we're like, why in the world did we decide to write books?
00:47:31.521 --> 00:47:33.891
Like this was a terrible idea.
00:47:34.027 --> 00:47:38.347
they're usually not happening on the same day, which is really good.
00:47:39.157 --> 00:47:43.717
It's been, I think, such a blessing to be able to come out and be like, it's miserable.
00:47:44.077 --> 00:47:45.516
I can't do this.
00:47:45.547 --> 00:47:48.666
And have the other person say, you totally can.
00:47:48.916 --> 00:47:49.056
Yeah.
00:47:49.056 --> 00:47:52.027
Remember last week when it was, it felt so good,
00:47:53.103 --> 00:47:56.913
Now that I've turned it in and I'm like, oh, it's, anybody could write a book.
00:47:56.913 --> 00:47:58.202
It's, I'm gonna write another book.
00:47:58.202 --> 00:47:58.983
It's great.
00:47:59.492 --> 00:48:03.603
It is like you have complete amnesia about how hard it was.
00:48:03.913 --> 00:48:13.603
Obviously writing a book has a kind of like, uh, mystique around it or something, but I don't believe the accounts where people say it's easy.
00:48:13.603 --> 00:48:20.172
I like if there's any of these accounts, I just feel like it's probably easy to write, what am I trying to say?
00:48:21.012 --> 00:48:23.293
There are certain kinds of books that are easy to write.
00:48:23.293 --> 00:48:28.483
I feel like the kinds of books we are trying to write are not easy actually.
00:48:28.483 --> 00:48:30.132
They're a lot of work.
00:48:30.987 --> 00:48:35.248
There were a lot of times we would look at each other and say, it's hard because you're doing a hard thing.
00:48:36.373 --> 00:48:36.882
Yeah.
00:48:37.318 --> 00:48:46.648
But at the same time, I would also raise this counterpoint of don't believe people who say, oh my God, you could never write.
00:48:46.708 --> 00:48:48.268
It's so hard.
00:48:48.268 --> 00:48:53.907
And all the, it's, it's a set of skills and it's like a thing that you're gonna be doing something with your time.
00:48:54.538 --> 00:48:58.557
You can absolutely achieve an ambitious, complex project.
00:48:59.068 --> 00:48:59.608
You know?
00:48:59.818 --> 00:49:10.818
And I think there's a lot of kind of learned helplessness advice that's just a little bit like, makes it a mystique, so that, so that authors can look like there's something different from the rest of humanity or something.
00:49:11.597 --> 00:49:13.338
And I get really fed up with that.
00:49:13.367 --> 00:49:19.697
'cause there's a lot of tough love advice that's like, your writing is probably so much worse than you think it is.
00:49:20.327 --> 00:49:22.878
And that was the opposite of the case for me.
00:49:22.878 --> 00:49:28.637
Like in a lot of ways I would turn things in and it was so much better than I thought it was.
00:49:28.637 --> 00:49:32.088
So just, just watch out if you're that kind of person.
00:49:33.523 --> 00:49:33.813
Yeah.
00:49:34.452 --> 00:49:35.813
I, I feel like as with.
00:49:36.557 --> 00:49:37.998
I don't know anything.
00:49:38.268 --> 00:49:40.878
You can take what everybody else thinks with a grain of salt.
00:49:40.878 --> 00:49:48.737
And ultimately, like you have to kind of know yourself and keep in touch with like why you're doing the big project, like writing the book.
00:49:48.737 --> 00:49:53.208
Because that's the thing, I just continuously find motivating.
00:49:53.208 --> 00:50:02.597
Like I've actually reread the prologue to my book the most out of any other piece of the book because it is in a nutshell why I am writing it.
00:50:02.597 --> 00:50:05.987
And I find it immensely helpful to return to that.
00:50:05.987 --> 00:50:11.807
And so I think like returning to the core of why you're doing it, it feels really important.
00:50:12.327 --> 00:50:14.277
You are the first reader of your own book.
00:50:15.538 --> 00:50:18.987
And so you have to be convinced that this is a worthy project.
00:50:19.168 --> 00:50:25.617
And you write, you write yourself into believing that it has become something that's worth it.
00:50:25.677 --> 00:50:28.648
And that's why people say ideas are cheap.
00:50:28.648 --> 00:50:29.577
Because they are cheap.
00:50:29.608 --> 00:50:38.518
Like anybody can imagine the perfect book and the instant you start writing it, it's imperfect, and you're grappling with actual reality.
00:50:38.547 --> 00:50:50.338
And then you're picking yourself back up from encountering the real world and getting yourself to believe, yes, this is worth it and at least that's how it's been for me.
00:50:50.818 --> 00:50:56.068
But then it's kind of like I have this joy in what I did because I know why I did it.
00:50:56.128 --> 00:50:58.588
And so even if nobody likes it, that's fine.
00:50:58.588 --> 00:50:59.847
I read it and I liked it.
00:50:59.847 --> 00:51:04.018
So it had one important reader who was satisfied, and that was me.