Focused - 73: Productivity and Art with Bob Reynolds

Episode Date: May 14, 2019

David and Mike interview professional Saxophonist Bob Reynolds to talk about the importance of productivity when creating art.

Welcome to Focus, a productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm David Sparks, and I'm joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. Mike Schmitz. Hi, Mike. Hey, David. How's it going? Good. I have to admit, I'm a little starstruck today. We have a guest on the show. And it's interesting for me because I get exposed to movie stars and famous people once in a while, and it usually doesn't do much for me.

But there's this YouTube guy I follow that I just love, and he's on the show today. Welcome to the show, Bob Reynolds. Hey, thank you very much for having me. Glad to be here. Bob is a professional musician and saxophonist. Long list of credits, a Grammy winner, does a bunch of studio work. He's got his own band that tours Europe. He plays with Snarky Puppy. He's got this amazing thing going on. It's called Yay Yinnings. Was it Jay Jennings, the guy behind it? Yeah. His name is actually Jay Jennings. Yep. And it's a bebop kind of West Coast jazz band, which literally pushes all of my buttons. As

soon as I saw you were doing that, I'm like... In fact, I think I emailed you at some point saying, where's the album? Yeah, yeah. That question has been... I've gotten so many YouTube... Not YouTube, but just social media comments and emails. Where's the album? Where's the album? When's it coming out?

Yeah. Soon. I think maybe next week. But Bob also tours with John Mayer, Larry Carlton. He performs with Idina Menzel and Gavin DeGraw. In fact, I saw at one point you were playing at Apple with Idina Menzel. Yeah, we did their Christmas or holiday party in December, which was pretty cool. Yeah. Nine solo artist albums, number one in iTunes, jazz charts, number four on Billboard. albums, number one in iTunes, jazz charts, number four on Billboard, just a remarkable saxophonist and also a popular YouTuber, a father. But the reason that you're here today, Bob, is because

in watching your videos, once in a while you start talking about things like Atomic Habits with James Clear or Mahaley's Flow Book, and you even pull them out and start reading them into the video. And I see you pull your them out and start reading them into the video. And I see you pull your book out and they've got all these highlights and sticky notes. And I can tell you're pulling this all together. And something I really appreciate and something that I am super eager to talk about on the show are artists who also take, you know, focus and intentionality seriously. Because, you know, the usual stereotype is the flaky artist who, you know, just does what they think of that day when they wake up. But you live a very deliberate life. And I wanted to talk about that.

Yeah, well, that sort of stereotypical portrait of an artist kind of thing. I mean, I guess it's been there. It's been around for a long time because, you know, that's what I always remember hearing about anybody in any sort of artistic field was that was the thing, especially musicians, you know, this kind of like flaky thing. And so I, whatever, that's part of my personality is the things that line up with being that artistic kind of personality or having those sensibilities. But then there's another part of me that's almost binary. It's like if you were to meet my mom and my dad, you would probably say,

how did those two people ever get together? And they got divorced when I was two. So my dad is like a tone deaf, like career long banker, very super organized. My mom is more of just like a free spirit, artistic kind of like, so both of those things are represented in my mind in some way. And I think from a very young age, I just, well, yeah, from a very young age I was interested in in pursuing things that would you might define as artistic I mean I wanted to be a movie director for years I was into magic for some time you know when I got into music I got in you know hardcore and then um but I but I recognized like wow if I want to do this for real there's a whole other set of skills that are going to have to come into play. And I'm going to have to be super diligent about that

because you look around and sort of the landscape is littered with people who you say, oh, that guy is so talented, but never got X, Y, or Z, or that this didn't happen to so-and-so or whatever. You know, it's like talent. I guess I recognized from a young age, the talent or whatever that means was certainly not going to be enough for me to sustain anything. Yeah. A friend of the show and listener, Rob Corddry, is another guy in Hollywood who does acting and producing. And he said the same thing to me. It's like, you've got to have your act together if you're going to make it. Because there's so many people that are talented. There's another level to this.

And I think the people that pay attention to that usually get a leg up. Yeah. I mean, I just could, you know, like, I mean, there's so many different ways I could go into this. But broadly speaking, especially after I recognized that this was a book, sort of a path I wanted to pursue as a career, I just knew like, well, I can't rely, I won't be able to handle relying on like, well, if on a life that has to, that revolves around the phone ringing, you know, as somebody calling me, like, I've always been sort of searching for ways to control as much as I could control knowing I can't control at all. But what are the things that I can control? And how can I control them to the best of my ability to sort of leave myself available for the right opportunities as time goes by? I was just gonna say, did you then kind of like fall into this path of pursuing productivity? And maybe productivity is the wrong term there.

But you mentioned like you had to figure out a way to make this thing sustainable. Was there a defining moment where you realized the way that you were working wasn't working and it was a drastic change? Or were you kind of just constantly looking for ways to do things a little bit better? I think it's more, you know,

yeah, that's a great question. I think it's gradual. I think it's always been like, okay, if I rewind way back, even before I started playing the saxophone, the last thing that I was interested in, deeply interested in before really diving in on the saxophone was, was filmmaking. I mean, I thought I wanted to be, I was talking about this with David earlier about the mutual affinity for like, we were talking about E.T. and John Williams and Steven Spielberg. I wanted to be a Steven Spielberg. That's what I thought I was going to do. When I was 12, I was going to go to USC. I was taking books out of the library on Steven Spielberg. I was going

to be a filmmaker. And I used all my money that I made mowing lawns and various things to buy primitive video making technology, an extra VCR to edit with, things like that. So I was making a home movie starring my younger brother and my neighbors. And all of the credits would roll and they would say written by Bob Reynolds, directed by Bob Reynolds, produced by, like every credit was almost me except for whatever the other acting credits were and music. Those were the two things I couldn't do myself. And so that's the first time I remember, um, like I still have full, I still have a whole section on my bookshelf of folders and labels I made back then. And like time sheets I was making for my brother and like ridiculous levels of like, yeah, detailed.

I was sort of like fast and I was as fascinated by like the sort of, this is going to sound super lame. Well, maybe not on this podcast, but like the, the, the stationary of organization, like I was, I loved walking into an office and just seeing staplers and folders and things like neatly organized. And it just felt like, wow, this, these are the tools of people who get stuff done. You know, long before I knew about books about any of it, it was like somehow that was built in. So when I started playing the saxophone and moving on into other directions, like I guess

the, the genesis of wanting to get the most out of my time has always been there. And so over time, just trying myself and then discovering a book here, a book there. When I got to college, it was where I really remember it being magnified, especially... I thought when I got to music college, I went to Berkeley College of Music in Boston. And before that, I was in a performing arts high school in Jacksonville, Florida. And I thought, wow, when I graduate from high school and go to college, it's going to be great because I'll just get to practice the saxophone and playing jazz all the time. I couldn't have been more wrong. Even though I was going to a specialized school,

there were now so many classes I had to take that I wasn't expecting. Like, oh, you got to take traditional harmony and counterpoint one and two and ear training three. And you got to, you know, this ensemble and, oh, you still have English classes. And there were just so many things. And that was the first place I remember going, wow, if I don't come up with some way of managing myself throughout the day and where I'm spending my time, like I don't come up with some way of managing myself throughout the day and where I'm spending my time, like I won't be able to do this, to handle all this, or certainly to focus on the things I wanted to focus on. And when I met my now wife, but then girlfriend, that changed things even more radically where I was like, all right, I still have to do everything that I need to do, but I want to make as much free time available as possible to just hang with her.

How do I do that? And that's where I would say my first kind of time management journals show up in my life where I was really being deliberate about like, okay, here's the map of how my day is going to look. Like, okay, here's the map of how my day is going to look. And the whole agenda was just so that I could get through the day and have like, you know, free hours to spend with her. And that was in college. That was college. Yeah.

But see, there's not many people that bring intentionality like that so early. I certainly didn't. I'm aware of that. I've totally seen that play out, you know, and that more often than not, that is not the case. I've seen, I've had lots of friends, um, really super talented musicians who, you know, it either took them a long time or frankly, they're still not, uh, getting it together in that department, you know, in all the sort of, um, in the, in the details of all these other things that have to come into play to sort of put a career together. So I know that's not normal. And yeah, I've always been,

I guess, you know, left of center in that regard. And I remember being in New York, like I moved to, we moved to New York after college. And I don't remember what year it was. It was fairly early on. Somewhere I discovered David Allen's Getting Things Done book. And I was just, oh my God, I was like, this is amazing. And I have notebooks from back then where I was, yeah, I was trying to do, I mean, I was deep into that methodology for a little while or trying to be anyway. So in thinking about this, it's like it goes back pretty far. In high school, even with my practicing, I have, in fact, David, you might get, or both of you guys, Mike, you'll get a kick out of this.

I'll send you a link to a blog post I wrote several years ago, but it's like how my journal from 20 years ago led to me performing with Joshua Redman. So Joshua Redman is a famous jazz saxophonist and one of my personal heroes. Just to interrupt real quick, my daughter the other night was listening to Beyonce and she's like, Dad, who's your Beyonce? And I said, Joshua Redman. That's great. That's great. And she's like, I have no idea who that is. I'm like, that's okay, but I do.

Yeah. So yeah, he was like one of my very big, first biggest, like, you know, just musical heroes. really detailed musical journal through high school that broke up my goals into 10-year goals, five-year goals, one-year goals, three-month goals, one-month goals, and one-week goals. And yeah, I still have that journal. And it's funny because one of the things in the big picture part in the front was like perform with Joshua Redman by X date or something. And years later, that happened. And I had to kind of look back and go, wow, this is kind of crazy, you know. And I wrote this blog post just basically about the power I had found in this goal diary. And even as I look

back at it, it doesn't mean I, of course, I didn't reach every goal. And even the smaller ones, it's not like I did everything I wrote down that I was going to do. But you mentioned the word intentionality. And I think that's sort of, you know, right there is a prime example of that sort of intentionality, at least being a strong guiding force to keeping me on a path towards something that I really wanted to, you know, accomplish. It's fascinating to me, though, someone in high school would have that foresight to sit down and make a gold journal. I mean, how did you stumble on that? Well, yeah, it wasn't my, you know, like most things. I mean, I got it from somewhere. I didn't

just come up with that and decide to do it. Not that I was, you know, like I'd never heard of having a journal or something. But I wasn't, I wasn't a kid who was journaling every night. You know, it wasn't like I was doing that, but I went to a music camp. I think when I was, I don't know, maybe 16, summer of being 16. And it was probably the first, after the first full year of getting really deep down the rabbit hole of playing jazz saxophone. It was after my sophomore year in high school. That's what it was. I went to a Jamie Abersold summer camp. And it was around that, in that year, somewhere in there was where I kind of just decided, even if it was quietly in my own head, like, this is what I'm going to do,

and I'm going to burn all the bridges. And this will sound crazy to everybody else, you're going to what you're going to be a jazz tenor saxophone player, like you can't do that. And that's what I was told over and over and over, you know, have a backup plan, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, but during that time, I made that decision. So I went to this camp and an instructor there gave a masterclass and a guy by the name of Jim Snediro, a really fantastic alto player from New York. He mentioned the gold. He was the one who said like, you should get one of those marble composition books. And here's what you do. Write down everything I just listed to you. That was his idea. Get your 10, you know, write down your 10, five year, blah, blah, blah, blah. The difference I suspect is that I might be the only one who actually took him up on that advice

and followed through with it is probably my guess. You had said, you know, about burning your bridges and being a, well, you're not just jazz, you play a lot of genres now, but even just thinking about it, I mean, we live in an era where being a musician is making you an endangered species anyway. Sure, sure. Digital music is taking over. And here's a guy playing a traditional horn. Yeah. And even in a city like LA, which is, you've got studio work and things going on,

city like LA, which is, you know, you've got studio work and things going on. There has to be very limited work out there and yet you're managing. And it just constantly impresses me how you're using all these tools to, you know, to support your family and do what you love. Yeah. Well, thank you. I'm really fortunate that a lot of the tool, there's a lot of tools that exist now that frankly didn't exist. Um, not only when I was younger, but not, but certainly not when I was in college studying to be a professional musician. And even not after, after that, when I was living in New York, um, as a quote unquote professional or striving to be. Uh, so there's a lot of things that are, that exist now that just, they didn't before. Like, I guess what I mean is it would have been impossible for me to forecast the

things that I do now in the way that I do them. Even like, you know, especially like 15 years ago, maybe even, but not 10 years ago, because 10 years ago I started doing some of this stuff, but you know, like 15, 20 years ago when I was like, I'm going to do this for a career, I had no idea what that meant, or what shape that would take. I just knew I was going to do it like, and that's that. And there would be no, there would be no backup plan. You know, I remember I played in a big band, full of grown men when I was a teenager, It was like a, it was called the Beaches Preservation Swing Band. And it was all guys who had, you know, they were chiropractors and lawyers and doctors and, and they had played music in college. Some of them had even put themselves through college playing in big bands, if that tells you how, you know, what generation they were from.

And they were like, kid, you know, so what are you going to really do? What are you going to go to school for? I'm like, oh, I'm going to do this. And like, yeah, you know, so what are you going to really do? What are you going to go to school for? I'm like, oh, I'm going to do this. I'm like, yeah, you can't do that. You know, you got to have something to fall back on. My take was always like, if you have a backup plan, you'll use it. Um, you know, so if there's anything to fall back on, you will, uh, or you certainly won't give the same level, uh, how to describe this. I mean, you certainly won't do certain,

you won't do things that you might need to do, um, for that, that primary objective. If you know, there's something kind of that you can go back, that you can retreat to, you know? So yeah. Retreat is easy when you leave a way back. Yeah, that's right. That's right. So, uh, I, I just knew like, I just, there was just something I was like, nope, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I have no idea how this is going to work. I have, I certainly had a variety of blueprints that I was hoping to follow. I was like, oh, I want to do what Joshua Redman did. And oh, I want to do what Chris Potter did.

Oh, I want to do what this person or the other did. And they provided wonderful kind of incentives and sort of directions to head in. But of course, you can't follow anybody else's blueprint. You're going to end up having your own. And that took me a long time to realize. But that process of chasing those things down, I feel like that's what at least in part led me to where I am now. things down, you know, kind of, I feel like that's what at least in part led me to where I am now. Yeah. I want to, I want to unpack this a little bit because I agree with you. And it's also interesting because this show used to be called free agents. And I know David, we were hesitant to tell people, go ahead and burn the boats because you don't want to tell

people, yeah, go ahead, chase your dream. You know, because there's a lot of different variables that you do have to figure out. You're never going to know exactly what this is going to look like, but I really believe this is a powerful idea. I'm glad that you're speaking to this. I actually am creating a video course. One of the lessons in there is burn the boats. Kind of the story behind that is how Cortez, he's trying to take over, he's trying to take over the Aztecs, you know, and it looks like impossible odds. So he has a commander burn the boat so they don't have a way back, you know, and then end up winning. And I think there's a lot to that. So I guess number one, it's awesome that you did that. But I'm also kind of curious how you maintain that attitude going forward.

Or do you get to the point where, okay, now I've made it, now I can relax? No, definitely not. I was just talking about that to my mom recently. Like, at what point does one feel that they've made it and can relax? I don't think I'll ever get there. I think if there's one overarching theme of this show is you never really make it. Yeah. I mean, yeah, exactly. Because you're constantly moving the finish line.

And so, you know, that's good. I'm glad I don't, I would never see myself as somebody who wants to just kind of stagnate or just like, oh, there it is, I'm going to take my foot off the gas. But it can be frustrating sometimes because I, and like I've mentioned, you know, I've been at various times in my life, I've been more a journaler than other times, but I've found that to be a really important tool. You know, just nothing fancy, but just the process of like writing about where my head was at at any given time. So now I have these things to look back on and it's like, it's really interesting to see, okay, wow. I, at some point in time, I thought if I could, if I could just achieve X or Y, that would be

that. And, and now I've, I've done a lot of those things by, by no means have I done all of them. But, but I still feel the same level of like hunger that I did back in high school. Like, okay. I mean, I constantly feel like I'm not getting enough done. There's just more things I want to do and need to do than I have time for. And it's my nature to sort of focus on what I haven't done rather than what I have. And I'm trying to make some adjustments in that department just for my own sanity and the sanity of my family to be more balanced about that. Um, but that by the same token, that's part of what's led me here to figuring out this path because it is sort of so mysterious and there's so many components to it. And, uh, what you were mentioning, Mike, about the boat

burning. I mean, I just think it plays into our natural survival instinct. You know, that's really, there's just things along the way that's like if you have to do something, you'll figure out a way to do it. And if you don't have to, we'll sort of fall prey to the line of least resistance, you know. This episode of Focused is brought to you by FreshBooks, online invoicing made easy. line of least resistance, you know? By simplifying tasks like invoicing, tracking expenses, and getting paid online, FreshBooks has drastically reduced the time it takes for over 10 million people to deal with their paperwork. I'm one of those 10 million. I use FreshBooks to do my invoicing, and I've been super happy with it. The new notification center is like your personal assistant. You'll always know what's changed in your business since you last logged in and what needs to be dealt with.

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to put on. It was just crazy. With FreshBooks, all of that goes away. If you're listening to this and not using FreshBooks yet, now is the time to try. FreshBooks is offering an unrestricted 30-day free trial for listeners of this show. There's no credit card required. All you have to do is go to freshbooks.com slash focused and enter focused F-O-C-U-S-E-D in the how did you hear about us section. Stop wasting your time with billing, get a FreshBooks account today and start getting paid. We thank FreshBooks for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. Yeah, it's funny, an inflection point of my musical career,

because I used to be a decent saxophone player, probably never close to what you were at the time, but there was a discussion I had with Bud Shank, who was a saxophonist back in the day, who said, you should only do it if you can't imagine doing anything else. Yeah. And I went the opposite direction from you at that question. I realized, no, this isn't the only thing for me.

I mean, that's, I remember, yeah, you had mentioned that to me in an email and like, it's great advice, but he gave you great advice. It's not easy advice to hear. Somebody was just asking me at my show last night, a younger guy was asking if he's in college and he's struggling a little bit because he's starting to work more as a musician or he's working a lot more and not feeling schooled. Basically, he was asking me, should I quit school or not? I said, well, I can't answer that for you. Only you can answer that, I could give you a list of people who've gone in both directions, quit or not quit and had it work out or not work out in both directions. You have

plenty of people who finished music school and then never music then didn't end up being part of their career path at all because they couldn't make it work. And I have other people who, who quit school and, uh, it worked out great or vice versa. But, you know, that's going to be for you to decide. But I, in one of my videos, David, in one of those YouTube videos, I answered this more directly about this, should I go to Berkeley, meaning Berkeley College of Music? And what I said in there sort of just kind of came out, but I think it's really a strong thing to consider. I said, you know, Berklee, the music school, it's an amplifier, not a generator. So if you're already on a path to make it doing that, it will be a tremendous help to go through that system. But if you're like, I don't know what I want to do, maybe I'll do music. Do not waste your money going to Berkeley

because it's, that's not, that's not going to, you're not there. You need to already be at a certain place, in my opinion, for that, for a school situation like that to help. I mean, it's not the school to go to, to figure out what you want to do with your life kind of thing, you know? So that, back to what you were saying about the Bud Shank thing that I think that's absolutely the right advice for, especially for this. It's not even a career path. It's a, it's a calling. It's not a career. It's, it's ridiculous. Like I wouldn't advise anybody to, to try to do this. I wouldn't advise my younger self to do it. You have to, and that's the thing was like, you have to be, I think you have to be like, yep, that's fine. I'm going to do it anyway.

It's going to take that. If you don't have that kind of fire about it, I don't think you're going to be able to even have a shot. Yeah. And that's the thing. Like, like you said, there's probably a lot of people who are drawn to something like music and they ask that question, well, should I do this? But you're talking about it being like a one in a million type of a shot. The odds are stacked against you unless you've got that passion for it, which interestingly, there's a whole discussion and focus forum on passion from the last PU episode that you recorded, David, which kind of speaks to this. But I think this is something that regardless of the field or what the topic you're talking about is, everybody is going to have that moment where they do have to burn the boats, burn the bridges, and take a chance on the thing that they're uniquely gifted or wired to do. And there will always be an opportunity, whether it's music or not, finding the thing that really pushes all the buttons for you that you're really passionate about. You're willing to go through some stuff to see it come to pass versus taking the easy way out.

And I hesitate to use the term easy way out, but it's kind of what you talked about, Bob, the safe route. I can always go get a job in this field. And I would argue that if you have that approach and you don't have that point in your life at some point where you do have to make the tough decision and say, how much do I really care about this thing? And am I willing to put my neck out there? Then you really haven't reached your full potential yet. And I think it's also kind of cool, like you were talking about, you had this experience previously and David's kind of amazed you started with this in college. I wish I could go back to college and tell 18 year old me, hey, listen up, focus on this stuff and do these things because you're going to end up here anyways.

You may as well get a jump on it. But the cool thing about it, in my opinion, and I'm kind of curious what your thoughts are on this, is that it's never too late to start. If you've had this thing and you've got this pulling in this direction, it is going to be scary. And yeah, maybe it's easier on the surface anyways, when you're at 18, you don't have a family and five kids like I do, but I kind of find myself in the middle of this thing right now anyways. So eventually there is going to be that point of no return that you just have to stare the monster down. Yeah. I mean, you're absolutely right. It's easy. Well, I don't know about easier, but it's the timing is different. If you're 18, that's a different thing than if you're married and have multiple children to to you know to tell somebody oh just you know burn all the all the boats and go just follow your heart kind of thing like those are different levels of scary you know um

i i read this great article recently um i'll have to i'll dig it up and send it to you guys but it was uh it was something it was like called, the title was like, you probably know to ask yourself, what do I want? But here's a better question. And the guy goes on to talk about, you know, everybody, everybody focuses on like, what do you want? Or what are you passionate about? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But he's, he's basically arguing that what you need to find is what you're okay. How does he phrase it? Like, what are you okay with that sucks? Like you have to find, because everything has a, it's not necessarily a downside, but like he makes the example that he thought for a long time, he wanted to be a guitarist in a rock band. And it wasn't until

many, many years later, cause he was always like, oh, I'm going to save up and get this great guitar. And when I do that, then I'm going to practice, you know, and it's like, oh, when I and then I'm going to find a band and then I'm going to practice. It was always like then I'm going to what he was in love with was the idea of being on stage, you know, playing air guitar, rocking out to people. He was in love with that. He was not in love with the process that potentially could, but also could not lead to that. And when he got into school or something later, he realized, oh, actually, I'm not interested in all of the things that it takes to get there. I'm just interested in that result. It's a very different thing.

Yeah. Okay. So I have to call this out because this is a big thing in the productivity space is people think that if I get the right tool, the right shiny object, task manager, whatever, that all of a sudden I'm going to be able to do all the things. And as a musician, I've been in the exact position you described because I play guitar and I sing on the worship team at my church, but I'm definitely not at the level of musicianship of probably either of you. Okay. But I've been in that place where it's like, oh, I should get this really good guitar because then I'll practice more and I'll get really good. Never happens. No, it's just not true.

It's never the, you know, that's never going to do it. And that's, especially as a, you know, as somebody who's now become a teacher, and even though that wasn't something I thought I was going to be, It's turned out to be that it's turned out that, uh, that's somewhere that I'm, I'm gifted that I didn't realize and wasn't aiming towards. Um, but in the process of all the teaching I've done over the last 10 years, uh, that shiny objects syndrome, the tools, the gear thing, it's always like the top question. So when I do masterclasses and clinics now, the first thing I always do is, um, I tell always like the top question. So when I do master classes and clinics now, the first thing I always do is I tell everybody what the saxophone is, what the mouthpiece is,

what the ligature and all the little pieces so that they're not holding their breath waiting to ask that question because they are. Whether they know it or not, everybody wants to know that. And you probably have to explain that no fancy mouthpiece is going to make them play like Charlie Parker. Exactly. Every time. And, you know, I go through this whole demonstration of stuff, but it's very true. It's not, I mean, it's, it's human nature. I think, you know, if I, if I just tomorrow decided like, I'm going to go, you know, really into, I'm going to go into skiing, you know, you're going to want to know what, okay, well, what are the, what are the right tools? What are, what is the best person who does this have? You know, it's just, it's fascination, but those aren't the things that are going to actually make you good at the thing. You know,

it's the doing of the thing is what makes you good at the thing. So, um, yeah, I I've played the same saxophone since I was 17 years old. I've played the same mouthpiece since I was like 20. Um, you know, so I don't really mess around with gear because that's wasting time that I could be putting towards just trying to get, you know, better at this, at this thing, um, or things, uh, you know, I, I, the stuff that I do, you know, just talk, speaking to that idea of like being in love with the result, not the process. So like the things that I practice, if you could have been in here with me yesterday for the two hours when I was warming up for the concert I played last night. So in the morning I had two hours to practice. You would have thought that I was in beginning band.

That's how basic the stuff that I do on a daily basis is in terms of practicing. Now, it's advanced in a certain way because of what I now know and what I'm able to do. But the way I approach it, you would be probably bored to tears. There's nothing sexy or exciting about it. And that is exactly why I do it that way, because I want to be available and have all of my skills and tools at my disposable on stage in the moment for the music that I play. It's, you know, it's very, it's very spontaneous and improvised. That doesn't mean it's all made up. You know, a lot of times people think, oh, you're just making it all up as you go along. No, there's an incredible amount of structure, but within all that structure and

limitations comes a tremendous amount of freedom. And I just want to always have my tools sharp and ready to, to make the most of that freedom and of those moments. And if I, if I don't do all the sort of diligent work that I do in the practice room, then, um, then I can't be available to that stuff. And oftentimes you have people who are, they're so interested in like practicing their licks, you know, they just want to get these licks together and like these fancy flashy things, but I'm not interested in that stuff. If anything, I'm interested in the blueprints underneath those things or the architecture underneath those things. I just want to be like, I want to feel like my main tool for expression here is a saxophone. So if I'm doing my job right, that instrument disappears when I'm on stage. I don't feel it. It's not an impediment between the moment and my reaction to that moment and my ability to express that reaction musically and in that moment.

Yeah, deliberate practice. There's so much to unpack in what you just talked about, but one of the things that really stands out to me is the fact, you didn't say it exactly this way, but really you were talking about how the constraints provide the freedom when you're on stage. And I think that that has so many parallels to productivity as well. I think it's why there's such an emphasis on analog tools right now. And I use analog tools. I like them. But I think a lot of the draw for analog tools for people who haven't been using them for a long time is the fact that I have constraints now.

So all I have in front of me is the paper and my ideas. So shocking, you know, when you cut out all the other extra noise that the ideas rise to the top. Yeah. And because, so I'm somebody who grew up with, you know, I grew up in that era too, like before the internet and all this stuff. So I only had analog tools. So when, but I was also of this age, you know, the, the, the internet and everything was, was really starting to develop as I was leaving college. Like I entered college without a computer or an email address and I left college and I had, I just got my first cell phone like at all. And so when I was living in New York and this stuff started to really bloom, I was going bananas. I had taught myself HTML and was building little websites and

the internet became like, it's this library that's always open and it's always there. And for somebody who's interested in learning, it can be a huge, a positive or negative distraction. There's always, you can always open another tab. And if I just search for one more thing, that golden answer for what I'm searching for might just be right around the corner. You know, that one more, I just need to, maybe it's a different type of to-do list. Somebody's got to be doing this better than I am. Let me find what that is. Meanwhile, you just spent two and a half hours searching for stuff and you could have spent those two and a half hours getting the darn things done. You're trying to figure out a better way to write a list of those things you need to get done. I think there's an interesting contrast there earlier when you were talking about results versus the process. You were talking about in relation to your music,

you are all process. It's all process for you. I mean, you get your joy out of the process. I mean, I'm sure you must because you do so much of it. And the result flows from that. Whereas when you're looking for, you know, hacky productivity things, you're just looking for a result. You're not looking for the process, which the, you know, the process is to actually get to work. I know where you're going. I think I know where you're going with this. You're right. You're right. On the surface, it almost seems like those two statements are at odds, except that I do the ultimate result is that one on stage. That's the thing. But I know that in order to get that, I have to do, um, I have to do these other things in order to be available for that.

So for me, they're kind of, they're kind of tied together. It's just happens a little bit in slow motion. Yeah. And I'm'm not it's a little bit different than you know i'm not looking necessarily for a new way you know when i'm on the internet looking up anything i'm always looking for new or better you know um is there you know something i'm searching for to kind of do something better but when the the saxophone, it's like, it's more drudgery, like the things I'm about to do, I know what I'm going to do. They're well-trodden paths. It doesn't mean I ever, I don't change things up, but the process is, I guess I'm more about the how than the what when it comes to like practicing. I'm very big on like how I practice is more important than what I practice. And so that's where I'm focused in that

department. And I would argue that that translates, that that's not just something that saxophonists need to understand, that no matter what you're trying to accomplish, if you are going to burn your bridges and you're not focused on process, you're heading into trouble. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's true. I want to clarify that a little bit because I think the process is what gets you to the point where you can confidently say, yes, I'm going to burn this bridge. I think maybe the reason why people hesitate to do that sort of thing and make the leap, so to speak, is that they're not at the point where they can even see the other side yet. So at that point, leaping is scary and you should leap a way back. But at some point, you

know, when it's possible, Jocelyn K. Glyde was on the last episode and she kind of, in her course, she talks about how the point where you should leap, and she didn't put it that way, but basically when you ask yourself, am I ready? And the answer is almost, that's when you're ready. You never really get to the point where you're 100% confident that, okay, yeah, this is the thing that's going to work. So you are going to have to burn the boats at some point to get there. But when you're just beginning the journey, isn't the time to do that. Yeah, that's a great point. Just to kind of expand on that, I'm always, anything I put out, whether it's something I wrote for a blog post, a video that

goes on YouTube, an album, a new song, anything that I make, I'm nervous and scared about before I put it out. Every time. I have no confidence in that department. In fact, there's an album I put it about out every time. There's no, I have no confidence in that department. In fact, um, there's an album I put out two years ago that I sat on for 10 years. And there's a song on that album. The album is called hindsight. There's a song in particular on that album that I was so, um, uh, like it's, it's hard to say, like, I was proud of it when I recorded it, but I was, I was shy about it. I was like, Oh, I don't of it when I recorded it, but I was, I was shy about it. I was like, oh, I don't know if anybody else is going to like this for a long time. And that song has had, I don't know if it is now, but at least for months and months for probably at least a year, if you went and searched my name and Spotify, that song in particular was the number

one most popular song of my entire catalog, the very song that I was afraid of. So when it comes to putting stuff out, like I'm never ready. So that almost thing is absolutely true. You're never ready. You have to sort of leap beforehand. The caveat there that can be, I think could get some people in trouble is that you have to understand also that I'm saying that as somebody who has a body of work to back up, like there's a very good chance that it's going to be good and I just need to get out of my own way, you know? But I didn't just start this last week. Yeah, the process got you to that point where you do have the skills where you can be confident if you wanted to, even though it's hard to, that the thing is good. Right. So it's always scary, but I didn't just, yeah, it's been a, it's been a long and

gradual thing. So like when I was in high school and deciding, oh, I'm going to do this for a career, it didn't mean that like my next gig was some like major, you know, thing that if I failed at, it was all, all was going to be lost. No, it was like a long, steady drip of, you know, and all the, all sorts of experiences that led me to like, oh, I can do this, you know? So that, that is what first step to building your online identity. And with Hover, you can find the domain that shows the world who you are and what you're passionate about.

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off of any domain extensions for your first year. Go to hover.com slash focused right now. That's hover.com slash F-O-C-U-S-E-D. It's time to get your portfolio website up and running. Thank you to Hover for their support of Focused and all of RelayFM. And I also think like you're talking, we're talking to you and you, David read your credentials at the beginning. Like people see the end of the thing and they compare it to where they are and they say, I can never get to that point. But what people don't realize, and I'm sure you would say this as well, that success is never the straight line that people envision.

It's all over the place. And I want to go back to something you said that impacted me when you said it. Teaching is something I'm gifted at that I wasn't aiming towards. And I think this is really important. And maybe this is where journaling provides a lot of value. Because if you just have your head down, focused, I want to get to this point and you never look around for what's happening during the journey, during the process, you will miss the things that are really the thing in my opinion. And that's just from my own personal experience. Like I never, I was terrified

initially of the idea of recording a podcast like this, especially interviews. I never wanted to do interviews because I can't think on my feet like that. That's scary. I want to have it all scripted out, you know, but as I took one step at a time down the journey, I find myself doing this thing now where this is really rewarding to me, but I never would have got there if I just went from A to Z. During the process, though, I found something that led to something that led to something that ended up being podcasting and ultimately public speaking, which is something that, you know, most people are terrified of. And I was just like that when I started. And I'm curious, like, what did the path look like for you? And maybe that you have some other examples of things that are kind of like

derivatives of what you thought you were going to do that actually are very rewarding for you now. that actually are very rewarding for you now? Well, yes, it's a very, my path anyway, has been very squiggly. I mean, I've always had, I've always held things out in, you know, like, I really know, I think I know where I want to go. But in the process of trying to get to those places, I feel like, you know, there've been so many twists and turns. It's good to have a North star that I've been aiming at at least in some way. But, uh, but then at a certain point it was a matter of going, Oh wow,

actually I never would have thought about this, but I'm really good at this. And it also seems to help people. So, um, I get the, the idea of like, of getting there and being open to those possibilities. It's been, it's been a long time for me because I was super frustrated for many years that how come the, how come the phone's ringing for this guy? This guy's getting all of the calls to be a side man with, you know, these musicians I wish I were playing with, et cetera. So it sort of goes back to my, what I said earlier about like, I kind of felt from an early time that I was going to be one. I mean, I believed in myself. I thought I've got something here and I'm talented, whatever.

But from an early age, I thought I'm going to probably be the guy who needs to make the phone ring or needs to call other people. Like the phone's not going to ring for me in the same way, needs to call other people. Like the phone's not going to ring for me in the same way it seems to be for others. Does that make sense? Yeah. So there was some element of trying to design that I was going to have to design that. I just didn't know what it was going to be. I forget who said the, said this exactly, but I, I heard it again recently, like you will, you will end up using everything you ever learned in life, you know, like all the different things. And for me, that has totally been the case,

like so many things that did not seem to tie into my end goal now are what have allowed me to get here. And I'll try to be briefly just explain what i'm talking about um let's see one of the first ones um out of college i like or right at the end of college i i bought my first i bought my website my domain name and it came with a free like website hosting like you know when you bought the domain they gave you a site and it was a black page with these big sort of bad 3D gold buttons that said like, click here, whatever. It was the most atrocious looking website you could ever imagine. And so when I saw that, I thought, this is terrible. I can do better. But I don't know anything about building a website. So I went to the store and I bought a book called Teach Yourself

HTML. And I started to learn it. And as soon as I started to learn it, like the first time that I figured out the basic code and refreshed the browser, and it said like, hello world, I got this rush of excitement. And it was a rush I'd felt in other places. I felt it musically. I'd felt it when I was trying to make those early films I was talking about. It was a creative rush, like, whoa, I just did something and then that caused this result. And so I kept going with that and I made the website better. I just got fascinated by building websites. And then I learned CSS, which is another sort of, I guess you wouldn't call it a programming language, but a design language. And it was just buying books, teaching myself stuff. Then I was in a band and the band needed a better website.

And I was like, well, I could do that. So I made a website for that band. And then somebody saw that website. And then before you knew it, I didn't intend to be a web designer, but I was making websites for myself and like four or five other musicians. And so it wasn't a thing that I thought I'm going to stop being a musician and I'm going to start a career in web design. It's just that at that time in New York, I was looking for any and every way to support myself to stay in New York. So I played wedding gigs. I had a part-time job working for

Red Bull Energy Drink. I did temp work for a time. I was, you know, playing sessions that paid no money. And so if I could do a website for somebody and make a thousand dollars, to me, that was huge. But it was a side skill. I wouldn't have considered it. Well, I did actually consider it a distraction. There were a lot of times where I thought, gosh, if I were just spending this time on the saxophone, think of how much better a saxophone player I would be. So let's fast forward a little bit. I mean, later, I was doing some film scoring work, that's much too large a word for it. I was writing some music for like some small student films. That was something I wanted to do. And I had to teach myself music software in a way that I didn't

know yet at that point, you know, like early versions of logic and pro tools. And so guess what I did, I went to the Barnes and Noble, and I started getting books on that. This is sort of before even YouTube could provide all these things. And then later YouTube, I taught myself how to use so many music programs by watching YouTube videos. And then there was a time when I invested in some real estate early on because I was like, I want to follow this path. And coming from Florida, I thought I might be able to save enough money to get a small property. And I did, and I had all these books on that. And then I was going down, I was living in New York, but I was going down to Florida and I was, you know, putting in sweat equity to kind of refurbish some small little place, which then I rented out to some college students. And I thought,

well, that can help me set up, you know, kind of even out my income or help me get to a place where I can make my own records. I was just always looking for all these things to put together. And, and then later on, I'm trying to remember, it was probably after I was doing some big tours and whatnot, but I, I got into, I was really interested in what was going on in the stock market. And I thought I had invested a little bit of money and lost that money. And then I did it again and lost that. And I thought somebody, somebody knows somebody's taking my money. Somebody knows something I don't. So I ended up training with a hedge fund in Manhattan and learning how to trade. Um, and the reason I mentioned that the, the most interesting thing

about that was during that time I moved from New York to California so I had to finish my training with them online and the way we did that was through a web portal that was like they were teaching through the website I had to log into so I had this whole education through that and during that same time people were asking me for lessons like hey I'm going to be in New York. Can I get a private lesson? And I would say, I'm not in New York. And the guys would say, well, can we do it over Skype? And eventually I said, okay, we can do it over Skype. But that stunk because the audio quality was bad. And anyway, one of those students eventually said, you know, we had a lesson. Everything you said went over my head, but I recorded the screen and

I've watched that video like six or eight times and it really has sunk in. You should just record videos of this stuff. And because I had gone through that training that I was just talking about online, I had this new model in my head for something that was possible that I never would have thought of otherwise. So where I'm getting here is that eventually you, when you start to draw these, push these circles together to make some sort of like monster Venn diagram, you have like, I'm really good at as a saxophone player, but I'm also kind of, I know how to build websites. I, uh, I've done a bunch of teaching

and people seem to, you know, really get a benefit from that. Um, I used to make movies and I know how to do that stuff. I used to act, act as a kid, like, so I'm okay being in front of camera. And just like you start pushing all these things together that I never would have planned on in a million years. And somewhere in the middle of that is like this special little niche that like I'm perfectly tailored for. That's awesome. That's great advice. I like that a lot. I mean, it's's yeah it's not i don't know that it's advice because like how do you replicate that other than you know the i guess the takeaway for me there there's again this is not my idea somebody i probably heard it on like a tim ferris podcast or who was the guy it's a cartoonist who said this um it's either the guy who makes

dilbert is that scott adams i think it's him i probably probably saw it on like a Seth Godin blog or something was like, you know, it's really hard to be the best, like in the world at one thing. But if you can be like in the top 25% of three things, then you're end up being the best at your own personal thing that nobody else could do. Yeah, exactly. And if in the more you niche down into this is the specific thing that I do, and it's not just I'm a musician, but I'm this type of musician who does this sort of thing and teaches lessons on the internet. The more specific you can get, the more likely you are to be in that top 25%. I think that's where the value from this kind of thing is, is not just to say generally broad strokes, I want to be a writer, or I want to be a musician, but recognizing the different circles you have available and combining them in a way where you

can find the thing that, yeah, that's the thing for me. Yeah. And I feel like there's a couple pieces to that. I mean, first, you have to have the awareness of what your circles are. I think a lot of people don't stop to think about it. I mean, sit down and think about what your talents are. And then the other piece is, I think you have to have the inherent curiosity to want to do something with them. I mean, it wasn't a given, despite the fact that Bob wanted to be Steven Spielberg

and that he had web development and that he's an amazing saxophonist. Despite the fact that all those puzzle pieces are on the table doesn't mean they get put together the way Bob put them together. Yeah, and you probably put them together one way, and it was wrong, and you failed. And then you're like, well, back to the drawing board. Yes, yeah, absolutely. And I get, you know, back to the sort of journaling idea, which is just, as I'm hearing myself say it out loud, I need to get that going again. It's been tremendously helpful, that kind of self-awareness, just kind of trying to

figure it out, constantly trying to figure it out. I guess it's always having this sense of it's able to be figured out. I just have to put the pieces together in the right order. And, um, it's, it, it took so long, um, to, to do that. And, and what I realized now is, is it's, it's, it is a little bit weird because we're talking about all this, like being focused. Um, and yet if there, if there weren't some of these, um, other alternate paths or side roads that I went down, you know, I wouldn't have arrived here. So it is interesting, you know, and I don't know kind of how to speak to that exactly. Other than I think at some level, there was a commonality

in all the things that I did well, there was an underlying enjoyment of, and it was a curiosity of, and a fascination with the process and want it just like wanting to get better at doing these things. And, and that, that's the core. So when I'm as a teacher, like, I don't think of myself as a teacher. I just think of myself as a sharer. And what I mean by that is like, I don't know what the right way to do something is. I just know the way that I've figured out for me. And if I can deconstruct that process for others and help them and help reconstruct it in a way that's kind of thoughtful and like more, you know, easier to digest or to understand. And then that helps them like, okay, if you want to call that being a teacher, fine. But like, I never said, I didn't want to be a teacher in the way that you go to school and study pedagogy and, you know, the dogmatic steps for this, that,

and the other. I just, I just enjoy like deconstructing stuff and sharing it. And that's how I learn everything is like deconstructive learning. I work backwards. Yeah. If I, if I could, I want to just chime in with a thought regarding the different doors that are available to you. And you mentioned, like, I'm not sure how focus maybe applies to this. I'll just throw it out there that maybe focus is the ability to close a door and say, I'm not going to keep all of the options open and I'm going to let this thing go and say no to this thing so that I can say yes to something that's better. And that's a constant process. You don't do it once and then, okay, now I'm focused and I can go hard on this thing. There's always going to be things that are going

to be in your periphery and you, that's a balance. It's, it's tough sometimes to figure out, well, what is the next step on the journey versus something that's just a complete distraction and a waste of my time. Oh, totally. I would, I would add to that, that focus, um, as you're belittling yourself, Bob, focus is exactly what gives you the ability to wake up at 5 a.m. and practice, to make it to the gig, to get the YouTube produced and released. You are choosing lanes here, and you are sticking to them at the same time. I mean, it's a combination, I think, of interest in what's out there and what you can put together,

but also once you commit to something, putting it down. Right, right. That's true. No, that's very true. I mean, yeah, my biggest struggle of late is just that I really can't do as many things as I want to do, especially with having two young kids who it's extremely important to me to be there as much as I can be with them. And given that I'm on the road a lot of the time, anyway, it makes the time I'm at home with them even more important in that regard. So like, how do you fit everything

in? And I'm every day is like, what do I borrow from sleep? Do I borrow from family? Where do I borrow from? Because there's just not enough time to do everything the way I think I should. Although I was telling this to my, my wife, like the other day, like, you know, I made a list. I had a day, a couple of days ago where I just like, God, I didn't get anything done today. And then that night I, I was like, I'm just going to write down one or two things I did. And it, the list kept going. And I realized, oh, actually I did a lot more than I somehow thought during the day. And it was helpful to kind of see that on paper. Um, you know, there's just, it's just more things that I'd like to do in, in certainly in a day than I can. And, and so all these tools, all these

sticky notes, all these, you know, calendars or any of these various things, the timer me, you know, I use the, I just yesterday used the Pomodoro technique. I still think that's one of my favorite I just yesterday used the Pomodoro technique. I still think that's one of my favorite possible things using a 25 minute timer because I, I was like, I don't have, I know I need to practice. I know I need to warm up in a certain way. I also need to edit these videos and I need,

I have a ton of emails I have to respond to. And there's all these things I need to do. If I don't do the practicing part, I know I will get to the gig and I will have a lot of self loathing because I didnhing because I didn't do what the most important thing was, was for me to be ready for that. So I need to get that done first. So I did. And it meant that other things didn't get done yesterday, but that was the right choice. And to help me make that choice and stick to it, I set the timer for 25 minutes because I know how that works for me. It's manageable. It's, I can stop thinking about everything else. And I know the timer is going to take care of me.

It's going to tell me when that time went up and I can focus on one single thing. So for me, in this case, I mean, this is super detailed, but, um, you know, I, as a saxophone player, like I spent 25 minutes doing a couple different variations of what we call long tones, just things where you're playing long notes to try to just center and adjust your tone. And then the timer went off. And so I went from being like, I don't have enough time today to, are you kidding me? 25 minutes just went by. I'm just getting warmed up. Let me do another 25. And before you knew it, I got two hours of practice in because of that 25 minute timer. And I felt great. And then I got as much done as I could in the rest of the day.

And you move on. A couple things there. First of all, there is nothing more fun than talking to somebody who has just discovered the Pomodoro technique. They feel like they have captured magic. And it's a lot of fun. But the second thing you were saying there is I think something a lot of us share is this idea of there's never enough time. I remember when I used to work for

a big law firm for a long time, and then I went out on my own. And I even found myself six months after leaving, waking up every day, thinking to myself, okay, who am I going to disappoint today? And I realized that I was really taking the wrong approach to this stuff. That's one of the reasons why I kind of went on this journey that led to, among other things, this podcast, is that's really not the right attitude. And I think stopping at the end of the day and writing down what you did accomplish and starting to think about what moves the needle. That's a concept to me that's really important lately is like, as you start your day, what moves the needle for you? And for you, long tones move the needle.

So you were able to stop and make that a priority. I think one of the things I really struggle with, David, and I have for years, is that everything else besides playing the saxophone feels like work. And somehow practicing the saxophone doesn't feel, it never has felt like work to me. So I somehow undervalue it, if that makes sense. I feel like if I just get done, if I get all these emails done and I get the, although just little chores, things you can put nice and neatly on a list, there's such a sense of accomplishment if you get those things done. Whereas like playing the saxophone doesn't feel the same to me.

It doesn't feel like a little item on a list I need to get checked off. So I'm always thinking if I just get everything done, then I'll just have, then I'll be free. And then I can, I guess, I guess what it is, is some part of me is like thinking I should treat it like a hobby. And I shouldn't because it's really, it's the engine that generates everything for me. So a lot of my internal struggle is like, no, Bob, you got to do that part first. And then the other other stuff later, it's like the, whatchamacallit, the, the, you know, putting things in a jar in a certain order, like big rocks and pebbles and sand and water. You got to put the big rocks in first and then everything else will fit. But if you start with the sand, it doesn't work. And that's kind of, I've found that to be super true

because when I spend the time doing what I need to do as a saxophonist, like it has a positive ripple effect out to everything else. And so it's like, that's what I, you know, when you say what moves the needle, it's weird because in a way that doesn't directly move a needle in the same way, like responding to somebody about some activity does, right? And yet it is the godfather of the needle movers for me. It's the ultimate needle mover for you. Yeah. That's the hard part for a lot of people. I'll put myself in that boat too, is identifying what those big rocks are. And it's great when you can say, well, this one thing, you know, this is the needle mover and this is always going to be

the needle mover. But for a lot of people, I think the needle mover probably evolves over time. Sure. or a portfolio, maybe you want to make a great blog. Squarespace is an all-in-one platform that lets you do just that. There's nothing to install, no patches to worry about, no upgrades needed. That's why I went to Squarespace, to be honest, because I couldn't deal with all the nonsense with the old blogging engines. Squarespace handles everything for you. You don't have to worry about any of that. They cover it for you. They have award-winning 24-7 customer support if you need any help. They let you quickly and easily grab a unique domain name. And those award-winning templates are beautifully designed for you to show off your great ideas. I've been on Squarespace for years now with both the Mac Sparky and my legal

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next website. You mentioned GTD at the beginning. That's one of the things that a lot of people have a problem with GTD is that the method that GTD outlines basically assumes that all the tasks you have to do are of equal value. So any other advice, I guess, for people who don't have such a clear cut, you know, this is my one thing. How would you advise them to identify what is the needle mover? Oh, I mean, that's a good question. Well, I'll just say real quickly about the GTD stuff. Like, you know, what was the guy Merlin Mann, right? He used to have that website for 43 folders or something. And then he kind of at some point abandoned it because he realized he was just like, wait, not I don't know, I don't want to say wasting, but he was spending an inordinate amount of time just figuring out like the right way to arrange things on his desk, so to speak. That's that's overly simplified. But it was like, okay, what's the point of all this productivity, quote unquote, you know, hacks and all the, it's so fun.

If you're into that stuff, it's a wonderful escape from the actual chore of the stuff that needs to get done. So I don't, for me, there's, I kind of know it at a deep level, like what I need to do. And so sometimes I have to, I kind of know it at a deep level, what I need to do. And so sometimes I have to just get quiet and figure out what is the thing that I really know I need to do and I really am resisting doing right now.

And so in resisting doing the thing that most needs to get done right now, this happened to me this week. I came back from a tour. My studio is a mess right now. This happened to me this week. I came back from a tour. My studio is a mess right now. I hate when my studio is a mess, but it is. And I'm, but I'm also behind on a lot of things. Um, my first instinct was to completely not only clean my studio, but rearrange the furniture. I'm not joking. I literally opened up a program, the furniture. I'm not joking. I literally opened up a program, like a CAD drawing, like an architectural graphics program on the computer to start rearranging my furniture on the computer before I did it in real life. And almost a whole day went by and I didn't do any of the things that

actually need to get done because I was doing this other thing that would make me feel so good to start rearranging the furniture because that has the promise inherent in that is like it's promising some new future better self or environment in which to be productive. Meanwhile, I'm ignoring the thing that actually needs to get done. And if I got that thing done, I would feel a much bigger sense of relief instead of putting it off until tomorrow. So I guess what I'm saying is I knew or know on a deeper level what those things often are, that nagging thing. It might take a little while to sort of, you know, maybe it takes some time just sitting or meditating or writing to get to it, you know, maybe it takes them some time just sitting or meditating or writing to get to it,

but you have a sense of what it is. And then I realize I'm avoiding that thing or those things, and I just need to buckle down and do them. Sometimes there's just no, that's it. You just need the self-discipline to do the thing that you know you need to do. Another angle to that could also be you just finished a tour, you're cooked. And thinking you're going to come in and do that hard thing that day is just not going to happen. So if you can figure those things out about yourself, you can say, all right, we're going to go to the park

or we're going to go to the beach and the kids and I are going to have fun today. And then tomorrow I'm going to do that thing. But it is interesting. You know, we're monkeys that want bananas at the end of the day. And a lot of times we revert to that. And it's amazing the extent we'll go to to revert to that. Oh, for sure. For sure. I used to find that after a big trial, I would always have a bad couple days. And no matter how hard I tried, I was just cooked and i didn't

have anything in me and finally i realized oh i'm just gonna take those two days off you know because i wasn't getting anything done anyway you need time to recharge and that's okay yeah exactly that's a huge part of it is like reframing like you said a moment a couple months ago david about waking up and what were you saying feeling Feeling like, who am I going to disappoint today? Yeah. I know that feeling. I feel one of the, but if you can reframe it, you know, that's really important. I think not only if you can, but you should, you have to kind of look at those things. And there's one of the band leaders that I work with, the guy who leads the band Snarky Puppy, who I'm constantly in awe of because here's a person who's talk about focus and vision and whatnot. trucking around in a van playing to nobody to playing a year of sold out shows at concert venues, 3,000, 5,000 people playing instrumental music. But 10, 12 years of going into credit card debt to shuttle people around in a van and anyway, all this stuff. But I was asking him last month or

the month before we were playing a show with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. So this band Snarky Puppy backed up by the LA Phil at Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles. And I'm standing behind Mike League, the band leader and bass player. And we're all crammed in a tight little circle inside the symphony. If you can picture the way a symphony is set up, right, like a half shell half shell well snarky was set up sort of in the in the donut hole and um so because of that i'm standing behind him and i can see his computer where he was pulling up some notes with the he had with the conductor just various things but i could see right over his shoulder he had his email open and i could see there were like 1500 unread emails and it hurt, it hurt my soul to see that, you know? Um, because I'm one of those guys who like, I would love to have inbox zero every day. I can't, I haven't been able to hit that in some time, but that's where I'd like to be. And I can obsess about that to the point we were talking about earlier, where like I might spend, I might spend an inordinate amount of time to get to inbox zero when really there's other important stuff I need to get done.

That's not the thing. So I asked Mike, I said, how do you deal with that? How do you deal with that much? Like, you know, that many unread emails, things you haven't gotten back to it and have it not stressed you out. And he said, well, at a certain point, it's just like it's communication debt. And you just have to get comfortable with being in debt. And I thought that was really interesting because he was able to get comfortable being in financial debt for this vision, for this band he was putting together for a long time. Talk about burning the bridges. Oh, my God.

And he made it happen. You know, it, it worked out, but he's able to do that with the, there's no way he, even with a team and he has a team, he can't keep up with all of the incoming and he, and he's not going to let that slow him down either. It doesn't mean that he stops making records or producing records or doing tours. You just keep moving. You do the best you can. He's like, maybe, you know, he's like, maybe I can't get back to every person who's asking for every little thing, but I get back to the important stuff and you just deal with it and move on. And that's something I'm trying to get better at. I love that idea of communication debt. That's so powerful. And I think with email specifically,

there does come a point where you have to be able to draw a line in the sand. And it does come back to that question of who do I want to disappoint today? And it's not going to be future me. It's not going to be the person who has gone into financial debt in order to see this thing materialize. I'm not going to let other people, because email really is a to-do list that other people can write on. Their vision isn't the same as yours. And so sometimes it sucks having to say, sorry, I'm not going to help you out with this thing. But if you just don't even go there for a season so you can focus on the thing that's really important, I mean, that's a totally legitimate way to approach it, in my opinion. Yeah, I think email is way overrated. Everybody thinks they have to deal

with it. And talking about email as communication debt, you know what they call when you just delete all your inbox? They call that email bankruptcy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I've done that once or twice actually at some point in the past. Just this week, I changed one of my workflows because I try to keep email within a block because I can't spend all day on it.

So traditionally, I'd have like an hour for it in the morning and then I'd spend like 15 or 20 minutes in the afternoon just to check it to make sure nothing blew up. And I realized, you know what, the morning, this was actually a result, Mike, of our last show with Jocelyn. You know, the morning is precious to me. That's when I really get a lot of work done. Why am I burning an hour of my precious time in the morning on email? Yeah, your golden hours. Yeah. So now email for me gets 15 minutes in the morning, and I spend an hour on it at four o'clock in the afternoon when I'm already kind of cooked. And then email, then I'll give it the block.

And it's been great. But it's funny, you always evolve with this stuff. Yeah, and I love, actually, that in particular is a daily thing that I'm, I'm always sort of struggling with. And I oscillate between, I would say almost like binary points with the email thing where I've, I've spent chunks of time doing like, okay, I'm going to answer, I'm going to deal with email first thing in the morning and chunks of time going, I'm not going to look at my phone until 3pm, you know, that kind of thing. And, and I'll get back to that. But one of the other things that I personally struggle with is like part of me, you know, these books, I read the post it notes, all the productivity hacks, etc. There's a large part of me that like wants to be this sort of very mechanized routine oriented every day is the same. And I know exactly what I'm going to do kind of like, Oh, I'll do email in the morning and I'll, or I'll

do something in the morning and at four o'clock to five o'clock, I'll check the email. The reality of my personal professional situation is, um, it changes day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year to a large degree. There's, you know, whether I'm traveling or whether I'm not. So I can't ever quite get to these routines that I'm experimenting with. Like for a while I was experimenting with getting up at 4.30 in the morning. I read Jocko Willink's books and I'm like, I'm going to do this. I'm like, this is crazy because like I have a gig tomorrow night that doesn't, the first set's not until 9.30 PM. I need to be at peak energy at 11 PM, you know? yeah um and it doesn't work so so i'm always like you know trying and tweaking

and all this stuff but the email thing is is really interesting i've i've actually come back around to trying to uh do it first thing in the morning in the early hours, because I've realized that I have a nagging sense of like a lurking sense of doom if I don't kind of just make sure nothing is really wrong. So I, my, my day goes better when I actually at least have a peak in the morning. And you were saying, David, you'd like maybe do 15 minutes or something with The days where I don't allow myself to check in until the afternoon, I might get stuff done, but there's a little bit of agita that I have over like, uh-oh. And even, I don't know, a day or two ago, you guys emailed me just a little reminder about this show.

And I think I told you, I was like, I had just spent the last 24 hours not checking anything. But of course, then when I opened my email inbox, there were all these things. And I was like, oh, God, the last 24 hours not checking anything. But of course, then when I opened my email inbox, like there were all these things and I was like, oh God, I needed to get back to this person by nothing was catastrophic. But it's just like, what's the best way for me to have a clear head for the day? Sometimes for me, it's like to get up early and, you know, David, you mentioned earlier that I'll sometimes practice at 5 a.m. That's true.

Sometimes I will. Sometimes I'll get up that early and I'll just get the, I'll take care of the busy work, the email stuff before 6am. And then I feel like my day is clear. Like I, then I won't check it again until tomorrow. And it's like a great feeling. So I'm, I'm always experimenting. Well, that's one of the reasons why I want you on the show, honestly, because, because you have gigs till 2am. Some. some days, you're on airplanes, you get around a lot, and you've got all these different bands you're practicing with. I mean, if I just have one meeting in a day, it can blow my day up, and I just don't know

how you hold it together. I don't know either. I mean, I feel like, God's honest truth is I feel like I don't. I know that I, God's honest truth is I feel like I don't, I know that I, I do to some degree, people will come over to my studio, like, uh, you know, Jay, yay. Yennings, right. We'll rehearse in the studio. And they were teasing me once because, um, I was complaining about the studio being messy and disorganized. And they, the three of them were looking at each other. Like, uh, you're the most organized person we know. What are you talking about? You've got like folders that are labeled, et cetera.

Now, I don't think I'm OCD about it. I'm not, because if I were OCD about it, I would not have been able to spend the week I've just spent in this disastrously messy studio that I'm in right now. But I don't think of myself as particularly organized, but I also recognize that that's my own, that's just me not being able to

see clearly like to others i you know who are less organized wherever i'm at seems like i'm very organized so it's perspective is part of it but you know how do you balance all these things like i don't know i i have to choose i have to clear the plate to some degree and just try to focus on one i mean focus on one thing. If I'm trying to learn Jay's music, all right, I need to block out some time and focus on that. I'm big on the block time thing. I can't have a really good day, a day that I feel good about if it's fragmented like crazy. Every one of my days is fragmented to some degree. But if there's not some portion of it in there where I felt like I got a good 90-minute chunk at least of really focusing on one thing, then it's hard for me to feel great about that day because I know that I tended to

lots of little things, but nothing really moved. Sure. Yeah. I know you read a lot of books, and I'm not sure if you've read The 12-Week Year, but it really describes your attitude as you're describing the concept of balance. And I would argue... I haven't. It's weird. I guess I've heard about it, but not read it.

I read another book. It was called 168 Hours or something, but it's different. Laura Vanderkam. Yeah, The 12-Week Year. Yep. The basic idea of the book is that people should set quarterly goals instead of yearly goals because when you set yearly goals,

you just procrastinate for 11 months and then try to crank them out right at the end. Yeah. But there's a powerful idea in there about intentional imbalance is how the authors describe it. And so balance is this ideal that a lot of people in the productivity space chase. There's the whole idea of like work-life balance, which I honestly believe is a myth. There's just your life and you have to choose what's important at any given point. And something is going to fall through the cracks. You're never going to be able to do all of it. But by applying intentional imbalance, you're basically taking control and you have power over the situation now because you're able to say, this is the most important thing. Yeah.

And this is what I'm going to focus on for right now. And the other things that I'm not going to be keeping up with, like email or whatever, you can insert your own thing there. That's going to be completely okay. Although another idea, which I think is important from another book, The One Thing by Jay Papasan, they talk about how you're juggling all these balls. And if you drop one of the balls, it can break essentially. But work is the one that people should be willing to chuck because that one's rubber. And obviously, there's specifics for everybody's situation. But I do think that a lot of times we tend to prioritize the quote unquote work, you know,

the things that come in via email that other people are telling us we need to do. And what suffers, what gets dropped is the things that are important to us, which ultimately are going to be the things that are going to get you to the point where you say, yes, this is the thing. This is the center of the Venn diagram of all of my circles. Like you'll never get there if you're constantly worrying about not disappointing other people. At some point, you do have to be able to say no to that stuff and embrace that intentional imbalance idea. Well, I was at the park a day or so ago with my son. And every time I go to the park, it brings this to the fore, which is,

you know, I, I see other parents sitting on the bench, like staring into their phone while their kids are on the park. And I never, you know, no offense to anybody, but for me,

that's, I don't want to do that. I want to be with my kid or my kids. and I, I, sometimes I have to go to extremes. So like, if I'm with my wife, if we both go to the park, I tend to leave my phone at home. If it's just me and one of the kids or both of them, I'll put my phone in the glove compartment of the car, which is parked right there. It's right

nearby, but I don't want it in my pocket. Because if it's in my pocket, then I have to decide every minute or five minutes to not check it. It's pulling my attention. So I just put it in the glove compartment. It's there if I need to call somebody, but you know, anyway, it might seem crazy to somebody else. But for me, it's, if it's, if I remove the distraction, it's a lot easier than if I fight the distraction. And I don't want to be distracted when I'm with my kids, because that's precious time. So I think about this often is like, what's the point of all of this stuff that we do? If the point is to get us to like more time with our family, I mean, it's not the point for everybody, but let's say that's a point for a lot of people. And then when you have that more time all you do is fill it up with new things that could fill your time yeah um and what's you know what i mean like

it's a never-ending cycle and i definitely it's difficult but i definitely don't want my kids to look back and think like oh dad always had that little like you know phone and he did have always had a little black phone in his hand like always like i don't want that to be part of the equation for their memories so i try to keep that away as much as possible so i've i've taken like i take email off my phone the app there's no email on there i've um i don't have social well i i the social media apps come and go or i never have like Twitter or Facebook or any of that stuff. But Instagram, sometimes I will post something and then I'll

delete the app because I know after I post something, I'll want to check it. I hate it, but I can't fight that I'll want to feel that way. But if I just delete the darn app, I'm not going to. And then the next time I need to check it, you know, I just have to go through the process of reinstalling it. And I've done this to varying degrees, certain times. And again, I can't, it's not all or nothing. When I go on the road, part of what I'm doing is I need to promote the shows. I need, there's all these things that I need to do. It's dumb of me to constantly delete and reinstall the app. So it, it's, it's like a micro version of what you just were talking about, Mike, my seasons might shift from in three week chunks, you know, like, okay, this is I'm on the road for three weeks, but now I'm

home for three weeks. What's that three weeks going to look like for me, and then I'm going out with snarky puppy for another three weeks. So that it's going to shift again. So I have to constantly like reevaluate the tools, which ones are helping which ones are not, what's the best way to use that. I can do better with email if I sit down at a computer for half an hour than I will on my phone, because if it's on my phone, I'll check it, but I don't like responding from my phone with my thumbs. I'd prefer to be at a keyboard. So therefore, I read the email. Now it's taking up RAM in my brain, but I haven't done anything about it. So it's just been added to this giant to-do list in the sky that's adding to my communication debt or level of guilt of not

getting things accomplished. But if I don't see it, if it never happens in the first place, I don't have to feel bad about it. And then when I sit down at the computer, I can, like David said, I'll block out some time for it, get it done, boom, it's over. Yeah, just don't even open the open loop until you can deal with it. Cause otherwise it's going to steal your attention and your intentionality away from whatever it is that you want to be doing instead. Yeah. And I, and I definitely feel over time how my, my muscles for, um, maybe you want to say being bored or just being present, they've atrophied, you know, it's, if I'm at the park with my kid, it's like, oh, we're okay.

Now he's riding down. He just rode far away. He can't see me. There's literally a part of my brain that goes, check your phone. Yeah. And I hate that. Um, so I'm just trying to figure out how to adapt and how to navigate that because at the same, at the very same moment, as he rides back, I want to pull that same phone out and

get a 15-second video of him that I will be ecstatic for having three years from now when I watch it. I know this because I have a daughter who's almost eight. And just the other night, we were watching some of these 30-second videos of her in a high chair eating that I am so grateful that I have. And if I hadn't had the phone in my pocket, you know what I mean? It's very weird to figure out this stuff. It's like having the angel and the devil in your pocket in the same thing. Like, which one is it? How am I supposed to figure it out? Just like we said at the beginning of the show, you never really get there.

You really do. Very true. You know something, Bob, I'd like you to address because you're an artist. And a feedback I get often, because I write about productivity and hacky things all the time, and we talk about it here on the show,

is sometimes I hear from somebody saying, you know, those are all great ideas you have, but I can't use them because I am, you know, some sort of artist, you know, maybe I make art, maybe I'm an actor, maybe I'm a musician. And it just doesn't work for us that way. Our brains aren't wired that way. And all these things, they just get in the way of us making art. And it always sticks with me. I feel like that's not necessarily true. Well, it goes back to what we were talking about at the very beginning about this sort of the archetypical artist or being sort of like all over the place. You think of the, or I don't know,

Einstein's hair, just sort of like a mess or a whirling dervish kind of thing. And that the artists have like messy workspaces or, you know, there's all these, these little things that we have in mind when we think of it. Um, for me, that's not been the case. I find that the more I'm able to, um, be intentional and be, and have clarity and design things, design my days, design as much as I can about my time, my goals, my year, whatever. Of course, it's not all going to go as I planned, but having plans in the first place, having ideas and keeping things tidy. And I mean that both physically and digitally. I absolutely know beyond a shadow of a doubt

that I get better work and more work done when my studio, my office is clean. Like when it's a mess, when my external world is a mess, my internal world follows suit. That's what I've found. And it's not, for me, it's not an OCD thing. Like I said, I can get past it.

I'm doing it right now. But I'd prefer not to. And I know that I have this pattern where like my pattern is like, I will reach a place where everything is just, it's gotten too messy, like physically and digitally. And you know, these YouTube videos I make the lessons I teach, there's so much media that I deal with, like digital media, clutter. Like if it's not organized well, then it's just a hornet's nest. So all of these things, keeping them as tidy as can be leads to me having more, being more productive in my art. When I clear everything out of the studio, this is what I do maybe twice a year. I literally clear everything out. Like I'm having a garage sale. I clean up my studio,

like sweep, vacuum, just like everything's clean. And then I begin to put things back in and I put things in their place. And I can't tell you the night and day difference I feel. I feel a physical shift when that's over the next day when I walk into my studio and it's clean. I can be 10 times as productive. And it doesn't mean that I'm going to do that every day or every week. Slowly, you put a thing down over here, and then a thing over there, and then two things go on top of that first thing. Before you know it, I'm looking at a stack of CDs over here, a few hard drives over there, a keyboard that's not in the right place. And then it's time to clean it all up again. And I would say the same thing for me happens digitally, like whether it's with a

calendar, the emails, all the stuff. It's like, the more order I have, the more creative I can be. I like that. I think maybe another way to state that would be to have some margin, whether that would be time margin or mental margin, emotional margin. But I think the productivity is the thing, if I'm hearing what you're saying correctly, that's what creates the margin, which frees your brain to be creative. As long as you have those other things that you know you should be dealing with, or you don't have the systems in place to take care of them where you can trust the things that you know you should be dealing with, or you don't have the systems in place to take care of them, where you can trust the things that are coming in via email, they're going to be there in my email inbox when I set aside the time to deal with it. And you constantly have that thing in the back of your head, which is telling you, you better go see what's there.

As long as you don't have the systems to deal with that stuff, then you don't have the ability to be fully present. And ultimately, I think that is what would hinder your creative work. Oh, for sure. For sure. Because, you know, the other thing is I'm at a different stage now that so like, the common thread here is that I've, we've established, like, I've been using these productivity methods for a long time, all sorts of them, reading books, keeping journals, time management, all sorts of things. But what's changed in that time is the balance for me has gone from pitching to catching to a large degree. Tim Ferriss said that once. It's like at a certain

point, you have no opportunities. Everything you're doing is reaching out to create opportunities. And if you're lucky and you reach some point of success, things shift and all of a sudden you're fielding opportunities and you have to weigh everything against like opportunity costs. Like if I, you have more requests for your time than you have time to fill those requests. shift for me has been a really difficult one to navigate because I'm constantly feeling like, well, for so long, I had no opportunities. So now like, I want to say yes to them all. And of course I can't. But navigating that has looked somewhat, you know, somewhat different, like maybe now it's like, oh, email stuff. But before it was, well, there's things I need to do, you know, just to this idea of how do you do this as an artist? Like, well, if I was just in my younger days, if I was just sitting around, you know, waiting, just only thinking about the quote unquote art and not doing anything to create the momentum, the, the, whether it was an album I was

putting, producing and putting together or releasing or dealing with trying to get a publicist or get gigs or like all sorts of outreach things that had to happen to further me being able to make the art. You know, the two have always had to work hand in hand. And when I first moved to New York from college, I thought, oh, this will be great. I'll just, now I'm out of college. All I have to worry about is practicing. I'll just be in my apartment practicing all day and I'll be going out at night. No, that lasted like three days before I was freaking out because rent was going to be due in three weeks and I wasn't earning any money. So for some people, that might be okay. For me, I went to get a job. I was like, I need to put my mind at ease that I'll know I can pay the rent. If my mind is worried about not being

able to pay the rent, then I can't sit here and be creative. I just can't do it. It doesn't work for me. That doesn't mean that I switched career paths. It means I got a job I didn't really care about so that I could pay the bills so that I could focus on what I cared about. So you're telling me we can't hire you to make our website still? That ship has sailed. It is great, though. It's great and also terrifying when you have to start saying no to things, especially when for so many years, all you wanted to do was say yes. I think that's a whole other, we could probably spend another hour talking about that problem. Yeah, I read that book, Essentialism,

by Greg McCowan. Yeah, it's a great book. Yeah, and I was like, wow, this is the book for me right now. This is the book that needed to show up for me right now, because I'm there. So, I know you read a lot of books. What are a couple that you think really helped you as an artist kind of pull all this stuff together, if someone was out there listening and wanted to take a few more steps? That's a great question. My top recommendation is always Steven Pressfield's The War of Art. That's my personal favorite. I wouldn't say that it's about productivity, but it's about the important, it's about the, uh, getting to the important thing. You know, he, he uses the term resistance as a catch-all for,

um, for anything and everything that shows up to get in your way when you decide to do something worthwhile, something worthwhile, meaning that's not instant gratification, right? Something that's going to take some, uh, work and time to get to. You'll invariably experience this force that, like I said, he calls the resistance. You sit down to write a book and you think, oh, I just need to clean my desk first. Now, I realized what I just spent time talking about was that for me, it helps to clean my desk. The thing is, I do that once in a while, not every time. It doesn't get in the way of the art all the time, right? Yeah. But, but so that book has been huge to me. I reread that at least once a year, if not more, because it's, it's short. And then there's another

book that's similar that I really like called, I think it's called The Creative Habit by Martha Graham. I love it because it actually speaks to this direct point that we're talking about now. She's, for those who are not familiar with the name, Martha Graham is one of the preeminent dance choreographers, modern dance choreographers of our time and has produced a ton of work. And there's a great page in there where she talks about, I'm looking at my bookshelf right now, but she talks about her creative routine when she's trying to create a new dance.

She gets a banker's box, and I stole this idea from her. I use banker's boxes all the time. So it's just a plain cardboard banker's box. Anything about the new dance goes in there. If it's a, you know, if it's a piece of music, she heard the CD goes in there. If it's something she, now the book was written a while ago. So she's like, if there's a VHS tape of, you know, some dance I need to review that goes in there. Anything I'm thinking about goes in this box. And then it's in this nice tidy little box. And I know where I'm keeping all of these things.

I love that idea. Um, The other one that I loved was she talked about her creative routine. And for her, the creative routine was she goes to a gym called the Pumping Iron Gym. It's on 91st or 92nd Street on the east side of Manhattan. And she gets in the cab at 5.30 in the morning, every morning, and she goes to the gym. And this is my favorite, maybe my favorite30 in the morning, every morning, and she goes to the gym. And this is my favorite, maybe my favorite line of the book. She says, the routine is not the gym, it's the taxi. Yeah, that's great advice. You know, what's the trigger that's going to get you to follow through on the rest of it? Yeah. She's like, the amount of mornings I wake up at five in the

morning and it's cold and snowy, I don't want to go, you know, um, it's, that's probably most of the mornings. So the routine is not working out at the gym. The routine is getting in the cab because once she's in the cab, she knows she's going to complete the rest of that important thing. Um, that has really stayed with me, um, as, and, and, and I loved that idea because I was, I was really searching for at that time, especially, examples of this thing you were mentioning, David. I was like, there's got to be people out there who are highly creative and very productive and prolific, have put out a lot of work, who aren't just super talented and lucky. I hated this idea that it needs to just be like, oh, you're really talented. And the, and the world just came knocking at your door. And that's what I felt like

was constantly presented to me, you know, like, okay, well, if I didn't, uh, if somebody didn't swoop me out of college, my second year in and take me on the road, somehow I'm an artistic failure. Okay. I moved to New York and like the biggest jazz musician in town has not yet called me to play in their band. Okay. I must be a failure. I hated that idea. I was like, there has to be some other way to sort of progressively manifest the destiny you're after to, to at least a better degree than just hoping that you're going to get lucky. And I couldn't of course guarantee anything, but I wasn't gonna sit by and not try. And when I read Martha Graham's book, like that was really inspiring

because I saw like here's somebody applying a level of discipline, which any of us could choose to apply. I love this idea. Like, well, if I could do that, I could get up in the morning and go to the, you know, whatever the thing is, right?

If I wanted to make it practicing, it could be that. But I love that concept of sort of this rigorous discipline. There's another example in The War of Art that Steven Pressfield mentions. I think the author, I always screw up his name, but Somerset Maugham, Maugham, Maugham, I can never say it right. But somebody asked him once, do you write when you're inspired or do you write on a schedule? And he said, oh, my dear sir, I only write when I'm inspired. Fortunately for me, that's every morning at nine o'clock when I sit down at my desk. Yeah, I read that. Yeah. Right. So those books, those two books have been really important to me in shaping how I approach art with discipline, if that makes sense. in shaping how I approach art with discipline, if that makes sense.

Well, I am really glad you could make time to come on and share that with us today, Bob. And I hope the folks out there listening, I think that what you talk, you speak truth that I think applies to much more than just playing the saxophone. Well, thank you. I hope it's, you know, like I said, it's just deconstructive for me. I'm just, if I'm able to share any of the little things that have kind of helped it click for me, that makes me super happy. we'll go ahead and link it there. We're going to go ahead and link a bunch of the books and materials that Bob talked about throughout the show. So you can check that out as well. We are the Focus podcast. You can find us over at relay.fm slash focused, and we'll see you next time.