Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #474: Keeping Things Different

Episode Date: September 29, 2017

For this podcast, I talk about how you can keep things feeling different in a game that's constantly making new content.

I'm pulling in my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time to drive to work. Okay, so today's topic. So this October, I will celebrate my 22nd year of working on Magic. So one of the common questions I get is, how do you do the same thing for 22 years? Aren't you bored? Don't you get bored of doing the same thing? And I don't. So I want to share with you today how I keep things interesting. How is it that I keep doing the same job year after year after year and still enjoying it and not being bored? So I'm going to talk about sort of some of the techniques I use to keep things interesting. Okay, first up.

I've talked about this, but this is something I'll go into a little more detail. I like starting every set from a different vantage point and what that means is so the brain the brain is interesting one of the things that I've been enjoying to understand creative thought is to study a little bit how the brain works and I mean I mean, I talk about this some, but it's just an important point to make here, which is your brain is not particularly designed to be creative. Your brain is designed to be functional. That your brain is trying to, like, okay, how can I get things done the most efficient way I can? okay, how can I get things done the most efficient way I can?

And essentially the way it does it is there's a muscle memory, if you will, or sort of brain memory, if you will, that you sort of do something and your brain remembers how you did it. Oh, yeah, I know how to do that. And so it allows you to autopilot a lot more. It allows you to sort of like, okay, I got it. I know how you did it. Yeah, I'll do that again. And so when you do something you've done before, your brain sort of goes into like, oh, yeah, yeah, I got it. I know how you did it. Yeah, I'll do that again. And so when you do something

you've done before, your brain sort of goes into like, oh yeah, I got this. So you tend to use the same neural pathways that the brain, without any outside interference, the brain will kind of do it the way you did it before. Now, most of the time, that's great. Most of the time you want to be, you know, I don't want to have to reimagine how to tie my shoes. I want my brain to learn how to tie my shoes and it ties my shoes. And I don't spend a lot of energy about tying my shoes. My brain knows how to do that. The problem is creative thought is the one place where this actually becomes a problem. Because if you approach a creative problem from the same vantage point, using the same neural

pathways, you end up with the same answer. And that's not what you want. That part of being creative is you want to find different answers. So one of the things I learned is if you want to get different output, put in different input. That if you always sort of approach problems from the same way, then your brain will just give you, it'll spit out the same same kind of answers so one of the things I always like to do is I like to start each design with some challenge of doing something that I know I haven't done before because I know if I if I put stuff to my brain that I've not asked it before I'm gonna get different outputs and that so whenever I'm starting it's always like okay how

can I do this in a way I haven't done before? What about this set is different than other sets? Sometimes they're top-down sets. Like, I'm basing this on a thing that I've never based a set before on. Oh, I'm doing Gothic horror. I'm doing Greek mythology. I'm doing Egyptian mythology. You know, I'm taking some known thing, and I'm going to use that to inspire what I do. Well, if I keep taking different things, you know, there's no way in the world that gothic horror is going to spit out the same thing as Greek mythology.

They're just different things. So that's one way to do it. Another way is, let's say I'm doing more bottom-up design. I just think of some facets that I haven't connected before. You know, I'm saying, oh, what happens if I focus on two-color pairs? What happens if I focus on two-color pairs what happens if I focus on mechanics that lands can do what if I focus on time as a mechanical theme you know and that if I look at different things and just say okay what is a mechanical way to do this is something that

I haven't done before that's another way to get you know to get your brain thinking in different ways the trick for me always is, I always want to find something different than I know I haven't done before. And I've made a lot of magic sets. I mean, I'm up to, I think, I just started on baseball, and that is like my 25th, 26th design. So I've done a lot of designs.

So part of keeping it fresh also is just saying, what about this that excites me in a way that I haven't done that before? six design. So I've done a lot of designs. So part of keeping it fresh also is just saying, what about this that excites me in a way that I haven't done that before? And that's important. I want to get a vantage point. I want to think of a different vantage point than normal. And then once I start doing that, then I kind of force my brain to think differently. Because if I say to my brain, do something you've never done before. My brain's going to spit out different things. Okay, connected to that is not just a management vantage point. Vantage point is saying, okay, I'm going to approach this from a different problem. The other thing I do sometimes is I try to, as I think of things I want to do,

I try to find challenges for myself within the context of what I'm doing. Now, no, my normal followers will know, I don't like challenges for the sake of challenges, meaning I don't want to do something just to do it. But I think if you sort of get a vantage point and figure out what you're doing that's new and different, I can find challenges within that. So for example, I'm doing Innistrad, right? I'm doing a gothic horror set. I'm trying to do top-down. But at some point, I realized that I really like the monster theme, that I want to have monsters. And then I have a new challenge.

It's like, okay, let's find a structure to do monsters. Let's find a way to do monsters. And from that, I ended up getting the ally color pairing, for example. You know, I figured out, how do I do monsters? how do I take monsters and not have them all be black? You know, that was one of the big challenges. And the idea is I like when, once I get a vantage point and I figure out sort of a new direction to start from, I then want to find little challenges that I can give me.

Challenges that are part of the process. Meaning I'm not making challenges for the sake of making challenges, but I'm trying to find challenges within the area that I'm already working. You know, one of the big challenges, for example, for Ravnica, or original Ravnica, was I came up with this idea of hybrid mana, and I came up with the idea of, you know, Brayden and I got the guilds, so it's like, okay, but the guilds and hybrid mana together, there's just too much going on.

How do I solve that? And that challenge led me to the 4-3-3 solution, right? Led me to the idea of, what if every set doesn't have every guild? Then I can concentrate, and it's not quite so complicated. You know, or, for example, when I was trying to understand in Theros how to make, I wanted enchantments to play a role, but I wanted enchantments to feel like enchantments. You know, that was a challenge. Like, each time I do something, I will find little challenges within it, and then sort

of, like, I'll recognize a problem, and then make a challenge of solving a problem within it. And the key part is that if you start from a different vantage point, you'll find new challenges you haven't faced before. And it's just a matter of sort of focusing on what those challenges are. Meaning, it's not just to have new challenges, it's recognizing and thinking about them and focusing on them. That when I work on a set, I like to say, okay, like the reason I do exploratory design before I start design is that I like to examine my problems.

I like to know my problem space. I want to understand kind of what the challenges are so that when I start the main part of doing design, I can make sure that I know the challenges and I figure out the key to start solving those challenges. The exploratory design sort of says, what are the challenges? Like they help me figure out the challenges and I figure out the key to start solving those challenges. The exploratory design sort of says, what are the challenges? Like, they help me figure out the challenges that I can meet. Okay, next. Okay. Another big part of it is making magic is a collaborative process. That I don't make sets in a vacuum.

I don't sit by myself and make sets. I work with a bunch of other people. And that is a big secret. So one of the things we always do is I always have a different design team. I don't have the same people in my design team. I always have different people. Now, the pool of people I pull from, I mean, most people I work with on one project, I've worked with on another project, but not all of them. And even for people that I've worked with together, it's always a different mix of people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've worked with person A, but I haven't worked with person A,

I've worked with person A before, and person B before, but I might not have worked with person A and B before. And that one of the nice things is I like creating new dynamics through people. Now, not every creative endeavor necessarily involves people. Sometimes it's a solitary thing but when it's not

I love mixing up the use of people I love the idea of having different interactions with different people because just like sort of starting your problem from a new place starting with new people also will create new things to think about for example the dynamic of working with another person which is something that's very fun for me, it varies from person to person. Different people will want different things

or different people will just generate different ideas. Like one of the ongoing themes from today is part of being different is finding different ways to generate different ideas. Because if you generate the same ideas, you'll go to the same place and come up with the same results. But if you get different ideas, then you don't do that. So one of the cool things about having different people is people are great idea generators.

And that, for example, one of the things I always do at the beginning of every design, this is a very typical thing, is I'll lay out to my team the general sense of what I want. And then the first assignment I almost always give is, go do whatever you want within this boundary of the new thing. Here's a new thing we're doing, and it might be like, hey, we're doing gothic horror, hey, we're doing top-down whatever, or we're doing mechanics based on land, or whatever we're doing. But then I say, okay, go do whatever you want. Fine, fine, fine, we're focused on land, make me any

land mechanics you want. Okay, we're focused on top-down Greek mythology. Look, just make me as many top-down Greek mythological things as you can. The key is, I always sort of push them in a direction, but then I do whatever you want. I want to start from a place where I don't...

I push them in an odd direction, because I want them to sort of all be moving in the same direction, but I don't necessarily tell them what to do, because what I'm them in an odd direction because I want them to sort of all be moving in the same direction. But I don't necessarily tell them what to do because what I'm interested in early on is I want to see what they do without guidance from me. You know, I talked before about when I hire an employee that I'm not super interested in hiring another me. I got me. I have people who make cards like me. What I want is to hire people that make cards I won't make.

And the reason you want other people on a design team is you want them to come up with things and make things that you wouldn't make. And sometimes one of the coolest things and things I love about teams is somebody comes up with something. You're like, well, while I don't think that's the perfect thing, wow, you tried something interesting here. And then people can riff off it. I love a lot of my favorite designs come from when we do design in teams, in meetings. Often, for example, we'll, like let's say we're doing a top-down set. I'll have the creative person just make awesome names of cards. Jar of eyeballs.

Okay, team, what does a jar of eyeballs do? What does an evil clone do? What does a black cat do? And that we came with a lot of fun cards and it wasn't one person. It was kind of a mix of people throwing ideas out. That there is a lot of fun to me to make cards in group. Plenty of cards are made individually. You know, there's a lot of homework assignments. But there also is a lot of just, hey, in a meeting, we're going to work together and we're going to make something. And the bouncing the ideas of other people always keeps it fresh, always keeps it interesting. Okay, next. Another thing I have found that to shake

things up is sometimes I'd like to change the process. And that I don't always want to make every set the same way. Now, luckily, if you start from a different vantage point, sometimes you're forced to do that. A great example is a top-down design in which you're designing mechanics based on flavor to start with. It's different than a bottoms-up design where you're sort of basing flavor based on mechanics. And so those start from very different places. But it's not just that. Like, even if I'm doing the same kind of thing, let's say I'm doing a top-down design, I try to mix up how I'm doing the design, how I'm doing it, and that I don't want the same process all the

time. And that I have certain things that work and I have certain, you know, one of the things I like is to find a bunch of different processes that are valuable and then I can mix and match them to a certain extent based on the project I'm doing. Now, one of the things that really helps keep me open is I like to be flexible, and I like each process to match the set I'm doing. That part of what I want is to say, okay, I'm doing something I haven't done before, and because of that, I have to rethink how I'm using my resources. And I have a different team

than I had before how do I make use of my team a lot of the processes is about maximizing your resources which we're gonna get down to it is ideas and people is I'm trying to do a different kind of thing okay how can I maximize this I have a different team how do I maximize that and that one of the easy things when you sort of get in, when you do something for a long time, it's very easy to fall in line of, hey, I've done this this way for so many years. Okay, this is just the way it's done. I'm just going to do this or I'm just going to do that. For example, normally there's defaults I have. There are defaults that when I make a set,

There's defaults I have. There are defaults that when I make a set, hey, often I will do thing A. But the idea is I always want to ask myself and question myself and say, okay, I know you normally do this, but how about here? Is that the right thing? And I like to sort of make exceptions

when I go, oh, you know what? For this set, maybe that's wrong. For example, normally if I'm going to do bottom-up mechanics, normally I start from commons. The default for me is, let's figure out the simplest way to do our themes. But sometimes, for example, if I know we're doing something a little more complex, or sometimes with top-down, I'll say, okay, let's tackle this complicated thing first, even though I know this complicated thing might not be common.

Because I want to understand the space that this thing's going to fill. And so sometimes I won't start with the commons. Yeah, like when I do my nuts and bolts, I'm telling you the default way to do things. And the default way to do things is start with commons, because commons are in a lot of ways the most challenging, because you get your theme simplistic enough. So it's not that I don't most often do commons first, but it's the idea that it's not locked in. That depending on what I'm doing, I can open myself up so I have different opportunities and different ideas. And that one of the things that is really cool about doing the same job for a lot of times is trying to figure out, like, one of my backgrounds, I've talked about this, is I used to do improvisational comedy in college. I started improv true, uncontrolled substance.

And one of the things I really liked about improv, one of the skills that I sort of bring to this job is a lot of improv is about figuring out in the moment, like spur of the moment, where's the best place to go. I got to do a scene and I'm working with another person. Okay, where can I go? And a lot of what makes comedy comedy is that you don't do the obvious thing, is that you don't, you know, so like, for example, one of the things you learn when doing improvisational comedy is the audience tends to yell out a lot of the same things. They're just very rote things that get yelled out.

So one of the things you ask for a lot in improv is a relationship. So blind date gets yelled out a lot. They really like blind date. And, you know, there's the sort of low-hanging fruit of blind date. It's either you're picking them up at the door or you're sitting in a restaurant. Those are the two like absolute like bottom of the, you know, low-hanging fruit scenes. And what you start learning as you do more improv is, hey, don't start there. Pick another place to start. In fact, one of the things you often do in improv is you make people give you a location just to have a weird look at, you know, like

give us a location. Fish store. Okay, blind date in the fish store. And then all of a sudden you're doing something different. And by the way, interesting, improv has that same sense where you ask for people to give you things so that you can start from a different vantage point. But the trick you learn is if the audience isn't giving you a different vantage point, you got to take a different vantage point. That if I'm doing a blind date, I don't want to always start from, oh, I'm nervous, I'm on

a blind date. Maybe I want to start with a blind date where I'm overly confident or I'm depressed or just something different so that the scene plays differently. And in some ways, the way I do sets is not really that different of, I just want to sort of approach it and somehow try to do something that's not quite expected. Okay, next, change the technologies. So one of the things that is interesting is, I like to always figure out what we have that's new and different.

So a real common thing, for example, for magic, is frame technology. Is, okay, what can we do with the frame? What can I do? And sometimes what I'll do is I'll go talk, for example, James is our graphic designer that lays out frames. I'll talk to him about something and I'll go, I'm thinking about doing this thing. And okay, what could I do if I wanted to do a different frame?

And I'll talk with him and get ideas. Or I'll go talk to Eli, who's our rules manager, and I'll say, I have this weird idea how to do this. How do the rules, can I do something like this in the rules? You know, sometimes I'll talk with editing about, can I template something a certain way? You know, that whenever I'm sort of working on something, I want to understand the latest technology that is available. And sometimes it's design technologies. One of the things that's cool is we learn things along the way and then we make use of it. One of the things that's cool is we learn things along the way and then we make use of it.

And that when we do something, we go, that was cool. I like that. So a recent example is for Innistrad, we made double-faced cards. And now we now have a tool that we can use and we don't want to use it too much. But it's something we have access to. And you guys saw it in Ixalan. We were trying to do something in Ixalan and I realized that that Double Face gave us an opportunity to do something kind of cool, where, you know, it wasn't a transformation issue as much as it was an exploration issue, but that Double Face cards could allow us to do exploration.

You know, I have a treasure map, or I have a, you know, I have a spyglass, or I have something that's going to lead me somewhere, and then I get to a place. And the idea that everything you did ended up in a place was different, was cool, was something that we hadn't seen before. And that was me saying, oh, well, here's me using new technology to do something I couldn't do before. And so I always like to embrace the technology. Another big thing is printing. You know, a lot has changed over the years of how we can print things. And there's things that I couldn't do once upon a time that when I talk, like, now I can do.

And I'm always pushing boundaries of trying to figure out what else we can do. And that push of technology, that try to explain, is another way to do new things. Because if there's a technology that didn't exist three years ago, well, now you can do something you didn't do three years ago because you now have a technology that lets you push in a different direction. So I always like to embrace new technologies. Okay, another thing is don't be afraid to revisit the past.

I talk about wanting to do new things, but another fun thing is to take something we did once before and come back to it. Now, when you come back to it and you have new processes and new technologies and new people, you know, it is neat to sort of say, okay, how would I do this differently than I did before? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I did this once upon a time or maybe somebody else did it. But now I get over it. Now, if somebody else did it, it's great. It's new to me.

I didn't do it. Even if I did it, though, even if I'm going back to a world that I made the first time around, I get to sort of reexamine things. I get to sort of try different things. You know, the part of the fun of going to the past is you get to sort of make different choices. And, like, one of the big things they say about writing is that when you write something, they say give yourself time. Put it away.

Put it away so when you come back, you can approach it with a fresh set of eyes. That you approach it from a different vantage point than you did when you wrote it the first time and set designs are a lot the same thing worlds are a lot the same thing it's fun to say oh I gotta go design this world and I haven't worked on this for years okay well I'm a different designer

than I was and I can look at it from a fresh eye and say oh well these three things were awesome about the world. You know what? This thing, we could do that better than we did last time. And one of the fun things about visiting the past is trying to recapture and figure out how to upgrade it, how to do things better, how to bring in modern technology and modern processes to do that.

And one of the things that, like, I think I talk about new, new, new all the time, that it's a matter of different approaches. It's not necessarily always the new approach. It's a different approach. And that I really do enjoy sort of harkening back to, you know, things of old because, I mean, A, it gives me a vantage point where I, it's like, okay, how could I approach this thing but differently? So I get to think of a different vantage point.

It gives me new challenges because obviously there's things that we've learned since then. So I get that. By definition, you usually have new people for a team. Our processes have changed over the years. And not only that, not only do I individually change my processes, R&D itself changes its processes. That, you know, we move from sort of having three sets and, you know, having one block of three sets and a core set, to having two blocks, each of a large and a small set, to having three sets that can combine in different ways with a core set. And each one of those is different, and how I design for them is different.

And so when I come back and do something, hey, I'm in a different environment than I was last time I did it. So there's a lot of different reasons that bringing back the past really allows you to sort of explore and do cool and different things. Okay. Another thing I like to do is I like to push past boundaries. And what I mean there is, especially early on, because I, you know, there's people that do the finishing touches. I don't do the finishing

touches. I do the bold beginnings. And one of the things that I find is really interesting is that I like to try to do things, even things I know will never, or I doubt will actually see the light of day. Like, for example, when I did Innistrad, I asked my team to come up with werewolf ideas. And Tom pitched the double-faced cards. And I was skeptical. But, and I've learned over the years, you know what? We're going to try it. Because even if it doesn't work out, we'll learn something from it.

And sometimes what we find is, wow, there's elements of this that are amazing. And can we do something slightly different that captures those amazing things? And then sometimes, as with double-faced cards, I was skeptical, but then I played with them. I'm like, no, this is perfect. These are great. And we have to figure out how to do this. And obviously there's some maneuvering to do it. But, you know, had I just said, oh, that's, nah, we wouldn't do that, then I'd miss out. And so I like, one of the things I always try to do is figure out what is something we haven't done before and push there. And one of the things you guys don't see necessarily is I push boundaries and then oftentimes I don't use those things.

So, for example, in early, early, you, early Battle for Zendikar, for example, I had a mechanic where I was called Hedonize, where I had an eight-sided die, and the way I wanted the Eldrazi to be unpredictable. So they did an effect called Hedonize, and whenever you Hedonize, you rolled an eight-sided die, and they did one of eight effects. And the idea was they were really hard to fight against because you didn't quite know

what they were going to do. And it was a neat idea and it was a cool execution, but a lot of people were like, really? Rolling dice? And there was a lot of sort of pushback. And in the end, I found different ways to do that. But maybe one day, die rolling is the right way to go. I don't want to leave things off limits. I know with Innistrad, for example, we tried an idea called Day-Night,

where we were, there was an external game piece, and the card case said, go get the Day-Night card. And the Day-Night card told you how to play with it. It told you when it was day and when it was night. And I like that idea, that there was an outside component, you know, and that even though that's not the way we went, that I find these things and I label them and I'm always sort of like, okay, here's stuff we can try. And I'm always looking to pushing and finding new things.

And that part of what makes things interesting for me is that I never want to say, well, that's just the way it is. I always want to push and see. And sometimes it's, I mean, one thing is, as you do something more and more, what's acceptable tends to stretch over time. You know, like when I made the very first unset, which required you could not do in blackboard or magic. And then years later, we did them in blackboard or magic, essentially, because what was viable and acceptable changes over time. And like I said, the technology changes, the process change, the people change,

that sometimes something that's off limits for whatever reason later isn't off limits. Mind Slaver was a card I originally tried to do in Tempest, and it just didn't quite work in the rules. And it wasn't until Mirrodin that I sort of found a new rules manager. Like, no, no, no, I can make that work.

And I was able to do it. And there's a lot of things. Energy is a great example where original Mirrodin, I was going to do Energy, and it didn't fit. And then to do it. And there's a lot of things. Energy is a great example where original mirror and I was going to do energy and it didn't fit and then I saved it and eventually I found Kaladesh which was the perfect place for it.

So I like to push boundaries. Not that the boundary pushing always results in a change right then and there. Sometimes it happens later or sometimes it inspires me to find something that inspires another

sort of thought process. Okay, another thing I do when I want to sort of keep things interesting is I like to challenge assumptions. There's an expression that I like a lot from my favorite book, A Whack inside the Head by Roger Vaneck, is sacred cows make great steaks, is the idea of I like taking things that saying, oh, we never do that, and sometimes going, why? Why don't we do that? You know, it's very easy to say, hey, magic cards have always had a back.

Well, why? Why do they have to have a back? Or I know when we worked on alliances, we were like, no, no, no, when you're tapped out, you can't do anything. Why? Why? Why when you're tapped out can't you do anything? You know, And there are things that, one of the things that when you do the same process over a period of time you will find that you get default

rules. You get rules like, well this is kind of the way it works. And I think in a creative thing you have to be willing to challenge those things. And it's not that you necessarily have to break them. It's not like I'm going to break rules for the sake of breaking rules but I like challenging them and trying to understand why.

And what I find is when you challenge a rule sometimes what happens is you realize that you don't need all of it. That one of the big writing tricks I learned when I was a writer was that always test your assumptions because what you'll find is when you ask yourself why you often get a solution that's farther reaching than your answer and what I mean by that is that let's say for example you want to solve a problem so you do something that combines a b c d e and f to solve problem. But the reality is you just need A and B to solve the problem,

or maybe just A to solve the problem. And that by tacking on C, D, E, and F, you're giving yourself sort of more restrictions, not necessarily for any reason. And like I said, I'm not always against having restrictions, but, you know, understand why you're doing what you're doing because sometimes when you're trying to find new ground, it's just realizing that you have an assumption that is overreaching in what it is doing.

And I find by challenging assumptions, you often get to cool places. You often get to spaces that you wouldn't normally get to. And that I know sometimes people worry that I challenge something that somehow you're trying to like, I don't know, do evil or something. You're trying to do bad. And like, no, no, no. Part of the creative process is always looking where to expand, where to find new areas, where to push into new spaces.

And, you know, when you first start, you go to the obvious things. There's just easy places to go. But one of the things when you work on the same thing over time, what you start to realize is, look, you've chewed up the obvious space. Like we're 25 years in. We've chewed up the obvious space. Look, we're 25 years in. We've chewed up the obvious space. There's not a lot of obvious places to go. Now, sometimes new technologies and new things opens up fresh new space.

But it also means that you have to start sort of taking places that you've ridden off in the past and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Really? You know, can I do this? And that sometimes asking the craziest of questions, challenging the things that seem, of course we wouldn't want to do that, gets you to interesting places. Sometimes it's just by getting stepping stones that makes you realize some component of things. Maybe you're overreaching what you're doing that you don't need to do all of it. But by challenging things,

you do allow yourself the opportunity to find and educate yourself to get new opportunity to do things. Okay, my last thing, okay, I'm almost to work, is talking about going with the flow. So what that means is that one of the things I like to do is, I like to have a certain amount of planning, of organization. But I also like, I'll go back to do my improv here. When we do an improv, one of the things we tend to do is we go out to the audience and there's a structure to the improv.

They have improv games. And the idea is, oh, this is the kind of improv we ask these kind of things. And when you do the format for a while, you understand the general structure of it. And when you do the format for a while, you understand the general structure of it. Like a very common structure is freeze improv, where two people are doing a scene and somebody off to the side freezes them. And then they have to start a new scene in the same positions that they were just in, making use of the position in a way that's relevant to the scene.

So the nature of that kind of thing is you want to have a lot of body movement. You want to put yourself in weird positions because what makes that that thing fun is they freeze you and that you then get to do new things. There's a different kind of improv where you get a genre, you know, you get a list of genres of different, it's a mystery, it's a science fiction film, it's a newscast, and that you do a scene,

usually your audience gives you a relationship or something in a place, and then you keep jumping between them. And with that, like for example, that thing, because you're jumping between genres, that's more talky. That what makes that funnier usually is the dialogue.

So you want to sort of open yourself up to things that have more speaking. For example, the freeze tag is more physical and the genre switch is more verbal. So there are structures of things. So in improv, there are structures of things that you want to understand. Okay?

So, but what you've learned is when you do a lot of improv is you want to find the moments of the magic. That sometimes somebody does something and that you don't want to structure things so much that you don't give yourself the opportunity for special things to happen. And what that means is sometimes somebody just does something really cool that you just want to be able to capitalize on. A real common thing in magic is somebody makes a card that just does something I've never seen before, but it's a really cool card. It's a neat card, and when I see stuff like that,

I sort of like, I want to say to my team, hey, look at this. Okay, this is our inspiration. Let's riff off this, and then when I find those magical moments, I want to leave myself open. I don't want to be so structured that when something happens that's unscripted,

that's unpredictable, that I can't capitalize on that. That I want something amazing to happen and go, that is amazing. We're doing this. We're shifting in this direction. That I want that opportunity. When I'm standing on the stage doing improv

and my partner does something just amazing, I want to embrace that and go with that. And so going with the flow means being willing to not be so tied down in your presumptions of what you're doing that you can't sort of pivot and latch on to new things that are exciting. And that one of the coolest things about the creative process is there's a lot of discovery that happens through the process. And I want to maximize that discovery. I want to make sure that when I'm doing something, that when a cool thing happens, I can be there. I can make it. I can take advantage of that.

And it's not like, oh, no, no, no, I already mapped this out. So even though this is a cool thing, we don't have time for that. I want to make sure that doesn't happen. So going with the flow is just making sure, it's kind of an attitude of saying that have enough flexibility in your system that when the unpredictable happens, the unexpected happens, that you can incorporate it. Because a lot of,

a lot of my favorite moments of any kind of creation comes from just capturing a truly magical, spontaneous moment. I mean, that's some of my favorite improv of all time. It's some of my favorite writing of I mean, that's some of my favorite improv of all time, and some of my favorite writing of all time, some of my favorite design of all time, is something I just didn't see coming

comes out of the woodworks, and it allows me to sort of do something I didn't expect to do. So anyway, I'm not at work, but let me recap. Ten things to keep things interesting if you do things a lot of times. Number one, start from a different vantage point. Number two, create new challenges for yourself, but challenges built within the system you're doing. Don't do challenges just for the sake of doing challenges. Three, work with different people.

People are a great way to sort of randomize the process, and it's fun to work with different people, and you'll get different things out of them. Four, change the process. Don't always do the way you do things in the same way. That is very easy to get sort of in a rut where it's just a way you do things. Try to find ways to break that rut, especially when it matches what you're doing. Change the technology. Keep up to date. Understand what tools are available to you because sometimes new tools, or even old tools you haven't used before, allow you to sort of explore new spaces. Number six, revisit old things. Don't feel that everything has to be new, new, new.

Sometimes the best new ideas come from old places. Number seven, update the past. That it's okay to sort of go and explore what you've done before and find ways to bring it to the present. It's okay to sort of go and explore what you've done before and find ways to bring it to the present. It's okay to find ways to say, how would I do an old thing but in a new way? Number eight, push boundaries. You know, always see, figure out more places you can go

and figure out different things that you can do. Don't ever sort of, don't ever sort of, you know, try things you haven't tried before. Number nine, challenge assumptions. Just because something was once true doesn't mean it's always true. And that one of the best things about finding new spaces is saying, hey this thing I've always assumed to be true, or maybe it was true for years and years, maybe it's not true anymore, or maybe it's not as true as I thought, or maybe technology has changed that I now can do things I couldn't do

before. And number ten, go with the flow. No matter how much structure you put to your process, how much you do, make sure that you leave yourself open to when you find those magic moments when things pop up that you can capitalize on them and that you can incorporate them into what you do.

And that, my friends, today is how to keep things interesting. But anyway, I'm now at work, so we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you next time, guys. Bye-bye.