Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - Legendary Record Producer Rick Rubin On: Creativity, Habits, Self-Doubt, Intuition and Meditation

Episode Date: August 16, 2023

We also cover: What to do when you're feeling stuck, the difference between authenticity and sincerity, and his approach to work/life balance.Rick Rubin is a nine-time GRAMMY-winning producer and a New York Times number one best selling author of the book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being. He was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time and the most successful producer in any genre by Rolling Stone. He has collaborated with artists from Tom Petty to Adele, Johnny Cash to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beastie Boys to Slayer, Kanye West to the Strokes, and System of a Down to Jay-Z.In this episode we talk about:Rick’s meditation practiceThe connection between meditation and creativityWhy creativity is a birthright for all of usHow good habits help facilitate the making of good artThe benefits of accepting the magical and mysterious aspects of creativityHis analogy of the vessel and the filter The difference between authenticity and sincerity  The role of doubt when creating The role of intuitionWhat to do when you’re feeling stuck in a creative endeavor His approach to a work/life balance His take on drugs and their effect on the creative process And his thoughts on the creative capacity of AI For tickets to TPH's live event in Boston on September 7:https://thewilbur.com/armory/artist/dan-harris/Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/rick-rubinSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello everybody. When you throw out a word like creativity, many people immediately assume that they are left out of the conversation. Maybe you're one of those people. Maybe you're thinking, I'm not an artist, what does creativity have to do with me? But today, we're going to talk about creativity in a much broader sense of the word. If you're moving through the world and making choices about career stuff, parenting, how you treat strangers, whatever, that's all creativity.

At least according to my guest, the legendary record producer, Rick Rubin. I've been a fan of this dude since, I don't know when. Just check out this partial list of artists he has worked with. This is amazing. The Beastie Boys, Johnny Cash, Run DMC Slayer, Weezer, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Shakira,

Neil Diamond, Tom Petty, Metallica, Adele, Weezer, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Shakira, Neil Diamond, Tom Petty, Metallica, Adele, The Strokes, and Jay-Z. And like I said, that's just a partial list. The amazing part is that Rick Rubin doesn't even play music himself. He's just got incredibly good taste and a kind of mystical approach to creativity that draws many of the planets most popular artists. Rick Rubin has just put out a book called The Creative Act, and it's about much more than creativity narrowly defined.

It's actually about how to be alive. In this conversation, we talked about Rick's meditation practice, which he's been doing for a long, long time, the connection between meditation and creativity. Why creativity is a birthright for every single one of us? How good habits can facilitate the making of good art. The benefits of accepting the magical and mysterious aspects of creativity. His analogy of the vessel and the filter. The difference between authenticity and sincerity. The role of doubt when creating, the role of intuition.

What to do when you're feeling stuck in a creative endeavor. His approach to work-life balance, which was unusual, his take on drugs and their effect on the creative process, and his thoughts on the creative capacity of AI. Have you been considering starting or restarting your meditation practice? Well in the words of highway billboards across America. If you're looking for a sign, this is it. To help you get started, we're offering subscriptions at a 40% discount until September 3rd.

Of course, nothing is permanent. So get this deal before it ends by going to 10% dot com slash 40. That's 10% one word all spelled out dot com slash 40 for 40% off your subscription. Rick Rubin, welcome to this show. Thank you for having me, sir. Very excited to have you. I thought we'd start if you're cool with it, with meditation. We'll be talking a lot about meditation on this show.

And I've heard that you started meditating when you were 14. That is true. How and why? My neck hurt when I was in school and my parents brought me to the pediatrician who delivered me, who happened to be hip. This was in the mid-70s, maybe late 70s. And he said, my neck problems were stress. And he recommended I learned to meditate. And I learned TM at that point in time. And I would say probably had more impact on my life than maybe anything else I've done.

Hmm. Transadental meditation is an organization and a practice that originates from... Marishima Hishio-gyi-yes. Yes, yes. And basically with respect to him, it really did kind of, and this is a little cute TM trademark and ancient technique of mantra-based meditation. So he was drawing on ancient traditions, and there's been plenty of research to suggest that TM is really good for you. But on a, and of one level, like what did it do for you that made it the most meaningful thing?

I didn't know it was as meaningful as it was until I stopped doing it and then started doing it again. So I started when I was 14, I stopped when I was in college, the year after college I moved to California, and I decided I was going to start meditating again. And I remember, I didn't just start. I remember it was a big decision to start meditating again. It wasn't, I didn't take it trivially. And it took me a couple of months from the time that I decided I want to until I actually reengaged. And from the first time

that I sat this second period of meditation after doing it for the years I did it before, from the very first time I recognized, first of all, how familiar it felt right away. Like, this is a part of my life that I'm reconnecting with. I understood it, having been away from it and coming back to it, as this is a big part of my life, and this is a big part of why I am the way I am, whatever that is. This is a piece of it. And I think I've always been able to see past what's the surface of what's going on and tune in more to the deeper meaning or what's really going on, you know, not maybe not so much what people are saying, but what's beneath what they're saying, or the energy in the music and what emotion is rooted in it, or when people tell stories that the stories are often as much about themselves as they are about what they're talking about, I just saw all of these levels

that I did not see before learning to meditate. What was it about the practice, the nuts and bolts of the practice that enabled that deeper way of seeing? I can't tell you I know how it works. I would say that it's a silent mantra practice. There are meditation practices that are more awareness-based where you take in everything that's around you, you're aware of everything going on the practice. And if any thoughts come up during the practice, you don't push them down, but you don't engage in them.

You let them pass, and you come back. Every time you realize you're not engaged in them, you're not engaged in them. You're not engaged in them. You're not engaged in them. You're not engaged in them. You're not engaged down, but you don't engage in them. You let them pass and you come back. Every time you realize you're not engaging

in the meditation practice, as soon as you realize you're not doing it, you just go back to doing it. That's all, very simple practice. And I suppose so much of the internal chatter, self-chatter that goes on, we're not aware that it's happening, when it's happening. We all have it. It goes on all the time. And through the meditation practice,

we come into compact and we get to see this thing, this ongoing argument with ourselves, and get to step aside from it and just be in the moment. Just be here now with whatever the object of our focus is. So just to state that back to you, as the volume of the internal chatter went down for you as a result of doing this concentration practice, then as you moved through the world, the yammering voices had less salience, less purchase within

your mind, and that allowed you to see things that were here to foremest. Yes, and I could see those chattering voices and other people. I was aware that when people were saying things, it was rarely what was going on with them. It was a surface reaction to a situation based on a past experience and it was just this momentary thing. And I can give you a specific example. In my family, my closest relative other than my parents was a cousin who was the son was a cousin who was the son of my father's brother. And he was my favorite cousin growing up because he was probably about five years older than me. And he was a cool kid and he was more of an adult. And, you know, he could drive before I could drive and he listened to cool music before I listened to cool music. so he was someone that I looked up to.

And he was very close to his dad, my father's brother. And then my father's brother passed away. And at the funeral, my cousin lashed out at my father and said some very mean things to him. And my father never really forgave the cousin for doing this. And I tried explaining to my father because they were very close as well. My favorite cousin and my father were very close, always very close.

And I explained my cousin is going through a terrible pain. He lost his dad. This is as bad of a moment as he has. He's lashing out in the world. He's angry. And he's close enough to you to be able to show his true pain to you. It has nothing to do with you. His dad just died. He's burying his dad. That's what this is about. This isn't about you. That's an example of, I don't know if I would have been aware of that had I not been a meditator.

Yeah. That really tracks with my experience that the more you get comfortable with, familiar with your own inner chaos and cacophony, the more you recognize that that's going on for everybody and that inextrable, I believe leads to a kind of empathy. Absolutely. And it's harder to hold a grudge for someone who's acting out their pain even if you happen to be in the way. When you see that, this is not about you. You're standing for what's going on.

And yet I remain pretty skilled at holding those grudges. So, TM was really the on-tribe for you. And then, as I understand it, you moved on to other forms of meditation. Yes, I've tried Vapassana. I've done breathing meditations. I've done all types of meditations, focusing on a candle, chanting. I've done many types. And I found great things in all of them. I tend to keep coming back to TM for some reason, and I don't know if that's just because it was the first one that I learned. So it has its deepest roots in me.

But it's one of the defaults that I go to. Although these days when I sit down, I might sit down to do TM and it ends up becoming something different, and I'm okay with that. Yes, often in my experience, I'm sit down to do TM and it ends up becoming something different. And I'm okay with that. Yes, often in my experience, you know, I'm a piker compared to you when it comes to meditation and that I've only been doing it for, I don't know, 13, 14 years, but often I'll sit and do a concentration practice.

And once the mind is settled, I'll open up and do something a little bit less structured. Or I'll do something a different structured like sometimes I'll go into Meta, which is the four phrases of loving kindness that might come up or it might turn into prayer or gratitude. And when those come I allow those to come. So you've got this amazing new book about creativity. What connection in your mind is there between meditation and similar practices and creativity? In the same way that we just discussed the benefits of meditation in getting closer to what's really happening around us, the same is true with the things that we're making. So we can be more in tune, more in tune with ourselves, more in tune with our inspiration,

and those aspects that can explain it, there's a depth that we're able to tap into that works its way into our creations. So waking up and being more aware of the inner and outer environments can be the source of inspiration. Absolutely, because we're refining our senses through meditation, and through that refinement, we're better able to deal with any type of detail or just see possibilities harder to see otherwise. Just as a foundational question here, and I'll probably have said this in the introduction, but I want to let you say it too

and you really go out of your way to make this point in the book. You're not thinking of creativity as something that's restricted to that thin band of society that would call itself artists. Your argument is that everybody is a creator. How so? We're all faced with choices daily and if we're making considered choices, that's the work of an artist. If you're not just checking off things from a list, but if you're deciding, hmm, what's the best way to handle this? What's the most interesting way? What's the best seasoning I could add to this dish that I'm preparing? What

would it be like at this time and day to take the Scenic root home instead of the direct root? Every choice we make or starting a business is a completely creative act. Also, in whatever job you do, chances are you're there to make decisions that involve making creative choices. We do them all the time. It's funny when I hear someone say, you know, I'm not creative. It's like, you're not a human being. If you're not creative, it's truly our birthright. There's this cliche about life as a work of art, but cliches become cliches because they're true. And so through your choices, you are creating your life. Yes, I thought of another thing related to the earlier thing we were talking about,

about why meditation impacts our artwork is, if you're doing a practice that involves persistence and discipline, which meditation does, you bring those skills with you into your artistic practice, in your choices. You may do an extra pass of the edit before you turn it in. You may be willing to go the extra distance for it to be all that it could be because you're in the habit of forcing yourself to do something that maybe isn't fun at all times. There's a discipline involved. You get something great for it,

but there is this trade off of, I'm going to work through the difficult times doing this, and I'm not gonna stop. That strikes me as potentially applicable or a decent description of the benefits from many kinds of practice. Yes, meditation really wicks you up and allows you to take in the world in a way that allows you to get inspiration, but

the daily grind of doing the thing can give you the tenacity and grit and perseverance to create in the world, which is very hard if you want to do it well. But I would imagine that an exercise practice could have the same benefit, because that too sucks. Yeah, absolutely. Anything that is for your benefit that it takes some energy to get to do it. A great example is going into ice tubs, if you've ever done any getting in an ice tub.

You never feel like, oh yeah, let's jump in the ice tub. This is gonna be great. It's never that. It's always a battle of will. Every single time, I've been doing it for 10 years. Every time I stand at the tub, there's a battle of will that goes on where I'm doing it now, I'm getting in, I'm doing it, and I do it. Again, it's a commitment, and that commitment for a greater good works its way into the craft as well. In the book, you say, good habits create good art.

Good habits allow art to continue to be made. In other words, if you make things using a shortcut method, let's say you get really high to have an experience that's otherworldly and you can write a great song that way. I think eventually, and if we look historically, usually the odds catch up and it doesn't work to be a sustainable solution. So the beauty of this is that we're talking about sustainable solutions, healthy habits that allow you to do good work for a long period of time. So what are the other healthy habits that would fit into that category? An interesting one, I didn't know this one early on because I was always a night owl and so many

musicians I know were night owls and we would work all night. And I would work all night and sleep all day. Something changed when I changed to be in tune with the planet and waking up with the sun and going to sleep not long after it got dark, where you're engaged in the rhythms of the planet in a different way. And somehow again, I can't explain it, but I feel as I'm working, the energy of the sun is working its way into the work and it's a good thing.

I don't know if I'm explaining it well. It's a little metaphysical. Well, you are explaining it as well as I think is humanly possible, but you're getting at one of the, at least to me, fascinating aspects of creativity, which is that there are lots of very practical

and easily understood things one can do to support creativity. But at the end of the day, it's a fucking mystery. Absolutely. No, and I think accepting the magic aspects of it also is helpful knowing it's not us. Knowing, you know, there's no ego involved. If I'm working on something and it turns out great, that's not because I'm great. That's not how it works. I may be persistent and I may be willing to go as far as it takes for it to be as good as it can get, but that's still not about me. It's about the forces beyond our control coming

together that allow this thing to happen. We just happen to be there when it happens because often where they're when it doesn't happen, you know? And it's not different. Do you know what I'm saying? It's like, you can, we can go to the studio every day for a month and maybe three days are incredible. And 27 are not as good. We have no control of that. And we don't know the difference.

We don't know why. We'll see it happen day to day, where an artist will be playing a song and it sounds okay, pretty good, good, pretty good, okay. And then maybe it sounds unbelievable, but you don't know what's different when it's unbelievable than five minutes earlier when it was okay. Everything's the same, but for some reason, everybody in the room looks at each other like what's going on?

And because we don't know what's happening. It's we're just witnessing it. When we witness it, we can say, oh, there it is. And then it's scary in the room because we don't know how it got there and we don't want it to go away. So we everybody's on egg shells until hopefully we get through that performance and maybe even try to do something else while the energy is happening. Often as soon as you notice it, it evaporates. But the maddening piece of this, maddening and magical at the same time, is that there are things you can do to increase the odds that the magic happens. But you can't really force it. So it's a bit of a conundrum. Yes, you can do everything right and it can go wrong. That said, the more consistently you do as

much as you can, your odds get better. You can't say I'm going to go out and catch three fish today, but you can say I'm going to fish every day until I catch three fish. One of the keys there is you have to be doing something. It reminds me of a quote, and I can't remember who said it. I think it was a painter, something to the effect of. The muse will visit, but she has to find you working. Oh, that's great. I love that. It's true. And one of the good habits recommended in the book is to keep some sort of office hours, whatever your version of office hours is could be for 20 minutes a day. It could be for three hours a day. It's whatever works for you. You have to find your rhythm.

But committing to showing up with you have something to do in that time or not allows something to happen. Something happens when you show up. Coming up, Rick Rubin talks about his analogy of the vessel and the filter, the importance of paying attention and being aware, the difference between authenticity and sincerity, why he believes that following your intuition is crucial and the role of doubt.

Can you talk to me about your analogy of the vessel and the filter? Yes, the vessel is us. We are the vessel. And the vessel holds everything we've seen and experienced over the course of our life, both that we remember and that we don't. So we could see something beautiful and note it, that's in there. And then someone could say something that we didn't realize bothered us when we were 10 years old, that's in there too. The vessel is all of our conscious and unconscious experience in life. And then the filter is how we see those things. The vessel takes in everything. And then the filter is how we choose to

let's say recapitulate it out or our version of it. Another example of the filter would be, if you and I both did the same thing and wrote down our experience, what filled our vessel, even though we did the exact same thing would not be the exact identical list. You're a list and my list, maybe some of it would match, but some of it wouldn't. And the reason it wouldn't is because we each have our own filter. But the filter is not a one-way filter. It's not just filtering things as they're coming in. It's also filtering things as they're coming out. Yeah, it's like that movie, Rashomon, by Akira Kirasawa. It's like the same thing happens, but you get all these different versions of it. So, but what is the relationship

there to creativity? It's that we can somehow work on the filter in some way. I guess you can work on the vessel too. We can work on both. Yeah. One of the things we can do for the vessel is curate our intake. So spend a lot of time reading the great works and seeing the greatest movies of all time

and listening to the greatest music ever made and going to the museums and seeing what are considered the canon, even though the canon's always changing, whatever the canon for you is, that might get you further than listening to what's today's top 10. What's this week's most popular movie? Those things are much more transitory. So filling yourself with the things that have stood the test of time, not to copy them, but to set your meter for what those things feel like. So that when you make some things like, does it fit in this context? Does it fit alongside these other things that I'm filled with from taking them in. Does it fit

with a beautiful sunset? So you can curate your experience on the one hand and then you can tweak the filter by doing practices like meditation, being in nature, etc. Exactly. Anything to refine the filter to where you're more attuned to what's going on, awareness practices where you're really paying attention, where you're sitting in silence, not with an object of attention, just allowing whatever happens to happen and to be with it enough to notice what's happening, noticing the different things that are happening that had you not been doing this practice would have been complete background noise.

You wouldn't have noticed it at all. All of those things. Also, noticing things like, at the different times of the day, noticing where the shadows are falling or noticing when you pass a plant or a tree, are there any other elements to it beyond the flower? What else is going on there? You know, like you start noticing things

when you really pay attention. There's a lot to take in when we open the aperture and choose to see what's there. You know, as much of what's there, it's impossible to take it all in. It's endless, but opening the aperture with interest to see what's going on in the ordinary, in the mundane. There's usually something really interesting happening underneath.

There's some story of life happening. And again, just to double back to your point here, that this is applicable, not just to people who are making something that might qualify as art, as art is traditionally understood, but also to anybody who's doing life at all. Yes, to be a better parent, to be a better spouse, to be anything. I didn't know that. When I started the book, I didn't know these things. I didn't know what was going to be in the book. I didn't know what was in the book. I still don't really know what's in the book. It's through the process of working on the book. I realized so much of what it talks about

is living in a way that allows this creation to happen. Turns out it applies to everything. Again, that was not what I said out to find. That was something I learned through the process. I think you've said that you thought you were writing a book about how to make art, but you actually ended up writing a book about how to be. It's, I mean, it sounds ridiculous, but it's really what happened. Well, because the two are inextricable. I think that's the point you're making. Yeah. Another part of it is, and there's a chapter about the sincerity dilemma that talks sort of against sincerity, but really what we're looking for, what makes art great is authenticity. sincerity, but really what we're looking for, what makes our great is authenticity. And the authenticity part of it, that comes through what the book talks about. It's about becoming

an authentic person in the world as best you can, being a curious, authentic person. Okay, I have two questions. I'm just going to spit them out before I forget them. One is what's the difference between authenticity and sincerity, which you have some questions about. And then also, why is it that so many schmucks have made great art? Is it because they were authentically schmucky? Could be. No, could be.

It could be that they were just being true to themselves. It's like with spiritual teachers. Some of the best spiritual teachers have been accused of terrible things. It doesn't take away from their teachings, their human beings. Do you know what I'm saying? It's like we're all humans, we're flawed people. The art is our, it's like the highest, how can I explain it? It's our highest offering that we make.

That said, there are people who make beautiful things that are flood human beings just like everybody else. But again, back to the authenticity piece. Some names are coming to mind, but I don't feel like getting sued so I won't say them. But you can think of people who were pretty terrible in their personal lives, but did transcendent works of art. But it was still authentic and some level they must not have been hiding the bad aspects of themselves from themselves. I think that's right. And I think if you look also, we have to look at when these things happened and what was

the standard of the time. And it's impossible to talk about anything from the past based on how we live today. Do you know what I'm saying? Like culture is always moving. So we can't judge what life was like in another time. If that was or in another part of the world, there are parts of the world where things that we think of as civil there, we would view what happens in other parts of the world as barbaric.

That doesn't make it wrong for them because that's that culture and that's how they see it. We're not right, they're not wrong. Those are just two different ways of living. We don't know that. Everything is an experiment and everyone is trying their best to solve their problems the best way they can. Right, which brings us back to empathy because everybody's doing their best. Even though it may not seem like it in our judgment, because everybody's doing their best, even though it may not seem like it in our judgment, based on their vessel and filter,

which we can only begin to comprehend. They're doing their best. Absolutely. And when we mentioned earlier sincerity, sincerity has the potential. If it happens in its own natural way, it's fine, then it's authentic. But most often, it's one of the few things.

Sincereity is the kind of thing that if you aim at it, it turns into like a hallmark moment. It becomes hollow. And I don't think that sincerity is something you can call up. I think it's something again. It's more like an outgrowth of an authentic thing may turn out to be sincere, but it's not something you can set out to do. I guess I'm trying to figure out what's the definitionally, what's the difference between authenticity and sincerity. Should we look them up?

I do, they have a different valence for me. Yeah, I'm not interested in the dictionary definition. I'm interested in the valence for Rick Rubin definition. Okay. Sincereity has a sweetness about it. Authenticity has a raw honesty about it. I would say authenticity is more selfish. Because that's how we're wired and if we're being really honest, it's always going to be there or it's often going to be there. No, it's just the purpose of me making this art is to share how I see the world. And if you don't like how I see the world, I can't

change it for your taste because then it's not authentic anymore. So the authentic artist makes their art to the best of their ability and shares it with the idea of, this is my diary entry, this is how I see the world. So if someone doesn't like it, you can't change it to someone else's feelings because that's their diary entry. They're not applicable to each other. Yes, that makes sense.

And I guess I'm wondering as somebody who personally, you know, I make podcasts, books and things like that. But there's a, on the one hand, I do try to be authentic to the way I see the world. On the other hand, I do want to be open to other people's notes. Would you ever change something that you believe is good to something you believe is less good because somebody else thinks it would be better. Or even worse, if you had a fictional audience in mind, would you change what you think is good for the fictional audience? That's the question. It's a great question.

I'll answer it honestly and hopefully not take up too much air time here, but I used to be a network newsman and so for for 21 years, I worked at ABC News, and I made a lot of work there that I was very proud of, but I often had to change it in ways that I thought degraded the quality because my editors or bosses thought that that's what would be more palatable to the audience. So they were conjuring the fictional critics in their mind. And so I didn't have a choice because my whole paycheck

depended on saying yes to those requests. I thought them sometimes, but I can only take it so far. Now that I'm on my own boss and I'm making podcasts and writing books that are memoirs and very personal, I do accept notes, but only if I actually think they're good notes. So maybe that's the difference. But only if I actually think they're good notes. So maybe that's the difference. I think that is the difference. I think that's the difference. And I completely understand making the art to the best of your ability. And if you have a job that involves some other power that has the power to decide whether you get to do it or not, again, you can have that fight, but ultimately that's that situation. It's very specific to that situation. Yes. So back to authenticity and sincerity. Sincereity has a sweetness.

And if it's done with authenticity, it can be incredibly powerful. But if it's done with falseness, it can be Tui, sweet, saccharine and miss the mark. And I think when you aim at it, that's what happens. I don't know that it's possible to get there other than by accident through being authentic. Right. In terms of it really landing, I don't know though, that's my opinion.

Maybe there's somebody who's an expert a false sincerity person, and they can just call it up on man and we believe him. I think we call them actors. I want to keep plowing ahead of here because I have a whole long list of questions I want to ask you about because so many interesting things in your book. You also talk about intuition. Let me just read you back to you because I'd love to get you to talk about this.

To the best of my ability, I followed my intuition to make career turns and been recommended against doing so every time. It helps to realize that it's better to follow the universe than those around you. It's not always easy to follow the subtle, energetic information the universe broadcasts, especially when your friend's family co-workers or those with a business interest in your creativity are offering seemingly rational advice that challenges your intuitive knowing. I find this very powerful, but also I find myself worrying that it's maybe a little tricky because I mean, I've got intuition to do all sorts of things like commit homicides and

go into candy stores and swallow everything. So like sometimes my intuition is that honest? Are you honestly saying that that's what your intuition tells you? I don't believe that. I don't believe that. Well, I'm being fissitious, I'm taking creative license a little bit with my intuition to make the point that absolutely listening to my body, listening to what you might call the heart has set me in absolutely the right direction. And there are aspects of the heart, the subconscious, whatever you want to call it, that are prone to delusion.

And so it seems like this process of listening to your intuition is not necessarily straightforward. That's when I'm trying to get up. In making art, following your delusional thoughts can be a great gift. In making art, following your delusional thoughts can be a great gift. That could be a superpower. Because it's a kind of sublimation, so instead of acting in a violent way, I can turn it into something beautiful artistically. Well, we see, if we look at heavy metal music, for example, heavy metal music often has violent lyrics, gory lyrics, and the music is very aggressive. And when people come together to hear that music, they don't come together filled with hatred. They come together filled with love.

And they cheer and share this like brotherhood of connection that maybe those people get to feel in very few places in their life. Maybe they don't get that at home in their family. It has been I worked with in the past called Slayer, who were really gruesome band. And their shows were like celebrations. And the people who were there, that might be the biggest cause of celebration in their life. And I'm so pleased that those people get to celebrate. I buy that a thousand percent. And as it pertains to your career and anybody's career, this notion of listening to the subtle signs of the universe versus what your friends and loved ones might be telling you, that strikes me as tricky and not necessarily straightforward.

is tricky and not necessarily straightforward. Yeah, I understand. If you have a knowingness that this is right, usually the people around you have more of a sense of, I know what he did that worked in the past. So this left turn really seems like a dangerous move. And again, the example that I gave was true, that every step in my career that I made that was different than what I did before it,

I was told by much wiser people than me, not to do it, every single time, people with experience, I was a kid. The experienced people around me don't do that. You know, you're a hip hop producer, you can't make heavy metal records. You're a hip hop heavy metal producer, you can't make country records. Every step

of the way, every next thing was you can't do that. Don't think about it. It's a terrible idea. And I just listened to what felt right to me because no one can know. I don't think anyone can know what's right for us. Did your intuition ever lead you astray? I can't think of an example. One can think of examples of great artists who took risks and it didn't work. The sophomore slump kind of, the band comes out with a great first record. Some people say that about the strokes. Their first record was amazing.

The second I disagree, I should have liked their second record. But the idea of the sophomore slump happens all the time. Or you can think of artists who take a big swing, they make a heavens gate or whatever it is, and it doesn't work. Does that mean they were listening to their intuition and their intuition was wrong, or they mistook intuition for something else? Well, who's to say what success is? Judging success in a very particular way. Success isn't necessarily material success. Many of the great works of art that we look at now as great works of art were in their day not considered that. Rolling Stone put out this book of all of the articles written about Neil Young that appeared in Rolling Stone. And each one of his albums would come out and they would get a terrible review.

And like after the Gold Rush, you know, more boring cowboy songs from Neil and then Harvest, another stinker. And then, and he would talk about all of them. And then you would get to the best albums of the decade. And Neil's albums would all be at the top of the book. In the same publication, the best albums of the decade.

So you never know. And sometimes an artist needs to do something really challenging for themselves that allows them to get to their next phase of work. If they do another in the mold of the successful ones before it, that could be the end of the whole thing. In a creative life, there are these peaks and valleys and dips and dives and twists and turns, and we take crazy risks. But they're all in the pursuit of making the best thing we can over a long period of time, over and over again. And if you don't like this one, it's okay. You know, that's okay. It's like you're entitled to your opinion. It's, it's usually the best you

can do in that moment. The times when they're what I've seen is the opposite of the artist thinking, okay, now we're successful. Now we have this obligation. What do they want from us? We have the thing that we made that was successful. We made purely out of passion when nobody was looking at nobody cared. We were being true to ourselves. That's how we got here. And now we have all these people counting on us and telling us what to do.

So if we listen to them, who knows what's gonna happen? And often the sophomore slump comes from just too much well-meaning input. From people who, again, they mean well, they just don't know. Nobody knows. That's the thing, nobody knows. That leads us very nicely to something else you talk

about in the book, which is the role of doubt in the creative process. You taxonomize it into two kinds of doubt, they're self-doubt, and then doubt about the quality of the work. Can you just say more about that? Yes. Self-doubt is, I just wrote a song. I don't think the song is any good. I'm no good. I can't write songs. That is self-doubt. The other type of doubt is, I just wrote this song. The song is not good enough. What can I learn from this song to make a better song? I know I'm going to be able to figure this out. I know I'll find a way.

It's okay to doubt a work, but when you turn the doubt around to I'll never be able to do this, it's a recipe for disaster. So there's a healthy kind of doubt and an unhealthy kind of doubt. Well, they're just doubt about different things. Think about you and the things that you make and the things you make are outside of yourself for the most part. It's important to have that boundary between this is the thing that's outside of me. This is the thing I'm working on. And because it's outside of you, it's okay to talk about it, it's okay to criticize it, it's okay to tear it apart.

And there's nothing personal in that. The sooner you can make the work, the work, it's outside, it's this thing that anyone who gets involved, everyone's interest is the same. Make that thing outside of ourselves the best it could be. And there's no feelings to get hurt. There's no, you're no good. There's no, I don't like you.

It's not, it's never that. All it is is, hmm, these lyrics aren't as good as they could be. What could we do to make them better? There's nothing personal in that. Given how easy it is to take it personally, however, what do you recommend to people to manage the self-doubt that can be so insidious and paralytic?

One is to know that it's not you. Two is to get into the detail. The more detail you can get into, instead of the kind of black and white thinking of, oh, it's no good. If someone brings me a piece of music and asks my opinion, my answer would never be, it's no good. It might be, this is what I like about it, this is what I don't like about it,

strengths and weaknesses. I might say this is not my cup of tea, I wouldn't listen to this, but that's not about it, that's about me. I believe you also talk about getting the artists you work with to put a name on the self-doubt of you use the term papuncha. That's a poly word for proliferating thoughts that we can have in Sanskrit. It's propuncia. Can you say more about papuncha slash propuncia and why it's useful to label it? Yeah, it's for people who don't know about it. It's propuncia. Can you say more about popuncia slash propuncia and why it's useful to label it?

Yeah, it's for people who don't know about it, it's useful to label it. Once you know what it is, you're okay. I've worked with artists in the past who have a great deal of self-doubt. And once they understand that the voices in their head that's undermining what they're doing is not them that it's this chatter,

you know, monkey mind. Once you can understand when it comes up, oh, that's what that is. Or if you have someone a friend who can remind you when you start saying, oh, I'll never be able to do this. I have no good. And it's like, no, no, no, that's that's Papacha. I'm like, oh, yeah, I remember now. Yes, so I'm in year five or six of writing my next memoir and I deal with a lot of doubt. And I sometimes have to just kind of step away from the computer, put my hand on my chest

and I wouldn't want anybody to see me do this, but give myself a pep talk. Like, dude, you're fine. Keep going or maybe take a break or whatever, but you're good. Just keep chipping away every day, make a little bit of progress, and you'll get there. Is that what happens? Does it turn around? Sometimes. Sometimes I have to just lie on the floor and list a local cat to join me.

I'm not telling you anything you don't know, but I do find that it's very helpful. I mean, there's a lot of data to suggest for those who like data that this is a successful strategy that you can harness your advice giving skills on yourself. Absolutely. I think I talk about that in the book as you envision if you're really suffering with something, make believe that this is something happening to a close friend and say out loud what you would say to that friend who's dealing with this issue. Yes, and I found that to be incredibly helpful and to also see that the thoughts I'm having about how's this going to be received and is it going to be as good as my last book and is it going to be commercially successful all that stuff, this just not useful. No, and it doesn't have anything to do with what you're doing. You're writing something. You're not putting together a marketing campaign.

You're not assessing it. You know what I'm saying? Those are conversations to have when the book is finished, not when you're in it. When you're in it, all that matters is, what's the next part of this? What's interesting to go to from here? What can I try next? But what happens after your day of work has nothing to do with it? Right, so I think I could get even better at this,

I think of just being more disciplined of seeing that coming up and saying, but Puncha, no thank you. Not now, not relevant, not helpful, and not in a violent way. No, no, no, it's not relevant. We'll deal with you later. You'll have your say.

You will have your say when it's done. We can talk about this. But now I have work to do. Coming up, Rick talks about what to do when you're feeling stuck in a creative endeavor. His approach to work-life balance is take on drugs and their effect on the creative process and his thoughts on the creative capacity of artificial intelligence. What do you recommend when people get stuck in a creative endeavor?

And again, this could be making something traditionally understood as art or making a decision about anything in life? First thing that comes up, I mean, there are probably a lot of things, but the first thing that comes up is changing the context of what you're doing. So turn off the lights, light a candle, go for a walk, change the way you're doing what you're doing. Go on a trip, you know, find a new environment, work in a new place, work outside instead of inside, sit in a coffee shop, listen to the chatter, get inspired, you know, find who yourself in a place that allows it to happen, where you

can get out of yourself, where there's other stimulation. Like going for walks is really good. Walks are great. I also have done, like if I have a problem I'm trying to solve, I might go for a swim and just forget about the problem, but it's there. And I swim and I swim and I swim, focus on swimming. And at some point, it's not unusual to like, oh, this might be a way to do it,

even though I wasn't trying to solve it in that moment. I was focused on breathing and swimming. And example, I often cite of exactly what you're talking about, I think, is in the TV show Mad Men itself, a, my opinion, a great work of art. Love to. And Don Draper is asked by his younger associate Peggy. You know, how do you come up with these slogans

and he said, I work all day, work, work, work, work, and then I go to the movies. Yeah, and zone out. And meditation is a version of zoning out. It's like either getting wrapped up in something other than your work, which would be going to a movie, reading something and really falling into the story. At some point you realize, oh, be going to a movie, reading something and really, you know, falling into the story.

At some point you realize, oh, I'm reading a book. I'm not actually in this, I'm not in this scene. I'm not experiencing this. Then when you come back, you have a clean slate to start from. Yes. And the mind is working that whole time, making subconscious connections, et cetera, et cetera. We talk about that in the book, the idea of that when you practice,

you don't get better immediately from practice. You get better when you recover from the practice. You know, it's like weightlifting. When you finish lifting weights, you're not stronger than when you started, but when you recover, you're stronger than when you started. And the same is true with practicing piano. At the end of a long piano practice, you're not a better pianist. You're done. But the next day when you come back to it or two days later, it'll integrate into you. How do you manage your schedule as it pertains to your creative work? Do you have to be careful not to overwork and say if you're going to do a big project like a book, do you need to really acidually cut down on the and say if you're going to do a big project like a book, do you need to

really acidiously cut down on the number of bands you're producing? I've only done one book so I can't say if I was going to do another one how it would work and the last one happened while other things were happening. And it took a long time, it took eight years and it didn't take eight years because I sat down every day to work on it for eight years, but it was just ongoing collecting ideas. And then once there were, you know, 1,000 pages of ideas, then there was a long process of trying to figure out how to make it into a book. So do you ever find yourself having to make tough calls about, oh, well, I have to say no to this because I need to manage

my bandwidth. Or can you just do it all and just do it out of pace that is humane? I'll say interestingly for the majority of my career, without good management skills, it has worked itself out one way or another, where I can't think of anything that I've wanted to do that I haven't gotten to do unless there have been a couple of occasions where I was excited and an artist was excited and we started doing something and we just there was some disconnection happen maybe two times in my life which is didn't work. But other than that it has always worked out one way or another and

you know there was a time when I would be going pre-internet over the course of the day. I'd been four different recording studios for four hours at a time on four different projects. I feel like in my role, I'm available when the time is right for the project to happen. It's, do you know what I'm saying? I can't, many people who do my production job will say,

okay, I'm available from November 2nd to January 3rd, and we're gonna make it in that period. I can't work that way because I want it to be great, and I know it doesn't work that way. So everything is this open-ended fluid thing where, you know, when you have songs, let's sit down and listen to them and then let's figure out how as soon as possible that we could record them, if they're ready to be recorded, and then how the different steps work after that, it really

has to do with when it's ready to happen, because again, I know I can't impose my schedule on a project and expect it to be good. That fluidity and improvisation, that sounds very wise, Vs.V. the creative process and outcomes. And yet I just, I'm curious, like how do you manage your own sleep and burnout and overwork while being open in this way. One of the things that has changed, I used to work, I mentioned earlier, I used to work

all night, and I used to work very long hours. And in the early days, most of us who were doing what we were doing associated the amount of time we spent in the studio to either how hard we were working or how good it was going to be. And that was just a bad idea. I didn't know that then. And now I spend only the amount of time necessary in the studio to get the best outcome. And if I'm needed, I'm there. And if I'm not needed, I'm not there. And I typically work on an album project in the afternoon, usually we started in noon or one and typically work till about six. And again, if it's a particularly magic day

and things are really cooking and going great, we may work a couple of hours longer because catching the moment, you know, if the fish are biting, we take advantage. But in general, those hours seem like the amount of time that I can really pay attention with all of myself, be completely focused on what's happening and be of use. And then, usually at the end of that time, I'll give a list of all the things that can be tried, and then in some cases, you just work all night until three in the morning after that. And then we'll meet the next day at noon or one and listen to what happened the night before and talk about, okay, this really works.

This I thought this was going to work. This didn't really work. Maybe we try it like this. And we just keep updating things. And the morning you clear out for yourself for meditation, exercise, whatever it else you want to do. Yes, wake up slowly, typically go for a walk, depending on where I am often to be twok, long be twok, and listen to an audio book or listen to a podcast, depending on the practice I'm doing I might meditate before it or

I might do, I've been doing a tight sheet ruler practice now, which I do usually late afternoon before dinner. I just started doing a Tai Chi ruler practice now, which I do usually late afternoon before dinner. I just started doing a coherent breathing practice that I do as often as I can to add up to about 30 minutes a day, just experimenting with it, seeing how it sits with me. So it sounds like there is space in your calendar. You're not lurching from one thing to the next on your to-do list. No, and I'm not beholden to what there is to do. In other words, if a project's at a place where it's time for me to send notes, but I know that the notes aren't going to be dealt with immediately,

I'll do it immediately if that's what suits my schedule. And if I need to wait a week before I address it, considering nothing's going to happen anyway, do you know what I'm saying? It's like if address it, considering nothing's gonna happen anyway, do you know what I'm saying? It's like if the notes aren't gonna be dealt with, then I do it on the schedule that makes sense for a life. And I do a better job of it because of it, because I like to do things when I really feel present.

For something important, I wanna feel like I'm really, like if I'm not feeling good one day, I probably wouldn't want to make a big choice about something really important on a day where I'm not feeling my best. So I might, you know what? I'll come back to this tomorrow. I'm gonna take care of myself.

So what I'm hearing there is a mixture of fluidity, you know, a kind of jazz approach to your schedule and the work. And also some ruthlessness of like, no, I'm going to protect this amount of time for a long leisurely aimless walk and some breathing and some meditation because I can't do the stuff everybody wants me to do if I don't do that. So am I restating this with some accuracy? Yeah, whatever it takes for the work to be good is what I'll do. And often, if I'm not taking care of myself, I don't think I can be of much use.

Right. But I would imagine you get a lot of incoming. I would love to have Rick Rubin read my book and tell me if he thinks it's good. I'm sure every band in the world would love to have you produce their record or give notes on it. There has to be some discipline on, I can't take on this project right now, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah.

Usually, I find that when it's the beginning of something, like if I'm being asked to do something, it usually works best if I meet the artist. And we meet, and in their presence, we listen together and talk about where they're at, if they've already started something, or if they have a vision of what they want to do or if they don't have a vision of what they want to do, how they assess everything that's happened up till now and talk about possible ways that it could go. Usually it happens in a pretty natural way. You mentioned something early that I've been thinking about when to follow up on so I'll do it now. You talked about getting high as a shortcut and maybe not the best sustainable strategy for long-term creativity. And yet, you know, I think about the way cannabis

has been used in creative process for many years. Do you think that's not sustainable? I'll say I know some bands who smoke a lot who have not been able to keep their relationship together. Now I've also seen the opposite. There's no right answer for everybody. It seems like usually any substance that's altering you is a shortcut to something that your body can do on its own if you tap into the right energy. There's the story of Ram Das giving his guru a handful of acid, you know, enough acid for horse.

And the guru said, what's this? And just took it all. And it had no effect on him because he was already there. He was in this place. So I can remember an artist once telling me, you listen to music, like I heard music after I took acid, except I'd never took acid. So I think we can get there without it.

That said, whatever works for everybody, I'm not against anyone trying it. I can remember one example of where a particular guitar player who's very much lived in his head, I'd spent time with him in general outside of the studio and he liked to drink in real life. And in the studio, he was very critical of himself and very in his head. It didn't feel like he was playing with his whole body. It felt too intellectual. And that was one time that I suggested,

maybe you should have a few drinks. And again, that's not my normal, wouldn't be normal, but in that particular case, based on my experience with him and seeing how he acted when he was having fun outside of the studio, I thought maybe in this particular case, it'll get us where we need to go.

That makes sense. You talk about this magic moment when things are cooking in the studio and I must imagine that that's a drug in and of itself. Just last night I was online and I was watching a clip of Timberland and Jay-Z, the moment they came up with that song, Dirt Off Your Shoulder, watching Timberland play the beat to Jay-Z and then he goes right into the studio and ad-libs this song. It's unbelievable to watch, similarly watching that documentary Get Back, Peter Jackson's documentary about the Beatles, where you watch Paul, you know, sit down on the base, waiting

for John to show up and he writes, what is he writing? Get back, I bet. Get back, yes, he writes, get back. And where you see, like, there's a shot where Ringo's talking to some random person and he's in focus, Ringo is. And in the foreground, out of focus is Paul, writing, let it be.

And I can think of few more thrilling things to witness than that act of creation. And that is your life. And that must be just awesome. Absolutely. It's thrilling and definitely addictive. And again, we can't control it. We can't make it happen.

But when you're in the room and it happens, it's stunning, breathtaking. And why we keep coming back for more. We only have a few more minutes left. So let me ask just a few more questions. Can AI, which everybody's talking about now, artificial intelligence, can AI, which is trained on the corpus of human knowledge, create in this way? I will say I don't know enough about AI, but I'll start by saying

the way we each work is we all take in a great deal of information into our vessel. And then through our filter, we come up with something new. I heard an interesting thing where some very smart business people who knew a lot about technology were talking about AI. And they said that there are currently five competing AI's and eventually with the same data sets in all five of them over time as they got better and better all five would get to the same answer. Now if you give a great script to five different movie directors you'll get five different movies. So the AI is doing something different than what we do.

What we do is we bring our point of view to the project. The AI doesn't have a point of view. It's just got a lot of data, but it doesn't have a point of view. And the thing that we're looking for from our artists, it's not a lot of data. We're looking for the point of view. And the thing that we're looking for from our artists, it's not a lot of data. We're looking for the point of view. Well said, is there something that you wish I had asked, but that I failed to ask? I can't think of anything. Can you just remind everybody of the name of your book and any other things you've

made that you think would be of interest to the audience. And the book is called the Creative Act, a way of being. And if you go online, you can find a whole bunch of music I worked on. Also, there was a great documentary called Shangri-La on Showtime about you doing your work. Yes, and I made a sort of a documentary called McCartney 321 And I made a sort of a documentary called McCartney 321 with Paul McCartney looking at Beatles songs. It blew my mind. It blew my mind being in the room and hearing the stories. It's unbelievable.

I'm so happy it's on film because I would think it was a dream. Had it not been captured. It is awesome. It's available. Who I recommend it. I'm a long-time fan. It's a huge pleasure to meet you. I'll be at virtually. So thank you for making time. Pleasure meeting you. I look forward to reading your next book. Thanks again to Rick Rubin, awesome to talk to that guy with a legend.

Thank you as well to you for listening. As always, I'm going to ask you, go give us a rating and review that really helps us. So thank you for that. And thanks most of all to everybody who worked so hard on this show. 10% happier is produced by Lauren Smith, Gabrielle Zuckerman, Justine Davie and Tara Anderson. DJ Cashmere is our senior producer, Marissa Schneidermann is our senior editor, and Kimmy Regler is our executive producer,

scoring and mixing by Peter Bonaventure of Ultraviolet audio. And we get our theme music from Nick Thorburn of the band, Islands. Before we go, just one last little note here. We got a lot of great feedback a few weeks ago when I asked the audience if you would be up for me, slash us, adding a third episode. We got a resoundingly positive response to that. So we're going to do another experiment with a third episode this week. Coming up on Friday, a full-on episode with a fascinating guy who's been on this show before, a former congressman from Ohio, former and perhaps who knows future presidential candidate,

Tim Ryan, who has talked a lot about being a very public meditator and we're going to talk to him about how all those years of meditation helped him handle a really tough and somewhat bitter defeat in a recent Senate campaign. So Tim Ryan coming up just a few days. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.