The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 171: Scott Berkun - Big Ideas For Curious Minds

Episode Date: October 30, 2016

Episode 171: Scott Berkun - Big Ideas For Curious Minds Scott Berkun is a bestselling author and popular speaker on creativity, philosophy, culture, business and many other subjects. He's the author of six books, including  The Myths of Innovation,  Confessions of a Public Speaker, and The Year Without Pants. His work has appeared, or been mentioned, in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Guardian, Wired magazine, Forbes, USA Today, Wired, Fast Company, National Public Radio, The Huffington Post and other media. Born and raised in Queens, NYC, he studied philosophy, computer science and design at CMU, was a manager at Microsoft ('94-'03) and WordPress.com ('10-'12), taught creativity at the University of Washington, was a co-host of CNBC's The Business of Innovation TV show, is named on 5 U.S. patents, blogs for Harvard Business and BusinessWeek, and has appeared as an expert on various subjects on CNN, CNBC, NPR and MSNBC. He's also the MC and speaker coach for Ignite Seattle, a finalist in the Amtrak 2014 writer's residency program and the director of the short film We Make Seattle. Episode 171: Scott Berkun - Big Ideas For Curious Minds  Subscribe on iTunes  or Stitcher Radio The Learning Leader Show "The first tip to pitching well: Learn about the other persons environment" In This Episode, You Will Learn: Having a sports background to learn a work ethic and set goals can lead to sustained excellence The process for Scott to quit his job at Microsoft to become a full time writer/author -- And why he did it Writing process #1 Don't chase headlines - Don't chase traffic... Write good content Write about evergreen topics that people will always want to read Consistently write and produce content  -- Stick to a rigorous schedule (he released work Tuesday & Thursday) Understand your habits over time -- Plan your day (when to wake up, eat, workout, write) The topics he covers when he gives a keynote speech: Innovation and creative thinking Management/Leadership Why he likes to prepare and not give the same speech over and over Time spent on preparing vs. delivering = 10x1... Meaning he spends 10 hours to give a 1 hour talk Teaching a creative thinking class at a University The importance of "combining ideas" "Passion is self perception of your interests... There is a need for self awareness" Self discovery --> You need to try different things/ideas Street smarts vs. Book smarts -- Can be a false dichotomy "How to call BS on a Guru" Have higher expectations How you read - Every chapter stop and plan for situations. Apply what would I do differently Read with a different intent Have a willingness to experiment Why Scott hates speed reading "How to pitch an idea" "How to run a brainstorming meeting" -- It's about volume. You must be very clear about intended results and action plans Have a good facilitator who says "Yes, and..." "It's very important to understand that all ideas are made up of other ideas... We need to combine ideas like "Uber for Laundry."" Continue Learning: Read Scott's book: Mindfire: Big Ideas for Curious Minds  Read Scott's book: Confessions of a Public Speaker Follow Scott on Twitter: @berkun To Follow Me on Twitter: @RyanHawk12 You may also like these episodes: Episode 078: Kat Cole – From Hooters Waitress To President of Cinnabon Episode 071: Nate Boyer - Green Beret, Texas Football, The NFL Episode 073: Jay Bilas - World Class ESPN Basketball Broadcaster, Toughness, Fixing The NCAA Episode 107: Simon Sinek – Leadership: It Starts With Why Did you enjoy the podcast? If you enjoyed hearing Scott Berkun on the show, please don't hesitate to send me a note on Twitter or email me. Episode edited by the great J Scott Donnell The Learning Leader Show is supported by Daor Design - Daor Design will help you build your brand like nobody's business. Most of their work falls into one of four categories: Logo Design, Print Design, Web Design or Digital Marketing. They pride themselves in being a trusted, valued resource for their growing family of clients.

I caution anyone who thinks there's one answer for these things. The essay that I wrote was largely about self-discovery is that the way you find your passion is you have to try. You have to go and try different things. Are leaders born or are they made? Our host, Ryan Hawk, believes that leaders can be made through determined, focused work on learning the art and science behind the makeup of other successful leaders. Now it's time to inhale knowledge and exhale success. You're listening to The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk. Hey, and welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. What an

interesting conversation with our featured leader, Scott Burkin, bestselling author and popular speaker on creativity, philosophy, culture, business, and many other subjects. A lot of people would call him a generalist, author of six books, including The Mists of Innovation, Confessions of a Public Speaker, and Mindfire. A few of my favorites. His work has appeared, Orban mentioned in many places, New York Times, Washington Post, Forbes, USA Today, the Guardian Economist, all over the place. Scott and I had a really interesting conversation, a few of the topics we got into. How to pitch an idea, what it means to follow your passion, how to call BS on a guru,

and then how to run a brainstorming meeting. We've all been a part of those. So many topics covered, such a fun, lively, interesting. conversation with Scott Birkin. All right, Scott, like I told you before, I've been reading your work for about four years now. So I think I'm pretty well read on what you've put out into the world, whether it's from Mindfire in some of your blog posts, as well as confessions of a public speaker. Is it something I'm getting into more?

So I've read a lot of your work, The Year Without Pants, another great book that you've written. I'm curious, from your perspective, you've done a lot of research. you're an intelligent thinker, a thoughtful guy. From your perspective, what are some of the common themes or characteristics you've found in others that you've studied who have sustained excellence over an extended period of time? What are some of the common themes you've pulled apart from those people? Wow, that's a big first question. I don't know if I can take that on all at once. Let me think for a second.

I think I have a sports background, and I know that you do too, and that's my first. thought that I learned, I played basketball in high school. I was not very tall. I was not very fast, but I was good at a lot of things, primarily my ability to learn and my ability to work hard. And I don't know of anyone who is able to consistently do well at anything that doesn't do those two things. It's probably the best thing I learned out of that whole sports experience was that if I choose to have a, to pitch, if I pick a goal and I can break it down to pieces, then I can get really good at those pieces. I might not be the best at those things, but I can do it. And I've, as I've, as I've become a writer and I've written on different subjects and I've studied people who are

really good at what they do, it's very, it's very, it's uncommon that I don't see the same thing in all the people that I admire, whether they're writers or athletes or just about anything. Can you think of a specific goal, maybe for yourself, where it was a potentially a big, audacious goal, someone called like a B-Hag. We've heard those terms before, that you've been able to break down into, or someone would call it chunking,

break it down into pieces, and that's helped you accomplish the big goal? Yeah, sure. Well, writing is the obvious one. So I quit the job that I had as a manager at Microsoft in 2003. And primarily I wanted to do something else with my life or at least try it. I didn't want to have the same career.

my whole life without doing something else. So I quit. And I decided I wanted to try to be a writer. I didn't know that much about it. But I just, I put together, I said, okay, what's a book? Well, a book, got to break it down to pieces. A book's a bunch of chapters. Okay. What's a chapter? Well, chapters a bunch of pages. Okay. What's a page? A page is a bunch of paragraphs. Okay. I think I can write a good paragraph. So if I can write a good paragraph, then I should be able to write a good page and it should be able to write a good chapter. So I broke it down just the idea of writing one book. So the first project I had was to write a book. And I was interested in architecture at the time. So me and a buddy, who was a photographer, we went to London and we're going to write

a book about what it was like to spend all of your waking hours on the London subway system. And we had a plan for that. We broke that down. I wrote that, I wrote a draft of that book. And I couldn't find a publisher for it, but I learned enough from that experience to realize, okay, I know what it is to write a book, and I think if I pick a topic that's maybe easier to find a publisher for, that I can do this. And I did. And that first book was called Making Things Happen. It was published in 2005. And it did well. It did well enough. There was interested in a second book and then the third book. And then I've written enough books that you have heard of me, Ryan, and then I'm on your show. Yeah, like I mentioned, I started reading in 2012. I remember I talked, my younger brother and I would talk about two of your books. specifically minefire, big ideas for curious minds, which I know is like a collection of your essays that you've put together, which is, again, kind of like you just mentioned, it's how you've put together a book was by piecing together maybe some great blog post. And then confessions

of a public speaker, another big one for me, because one, I like the style in which you write it. It's practical, helpful for somebody who I think everybody needs to be better at being a public speaker. Regardless of your role, I think my dad has always told me since a very early once I graduated college, you will get an impressive amount of credit for being great at something if you can get up in front of a room of people and explain anything. Basically, because it's rare to find great public speakers that you can get a lot of credit and progress in your life. And it's really hard, and it's good to lean in towards things that are hard to do, push outside of your comfort zone to improve and grow as a leader. And so I found that your work really helps. And

in that regard. Well, thanks. That's good to hear. So I want to learn more about your writing process. You brought up writing and the fact that there's a lot of it. So Scottberkin.com. You can find so many great posts. And I want to dig in, I think, to some of the specific ones in addition to some of your books

because there are some interesting topics. But first I want to learn. I like to understand the specific process behind how you do this. Because for me, understanding the tips, I don't like you. use the word tricks, but that usually goes together. Tips and tricks extrapolate perhaps on how you're able to put together so much good work, one blog post at a time. Well, there's some things that I do that I never recommend.

I would never recommend other people. Then there's some things that I do that I would definitely recommend. I'll do the definitely recommend things first. Okay. So number one is I generally don't chase traffic. I don't chase headlines. I try to write about things that I think, if I'm going to write 500 words or 1,000 words on something, ideally, that's something that will have value when people want to read about a month from now or six months from now or a year from now. And I take the same approach with the books that I pick topics that I think will have a long life because if I'm going to put a year into writing a book or an hour into writing or two hours into writing a blog post, I want to get to the roots of some. problem or some topic or some things, so it'll last for a long time. A lot of people who are successful bloggers, and these are people who get far more traffic and attention than I do.

I don't get good traffic, but that's not, I'm not a huge attention source. They'll chase headlines and they'll chase things, but the content they create then is not a month later or two months later or a year later isn't going to amount too much. So part of, I think that's good advice for people who write about things is to try to find a deeper, okay, there's this thing in the news right now But things like this have been in the news before. So what's the underlying theme? What's the underlying problem? What's the underlying pattern?

Let me write about that. I think that's really good advice because writing is hard. It takes a long time. It takes a lot of effort. There's a craft to it. And you want every reason to write really good things that strike chords with people. And it's less likely to happen, I think, if you're chasing headlines and you're chasing what happened yesterday or two days ago.

So that's good advice. When my blog was younger, I had a very rigorous schedule about when I would post that everyone who followed me knew that every Tuesday morning there'd be a new post, that every Thursday I usually have some kind of follow-up post. And that's a fantastic thing for anyone who's new at this or is trying to grow their audience to do. That that rhythm is something people will start to look forward to if they like your work and you'll enter into people's habits for consumption. and that's really important in terms of finding an audience. Can I hear a pre for a second? Sure. Yeah, yeah.

So I, from, I've done this now, 160 plus, 170 plus, and I've released two episodes a week since basically inception every Wednesday night and Sunday night at 7 o'clock Eastern time. And some people, and I've had this debate with a few others, they say, hey, if your content's good enough, you don't need to worry about consistency. But for me, I don't know if it's just, I don't know where it comes from, but I love the thought of being consistently there for my listeners that they know every Wednesday and Sunday and I'm almost have a fear of deviating from that. And so I've always done it that way. And I'm not sure I see a time when I don't, even though I've had some mentors say, hey, dude, don't worry about

that as much. It doesn't matter when you put your content out. They'll listen to it. They'll read the show notes. What do you think about that now that I'm a year and a half in? It's not new anymore. It's picked up a pretty good audience. What are your thoughts on consistency? And am I crazy or is that something that I should stick to? I think it's probably something you should stick to. It depends what your goals are. So when you jumped in, I was talking about growing an audience. I think if you're interested in growth, that kind of consistency is important.

The other benefit to it is that it gives you, just in terms of your production process, you have regular weekly and sub-weekly milestones to aim for. And that's helpful just in terms of your productivity. So right now, been in a phase for the last six months, I've not been that regular about posting on my blog. And so that's, I still do fine. Like my traffic is good, new posts get attention. But my blog is not growing at the same rate that it was. And I'm convinced that's part of why. So I definitely think consistency is a good thing. It has external benefits, but it also has internal benefits.

And your initial question, if you wanted to jump back about writing. I do. For me, that's the whole story is I have my own habits and everyone wants to know writer's habits they want to oh well this is what Hemingway did he wrote that this is from 12 o'clock to four o'clock so that's what I should do and I caution people to about copying other people's habits that you you figure out your habits by over time that it what worked for one person is probably not going to work that well for another one but I do I get up every morning I have some just general over I'm an independent author which means I'm an entrepreneur I get up I have a whole bunch of just administrative stuff to take care of that I haven't gotten to the previous day

or the day before. And then I have a writing session where I have something on my docket for this next thing to work on. And I'll work on it for an hour, maybe an hour and a half. And then I'll take a break and do something else. Often I'll go to the gym in the middle of the day. That's my break at the midpoint of the day. And then I come back and I'll work on that same thing again. And I'll take another break. I'll walk the dog, my big Rottweiler. And then before dinner, I'll have another two or three hour session of either writing or editing. So, So I, every day I have something on my docket that's the next thing to work on. And I show up every day and sometimes it goes well, sometimes it doesn't.

But back to the point about consistency, the fact that I know I have these carved out windows of time for me to show up and put my butt in the chair that either even if I only produce 100 words or I only revise two pages, every day I'm guaranteed those slots where it's already carved out in my schedule to do stuff. How do you balance that with giving speeches? Well, giving speeches is this fantastic tradeoff of, not tradeoff, fantastic, fantastic, if you can get enough attention for your work that enough places that shouldn't hire you to speak, it pays very well for the time.

So when I decided to come a writer, I didn't know how any of this was going to work. I didn't know anyone who was a writer. I didn't know anyone who was paid to give speeches or, like, or anything like that. But in the course of writing the book and doing a lot of lectures for free, I started to realize that there was possibly, that was possibly a major income stream. And so, but the deal I worked out, the deal I worked out with my wife when I quit about travel was that once a month, that once a month I could be on the road somewhere to, to either get attention for the work I'm doing or to get income. And that's about all that I do.

But once a month, I'm somewhere other than home, giving a lecture somewhere. If I'm invited to give a lecture somewhere and far enough out in the schedule, and I know other people, because I've been doing this for a while now, other events or venues that might want to have a speaker come in, I'll tie them together. But I don't do that many talks a year, maybe 20 to 30, something in that range, which is, that might sound like a lot to the average person. But there are people who just, they make their entire living from giving speeches that do 180 to 100 lectures a year. I think if I did that, I would die. I don't think I could do that much travel and do that much performing, which is really what speaking is. And I'd be writing a lot less too, I think. Nowadays, what are the primary topics that you're speaking about when someone asked you to give a keynote? This is a fascinating thing.

So you alluded to something that I'm very proud of, but I also wouldn't necessarily recommend anyone who wants to be a writer. I've written about a wide range of subjects. Definitely. So I've written six books and one is on managing teams. One is on innovation and creativity. One is on public speaking. One's a collection of philosophical essays. One book is about working at a remote company.

And my last book is actually a memoir about my father. So I've written six books about six totally different things. This is great. I'm very proud of that. I'm ambitious and I like the challenge of seeing what I can, the frontiers of what I can write about. And I'm very curious person. So that's reflected in those things. But the downside is as much harder to market yourself if you are that diverse.

If you're that much of a generalist, it's harder for people to know that you are very good at each of those things. But to answer your question, it's all over the place. I think probably 60% of the lectures and talks I'm invited to give are either about innovation and creative thinking or about management and organizational culture. That's probably 60%. Then the other 40% are across the board. Sometimes people will see a blog post that I wrote. They got attention. It could be about something related to like decision making or it could be about communication

and how to give feedback to people. So the other 40% is across the board. And I love that because every time I'm invited to give a lecture about something I haven't spent an hour talking about before, that's another kind of challenge. I get really excited about going to corners of knowledge that I have. have that I don't get to exercise as much. Do you find it to be quite a process, though, to, from a preparation perspective, I mean, the best speakers usually are incredibly prepared.

And if you're giving varying degrees of talks on different topics, it seems like the prep would be much more time intensive. You're right. And this is, again, the saying before about the stuff that I do and stuff that I would not advise. I think if you're running purely like a profit and loss statement on your time, you'd want to develop one lecture or one book or one one thing that you're really good at. And then you leverage that and you sell that one thing that you've built as many times as you can. But it gets

boring. If you get the same lecture 50 times, 100 times, now it doesn't get boring. It's just I'm ambitious. I don't, I hope to be on this planet for a long time, but I'd much rather be able to look at the talks I've given and see this diverse set of things that I challenge myself to think hard about than having given the same thing a hundred times. One other note just about preparation is so I wrote a book about public speaking. I get asked this a lot. It's about 10 to 1. If I have to give a lecture that's an hour long, it's going to take me about 10 hours of time to develop a good, informative, interesting, highly watchable and memorable talk. About 10 hours. And that's the first subject I know something about. If I know nothing about it, it's going to take me more.

and if it's in the ballpark of stuff that I feel like I'm an expert on, it might take less, but about 10 to 1. 10 hours to write it or just prepare it to maybe have a visual deck to support it or everything? Everything. Okay. And then actual practicing and prepping? Is that all part of it too? I don't keep statistics on this, but that's my ballpark number. I know it's going to take me.

And 10 hours, it's not 10 hours that you can do in a day. That's probably over two or three days because I need to practice it. And then I need time to think about it. What I'm going to change? And next day I'll come back and have some clearer thoughts about how to make it better. Interesting. Okay. All right.

Now, if you're cool with it, I told you before we start recording that, I think you have so many. Like you said, you're generalists. You've written on a lot of different topics. I'd love to bounce around a little bit if you're cool with it. Let's go. I'm up for bouncing. You taught creative thinking at the University of Washington. Is that correct?

Yes. What? How do you? teach a group of college kids or really anybody, my listeners to me, how do you teach what goes into the curriculum of a creative thinking class? Yeah, it's actually kind of, it's very like meta because it has to be very creative, right? If the syllabus for the creativity course doesn't seem creative, then no one's going to have any faith that they're going to get what they want out of the course. So there's a long history of studying creativity and problem solving. So there's

a lot of literature, both in terms of like academic studies about what makes someone creative or not. And I've read a lot of these books. This is something I've been interested in for a long time. And so I went out of the opportunity to teach the course. That was while I was working on the book, the myths of innovation, which is the book that I wrote about creativity and ideas and where all that stuff comes from. So the course was a helpful way. to me for me to understand my material if I had to teach these things that would help me understand it better and it did. But the short notes on it is that there's really, it's really a very simple thing. I mean, if you watch any four, five, six year old child that watch them

play and see what they do, they're trying things out all the time. An idea comes into their head. They want to build this thing at a Lego or they're in Minecraft. They decide they want to build this sort of tower. There's not a lot of inhibition in them. They get an idea and they'll try it out. it works great and if it doesn't, it doesn't. And so that's one of the first lessons about creativity and being a better problem solver is just recognizing how open you need to be and how closed most adults become. That by the time you are 15, 18, 20, you're looking to get a job, you're trying to apply to colleges, you're trying to fit in, you are trying to please people. We become very structured and we shut down a lot of our natural creativity just to fit in

to the social order of life. And fitting in is totally fine. It's good. But when we sit down to write a book or we're in a meeting and we're supposed to come up with ideas, we have all this baggage that we've collected

that repress a lot of things that we would want to be able to say. And so the first part of the course is just understanding people's own inhibitions about things that are wrong, things that are crazy, and helping them to get past that. Then the second thing that I teach people,

that I taught people in this course, is that it's very important to understand that all ideas, is every idea for anything, music, business, whatever, all ideas are made up of other ideas. That as magical as it might seem for someone to invent the iPhone or for whoever came up with the founders of Uber to come up with Uber, it seems so, oh, it's a brilliant idea. How'd they come up with that? If you take any time to just step back and break it down, you realize that there are ideas

that are already out there and they just combine them in a different way. And if you're able to see any idea as a combination of other ideas, now there are things that you can play with too. And you see this sort of played out in this silly, it's not even really a meme. It's now people say, oh, that's just Uber for chocolate

or that's Uber for laundry. That is actually a good exercise of this kind of thinking is that everything is just a recombination of things that already existed. So if you are able to break an idea down into its parts,

then you can reframe those parts. You can put them in a different order. So one of the exercises we would do in the class is we would take a song. a favorite song, a song that you love, and we break it down into its parts. There are actually, I can't name the reference to it now, but there are actually examples of this on YouTube now where you can listen to tracks of songs that have taken out the

baseline, they've taken out the drum track, what if you change the order of these things? Once you break something apart, you can recombine it in different ways, and now you are actually creating. And some people feel like this is cheating, that because you're not inventing every part of everything, that it means you're not actually creating it yourself. but the truth is that no creator in history created everything themselves. There's always reuse and reintegration of things already in the world. Interesting.

How you write about how to be a genius. This is the word that's thrown around a lot. It's put under the categories of creativity on your website. How would you give the version of if someone says, I want to be a genius. Scott wrote about how I can be one. one, what would you tell? Well, so I hate all these words. I really hate genius, prodigy, the word innovation.

Would you hate all these words? I do. I do. Why do you use them? Well, you need to use words to get attention from the people who are going to be interested in reading about whatever you have to say. So some of these labels you have to use, I tend to use them. And then I critique how the words are abused.

and I try to offer an alternative. And so this words like genius or prodigy or I'm trying to think of something more business-oriented. I want to be, you know, innovator is one of these words. I want to be a disruptive innovator. All these words are terrible to me because people usually don't think very much about what they mean. And most people who earn the word genius,

they earn it because they worked really hard in some very specific field and they produced really good work. and that that no one no one gets called a genius because they have 170 IQ uh no one gets called it's a genius because of all the ideas they have in their head for businesses or for movies

that they never do anything with genius is really something that's said about someone as a result of their activity as a result of what they've done and that's a very approachable place to start so someone said I want to be a genius I want to be it's actually this is true for sports too I want to play in the NBA okay great what do you what is your training regimen like. What are you doing on a daily basis that's going to allow you to perform at a high

enough level, maybe not next week, maybe not six months from now, but a year from now or two years from now, that you'll be performing well enough, that you do work that's good enough, that's recognized by other people in the field on such a high basis that they will use that word about you. That's the practical way to think about these things. That particular essay also points out that a lot of the people who become super famous in almost every creative or business field, a lot of them are really not very happy people.

Like there's an obsessive, compulsive nature to people who are that committed to one thing. The Michael Jordans and the LeBron James's and the look at the most famous movie stars, Elvis Presley, people who get reached to that level of success, you often pay a price for it. And I'm not sure that

most people really want to pay that price. Maybe being, you know, in the top hundred of athletes is good enough. Maybe not being a genius, but being a really good doctor. That might be a much healthier ambition to have. And that might anyway be the limits of what your potential would have been anyway. I got you. In Mindfire, one of your essays that you published, well, two things here. So you briefly talked earlier about the fact that you decided to leave Microsoft to write and to go overseas and study and then write a book. And you also write about, and it's part one of

it's titled how I found my passion. I think there's a lot of people listening based on feedback I get via emails and Twitter, things of that nature, that this word is brought up a lot and there are varying opinions on it. Cal Newport would say, you know, you don't find your passion,

go find something, go do something and become really great at it and you'll find that you become passionate about that thing, whatever it may be. It might surprise you. But you write about how I, found my passion, how would you expand upon that phrase? It's another one of these tricky words because I have people who come up to me now and then,

or they'll send me email. I've written a lot of blog posts about writing. It's a writing. One of the fun things about writing is you can write about writing. You can't really dance about dance or, you know, or, but you can write about writing. So I write about writing a fair amount and people who want to write, read these posts and they'll email me and they'll say, I know I'm super passionate about writing a book. book, but I'm having trouble starting. Like, what should I do? And I, it's hard to, it's like, well,

there's this problem then, because passion is this self-perception of your level of interests, or it's a self-perception of your potential, I guess. And people who don't know what to do with their passion or how to find it, there's, there's something that's some level of self-awareness that's missing. If you're really a passion about something, that means you should have energy to go and do stuff to write a draft, to go read a book, take a course. Sending me an email about, you know, how passionate you are is actually not a healthy, productive expression of passion. It's something else.

It's really more of the confusion between a possible passion and a fantasy you have at what it would be, what is to be a writer. So you mentioned that like seeking out passion is overrated, that Cal Newport, you said? Yeah, he wrote Deep Work and a book, two books. one's deep work, one's called So Good, They Can't Ignore You. I'm not sure if you've read them. They're great, though, by the way. Here's a guest on this podcast, yeah. Oh, good. Yeah, I'm not familiar with this work. I'm familiar with the sentiment, though. I think there is something problematic about it. It's this very precious idea that you should only do work that you are passionate about. And there's a saying from Joseph Campbell, you know, follow your bliss. You show us follow your bliss.

And I have mixed feelings about this stuff because I think everybody is different. That's the problem. with writers like myself and Cal Newport, and anyone who writes books that are in this how to figure out your life category, that everybody is so different. There's some people who I know that clearly, they clearly have a primary passion in their lives. They need to do it all the time. And if they can find a way to carve a career around that where they don't crush their passion, that's probably great for them. And then I know other people who are just, they're smart and talented, but they can't sustain that much intensity about anything, really. And so they struggle, they're in a career, it's okay. They think she's moved to another one. They move to another one.

That's good for a while. And then they end up in the same place again. I don't know there's a magic answer for them about this stuff. So I think I caution anyone who thinks there's one answer for these things. The essay that I wrote was largely about self-discovery is that the way you find your passion is you have to try. You have to go and try different things. The more diverse things that you try, this is good advice for a good life anyway, the more diverse things that you try, the wider your perspective is, A, on yourself, because there'll be things you're excited about, and you go and do it, and you realize, wow, my perception of that was totally wrong. And then the things you think you're not going to like, and someone suggests, you're like, okay, I'll try it. And sometimes you're

really surprised that you like this thing, and our judgment is always dubious. And you have to question your own judgment and try things. And if you do that and you get better at experimentation, I think odds are you'll find more things that maybe you're not quite passionate about, but that you enjoy and that you really like. And this is actually, so I know one of your previous guests talked about his distaste for the movie, Forrest Gump. I've never. I've related, it's a tricky segue, but I think I can pull it off. Do it. Forrest Gump, I'm a big film fan. Forrest Gump was a film that I really did not like the first time I saw it.

I had all the complaints that your guest did. Really thought it was a sentimental saccharine kind of film. And there were things that amused me about it, but it made me really upset that it was so popular. And then like two years later, I was on a plane and it was on. And this is so long ago, this was before you had the screens, you could pick your movie. This was like the screen dropped down from the top of the plane. had to watch Forrest Gump. So I had to watch Forrest Gump. And I watched it. And I was really surprised that the movie worked much better the second time I saw it. And I was enjoying it.

And at the same time, I was upset. I was like, I can't enjoy this. This is far. I hate this movie. And then that inspired me to watch a third time. And the third time I watched it, I enjoyed it. I didn't, I still had some complaints about it, but I really appreciated much better what they were trying to do and I noticed things I thought they were successful at doing that I really did not notice the first time. And so there's a lesson in there about self-awareness too, that we'd like to think we know ourselves really well, but sometimes it takes two exposures, three exposures, maybe five to an idea, to a new kind of food, to a kind of music, or even to a person before you really can see it. And then it may actually be something you really need or want or, or, or, or,

or you want to make a part of your life. So that's my Forrest Gump passion story. Wow. I think you pulled it off. You were able to bring in past episode that you listened to with Adnan, Virk, who was a great one that I got a lot of positive feedback on. Complete side note. When it comes to watching movies on an airplane,

I think I have a theory here, and that's that your expectation level for anything you're about to watch, for some reason, maybe this is just me, is lower. So you could watch any movie, and it seems better if it's on an airplane because the other option is to sit there and either sleep or try to sleep or do nothing. So for some reason, I think movies, I don't know, they're just a little bit better when you watch them on an airplane than maybe they really are. But no, you watch the third time, and you really liked it. So I guess maybe that's not accurate for you. But like I was talking to my dad who travels a decent amount.

He's like, it's a good airplane movie. I'm like, well, why isn't it just a good movie? Well, it's good on an airplane because you're kind of bored if the movie wasn't on, so I kind of liked it. So anyway, complete side note. But you talk about another aspect, speaking of Forrest Gomb, and I don't know if this works either, but you talk about street smarts versus book smarts. And this is something I think about quite a bit because I believe some of the most impressive people I've ever been around have an immense amount of of awareness, not only of themselves, but of their surroundings.

And I think that's how some would define street smarts. They just seem to be really aware of what's going on, how to react, how to handle people. Maybe it's an emotional intelligence, I'm not sure. But you talk about, you've talked about street smarts first, book smarts. I'd love for you to expand on that. Yeah, so there's a fair number of posts that I've written that are, They're false dichotomies that taste great. There are all these things that we know are really, it's not one of the other.

I don't really, I think even something like conservative or liberal, it's kind of, it's a false dichotomy. Any person is going to be liberal about certain things and conservative about others. But it's a way to draw people into a discussion to make it overly polarizing. So this post, this short essay, just asked that question. And I concluded that street smarts just, and this, I really don't believe it's, one of the other. But I concluded that street smarts really, if I had to pick one, I'd go with street smarts. It's someone who is really street smart could approximate a lot of what a very book smart person

could learn because they're much better at learning on their own and finding other ways to get things done, including obtaining knowledge. So this has a long common thread where people get very upset about taking one side of the other, which is sort of entertaining. But it's one of the examples of really what you want is the hybrid. I think any person would want to be able to develop both skills. And I think of myself primarily probably is more of a street smart person, although I went to a good college. I read a lot of books. But there's something that has to happen when you read a book about how you apply it to the world. And the book itself can't really help you do that. That's where you have to decide for yourself, oh, in this situation, what the

book explained, I'm going to apply it this way. Or this is when I ignore what the book says, and I do it this way. Or all that interpretation I would put into street smarts. I'm really glad you brought this up. So I asked this question to, I think, intelligent leaders a lot because it's important to me. As someone who's a learner and who speaks with leaders from many different industries all over the world and people listening to the show as well. I think most of us here, certainly that listen to this podcast, do a good job of seeking knowledge, of going to conferences, reading books, going to classes that we don't have to, but we choose to, basically taking in knowledge. But a lot of us, I believe, struggle when it comes to the

implementation and execution of what we've learned, actually going out and doing it. It's one thing to learn. It's completely different to actually execute and to make, you know, to become a better leader or to make your life better because you've executed. Do you have any tips or thoughts on specific ways that you could implement and execute on what you've learned? Well, part of it is a failure. So I'm one of the people who writes these books that people read and they think are great

when they read them, and then they go back into the workplace or whatever situation they were hoping the book would help them, and they don't, they're not, they don't even think to apply. So I'm part of the problem, I think. I think that books, what a book that's trying to teach you something, part of what the book should be doing is giving you that first step about, here are the 10 situations you're likely to encounter on the subject. I've given you this advice. Here's how they relate to these 10 situations. Like the books, I think books and courses can generally do a much better job of helping you do that conversion. We don't expect that because in the moment we're reading the book, we're having the experience of the book. We're being entertained.

We feel like we feel like we're learning. And we're not thinking about how am I going to apply this. In some cases, actually, a lot of readers are. But often we're not if the book is entertaining and interesting, certainly not in a lecture. So the short answer is I think you should expect more from the lectures you go to and the conferences you go to and the books that you read about who, has the person who wrote this book and the person who's giving this lecture, have they done this themselves? There's an essay that I wrote called How to Call BS on a Guru. And it's largely about this problem of it's much easier to get up on stage or write a book where I am defining all of

the characteristics and I'm defining all the situations. But I may not actually be able to do any these things myself. And if I can't do these things myself, how am I supposed to be competent teaching you about how to get past these things? So my first bit of it, you're asking for advice for your listeners. Number one is you should have higher expectations for the sources of information that you get. Then the second thing is about how you read and how you consume. And you can do this for yourself in every chapter before we move on to the next one is to stop and think, okay, I know what my week is like next week. I know what my, I know what my previous month of work was like. How is this, what's coming up for me next week and what I've had in the last

month, how can I apply what I just learn? What would I do differently last week? What maybe I should do differently this week? And this is about reading with a different intent. Instead of reading with the intent to finish the book or to finish the course or finish the workshop to read with the intent of pausing and say, I need to think about this. How am I going to use this? And that will often lead to questions. And those questions are something that most authors usually want to hear because maybe they intended to give you that, but they didn't realize that they didn't. So number one is it's about the material that you choose.

and number two is about how you read and what you're doing to help with this transition while you're reading it. The third one, I just thought of. The third one is about the willingness to experiment that with all new knowledge, we like to imagine that it's like the matrix and you just plug a thing in the back of your head. Now you know, Kung Fu. It doesn't really work that way. That when you get new knowledge, it's going to take a little while in applying it before

you master it. And you're going to make mistakes in applying that new knowledge. It doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. It just means there's always adjustments that are going to happen. So there's some expectation you have to have for yourself that I just read this book about how to be, how to give better feedback to people. Well, it's going to take you a little while to be that much more proficient. You're going to do it. You're going to get feedback on your feedback.

And you're going to, it's going to take some time before you refine that improvement. And that's something you have to diligently go about doing. Interesting. I'd like specifically reading with a different intent. I think the intentions of a lot of us are, like you said, maybe to read to complete the book and then go on to the next one because we all probably have a list of tons of books to read. I found using highlighting tools, I usually read on an e-reader or Evernote, sometimes just the act of stopping. and this isn't the most efficient way to read a book,

but sometimes I think it helps me retain the knowledge where I'll stop at a point in the book and pull out my phone, so a separate device, log or click on Evernote, the app that I use to take notes because it can be on my computer or my phone, type in the notes that I've learned or things to pick up, things to potentially implement,

and then set it back down when I'm done and go back to the book. Again, not the most efficient way, but I found the purpose of reading the book is to find and learn new ways and innovative solutions potentially to solve problems or to make my life better. And so I think it might take me longer to finish the book, but if it impacts me even to just a couple ways, then it was worth it. Absolutely. And I think you said something in there.

You said it almost like you were guilty about it that it's not efficient. I hate, I really, really hate all the stuff about speed reading and how, I think it's all backward. I think it's all a complete misunderstanding of why you read books, that if you're in that much of a rush, if it's a volume process, you are trying to read as many books as you can, then you are really going about it all wrong. That there's not that much knowledge you need to know. If you're reading good books and you're reading them intentionally and you're thinking about them and you are trying to figure out how to integrate them into your life, you don't need to read that many books. You need to read better books and read them in a better way. So I get asked about this. I read a lot. There are people who read a lot more than I do. I probably read maybe 40 books a year. 30 to 40. It depends if I'm researching a book or not. It's about a book a week, a little bit less. There are people who meet. I I read 100 books. And I look at them, I'm like, you know, I don't watch much TV. I'm reading most of the time. If you are reading 100 books a year, that means you have no life or you are not, or you are not really reading the books. And they go, oh, well, I do comprehension tests.

I'm like comprehension test is sort of like multiple choice tests. You are testing your book smart. You're testing your recall of a fact that went across your brain. It doesn't test how you have incorporated that into your actual thinking or your behavior or your outlook or your psychology. That's a much deeper effect. And that's really, in lots of cases, what in theory you're picking up the book to do. So I don't think efficiency is, I mean, if you're a terribly slow reader, if someone's a it takes them, you know, a month to get through a book, then I might say, okay, maybe there are things about how you read that efficiency might be important, maybe. But for most people, I think they read it so they can say they read it, it becomes a trophy, and that's just not the goal.

One of the parts about my process that I like is the fact that I have one centralized place to go for all of my notes and highlights from various books. So I know a lot of people like to physically hold the book and read it and highlight it. And there's obviously nothing wrong with that. But in that case, you have to go back to each individual book. whether it's on your shelf or a certain place, and it may not be with you. And for me, I have really all of my notes in my pocket to go and reference at any point,

whether I'm putting together a new speech or I'm writing or thinking or preparing for a podcast. I can go through this one place and look through a bunch of different books that I've taken notes on and it's all there for me in one spot. It makes it a little bit easier. From an efficiency process, I guess that's where it's more efficient to recall. to remember what I've read and it helps.

But yeah, I think reading the actual book itself probably takes a little bit longer than most because I'm trying to devour it and understand what it is that I'm reading. And sometimes, you know, you ever go down, you're reading a book and you have to start all over at the top of the page because you forgot when you read like that happens to me. And so at that point, but you got to do it, though, right? Like, what's the point of reading the book if you're not going to grasp the information that's put out there, you know? Exactly.

Exactly. Exactly. Right. But I had a question for you that. I was just curious about how many notes, like for a book that was a good book that you enjoyed it and you got value from it, what volume of notes do you take? Is a page, a page per chapter, like a page for the whole book? Oh, no. Yeah, it depends on the book, but there are some chapters that have multiple pages of notes and there are some chapters that have no notes.

So there's certain parts that I pick up that, like I'm thinking of how Adam Smith can change your life by Russ Roberts. you know, I wrote a boatload of notes for that book and was able to talk to Russ and record with them. You know, similar. I remember taking a lot of notes on, but when I read your book on public speaking, I would do a varying ways of, I actually have that book in the actual book itself. So I hold it and highlight it and read it and put notes in the margin. That's how I used to do it.

And if I still have a hardbound book, that's how I take notes with that. Or now I'll take pictures of it. And then you can put those pictures within Evernote as well. So all different ways to take notes while reading books. So it's really interesting. It depends on the book, though, I guess, is the short answer to your question. Another topic you've talked about and you've written about that I think can apply to people in many industries and different jobs, whether you're an entrepreneur, potentially trying to get funding maybe, or you work at a huge company and you have a thought or an idea.

or an idea that you want to implement. You want it to happen. And the title was How to Pitch an Idea. I love for you to expand on this because I think it applies to so many people. This is the, this is actually, it became part of the course that I taught in creative thinking because it turns out that with some basic training, anyone can get better at coming up with ideas for things or refining ideas. it's not that hard. It turns out that what's much harder is the social process in any organization or if you're trying to get money for a business or even within like a family.

Like to convince someone else that your idea is good is really hard. And the mistake that most people make, this is across the board. This is for entrepreneurs. This is for writers who are trying to pitch their screenplay for a movie is the confused perspective that you get, that it becomes a very self-oriented process. I want to pitch them on my idea, so it's about me. And that's the tragic mistake. That's the fundamental mistake people make. It has to be oriented the other way. There's someone I am going to pitch, and that person probably gets pitched a lot. That person probably gets pitched 20 times a day, 50 times a day. We forget that if you

have an idea and you need resources, you need money, you need a publishing contract, the person on the other end is inundated with pitches. They see them 100 times a day. So you have to think really hard about their point of view. What is it they're looking for? What kind of things are they likely to see a hundred times a day? How do you make your pitch better, more salient or more compelling? So the easy footnote on this, a lot of your listeners probably work for other people. They work in an office is if I worked in an office, when I used to work in an office, and I have a boss and I want to pitch the boss on this new project idea I have, I'm going to want to pay attention. Like, Who else has pitched my boss before on something like this?

What have I seen work well? Did they tell a story? Did they pitch with data? I want to learn a little bit about who I am pitching to. And then I can think harder. Okay, maybe my boss has a goal of their own. Maybe their goal is to raise revenue this quarter by 10%. Okay.

I got to think about my pitch. How do I fit the idea that I have and pitch it in a way that's going to match what my boss is trying to do? If I can pitch him about my idea in a way that's going to sound to him, and not in some kind of like manipulative way, in an authentic way, some way that's going to help him with his goal or her goal, they're going to have way more interest in listening to my idea and simply me coming up to them and saying, I got this great idea for the fact that I have a great idea is not that important. If I come up to them and say, I know you're working on this 20% goal, I think I have a project that could help us get there. Ah, it's a very different kind of conversation. And so the first step in pitching well, is to recognize, have a sales orientation that you are pitching into someone else's environment and you want to learn as much as you can about that environment. Now, that may mean the idea that you really love isn't going to work, but it can lead you down the path of other ideas that are going to be easier to pitch based on the state of mind and the goals of whoever you're trying to pitch to.

Did you do this at Microsoft or potentially when you worked at WordPress? can you think of examples or maybe stories that you've learned from others that they've taken the approach of understanding the environment, the viewpoint of the person they were pitching, the understanding of the number of times they've been pitched and how they've been, how they were able to be successful? I did it hundreds of times. I mean, the scenario I outlined is more dramatic, but I don't know how anyone in any workplace who is doing interesting work can succeed without this basic skill. I think at first I was I was I was good at the idea of it, but I used a much more brute force approach. I would just I would just be relentless. And with certain people, that that does earn you some credibility, that you are that persistent and you're persistent in at least somewhat entertaining way that eventually you can maybe be able to get them to relent. But I got savier as I'm trying to think of a great romantic story for you.

I don't really have one. That was that a dramatic thing. not in my own life experience. I'm sure I'll think of one as soon as we end this podcast. But right now, right now I don't have one that comes to mind. But I think it's obvious. I think once people hear this way of framing pitching, you're like, of course. But people get so excited about their own idea that they become very self-oriented,

and that's the first mistake. The other topic, I've been a part of these meetings before. I know a lot of people listening have, too, where you get a meeting notice. and it says brainstorming come to this meeting with five to ten ideas on how to grow revenue,

whatever, something along those lines. And you write about how to run a brainstorming meeting. What are the proper ways to do that? And maybe what are the proper ways

to, if you're called to be in one maybe with the CEO of a company and you're coming to try, you know, you're coming to this meeting because they obviously so you think highly of you and they think you could bring ideas.

What are some ways you could both run one of those meetings as well as prepare to lend your ideas and thoughts to stand out in a meeting like that? Okay. The first problem is that most of the time these meetings are terrible. They're like 70, 80 percent. They're terribly run. They're terribly organized. And people's cynicism about them, I think is entirely warranted.

The mistake that is usually made is that the goal. really doesn't make any sense. The actual technique of brainstorming, there's a book called it's Alex Osborne, came up with this technique. He wrote a book in like the late 50s about brainstorming. It's a good book. It explains the technique, but the goal of the technique has one primary goal, and that's about volume. It's really a technique about giving yourself a big pile of ideas on the hopes that in that big pile, you now can sift through them and find good ones. And that's totally fine. The problem is, that usually people, once they get that big pile of ideas, they have no idea what to do with them.

And the way these meetings are run are usually fairly frustrating. There's not enough time and it's not clear what's going on and why. So the number one thing, if you're running a brainstorming meeting, is to be very clear about what's going to happen with the result. You're going to generate a list and that's going to go where? Who's going to get to see that list? Who's going to decide? That should be all, should be totally transparent. And the simple answer, of course, if you're the boss is that you're going to, you're going to, you're going to winnow down this.

list, but to what? To five proposals, three, whatever that, whatever the next step after the meeting is should be defined before the meeting happens. And then everyone invited knows they have some clue about what to expect and how much they should really care about what's happening. Most of the time in most meetings, a big list is put together. Everyone gets kind of excited because they see their idea up on the whiteboard or whatever. And then nothing really happens to that list and it becomes dispiriting and demoralizing. So number one is the organizer is just make sure that you have some clear idea of what you're going to do with it. The second thing is that you want to have someone in the room as a good facilitator. In theory, these meetings should be fun. It should be

energetic. It should be entertaining. There's a class. I took an improv class. Improv is a very cliche thing to do, but it was fantastic in giving basic rules for brainstorming. There's this rule that comes from improv called yes and, which basically means that anytime you hear something, your job is to add to it and to refine it or to to to make some other version out of it. I said earlier earlier in talking to you about all ideas are made from other ideas. Yes, and is part of that spirit. So someone next to you says something offers a suggestion that you think is really stupid. Like, you know, next season for the NFL instead of having full-sized footballs, maybe we should have footballs are like mini-sized, you know, which seems like a completely stupid idea. But in a

brainstorming meaning you're trying to your the goal is really to to find some way to take something interesting into everything that someone else said so maybe that suggestion of itself isn't very good but yes and okay so if we did that then what might be a possible upside of that well a possible upside of that or a possible way to riff off that would be well maybe then um i'm gonna i'm gonna lose a thread here and not you'll succeed in this example maybe that it's really a terrible idea but yet yet yet Yes, M would suggest that you, instead of spending time critiquing someone else's idea, you move on and find some other direction to go and let that thing just sit there. It may turn out that 20 minutes later, 10 minutes later, you find some way to use that idea

that wasn't as intended. Maybe there's some other point in the conversation where miniaturizing something is actually valuable. And you're trying to avoid spending any time debating with people about the merits of ideas. It's a volume process. And whenever someone starts criticizing someone else's idea, it's very quickly going to defeat the purpose and the goal. So one last trick kind of blew that story. So one trick that's really valuable to get the spirit that you want out of any brainstorming session is to start out the session by doing the opposite.

That if the goal of the brainstorming session is come up with ideas to raise revenue by 20%, then you should have an entertaining exercise to begin with where the goal, what can we do? to reduce revenue by 20%. And initially people will balk at this, they'll find it kind of amusing. But once people start doing it, it's almost always, going for the opposite, is almost always really fun.

People come up with crazy ideas, ridiculous things, a lot of pet peeves get surfaced, and people are laughing and having a lot of fun. And a lot of the chemistry and the creativity that most people want

in brainstorming activities, doing this exercise first where you go for the inverse and you have a sense of humor about it sets the tone right you do that for 10 minutes or until it dies out then you switch over into actually trying to find a positive good ideas i've used this this trick a hundred times i've taught it in lots of places i've never seen it not work especially if these are co-workers who all have these venting things about things they these jokey things they wish they could express this is the way they can get that venting out

and have fun and now there's some camaraderie in the room and actually a good conversation, a good brainstorming activity can happen. Huh. What about the second part of if you're called into one of these, you're not running it, but you, you know, maybe you're, this is somebody who's earlier in their career. I have a lot of listeners at this stage of their career. And they're kind of excited, you know, they're maybe going to be in rooms with senior level people and they're not quite there, but maybe they want to be.

And they're like, oh, God, what am I? What should I do? Like, how do I get ready for this? Let me just sit at home and write a bunch of ideas? Or what are some of your thoughts to give to a person like that who wants to stand out and make a name for themselves in a meeting like that? Well, I think that's, you've identified part of the problem with these meetings. If the goal is really to be creative, then you want as little politics in the room as possible.

Yeah. And if you have, if you're a, if you're a new hire and an organization and you're in the room for the first time with a vice president, you are not going to be inspired to be particularly creative. You're going to feel something at stake in what you say. So there's something problematic about the idea of a brainstorming meeting where you have a lot of very senior people in the room. It changes the things people are going to be comfortable saying. But if that were the situation, you want to spend the first 10 or 20 minutes just listening and watching. Like I said before about pitching, you want to study the person you're pitching to.

This is a similar thing. You want to get a feel for the room. Who's quiet? Who talks too much? Who's saying interesting things? If the most important person in the room, this is like culture and family dynamics, the most powerful person in the room sets the tone for the room by what they respond to and how they respond. So you want to watch that. Who's making the boss guy laugh? Or who's making her laugh? You're looking for clues about what kind of behavior or what kind of contributions are most valued. And then once you have a sense of that, then maybe maybe you're starting to pay attention and listen and think about things you can contribute yourself. But I would strongly recommend taking the passenger seat, being a passive observer, until you understand the lay of the land and what's going on. Thanks for listening to this episode with Scott Burke, and I apologize for the abrupt ending. My internet actually went out right as we were wrapping up. It's never happened before.

Scott and I have talked, and we definitely want to record another one together. but I love the vast array of topics we covered. It was a lot of fun. He's a really interesting learning leader. I'd also encourage you to join the conversation in our Facebook group, the learning leader community. Simply go to learning leader.com slash group to sign up and you can join in the daily conversation with fellow learning leaders.

Learningleader.com slash group. Thanks guys.