The Tim Ferriss Show - #121: BJ Novak of The Office on Creative Process, Handling Rejection, and Good Comedy

Episode Date: November 25, 2015

This tactical episode covers principles and tactics for creating amazing careers, comedy, writing, and much more. Hilarious stories weave it all together. My guest is B.J. Novak (@bjnovak), best known for his work on NBC's Emmy Award-winning comedy series "The Office" as an actor, writer, director, and executive producer. He has appeared in films such as Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds and Disney's Saving Mr. Banks. He is also the author of the acclaimed short story collection "One More Thing" and the #1 New York Times Best Seller "The Book With No Pictures" (great Christmas gift), which has more than one million copies in print. Last but not least, he is co-founder of The List App. In other words, he does a lot and does it well. What are the habits, tools, and routines that help him to do this? That's what we explore in this conversation. Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Vimeo Pro, which is ideal for entrepreneurs. In fact, a bunch of my start-ups are already using Vimeo Pro. WealthFront uses it to explain how it develops personalized investment portfolios. TaskRabbit uses it to tell the company’s story. Twitter uses it to showcase Periscope. Why are they using it instead of other options out there? Vimeo Pro provides enterprise level video hosting that typically costs thousands of dollars for a tiny fraction of the cost. Features include: Gorgeous high-quality playback with no ads Up to 20 GB of video storage every week Unlimited plays and views A fully customizable video player, which can include your company logo, custom outro, and more You get all this for just $199 per year (that’s only $17 per/mo.) There are no complicated bandwidth calculations or hidden fees. Just go to Vimeo.com/business to check it out. If you like it, you can use the promo code “Tim” to get 25% off. 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Visit tim.blog/sponsor and fill out the form.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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That's Tim.blog forward slash Friday. I get asked a lot how I meet guests for the podcast, some of the most amazing people I've ever interacted with. And little known fact, I've met probably 25% of them because they first subscribed to Five Bullet Friday. So you'll be in good company. It's a lot of fun. Five Bullet Friday is only available if you subscribe via email. I do not publish the content on the blog or anywhere else. Also, if I'm doing small in-person

meetups, offering early access to startups, beta testing, special deals, or anything else that's very limited, I share it first with Five Bullet Friday subscribers. So check it out, tim.blog forward slash Friday. If you listen to this podcast, it's very likely that you'd dig it a lot and you can, of course, easily subscribe any time. So easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog forward slash Friday. And thanks for checking it out. If the spirit moves you. BJ, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me here. It's very cool. Yeah, I appreciate it.

And we are sitting in Venice at my friend's house, Devin and his friend, Travis Brewer, who's on American Ninja Warrior. So we have this incredible workout facility to the right, to my right, I guess, in the garage. But you do not, you work in Venice, but you live an hour away. I live over an hour away. So I've been getting into podcasts. I actually enjoy, I was telling you on the way in, I enjoy getting to see this other part of town because LA is really like several different cities and I've never really known the West side. So it's worth it to me,

at least for now, to spend that hour. And listening to podcasts on the drive, it's really like an extra hour of reading a day. Do you have any particular go-to podcasts at the moment? I just started getting into yours. What else do I like? I love this podcast called The Great Debates. It's a comedy debate podcast. People really, at the top of their intelligence,

two Harvard friends of mine who are very well know, very well educated erudite comedy writers just going at the most trivial and, and, and bizarre topics. One topic was, it would be cool if the Pope had an affair with Maura Tierney. And one of them took the side, the Catholic church needs this sort of, you know,

jolt and rebranding and the other person saying, what's the point of an institution like this? You know, so, uh, so it's like debate club. I mean, it's, yeah. And then there's one intelligence squared, which is sort of like the serious debate, the serious version of that. Yeah. The serious version of the comedy version of the serious thing. And, uh, that was, that's been really interesting too. For those of you wondering what the whining is, it's not, uh, it's not BJ.

That's, that's Molly, my dog. Uh, you mentioned two Harvard friends or fellow Harvard graduates. I have a question about Harvard and, uh, and you're a Princeton guy. I went to the lesser known with the P, but, uh, it seems like there is a rich history of people coming to Hollywood from Harvard that you don't associate with, say, Yale, or maybe so, but I haven't come across it as much, or other Ivies. Why is that? Because it seems to go back quite a ways. I mean, my family at one point knew Henry Beard, who then helped

create National Lampoon. And it just seems to go way, way back. And I'd love to hear why that is. I really don't know. The main correlation that I am familiar with is the Harvard Lampoon, which is a really one-of-a-kind comedy magazine that has its own spectacular castle building in the middle of prime real estate in Harvard Square. William Randolph Hearst funded this incredibly bizarre and exciting old building, and that has fostered a lot of intelligent people trying to get into this building slash magazine slash party house. And those people sort of train each other really, I wouldn't quite say viciously, but really rigorously about comedy. This joke doesn't progress. This joke is predictable. And it's very rare that you'll get 19-year-olds being hard on funny 18 funny 18 year olds year after year. And so I think

that is a training system that is unlike just about anything else you'd be exposed to at that age. So that has led to a lot of people falling in love with and becoming very good at comedy writing, which is, you know, a real, a building block of entertainment that can be put to use. So a lot of people have traditionally graduated the Harvard Lampoon and gone on to write for The Simpsons or Saturday Night Live or many, many other shows. And I think once you see graduates do that, you kind of think, oh, maybe I could do that. A big advantage, I think, of going to a fancy school, or my dad, who did not go to a fancy school, but is a writer. A lot of people ask me, oh, did you have those advantages? Yes, of course, to an extent, but I find the biggest advantage is just not thinking that it's a crazy idea to

try to be a comedy writer or to try to be a writer. Many people waste years working as a lawyer, working, you know, whatever they do that they think of as a more reasonable choice before they finally get the courage to write. So I think that the huge advantage is if you have the talent, no matter where you are, if you believe that it's a reasonable choice of action, you're extremely fortunate. And that, I think, is a main advantage of going to Harvard. It doesn't seem crazy. Right. I mean, you have these historical case studies of people who've done exactly what you might

fantasize about doing. And the rigor and the training is very interesting to me because I was the graphics editor at the Princeton Tiger. So the satire magazine, cartoons, illustrations, that was my department. And I wanted that job partially because Jim Lee, who's sort of an iconic hero in the comic book world for me, had that previous post at Princeton. And I found a bunch of his drawings actually that did when he was shit-faced drunk after going to a party on Nassau Street. But that's a separate story. The approach really was do something funny. And there wasn't a lot of structure. I mean,

there was feedback if something sucked, obviously, or just didn't get any type of laughs whatsoever. But where did that structure develop? mean did people come back uh from say industry and help instill that in some way uh or did it just develop organically among the students the career path of it oh no i mean the being hard on say underclassmen and and and looking at whether something progresses or not etc yeah well i Yeah. Well, I imagine that was simply imitative of other rigorous extracurriculars at a school like that where the ski club or rowing or the Harvard Crimson newspaper, whatever. Probably it's more inherited from that because a lot of people want to do these activities and you limit it to the people that you feel, and it's an incredibly subjective practice, but are the most talented at comedy writing. And so you put them through, well, can you do this? Can you do that? And you have to

write a number of pieces in order to get on the staff. So I think that everything at a place like that is very competitive. And so this is just that same rigor applied to this incredibly subjective and often thought to be trivial field of comedy writing. And this does not lead to the best comedy writers by any means. That's one advantage, and the other advantage is that they believe they can do it. There are also huge disadvantages to coming from the Harvard Lampoon, which is a lack of sort of life experience or being in touch with what real people actually find funny or a sense of cockiness that is very antithetical to comedy. So there's definitely advantages and disadvantages

to coming from a place like that. At what point in your undergrad did you get involved with the Lampin? Well, I tried to get on from the very beginning. So I tried, you comp is the term for, you know, auditioning for it with your writing. So I tried three straight semesters. So I didn't get on until the middle of my sophomore year, but I wanted to be on from day one. What do you think changed between your first attempts and getting accepted? How did you improve, or was it just that long? I have no idea. I probably just improved because I was older and had been doing it longer, but it's also incredibly subjective.

If I had not gotten on, I had vowed to never try again and decide those people didn't know what the fuck they were talking about. And then I did get on and actually I did keep a healthy sense of this is not the be all end all, but it's so subjective. How does, uh, when you then did, um, writing after college, well, actually let's, let's not hit fast forward too quickly, although I'm happy to jump around. The next step after graduating, what happened in the year after graduation? events and what it has in common with everyone else is that everyone who gets a job in show business, they have a story that's not replicable. That's the one constant, ironically. So what happened was I was one of my main extracurriculars at Harvard was I put on a show called The BJ Show with another kid named BJ who was like a campus celebrity. He was like a reality show star before reality because he had stowed away on a plane to visit his family for Thanksgiving.

This is before 9-11, so it wasn't quite as bad. But still, it made the papers. Harvard student stows away on a plane. He was the guy from the plane. And so I saw an opportunity here to hitch my fame to his, and we put on this variety show. To get the plane guy attached to your project. Yeah, it's like, you know, I have the same to his, and we put on this variety show. To get the plane guy attached to your project. Yeah, it's like, you know, I have the same name as the guy who was on the plane. Maybe

we should do something together. So we put on the show, and I got, you know, some of my comedy friends, and we wrote this sort of, it was a variety show and parody of a variety show called The BJ Show. My senior year, I decided, let's invite Bob Saget to perform in this show. Because I had heard that he was a really filthy stand-up comic, which he is. What was the timing on this? This was probably... This was 2001. 2001.

Yeah. Okay, so this is before America's Funniest Home Videos. No, no, this is after. I'm sorry, after. Yeah. So he's well-known as a family-friendly guy. Right. But sorry after yeah uh so he's well known as a you know family friendly guy right but i have heard rumors that he's really filthy so i think maybe we can book him maybe we can maybe we can honor him at the harvard lampoon and because he'll want the award

he'll come and do the show which worked perfectly i approached his management i cold called his management and said i'm calling from harvard we want to give Bob Saget an award and feature him in the show. And the show, you know, the proceeds went to charity. It wasn't a scam for me. I just thought it'd be a great show. By the way, that's a great thing. Always, if you don't care about the money, always give the money to charity because then everyone will do it. And often you just don't care about the money. You just want to put on something cool. So that's something I learned in college that I'll probably use again. If anytime I have like some cool scheme,

like sure, keep them like, who cares? So I cold called his management. I asked my dad, how do you think I get in touch with Bob Saget? He said, call CAA.

We're from like Boston. I don't know how he does. He said, look up, call 411, get CAA's number and ask CAA. They'll probably know. It's like, that's so smart. So one of the big agencies in town. Yeah. So I call CAA. I say, do you guys represent Bob Saget? The receptionist says, uh, no. I say, do you know who does? They say, I think Brillstein Gray. So I look up Brillstein

Gray. I call Brillstein Gray. Um, they do represent Bob Saget. They put me through to a guy. Um, I explained my case. He says, send theet. They put me through to a guy. I explain my case. He says, send the stuff you're writing for Bob. I'll take a look. This guy later becomes my manager. So the manager, Michael Price, likes the material, recommends that Bob does it. Bob comes out and does the show, which is a very highly scripted show. There's a parody of Full House called The Lost Episode of Full House, in which Bob learns about sex from Uncle Jesse. Very dirty, very funny. Anyway, so after the show, Bob and he

had brought his show's creator. He was doing a new show that never really went anywhere, but it lasted one season. It was called Raising Dad. Oddly, it starred Kat Dennings and Brie Larson, who are now both very, very successful as well. But they hired me. They were like, oh, cool, a young, edgy writer, Harvard Lampoon, perfect. And they gave me a job on that staff while I was about to graduate. So I graduated. It's perfect.

Set up. Perfect in a way. In a way. I mean, too good to be true on a career level. But again, I really had these fantasies of being a great artist, a great filmmaker, and sort of a family WB show. I didn't want to move to LA. I knew that I shouldn't say no to this, And I didn't say no to it, but it was, you know, I actually wanted to be like a starving artist, you know, easy. I'm like, look, I'm from like a suburb.

Starving artist means like borrow a little money and like live cheap. I have no real illusions, but I didn't, I had mixed feelings. So it was sort of a dream come true and sort of career moving forward. But it was, you know, I was,

I don't know. What did you think you, what type of starving artist did you think you wanted to be when you were a sophomore, junior? I had read this book, Easy Riders Raging Bulls, about independent film. Would you recommend it? Highly recommend it.

Easy Riders Raging Bulls. Easy Riders Raging Bulls, about sort of filmmaking in the glory days of the 70s. And I wanted to be like that. And then there's a sequel about sort of the in the glory days of the 70s. And I wanted to be like that. And then there's a sequel about sort of the Miramax, like the 90s Tarantino, Kevin Smith, that is also good. But I wanted to write like a screenplay that would like blow Hollywood apart.

It was so edgy and innovative, et cetera. And then demand to direct it. And I think anyone who saw Pulp Fiction as a teenager, that was their fantasy. So that was very much my fantasy. And in my privileged wannabe artist mind, this was a sellout move. But I knew it would be even more privileged

and eye-rolly to turn it down. It's an interesting paradox. I've noticed this. When I was young, I thought, oh, I'll never be a sellout. If anyone ever offers me something sellout-y, I'll always say no. Then you realize there's a huge integrity pull towards doing the sellout thing because you think, who am I to turn down all this money for something that someone else's would struggle their whole lives to, et cetera, et cetera. And you actually feel very guilted towards, at least, doing what you would have considered a

sellout thing. So it's an interesting paradox that I've observed with a lot of successful people. They get offered a really lame movie for a ton of money and their thought isn't fuck that i'm an artist their thought is god who am i i'd put my kids through college just to do a christmas movie who am i to say no it's very surprising i mean it makes sense but i i'm it does make sense but it's uh it's a it's an incentive of guilt as opposed to sort of incentive of focus in a way. It's kind of like the Christmas story where it's like, there are starving kids in China,

you know, and you're like, oh, okay, I'll eat this food that you put in front of me. Right. Uh, how did you then make decisions or what happened after you were offered that

gig on the, I took it, you took it, you know, I, I took it, uh, moved to LA,

started writing for it. Um, and I, it. You took it. You know, I took it. I moved to LA, started writing for it. And I, you know, I looked around the room. It's interesting. I kept telling myself, I'm making so much money because for a kid at that age, it's so much money.

But any job I've had since then, I made more money on The Office, for example, and I never thought I'm making so much money. So anytime I'm telling myself I'm making so much money, I'm making so much money, that's a warning sign that you're doing the wrong thing. So I would tell myself that because I gradually realized this isn't the life I want.

I'd look around this writer's room and think, these are not the jobs I want. And I really, and I'm glad I did, I really had these dreams of doing something important and visible and exciting. And the only people in the room who I did aspire to be something like were Bob Saget, who would come by now and then in his fancy car and cool sunglasses and tell 10 jokes and leave and get to be the star of the show. And Jonathan Katz, who created the show and had previously created Dr. Katz on Comedy Central. Oh, sure. Really cool show.

Oh, yeah. I know Dr. Katz. And he also came by now and then, gave some words of wisdom and jokes and then left and was also celebrated for his own voice. And I thought, well, those are the guys I want to be. And they were both stand-ups. So I thought, I had never thought of doing stand-up before then, but I realized, well, how, how insurmountable is this? Being a stand-up is writing a joke and then saying the

joke. And that is what I'm doing in this writer's room. I write a joke. I say it out loud to see if it goes in the script. I guess I could try that and try to be like them. And so as the show was winding down, I signed up for open mics around LA and I would start, you know, saying one liners into a microphone and I was kind of doing standup comedy. What was the, do you remember any of your early bits when you did it? Well, the first time was a real disaster. And one of my most important pieces of advice to anyone doing standup is if you're really going to try standup book, your whole week of shows,

your whole first week, uh, in advance. So you can't quit. So you can't quit because I, I got up all this courage to do my first show. It was at a youth hostel, the Hollywood youth hostel.

It was October 10th, 2001. So less than a month after nine 11, all my jokes were about nine 11 And I was not a good comic. And the crowd didn't speak much English. And I followed a guy who killed. He did an impression of Robert De Niro taking a dump. And I have to say, it was great.

It was a great impression, and you didn't need to know English. And it was completely the opposite of what I was doing. And so I did this bit. It was horrible. And the host said after me to try to, you know, keep the show going. All he could muster for me was takes a lot of courage to get up on this stage. And after that, I did not get on stage for three months, I had to work up the courage all over again, because it had been such a disaster. And that time I was like, you know what, Tuesday, I'm going to this coffee shop, Wednesday, I'm going to this bar, you know, all these open

mics. And you know, the first night back, I did pretty well. And the second night, I didn't do well. But you can't make each night a referendum on whether or not you should be doing it. You just have to do a bunch. And how did your approach change between that first bomb and the second sort of collection of attempts? It was really, it was exactly that. It was the idea that I'm going to really do this night after night, and I will evolve the act. And, you know, I was really bad for a while. But, you know, let's say you do 20 jokes, and three of them get pity laughs. Well, those are the three you keep. And then after a while, one of them always does well. Well, that's your opener. And now two of them do well. Well, now you have a closer and, uh, you sense, oh, okay. When I do this kind of joke, it does well. And you know, it, it evolves that way. And, uh, what did your parents do?

You mentioned your dad wrote, he also, he wrote some memoirs or ghost wrote some memoirs for some big people, right? I mean, what are some sample? very exciting for me. He worked with Tim Russert on two books and George Stephanopoulos. So a lot of political people on both sides of the spectrum and a lot of just eclectic business leaders, various people. What did your mom do? My mom is a teacher now. She's done a bunch of things though. She's also kind of an eclectic career. What did they think of your move to start, uh, to not startups that comes a little later, stand up similar sounding word. What did the, how did they, how did they feel about that? What are the conversations like? Yeah, I think they thought I wasn't very good. You know, they're, my dad also is the co-editor

of a couple of humor books that are very good, The Big Book of Jewish Humor and The Big Book of New American Humor. And my family, comedy is a big deal to us. They watch Seinfeld every night. Seinfeld and Key and Peele are the only things my parents watch, which I think is very good taste. So I think they definitely supported me writing. I'd studied literature at Harvard. My dad's a writer.

There was nothing, again, huge advantage for me that my parents thought writing was like a good a solid job you know and then stand-up was where they were like like okay get it out of your system this is not you but whatever you know they never said this to me but in retrospect it's like i it's the same thing on stage when the audience is laughing and then you say something off the cuff and you get a huge laugh and you realize, oh, they weren't even laughing before. My parents were like, supportive, supportive, supportive. And then they really supported something different. And you're like, okay. So you were not, okay.

You were just being polite. Fair enough. And that was the sort of BG. But they were slow. They're supportive people. They came around and they supported the office you know and so when did the what happened between that startup uh i really want to say startup that's just this is why i'm taking a break from startups because i'm just like completely brainwashed the the you took a uh from that

that's first you have if you title this interview from standup to startup. I could, yeah, that could be your, that could be your memoir. That could be right now. Should from that point to the office, what happened between those from that point to the office? Well, raising dad got canceled. Uh, I continued doing standup. I ran out of all the money that I had saved on my big money year in about a year and a half, two years of doing open mics and gradually getting better to the point where at the end of sort of after a year and a half, which is a long time when you are a kid from the suburbs. It's a long time. It's a long time. But compared to most standups, I got very lucky, of course,

but it did feel like a very long time because I had been working. After about a year and a half, I got decent, definitely decent at stand-up. And I was starting to get booked at respected alternative rooms, at the improv. And there's a lot of people in Hollywood that are always looking for anyone half-promising to sign or to put on showcases. And I was becoming that comic that people would say, Oh, there's a new guy. He's pretty good. You know, that kind of guy. And at the end of that, a bunch of things, the end of that sort of two year stretch, a lot of things kind of happened at once I got cast on the show Punk'd. I replaced Dax Shepard as the new guy, which I thought that,

oh, that's what I'll be famous for for the rest of my life. I'm the guy from Punk'd. So I did pranks on Hilary Duff and Usher and people like that. Incredibly fun. And I got booked on Conan. I got booked on Comedy Central.

Was the Usher prank, I have a vague memory of this. Was this when his brother was set up to steal jewelry? And then I tell him. Usher handled that so well, was set up to steal jewelry? And then I tell him... Usher handled that so well, I thought. He was great. And then I tell Usher, you know, we can let this go if you record a radio ad for our store

and do this rap that I wrote. They wrote a really funny rap, and I have to rap this to Usher. It's so hard to keep a straight face. And one of the brilliant touches the writers have put in is that in the rap, Usher refers to himself as Ice. And then I apologize that we originally wrote this for Vanilla Ice, who passed. So I got to do really funny, clever things. And around this time, I was on a showcase. Stand-up. A stand-up showcase for a network.

And now I'd booked Punk'd and stuff like that. And that's when Greg Daniels, who was creating the American Office, saw me and thought, he was already looking for people that could write and act. And my jokes were very clearly clever writing. They weren't a raw personality or anything. So he thought, oh, maybe you can do... And I had a writing job, maybe you could be a writer-actor, which at the time it was a very experimental idea. Yeah, I was going to ask you why he was looking for that. Because he had worked at Saturday Night Live, and he had had a good experience where there was a small gang of people who were kind of writing their own things. And also the British office had been a small, you know, Ricky Gervais had written so much of it. So he was totally right. Let's not have a corporate feeling show with a writing staff and a cast. Let's cast kind

of funny people who can kind of do it as a little unit. And what was, so what was the very beginning of The Office like for you? The beginning of The Office was very exciting, creatively especially, because it was not thought to be a show that this is now I got to feel like that starving artist, like, you know, the actual integrity. This was not considered a successful. There's no laugh track. There's no colors. It's bleak. It's not a pretty cast. The jokes are very slow and dry. And it's a remake of a British show that NBC had a track record of disastrous remakes. So it was a six-episode mid-season order. It was a really – actually, no, it was just a pilot order. And then we squeaked into six episodes.

So the beginning was, you know, but it was – the people working on it were brilliant. Steve Carell's improvisations and Greg Daniels' sort of joke pitches and story outlines. And, you know, pretty soon this very lean writing staff of Mindy Kaling and Paul Lieberstein, who played Toby on the show, and a bunch of other, you know, real, Larry Wilmore, who now hosts the Nightly Show on Comedy Central, you know, real, real lean group. And, you know, so creatively, it was extremely exciting. And then it was bizarre when it became successful, because we had come to think of it as the show that for the rest of our lives

we'd meet one or two comedy fans who were like, that's a classic. That's what we were going for, for Mr. Show, like cult status. And when did you feel the tipping point? Or was there a particular event or moment or time when you're like, holy shit, this thing is actually going to be successful or is successful.

The beginning of the second season was around December, I think. So we'd been out for like over a year, but only a few episodes. And they moved us from, two things happened. They moved us from Tuesday to Thursday, which I felt was very important because now, you know, the night you're on doesn't matter so much in the DVR era. But back then I, my theory was that you wouldn't want to watch a show about an office at the beginning of your work week. It's not funny on Tuesday. It's funny on Thursday.

It's almost over. Um, so there was that. And then the big thing was that the Apple iTunes store process began. And we, because our cult audience was very young and tech savvy, they made us a very big hit on the iTunes store, even though we were not a hit on NBC. And then people were walking around with like video iPods with the office on it, and they were sending each other, you know, links to download it and stuff. And so it was really one of the first shows to be a hit, like an online hit in that way. And that really was this viral, proto-viral way that the word spread about the show. And so I have to ask a question

that I've always wanted to ask somebody involved with The Office because I have no idea how this came to pass. But a fan sent me a link to a clip at one point. The four-hour work week came up in an episode of The Office where there's this big debate going on amongst everyone. And someone says, what do you mean? I sent you an email pointing to Daryl. And Daryl says, I don't check email until 12 noon,

four hour work week. And then it zooms out of the space. Do you have any idea how that happened? I mean, it's very specific question, but I was in the room when that was pitched. I don't remember whose it was. It was just,

I thank you for being part of that joke. I, I, working backwards from what we must have meant. It was, it was just funny. Like every little thing is going wrong, you know, for Michael on this episode. It was, uh, it was really, uh, hilarious

and made, I mean, really made my week. That was, uh, it was very, uh, it's very surprised to come across it. The, the, so the office, what are some lessons learned through your experience at the office? I mean, what did you get better at and why? Lessons learned. And we could talk about, I mean, you could, you could, you could have a particular person in mind if that helps. Yeah. Well, one lesson that I learned from that, as well as from standup, was that you really

never know how something's going to play until you test it. Scenes that felt like they were just airtight, winter, hilarious scenes in the writer's room sometimes just would not work on set. And you had to learn to not be angry at it for not working. You had to learn to listen to the audience. And that's a major, major lesson. There's no one smarter than the audience. And it was, so this is actually something that,

so it was filmed in front of a live audience? No, but there's, you know, there's a crew. But you just feel it. You just feel it. If it's flat if it's flat it's flat first you do a table read of each episode so you have a big room of people laughing or not laughing and then when you take it down if it's like a rewrite scene or something you know steve carell says it and you're just there you know even just you and the cameraman like you're

smiling or you're not right um or then you edit it and it works or doesn't and that was i think a humbling lesson for someone who thought of himself as a real writer because writing is really – it's just a guess. And there's no penalty for doing your homework. So if you want to test your stand-up at 1,000 rooms before you do it on TV or if you want to test the stuff you're writing for the office in as many groups as you can do it because you're not, you're not smarter than the audience. It's for the audience. Would you test your material you're working on for the office and other environments? In like little rooms? Yeah. Everyone had their own office.

So like, you know, Mindy and I would like read scenes out loud and, you know, just see if they sounded right. And you either see someone smile or not. Yeah. Yeah. What about Steve Carell? Did you observe anything particular? Oh, well, I learned something from him,

which was one time I, you know, wrote a bunch of jokes cause the scene wasn't working and I was the guy in charge of, you know, bringing alts as we call them, you know, other versions. So I'd bring alts to the,, and he looked at all of them, and he said, I don't know, these just feel like jokes to me. And I was like, well, yeah, they're jokes. That's what I do.

That's what we do. But for him, comedy was a byproduct of authenticity. I would compare it to the difference between a kid who knows he's cute and a kid who doesn't. A kid who knows he's cute is not cute. A kid who just says something without realizing cute is hilarious. And that's what he wanted the office to feel like. Like these people don't even know how funny they are. So that was important.

I'm sure I'll come up with a lot more lessons because I learned more on that than anything. I can talk about the writing process that I learned a lot of lessons from. I would love for you to write about, yeah, I'd love for you to talk about that. Well, the way that we would start a season, and I've adapted this to many things I've done since, we'd start with what we would call a blue sky period, which was my favorite part of every year. For two, three, four weeks sometimes if we had a long time. Every single day in the writer's room was just what if.

There's no penalty. There's no maybe we can't. There's no but this one conflicts with that one. What if Dwight goes to the moon? What if Jim and Pam get divorced? Just every idea is valid for a while. That was just an amazing period. And then- How long would that last?

That would last, if we didn't have much time, because we had different pre-production schedules, between two weeks and four weeks. That's a decent stretch of time. Yeah. And was there structure to the what ifs? Was there somebody on a whiteboard taking down the favorites?

Yeah, a little bit. But it was sort of improvised day-to-day, like the showrunner would say, you know, all right, we don't have anything for Dwight. Or like, how about everyone split up and come up with 10 ideas for Ryan? Or, you know, let's come up with more ensemble stories. You know, there would be sort of a leadership that way. It wasn't just all sitting around.

What is an ensemble story? I feel like I know what both words mean separately. The whole cast is involved in one thing rather than a story, B story. So that was incredible. Those, and it really was creatively important. And I,

I tried to replicate that in everything I do, just not shut down any ideas for a period. Just generate, not edit. Yeah. And then the best ideas we'll have there will fuel you past the problems. After a few weeks of Blue Sky, we would love some ideas so much. It would be obvious what the best, let's say we were going to start with six stories, right? It was obvious what the best 15 were. And then we'd start talking

more seriously. And then we'd look, which ones do our love for the story carry us through the inevitable? Well, how could Dwight be here if he's also there? And stuff like that. But finding the love first, and then letting that carry you through the problem. Could you explain what you mean by that? Yeah. You find what you love about an episode, or in other things I've done, a story idea or a standup bit but you know, you gotta just indulge, develop what you love about it so that when you then come up with, Oh, but then we couldn't show this on TV or, um, it is kind of contrived or whatever it is. You'll, you'll love it so much that you will have the inspiration to fix it. Got it. So you're developing the piece that you've fallen in love

with enough so that you can handle all the inevitable. Yeah. Fix your upper issues. I do that with my other writing too. I always start with what I love. And if I'm stuck on a story and I approach it the next day, I never go to the hard part first. Some writers probably do.

I go to what's my, what's the one thing I'm proud of in the story. Could you give an example? Not off the top of my head, but there might just be a joke or a phrase or a beautiful line that I'm proud of that I'm just so certain everyone's going to think I'm brilliant. So I start at that and I get excited and then I want everything else to live up to that rather than start at the problem. That's a personal thing. I am very motivated by positive thinking. Were there any other... An ego, positive ego. Use your own ego to fuel yourself rather than be an obstacle.

What other approaches do you take in your work life or personal life to maintain positivity or use positivity? I consider being in a good mood the most important part of my creative process. So right or wrong, I personally don't get up early unless I'm awake early, if I'm where I have somewhere to be. I know I've read the book we talked about, Daily Rituals, which I love. Yeah, Mason Curry. Great book. I'm demoralized by how many great people start their day very early.

Were you, were you also, were you encouraged or demoralized by how many of them were drug addicts? That was encouraged. It's like 90% used methamphetamine. Amphetamine. Right. But you know, this Starbucks, this venti Starbucks in front of me, who's to say that doesn't have the same stimulation that they used back then. So, you know, if I try to go to bed early and wake up early, but if I need to sleep late or take a walk in the morning or whatever, I find that being in a good mood for creative work is, is worth the hours that it takes to get in a good mood. So often when I was writing my books, I would, you know, someone would check in, send me a text at like 1130, like, how are you doing? What's up? And

I'd say, powering up. I just feel the first few hours you're just getting into a good mood until I think, all right, all right. I have an idea I'm excited about, or I have so much self-loathing and caffeine that I'm like, got to do something. The self-loathing and caffeine that I'm like, got to do something. The self-loathing plus caffeine is a hell of a thing. One of my friends, Kelly Starrett, who's a very well-known athletic trainer, calls it cup of fear. So you take the self-loathing and then you drink a cup of fear. I'll tell you my number one while we're on this number one creative, uh, productivity advice to anyone.

Um, and I mean, anyone, if it works for you, I carry around a notebook and if I don't have a little notebook, I have my phone, you know, but I really divide my creative work into two distinct phases, which is the idea phase and the execution phase. And I do not let either interrupt the other. Yeah, that's the best way to say it. So if I'm taking a walk or I'm having a drink with a friend and just some funny idea comes up, something that makes me smile or some other impulse, I write it down and I never judge, well, what would you do with this idea? Or how would you end that joke? Never. I just have this notebook and I feel like the richest man in the world in terms of ideas. Just fill it up. Feel great. Never question it.

Then on a separate day, I sit down 9 or 10 a.m. with a big cup of coffee at my desk, go through the notebook, and I do my best with every idea in the book. So I never am intimidated. When you say do your best, you're developing each one on a separate piece of paper or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. On my computer usually, um, or continue an idea on the computer that I left off the previous day. But, uh, you know, but first I'll check my notebook. Oh, did I have any ideas for solutions or whatever? So the idea to me, everything is idea and execution. And if you separate idea and execution, you don't put too much pressure on either of them.

I was reading an article by Isaac Asimov about creativity in groups versus solo creativity and a very similar conclusion that he came to just keeping them separate now when you uh do you have a particular type of notebook particular type of pen that you like yeah i use the moleskin kahir as i say it i have no idea you can buy them c-a-h-i-e-r you can go on amazon and buy these three packs. So they're much thinner than the typical Moleskine notebook. So you can really, you can keep them in your pocket easier and you finish them.

So you feel more productive. You feel like you've accomplished something up in a couple of weeks. And then I have a huge box of them, but I use that and I use the uniball vision, uh, pen and generally, how do you, do you date them? How do you keep track of what i do i order different

colors and mix up the colors that i order and then i buy on amazon these huge batches of stickers shape stickers that teachers use to put on you know reports and stuff like stars and circles and blue rectangles and stuff and every time i start a new notebook, I write my phone number in the first page in case anyone finds it. Super important. Yep. And then I put a sticker in the top left corner of the book.

That lets me know which one I'm on currently. And then I have a yellow, I'm sorry, I have a red box for, I have a white box for untranscribed notebooks, because then I transcribe them on my computer, and a red box for transcribed notebooks. And I don't date them. And I always tell myself I should date them. This is crazy. Because when I go through the white box, you know, I'm jumping around six months ago, four months ago, you know, I'm not going in order. But I guess just I'm not going to order, but I guess just, I'm not going to question

it because something about the creative process, I just don't want to date them. I just don't know. Interesting. What, uh, I mean, maybe that would create some bias against older material. I mean, for the same reason that I take dates on my blog posts and I moved them from the top to as a small italicized line at the bottom and my traffic jumped like 20 30 percent because people are no longer biased against older material that's very interesting that's something on the list up too we we keep an eye on uh what uh and we're we're going to talk a lot about lists not not trying to rush you no no no we're we're gonna get there the the i love the red box and white box when you develop these or do your best with them as you said on the computer

are you doing this in a particular app or program or is it limited to whatever your current focus is say a book or a screenplay or film i use microsoft word um same reason my dad used word star it's just what i learned and got in the habit of. And I use Final Draft for screenplays because everyone does. I would like, I know there's other software out there, I would like something that kind of combines the two because often I would like to kind of write a paragraph and then kind of throw in dialogue easily. But it's not worth it to me to investigate and switch.

Yeah, there's a tool that I've used for my last few books that I found extremely helpful. It's not as, it's not as focused on screenwriting as say final draft, although people do use it for that, uh, called Scrivener. I don't know if you've ever seen this. Yeah, I've heard of it. Yeah. I've used it for my last two books. I found extremely helpful for that format. I think it's mostly used by playwrights, I want to say, but there are screenwriters who use it. Blake Ross, I was going to mention, who invented Firefox. Firefox, yeah.

He's an investor in the List app, and I've been trying to get him for years to develop with me like a screenplay writing software, because he's actually a terrific writer, and he wrote the Silicon Valley spec script that he put on Twitter, which such a tech way to get your spec out there but it was it was great and uh i think he would be the guy to crack it because he's the writer and also the software developer i think where is he based is he still in the bay area or is he yeah i need to actually spend some time with him he was very very kind uh when i think it was 2007 gave me a quote for the four-hour work week and

i feel very indebted to him so he's awesome so if you're hearing this thank you so much i really owe you a coffee and dinner and a bottle of wine and probably more uh when you how do you think of yourself i mean i guess it depends on perhaps what project you're working on, but which of these many activities and artistic projects, crafts that you've attempted, do you most identify with? Writer. Writer. Yeah.

Any particular type, or is it just across the board writer? Probably comedy writer, to be honest, for two reasons reasons one is just it's the identity i come from i think it was woody allen who said if you you know i do these different things but if you woke me up and shook me in the middle of the night and said what what are you i'd say writer um i definitely feel like that that's a good i should i should should rephrase my question yeah to mimic woody allen's wording on that if someone woke up in the middle of the night and shook you and said what what's your job? What would you say?

I guess the simpler way is, what do you put on your passport or your customs declaration? I always put writer. But I think that everything I do is sort of a version of writing. Even if I'm acting, I'm sort of writing the way

that I think this character would act. Do you know what I mean? Of course. Or if I have an idea, I really feel like, you know, idea and execution, that to me is writing. If you were teaching a, let's see, freshman seminar at Harvard on comedy writing, what would the curriculum look like?

Oh, great, great question. Well, P.J. O'Rourke, who was one of the big National Lampoon editors, said that if he taught writing... What's the Confederacy of Dunces? Did he write that? No. Am I making that up? But he might have written the introduction to it or something. All right.

So he said that if he ever taught English, he would assign parodies, because that's when you really learn something, is to parody it. So I would probably assign parodies. Because that's when you really learn something is to parody it. So I would probably assign parodies of literature. I would... Are there any particular parodies that... Just sort of whatever you're studying in your other classes, parody that. I see. And it really, I think, would open you up. I think mischief is just so important in comedy. It's really, there's just something like,

am I really allowed to say that? That's just the cool thing. Am I really allowed to hear that? I could pontificate. I know a couple things that I feel I have discovered about comedy. One is that the perfect, first of all, the most important thing is it is sort of a it's like a physical it's like sex in that it's about whether the other person is enjoying it or not or

you're enjoying it you know like you could say do this and that and then if neither of you has a good time you couldn't insist to me like, but I had good sex. No, you didn't. Like that. I gave you my best advice, like touch her here and take your time and whisper this. Like I could do that, but you'll know if it's good sex or not. These are just tips. Like it's a physical reaction that you're going for. Um, so there's that, you know, whatever you teach, it's like, Hey, you'll, you'll feel it. You'll feel it or you'll hear it. You'll know. So do it a lot and, you know, probably, you know, don't take this class too seriously.

One thing I've definitely learned about comedy, I don't know how it applies to what, maybe it applies to editing more than just to writing or finding what's good comedy. But I believe that a good comedy operates the exact same way a good mystery operates, which is the punchline should be something that was right in front of your face the whole time and you never would have put your finger on it. It's like the red doorknobs in The Sixth Sense. Oh, the red doorknob! Yeah, exactly. Of course, he was dead the whole time. How did I not get that? That excitement, that elation, where it was the butler, it was the narrator, whatever it was,

that's the best comedy. When someone points out something, you're like, oh my God, that was so obvious. I never would have gotten it. Another thing is that observations are really the currency of comedy. Anything you do, if you observe something that touches a chord with somebody and that has not been expressed right, you can turn that into a movie. You can turn that into a plot.

You can turn that into a one liner. But anytime you observe something that, that a good new observation, that's what fuels 99% of comedy. And the other 1% is just people falling down or whatever and uh is are there any particular uh comics or comedy writers who are very good in your mind at the red doorknob effect so hitting you with punchlines that have kind of been there all along, but they do a good kick. Well, Aziz Ansari has a bit about marriage that I find brilliant.

I think it was one or two specials ago on Netflix where he's like, if we invented marriage now, if no one had heard of marriage and you proposed it to a girl, you would freak her out beyond belief. You know, I want a vow that will never, like ever sleep with anyone else. And I want like rings on our fingers to symbolize it. And I want a priest to be there and everyone we've ever met. And there'll be a ceremony. It'll be in the newspaper. You know, that is so funny to me because it's completely true.

Never would have noticed it. Um, Louis CK is brilliant at, at pointing the stuff out, saying things that is kind of how you felt, but you never would have thought of it. Um, but even, you know, an, an abstract one-liner comic like Zach Galifianakis, who I tried to see whenever I could, when I moved to LA, you know, even those are like, right, that phrase could mean that, or why even that is an observation, even that's just about language. That's true. Right.

Like 24 hour banking. Who has time for that? The Stephen Wright kind of approach. Right. Uh, you know, who's really, really good at that is, uh, now that I'm getting sort of a finer feel for, for what you meant is, uh, this was this was a lot i suppose perhaps the majority of really good stand-up comics are good at this i don't know but uh uh why am i blank dimitri martin yeah yeah dimitri martin is really good at the wordplay uh so you mentioned uh you mentioned

movies we've mentioned list app a few times and I feel like we should dig into that because my next question would be related to, and maybe by means of example, we can get into List App. I was going to ask you for screenwriters. What would your curriculum look like? And you put up a list recently, and maybe you can explain the app as well, but you put up a list of some of your favorite movies.

So you had Adaptation, you had Naked Gun had naked gun down towards the bottom and the top five though. Yeah. It's a top five. It was adaptation Ferris Bueller's day off, um, Pulp Fiction, Casablanca,

the naked gun. This is just personal. What, right. You know, just if I were really going to die tomorrow and they said you could play a couple, I'm not trying to impress anybody. Like, you know, it's just, it's not film history. It's just me.

Now, would those films correspond to the five screenplays that you would suggest people read if you were signing them? Yeah, probably. Probably the writing is front and center for all of them. Now, adaptation is brilliant because it breaks all the rules and comments on all the rules. So maybe I wouldn't teach that first. That's sort of like... Also, if anybody says, I want to be a writer, at least for me, I would say watch that movie. Yeah, I'll talk you out of it.

Yeah. It's just like, I should really use a donut. God, I'm so hungry. You know, I guess all of these movies break the form. of it yeah it's just like i should really use a donut god i'm so hungry you know you know i guess all of these movies break the form and maybe that's why you know casablanca probably i don't know enough about film history but it probably broke the form now it is the form um so maybe i would you know but there are weird things in that pulp fiction obviously completely breaks the form chronologically ferris bueller he narrates the movie to camera.

The Naked Gun is just, they'll do anything for a laugh. I guess that's kind of formal in a way. Adaptation, completely commenting on itself. So yeah, maybe I think one lesson in all of that is it's not about the rules. It's about you and the audience anything that you do so here's i have a quote this is maybe out of left field a little bit do you like have you seen memento yeah did you enjoy that movie i thought it was okay so when i saw it i really enjoyed it but that a lot of people hold that up as an example of a movie that broke the rules where it didn't work.

Or it was trying too hard to break the rules or something like that. I think it's a great... If I were him, if I were Nolan, and that was my first big movie, I'd be very proud that I got everyone's attention. It's extremely clever as an idea. And if that's enough to give you pleasure watching it, or if that's enough to get your attention to watch it, and then you've got pleasure watching it, I agree the premise is fantastically clever. I just wasn't personally especially moved watching the story.

And he's so big it won't matter if I criticize him, but I have a real problem with the Chris Nolan worship in cinema. I think that's a screenplay. That's a writer I would never teach if I were teaching screenwriting. Why is that? Says the guy who's never written a screenplay. Because a movie should be a pleasurable experience. That is my one sentence answer. And I find his movies cold and formal. And I find his demeanor as a public director cold and formal. And please don't make this a headline of your podcast.

If someone listens all the way here, they can see it. Everyone has opinions. But I find his movies completely unpleasurable. Exclusive to TMZ. Yeah. is completely unpleasurable. Exclusive to TMZ. Yeah, and I feel that the formality has conned people into reverence when in fact no one was smiling in any of these Batman movies that everyone gave such a claim to

and no one was smiling at Inception and no one understood Interstellar. I am a well-educated guy. I have a real interest in science. I write screen stories for a living, and I could not follow this. So who is following this? A movie should be entertaining you and inviting you in. So that's a screenwriter I would not teach.

Got it. How did you get into tech and why tech? I find tech, and again, this is sort of the formal rules of anything. First of all, tech is the best field at being the first to tell you that there are no rules. It's about what you make and how people respond to it, which I really love. And I think tech is leading the way for entertainment and you realize, oh, everything is about. Very soon on the Apple TV, you'll be able to say the MIDI project. And you won't have any idea what network it's on. It's all about whether Mindy Kaling, full disclosure, a good friend of mine,

it's all about whether Mindy Kaling has made a good show, gotten the budget, gotten the cast, convinced them to do it. That's a big deal. And made it well. That's a very big deal. And gotten enough publicity for it that you are curious about it. But that's it. And there has been a lot of bullshit in terms of what night is it on and what's the competition like and how is it, you know, and who picked it up and why and who funded it and how much do they get and is it going to make syndication? And that noise has nothing to do with the product and

the audience. And I think tech is leading the way in removing that. And I think tech is really, the reason I've always been drawn to it and always pitched every idea I ever had in tech to my friends in tech is because it seemed like a utopian version of you have an idea and you see if it's a good idea. Just like with standup, just like with writing scenes for The Office, I think this is a great idea, but I won't know until it goes to the set and it succeeds or fails, or I bring it on stage and no one laughs, or everyone does laugh. That to me is the biggest pleasure is having an idea and seeing if you're right. And so tech seemed to me you could have a huge idea and it could be right, whereas in other fields, a huge idea, you need to be at a huge scale to even try it out.

So that's why I met Blake Ross because in 2006 or seven, you know, I had a friend, Charlie Cheever, who worked at Facebook and I said, can I see Facebook? You know, can I have a tour? Um, so, and I, I would cultivate these friendships and these guys to me, that was, I think what a lot of people looked at show business, um, and in the world I was in and thought, that's so creative. I would look at this world and think, wow, you can have an idea, and then if it works, it works. That's so beautiful.

Yeah, there is a... And of course, like everything, it turns out to be way more complicated, but I think less complicated than other fields. And less and less complicated from the standpoint of testing ideas right because you have cheaper and cheaper rentable infrastructure whether it's amazon web services or otherwise you have a global talent market where you can use people remotely or locally or in some distributed fashion like automatic which i advise you know the guys who do wordpress.com and what i mean they have 400 plus people who are all distributed and And, uh, then you have the kickstarters and other

means of funding that weren't available five, 10 years ago. So if you had an idea for a store 20 years ago, that's, you really put your whole life, your on hold to pursue that, a compromise of a compromise of that idea for a store. And now you can make that store. You can do it in an afternoon and then see how it goes. Can you describe then what it is that you're working on right now? So this is, I've tried to get you on and I know we'll get you on when we have the Android. This is the list app and it's as simple as it sounds. It's li.st is our domain.

So eventually when we have web, we'll probably just want to be known as list. But it's really that simple. And we aim to be that universal just to place four lists socially. So that my original idea was we all have these lists in our phones, in our notebooks, in our minds of what are the good restaurants in LA, et cetera. I wish I could see those lists on the phones or whatever of the people I care about, or occasionally a celebrity or a publication that I would turn to for this type of thing. And I wanted a place. It seemed so simple to me. Why hasn't it been done?

I thought a place where you could put these lists and everyone would put them and then you could search them and read them. And that is essentially what we built. So in this case, yeah, I think I'm right. I'm not saying I'm a genius or anything at all. It seemed like this was something worth testing. And if you do it right, and someone shows you an idea and you say, Oh, not that, but yes, that. And like anything else, the most important thing is, is who you partner with. And so I knew I didn't know this field. And I, I hired a company to make screenshots because everyone I pitched this to treated me the way I would treat them. If a tech person pitched me a good idea for a TV show, I'd say, that sounds like a good idea.

I don't think you understand what it takes to, do you have a director? Do you have funding? Do you have a cast? Do you know how to do a rewrite? No, no. I mean, just an idea. Shouldn't someone make, you know? So that's how they treated me. And I thought, well, I need to show that I'm serious and that it would be good. So I asked friend after friend, do you know anyone who could make mock-ups for me? So I hired this great company called Two Toasters in New York. And apparently it's named after, coincidentally, an office reference where Stanley ends up with two toasters because he bought one for Phyllis's wedding. But I didn't know that when I met, I didn't even remember the reference when I met them so I drew up

I'm not a good artist but I drew very again this is not anything innovative I drew up what a list would look like very similar to Twitter to Instagram to Tumblr a vertical feed of lists and how you'd search for them and how you'd add a suggestion to someone else's and how you'd compose

and ask can you make sort of a nice mock-up of each of these main screens? So they, I paid them to make them. And then I would walk around and when I tell people the idea and they'd say, yeah, it sounds good. I'd show them and they would try to tap and they couldn't cause it was just a mock-up. And that, that's how I knew, okay, they want to be using this. I showed them that I'm serious. They, they know what it feels like to want to see the next screen. And I showed, at Two Toasters, Simon, said, I host a tech breakfast in New York once a month. I was going to be in town for that tech breakfast. So I went to it, talked to everyone.

I'd say about 49% of the people were way too nice to me because I was a celebrity. About 49% of the people were way too nice to me because I was a celebrity. About 49% of the people were way too hard on me because I was a celebrity and what am I doing here? Then there was like one guy who took me seriously, who met me at my level and said, I like it for these reasons. I think these are my concerns. And his name was Matt Whitiler. He was a VC at Flybridge, which doesn't do this kind of thing generally, but he was interested. So I asked if I could have lunch with him. I almost canceled. I was hungover.

I'm like, what am I doing? I'm here to do press for a TV show. And why am I pursuing this crazy tech thing? Everyone wants to do a startup. I almost canceled, but I didn't. I show up to meet him. And he says, I know the co-founder for you. I don't think you can get him, but it's worth a try. I've been trying to convince this guy to leave his job

forever. Um, but I think he might like this cause he's done stuff like this before. And his name was Dev Flaherty. He ran product at fab. He had previously worked for a sort of a map, uh, based travel startup. And the original idea for this was travel lists, of course, would be big. So I said, um, let's, let me try. I was leaving the next day. I emailed dev had dinner with them at, uh, the ACE hotel in New York, the Breslin. And we sat down right away. Yeah. Right away. I was like, I'm doing the, I'm doing with this guy. I'm not doing it. You know, he, we were the exact same watch, an IWC Pilot. So like a nice, simple watch with great design, great classic design. We ordered a bullet bourbon, each of us.

So we have the same taste, you know. And just like Matt Woodhiler, he was hard on the idea and respected the idea, asking all the right questions. And he could talk. And his wife was a television writer. And he was interested in what I was interested in. And he was, tellingly, he was a Parks and Recreation fan, but not an office fan. So he liked the kinds of things I liked, but he was not impressed by me, my celebrity. He heard I was somebody, but he didn't care. He cared about Ron Swanson. So he was adjacent. It was the perfect match. And he said, Lena, let me think

about it. Let me think about it. And then his wife kept getting up for jobs in Hallie Gross's Fantastic Writer. I think she's a fantastic writer, fantastic talker and thinker, and she's on great shows. So I assume she's a great writer. Um, so she kept getting more and more attention in LA and then she was up for this huge writing job in LA on an HBO show and no one was rooting for that job harder than me. I'm praying that Hallie gets hired. Cause I know if Dev moves to LA, I'm sure he'll do this. And sure enough, she got the job and he finally committed to doing this. And, you know, he's really been leading sort of the overall, why I think this is so good is because of Dev. I have a lot to do with the community.

I obviously have a lot to do with the conception. And I argue for all my taste all the time, but 90 plus percent of the time, Dev has already arrived there and added more things that I should have thought of. What are some of the more popular lists that have popped up? Well, I can look at the trending lists right now. And I'll mention one to people.

Yeah. And just because I found this actually very, very cool and helpful, which was a list which you put on Twitter or retweeted i think it was uh cheryl straight and uh writer of wild which was made into a movie and she put out a list of writing prompts so assignments or i think there were more sentences or questions that you could use for writing exercises. And what is your Twitter handle? At BJ Novak. So very simple at BJ Novak. So download the app and also follow BJ on Twitter because he highlights also quite a few different lists, but that list in and of itself. That was great. And she also did a list that was very moving, which is objects found in my mother's car at the moment of her death, or the time of her death.

You know, just like a pen, you know, lipstick, tickets to this play. I don't remember exactly what it was. But I remember being just so stunned by the simplicity of that power in list form. And you know, there's a lot of writers on it. So that, you know, there's a literary thing, but I'm looking here, you know, it's a mix of publications on it, so there's a literary thing. But I'm looking here. It's a mix of publications doing lists, celebrities doing lists, and of course, mostly just regular folks. But trending right now, the Washington Post made a list of the things Donald Trump has called on America to boycott. He's called for a lot of boycotts over the years. It's very interesting, including the company that makes his clothing line which he didn't realize um vox made a list what nasa picked to explain our world to aliens

so what they put on voyager one and two just you know a cool list a girl named jenna martin i know made a list favorite howard stern interviews and that's an open list so you can make a suggestion on that list and if she likes it, she double taps it. What are the top on the Howard Stern list? Howard Stern interviews Lady Gaga, Bill Hader, Billy Joel, which was a great one. I heard that one. Jonah Hill, Jerry Seinfeld, great interviewer. James Taylor, I did not know that.

Although I've seen him be dark and funny. Chris Martin, apparently. So, you know, some of them are very helpful recommendations. A lot of books lists. And some of them are very funny. Now, correct me if I have a faulty memory here, but I remember we were chatting on the phone a few months ago. And was it Lena Dunham who had dead people I'd have sex with?

Am I making that up? Yes, she did. And I'm looking right now. Anthony Bourdain made one that I thought have sex with. Am I making that up? Yes, she did. And I'm looking right now. Anthony Bourdain made one that I thought was really fun. This was, uh, what was that? Uh,

three, four spy novels, three written by spies. One by non-spy. He did that. He's a big reader and writer. Obviously his most recent one is called hotel slut. That's me.

And, uh, you know, it's, it's very much his writing style, but it's the hotels that he will stay. He will make an excuse to go to that town. If he can say in the following hotels,

including one in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Chateau Marmont here in LA, the Raleigh in Miami. Um, so his list are great. Anything in New York. Let me see what his New York choices.

Headed to New York. Surely. Maybe I'll try. There's a lot of lists of New York hotels. But there's also a list of, if you ever stayed at the Bowery, which is my favorite hotel there. Bowery's great. There's two people, at least, have made lists of the best rooms at the Bowery. 1403 has this, and 1401 has that.

Oh, that's very useful. Very useful. I tried to stay at the Bowery. They were sold out for this upcoming trip. So it's very useful and also very creative, and there's great people behind it. For someone who downloads the app, what would you suggest to get them a very good taste of the types of content?

What would you suggest they do? I would suggest just, it's very quick, sign up flow, just sign up, and there's a recommended follow menu. And you can, they'll take you to that screen automatically.

But one of the things you can do is you can hit follow all. It's our top like 100 diverse accounts. So I'll read them right now. Not all 100, but the first batch, Lena Dunham, Mindy Kaling, The New York Times, Jimmy Fallon, The Onion, Anthony Bourdain, The New Yorker, CNN, Andy Cohen, Vogue, Snoop,

Cheryl Strayed, Rachel Ray, people. Not everyone's John Mayer, Wired, TED Talks. Not everyone's going to like all of these, but then just unfollow cause it will give you a real, um, you know, assortment. And there's a lot of, you know, civilians on there too. Just people that are like making, you know, crazy personal or advice lists. And so it's a real, I would just say, sign up, hit recommended, hit follow all recommended and just see what you like. Very cool. Do you have, as we have a plane zooming overhead, do you have a little bit more time for some rapid fire questions? Yeah, sure. All right, cool. So we're going to shift gears just a little bit. Successful. When you hear the word successful, who's the first person who comes to mind and why? Shakespeare. Why? Because he made things that were both moving and permanent and popular.

What was your... Both three things. It shows you how far I am from that. What was your thesis on? Did you write a senior thesis? Whoa, you did your homework. Yeah. I did one on uh mine

was on it's very specific in the films of hamlet how they treat the line to be or not to be because that line already has a lot of mystery within the play exactly what it means uh but then you add all the culture like if you pay to see a movie of hamlet like you're waiting for it to be or not to be the whole time. So how do the cultural expectations affect the interpretation of that line? Got it. Yeah, the bard. I mean, there are a lot of people who make me want to cry into a pillow, but as a writer who's trying to improve, that's certainly way up at the top of the list. What book or books do you give most often as gifts?

There's a book called The Oxford Book of Aphorisms, which I love. It's just the most well-edited, brilliant one-liners from history. And you can spend hours on a page. Or you can just flip through it. I give that one a lot. The Oxford Book of Aphorisms. And I'm going to give Daily Rituals, that book we mentioned a lot, page. It's just, or you can just flip through it. I give that one a lot. The Oxford. And I'm going to give daily rituals. That book we mentioned a lot to anyone who's creative or ambitious.

Uh, you take so much solace in seeing all the different processes. People just do, you know, what does Charles Dickens do every day? What did he do every day? What Darwin do every day? What does Steve Jobs do every day?

You know, it's just so reassuring to see like, and everyone's got their own system and it it also is very reassuring to see how dysfunctional so many of them are yes and uh depressing too yeah depressing in some cases uh great book i actually produced the audiobook for people who want to try the audio uh if you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? I'd love to be great looking.

You're not a bad looking guy. I'm not terrible looking, thank you. But I look at James Franco and he does all the things he does. And I'm like, man. James Franco. Well, look at his brother. I mean, they're like- No, I'm saying-

It's a handsome family. If I could have whatever I wanted, I could lie and say, oh, I'm saying it's a handsome family. I could have whatever I wanted. Yeah. I could lie and say, oh, I'd learn to be better at empathy. No, I'd be like fucking awesome looking. And, you know, then I would like, you know, if you're James Franco, you can do anything. And people are like, well, it's pretty interesting. Anything.

And I wish I had that extra level. I'm just answering. No, no. I appreciate the honesty. Fucking awesome. This is good. Do you have any bad habits that you're currently working on? Yeah, of course. I zone out any conversation.

I'm not holding a microphone. I zone out easily. I just love daydreaming. And I think it's so indulgent in a good way to the creative process. But then you get used to that indulgence when someone else deserves your attention. So I try to be better at that. How do you go about trying to become better at that? It's just a conscious decision not to zone out?

Good question. I don't have a process yet. I'm just always berating myself. I do the same thing. So if you come up with anything, please let me know uh words or phrases that you overuse pretty that's my one tonight oh i hate it i started trying to fix it by saying do you use it as an adverb or an adjective how to use it adverb see i use it as an adjective oh okay um but i don't mind using it okay yeah i say oh that's pretty interesting oh that's pretty that's pretty and i tried to fix See, I use it as an adjective. Oh, okay. But I don't mind using it.

Okay. Yeah, I say, oh, that's pretty interesting. Oh, that's pretty interesting. And I tried to fix it at one point by forcing myself to say fucking afterwards. So I'd say, that's pretty fucking interesting. Yeah, that's good. That's pretty fucking smart. And eventually it short-circuited for a while. It's definitely...

I overuse like, which is so embarrassing because it's not a very masculine word to overuse, but I do. Like as a verb or like as a... Like as in... I don't even know what it is. It's a stutter, really. Right. Like.

Oh, I see. I see. Do you have anything in writing, long form, let's say in a book? One of mine is, for instance, like that having been said or something. Sure. I overwrite a lot and I need to pare it down. God, it's just too many revisions phrase,

but, uh, no, no. I mean, I just, I do stuff like that because it's, it sounds,

um, I don't know. It kind of, it gives extra elegance to a stupid idea. And then I need to go back and be like, you know what? Put some monkey in a suit. Yeah.

It's something I learned on the office too. If you're, if a scene should be two pages and it's four pages, it's a bad scene. It's just you, cause you keep writing when you haven't hit it. So if it, if it's a great scene, you might, it might just be a two line exchange. I love you. I don't love you. Like, Whoa, that's a scene. But if, if the scene is like, so I was thinking the other day, my feelings, you know, like, that's a scene. But if, if the scene is like,

so I was thinking the other day, my feelings, you know, like that's not a scene. It's not working. Yeah. So if you overwrite, it's often a sign that, that you have not hit it and you're still looking for it.

What, uh, what is the best purchase that you've made in recent memory for less than a hundred dollars? Um, an ice cube tray that has giant ice cubes in it anytime i'm at a bar and they have like a big ice cube i feel like oh what this should cost like a hundred dollars this is so nice and then i thought well wait the the rubber ice cube tray

shouldn't be any more expensive it's just just a different shape mold. So I go on Amazon, and sure enough, Tivolo, I think, is the company. For like $7, it's six huge ice cubes. And if anyone comes over and I make them a drink, they have one huge ice cube in their glass, and it's like I have a fancy bar. Love it. Do you have any favorite documentaries? You know what?

Do you mind if I look at the list app? I don't mind if you look at the list app i don't mind if you look at the list of my favorite documentaries on the list app um i love documentaries and i'll throw i'll just buy some time i'll throw one out well i loved man on wire when it came out very uniquely put together and the same team made a documentary subsequent to that called Project NIMH, which was about a chimpanzee, I think this was in the 70s, effectively raised as a human child to see if NIMH in this case could, I think it was NIMH-chomsky or Chimpsky,

they called him in any case, could acquire language. And just a fascinating documentary on human thought, human interaction with this chimp and so on uh on my list catfish it's a cliche but catfish is a brilliant documentary i still haven't seen it's brilliant it's generation defining and it's just become a term but it earned that term um brilliant movie to be and to have is on my list. A beautiful, simple film about a one-room schoolhouse in France. And just what happens over the course of a year.

There's really little story. But it really holds your attention and gives you a spirit of a place. And if I choose one more. Oh, you know what's a really cool one? It's called The Overnighters. And it's about the oil fields in North Dakota. Came out a couple of years ago on this pastor who has a church there, the back end oil fields, which is like probably bigger than the gold rush and the 1800s.

It just like, now that you can frack, there's so much oil in North Dakota that a whole culture, you can rent a garage in North Dakota for like $250,000. There's so much money there and such a rush to be close to it. That's a really interesting documentary. The Overnighters. Yeah.

So I usually ask about morning routines, but I want to ask about, and you can feel free to answer that, but I'm so curious to dig a little bit into your powering up. Yeah. How would you power up to kind of get into the zone? Um, I have a venti Pike place coffee from Starbucks. Um, I find that, how is it made? Just black? Yep. Black. I find that brewing my own coffee at home is so unpredictable. It's like getting artisanal Tylenol. I want to know what my dose is. You wouldn't be like, oh, I made some Tylenol for you. No, give me two Tylenol.

So I want a standard dose of caffeine. You want your standard loading dose of caffeine. Got it. So I have a venti from Starbucks. Now, when you have it, you mean you purchase it? Or do you just down the thing like a shot of tequila? I either drive to the Starbucks. No, it takes an hour because I will sometimes read the paper, the Wall Street Journal or recently the Wall Street Journal, which I find really good, especially on weekends.

Or the New York Times is my favorite. And I often read that. I usually read that online. And, you know, just emails and I turn on music. I usually listen to, um, morning becomes eclectic on case or W morning becomes a collective. Yeah. It's this great show from nine to 12 every weekday commercial free, like just cool new music.

Um, I also have a list on my, on the app of music that I work to. So, and they have a 24 hour station. Do you have another one that you can pull from memory? Yeah, yeah. I will often do Pandora of early blues. Early blues. Which I find good to just... So, yeah, I listen to music.

Or Sirius XM35 is like indie music that I like. So I just listen to music. It's just about being in a good mood. I slowly drink that Starbucks. I sometimes take a walk around Runyon Canyon or my neighborhood. You know, text, email. If there's a book, I'm kind of reading

and read a couple chapters. And then eventually I'm just like, all right, like either I'm excited by an idea or it's like 3.30 and I'm like, this powering up turned into lunch, turned into a workout. And I'm like, God damn it. I cleared out my whole day and it's 3 fucking 30 and I haven't written anything. Then I just start looking at my files and then I finally get going. So yeah, the power up can have a happy or a sad ending.

Is there a particular time of day that you find you you tend to do your best writing um for me it's always been super late night i don't know why that is for synthesis for note-taking for interviewing i can do that whenever but for synthesis i've always been kind of a 10 p.m to 5 a.m kind of guy for whatever reason um it's hard for me to get myself to work later in the day. So probably my most productive time is like 11 to 2. But the creative ideas can come anytime.

I never know when those are coming. Let's see here. If people wanted to watch besides The Office one or two TV shows for good comedy writing, Let's see here. If people wanted to watch, besides The Office, one or two TV shows for good comedy writing, any particular recommendations? I love this show right now called The Grinder with Rob Lowe and Fred Savage.

That's very, very good writing. Season four of Mr. Show is brilliant sketch writing. Could you explain what you mean by, I apologize. Oh, sketch like SNL, like, you know, sketch. Got it, got it. Yeah, I'd say, yeah, those are pretty great ones.

Cool, just a few more questions. Yeah. What historical figure you must identify with? Oh. In my hopes, Ben Franklin, because he started in comedy. And then I, I make a joke about this in my standup act. Like he really took it to the next level. I mean, he wrote poor Richard's almanac and he was known as a comedy writer. And then he ended up discovering electricity and having his face on money. That is really—and he remained a witty guy. So my hope is that I could do some shadow where I can have ambitious, positive-spirited ideas, but it won't be like, Oh,

now like he lost his sense of humor. Like Ben Franklin always had a sense of humor and he wasn't ashamed to like, like experiment with, you know, a lightning, you know, like that, that's really cool.

But I, I, even in my most egotistical, I don't actually identify with him. He's just like, you know, if I'm setting myself up. Yeah. Yeah.

Aspirational figure. So probably someone more, yeah, someone, I don't know, like, you know, if I'm setting myself up. Yeah, yeah, aspirational role model. So probably someone more, yeah, someone, I don't know, like funny and dark and like, I don't know. For someone recognizing that no path is quite the same for people certainly that I've met in entertainment or comedy or whatnot from going from school to the industry of uh if we could call it one industry of entertainment let's just say you had a promising high school senior yeah who's a gifted writer

and they think they want to be in comedy writing, what advice would you give them? A bunch of things. One piece of advice that I stand by that I've given to a bunch of people is there's really two, think of it as two things. You need to get people's attention and you need to be able to back it up. So this is especially for getting,

I feel that most people who want to get into comedy, what they want to do these days is get a staff job on a TV comedy show. So to do that, you need think like the person hiring you, you're going to want, uh, if you were given your own show, you'd panic.

This is my one big shot. It's gotta be hilarious. You hire your most loyal, funniest friends first. Then you'd ask around, you know, who worked on, you know, my favorite shows, who's the best, best, best person, you know, and those names would come to you through an agent or something. And then you'd like anyone that you saw or heard, or you were at a standup show and this guy was hilarious, or someone sent you this internet video, or, you know, you just don't know, or you'd ask around and someone would send you something. So the first thing is get their attention. That means could mean be friends

with somebody or have collaborated with somebody. Another thing is you might want to make something. I don't, for me, it was standup, but I don't know what it is for anyone else. It could be probably some internet video. I feel like that's the best way to be completely wild and get seen. But make something truly great that could be anything, absolutely anything. Then once you have someone's attention, they're going to want to be sure that they're not taking a crazy bet on some kid who made some funny video who then gets in a writer's room and doesn't know what to do. So that generally means have a spec script, which is a speculative script that could be for a TV show. So you write an episode of The Office or The Simpsons or whatever, just to show that if you were on that

stuff, you'd be able to know the voices, you'd know how to format it, you'd know how to craft a story, you can write hard jokes. So have a spec script, and it'll probably take you a few to get a really good one, but back it up and get their attention. Now that's for anyone starting out. I don't know if I'd advise a high school senior to go right into TV writing. So this advice is probably more for someone who just graduated college or someone, whatever stage of life, they're just ready to start this. So, you know, if, if you're really going to go to college, I'd say, um, you know, stay funny, be around funny people, come up with funny ideas, make your friends laugh. Um, be misch your friends laugh. Be mischievous.

Yeah, be mischievous. Now you are, am I making this up? 36. What advice would you give your 30-year-old self? And where were you? What were you doing at 30? At 30, I was on the office. I wish I had told myself on the Office, and this might be specific to me

the whole time I was on The Office I thought well this is my best shot at whatever I'd ever want to do so I better not waste a second, I better write a screenplay I better make an avant-garde film I better get cast in something. I better do my big thing while I'm still in the office because I don't want to be that guy who used to be on the office.

So, but I didn't have time. I would have two jobs on the office. Either one of them takes up, you should take up your focus. Now you, as a one point, you're three,

right? I mean, was writer producer actor? Well, producer tends to just be high level writer. Got it. So I take that. That was the same job um but you know it's important it means writing is really for the whole show is part of your responsibility so i wish i could tell

and now people ask me did you what was it like working in the office was it so much fun were you laughing all the time yeah but i have to admit that's buried under, I was so anxious and always trying to write some extra thing on the side that I never finished and never had time for. And I really didn't just enjoy this incredible once in a lifetime thing. And you know, as soon as the office ended, I was talented enough to write a book and I'm proud of the book and I made the app and I worked really hard and I was able to pull it off. Like, you know, if you can do it, you can do it. It's, you're not really on someone else's schedule ever. And you know, I also tell people all the time, like if Will Smith isn't in a movie for three years, you're not walking around saying, where's Will Smith? No one's

paying attention to anybody else at all. You think everyone is, but they're not. So take as long as you want. If you're talented, it's not really, you know, you'll, you'll get their attention again. If, if you have reason to. And so I do wish I had told myself back then, like, this is, this is very, very special, like own it, be in it, enjoy it. Um, instead of, you know, being so nervous and, you know, all for nothing. None of the things I tried to do on the side of the office ever got anywhere because I just didn't have time. I think that's good advice for a lot of people in a lot of places. That was the advice also that Stephen King gave to Neil Gaiman, one of my favorite fiction writers. What was the advice? Well, he said enjoy it because neil was sitting at i think it was a book

signing for sandman which was just this uh incredible uh canon of work that redefined what was possible in sort of the graphic novel genre yeah i know that's just incredible and he's used that of course as a stepping stone to write novels and, and that were, have been turned into movies and so on. Uh, but he was sitting there with this huge line of people as I remember it. And he said, enjoy this. And that's my laptop sliding.

But, uh, he didn't, he had a lot of trouble enjoying it. And, uh, I think that's a constant battle. Well,

I don't want to take up any more of your time. This has been a blast. It's getting so great. It's getting dark and probably time for some food. Where can people find you and what you're up to online? Where are the best places to go? I think the best place is the list app because that's where I am. So I would say download the list app on the app store or it'll be on Android and web

soon. And that's just three words, the list app or go to li.st. Um, and my profile there is all my favorites and, uh, ideas and thoughts on this and that. Um, I'm also on Twitter. Uh, yeah. At BJ Novak. At BJ Novak. Awesome.

And that's me on the list app too. Cool. Well, this has been great fun maybe we'll do a round two sometime and thanks so much again I really appreciate it and to everybody listening you can find the show notes links to all the books, shows

apps etc that were mentioned at 4hourworkweek.com forward slash podcast or you can just go to 4hourworkweek.com and click on podcast has show notes for this episode and every other episode. And as always, until next time, thank you for listening. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is five bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend?

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