Episode 70 - Chris Scheiner

**Podcast: Productivity Alchemy**

**File Name: PA-Episode70**

**File Length: 01:28:53**

**Transcription by Keffy**

Kevin:                                       [00:00:00] Hi folks. This podcast is recorded in a house with animals and no teenagers. The teenager is off at a family event with his mother. The cats are around and the dogs hopefully are taking a nap after a quick run-around. I should also mention at this juncture that we swear a lot and this podcast, while marked explicit because I don’t have a choice between explicit and clean is actually PG-13 and we will not be doing anything that would delve into the realm of R or worse, I hope.

                                                     [00:00:37] So, welcome to Productivity Alchemy episode 70. The wombat co-host, Ursula Vernon is currently recovering from having some dental work done which means she is not available to record, and, as I said, the teenager test subject is on his way to Michigan. He may even be there by now to deal with some family business on his mom’s side, and I wish all of them the best as they are dealing with that, and he should be back home next week. Which means, before Windycon I have, and I need to stop clicking the pen because that’s a nervous habit, but that means that I’ve got like two days, three days without him before I go to Windycon and he’ll be getting back about the same time I will on Monday. And so, this is a nice little break, and it gives me a little time to prepare for Windycon.

                                                     [00:01:34] As I have mentioned on prior episodes on Saturday, November 10, 2018, in Chicago, at Windycon, we will have the first ever Productivity Alchemy Live and I am still working thorugh what exactly that means. And, some of it’s going ot be playing by ear. Some of it may be an interview. We’re going to see what happens when I get there. I’m trying to pre-plan a little. Let’s not be ridiculous. The biggest issue is recording, and so I’m working out the logistics on that as well.

                                                     [00:02:10] All that being said, then, there really isn’t that much to talk about this week, my job hunt goes on. Ursula has a whole bunch of books due, and it’s just easier to go straight into an interview. Now, I realize this is the second episode of the month. Normally, we would do letters here. Don’t have very many letters this month, and since we’ve got the special Productivity Alchemy Live, I’ll have hopefully recorded for next week, I figured let’s go ahead and talk to Chris Shiner who is a biologist and a writer. Actually, he’s a biologist and a cartographer, currently, he’s a carpenter and a writer. And, I had a great time talking to him, and so, since I don’t want to throw my entire schedule off again by either playing the wrong thing or having to shift everything out another week because I have this live episode to do new week, which is awesome, we may talk about it later, we’ll see. There wasn’t anything huge or urgent that I haven’t already directly responded to, so, you can send your questions and comments either into [[1]], that’s Kevin, K-E-V-I-N at S-O-N-N-E-Y.com or through commenting on an individual episode at ProductivityAlchemy.com. We also have a contact page there, so you can send that in.

                                                     [00:03:31] Okay, that said, let’s just go talk to Chris, and talk about all the awesome stuff he does to keep himself organized while he’s writing or doing his carpentry or even being a biologist or a cartographer, both of which are things he is but isn’t doing right now. So we’ll be right back after this.

[00:03:52] [Productivity Alchemy segment change music plays. Jaunty, pleasant jazzy piano with accompanying bass.]

Kevin:                                       [00:04:32] Hi, folks. I am here with Chris Sheiner. And we’re gonna talk about how Chris stays productive, today. Chris, can you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you do?

Chris:                                        [00:04:46] Sure, so I am … what am I? I’ve spent so much time trying to figure out how to answer this question. I am a biologist and a cartographer, and of course, I’m not exactly doing either of those things right now. I am being a carpenter and a writer. So, I—Ursula and I have interacted on Twitter a few times, because—

Kevin:                                       [00:05:16] Oh, you’re the person who was impressed at the quality of the map she scripted in for Productivity—er, for Hidden Almanac last week, wasn’t—

Chris:                                        [00:05:22] Yeah.

Kevin:                                       [00:05:22] Yes, okay, yeah.

Chris:                                        [00:05:25] Yeah. And, every so often I’ll run across a really nicely well-done map for books and so on and It’s—not to speak ill of certain individuals, but—Tolkien’s maps are, I mean, I guess they get the point across, but—

Kevin:                                       [00:05:50] They’re—

Chris:                                        [00:05:50] –they’re not great from a mapmaker’s stand point.

Kevin:                                       [00:05:53] They’re very folk maps, right? They have that quality of them. You expect to see, if you were to unroll the pirate treasure map, it would all be sort of sketched out, and then an X where, they, with all the—but not actual, real distances.

Chris:                                        [00:06:12] Right, right. Or, you know, the one that always gets me is the fact that the mountains have a right angle turn.

Kevin:                                       [00:06:21] Right, and that does not happen in nature.

Chris:                                        [00:06:21] No. But, yeah, so. I have—Ursula and I have occasionally gone on about invasive plants.

Kevin:                                       [00:06:36] Yeah.

Chris:                                        [00:06:36] Because that is my area of expertise. I believe there was something, maybe in the spring, where the timing just happened to work out. She posted something, I was on, fired a comment back and was delighted to get to—what did she say? “I will yell Chris sends his regards while I smother the” whatever she was smothering.

Kevin:                                       [00:07:02] Yeah. There’s no telling. So many things to smother in mostly Dogskull now, I think. Mostly Dogskull, so.

Chris:                                        [00:07:12] So that’s—I’m sort of a jack of all trades, but at the moment I’m helping renovate a house and writing a book on invasive plant management.

Kevin:                                       [00:07:21] Right on. So, with all that going on, how do you keep yourself organized?

Chris:                                        [00:07:28] I’m not sure I do.

Kevin:                                       [00:07:29] You’re not alone in that, it’s cool.

Chris:                                        [00:07:34] I was just, I got caught up on the most recent episode of Productivity Alchemy yesterday and I really felt some of answers there from your guest. But, yeah, I mean, I will say that I’m still looking for a lot of the answers and, you know, your show has been really helpful in terms of sometimes the things that other people try that I would not have heard about otherwise. And sometimes just taking a step back and going, oh, gee, if I think about this thing, maybe I can find a better approach.

Kevin:                                       [00:08:14] Right, right. And I mean, that’s something I like to emphasize is there is no one size fits all. Right? All the methods—everybody is different in terms of how they think. Even when we talk about “neurotypical,” yeah, I’m making air quotes, people, everybody still has their own triggers and motivational points and things like that, so it doesn’t—So the whole idea of one size fits all, or if everybody used this same method, it would work just magically for everybody is complete bullshit, so.

Chris:                                        [00:08:50] Yeah. And that’s—that message has been really gratifying to hear somebody else say because, as I’m sure many people can relate, I have had my share of perfectly well-meaning individuals going, oh, you should totally do this. Works for me! It’s like, well, that’s great but the fact that it works for you doesn’t mean that it will work for me, and if I’ve already tried it, I don’t want to go through it again. Stop telling me to do this.

Kevin:                                       [00:09:16] Oh yeah, oh yeah. And, of course, it doesn’t help that my wife every so often when I suggest something yells, “CULT!” into the microphone.

Chris:                                        [00:09:27] I don’t know, I mean—that’s an appeal for me, but. So, yeah, I don’t know that—I certainly don’t have all the answers I would like to have, but I do a number of different things. Some of it just is keeping different things in different places. So, I have a rapidly aging Android tablet that I was—I was very much against the idea of tablets. They seemed like a strange middle land, and it didn’t make any sense and then eventually I got one and now I love it. But, there are some things that I will use that for that I don’t use just a desktop computer for, and so sort of knowing in the back of my head, okay, these things go here, and I know where to look is a big thing. And then, I have so many software programs that I’ve tried to use for these things. Just the things I scribbled down yesterday. I use One Note to some extent. I have tried using that. I have browser bookmarks that are insane.

Kevin:                                       [00:10:54] Yeah, I think we all do at this point. Anyone who’s been on the internet since the real popularlity, the very early cusp of the popularity. I think I have bookmarks that are probably 20 years old at this point. It feels terrible saying that, right?

Chris:                                        [00:11:14] I won’t tell you how much older you are than I am. I do use labels in email. I keep trying to shrink that inbox, but I am sadly not someone who—I would like to be someone who uses inbox zero, I don’t know if that will ever happen, you know.

Kevin:                                       [00:11:32] No, I understand that one. It took me a while, really, to get into the swing of things, and now I feel bad, I’ve got five things in my inbox. All of which are actually pertinent, actionable and I feel bad about that and the hope that I can down to zero, you know, this week, since unemployment being what it is, hey, we’ll just—I can maybe take care of these things, or not.

Chris:                                        [00:12:00] It’s interesting because just, from my perspective, for me, a lot of the things that are in my inbox are things that, oh hey, I want to read that, or oh, this looks like it would be useful for later. Let me flag this tool. And then for whatever reason, I don’t have the time or spoons or I get distracted or whatever it is, and then it just sits there. And then it’s like, well, all right. So, I’ve got umpteen red emails and buried somewhere in there are this article and that conversation and whatever, and it’s like. Well, it’s not something I have to do something with in terms of somebody else—it’s not like a task I have to finish for work or something.

Kevin:                                       [00:12:47] Right, right.

Chris:                                        [00:12:48] So, it’s kind of a weird middle land of does it count towards not being inbox zero? I don’t know.

Kevin:                                       [00:12:58] I found that—I use Gmail, right? I have the Gmail for the google apps for your domain, G apps I guess they call it now. And, one of the big helps I had is I just have a later folder. Not urgent, not important, something I want to deal with later, just shove it all in there. And then, like, once a day, I’ll go through and I’ll clean it out. This is one of the reasons I really like SaneBox. This is—by the way, I’m not paid by SaneBox, this is not a commercial endorsement, it’s just, you know, this is one of those tools where I set it up, and I’m like uh, I don’t know. And then it was like, okay, so now, as things are coming in we’re automatically filing for them, leaving them new, and so the things that you’ve classified as later, you can deal with later. There’s a folder for that. Here’s the—I have a folder set up for the Dorsai Irregular stuff and all the mailing lists go there instead of getting lost in other things.

Chris:                                        [00:13:55] Sure.

Kevin:                                       [00:13:55] So that’s been—that’s been like the big email epiphany in the last, I guess in the last eight months or so, was, I don’t have to do it by myself. I don’t have to set these rules up by myself. There are services to do this, and oh my God. And then it’ll send me a nice digest saying, you’ve got 23 things in your later folder. Okay. You know, you had five new things that you trained from your Inbox to other places. Do you want to make sure that those are the right trainings? Like, yeah, this is cool. And since it’s provider agnostic, it’s not a Gmail specific thing, that makes it really nice. Because I’m sitting there thinking, with the recent revelations of Google basically reading all of your email and then sharing it with other people that maybe it’s time to look at something else. And, wait, I can take SaneBox with me. It’s not going to be stuck. I’m not going to lose that functionality because I change providers or set up my own server or whatever. Yeah.

Chris:                                        [00:14:59] Yeah. And, you know, it’s—I know you’ve mentioned SaneBox before on the podcast and the idea of a later folder, I was, I think, this morning as I was—because I’d been thinking about these things. The thought did occur to me, that, you know, I could just label all these things that I want to read later and stick them under one heading so that when I feel like reading something, I can go do it, and they’re not cluttering up the inbox, hm.

Kevin:                                       [00:15:30] Hmm, yeah.

Chris:                                        [00:15:33] Yeah, so a couple other things that I do also use, is I write notes to myself a lot. Mostly because I’ve learned that if I don’t write it down I’ll forget it. I will not remember it, despite—I keep thinking I will.

Kevin:                                       [00:15:47] Yep.

Chris:                                        [00:15:48] I also use EverNote specifically, and this goes back to different places for different things, for job search stuff. You know, some of that is just that I was introduced to it at a time when I was job searching, but, and a friend of mine, actually the person who introduced it to me, uses it for all sorts of things. And I tried that and it just didn’t work for me. But having a program that, it’s like, okay, I need to look at my old resumés. It’s one place to go for that. I don’t have to sort through other things. So that, I have found that really helpful. Again, just having everything in one place. I did—I find it really entertaining listening to you and Ursula interact. Particularly with the productivity stuff because I sort of feel like I stand in both camps.  There are certain things that I’m sure we’ll get into later that’s from one or the other you that I go, Yes, I totally know what they’re talking about. And, you know, sometimes they’re conflicting things because I contain multitudes, I guess.

Kevin:                                       [00:17:08] Yeah, really. That’s not uncommon, right?

Chris:                                        [00:17:14] But, so one of the things that I did was I actually sat down and went and made myself a planner page. And, you know, because I did not go into the effort that even checking out some of the—I looked at some of the things that you guys have talked about over the last year, and yeah, they’re not—there’s so much that, you stare at the planner page and go, well. That’s great, but I really wish it had this and not that.

Kevin:                                       [00:17:50] Right. It’s very—it’s… Like, the base desigsn or the base use on them is so common and universal to do that appeal to the most number of people, and really, like, I was looking for meal planners, right? And they were all, I mean aside from some font choices and some layout choices, they were basically all the same, right? There’s only so many ways you can do a monthly calendar or a week or a to-do page. But then, when you want to start getting into, well, my week has some special things. Then you’re like, no one cares about that. They have a section for notes, that’s about it.

Chris:                                        [00:18:32] Right, yeah. So, you know, I think, actually, I guess that makes me think that a lot of the—a lot of what appeals to me for things that I do find useful for organization is customization options.

Kevin:                                       [00:18:53] Right.

Chris:                                        [00:18:53] You know, and I have not tried it. I have thought very hard about Bullet Journaling and I—it seems to tip the scale into too many options.

Kevin:                                       [00:19:08] Right?

Chris:                                        [00:19:10] So, I have stayed away from that, but definitely with like One Note, I have found myself de facto creating custom “planner pages” and I’ve had issues with that. So I just went and did something in, oh, I’m blanking on the name of the software. Microsoft Office’s design program. Uh.

Kevin:                                       [00:19:36] I can’t remember.

Chris:                                        [00:19:37] Whatever that is. Just, it’s not particularly sophisticated, but it’s a picture that my brain has decided has the right pieces in it that it makes sense to me. So, yeah. So, I’ve done that. Oh, and the other one I wanted to throw out , and this is probably going to sound weird to a lot of people, is the Bibliographic software, Zotero. I use that primarily for its intended purpose because I, as far as writing this book I mentioned and doing the research, nothing frustrates me more than when I read an article and in the jist of the article, “Oh yeah, so-and-so said such-and-such.” And they give a Smith, 1981, and then you look at the bibliography and they forgot to put Smith in the bibliography.

Kevin:                                       [00:20:42] Right. Oh, the one that drives me crazy is the one where they cite articles or they cite things and then the either don’t link them or they don’t put that reference in at the end and you’re like, okay that’s—am I just supposed to magically know who Smith is?

Chris:                                        [00:21:00] Right. So that’s mostly what I use it for, but I’ve also experimented with essentially using it as an archive of things and tools for example, because everything is online. And just trying to categorize things. And I’ve tried to do this in browser bookmarks too, of, hey, here is this thing that is useful. And it—through no fault of the creators of Zotero, it doesn’t do a fantastic job at it. But it’s not bad. You know? So… who knows.

Kevin:                                       [00:21:40] I’ve been looking at a lot of personal wikis lately, and they all sort of have that same functionality. The big thing I’ve had with a lot of them is the UI is shit. Right? They’re like.

Chris:                                        [00:21:54] Yeah, there is that.

Kevin:                                       [00:21:54] Yeah, and I mean, I’m a cross-platform person. I have Androids, I have Macs, I have Chromebook. Most of my desktop—or, laptops are Linux. Right? All that stuff. So I’m looking at that, and no one seems to be able to design worth a damn. I’m almost at the point where I’m like, well, I suppose I could go back to iOS and Macs because most—the UI is just exquisite, but then I’m paying the Apple tax. On the other hand, I was looking at a piece of software that was designed around the iPad Pro and I was salivating a little bit. Because it’s like, oh yeah, here. Just design your thing in PDF, put it on there, and it’s just like writing on a piece of paper except it’s an iPad Pro, and I’m like—I’ll look that one up and link it, because yeah. I’m just like—I didn’t want an iPad Pro and I thought I was done with iOS, but damn it. Suck me back in.

Chris:                                        [00:22:54] They will take your money.

Kevin:                                       [00:22:55] Oh yeah. So. Um, okay, so anything else?

Chris:                                        [00:23:01] I think that’s enough of how I may or may not keep myself organized.

Kevin:                                       [00:23:06] Okay. That’s fair. That’s fair. So, with all of that, and we’ve talked a lot. We’ve touched on a lot of these, but, what systems or habits are valuable to you as part of that?

Chris:                                        [00:23:23] Several things. I go through stages of sometimes I will use these, and then I’ll get frustrated and throw them all out, but Post-It notes. Both digital and hard copy.

Kevin:                                       [00:23:42] Just hold on, let me finish writing and then say hallelujah, amen brother.

Chris:                                        [00:23:51] Yeah, I—a mentor of mine used physical Post-It notes and he had—he’s a fantastic guy. He had a filing system where he would file things as he worked on them. So, he ended up with stacks and stacks of things on his desk. He always knew where everything was, and it drove his boss insane because it wasn’t a neat and tidy desk. And he’s like, I’m working on these things. I’m not going to go put them in a file box or something. But he had Post-It notes—they covered—he had one of those desks with a hutch, you know, up over the computer monitor. And the hutch was covered in Post-It notes. The computer monitor was covered in Post-It notes. They were not the same Post-It notes. They changed. As he’d cross things off, he’d get rid of them. But I have a photo somewhere because it’s just like, this is fantastic.

                                                     So, Post-It notes. I would say, a couple of the things that are really the most significant for me, and this goes back a little bit to when I originally wrote to you andmentioned that I am familiar with burn out despite being, some would say, far too young to have had that experience.

Kevin:                                       [00:25:22] Yeah, nope.

Chris:                                        [00:25:24] And these are things that were true beforehand and just have become more true sense then. But, everything has to have a home. And I’m looking at my desk right now and going, oh yeah, there are these things that I need to figure out where to put them. And just because of the way my brain seems to operate, if I know where something goes because it has a home, there is a decent chance, assuming it’s not something I’m working on and just putting down briefly, there’s a reasonable chance I will just put it away.

                                                     [00:26:00] But if it doesn’t have a home, then I get suck in the whole, well, I know this needs to go somewhere, but I don’t now where to put it, so I guess I’ll put it down here for now and come back to it when I’ve figured out where to put it.

Kevin:                                       [00:26:11] Yeah, and then you start to get the pile, or the home for that thing is now in that place and now it’s starting to gather a pile of things like that, he says, staring at his pile of old keyboars and sound equipment on the other side of the room.

Chris:                                        [00:26:29] Well good, now I don’t feel about having an old desktop PC on the floor behind me.

Kevin:                                       [00:26:34] Yeah, I have Ursula’s old desktop, the desktop she had when she moved in. The one that we replaced with a Mac Pro, I guess two years after she moved in, is still on the floor behind me and I’ve been sitting there thinking this week, I’ve got time. I could set that up as a server for experimentation. It’s not gonna—I don’t think she needs anything off that drive anymore. Um. So, and if she does, we made a backup and it’s on her Mac, so it’s okay.

Chris:                                        [00:27:02] There you go. There you go.

Kevin:                                       [00:27:06] Yeah, no, no. I have things that have turned into—it’s like warrens. You didn’t expect them to nest there but they did and now that’s their home and you can’t move them.

Chris:                                        [00:27:18] Yeah, my frustration is when I go through a phase of, all right, we’re gonna deal with these piles and put them away and then for the next six months, I know where I used to keep it, but I don’t know where I put it now. Yeah. So [inaudible 00:27:37].

Kevin:                                      [00:27:39] You could put a Post-It note down where it was, saying, “I moved this to.”

Chris:                                        [00:27:42] That’s a really good idea and I should have thought of that like ten years ago.

Kevin:                                       [00:27:46] No, that just came to me. I’m like, you have the Post-It notes there. You know, the problem is of course when that becomes the new home for something and the Post-It note is now buried.

Chris:                                        [00:27:55] Yes. Then the process and the brain becomes, okay, the Post-It note that tells me where I put that thing is underneath this pile of things, so I have to remember to pick it up to look at the Post-It note , and yeay.

Kevin:                                       [00:28:07] Then I might as well find a home for them, and then you’ve got two Post-It notes.

Chris:                                        [00:28:11] Exactly.

Kevin:                                       [00:28:12] Right?

Chris:                                        [00:28:12] Clearly the answer is I need a place to put the Post-It notes to tell me where I put other things.

Kevin:                                       [00:28:18] There you go.

Chris:                                        [00:28:19] Oh, that’s what I could use the—a friend of mine gave me some pieces of cork, as in cork board, and she was like, “I don’t have any use for these, but could you use them.” And I said yeah, I’ll slap some pressboard on the back of them and make it into a bulletin board. Of course, I haven’t done that yet, but you know. I could pin Post-It notes to it.

Kevin:                                       [00:28:43] I’ve got a roll of 72x17 whiteboard material sticker that I could just stick on a wall, right? And I keep looking at it like, well, I could put it there but then I have to move all that stuff off the wall to somewhere else and, oh, now I’ve got a bit blank spot I could put it up there, but if I put it up there, I can’t actually write on it and then what’s the point of having a whiteboard. So, it’s—yeah, that’s been the big thing. It’s like, I want to put it up but, as you can see from the wall behind me full of art, there’s a barrier to entry here.

Chris:                                        [00:29:19] Yeah. I actually—I think I have settled on where I’m going to put that hypothetical bulletin board which is directly behind me because a) the view out that window is the wall of the house next door, and b) the sun, when it comes in that angle in the morning glares off the computer monitor, so. Why don’t I just put it over the window?

Kevin:                                       [00:29:45] I at least lucked out. The window in my office to the right looks out over the porch and there’s an awning and stuff, and that’s where I feed the chickens. So, every so often, there’s just a chicken wandering by which is like I get the best of both worlds. I get to see this lush garden that she’s built and my chickens and it isn’t like I have to take a break to do those things, and I don’t get the glare.

Chris:                                        [00:30:09] Those are all good things.

Kevin:                                       [00:30:09] Yeah. And then, I don’t know. Tomorrow, half the forest outside is going to fall down and every morning it’s going to glare through the window, because yeah.

Chris:                                        [00:30:20] Yeah, I get the occasional squirrel on the front porch out my window, you know. Yeah, the other thing I wanted to make sure to mention with regards to burnout is that because of the burnout, I have what you could call a hypersensitive fight or flight response. Otherwise known as anxiety, so, you know, and it’s—I have to, and it’s one of those things you sort of have to constantly remind yourself. I have to remember to manage that as part of my productivity, in terms of, well, like I wrote in to you guys a while ago about, I was trying fairly standard to-do lists and staring at all the things I needed to do and going, “Oh my God, I don’t even know where to start, this is terrible.” You know, and it’s like, well, okay. So, we can’t use that approach. And one of the things that I have tried, and it actually seems to work is ridiculously simple, but it’s not calling them to-do lists.

Kevin:                                       [00:31:43] Interesting, okay.

Chris:                                        [00:31:44] And so, instead of having a list of things that say “to-do” and then “done” or whatever. Because my brain takes—I have always been very quick to take responsibility, including for things that, you know? It’s not my fault. I don’t actually have to worry about it.

Kevin:                                       [00:32:13] But you do anyway. Happens to me all the time, yeah.

Chris:                                        [00:32:16] So, when I see, “to-do”, my brain goes, “Okay, these are things that someone else is going to either be disappointed if I don’t accomplish or come yell at me if I don’t accomplish. You know, regardless of whether that is even remotely true, that’s just where it goes. And so, what I’ve tried is calling them, “Pending.” And “Accomplished.”

Kevin:                                       [00:32:46] Okay.

Chris:                                        [00:32:46] And it’s not a, it’s not a panacea, but it does seem to prevent that sort of initial trigger that just makes everything else impossible.

Kevin:                                       [00:33:02] Now, for me when my burnout is—and I say when it is versus when it was because one of the things I’ve learned is that even though you seem to get over burnout, it’s always sort of there lurking, right? If you’ve burned out once, chances are pretty good you’re going to burn out again. That’s sort of the whole idea, like you said, with managing it. That’s part of the self care. But for me, I get the third option that a lot of people don’t talk about, and that’s freeze. When I have that big list of things I’m responsible for, instead of fighting or running away, I just lock up. Right? And while I am—I have the cis male—I don’t know who’s calling me, but they can worry about it later. I have the cis male, the anger expression of my chronic depression, right? So, instead of getting like mopey or what is traditionally depressed, I get grumpy and angry and want to punch things, which is why suddenly hitting a freeze response is really weird. Because instead of getting frustrated and angry—I then, it just feeds back on itself, because it’s like my brain just locks up and says, “That’s too much, you can’t deal with that right now.”

                                                     [00:34:36] And that’s just sort of the rolling thing, and then I get mad at myself. Which is the depression expressing itself. But thorugh all of that, yeah, no, I think I’ve—it sounds really weird to say ti this way, but I think in my last job there was a lot of pressure towards the end, nad I think I feel back into burnout at least twice. But that’s one of the things that—one of the things we don’t talk about often enough is, you burned out, great. You’ve recovered. You’ve done all this stuff, that doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen again. You know, that just means that you’re—I hate to use these terms, but they’re the only things I could come up with for—you haven’t relapsed and it’s in remission. You’ll never truly be cured of it, or maybe you will, but it would take years and years before you could really say that. And I hate to use those terms, but they’re the only ones that seem to make sense to me.

Chris:                                        [00:35:37] Sure, well and that, you know, that makes sense. And I’m reminded, actually, of a couple of things that the therapist that I worked with before, during, and after the, what to call it, the most visible portion of the burnout.

Kevin:                                       [00:35:59] Right.

Chris:                                        [00:35:59] Which was that, two things: one, that depression is anger internalized, which I thought was really interesting. And, the other is learning that the brain is plastic. Every time something happens and in this case, we’re talking stress, burnout, and anxiety, things like that. The neural pathways that activate, it’s, a think of it a lot like erosion. If you walk across a lawn over and over following the same path, eventually you’re going to pack down the dirt and the grass isn’t going to grow there, it just becomes dirt and mud and what have you. So, the more times a neural pathway, the more likely it becomes that it will be activated. Which is why, you know, the rule of thumb is that if you have more than, I think it’s like five depressive episodes, you become more likely that it will be a chronic condition, because your brain has gone, okay, hey, I’ve done this before. I know what the correct reaction to it is and I’m going to do this. And so I have had stuff in the last year where it’s like, ok, I can do this, and then my brain starts doing this that or the other thing and I go, why is this happening? Oh, this circumstance is vaguely similar to the other thing that happened during burnout so now I’m having the same reaction, okay, now I’ve got to deal with that.

Kevin:                                       [00:37:56] Well, and I think another thing is that for whatever reason, people aren’t willing to treat their brains the same way they would any other system in the body, right? I mean, physically speaking your brain is an organ with chemical balances and inbalances, and it’s weird compared to say muscle structure or digestive structure or whatever, but it’s still biology underneath it and the reluctance of people to say, “Hey, so yeah, I’m having these episodes and maybe it’s a chemical imbalance, or maybe it’s actually something that’s a physical wrong or a sickness. Like, if your lungs are congested all the time, you go to see about allergies. If you’re having depressive episodes all the time, we’re so against going out to get the same, to get the medicine we need to help, right? Whether that medicine’s therapy, or in my case, 100mg of Zoloft daily, or whatever. It’s—I don’t—at first, I didn’t understand the stigma around it. Now, I’m screaming from the rooftops your brain is just a muscle that you fucked up, and you can fix it, right?

Chris:                                        [00:39:14] Well, and there’s so much that—there’s like legacy effects in that, I’m sure you’ve heard the comment, oh, it’s all in your head? Or, well, that’s just feelings. And it’s like, well, wait a minute, you know. Because I had—I am, what’s the mean—if you can’t produce your own neurotransmitters, store-bought is fine.

Kevin:                                       [00:39:51] Yes.

Chris:                                        [00:39:52] And I love seeing that.

Kevin:                                       [00:39:54] Better living through chemistry.

Chris:                                        [00:39:55] Yeah, yeah. I don’t think I’ve actually had this conversation with somebody in person, but I have definitely imagined having a conversation where somebody uses that, well, it’s just feelings and going, what are feelings? Because the answer is feelings are electrochemical reactions.

Kevin:                                       [00:40:23] Right.

Chris:                                        [00:40:23] And so, it’s like, well, if you break it down, feelings are not this amorphous thing that just happened. It’s not magic. It’s biochemistry and you know, if I drop a cup of bleach in my aquarium and the fish all die, it’s not magic. I poisoned them. I changed the chemical—words.

Kevin:                                       [00:40:51] Composition? Balance?

Chris:                                        [00:40:53] Sure, one of those words.

Kevin:                                       [00:40:55] One of those.

Chris:                                        [00:40:59] And they couldn’t cope and they died. So, if my brain is not functioning the way it should, it’s not a mystery. I mean, it can be, but it’s not an unsolvable mysterious thing. It’s there is something wacky with the biochemistry, and yes, okay, it’s a lot harder to diagnose, you know, you can’t. I mean, you can, but doctors usually frown on like drilling through your skull to take samples so they know exactly which chemical levels are off. Something about, you know, fatal tests, and yeah.

Kevin:                                       [00:41:52] The first church of trepanation? No, trepanning? Evangelical… the guys who drill their own third eye through their skull, yeah. In those guys at least it’d be easier to get a sample with but that’s not something I’m up for, really.

Chris:                                        [00:42:12] No. No. Body mods are one thing, that is something—that is a whole different level.

Kevin:                                       [00:42:17] Yeah. Yeah.

Chris:                                        [00:42:21] I had something else I was going to—[inaudible 00:42:25] Oh, so, yeah the other thing I wanted to throw out was that since burnout has become a friend of mine, frenemy, I guess? I never really understood that word [crosstalk 00:42:43]

Kevin:                                       [00:42:40] I think of it much more like that roommate who pays all the rent, or who doesn’t pay any rent but eats all the food, but for whatever reason kicking them out doesn’t work.

Chris:                                        [00:42:53] Sure, yeah yeah yeah. Okay, yeah that’s a good one. It is that my brain—I can be working on something and my brain will make a connection to something else and sometimes without really consciously deciding to, I find myself now working on that something else.

Kevin:                                       [00:43:19] Right.

Chris:                                        [00:43:19] And, I was thinking about this earlier. There’s so much language out there that I hope we can change because my first, as I was trying to verbalize it to myself, the first thing I thought of was, I get easily distracted and I need to focus. And then I thought, wait a minute. No, no. That’s bullshit, it’s—you know, this is, I will not go into a rant about Puritans. I will not go into a rant about Puritans.

Kevin:                                       [00:43:51] Yeah, no. That’s fine, that’s fine. I’m sure we’ve all had those rants. Anyone who’s listened to any of my shows for any length of time has probably heard at least one of those rants. If not, get me drunk at a con.

Chris:                                        [00:44:05] Yeah, the whole tying value and virtue to production, let’s not go there. But the, so, let’s reject the idea that the fact that my brain operates in a certain fashion is somehow. The word that I’m coming up with is unsightly, but that’s not what I mean.

Kevin:                                       [00:44:30] What it is, is a moral failing, right? It’s the moral failing of the Protestant work ethic, that if you’re not productive, then somehow you’re a bad person.

Chris:                                        [00:44:38] Right. Right. And, so rather than starting off my thinking about myself as with a value judgment that doesn’t really need to be there, one of the things that I have, certainly recently, tried really hard to embrace, is okay, my brain works this way. It doesn’t need to change. I—and it feels really weird to say this, but I need to adapt to the way that my brain works and we think of it the other way around, but no. It’s—so, I have a notebook, just like a little pocket sized thing that I have, because I’m trying to get in the habit of carrying it around, so that when I am, what was I doing, something the other day. I think I was going to go do a load of laundry, and then I thought, I need to remember to scrape and repaint that step. And that, in that case, that was sufficiently different that, a) that I could remember it for five minutes, and b) that I did not find myself 10 minutes later with a paint brush and a paint scraper in hand because it was pouring and that would have been a lousy time to try to paint an outside stair, but I have certainly done things, it’s—

Kevin:                                       [00:46:08] It’s like the scene from Malcolm in the Middle, that there’s—I love this animated image where Bryan Cranston’s character walks into the kitchen. He turns on the light, there’s no light, the lightbulb is out, right? So, he goes to the closet to get the light bulb, and when he’s in there, the shelf that the lightbulb is on is wiggling, so he goes to the drawer to get the screwdriver to fix the shelf and the drawer is squeaky. So, he goes to the garage to get the WD-40 to lubricate the drawer, but it’s out, so he goes and he starts to turn over the car and the car’s making a weird noise, and then his wife comes out and says, “Hal,”—Hal was his name—“Hal, the light bulb’s out in the kitchen, can you replace it.” And he comes out from under the car covered in grease and he goes, “What does it look like I’m doing?”

Chris:                                        [00:46:59] Yes, exactly.

Kevin:                                       [00:47:01] Yeah, exactly that. And I—every time I watch that particular, I used to have to just for work. When it would be like, yeah, I need to go—two jobs ago. It feels weird to say, “Two jobs ago” because it was one job ago until like a week and a half ago. But two jobs ago, it was, that was how it is. It’s like, okay, I need to set up a thing on X, and oh look, to set up thing X, I need Y. Y’s broken, so now I have to fix Y, but to fix Y, I have to go work on Z, and Z now requires me to learn and understand X, or not X, but T. Right? And so by the time I’m done with a, this should have been a five minute go in, install a thing, and go, now I’m elbows deep in something, I just wanted to install an update, and now I’m over here trying to figure out the internals of some script that was written by me five years ago. Because by that point all the scripts—all the original scripts that I replaced hadn’t been replaced yet. That I couldn’t remember how it worked, right?

Chris:                                        [00:48:16] Sure.

Kevin:                                       [00:48:18] Or, hey, we need a fix to this thing and oh yeah, by the time I’m done following the rabbit hole down to where to fix it, I’m running into things that haven’t been touched since I started at the company, I guess that point, it was seven years prior.

Chris:                                        [00:48:35] Oh, geez.

Kevin:                                       [00:48:36] Because they worked, so, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and that’s sort of the whole thing with that is you can find yourself very easily distracted in, I need to do X and on the way to do X, here’s something wrong with Y, and so your notebook is basically where you put down, “Take care of Y, later.”

Chris:                                        [00:48:56] Exactly, exactly. And a friend of mine linked me to something, actually, maybe I can find the bookmark. It’s a post called, “Don’t Shave the Yak.”

Kevin:                                       [00:49:11] Oh, God. Yak shaving. Yak shaving and bike shed. Painting the bike shed. Yeah.

Chris:                                        [00:49:19] Maybe… there was—let’s see, if I can find it real quickly.

Kevin:                                       [00:49:30] Yeah, no, these are terms we’re really familiar with in software development, right? Yak shaving is that discussion that goes on and on about how to do a thing without actually doing a thing. And then bike shedding is the pointless argument, or not the pointless argument, but the eventual argument you have about what color to paint the bike shed. You know you need a bike shed. You’re going to build the bike shed but everybody has to put their opinion in on what color it should be and then you can’t build the bike shed until you determine what color it is.

Chris:                                        [00:50:10] Right. Yeah.

Kevin:                                       [00:50:12] And, no, these are—So many times, it’s like, yes, we’re in this minute detail over how to do a thing and this is—which is not that different from bike shedding. But, what’s the proper method to do it and not actually doing it.

Chris:                                        [00:50:26] Sure, right.

Kevin:                                       [00:50:27] What’s the best way to shave that yak, and whenever that starts to happen, I have the image from Ren and Stimpy all those years ago about the yak shaver. Yeah, they actually did a thing about shaving yaks on Ren and Stimpy back in the ‘90s, it was brilliant.

Chris:                                        [00:50:43] I’ll take your word for it.

Kevin:                                       [00:50:48] First season of Ren and Stimpy, I think was significantly better and more creative than second, but there’s a whole other—I could rant about ‘80s and ‘90s animation for hours, as well, so.

Chris:                                        [00:51:00] Well, the article I can’t find it [inaudible 00:51:03], real quick.

Kevin:                                       [00:51:05] And when I’m wrong, by the way, everybody email me and tell me how wrong. I am about describing yak shaving. Bike shedding I know I got right, but you know, the—

Chris:                                        [00:51:14] Well, the thing with the article I remember anything about. My brain brought it up because it is very much that sort of chain together thing and it, from what I recall, it had to do with—It starts with, I think it starts with replacing a garden hose or something, and the point of the article was if you follow this chain of progressive events that need to be done to do something else, you end up at the zoo shaving a yak because you need to. And so I could be misremembering  what it was, I think it was less about cart before the horse and more about you have to make a decision, stop and think about this decision of do you do things the sort of, the easy way which leads to this long involved process, or can you take a step back and go, wait, if I do this one thing differently, we’ll be in and out of here and can get on with our lives. But, I don’t know, anything that talks about yak shaving confuses me, so…

Kevin:                                       [00:52:32] Yeah, and it was a great, a fake commercial in the middle of their show about yak shaving, and how to shave the yak, and the yak with a nice clean-shaven goatee.

Chris:                                        [00:52:46] I never really watched the show, but there’s enough in the zeitgeist or something that I can picture this and I, yeah.

Kevin:                                       [00:52:54] The thing was that of course, John K who did that show was a student of Bakshi, Ralph Bakshi, who did Fire and Ice, who did Wizards, who did the first animated Lord of the Rings. He did… But at the time, he also did a terrible movie. He did some terrible movies, too, and mid-‘90s it was Cool World, which had a great soundtrack and great animation, and a terrible story. But at the same time he had done the Mighty Mouse cartoon on Saturday mornings, and between his animation style and some of his subversive things, there was a whole brou-ha-ha. It was taken off the air, but that animation style is the style that John K had studied under, he was one of Bakshi’s students and collaborators. So, when Ren and Stimpy came out, all of us who were into Bakshi were just over the moon not realizing how bad it was going to get. Like I said, first season, absolutely brilliant. All the sort of Bakshi-ist notes. In the second you could really see the influence. Second season, there are some very particular things about John K taking control versus Nickelodeon’s control, yadda yadda yadda, why it didn’t—It just didn’t have the same edge, second season. It’s still brilliant, it’s still one of the most seminal pieces of ‘90s animation that I think everybody should at least watch the first season of. It’s right up there with Invader Zim, but I have a thing for Invader Zim, as well. It’s so twisted and gothic and Nickelodeon didn’t actually screw that one up too bad. Anyway.

Chris:                                        [00:54:46] Anyway.

Kevin:                                       [00:54:48] Right, so you can see how I end up in those same places with those discussion. Really anyone who was not expecting a fanboying over—or at least some information about the history of Ren and Stimpy and it’s origins in the works of Bakshi this week, I… I’m on my second cup of coffee, I really, you know. I got up late, so I’m really well rested for once during one of these interviews.

Chris:                                        [00:55:18] There you go.

Kevin:                                       [00:55:18] There you go. All right, so—

Chris:                                        [00:55:22] Maybe we should at least go back to the questions and start sort of [crosstalk 00:55:26].

Kevin:                                       [00:55:26] Yeah, exactly. So, we were working on systems and habits. Now, I need—now I need to just keep a, I have the list in front of me on screen. Now I’m thinking maybe I just need to write a Post-It note for everybody to check it to keep myself on track.

Chris:                                        [00:55:43] Well, you know, I thought about whether I needed to warn you that I will go off on tangents if given the opportunity.

Kevin:                                       [00:55:49] Have you listened to the show?

Chris:                                        [00:55:51] Well, that’s why I didn’t bother.

Kevin:                                       [00:55:56] All right, so. With all that said, how do you decide what to do first in a given day.

Chris:                                        [00:56:05] So, it depends and I’m going to borrow a line here from Mur Lafferty and Matt Wallace and answer that question first with the segue, look at me segueing, how well this segue is going.

Kevin:                                       [00:56:22] There you go.

Chris:                                        [00:56:22] And, one of the systems, I don’t know if you can call it a system, but one of the things that I do is try to have three to five different projects going at one time. Not because I like running in 30 different directions at once but because if I don’t, I’m more likely to lose steam and I will find myself staring at the computer screen or whatever and go, I really don’t want to work on this anymore. And so, there’s a fine line. And I say three to five because I have learned as I’ve tried to put numbers to it that more than that and it’s overwhelming, but less than that and it’s like, well, I know I need to do this and I wanted to do it a week ago, and I just don’t care right now.

Kevin:                                       [00:57:27] Yeah.

Chris:                                        [00:57:29] And I was—let’s say I was introduced at a young age to the idea of just power through it.

Kevin:                                       [00:57:39] Which doesn’t contribute to burnout at all.

Chris:                                        [00:57:41] No, of course not. And I will go on record as saying that I know that there are people, and I know people for whom that is a great way to get things done. And, that’s fine. There are times when it has served me well, but more recently, I would say it has not. And, try to be mindful of things and learn from my mistakes and all that jazz. And so, instead of—I try to look at it that instead of putting the energy into forcing myself to do something that some part of body or brain is telling me, maybe don’t do this right now, I try to put the energy into giving myself the permission to step back and say, “Why am I fighting with this so hard? Maybe there’s a reason. Maybe I need to listen to myself.” And I’m going to go work on something else now.

Kevin:                                       [00:58:50] And, Malka Older who, that would be the last episode you listened to. I think she said something like, she’s got like 12? 10 or 12 things. I know Ursula has—I don’t like to think about Ursula’s works in progress folder. But there’s a certain flow to here’s the thing I have a deadline on. Here’s a thing I’m gonna poke at, and then here’s all the things that I could work on if I felt the urge or the need to. Which is why, yeah, no, Summer in Orcus sort of percolated that way for a couple years and then just in a mad rush, she finished it. The book that’s coming out later this year, ha ha!

Chris:                                        [00:59:34] Which I am looking forward to immensely.

Kevin:                                       [00:59:37] Yeah, Swordheart is, see, now, by the time this interview airs, it may actually be out. But, at this point it’s just been sent to the editor. But that one, oh, she’s been poking on and off for a couple years. The Clocktaur Wars, Clockwork Boys and Wonder Engine, I think I read a draft of that a little under a decade ago. That has been called The Thing with a Paladin for so long that—but when the time came and she’s like, this is the thing I think I need to be working on, she just went right through it. And I know that she’s got, like, other things percolating at the same time that we can’t talk about right now, because they either haven’t been announced or there’s negotiations or whatever. So, but I mean, I know there’s this whole stack of things that when she sits down to write every day, it’s also a—She can make that same judgment of, this is the thing that’s due, but I’m not ready to work on that yet today, so I’ll put some time into this other thing.

Chris:                                        [01:00:44] Sure. Sorry, don’t mind me. It just occurred to me that I could, using my notebook, that I should start asking myself is today, because my projects are different kinds of things, you know, is today a day that I want to start with writing or should I start with carpentry, or should I start with something else.

Kevin:                                       [01:01:06] Right. Sort of a thing to ask every day.

Chris:                                        [01:01:12] Right, exactly. So, I’ll have to integrate that in there. Right now, my approach to what I start with, I mean, it varies. Everything always varies. If I’m honest, it’s often whatever is sort of poking at me the most. And it’s sometimes the phrasing on that sentence is whatever I’m most worried about. Although I try to manage that. Sometimes, this probably says volumes. Sometimes what I start with is whatever is the most urgent, may or may not be the thing that is bothering me the most.

Kevin:                                       [01:01:58] That’s fair. You know, what is the most—what is urgent and important, versus urgent and not important, right?

Chris:                                        [01:02:06] Exactly, yeah. Or, sometimes it’s—I haven’t. I don’t know if I’ve been as mindful as I would like about this, but sometimes what I will do is, okay, I’m going to start with something that I didn’t, that is either radically different from what I did yesterday, or something I didn’t think about at all yesterday so that I come back to it with a fresh set of eyes. I have—I guess I’m learning to. No, I just had this word, where’d it go? I hate it when this happens.

Kevin:                                       [01:02:53] No, no. This is when we would say that writer brain is kicking in, right? Ursula will be sitting there going, and then there’s a thing with the ordering and the importance and the you, words hard.

Chris:                                        [01:03:09] Yes, exactly.

Kevin:                                       [01:03:10] I’m like, okay, you’ve been writing all day. Or artist brain is engaged and words don’t work, but if I asked her to paint me a picture, she could sketch something out really quick.

Chris:                                        [01:03:18] Yeah, I wish I had that. I have learned to, or I am learning to sort of psychoanalyze myself on the fly and use my psychoses or my neuroses against each other. I don’t find it useful to do the thing where you go wash dishes because you don’t want to write a book. I know a number of your guests have praised that particular approach. I wish it worked for me, I really do.

Kevin:                                       [01:04:05] Mine is much more, I go wash dishes to let my brain sort of background process and kind of chew through things. It’s not that I don’t want to do it, it’s that I need to really—I need some background cycles on it. I need to not think about it in order to think about it. It sounds ridiculous when you say it that way.

Chris:                                        [01:04:26] Well, see, I don’t think it does. And maybe it’s just because I’m familiar with it. When I can convince the anxiety to shut up, I will find it helpful to sleep on something.

Kevin:                                       [01:04:42] Okay, yeah.

Chris:                                        [01:04:45] I assume it’s just that my subconscious is grinding away, and it’s not, again, I wish it worked better than it does because there are any number of times I have gotten up and gone all right, what did I—I don’t think I”ve ever phrased it this way, but… What has my subconscious got for me today on this program that I gave it, and my subconscious goes, “Idunno.” Thanks. Yeah, so, I guess I can keep this answer short that it’s something different from the day before or whatever is screaming loudest in my head for whatever reason.

Kevin:                                       [01:05:36] So, other than not shaving the yak, what is the best advice or feedback you’ve been given. Because at least we’ve covered don’t shave the yak already.

Chris:                                        [01:05:46] So, there’s a couple things. I’ve actually got a couple pieces of advice and a couple pieces of feedback. The first couple are going to sound familiar. I did mention the whole idea of if someone else’s system doesn’t work for you, that’s okay. That, like I said, that has been pretty validating to hear somebody else say that. The other thing, and I’m pretty sure this is something that’s come up on this show before, but the idea of asking yourself, particularly if you’re feeling under pressure, you know, just how urgent is this, really? Is somebody going to die if I don’t, if I miss this deadline. And that, I have found that helpful to remind myself when you get something like, okay my boss is tyrannical and they’re going to get on my case if I’m five minutes late so I’m speeding down the highway, well, no, wait a minute? Is it worth the risk?

Kevin:                                       [01:07:01] Right? Yeah.

Chris:                                        [01:07:03] Is that, excuse me, is that chewing out, is it worth the ticket or the car crash or god forbid the injury or the fatality that I could cause? It’s probably not. You know?

Kevin:                                       [01:07:22] Yeah, yeah.

Chris:                                        [01:07:22] So… So, those have been helpful. The pieces of feedback. One’s actually fairly recent and one is a number of years old, but it’s stuck with me. The older one is I was visiting my graduate advisor on my [inaudible 01:07:40] histories degree. And I graduated in, when did I do that defense? 2011. And this was several years later, and I think I was job hunting at the time, and I was going to be in town and said, hey, let’s meet up. And we had this lovely conversation and one of the things that she said to me was you’re really good at problem solving once you remember to step back from the problem.

Kevin:                                       [01:08:16] Right. Yeah, yeah.

Chris:                                        [01:08:17] Ow. Okay, yeah, that makes sense. Because when I’m faced with a problem I am totally focused on it being a problem, because it’s there. It’s in my way, what do I do with it? And remembering to say okay, with my nose up against this brick wall, I can’t see how to remove it. So step back, take a breath and then go forward and see what you can do.

Kevin:                                       [01:08:51] Sort of the opposite of can’t see the forest for the trees.

Chris:                                        [01:08:55] Kind of, yeah.

Kevin:                                       [01:08:55] You can’t see the trees for the forest, yeah.

Chris:                                        [01:08:59] Yeah, kind of. And it’s—

Kevin:                                       [01:09:01] Or maybe I’m getting that backward and you’re so involved in it that you can’t see the big picture. So you can’t see the forest for the trees because you’re focused on a tree not the environment, yeah.

Chris:                                        [01:09:13] Right, and I guess it’s both that and then, let me see if I can mangle that particular saying. Something like, can’t see the tree for the bark, or something.

Kevin:                                       [01:09:31] Okay, yeah. Yeah.

Chris:                                        [01:09:32] You know, right? You’re really up close and you’re really focused in on something.  So, you know like I’ve said, that has stuck with me. And the other bit of feedback that I got recently. I was visiting a mentor of mine that we’d stayed friends. And the funny thing is, I didn’t actually get it from him, I got it from his wife. She commented that he was talking about his past employees and I was basically a technician level field biology type. And, he’d commented to her in this conversation that—oh, and I should add, this is somebody I worked for multiple times. These were seasonal positions. And, but he, really takes a lot of delight, I think, when somebody calls him, because I’ve listed him as a reference for a job. One of the common questions is, would you rehire him. And his answer is always, I did!

Kevin:                                       [01:10:40] Right?

Chris:                                        [01:10:42] And because of just the way things worked out, technically I worked for him five times.

Kevin:                                       [01:10:47] Okay.

Chris:                                        [01:10:49] And this was spread out over not quite ten years. Like eight years, something like that. And his comment was essentially, I’ve had some pretty good techs, but I never found another Chris where I could say, this thing needs to be done, go away, come back, and it would be done. And I was like, that is, and knowing him, that is fantastic praise.

Kevin:                                       [01:11:21] Praise from Caesar, right?

Chris:                                        [01:11:23] Exactly. Exactly. So, to be able to look at that as feedback and go, okay, yes. I’m not just blowing smoke up my own ass. My efforts to do good work do actually. You know, I actually am doing good work. I’m not just deluding myself.

Kevin:                                       [01:11:44] Cool. All right. Do you want the hard question or the easy question first? Or, do you want the happy question or the sad question first?

Chris:                                        [01:11:55] Oh, let’s do the sad question first.

Kevin:                                       [01:11:57] All right, and side note, I just got notification, I’ve gotta leave to pick up my kid in like 15 minutes, so.

Chris:                                        [01:12:04] Okay, we be quick.

Kevin:                                       [01:12:06] If we can. Quick is relative, right? All right. How do you deal with failure when you miss a goal?

Chris:                                        [01:12:13] This is something that I am still working on. As are many of us. But, I try to be kind to myself. I try to be compassionate and I used to say that I was my own worst critic. And, it—maybe it’s not always—but in my case that became a really poisonous outlook, and so these days when I—

Kevin:                                       [01:12:42] Oh shit, it’s the presidential test.

[01:12:44] [That presidential alarm tone that everyone had to put up with sounds.]

Kevin:                                       [01:12:45] Your phone should be going off right now, too.

Chris:                                        [01:12:48] Yup, there it goes.

Kevin:                                       [01:12:50] Yep. Mm-hmm. So that tells everybody who’s listening in the US exactly what day and time it is. God…

Chris:                                        [01:13:02] Oh look, it’s 2:18 on Wednesday, October 3rd.

Kevin:                                       [01:13:03] That’s right.

Chris:                                        [01:13:08] Oh. Right. So, being kind to myself, and you know, sort of going back in with the, is somebody going to die if I don’t get this done? Has somebody died? No? Okay, then cut yourself a break, and just… I am human, I should treat myself like I would treat any other human if they screwed something up and you know what? It happens. Let’s learn from it, let’s fix whatever needs to be fixed. And then, let’s go do something else and hopefully we’ll do the next thing better.

Kevin:                                       [01:13:55] And that’s always a tough one because we want to hold ourselves to a higher standard than we hold other people, and sometimes that standard’s impossible, right?

Chris:                                        [01:14:03] Yep, absolutely. In terms of actually, like coping, I will add that it’s usually that I will do something that makes me feel better, honestly. You know, maybe that’s eating a favorite food or playing a video game. Or, and I would highlight this, I will often go talk to somebody that I am close to who is, oh what’s the word?

Kevin:                                       [01:14:37] Cognizant? Aware?

Chris:                                        [01:14:38] Somebody who is a supporter, who is in my camp, whatever the—can’t think of the word I want, but that’s okay. Because that’s helpful, you know, and it’s a reminder that, you know… I can say things to myself that all I want and I have to hear it from somebody else to really have it stick. It just—because humans are weird that way.

Kevin:                                       [01:15:04] Yeah, no… Okay. Flip side. The fun question, but the one that more people have had trouble with than I really expected. How do you celebrate your success, if you do?

Chris:                                        [01:15:19] Well, the funny thing is I was writing notes to myself this morning about this, is that I realized that the answer is mostly the same as your previous question. You know, it’s the idea that, oh, what was it: Jeph Jacques’ Questionable Content comic, there is a scene where somebody is like, well, I feel terrible, somebody go get me a bottle of booze, and the response is, “Well, you know, booze is good for both despairing and celebrating.” So, you know. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing.

Kevin:                                       [01:16:05] That sounds likes a Fay line, it really does. Before she quit drinking.

Chris:                                        [01:16:12] Yeah, it’s not. It’s Abby. She’s one of the military folks on the space station.

Kevin:                                       [01:16:24] Oh, right. Okay, yeah.

Chris:                                        [01:16:26] It’s when she has an altercation with the AI. But, yeah. It does sound like a Fay line. And now, you know, a certain number of your listeners will be going, “Yes, totally.” And the rest are going to be like, huh?

Kevin:                                       [01:16:43] Yeah, no, and I do recommend Questionable Content to all of our listeners if you haven’t read it. I’ve read it since the beginning. And that—it’s brilliant. It’s sometimes it’s hard, a lot of times it’s funny. Sometimes it’s just straight-up offensive, but Jeph doesn’t seem to care. So—but he’s a really good writer and looking at how the illustration has changed over the year and the focus now on the whole sort of psychology of AI has been brilliant. And then, of course, there’s also his other one the hard sci-fi comic that I can’t remember the name of, now, Alice something.

Chris:                                        [01:17:29] Yes, and I can picture the cover page and I can’t think of the title.

Kevin:                                       [01:17:35] That is also possibly one of the most—that is absolutely brilliant and didn’t go where I expected it to, right? I will find my link to that one and put it in the episode so that people can remember. So, that’s it. That’s all the questions.

Chris:                                        [01:17:53] We seem to have made it to the end.

Kevin:                                       [01:17:56] We did. Do you have anything else you want to mention to the folks at home before we call it an interview and I hope in the car and run up to the high school.

Chris:                                        [01:18:05] Yeah, just a couple of things. One is I wanted to mention a book that I found really helpful.

Kevin:                                       [01:18:12] Okay.

Chris:                                        [01:18:12] And I’m not a shill for this, it’s something I just came across. The title is called Write Ten Days to Overcome Writer’s Block, Period by Karen Peterson. Peterson is apparently a psychologist among other things, and the book, while it’s aimed at writers, I found it really useful for, it seems like it’s useful all sorts of pursuits, creative and not. And it essentially gets into the psychology and the brain and things like how the—how do I put this simply. The part of your brain that really just wants to go eat an ice cream cone instead of sitting down and churning out your 5,000 words. Is an awful lot like a toddler, and just you would hopefully not try to use logic on a toddler, maybe stop trying to use logic on that part of your brain.

Kevin:                                       [01:19:26] There are so many times early on that I had to explain to Ursula that you cannot reason with a pre-teen boy. You cannot reason with a 8-12 year old. Trying to explain why they should do a thing to get them to do a thing is completely point. Just tell them to do the thing and move on, and if they say, “Why?” Say, “Because.” She’s getting frustrated with them, they’re getting frustrated with her, and I’m just like. Ray. Sweep the floor. Ursula, it’s cool. I’ve got this. She would be like, “Why is it so hard?” I said, “Because you’re explaining it to them.” And I think the epiphany moment on that was when she bought a pie. And at that point, Ray was in his mid-teens which means he was a food hover. Still is, because he’s still in that late-teen/early-20 growth spurt phase. But she just put down, she put a Post-It note on this pie she had bought that said “Ursula’s Pie: Touch and Die.” I’m like there, see! That is the most succinct and direct way to communicate, and they’re gonna understand that much better than, “This is my pie and I’m really looking forward to eating it. Don’t go near the pie.” No, just “Touch and die.” There you go. Don’t explain why you need them to do something to get them to do it. Just tell them to do it and get on with your life. Everybody’s happier. And your brain is like that sometimes.

Chris:                                        [01:21:04] Yep. So, anybody who is at all interested in this or has the struggles with writer’s block or what have you, I would really encourage looking it up. I think I’ve ordered mine off Amazon because you can order anything off Amazon. So, wanted to throw that out there.

[01:21:22] Other than that, just two things. One is that if folks want to find me they can reach me on Twitter I am GeoNaturalist on Twitter and you know, hey, if you want to talk about anything that I have babbled on about today, I’m happy to talk with folks.

Kevin:                                       [01:21:43] Here come the carpentry and the biology people, I’m just saying.

Chris:                                        [01:21:47] Hey, by all means. And then a last plug is that the book that I mentioned that I’m hoping to have out early next year, it’s a self-pub deal so I can control most of the progress. It is if you are a plant person, if you are—for gardeners or for the other biology types. If you know what invasive plants are and you are as frustrated as I was with the lack of comprehensive information in an accessible format, watch this space. My goal with the book is to bring information together so that people can use it and I will be releasing it freely once it’s done, and you know, if it’s something that you would be interested in, give me a shout and I’ll add you to the list.

Kevin:                                       [01:22:46] Oh, you know we’re interested in that because we’re all about dealing with invasive plants and I know one of our big struggles has been finding the information on it. So—

Chris:                                        [01:22:53] Yep. Exactly.

Kevin:                                       [01:22:54] So, I’m looking forward to that as a resource so that maybe I understand what she’s going on about. Because she’s done all the research. I’m just like, uh, she said that plant’s bad. It’s invasive. Okay.

Chris:                                        [01:23:05] Right. But it’s pretty. Well, yes it is. But it’s also invasive.

Kevin:                                       [01:23:10] She still hasn’t forgiven me for putting in the silk tree 20 years ago because my ex-wife and I thought silk trees are pretty, but now I understand what a blight on the world, or North Carolina they are. But since she’s been trying to kill the one—since basically she moved in here. And it still refuses to go. She may never forgive me for that one, but that’s—of all the sins, that is the slightest of which I could have commited. So. All right, Chris. Thank you so much.

Chris:                                        [01:23:41] Thank you, this has been awesome. I am super stoked. I am glad you took me up on the offer.

Kevin:                                       [01:23:48] Yeah, and it’s been a great discussion and I’m sure we will talk more at a later date. And for those of you who are listening right now, we’ll be right back after this.

[01:23:58] [Productivity Alchemy segment change music plays. Jaunty, pleasant jazzy piano with accompanying bass.]

Kevin:                                       [01:24:38] And I’m back. I had a great time talking to Chris and I hope you all got some good stuff out of that. I know I did, and there are a whole bunch of links on the episode page on ProductivityAlchemy.com. The other thing you can do at ProductivityAlchemy.com is claim an episode badge. That is an Open Badge following the Mozilla Open Badge standard with some metadata that says you earned it by listening to this episode. The code to enter for this episode is SHAVEDYAK that is all one word, S-H-A-V-E-D-Y-A-K. And you’ll get a nice little image for this episode, saying, hey, I listened and it’s pretty cool, and some people are pretty into collecting them. I think it was—who was it? I think it was Damien Ryan who said, I was like, “I have a special badge code to give to people when they have an interview and you might see that on some people’s Badge things and it’s the I was a Guest badge.” And Damien, I was like, now here’s the special code that you get for being an interview subject, and he was like, “That’s the whole reason I did the interview,” which I thought was kind of neat.

                                                     [01:25:58] The other thing we have going on is a giveaway. We’re giving away two, I managed to dig out two, I don’t know where the third is, Story Clock notebooks. If you want a Story Clock notebook, you need to comment on the last episode. Episode 69 with the, “I want the Story Clock notebooks” we’re giving them away as a pair. They are kind of neat and if you do script writing or you structure your writing kind of like a TV episode or something like that, that’s what they’re designed around. And it’s pretty cool, and I’m looking forward to sending those out to somebody. The drawing will be on November 21st. So, that’s still about two weeks away, so you’ve got plenty of time to comment. And I will be closing, obviously, entries on November 21st, 2018. And the episode on the 22nd is when we’ll announce the winner.

                                                     [01:26:52] And that’s pretty much it for this week. Again, live show, 3pm Saturday, November 10th, 2018 at WindyCon. I am excited to be doing this and I cannot wait to look forward to meeting you. I have a whole bunch of stickers for the “I Met Kevin” badge and I will give the badge code there to the attendees, so that if you happen to be there and you’ve never met me before, you can claim the I Met Kevin badge. It’s pretty awesome.

                                                     [01:27:21] And that kind of wraps us up. So, you can support this podcast and all of the podcasts we produce here at Red Wombat Studio by going to Patreon.com/UrsulaV. That’s Ursula’s Patreon and it pays for this podcast, it pays for the hosting for all of our websites, it pays for the food and the special drugs now we need in order to do Kevin and Ursula Eat Cheap. And it helps to make sure that these podcasts are free for you to consume and free for anybody. Don’t feel obligated to join, don’t feel obligated to give, just saying.

                                                     [01:28:00] The other thing you can do if you want is to buy me a coffee, I am fueled by coffee, and you can go to Ko-Fi.com, Ko-Fi.com/KSonney. K-S-O-N-N-E-Y and buy me a coffee. All of this is linked on the ProductivityAlchemy.com website. We have a support and a contact page there, so if you have some questions or if you want to make a comment on something in particular, give me a recommendation that is the place to do it. The only other thing I can think of about the website is that it has all of the back episodes listed and so is a handy-dandy resource. And I think that’s about it, so I’m going to go and get ready for WindyCon. I’m looking forward to meeting each and every one of you who will be in the Chicago area for that and I hope everyone has a good week, and remember: Stay Productive.