I mean, the monsters are nothing shocking. They're career people who have number one best-seller than I. I've never hit number one. The problem is you can always find someone to compare to.
What's next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot Podcast, and author of Pivot, the only move that matters is your next one. For show notes from this episode, visit pivotpivot.com slash podcast.
If change is the only concept, then let's get better at it. Here we go. Wow, welcome, A.J. Thank you, Jenny.
I am so excited to be here. I feel I should be interviewing you. Because you've given me so much wisdom. Oh, my goodness.
I can't wait to hear it. I can't wait to hear it because I'm kind of flabbergasted. I'm going to repeat your wisdom back to you, so that you'll remember it. Wow.
I was going to say welcome to your city. We're in your hometown of New York City, but I'm welcoming you to Midtown. We're recording in person, which is very rare for you. It's very unusual, yes.
And we'll see if we both get COVID. We'll know it was a bad idea. I actually thought about that. Me too.
I was like, wait, should we do you do this? I know. Hopefully it'll be such a great podcast that is worse, thus risking. Seriously.
I know it will be. I was washing my hands and I go, are we just acting like this isn't a thing now? And it's so strange that something like a podcast conversation, both of us had a moment before hitting record where we're like, are we going to get terribly sick and fall ill for three weeks or three months as a result of that problem? Right.
Yeah. There's that problem. I still don't go to places where there are a lot of people. But you are not a lot of people.
You are just kidding. Thank you. Yeah. I don't go places where there are a lot of people in general.
Although we did have to crawl through like Midtown crowds. This is kind of just stuff. But it's outside. I'm okay with the outside.
Yeah, that's true. Well, thank you for starting with such kind words. It's a very full circle because as you mentioned to me, when you emailed, we were kind of brainstorming what we could talk about astute listeners will know that you wrote the outsourcing kind of guest essay in the four hour work week that I read that I think that essay blew a lot of people's minds like was a complete paradigm shift that came from that book and we're going to talk about the delegation journey that you've been on since then. Yes, I made your advice on that.
You self included. Good. But first I have to know could you have even seen that coming that writing that snippet for the book would have become what it became? Well, here's the story because it's a bizarre one.
I was writing for Esquire magazine and I came up with this idea. But if I outsourced my life, this was a long time ago. So outsourcing was new and it was only banks and law firms were doing it. And I'm a writer.
So I was like, this sounds great, but I don't have huge amounts of employees, but maybe I could outsource my life. I hired this team of people in Bangalore, India, who had never been personal assistants. It didn't exist. And I said, can you answer my phone for me and answer my email and argue with my wife?
That was the funniest thing. Oh, it was great. It turned out great for everyone. They were much more polite than I was.
And so I wrote it up and then it became a thing. It was weird. People were like, oh, this actually is a good idea. And Tim Ferriss called me out of the blue and he said, I'm a first-time writer, I'm writing my book.
He said, it's called Drug Dealing for Fun and Profit. That was the original title. That's right. And he said, I don't know how to write a book.
A, can you give me some advice? And I was like, that's some good huts by there. I appreciate that. And he said, also, can I just print your article as my chapter on outsourcing?
And I was like, you know, he's going to sell 14 copies for a first-time writer. I'm not going to be a jerk and ask him for a bunch of money. And then cut to a year later, he calls me and he says, I just want to let you know my book is coming out next week. And it's number one on Amazon.
And I'm like, you mean number one in 20-something career advice? And she's like, no, number one on Amazon. And I've been like, you are a genius. How did you do that first time?
So anyway, he taught me as well as I taught him. But it's funny. I am glad I gave it to him. I don't regret it all.
Because it worked out for me. And he's got millions of followers. And a lot of them know me from that. So the article ran in Esquire.
Right. Did take off. I mean, it was harder for things to go viral back then, back when we held magazines with our hands. But could you already tell that that article and that topic was going to become a bit of a sensation?
It definitely went viral in the like 15 year ago version of viral. And I got on Good Morning America and all this. And what was weird was the people in India start the company that I hired, which had previously only worked for businesses, started the VA arm called, I think it's Get Friday. I think it's still that.
But yeah, like it actually spawned businesses. So it might be the most influential article I've ever written. Seriously, because I think you were the one who made that connection. But I love how you go on these personal quests and you get a bug in your bonnet.
You get an idea. If I say that right. Half or something. It sounds like you're in your bonnet.
A B is a bug. So it's technically correct. It's like a bug in your ear and a B in your bonnet. Oh, yeah.
It's just amalgamate these things. So like it's now a bug in your bonnet. You're creative. I just don't know.
It's my puzzle or mine. They're just smashes things together. But I love how you get this kind of itch and you go on a quest. And the thing with the Esquire that became an in for our work week article is you really showed people the connection that any of us, it was almost like what Uber did for transportation where I remember when early days a friend would be like, yeah, I put a button in a black car rolls up and we thought, oh, that's only for the richest people on earth.
And the same thing with a personal assistant, that would have been for the 1% right when you wrote that article. Nobody would have dared to dream that each one of us could have our very own personal assistant to get help with the dolting. It was not expensive. And this is what I wanted to ask you.
I know we're here to talk about my other book, but what happened was I was one of the first, you know, I sort of broke this idea and then I fell off and I went from being one of the best delegators in the world to now I'm one of the worst and actually reading your book has inspired me to try again and you've given me a lot of tips. But I find it and I want to know your opinion. I find it hard to delegate because there's the problem of perfectionism, there is the problem of I need someone to delegate my delegating to. Yes.
You know, I really have time to figure out what to delegate, and you've given me awesome tips on how to do it. Have you also struggled with that? Oh, 100%. And I go through waves with that.
And so I'm so glad you brought this up because people might think that once you write an article or you went and experiment like that, you just brush your hands and you have it solved. It's not really the case. And it does go in waves. And I find that there are times I'm really inspired to build and maintain the infrastructure of delegation and outsourcing, I guess those are sort of related ideas, not necessarily one and the same.
And then there are times where I get fatigued from it almost. And right now I'm in a period of team sort of transition and I keep stripping things away and I keep simplifying and in doing so I'm taking more on my plate. But I just had a conversation this morning with Julian Smith that will air on the free time podcast where I told him that software is my first employee. Like software is the first place I look because it's not the same kind of hands-on management that delegation involves.
And by software you mean like automating. Yeah, automation, documentation, things that I know are going to make things much easier with without a person involved. Yes, writing everything down. Like this is so simple but just keeping a record of doctors appointments and vet appointments and keeping track in one place so that it's much easier to know when the next one's needed.
I find the job role of a manager doesn't energize me that much. Interesting. Much more enjoyed just kind of solo creative projects and playing around like what we're doing now. What do you think for you?
Having written the kind of starter piece on this for so many people, what roadblocks did you run into after that where you know the knowing doing gap, like you could know what's possible with delegating and outsourcing but then there must have been a part of you and you're a super smart guy that it wasn't that you didn't know what to do but some aspect of it must have been experiencing friction somehow with it. There were a couple of points of friction. One which I think is misguided. I felt sometimes kind of like a jerk giving these really boring tasks to people and I'm like you know what kind of a privileged asshole am I but it's a complicated issue because they were delighted to have the work.
So I don't know where I stand on that still. I think that the one way to reframe it which I learned from you is that you're not freeing up time to you know watch sitcoms or Netflix. You can free up time to do something even more productive. How can you earn more in that hour that you free up than you are spending on outsourcing?
So that I think is a good reframe that is going to motivate me but yeah part of it was gelled part of it was that like you I don't love managing especially my research. I wish I could outsource some of my research because it is super time consuming and yet I am glad I can't because research for me takes me down so many unexpected byways and I don't think that you know what interests me may not interest other people and they just wouldn't follow the same trails and come up with the same material that I did so I find that very hard to outsource but like you suggested make a list every time I'm doing something that could be outsourced write it down so I have a whole list before I go approach someone. Yeah because you're so creative and I want to talk about you shared in one of our author calls how you generate ideas and I'm so curious about your process. I do think that's what makes your writing so unique is that you are true journalist in the sense that you don't just hire and outsource your research okay so the new books on puzzles and problem solving in games and stuff but you don't just hire a team have them basically goes to write the book and then you put your name on it you actually go on these adventures you go on a quest for two years and you pick up these little tiny nuggets about being in somebody's home or what they say on a Skype call I think that adds so much depth and richness thank you to what you do yeah I definitely could not outsource a lot of my job because my books tend to be these first person adventures so for this book on my love of puzzles I went to Spain and competed in the world takes on puzzle championship which was a disaster but at the light at the same time or I went to the headquarters of the CIA to see one of the most famous unsolved puzzles ever and that yeah you can outsource and I'm very flattered you think I'm able to pick out interesting details because that is something I'm very aware of while it's going on I sort of have to have two minds I have to be in the experience and experiencing but I have to be also looking and saying oh that would make a good detail that would make a good sentence and even trying to structure it like how is this going to look in a chapter what's it going to be the beginning and what's going to be the end even as I'm experiencing it so I have that sort of dual mind.
writing a book is a big puzzle how many books have you written now I've written six or it depends how you count them some of them are like you know half books and I've heard people say both ways that it gets easier and some people say no it doesn't it's just a hard every time what's your take because it is a sort of it's a big complex thing a book is just this I don't know it's something about the scope of it really stretches the human mind to the edges of trying to organize that much complexity and hold it and know how to structure it so has it gotten easier for you it has gotten a little easier mostly because of what you said which is structure I will not start a book unless I have a very clear structure and the skeleton that I can then fill in with the flesh for instance I wrote a book about trying to be as healthy as possible and I knew I wanted to write a book about health for many years but I didn't know the structure it just seemed overwhelming but then I don't know when maybe during one of my daily brainstorming sessions I said well what if I break it down into body part like even absurdly specific body parts so you've got the you know the stomach health can be your diet and the lung health heart health can be exercised but what about handheld like there are people who specialize in hand exercises and you know what about eye health you know all of these unexpected body parts to balance the more expected ones and that is what cracked it open for me and allowed me to write it so as long as I have a structure in this puzzle book is about my love of puzzles and what allowed me to write it is there are so many types of puzzles I never even thought about that I could explore so everyone knows jigsaw's cross where the Sudoku but there's also Japanese puzzle boxes and there's secret ciphers from Victorian newspapers there's just so many things to explore and I could break it up into those sections I love reading there's so funny about how you're addicted to spelling B and oh are you are you know I kind of put it down and my dad loves spelling B and he works on it all weekend as I read your book I took screenshots of the book and I sent it to him and I said look there's genius level in this Easter egg of queen bee if you get everything he didn't know about queen bee because he does it by hand he doesn't use the app so there would be nothing that flashes and goes you are a queen bee but my dad he doesn't stop until he gets genius level every week and I asked him your book sparked a great conversation where I got to ask him about his love of spelling bee and my dad said to me I have a system and I thought it was so interesting how he talking about structure he has a system so he has it out it's by his desk he comes back to it he'll do things like write all the letters across the x-axis and the y and then make one of those grids and then try to match words so he'll clockwise he'll go counter and so just hearing about tips and tricks that our mind devises to crack a puzzle right it's very interesting because it does apply to writing a book pivoting career change running a business delegating it's all a puzzle right I love that you say that and that is the way I tried to reframe my book because I do think puzzles there's something more fun about solving a puzzle than tackling a problem and in fact Quincy Jones the great musician says his quote is I don't have problems I have puzzles and I love that quote it's so good because it is so motivating problems to me if I hear that word it's like they're intractable they're a pain in the ass whereas puzzles it's like oh this is a challenge I'm going to solve a solution oriented I'm going to figure this out so even just a simple reframe like that can make a huge difference I agree like just turning things I talk about this in pivot just turning a challenge into a question creates the puzzle it's almost like by instead of just stopping at a dead end like oh I don't know how to do this it's how can I learn or how can I improve or just turning it into an inquiry yeah I love David White calls and beautiful questions they're the kind that you have to live with you can't answer in the moment it's not just a math problem right you have to write the problems I've heard I saw a little puzzles we should go on puzzles a. J. Jacobs the wild puzzler I'm actually dancing on tables at three I like it I have a wild and crazy puzzle well it's interesting you bring up pivot and I want to pivot for a second because I thought there's so many overlaps between our work and one of them is in the puzzler my book is all about pivoting your mind so being cognitively flexible not necessarily changing your job but it's the same muscle of being able to because to solve a problem you can't go with your first thought your first thought is usually wrong I mean on purpose these people design it so that you need to look at it from all angles and I'll give you an example there's some very very tricky British crossword puzzles they love to mess with your mind even more than American crosswords so you'll get clues such as gags that's the entire clue G. E.
G. S. this kind of thing drives me nuts yeah that's why I don't do crosswords but I admire the people who do love them this just drives me nuts well we'll drive you nuts but hopefully in a good way hopefully you'll get the aha moment which is what we want but yes so the clue was just those four letters G. E.
G. S. and I was like what the heck is a gag and I even googled it which I don't like to do the airport in Portland is airport code is gag so is that anything no it was only when I walked away which is also another important chip I walked away took an hour off came back and I was like maybe it has nothing to do with the word gag and I had to pivot my mind well it's actually the letters E. G.
G. S. but they're scrambled so it's scrambled eggs so that's the answer to the clue is scrambled eggs so that is a totally different way of looking at the puzzle and that is I think the secret not just is cracking puzzles but to cracking life and like you talk about in your books we'll be right back just after this it's so interesting that connection between well me hijack something high he's like probably second to you and didn't fair is one of the most quoted authors like every book is going to site flow but what I find so interesting he says that we find a flow state at the intersection of challenge and skill and we need to be right at the edge of our skill level not too much and we get frustrated we have to have just enough skill to meet the challenge and then the challenge has to stretch us just enough if it stretches us too much we might quite give up and so this dynamic of challenge and skill in that intersection and what you describe with the best puzzles involving this other ingredient which is insight and I love how you quote what's third name the Japanese maki kaji yes this man he is called the godfather of sudoku is he popularized sudoku yes and who just articulated the whole crux of your book which is with three little punctuation marks question mark arrow exclamation point I loved it I went to go see a tattoo oh yeah that is a good tattoo so we're gonna get one and he summed up all of puzzles on the whiteboard by drawing those three symbols question mark arrow exclamation point and he explained the question mark is when you get to a situation and you're baffled and then the arrow is the struggle the figuring out the trying different methods and the exclamation point is that aha moment and it's not just puzzles that's the structure of many stories you know conflict resolution so it applies to all sorts of things in life and the other important piece of wisdom that he imparted was that you have to embrace the arrow you have to embrace that middle part the struggle and start to enjoy it because you may never get to the exclamation point and exclamation point is so short in comparison to the journey that's a great point it's funny because the way I say this in pivot is that the punctuated moments of success and they are there short compared to the process of working toward them right yeah so you were saying it I just like how you really describe that it's much more rewarding when we solve puzzles where there's a shift in paradigm I do love that and that's where I think life change is so interesting I mean I'm at my husband walking down the street opposite directions and I say what I tell the story is as if the universe is fun on its axis and I know that's cliche but it was a true legitimate New York City meq we're walking opposite ways and I saw his sparkling ground eyes and time slowed and it was as if the whole universe just shifted in that moment and as soon as he passed and then all of a sudden everything was different after that and it's true because I ended up marrying this person and I never even thought I would get married just what happened I know you've told him before but what happened after the so he is a painter and he and his friend were looking for overalls and I joke that funny that his request to the universe was I'm looking for overalls or at least let's say the universe planted in his mind you are looking for overalls but then the wink of it was there's a girl in overalls you know because he didn't want a girlfriend at that time but sure enough I'm walking I was almost home 20 feet from my apartment he mouthed the words nice overalls he didn't say but he mounted it and as I passed I was like to be polite so I turned around and I said thank you so much and then he and his friend yelled because we had passed already they yelled like where did you get them and I'm like yelling AT jeans and so we came back together and then started talking and that is a great story and then I sat on a bench I was like I texted my friends I said overalls are the new tender because the second time that I had met someone while wearing these and I said my overall ROI on these guys was all about the times because they were really expensive at a time where I should not have spent 400 dollars on overalls wow I know wow but they had they landed me a date the week prior I was browsing in McNally Jackson books on Prince Street and I was browsing and that guy just came over and was like do you want to get tea okay sure he's overalls they're like magic too bad they don't pay anymore freaking pandemic the real puzzle is how I'm gonna fit these overalls again that is fantastic yeah so why did I get on that tangent oh just kind of seeing things in a new light the shift the insight around it and seeing overalls are not usually considered like I know that's so that's a good shift right there these are form fitting overalls all right well but that way oh my goodness that's time of this recording I'm on a duelingo streak so I go on and off the duelingo and I'm two thirds of the way through learning Arabic wow I just don't know if it counts in anywhere near the realm of puzzles or what you describe in your book which I did read I loved your book but I was as I was reading your book I was thinking about my daily dueling going and how well they game a five first of all the game a five language learning like no other it's incredibly sticky but particularly learning Arabic is so interesting because it's kind of a puzzle and especially the more complex the sentences get I'm having to process all these characters that I'm not used to oh yeah that's like a code sure yeah and it's a kind of feel that every day I'm kind of cracking the code and it's incredibly rewarding and I think that's partly what makes language learning so sticky and compelling is that it actually unlocks part of the universe it unlocks part of the world right people communicating ideas even the way things are phrased in Arabic is so beautiful oftentimes compared to english and I'll just give one example one time my goal my husband told me he said I have roses in my cheeks and I thought what roses are she oh he was saying he's blushing and Michael fluent he grew up speaking fluent english french and Arabic so it's not like oh he didn't know how to say blushing in english but for a moment he could only call the Arabic and look how much more beautiful I have roses on my cheeks compared to the translation yeah that's great so where does language learning fit with this notion of puzzles I had not thought about it but you're absolutely right it is a puzzle in so many ways and it's like a code unlocking a code and a revelation and there is some science that puzzles are good for your brain for slowing down cognitive decline but it's not just puzzles it is any intellectual activities that keeps you challenged and the other big one that people talk about is learning languages so they are very linked in that way it's almost it kind of reminds me I know jigsaw puzzles weren't your favorite maybe you came to like them a little more I did I did I'm a convert a couple language learning is like this ginormous jigsaw puzzle and you can only fill in the edges and if you know 10 words that's better than zero words and I know not all six thoughts we don't always start with the edges as I learned from your book but it is the sense that slowly but surely you plug in one tiny piece and one tiny piece and that there is a moment of escape velocity which I'm not quite there with Arabic but where you're like I can communicate I can speak to a taxi driver about existential ideas for an hour or two and that makes me happy I'm very awkward and I sound terrible but hey we're able to cover some ground wow that's amazing I love that I find that word puzzles in particular have made me so much more aware of language of the English language and have changed the way I read the news because word puzzles are all about one word having multiple meanings so it's like the word trunk is it the trunk of an elephant is it the luggage is it the trunk of your torso and you have to look at it from all different angles and it makes you realize the English language is quite slippery there are these what my friend calls them suitcase words that have multiple multiple meanings you can pack into one word and it makes me a little more I wouldn't say suspicious a little more aware in a good way of how language can be manipulated like the word freedom can mean tons of different things so just saying the word freedom is sort of like a Pavlovian reflex all that's good freedom is good but you know there are tons of ways that it has drawbacks and tons of uses that are not so good so anyway that has been a huge boon to my life is just being more aware of language that reminds me of a packs political action committees where they'll be like you know the American society of freedom and beauty and it's like oh we're the gun lobby you know or whatever it is just uh wow they name things that were exactly yeah like all of those um industry lobbying groups like you say they all sound great speaking of play on words I love puns I love I love a good pun I appreciate them why do people rag on puns so much well it's interesting I became a little more of a convert of puns because I was a little snobby about puns because people do say they're wonderful it's punishing yeah but yeah people would always say it's the lowest form of humor but some of the puns that you run across in the puzzle world because they are obsessed with puns are just so sophisticated and ridiculous that I have to admire them and like I say they have that bigger lesson which is that words are slippery and you have to really look at them from many different angles so I have much more pro pun than I used to be speaking of words I want to talk about idea generation and how you solve the puzzle of what you write next because a book and your quests in particular that become your books are big commitment yes tell us a little bit about your daily brainstorm and idea generation practices and then how the heck do you puzzle out what you want to tackle next great question like you said I love having 15 minutes and I still do I did it this morning 15 minutes that I a lot I turn off my computer and my iPhone and I just brainstorm and it could be about anything it could be about book ideas article ideas a lot of the time is just free form so I'll look around and I'll see something like you know maybe I see a snowman outside my window and I'll think what can I do with that how can I play with that idea maybe it's a snow woman or a snow non-binary person or instead of a pipe they have a vape now as you can see 99 percent of these ideas are crap and they are never going to be used for anything but I find it so helpful because I do believe to a certain extent the brain is a muscle and that the more you're able to be creative the more creative you'll become the more new pathways in your brain that you're able to create then you're not going to get stuck in the same kind of thinking so I do honestly think it helps me enormously even if 99 percent of those ideas are never going to be used and then there is that one percent that is used and as to your second part of the question how do I know which one it's a little bit of a challenge I would say two things when I keep thinking of an idea like two weeks later three weeks later that is a into the maybe it's important another is I love to tell people ideas and look at their faces now you can tell when their eyes light up or they kind of glaze over I will say that I don't have a perfect record because for instance this book only came about because I was writing a completely different book for three months I had a contract for a whole other book that I still think is an interesting idea and I'll just tell you briefly it was all about fact how do we know what we know the whole post truth crisis so it was fact checking my life how do I know the world is round how do I know the New York Times is more reliable than Newsmax how do I know my wife loves me she says she loves me but I'm not in her mind and it was an interesting idea but it came down to the structure that we talked about I didn't have a good structure on it and I felt lost and overwhelmed and my agent knew that I loved puzzles and he said why don't you just devote a little time thinking about pivoting wow nice product placement yeah that's what I'm here for so that is how this came about and once I thought about and figured out the structure and I convinced the editor to let me switch topics completely and it was a much more pleasant two years of reason oh my gosh can you imagine just the right the vibe and the milieu of your life like diving into facts and truth and the current climate versus the passion that you have exactly and puzzles can touch on the deep and profound things too but yeah this I would have had to spend time with you know a lot of conspiracy theorists and slat earthers and it would have been fascinating but also for us people who don't believe in parents you know I love the birds aren't real movement that is a great one oh my gosh it's really wild and isn't that funny how as with the puzzle like it's right under your feet I think that's something that I found with pivoting and people who I spoke to where they said in hindsight everything was leading me to this or it seems so obvious I'm sure that's what any individual puzzle you're working on but also you landing on this topic for the book it's right under your nose you're working on puzzles every morning you know but it's so close sometimes it's hard to see yeah it was funny someone once interviewed me a few years ago and said you know what are your hobbies what are your passions and I was like I don't know I don't think I have any but I had puzzles they were so part of my life that I didn't even consider it like you said I found this hobby question so funny because I'm like I don't know just silence reading sleeping through this count you know like going off to heat it when you spoke about idea generation before you were giving these kind of rules of thumb about what you do and you know you start things like alt or something that exists do the opposite look for the opposite or the inverse push things to the extreme so when you're sitting there every morning are you literally looking around and you see what's in your environment or just something dropped from the sky into your mind and then once the thing drops like the snow person example or something conceptual do you have these almost like calisthenics these little exercises what's the opposite what's the inverse what's the extreme I've never gone into so much detail but you're absolutely right and I think I want to teach my son's this because I found it so helpful first of all I do sometimes try to have magazines old style magazines around like the week and I'll flip through it and I'll get to an article I don't know about windmills and then that's a spark for me to start brainstorming about that and weirdly yes I do sometimes very consciously employ these like you said to think about it upside down think about it backwards take it to the extreme that's kind of how the outsourcing came out I was like what can I do without sourcing what if I outsourced everything in my life like push it to the extreme not just you know outsourcing my low end work outsourcing my reading bedtime stories so those ones you mentioned combining it with other ideas you mentioned some of the great ones I got them all from you took them right from you they're just for something you said and I thought the interesting thing about let's say outsourcing I don't know that anyone else would have thought to outsource a fight with their wife I don't know how you have this sense of humor or the level of detail I guess that the heuristic in that case would be something completely unexpected we're back to the puzzle and the paradigm shift because what you did there was really work an angle that I just don't even think like I don't even think Tim Bares would have thought to outsource a fight with his girlfriend quote unquote you did like your mind worked in a kind of tricky sneaky way where that's like really outside of the scope but then it made us all laugh thank you Jenny yeah well I think part of it is yeah that I'm sure I don't even remember but I'm sure I did 10 things and nine of them didn't work but the one with outsourcing my argument to my wife that worked spectacularly so that's the one I'm gonna write about and I guess it makes for a good story to tell I mean the book project where everyone is your cousin right which by the way your editor for this project has the same name I won't say it on the podcast but the same exact name as my sister a lot and I just bought there it is like we're all somehow connected wait the same like first and last thing yeah yeah yeah how has your experience been with editors because I know you've done some traditional publishing and some on your own right at every book project while my dad is always very hands-on editing because we both just like you love words love puzzles love problem-solving my dad is really good about precision we have a shortcut see it's too many words to even say Occam's razor but Occam's razor is like the simpler the better you know if something can be said in fewer words it should be and that efficiency is the essence of Occam's razor so my dad will just write Occam now and he literally there were all these places in the book where he would eliminate three words at a time and just put an adverb so instead of I will go to the store it's like I'm going I don't know anyway just some I love that yes I'm gonna have to remind you shine he's ruthless which is a good thing that says do you want to gloves off edit that means that he is not gonna hold back he's gonna spelling be that thing he is gonna look at it with a closest read and the red ink like every page but it will be so much better for it he catches everything and you know what the mind of a puzzler because he's very well read and knows factoids about absolutely everything he catches things no editor would ever catch because it's just the depth of sort of the edges of knowledge or how things work or metaphor or science biology so he catches all kinds of stuff that nobody else finds amazing all right I'm in just as a test run a manuscript by well I will say I love your writing and I can't remember if this was you or one of your guests but I quoted you this morning or one of your guests I'm so honored wow because it was such a concise way of saying it which was compare leads to despair I love that I know that I can't take the credit I do say comparing despair a lot it's great yeah I feel that happens to rhyme but it's also happens to you experience comparing despair oh yeah comparison is a thief of joy is what I've always been but I actually like comparing despair like that's sickier oh yeah I know it is terrible I have to what's your comparison monster I think of these like the monsters ink monsters like they're generally friendly but they're just kind of like hovering around causing a ruckus oh yeah so I think they're generally friendly I guess I try to be friend of mine and just say you well that's a good way to do it I mean I can tell you what the monsters are and then how my strategies for trying to focus on them I mean the monsters are nothing shocking they're career people who have number one best sellers and I I've never hit number one the problem is you can always find someone to compare to especially now where everything's global and hyper-connected right like I'm sure Jeff Bay I'm not in his mind but he's probably really pissed that Elon Musk has eight billion dollars more than I thought about that I actually thought about that because like into a lingo I battled with these people it makes you weirdly competitive and it's like oh Jeff just took your number one spot in bronze league and then you're like what are you doing Jeff I'm gonna get you and then it's like very competitive but I find myself getting sort of antagonistic with Jeff and like oh I'll show you Jeff and then I'm kind of working with psychology of when I'm gonna use my turbo boost it's really weird because I don't have this side of me outside of it but it's just I bet Jeff Bezos was like I'm gonna get you Elon right it's definitely double-edged sword competition it sometimes is really great for motivating yeah but it can also make you miserable I guess I had one that has been good for me because it's very low-level competition it's more support group type competition because I decided at the beginning of the year that my fitness goal would be I'd been doing the 10,000 steps which there's no real science behind it could be 7,000 8,000 but it made me feel like I had a nice goal so 10,000 steps when I was getting bored of it I happened to for my book on health I have been walking on my treadmill while I type my emails for many years and I do it at an angle so I'm sort of walking up the hill and it keeps track of your vertical climb and it turned out I was walking about a thousand feet a day with like the height of the Eiffel Tower and I looked it up and I was like I think that I could walk to space in the year in 2022 I could walk to space because it's only 330,000 miles to the edge of space so I could be like Bezos and you know I don't even need a rocket and I put it on Facebook and it was delightful because I got dozens of people were like I want to walk to space too so we have this Facebook group of all these people and then there's a spreadsheet and we're all semi-competing but semi-tearing each other on as we walk to space and I think that what I also like about it is there is research on when you try a new instead of just having the same goals all the time if you stretch if you pivot to an hour-out so good yeah okay a stretch of pivot yeah well the problem is now the word became totally ubiquitous like we can't not use it right over you were ahead of the curve that was great a little bit and lean startup because they talk about pivoting I wanted to be what's the lean startup for people so we have to give Eric Reese full credit okay can I tell you I have written about my favorite pivot in the business world oh yeah which one my first book was reading the encyclopedia so I read like the history of everything and I read the history of this guy named Welch who was a Presbyterian minister I believe anyway it was very religious but he was also anti-alcohol so he decided he wanted to make non-alcoholic communion wine so people could be religious but they wouldn't have to drink wine when they went to mass and he made this grape juice that was non-alcoholic and maybe it sold a little but no one really cared and so then his son came along and his son totally pivoted the organization it's like forget this line business let's sell it to kids as a treat grape juice is like a little treat and that's how Welch's became the grape juice kings whoa amazing yeah I was smart right that is smart I find these stories very interesting and looking at exactly the well there we go again just a paradigm shift looking at a problem from another angle so we were talking about comparing despair and you said you had some solutions or some ways that you get out of that particular thinking trap what else has worked for you and you find yourself falling into that well I guess two come to mind I'm sure I have others that are gonna come to mind later but the first is I do love that story about Holland no it's a fable it's not real it was written by a woman whose kid I think had Down syndrome but it was a fable where she talked about imagine if you plan on going to Italy and you know you plan this trip for years and you've mapped out all of these wonderful restaurants and gondolas that you're gonna go on and you get on the plane and it lands in Holland instead you got on the wrong plane and there's no way to get out of it for a week or maybe you can't afford to go and she says so the key is learn to love Holland there are some wonderful things about Holland it's not Italy maybe it's a little duller maybe it's not as exciting as sexy but Holland has its own charms if you end up in Holland learn to love Holland right and then maybe some completely surprising and unexpected thing will happen in Holland so we'll change our trajectory of your life you don't know exactly that wasn't gonna happen it could be the greatest thing they never know and sometimes I think about I know it's not everybody believes that things happen for a reason because there's so many terrible things that happen on the planet but we don't know what we missed like Michael recently traveled to Beirut and he got so many flight delays and missed a flight missed a connection lots of delays and drama and you can complain about all that which is a complainable you know it's an annoying situation and I had that happen recently too on the other hand who knows maybe we're gonna sit next to someone who had covid on the original flight and the fact that you missed it was a good thing so even though you got in 12 hours later there's some missed thing you know I don't know we can never know I love the parable design parable we'll see so you cannot judge a situation is that the one where the kid breaks his leg in the heart yeah I love that one farmer yes exactly I always forget the exact details for like his son is writing the worst breaks is like how terrible we'll see military comes to recruit the sun can't go how wonderful we'll see the sun falls out you know and it's so and so on there's always a will see mindset and I love what you said with the home and story of appreciate where you did end up with what is here yeah I mean someone wants to ask me because my kids are now teenagers and they had just had twins and I have twins and they said is there a light at the end of the tunnel and I said not really not for me but I've gotten used to the light in the tunnel sometimes that light in the tunnel can be quite nice it could be fluorescent so you gotta yeah appreciate the light in the tunnel as well as out of the tunnel I mean that seems like a perfect response of parenting in general I'm not a parent enough kids but like the tunnel changes right because I've heard parents say each age group brings the next set of challenges and right problems you can't even imagine when you were in the previous one so you might get their one tunnel just have the next tunnel start exactly and so yeah it's like we said the arrow between the question mark and the exclamation point you got to learn you got to learn to love the arrow the tunnel whatever the metaphor right okay this is less compared to spare of my own but more a curiosity you have landed on some big podcasts I know your friends with Tim of course after all these years Dax Shepard you were on Sam Harris I'm just so curious hey do you ever get nervous going on these big shows for these interviews NMP is it a different experience with all these different hosts like it does each show these big shows that I think many of us subscribe or listen to right what's it like for you because you actually landed them I only dream about them I only prepare for them as a conceptual well I first have to say I am a huge fan of your podcast oh thank you Neville and so this is just as great an honor for thank you secondly yeah I totally get nervous and I over prepare maybe not over prepare but I definitely come up like you saw I have like 80 brought papers I got paper and pencils I know how to use them at all because you're such a good interviewer but does it help you let's say like you were on Dax Shepard that's a big deal and you probably didn't know Dax personally right as you mentioned a lot of it a serendipity he is a big fan of Sam Harris just like Tim who I met very early on Sam Harris I had emailed when he wrote his very first book so we had a relationship and he had me on a couple of times and then Dax had heard me on Sam Harris and that led to me being on Dax and I was nervous about Dax Shepard because he's a loose cannon like you know where it's gonna go so you just have to let go and hope and actually talking about things that could have turned out badly that turned out okay he like you when I go on you know we have a little chat beforehand and then you start to record that's like 99 percent of podcasts so I was waiting on zoom he comes and sits down he's like hey what's up and I thought this was pre-talk so I'm like my office is super hot so I took an ice pack and I put it down my pants and we talk about that for like two minutes and then I'm like so when are we starting he's like oh we've been recording I'm like what the hell oh my god I could have been a disaster but people found it like you know charming I found it really funny yeah I was like oh a day I'm like way to just meet him at that little fun fact like you know I actually actually give you a hat tip because I'm like I don't have the courage so it's funny that you didn't know you were recording I didn't have the courage it was really funny the thing is I could so relate because yesterday in New York City it was 91 degrees in humid our AC doesn't work and I thought about you in that moment I'm like a day sat there with an ice pack to record and I would have done the same thing yes it's good for the environment AC when you're doing a podcast right right so that was some puzzle solving right there I know how to keep so you actually did bring notes today and I said before we were actually recording I said I just want to know about the notes sure does it help you to have notes in front of you or because for me that would probably delay me like if I had to be referencing notes or something well I'll tell you two things one if it's you know good podcasts like this one I don't have to look at the notes it's more of a life raft and it's the same thing when I've given some TED talks and told stories at the moth and those are super stressful because they don't want you to write things down but I always write it down and keep it in my back pocket so it's always there and I've never had to use it but I just know and then this when I write things down you are so good that you're like peeking over them well you can actually look at it so cool you would do it better than me but to me the key is to break it up into sections so that they're easy to find I always forget to mention what's in the book yeah what's in the book big themes what else adventure is so fun and then like reception so far so I can count that other people like it the social proof such as the New York Times calls it a romp both fun and funny so but I'm saying we use the note I like that your gnome to puzzle is one down one down yes one down like it's only one down Saturday well another thing about writing a book is how do I start it that's always a puzzle and this crazy situation happens and when it happened I'm like okay this could work as a start and I'll just tell the anecdote quickly how the anecdote and tell what qualifies as a starting quote show book like what criteria does it need to meet oh interesting okay the anecdote is that a few years ago I appeared as the answer to a clue in the New York Times grandfather puzzle and as a word nerd this was like the highlight of my life you know my wedding was pretty good but this was the holy grail and then my brother-in-law emailed me and he did congratulate me I won't give him that but then he pointed out correctly that it was the Saturday New York Times puzzle that I appeared in and if you know the puzzles they get harder and harder throughout the week like a parent is there like a parent is fair great point because Saturday is not good enough now no Saturday is achievement you're in the crescent I know I should have been so over the moon and yet I'm like oh yeah all these answers are totally obscure and no one knows who they are and that was his point it's like this is not a compliment so I actually told that story on a podcast and it happened one of the New York Times crossword makers was listening and so it coincidences what podcast was that it was a Steven Dubner oh not freakinomics but he had like a game show about what you know and so this guy heard it and decided to save me and put me in a Tuesday puzzle which is not Monday but Tuesday is huge you know much better than Saturday and I don't belong there buddy put you there the grass is greener on Tuesdays I guess grass is greener on Monday well if you're listening Monday I will not die happy oh okay you're gonna tell me about the opening anecdote what bar it has to cross that's a great question and I've never been asked it we'll talk about systematizing when I was working in a magazine I had sort of a list of 10 ways that make for interesting openings and one of them is almost a list so when I wrote a book about the encyclopedia reading the encyclopedia when the encyclopedia still existed and so it was like a page-long list of all of the crazy things that I had learned just in chapter a like about art varks and Abbot and Costello and Abasynia just like the weirdest facts from a and that I thought could grab people because it's like a list I will say this is slightly related one I find works in writing in general is you've got to mix it up so you've got to mix up the length of the sentences long and short you want to mix up the type of sentences questions the clarity of sentences commands and you want to mix up you know whether you're writing a list or stable you know more traditional prose which you do beautifully in your books funny I think about the same things it's like a little potpourri you have some full facts little anecdotes will metaphor here and they're like sprinkling right especially now when you know our brains are very much wired to look for changes so yeah that's a key for me if it has to grab the reader it's possibly it's a mix possibly it's one where it's sort of a twist like a puzzle like you know you think you're reading about something else it's very glad wheelie and as well like you start an open question and then right all of that and it steves jobs when he was a kid and he had a different name and they're like wow exactly that style how he just puts like one two three and then the puzzle unfolds right that's very attractive yeah that is very engaging I like that we'll be right back just after this I like how you have a list of 10 that even when you were writing articles because like articles it's intense and you have to turn them out you have to keep coming up with ideas right that to have your framework of 10 ways you could start an article that you had developed and I don't even remember what they are two of them are the ones we talked about I don't remember what the other kind of solve that puzzle because you got to pass that to your sons as well yeah and what about you and how you start a book what do you think of when you start one I like to start the book funny and no one's ever asked me that AJ wow I got the idea from someone else it's true though don't ask I like to start with the moment of being in the problem and its dialogue both pivot and free time at least started with this moment of being in the belly of the beast the belly of the problem beast so with pivot it was a series of internal monologue of I must be crazy I don't know what's wrong with me why can't I figure out what's next I'm never gonna be happy and it was just this chain of thoughts that one might have when they have a perfect on paper job but I feel restless and then with free time I just knew very early on how it was gonna open which is this text exchange I had with my friend I was like I want to burn it all down and I literally describe I'm sitting there on a Tuesday and I tell my friend I want to burn it all down and I'm eating ice cream and I'm depressed and I'm on the couch and just I feel that I want to highlight the moment that I know so many people can relate to yes and I always with my books I look for the thing that a person is going to say to their friends so it has to be not an author speak not in this week it has to be the language somebody uses with a friend where the friend goes I call it book rx what book will the friend prescribe so if somebody says god I just don't know what's next oh you got to read pivot by Jenny Blake or if they say oh I just want to burn it all down in my business or I'm totally overwhelmed oh you got to read free time and so I try to identify in their language with the problem that they would tell their friend and it just cannot be in marketing this week that's so crucial I love that yeah that is huge I think that was one of the other times like an anecdote a moment yeah that the reader can relate to completely and that exemplifies the problem I love that there's another skill that you have just as we start to wind our way down sadly because I could just say you're all day with you why not until we get covid no we're in our isolation chamber now that's right window is room we're covid hanging out you are really courageous it seems about reaching out to people and I appreciate with all your books the level of access that you achieve in terms of who you're able to interview so I just love that you went like straight to the top of interviewing Will Shorts the New York Times I'm not gonna mess up his official title but I don't even know New York Times puzzle master yeah all these legends do you ever have I don't know if it's imposter syndrome or just a shyness about reaching out to these people or are you pretty bold about you'll reach out to anybody how do you get them to actually agree to talk to you yes I definitely have the imposter syndrome sometimes and I have to do the acting as if like as if I'm bold and then I become a little more bold I do try to also convince myself which is partly a delusion that this is good for them I try to remind I say you know what they want to get their word out and hopefully a lot of people will read this book so I try to convince myself this is not necessarily an imposition maybe I'm doing them a favor even though sometimes not and then just being okay with rejection because I'm lucky enough that I got some great people for this book and others but I got a bunch of people who said no so you know what you see it's just the yeses so you're getting a biased view of because I don't write about all the people who said no that's the next book actually it's funny because I wrote a book about gratitude and I had this long acknowledgments you know page as long as you would need to you like even goes in an appendix online or something but I thought if I you know we're in a grumpy mood I could have written a no thanks like an anti-acknowishments like no thanks to all the people who didn't return my calls funny right or you would need to thank them for not returning your call because right it led to something else great point do you think you're gonna stick with the quest format you landed on this a while ago it sounds like maybe even your ask choir pieces were these yeah personal quests have you always had this in you like how did this become your style I'd always love the genre because there's a writer named George Plimpton who did it with sports a lot he would join a professional baseball or football team I loved a book called Nickelden Dimes by Barb and Eric who she worked as a waitress in the hotel maid so I've always loved it a lot of times people say write what you know but I felt I didn't know very much I'm highly curious but I didn't have like you know if I were gonna write a memoir about my parents they're quirky characters but now they weren't spies or you know you know that's true yeah maybe that will be the best book finding book so yeah I felt I had to sort of create interesting circumstances and explore it that way and then write about that and then your wife seems pretty good humor too that she kind of goes along with I am so grateful for her because I get lots of emails luckily readers say you know your wife is a saint because she's a great balance you know it's almost like if I could have written a character that would be the straight person you know the sort of I know I'm not gonna act like you know we're in biblical times so we're creates a contrast yeah well okay I don't know why that took me back full circle to the beginning but oh because your wife thinking about delegation did you get a whole influx of inquiries after you run for our work week and even times after you've been on these big podcasts do you get a whole flurry of stuff that comes in yeah I am glad I did this for a while I had on my website I get I'm sorry if I can't answer all my emails and then I decided there's so much treadmill time you can do yeah but I also decided that was kind of a snobby it wasn't a good look so I do actually try to respond to every email even if it's only you know thanks so much you made my day so that's probably something I should be outsourcing I don't know I really can see it both ways I know people it means something to them to respond to each one no matter how short well I'm in a lucky position because I could if I have one of the outsorcers do it it's almost like you know right you're living your own message when I wrote about outsourcing like this is exciting to get an email I don't know exciting but it fits in with the brand of outside yeah that's true like especially if it was warm if it was warmly crafted yeah even better than something I would can you imagine if your VA was like hi Joe thanks so much for writing I checked out your website I love what you're up to and you actually gave them the assignment to like add warmth you know that's a good one thanks Jenny I'm gonna do that that's a good experiment yeah like they're gonna be the best correspondents with readers ever like take it to a new level next level yes and then I always like to say in part of their charge would be to say I'll make sure AJ sees this right and like I'm gonna personally carry your email to AJ and by the way I found this article for you related to what you asked about you would just so interesting like to roll out the red carpet but you're not doing it but you're the one right as far as you're creating that feeling for them to you know that is fun well I will say when I wrote the thanks a thousand book which was about the gratitude as part of the marketing I announced on my website I was gonna write a thousand handwritten thank you notes and I didn't really think through how much a thousand is a lot did you do it took me a year and a half and I personalized them all so they had you know I asked them to write about themselves so I could personalize it so I could only do like three or four a day it was a pain in the ass pain in the hand but it was also awesome I felt so connected to the readers and I loved learning about what they responded to with about their lives and their weird requests like draw a dog eating a taco oh my gosh all right I'll try I'm not an artist but I have to say one of my best friends to this day is because I sent her a postcard ten years ago she said thank you for one of the books so you responded I used to sign postcards yeah I used to and then she responded and then yeah and then later like just through a whole string but there was this origin point of a postcard that made her kind of pause and say I love that and I want to run a business like that that involves like these nice touches you know also you inspired her yeah I think so now she inspires me all the time and it's very reciprocal she does incredible of a person but it's like the power of a postcard you don't know that's the great story what's the name of her business being collaborative her name is Darion she's a guest on this podcast yes I think of her yeah but I feel a little sad because now I'm not necessarily sending postcards well you did your job you inspire someone it goes and waves it goes in waves sometimes you're doing other things I noticed that like I mean I sent our friend door yet you know I thank you card with my wax seal I love analog old school things like I still read the inky newspaper and I love using a wax seal just as a moment of surprise it's like the exclamation mark well can I make a connection for you with my friend David Sacks I don't know if you know him he's a fantastic writer and he wrote a book on analog stuff and he's got a new one coming out in a couple of months it's called analog is the future and I think you and him would have a great time I would love to interview him David Sacks I think I tagged his book as yes and it has little cutouts on the front cover I just stumbled across it awesome be fun to talk about that all right amazing thank you so great guys this is so fun if you could leave people let's leave them with one some experiment to try a micro quest oh I love that idea like you say you don't need to do a macro quest a micro quest is fine I might try one that really had an impact on me from the year of living biblically was just trying to go a week without gossiping I mean some gossip is good for evolutionary reasons like to warn people against really bad actors but 90 percent of the gossip I was doing or still do is not helpful and it makes you feel good in the moment but it makes you feel icky in the long term so yeah try not saying negative things about other people for a week and see how you feel that's such a good one oh I love it I even tried in New York City it was many years ago but I realized I was being very judgmental and critical in my mind it wasn't gossip I was looking at people and not thinking very good thoughts and then now I try to just like see the good you see the good and not just critique people in my head because that means that's how we're treating ourselves right that's a good one and then just in case I don't know what this has been so fun to cover so much ground for pivot and possibly free time so a free time the final question as you may know is if you could give people permission to do something differently or drop something altogether what would it be in addition to dropping gossip I like to give myself permission not to keep up with the details of every news story because I think it's bad for my mental health and productivity and it's bad for the world because if I'm following every in and out of a news story I'm not looking at the big picture of how I can help the world best so you might think that you're doing your civic duty and I do think you've got to keep up in the big picture stuff but yeah like following every twist and turn of the Amber Heard and Johnny Bill. Talk about gossip yeah I know it feels so good in the moment.
I was actually so shocked that I felt dirty I felt gross watching it this is disgusting like this two people throwing each other under the bus like I couldn't stand it I know we know we don't know what really happened and it just feels so yeah I that one's really I know and it's so tempting you know like as if it's written someone said there was this meta commentary that it's as if you're watching a scripted show as it's being developed like it's as if the reality is already creating the scripted drama that was gonna follow do you know what I mean it does seem like that so weird yeah I know it's gonna be on Netflix in like three months as a drama show you know it will be of course oh my gosh well AJ this was such a joy thank you for being here in person and risking your life talk has with me that is right it's worth it and it's worth it and it's worth it thank you so much thank you Jenny it's such a delight likewise I think thanks to everybody who's here listening thanks so much for listening to this episode of the pivot podcast make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for pivot list a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading watching listening to and the latest tools I'm getting out on sign up at pivot method dot com slash pivot list get shown us from this episode at pivot method dot com slash podcast and connect with me on Twitter at Jenny underscore play remember build first then your courage will follow haven't it always