B.J. Novak of The Office on Creative Process, Handling Rejection, and Good Comedy (#121)

Hi Tim,

I am listener from India and your podcast does not get listed in the Apple Podcast app. Could you please make it available for non US listeners as well?

Not uploaded to iTunes yet?

Yes! Mr. Show! “this hamburger is fucking delicious!”

QOTD- cold call rejections. Just don’t take it personal when people treat you like shit on the phone. Empathy for that person helps to overcome any anger towards him/ her. Because you never know what is going on in that person’s life in the instant you call. A loved one passing away, just got fired, just got divorced, etc. Pondering this helps calm me down and bring me back to neutral.

Im enjoying your blogs Tim. Thank you.

Im planning a trip to Beijing in the fall to volunteer at some animal shelters (Im a vet) and also to film our adventures for a documentary or reality-like tv show…so learning of other people’s creative process helps a ton.

xie xie ni (thank you)

Cliff

Hilarious analogy about sex and writing comedy “…it’s a physical reaction you’re going for.” – BJ Novak (audio 49:00)

Thanks for the smile 🙂

Teach Molly to catch lobsters ? Thanks for putting me on to “Don’t shoot the dog!”. Cheers

Is it possible to see Novak’s li.st without an Apple device or iTunes?

In response to your QUESTION OF THE DAY:

Title: How a Jobless Loser Triples his Creative Confidence in 15 Minutes.

Since leaving an “ideal” work situation two years ago I have bounced from one part-time job or project to another (currently sporadic sub teaching and other randomness) while our savings dwindles slowly and without any real direction for the next “real” work. So, plenty of cause for self-doubt combined with depressing inability to stick with one thing for long. So that’s the daily negative.

Positive action/technique to overcome or put me in the “positive” creating mood:

First, “Making the beds” every morning (much as your military interviewees have pointed out about doing at least one thing you can control, that matters, and puts the conscious mind to sleep momentarily).

Secondly, I have been taking at least 15-30 minutes every day to make art with my 3 and 5 year old daughters. What started out as a way to keep them away from electronics just a little longer during each day has morphed into family bonding time. After embracing the other motives for it, I semi-consciously determined to create at least some work of pure, “worthless” art every day.

To be clear, I have never, ever been an artist or taken art classes after kindergarten.

Yet the girls think my stuff is awesome, so to them I’m a rock star.

My bizarrely practical wife is surprisingly impressed (surprising since my stuff is pretty lame compared to the real art being put out by a few of her nieces) and often intrigued (always good to have intrigue in romantic relationships).

Whether I am doing a temporary creative project or mindless pay-the-bills work for the day, I leave the house feeling, if not great, at least like the people who matter most to me think I’m a cool, creative dude.

Simple guides:

– no more than one minute to decide what to do – when stuck, ask the brain to take me “outside,” then think nothing, and take the first subconsciously-generated vision, even if only very impressionistic

– be able to walk away (ie change little man’s diaper) any second – I subconsciously work then in layers that by themselves could actually mean something in the event I never return

– never think about sharing with anyone besides the girls

– no intentional teaching – I don’t introduce new techniques or materials unless they ask – which, of course, they do with surprising frequency – it helps I don’t know what in the world I would teach them

– do NOT schedule the art session – just do it whenever the “what to do” look is on their faces – most enjoyable in morning, but carries over to next day from evenings

– if they don’t “want to” color, we do next best thing – wrestling!

Last week, my wife says “I can’t think of the last time the girls asked to watch a show or play on the computer.” The amount of original art they have created is staggering. We started with mostly coloring books and they have naturally transitioned to creating mostly on their own.

For singles without the built-in family audience, I would strongly suggest that while you fearlessly use your close friends/family as your incubator or feedback loop for professional work, you intentionally make time for sharing with them your original art/science you NEVER intend to share publicly.

I find it interesting to note that most publicly celebrated performers in art or science have another consistent side audience of those at home who are much easier to impress and care less about the quality of the output as much as the shared experience of creation. They often create completely different art/science for that audience than what they are known for professionally. Eg, you with creative/reactive wrestling and martial artsy stuff when your writing is so precise and analytical.

Originally, I had typed the following in the comments about the super-enjoyable interview with BJ until your question side-tracked me – not surprisingly, the ideas are closely related:

Creative phase (brainstorming, mind vomiting, etc)

separate from

Development phase (trimming, tweaking, testing).

Like the 80/20 principle and saying NO, separating the phases (whether by time slots or by literal rooms as Disney does) exponentially improves my “real” work WHEN I remember to plan the separation. You would think that after finally reading Bird by Bird I would actually schedule my week this way, as BJ apparently does, as opposed to simply continuing to nod in agreement and move on. Maybe this week!

After two years of floating professionally, we have used 4hww principles to stay above water, I will have helped my dad publish his book about winning the Olympics with his brother (in large part due to training with Dan Gable), co-founded a pretty cool resource website for football players (not profitable other than lessons learned – gotta be stricter on my muse creation process), established relationships and skills that have exponentially increased our connection to high quality local-ish, chemical free food, enjoyed renovating several family/friends’ yards and overgrown fruit trees, and gained experience in four distinctly different industries along with so many minor new skill sets I stopped counting.

Very few regrets. And a growing portfolio of completely publish-unworthy, yet well-received pencil drawings 🙂

When I let myself FAMO (Forget About Missing Out), I feel pretty good about life.

It still amazes me when really attractive people say they wish they were more attractive, though it really shouldn’t anymore. Thanks for this awesome episode! I really admire B.J.’s approach – it’s clear that he takes his work immensely seriously while managing to remain incredibly humble and easygoing. Also I finally started watching The Office a month ago and am now on Season 8.

Absolutely agree with the importance of ‘good mood’ for creative work and productivity, as nebulous as the term is. For me the biggest challenge (as I work in a highly codependent office & profession) is fighting to carve out long stretches of time where I can be alone during the middle of the day when I am most productive. Once that’s done, a few cups of good coffee and one or two good songs will usually get me in that creating mood.

Notice a sweet Banksy in the background. Called CND Soldiers for those who may not know.

Loved this interview, my wife and I are hooked on the Office now that its on Netflix – gotta say I disagree with the statement about Interstellar – Me and the guys in my band loved the concepts being presented in it – Some of them are NASA scientists though 😉