Love Your Work

Things were not going well for Neil Pasricha (@NeilPasricha). He came home from work one day, and his wife told him she no longer loved him. Around that same time, Neil's best friend committed suicide. Neil needed something to lift his spirits. Something to remind him, every day, that there was something good in the world. That’s when Neil started his blog, 1,000 Awesome Things. At the end of each day, he wrote about one little awesome thing from life. Today, Neil has written several awesome books, including The Book of Awesome and Awesome is Everywhere. His blog, 1,000 Awesome Things was named Best Blog in the World two years in a row from International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, Neil is the Director of The Institute of Global Happiness, and he has a fantastic podcast called 3 Books, on which he’s interviewed titans such as Judy Blume, Malcolm Gladwell, and David Sedaris. Neil’s new book is You Are Awesome, and it’s all about resilience. In this conversation, you’ll learn: Neil says "You never know when you're making art, who in your own personal life is going to resonate with it.” What surprised Neil about the difference between running a blog, and a podcast. Neil also says "no one should be embarrassed of any book ever.” What is “book shame,” and why does Neil feel it should be wiped off the face of the planet. Neil also says "A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.” (And he admits he stole that from Game of Thrones). Hear the fascinating science behind how reading cultivates emotional intelligence. Listener Showcase June designs patterns for really cool crocheted figurines. I’ve seen them. They really are amazing. Check out June’s work at planetjune.com and on all of the socials at @PlanetJune. My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Sponsors https://honeybook.com/loveyourwork https://linkedin.com/loveyourwork Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/neil-pasricha/

There’s an expression, to burn your boats. It originated with a military strategy. Hernán Cortés famously “burned the boats,” after arriving in the New World to conquer the Aztec empire. (He actually “scuttled” his ships. He sunk them.) I recently burned my boats, when I killed off a $150,000 passive revenue stream. The birth of a passive income muse In March of 2007, I was sitting with some friends on the cable-locked chairs and tables – at two in the morning – on the porch of a closed restaurant in Austin, Texas. We were doing the kind of thing that we did at the time, after a night of parties at the SXSW conference: We’d sit around and talk about our ideas. Facebook and Twitter were still fringe services – most of the mainstream world knew nothing about them. The internet seemed full of opportunities. The subject of my dating life came up. I was terrible at finding a girlfriend, but I was good at finding dates. I described in great detail to my friends the way I had optimized my process of online dating. I had something to say about what you should write in your profile, what your pictures should be like, and what to say in your messages. I’ve since learned that this is the way I approach many things. I like to get deep into the details, to break it down into a framework, then do my best to explain it in a clear way. I thought I was talking about something very obvious or unexceptional, like tying your shoes, but my friends were on the edges of their seats. As was standard at SXSW at the time, whatever you talked about, there was an idea for a business there. “You HAVE to blog about this,” one friend said. Then, of course, the rest of them piled on. Now, almost 13 years later, I’ve made well over $150,000 off of the blog that I created because of that conversation. I burned my boats Last month, I killed this blog. I didn’t so much kill it as I let it expire. Literally, I simply let the domain expire. I burned my boats. At the height of this blog’s revenue, I earned $11,000 in one month. The amount of work I did on the blog during that month: approximately zero. It was a passive income “muse” as Tim Ferriss would call it. In the days before I killed this blog, I wasn’t earning near that much, but I was earning something. Why burn your boats? Intuitively, it makes no sense to burn your boats. Intuitively, it makes no sense to kill off a passive income stream. Something that’s earning you a profit, without you needing to do any work. But our intuitions aren’t always correct. Our intuitions sometimes see opportunity where there is no opportunity. Our intuitions sometimes see harm where there is no harm. Opportunity where there is no opportunity First, the opportunity where there was no opportunity. The revenue was way down on this site. I made maybe $300 in 2019 off of this site. But, I didn’t do any work on this site. I had a couple of opportunities there. I could invest some time, write a little content, build a few links, and maybe I could bring that revenue back up. I also could sell the site. I even had an interested buyer. But these opportunities weren’t the opportunities they seemed. This has a lot to do with the perception of harm where there is no harm. The real pain of loss aversion In behavioral economics, there’s the concept of “loss aversion.” That losses feel about twice as bad as gains feel good. Losing a $300 a year income stream feels about as bad as gaining a $600 a year income stream feels good. Which is to say that it hurt to kill off this passive income stream. But I reminded myself that the reality was probably not as bad as it actually felt. Added onto that hurt was that this passive income stream held a special emotional significance. This passive income stream made possible the business that I have today. The start I didn't have the heart for First of all, it wasn’t easy for my friends to convince me to start this blog. I didn’t write a book called The Heart to Start because starting things always came easily to me. I was full of objections. Primarily, I didn’t want to build a personal brand around online dating tips. I didn’t want to be known as the “online dating” guy. But my friends pushed me to start the blog. When I presented this objection, that I didn’t want to be the “online dating” guy, they said I could make up a name. So that’s what I did. I started the blog under a pseudonym on WordPress.com, and began to write. It wasn’t until I really got rolling that I even bothered to buy a domain, and eventually started hosting the blog on my own server. And I’m glad I got started. Early days So, I worked on this blog for about three years before I made any money on it. Yes, I knew that the revenue potential was there, but mostly it was something I did on the side. I enjoyed the freedom of writing under a pseudonym. I enjoyed the focus of writing on only one subject. Most of all, it was a good outlet for me. I’d come home from a disastrous or depressing date, and there’d be emails in my inbox. People telling me that my blog posts were helping them. I wasn’t writing anything risqué or manipulative or even ground-breaking. To me, it was common sense stuff – but it helped people, and that kept me going. Perfect timing When I did finally start making money from this blog, the timing could not have been better. November 22, 2010, is when I signed my contract to write Design for Hackers. That month, I made $659 from this blog. It wasn’t a lot, but I needed all of the extra money I could get. I had just spent three years on my own, searching for some idea that was closer to my core – something other than being the “online dating” guy – and I had just found it. I had written some blog posts about design, gotten a book deal, and eagerly signed the contract. I now had no clients. I had a meager first-time-author advance, and I had a book to write. If I missed a single deadline, I’d have to give back my advance. But writing a book is an all-consuming process, and I didn’t have the time nor energy to find some other way of bringing in income. Fortunately, that’s when this passive income muse took off. That November, I had made $659. In December, it went down to $517. But in January, the revenue skyrocketed. I made $1,799, then $1,856 in February. By April 2011, this site brought in $4,726. It was paying all of my living expenses. Meanwhile, I was finishing the first draft of my book, Design for Hackers. How did I make that much money? I talk more in-depth about this passive revenue stream in my course, Blog 2 BLING!, but the basic way this worked was that I was referring people to Match.com. At the time, if you searched for “match.com promo code,” my site was maybe the second or third result. I got 100% of the first purchase a customer made through my promo codes. If they signed up for six months for $120, I got $120. How passive income brought me closer to my core Yes, I could have doubled down on this site. Yes, I could have dropped the Design for Hackers thing, and made more money. But it wasn’t what I was passionate about. It wasn’t the intersection of my Love and Money Venn diagram. But, it did get me closer to that intersection. So, this passive income site meant a lot to me. If I hadn’t had that income coming in, I don’t know if there would have been a Design for Hackers. I wouldn’t have had the runway to get where I am today, where – as you can see in my monthly income reports – I’m keeping my head above water as an independent creator, living in South America. Losing opportunity to create opportunity So yeah, it hurt to let this site die. It also hurt to pass up what seemed like opportunities to revive the site, or at least sell it. And this is where the value of burning your boats comes in. It’s about opportunity costs. When you burn your boats, you can’t go back. When you burn your boats, you aren’t spending any energy thinking about your alternatives. When you burn your boats, you are committed to your mission. Yes, it’s nice to have something to fall back on. Yes, it’s nice to have your options open. You get something out of it. But sometimes you get more out of not having those options. Opportunity costs are something you might think about in investing. Say you’re returning 4% a year on an investment, with no chance of losing your money. Depending upon your strategy, you might want to keep your money there. But say there’s another investment with unlimited upside, and a chance of losing a good amount of your money. It might be worth it to take your money out of that 4% investment, and put it in the unlimited upside investment. But you only have so much money. At what point do you put it all in the unlimited upside investment? Yes, I could have spent some time and money trying to revive this site. I could have even given it to someone to manage it, for a revenue share. I would have made more money than I was making. But what would I have missed out on? How much better could I make my podcast with that time? How much progress could I make on my next book? What courses could I build with that time? Don't learn what you don't need to know Additionally, I could have sold the site. I would have to collect together all of the loose ends, collect the money, and make the hand-off. I would have had to do a process I hadn’t done before, and that I don’t plan to do in the future. I’m not in the business of flipping websites, so what’s the point of learning to sell a website. Not to mention that if I did sell the website, what might they do with the user data? What might they do with the brand that I created? In the end, it wasn’t worth it. A strategy for the scatterbrained At one point, this passive income stream got me where I wanted to go. Toward the end, it was doing little more than take up space in my mind. As I talked about on episode 180, I’m a “Perceiver” in Myers-Briggs. I see possibilities everywhere. I don’t want to close doors. I don’t want to let go of opportunities. I’m scatterbrained, I get shiny object syndrome. Can you relate? Where do you need to burn your boats? Something to think about: Where do you need to burn your boats? What opportunities do you have that are taking up mental space and other resources? What could you accomplish if you freed up that space? Burn your boats, burn your boats, burn your boats. Image: Worn Out, Vincent Van Gogh My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/killed-150k-passive-income/

How’s it going? Really, how are things going for you? If things are going pretty good, you might want to tear everything down, and start all over again. Nick Kokonas (@nickkokonas) is Co-Owner of The Alinea Group and CEO of Tock. The Alinea Group is a collection of restaurants Nick started with world-class chef Grant Achatz, including their first restaurant, Alinea – a three-Michelin-star restaurant that received the James Beard Foundation Award for Outstanding Restaurant in 2016. Alinea is also ranked in the top restaurants in the U.S. and the world on numerous lists, including World’s 50 Best Restaurants. Tock, Nick’s other company, is a reservation system for buying tickets to some of the best restaurants in the world. With Tock, Nick has completely re-thought the economics of restaurants, eliminating wasted seating inventory, and making available variable pricing based upon the popularity of reservation times. Nick is a truly original thinker. He’s demonstrated this on his appearances on some other podcasts, including The Tim Ferriss Show and Noah Kagan Presents. But this conversation is full of fresh insights, including: Nick says “people are far more afraid of success than failure.” What drives Nick to tear everything down and start over, even when things are going well? Nick also says "if you're trying to innovate. A/B Testing things as a terrible idea because people won't know what they want.” But there’s an important distinction he draws. Find out when he tests, and when he doesn’t. At Alinea, they intentionally make the first moments of dining there incredibly awkward. Seriously, I was cringing hearing him describe this. Nick said "there are people who hate us for it, and I'm okay with that.” Find out why. Thanks for sharing my work! On Instagram, thank you to @booknotes101 for doing a giveaway of The Heart to Start. Thank you also to @characelik, @5wisdomsproject, and of course @tomjepsoncreative. On Twitter, thank you to @mischievousmali, @geekosupremo, @Palle_Schmidt, @LouisSzabo, @LovinDaLife, and @LWCvL. Our Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/nick-kokonas/

Four years ago, almost to the day, I moved to Colombia. Four years ago, I decided to become a writer. Four years is how long it takes to get a college degree. Today, I’m graduating. It might seem strange that I didn’t think of myself as a writer. By the time I set out on this mission I had already written one best-selling book. But writing was still frightening to me. Every time I sat down to write, I felt a sense of agony and fear, and I wanted to run away. Today is my "graduation day" Now that I’ve dedicated myself to writing for the past four years, I feel confident in calling myself a writer. Since it takes four years to get a degree in something, I declare today, January 9th, 2020, to be my graduation day. Something to ask yourself as you listen to this: What transformation have you made? What commitments and changes and sacrifices did you make to make that transformation? My quest to becoming a writer took some big commitments, changes, and sacrifices – but by making these changes, I was getting something I wanted. Why I moved to Colombia to become a writer By moving to Colombia, I was doing two primary things things: One: I was choosing a place where I knew I could build routines I wanted to build to do the things I wanted to do. I wanted apply the things I had learned about how to be more productive in producing creative work. Second, really, wrapped up in the idea of being able to build the routines I wanted to build, was a behavior-shaping constraint: By moving to Colombia, I was also moving myself far away from distractions. When I lived in Chicago, for example, I could easily fly across the country on a whim, just because there was a neat conference going on, I got a speaking opportunity (usually not paying much, if at all), or even a friend was having a cocktail party in New York. But now I can’t fly to any major U.S. city on a whim. From Medellín, I have to connect through Miami or Panama City. What might have been a two-hour journey, now is usually seven at the least. Sometimes I even have to spend the night at a hotel in a connecting city to get to my destination. That extra friction means that if I want to go somewhere, I better have a damn good reason. Instead, I stay where I am, and I write. Another thing I did to make myself a writer was I started wearing really ridiculous glasses. Friends made fun of me, and some people straight up told me that I looked ugly in the glasses, but I didn’t care. It was what I was going for, honestly. I was using my manner of dress to influence my behavior. As I talked about on episode 172, I was changing my identity so that I could change my actions. Now that I’ve done the action a lot, my identity is solidified. I was very strict with how my habits and routines helped me write for the past four years. I made sure to not waste any time in beginning to write each day. I didn’t eat breakfast, I didn’t shower. I simply put on some comfortable clothes, meditated, then sat down to write. For the first few hours of each day, I made sure to face a blank wall (which I talked about on episode 46). I knew the morning was my most creative time, but it was also my least-disciplined time. I needed to face a blank wall so I could be sure not to get distracted. My identity as a writer wasn’t solidified. Each time I sat down to write, I wondered whether I would manage to write anything at all. After four years, I can finally say "I am a writer." Here's what that changes Now, four years after I started this mission, I declare that I am a writer. I have graduated. I no longer wear the dorky glasses. Much of the time, I even wear contacts (You’ll never convince me to voluntarily slice my eyes to fix my vision). Each morning, I no longer face the blank wall. I no longer put in ear plugs. I know that I am a writer, so I know that I can write, and I’m not in a panic each morning trying to convince myself that I can write. After I meditate, I take a shower, put on some less-comfortable clothes, and go to a cafe. Even with noise and people, and even though I’m groggy, my writing muscle is strong enough that I can write. Sometimes I do have trouble getting started, and I want to put in ear plugs, but just as a challenge, I won’t put them in and I’ll see if I can write even with all of the conversations going on around me (It helps, by the way, that most of those conversations are in Spanish, which is not my native language. If I hear a conversation going on in English near me, it’s much harder.) Many things that I picked up while transforming myself into a writer, I still do. I still try to choose a tool that will reduce distraction. Right now, my favorite writing tool is an iPad with an external keyboard – one that actually plugs in. I still manage my work according to mental states. I still don’t eat breakfast. But I simply have more comfort and confidence in my ability to write. I know that I wrote yesterday. I know that I wrote every day for a thousand days before that. I know I can write today. Other self-education projects This isn’t the first time, by the way, that I’ve created a self-education program for myself. Way back on episode 52, you heard me talk about my $40,000 DIY MBA. When I got fired from my job, I considered going to business school. Then, I thought to myself, Would I rather spend a bunch of money to earn a degree? Or would I rather spend a bunch of money to build a business? I could learn in the process of building that business, I figured. I decided to cash out a good portion of my retirement portfolio – $40,000 – and give myself the freedom to teach myself. That $40,000 bought me a year of exploration. By the time that year was over, I could support myself with my business. And that business continues to teach me new things. In fact, I often refer to my own business as a Personal PhD program. I may not be expanding the bounds of all human knowledge, but I am expanding the bounds of my own knowledge. It’s like a PhD in my own curiosity. So, I declare that today, January 9, 2020 is my graduation day. I may have written a lot before, but from today on, I am officially a writer. What's your graduation day? Here’s something worth asking yourself: What skills have you picked up, what transformations have you made, without acknowledging them? In this world, we have fewer and fewer rites of passage. We have fewer ceremonies. We have fewer opportunities to reflect upon what we’ve achieved, to throw away or burn our old shoes, and step into our new shoes. It’s a powerful thing to do. As we go into this New Year, take some time to reflect. What were you once afraid of that you are no longer afraid of? What did you once do as an amateur, that you now do as a pro? What’s your graduation day? Image: Maternity, by Mary Cassatt My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/graduation-day/

This is the time of year when we make resolutions. Very few of us will actually keep them. The reason we can’t keep resolutions is that resolutions don’t work. We would be better at reaching their goals if they built habits, instead. BJ Fogg (@bjfogg) is a behavioral scientist at Stanford University. He specializes in “Behavior Design.” BJ has a new book coming out, right now in the beginning of 2020. It’s called Tiny Habits. I wanted to have him back on the show to announce the book. But then I realized that this episode on how to build good habits is so good that it’s worth running again. Here’s what you’ll learn: You need to pick habits with the right characteristics to be successful in building those habits. What are the components of a habit that will stick? What are the most common mistakes people make in trying to build habits? You've probably heard that it takes 21 days to build a habit. That's actually a myth. How long does it really take to build a habit? Our Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Sponsors https://honeybook.com/loveyourwork Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/bj-fogg-bestof/

Socializing is good. But socializing as a default – out of some Fear of Missing Out – is not good. David's voice double fills in for him once again – and it's getting better. Image: Still Life With a Burning Candle, Pieter Claesz Our Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/art-staying-in-bestof/

Twelve years ago, David met Rob Hunter (@vegashacker) on Craigslist. They had both left their jobs at the same time. They were both determined to make it. So, David and Rob spent several months wandering from cafe to cafe in San Francisco. They put in twelve hour days, not making a dime. David says it was one of the most exciting times of his life. Today, David has this podcast, best-selling books, and lives in South America. Today, Rob is one half of Focused Apps, makers of hit iOS games including Hit Tennis and Emoji Me, which has more than 40 million downloads. Our Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/tale-two-bootstrappers-bestof/

Here’s an essay from a few years ago. It helps explain why David likes to step back from his work during the final weeks of the year. Puny humans. Also, for the first time ever, hear David Kadavy's voice double, created using Descript's "Overdub". Image: Pere Magloire on the Road to Saint-Clair, Etretat, Gustave Caillebotte Our Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondaysss About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/see-you-next-year-bestof/

I decided last December that I would be taking this December off. I like to give myself some space toward the end of the year so I can recharge, and come into the New Year with a fresh perspective. So, I’m reaching into the vault of more than 200 episodes, and pulling out some of my favorites – especially ones that are good for this time of year. This is a fantastic conversation with Sean Stephenson, and it takes on special significance this time around. Though what you’re going to hear is the only conversation I ever had with Sean Stephenson, I always felt a special connection with him. So when I discovered that he was born exactly one day after me, it seemed fitting. When this episode debuted, my mother sent me a text message. She said, “Listening to interview with Sean Stephenson on my walk. Very good. I was struck at the very beginning that he was born the day after you, and what a different experience his parents were thrust into.” When Sean Stephenson was born, he wasn’t expected to make it through the night. He was born with brittle bone disorder. Throughout his life, he suffered hundreds of bone fractures. Even as an adult, his limbs were twisted, he never grew larger than three feet tall, and he was confined to a wheelchair. In July, I rushed from Medellin to Scottsdale to be by my mother’s bedside. She had suffered a brain hemorrhage, and – as you may have heard on other episodes – she later died. About a month and a half later on August 29th, I was still in Scottsdale – where, it happens, Sean Stephenson also lived. I was sitting in a cafe, and I took a break from writing to open up Instagram. And I was instantly saddened more than I was already. The first photo in my feed was of Sean, and it said “in memoriam, Sean Stephenson 1979–2019”. His wife, Mindy, had posted it that morning. When Sean Stephenson was born, he wasn’t expected to make it through the night. But he made it through forty years. In those years, through his work as a therapist and through his writing and public speaking, Sean inspired a ton of people. I was one of them, and when I returned to my parents house, from the cafe, I saw one of Sean’s books sitting on the shelf. Get off Your "But”. My mother had bought it after hearing Sean on the show, so I guess he inspired her, too. Listening to this conversation in preparation for writing this intro was even more powerful than it was the first time around. I always try to get a superpower from my guests, and listening again helped me realize that I had internalized some of the lessons I learned from Sean. Mostly that Sean has a way of helping you realize the limiting beliefs you put on yourself. The ways that you tell yourself you’re the victim. The scapegoats you create, on whom you can blame your shortcomings and failures. I always felt there was something messed up about that: Sean was dealt a tough hand in life, and so now I feel better about my own situation? That does sound messed up, but it works. And now that Sean is gone, this conversation serves as another reminder. A reminder to make the most of each day you’re here on this earth. Sean did that. I’m trying. One fun thing I didn’t realize until I listened to this conversation again: In this conversation, Sean recommends the book One Small Step. One Small Step is of course the book by Dr. Rober Maurer, who you heard on episode 187. That episode is a hit. It’s worth listening to. I had discovered Dr. Maurer’s work through another channel. It made me realize there’s so much valuable knowledge in the Love Your Work catalog. Even listening to each of these conversations several times, there’s always something new to discover. So if you’re craving new episodes, try re-listening to some of your old favorites, as we head into the new year. Our Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondayss About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Sponsors https://honeybook.com/loveyourwork Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/sean-stephenson-memory/

In the 1840’s Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis noticed a pattern. He noticed that too many new mothers were dying of a fever. And it didn’t seem like a coincidence to him that many of these women who were dying shortly after childbirth had something in common. The doctors who delivered their babies had just performed autopsies. The death rate – by this fever – of new mothers, whose babies were delivered by doctors who had just handled dead bodies, was sometimes over thirty percent! That’s incredibly high, even by the standards of the 1840’s. The death rate of this clinic, where doctors performed autopsies and delivered babies, was so high that some women gave birth on the street, rather than go to this clinic. So Dr. Semmelweis performed an experiment. He tried one simple thing. This one simple thing dropped the death rate from this fever from the double digits to the single digits. Some months the death rate was zero! The one simple thing Dr. Semmelweis did: After doctors were done performing autopsies, before they delivered babies – he had them wash their hands. Today, Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis is recognized as a pioneer in antiseptic procedures. I wish I could tell you the same was true during his lifetime. Instead, he was ridiculed. He lost his job. He eventually moved away. Nearly twenty years after his experiment, Dr. Semmelweis still couldn’t convince most of the medical community to wash their hands. He was committed to a mental institution, where he died fourteen days later, after being beaten by guards. The guards didn’t beat Dr. Semmelweis to death, though. You can’t make up cruel irony like this. He died from an infection in his wounds – an infection which could have been prevented with antiseptic treatment. The antiseptic treatment for which he is now known as a pioneer. Image: The Death of Marat, Jacques-Louis David Our Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David explores what it takes to make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Facebook Messenger Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Sponsors https://offgridmindfulness.com Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/cell-phone-emfs/