Transcription
I just got asked by a reporter, uh, a question, and I'm sure he's going to publish it in a news source that's behind a paywall. And that interview is going to be great for the people who are subscribed to that publication, but I feel like the question was interesting and good enough that I should answer it publicly in a place where everybody could see it, or not. Maybe. I don't know. This is a little bit much.
I have a hard time with this, like, knowing where my line should be when it comes to, like, giving advice. But the basic question he asked was, like, after all this time, what do you feel like is, is, like, the thing that's responsible for all, like, you doing all of these different things and, and having success in, like, many different fields and formats? So I'm going to tell you what I told him. I hope it's useful.
I don't have goals. I don't have dreams. I think that the, the narrative that we are taught about, like, "follow your dreams" should, uh, come with a huge grain of salt. In fact, if, if I could just take it out of our minds, I would. If there's, like, a place you can put it in your brain and then light that place on fire, that probably would be for the best in terms of actually having impact on the world.
A dream I definitely did not have in 1988 or 2005 was being a YouTuber because YouTube didn't exist. Now, I did have the dream that I wanted to be a science communicator. But I started making YouTube videos on January 1st of 2007, and I did not start being a science communicator on YouTube until 2011. Before I did that, I did something that was absolutely not my dream, which was I became a musician, like a touring musician. That was nowhere on my list of things that I wanted to do. I didn't know how to play guitar when I uploaded my first YouTube video.
So, if not dreams, then what? If I had to say this in, like, a trite little way, it would be: Don't follow your dreams, follow your tools. Now, among your tools includes you, includes your values, includes what inspires you, includes what you know, what you've learned about, what you've been drawn toward, what excites you, what you believe in. All that stuff is part of your toolkit.
So, at a certain point, I get, like, mental blocks for math. And so, I had a hard time continuing to develop that skill, even though at first I was, like, good at math. And then eventually, I was like, "I can't figure this out." Like, past much past calculus, I kind of broke. And maybe I could have developed that skill more, and that would have been valuable, but man, physical chemistry turned me off.
But I did, as a, as a, like, a young man, have very big, sort of, young man goals, you know? Like, I wanted to, like, I wanted to be involved in, like, the science of ending death. That was, like, a big thing for me. I was like, "This is this is my thing." And I, like, I'd read books that that I had, like, heroes who were fictional characters who had, like, I don't need to get into details, but that's what I wanted. I like, when Catherine asked me, like, my dreams when we first met, I was like, "I want to fix death." But really, what I wanted was to, like, have an impact on the world. And for better or worse, I still have that one.
But I just think that, like, having and aiming for a singular dream doesn't work. Like, it means that, like, a bunch of other things pass by, and you just, like, watch them pass by 'cause they're not the thing you wanted to be. And I saw this so much early on in YouTube where these people would have amazing audiences. They'd have, like, money coming in. They'd have creative freedom. They'd have everything. It would be simple. It would be small. They'd have the opportunity to, like, build their own thing and completely own that thing. And then they would spend, like, half or three-quarters of their time auditioning for TV shows, things that they didn't control. They'd only get a tiny slice of the money of that, 99% of the time they would have wasted the time of the audition when they could have been at home making YouTube videos, which was more fun and more lucrative and ultimately much more impactful on their future as, like, creative people. But they had this dream. They had this dream that they wanted to be on TV. And so that was the thing they were aiming for.
Like, I really honestly think at the core of what has helped make me successful is that I don't have dreams. I don't want to do anything in particular. And that allows me to do two things. Number one, just look at my toolkit, which includes me and includes what I want and includes, like, the things I'm curious about and, and my values. But just look at my toolkit and think, "What can I do with this?" And if it's an album of nerdy punk rock songs, great. If it's a sock subscription club, fantastic. If it's an online video conference, dope. If it's, if it's 2D glasses that help you watch 3D movies in two dimensions, sure, I'll do that.
And I am such a project-based learner that without those things, my toolkit would be much more limited. So every time I take my toolkit and I say, "Okay, I could do this," it turns out my toolkit was not complete enough to actually do that thing. I had to learn a bunch of other stuff along the way. Say, like, "I'm just going to, like, write some comedy songs." Songs. Well, if you actually want to, like, release those with a music video, maybe you have to learn how to work and do kinetic typography in, like, an Adobe product of some kind. What was I using? The one that's the motion design one. It's been a while.
Both the extraordinarily enabling and very difficult part of my current life is that I have so many tools. It's my, it's personal relationships. It's trust. It's audience. It's skill. It's talent. It's, like, all this stuff that I've built up that now that the number of, like, unsolved problems I could apply that to is fairly large, which makes me have a hard time, like, if you have, if you can do these things, not doing them. Which is why I've got, like, 21 different projects on one of my burners right now, and, like, in any given week, maybe I don't work on the thing that I really should be working on, which is probably my book, but I'll get there eventually, you know? And instead of doing this, I'm making this video. What the hell, Hank?
So, that's one thing that it allows me to do. And the other one is, like, very counterintuitive, and people don't like it, kind of. I don't get the best responses when I tell people this, but it is when they're like, "How do you decide what to do? How do I, I fall downhill is what I say." I am not swimming upstream. Very rarely. Like, I might be swimming upstream in terms of, like, the broader culture, but in terms of my skill set and my toolkit and my values, I am doing the easy thing in any given moment 'cause, like, I only have so much energy.
There are times when I'm doing the hard thing, but it's only ever because I h, I am obliged to, like, I have to because of some, you know, obligation that I have that I, I would feel like a true monster to ignore, like, that kind of thing. Mostly, and this is, like, the secret to the productivity: I have, I have built a very substantial toolkit, and I h, and I mostly fall downhill. So I do what's easy.
So, like, the idea isn't a good idea if it's going to require a tremendous amount of discipline from me because I know that I don't have that discipline. Like, I know what I'm working with, you know? I know what I'm working with, and, like, this. I'm working with this and this, you know? It, it can't be dis, it can't be like that guy who gets up at 5 in the morning and jumps in the cold plunge and, like, gets everything, you know, all your macros are in order, and then you, you get, like, two full work days in because you're like, "Well, my first workday starts at 5:00, and then my second workday starts at 5:00, and that way I get two eight-hour days and I get everything done." Like, I'm not that guy. I'm not even the kind of guy who can, like, get up in time to go for a hike before it gets hot out. Like, I'm going, I'm falling downhill.
And it's a weird thing to be this productive while not being particularly dedicated or, I mean, people will yell at me about this, or hardworking. I am hardworking, but, like, I don't feel like I'm hardworking 'cause mostly I'm just doing what I want to do in any given moment. Now, there are times, and there could be long stretches where that's not the case. I am focused, and I am exercising self-control, and I'm pushing on something that I, that I need to get done that I don't want to do during all of the times that I'm doing it. But mostly, mostly.
But in terms of concrete advice, things that I actually did that I think have helped me be this way. You know, there's, like, who I am, and, like, we're all different, so we're going to have different ways of doing things. So I'm working with me, like, as I exist. But a piece of concrete advice that I really would give to people is: If you have an idea for something that you think is, like, an unsolved problem or, or just even interesting, do not shy away from spending some significant amount of your available capital on that. And that is both time and money.
It's very easy to give, and I think that you should. It's very easy to buy education from a university. This is absolutely a good way to spend money, and also, uh, it is, it is easier to do it if even if you don't have money because student loan infrastructure exists. But that's not the only way to learn stuff. And so I, and at various times in my life, I have said, "Okay, it is all right for me to spend 5% of my net worth on this idea that probably won't work." And when those things have failed in my life, which early on they all did, I came out with new tools. You know, that was when I was young and silly, and, and, like, those ideas were not going to work. Like, there was no path, but I learned so much doing them. So much, like, working with someone else, like paying another person to to work with you, wild. Like, and early on, there was no income for those things, so I had to do it out of savings. And I'm really, I feel like those were really smart ideas. And sorry, they were not smart ideas, they were bad ideas. Some of them were okay ideas, but they, like, I didn't actually have the toolkit to pull any of them off.
But all of them, I learned so much from just in terms of, like, taking the risk on myself. Like, rather than spending money in a safe way, like with school, or taking the risk on someone else, like investing in something or giving someone else a loan, taking the risk on myself. Letting my, like, letting me see what happened when I, when I outweighed that capital, both in terms of time and money, and, like, better understanding at the end of that process, what was it that was in the way of that success? Was it me? Was it my ability to stay focused on the task? Was it the cost getting bigger than I thought it was going to? The marketing being harder than I thought it was going to? The story not working for people? Like, just there, just not being people who wanted that product, whatever it was. You know, the marketplace. Sometimes it's a marketplace problem, like not understanding or being able to integrate well into, like, the app ecosystem would be an example from today. At this point, there, there wasn't in my life, there wasn't an, like, an app store. This was more like trying to compete on the web for views.
And some of those things, like, made some of the money back. Like, money did come in. Some of those things never, and some of those things became actually made more money than they cost, then just like weren't, you know, that's a big difference between, like, that and it becoming a job. And of course, I'm, I'm remembering all the stuff through through rose-colored glasses, and it was, you know, how much did I actually learn? But I think I did. I think I learned a lot from doing that.
And I hope that people don't, like, think less of me that I don't, like, have a goal that I'm running toward. I'm, like, really looking at an, like, an idea has to solve a legitimate problem, and it has to be achievable with my toolkit, and I have to understand both of those things really well, and that's, like, where it comes from. So understand the problem space, and that's probably the hardest part, and then understanding my toolkit, which is easier because it's, like, I'm, I'm in it. It is me in many ways. I know it's, it's also this computer, and, you know, the relationships I have, and, and the audience I have, but, like, it's that all, all this that feels pretty internal to me. It feels like an extension of me that I don't sort of, like, draw the boundary of who I am at the, the flesh boundary, at the, at the, like, flesh border. That would be silly, you know. How could I imagine that when people are seeing versions of me that made a video 10 years ago, and that's still out there being me, even if it's not me anymore? Anyway, the self is a topic for another video.
And hey, this video is brought to you by this job entering marketing and website manager at dftdva.com. Uh, you can find that at the link in the description. So check that out if you think it would mesh well with your toolkit, which of course includes.