Susan Cain — How to Overcome Fear and Embrace Creativity (#357)

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Well, hello there you sexy little minxes minx is it murder of crows a gaggle of geese? I don't know.

What this is Tim Ferriss welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show where it is my job to interview and attempt deconstruct people who are excellent world class at what they do my guest.

This episode is Susan Cain.

She's been very widely recommended widely requested by all of you and he or she is Susan is the author of the best sellers quietpower subtitle the secret strengths of introverts and quiet subtitle the power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking the latter of which has been translated into more than 40 languages quiet is also in its seventh year on the New York Times bestseller list that is a long time and it was named the number one best book of the Year by fast company magazine, which also named Cain one of its most creative people in business.

She's the chief revolutionary quiet Revolution and her writing his beard in the New York Times the Atlantic The Wall Street Journal and many other public.

Her record-smashing Ted Talk has been viewed more than 20 million times and was named by Bill Gates one of his all-time favorite talks.

You can find Susan on Twitter at Susan Cain Cain at the website quiet rev.

Comment on Facebook under author Susan Cain.

So without further Ado, please enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with Susan Cain.

Susan welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

I have been looking forward to having you on the show for some time and we have a lot of terrain to possibly cover said we may end up having a part 2 and 3, but I want to get ahead of myself.

I thought that we could Look at public speaking just for a second because many people will associate you with this Blockbuster mega-hit of a TED Talk and rumor has it that you straight in the delivery room from the get-go.

Where a Natural Born Killer on stage.

This is true.

Were you born a spectacular public speaker? You can't see to him right now, but he has a very devilish smile on his face.

Of course.

The answer is the complete opposite so I had a lifelong welding back to middle school.

I know exactly when it started.

I've had an almost lifelong fear of public speaking and a lot of people say they're afraid of public speaking and you know, they're telling the truth but like they didn't have a fear the way I had a fear of it.

It was it was so extreme.

So triggering event to new middle school and I was in an English literature class and I probably appeared to the teacher in that class to be not a shy person at all because I love English.

So I was always participating.

So anyway, she called me after the front of the room.

We were doing Macbeth and she called me up with a friend of mine and she said, okay, you're going to play Lady Macbeth and your friend.

Rob is going to play in Macbeth and just improvise the scene.

And for me as a shy person in a new school, this was like total Kryptonite and I couldn't say anything.

I just completely blanked out and just stood there dumbly at the front of the class and finally just had to kind of sit back down red-faced not having said a word and a toast tell her by just listening to it is now and now that I've studied all this stuff that if you have an experience like that, it gets included into your amygdala, which is the part of your brain that registers all your fears.

And then he make you laugh for the rest of your life is doing its job by saying, oh, you know, I'm going to steer you clear of any situation ever approximating anything like that literature class ever again, so After that anytime I had to give a speech and I did it and I used to be a lawyer and and well Street and stuff anytime I would do it.

I would just sort of stuff for my way through and I would always lose 5 pounds because I couldn't eat before like for a week before.

so then then I started writing this book quiet and it was after I had left law.

And I really really really cared about it.

You know, it was my dream come true to be a writer and I cared so much about the ideas in the book and I didn't want my fear to stand in my way and I was getting his Ted talk.

So I had to overcome it started with starter interrupt.

But now that I've had a cappuccino as as long-time listeners, no attempt to jump a lot.

How did the opportunity for the Ted Talk come about that? I had a friend who worked at a told him about the book and he kind of passed on the idea to the curators at the time and I think that they understood that most of the Ted audience is really introverted.

And so they knew that it would relate with her audience and I think that that was probably why they invited me in and I'll come back to you how I overcame my fear in a minute, but I will tell you they turned out to be so accurate that after I gave the talk and I came down off the stage and I was Absolutely mobbed for the whole rest of the week by every single other audience member who are all coming to tell me your that's my story too and I'm going around pretending to be this very confident extroverted person and it's not really who I am.

So included you will also bring it back to you or just hang up that last night at a group dinner, which I helped organize.

Keep in mind that a wonderful restaurant here in York City called a lily is Lebanese place.

I had to take four or five bathroom breaks which were not to use the bathroom is that is what I do at any dinner of more than one or two people.

I have to exit not just the conversations but the environment to just recharged my batteries and gather my bearings for a few minutes.

Feeling a kind of overstimulation over Spanish moving to Austin and having these group dinners and twitch and wants to do because like I would never to socialize that way I always love to socialize when on why like, the way we're doing right now, you know sitting here just talking point for me in terms of size 4 to 6.

I can handle it depends.

It depends for me also on the environment I think more so than the number of people.

So when I do these group dinners, I will generally host them at home or have them at one of my friends house not in a popular restaurant.

So what's interesting about that is how strategic you are about it and I really noticed this with people so we are just talking about Ted.

I was just talking to Chris Anderson who runs Ted about the Phenomenon and he describes himself as an introvert too.

And he said he loves group dinners if he can if there's a specific topic that everybody is gathered there to discuss and he knows it's going to be something really substantiv.

Then he's in his comfort zone, you know, but if it's still kind of the same orifice socializing heat heat want to leave so just on the Tactical practical side.

I also tend to very frequently cook the meal for the group so that I have a task while people are arriving and talking also deliver it because I'm often inviting people who don't know one another so I wanted them to have a chance to chat without having me is a Mutual crutch if that makes sense yet.

But in any case it I can play extrovert I can come get it playing after work.

But up until they 6th grade.

I wouldn't even got to reset some sit on the step and read usually books about sharks and fish because I want to be a marine biologist but I wouldn't even go out to recess a lot of what you talked about it and it written about certainly not sure if we go back and talk to sixth grade you right this minute, but do you have any idea that you would have the life path that yours has taken that that's so public absolutely not know definitely definitely not me.

What happened in 6th grade also just Did four people might be wondering what happened in 6th grade if it's up until 6th grade what happened in 6th grade or I should say more accurately.

The summer of fifth grade is that I had a huge growth spurt and I had been bullied really badly.

I was born premature and very small and I was bullied really really badly up until the end of 5th grade.

Then I left to a summer camp and gained about 30 pounds of muscle in group 4 to 5 in is over the summer came back and then exactly and then the boys who have been accustomed to blame me try their usual Playbook and I just went on this vigilante spree like The Punisher and that changed the dinosaur skull that I was able to actually go outside and do things that I wanted to do at recess from that point on so I didn't mean that I socialize lot more but I had more Mobility but Like you in this part of the reason why I wanted to start with this.

Question about overcoming a fear of public speaking is that it's when people see the finished product it's easy to assume that it comes from an attribute as opposed to a skill.

And in fact a lot of what appears to be natural appears only to be natural because it started off very very unnatural and someone has worked at chipping away at it over time.

I think that's true.

I think almost so often when you see someone who's really good at almost anything it's because they actually started out exactly the opposite and then they cared so much about fixing that problem.

So but in terms of how I overcame that fear and I have this kind of Evangelical desire to share it because it was so extreme.

I feel like if I could do it then I know anyway, I can overcome any fear.

So first of all, I spent years sitting in therapist office office.

Who is Ali discussing what might be the sources of this year? And you know, what do I trace it back to you and I like that and that does no good at all a big believer in therapy but not for this type of issue.

So what really does it if you're afraid of something you can't you have to have to expose yourself very slowly to the thing that you fear in really manageable doses.

So you can't start off by giving the Ted talk.

So in my case, I signed up for the seminar and it was a seminar for people with public speaking anxiety here in New York.

And you know, you'd get there and on the very first day.

All you had to do was stand up say your name sit back down to declare Victory you're finished and that's it.

Chester's light Masters.

Yes.

So the guy's name.

He's amazing.

His name is Charles to cagno and you can find his organization.

It's a speakeasy.

Calm and I think it's spelled with three.

He's perfect in the show notes for people as well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, and maybe it's an end to do these things like he'd have people stand on either side of you.

So you didn't feel all alone up there onstage questions.

Like, where are you from? Where do you go to college really easy stuff you answer the questions and you're done and it's like if you do that little by little by little You actually really can overcome it.

It's kind of crazy but true, but I want you real bad having said all this still, you know, there's something about attend talk that's on some whole crazy the other realm of public speaking nerves that even if the setting is exactly the same there is a performance anxiety associated with that three letter acronym for sure.

Yeah.

We were we were talking about this before we started taping though.

So many of the speakers are really practiced on stage and yet you see them minutes before they go out and sweating bullets and and the roads are all losing it because we were chatting for a second about in Chris Anderson in the exact term, but there's some space right next to the stage behind the curtain called the Zen room or the relaxation Cube.

There's some very pleasant sounding name of the space and its intended to be the The next up batting cage for the the two or three speakers to come and I remember it's probably 15 or 20 minutes before I was supposed to go live or no.

It couldn't have been that was playing hour before and I really didn't want to be around a lot of people and in The Green Room there all sorts of staff and lots of people Milling around and and working on production and I thought to myself I need to go to the room.

And so I walk out to the Zen room and I won't mention names but there an app like three just Killers.

These are consummate professionals who've done this type of thing thousands of times people.

I look up to it would love to someday have a coffee with and they are freaking the fuck out not helping not helping.

I need to leave the center of right now.

Yes, it's a different Beast.

How do you go from talking about your favorite color on stage of two people next to 210 then graduated from that Toastmasters, which I also completely recommend and should I describe what that is? But yeah, okay so Toastmasters it's a worldwide organization.

You can absolutely find one near you kissed her everywhere and and it's basically the non-for-profit thing where you sign up for you sign up for a group that meets near you and once every two weeks to get together and you practice public speaking together and they have this this ritualize way of doing it in some of the time you're practicing speaking off the top of your head and sometimes it's a prepared speech and it's just kind of giving you that exposure therapy of you putting you in the Beast of the thing that most frightens you you have to show up every two weeks and do it.

So I did that but then the next day after that It was my husband's idea was I hired a coach for the full week before the Ted Talk was really amazing guy named Jim Fife who I also completely recommend and since then he has coached many other Ted speakers.

So I worked with him morning till night for a full week before the talk with him.

Okay, so he he did a really brilliant thing.

He was very psychologically attuned and I said to him, you know, I'm really comfortable in general talking to people went and wine and kind of like Cosley sitting on a couch and talking about life.

I love that.

It's it for me at that point though getting up on a stage and holding forth was the hard thing.

So he said, okay, let's practice your talk sitting on the couch and just talked to me about it.

And we did that for like 2 days and it was only after that that way then moved to the stage and started getting into kind of the theatrics of it.

And that really that that kind of transition was so helpful note that this is I spend so much time with it.

I'm so obsessed with good teacher.

Scout good coaches.

This is very common where they will effectively say, let's start from where you are right now and they will they will always return if they sense any time.

Overwhelming fear to bring you back to a point of Millie already or comfort and then Edge into the next concentric circle of hell.

So have to show a lot of non judgments because I had some dark moments during that week, you know for me this was the abyss and I was just hanging out in the abyss for a week.

And so he saw me, you know, I only just met him and he saw me not in the most flattering circumstances and yet I didn't feel embarrassed by that line or is it more of an interview that he used like an intake.

Do you remember what they like that? He's such a human guy.

It was just like we are just talking disguise doesn't take smart smart smart film.

So the amazing thing to me now is I know a super ironically have a career as a public speaker.

Like I travel the world to all different companies in conferences and all over the place if we could tell 6th grade to him where he would be what would he say and I say that to myself to like if you could have even told me eight years ago that this would be my life.

I would have been so shocked by it and now I've come to like it.

Do you have any particular pregame ritual or anything that you did in the hours leading up to your talk that helps or that you didn't do I have things now back then I just suffered but what what do you have to have a few things? I do deep breathing just like everyone else.

I'm sure you've heard that a million times but it's got to be real deep breathing.

He know where you really feel your belly and your diaphragm filling up, but for me, what I also do is I usually think to myself and I do this especially when I'm speaking to an audience that I find more intimidating, you know, like a group of Finance people at an investment bank or something for it.

I will stay to myself there.

I am sure is one person in this audience who has a child who is shy or introverted and if that child has a better life because of one tidbit that that person hears today, then it's all good.

And that pulls me out of myself instantly gives you also heard that you can clear.

For winning the presentation so to speak but I think it's deeper than that to me.

It feels also like I think when people get nervous about speaking, obviously, they're really nervous about being judged right but this completely shift the energy where it's not any longer about how anybody judges me.

It's about.

Can I help that kid out there.

I wanted to say also that part of the reason I am more than happy actually excited to spend so much time talking about this is that it is not specific to public speaking.

This just happens to be a very common fear and perceived weakness of many many many people also as a side note what Warren Buffett says is his greatest ever investment and put more specifically is a Dale Carnegie course.

My husband magnified his ability to do almost everything else to communicate effectively both in spoken word.

But also in the written word and he in some respects.

I was just going to say that I've never I don't think it over to I've ever spoke about this but I also did Toastmasters and if you have trouble finding it often times, there are large companies that will have within their HQ or any large location their own Toastmasters group.

That's actually how I found it in San Jose initially was at Adobe.

So I would go in and I would do this Toastmasters and your your description of having this very logical progression of small wins layered upon small ones getting up on stage and then getting off stage but getting up onstage have a two people next to you answering a few questions and getting off stage is so Incredibly effective and I am laughing right now because I remember when I Was preparing for my first presentation at South by Southwest.

So this is a very large.

Festival in conference in Austin, Texas in the timing was 2007.

It's about a I want to say a month month-and-a-half before my book is going to come out my first book which I'm very nervous about there been no speaking slots, but I had pitched Hue for us at the time.

I who I've been introduced to that.

I would I would take anything available corner of a room hallway if there are any cancellations, I would really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you and love you.

All there was a last-minute cancellation not by a keynote speaker.

But by a sponsor who is going to have a stage to pitch their products from in the in this makeshift Cafe, and I think I'm in I'm in but I was so incredibly nervous about this.

That in the beginning in particular I was in this is true today too nervous to practice my rough rough draft of the presentation in front of people.

That's what I did.

I was I was saying it I guess better at a friend's house.

He had three Chihuahuas and I and I went outside as play the Chihuahuas and they followed me into the garage of Zyprexa in the garage.

I didn't want to practice in the house weird.

My friend's wife was and I gave my presentation.

I I feel reasonably confident about the content but I I wasn't comfortable with any of the performance aspects of trying to keep attention.

So I gave my draft of this talk over and over again until I could get the dogs to sit and stare at me somewhat bewildered attention and that was that was the litmus test for me to graduate to giving a rough draft in front of humans of for those people out there.

Who are wondering whether this this all comes naturally to me? It does not at all.

Have you talked about that before? I don't think I've talked about that.

Certainly.

I don't think I talked about it on the podcast and the the Ted Talk also something I did what I did not do for the South by talk, which I thought really made a difference was I practiced giving the talk in front of small groups of strangers.

Once I had a recently published version and I asked friends of mine who worked with larger companies who had teams during lunch hour if there is they're having to be never empty conference room.

Could they invite people to hear a rough draft of a TED talk and then I would ask for feedback and usually there was enough time that I could give it two or three times so I can actually incorporate their feedback give another version.

And once I give him the second version there are a lot more people in the room or what Going to be critical right at the first round you get one or two.

And then the this is just something I thought about a lot because I've been so nervous about public speaking so long and it did it by the way doesn't really go away.

Like I at least for me I still have those nerves but with Ted very specifically I I assumed in this came from sports, but I never applied at that.

I was going to be my heart rate was probably going to be 30 beats per minute higher than normal and that it was not just important for me to practice the content that you practice under the physiological stress that I would probably experience when trying to deliver with content.

So I would to a bunch of push-ups in another room and drink.

I got two double espressos and wait for it to hit and then go in and give my dress rehearsal to see if I can handle that stimulation.

That was so so smart and listening to that story is remind.

Give me a of this crucial step that I left out.

In a lot of ways that kind of mistake that I made which is yeah.

I told you I worked with that guy at gym for a week.

It was amazing and I thought I was pretty well ready at that point.

So I talked to my friend Adam Grant.

He's a very dear friend.

Speaker 2 at a really good speaker and who also started out as a very nervous and fight his description in a terrible public speaker.

He says he used to get terrible reviews from his student and he just worked and worked and worked and at it and now he's most popular professor at work.

But okay, so I was talking to Adam about all this and so he said, so I'm leaving for Ted on Sunday morning right to fly out to California, which is where it was at that time and he says, oh I'm going to pull together a group of friends and you can practice your talk in front of them.

And so this is Friday night and I'm leaving Sunday morning.

And so I show up at this apartment full of Adam and his friends and I think that I'm pretty well done with the talk.

And this is the first time that I'm giving it in front of any kind of group cuz I didn't have the foresight of what you just described and Not only was I so nervous but I realized from the feedback that a lot of the content was all wrong and it's Friday night and I'm leaving you like the next day basically or the day after the next day.

So I went home and I just spent the whole entire night rewriting the whole final third of the talk.

And then I'm like on the plane going out to Ted trying to memorize the new talk that is why I recommend you need to get real people in front of you.

This is just before exposing it to any prospective client that you really need to get into the messy reality of what a live audience or a real customer looks like and the same is true for me.

I made God of changes in the last few days, which I thought were just going to be fine-tuned right and then you actually I really need to come I need to completely change by 30% of this and I was very very nervous before the Ted Talk and I came offstage and I did not think that I didn't I didn't think that I blew it but I didn't think that I I did a great job.

I came offstage thinking that they're definitely bits and pieces I could have done better, but Work.

Seems to work.

But I want to come back to one thing that you said for the benefit of people who are listening now.

So you said that you still are really nervous when you give a talk, but are you really as nervous as a used to be because I I really want people to understand that like you can get to a point you might still have butterflies.

It's not like the nerves completely disappeared but they guess who I am in my experience and from all the literature that I've studied on this day really do get to a point where you can manage them and the difference between manageable and non manageable is gigantic terms of its effect on your life and your career and everything would make sure I ate depends a lot on the event.

Right.

So if it's we're going to do a Q&A and it's a friend of mine interviewing me on stage.

That's not from my perspective really public speaking it is but at this point I could do that with zero preparation if it's anything resembling a keynote if it is Tim on stage talking.

To an audience and they expect something that has been well rehearsed.

Mike physiological response is still very strong.

I get really sweaty hands I Pace I have very minimal contact with with anyone before hand.

But let me mention a few a few things number one and I are both Mike Tyson and Dean Martin used to vomit or nearly every performance.

But the way that they psychologically contended with that evolved over time and what Mike Tyson cus D'Amato who was the trainer really in a lot of respects I think.

Boxing boxing Scholars are boxing fans would agree made Tyson into what Tyson was it is prime as well as an athlete used to say something on the following that the the hero and the coward feel the same thing.

It's how they responded.

I still believe that and there is no courage without fear and for me, I have come to see those physiological symptoms that used to make me panic that used to make me feel like I was doing something wrong that used to make me feel like I was unprepared as simple precursors to a performance the way that I frame them for myself is completely different and I've learned to view it as this energetic asset that I can use and that has made all the difference and it did it has decreased in some circumstances, but certainly before 10.

I mean I'd given hundreds of different presentations and it was like I was getting the switch for the first time in heart also for people who don't know they are very as they should be strict about many things that Ed including running over and over again, and I want to say and this is exactly what they should say.

But in effect they say if you run over by you should not run over number one do not run over.

If you run over I can if you get to the point where you're like 30 seconds over we will come up and remove you from stage and while I'm preparing and while I'm rehearsing one of the things that made me most stressed out is that my finish times were really variable.

Sealy 30 40% the time I ran over then other times I would run 2 minutes under but miss something really really important.

Good God.

This is just a crap shoot.

Like I am at the craps table with my timing and that really was was a concern for me.

So that was another element.

That made Ted unique from me was that degree of cut off? Yeah.

I felt that way too and I did end up going over by over a minute.

And and there it is.

And there is like we cannot we cannot stop this performance.

But I want to say I'll do for anybody who is listening and who is right.

Now in the grip of this kind of fear and isn't sure whether they can really get past.

It also would like what is waiting for you on the other side of it is so gigantic because there's just there's something weird about public speaking where it has such disproportionate value to in a way what you're investing in it.

You don't like you're going up on stage for 18 minutes or 40 minutes or whatever or you or maybe within your own workplace even give me a 2-minute talk suddenly.

Everybody is regarding you as a leader and as someone who they can turn to you in a new way from if you hadn't been willing to put yourself forward in that way Beverly King as the force multiplier for the value of your other skills.

Just absolutely true and then public speaking it away is also a a a wonderful diet.

Gnostic tool and what I mean by that is as I remember talking to you.

A friend of mine who he's a he's a wealth manager for a lot of bukaty monks who you would recognize and he said I know them generally better than therapist save been seeing for a decade within the first few hours because money brings up everything that talking about money brings up the full spectrum of someone's insecurities fears desires Neurosis sex, also true and public speaking.

I think if it makes you remotely nervous when you start going to public speaking like it at least for me it kind of ring brings up all your stuff.

So if you would simply interested in personal growth, it brings to the surface many different many different pieces of your personality and psyche that you can then work on in a way that transfers to other areas.

So that to me, it was my experience and I find really interesting.

Okay.

Well, maybe you don't have to play hide and go seek with talked to her 20 years to find all of the bits and pieces when if it rather than following these different gingerbread Trails, you can use certain Fearful circumstances to just bring it all right, or a lot of it to the surface.

That was my experience and not saying it's true for everybody but it was one of those things like talking about money talk about sex or public speaking.

So, okay now we just bring we just bring everything before friend for me.

That was that was also a even if I even if I had not had any interest in getting on stage and giving presentations.

Yeah, it would have been valuable in and of itself are there other things that you're fearful ever have been afraid of that you've overcome.

No, I mean that was really the big one for me.

But yet we were talking about this before I guess my Bugaboo in general is that I just tend to be a worrier so I don't know what other than the experiences I've had with public speaking.

It's not like I have full-on Panic or anything like that.

It's more like it's a a very familiar companion for me.

So I've had to just come up with various hacks around it.

What are some of your hacks? For example, when I stopped practicing corporate law and I decided that I wanted to be a writer.

I told myself that it's really hard to make a living as a writer and I said, okay the goal is to publish something by the time you're 75.

And at the time I was 33 at the time that I said that and I kind of did that instinctively because I was always doing these hack just wanting to completely take the pressure off of something that I otherwise love too deeply and like I just knew that if I turn this thing that I deeply loved into Best source of like this has to be the place where I make my my living this has to be the place where I derive some kind of professional stature.

It was going to soak a lot of the joy out of it.

And so that's the kind of hacks that I just naturally do on a very related note.

Could you give us a little bit of context around the leaving law like why you left long and then You decide you want to be a writer and you can kind of alluded to it, but does that mean that said lame your rent is dependent on writing from the time.

I was four and then you know, it was for a whole bunch of reasons and like so many people I graduated cut like I took some creative writing classes in college and I decided that you know, I'm not actually that good at this and I need to make a living and I also kind of had a desire eye thing to show myself that I could be out there as a kind of alpha person out of the world of Finance or something.

So I went to law school and I I practice law of Wall Street law for almost a decade and And during the time that I was practicing law it was so all-consuming that I completely forgot about the fact that I had wanted to be a writer.

It wasn't like, you know, I was walking around conscious of this broken dream or something completely forgotten and the first few years of practicing law that I really loved it.

It was just this kind of crazy adventure that I was on and as the years went by it started to get really tough for me, you know, I'm not a very natural lawyer in a million different ways, but I was on the partner track and I was committed to it and and then came the day and I think I may have told you about this in an earlier curse upon its butt.

Then came the day when is senior partner in my firm walked in and said I was supposed to be up for partner that year and he said well, we're not going to be putting you up and funny thing is to this day.

I don't really know if he meant we're not putting you up ever for partner or just not anytime soon.

I don't really know what it meant.

All I knew was like number one.

I burst into tears and number two Heroes my get-out-of-jail-free card.

So 3 hours later.

I had left the firm like I was gone.

I took a leave of absence and I just started bicycling around Central Park.

Like I didn't know what I was going to do next but As soon as that space opened up that I now had free time for the first time in like 10 years.

I started writing and I had no idea that was going to happen.

It was almost like a movie has been waiting for you.

Like I remember that night in my apartment and I just started writing on my laptop and then a week later.

I signed up for a class in Creative nonfiction at NYU and I just had this complete feeling of certainty that this was what I wanted to be doing and zero expectation that I would make a living out of it.

So So if this is a really important thing I think.

I think if you have that kind of a creative dream and a creative love you have to do everything.

You can not to spoil it with the pressures of paying the rent and all those those other things were the pressures of needing to derive from a professional status from it.

So I set up a little side business teaching people negotiation skills, and that was how I was paying the rent.

But the thing I was really doing in my heart was this beloved hobby of writing.

This is this is super super super super super important and there are.

It's that it's true in Creative Fields.

Pretty much every field just for the sake of illustration writing music Etc that also Another Printer should be here these stories of desperation where necessity is the mother of invention and it about a bing bada boom magic wand and then there's a billion dollar company here or there is JK Rowling or whatever she is.

But those are in my experience the outliers at this they make for great cover stories in magazines, but the fact of the matter is that From what I've seen certainly with with guessing this podcast is that Princeton soman chainani who has a number of Mega successful novels, but he had a SAT prep counseling service that he offered.

Well past the point that his first book was successful because he wanted to always feel like he had a safety net so that the writing would not be tainted or even subconsciously influenced to match the market or whatever the lens might become by this pressure.

And that is something that whenever possible has come up as a really valuable.

Chosen one hand Financial survival mechanism, but even more so as psychological they're freeing do ice creams for sayings and the Glamorous narrative is you know, you had so much courage.

You took the risk, you know, you were you were depending on their company or this book or whatever and if it didn't work it was faster, but you were the one who beat the odds like we love that narrative and for most people that are really bankrupt narrative and there's a kind of deeper glamour actually in in the kind of story that you just told was because you're you're you're doing everything that you can to deeply protect the thing that you love most definitely Now the book itself give may not be not.

No backstory.

I'm sure a lot of people don't how long did it take to get that book done.

So I'm laughing cuz it took a really really long time especially by Tim Ferriss standards.

I'll see you in like look at your life trajectory.

Like how does he do that answer? So yeah, I took from start to finish it was about seven years and I will say in my defense it during the seven years.

I also had two children and was raising them.

So that was part of it.

But I also just think I'm kind of a slow writer like I like to really really think about everything super deeply and what I think is probably people might not know I had a deadline as all writers do and I turned in some sort of draft upon my deadline coming to do, you know, after 18 months or two years and my editor basically read it and said, this is terrible and she said, you know go back and completely throw that out start from scratch and take all the time that you need.

And and you might think that when that happened that I would have been really bummed but I was actually related because I knew that it was terrible and I knew that I needed much more time and I have no idea what I was doing.

I never written anything before so yeah.

I was just really happy to have that time that it's actually really unusual like usually in publishing they've given me a big fan through the book and usually they want their dance back and they're not willing to delay like that.

So that was Hebrew understanding at her with her again on my Nextbook.

That's it.

It's all so smart in the sense that I took a mediocre book is more of a liability the notebook at all, right? Yeah, and because you know, I have this philosophy about writing that it's the the deep love that has to be protected at all cost because of that.

I don't care how much time it takes.

You know, like I'm just Interested in doing it as well as I can.

What is your what is your writing process at this point look like so you've you had your experience with that book? And now when you are writing, do you have a daily practice? Does it go through phases of research periods that organizing then? Putting all of that into cruised synthesis.

What is what is your what are your writing routines or how do you think about writing these days whatever thesis and working with and then I spend a year to just walking around the world looking at everything through the lens of that tesis.

He knows what used to be introverts and now it's on to a new topic and I'm taking crazy notes through that.

You are so every conversation that I have every book I read while doing it.

How do you how do you take an organizer notes to do the notebooks to do it digitally what does nerdy but I like a lot of writers do differently.

When you hear my answer you're going to know that I need a consultation with you for the Nextbook.

I have basically all those conversations all those ideas and notes and thought them having I stick them all into one word document and then I go and that document becomes about seven or eight hundred Pages by the time I'm done and then I go through that document and I kind of tagging as I go along and then I'm separating everything out by topic.

So I end up with like eight or nine loose leaf binders that are organized by topic but in each of those binders, it's just like one big massive nose and then I think about where do I want everything an idea? But whatever.

I'm emotionally moved by one of the ideas that I'm taking notes on.

I try to write out the riff around that idea right then and there because you don't know if that emotions going to come back see how to capture it when it happens.

I think it's perfectly fine system.

So you it's like technology must have come up with something better like I do to Microsoft Word.

Tyler they're probably better tools available.

But I would say also that a lot of people confuse new tools for better content a people.

It's is very easy at least speak for myself for a second when I'm writing.

I have to disallow myself from thinking about say marketing because marketing is fun and exciting and to you easy for me because I put her hands on you as a kid watch 20 infomercials or something in any case that takes it's a it's a way to procrastinate doing the harder piece, which is the actual research and digging improves.

That's the hard part for me always has been but it's the most important part of a similarly a lot of folks get him become consumed by Upgrading your tools multiplying their tools versus just the words.

You got to put the words then and I have some questions about the word.

That's when you're going through it adding things to the word doc and you come in you're tagging things.

So you can separate them and you mentioned binder so you're printing the stuff out and then separating them.

Is that mean that when you put in a new note in the word doc, you go to a new page if it's tag differently so you can separate them more easily later.

Does that make sense as opposed to each time? You add a note then he returned twice and then add a new note if they're tagged differently.

It would seem like you would have to cut up the page into multiple pieces to do you start a new page.

Are there any particular ways that you tag friends? That would be a chapter name or would it be a theme? What would the tag? It relates to something.

I've already done then I'll search for the thing.

I've already done so I can add it to that section to make it easier or later makes sense.

But sometimes I can't think of it and then I'll just add it to the end of the document which control the f word keeps a journal every day at midnight and it's weird awkward Ox.

I spent a few days reading the instructions for Scribner one of these programs for me.

It looks great.

But if you really simply and you don't use 98% of the features, I find really useful just because you can create a view by which you see.

You all of your separate documents or actually I should say rather you see you are a tentative table of contents on the left side in a in a vertical pain and then you can look at what you're on the right hand side.

Then I would have it set up so that I have to to split windows to look inside you see your table of contents and then there's a research in the whatever research you want.

That way you can be working on a document in the upper right hand pain while you have your research that your ring off of in the bottom.

Right? And if you decide to move docks around to see how it affects flow, it's just Dragon drop.

It's actually quite quite wonderful.

They did have some issues with footnotes, or maybe I was just too technically incompetent at one point when you that had to export on the publisher insists on sight word, which maybe that will change some point but getting a little a little geeked out but the scrivener at least give it in her for almost all of my books.

There might be one exception at the 4-Hour Chef because of how Usually intensive it was was done outside of that it in terms of routine or ritual spend a year Gathering these nuts.

So they have no more cf700 to 800 pages to the word doc.

And then what happens if they're more or less organized by what the chapters are going to be? Yeah, and then comes the time to write during which I'm still doing more research, but I'm starting to write and yeah for me the writing like that sitting down with my laptop and thinking about it all that's like I want to say is my happy place but that's not really the best description.

It feels like it's his place that I go deep in my mind and I really love being there and it's like no matter what happens to be going on in my outside life.

I always have those few hours a day where I'm going to a cafe or library or whatever and I'm sitting with my laptop and my cappuccino and I'm just doing it and that's so huge for me.

And I feel like I train myself to associate writing with all these pleasures of you know, sitting around and cafes and things like that.

What is the day of a consistent time when you sit down with her cappuccino and do this? Are you a morning writer or you a catch-as-catch-can writer or evening right around and you also have kids you have other obligations to when do you when do you tend to do your writing or do your best running he can answer it how we like would be ideal but if you say I have kids so my routine is that I dropped my kids off at school that's around 8 then I go and I either play tennis or do yoga everyday and then after that I do my writing and that's a pretty good time for me.

But what time of day was that typically around 10 or so that I'm starting? Yeah, if I had no other obligations the best times of day would be more like either 7 in the morning and also super late at night.

So to time.

That I have no access to you for the stage of light, right? Yeah, and you start writing this is this really interesting to be hopefully everything other people see start the say around 10.

Do you break for lunch? Do you skip lunch? Do you have a a standard type of lunch that you would have and the reason I ask is that I think part of the reason so many writers seem to work between the hours of say.

This make us up at 10 p.

m.

And 7:30 a.

m.

And they tend to either be night owls like me or early risers is that there are fewer distractions and they get in they can get it relatively uninterrupted block of 325 hours, but you're starting at 10 then.

Most people have lunch scheduled shortly thereafter in like 2 hours later.

So do you do you break for lunch? Do you have something really small? How do you how do you handle that is for me just speaking personally.

It's okay.

If I might have time, of course I have time for a five-minute phone call.

But if I do a five-minute phone call about something very mechanical or mundane like calendaring stuff or whatever and I'm juggling.

15 pieces that run paper in my head.

I kind of have to start over a lot of times like I drop all those boxes because of the test strip everybody but it's true for me.

So what what is what is your schedule look like then once you sit down until I realize that I'm not concentrating well anymore and very often that happens after two or three hours and I just have to take a break.

Like I actually I have a lot of discipline if my brain would cooperate like the so I would happily sit there for 7 hours until my kids come home from school.

So certain point I'll notice that it's just not coming anymore.

Yeah, and so then I'll take a break and I'll eat or something like that.

But you know, I would say you were mentioning work at night because it's when you get uninterrupted time, and I think that's one factor, but I also think the reason that those hours and to be so good.

Tonight time is when your cortisol levels are really low.

Which of course is your stress hormone.

I thought I noticed this in myself all the time that the ideas that I come up with late at night and different from the daytime ideas.

They're completely unfettered by any stress.

And so I'll just I don't know.

I just make different kinds of associative leaps and there's there's a softness and he's in my thinking and I feeling about the ideas.

So I think like that's one advantage of late night writing and then in the morning you got the high cortisol, but you also have the sort of acute attention.

I told you that I can definitely see that I also find the writing late at night with him riding at 2 in the morning.

It's a very hard from Aaron Burr.

I want to say it was Ian Rand who wrote she has she had a book about the craft of nonfiction and there was some it's not exactly it wasn't bad for a thing as a real world example, but an infectious saying writers many riders will do almost anything to not right and there is the story about that the white tennis shoes.

Like I have to clean my white tennis shoes for 4 before I'm going to ride because I'm going to go out and then when it's 2 or 3 in the morning, I have to check email to make sure X is just a viable excuse just removed a lot of bulshit distraction that I would impose on myself to avoid doing what it is that I find hard when I was writing quiet.

I suddenly developed this idea that I had to learn everything in the world about digital photography and the rule of thirds and all that stuff and I have never had any interest in photography before or since these two weeks of mania where I didn't want to have to be looking at that manuscript over there.

Are there any are there any any particular Amalur student of the crap? Are you taking creative nonfiction courses, are there any particular books or resources or writers who have had a significant impact on how you view our practice writing through Z is that I can so I can try to buy some time to I can make it if it's helpful.

I mean I draft number for by John McPhee at this is really as very first just to spend time with him as an undergrad College because he was teaching a seminar but about structure in the way that he thinks that structure saved me because I Thrive with some type of predetermined blueprint for stranger.

It's very hard for me to just free and flow of Consciousness.

Let things take some emergency forms to very hard.

I do know friends.

Who who does that really really? Well that terrifies me.

So I need the scaffolding Bird by Bird by Anne.

Lamott Bird by birds for people who don't know the book.

I will say just before getting into a short description has saved at least half a dozen friends of mine from the precipice.

Meaning they were at the point of throwing in the towel and just quitting their books and their they're all writers in this you're at the point of the Reich.

I'm done.

I can't do this.

It's too stressful.

I don't like this and what it is going to be terrible and there were going to in some cases return their dances and just walk and Island.

I want to see at least half of them read this book when I'm finished their books and their books went on to become New York Times Best Sellers to talk about an important window for making a decision and the gist the book the title.

I should say comes first from it was her brother and brother and the model is a writer and her brother had this experience.

We've had something like an entire semester in the making this up.

Let's just call it forth grade to prepare for this end of semester project supposed to put together a term paper on birds or something like that and it's like the night before and then any preparation and this poor kid who granted kind of deserves it because it could do to prep but none of us is having such a nervous breakdown at the kitchen table with 15 books about birds and you just is paralyzed say it was and dad came over like put it on his shoulder and said to stay Bird by bird buddy Bird by bird and 8th cir the psychological life raft break glass in case of emergency kit for writers who are just hitting that point, like maybe you did with the photography or just like I want to do anything other than look at that screen of that page.

I just I can't handle it and I don't know what to do except for that reason not initially for the the nuts and bolts of the writing process itself before the psychological component.

It's like if you had any if you were a top athletic coaching you had your sports specific technical coach and then you had a mental toughness coach who also doubles as a shrink like the mental toughness go to doubles as a shrink as the bird by bird and remembering she also talks about shity first draft three words or incredibly helpful because you know when you're looking at your job than it is always really shity at the beginning and so just knowing okay.

That's what it supposed to be.

But yeah, you know the other thing that's been really helpful to me.

So I told you I started taking that creative nonfiction class at NYU and the student all of us who took that class got along really well, so we formed a writers Group after the class was officially done and we stayed together for years and we would meet once every week or every two weeks and read each other staff and especially at that stage that really really helped you have getting the feedback but also having the kind of camaraderie and support system totally isolated and I actually met my literary agent from one of the people who was in that group who the publishing lawyer and I have this idea for this book about introverts which at the time to me seem like the most idiosyncratic project on Earth, but she said when you're ready, I know the right agent for that.

Weather really serendipitous thing as weight.

I want to share this when I put together the proposal for the books that became quiet.

I sent it out to that agent who she recommended and to for other super amazing agents to whom I had connections to and every single one of the other ones.

Past and some of them said, you know, I really like the writing but I think this topic is not commercial enough and I just don't think it'll sell so could you come back with a different topic and I have to pay my agent instantly saw what the potential was going to be and we've been together ever since and I feel like I owe him everything and I love him.

His name is Richard time.

You are out there looking for an agent and I think about this story all the time.

Not only because of book writing but because all these people these other agents if these are experts and these are the culturally anointed Gatekeepers and they know what they're doing and yet they didn't see this one particular thing and I think that that happens all the time.

It was so glad you shared that and either Iverson lyrics Prince.

I reached out to him once it was for Agents who were introduced by a very successful author to add Metzler like 7 years earlier by volunteering at a nonprofit, which is a great way to meet people above your paygrade as a side note.

Just like feeling water glasses for panelists works really well.

And so I had the right introduction the writing.

I didn't think my writing was Tolstoy or anything but it was it was possible and complete rejection.

Not at work were pretty heavy-handed about it.

The one of the third Jedi band member named Jillian Manus.

I'm very good agents and she passed but she gave me a lot of really helpful feedback.

And she didn't say this won't work.

She just said I don't think this is the right fit for me.

Right and ever was think of each I was intimidated by the prospect of writing a book and read the book before she said treat each chapter like feature magazine article beginning middle and end self-sufficient chapter can live on its own and I followed that advice ever since we met on fiction which makes it easier to write also experience stuck somewhere.

You don't it's not like you have to cross that bridge to get to a chapter that sequentially should show up three chapters later.

You can treat it in a modular way, right? If you get really bogged down you can skip which also in some cases like the rest of my books leads to a book that can being read non sequentially naked.

And I said three out of four turn it down finally sign with my current agent Steven Hanselman.

I who still work with this day, they similarly.

Yeah, and he just become an agent.

Wow.

He just become an agent but part of what attracted me to him was that he had a long career as a very successful editor and sausage.

This is just an Eclectic.

I went to Divinity School plays in a jazz band and really went like my kind of my kind of person and then we went out to sell it and I think it's like 26 or 27 + 27 or 28 26 to 28 Publishers.

Turn it down really and then the only one that's it's not about how many people don't get it.

It's about having the right person or people who do And tell me which is so clear it with your buck rhymes like you don't need.

All the people in the world to think it's a good idea.

If you don't need half the people in the world think it's a good idea.

If you need the people who it resonates with to have it resume does not need to be millions of people it could be but it doesn't have to be in it at that one at I have a note down also to just said we are in this respect a ton of time on this, but just to clarify the talk about introversion vs.

Shyness and sci-fi and I came across this when I was doing The homework which is the people think of say Bill Gates write as for the maybe one example of someone who could be useful in distinguishing between the two but could you clarify what an introvert is? How you Define introvert? How am I living from somebody who's shy about that the preference for lower stimulation environments and you can trace it to our neurobiology is like introverts have nervous systems that react more to all the incoming stimuli.

And so that means that we're kind of at her most alive and happiest and switched on when things are a little more chill around us, which is probably why when you're in those group dinners you were going to the restroom every so often because your nervous system wants to tone it down and extroverts have the opposite situation and the opposite liability and cuz you got a nervous system.

Reacting less to stimulation and that means when you're in an environment that you find to quiet you start to get really listless and checked out.

So that's the liability there.

Shyness and I always feel like I have my work has to do with both introversion and shyness by the way, but the China's is much more about the fear of social judgment.

So you'll know if you're a shy person because when you when you encounter someone who has a neutral expression on their face, you will have a tendency to read disapproval in there and to react really strongly to the disapproval you feel kind of really unhorsed buy it and Anakin take different forms.

So it could be a fear of public speaking or it could be a job interview or any kind of situation where you feel you might be evaluated.

So in reality lots of introverts do tend to be shy and vice-versa but not necessarily at all.

I don't know Bill Gates personally, but my guess is that he's an introvert but not specially shy and then Somebody like and Eileen Fisher, who knows she's got this wonderful and I think it's been decades.

Now.

I'm super successful fashion brand.

She describes herself as a shy extrovert.

So like she really wants to be around people all the time.

She wants to be connecting all the time.

If you talk to her she's she's constantly like setting up this workshop and that program and he looked her life and she was always surrounded by lots of people and things going on but she's off and feeling intense discomfort and needing to work through that spoiled.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's it's I would I would certainly describe myself as an introvert and I never knew quite how to frame it into coming across your definition of preferring lower stimulation or environment environment suits with fewer stimuli, except I've ever since I was a little kid been very sad.

Show me my site is very sensitive.

My hearing is very sensitive.

But I'm not shy in the sense that I don't I want to engage and ask questions and interact but if the volume is turned up too much are there too many speakers metaphorically or a lot of difficulty parsing it but you don't have like a shyness would be like, you know before you go into those group dinners.

Are you feeling a kind of social anxiety, right? You have the difference? Yeah, there's so many questions that I want to explore but let's set that we have maybe 10 or 15 minutes more.

I will text you if of the questions that I that I always like to ask sure are there any books that you have given the most to others as a gift or any books you've gifted off to tell the people? I think that the book I probably for the last few years been giving out the most is waking up by Sam Harris, which it's such a fantastic book and it was really for me completely life-changing.

I think probably the reasons it is for many people which is I haven't really known much about meditation before reading it and because I don't care either way, I think by my my nature in a cross between a skeptic in a Mystic or something and it it's a pretty deep skeptical side.

It really needed.

Somebody likes am I such an extreme skeptic 28 years of his life or something in investigating all these different spiritual tools and then reporting back on them for me.

That was narrator.

I could really I felt I could really rely on your talk in a bit about Sam before he sta