"The writing is just getting something down.  The editing is where all the work comes in.  What was your editing process like? I had a rule that I would not put   anything in the book that had not  bee..."

"And you went back to that store when Building  a Second Brain, the book came out, right?  Yes. I felt like as you were   writing Building a Second Brain, especially  towards the end, that book almost ..."

"I did three, four, or five day full writing  retreats, which were crucial for that reason.   So here's the other thing that happens is,  if I had a morning call, it just killed me.   Because let's say..."

"many ways. He's a painter. He does large-scale  canvases or paper, everything from figures to   still lives, to landscapes, to even abstract.  Has been a painter his entire life, since he   was five y..."

""The first lesson is that quantity and quality are  not opposing forces. You don't have to sacrifice   one to get more or the other. One can be used  to enhance the other, like two sides of a coin."  ..."

"don't bother getting bogged down in whatever  you want to call it, writer's block or creative   block. When I sense that I'm even starting to get  stuck... That's the thing, you can switch tracks   wh..."

"What was your editing process like for that book? The editing process was many, many, many passes.  By you, by other people? I remember I reviewed  an early copy, so there were a bunch of us that   di..."

"more people? I remember sending you this YouTube  video about Taylor Swift and her creative process.  That's right. And that shows up here.  Yeah. In an interview about how she wrote the smash hit,   ..."

"You got really into the  Godfather while writing that.  Yeah. Why did I get so into the Godfather? It was Coppola's notebook, right?  Oh, yeah. Yeah. There's a number of things that  are quite interes..."

"Yes, yes. That was essential. I had a rule that  I would not put anything in the book that had   not been tested publicly. It was too risky,  it's way too risky, just like a startup would   validate t..."

"slow. To finally publish a blog post and then even  if you have comments, finally see those comments,   the feedback loop is very slow, whereas teaching,  especially live, but even on Zoom as we know,..."

"it in any situation, just ask, here's sort  of how it works. What is the moral lens that   I'm looking through? And there always is one. And when I say moral, it could be a religious   morality, what ..."

"There is totally a trade-off. Yes. Such a steep trade-off,   such a trade-off. Absolutely. I hope that's not a sword to   the chest, but I think it's revealing. It is a sword to the chest. Every time ..."

"score. That is so good. You wrote another really  good one, this was more of a series about the   theory of constraints. But one of the things that  you do is I think that you spend 10 to a hundred x ..."

"feedback. All that stuff is just preparation. Where does your interest in the Toyota production   line and manufacturing show up in the way  that you think of the creative process?  Yeah. I have a who..."

"just generating a lot of quantity, but also vice  versa. A lot of times you have to study a problem,   very high quality, very subtly. Then you come  up with a solution that allows you to produce   a ..."

"you wrote Building a Second Brain, and then you  came out with this, what, 12, 18 months later?  Let's see, about 14 months later. Okay. How did you think about   this book from a positioning perspect..."

"met, you were a blogger and a course creator,  and now you're an entrepreneur and an author.  And a YouTuber. And a YouTuber.   Why do you say that so passionately? Because those two things, author an..."

"It's so much more effective on YouTube. What do you think your biggest   weakness is as a writer? Always approaching things   from a primarily intellectual, analytical, heavy,  overly thorough... This..."

"How do you think about that process? The annual review is a huge part of my   life. I find that deep introspection about  the fundamentals of my values, who I am,   what I want for my future is not go..."

"I'm forced to follow through with it. A lot of your advice to new writers is,   don't worry about having your own ideas  at the beginning, just be a curator. Why?  Oh, gosh, because that's all you can..."

"things like, you ran a regression analysis of  what metrics correlate highest with book sales,   and you found that it was number of new Amazon  reviews per day that was the defining metric.  Yes, yes..."

"Apple Notes is much easier than Evernote, which  is easier than Scrivener or something like that.  Yeah, yeah. I mean it's kind of, the medium  is the message, which we usually think of   in terms of ..."

"Let's talk about building rite of passage. We  had that weak in Mexico, and I think that one of   the best things that we had working together and  one of the worst things was we both had such good   ..."

"What is your writing process like now? Mostly mornings. That's another thing   that's changed. I can really only write just from  a physiological level for about two hours. It's   like a specific two ..."