Tim Ferris Podcast – Maria Popova
Maria Popova runs Brainpickings.org.
- Knowing what you know now, what would you tell someone about starting a blog?
- Write for yourself.
- Once you write for other people for anything creative, you lose long game
- You must stay motivated by it to create something rewarding in the long-run
- Key to being interesting is being enthusiastic about your interests
- Don’t think of your work as “content”
- “Content” implies external motive, filler currency for advertising
- No one does content for joy of the soul
- Write for yourself, stay interested, don’t view it as content, love words, agonize over sentences, pay attention to the world
- You have read a lot of books, have you become who you want to be?
- Started in early 20’s as a record of my own becoming and nine years later it is still that
- We never stop becoming or growing, if you do, you’re dead
- Dan Gilbert’s book Stumbling upon happiness should be required reading for everyone. People are works in progress who mistakenly things they are finished.
- Key is being content in any given moment but not so satisfied you cut yourself off from continual growth
- I haven’t become who I want to be because it never ends
- Stop myself of illusion of having arrived
- What is the most significant characteristic of people who have accomplished greatness in any field?
- Consistency
- I’ve read multiple journals and diaries, they show up no matter how they are feeling
- There is a deep love of the work and it needs to be done in order to feel alive
- Our culture makes it seem like difficulty and torture confers seriousness on something
- The fact that doing great work for the love of it sounds flimsy and is failing of our culture
- Some creatives deviled by serious illnesses, but without their art, they would have suffered more
- How do you decide what to read?
- Literature is like original internet and many footnotes have “hyperlinks” to other books. Ultimate recommendation algorithm.
- Likely to take you to similar books that call to you.
- What makes book worth reading? illuminates some aspect of how to live, makes you understand your purpose a little more, helps you understand the world a little more
- Really matters what’s on my mind and what I’m trying to make sense of the world.
- Depends on mood, life events, time of year/month/day
- Has to answer some question on how I am going to make my life better or richer
- What text do you refer to again and again?
- The Diaries of Henry David Thoreau
- No one writes more beautifully on the inner and outer world
- Many universal timeless truths
- If you house burned down, what book would you rescue?
- Diary of Henry David Thoreau
- If I could replace, likely my marginalia
- A Rap on Race and On Science, Necessity and love of God two very hard to find books with copious notes on my thoughts
- If you could make every public official read one book and take on a habit what would those be?
- Plato’s republic
- Mindfulness meditation
- Makes it harder to be selfish when you see inherent interconnectedness of everything
- If you’re a public official, the public good should be your primary concern
- How do you turn down invitations that don’t interest you to avoid time jacking?
- It’s harder earlier on because we crave positive reinforcement and mistake interest for affirmation of our work
- Overtime, you get better at trusting your criteria on what makes your work admirable on the inside
- Once you accept requests, it can impact the quality of your work
- Oliver Sack’s memoir, On the Move, was one of most transformation reading experiences of my life and couldn’t recommend more heartily
- When his writing career picked up, he had a sign on his office that just said “No” to remind himself to decline requests that took away from his writing time
- I have a tattoo in right arm to remind me everyday on what to focus on
- Almost always do things for students because if I can help consider a path other than corporate gristmill or persuade aspiring journalist to refuse mindlessness and mediocrity and instead focus on lifting people up, It is absolutely worth my time.
- Do things for friends and people I admire or people I feel kinship of spirit
- Creative culture is woven of invisible threads of goodwill between people who believe in one another.
- Art is carried on the wings of this kinship
- Put investment in rewarding things when put in a position to help