To help me when I'm kind of really working through a tough first draft. Is I have a song that I play on a loop with headsets and it just goes round and around and around. It's the same song. And I've picked up that trick from a couple of people that you play this thing and it's it's there's something weird about it. It's very soothing. I know people who work in like cafes and they like that background noise. This is something similar.
I guess.
It's just the same song on a loop again and again, and just hearing it kind of makes me productive. I don't know, it makes me kind of like distraction fully away and I can really really focus. And so I would recommend to people give it a try. Find something that you think you wouldn't mind hearing a thousand times, and then it's just play it on a loop and it it's kind of like a trance, you know. It makes it kind of a work trance. I guess.
Welcome to How I Work, a show about the tactics used by the world's most successful people to get so much out of their day.
I'm your host, doctor Amantha.
I'm an organizational psychologist, the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium, and I'm obsessed with finding ways to optimize my work date. Before we get into today's show, just a reminder if you have questions that you would like answered about work, productivity, the future of work who knows, I would love you to send them through to me. I am dedicating a few episodes to answering listener questions.
I've gotten some really good ones already.
Some of which I've addressed in some episodes of How I Work. So if you have a question you would like me to answer, like my view on like me to dig into research around, just send it through to Amantha at Inventium dot com dot au and my email address is always in the show notes as well. Okay, let's get onto today's show. My guest is Kevin Kelly. Very excited to announce that Kevin is a senior maverick
at Wired magazine. He co founded Wired back in nineteen ninety three and served as its executive editor.
For the first seven years.
His most recent book is The Inevitable, which is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, and he co founded the Hackers Conference and also the Quantified Self movement of which I am quite the fan, and he also writes one of my favorite newsletters, Recommendo. He also hosts the Cool Tools podcast and also founded the very popular cool Tools website back in two thousand and three, in which a new tool is reviewed every single day.
So I've been trying to get Kevin on the show for I want to say, well.
Over a year, and I was finally able.
To secure an hour with him, which I was so excited about. He's someone that I have admired from AFAR for many, many years. I think he's one of the best and most interesting thinkers on the planet, and I'm so excited to share this interview. I found it fascinating to get insight into how he works. And also before we hit record, he literally just before he set me the challenge to see if I could ask him questions that he's never been asked before.
So no pressure given.
Kevin has been interviewed by many, many people, probably has done thousands of interviews over the course of his long career, so I did manage to succeed in.
That challenge, which I was very excited about.
And on that note, let's head to Kevin to hear about how he works.
Kevin, Welcome to the show.
It's my delight to be here at Thank you for inviting me.
Oh, I'm very excited now.
Something I have subscribed to and read literally every week is your newsletter. One of your newsletters Recommendo, and I reckon. I mean, there's not many newsletters that I read religiously, but there's always so many good recommendations for new tools and software and gadgets, and I would love to know what are your go to sources for finding all these new tools and strategies.
I waste way too much time surfing the net in the web. That's that's the sad, sad truth there. For listeners. This is called Recommendo, and every week we send a one page message with six recommendations, two by me, two by Mark Tube Claudia. We publish cool tools and they're kind of like whatever we want to recommend, whether it's a cool tool or a cool place to visit or somebody to follow, something to watch, something to read. It's
just kind of pretty broad in that sense. And sometimes there's tips, sometimes there's other kinds of suggestions, and so we try to amuse ourselves not repeating ourselves. And we've been going almost four years, and we're going to have an expanded book version of it coming out self published wise or on demand. I guess they call it publishing this Christmas time. So it's part of what I do. It's part of what I've always done. It's part of my habitual take on the world is I'm always sniffing
around for cool stuff. And just as you know, I don't know, a musician might be always doodling on their guitar and occasionally, you know, some chords or hook comes in, and that's just what they do.
That's how they do.
I am kind of always sniffing around for things, and that's how I do it.
If I were a fly on the wall watching you sniff around, I feel like the way you must sniff around on the internet is different from a lot of other people because you you are people's go to source for so many things. So what are the things that you're doing differently when you are like sniffing around on the internet.
Well, that's that's a fair question. I haven't been asked that, you see so.
Well, Actually, you know, I don't really spend that much time sitting in front of the computer compared to maybe some other people. But I would include in my sniffing around having conversations with people. So I do have a lot of conversations, and I would include even these kinds of conversations where the range is pretty wide. And I think maybe here's maybe one answer to your question is that my interests are pretty wide. So I am kind
of always interested in learning things. And so I'm going down and going into areas where I know nothing, and that is very productive for finding things that you know, are interesting because they're just out of the normal circle and the normal mill stuff. And so that's one thing. And I like to have pretty broad conversations with people and talk to people that I have just met or meeting and so so so there's a conversational element that that I do spend a lot of my day with
in conversations. And then there is another aspect, which is I am, and have been since I was a kid, a maker. I make stuff. I make all kinds of things, and again I like to broaden the kinds of things that have making, and that making forces me to try out things, to research things, to do stuff, and in
that doing I learn. And so whether it's manual things or you know, building a business or starting something there's by by making things and making things happen and trying to spend a lot of my day in the making mode, the creation mode, that kind of surfaces philos of these things.
I want to pick up on what you said around starting fresh with something and when you are starting fresh with a topic, where do you start? I mean, that's so overwhelming for so many people. So what does that look like for you, those first few steps that you're taking?
So like right now, I recently added a three D printer. They've been around for a long time, but I never had one, never had the need for one. But I have several tool philosophies being a cool tool kind of person, and one of them is to not buy a tool until five minutes before I.
Actually need it. Oh I like that because they're so.
Available, so easy Amazon next day deliveries, Like there is simply no reason to have one before you are, i mean literally are going to sit down or stand and use it. And so I've known about d D printers for a long time, but I've never really absolutely had to have one, because you could always mail off and have shape ways or somebody make one for you or a friend. But I needed I moved to a place where I needed to do some of that, so I got one.
And it turned out that while there's some maintenance in keeping the printer going that I didn't expect, most of the work was learning how to deal with and create three D files. Files in three D, three D you know objects. This is like a whole new world, and I, like, I entered it and realized, oh my gosh, I don't know anything.
This is like totally new.
I am total beginner, and so my method is to try something. So it's to kind of like to try to learn by doing a project rather than you know, just taking the course and then going as I like to kind of learn as I go along. It's kind of like on demand learning where I need it. I need to know this thing right now, so I'll go and then I well to do as I go, and I'll go to YouTube almost always to learn how to do it, and then do it until I get stuck, and then go back and learn how go back to
YouTube and learn how to do the next thing. And then after I do that, I realized, oh my gosh, I'm missing some real fundamental knowledge. I need to take the one on one introductory course. And at that point I have enough questions that that course is really valuable. But when I start off, if I just start off taking the course of the training of the Linda course whatever it is, it doesn't I don't know, it doesn't stick. So I like to do kind of on demand learning even from the beginning.
Yeah, that's interesting.
And when you're on YouTube trying to find the I guess the most useful videos to watch, how are you doing that?
Like?
Are there people that you trust that you're going to Are there certain search terms that you're typing in that maybe other people wouldn't think to type in.
No, I'm not that sophisticated. There are.
There are a couple terms for things. Like one of the things I did learn is that you if you want to find good reviews, use, you know, use the word use vs versus something versus something else, and that will turn up things. And another kind of a search hack is to use the word solution. When you have a problem, add the word solution, so you just don't hear the problem.
You hear, but the solutions are. But the truth.
Is that I rely a lot on the recommendation engine of YouTube when I'm searching around, So those are usually the first ones I look at. I'll look at the automatically recommended ones as one way to kind of search through it. And you know, obviously the qualities call uneven.
It really varies tremendously, and there is, by the way, anybody out there there is there is a huge need and market for kind of a Wikipedia version or I don't even know what to say, a user's guide, or if I have to see a whole worth catalog version of YouTube stuff, because it is troublesome and not very elegant looking for the best of the ones that you're searching for, but sometimes you know that they are so obscure that it's hard to imagine any human doing this.
I think this may be a job for AI, helping us to find higher quality ones by actually looking not just at what people say, right, but actually looking at
the video itself in a high level capacity. Nonetheless, it is it is a chore, and I've watched I share of really horrible tutorials, but it's worth going through that because even with that, the power and the speed and the depth of you two is just amazing that I think highly highly underappreciated the value and what it's doing in the way that it's accelerating learning and culture, and
I'm wholly dependent on it. And you know, I go there for answers, and I go there for recreation, just to just to watch a master maker make something.
Hmmm, yes, it's really interesting. I want to come back to what you said about your tool philosophy. I like that idea of not getting something until five minutes before you need it. What are some of your other tool philosophies.
Another one is that I believe in earning great tools.
That almost all the tools that I buy at the beginning are all cheap. And here we call we have harbor freates. Afraid it is kind of a Chinese and it's low end, not low end. It's very inexpensive. It's not I write cheap tools, power tools, often tools, and it has kind of a reputation as really being low end. But for some cases, a low end tool is all
that you will ever need. And in other cases, what I like to do is I like to earn the more expensive, durable tool because by using the cheap tool, as I said, sometimes it's all I need, and if I'm an occasional user, it's plenty. Other times, if I
decide that or find out myself. Using it more and more, I begin to understand what I want from it, what's missing, and what I'm willing to pay for, and the kind of features or the quality that I do desire through use through using it, and then I can and then I'm kind of educated and ready to buy something better, and that may not even be the best. That may do another step of using that one and finding that, oh I'm using a lot and I still need an
even better one. And so rather than kind of you know, some people preach, you know, buy the very best tool that you can afford, I don't do that. I buy the cheapest possible tool to begin with, because oftentimes that is enough that I'll ever use. Sometimes even with heavy use, like a harbor freight thirty dollars grinder is almost indestructible. I mean, it's like you're just there's probably all you ever really need unless you're a professional of some sort.
So I like to move up and earn where I say, earn the expensive tools by becoming educated through the use of the cheaper tools.
That's a really interesting philosophy. I'm going to have to think about that for myself because It's definitely not one that.
I tend to apply.
I feel like I'll try to go straight to the best, but I lack the idea of why you wouldn't do that that makes a lot of sense. Something I want to segue into is one of the most popular blog posts that you've written is sixty eight bits of Unsolicited Advice. And I must say, out of all the blog posts that I've read in my time using the internet, that is probably one that I've shared most frequently with a lot of people.
Well, thank you, thank you very much.
I think it's just brilliant.
And I'm going to link to it in the show notes because I think for listeners, if you haven't read it, just read it.
And there are a.
Few that I want to dig into because I'm curious around how you personally use them at the moment in your life. So one of the bits of advice is you say the purpose of a habit is to remove the action from self negotiation.
You know, longer expand energy deciding whether to do it. You just do it.
Good habits can range from telling the truth to flushing and I love that I use that a lot in my life, and I want to know for you, what habits have you formed that you think have served you best, like perhaps over.
The last year or two, new habits or.
Old habits as well, happy to go for old habits.
On the intermitt what they call intermittent fasting bandwagoning. So I stopped eating breakfast, and you know, I kind of like thought about it for a long time, and then I kind of like say, Okay, I'm gonna make a commandment. I'm going to make it a habit. And so now it's just like not an option, it's just I just don't do it, and I don't have to think about it.
I don't have to negotiate it.
It's just like I don't I don't do breakfast anymore, and this no longer. And so it's easy in some ways to kind of do because I'm not negotiating, and there's no exceptions, there's no you know, it's just now it's just a habit.
And uh have I had.
I'm trying to think of some other habits this year that I picked up. I'm trying to make it a habit, but I haven't quite succeeded, which is I have this the beginning of the year, I declared that I'm going
to now go what I call video first. So it was a sort of an idea that anything that I produce, I would start with video first and then move to text or move to other media because I have been I've spent fifty years being a still image person, a text oriented person, and the culture is definitely moved away from text and books to YouTube. To go back to my point, and moving images on the screen, so we're no longer people of the book, were people of the screen,
and I am trying to move myself there. And so like on my phone, I have a habit I would have a habit of taking still pictures, and now I'm trying to make the new habit of taking a video instead of a still picture because I need to retrain my brain from being a still camera to moving in time. And so I'm trying as much as possible to make that a habit of hit the video first, think in terms of video, reconceive it in terms of video, be the video rather than be.
The still image.
And so I haven't been fully successful and not thinking about that. I'm still still kind of working on that, but I think I can finish the year with making that out a habit.
I like that.
And what about work habits and new and old work habits, because I feel like a lot of people have had to, or you know, would be well served to have formed new work habits, given how the landscape in which we work has changed because of COVID.
But what are some work habits that serve you well?
My work habits are just terrible. I don't even know if I mean, I'm sort of embarrassed by how bad they are. But I probably do all the wrong things. I know a lot of people, and I have a daughter who have very i don't know what you call it, strict to do lists, who plan the week out and all this kind of stuff.
I am unable to do that.
I don't even have a to do list except for maybe kind of in the back of my head. And I believe in the power of interruption, so I let myself be interrupted, not necessarily by you know, distractions. But
I have visitors. We have a large kind of social bubble family here, so i'd like I like to keep the day very varied and switch from sitting in front of their computer, could going down to my workshop and working for a while in the workshop, and then going out to do some photography and then I mean coming back in and I don't do much of that on a regular schedule, so I have kind of I'm a little bit kind of free form flowing, and you know, I do have things in the back of my head,
so you know, I've got to finish that video for these people, or I have a presentation that I have to do, and it's kind of there. I do the hard work late at night. I'm kind of a night out that way. I have one little habit that may be worth talking about when I have some really hard writing to do. I'm not a born writer. I'm a born editor. That first draft is a killer for me.
Is painful because for me, it's a kind of thinking and I write in order to find out what I think, because I don't know what I think until I write it. And then as the beginning to write it, I realize I don't have any idea what I'm talking about, and so that first draft is really really difficult. And to help me when I'm kind of really working through a tough first draft is I have a song that I play on a loop with headsets and it just goes
round and around and around. It's the same song, and I've picked up that trick from a couple of people that you play this thing and it's it's there's something.
Weird about it. It's very soothing.
I know people who work in like cafes and they like that background noise.
This is something similar. I guess.
It's just the same song on a loop again and again, and just hearing it kind of makes me productive.
I don't know, it makes.
Me kind of like distraction fully away and I can really really focus. And so I would recommend to people give it a try. Find something that you think you wouldn't mind hearing a thousand times, and then it's just play it on a loop and it it's kind of like a trance, you know. It makes it kind of a work trance, I guess. So that works when I have some really hard writing where I am having to completely focus and think very very hard.
Is there a specific song that you'll go to.
Or for me? For me, there is one song.
It's the same song and I've been using for years and it's a Bulgarians men's choir with a Gregorian chant. I have no idea what it's what they're saying. It's, you know, vocals, like a weird Bulgaria kind of meal was the word. It's like, it's like a deep, strange medieval chant, And for some reason, when I heard it, it made me kind of at ease, meditative, And so now I've played it so many times I can almost start writing as soon as I hear it.
Wow, that's great.
I had Matt Mullenwig on the show a couple of years ago now, and he does the exact same thing. I think it was actually just transitioning out of it and just doing whole albums rather than some I.
Think Matt might be one, and maybe Jason coy Am I sure, but it's not uncommon.
Yeah. Interesting.
Another bit of advice in the blog is you say, perhaps the most counterintuitive truth of the universe is that the more you give to others, the more you'll get understanding.
This is the beginning of wisdom.
And I imagine for you like, well, I can't even begin to imagine how many demands you must get on your time, with who you are and your profile and your networks.
And so forth.
And I want to know how do you decide who and when to give to and also when to say no, okay?
Number two questions I've never been asked before as good one. It's a great question, and how do I decide? So I'm past him because I don't know, I'm having to think about that.
How do I decide?
So there is a very large component of wanting to learn something. This has something to do with the kind of conferences I will agree to go to. It's like, well, I of to learn something from this talk or interaction or interview, whatever it is. And so there's there's a component of that, like like when I was doing a.
Book tour, I did a virtual book tour.
I was one of the first to do a virtual book tour many many many years ago, where I had a whole month of doing these kind of conversations and I was choosing or I was letting, letting me be chosen, really obscure, weird, like there was an association for science camps.
There was a church, there.
Was a another kind of weird high school as some of the audiences, and for me, it was like just having the conversation with them was a reason to say yes, because I wouldn't normally have that ability or that opportunity. So there's, as I would say, one part of that answer is.
Kind of self interest. What would I be getting out of that?
Yes, The second one is more along the lines of and this is a little hard to quantify, will I really be useful? Am I really the right person to be helping? And that is one of the reasons why I often knows is my concluding that, well, I'm really honored that you asked and thank you, but I don't think I'm going to bring anything of value to this. I mean, yeah, I maybe ab'll say something, but this is not really it's you know.
There are better people. There are better people.
Who can do this and give you more, and so you should be going to them. And so that's another way. So I was like, yeah, can I really add anything? And then you know, there's kind of a trivial sense of like, know, do I have a relationship with this person? And for sure people that I have, you know, that are friends that's to me at just a different dynamic.
And then there's strong friends, weak friends, new friends, associates, and so there's a kind of a little bit of like, well, what is what is my relationship already with this person? Because I feel that part of having a friendship is doing those kinds of things, having a conversation, whatever it is, you know, being being engaged, being part of their movie, and so so that's another.
I would say, even a significant factor in it. And then.
A fourth factor in kind of making those calculations would be why they what's the request about really about? Is it a commercial enterprise? Is it a school classroom project?
Is that? You know?
What is that cool nature of it? And I am less and less inclined to do things that are just strictly business. So anyway, I'm not sure if I don't have a really good summary, but as I think about it, that's what I came up with.
I like that. I like those four things.
I think the second thing that you mentioned around you know, am I the like essentially the uniquely best placed person to do this thing?
I find really interesting.
I think I heard that once before from Adam Grant when I had him on the show, and he says something similar around his kind of giving philosophy, Yeah, which I think is it's such a useful thing to keep in mind. It Certainly, when when I first heard that, it definitely changed how I think about request coming through from my time, and I really like that. There are
two other things that I want to dig into. In the sixty eight bits of under sort of advice, the next one is you say being able to listen well as a superpower when listening to someone you love, keep asking them is there more until there is no more?
So I want to know for you, I imagine you must be a brilliant listener because you've learned so much, you contribute so much thinking to the world, and you know you are a lot of people's go to person for a lot of different topics that that be digging into. So what is it that you do that makes you a good listener or makes you listen differently to how other people are listening in the world.
I think it's in part what I don't have. So I feel with a lot of conversations that I am I actually am not a super quick witted thinker. I don't have a quick witted response to things like usually the other people in the room that I'm with or you know, who are much snappier, quicker, brilliant thinkers than I am.
And so I will listen because I don't because I don't have anything witty to say.
So it's sort of like I'm sitting there because I can't move it forward, and then I'm listening. And so it's also I think temperamental because if I recollect back to my time in classrooms, I didn't do something which was I never hardy ever did the homework. I was
just terrible. I still have nightmares about that. But what I did do is I set up in the very front row of the class and I listened really hard, and I would ask questions, and I would listen and ask questions, and then that was the end of the class. I'd go home and I wouldn't even ever think about it until I was in the class the next day, and then I was up front listening and asking questions.
And so that is sort of just what I do, and I, you know, for whatever reasons, again, it's probably the cover for.
The fact that I'm not doing any of the.
Homework and I am not really making student observations. I'm just listening and answering questions. And so I think listening and asking questions are a good pair, and you know, you can go pretty far without with just those two and not having to add anything brilliant to say, are these.
Specific questions that you ask? I guess nowadays that are generally going to elicit something interesting or something deeper.
Yeah, well, going back to this, to the whole idea of asking good questions, I have a whole chapter in I guess it's my last book about the shift from answers to questions. How you know machines if you I mean, basically it's reduced. If you want a really good answer, you'll ask a machine like good Google or a serie or an AI. If you want a good question, you want to hire a human. And hopefully we're going to be trained to ask good questions and we can talk
about what makes a good question. But a lot of a good question is an honest question, meaning you don't know what the answer is, you don't know where it's
going to go. But I found in my conversations with people that I really respect, who's who's thinking is lateral, is that there is there's a little bit of a I don't know, I would call it a hack or a trick or something, a strategy of asking a question where you I'm trying to articulate this, it's it's your your sort of You're you're asking it kind of from outside the usual assumptions or almost like a Martian or you know, you're asking it from a position where it
could be considered a dumb question because you kind of have sidestepped what everybody knows. And that's always risky because it could sound dumb because everybody knows this, but you're kind of asking it anyway. And if you take the right step to the side of that, you can ask a question that it's interesting and not everybody knows, but
it doesn't sound dumb. And so when I'm doing interviews or stuff and trying to have interesting conversation, I will try coming sideways as another kind of way to think about that, where you are bypassing some of the assumptions, or maybe you're questioning the assumptions. Both of those could work.
So it's kind of like Brian Youenicole's oblique strategies, where you're coming obliquely at an angle and it has something to do about surrendering or ignoring conventions in some ways, and again it risks being a stupid, silly question, but that's that's the price.
The other thing that I really liked in the sixty eight bits of un Solicit Advice that really resonated with me is that you say being enthusiastic is worth twenty five IQ points. And I love that I'd been given the advice many years ago that you can't train attitude, which kind of reminds me of that. And I want to know how do you make decisions about who to collaborate with or who to recruit into projects that you're working on.
I wish i'd collaborated even more than I do. I'm very content to be a loaner or solo. I really a loner. I'm surrounded by people, but being a solo act I am okay with. One of the first things I did when I left Wired and had the means to was, you know, rather than buy a new house or new cars, I said, I want a full time personal research assistant. And that has changed my life forever. Having somebody who is on hand to do research, do assistance, do scheduling, do the you know, the book keeping I
don't want to do do do anything. That was like so collaborating with that person, having that person on a team, working together, and now I have more than one person helping just maybe I don't know, ten times fifty times as productive again, give me my really bad work habits. Just having someone help me be accountable to keep me
busy in the right direction. Maybe that's actually that's probably part of the answer to my work habits is that I have an assistant, and therefore I have to be more responsible and the jobs that I get lined up and do, and so that kind of maybe forces me to a little bit more order and structure into it because I have an assistant. But still I'm kind of like more like a solo performer rather than a big band. Wired was a big band and it was really a
lot of fun. Wholw Earth was a big band. I kind of miss that kind of collaboration with a big band. I've done a couple other projects where there was more than one person involved in I miss that I should be doing more of it. But that's the question I keep asking myself. Okay, you know, now that I'm sixty eight and a half, what do I want to do when I grow up? And do I want to, you know, still work with a duet a small solo performers or
do I want to have a band again? And there are plus and minuses on both of them, but I am feeling that I should collaborate more. And then to answer your question of how do I decide? Well, Number one for me is do I really enjoy spending a lot of time with these other person or persons because we're going to spend a lot of time with them, and so that you know, compatibility friendly thing is hugely important. And I just simply don't work with people that I don't like.
It's like.
No amount of talent is enough for me. Life is way too short. So I tend to want to work with people that want to be around with and hopefully they're smarter than me, and they're always more talented than me, and that makes it fun.
What else did you think about, like when you're recruiting your personal research assistant or assistance.
Well, I one of the things I did when I was evaluating them was I gave them and actually paid for real work that would be the type that they would be doing, so we could evaluate their work. And to something you said, which is we're hiring for attitude, not for skills. That was the motto at Wired, hire for attitude, training for skills, because like we were inventing the web, there's nobody at any experience and designing your
programming the web because we were inventing it. It didn't exist, So the only thing we could really hire for was attitude skill, I mean attitude and character and things like that. And so that's sort of what I really look for. I'd like to go for a long walk with the candidates and you know, two things to work with him, to do work, have him do something with us for us, and that's work. And then two take a long walk with them and just you know, try to get a
beat on their character. And that covers it.
What are you talking about on that walk? What are some of the questions that you're asking.
Well, anything except for work.
With their hobbies are how they how they spend a free time, cosmological question, uestions, what's your favorite movie? Just anything except for the work.
M Yeah, I like that.
That sounds that's an interesting thing that I feel like so few people do when they're recruiting new people into a team.
Yeah, it's.
I guess the older I get, the more important. And this probably goes to one of the bits of advice about you attending funerals, the more important it is to me for the character. I'm using it loosely of people as we work, because in a certain sense, it's not that hard to make things. It's it's hard to make things really really great, and there I find that extra ten percent or extra one hundred percent, whatever it is.
It really does come down to character and enjoying the time that you're working with other people because you're going to be in overtime and having to work hard, and so it wants to be for with people that you respect and admire, and those kind of things are to me crucial. I think money, even lots of money, is way overrated, and making money is sort of actually not difficult, but making something that you're proud of and doing it
better each time is difficult. And so the character, the experience that we have, the human relationships that we have, all we're doing it to me become more and more important than just the achievement of At the end. It's kind of like, you know, the old thing about the journey is more impressive, more important than the destiny, you know,
like thinking back to Wired or whatever. We're very proud of those issues, but I have to tell you some of those issues I've completely forgotten even what we said, but I have not forgotten the people and the interactions that we had while we were doing it.
I love that now in the final few minutes that we have, I want to get like a quick read on what are your favorite gadgets and tools and software that have brought you the most joy. And I also want to know from a health perspective, because you obviously coined the term quantified self. I think it was back in two thousand and seven with Gary Wolf and I'm
a massive nerd when it comes to that. I think probably the nerdiest thing I've done is like prick my fingers every half an hour to test blood glue cooaster responses. There's a workaround because I couldn't get Day one. I don't know if you're familiar with Day one from Israel, who actually have algorithms that can calculate your blood glucose response to certain foods, but being in Australia, couldn't access that, so finger precking.
But let's maybe start with health. What are the best tools.
Or gadgets or software that you're currently using, I guess to improve your health or have a healthy life.
You know, despite the fact that I've was one of the co founders of the quantifyself and I've had the habit of wearing the fitbit the early versions of it all the time, and have gone through a number of other of those. Right now, I am not using the technology to track. Part of my thing is that overall my health has been so good. I don't take any pills at all of any sort, not even vitamins. I just I'm just kind of ghosting. I guess I don't know what the word is, but I don't pay too
much attention to my health, for better or worse. I walk and hike every day and still ride my bikes.
But I just am.
Bored by health, and I'm fortunate to be able to say that.
Generally, Like, what are some gadgets or tools or software that maybe have brought you the most joy or even productivity, like in you know, in other parts of your life.
So joy, yeah, joy is that that? That's a good That's a good way to phrase it, Like things that bring me joy. So I carry in my pocket right this moment, my shorts here. I have a ninety nine cent plastic box cutter. That is the one thing that I carry even more than my phone. And even though I have a desk job, I use this more than you would ever imagine. Of course, I'm down at the workshop and I'm doing all kinds of things. So it's a knife, but it's a plastic knife, and I prefer
to anything else because it's very very light. It's made out of plastic, and it's a box cutter worth a snap so you sharpen up. I just snap and the tip off, and I have one for every pair of pants and they're just everywhere. And I use that more than anything else, and I get a thrill out out of using it, and it's it's and I don't care if I lose it because it's ninety nine cents and although but I don't often use it lose it.
Let's see.
I'm looking around my desk right now for other things that are close at hand. I have a notebook. I'm a big notebook user and believer. That's pen ink on a nice stiff page. And I have a turn at diversion to the Moleskins. It's called a Millennialism art book. It's like half the price and brighter colored colors of a big Moleskin book. And I fill those up with drawings, sketches of stuff I'm working on. I'm when I write, I'm a visual.
I like to.
Sketch out graph kind of when I'm trying to think.
Before I put into words.
So I use that and that brings me joy. Let's see, we have a electric car that is not a Tesla. I love electric cars. It's this is a cheap has half the price of a Tesla at the time.
It's a GM Bolt.
It was the first American car we've ever bought, because we've been Japanese Toyota people forever. But I have to tell you it brings me joy. It's the best performance car that I've ever been in. It's really remarkable. There's so much power and torque, and we get it. It's because the batteries are in the bottom. It really hugs the road. It's just really really great. And my daughter has a has a Tesla, and you know, electric cars are.
Just superior in every way.
And I think the switch to electric cars is going to be fairly fast because they will soon become less expensive than a regular car and they're twice as good. And so that brings me joy. Get an electric car if you can.
Oh, so, I'm loving all those recommendations.
Yeah, and so other apps.
Boy, I'm looking at my phone just so I have a little tiny app that brings me joy.
I don't use it every day, but because I live.
Almost within sight of the ocean, the Pacific Ocean, I have a tide app and the tide app tells me what's tied, is whether it's high tied or low tide, and when it's going to be low tide and when it's gonna be high tight. And man, that has changed my life because it's like, you know, there's tide charts, but they were like, you know, they're just so already used.
But so anyway, whenever we're going out, it's like, okay, it's a we can time it for low tight and how low with the high B. So you know, it's like, who would ever thought that, you know, the supercomputer that you would carry around in your pocket, that it would also be the tide chart as well as everything else. So that's kind of what's it called. That's called tide Track t R A C. It's I'm on an Apple
I phone. There's probably an equivalent somewhere. I'm not even sure it's the best one, but it works for me. So other kind of uh cool apps, you know, I have to so, uh, there's another app here. It's called seek See Hey, this is quite amazing. It is something I've recommended and recommend it.
But what it is is an.
App that has the user camera and it identifies plants. It tells you what the species is. You hold it over and tells you this is what it is. It's remarkably good. It's going and you need to have connected service because going up to the cloud to do it.
But I have to.
Say, you know, I would say ninety percent, maybe ninety ninety five percent of time it'll give me a species for a tree or a plant or a grass or something. You identify it. That's really cool for me because that was forever My question is what is that? Okay, here it is, that's what it is. It has a name. I can read more about it. Maybe it's even edible. So that's been a huge thing, and that kind of thing won't get better over time, but even right now it's pretty good.
That's awesome. That's also den with so out of time, Kevin.
My final question, if people want to consume more of what you're putting out into the world, how can they do this?
So we mentioned my newsletter Recommendo with one m and it's free. It goes out every Sunday morning. You can sign up at recommendo dot com. You can see back issues if you want. And I also we do a cool Tools podcast called Your Four Favorite Tools. We interview people and ask them about four of their favorite tools. We've been going on that for many years. Every week that's there. We have a website called cool Tools, which is one review or something equivalent of a new tool
every day. Sometimes we're from the podcast. And I have a blog which is very intermittent called the Technium where the sixty eight Bits of Advice appeared. And my newest
project is Vanishing Asia. We didn't get to talk about that, but I spent forty years photographing in Asia all the disappearing traditions and culture, and I put nine thousand of the best pictures into this one huge, humongous, oversized, thousand page book that is now being ready to be printed but probably won't be out because of the COVID until
the end of twenty one. And in the meantime, I have an instagram called Vanishing Asia where I issue and caption one photograph a day from that series of a world that has almost disappeared, but it's kind of disappearing right now in Asia. Between Turkey and Japan, most of every of the countries, including in the midiest that I've been documenting these disappearing textures, festivals, costumes, architecture, and the scenes from Long Ago Amazing.
I will link to all of that in the show notes.
Kevin, it's been an absolute joy talking to you.
Thank you so much for your time.
It's been a real joy myself. I appreciated you asking questions I haven't been asked before. That's always a pleasure. Thank you for that. And I appreciate this moment.
That is it for today's show.
If you liked my chat with Kevin, why not share it with somebody else that you think would enjoy it, or maybe posted on social media, whatever you like. I'm very, very grateful for everyone that spreads the word about how I work. I feel like there are quite a lot of you out there doing that, so thank you so much. It's so deeply, deeply appreciated. And if you are in the mood to leave a review for how I work in Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening to this too, that'd be awesome.
Thank you to the hundreds of people that have done that.
It's so nice getting feedback on my work, so thank you, thank you. So that is it for today's show and I will see you next time.