My new course about ChatGPT and AI

I am thrilled to announce my new course, Create Content With AI and ChatGPT 2024, is live!

This is the soft launch phase for this product. The site and supporting materials are still being developed. For instance, the name of the course might change. Or you may find some little glitches and mistakes, but they’ll be getting fixed over the next couple weeks.

Order it now and save $50!

50 free book summaries on Blinkist

I have a playlist of 50 awesome book summaries on Blinkist, and they’re totally free. They’re mostly about personal improvement, productivity, creativity, and business. Complete list below.

The Female Brain - Louann Brizendine

Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman

Expert Secrets - Russell Brunson

Traffic Secrets - Russell Brunson

The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding - Al Ries and Laura Ries

Design for How People Learn - Julie Dirksen

How We Learn - Benedict Carey

Testing Business Ideas - David J. Bland and Alexander Osterwalder

Daring Greatly - Brené Brown

Burn the Boats - Matt Higgins

From Strength to Strength - Arthur C. Brooks

Hyperfocus - Chris Bailey

ReWork - Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

$100M Offers - Alex Hormozi

Focus - Daniel Goleman

Life in Five Senses - Gretchen Rubin

How Minds Change- David McRaney

Discipline Is Destiny - Ryan Holiday

Think Again - Adam Grant

Chatter - Ethan Kross

Where Good Ideas Come From - Steven Johnson

Messy - Tim Harford

Thinking in Systems - Donella H. Meadows

Nonviolent Communication - Marshall B. Rosenberg

Mindfulness - Mark Williams and Danny Penman

Wherever You Go, There You Are - Jon Kabat-Zinn

Full Catastrophe Living - Jon Kabat-Zinn

Flow - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Building a Second Brain - Tiago Forte

The Willpower Instinct - Kelly McGonigal

Indistractable - Nir Eyal

How to Grow Your Small Business - Donald Miller

Atomic Habits - James Clear

The Male Brain - Louann Brizendine

How to Raise a Wild Child - Scott D. Sampson

The Myth of Normal - Gabor Maté with Daniel Maté

The Extended Mind - Annie Murphy Paul

Effortless - Greg McKeown

How to Begin - Michael Bungay Stanier

Building a StoryBrand - Donald Miller

Late Bloomers - Rich Karlgaard

Ultralearning - Scott H. Young

The 1-Page Marketing Plan - Allan Dib

Life Is in the Transitions - Bruce Feiler

This Is Marketing - Seth Godin

Hooked - Nir Eyal

Hacking Growth - Sean Ellis & Morgan Brown

Make Time - Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky

Build - Tony Fadell

Exactly What to Say - Phil M Jones

How to Reverse Aging. For a Bit.

In my mid-thirties, I got really into an intense, aerobic form of yoga called Ashtanga. The tougher the instructor, the more I liked it. I’d be sliding around the mat in a sweat puddle just midway through class. I lost weight, gained muscle, felt great.

One day, I ran into a friend I only saw occasionally. She said, “You look younger every time I see you!” Even better, I felt younger.

As positive as these changes were for me, that lifestyle didn’t stick. I’d get on track for a few chapters, but then I’d revert to my old ways.

I've been overweight most of my life. It’s the kind of minor heaviness that basically everyone has nowadays. I'm always strong and sometimes in good athletic shape, but I generally carry around an extra 10 or 20 pounds of fat. 

A couple of years ago, I thought I’d finally fixed the issue once and for all. I ended bad habits, started good ones, and reached a healthy weight. Then we had a baby and that went straight out the window. Life became so impossible that I couldn’t cope with not drinking Coke on top of it all.

Folks, I think I’ve finally fixed this, and I think it will hold. Here’s what happened.

Creating the game

In spring of this year, parenting life became more manageable, and my willpower returned. I dropped from 210 pounds to 200 quickly and easily. All I did was moderately improve my diet and exercise. 

Then I plateaued for months. Partially, it was because it was summer, and I wanted to have good times with my family. But it was also because a higher level of discipline is required for me to get below 200 pounds.

I needed to change the game—or rather, create a game. I devised a little challenge for myself. I intentionally chose an aggressive goal. I’ll explain why in a bit.

The goal: lose 10 pounds in 5 weeks. That’s 2 pounds per week, which is the maximum considered healthy. The goal was a weight of 190.5.

I set the following rules targeting my worst habits.

• No eating whatsoever after 8 p.m

• No burgers and fries

• No chocolate, cookies, cake, or ice cream

• No cola

• No lunchtime pizza

Underlying this were some additional informal rules. I would eat healthy and increase my exercise.

Here’s what happened each week.

Week 1

Week 1 was a breeze. I exceeded the weekly goal and lost 2.5 pounds. At this rate, I’ll be done a week early!

Week 2

Yeah, that didn’t happen. Getting the numbers to drop got tough. I also got a cold, so I couldn’t exercise much. I only lost one pound. 

Week 3

Week 3 is when shit got real. I got lodged at 195 pounds. Nonetheless, progress was evident. It was just slower and harder. Then, I traveled to a video shoot in San Francisco for a few days. Despite eating well, those days didn’t burn many calories. I came back about a pound-and-a-half heavier.

Week 4

I was slowly losing weight this week but still stuck at 195, the same weight from two weeks ago. Nonetheless, I noticed my appetite feeling lower and my midsection feeling tighter.

Week 5

In the final week, I break through and drop overnight to 193.5.

Final weigh-in!

The goal was 190.5. I got to 193.5, 3 pounds shy of my goal. That’s 7 pounds lost in five weeks. My goal was 2 pounds per week; I got 1.4 pounds.

Even though I missed my goal, this is a huge success. Not only did I shed 7 pounds in five weeks, that weight puts my BMI within the healthy range. At the very top of that range, but still in range.

It’s now been a month since I completed this challenge. I’ve kept up my good habits. There have been some food indulgences, but they’ve been moderated. I still haven’t reached my original target weight—and I’m not even sure I will! The goal now is to continue to lose fat, but I also want to gain some muscle, so who knows what my weight will be. The scale might not be my primary metric going forward.

What I learned

Set the bar too high. Making the goal harder is more fun. If you pull it off, it’s a huge win. If you fail, you still win as long as you make some progress. My goal was just a round number, a direction to head. After the first couple of weeks, I knew I wouldn’t make it, and the challenge became to see how close I could get.

Don’t consider the challenge a permanent commitment. All you have to do is five weeks or whatever schedule you set. If five weeks feels impossible, do one week. After that, you’re free to do what you want. But I bet once you get to that point, you won’t want to lose your progress.

Keep the time frame short-ish, like six weeks or less. It’s easier to stay motivated. If you can’t reach your goal that quickly, break it up into a series of challenges, with good breaks in between.

Weigh yourself every day. In the past, anytime my weight has gotten well out of range, I’ve stopped getting on the scale. No news is good news, right? If you know you’re gaining and gaining, you’ll do something about it.

Lifestyle goals are fun! It makes ordinary little choices challenging and rewarding. For most of us, the only goals we regularly have are projects, primarily for work. Lifestyle goals are less life-and-death than work goals. If you don’t hit your work goal, that could be a severe problem. Lifestyle goals are lower stakes. And when you fail, you can just regroup and try again. If you keep trying, you will succeed.

I got what I really wanted

I don't know if I look younger, but I'm entirely certain I feel younger. I'm lighter, bouncier, and have more energy. I take steps two at a time. Not having that extra weight jiggling around my midsection feels great. And I can now do a proper finger-roll layup in basketball. I couldn’t elevate enough to do that just a few months ago. 

Minor health issues have vanished or improved. Knee aches are gone. Backaches, worsened by parental lifting, are markedly better. I have a skin condition called rosacea. It's improved, and a related condition, a form of eyelid inflammation called Blepharitis, has disappeared. Most of what’s going on in these cases is inflammation. I wonder what unseen inflammation has also lessened.

My mental focus has improved, though that may be because of other recent changes. I’m also less irritable, probably because my blood sugar is more level.

But here’s what I really wanted from all this.

High blood pressure and high cholesterol increase your heart attack or stroke risk. I’ve only had normal blood pressure and cholesterol levels when I have weighed less. Before this challenge, my blood pressure was markedly high. Now, it’s only slightly high—or maybe not high at all, depending on which country’s guidelines you subscribe to. I just got a physical, and I’ll know my cholesterol soon. There’s no doubt that it’ll be better.

Of course, I did this for myself, but above all, I did it because I don’t want to be debilitated in old age because of my choices. I don’t want to be compromised in my golden years because Ben and Jerry’s Peanut Butter Cup was just so delicious. I want to be healthy for Nora and Little Kirby, as well as for myself.

This is a permanent change. There will be some lapses in the future. Life will get in the way. But I’ll get back on track.

Ripple effects

Just as importantly, this little health challenge has had ripple effects beyond my health. It’s given me a feeling of effectiveness and competence during this fumbling chapter of my life. Getting wins, even when they seem unrelated, helps you gain momentum. I chose a goal, had success, and that inspired me to try new goals.

Reader, create a lifestyle goal for yourself. They’re fun and rewarding. It doesn’t have to be about weight or health. Want to read more books? Get more chores done? Make more memories with your loved ones? Give yourself a challenge. I guarantee you won’t regret it.

P.S. Here are the books that inspired me to get into lifestyle goals.
P.S.S. I’ve got an awesome new morning coffee recipe. Try it!

My morning coffee recipe

Photo by Nathan Dumlao, Unsplash

I’m not one for sharing recipes because I’m not very good at cooking or making drinks. But I’ve stumbled onto a morning coffee recipe that I think is delicious. I’m not a coffee nerd, and there’s nothing fancy going on here. It’s a version of Bulletproof Coffee, which accounts for the butter and oil. It also contains LMNT, a salt supplement that I love in coffee. There’s no sugar and no cream!

Not only is this delicious, it provides nice, even energy for the morning and it’s even a bit filling.

Ingredients

• 16 ounces Four Sigmatic Coffee (or whatever you choose)

• .5 tbsp MCT Oil

• .5 tbsp Unsalted butter, like Kerrygold

• LMNT Chocolate Salt Electrolyte Supplement

Directions

1. Brew up 16 ounces of coffee. I drink it in a big travel mug. I drink Four Sigmatic coffee, like every other tech douchebag. They’re right—it’s delicious! I buy it pre-ground cuz I can’t tell the difference when I grind beans myself. Again, not a coffee nerd!

2. Add about .5 tablespoon MCT Oil

3. Add about .5 tablespoon unsalted butter. Kerrygold is good for this.

4. Add half a packet of LMNT Chocolate Salt. If you like it salty, a whole pack is great too.

5. Froth for about 10 seconds. (I use this frother.)

6. That’s it, enjoy!

A few books that have inspired me lately

This list is related to a recent Midlife Remix mailing. If you’re not subscribed to that, you can do so here.

Here’s the books that inspired my recent “10 pounds in 5 weeks” challenge.

Outlive, Peter Attia
Ultralearning, Scott Young
Atomic Habits, James Clear (thanks Jordan!)
Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy, Walter Willett
The Complete Mediterranean Cookbook, America's Test Kitchen

A couple of these books come with Kindle Unlimited, which used to be a junkheap, but now has many good books.

This post contains affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission if you click through and make a purchase.

Get our free guide, Finish It Now

You have that one project, right? The one that haunts you, the one you believe could be really good. But life's responsibilities keep getting in the way, and it's been sitting on your hard drive for… too long.

I’ve got a new free guide, Finish It Now, that can help you complete that languishing project in just six weeks of evenings and weekends. Whether it's writing a screenplay, recording an album, creating a game demo, or building a website, you can do it, and you will do it.

I’ll show you how to:

• Get Your Head Right

• Make the Plan

• Carve Your Schedule into Granite

• Reconnect, Reevaluate, and Reimagine

Sign up for the Everything is a Remix mailing list and get it for free!

When should you use ChatGPT in your writing? And how much should you use it?

There are plenty of writing tasks where ChatGPT can save you precious time. But there are also plenty of writing tasks where it can cost you time. It’ll take longer to rewrite and edit ChatGPT’s outputs than just writing the piece yourself.

What are the writing tasks that ChatGPT excels at? What are the tasks it’s weak at? And how much can you use it for each?

The Three Tiers of Writing

What is your writing task? Place that task in one of these three tiers: low-level, mid-level, and high-level. I’ll explain each.

LOW-LEVEL 

This is writing that just needs to do its job. It doesn’t need to withstand much scrutiny from the reader because it will get skimmed. Whether it’s “good” or “bad” is determined by whether or not it did its job. You’re not composing beautiful prose here. Some examples: most social media posts, FAQs, terms of service for your site, or summaries of existing text.

MID-LEVEL

This is quality content that should engage your audience more, but it’s not the best you can do. This is valuable content, but it’s not headline material. It’s your content for this week, and you’ll need more next week. You’re probably not going to promote this content for months. Some examples: an article or blog post, a social media thread, or a landing page.

HIGH-LEVEL

This is the best writing you can do. These are big ideas and big swings. This content requires excellent writing and storytelling. It might demand research, analysis, or creativity. You’ll continue to promote or sell this content for months or years. This is your prestige stuff, the centerpiece of your written work. Some examples: a book, video, presentation, product copy, or important articles.

Get the idea? Choose the tier for your task. Is it low-level, mid-level, or high-level?

How much can you use ChatGPT? 

The tier you just chose is ChatGPT’s grade for that level of writing. In other words, ChatGPT is excellent at A Tier, good at B Tier, and decent at C Tier. You’ll use ChatGPT less the lower the tier you place it in.

With A Tier, you can use plenty of what ChatGPT gives you verbatim. (But as always, be sure to proof those outputs and edit them.)

With B Tier, ChatGPT will primarily give you raw material that you’ll rewrite. It’ll also give you some usable text.

With C Tier, ChatGPT becomes a support player, a bit like a combination of Google and a human copy editor. ChatGPT can give you information and edit your writing, but most of the work gets done by you. This is ChatGPT at its least revolutionary.

Beware of C Tier

C Tier is where ChatGPT can waste your time. You can end up typing endless prompts as you search for decent outputs or entirely rewriting and rethinking what ChatGPT gives you.  

To determine if your task belongs in C Tier, ask yourself the following three questions. If the answer is “yes” to any of them, it is.

• Is this a long piece of writing? (Even over a few hundred words is long.)

• Is this a complex piece of writing? (Does it have a narrative? Does it have a personal perspective? Is it intended to evoke emotion?)

• Is this a very important piece of writing? (Is it very important to you, your audience, or your business?)

Again, ask yourself: is this long, complex or very important?

An important note: ChatGPT is still very useful for supporting C Tier writing.

You need lots of low- and mid-level writing to market and publicize your premiere content. It’ll need social media posts, articles, product pages, summaries, etc. ChatGPT can help you do a lot of that work quickly.

Some of you might be wondering why you should use ChatGPT less and less as the writing task becomes more and more important. It’s simple: ChatGPT writes mediocre text that tends to be bland. In small doses, this works just fine. The text will be repetitive, rambling, and dull in larger doses. If you use ChatGPT where it’s not suited, you’ll just post text nobody will read.

The quality of ChatGPT’s writing might change, but that’s where we are now.

The Take-Away

ChatGPT can do most of the work for low-level writing, a good amount for mid-level, and valuable support work for high-level. You’ll use ChatGPT less frequently the higher you rank your project in these tiers. But for most of you, C Tier writing is a minority of your day, so there are a lot of tasks where ChatGPT can save you some time and spare you some tedium.

As always, be sure to verify any fact ChatGPT gives you. You’re responsible for what you publish, not ChatGPT.

This Week Only, Save 30% on Write Now With ChatGPT.

To learn more about how to write with ChatGPT, check out my toolkit, Write Now With ChatGPT. Use the discount code GPT30OFFOCT and save 30%! (Offer expires October 9th.)

This lean and efficient guide will show how to get real writing done with ChatGPT. I do actual work, and I show you how I did it. There’s no hype and no BS. Read more about it here.

Copying: Where It All Begins

In school, we’re all told not to copy. It’s plagiarism, it’s wrong, it’s a no-go.

And I agree! When you’re young, you need to have things simplified. But there comes a time when you need to revisit copying and understand its creative power.

Let me show you how copying is an essential part of creativity. I’ll do this in the simplest way possible.

This is not a trick question: what is this?

Did you say, “Duh, it’s a circle?”

Ding ding, correct!

Now let me tweak it just a bit.

What is it now?

Yep, it’s the Moon. Still just a circle, but with a black backdrop and some stars -- which, by the way, are also circles.

This is a super basic example of creating by copying.  I copied something, tweaked it, and transformed a grey circle into a moon. It’s not high art, but it is creativity in action. 

That’s how you create using copying.

We’ll often interpret what we see differently than others. You might look at that original grey circle and see another possibility. Change two colors and presto, the Sun.

Some might see a ring. Take that sun image, switch that circle to a gold outline, and you’ve got a gold ring.

Some of you might see a flat disc, like a plate.

And some might not see an object at all but a round hole, like a ship’s porthole.

How you perceive is creative. We all spot various possibilities in what we see.

And these things we see then become tools in our creative toolkit. We can use these to solve creative challenges.

Circles, for instance, are the building blocks for all figure drawings, including animals.

How to draw a cat, Illustration by colomio

The comic book legend Jack Kirby used swirls of black circles as backgrounds in his panels, adding extra punch to his art.

Jack Kirby’s famous “Kirby Krackle” dot effect

Inspired by Kirby, the film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse used circles throughout to create a portal to the multiverse.

Kirby-inspired dots in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

To be clear, copying by itself isn’t creative. But it’s a vital part of creativity. We take existing things and remix them into new things. We use existing ideas to solve our creative puzzles.

In our next exciting installment, I’ll use pop culture to delve deeper into copying and start to unravel this important issue: when is it wrong to copy?

In the meantime, check out “Everything is a Remix Part 1” and see how all musicians rely on copying.

Subscribe to the Everything is a Remix newsletter and get FINISH IT NOW, our free guide to finishing that languishing project.

New guide to writing with ChatGPT

Folks, I am thrilled to announce that I have a new guide to writing with ChatGPT. This lean and efficient guide will show how to get real writing done with ChatGPT. I do real work and I show you how I did it. There’s no hype about doing everything instantly or making a million dollars and I tell you in no uncertain terms what ChatGPT is good and bad at. I’ve designed this guide so you can finish it in one sitting. Then you can get to work on your own stuff!

Get it now for just $50!

We now support Apple Pay and Afterpay. if you’d like to pay in installments.

How to stop starting

Your brain wants you to go for it. But maybe… don’t.

Ready for launch? Hold up.

I have a problem with starting. I don’t mean that I can’t get started. I mean starting too quickly and starting too much. This can produce small problems like buying software or gadgets I barely use. Or it can produce big problems like unfinished projects or worst of all, projects that are way more crazy-making than they should have been. 

And you’ve got the same problem. Why do I know this? Because what I’m talking about is a human bias called the action bias. The purpose of the brain isn’t just to think thoughts. Its purpose is to make things happen. Your brain wants you to do it: set that goal, buy that course, start that project. But it’s not so good at helping you achieve that goal, learn that material, or finish that project. 

The action bias tricks you into thinking you’re getting something done. But all you’ve really done is begin… and that’s the easy part. Impulsive choices like these will waste your time and resources. If you fall prey to the action bias frequently enough, and you’ll find yourself demoralized and doubting you can achieve much of anything.

I got burnt by the action bias in an unusually epic way. In 2012, I was finishing the original Everything is a Remix series, which was a big success. I was hot and I wanted to capitalize. I wanted to launch something and I wanted to do it fast. I launched a KickStarter for a new series, This is Not a Conspiracy Theory. I had almost no clue what it was or what I was going to deliver or how long it would take or how much it would all cost . (How many successful KickStarters have ultimately cost the creator money? I’m guessing plenty.)

This is Not a Conspiracy Theory worked out. I made the thing I wanted to make, I got to the place I wanted to go. But it took eight years and the process was far more painful than it needed to be. The premature launch took a slow project and made it even slower because I wasted time wracking my brains trying to solve problems that couldn’t be solved. If I’d slowed down and thought things through a bit more, I could have saved myself substantial time and a lot of misery.

It often requires more energy and more discipline to not act. To wait, think things through and then act is actually harder. It’s way easier to just let it rip and make something—anything—happen. 

By slowing down, making sure we want to make the move we’re making and figuring out how to do it the best way we know how, we’re setting the stage for a more efficient and less painful project.

However, this problem is a shadow of what it once was for me. The big thing that has helped has been awareness. My snap decisions bounced back badly enough times that I got wise. I didn’t know anything about the action bias, I just learned through mistakes.

I learned to be slow down on big decisions first. But small decisions matter too, they add up. Something I’ve been doing in recent years is creating these little holds for these impulses. Want to buy something? I put it in a hold list and revisit again when my mood is more moderate. Then I revisit it again when I think. Still want it? Okay, it’s safe to purchase. Most things I want to buy do not make it through this gauntlet.

The practice of mindfulness helps with this, as well as countless other personal issues. 

But the action bias is one of those things that you never banish. It’ll always come with inventive new ways to trick you. But I’ve got decent defense now.

NEW VIDEO: Will the Law Stop AI?

Ladies and gentlemen, I have a brand new video! This is a commission I made for Bloomberg Law. It’s written, directed and narrated by me. It explores the legality of generative AI and features a debate between copyright lawyers Mark Lemley and Ian B. Crosby. You can read more about it over at Bloomberg Law.

Why I removed Kanye West from Everything is a Remix

One of the thumbnail versions from Everything is a Remix Part 1

Kanye West is as canceled as canceled gets. He might still be a giant celebrity, maybe he can even make lots of money somehow, but he is utterly exiled and it’s hard to imagine how he returns. I don’t foresee his mind becoming more ordered in the future. 

On his way down, West left a string of humiliations in his wake, both for himself and anyone he touched. His final stop on the bus ride to oblivion was an interview with Alex Jones on Infowars. It was a dumb, depressing spectacle in which Jones was actually forced to distance himself from West’s anti-semitism. (Jones typically just ignores anti-semitism and moves on, but he couldn’t pull that off with a guest this high profile.)

In my little world, Kanye West has the odd distinction of crossing over between my two major projects, Everything is a Remix and This is Not a Conspiracy Theory. West’s music was in the original Remix and he was featured in the final segment of the new Everything is a Remix Part 1. West wasn’t in This is Not a Conspiracy Theory, but he would have been if I’d made it later. Jones was in it and I also did a whole mini-series about Jones and his most outspoken champion, Joe Rogan.

Generally speaking, folks, you wanna be featured in Everything is a Remix, not This is Not a Conspiracy Theory.

A number of people have noticed that Kanye isn’t in the final edit of the new Everything is a Remix. But this is not quite what it appears. I didn't remove West because of his long series of anti-semitic remarks, which were stupid, wrong, and sad. My reasons were much more mundane. I removed West for format reasons. Let me explain.

The original version of Everything is a Remix had post-credit segments, which were inspired by Steve Jobs’ “one last thing” bits where he’d announce the biggest product after the presentation seemed over. I did one about Tarantino which was very popular, but my favorite is the one about multiple discovery. Actually, that’s one of my favorite scenes of mine, period.

In the Remix reboot in 2021, I wanted to honor the series’ original format and continue doing these post-credit sequences. Kanye West was the first post-credit segment in the new Everything is Remix. But after seeing how that played, I felt like it didn’t fit on contemporary YouTube. It was hard to make that segment but most people didn’t see it. I decided to not do one in Part 2 and see what happened.

Aaaaand… crickets. Nobody cared. So I nixed them after that. (This video about Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was initially going to be the post-credits segment for the new Part 2). 

When the new Everything is a Remix was completed, the Kanye segment was the odd man out: it was the only post-credits segment in the series. It wasn’t consistent with the rest of the videos, so I cut it from the final all-in-one version, which is the version most people see. 

But Kanye should be in Everything is a Remix and if the series ever gets a maintenance upgrade in the years to come, I’ll put him back in. West is a master remixer, arguably the GOAT. His music endures, with or without him.

Kanye West should be seen as someone with an ailment. Exile is probably the only place suited for a media juggernaut with fairly serious mental illness. But I don’t see any purpose in the rest of us depriving ourselves of the joy of hearing his music, or worse yet, editing him out of musical history. West’s music was beautiful when he made it, and in many ways, so was he. That segment in Everything is a Remix Part 1 honors what he did and who he was. I’m proud of it. Go watch it again.

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