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Episode 6 - Is Hustle Culture Toxic for Creativity?
1.6k Plays9 months ago
"HUSTLE & GRIND BABY!" We've all heard catchy motivational phrases like this, which sound good on the surface, but is HUSTLE CULTURE actually toxic to our creativity? Does it lead to higher productivity and success or simply BURNOUT? Join us for a discussion on this topic where we arrive at some quite interesting conclusions.
To watch the YOUTUBE VIDEO of this episode and the irreverent & somewhat unpredictable AFTERSHOW, subscribe to our Patreon: http://patreon.com/user?u=91688467
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Transcript
Introduction: The 'Why' of Woodworking
00:00:13
Speaker
Hello, everybody, and welcome to the new episode of your new favorite irreverent podcast, Woodworking is Bullshit, where we explore the why of woodworking rather than the how. I'm your host, Paul Jasper, scientist by day, woodworker by night, and I'm joined by my two fabulous co-hosts. First up, he's an award-winning author for his New York Times bestselling book, 101 Poop Jokes to Tell Your Kids, Derek Curtis.
00:00:42
Speaker
And our other co-host, and our other co-host who has advanced degrees in just about everything, including herpetology, where she specialized in handling and husbandry of iguanas, Mary Tsai. It gets harder and harder to make it through the intro every week.
Main Question: Is Hustle Culture Harmful?
00:01:12
Speaker
Okay, so, on that note, we always start with a question as you know, and today's question is, let me center myself, is hustle culture detrimental?
00:01:31
Speaker
And I think we should start by defining hustle culture. And the reason I say we should define it first is because not everyone knows what it is. One of my friends who I asked this week was like, what's hustle culture? So hustle culture is defined as like sort of a hyper competitive ideology that prioritizes hard work and long hours above all else to achieve your goals of money, fame, prestige, whatever, and thus happiness.
00:02:01
Speaker
Uh, I think you can approximate hustle culture into the phrase hustle and grind. I think we've all heard that hustle and grind, hustle and grind. Uh, and I think, you know, typically when we think about that means for going vacations, that means for going time with friends, that means there's like no downtime to read and watch TV or, or nap, which we all love. And I think the idea is like when you're, when you're wasting time like that, your competitors are getting the edge on you. Right.
Perspectives on Hustle: Gary Vee and More
00:02:31
Speaker
So you better hustle and grind, plan every minute of your day to maximize and squeeze out the productivity of your life. And there are quite a few people who
00:02:49
Speaker
who have espoused this lifestyle over the years. Gary Vee is one of the more popular ones that I keep hearing about. And I actually have a quote from him explaining a bit about how he defines hustle. And he kind of talks like this, and he's real excited and romantic. And he's like, hey, man, when you have a passion on something, you just got to squeeze every last bit of juice out of the orange. You just got to squeeze it.
00:03:13
Speaker
To me, hustle is maximizing the energy that you're putting into something. Hustle will be putting all your effort in, achieving the goal at hand. And for me, that means making every minute count. Friday night didn't happen because I was hustling every minute. There's so much hustle in my day. There's no hanging out. There's no time. Hustle's putting it all on the line. Hustle's waking up one day, the day before you die and realizing you gave it your all. Emotionally, executionally, you go all in.
00:03:41
Speaker
So that's how I would define hustle culture. And the question, again, is, is it detrimental? Or could it be reframed as a positive aspect? So with that, I'll turn it over to Eric. Oh, boy. Well, first of all, your impersonation is 10 out of 10, man. As I say, I want to hear your impersonation of both Eric and me. Oh, we'll get there. That's for the after show. Yeah.
Mindset: Hustling vs. Grinding
00:04:12
Speaker
So it sounds to me like the way that we're defining hustle culture stems from a mindset of limited resources, right? And I think this is a key thing because we've all been, and I've heard you espouse the benefits of a flow state. We've all been there from time to time. We've all put eight, 10, 12 hours in the shop without thinking about it.
00:04:41
Speaker
that is fundamentally different from the idea that if I don't do this, somebody else will best me at it. And so I want to start off by making sure that we understand that when we're talking about is it detrimental, I think we need to limit this to saying like, I hate to say the classical definition because it's such a new term, right? But in the way that we understand it as a culture is hustle culture
00:05:06
Speaker
forcing us to be paranoid to some extent about our success and judge ourselves against other people. For me, I do think that I hustle. I don't think that I grind, right? And I think it's important to separate those two because I do work as the only person of the three of us who owns and operates a small business, right? Full time at least I should say.
00:05:30
Speaker
Uh, yeah, I work a lot. I do. I mean, you guys, you do, you run small businesses and I don't mean to denigrate that at all, but I do it for my livelihood. I do it to pay my mortgage in, in, you know, pay my grocery bills. And, uh, so I do work a lot, but that's the nature of the thing. Um, but it's not, it doesn't stem from a mindset of if I don't land this client, somebody else will. I don't care if somebody else lands the client.
00:05:56
Speaker
And there are times where I need to take a day off to go meander through the woods to find an idea if I'm developing an idea for a client. So do we define that as part of the hustle? Because it's work, but I'm not at work. I'm not producing quote unquote valuable content for clients. I'm off in the woods trying to figure out where an idea is going, right? So it's, I don't know, there's, for me,
00:06:25
Speaker
Putting in the hours is, it's not trying to take things from other people. It's knowing that I can't not do this thing that I love. And so I might as well just embrace that part of me and do the thing and be happy with it rather than hustle and grind. And I mean, if we're defining grind, like that's literally wearing a thing down. You're grinding away until it's non-existent anymore.
00:06:52
Speaker
And that's a really dumb way to go about running a business because it's not sustainable. So I guess that's my first question is like, what mindset are we, how, how are we defining the detriment of hustle culture? Is it to our emotional and spiritual well-beings? Is it definitely a process? All right. We're making beautiful objects. What is that?
00:07:18
Speaker
So I think, and Mary, you're going to go next because we haven't heard from you yet, but I think that hustle culture, sorry, the grind part, really, I love how you separated hustle from grind.
Personal Experiences with Hustle Culture
00:07:31
Speaker
I never thought to do that. That makes a lot of sense because we do have to hustle.
00:07:37
Speaker
uh at times and we do actually have to grind at times i'll say like i feel like life is a series of like sprints and rests and endurance running like those three things are what typifies our life and there's certain times when you have to sprint
00:07:53
Speaker
Or you'll miss an opportunity. Like for me, the sprint was in graduate school for my PhD. It was hustle and grind for seven years. And I knew it had to be that or I wouldn't finish with a degree.
00:08:08
Speaker
So that was like a time limited offer. So there are periods I think where the hustle and maybe kind is important and then there's periods where like having a better balance of say some endurance running and some hustle or sorry some sprints and some rests you know imbalance.
00:08:27
Speaker
can be beneficial. Now, in terms of the negatives, Eric, to answer your question, you said, what are some of the negatives? It's like, well, I think too much hustle and grind can kill your creativity and productivity because you're exhausted all the time and you're not going to be creative and productive when you're exhausted.
00:08:42
Speaker
and I think it can ruin your health. The amount of stress and anxiety that comes with that lifestyle leads to huge amounts of stress hormone release like cortisol and we know it depresses your immune system, it predisposes to all kinds of diseases. The third thing which my friend John brought up as I was chatting with him, John Welch as I was chatting with him about this was that guilt
00:09:07
Speaker
Every minute you're not hustling and grinding, you feel guilty that you're not. If you took a four hour nap, God damn it, I could have put that towards achieving this. And that guilt sticks with you.
00:09:19
Speaker
not just for the day, but for years. I think I still have some guilt left over from my grad school days about being productive all the time. And the last thing is I think we sacrifice, we wind up sacrificing the things that are actually really important to us in the long run, which is time with friends, time with family, time with your like, you know, alone time, like nature, like Eric, your cross country drives in nature and all the things, you know, that lead to a well balanced life.
00:09:48
Speaker
So those are four of the things I think are detrimental about this. And with that, you know, Mary, what do you think about this whole topic? Can I ask you a quick, like, where did you get that definition of hustle culture? I made it up.
00:10:08
Speaker
No, no, like I didn't want you reading and there's no, there's no, there's no exact definition, right? It, everyone's got their own, it's, it's just an approximation of sort of the cultural essence of it. Okay. I was asking because you had said that it was like the first, I forgot what the first thing you said, but it was something about like it being a competitive. Yeah. Like hyper competitive ideology. That's what I said. Yeah. Yeah. And for me.
00:10:34
Speaker
I don't know if I can like compare myself to others in terms of
00:10:40
Speaker
like hustle, I'm mostly competing against myself. And it's all a lot of it's internal. Just like I like the guilt part is huge for me. So like, I should be doing this. Like I was this productive, like some other day. And like I should be at that same level as well. So for me, yes, I think I went through through probably like a similar route in terms of going to school. Like I remember when I was an architect, and
00:11:10
Speaker
making minimum wage very little money and like not knowing you know if I was going to eat the next week and then deciding to go to grad school as a way to get over that and knowing that if you suffer through grad school the end result will hopefully be good and that was the case for a lot of people um so yeah I think the
00:11:35
Speaker
For me, it is a lot more internal. Um, it's more just kind of like, don't disappoint yourself and like, don't, I don't know. Maybe it's too much like chastising of yourself and it's probably not healthy. In fact, I know that it's not healthy because in my low points, I definitely get a lot more depressed because I'm comparing myself to a past version of myself. So yeah, it's, it's not great, but, um, I also will say that.
00:12:02
Speaker
in my mind I try to hustle because I always I want to be in that state and I think that I get a lot done um I don't know if that's always going to be the case but in what state do you mean um always working towards something and always having a goal to to work towards so um
00:12:26
Speaker
If I don't have a goal, then I feel like I'm stagnant and complacent. And if I do have a goal, I feel like I'm at least working towards something. This is an interesting thing to me because I've long thought that having like making strides toward an end is more rewarding than the end itself.
00:12:48
Speaker
right? And I know there's some psychological data to back this up, which I don't have on hand because I'm the only one of us with a bachelor's degree. So forgive me. But, but I do think that I capped out at a bachelor's degree. But I do think they're like,
00:13:12
Speaker
This is where hustle culture becomes a little stickier to talk about and to define, right? Because you are giving people who may feel the
00:13:23
Speaker
the ebb of not knowing what to do. You're giving them a tangible goal to work toward and then creating movement. Some people may internalize that in a way that's unhealthy and take that to the extreme, but there is a sub-segment of those people, and I think that I'm one of them, that
00:13:43
Speaker
can take that idea and turn it into momentum without letting it roll too far down the hill too fast. You know, because I know that for me, like if I'm in that same funk, I just need to get back in the shop and sometimes like it's at a slower pace. It's less hours. Like you need to give time and space, but I also know that it's a muscle memory thing. And if I can just get back in the shop and start doing a thing, it may catch on to something.
00:14:11
Speaker
And that spark may, may reignite. And that's the important thing. And so I don't know, like some folks might call that hustle or grind because you're doing a thing where you don't really know it's kind of butting your head against the wall. But simultaneously, it's a searching mindset, right? Like it's a seeking mindset where you're like, I don't know what I'm looking for. But if I keep looking, I might find the spark that then pushes me down a new direction and down a new road. I
Education and Hustle for Success
00:14:36
Speaker
see.
00:14:36
Speaker
I want to ask both of you the next question, which is, were there times in your life where you felt like hustle and grind was like, really important for that period of time? Like, often it's when people are starting a new business, or when they're in school, like, you know, fresh into a degree, or, you know, or something along those lines. So for each of you, you know, was there a period when you felt like, yeah, it's time to hit the gas?
00:15:02
Speaker
Yeah, for me, it was probably schools like one of the more significant ones because I knew that my health is probably going to decline because of how little sleep I'm getting. And I'm not eating well. I'm not exercising. It's just overall not great. But I am working towards something in my academic career that will
00:15:23
Speaker
You know, hopefully have a good outcome and whether or not that's like another career if that's like an academic goal that you had set like publishing a paper, etc. That is probably the most significant time I think like
00:15:37
Speaker
Other, other times I can quote her, you know, if I, when I first started my business and I wanted to get my name more out there, like I was pretty lax about it at first. And then I remember at one point I was like, all right, I got like, actually got to start getting clients. And then I started reaching out and just like spending all of my free time being like, okay, how can I get more commissions? And that was like a version of a hustle, although.
00:16:00
Speaker
To be fair, I have a full-time job, so I didn't feel that drive as much. Um, but yeah, again, like I said, it's just like setting goals for yourself and reaching towards that. Now, when you achieve those goals and Eric, we're going to come to your periods of hustle and grind, but Mary, when you achieve those goals, do you feel different? Like when you have achieved it, are you like, yeah, that's it. Or is it more like, okay, that was interesting. Next goal. How do you.
00:16:31
Speaker
A little bit of both, I would say. I think for grad school, I was really pleased with
00:16:42
Speaker
the outcome of my master's thesis and then also just moving into a new career. I was just relieved, I think, at that point. So I was really happy to move on and have reached that goal. But I am not someone who likes to sit still or be still for a while. So as soon as I accomplish something, I am like, all right, next one. But Mary, is that sitting still feeling an illusion? I mean, you're never really sitting still.
00:17:12
Speaker
But do you need that goal to give you a sense of momentum? Yeah, I think so. Like I always want to be working towards something. I feel like I'm moving forward in that sense. I see. Eric, how was the period of hustle and grind for you? Was it starting your business when you transitioned out of teaching or?
00:17:31
Speaker
What was it for? Yeah, I think that's the clearest example of, or at least the most recent example that immediately came to mind when you said that is when I stopped teaching, it was 2021, the fall of 2021. We had finished shooting the Netflix show. It had not yet come out. And so I had to transition. I had to be available in case we got a season two.
00:17:59
Speaker
Can you talk about, okay, sorry, not everyone knows the Netflix show. Can you just get just a brief summary? I got a Netflix show. We did. I did win an Emmy. That was a funny thing that happened. But that's not a joke, by the way, he's this is legit. I just ordered my statue yesterday. So let's comment now. But so yes, so got a Netflix show randomly.
00:18:28
Speaker
filmed while I was teaching and then I had to be available for season two and ultimately my boss and I decided we were like we don't really want to like mutually we didn't want to terminate the contract but we also knew that that's where it was headed so we walked away amicably and I had to go start a business because there was no sense of me like trying to find a job and being like hey I might not be available for you know three months and I don't know
00:18:58
Speaker
And so there was this this moment of I don't know if I can do this or I don't know if I want to do this because I I tried to start a business when I got out of school in 2013 and Had a absolutely miserable go of it because it was a ton of work. I had no idea how to be a business person And I didn't know if I wanted to do that to myself again
00:19:23
Speaker
And so ultimately I decided that's what I wanted to do. And it was a moment in time where I had to, when I say like it was a year zero, and this is similar to teaching, is I took a year zero. It's not a first year. I'm not making strides toward anything. I'm just trying to survive and collect data so that I have some framework in which to put that information and then manipulate that information. I can start to make strides year one.
00:19:50
Speaker
Uh, and so that year, I mean, it was, I mean, I, I was dealing with Instagram sponsorships. I was dealing with commissions, uh, and nobody pays you for an Instagram sponsorship. Nobody gives a shit, right? Nobody cares about content. That's not evergreen. So it was like, I had new projects like every couple of weeks and it was just balls to the wall, make things happen, cut wood, glue it back together, figure it out as you go.
00:20:18
Speaker
Uh, and it taught me how to work fast. I'll say that it was valuable in that regard. Um, but it was absolutely just a, I saw my bank account slowly coming down and it was constantly the, how do I get it to stabilize? You know, I think your business was a little like this. Well, that's not my main business, but it is my main. We will be discussing our only fans in the after show.
00:20:48
Speaker
Um, for me, yeah, yeah, for me, um, it was, uh, it was definitely graduate school. It was so hard. Uh, I. I picked the hardest lab in the whole institution and everyone warned me that like, if you pick this lab.
00:21:06
Speaker
do you know you're going to be served? And I was like, bring it on. Little did I know, it would come my way. And it was extremely difficult. My mentor was very, very hard on me, extremely demanding, to the point that it was like meant. Yeah, it almost broke me. And to her credit,
00:21:32
Speaker
Uh, she was a fantastic mentor and had the utmost integrity. So I do want to say that. Um, and she did me a huge service, but it took a lot out of me and I was in the lab. I was hustle and grinding in the lab for seven years and no, I was broke as a joke the whole time. I mean, they give you enough money to live and eat, but man, that was balls out. And then my postdoc after it was, was pretty intense too for the next four years. So that's, um,
00:22:02
Speaker
What's that 11 years after college, after four years of college, that's 11 additional years with Mary, as you, as you alluded to earlier, the promise of a career, the promise of stability. I was going to ask, like, what is the goal in that situation? Like, what's the thing that keeps driving you forward? Well, you know, Eric, it's crazy to do something like that. You have to be a little mental and you have to love the topic so much.
00:22:29
Speaker
that it's all you can imagine doing, and I did. I love science that much. I know I don't talk about science a whole lot, and I'm always talking about woodworking, but science is actually my first love, and that's why I do that full time. And so as much as I love woodworking, I probably love science more. And so I could do that. It was total hustle and grind, and that was my period.
00:22:51
Speaker
of just total imbalance, but it needed to happen during that period or else I wouldn't have made it through.
00:23:03
Speaker
You clearly have this deep love for science and you have a deep love for many things. Money. Money. Money. All right, so this kind of gets at the point that I was driving toward is like we say hustle culture with our noses turned up because we know that it's not the best for mental health and it's not this and it's not serving that and you could do better and you could find a job, but there is a tremendous
00:23:34
Speaker
of the population who don't have the opportunities that we've had, right? And to those folks, if you're talking about folks without a dream, without a hope, the hope that if you just fucking work hard enough, something good might happen. That is not without value. And I don't want to lose sight of that because we can sit in our armchairs all day long and talk about like, well, you know,
00:24:03
Speaker
It's good to take a break and it's good to go on vacation and it's good to do this and that. But when you only have a dream, you cling onto that with a manic obsession. Right, right. And the word that comes to mind as you said all that is privilege. I certainly had privilege going to college, going to a great graduate school. So Eric, it's a great point. What if you don't have that privilege starting out?
00:24:35
Speaker
Mary, you were listening to a conversation earlier you might want
Cultural Perspectives: Immigrant Hustle
00:24:41
Speaker
to share. Yes, yes. Yeah, I had this conversation with my dad recently, because he
00:24:50
Speaker
Both him and my mom are immigrants from Taiwan, and they came over. My dad grew up homeless more than you can imagine. Every time he talks about it, he's like, I was studying by the candlelight or the moonlight and having to look for scraps of food and trash.
00:25:12
Speaker
things like that just like poor beyond what I can imagine and coming to America was like the American dream that was the thing to work towards and it's like to my dad's credit he completely he absolutely achieved that like he worked his way and
00:25:29
Speaker
and like figured out a way to get to graduate school and through college despite not really speaking English very well and just like so many things that are so difficult to handle and move me to a different country and yeah like he talked he talked about this like I had to work every day otherwise I didn't think my family was going to survive like
00:25:53
Speaker
didn't even have kids at some point, once he did have kids, he's like, I have a livelihood of my kids, like, I cannot eat, but my kids need to eat, like, I need to be able to support them. And like, if I don't hustle and grind, like, what is this future that we're going to have in this country, like, we basically uprooted our entire life, and have formed a different and like, have adopted this other culture here. So it's, it's very scary for him to take a
00:26:20
Speaker
well nowadays he can but like back then he's like I could not take a day off there's no chance that I could have taken a day off otherwise I would have felt like a failure I would have felt you know like I'm wasting my time and my life and I don't know I think he says like nowadays he still has a mentality like he was just he retired and he hates it because he doesn't know what to do like he's just worked his whole life so now he's like I don't
00:26:48
Speaker
I don't really know what to do now. So I'm trying to help him like figure that out. And it's just completely unknown territory for him. But it's been his entire life of like, this is what I know. This is like who I am. I am someone who works really hard. I define myself through my work. And yeah, it's difficult. That's a great point. All right. So ultimately, this is a woodworking podcast, right? So can we take that?
00:27:17
Speaker
and put it in the context of woodworking and how we view this thing that we all love. So immediately what comes to mind is when I was working at a cabinet shop, Paul Downs' Cabinet Makers in 2017 or so, there was, I want to say he was a Somali immigrant. His name was Remy. He was a super, super sweet guy. And he came in every day. He started around the same time as me. Had zero experience, but he busted his ass every day.
00:27:46
Speaker
And I wonder, like, we sit here as furniture makers, as woodworkers, as designers, and we nitpick about like, oh, your proportions are a little bit off or your chamfer's a little heavy. And then we like to like, oh, well, this person's, they're just out here making cutting boards and shit, you know? But like to somebody, the ability to make cutting boards and make money doing it is the fucking dream.
00:28:15
Speaker
And it's a dream beyond their wildest hopes when they were in another country trying to pick through scraps to get by. Apologies to anyone who makes cutting boards. I mean, fuck your game. Fuck. My point stands.
00:28:37
Speaker
There is a thing to like this, this may kind of circle all the way back around from like to like the craft and art argument, right? Is can you just do the thing and be happy with it and find contentment in there? Or do you need to hustle to sell some greater vision? And maybe it just is as simple as like, wherever you start in life, that next step is the great vision.
Happiness and Woodworking: Beyond the Product
00:29:01
Speaker
Alright, so that's a very good question. Are you content with just making the thing or is there some bigger vision that it contributes to your happiness? And that brings up one of my favorite topics ever, which is Oh, Eric, you knew this was coming. What deter like what is the best
00:29:26
Speaker
determining factor of happiness. And as a researcher, I tend to go towards research to try and figure it out because I believe data. And the Harvard Study of Adult Development is a study that's been running for 85 years at Harvard.
00:29:46
Speaker
And they have, they started, you know, whatever it was 85 years ago. And they said, we're going to follow a group of people longitudinally over their whole life.
00:30:00
Speaker
And we're going to measure everything. We're going to measure what they did for a job, whether they were healthy, whether they were married, what they did with their time. We're going to measure everything about that. And then what we're going to do is correlate it with happiness measures. We're going to ask them, do you feel happy? And why or why not?
00:30:22
Speaker
They were trying to scientifically determine what makes people happy. And that is a hell of a study, by the way, because to run a study for 85 years, you know, the original authors who got the grant money to do that, they're dead. They're long dead. So you have to like find people to pick up that research.
00:30:42
Speaker
and keep it going and keep perpetuating the grant funding, the literature cycle, the whole nine yards. For 85 years, it's the longest running study of its kind anywhere. It's phenomenal and it's still going. It's amazing. The conclusion of the Harvard Study of Adult Development was, well, I'm gonna ask you, what correlates best with happiness? Was it income?
00:31:10
Speaker
a marital status, health, job, prestige, success, the amount you travel. Any guesses? I mean, there's other variables too. No, there's more, there's more. Is there one answer for everyone? I was gonna say it sounds like a multiple answer situation. No, no, there was one answer and I didn't list it intentionally. You just spilled a bitch.
00:31:37
Speaker
It turns out that the most, the variable that most highly predicted and correlated, what did you just, Eric, you just whispered something to Mary. What did you just whisper?
00:31:53
Speaker
Hey, hey, this is a kids podcast, Paul. We both have a similar thought. We were both right there. Oh my God. I'm not even going to ask. Okay. So the answer, the answer was deep, meaningful, personal relationships.
00:32:10
Speaker
That actually was more important than health. Because even if you're in bad health, if you had a close network of people to support you, you felt happy in those moments. Not happy because your health is failing, but happy that you had the support.
00:32:26
Speaker
And so I always think about this when I think about balance in the shop, you know, I spent a lot of time alone in the shop, and it's tough. And I do get lonely in the shop. It's like it's always just me out there. And then, you know, last weekend, Keith Johnson joined me to work on our whiskey cabinets after he blew me off for two years. And it was just
00:32:48
Speaker
And it was so nice to have my friend. It was so nice to have my friend in the shop. And Eric, you've combined my house multiple times. And it's just such a joy to do this thing we love with other people. And it all makes sense to me in light of that research finding.
00:33:04
Speaker
So I'm curious about this idea of balance then because one thing I know to be almost absolute in our community is when we get together, we make things together.
00:33:19
Speaker
And there's an idea where we can't not make things. It's like a compulsion, right? And so is that really balanced? We find a great deal of joy in it. We find a great deal of contentment in it. And we find that interpersonal relationship and sharing the experience and the object with the people that we care about.
00:33:37
Speaker
But are we really balanced if we can't just fucking sit down and have a drink with a friend and like talk about life? Or are we just like, we need a thing to do that we can connect over, right? It's good or bad. I'm just saying like observation.
00:33:53
Speaker
woodworking is the vehicle that connects many of us and it's fun. Eric, I actually remember three times at least you were at my place. One time you helped me build my kitchen. Do you remember that? It was the first time I came over when Vicki was like, who's this strange dude from the internet? I was like, don't worry, we're doing a kitchen today. He was amazing and he helped so much. The second time I remember
00:34:16
Speaker
You actually cut the hand cut dovetails for the whiskey cabinet that Keith blew me off for two years. That's right. That in that cabinet. Yeah. The cabinet that Keith blew me off for two years. If I don't get credit on this cabinet, I'm quitting. And then a third time you brought that amazing violin case and you and I cogitated over design, how to add whatever to it, you know, accents. And then we made chopsticks. We did.
00:34:44
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It was so meaningful. It was so meaningful. We were very drunk when we started making the chopsticks. I don't remember that at all. But this is what I made. The foundation of our friendship is we have a shared thing that we love. And then when we hang out, we get to do it together. And that's a beautiful thing. That's not something to pass over and say that we're in balance because of it. But it does raise the question.
00:35:10
Speaker
Every time we hang out, we're like, yeah, of course we're making things. That's what we do.
00:35:15
Speaker
I love it. I love it. And I don't remember the chopsticks at all. But on that note, I want to ask Mary a question. So Mary, there's a way to visualize making. And this comes to Eric's point about why do we always make shit when we're together? Are you happiest when you're on the journey of making in the middle of the project? Or do you get more excited about the destination when it's finished?
00:35:41
Speaker
I feel like I can map this out because so happy when I first start, super thrilled. Like I know I'm happy with the design, happy, pretty happy starting. And then there's always a period where it just drops from like, everything's gone wrong. I hate this. I want to give up. Like, should I start over? I fucked up. Like, and as I get older and like more experienced and I can recover from that. But like, there's always a period and it's usually like,
00:36:10
Speaker
80% of the time, 80% of the way through. And I'm like, I'm ready for this to be fucking over. I cannot stand this project anymore. And then at 100%, you're like, thank God, I'm so happy. I think I'm happy mostly because it's over, but also like, I'm pretty proud of, I mean, like realistically, hopefully it's a good product at the end. So how would you define, like, what's the word you would use to define that cycle you just stated?
00:36:41
Speaker
Mmm... I'm not sure. Chit show? I have more chit show, sure. All right. Well, I would call that perseverance. Yeah. Right? Yeah, that's not wrong. And I think that the more experienced I get, the better I am at coming back from that low point. Like, I'm able to bounce back easier, and I'm able to know that if I just get through it, that I will be back at that, you know, that top level. So, I'm wondering,
00:37:06
Speaker
from a capitalistic limited resource salesmanship perspective. If the difference between hustle and perseverance is you can't sell perseverance. Perseverance is a personal thing that you choose to do and have and make happen. Hustle, you can sell the dream of hustle to anybody. Gary Vee has made a career out of selling the dream to people.
00:37:28
Speaker
Right. So, but they're the same thing. Like one is just, you can sell an e-course and the other one is just a state of mind that you know through experience of doing and failing and fixing that you can get to the other side if you persevere. Yeah. I see what you're saying. I don't know what to say to that. I'm just, I'm wondering out loud.
00:37:52
Speaker
Eric, how about you? Like, the same question I asked Mary, like, are you happier when you're in the middle of the project? Or are you like, elated at the end? I so this, this comes back to the conversation we had last time about chasing the dragon.
00:38:07
Speaker
at the beginning of my career, it was always at the very end because you don't know how it's going to turn out. You don't, you don't have the experience to see what's in front of you. And so when you get to the end and you realize it doesn't suck, you're fucking elated, right? And it's, it's the most magical thing. Like I will never be as excited about a project as the blanket chest that I made when I was in school. Cause it was the first thing I ever designed.
00:38:35
Speaker
And I got to the end and Allard, who was my teacher and is an incredibly gracious human being, just like gave me the old wink and the nod and he was like, hey man, that's actually pretty good. And I was like, holy shit, did I just like succeed? But at this point, like the succeeding at the end,
00:38:54
Speaker
for fear of sounding arrogant. I don't like, but I just assume that I will succeed at the end by the time I get, like I'll figure out how to, it may take me different lengths of time, but I'll figure out how. So at this point, it is,
00:39:09
Speaker
Like I talked about seeking earlier, once I get that sniff of a thing, once I get that scent and I start down that trail, that's when I get excited. I'm like, I don't know where this is going to go. I don't know where it's going to end up, but I know I'm going down this road and this is interesting to me at this moment.
00:39:29
Speaker
I'm with you 100%. It used to be the destination early on because it proved to myself I wasn't an abject failure. But then when you accept it, you know how to make things. Man is that journey like that process. It's wrong. I love the process and the feelings of euphoria come during the process because you're like, this is gonna work. This idea is it's gonna work out.
00:39:56
Speaker
And you get so excited, right? And when the project's over, funny enough, it's almost disappointing. Like, sometimes I enjoy making the thing so much that when it's over, I feel like this sense of grief and loss. I know that's so weird to say.
00:40:16
Speaker
It's like reading a book like a really good book. And when it's over, you miss the characters a little. God, you wish there was more to read about them. God damn. And yes, you get to start over on the next story, but it takes a while to get emotionally invested into it the way you were on the last project. And that's what you know, people ask me all the time.
00:40:38
Speaker
about woodworking, how do you get into it? What keeps you going? And it's that, I love your phrase, Eric, chasing the dragon. That's really, it's chasing that feeling during the making that is so intoxicating that you can't not do it.
00:40:58
Speaker
Well, it's also the risk of failure, right? When the project is over, it's gone, so there's no more risk. It's not interesting anymore. But when you're in it, you have an idea, and you catch on that thing, and you go, this could work, but I don't know if it will work just yet. And that's the exciting part.
00:41:16
Speaker
Yeah. So funny enough, I think a lot about the journey or the middle versus the destination a lot because of this. And we have, Eric and I both are very fond of the philosopher and thinker Alan Watts.
00:41:37
Speaker
And at the end of the podcast, we're going to leave you with a four and a half minute segment of Alan Watts speaking in his own words about whether it's the destination or the dance on the way to the destination that really provides the love and the enjoyment of life. And I'm so excited to present this clip. I begged, I begged.
00:42:04
Speaker
Eric and Mary to let us play it and I contacted the Alan Watts Foundation and I was lucky enough to actually be responded to by his son Mark Watts directly and I couldn't sort of believe I was having a conversation with Mark Watts today.
00:42:20
Speaker
graciously allowed us to actually use Alan's own recording from the 1960s talking about this issue. So just, I just want to put that there that at the end of the episode, we're going to have this clip that really speaks to this issue of do you enjoy the process versus the destination and his views on that whole thing. And I will just say, this is not hyperbolic at all. This is my favorite four minutes on the internet.
00:42:48
Speaker
like hands down across any genre it is I don't I don't mean to over hype it you can like it or not like it all you want but for me and Paul and I think very similarly in this regard uh I know that's the foundation of our friendship but it has had a profound impact on the way that I approach uh my work my life and where I put my value so there is and I
00:43:10
Speaker
I'd like to double down on Eric's sentiment.
Critique of Hustle Culture: Necessary but Harmful
00:43:13
Speaker
This clip, this type of thinking has profoundly affected how I approach my life, which is, it's crazy that both Eric and I are saying that. Like, what? One of the great thinkers of the second half of the 20th century. Anyway, so with that,
00:43:33
Speaker
I think we covered a lot about hustle culture. Funny enough, I think the internet is rallying against it because it's so unhealthy in the long term. But funny enough, I think we together have actually pointed out exceptions. There are times when a sprint is appropriate or there are conditions when you don't have privilege and you're just trying to survive when it is appropriate. It's funny to think about it. Everyone's railing against it.
00:44:01
Speaker
And I'm definitely against it in the long-term, but yet there are these periods where it seems appropriate. All right, with that, let's transition to our next segment, which is feature a fail. And what we mean by fail, we were talking about this before the show, what we mean by fail, it's not necessarily like, oh, I fucked up my Morrison tenant, but really like, is there something, you know, mentally that you wanted to achieve and you didn't achieve or, you know, it can be bigger than a material thing.
00:44:31
Speaker
So I'm going to call on Mary, which is her favorite thing that I do. And she stares at me with those eyes. Mary, what is your, do you got a fail for us recently? Yeah, this is like my nightmare of Paul calling on me.
00:44:57
Speaker
I guess like, yeah, my quote unquote fail is not exactly a fail, but I just recently moved to Philly and that's why Eric and I film in the same place. Um, but I joined a shop that I have spent basically the last week and a half in every, almost every day or every night. Um, just mentally preparing myself to be in this space and then
00:45:25
Speaker
Actually, just today I got a message from a friend of mine who is a woodworker and we had been looking at like chop spaces together and had given up for a little bit because there were just no available spaces, but got a message from her today of like, hey found this cool new space happens to be in Eric's.
00:45:43
Speaker
building. Yeah, it does. And you happen to live across the street from him. She moved across the country and lives across the street from me and now she's like, hey, I'm going to be in the shop underneath you. I did not find the space. Oh my God. Creeper, creeper. Okay. Also, I lived in Philly before you, I'm just saying. But you didn't live here until I came here.
00:46:10
Speaker
That's not true, I live here. That's temporarily accurate from my perspective. Oh my god, okay. By the way, it's not so much a fail, but more of me being mentally, like accepting mentally that I am in this current space, but this kind of, not roadblock, it's just like another
00:46:36
Speaker
I don't know, idea and concept for me to accept that I could suddenly just be moving into another space. So it's not a fail, I guess, but in my mind, I was just, I was just so ready to be where I am right now, but this other opportunity came up. And if we do go through that, it is, it's too good not to go through, if to be honest. So yeah. What's that again, Eric? What sounds like an emotional fail more than anything.
00:47:08
Speaker
Yeah, because I'm someone who really likes to be prepared and like know what to expect. Okay, okay. Mary, how about the fact that you made all your shop furniture out of a highly figured walnut? Okay, that was... And then complained that she doesn't have enough money to keep doing it. That was not accurate. You know what's way cheaper than figured walnut? Literally anything else.
00:47:35
Speaker
It was all I had and I was like, may as well. You guys know that I like nice things. So, I mean, I guess I got to keep going. Mary's going to go bankrupt making chisel holders. Yeah. Yeah. It's going to be another fucking French revolution in here in the woodworking world. The bourgeoisie of the woodworkers over here.
00:48:07
Speaker
Eric, I think in one of our previous episodes you said
00:48:11
Speaker
What did you say, heretofore? What did you say? You say this all the time. I may be the most under educated of the three of us, but I have a fucking vocabulary, sir, okay? And now you pull out bourgeoisie. Yeah, yeah, you're welcome. I'm just trying to hit our target market, okay? It's fantastic. Eric, what's your fail besides using vocabulary? Mostly the use of bourgeoisie.
00:48:45
Speaker
I would say the fail that came to mind is just content and the expectations of content.
00:48:59
Speaker
This is more, it's a regular occurrence. So I don't know if I could consider it a fail per se, but it does. Anytime you think you've nailed it and you're like, this one's gonna do well. An Instagram post, a TikTok post, a YouTube video, whatever it is. You're like, this one's gonna do well. And then it tanks. And every time you're like, I give up, man. What is going on? And then inevitably it's the ones that you throw up with no thought or foresight that just blow up and do the best.
00:49:29
Speaker
So I've had a couple of those recently where I was like, put up a YouTube video, I was like, this thing is going to pop off. Which ones? There was the Cats Moses router video, which did well, but it didn't do as well as I had hoped. Or the video I put out last week, which was about like,
00:49:48
Speaker
shop made stains in like, stop using pre made stains. It's, it's done well in the numbers, like the views are high, but the viewer retention is very low. And so what I'm realizing in conversation with a few friends like drew wit for example is I've
00:50:09
Speaker
I didn't frame the video well enough to retain attention in the long haul. So it was a success in that I got people to click on the video, but it was a failure in that I failed to then consider how to retain their attention. I would have reformatted the video to basically frame it around the can of stain that was in the thumbnail and articulate why this was less than ideal and then show them a better way.
00:50:37
Speaker
Right? To continue to lead and tell the story rather than just die right into, this is what professionals do. Oh, you're such a professional. Of the three of us. Once you flip that bird audibly, Paul. I don't know. I don't know what you're referring to, Eric. You're too poor if you could to flip that bird audibly.
00:51:05
Speaker
What's your fail? What's your fail? I fail. Yeah, I've been real bad about posting anything. Like real bad. And I always think of Yeah, kind of not not that I feel a ton of pressure to post all the time, but I could be sharing more of what's going on.
00:51:26
Speaker
And I always think of Jimmy DiResta. I really like Jimmy. I've met him a couple of times now. He's such a great dude. And one of the things that I always remember him saying that sort of stuck in my head is like, stop over
00:51:44
Speaker
Sorry stop like censoring yourself stop like over You know overdoing the the videos. They don't have to be perfect Just share what you have when you have it and I have a prayer like I have this this thing where it's like oh But I know if I do this it'll be better and then what happens is I never do it hmm
00:52:09
Speaker
And I think he's right. Just share it. Share the raw reality of whatever you're working on. And I haven't been doing that. I've been putting it off and putting it off and putting it off till I'm ready to have a more polished product.
00:52:22
Speaker
And to me, that's a fail because I want to be more easy breezy about posting. Because both, because I think it's good for me, commission-wise, and it's good for the community. We all like to see what everyone's working on in real. We don't always need this polished stuff. Anyway, I've been failing in that miserably lately. All right. You're a mental health buddy.
00:52:49
Speaker
Now that we talked about our failures, let's talk about some successes, which comes in the form of a Patreon. You know, the last episode, we only had three, and now I think we have eight. Well, look at that growth.
00:53:08
Speaker
Most of the people who joined, I know personally. These people, Instagram, do you have a please? It's like all my friends.
00:53:21
Speaker
We have Ron Lowe's, who actually came to my house and my shop one day. He's a great guy. I've met him twice. My very close personal friend, who I actually, me and my wife vacation with him and his wife, John Welch, John Francis Designs, he wanted to support us. I really appreciate that, John. Vic Teslin, who I think a lot of us know from his time at Lee Valley and finally working.
00:53:47
Speaker
Yeah, Vic's a great dude. I just met him and his wife, Andrea, at the last woodworking show. Nicholas Berchtold, who, as you know, uses CNC to make boobies on cutting boards and all kinds of really cool CNC textures, like... Yeah, really cool textures, like smooth ones and pointy ones. Oh my god, you guys!
00:54:09
Speaker
He makes titties on cutting boards, but he also makes button fabric kind of textures. Really, really amazing use of CNC. And we're going to talk about CNC in a future episode and upset a lot of people, I'm sure. And then we have Chris Ortiz. So thank you, the five of you, for supporting us. We really appreciate it. Thanks, guys.
00:54:30
Speaker
So with that, I think it's time for everybody's favorite. Did you just call me a bitch out of nowhere? I did not know that's all I expected at that point. I thought you were calling me a bitch for knowing something. You're like taunting the bull? I mean, you do that all the time. You got mad at me for calling you a tank. Come on, man.
00:55:02
Speaker
Mary Mary you have permission to hit his ass
00:55:13
Speaker
Okay on that note Mary how about you and I embarrass Eric with this slide because we got a doozy today
00:55:30
Speaker
The slide. We're gonna slow things down, draw back, pour some wine, light some candles, because we're sliding into Eric's DMs. Eggplant emoji. Oh, slide. I'm horny. Oh, I just can't even wait to get into it. Are y'all ready? It's a doozy. Here we go.
00:56:02
Speaker
Hey Eric. Oh my god, I'm in love with you. Heart eye emoji. You are the guy of my dreams. Heart eye emoji. And although I know you will never read this, I want to tell you that I wish I could meet you at some point in my life. Star eye emoji. You are my platonic love. Upside down smiley face.
00:56:25
Speaker
I'm Colombian, and I live in Houston, Texas, and I recently opened this app, which is why I don't have very many people added recently. Crying emoji. You're very handsome, and you have everything I look for in a guy. Heart eye emoji. I hope you'll do me this miracle of answering me something one day. Star eye emoji. I'm single and I don't have kids. Blessings. Prayer hands emoji.
00:56:54
Speaker
It hit me with the blessings at the end. That went so many different directions. It was a novella, first of all. Oh my god. There were so many emojis. Every sentence was not what I expected. No, every sentence was a chapter in a book. Oh my goodness. So thirsty.
00:57:20
Speaker
I just love at the end, they were like, blessings. Well, that's quite the message. Mary, get your thoughts together on that one, because you and I have some work to do in the after show talking about that. Eric, Eric, do you remember getting that one?
00:57:48
Speaker
I don't remember that one. Sorry. Sorry, I don't remember that one. How do you not remember that? I want to know if it's a guy or a girl. What's strange and concerning is that's one of the tamer ones I've received, actually. There was nothing explicit in there.
00:58:08
Speaker
Oh, okay. Okay. Well, we're going to handle that in the aftershow. If you want to hear the aftershow or see the video feeds, just subscribe to our Patreon. It's that easy and you'll have access to the YouTubes. I'd like to kind of summarize now sort of where we've been and we're going to end on that clip that Eric and I talked about earlier. So is hustle culture
00:58:32
Speaker
detrimental. My takeaway is that in the long term, yes, absolutely. There's just no other way to slice it. It's not good for your mental state. It's not good for your health. It's not good for the things that matter in life, according to the Harvard study of adult development, which is close personal relationships. It's just very poisonous in the long term. However,
00:58:57
Speaker
That being said, there are times at which I think it is appropriate to hustle and grind, which is whether you're in grad school or whether you are not in a position of religion, you're really, you're struggling to make your way in this world. And in those cases, it does seem, you know, for a period of time that that's what you need to do. So anyway, that's my personal summary of that today. And we're going to leave you with the words of Alan Watt,
00:59:27
Speaker
one of my favorite philosophers of all time, who's really talking about this idea of finding joy during the journey of something rather than the destination. This clip of graciously provided by the Alan Watts or alanwatts.org through his son Mark Watts. Now it's my contention, my personal opinion, this is my basic metaphysical axiom, shall we put it that way.
00:59:57
Speaker
That existence, the physical universe, is basically playful. There is no necessity for it whatsoever. It isn't going anywhere. That is to say, it doesn't have some destination that it ought to arrive at.
01:00:25
Speaker
But it is best understood by analogy with music. Because music as an art form is essentially playful. We say you play the piano. You don't work the piano. Why? Music differs from, say, travel. When you travel, you are trying to get somewhere.
01:00:51
Speaker
And of course, we, because being a very compulsive and purposive culture, are busy getting everywhere faster and faster and faster till we eliminate the distance between places. I mean, with the modern jet travel, you can arrive almost instantaneously. What happens as a result of that is that the two ends of your journey become the same place. So you eliminate the distance and you eliminate the journey.
01:01:21
Speaker
because the fun of the journey is to travel, not to obliterate traveling. So then, in music, though, one doesn't make the end of a composition the point of the composition. If that were so, the best conductors would be those who played fastest.
01:01:48
Speaker
And there would be composers who wrote only finales. People go to concerts just to hear one crashing chord, because that's the end. Say, we're dancing. You don't aim at a particular spot in the room. That's where you should arrive. The whole point of the dancing is the dance. But we don't see that as something brought by our education into our everyday conduct.
01:02:19
Speaker
We've got a system of schooling which gives a completely different impression. It's all graded. And what we do is we put the child into the corridor of this grade system with a kind of, come on, kitty, kitty, kitty. And now you go to kindergarten, you know, and that's a great thing because when you finish that, you'll get into first grade.
01:02:42
Speaker
And then, come on, first grade leads to second grade, and so on, and then you get out of grade school, you go to high school, and it's revving up, the thing is coming. Then you're going to go to college, and by Jove, then you get into graduate school, and when you're through with graduate school, you go out to join the world. And then you get into some racket where you're selling insurance. And they've got that quota to make.
01:03:02
Speaker
And you're going to make that. And all the time, this thing is coming. It's coming. It's coming. That great thing, the success you're working for. Then when you wake up one day about 40 years old, you say, my God, I've arrived. I'm there. And you don't feel very different from what you always felt. And there's a slight letdown because you feel there's a hoax. And there was a hoax, a dreadful hoax. They made you miss everything.
01:03:28
Speaker
by expectation. Look at the people who live to retire and put those savings away. And then when they're 65, they don't have any energy left, they're more or less impotent, and they go and rot in an old people's senior citizen's community. And because we've simply cheated ourselves the whole way down the line. We thought of life by analogy with a journey.
01:03:58
Speaker
with a pilgrimage which had a serious purpose at the end and the thing was to get to that end success or whatever it is or maybe heaven after you're dead but we missed the point the whole way along it was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played