so you got a law degree from Durham yeah and then you're applying for jobs and you end up working at McDonald's because I had no money in my bank account I had nothing to lose nothing to fall back on it was like it's either do or die either this Twitter account works or whatever the army or film school or listicles or tutoring something has got to work so I just gave everything wow how does someone go from being a cleaner at McDonald's to building an audience on Twitter of over 1.5 million followers along with DMS from people like Elon Musk and other celebrities and how do they do that without ever showing their face and with basically no one even knowing who they are that is the story of the incredible shien Quirk who features on this episode of Deep dive he on Twitter is known as at the cultural tutor just imagine me there this guy who's always thought he was going to be a writer and life hasn't quite turned out how he thought it would and then I had a bit of a revelation this is one of my favorite interviews I've ever done on Deep dive and we're going to hear all about Shan's story of how he got his start how he was working at McDonald's how he decided to quit his job and start writing on Twitter of all places and the strategies and tools he's using to build his writing career on the internet in in a world where no one knows who he is the internet is a beautiful flawed strange incredible place but if you say anything slightly wrong on the internet everyone will let you know immediately at the end of the day you've got to put those things out of your head and focus on whether you are happy with it because if you're happy with it if you can put something online write something and say I stand by this then you'll be fine Shen welcome to the Deep dive podcast thank you so much for waking up early um you have an incredibly interesting story uh you have grown your Twitter following from literally nothing to 1.5 million followers in a very short space of time and no one outside of like a week ago really knew who you were because you're a fully Anonymous account and it's only I guess I think your first interview was was with David that's correct is this going to be your second this is the second podcast I've ever done yeah yeah well actually no I did do an interview with a with a a Dutch or a Belgian Dutch architectural magazine about 6 months ago and I did an interview with a Bulgarian magazine as well so this is my first my second ever English language uh press or interview whatever you want to call it we we are the Press so um lots of people in our audience are keen on growing some kind of following online they like the idea of being a Creator a lot of people in our audience like the idea of being a writer and we were doing some research for a video the other day and actually being a writer is like one of the top kind of dream occupations in a lot of places in the world um second sometimes to YouTuber sometimes ahead of YouTuber sometimes astronaut comes further up in the list sometimes it doesn't but like writer is like a thing that a lot of people aspire to and you are doing the thing and so I was hoping in this podcast we could dive into the backstory and then because I'd love to know how you ended up being the cultural tutor with all these followers and in the DMS with Elon Musk and then I'd love to i' love to dive into your writing process or lack of process no this sounds delightful and I hope what we have to say will be useful um for your listeners because look I always wanted to be a writer I mean you know you have those um yearbooks when you leave school um when I left school my primary school in year six my little profile he there a photo of me and some silly hat or whatever and and when it says what do I want to be when I grow up for some reason the first thing I wrote was businessman um and the second thing I wrote was was writer now now it's turned out that I'm not a businessman I'm not an entrepreneur I'm terrible at maths I hate organizing scheduling things and managing people but being a writer it's what I wanted to do since I was 10 years old and I was writing every day probably since that age so for like 15 years imagine you're writing every day all sorts of things I've still got the stories I wrote when I was like 11 or 12 I wrote this one about how Lions had like evolved into beings that were more capable and more intelligent than humans and there's a war between these lion creatures and humans that kind of thing um so I always wanted to be a rider always wanted to be a rider um went to University I did law I'm not a lawyer never wanted to be a lawyer I I I took law I think because it was um something appealed to me about it I I I loved my degree academically but the working side getting in the office throwing up the contracts being a barrister not so much anyway I'm I'm what I'm I'm 22 23 got my law degree still not a writer at least not a published writer I've got a bunch of unpublished novels I've tried to get some novels published in the past which um every agent I sent it to rejected it I've I don't know probably had two 300 rejections oh wow well in in total that's probably not far off the number you know all like you know I would often like when I was 19 I just like okay I've got this idea for an article I'm going to email you know the guardian or the times or just anybody who listen saying hey I've got this great idea for an article I want to write obviously I never hear back I did also apply to be the manager of Bayern Munich when I when I when I was when I was 15 they responded declining um um my proposal anyway so that's where I was I always had these ideas thinking could do this I could do that asking other people um to publish my book for me to to to publish My article for me you can probably see where I'm going with this life gets on a bit um I don't want to go to London and become a lawyer like all my friends have done hang around um and I need money right I'm living in a in a house in Durham where I went to University I need to make money to pay the rent to pay the bills so what do you do when you need money you get a job um so I apply to just about every job I could think of in area all sorts of things the one I ended up getting was a McDonald's um I so you got a la degree from Durham yeah and then you're applying for jobs and you end up working at McDonald's yeah what were your other options like where were you trying to get to sure sure well this is this is really interesting I think it's look like a lot of people may be listening to this right now I wanted to be a rider but I got this this kind of idea into my head that eventually someone was going to come along and knock on my door and say hey man we've heard of you this this hidden genius here's a book deal going right us you know 20 bestselling novels I I just thought it was going to happen eventually so I'm I'm writing away waiting for life to give me what I think I'm owed you know I'm feeling entitled almost to success and obviously if you don't do anything it doesn't come to your door you know as I said I tried I'd sent the emails um tried to get get the book deals whatever never happened um and that and I sort of maybe some extent I sort of hung up my cap as it were and thought washed my hands of it and thought fine I'm just going to write in my spare time um with normal job um and that's what I'm going to do for the rest of my days so when I was working at McDonald's which which I applied to because I needed the money to pay the bills I did you know there's no there's no sort of um there was no second thinking with it it was a very honest application to anybody who would take me I appli to Pizza H and they rejected me um all sorts of things I apply to just looking for some some way to make some money to make a living so I could then ride in my spare time um this was about two years ago I worked at McDonald's for for four or five months um getting in at 6:00 a.m. I wasn't a burger maker I was a maintenance person so my job was to bring in the stock get in the freezer you know load up the boxes of fries that's clean up as well degrease the floors get the jet washer in the car park pick up cigarette butts wipe splattered McFlurries off the booths in the Drive-Thru this this kind of stuff yeah was good good hon his work you all work is good if you're making money if you're working hard then there's dignity in that yeah and the people there were great but the truth was that I I wasn't I wasn't happy there and more than happy it's not really about happiness it's more when I woke up I I didn't wake up excited about the days to come and I was going to bed thinking F you know I'm glad I'm glad another day of my life is over um which isn't how it can be when you're doing what is right for you um I mean I don't know if I've painted this picture quite right but just imagine me there this guy who's always thought he was going to be a writer it's all he ever wanted to do and life hasn't quite turned out how he thought it would when he was 12 years old working at McDonald's earning the money and then in April of last year so it was just after my 25th birthday I had a bit of a revelation and and and and I the way I put it to people there were two ways I frame it the one I to go with is I call it my Mulan moment the Disney film Mulan you've seen it of course um you know the scene I adore that film the scene when um she suddenly realizes that she's going to go in place of her father and these this music kicks in the syns and she goes she gets a sword and she cuts her hair puts on the armor and rides off to W um that's how it felt for me and I said to said to my girlfriend one day I just got home from work and said look I'm going to quit my job at McDonald's and I'm going to throw everything at the wall I'm going to work until I die to figure out if I can make a living as a writer so what do you do when you want to be a writer online I thought it came partially from a good friend of mine who said look man you need to start bringing an audience to yourself you need to put your work online that's where people will find you don't wait for a book publisher or an agent to come along and say to you here you go you've got to go out and claim it for yourself so similar in some sense to the work you've done you know you've learned this lesson there's an audience there waiting is it's there's this wonderful line from from plenny uh the younger was a Roman lawyer back back in the second the first second century ad and in a letter to one of his friends and his friend was moaning saying like oh you know I'm writing all this good stuff but you know no one cares about it no one's interested in in in the classics anymore everyone just wants all this you know crappy modern rubbish and pl says to him look man you know we we can't complain about the state of the world and what readers do or don't want we've got to go out there and write something worth reading and people will respond if you do that so had my Mulan quit my job at McDonald's first thing I did was start writing listicles question um was there an inciting incident that led you to quit that led you to this realization or was it just one day you decided you you'd had enough it was it was a one day thing it was a one day thing I know there there was a moment and I'll tell you what it was my old school friends were getting together there's a group of five of us very very close friends and um we were getting together and and I was like look guys I can't come because I've got to shift to McDonald's I thought hold on you know I can't go and see my oldest and best friends this weekend because I'm supposed to be working um working with shift bringing in the the fries and and the McNuggets and I thought I can't have this anymore I have to change what I'm doing with my life if this isn't cuz I'm a very laidback person I take things as they come I go with the flow I don't worry about things too much I'm not particularly stressed and that led me to this point of complacency so so that I haven't thought I haven't actually remembered that moment for a while now and I'm glad you ask me that question cuz it's sort of that was it it was like this brief moment of clear thinking like you know you wait suddenly the world it's like you know you take off sunglasses and everything's brighter so that was my Mulan moment um yeah I find that when whenever anyone makes a change in their life uhhuh it it like always stems from One Moment One Moment where a story changes from A to B and the changing of that story or the changing of a belief or just that decision that's been made that then set to have a chain reaction of events and often people can sort of can boil it down to like that one moment where you realized oh crap exactly I mean I suspect it sort of like starting a fire I mean the kindling was probably Gathering the sticks you know and and the leaves uh and whatnot that was gathering over those long slow months of of working at McDonald's slowly but surely running out of money as well um by the time I quit I actually had less than no money um I owed money to all my friends and to my family as well but I think all that had been building slowly so so it's not like I suddenly just woke up and just changed my life there is a bit of a backlog there back catalog as say the kindling Sol building that's the spark the lights the fire that then transforms your life um that's how I'd I'd phrase it but it didn't exactly go well at the beginning I I I did a lot of things I applied to the Army um I applied to film school cuz I love Cinema um one of my deepest and oldest passions and I started writing listic um there's like a website called list verse they pay you $100 for a top 10 list of like you know the most interesting house plants um and and I churn out a few of those and it was good to earn some money online suddenly um and then um I I suddenly one of my friends said oh you know you could maybe maybe you can make money um tutoring online there's a lot of money in online tutoring cuz you got to remember the desire for flexibility was probably a big part of that change the fact I'd wanted to go and see my friends and I couldn't if you have a job where you work online you can go anywhere right so it was flexibility and earning money um were the two things that I wanted and writing it was kind of mixed in but it it wasn't all there um so tutoring uh great way um to make money online you probably be quite good at it my friend said but I didn't want to Che to history and maths and and physics like for GCS level um I did law I enjoyed law maybe I can teach people law um post on a load of Facebook forums saying he wants law tutoring you get like one like um no nobody pays any attention so not going to do legal tutoring fine maybe I'll go completely think outside the box and why not give sort of um cultural tutoring you know people want to be well-rounded I don't know about yourself like maybe you feel like oh you know I'd like to know a bit more about art know more about culture I feel very uncultured I go to a museum and I'm completely lost I go to a new place and I'm like I don't understand anything yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly exactly this is it I thought a lot of people like that so I I'll do cultural tutoring U made a website and you know I just use Squarespace um made a nice little website advertising my services um and then start trying to get a post online about that not getting any traction my friend says start a Twitter account man that's a good way to drive traffic you know it's a classic Model make it some sort of social media profile on one of them well X formally Twitter I should say and that's the one I went with and and it became clear pretty quickly that the people um weren't interested in my tutoring but they liked what I was writing on Twitter or X I mean I'll probably refer to itation conversation so this when I when I first heard you tell me the story when we were having dinner a few months ago now I can't remember I found that it basically par well it paralleled my story in a bunch of interesting ways as well because I had my moment of like oh I need to change something because a I read the 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris and B I started speaking to doctors and asking and spoke to doctors who were 10 years ahead of me in their career 20 years ahead and asking them if they actually enjoyed their jobs and the answer was always well H you know it's a bit of a slog and and this sort of thing so I had this moment of realization of like I need to make money on the side M and that coincided with me losing ,000 cuz get it I got scammed out of a Macbook from some dude on gum tree you know I was getting I was going into medical school I was like my first Apple product tried to buy it second and ended up getting scammed with a defunct product and you just lost a th lost I so I'd built up that over two years of doing tutoring in math and physics I was like you know painstakingly making sort of5 10 an hour5 an hour got this ,000 lost the ,000 and I was like okay I need to somehow make money and I landed on tutoring people to get get them into medical school and that worked for a while and then my YouTube channel started because the business started to plateau and I thought well if I make videos on YouTube teaching people how to get into Medical School some of them might think I'm Legit and therefore they will sign up to my my courses but it sounds like for you you were like I need to I want to I want to do this cultural tutoring thing if I start writing on Twitter some people might think I'm Legit and therefore sign up to my culturing cultural tutoring Services precisely that that's yeah very eloquently explained uh so it was an accident basically sing the Twitter County I didn't set out to conquer the world or whatever and get a load of followers on Twitter I was just trying to make some money in a way that would be make a living you know in a way that I would find more enjoyable day today Mak my life more more flexible um and and I mean what I will say is when I made the Twitter account obviously you making I don't know how you found it when you started your YouTube account but but when you make an account you have zero followers yeah zero zero subscribers whatever it is um so the getting the first thousand followers was a big grind I I worked I worked very hard but I think I decided basically what I'm going to do is write one thread every day and the original plan was for 90 days just to see what happens okay because ultimately if if it doesn't work I can try something else sure but I'd heard it was good for growth to write threads with a thing to do um so I started writing a thread every day and then um sorry question before we do this why did you decide to call yourself the cultural tutor rather than your real name cuz a a lot of people have this issue where they're like yeah I kind of want to do stuff on the internet but I don't want to show my face especially like people you know I talked a lot of want to be YouTubers and they're always like oh I'm really want my friends and family will thing I'm not very good on camera and there's all that kind of stuff sure it wasn't a desire for anonymity so much it was as I said what I wanted to offer people was cultural tutoring so the name cultural tutor was literally just a complete a literal description of what I thought I was doing I didn't want to set myself up as this sort of the this font of knowledge and understanding I literally just wanted to offer people tutoring and things that were culturally related so that's where the name came from from um and the reason I chose that for my Twitter account was because I just thought it sounded more authoritative with a picture of a statue of Plato um there wasn't a lot of thinking that went into it was very very um quick this this is a beautiful thing you may have found it as well when you start something new everything is so simple so straightforward you don't worry you don't think ahead because you don't know you there's nothing to worry about nothing to fit nothing to lose you just go with your instincts and I thought who who cares what Sheen Quirk has to say who's going to care if Sheen Quirk writes something about how to date a church by the shape of its windows but if this you know there's a picture of a of a of Plato and then then this Anonymous um name so it's almost like you know um Batman there's a great line in in the in in Batman Begins you know the first of Christoph no's Trilogy when he's like as a as Bruce Wayne you're just one man but as Batman you're a symbol um it felt a little bit like that I mean I hope it doesn't sound too silly but but to me almost the cultural T is are my Alter Ego um I don't know if I have quite the same relationship with him that Bruce does with with with Batman but to some extent that's how I felt it was like putting on putting on my my mask as it were to become the cultural shooter were you to what extent were you concerned that you didn't have enough credibility why would anyone care what you say it's not like you did a degree in history you just did a degree in law it's like I think a lot of people have some level of syndrome that holds them back from doing things even anonymously because they're worried like oh but I I don't have the right credential to be able to do this thing sure that's a fantastic question um I I'll say two things first of all I still feel that in fact the more and more this journey has gone on the more I feel that I know absolutely nothing about anything I'm writing about it's all just spurious nonsense but I think um the reason that I didn't worry about it in the beginning is because the ultimate test of credibility is how people respond to it like you know if if you're worry that you don't have the authority to write about what what you want to write about it let other people be the judge of that because if they don't like it they'll tell you and then you can improve as well because there were some things I said in the early days and people were like man this is so wrong so I went away and researched it and then I got better it's like a sort of self um it's a positive feedback loop um but I think that that's the key let other people be the judge of whether or not you've got the credibility um ultimately if you want to write about it if if there's something that interests you however far from the truth you might be you've got to start writing about it because otherwise you know you never will I mean look at it this way that whole point about credibility applies whether I'm writing to an audience of a million an audience of a thousand or an audience of none if I'm just typing away on my laptop that doesn't mean I have more or less credibility right um I don't know if that quite quite Mak sense so I think that's a really good point like let other people be the judge but I think there's sort of that is a mindset shift that that's a that that's a mindset that a lot of people don't have I think you know law is a fairly traditional thing medicine is a very traditional thing a lot of people who've done well in school have gotten very good at doing the things that the people in power say that you should do working towards a badge and so the thinking like screw it I'll just I'll just let other people be the judge of whether I'm good is a completely counter to what most people would think which is oh I have to be good first and then good dot do dot good things will happen exactly and the beauty is once you start you get better so quickly like if I'm I'll go back to another example if I'm just writing a little essay on my laptop oh I'm thinking about whatever it is you know impressionism and I write a little essay for myself and I'm like oh how could that be better I don't know then I go in I leave it for two weeks and I forget about it when you write online the internet um is a beautiful flawed strange incredible place but if you say anything slightly wrong on the internet everyone will let you know immediately and and that can be quite scary but to me I treated that as is an incredible um tool because as I said immediately you start getting better because you have to get better because the stakes are raised when you're talking um to people about about it online um there's a point you mentioned earlier about the exams and and really good point yeah we're all trained in school I get I get an AAR I get praised whatever I get into University because I've done this thing that other people want me to do and I suppose speaking about a mindset shift for anybody who wants to be a writer what I would ask them is who are you writing for and to me the answer was myself like I'm not I hope what I write is useful I I always say what I produce I want it to be useful and interesting and beautiful for other people but mainly for myself and when I write something online even today you know I'm I'm going to go and write something on Twitter later today I'm not quite sure there are two things I have in mind today's the birthday of Commodus the Roman Emperor who was played by wacking Phoenix and Gladiator so it' be kind of interesting to tell the real story of his life cuz he's almost wilder than he was in the film or something else about the Eiffel Tower anyway um when I'm writing those things I'm writing them for myself because I'm really curious to know about them because I you know I'd like to I know a few of the facts about the life of comus but I'd like to try and write something about him properly um when I'm writing these things it it's it's for me because I want to know about them because I'm curious and if I'm happy with what I've written then there's a point in which I don't care what anybody else says and and I can have thousands of people online telling me this is the worst thing I've ever read you should be banned there's that wonderful moment when someone did quote tweet me saying this dude should be banned and it got like 95,000 likes W um but equally if if thousands of people are saying wow this is wonderful um this has changed my life which people have said these things to me and it's some shocking um to hear that I'm beautiful and uplifting at the end of the day you've got to put those things out of your head if you want to be a writer you've got got to forget what anybody else is saying good or bad bad or good and focus on whether you are happy with it because if you're happy with it if you can put something online write something and say I stand by this then you'll be fine and nothing can bother you no problem can stand in your way online whether you go big or you fall you'll be okay because ultimately that's what it's about I think it's about writing something that you are proud of isn't necessarily the word because you know whenever whenever I write anything I always think God that could have been 10 times better you probably feel as way you you make a bit of you know you make a video you analyze something like the next day you're like man that was awful I could have done it better but if you can put something out and say I'm I'm okay with that then all these other problems kind of fade away yeah the bar I have in my mind is is this at least reasonable sure um and when I spoke to Cal Newport who's written a bunch of productivity themed books he said the the way that he keeps himself going for when he's writing a book is he tells himself this one just needs to be reasonable the next one is going going to be good sure sure no like everyone has different ways of doing it um I mean one thing I will say so this is a slight tangent back to what I was just saying I think it was from those long months and years when I had no audience online and I was writing for myself um that I kind of got this mindset um I set myself a challenge in the summer of 2021 I wanted to write a novel in 4 weeks I thought a novel that's exactly 99,900 99 words long I just thought it sounded fun to do that and and I did it and at the end of it uh 4 weeks I was working at the time and writing in the evenings or or writing while I was at work that was when I was working as a kind of a security guard or night Watchman on the graveyard shifts um that's another job I did and I think it was in in those days when it was just me writing for myself that I learned that I learned this um the point you make about standards is interesting I mean that that that's maybe we we can go down that route now or another point um and I suppose that's scary for Young Writers as well people think oh I want to be a writer but look at all this other stuff it's so amazing how can I ever possibly compete with that to to me at least it's it's yeah this stuff is good we shouldn't hide from it you've got to believe that you can do something better and even if you fail you've got to at least try you know if you set the standard up here but then you only reach this far you've still achieved more than if you set the standard down there that's my take anyway and it can be quite taxing because you're never happy with what you've done yeah um but I'd like to believe it's maybe made things I've written just a little bit better this episode of Deep dive is very kindly sponsored by snipped now snipped is an amazing app that's absolutely going to revolutionize the way you listen to podcasts I've been using it for the last 2 months and it's become my absolute favorite way to listen to podcast because the cool thing about snipped is that it's not just a podcast player what it does is allow you to create Snips of each podcast that you listen to where if you hear something that particularly Vibes with you all you need to do is tap your headphones and the app will save it and then it's like this ridiculous ously fancy AI 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deepdive and that will let you sign up to a completely free 30 day trial and if you're one of the first 200 people to use that link you'll also get 20% off the annual premium subscription so thank you so much brilliant for sponsoring this episode so you make the website on Squarespace the cultural tutor.com or whatever the domain was you decide you know what I need lead genen for my business I'm going to make a Twitter account sorry lead lead gen lead lead generation generate leads for the business um and so you start writing on Twitter yeah and you think okay cool I'm going to do a thread every day for 30 days 90 days day one to day seven what happens next well I I think the first week I was so excited about writing threads I just I wrote like five a day just by the oh that sounds great that sounds great um the way I got my first few followers was by um ask some my friends to follow me um of course as one would and then I if I was say doing a thread about Roman history I would just search on Twitter for other people writing about Roman history follow them follow people who liked it and commented on it and retweeted it hoping they would follow me back um and you know I got up to like 20 30 followers that way um and then I would message some bigger accounts as well being like hey this is what I'm um doing uh I write about history blah blah blah blah um do you have any advice how did you grow and some of them you know one thing I should say is a lot of people are incredibly kind and helpful the internet seems like this great big terrifying scary place but but a lot of people on Twitter were so so incredibly friendly and helpful to me um gave me all sorts of wonderful detailed advice accounts with everything from 2,000 to 100,000 followers you know some of them would retweet me and then I got got into this habit of every time anybody had liked anything I'd ever posted I would then message them personally every time I uploaded something new so for example it's it's 10 p.m. I've just finished the thread for the day I'll stay up till 4 in the morning messaging like 150 people um and often what would happen is i' get to that point where you know it stops you because it's like you've sent too many messages in the past hour you're clearly a bot or whatever so I usually send messages until I wasn't allowed to send them anymore by the platform and I ground out those first um those first thousand followers then you have a thread which gets 100 likes 150 likes I remember I did this one that got like n got 900 likes um about it was about a speech given by um Pericles at the end at the beginning of the pelian war and i' kind of like analyzed his speech and broken it down we got 900 likes and I was literally I was like I've made it I'm I'm I'm famous online I'm a successful right you know just how far into the journey was this that was after two weeks I think after two weeks you got a thread with 900 likes yeah Dam that's cool it it went yeah I I look I I'll say two things everyone has to be lucky right you don't ever get anywhere without a little bit of luck but I would like to think that I I work bloody hard for those because because I had no money in my bank account I had nothing I had nothing to lose nothing to fall back on it was like it's E Do or Die either this Twitter account works or whatever the army or film school or listicles or tutoring something has got to work so I just gave everything and I think it was once I started writing on Twitter the joy of riding threads um completely overtook me and I was like this is the one that I want to work if I can find a way maybe to make some some make a living doing this um so I will say it was hard work I was lucky a combination of luck and hard work I'll leave it that I mean it certainly sounds like a lot of hard work like writing five threads a day and then also staying up for 6 hours from 10 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. messaging people individually to say Hey you have at some point engaged with my tweet would you like to read this one as that is like a a [ __ ] absurd level of work to put into a Twitter account um so yeah yeah look I'll say two things about that first of all I don't give people the wrong impression it wasn't 6 hours of messages every night but certainly for the first it was at least an hour or two three off four um but I like to you know there's that that great saying I don't know who came up with it but um How We Do Anything Is How We Do everything and I think I like think it's how I tend to approach things so like at school you know I love I love the exams but then when I was playing football I gave everything to the football you know I wanted to um I'm not very good at football I should add I'm a very cumbersome Striker but I still gave everything I I I could and then when it came to Twitter you've almost got to trick yourself in into thinking that this is the most important thing in the world and obviously it isn't it's just Twitter who cares about social media what what what people are saying online but if you trick yourself into thinking this is all that matters then suddenly the stakes are raised when the stakes are higher we all perform better if you think what you're doing doesn't really matter then you it's going to show in your work right yeah um and in how much work you're able to put in and the fact I could push through that tiredness um was because I managed to trick myself into thinking that if if this didn't work if this Twitter account didn't work then you know that was it yeah there's I think that's a really good point um there's there's a lot of value in convincing yourself that the thing is going to work M and therefore because if someone is like oh I'm just going to halfly start a Twitter account or start a YouTube channel and I'll just I'll just publish a YouTube video when I feel like it I'll just write a thread when I feel like it oh it's not going to work anyway it's like the you know as fluffy as it sounds the the belief that the thing is not that the thing might not work absolutely changes the way you approach the thing absolutely whereas the belief that this has to work completely transforms the way you approach the thing he who says he can and he who says he can't are both usually right um It's a Wonderful line I think I guess the heart of of what you're saying I don't know about yourself but when you say started with YouTube did you um how much did you commit to it a lot committing to right making one video every week for the next 2 years and I'm sure something good will happen look man that's how you've built what you've built today and how you've got to where you are because you put in that work and I think I think this is it sounds frightening at first when you say to people that there's no that there's no easy way that that you've got to work hard and you've got to want to but but I think that's also reassuring in a way because it means um it's not just magic and it's not just luck there are elements of that of course there are but if you do put in that level of work that's got to lead to something because let's think of this competitively right the day you start your YouTube account the day you started yours the day I started my my my Twitter account probably 20,000 other people also started accounts on that day and they all wanted to do something with it but I wouldn't be surprised if you worked harder than every single other person who started an account on the same day you did um and you know that like to think I I probably did with with with my Twitter account and not just hard work but but passion as well and Joe you can work clever you can there's all sorts of other things but I think at the core of it is is that that compulsion um and I suppose I was in this position where being a writer is what i' always wanted to be and this is a really really important moment because i' had i' had this as we said this um um this flash point when the fire was lit and I suddenly see the world in a different way quit my job that then reached this point when I started writing on Twitter when it was no longer simply this compulsion to to changed my life it was like I'd found the thing that fitted with me I'd found you know people might say I found my calling um which was almost another gear change because as I said I would always wanted to be a writer and suddenly I was writing and it seemed like it might lead somewhere and when you're doing not just when when you're not just working hard but you're also working in a way that the work isn't work right writing threads for me Isn't work it's like it's it's a joy it's a delight it can be a torment it can be horrible it can be painful um but I approach you know and it probably sounds silly to people talking about threads on Twitter in this way but look you know um from a certain point of view that's true it's just the internet at the same time if you write a good thread a million people 10 million people 30 million people could read something you've written um and and maybe it'll do some good if they read it hopefully I'd like to think some of the things I've written have you know made people's days a little bit better made them see the world in a slightly brighter way um and the the point was I was sat there writing and I was like this is what I'm supposed to be doing and and it's a blessing to be able to say that and to think it and to feel it and that was a world away from from McDonald's there there are some essays from Paul graah that I've been reading recently how how to find work that you love and he talked about how the Journey of finding work that you love is is something that the 8 billion people on the planet only probably a few hundred thousand will get to the point where the thing that they are doing they can genuinely say with an open heart I genuinely love this thing MH and what he argues in these essays is that like you want to find that thing as soon as possible really because and and if you don't yet know what the thing is then the idea is that you want to experiment with a lot of different things but it sounds like for you you knew from a young age that like I want to be a writer and then after you had that flasho moment where you quit the job at McDonald's you were like cool I'm going to find a way to make this work yeah I think that's very Fair um summary brief summary of it and and one thing I would add though that I realized with this is for people who who want to be a writer to me at least you either are a writer or you aren't now whether you're a published writer or a writer who with no audience that's a different matter but being a writer isn't about having a book you know on the Shelf it's not about having a million followers on Twitter being a writer is about um what defines somebody who we can say they are a capital W writer is whether or not they wake up and they write that day it's about doing the thing rather than being being the thing almost precisely precisely exactly that's exactly it and a lot of people think oh I'd love to be a wrer well if you're writing you already are and I hope that doesn't sound like poultry consolation but that is the most important thing whereas if you're not writing thinking I would like to be a writer yeah you're kind of waiting for someone to to give you permission to start doing the thing exactly but actually starting doing the thing is what ultimately gets you in front of people what are you waiting like a lot of people say oh you know I'd love to ride I don't have the time I've got this idea but I didn't have the time today to write like if you need to write if if you want and need to write this thing you'll find the time you'll make the time every every action is an expression of our priorities we find the time to eat every day you find the time to go and see your friends find the time to sleep if you can find the time to sleep and you can find the time to write if you really want to do it so that that's what i' say to anybody who is sort of in this position where they don't have the audience they don't have the book deal like I was in literally 18 months ago um slightly less than that you're still a writer anyway yeah and you know this is a going to be a trite point but we we we are talking about writing but actually everything that we're talking about is applicable to almost everything else as well you want to be a creative in any kind of field you want to be a YouTuber you want to be a musician you want to be an artist it's like do the thing do the don't wait for permission to suddenly one day at some point in your life you're going to magically have the time to do the thing everyone's lives should generally tend to get busier as they grow older you you get a family you get responsibilities you have kids all this kind of stuff if if right now I feel like I don't have the time to write lol you know I'm I'm like a dude with no kids how do I possibly think I'm going to suddenly start having a time once I have kids um you know there are people who start start a business because they want uh they want more free time and then you speak to anyone who's got a business they like yeah how how's that going for you you realize that starting a business to try and get more free time is a is a complete myth likeing business does not give you more free time you realize oh my godness oh my goodness there's all this stuff I need to do but if a friend did say something to me once which sounded very very counterintuitive but very wise he said I mean I'm I'm assuming some some famous person said it originally but it was like entrepreneurs let's say like yourself work 60 hours a week so they don't have to work 40 hours a week um which does that make sense yeah yeah it's and I feel sort of the same way about I'm I'm certainly not an entrepreneur but I'm happy to spend 10 hours if you're doing what you love like the the Paul grain point then you're happy to spend 12 hours a day doing it rather than spending eight hours a day seven hours a day doing something you don't really um want to do so you're two weeks into the thing into writing threads you put this thread out and it gets 900 likes mhm what and you were thinking [ __ ] I've made it what happens next well then I just started writing immediately when things when things are going well you're always more excited the key part is continuing when it's not going well because I think the next thread I wrote didn't even get more than you know 20 likes or something um and it brings you right back down to earth um when suddenly you think you're king of the world you think you're going to be the most famous writer in history and then suddenly six people um is actually not not not to be sniffed at but only six people um like what you've written so that was I think the first thing that happened was that my my suddenly expanding ego was immediately burst but in in terms of the story I just kept going and then I think after three weeks or four weeks perhaps four weeks um I was on about 3,000 followers so been building still grinding it out um getting retweets from bigger accounts they would bring in you know sort of you know another 20 30 followers grinding grinding it out and then I did this thread about um medieval education and it got like 5,000 likes and another couple thousand followers and then I did this one Thread about modern architecture and and and the picture that I'd used for it um was I just took a photo of a light switch in my house this light switch I really hated it's similar to to the one over there actually this sort of just this white pointy plastic light switch and it was really annoying me that day so I took a photo of it and then wrote This Thread about um the problem with modern architecture not being quite what you think it is and that got 15,000 likes and my follow account shot up after that to like 12 or 13,000 or or I can't remember all the numbers and then two weeks after that I think came the big one I did this thread called um and remember at this point I'm still doing one every single day most of them uh and misses you occasionally you know get a hit but you've got to keep doing because by runting a thread every day you're just increasing the odds of something doing well I mean I'm talking here from a purely engagement perspective rather than um some of the other more important things but you know as you know the more content you upload online the more potential engagement there is um so six six weeks in i' had this this like I think I probably three or four days on the Trot that I was like with the with engagement of me dropping I was thinking okay this is it this is the end of the cultural sh this is the end of my journey you know whatever it is 15,000 followers that's where it ends for me fine I'll take but I was I was annoyed I was thinking I've got more to say more to do and I was so mad and then I open my laptop and I and I wrote This Thread about entitled it the the the danger of minimalist design and the death of detail and it was basically analyzing the ways in which the world has got less detailed everything's getting simplified from from brand logos to architecture um graphic design of all kinds um and and this thread I I shut my laptop and then my friend messaged me being like Whoa man that thread's doing pretty well I opened it you know a few hours later it was on like 30,000 likes oh wow who you know bloody hell this this is this is shocking I went to bed and I woke up and then my my dad messaged me be like wow man that's really doing well and and then it was it was on like 250,000 likes by the end of the day it had reached half a million um and my follow count had increased by 80,000 wow to to to to to nearly 100,000 um and at that point I had then the critical mass of followers to be able to grow to the point where I'm at now um where I had enough followers that I wasn't relying too much on the algorithm to favor me you know the all allseeing allmighty algorithm um and that was I think 6 weeks after I started the account wow so from that point today it's it's basically those first six weeks were just these beautiful be beautiful days where as I said you're not worrying you're not overthinking everything's simple you you move fast I started a newsletter in that period as well um didn't worry about what it was called or what it was going to I just started one and started writing it straight away and then from that that sixth week from the big thread to now it's been sort of well one thread every day since then growing to Apparently one and a half million followers on Twitter um this is the there's there's so much I love about your story um one of the big things is that I think for someone hearing it it just shows that there's basically no excuses like you're an anonymous account no one knows who you are no one knows your name no one knows how old you are no one knows whether you have a degree or a qualification and you decide to just do the thing you you don't you don't have a degree in anything related to cultural stuff you're just interested in the thing and you're interested in writing and you just do the work and now freaking Elon Musk is in your DMs and you've got a one and a half million followers and you could now spend the rest of your life literally like making a living out of writing and you started with like seemingly no unfair advantages other than enjoying writing and enjoying the subject that you were talking about is that is that fair to say I I think it is fair to say um an important part of the story is that as I I've been writing every day since I was 10 years old and when you write for that long you know I I I can be a lot I think I can do better but I don't I don't think I'm a terrible writer um and that came from all those years so so I think that has something to do with it it wasn't like I just woke up and said Okay I want to play tennis and then I was at Wimbledon in a year um I had been training if you like for for for well over a decade by the time I started writing online and um David Pell the found of write of Passage who have been sponsoring me now for over a year not actually sponsoring me they've been my patrons they don't ask me to publicize anything about them they this is an important part of the story we'll get back to what you're saying but I just I want to tell this really incredible part of the story when um it was around the time of when I blown up and I got the newsletter I still wasn't making money at the point at this time and so I thought thought okay I'm going to monetize the newsletter and then on literally the same day I decided to do that this guy called David pel um gets in touch with me um he do no who I am or how old I am where I'm from he DMS me on Twitter get his number we talk he tells me who he is what he does he's said look man I love your work online I teach people to write online with with his with this course um so I want to support you I want to help people in your position who've just started out who don't have a source of income because he realized if I started dedicating my attention to making money at that point probably engagement would drop because I'd be spending I'd be spending less time writing for the general audience and more time trying to curate um people who who who who were supporting my work he said how how much money do you want I'll pay you how how much do you need um to live on and to buy your books um and ever since then in in in June or or July of last year he's been supporting me um with no strings no strings attached um why well I think from his point of view this is something I was sort of a trial run this role writer in Residence what wrer passage want to do is is is literally do this just just patronize in the older sense of the word not patronize um the way we use it now but become a patron of Young Writers help them by just giving giving them the money they need and writers don't need that much money you know it's not like investing in a business whether loads of cost or writer there's a great line for from John Ruskin um one of my favorite writers and historians he says all all all a writer needs is bread and salt give them their bread and salt by but you know by this he just means food on the table water and a place to live and that's all they need it's all they should have in fact if R has too much money it's probably not good for them anyway yeah so no he just wanted to support my work I mean everyone always asks well what does he get out of it what do does he benefit what and I think it was genuinely as shocking as it is um to hear it it was it was it was an act of generosity and of faith and belief it wasn't a zero sum game calculation it was just I want to help you because I believe in what you're doing and it's beautiful I mean as I mean as a writer someone who wants to be able to wake up and write until I fall asleep until I can't write anymore what more could you ask for than someone saying I'm going to pay you to live as long as okay there was one string which was you keep writing that was the only one which of course is isn't a string at all um that's an important part of the story but this came from a tangent now what were you saying just before I um got on to that unfair advantages unfair advantages lack of uner advantages he put in the grind the hard work yeah while enjoying the process and ended up with 100,000 Twitter followers in about 6 weeks yeah um speaking about that early growth I um I think there's a couple of other important things about why why I grew so quickly um I think the first is that I probably wasn't writing in a way or about the things that a lot of other people were writing about and and the reason for this is because um you know the the way we write is influenced by what we read and I wasn't reading what anyone else was reading broadly speaking um I have this one rule when it comes to to which books I read I've said it before and I'll say it again I I don't read anything published in the last 50 years um for a couple of reasons one of course is that if you read the same books as everyone else not only will you write the same way but you'll think the same way so if instead of reading um you know whatever is on the on the New York Times bestseller list I'm reading something published 700 years ago whatever I end up writing will inevitably be different um so that that that's part of it I think um but the second thing is the kind of content I was putting online um you know the internet is is as I said this beautiful bizarre terrifying strange thing that we don't yet really understand or all of its consequences um you know I often sort of look back and think people like arasmus one of my heroes back in the 16th century he was writing his books a great force of Education literacy if he could see the internet where you know as long as you can afford a you know an internet connection it's free you've got every book ever written at your fingertips I mean it's it's incredible resource but and yet the internet is filled with a lot of of crap frankly um you know there's some wonderful creators out there wonderful wonderful writers V video um artists and and and and um and and all all sorts of people but a lot of Internet you know if you open Instagram and go on it what do you see probably you're going to see you know monkeys doing backflips and and funny videos um celebrity gossip and the internet suddenly what we have is when people go online what they experience most of the time is it's either politics which just causes Division and it makes you angry um or it's just Mindless Doom scrolling content designed purely to keep you staring at it um so then they can make more money from your ad Revenue so so the internet is full of this sort of thing which is either making you angry and unhappy or just just makes leaves you feeling empty you know uh what does it say in in the Bible man does not live by bread alone and I think the things that I'm writing about art architecture history it's it's apolitical um it's not clickbait I don't think it's not merely something that's entertaining in in in a simple sort way look I I love video of otter you know swimming around and with a little baby otter But ultimately that's not enough to to live on you need something more and I think when people suddenly find themselves reading online about art about something as simple as as Claude Monet and you know his his paintings of of of of the water lies in his garden or about Gothic architecture um you know or or the great step Wells of India whatever it is where people are reading this suddenly they find themselves reading about something which isn't politics which isn't Doom scroll on content it's actually quite interesting quite uplifting quite beautiful and quite meaningful and I think that's part of what resonated so much and I got a lot of those sorts of comments and I I still do you know one thing I noticed is this TR people would often quote tweet me and they'd say you know timeline refresh and that sort of thing and that you know I didn't think much of it at first and I'm looking back I think hold on there's something interesting there you know what they're saying is their timeline is so full of just of just either nonsense or unpleasant things to read something that was quite Pleasant and meaningful wasn't the sort of thing they usually read online um and and I think that's part of where the growth came from um that that it was this sort of thing that people experienced a different form of content as we now call um the the things you find on the internet this episode of Deep dive is very kindly being sponsored by hostinger now if you're looking to start a business or develop your personal brand in 20124 and you're going to need a website but the question of where to start is a question that 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useful AI tools including a logo creator an image generator and a heat map tool as well it's super easy to use with a drag and drop editor for simple customization and you you don't need any coding or technical knowledge at all hostinger comes out to less than $3 a month which includes a free domain name so it's super affordable and if you use the link in the video description or in the show notes which is hostinger.com Al abdal and if you use the code Ali abdal in all caps at checkout then you'll also get 10% off so thank you again to hostinger for sponsoring this episode I'd have to dive into the writing process or lack of it but before we go there I'm curious so you're covering a wide range of topics mhm history art architecture Cinema tons and tons and tons of stuff football I I still football I football and I do find a way to connect the things and and right about football as well um presumably you don't just have all this knowledge in your head no so like how you know someone looking at this and being like you you've written like basically an essay on Twitter every day for the last 500 days or something ofs said like that probably more than that how on Earth do you not run out of stuff to say um to points first of all uh you can never run out of things to say I mean I suppose I'm lucky given the things I write about about culture history art architecture football whatever like the world is just full if all you do is open your eyes and look you'll never run out of things to to write about if you go outside your room open your eyes look around you with the trees you know there's orange tree here you know you could write a book about that orange tree there's so much to say about it so many tangents to go off so inspiration comes from lit and a lot of my best work has come um and you know I wrote a thread uh two days ago or rather a post a long post about the benefits of trees in cities um and engagement wise that one did pretty well um it's been a bit up and down recently but that one got like 100,000 likes um and that had come from from walking around as I do um I spent a lot of time walking around doing nothing and and i' just been looking I was on I was on this one street and then I went to another Street and I suddenly felt happier on this other Street street I was thinking what why is that like I suddenly found myself my head was up rather than down I was like oh there are trees on this street and I found myself looking at the trees it was also Shady so I was cooler I was like there it that's I've got to write about trees and why they're so good and that came as I say from just walking outside and and and listening to yourself not looking at my phone not listening to music so inspiration comes from everywhere but more to the point of your question um look I I have a lot of books I spend most of my time when I'm not writing reading um and and I'm always buying more books more than I could possibly ever read so the the the knowledge so to speak that I use to write with mostly comes from books the internet is of course an incredible place to research things um as well and I think once you get enough basic knowledge about something you then sort of start to pass into this other territory which I would call understanding um and understanding is much more powerful than than knowledge and I think once you've got just a little bit of understanding you suddenly start to make connections you wouldn't have previously made and you look at things and even when you don't know that much about them you get a few little facts about it you can then start to build the connections in and it's suddenly whereas before I might have looked at something and and and not had much to say about it now when you've got all these the these links there in your brain from reading all these books giving it time to percolate yeah you can then look at it and then suddenly you got these connections to make drawing back on other material you've written about um other things you know about and then you're able to suddenly look at a lot of different things and write about them and seeing the similarities um I don't know if that's too fluffy an answer but but but but the hard facts are it comes from books many you know you read a book about something basically so let's say you and I are both walking and we're walking down hide Park sure and we're think and we're both thinking let's write a thread about trees sure I'm going to be thinking well I know very little about trees let me find the Wikipedia article and let me uh I don't know I don't know like at that point the thought process of like from let me write write something about trees lands at a brick wall pretty quickly what does your thought process look like when you think I want to ride about trees um this is why I said you want to open your eyes and look and then interrogate yourself so we we're there in hide Park we're looking at a tree y um and we look at the tree and and I say oh you know Ali do you know what kind of tree that is you don't know I'll say I don't know either and then oh what kind of tree is it okay um is that kind of tree native to England did we bring it from somewhere else why did they plant this kind of tree here are the other trees in the park the same sort of tree why did I not know what that tree was called when the world is full of trees how can I not know what type of tree this is well people in the past did they know what trees were called maybe they did yeah maybe people living in the Middle Ages had a bit of a connection to Nature and they knew what the plants and the trees and the birds were all called and then suddenly it's like wow now I've got something to write about you know we're more distant from nature or this the history of this particular kind of tree and how it got here and where it was planted and why why it was used in High Park and then as I said when I was walking on the other Street we're looking there we're thinking um you know oh it's nice to be around this trees and here was shading us from the Sun and that in itself is I I think interesting enough and that was one of the points I made about Urban trees what the great that is regulating temperature because we're cooler like we look around in High Park on a sunny day why is everyone gathered underneath the trees aha it's it's not complicated at all none of this is complicated it's none of it's remotely complicated or difficult to comprehend I think the key is just looking and looking properly and pausing for 20 seconds more 30 seconds more about the things you're looking at to ask yourself why and what and how and when if those four questions about everything you look at you'll suddenly realize there's too much to write about it's not a question of of are there enough things to write about it's there are more things than I could ever possibly write about in 10 lifetimes you know same same for this building um and the street outside just take a walk through London and and your mind will sort of sort of explode with with with potential and then okay so you've got all these questions so I'm going jump in one point and then once you look in that way and really look at things and then you've also read a little bit and you do know a few facts you can then maybe start making connections um so you know one example might be like architecture is a great example um you know when you look at a building and and you really look at it and you you know we we don't pay attention to things but I look at that building and I notice a particular detail of it and I'm why is that there then I suddenly remember a fact about that building like um you know on the building here just just just over the road um is is vaguely neoclassical you've got you've got the columns uh it's a Doric order and you've got the triglyphs above them and then you know then when you look at them suddenly because I know they're called triglyphs this is just a hard fact a hard fact in itself is potentially interesting it's useful to know what things are called but once you connect that that fact to a bit of History this is a cool thing about triglyph so a triglyph imagine like a the front of a neoc classical building you've got the colums then you've got like sort of a flat um The Arc TR above it like resting horizontally and then the pediment which is a triangle bit and and on the arc trave you'll notice when you go outside there are these decorative strips they're like groups of three little lines like that there's three of them then a space and three of them above each column they're called triglyphs and what's cool about triglyphs is that although they're in stone on the front of this building and they were in stone in ancient Greek architecture and in Roman architecture they originate when Greek buildings were made from wood and when they built them from wood these three triglyphs were originally um bits of the Cross beams that were sticking through the front and then when the Greeks started building in stone instead of wood they just imitated the shape of it so they kept these three decorative strips um in stone and then it was no longer functional it was decorative and then 2 and a half thousand years later on a street in London the decision of some Greek Builder Anonymous Greek Builder 2 and a half thousand years ago to to keep this this bit of wood and turn it into stone is influencing the way the streets in London look I mean it's a miracle you know and that's where a few facts do come in handy I think that's where reading the books so if you read a few facts and then look that's where the inspiration comes from anyway you had a and so you're thinking because I guess when I make my Youtube videos what the The Guiding question is what actionable point can someone take away from this that would help them build a life they love or something what's the guiding that's so that's like self-help but sort of in your genre what's what's what are the guiding questions that you're thinking about like whether it's worth sharing something or whether it's just oh this is a factoid no one cares that's a good a very good question yeah we do work in Fairly different fields in that regard I do have this line I think I mentioned earlier I I try to make sure everything I write is either one of and hopefully all of interesting useful and beautiful but you know that's a bit of a slogan rather than a a tool with which I analyze the things are I I I think it comes down to judgment and taste like you just have a sense for things like am I excited about it do I want to know this do I find this interesting do I think this is useful and that's it it's my I try not to think about what people want to read what they need to know about I me who I say what anybody else wants or needs and I think once you start playing that game at least from my point of point of view I think I would I would immediately lose the spark yeah like um the thing about trees the other day I was just excited to write about it I was excited to think about it you know um it's just something that had me interested and and I I suppose there is a bit of texture there because there's a difference as you say between a factoid um and then a story maybe so if if someone is if if if you were to hire like a Twitter growth agency or something and they were to be like look Sheen like the most important thing is the first tweet and the most important thing of the first tweet is the first line which is going to find the most viral first lines imaginable and just like feed them to you and then you go and create a thread based on that yeah that would be how does how does that kind of idea land with you um in some sense look I'll say one thing when you have a first line the thread or the post writes itself when you have a great title um you know there even these stories in Hollywood apparently the The Producers they sit around and come up with titles theyve got a great title and they go and find somebody and say write me a script based on this title um if you have a great title everything writes itself everything falls into place but in that scenario specifically I I couldn't do it I think I'm I'm too protective over over my own over my own work and I think for me the key is that look I don't plan ahead I don't have a Content schedule I just wake up and wait until something strikes me something inspires me that day and then I write about it when the passion is there the fire the Curiosity when it's fresh in your mind that that that I think that's the vital part of my writing process on on on Twitter and once that stops um I I don't think I could do it yeah CU then you become a Content Factory yeah job exactly right EXA exact that's it exactly right now what I'm still doing to this day is literally finding something that that that's been on my maybe it's been on my mind for a couple of weeks and then suddenly I'm turning it over in my head trying to understand something I've got it and I I need to go and find a laptop and and start writing before before I forget um I'm still in that beautiful space and I'm I'm very lucky to be here um doing this um sort of thing yeah there's a little I've drawn a sort of bell curve sure yeah um with like art and optimization on opposite ends or creative and business on the opposite on opposite and I think there's this I I really struggle with this balance MH cuz you know with with YouTube videos we we we could only make two YouTube videos a week and I sorry I said that's still a lot that's still a lot um but that means there's only there's only eight videos a month and so I'm excited about all these different things but we're thinking well unless we unless we can find a good title and thumbnail there's all there's like no point in making the video just cuz I'm excited about it because like why bother making a video that 50,000 people will see when I could also make a video that 500,000 people would see yeah and it would just be a different topic that I may not necessarily be excited about there and then but that I would you know once I've got a title and a thumbnail I can I can whip something up and I I can feel at least I can feel that I can feel at least somewhat proud of it by the end of it and it's like this Balancing Act between like I I want to make a video about this thing but like oh I also want to find a good title in the thumbnail and a hook and I guess the first line of thread I also want it to do well well and you're combining like the artart and the creativity and the wanting to share from the heart with the commercial incentives of the business that needs to grow because we've got a team now and stuff if I just throw that at you I just would on that idea look man I I don't envy you I don't envy that position I'm I'm lucky to have ride of Passage as my Patron so I don't I don't need to worry about you know they pay me regardless of of of of of how well they support me regardless of how well or not I'm I'm doing so I I I'm lucky to have a disconnect between the money coming in and the work going out um which I think is a good position to be in um potentially yeah I don't know that I think it might be a good position to be in for not always but sometimes but look I don't want to give the wrong impression I'm sort of immune to the notion of a good um a good thumbnail as it were you know I've had plenty of images where I have these little like you know I did this thread about the origins of the Argentinian football kit and why it's blue and white and and and okay this is an example of looking by the way we're going to jump off here for a second I saw lonel Messi lifting the trophy of the World Cup I was delighted by the way um for Messi to to win the World Cup and the images being beamed all around the world to billions of people and I was like why is he wearing a blue and white shirt and I know it's because the Argentinian flag is blue and white but why is the Argentinian flag blue and white um and then I went back and I researched it and there just kind of an interesting story so that's that's an example of what I mean by looking just looking and asking the simplest questions no nothing complicated nothing overwrought or or too detailed just why is that thing like it is and suddenly this incredible story opens up which takes you back to the byzantian Empire through the Middle Ages through this particular color that was imported from the mountains of Afghanistan for the painters in the Renaissance blah blah blah blah incredible anyway for this thread I I made this image with like Messi at the top and then there's um King Charles of Spain and then there's some Byzantine emperor and there's a load of like colorful arrows going in between it all you know to show the progression they're the kind of thumbnails you see see on YouTube you know I I don't think there's anything anything wrong with getting people's attention of doing clickbait as it were uh dare I say the word and I think some of the titles I've written have probably very intentionally being pretty clickbaity I mean but what I tell myself is I can clickbait people click bear people as long as I back it up with something really valuable and good and useful um so so so as that was all to to make it clear that I don't give the impression that I'm I'm in this um vacuum immune to to the way the internet actually works which as we all know is you need to get people's attention because it's just a sea of content and millions of people shouting at you and you have to be the one who shouts um the loudest but then the tension the broader tension between business and and art as it were um I probably can't talk too much about but I will say sometimes I have been tempted to write about things because I think people want to hear it and occasionally I've fallen for that Temptation and I've written something because I think this will get the most engagement um more often than not those sorts of pieces have done the worst either just got the worst engagement or got the worst feedback and I didn't feel very good about them afterwards I think I've come to realize it's worth paying the price of what you think will be less engagement for providing something for creating something you actually want to create and that you're proud of because I do think when people watch the things you make read the things you write they can usually tell how much you cared about it even if they don't realize it but it's often just better and and there's something to be said about that all this being said I I'll I'll give you one counter example um the 1812 over by jakovsky you'll recognize it when you hear it and the crescendo has cannons firing one one of the most wonderful pieces of music um probably jakovsky is you know one of his most popular um you see it's on TV all the time and it's in movies um he wrote it in like three weeks I think in like 1872 and and he said very openly I I didn't have any passion for this I just wrote it because I thought people would like it and I needed to get something I can't remember the particular circumstances but essentially he needed to get something written for a particular deadline to make some money he wrote it and it's one of the greatest pieces music ever written you know sometimes by accident when you think you're being this sort of callous businessman likee um content creator you can actually accidentally create something extraordinary so I don't know either or I often give answers like this I'm not someone who particularly sees the world in in Black black and white either or to me you know the Via media the middle way is always usually right it's a bit of this and a bit of that yeah I think that's I think often I default to trying to find the answer um I could be wrong here but my my vague understanding is that sort of Western School Western thought is quite about is very much about the answer and about like labeling things and like putting things in a box whereas EAS thought is a bit more like two two seemingly contradictory ideas can exist to can you can hold them both together is that like what's I'm not much of a philosopher and I'm very cautious of all philosophers but broadly speaking I I I think that is fair to say um certainly in my experience of what I've read that that does that that that does come through um but but I wouldn't wish to say anything too uh too certain about that because I say philosophy is not really my um my realm of expertise and I find them very frightening strange people philosophers so I try and St away from them yeah I one one thing I've been trying to figure out when it comes to my creative process for videos is how do I this going to sound cringe but like some some combination of like mind heart and soul mhmh and I think the heart and the Soul comes from me being passionate about the thing and feeling excited about it and the mind component is like the all right let's see how do we optimize the [ __ ] out of the title and the thumbnail kind of thing it's like B be afraid of this we shouldn't be like um I think all the greatest stuff doesn't just the greatest stuff doesn't just come from this pure completely uncontrolled passion and that stuff usually ends up being messy and poorly structured like think of it like a film you know like the best films the screenwriters the directors if all they worked on was passion the thing would be S hours long and the plot the pacing would be over the place and the narrative you know would be hard to follow and it might be beautiful in some sense the best work always comes when you have have the passion and you can see it clearly but then you're also able when you need to to step back and think about it very rationally about does this need to be here to think about thumbnails say and I I don't think look look I mean in some sense I'm a bit of a purist but I I think it would be historically wrong to say that all the great stuff has come from people who only listen to their passions and didn't actually think about it very carefully what they were doing um whether that's about things as as as you know thumbnails or or structure whatever it is the deta the hard details of a piece of work um so so those three those three things yeah can be can be and should be United and if you cast off one you lose every you need all three of them you know I suspect what do I know yeah um how do you think about what your Niche is if at all oh I don't think about it at all I don't because traditional writing advices find a niche find your personal Monopoly do the thing find that that one thing that you can talk about and talk about really well and then people will follow you for that one thing and if you stretch too far outside of your lane then your engagement goes down and all of those things um that advice I've read that advice before um I think probably in those early days when I was Googling how to become a writer online after I left McDonald's I read that sort of thing um and it seems like very fair advice um I certainly didn't apply it myself maybe retrospectively you could say that I've fallen into that category but I I don't know what my Niche is I mean I suppose if I started talking about you know self yeah even some of the things I do do do touch on that you know I did this I write about beus all the time I talk talk about him nonstop and beus he was um he he was around just just after the fall of the Roman Empire Empire fifth century um early 6th Century he rose to the top of society he was a friend of the king suddenly everything goes wrong he gets thrown in prison when he's in prison awaiting execution he wrote a book called The consolation of philosophy and it's him sort of reasoning with the fact he's had this fall from grace he's about to die um and he's exploring the true meaning of happiness and of what it means to live a good life and and this book was basically a bestseller for 1500 years like we talk about you know um self-help this was essentially an early medieval you know late classical self-help book which topped the charts for well over a thousand years um and it's Al it's 100 pages and I it's one of the when you read it you can see why it was so popular for so long because it's got some of the most brilliant brilliant advice um and wisdom that anybody could hope for this is all a very long way of saying um I've written about this book before and I talk about buus a lot I talk about self-help so no maybe not in quite is quite a pointed way but but I certainly don't vot I I'm not afraid of talking about it but uh to answer your question I'm sort of jumping around because I I don't I don't think I have a niche I just followed my nose followed my instinct um I suppose if I was I don't like giving advice particularly because everybody's journey is different um I say one thing you say another thing we're both right and we're both wrong at the same time but but rather than picking a niche to to capture to enter just just just you are your own Niche um that's how it works for me at least I think yeah there's a phrase that a friend friend of mine Paul Millard uses um which is kind of the difference between a niche and a mode somewhat semantic but like a niche is sort of like topic area a mode is sort of like an operating system a way of being and it Paul wrote a piece for his newsletter where he said he said he had a really interesting paragraph he was like see someone like Ali abdal has managed to do it well because he's found himself a mode where he can make videos about whatever he wants and whatever he's passionate about and whatever he's learning and I was like really can I that's a good point and I guess thinking of it because I also think I don't really have a niche we've been trying to figure out what are our topics like productivity how to be a YouTuber relationships Health business how to make money yeah that's not a niche it really a niche it's more like I learn stuff and read stuff and talk to people and then make videos about the things that I because you are your own Niche alial is the niche as as it work the same in your case it's like you could if you wanted to you could pick up the top 10 New York Times bestselling books of this year and you could probably find something really interesting to say about them from the lens of the stuff that you're interested in oh yeah I'd like to think so were you gonna lead on to something else there or that was it no no it's yeah which is why you know I do like this idea that you pick something something very specific very very specific and become the best in the world of that one thing that sounds quite exciting to me um you know maybe for about two months it was a sort of golden gold the golden age of of last year maybe I was probably the best person in the world are writing Twitter threads of a certain kind um let's say that is very specific but that's one thing I was pretty good at and you know maybe for someone who wants to be a writer we could say that to them but look I just I just I I find it odd suggesting to a young writer that you should advising them what they should write about or or to pick something because I don't know maybe I'm wrong because ultimately I picked something I I picked cultural stuff this is interesting so so I didn't I wanted to be a novelist that's what I I novels that I wanted to write you know I'm I'm hope hopefully going to write a book maybe more than one book about the things I now write about on Twitter about architecture art and history and working on a book proposal as we speak well not not as we speak but but but I will be working on it on it later but I always wanted to be a novelist um and there there's a shift in what I was writing about there I didn't used to write about this kind of thing um in my spare time I was always writing screenplays and and dramas and and poetry so so I did change what I was so I think you can maybe you can pick something I don't know as long as it interests you one of one of the mental models we we say for our our YouTuber Academy students is the difference between being an architect and an archaeologist and an architect is someone who sort of has a plan in advance they've got the blueprint they're like cool this is going to be the thing that I do this is the strategy and so on and so on before they lay the first Breck as it were whereas an archaeologist um you know more about archeologist than I do but my understanding is that they think okay there might be something there and they dig a bit there's nothing there and then they go somewhere else there might be something there and they dig a bit and then eventually by digging in a bunch of different sites they will find some they will find gold it' be like ah I'm going to excavate a bit more around this place and then they discover this new ruins it's like cool and they now they double down on that particular thing because they've seen that essentially there is a market for the thing and so they might have been passionate about site a b or c but the fact there's a market in site d means that now passion Plus Market forces combine and now it makes sense for them to build their business and make a living off of site D um doing more and more work there and in a way the fact that it's now working and the fact that there is a market for it makes makes doing the work feel even more rewarding because now you're not just pissing in the wind you're like doing something and it's getting traction people like it and you're making money or whatever the thing is you're getting patronage from like the local Museum all of that kind of stuff sure um yeah that's kind of a nice I'm not I'm not a big fan of um um sort of models and and and analogies I I but that sounds it it fits right what you've just said um I I suddenly realized when you were talking just then I think the reason I'm struggling to answer your question and you know we're both sort of struggling a little bit to to get to the heart of it because I think it comes down to what you want to do like what you want to get out of it um whether you just whether you want to a make money B make money doing something you like or C just do something you like and survive if you can while you're doing it I I think that's why I find the question hard to answer depending on whether or not as you say traditional writing advice pick a niche it depends what you want depends on the goal yeah yeah if if if you want to grow an audience and and you know maybe that is a good thing to do but I don't know because I I I didn't particular and I suspect a lot of people who do write on and who have done well I wonder if because because it makes sense in hindsight when you when when you say that for me it make kind of makes sense in hindsight maybe for you it maybe makes sense in hindsight but all these people who have grown an audience I I wonder if they really did proactively and very coldly rationally pick something or if they just sort of instinctively went for it because it felt right at the time and this is something I really believe you got to trust your instincts that spark within you as a writer as a Creator everyone's got advice everyone's telling you how you should do XYZ everyone's got a million different ideas about the way to grow the way to um become the person you can be but what we all have is an instinct a spark whatever it is that thing inside you that little voice that feeling that good feeling and I think everyone you've got to trust that you've always got to trust that and sometimes it's wrong you got to learn to understand yourself more clearly but as soon as you start ignoring that instinct within you I think that's when you get lost what does your writing process look like sure um uh what do you mean by process I guess um what does a day in your life look like was How does writing fit in um gosh well well no no two days are the same and I don't mean that because my life is exciting I mean that because I I I I don't really have a sleep routine so I sort of wake up look look when I go to okay we're going to begin the story of my day when I when I go to bed okay so go to bed whenever I happen to go to bed I don't know what time it is it's whenever I finished writing the thing that I want to need to write that day so I've done a thread on Twitter I've been working on the newsletter worked on the brook proposal and then I'll work for a couple of hours on something that's never going to get published it's never going to I'm probably going to delete it in a week just some private passion that's got me gripped or I read um something important and useful go to bed and then I won't set an a larm mom I'll just wake up whenever I happen to wake up um usually ends up being usually I'm you know two or three or four or 5:00 p.m. in the afternoon oh wow so you're up until like 6:00 a.m. yeah yeah yeah normally I like I like to see the sunrise before I go to bed I enjoy working at night because it's much quieter it's darker as well something like the darkness blocking out the world because otherwise I'm looking around when it's dark and I can't see anything and also no one bothers you at night you don't have email and texts and I hate emails I hate texts can't stand them that's why I don't reply to most of them um same yeah sure I tend to tend to work at night and are you working in your in your in your house or like in a c in a pub or like um what's open at 5:00 in the morning well exactly um nothing really I I tend to work at home I I have a little desk and then I have a bookshelf a few few bookshelves with all my books and I'll I'll sit there and work I can't work in cafes um too too too noisy too much distraction it's too loud um you know there lots of cars going past on the road I don't really there's something about people in the chatter I think when you're writing and creating it depends on what you're doing of course but I like to be secluded on my own where the only thing is just me and the page me and the blank page as it were and it's like I'm in a fight with this blank page and I've got to beat it to death until some words appear so so look I'll wake up whenever I happened to wake up okay so let's say you wake up at 400 p.m. in the afternoon what happens next I have a cold shower I only have cold showers um it's it's a one of the few bits of Life advice I would give to people is to attempt having cold showers it's wonderful because it's horrible every single day you hate it but the something about it it just wakes you up gets you going um and do you do sort of cold completely or like hot because I go hot then cold oh I see right I've heard that no no just just completely cold yeah okay then um done that get dressed iron a shirt iron a pair of trousers put on a tie and head out and just go outside for a why why why shirt trousers tie rather than like um Sports Lululemon comfortable top with yoga pants so which is my look sure I me look I I feel like everyone's got a uniform you know and and for me this is this is my uniform it's like you know Messi puts on his jersey if into my the pink jersey of into Miami to play football um your soldier puts on their their their their cover RS um whatever it is everyone has a uniform and and you know it's not as comfortable dressing this way as it would be to wear a t-shirt but that slight lack of comfort it's it it it I mentioned earlier it raises the bar it's it's like I'm I'm here to do something I'm not here to be comfortable I'm not here to relax I'm not I don't want to be relaxed while I'm writing like I I'm I'm at work so to speak I'm in the trenches and for that reason um you know I I and then there's no better feeling than the than getting you know taking your tie off in the evening after a good day's work taking a tie off suddenly colar you know you have a tight collar around your neck anymore and and you can so that's what it is it's it's my uniform okay um everyone maybe has a different one but I think I think Comfort can be dangerous for creativity if you're too comfortable I think you need to have a few um a few thorns in in your feet and I that's not a saying but let's imagine that that's that is an idiom something along those lines okay so I get dressed and then the first thing I do is I got to get outside and and and not to do anything in particular just to get a coffee I'll drink a coffee at home and then um just go aside and see what's happening just walk just walk around for a bit just walk around for a bit like 5 p.m. just like walking around yeah walk around um see what the weather's like and and let my brain slowly emerge from it Slumber because I I take a long time to wake up um I'm I'm not an early riser evidently um it takes me four or 5 hours until I can start thinking clearly so I usually just just wander around and and and just see what comes into my brain I mean some days it's awesome because I will actually have a moment of inspiration just after waking up and then I'm going straight to the laptop like so this is an important thing as soon as in the day in in wake up whatever point in that day the inspiration hits me that's when I go and start writing immediately as soon as I've got it um look I I'll get up and wand around and I'll have another coffee then another coffee then I'll go home and I'll sit around I'll read a book and this is like 11: p.m. at this point just whatever just whatever time it is it could be 11:00 p.m. it could be 11:00 a.m. I don't know just whenever I've woken up and then and then wander around and you know wow you just you know I have a have a few uh smoke a few cigarettes um probably probably too many um you know maybe maybe head down to the Boozer just uh get warmed up whatever it is um um and then eventually if you wait long enough if I wait long enough my brain suddenly starts working the cogs start woring and then after sort of doily walking around um for a few hours I suddenly start walking more quickly and then suddenly you know hope doesn't sound too silly but some days if I'm on the street and then I've got an idea I I'll run home because I'm like I have to start typing for and I I literally run down the street back back to where I live um and and I'll write and the write and write and WR right if it's a thread on Twitter right right right right rewrite rewrite that doesn't work fix that um and then once that's done it can take one hour take half an hour it could take 10 hours and then once it's done hit send it post send it out to all those people try not to think about it too much that you've just put out something you've created to an audience of potentially millions of people shut the laptop forget about the internet forget about Twitter go back to reading um go back to smoking and boozing or whatever the hell it is um and another wander another walk around look at the birds if there are any at that time of day listen to them singing in the morning of course read a bit of poetry maybe see my friends depending on what time they're awake um if and when the problem with this routine is and with I think I don't know how you found it when you're working a lot really hard online trying to build an audience it ends up putting a big strain on your relationship with your friends and your family and so on and so forth because look at it's hard to say no when somebody says like you know hey man uh we need an extra man for the game tonight you want to play some football like I love to play football but I know if I don't write this thing maybe you just got maybe it's something boring like editing a video you've got to do but if you don't do that thing you know you're going to fall behind and you've got to say no um and I you know from time to time I do say yes and see my friends look then whenever time it is I just get into bed and the day is done and we begin again tomorrow um and look sometimes you have to get up early sometimes you have a two hours sleep sometimes you don't eat um it feels great some days when I don't eat um yesterday I tried to I just I've been I've been eating raw broccoli recently I just I just I just got sick of bread and meat and cheese and crap so I just I'm just eat some broccoli so yesterday I just ate some raw broccoli um and like some days I probably could lead a more healthy lifestyle I do run um going for a run is never a bad idea this is what I've learned you never feel worse afterwards after you've gone for run after you really put yourself um through it and that is a sort of portrait in of a life portrait of a day in my life and it's been like that for for 400 and something days now um a lot of long dark nights when you really think what is the point of this why why am I writing this what good is this doing I don't know anything I can't even put two words together days when you you've slept for 2 hours less than that you haven't slept you've stayed up all night you haven't slept and you're still r still going can barely think horrible long unpleasant nights like that mixed with wonderful ones or you suddenly think wow I I've written I've written a good sentence I've said I've said this before if I did have one aim every day it would be just to write one good sentence one sentence I can say that is a good set of words well put together useful interesting maybe quite nice to read as well if when you were a 19-year-old law student Durham you would have listened to your future self on this podcast describing this as the life of a professional writer what would have what thoughts and feelings would have would have come up well the first thing is I think I would have been delighted to know that I hadn't betrayed what I always wanted to do yeah I'd been far more shocked and disappointed not that not that there's anything wrong with this line of work but if I was a a lawyer working in the city in one of those big glass Towers making Mega books working hard those people work very hard if if that was what I've been saying to you on this podcast that then I would have been very disappointed in myself because I knew I would have betrayed what I really wanted to be honest with you I wouldn't have been completely surprised I was like that as a student as well I didn't go to most lectures because I found I could just all the materials were online for the lectures and the seminars so I could just go through them myself more quickly um and then do extra reading as well at the time and and I used to when I when I was University there was like I lived in in in accommodation where there was a dining hall um where they serve breakfast lunch and dinner I used to go to breakfast um at 7 or 8 a.m. whatever and that was my evening meal and I'll see every around in the morning how you doing guys I'm off to bed go home and then wake up just in time for for dinner um let's say 600 p.m. okay to then have my breakfast so this is pretty normal for you yeah like this like your natural Rhythm when left to your own devices yeah yeah I'm I'm completely you seem to be pretty happy would you say you're happy yeah I am happy I am happy but I and I but I don't think that's anything to do with I it has something to do with the work I do but it it's more than that it's more than that I think what do you mean um I think recently I've come to see more clearly what it is that does make me happy every day the writing isn't so much a part of that I don't know if writing makes me happy look obviously in some sense I'm I'm materially better off than I was before and I enjoy the work much more than I did before in some sense but but suddenly having this Twitter account and all these followers and people saying hey do you want to write a book do you want to come on the podcast do you want to you know you're in some sense you have a little bit of Fame a little bit of popularity a little bit of success but now I've got that I see much more clearly how quickly that can all disappear and be taken away like beus you know the Wheel of Fortune turns one moment you're on top of the world the next you've lost everything and now I have something that feels worthwhile and feels important I see much more plainly that this is not the thing which will make me happy ultimately there's a famous cliche whatever happiness comes from within um it's completely true and if I wake up every day whatever state I'm in life wherever I am and and the value I draw the source of energy and and and joy and peace that keep keeps me going isn't the the the money or or the popularity it's waking up and looking around me and you know it's rainy it's sunny what wherever I am whatever whatever's going on thinking you know I'm alive I am here I can hear and I can see and I can walk and I can run I can taste I've got food on the table I've got clean running water coming out of my Taps I can have a shower have a bed sleeping what in the world could possibly could possibly make me unhappy when I have that to remember how blessed I am to have these these things and when you feel that way suddenly all this other stuff seems less important which may be quite healthy for somebody working online when people very readily tell you you know that you know that you're an idiot or or you know they want to kill you or whatever the hell it is people say they say good things as well sometimes um but it can make you sort of sort of neurotic I think working online and worrying about what all these people are telling you and and worrying every day like engagement is going down I'm over I'm washed I'm old news I feel that often um but then I remember no no this is nothing to do with what makes your life worth living what makes you happy and equally you've got to remember in the good times when you you know hit it out of the park suddenly you're the biggest thing you know probably that that thread I wrote about the danger of minimalist design got 100,000 likes sorry 500,000 likes and tens of millions of views there probably weren't many more things in the world written that day which were read by as many people that's a strange thought to think I've written something today which has been read by more people in the world than anything else that has been I mean it's probably not quite true but on some level but you've also you've also got to remember it then now this sudden Joy your feeling about being popular and famous and successful that isn't the source of the happiness either it's it's only in you and how you see the world around you and um some something like that that was quite a long answer to whatever question you asked me that was a good answer I feel like I think of it this way like like IM imagine if you can be in this position where you wake up some days you feel crap some days you just wake up and and you hate your life and and and everyone's annoying and you're tired and you're hungry and you're ill and you know you think oh god I've got this meeting I've got that meeting oh I've got my taxes to pay oh you know got me many things to do if even in that position you can just just stop yourself for a moment take you know take take a minute to yourself and and find some beauty some meaning some happiness in where you are in where you're standing in the moment you're living through if in the worst moments of your life you can do that then you know nothing in the world can possibly affect you nothing can make you unhappy if you're able to to to have that strength of mind to to to remove yourself from these things and remember how lucky you are and so yeah something along those lines it was a little bit strung out and that's very good um how does this sort of Lifestyle Vibe with like romantic relationships and yeah you mentioned with friends It's tricky because it's like sometimes you're awake and they're asleep and that's not the trickiest part is saying no because I I love my friends I mean I'm lucky to have some really good friends you know people who you know i' die for yeah but then when you have to say no sorry I can't see you because I've got to write something on Twitter um it it's kind of a bit a pill to swallow so why why is there any different no I can't see you because I've got my shift at McDonald's like what's what's the difference between those two things in your mind oh um well clearly based on my behavior I quit my job on McDonald's to see my friends but I'm not quitting this to see my friends I have said no I I wouldn't have been able to do what I've done for 400 plus days if I hadn't said no to a lot of people and to a lot of things um it certainly puts a strain on on on you know it's probably taking years off my life I don't know I'm probably not as you know not going to live as long as I might have done and one of the worst things you can do for your health apparently is have a bad sleeping pattern um but is it worth it yeah it's bloody worth it you know would I rather live to to to eat and 90 and and and have not done this or you know hopefully I can touch would I live long enough to write a book a couple of very good books that are worth writing and very much worth reading that are not a not unworthy contribution you know to the great lineage of all the books that have ever been written and and that might do some good for the world and for people if I can write that one book do this one thing even if it kills me even if die right after I've done it I think that would be more worthwhile than not doing so I don't know if that sounds extreme but that's how I sounds pretty extreme I see but that's I'm being honest like that's how I feel about it it's like Socrates said you know Socrates the Athenians condemned him to death the ancient Greek philosopher he was in his old age at the time but they he had a trial apparently for corrupting the youth and and um and and and bring and corrupting the youth and and encouraging them to worship foreign Gods a l something along those lines so he has a big trial the Athenians condemn Socrates to death um but he but he's very controversial a lot of people don't think he should be anyway but the sentence has been passed but he's given a chance to escape he's told you can actually look we're going to delay the sentence for like a day or two you have time to get out of the city and keep living and and Socrates says no why would I want to go and live in Exile and live a life I don't want to live what's important isn't the length of your life the length of a life is essentially meaningless time like the only thing that's certain is is that we die right so whether it's 10 years or or 100 years quantity has has no bearing on on the value of that life what matters is what you do with it and how you feel about it and Socrates says this to his friends and they're all weeping they're all like know you know we're going to miss you so much in slightly more poetic language um Socrates smiling takes and drinks the hemlock the poison and dies um a dignified Noble death and that's how I feel I I I don't see the point in life for the sake of there is no in life for the sake of life you know it's like if if you want to avoid Danger let's say this is going to if you want to avoid danger you know walking outside your house is dangerous getting in a car is dangerous then they're even more dangerous things you can do but ultimately if you wanted to make your life as safe as possible you would stay home all day and never leave and you might live forever but then what would be the point you know I think anything worth doing perhaps has an element of that's a separate point I think you see what I'm I see what you're getting what I'm driving at here so if a somewhat pointed question um but please do if you were let's say on your deathbed uhhuh do you think you'd be saying and I'm really glad about all those times I said no to hang out hanging out with my friends for the sake of writing Twitter threads what do you you think You' be saying you know what the the stuff that I wrote has added value to the world and I'm glad I did that even if it meant not spending as many evenings playing football with my friends sure um two things to to uh to say first great question um the first thing I will say is I just want to slightly maybe alter what I said it's not just about adding value to the world for me it's almost actually just just about trying to find the truth like it that I suppose that is actually my ultimate goal to write something to think of something to do something that is truthful um it's hard to think about improving the world it's a Sly lofty goal maybe too lofty but anyway with that correction in mind I don't know at this point I'm going to start um contradicting maybe what I said earlier Al although Ruskin has a great line where he says I'm I'm not happy with anything I've said with any of my opinions until I have contradicted myself at least five times in public I feel the same way or you know like like Petro he has this great lary he like one of his poems um neither yes nor no rings clearly in my heart his point being you can see something from both sides he can understand them both and they're both appeal to him but he he can't decide like when you put it like that suddenly I'm back I'm back to what um Michelle de montine said the 16th century writer essayist he invented the essay de montine he went back to his castle he retired from public life at the age of 30 38 went back to his castle in France just writing and he did that until he died wonderful interesting funny essays anyway he has this one observation where he's like people he hears him complaining oh I've done nothing today I've done nothing worthwhile I've I've written nothing um worth writing I've done no work I've earned no money um I haven't been as productive as I could have been I've not created what I should have created and montain is like this is ridiculous have you not lived that's the question he asks them have you not lived what point is there to life other than being alive this is the greatest joy the greatest pleasure the only purpose there is um you know like the trees um absorbing the rain the water through their roots and the sun in their leaves something like that so suddenly suddenly now I asked that question I'm leaning more towards the montine side and thinking you know what maybe that is true maybe I would give it all up just for um yeah a few more nights of football with my friends but here's the thing I haven't have I action always expresses what you believe to be most true and most important so if I if I'm trusting not my own thoughts and feelings right now which often we can't really trust what we think we think but we can trust what we've done I don't know so I've I've often thought about this in the sense of you know whole action speak louder than words and all that kind of all that kind of stuff where you know it'll get to an evening and it's a choice there between do I want to do more work for 3 hours or do I want to go like have dinner with my Grandma yeah or something and in that context and in that mode my my base instinct is to do more work because my base instinct is to drive economic output and make more money and like get more of a safety net because I'm scared of like losing it all becoming homeless and broke and all that [ __ ] but my higher self is like thinking what are the values I want to live by do I want like what is the decision my 100 100y old self will tell me to make of course I'm going to [ __ ] go have with my grand it's just of course and in that moment I need to essentially rise above my base my base desire to continue to try the comic output and in that sense I'm like there are times where I allow my I allow myself to there there are times where where the action is not actually in alignment with how I would like to live that's again where I struggle with this where it's like is it true that action speak louder than words maybe it is but that's very insightful I mean I I don't think it negates the idea that action speak ler than words I think it simply speaks to the fact that you can um guide your actions it's it's not as if they guide us we do choose what we do that's what you're saying that you can actually have this instinct or this desire the default just to work work I mean yeah you man you work hell of a lot but then suddenly to think now hold on this is what I should be doing I mean yeah that that's that's I think a lot of people in in your position and perhaps mine have that have that same dilemma and people who are maybe thinking about they want to create content online they want to be YouTuber writer whatever it is that's something they'll have to face as well and they of have the opposite dilemma initially where it's like my default is to scroll Tik Tok yeah oh you're saying I have to not watch Netflix for 3 hours if I want to write a Twitter thread yes and but and eventually if you do that and you enjoy the thing you start preferring writing the Twitter thread to watching Netflix for 3 hours yeah yeah yeah and now you have to start and now you have to stop yourself from doing the thing so that you can actually take care of your health and sleep on time and hang out with your friends and family yeah I mean look it's like I go back to the V media that you can do both you can do both um I'm not an extremist and yeah the example you gave is really good and I think I feel the same way and to some extent I have lived that way and one of the reasons why in the past year I've not slept anywhere near as much as I should have done look look I I either sleep for 3 hours a night or or 12 hours basically that's the only no no no no other way I don't I don't have 8 hours sleep nothing or everything part of that is because I have actually said yes to a lot of stuff as well well I've been very fortunate to travel a lot in the last year um sometimes on a bit of a shoe string but always traveling always writing rather um when I'm traveling trying trying to trying to say yes more often and then also working at the same time um which is quite exhausting but when you're seeing your friends and then you're doing the thing you love you could you could do it forever um so yeah that I should make that clear clear as well um I don't know it's hard to it's hard to know what one would think one's deathbed um or if that's even the right mental model to like yeah well this this is another thing Montaine says oh yeah he's brilliant he's like why do all these you know philosophers and these gurus be like you got to think about death and what would you say when you're ready to die and you go about death death all time Mon's like just take it stop worrying about that you'll deal with that when you come to it don't worry about the future and all these details take things as they come you know Montaine is brilliant for that he he's brilliant montain for this sort of very very very common sense wisdom that being said I I I'm not saying this because I agree with everything he um he wrote at times I do then at other times I'm leaning more towards you know stoicism has seen A Great Big Revival recently I'm leaning leaning much more towards um senica you know on his deathbed being the only one who was calm and collected with all his all his friends were weeping around him um saying that he was you know something like that yeah the middle way so what's what's next for you what are you what are you working on at the moment well today I mentioned earlier there'll be a thread coming out in a few hours I don't know how long it will be and then a book I'm working on a book I think it's the first time I've ever said it publicly ored it then I'm working on a book um to be specific a book proposal at the moment um about the things I'm writing about and it's just it's just a miracle man like as I said having had all these rejections from literary agents so for so many times I've got this novel please please let me write a book suddenly now people are asking me to write a book They're saying please she it's because I've got an audience right we we don't need to pretend it's for any other reason than that when you have a big audience they know they can they have someone sell a book too you've created you've done all the marketing for them great um that's rather the more cold commercial side of but anyway I'm being asked to write a book and that's what I want to do and I hope this book will be a um a distillation and Improvement of everything I've written thus far um that is the next big thing for me it's got to be the work on Twitter's been great but I think it's time to make a definitive statement to create something a single work pour everything into it create a single work which is as as I said useful interesting and beautiful um obviously you know what it's like to to to write a book Congratulations by the way on getting it yeah and I mean I understand it's a long process I've written books before but but that's when I'm on my own scribbling away but when you have deadlines and editors and and all these other people involved and departments I imagine it must be quite a yeah there's a bit more to it I'm not sure how I feel about the deadlines I don't like deadlines yeah yeah my friend has this great line Harry dry who I should mention by name um he he runs a marketing website he runs a brilliant newsletter as well the best copywriter in the world is how one Twitter user once described him um he uh he told me once what you lack is deadlines not ideas and that was very wise and that's essentially the rule I've applied to my work on Twitter one thread a day you have to just like ideas are cheap there's like 10 billion ideas and you can think of 100 ideas a day the difficult is in picking one and executing it yeah that's the skill so anyway deadlines are useful but I know what you mean I I I'm not the biggest fan of deadlines I like internal deadlines rather than externally imposed deadlines oh I see right like when there is a sponsor deadline on video man here's here's the good thing about deadlines you can miss them and so what no one cares no one cares like the world doesn't end I used I used to get annoy people at a university like around exam time I'd be like come on mat it's just it's just it's just an exam it's just an essay what could go wrong you know uh people didn't like to hear that probably I probably sounded rather obnoxious at the time um but I I did believe it anyway yeah the book so how long did it take you to to put it together start to finish three years wow well as in three years if we count like from the day the editor sent me the email being like hey do you want to write a book then the propos itself was a year and a half and then the writing itself and then the writing and editing was another year and a half wow so why it's like you've put a lot of time and yeah but it was it was it was very half ass time it was like kind of a few hours a week ex with other [ __ ] going on and exactly I I think if I had my time again I'd be more focused sure yeah yeah I think that's my plan to to literally lock myself in a room and not eat until I've finished this book um get it done yeah well exactly F strike um but often a lot of good stuff does come from necessity and I think that's why I said ear you shouldn't give writers too much money because then it's no longer it's not completely nothing sort of I wish everything I say should be car Cared by The View that there's no single rule and this is actually this is really important for anybody listening anybody who wants to be a content creator writer YouTuber you with with your um course you'll have experiences with your students I imagine is there's no single way to do it there's never a single rule a single approach a single method a single Journey um and everybody's different for fundamentally and like what works for one person doesn't work for another and history is true of this as well like you know I use the example of Anthony trollop the 19th century novelist not so famous now go into any secondhand Bookshop and it'll be filled with the novels of Anthony trollop he was like the JK rolling whatever of his day um worked at the post office his whole life and we wake up at 5:00 in the morning write 3,000 words head off to work at the post office um so he he lived a very normal orderly life but then you've got you know someone like Byron Lord Byron the great romantic poet who lived a scandalous life he liked to stay up and see the sunrise as well when he was working and he was also great so you know there's no one way to to write or or or to create or to produce um yeah I think that's why I was I was very keen to talk to you on the Pod to get your story because it's basically the opposite it way of working as me and a lot of other people I interview no no yeah I appreciate you bring me here CU I think it is important that people hear this look um I it does concern me a little bit maybe look it's not the worst thing in fact it's great that the world seems to be getting healthier and more organized and people are being encouraged to actually live their lives more purposively purposively don't know if I'm pronouncing the word correctly but I I think I'd like to remind people that this sort of routine isn't the only way and that you don't necessarily it might work for you but equally you don't necessarily need um complex note taking methods and uh you don't necessarily New Day hours of sleep at night I'm probably going to get people telling me that that I'm endangering the health of others by saying this but but I I I honestly believe it to be true like you can just you don't need to do any of these things and I think maybe sometimes it can even get in the way that you think by by having the perfect routine good things will just happen and and they'll manifest that might not be true yeah and at least if ever I've written anything good it's not because I had a good routine or because I was being productive it all came from Passion and brute force and a little bit of chaos yeah the madness that comes from a little bit of chaos you know you can't buy that you can't capture it you can't get it you you can't you can't choose to find it but you can optimize it out of existence I think oh you can optimize it out of existence mhm yeah you can optimize the spark within you that makes youly decide to say this is what I'm doing today like youly have this flush of inspiration if you're too optimized you can squeeze it out of yourself if you're over scheduled i' I I think I'm running into this issue right now where I'm over scheduled like I look at the calendar for the next 90 days and it's hard to find a single day of like wanting to hang out with a friend because it's just like one thing after another after another and and I've chosen to do all these things but it's like first what a problem it's like oh you know we're flying to Dublin to give a talk at go gole flying to Brighton to give a talk at some thing and going to going to Italy and then doing this thing on the podcast and then going to Austin for two weeks then going to Miami and I'm going to [ __ ] Florida oh what a nightmare what exactly right man like you always got to remember yourself remind yourself how how wonderful that is but that's that what you just said terrifies me over 90 days of scheduling bloody hair but you know we're talking about this from creativity point of view I think creativity can be very much stifled in that way and the thing that only you can say can be stifled by following too many methods and routines laid out for you by other people um look at that sounds ter 90 days and look look when people say to me like are you free for a podcast like I'm just like yeah just just give me a day and I don't have anything planned people say to me hey have you got time for a coffee I'm like well how how about not until like January the 18th kind of vibe and and I feel so bad about it because these are friends of mine but because I've overscheduled Myself by saying yes to too much stuff cuz in in isolation is like I wanted to say yes to all those things M and I didn't I just never appreciate the value of unscheduled time at least in advance I I look six weeks out and I think oh the calendar looks free of course I put that in there that we're just complaining about right now no no no no well yeah first FL problems you know crime River and all that kind of stuff yeah exactly like you're living in incredible life doing amazing things it's all stuff to be grateful for but yeah by comparison I don't have a calendar I I I don't put things into a calendar I just hopefully remember where I'm supposed to be on a given day yeah um which often doesn't work um so I am I'll take my chance to publicly apologize to all the people who I promised I would speak to or meet different way of do different of doing doing the same stuff this is it this is this is this is import there's no one way and for all those people who are who who maybe yeah optimizing the creativity out of themselves and and they're the ones who I hope can um you know if I can give them a little bit of consolation and and faith that no if if they are a slightly more chaotic individual I mean I I don't think I'm I'm not a chaotic person I'm I'm very calm I I'm just not organized yeah which is which is not the same thing anyway um it's to those people who I would like to offer a little bit of um support that if you try these methods and they don't work there are the alternative Solutions anyway final question um okay if you had if you had to give three pieces of Life advice to someone who's listened to the last two hours of our conversation and Vibes with your way of looking at the world what would they be um I'm putting you on the spot here because I know you can take it but yeah look man I I don't know whether I don't know whether to be with all the caveat advice and around giving advice have cold showers smoke as much as you want drink as much as cuz you want to make sure you get the thing written that's all it is something like that and don't go to any meetings and ignore all your emails life will be fine something like that that that that would be my slightly uh no I'm not even being fous I probably believe everything I just said because look look if life advice in general or for somebody who wants to be a writer or content creator because look I I don't think I'm in a position to give anybody like what let's say for a content creator what the hell do I know we have this impression that just cuz somebody has done something they know how they did it if you ask um say you know Tyson Fury why is such a good boxer you know well how does he know he's just a massive guy who's a brilliant fighter and is a heart of a lion I'm not saying I have any of those qualities of course but but but point being I I I not in a position necessarily to give advice but if I I can tell you what what I've learned maybe if I was to tell somebody what I have learned is this and it goes back to what I said earlier and this will be specifically for writers forget everybody else in the world it's you and the page and that's all there is forget this is true whether you're on your own or you've already got an audience you're trying to build an audience forget everything else in the world it's you in the page and you're trying to write something which is truthful which you would Stand By and that's it there's nothing else there is nothing else that matters when it comes to writing and every other worry every other fear every other concern hope dream anxiety doubt throw it all out the window that's how I believe at least I think cautiously you might write something that's worth reading which isn't true of most things in the world and maybe hopefully one or two of the things I've written might fall into that category although I can't say so for sure nice J thank you so much thank you for having me um I hope this has been of use to some people also great questions you're a very good interviewer thank you a very good conversation you're a very good guest I hope so hope so yeah all right so that's it for this week's episode of Deep dive thank you so much for watching or listening all the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are going to be linked down in the video description or in the show notes depending on where you're watching or listening to this if you're listening to this on a podcast platform then do please leave us a review on the iTunes Store it really helps other people discover the podcast or if you're watching this in full HD or 4k on YouTube then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode that would be awesome and if you enjoyed this episode you might like to check out this episode here as well which links in with some of the stuff that we talked about in the episode so thanks for watching uh do hit the Subscribe button if you aren't already and I'll see you next time bye-bye
