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Ep 84 - The Exorcist: Creativity Lessons You Can Learn from William Friedkin, Director

Leap of Faith is a fascinating documentary about the making of the classic horror film, The Exorcist. It focuses on director, William Friedkin. This guy's brilliant! He has an impressive knowledge of and appreciation for the history of art, music, and film. He's a spectacular example of someone who brings in his influences from many different media.

Simplicity
You might not think the scariest movie ever made has elegant simplicity - but that's what inspired Friedkin to make the film. His only movie inspiration was the 1955 movie, Ordet (pronounced "Ord"). The movie was shot like a play - everything was intimate. Friedkin approached The Exorcist the same way. He considers his film to be a chamber piece, not spectacle. All of the key scenes are shot in a child's bedroom.

Identify the Spark
Friedkin defended his decision to keep the intro of the movie in - the archeological dig scenes in Iraq. He said it set the mood for the entire film and stated the mood is just as important as any one scene. In the Think Like a Musician project management system, the first stage of managing a large project is to Identify the Spark - the emotional connection you have that will provide the momentum for the entire project's completion. Brainstorm a list of feeling words at the outset of every large project that's on your plate. As Simon Sinek says, "Start With why!"

Spontaneity Over Perfection
Friedkin would prefer to shoot his movie in single takes - or very few. Kubrick liked taking a plethora of takes for any given scene - sometimes over one hundred takes! Friedkin pursued the spontaneous, authentic reactions of his actors. Sometimes you have to simply ACT! Don't dwell on perfection.

Intuition
Learn to trust your intuition - your gut feeling. Fritz Lang, director of the silent 1927 masterpiece, Metropolis, said he made his movies with a "sleep-walking security" - one in which every decision is the correct one and there's no questioning your intuition. This sounds like being in the zone or having peak performance. Friedkin took a similar approach. There's a richness in accepting the ideas that come naturally and not questioning them. There's wisdom in those creative impulses. It reminds me of Malcom Gladwell's excellent book, Blink. He focuses on the exquisite genius of the split second observation - thin slicing, as he calls it. It's what makes it possible for an art expert to take one look at a statue and know it's fake - even though it's seemingly authentic in every physical way. It's a feeling.

Make Room for Reactions
Friedkin said whatever an audience member brings to a movie is what they take away. Allow people to see your work through their lens. We all view the world from distinct viewpoints - expect and accept it.

Scott Snow is a productivity expert, speaker, podcaster, and life coach. He is the founder of Think Like a Musician, whose purpose is to help you learn the time management skills you need to be joyful, productive, & fulfilled in all areas of life. He teaches a unique and innovative approach to managing your crazy, busy life. It's a musician's approach to time management and work-life balance. Call 774-230-3928 now to customize a training for your organization or to inquire about coaching availability.

Ep 81 - When the Suffocating Rubber Clown Suit of Negativity Begins to Dissolve

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1:00 Transition from All the Hats We Wear to Think Like a Musician

1:40 Henry David Thoreau quote

2.00 Audio journal

3:10 David Lynch's analogy for transcendental meditation

4:00 Life as a masterpiece

5:20 Dr. Yusef Lateef

7:00 Professor Lew Spratlan

Town Meeting of the Bugs composition

8:00 Chief fun officer

9:20 The Protege film’s star

11:50 What I love about the dentist

13:30 Skateboard park creativity

14:10 Book: 4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

15:10 Music to change your state

16:50 Sensory cues

18:00 Yoda board and themes

1. Suck the Marrow Out of Life

Henry David Thoreau inspired many to life simply and suck the marrow out of life. Journaling is an important tool to do this. Mindfulness is another - taking stock of tiny sensations throughout the day - a cool breeze on your skin or acknowledging the feeling of grass beneath your bare feet.

2. Dirty Clown Suit

David Lynch is amazing. He's the famed director of such classics as Blue Velvet and The Elephant Man. He's also a huge proponent of transcendental meditation. He said, "I practice transcendental meditation twice a day, and in almost 43 years, I've never missed a session. It's such a tremendous feeling of freedom when that suffocating rubber clown suit of negativity begins to dissolve. I think of meditating as bringing in the gold and saying goodbye to the garbage."

Oh my God do I love his image of the "suffocating rubber clown suit of negativity" beginning to dissolve.

https://www.davidlynchfoundation.org/

3. Compose Your Life Into a Masterpiece

My inspiration for the Think Like a Musician system for managing a busy life to live one's masterpiece life began when I first started playing drums in fourth grade but intensified and clarified in college when I began composing. I had two key composition professors: Lewis Spratlan and Dr. Yusef Latef. They were the first mentors that helped me bridge the gap between how I approached composing a piece of music and managing my life in a way that was built upon beauty and boundless inspiration. Sometimes managing one's busy life can feel like work but when you get the spark for a composition, you unleash your inspiration. So, I learned to approach my life - in all of its main categories or "roles" as a composition I was joyously planning.

4. Brother Lateef

I was a jazz performance major in college and had Prof. Lateef as my improvisation/composition teacher. He had a profound impact on me. It was as if he believed in my more completely than other other professor. When I had the hair-brained idea to write a piece for full orchestra as a junior, he didn't try to talk me out of it - he gave me an old copy of a book about orchestration (ranges and tendencies of all the instruments). He converted to Islam in the fifties and thus, called me Brother Snow! I loved that. I'd occasionally skip history of music lectures to see if he was available to chat. He had a tiny practice room office - which I never understood because he was the most accomplished musician in the faculty yet he was given a closet-sized office space.

One of my favorite memories of learning from Brother Lateef was learning to improvise on the vibes as he accompanied me on piano. He'd make short moaning and grunting sounds, in response to, my selection of notes in my solo. He was showing me the reaction of my playing on another person and that was profound. I loved his oversized, thick score paper and the bag he toted around during his march from the bus to his office. I remember playing him a recording I made the night before of myself trudging across campus in a snow storm. He closed his eyes and listened intently and made eye contact with me after and say, 'You may have some elements of genius here." Lol - he was the best.

5. Professor Lewis Spratlan

During the same time I was working with Prof. Lateef, I started composition lessons at Amherst College with Lew Spratlan. This followed a very negative experience I had with a composition teacher at U-mass, who took a very traditional, harmonic approach and wasn't encouraging in the least. Prof. Spratlan was kind and I spent most of my week preparing for my hour-long lesson. Under his tutelage I composed three pieces I was very proud of and even had them performed in the composer's concert. One piece was called "Funhouse" and it had a pre-recorded tape of Funhouse mirror-type music and had a trio of flute, baritone horn, and piano. Another was called "1619" - a based on a poem I wrote about slavery and performed with a male singer, percussion, piano, and cello. Town Meeting of the Bugs was an interesting composition for tape and it was created with a synthesizer and electric fan. The fan was used to created background sound for segments of the piece and when the fan was turned off, there was great contrast to the backdrop of the sounds. My biggest accomplishment was the Zoo-Keeper's Wife - a setting of a Sylvia Plath poem of the same title. It was a dark and creepy piece with piano, percussion, violin, mezzo-soprano, female reciter, electric guitar, and French horn. Prof. Spratlan liberated me by teaching me about tone rows and atonality.

https://www.davidlynchfoundation.org/

6. Chief Fun Officer

I love the new job titles nowadays: Chief Fun Officer, Chief Storytelling Officer, and Chief Heat Officer (to combat forest fires in California). The TLAM system for time management, I teach the process for writing a mini-mission statement for each role. Each mini-mission statement ends with a nickname for the roles. For example, the nickname for my role of Visionary is "Willy Wonka Engine that Drives Everything Good in My Life." Often times, I utilize similes in mission statements, such as, The Warren Buffet of Business Strategy or the John Coltrane of Creativity. Try it! What are the nicknames for your roles?

7. Maggie Q Tips

I'm fascinated with movies featuring master assassins. This began with the 1972 film, The Mechanic, starring Charles Bronson. The concept of anyone who goes about their job at an elite level gets my full attention - even if it's a villain. I love everything Joker and have since watching Cesar Romero in the corny 60s Batman series on tv.

There was a top 10 tips article from Maggie Q - the actress in the new movie, The Protege (female assassin). Here are a few highlights:

* She loves backgammon! One of her business strategists encouraged her to take up the game. I'm a huge backgammon fan! It certainly has many lessons for an entrepreneur - strategy, risk-taking, assessment, and big-picture thinking. Try it!

* She loves soup! We forget how amazing a good soup is - life-affirming really. Her mother is Vietnamese and pho is a type of soup she was raised on. What's your favorite soup to cook?

* She shared how she loved listening to records on her record player as a youngster and how she'd sit back and let the album unfold. She pointed out that she had to become an active listener to participate. She added feeling concerned for kids nowadays who are completely overstimulated most of the time.

8. I Love Dental Fillings

I'm in the middle of making a deck for my house. Well, I'm a laborer and my brother-in-law is leading the project. We dug holes for cement footings, inserted Sonotubes, filled them cement and let them set. In the quiet following the excavation work, I thought of the calm and healing feeling of getting a cavity filled. You have all the necessary drilling and destruction that's followed by the calming fill. Self-development work could be described similarly: the digging and ugly work and then the healing feeling of progress afterward.

9. Inspiration Fades

I use a 5-subject notebook throughout the day to jot down thoughts or inspiration. I'm learning the importance of honoring ideas in the moment. Don't put ideas on the back burner - give them a chance to shine! Feature ideas in your audio journal that night - don't wait for the idea to be perfect and fully-realized.

10. Skateboard Park Art

My twins are very creative - one of them enjoys creating art. I love it! We had extra flashing (1 foot aluminum sheeting used to be a barrier between wood and your house) and he used it to craft an expansive skateboard park - like a diorama!

11. 4,000 Weeks

There's a new book out titled "Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals" by Oliver Burkeman. Whereas most time management books help you become more effective or productive, this one helps you realize that time is all we have! We have a limited time on this Earth so we should strive to spend as much of it possible doing things we cherish. He drew from Buddhism, meditation, and philosophy for the book.

12. Everybody is Somebody

This is the translation of a Haitian Creole phrase in a mural: Tout Moun Se Moun.

Ep 80 Work-Life Balance While Pursuing a Long-Term Vision with Lucas Vining, CEO, Ichosia Biotechnology

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Lucas Vining, CEO, of Ichosia Biotechnology, shares his invaluable insights for running an innovative biotech company. We discuss work-life balance, productivity, and having a long-term vision to change the world. Lucas tells us how he created the non-profit company, Sa'akom, which helps farmers in Cambodia have a living wage. You'll learn a lot from this brilliant scientist, CEO, and entrepreneur.

Ep 79 - Demolishing Goals and Solving Problems with Holly Zink, Research Administrator

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Solving problems, goalsetting, and being purposeful at work are just of the a few subjects we'll learn about in today's episode. Holly Zink, Research Administrator, and founder of www.idogrants.org, gives us a lot to think about!

Episode outline:
1:58 I Do Grants
3:00 Getting involved with grants
3:50 Non-profit vs. for-profit grants
5:00 Holly's background and education
5:45 Identifying roles for self-development
7:10 Making goals meaningful
8:00 Conducting a life audit
8:45 Personal productivity
9:45 Problem solving
11:10 Creativity
12:45 Goalsetting and goal demolishing
13:10 Progressive elaboration in project management
15:30 Work-life balance and role transitions
17:30 Life coaching backed up with research
19:40 Researching on Google Scholar
20:40 Researchgate
22:50 Leadership and personality
24:00 Gallup ClifftonStrengths Assessment
24:40 Bullet journal and journaling for self-reflection
25:00 Write down goals for a 42% boost in achieving them!
29:00 Mission statement vs. vision statement
30:20 Business plans and business plan research
38:30 The secret to a more purposeful life is...

For more information about Holly Zink and her company visit www.idogrants.org.

Download full transcript

Ep 78 - Save Yourself Time by Having Great SEO with Alex Collins, Digital Marketing Expert

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Learn all about setting up the SEO (search engine optimization) for your social media! As busy entrepreneurs, we wear many hats - so get better at all of your business hats. Alex shares his wealth of experience for SEO and digital marketing. He covers the biggest mistakes small business owners make with SEO, tips for keywords, blogging, videos, TikTok, Youtube, Instagram, and valuable techniques for widening your net so you can build your business and serve more customers! Get out your notebook.

Ep 77 - Finding Meaning, Purpose, and Beauty in Your Busy Life

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Today's episode begins with a review of the popular Netflix series, Midnight Diner - a Japanese show that focuses on the wonders of simplicity. We'll explore key components of communication and be inspired by a father's story of heartbreak followed by meaning and beauty. Also, we delve into an inspirational story about young teens that survived on a deserted island for 18 months! Apply these lessons about meaning and purpose to your life now.

Transcript:
Joyful, productive and fulfilled. That's what you're gonna learn. When you listen to this podcast, all the hats we wear. I'm your host, Scott Snow. I'm a life coach and productivity expert. Our first story here is midnight diner. That's a new TV show on Netflix. Well, I guess it's there's a second season now. But I really liked this show, it's 30 minutes long. And it's reminds me of the beauty of simple pleasures. It's all in Japanese. It's about a guy they call master who is who owns a diner, and they open up a midnight, and they close at seven in the morning. So it's all of the people that, you know, they leave work, and they come stop off at the diner for something to eat. And this reminds me of role transitions. Because as you know, one of the trickiest transitions to make is from your work role, to your home personal role. And a lot of times, it helps to, you know, open the windows in the car to have some specific music you like maybe it's quiet, maybe it's a meditation that you do something going out to eat, grabbing something grabbing a coffee, something you need to do to make help you make that transition between the work view and the home you. Now this show, he only has one thing on the menu, and that's a pork miso soup. But if he has the ingredients, he'll make whatever you request. That's his rule. So a lot of people bring their own ingredients and give them to him. So each episode is it's really a charming, sweet show. And each episode focuses on a dish, a simple Japanese dish, it could be butter, rice, soup stock with a rolled omelet. orcia Zuki, which is basically rice with some kind of meat with it pickled plum, cod row salmon, rice with tea rice with soup, bonito flakes over rice, Benito, I guess is like a fish that you It looks like a piece of wood that you shave, you know, with a planer it's called cat rice. So I really enjoyed the show. And it's based on manga series, I guess called Shinya shokudo. And I love the simplicity of it. Actually, you know, I one of my bucket list is to get Japanese flooring in my house. It's called tatami, and this is a woven straw. I'm sure you've seen it, you know, in Japanese movies, or even the, you know, the famous scene in The Matrix, when he's training for kung fu that all the floors, it's just that beautiful, smooth, woven straw material I really like. So some episodes were about friendship, you know, there was one between a mob boss and a transexual. In the, of course, their paths usually wouldn't, you know, connect, but they became friends. And there's one funny quote from the transexual. And they're drinking and he's feeling more comfortable with the mob guy who is very, you know, rigid and standoffish. And they both say that usually they wouldn't like each other at all. Like they they despise mobsters, or despise transexual in the transactional says, oh, get off your high horse. And I thought that was such a perfect response, you know, when he's feeling less inhibited, just to say the truth of what it is. There was one episode about three female friends that they they're funny together, they always talk in unison and they're, they're searching for the perfect love. And there's a fancy food critic, who was very conceited and very rude. And he became very interested in you know, very simple butter rice. There's an episode about a porn star who reunites with his reunites with his elderly mom, who has dementia, a boxer who falls in love. It's just a really charming, interesting show. Reminds me of Episode 13 of my podcast, where I talk about the great documentary Jiro dreams of sushi about the world's greatest sushi restaurant in Japan. Story number two, David kantoor passed away and he was an innovative mental health counselor. He created this idea for mental health support groups, which I'm very interested in because I'm considering starting some open zoom groups. For my all the hats we wear a podcast on all the hats we wear

5:01

So where people could get together and have support and have some exercises to help them manage their busy life, and share resources with one another. love that idea, I think there's a great need for it too. So, keep watch on the website, I do have a page about this zoom support group. So I'm trying to find out the schedule. I mean, probably in the next week, you'll see some regular office hours that where we can get together and you can pop in and get some help. Now this guy, David Cantor, he he left a lasting legacy. And his pioneering work pioneering work was his structural dynamics theory of communications and sounds very fancy. He had a theory of face to face communication, where anytime two or more people were in a room conversing. If they have history, they'll develop a dynamic. So the foundation of his theory was the four player method, or model. And he says, There are only four kinds of structural acts that people use in all communication. All communication within this group can be funneled down to four actions. The first is to move like an example let's go to the movies, someone who's in charge and who's given the suggestion to is to follow, three is to oppose. And four is the bystander, which is the most important vocal act of the four. And this is the ability to add perspective to what's going on, and to bridge differences between people. I'm also thinking of Irvin yalom, who was like the godfather of psychiatric group therapy, and he wrote an excellent book about that, that was part of my internship. Report, my paper that I had to do with my six month internship at Westboro state psychiatric hospital. Also, he started something he called the well met halfway house. And it was innovative back in then, because it had college students working in residential group homes, this halfway house, and it was a family atmosphere, that people in transition are more open to change than those stably located in an institution. I think that's an important point. He expanded his systems theory to the business world and did a lot of management consulting in his later years, and he wrote a book called reading the room, group dynamics for coaches and leaders. interesting guy. Next story, finding meaning in grief. The book is called finding meaning the sixth stage of grief by David Kessler. He says that we have to find meaning in our loss, to process our grief. Now, we've all lost things due to the pandemic, rituals, loved ones, events, graduations ceremonies. And we have the false idea that our work is to make the grief smaller word our actual work is to become bigger and go around that grief and that loss. Kessler says that meaning doesn't mean understanding. For example, you may never understand why a loved one died. But you can find meaning. And that may change you for the better example. The woman who lost her child to a drunk driver went on to found MADD Mothers Against Drunk Driving. So she became much more determined and generous and she had a vehicle to celebrate his life and to do something worthy of meaning. Also, Kessler says that he fears when things open up after the pandemic that people that have passed away, their family members might just say, Well, they've been gone for a while, you know, let's not have a funeral. But he says that we need to have funerals, that their grief hasn't been witnessed. The person who passed away it was left alone in isolation during the pandemic, and that we need these rituals like a funeral. A funeral is a marking of life, he says. And Kessler had some extreme loss in his life as well. He lost a 21 year old son back in 2016. Very suddenly. And Kessler doesn't agree with the the advice, move on, just move on. He prefers move forward with it.

9:33

And I love this story here. This gets a ding. He did a lecture series in Hamburg, Germany. And he says there's a church right in the middle of a bustling, beautiful city. There's a church that's still in ruins, and they keep it there. It's St. Nikolai church, in Hamburg, Germany. And he likes to hold the loss of his son in his heart like this church. is surrounded by a beautiful new city. So Kessler says his heart partially is always devastated by that loss of his son. There's always a place in his heart that's just always going to be ruined because of that. But that doesn't mean that he can still build a beautiful structure around that devastation. He can go on with his life and make beautiful things happen. So well said, Kessler. Next story is about shipwrecked boys that had a situation just like the Lord of the Flies. And Australians seafarer named Peter Warner, in 1966 discovered six boys on an uninhabited island in the South Pacific. They had been there for 15 months, hadn't had six boys. When they 15 months before the boys their ages 13 to 16. They stole a boat for a joy ride, or Mariner joy ride. And then they got a storm. And then they were adrift for eight days. And then finally they saw this island so they got to the island. They first lived off rockfish and birds eggs. And after a while they stumbled upon the ruins of a village and they found a machete and some chicken and they made a fire. And then they created their own house a thatched roof hut. They made a garden. They had badminton, they made a guitar and each night they ended the night with prayers and songs. I mean, it sounds like the best movie ever. They had a strict duty roster where they all participated in duties. And they learned how to trust themselves. So it's kind of a real life Lord of the Rings, but it wasn't murderous anarchy. Like in the famous book. It suggested that cooperation perhaps is an integral feature of the human nature. So inspirational story there. All right. Thanks for joining me. I hope you got something out of this podcast. If you did, let me know. If you want to hear more about what I do. Check out the website. All the hats we wear calm, and you can even take a free one hour course to completely change your approach to time management and balancing your crazy busy life. Check out all the hats we wear calm. Until next time, we'll see you!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Ep 76 - How to Become More Focused in Each of the Roles You Play

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Learn to become indistractable, make important connections between identity and behavior change, identify your role attributes, and explore how to show up as who you wish to be without first receiving acknowledgment for it.


Episode outline:

1:15 Indistractable book 

2:50 Four reasons happiness is fleeting

4:00 Identity and behavioral change

5:50 My roles and identities

6:30 Essentials of a healthy human psyche

7:30 Roles in obituaries

9:30 Police reform: warrior to guardian mindset

11:20 Role attributes

12:15 Amira Alvarez interview (Ep 63) - switching between energy levels 

13:25 Top self-development lesson I learned last year

14:45 Paul Stanley story

Ep 75 - Around the World: Effectively Manage Your Time With a Simple Productivity Technique

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Learn a simple productivity technique that will keep you current in all of the moving parts of your life. We'll explore crazy, out-of-the-box ideas so you can start thinking big. You'll decide for yourself how inspiration comes to you: quietly or like a ton of bricks. And we'll hear one more handy tip for squeezing everything you can out of your day.


Episode notes:

0:30 Crazy ideas

6:30 Banana ball

8:13 Inspiration comes in shouts and whispers

10:15 San Antonio Spurs' locker room quote about perseverance

11:20 Warren Buffet's Cigars

16:25 Around the World: productivity technique

Ep 74 - Steven Spielberg's Secret for Becoming What You're Meant to Be

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The biggest question for today's episode is: Does our purpose come to us all at once or in tiny messages? Spielberg can teach us about creativity, intuition, and how to discover what we're truly meant to do!

Episode notes:

0:50 Steven Spielberg's wisdom

9:37 Benita Raphan, experimental film director (Boston Globe, 4-12-21)

10:34 Tell me a story - Game of Thrones scene

12:30 Batching: productivity hack

15:35 Beauty of what Charles Shultz did with the Peanuts comic (New York Times, 4-28-21)

18:00 Treasure hunt in Maine (Boston Globe, 4-12-21)

Hello, World!

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