31. David duChemin | Photographer / Author | Getting Sh*t Done and Creating a Career you Love

In this episode, Marshal sits down with renowned photographer and author David duChemin to explore the art of productivity and focus. Together, they unpack the importance of identifying your "big rocks"—the essential priorities that drive your creative life—and how to use your calendar as a powerful tool for achieving your dream goals. David also shares insights on navigating distractions and staying on track when life throws inevitable curveballs. This conversation is packed with actionable advice for anyone looking to get more done and stay aligned with their purpose.

Episode Highlights

3:31 Finding Direction

12:06 Moving Forward

30:35 Evernote & Calendar Process

43:07 Dealing with Distractions

51:30 Creating Priorities

57:49 The Only Tools You Need

1:03:28 Time vs. Money

1:10:58 David’s Thought Process

🔗 CONNECT WITH David duChemin

📸 Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/davidduchemin/ 💻 Website | https://davidduchemin.com/

🔗 CONNECT WITH Heather Mosher

📸 Instagram | www.instagram.com/heathermoshermedia 💻 Website | www.heathermosher.ca

🔗 CONNECT WITH MARSHAL

📸 Instagram | www.instagram.com/marshalchupa 💻 Website | www.marshalchupa.com 👥 Linkedin | www.linkedin.com/in/marshal-chupa-99a7921a8

📄 SHOW NOTES & TRANSCRIPT

Visit the website for the transcript and highlights from the conversation - www.shotlistpodcast.com

🎙 ABOUT THE PODCAST

This podcast is all about helping emerging cinematographers, photographers, and directors navigate the challenges of making a life and a living behind the lens. From workflow to personal growth, creative vision to marketing, finances to production—every episode is packed with a wide range of topics to support visual storytellers in their pursuit of building a business and growing a career they are proud of.

🎧 LISTEN FOR FREE Apple Podcasts | https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/shotlist/id1645435800 Spotify | https://open.spotify.com/show/3m5203Y5yQ7wNXQhZBOmNV?si=f46bc0e937bf40c1 RSS | https://anchor.fm/s/5cb2e948/podcast/rss

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📱 GET IN TOUCH

You can also drop me a DM instagram @marshalchupa or email marshal@marshalchupa.com

Transcript

Introduction and Welcome

Do something you care about, like, if you don't give a damn, and maybe that's why you're not doing the stuff. Maybe you just don't care enough. You haven't found the thing. That's like, I care so much about this. Like, if you're doing something that you really care about, Marshall, you don't get distracted from it. You get distracted by it. That's the thing that you're doing in the margins. That's the thing you're neglecting. You know, I, um, haven't brushed my teeth for three days because I've been so in the weeds with this project that I'm so excited about.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Shotless podcast, where we talk about how to make a life and a living behind the lens. I'm cinematographer Marshall Chupa, and today I'm speaking with and is back for a second time, photographer and author David Duchamit. In this episode, David and I dive into getting clear on where you want to take your career and understanding your big rocks, why the calendar needs to be your number one tool that guides you to living your dream life, how to think outside of the box and get creative about arriving at your desired end destination, and how to stay focused in a world full of distractions and never ending pings and dings. I've never had a conversation with David that didn't leave me feeling inspired, and this conversation is no exception. The way he is able to speak to the journey of our lives as freelance creatives is something special, and he has been one of the biggest influences on my career since my humble beginnings. Quick little story. When I was probably around 15, I used to go to the chapters bookstore and go to the back corner of the photography section, and I used to bring a little moleskine journal with me and pull David's books off the shelf and write notes on basically building a career as a photographer and how to do that. Back then, there wasn't a ton of resources or blogs online, and his books were some of the only ones on the shelf about photography. So fast forward, you know, 15 plus years later, here I am speaking with him and have had an incredible journey arriving here at the destination that I'd hoped. And it's really cool to be able to connect with him nowadays as an adult and now as. As a friend. I'm excited to share this episode and conversation with you. Let's dive in. David, thanks so much for coming back on the Shotless podcast.

Yeah, it's good to be here.

You know, I originally was not planning to do this as an episode, but I recently reached out to you via email and I just had a lot of questions that are popping up in my life that I thought you might have perhaps answers to. So I thought, hey, why don't we get on the mic, let's do this and share it with the world while I learn. So excited to have you here.

Sounds great. Yeah. And, uh, if I don't have an answer, it may just be enough to know that these are questions that are worth asking and looking for every day. I mean, the questions that satisfy last week are not necessarily the answers that satisfy those questions. They're not necessarily the ones that are going to work for you the next week. So maybe there's something simply in the asking of the questions and knowing that you're not alone and asking them, uh, that's of value.

Yeah. So the theme and topic is kind of ultimately getting shit done and creating a career out of what we love. And I think as freelancers and creatives entrepreneurs, we wake up every day and we have this kind of blank canvas sitting in front of us, just like, what do I do? And I think this is very beautiful and very dangerous all at the same time. And there's like a million and one things we could do with our time every time we get up and we get to have a new day. And I'm curious because it's easy to dive into the fun things every day or jump into the emails and start putting out fires right away.

Finding Direction

What are the things you do to get clear, I guess, on your vision that helps you create a direction to start out everything.

Well, first of all, I think you're absolutely right. I think the terror of the blank page, uh, you know, when if you wake up and there's nothing, if I wake up and there is nothing on my calendar, I get nothing done because I'm in a million different directions. And I will sit with my coffee and I'll look at instagram and then I'll be like, I don't know, maybe I should. And in the end, I get nothing of personal value or professional value done and I just wallow. And so, I mean, there's so many ways that we could take this, but I think the first thing is an understanding of the big picture. What do I need to get done in the next year? What is the next year? What do I want it to look like? What do I need it to look like? And breaking that down as best as I can into this old analogy of you've got a big pickle jar, and you've got to get all these rocks in. And there's big rocks, and there's small rocks, and then there's some sand. And the rocks, kind of the big rocks represent the most important stuff. And then as those rocks get smaller into grains of sand, they become more and more trivial. Not necessarily undesirable, not necessarily, you know, it's not that they don't have value. It's just that they're less important for the big picture. And so if you go straight to the small things, if you grab, uh, handfuls of sand and throw them in the pickle jar, you're gonna have less room for the big stuff. And so big rocks first is one of my mantras. You look at the year or two years. I can't go much beyond a year. And I say, what is the most important that I get done? That's either the legacy stuff, the personal stuff that, uh, and most of it, to be honest, it's kind of. I don't really divide my life into personal and professional. Uh, everything is a big melting pot for me. I don't do things professionally that don't benefit me personally and vice versa. So I sort of just look at it as life. And rather than life work, this idea of life work balance, I prefer to think of it as life work integration. How can I just make everything fit? And that's the big rocks and the small rocks and the, you know, the grains of sand. So you put the big rocks in first. So I will put on my calendar, I will look ahead and say, okay, so, you know, my thing these days is I'm a wildlife photographer. Primarily now I make my living with the actual income through teaching. And that involves courses and videos. And in order for me to sell those, I need an audience. So I need to do a certain amount of trips every year to make the photographs, but also to have stories that I can tell and share on social or in my. In my emails. And so these are kind of the big blocks, the big rocks that I look at and go, okay, I need four trips this year. And I look at my calendar and say, okay, where can I put them? Where it's desirable to put them? And I just put them in. I put a, uh, placeholder on the calendar. Two weeks, three weeks in, uh, the grand tetons or a, um, month in Kenya or whatever that block is. I may not have it planned out yet, but I put it on the calendar, and then around those big blocks, they can shift. You know, obviously, if suddenly the plans change, that's fine, but they're on the calendar. And then I start putting in the other things. What's important to me this year? Is it important, you know, that I do, uh, my training a year ago, as you well know, I had my right leg amputated, and it turns out that the more I train and the more I do my physio, the better things are. And so that is, though, it's a 45. Well, an hour and a half. By the time it's all done, it's not a big block of time, but it's important. So it's still a big rock for me. If I'm not on. If I'm not traveling, that's on the calendar three days a week. And can I move it? Of course I can. I can move it from a Thursday to a Friday if I have to, because of some other priority, but it's, like, at least three days a week, and then there's hiking in between. And so I'm looking for the big blocks, and I think I like to be dominated by my calendar. I like to not wake up in the morning and go, oh, uh, what am I going to do today? So, I look at my calendar. That's the first thing I do. And I actually usually do it the night before. I'm like, what's on tomorrow? And is there something I can do right now to prepare for that? I'm having a conversation with Marshall. Great. What do I need to do in the hour before that to prepare for that? And I'll put it on the calendar. If if there is something there, or I have an hour before my conversation with marshall, what can I put on the calendar? And I put it on there. And usually what goes on the calendar first appears in, uh, an ongoing to do list in Evernote. I look at that because at some point in the day, two weeks ago, I made a note that says, hey, you got to get this done. The first step for this project is this. Or the next step is this. I put it there, and then a couple times a week, I'll sit down, and I'll do a calendar meeting with myself, and I'll look at my evernote, and I'll say, okay, when does this need to go into the calendar? Maybe it's a big rock, but it's not this week's big rock. Or maybe all the spots for big rocks are taken up this week. That's no problem. I'll put it next. Next Tuesday. It goes on the calendar, and I am obedient to my calendar. I'm obedient to the person that put that on my calendar, which is not David the teacher. It's not David the photographer. It's David the CEO of the company that I run and to whom I am accountable to get this stuff done. Because if I get to the end of the week and it's not done, whose fault is that? Uh, you can't just go, oh, well, I didn't get it done. Maybe, but those big rocks, then they all have to shift, or they don't get done. Or those things that you dreamed of would happen by the end of the year, you look back and you go, man, a whole year went by, uh, because if you're just improvising the whole time, you're just not going to get it done. At a certain point, we work for ourselves. And the old joke is, I work 80 hours a week for myself, so I don't have to work 40 hours a week for someone else. It's not untrue, but you have to have the discipline. And so I get up same time every morning. The calendar is my boss, and that's the first thing I consult, and I do what's on the calendar. Sometimes it's fun, and sometimes it's like, man, I just really don't want to do this. Too bad. It's on the calendar. And the fact that it's there prevents me from going off script and going, ah, uh, you know what? I'd. You know, I'd rather just go swim in the lake right now. Not, well, too bad. Uh, if that's important, put swim in the lake on your calendar for, like, 03:00 in the afternoon when you don't have anything scheduled right now, your job is to sit down and write that episode, write that lesson, write that blog post, whatever it is that you've. And I. I am relentless about my calendar because I don't trust myself. I don't trust David the artist to run a business. So David the CEO has to step in at a certain point and go, dude, this is what you're doing tomorrow at 09:00 and there's buffers in there, there's little bits. I'm not over scheduled. I still take a nap, like, three days out of the week. I'll lie on the couch with a book for an hour, and I'll do a little reading, and I'll have a nap, and I wake up, and I get back to it.

Moving Forward

Yeah, that's cool that you kind of have archetypes, so to speak, or different hats. You're willing to put on the CEO or the artist, the person who's doing the work in the business. On the business. I think that's really important to frame life, uh, and our work like that, because oftentimes as creative freelancers, we are just wearing so many hats, but we forget when to take one off and put one on. So that's really cool. I'd like to zoom backwards because I love how rigid you are about the calendar and how it guides your life. And I think that's so important. I think what a lot of people struggle with is, well, what the hell do I put on the calendar? And you've talked about the big rocks and the small rocks, and you talked a little bit about creating a, uh, to do list in evernote. But I can see this consistently happening with a lot of people is just like, okay, I want to be a successful photographer. Okay, now what? And there's just this cool. David told me to put things on my calendar, but I actually don't really know what are the big rocks? What is actually going to move me forward? Can you speak to that a little bit?

Yeah. Figure it out. Running your business is as creative an endeavor as making a film or writing a book, or you need to figure it out. There's no, you're not missing, look, I have spent so much money over my career on occasionally on coaches or on a, uh, course or something, because I think I'm missing, like, there's got to be some secret ingredient I'm missing. Usually it's with marketing. I like to study marketing. I think marketing is overly neglected by creatives because we don't like selling. And every time I do, I get done and I'm like, I knew all this stuff. I was looking for some magic bullet, some secret thing. What, uh, benefits me the most is, yes. Occasionally picking up a book and reading it, and I get some ideas, and it cost me $40. Well, that's money well spent, as opposed to, you know, something that costs a lot more. And then sitting down with a cup of coffee and going, what could I be doing? You don't know. At the beginning. You have no idea. You're like, whoa, do I do this? Do I do that? And it's a lot of throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. But eventually you see, uh, the patterns. If you're paying attention, you have the humility to ask others for advice and for help and see what's working for them and what might be adopted or adapted into your own business and life. But I think you know, you need to look. We've all got brains in our heads. We can all figure this stuff out. Figure it out. Look at your calendar. Go. I need to, for example, big rocks. I want to make a book of my wildlife work by the end of next year. Let's say that was my goal. I need to sit down with myself and say, okay, what needs to happen between now and then? And then reverse engineer it. So I need the, uh, publishing. There's a certain window. Let's say I need two months from the time that I'm done the book until the book is published. And then once the book is out, I need to market it. Okay, what does the marketing effort look like? If the book's coming out on the last day of next year, when do I need to start the marketing? Well, when do you think? And then maybe give yourself a little extra time. When does it need to go to the printer? Put that down. Then call the printer and say, when would this need for? Just step by step. Okay. Well, wow. I thought it was going to be two months, actually. Turns out all they need is a month. Great. I'm still going to put it on the calendar for two months because I might need that extra month as a buffer to polish the project, to troubleshoot if something goes wrong. And then you back it up again. You're like, okay, so when do I need all the images in? When do I need layout to be done? And you just, you back it up. And yes, you're guessing, but you're making educated guesses. And with everyone, you're going to, you're going to learn next time it'll go easier. And if that's the case, when do you need to have, uh, all the images in? When do you need to have photographed for this book? What's missing? Like, you sit down, you figure out, what do I need? And again, no one else is there to answer this for you, so you just figure it out. But for me, putting it on the calendar and going, this is when I think I need to be shooting. This is when I need to be doing admin stuff. This is when I need to be locked in my room writing for a month. However it is, be aware of your patterns. Be aware of some people. Like, I can sit in a. I can lock myself away for a month or two and do the writing for a book. Some people need to do it, like over a year or two. You know your own patterns. You know what works well for you. You know what doesn't work well and what you hate. Usually all these things kind of go together. So I know it's not helpful, but truly fit, just figure it out. Like how you run your business, Marshall. What your big rocks are, what you need to do to accomplish them will be so different than mine. Um, someone who's just starting what that looks like for them will be much different. I would say, early on, prioritize meeting people that can, like, uh, you have done such an incredibly good job at being open and asking questions and knowing when the knowledge that you have is insufficient for the next step or could be augmented by someone else's wisdom and experience at the beginning. I think the more people that you meet with and say, what would you have done differently? What did you do wrong? What were the big lessons? And then maybe do your elevator pitch. Whether that's about creative efforts, I don't mean trying to sell yourself, but sort of summing up what you're trying to accomplish and let them sort of pick it apart and ask you questions and be open. Not when we start out. We're so m intent on selling what we're doing and talking ourselves into being right about it. Uh, or talking others into believing that we're, you know, we have it all together. When what we should be looking for is we should be trying not to prove that we know what we're doing, but actually to find all the holes. Like, uh, where am I screwing this up? Where, where's my blind spot? What do I need to be learning? I know I'm kind of getting off tangent, but those, I would prioritize that at the beginning because those, that's your support network. I know there are a million things I'm not good at. And I've had a manager, you know, corwin, Corwin has been my manager and one of my best friends for years and years. I'm not exaggerating when I say I could not run my business without him. I don't even remotely know how some of the buttons and dials that get pushed and I don't even know where to find them. If Corwin gets hit by a bus tomorrow, I'm in deep trouble because I just truly, I could probably figure it out. We have all our passwords in one password. I could probably log into stuff and recover my, but I don't, honestly, I don't know because I'm not good at that stuff. And if I spent my time, if those became chunks that I had to put on the calendar, I would never get to the deep work. And so for me, that's a, uh, concept I got from Cal Newport, he wrote a book, unsurprisingly, called deep work. And it's just an encouragement to, uh. I mean, he doesn't. I think he doesn't use these words, but he puts the big rocks in first. He's like, what's the legacy stuff? What's the stuff? Yeah, you need to do press interviews, or you need to do. You need to do a little of this or a little of that. But unless you write the book, you're not going to have something to talk about. You're not going to have something to sell or for your audience to, you know, to exchange their money for the value that you bring to them. So you've got to kind of. You've got to put the deep work first. You don't always know. You got to figure it out. I read a book, and I think it was called the one thing, and the idea was, in a decision making process, what is the one thing that by doing that, everything else becomes easier or unnecessary? So that's your decision making. When you're looking at putting your big rocks in for the month that aren't already there, maybe they're the medium sized rocks that are required to kind of get the big stuff done. What's the one thing today or this week or this month that by doing it, I can make other things easier or unnecessary? That has been a really helpful matrix for me, because very often we attack problems kind of the other way around, and we occupy ourselves kind of getting the busy work done when we could have done something much more significant that would have caused other things to fall into place. And I wish I could give you an example of that. I brought it up and immediately thought, oh, I can't think of an example, but just in terms of, like, we need to take this stuff seriously if we are going to, uh, a live as though there is no dress rehearsal sold, this is it. Those big rocks are really important, like, as we fill our days, uh, you know, so we live our lives, and you can get to the end of a year or a decade and realize you have spent that time pissing it away, doing nothing of consequence. And so I don't approach this big rock stuff casually, and I don't approach it with trepidation. I approach it with boldness. And, uh, I like to think with courage because, you know, it's going to be over in a heartbeat, and. Or it won't be over, and you'll be at 80 going, why did I not save more aggressively? Why did I not invest? Why did I not make that a big rock? Why did I think that the money I earned back in my thirties would always be there? These are big rocks. These are significant life decisions. So when you're thinking about one of those big rocks, and so maybe here's the example. What one thing, that by doing it in terms of my finances, I would make, uh, other things easier or unnecessary. I would say aggressively saving, aggressively investing, being really money smart. And that might mean taking a step back and going to first I got to learn about this stuff. That might mean finding a great financial advisor. But look, even if all you do is put an, uh, aggressive amount of money before you spend any of that paycheck, you take that and put it in the bank account somewhere that you can't see it, just somewhere away. And I do it both for my business and for my personal, and that's profit. If I get to the end of the month and I haven't put anything in the bank, I haven't made any profit. I'm dipping into savings, and that's trouble. And in that case, I don't buy anything. The first priority, the, um, biggest rock is aggressively saving so that when I get to 65, I'm looking at millions in the bank, not $100,000 going frig. Because a million in the bank makes, you know, it's that one thing that by doing so, you get to a point where other things like working into your eighties, become unnecessary or at least an option rather than something that you're compelled to do just to buy ramen and stay alive.

Yeah, we'll save that for our twenties.

Yeah. I mean, I went bankrupt. And I think, you know, that I went bankrupt in my thirties because I was a financial moron. And when I filled in my form for my bankruptcy, there was a part that said, you know, reason for bankruptcy. And I wrote optimism, and my bankruptcy trustee sent me back to redo, uh, it. And she says, well, how about you put seasonality of work? I said, you can put anything you want. The truth is I was optimistic. And I just believed that by buying things on my credit card, next month would be better, right? That if I bought. Let's talk photography. I wasn't shooting professionally at the time, but if I buy this camera, yes, I will put it onto my credit card and that will increase, uh, my debt. But because I have this camera, I'm going to shoot so much better, and I'm going to get better gigs and more gigs. So next month, next year, I'm going to have way more money. No you're not. You're going to get to the same point next year. You're going to have a bigger debt of but you're still going to be seduced by the latest version of whatever camera, whatever lens, whatever nonsense you believe is your magic bullet for. Look, if people aren't hiring you now, when you're shooting with whatever you've got, for the most part, at least when you're starting out, the difference, the big difference is not going to be, well, I spent $50,000 on a new camera. If you can't tell a story with a crappy camera, you can't tell a story with a good camera. So I know theres some nuances to that conversation. But in general, I would encourage people to consider the finances as one of those big rocks because it will allow you greater freedom later on if you have a bad year. Covid hits and suddenly youre like, oh man, how am I going to make it through? I had friends that really struggled to make it through Covid. And dont get me wrong, it was a bloodbath. But at least it was a bloodbath with a healthy savings account where I came out of, I didn't advance during COVID I didn't get any further ahead financially, but I also didn't really significantly regress. I just kind of held everything in place waiting for it to be over. And that was thanks to a healthy financial situation where I have no debt. I have a, uh, mortgage with a couple of years left on it, small payments, I own everything else. And there's so much freedom in that. Like there's I would way rather to have that than the latest Sony camera. I mean, if you can do both, great, but if you can't, the freedom of being out of debt like that would. If I were back in my thirties, that would be one of my big rocks. Get out of debt like that would be uh, because doing that one thing would make other things easier and or unnecessary.

A big piece I'm hearing is just think outside of the box because, I mean, I feel like I already hear people on the other side of it saying like you're saying get out debt, but they're also, oh, yeah, nice, David, thanks a lot. Like, of course I want to get out of debt. How am I going to do that? But I think that you just explained the answer is, the answer is different for everyone. And everyone needs to think outside of the box and focus on how they operate and uh, what their life is offering them. And so it's, I think people don't like these answers because they're not. There's no right answer, and they're hard.

No matter what.

They're hard, definitely. I think everyone just needs to understand there's no right or wrong. It's just, I, uh, mean, I love speaking to this stuff because it's just, as an artists, there's a continual unknowing, and, I mean, I think it's a great experience that you had to go through bankruptcy in your thirties and now have come out the flip side and realized the importance of that. And unfortunately, that was probably a really frickin hard lesson. But it sounds like it was a hard lesson that now has put you in a place to be, you know, retiring comfortably because you had to learn the lesson. Um, so that's amazing.

It was hard. It was really hard. But it taught me a lot. I mean, I was very lucky. I had a bank. I didn't want to go bankrupt, believe in being responsible, and I had incurred the debt. And I also believe you make your bed, you're going to lie in it. But I went into a business that specialized, uh, in debt negotiation, because I just realized I'm not making any further progress on this. It got to the point where it was just this unstoppable thing. I went in and she looked at my finances and says, I got two options for you. You can go bankrupt this month. And I said, well, that's not an option. What's the next one? She said, well, you can go bankrupt next month. I was like, any car I want, as long as it's black. So I didn't willingly abdicate my responsibility, but there is. So nuance is hard to kind of capture in these conversations. So I want to say that first, I believe in being responsible, but there is a point at which you have to identify, are you going to go down on this ship? Is your sense of responsibility to that debt? And let's face it, it's credit card debt. These guys have already, well, been repaid for the balance, for the capital they've lent you. And at a certain point, if that is your only option, is that the ship you really want to go down on? You know, if you're trapped in a, uh, truly, truly bad marriage, if you're trapped in something abusive or toxic. Ah, like, are you going to go down on that ship, or are you going to call it quits? You know, I, uh, willingly chose to have my right foot amputated, which some people saw as very drastic. And yet a year later, I'm doing things I haven't been able to do for twelve years because my injured foot was preventing me. And I'm at the gym doing two foot box jumps and I'm doing stuff that I'm like, oh, my God, like I could have, I wish I'd cut the damn thing off sooner. So I'm a big proponent of, yeah, put the big rocks in first, but also if there's a big rock in there and you need to get it the hell out, like aggressively taking the things in your life that are not pushing you forward, toxic relationships and financial bad decisions, all of your behaviors and your patterns, they should all be suspect. You should be able to look at them and go, okay, the guy that I was two years ago that made this decision, he was an idiot, and he didn't have, or maybe be more gracious to yourself. He was less experienced, he didn't know. But are you going to pay for his decisions? Are you going to pay for him making that choice? Well, again, there is a point at which, of course, you take responsibility for it, but there is a point at which you go, I have a way out here and it's going to hurt and I've got to. But are you willing to cut out those big things in order to move forward? You know, are you willing to, or are you just, well, uh, you know, I made my choice, I guess I stick with it. Well, life is too short for me for that. And at the end of my life, am I going to look back and go, God, I wish I made the hard choice. I wish I had cut that thing out of my life. I wish I had made this choice at the beginning especially. You're going to sacrifice. You're going to sacrifice this gig for that gig. You're going to sacrifice these choices in order to have better health, mentally or physically. You're going to sacrifice certain things in order to be able to put that money in the bank and save it or invest it, rather than buying whatever silly thing that you just saw on instagram that's going to change your life. There's going to be sacrifice.

Yeah, I agree with so much of that. And, um, yeah, I feel like you just have a really nice way of explaining and wrapping, wrapping that into a bundle. So I really appreciate kind of shedding light on that. I would love to. We're talking kind of zoomed out right now. I want to get really nerdy and zoom hard in before I forget about this, because we kind of brushed over it.

Evernote & Calendar

But I want to speak to the, your process around evernote and calendar stuff. Just coming back to the structure bit, because I love, I think people really hear this stuff in broad strokes, but they're just like, I want something to grab onto that I can do tomorrow or that I can actually write down. And this is the thing I'm going to do to help me move forward. And so I would love to dive into just a little bit more about. You said you use evernote as your note taking space, or rather your to do list, but that gets put into the calendar afterwards. So when you're done, let's say, are you just consistently brain dumping to dos in evernote? Uh, is there any structure to that? What does that part look like? First? And then the second part would be, how does that then translate into the calendar? It, you create a block and then you add those little notes underneath it. I'm curious to go nerdy into that.

Yeah, well, first of all, I don't overthink it, and it's not something that I created intentionally so much as it has evolved over the years. I used to do a lot of stuff on, uh, you know, in my little moleskine journal notebook, and that was great, except I would find myself on a trip somewhere and want to consult on a note that I know was like three notebooks ago and is sitting in my, in my office in a bookcase filled with notebooks. So I still use that for some brain dumping and some personal stuff. But Evernote is, evernote is where my thoughts go. So I have packing lists for every single trip I do. I copy the last similar trip, I rename it, and I make a complete packing list. Because sometimes what you pack or don't pack can mean the difference between getting the job done and getting, you know, that big rock, like, successfully done. And Evernote is, you know, it's one program, but you can have, I have thousands of notes, and I just make sure that I title them with something that I know I'm going to search for. I don't use tags, I don't use different notebooks, or rather I have, and that hasn't worked. And it's just so I just, all of them just go into one place. It's a, it probably looks to others like it's a mess, but I know how to search for what I'm looking for, and it's ideas for. I write my books in Evernote, at least the initial drafts. I write, you know, thoughts on, on what next year is going to look like and to do lists, and it's just the brain dump of stuff those are thoughts. Those are goals. But they're not steps or actions. Steps and actions. I will break down. Like, okay, what does this need to look like? Let's go back to the example of a book. I will use Evernote to kind of break it down and reverse engineer it and assign some kind of, some fake math and random dates and see if they fit. But when it comes down to, uh, when it's time to take it from being a goal to being a step or an action, that's where the calendar comes in. So I may have, I don't know, write the latest blog article about this, uh, on my to do list. But the minute I actually get clarity and it becomes something that I need to do, because it may not come around. Like, it may not. It won't say, write the latest one. It'll say, here's an idea for a blog article, but when it comes, I've got on my calendar, write your. My email newsletter is called the contact sheet. On my calendar. Every two weeks, there's an item for publish contact sheet, and it's a recurring thing. Nobody has to guess when am I going to get an email from David? Because every two weeks, I publish a new article. It's on the calendar. Then I backtrack and go, okay, comfortably. What do I need in order to write that? And usually for me, it's one or two weeks, and I will put it on the calendar. And it's, one is a published calendar, so it's coated orange, and the other is for writing, uh, and or reminders, which is, you know, actionable stuff, which is color coded blue. And that will be right, the contact sheet, and it's on the calendar. And if I wake up in the morning, or more likely on Tuesday night, I'm looking at my calendar going, what do I do? What am I doing tomorrow? Oh, I see that. I've got the morning blocked off. I usually need 3 hours for the contact sheet of write the contact sheet. I wake up in the morning, and when it says 09:00 on the calendar and 09:00 on my clock, I write the contact sheet. That's what I do. And so it removes that, you know, the tyranny of this freedom of, I can do anything I want today, what do I want to do? What do we need to do in order to get the big rocks in by the end of the year? For me to have published x amount connected with my audience, to have fed them and nurtured them to a point where they trust me and want more of what I do, and therefore buy a course or a book or whatever. I need to have done these things and so I don't get super granular about it. Sometimes I don't have nine till twelve on the calendar. Sometimes it's just the whole day is blocked off with, right, contact sheets. Uh, and there's two other things. So I wake up on, uh, Wednesday morning and I'm like, okay, well, this one thing needs to be done at two. And then I will put into the calendar. Okay, write the contact sheet. I'll do that from nine till twelve. And then at 03:00 when that other thing that I needed to get done, it's time sensitive when that's done. So I'm free enough that I kind of feel like I'm not being, you know, I'm not being straight jacketed into my days. That is enough for me. Like my calendar. If I lost my calendar, I would be in such trouble because that's where I will go, you know, again, there will be an item that says, hey, have a conversation about, with Marshall at some point about, about this or that, or touch base with Marshall. And then usually I will kind of like, either put it on the calendar, like, reach out to Marshall. That could be a calendar item. Reach out to Marshall, get in touch with Marshall. Then there will be that additional one. Once you and I have talked, that's like, okay, on this Wednesday from ten to twelve, Marshall and I are going to record a podcast that's on there. There's no questions. And then I take it off Evernote, just as this revolving list of things. And it always starts in my to do list, just a simple one line, do this. Or maybe it's not a do, maybe it's a, uh. Think about this. Maybe it's answer the following question. Or, and it's just, you know, there's a couple dozen things on there. There's some short term stuff, there's some things that I need to put on there for, like, okay, next year, the travel looks like this. You're doing four trips. And I will make a, uh, to do listen, or as sort of a new area in that to do list that's like, travel for 2025, book these flights, book this ferry, book these, uh, accommodations. Like, I just will itemize stuff. And as I get closer, those are the kind of things that I usually batch. So if they're small things, I will put on the calendar travel arrangements, 2025 for all of Tuesday. And I will sit down and I will just hammer through my Evernote list and I will make a, you know, six reservations at the Fairmont and, you know, Vancouver airport, and I will book four or five different sets of flights. And sometimes it's not the whole day. Sometimes I just have two or three things, and I sit down. I'm done them in an hour or two. But again, it starts with the thoughts and the what ifs and that you need to get this done in the abstract, in Evernote, and as soon as I can, because it does not exist in my life until it gets on the calendar. The minute it gets on the calendar, then it's like, okay, shit's getting real. Like, I will put two months aside for writing a book, and then I will start getting really granular about chapter one needs to be done by this. Chapter two needs to be done, final draft needs to be done here, edits need to be done here, and I will just constantly be breaking those rocks into smaller pieces, kind of mixing my metaphors here. But, you know, it's, it goes from the big idea into the smaller stuff, because I've realized that goals, like, everyone's New Year's Eve rolls around and everyone's like, oh, I'm going to do this this year. And they make resolutions. Stop making resolutions. Start putting shit on your calendar and then doing it and break it down into actionable. Yeah, you want to lose ten pounds this year? Great. What does that look like? Maybe it looks like make an appointment on Wednesday with a dietitian. Maybe it looks like on Thursday, go to the local gym and buy your membership and book three months of training with a trainer. Put it on the calendar. Like, end of tomorrow, I've got a gym membership, I've booked a trainer, and I've got three months worth of workouts planned in the calendar. And it's like, everything else has to move around that. Well, what if I need to do something? Uh, okay. If suddenly one of your really big rocks gets in the way, it's understandable, but otherwise, you got to figure out, like, how important is this to you, really? Like, are you just fucking around, or is this, like, is this serious stuff? And if it's serious, you know, the guy that's in charge of making the calendar for your organization, which is you, needs, uh, to, like, he needs to sit down and do it. Like, I have calendar time every month, usually every week, where I'm like, I got to rearrange my calendar. I got some of the big rocks have shifted. But my calendar, that's, like, that's my working document for my life. So I don't know, if that's granular enough, but it's certainly, that kind of thing is, like, if it's on my calendar, I know it's going to get done. If it's not on the calendar, it's still a wish. It's still a, you know, woulda, shoulda, coulda. Ah. And I'm clearly not serious enough about it until it is on the calendar. And it can be on the calendar in a speculative way, like, you know, uh, maybe, I don't know whether I'm going to the grand tetons next year to photograph grizzlies, but I've put, put a calendar item aside for 3 hours to plan that, the possibilities of that trip. And then I put one to, you know, to email two or three guides, and, you know, I've got one tomorrow to talk to a guide. It's on my calendar. I've already got the, now I'm looking into the next year because I accidentally planned this trip to the grand tetons, and I'm like, okay, I got that one figured out. What is the next year? What might that look like? Because I'm really excited about this. I don't want to get to the end of next year and go, okay, now I got to find time with this guide that I really want to be out with. And, no, she figured out, now, put some stuff on the calendar. You're putting things into motion the minute it's on the calendar. In Evernote, it's not in motion. In Evernote, it's still. And it's important. Don't get me wrong. It's still incubating. It's still like, okay, I'm thinking about that. But a certain point, even you don't have to have it all figured out. At a certain point, you got to be like, okay, it's New Year's Eve. Forget the resolutions. Here's my plan. A new year's plan. Nobody talks about that. Where's the plan? Because everyone goes to the gym, like January 1, and then, and this. Then they stop. It's not a plan. It's a, uh, I will go to the gym. No, you won't. You didn't go last year when you said you were going to do. You didn't do it the year before. But it's like finances slow, you know, this slow, like, gains happen over time, and so you don't have to go to the gym every day for a week, January 1 through 7th. You need to find something that works for you, that fits into your calendar, so that you can go at that interval every day or, you know, every day that you have it scheduled for the rest of the year and hopefully for the rest of your life. You know, I've been kind of on again, off again, and my foot certainly influenced my fitness. But I'm like, I'm all in now, you know? And it's a plan. It's on the calendar. You look at my calendar, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, there's a spot 430 because I know previously I did it in the mornings, and it was like, why is this not working out? Mornings are crap for me, Marshall. Like, actually, they're not. They're my best time and they're my creative time. I need to be writing. And so I found trying to make the one big rock fit, uh, into my calendar in a way that it couldn't fit. Like, it just was not a fit meant I was only doing the one and not the other. Uh, for a while, I was doing the workouts, but I wasn't getting my creative work done. And then I shifted it and I was getting my creative work done but not my, and I finally realized I just got to ditch this trainer. She was fantastic, but she only worked in the mornings, and I needed a trainer that worked at, you know, like 04:00 so I can do my full creative day, I can get it done, and then at the end, it's kind of like I go to the gym, I clean my palate, feel so good. I get done, and I'm ready for the evening, relaxing, and I'm like, now that was a day. That pattern works. And it took me, like almost a year to figure out. And finally I was just like, man. Ah, what an idiot. Like, of course, of course it wasn't working. And I knew this, I knew I was fighting it all the time, going, this is my creative time. When am I going to write my thing? I'm not doing anything at 430 in the afternoon other than working out because creatively, I'm, um, done. I'm completely spent. So understanding your rhythms, trial and error, all of this stuff. If you're looking for a how do I get it done? You can't use my way of doing it as a template because I just work differently. But, uh, understanding all these things and knowing that the questions are important, I think that's when you start making changes, is when you start going, how do I, you know, not how am I going to do this? It's how am I going to do this? And for me, put it on the calendar. Be sensitive to the rhythms of your own creativity and what works best for you. But don't let that be a reason you don't do it.

Dealing with Distractions

And I think one thing we haven't spoken about is distractions, because I have been trying to get into this time blocking thing on the calendar. And while I also, I don't think I'm as religious as you about it, I have definitely been creating this structure to my life. But what I also find happens is life happens. There's that, uh, like email that comes in about the job, or there's the, the thing you for, you know, you should do instead of, uh, you know, you should be posting something on social, you should fix that thing on the back of your website, you should. All those little nuanced things. Um, when I look at my to do list in Evernote, I'm like, well, I don't use Evernote, but, um, I use many other apps. But how do you stay focused and away from the distractions? Like the phone call that's going to come in the rabbit hole, you're going to go down on YouTube, all those things. It's so easy to have a plan for the day, have it blocked it on the calendar, and then by the end of it, I'm like, wow, I got kind of part of that done. And I also went down this rabbit hole or got, uh, pulled into this other thing. How do you avoid that?

It's not on my calendar. I don't do it. But let's back up to the beginning, Marshall. If it's on the calendar that you do a certain thing, you don't do something else, you don't answer that email. It's 09:00. My calendar says, I'm m doing this for the next 3 hours by virtue of the fact that you can't do two things at once and you can't, you don't do the email. If email is important to you, put it, uh, like at 12:00. Schedule an hour for, for the little shit. Schedule an hour for. I'm going to reply to this, I'm going to check my voicemail, I'm going to do these three things, and you batch it. Batching the small stuff is really important. If you think that throughout the day, you're just going to like, oh, every now and then, I'm just going to check my email, I'm going to check social. Um, I call bullshit. Science has proven over and over again, despite everyone listening, going, yeah, but I can multitask. No, you can't. You cannot get into flow into meaningful work and constantly like the deep work. So, you know, imagine you're in a swimming pool. The deep work's down at the bottom, it's at the, in the depths. You cannot keep coming up to the surface and then going back down because we all need time to reset to change our thinking on things. And if you emerge from the deep stuff, you immediately lose your focus and it will take you added time to get back into flow. And the more times you do that, the less chance you are going to get back into flow meaningfully that day. So put it on your calendar. My phone is off. I told you at the beginning of this, you said, is your phone off? I'm like, my phone's always off. I don't take phone calls. I will see a phone call come in, maybe. And there are a couple people that, uh, get past my do not disturb. My mother is one, and I still usually don't answer phone when she calls because half the time it's a butt dial. But I know she's called and if it's important, she leaves a voicemail. And yes, when I take a break, I will look at it and I'm like, oh, mom called, I'll call her back. Same thing with, with my wife Cynthia. She will break, there's a couple people that will break through that and I will look at it and usually I, uh, will just ignore it. If it's important, someone will text me and I can immediately look and go, oh, Cynthia really needs my help on something that's different. But for the most part, all those little things, like I shut my email program, it's not open. I have no notifications on my phone other than the really important stuff because my deep work is going to be sabotaged by all these little things. Remember, there's a distinction between what is important and what is urgent. And if you continually neglect the important stuff because, oh, I got this one phone call. No, you don't have return it in 3 hours when you've got an open block that you've scheduled for lunch and checking your email and doing all the little bullshit stuff. Maybe at the end of the day it's like, you know, I'm not doing anything from 330 to 434 30, I'm working out, but 330 to 430 kind of hit the end of my creative juices. I'm kind of spent. That's when you do your email, that's when you return your phone calls. The phone's there for your convenience, not for everyone else's. And I know that's hard to hear. I'm not saying leave it three days. I'm saying, you know, get back to them at lunch. Right now, you're in your cave doing your deep work, whatever that is. So it's very easy for us if you give distractions the. Well, I'll just, you know, I'll just get this little. No, you won't. You don't have distractions on your calendar. You have. Write your book on your calendar. And if you need a block of an hour to batch it to, you know, like, I don't. When bills come in, I don't pay my bills. I do not pay my bills as they come in every Friday. I pay the, like, I open the accumulator piles and I pay my bills, and it takes me 20 minutes. But imagine how much time it takes if every time a bill comes in, you're like, I really should pay that. Now. If you're not disciplined enough to get it done on Friday or whatever works, um, then put it on your calendar, pay your bills at this time, or find another system. But our lives are busy. They're going to be filled with distractions. If you don't have distractions on your calendar, you don't do them. And it's so freeing, Marshall. Like, of course there's going to be urgent, like, truly urgent things. Of course they're always going to come up. But you know what? Most of them, they don't move the needle the way we think they're going to. They're kind of in, um. They're masquerading as important things. Like, this is what I'm, you know, these. I've got to get this done because I'm an important business person. No, you're not. Right now, you're a creative that needs to be doing his deep work. Do the deep work. The important business guy can do this, you know, his little, you know, shit later. But, uh, the big question again, what one thing do you need to do right now that by doing so will make other things easier or unnecessary? It's such a clarifying question. What's going to move the needle is another way to put it. Answering that email right now is not going to move the needle. Doing your deep work will move the needle, or whatever is on your calendar. Do that. And if you need to tweak your calendar, then tweak your calendar. But don't break up those big chunks of time which are the most valuable time on your calendar. Don't break them up. And distract yourself with the little stuff is zero payoff. M the needle will not move. And at the end of the week, you'll be like, no, I did it again. Spent another week doing all the little bullshit and didn't get my actual deep work done. And at the end of the year, year, it's going to be the same thing, and you're going to look back and go, well, I made that New Year's resolution on January 1, and it just didn't happen. Well, guess what? There's a reason. I mean, it's so clear when you step back, it's so clear. And I don't know that. Do we all really believe we're going to live for fucking ever? Like, there is a time in our life where we can be vital, where we have our mental health, we have our physical health, we have the opportunity to. To earn money. Now is the time to get it done and to live your dreams. You know, everyone's like, when I retire at 65, I'm gonna travel the world. Oh, my God, Marshall. By the time I'm 65, I'm gonna be so exhausted from. And so, like, not wanting to be with people that I'm gonna lock myself in my room. Or it could be that by the time I'm 65, I have a health issue that prevents me from doing those things. Now is the time for these things again. Got to balance it out. You got to figure out your big rocks. Living the dream doesn't mean doing everything you want, because we all have limited time, limited money, but now's the time to do it or just let life happen to you and see how that goes. But in my experience, the people that are crushing it, the people that are the most creatively satisfied in their relationships, in their finances, in their creativity, in their business, are the ones who are getting it done. You know, the creative life, the self employed life, is not one of leisure. It's like, if I wanted leisure, honestly, I would go. I'd go work at Home Depot. I mean, you can never find one of those friggin people anyway, so where are they? But, like, honestly, I wouldn't have to think. I wouldn't have. There wouldn't be the high stakes involved in everything I do, but also there wouldn't be the risks and the rewards that I find. So. So, so I don't know. It's just. It's what makes life, you know?

Creating Priorities

Yeah. I mean, hearing a few themes here, ultimately, like, one you're using, like, the limited time we have here on this earth as, you know, death as a motivator to, you know, show up for basically creating you know, priority around these big rocks. Because ultimately, what else are we here for? Meant to prioritize what our life is meant to be used for, things that we care about.

Yeah. Do something that is meaningful, like you just said, do something you care about. Like, if you don't give a damn and maybe that's why you're not doing the stuff. Maybe you just don't care enough. You haven't found the thing. That's like, I care so much about this. Like, if you're doing something that you really care about, Marshall, you don't get distracted from it. You get distracted by it. That's the thing that you're doing in the margins. That's the thing you're neglecting. You know, I haven't brushed my teeth for three days because I've been so in the weeds with this project that I'm so excited about. If it doesn't matter, if you're not excited, if it's not changing the world, even if it's just a small little corner of your world, what are we. What are we doing?

That's beautiful. Yeah. Ultimately, after using that kind of, like, framing of death and just, like, our limited time here, I think batching is the other thing I heard is just stop getting fucking distracted from all the little things. And this is the curse of our generation. And I don't know, like, if you experience it as much, but as just, I'm watching other friends just, like, literally have their instagram DM's popping up on their phone just, like, constantly. And, like, whether that's like a, like or a comment or whatever it is. And I'm just like, holy crap. Like, I at least have the ability or have the, uh, have that not allowed on my phone. But I'm still pulled into the, like, checking it multiple times a day for the mental excuse that there could be a business opportunity or a DM about a project or something like this, because ultimately, sometimes work does come in through there. So it's like this fine balance of getting distracted or wanting that your brain wants to, uh, uh, you're getting stuck on a task, so it's way easier to go for the dopamine hit and just be like, oh, let's take a few seconds or a few minute break here, and then you're completely on a different rabbit hole. So I think that's a really common trend I'm seeing in. In my peers and myself. What I'm hearing, ultimately, is just like, you know, you're. You have to live by your calendar, putting in those big rocks, looking ahead, understanding how to block it out. Show up and turn that phone off. Whatever it takes to show up for that deep work. And then schedule in the little nitty gritty pieces of sand around those big rocks.

Yeah, 100%. And let me be really clear. Every generation has struggled with discipline. No one finds, uh, this is not the sexy stuff. It may be we're distracted by different things, but every generation thinks they can multitask. Every generation would rather take a break when you have a minute. And so it's discipline. This is why the martial arts have always been so appealing, I think, to some people, and why there is a bigger paradigm at play. And that is the skills that make you really good at a martial art are the skills that will make you really good at life. And part of them is disciplined. If you want to live, like, totally footloose and fancy free, if you want to just live by your desires. And don't get me wrong, everything on my calendar is there because I want to do it. It's not obligation. It's because I want to do it. Even if I want to live debt free and therefore have to pay my tax bill. The bigger goal is a thing that I want and have made a priority. But, look, you can either let life happen to you, or you can. Then you can call the shots as best as possible, and you need to be intentional. Turn your fucking notifications off. Do the work that you have scheduled, and then at 12:00 when it's time for your break, you get 15 minutes. You get an hour, whatever you've scheduled, then it's not a distraction. Then it's the task, and you can enjoy it. My job right now, 30 minutes, I've got set. If it's really important and you do get business opportunities, put 30 minutes on the calendar every once in the morning, once in the, uh, evening or afternoon to check all your socials and make sure you're current with any of those business opportunities, and then you won't feel guilty. Then you won't be coming out of flow. You'll have a meaningful 30 minutes block where you can give your full attention. Because, look, even if you're distracted by that little business opportunity that comes in through social and even if it is actually as important as you think it deserves your attention, it deserves not to be a little distraction in the middle of the day. If it's as important m as you say it is, then it should be blocked off, and you should. When it's time to pay attention to that, you pay 100% attention. And you give it not just, like, a quick response with your thumbs when you're doing something else. Give it your full attention. Like, we either believe in excellence or we don't. If you think this is something you should give a damn about and that you care about, then give it 100% and stop fucking around. You know, it doesn't matter. Every generation has had to struggle with that. And, yes, I mean, I feel it. Of course I feel it. I feel it more if my notifications are on. Like, my life changed when I took my. All my notifications gone. And finally, uh, it was just like, oh, my gosh, I went off social for three years, and I'm here to tell you, you can have a meaningful life without social. Like, it is possible. I'm back on it, but I'm back on it with very strict. Like, it's a tool. Here's how I use it. And social does not ping me. Social is there for me, not the other way around. So just be intentional.

Jeff. Yeah, I appreciate that. That's a really good framework. And I just think, uh, yeah, our culture or this generation doesn't even think like that. There's not. That's not even an option to social. Something you flick open with your thumb, um, impulsively, every 30 minutes to an hour. And so I think there's just some really good value in what you just spoke to. But before we come to a close, there's a couple last points I'd love to dive into. They're a bit more specific and, like, factual. But again, let's. I just want to get nerdy into the software side of things. I know you mentioned evernote and your calendar. Um, I'm assuming that's Google calendar you're using, or Mac calendar.

No, no, it's just ical, whatever came on my Mac.

The Only Tools You Need

Okay. Is there any other things that you're using in your life when it comes to, like, managing your life when it comes to this. This whole conversation that you like to use when it comes to software?

Yeah. There's really only one other tool that, like, is every day, and that's slack because, uh, I've got a team, and most of the time, it's just my wife, Cynthia, who does my editing and all of our customer support, and my manager, Corwin, who, as I mentioned, holds my life together. And he's the one that's, like, down in the weeds on a lot of this stuff. So we use Slack for communicating with different channels, and it just keeps the wheels kind of, rather than relying on email, Slack has been incredibly helpful, but I'm not an overthinker, you know? Well, actually, that's not true. I am an overthinker, but I try not to enable that with a lot of different. It's like, how many tools are the tools themselves a distraction? Can they be? I think so, you know, and so I try to keep as few things on my, uh, my phone as possible. You know, I, like, if I'm traveling, I've got flightly, I, you know, I've got all the airline apps, I've got my banking app, but I don't really just don't need another app in my life. I need fewer apps. I need, you know, greater clarity. And, you know, that's one thing that I would encourage you to do. If you're really struggling with you, like, checking your email all the time, take email off your phone. And I know some of you are, like, just, you just, like, fell over. Like, there's no way. But why not? Why not if you're true, like, if you're blocking things out and you're like, I'm not going to just spontaneously do email. Take it off your phone. Let it be something that's just on your laptop. Um, I'm not saying do that. Like, that may not not be the solution for you. Maybe the solution for you with distraction is just every now and then, move. Move the apps around on, you know, so that, that habit where you pick up your phone to do a thing, but instead your thumb just goes to Instagram, and an hour later you're like, what just happened? Move Instagram way to the back. So you got to work to get to it or take it off every now and then. Like, every now and then. If you got a busy week, take Instagram off your phone. You can put it back on later. You just, you know, just don't forget your login information. Put it back on. It's all there, you know, like, if you've got a problem, figure out a creative way to solve it. And if it's distraction, get rid of the distraction or figure out a way to manage it. But there's got to be a point at which all the apps, uh, you know, it's like, uh, use whatever works. You know, use a piece of paper and a pen. I mean, studies have shown that there are certain things for which a piece of paper and a pen is just the best tool. It's just, it nurtures a certain kind of creativity, and it gets us off the friggin devices that keep calling us.

To other tasks, 100%.

Figure it out, you know?

Yeah, I'm definitely someone who loves the tools, hence why I'm asking these questions. And yet I. As much as they are a beautiful help, they are a hindrance as well, because I get obsessed with, like, building workflows and making it perfect and having this checklist in here and this mind map over here and this beautiful notion database over there. And so, yeah, it's definitely like, uh.

Marshall, the last thing you. The last mind map you sent me, I looked at it, and I'm like, this guy has neurological problems. Like, I. Seriously, I'm looking at it, and I'm like, oh, my God. Like, now, I don't really mean that. I think the way that you think is, I think you are very intentional about that stuff, but there is sort of a humorous element to it, and that is like, I still get all this shit done, and I don't have any of that. But that doesn't mean that you have to work like me. M for you. Use it until you're like, yeah, this is just like. Because it could be once you. For me, as a photographer, I open adobe lightroom or Photoshop, and it's like, I start working on an image. You could work on that thing for 24 hours. Like, when is it done right? So the simpler the tool and the more clear you are about when it's done. Like, the sexier tools just encourage you to spend more time in them. Like, oh, my God, this is great. And wait, I could do this. I wonder how. And suddenly you're on YouTube. You're learning how to do a thing that, until five minutes ago, you didn't think you needed to know. You really don't actually need to know. But now it's like, oh, if I could just figure this out, then I'll be able to stop, like, enough. You're drifting from the task. If it's important, put a block on your calendar. That's like, learn some new shit on YouTube. Again, I'm not saying, like, if I was working in lightroom and I hit a hit, a thing where I needed to, of course you're going to research it, but come back to it, like, you know, and again, the sexier the tool. Could it be that that's where our dopamine hit comes from? Or I'm bumping up against the limits of this tool. What if I researched other tools and suddenly you're spending all your time looking for tools, not using them, you know, and we can either use tools or tools can use us.

Yeah, that's a great point. Thanks, David. Yeah, I need hear that, um. Um.

Your spanking is over.

Time Vs. Money

Yeah. So the last thing I want to dive into before we wrap up here is just, I think, how do we. Okay. We wear so many hats as business owners, and we spoke to that in the beginning of this conversation, but how do we know when to grind it out, so to speak, put on all these different hats or to outsource or hire someone because you spoke to, you know, corum being, you know, aren't able to operate, you know, without him, you don't know what would happen. Uh uh. You talked about having a team on slack. Like, how do you know, for example, it's like all the nitty gritty pretty things on the back of the website, or, you know, posting on social, or how do you know when to divide those and to be like, okay, I got this. Versus, okay, this is worth trying to hire someone else to do this. And this is also a bit of a time versus money conversation as well. How do you go about figuring that out?

You're right, it is partly a time versus money thing. So if there's something like, let's take a really simple thing. I don't clean my house. My wife doesn't clean our House. It is in the 2 hours it takes every couple weeks for cleaners to come, whatever we pay them, she and I, Cynthia and I can get far more work done in that time that makes more money, uh, and moves the needle than the $200 or whatever it's going to cost to get our House clean. Now, years ago, when I was still trying to hit the survival line, I couldn't have afforded that. So you're going to have to figure this out for yourself. But in terms of, like, is it worth an hour of your time? Could you be spending, let's say there is 7 hours a week that you're doing, doing stuff that you could outsource and do more of the deep work for which you actually get paid. You could deliver better client work. You could deliver more client work. You could do another assignment, like figure out kind of like, what those tasks that you can give up are and just be kind of relentless about them. Like, I don't do gardening. I, you know, I. I'm not good at it. And I, uh, would kill all the plants. But also, also, I have a guy come. He spends like 4 hours on a Saturday. It is worth the $200 that I spend rather than. Because I can get more stuff done, either personally or now that depends on you then actually doing the thing. You can't be like, oh, I've got people for that. I'll get my butler right on it. No, you better be. Like, if Alfred's working away at a certain thing, you better be in the bat cave working on your bat skills and, like, rescuing Gotham. So it's. There's that time money kind of, uh, matrix you have to figure out. But then there's also just the I don't like it, and I'm not good at it. And usually we like the things we're good at. Like, there is a correlation, and maybe it's because if you like it, you're going to do it more. You're going to get better at it. I do certain things. Like, I have a bit of an eye for design, and there are some things where I'm like, you know what, I myself, and I enjoy it. So I could do. I could make a sales page for a course and enjoy doing that. Get benefit out of it. Because as I write it, as I, uh, work on it, I clarify some things. Like, the process is important to me, and I could do, like, an eight out of ten.

Yes.

If I paid someone, I might find someone that could do a nine or a ten out of ten job, but I'd rather keep the money. And I have found the process to be really helpful. But there are things, at a certain point, I just had to give a bunch of my life to Corwin, say, help, you know, like, I can't do all this. And it's. It was that perfect spot of, I could be doing something better with my time. I, uh, could be doing something I liked more with my time, and I could be doing something that I'm better at with my time. And so if you can find. If there are things you don't like and you're not good at them, and you could be making more money. Like, that's the no brainer when you get that, like, sweet spot, wherever. Just like, it's not worth. I don't do my books. I don't do my tax returns. A, I would fuck it up. B, I, uh, don't enjoy it, and c, it doesn't cost that much money to have an accountant who can keep me. You know, like, that's their thing, it's not my thing. So you want. You start running a business that's, you know, it's a little bit complex. You become a corporation. This is all outside my wheelhouse house. I'd rather just pay the accountant and do the stuff with that time that I'm good at knowing that, uh, there's some peace of mind, knowing that my finances are being taken care of and that they can call me and say, hey, did you know this? Have you considered this? So I don't have a real answer because I think there are so many considerations for your question. But, uh, what I would say is do it sooner than later. Like free up that time sooner than later. Get better help. Uh, sooner than later. Coming from the world of photographers, it consistently blows me away. Photography is a visual medium. It is all about visual design and storytelling and communication and the photographers that are building their own websites. And it's awful. Like, it's just terrible. And I'm just, I mean, you don't have to pay a full on developer or designer. Pay for a theme, pay for a template. There are ways of doing this that can be a compromise. It's not all or nothing. It's not, well, I don't have $10,000 for a designer. Well, you know what, right now I don't either. But I could spend a thousand on a really good theme and then pay Corwin to work on it, you know, for $1,000 worth of hourlies. And suddenly I've got like a, uh, way better website experience, you know, so you just have to get creative about, about it. But again, my experience is if you're not doing your deep work or things that are immediately related to your deep work, you're getting in the weeds on things that you could probably pay someone else to do better. It would take them less time and you could earn more in that time with your efforts on deep work than you would save by creating some crappy version of whatever it is you're just trying to, to get done because you're pinching pennies. Again, don't get me wrong, there's a time and a place. If you're not like buying groceries, if you're that tight, then no, you probably want to be bootstrapping it and figuring out the shit for yourself. But there's a point at which if you don't like it, if you sit down to it and you're like, God, why do I keep doing this? I hate it. I could be doing something. If that's your internal dialogue, then put on your calendar, find someone to do this stuff I hate and do that. Right, but put it on your calendar.

Yeah. And just a quick note on that. Just an experience I had yesterday. So I don't know if you've ever used upwork before, but you know, just kind of reaching freelancers across the world and kind of leveraging currency, something that I've been working on quietly in the backend is kind of rebuilding up the production company. And I've had a few people come on board, uh, as collaborators. And I just watched us trying to do this task of like on Instagram. You can divide the photos and make this beautiful grid and it kind of looks sexy, but all the nuances that come in to actually make that happen, there's like 50 steps to try to get all the formatting right and hide the video behind the thumbnail, all this sort of stuff. And I watched us fumbling around for like a few weeks trying to figure this stuff out and none of us know how to do it. And I just kind of had this epiphany yesterday. I was like, well, what if I just go on upwork, uh, write a job description and post this thing and say like, you know, and put my rate between like 15, uh, ten to $15 an hour. Within 30 minutes there was 15 job applications for this, this thing. And uh, within half an hour I was on a call with a girl in Pakistan. Uh, she spoke great English. And I said, hey, here are all the things I'm looking for. And of course then I realized the skill isn't doing the thing, it's actually how to think outside of the box and be able to then translate what Im actually trying to get done into uh, words that someone can understand and then also be able to guide them through a step by step process. Hey, this is exactly what Im looking for. Here are their assets, what is the deadline, and its like leading that person. So thats been my journey in this process lately. So I just wanted to quickly throw that out there to make people aware of that.

I think thats uh, really valuable. And it reminds me of something that I probably havent recommended this for a while, but I highly recommend anyone that's doing any of this stuff that you read. Tim ferriss four hour workweek. It's mind blowing and it's not all going to uh, appeal, it's not all going to apply and there are going to be times where you can roll your eyes. Uh, but there is so much good stuff in there. If some of the stuff I've talked about like batching things and what you just said about outsourcing, you can leverage time zones, currency differences. I have a uh, trapdoo, the guy that organizes my safari trips, he's in Kenya right now and there's like what, eleven hour time difference or something. He's working while I'm asleep and I wake up and there's an email that's like, here are your next options. And I respond to him and, you know, when he wakes up, he's, you know, so there are ways of using this to our advantage. There are ways of being smarter about it, so you're working less. And as cheesy as the title is, as cheesy as the COVID artwork is, and as much as, you know, Tim Ferriss and I probably wouldn't, you know, probably it's not that we wouldn't get along, but we're very different kinds of people. There is so much in that book that is of value that I think it's absolutely worth it. And for sure, there is so much value in being able to outsource design and whatever kind of admin tasks. And there's stuff about that in the four hour workweek as well.

David’s Thought Process

Yeah. As we begin to wrap things up, is there anything else that is firing you up right now? That life is like, this is the thing I'm super excited about and this is what's getting me up in the morning.

Uh, yeah, there is.

He says, don't sound so excited about it.

I know. You know what? No, it's just like two weeks ago I was really floundering. I was feeling directionless. My latest book, I just got the first advanced copies of it and it's kind of like, okay, all of these things that were my deep work have wrapped up. I don't have anything big. And my latest course was launched and it's sort of like, well, now what? And there is a rhythm to all of this stuff. You're, ah, not always going to be on fire. There are going to be times when you're like, oh, uh, maybe I just need to listen to the silence for a little bit and then get back to it. And I looked at my calendar and I was like, man, it sure is empty. What are the big rocks? And I started all over, what do I want to do next year? I'd been so concentrated on the stuff I need for this year and into the end of, or sort of the beginning of 2025 that it was like, okay, but what courses am I going to launch in Q two, three and four for next year? What travel am I going to do? And it got me excited again because I was looking at my calendar and I'm not like, oh, what should I do here? What do I get to do? What do I want to do? And it was like, well, I really want to, I really want to photo grizzlies in the, in Yellowstone or the grand tetons. And so I put some time aside to plan that. My research began on Instagram, and I found a guide that, you know, I liked the way that he communicated. And before I knew it, I was on a Zoom call with him. And then, you know, a couple emails back and forth, and soon I had, like, my two week trip to the grand tetons put on the calendar, and that got me fired up. And I was like, well, I got some time here. What if I went to Zambia? Because I saw a post on, you know, this place in Zambia be called the Valley of the leopard? And I was like, well, that would be cool. I wonder what. So I put on my calendar, you know, talk to, talk to Ryan, who's my travel guy in Africa. And now we're working on, uh, and it's really good to have something to dream about again and to challenge you. You know, going to the gym is still challenging for me and getting a trainer that's going to push. And, uh, I think sometimes our tendency is to lean away from the challenges. Like, oh, it's just so, there's so much going on right now. I think there's a time for that, but it shouldn't last very long before we're like, we're up and creating and leaning into these challenges because that's where the flow comes from. That's where the problem solving is and the creativity, and that's where you get done a day of work and go, wow, I sure got a lot done today. Like, that felt good. Like, I moved the needle. Maybe it wasn't a lot, but I moved the needle a little. And that's going to make tomorrow and this week and this year a little bit easier or a little easier to get to the big rocks and to pull it off. And so I think just having something, like, again, fill your calendar, put stuff in there, even if it has to move, put stuff in there, have something to strive for, and don't be so caught up in the nitty gritty of today that you forget to look ahead and go, okay, but who do I want to be in five years? What do I want to have accomplished by the end of next year? These are important questions, and they're worthy of taking a break and, you know, taking your notebook and going to the coffee shop and spending an hour kind of just dreaming, you know, and in that space, looking through Instagram and kind of going, what would be cool? You know, like, and reaching out to people and networking and you know, just stay in motion. Stay in motion. And when it gets overwhelming and you're like, God, there's just so much going, going on. It's all right to slow down. Just don't slow down for too long, because the momentum is important. I'm not talking workaholism. I'm not talking hustle culture. I'm talking your rate, you know, of speed, your rhythm, but keeping momentum going, because I've found that it's really easy just to slow to the point where getting started again is like, oh, God. I just, you know, that's why I don't do vacations very well. I need them to be working. I need. I go somewhere for a month or two weeks and absolutely love it and be refreshed. But it'll be the kind of refreshing that happens by challenging myself with new things and doing new work and the idea of going and sitting on a beach and slowing my momentum so far down, it's like, how am I ever going to ramp this back up again? You know? By then, my brain is soft, and I've just kind of, you know. And everything else is soft.

Yeah.

So I don't know where I'm going with this, but, you know, m. It's easy to get kind of into that. Well, now what? It's easy to get into that place where you're feeling like, you know, and you're watching others, and they're not in that place right now, and they're accomplishing, and they're winning awards or whatever it is. Uh, and it's just like, what the hell is wrong with me? Well, there's nothing wrong with you. Take a break, not too long, and then get, uh, back to your calendar. And if there's nothing there, fill it with meaningful stuff. Stuff that makes a difference, stuff that moves the needle. And because the meaning is in the doing of those things, things it's not, in one day, I'm going to accomplish all this. Look, you may not actually accomplish it, so you better enjoy the doing of it. And if you don't, something's amiss, something is misaligned. And that's where I think this whole work life balance thing is less valuable to me than work life integration, where every day the work is meaningful, even if you have to have a side gig. Those are like, they may be temporary, but look, it's meaningful to put food on your table. It's meaningful not to starve. Um, those are good things because it's really hard to be creative when, you know, when you're hungry.

Yeah. That's beautifully said.

It's not just your stomach. I'm talking hunger, like your soul and your heart. And wherever all these things live in our physicality, there's, uh, a hunger there, too. And you got to be filling it. You got to be chasing it down. I think that's where the spark comes from. And when I look at other creatives that I envy that, I'm like, why don't I have that? It's not that I want to be them because I have some version of a thing that they don't have. It's usually that they're doing something exciting. And I need to go back to my calendar. Go, all right, time to put a big rock and risk a little more. You know, maybe it needs to be a bigger rock. Maybe I'm done with the short little projects, and I need to do something epic and really bite off more than I can chew. At least that gives me something, you know, like, you want sparks? That's going to give you sparks.

Yeah, I love that. Wow. So much value in this conversation. Really appreciate you coming on today. And if there's one word we hammered home today, I think it was calendar. So I love that. And, um, yeah, if people want to go to find you, where. Where can they go to check out your work and what you're about?

Yeah, the easiest place is my website, David duchammon.com, and I'm on insta under the same handle. That's probably the easiest. I mean, there are books, uh, on Amazon and that sort of thing. But if you go to my website, you'll fall down. But don't go there until you've put it on your calendar and you've actually blocked off some time for it. I don't want to be your distraction. I don't want to be your excuse for not getting shit.

Uh, good way to put a bow on it. Well, thanks for. Thanks for coming on the show today, David. Really appreciate it.

Anytime, my friend.

Okay. That was photographer and author David Dushman. David is such an inspiring human, and the way he speaks to our journey as freelancer, artists, and creatives feels like he is speaking directly at our souls. I encourage you to check out some of his work@daviddushemmin.com. comma or on Instagram. David, in efforts to continually grow this podcast and help you make a living doing what you love, I have a request. I want you to dm me on Instagram, uh, arshalchupa, and let me know what is the one thing you are struggling with the most? And why is it so painful? Learning what my audience is struggling with will help me dig deeper in future episodes with the guests I bring on and ultimately help us all grow together as a community. In future episodes, I will be speaking with photographers, cinematographers, directors, producers, reps, and anyone who has decided to take this ambitious leap of faith at making a life and a living behind the lens. Stay tuned and subscribe to the podcast on your favorite channel. And if you have 30 seconds, please leave me a star rating or review. If you heard something of value, I encourage you to share this episode with a friend and help them along their creative journey. Thanks for listening and we'll catch you next time on shot.

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