Editing The Pen Addict 378/transcript (section)

== Theme System Topic ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm thrilled. I'm thrilled. While you talk about our wonderful sponsors, I'm going to get out my notes. I have an additional page of notes just for this next topic.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I just wonder if you could just tell me this stuff in private. Nope. Nope. Nope. You're in dirty laundry for me all over the show. But that's where we are, I guess. That's what we do.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Take our first break, and then we'll get into that. Our thanks to Backblaze for their support of this show. Backblaze has the unlimited cloud backup for Macs and PCs that starts at just $6 a month with no gimmicks and no add-ons. Backblaze backs up your documents, music, photos, videos, drawings, projects, everything that is important to you on your computer. And they have backed up 750 petabytes of data and counting. That is equivalent of 750 million gigabytes. These people over there, they know what they're doing. And Backblaze have helped restore over 40 billion files for their customers. That is a ton of saved assignments and family photo albums. Data disasters are a terrible thing. We've all had them. But we shouldn't have them. You shouldn't have to worry about a data disaster because you should be backing up with Backblaze. I do it. I have my Backblaze set, and I have that peace of mind constantly. Everything is backed up for me, my entire computer. So no matter if I have stuff being saved to other cloud services, it doesn't matter if it's on my computer, it's also going to Backblaze. It's giving me that extra peace of mind. All of my photos, I wouldn't want to lose them. All of my documents, I have important things on my computer, right? Like our entire lives are on these things. You don't want to lose any of that stuff. And that is why you need Backblaze. Go to backblaze.com slash penaddict for your fully featured 15-day free trial. And tell them that you heard about them on the Pen Addict. That's backblaze.com slash penaddict for your 15-day free trial. Go try it out today. Thanks to Backblaze for saving us from countless data disasters and for their support of this show and RelayFM.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So have you backed up your theme system, journal, work files?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. I have a whole system around that that needs to be solidified because it's been such a harried process of getting everything created. And I'm now starting to make my notes for what I want to make amended. So that's like a whole other thing. I'm good.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You're right in that process because, as you know, you handed me off a theme system journal, one of the early editions at the San Francisco Pen Show. And I said, like, my history is like, I don't think that's probably a product for me. And then as I got into, you know, some changes over the summer that I wanted to make, I was like, oh, well, maybe this is actually a perfect product for me. And you said, OK, well, let me get you one. And then, you know, like I had some general questions and you said, well, I'm working on the website to give you ideas on how to use it. And I said, OK, well, I'll wait for that. And that way I can go through it all at once. Because the big caveat here is that you talk about this on Cortex and I only sparingly listen to Cortex. So what I'm about to bring up, you may have.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Even with you need the instructions, I think. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But what I'm saying, like the things I'm finding as I use this, you may have discussed already and I don't know. Right. So I might have a question for you that you have already answered on Cortex. And I purposely didn't listen to the last two episodes because I know there were a lot more specifics during those episodes. So I purposely didn't listen to them until after I talked to you about it. So I started using it Monday. So I just started it and I used it in conjunction with the themesystem.com. So the little website you set up. Yep.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Because I needed that big picture to just kind of, you know, give me the glue for what this whole thing is going to be. Kind of put it all together just so I have before I started, I have a big picture idea. So like I read through the whole site. The site's great. So we're going to talk about that. Yeah, it was I'll tell you how it was. It was super helpful to me. Overall, like construction quality, you know, all of that stuff, the build, the paper quality, it's all exceptional.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't I don't have any like I don't have any technical like issues with the with the book, like I have other issues with the book.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But like, you have to write on the backside of the page on this book, right? It's designed for 90 days. Yeah, you do both pages. Front and back page. So you need so if I'm going to use a fountain pen, which I have these first two days, I need to make sure the backside of my page is legible once I write on it, right? And it is not perfect.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But I think it passes the mustard with it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It passes them. It's going to pass the majority of the test. There'll be some issues with certain inks, certain very heavy inks and broad nibs. It might be an issue. But I've used a stub nib and a sailor medium nib and I've had no issues so far. So.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, yeah, the the the notebooks broken down into the yearly theme, which is like four pages up front. You have a yearly theme. So let me get mine out here. So, like, I'm going to I'm going to tell you mine. So I was hoping you would. Yeah. So my theme is the year of experimentation, which we talked back in the beginning of the year, but I never wrote it down. Right. Like I talked about it and like I've talked about how I failed throughout the year of experimentation. But then so I filled out my theme. I have my description. I'll read some of these things and I won't read all of them just for time.

'''Myke Hurley:''' If people need like if you go to the theme system dot com, you can get visual ideas of what the pages look like. There are no straight on scans of the pages for what should seem like an obvious reason, but you can get an idea of the pictures like you can see what the pages look like. So you can kind of follow along with what Brad's talking about.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. So that's how I did it. So I took the yearly theme section on the website and then filled out my yearly theme. Yeah. OK, so I did that. And then in the ideal outcome section, I have one, two, three, four things filled out for, you know, what I believe my ideal outcomes should be. So then you go to the journal pages section. And this is kind of the meat of the notebook and the main part. And this is what you're going in and doing every day. Pretty much. Right. So there's four sections. There's two blocks up top, one huge block in the middle and then one smaller block at the bottom. So what you use these for, which you talked about on the page, and I don't have the page pulled up right in front of me, but you can talk about it like your top section is good, like good. What happened?

'''Myke Hurley:''' What was good in the day? Then the second section is what was bad in the day and they're equal sizes. The larger box is kind of what I'm proud of. And this is where I try and go into a bit of detail. And then the final box at the bottom is like, what is one thing I'm looking forward to?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' OK, so knowing. Knowing that I want to do something similar and that if I use your terms, I'm going to fail. I sat there and went through your terms, took an extra sheet of paper and kind of figured out what are the terms that work for me? Yes. That are going to allow me to enjoy filling out these pages every day because you really need to do it every day. So, you know, like good, bad. What was it? What was your middle section? The good, bad, proud and forward. Proud and forward. So like those are like I took those as the general rule and then I tweak them into what's going to make Brad use this. Yeah. So my top my top section, they're my headers are generally the same, but my header for the first one is stoked. What am I stoked on right now? Yes. Like what's making me happy?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' My second my second section is joked. Like what happened today that was stupid or made me mad or was annoying, you know? So I've stoked and joked at the top. So proud of you right now.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This makes me, no, seriously, I cannot tell you what a gift you are giving me right now. I know we've got bad stuff to come, but the fact that you, the fact that you have like worked something out for yourself. It's like, yes, this is what I want, right? Because I was going to say, we spoke about this in the last episode. The first run that we did, there were 200 of them. And then the second run that we've done, there were 2000 of them we sold. Right. So the level of feedback that I'm getting now is very different. And so like I'm starting to get more people telling me how they're using it. We didn't really get a lot of that. We got some of it last time, but the sample sizes were just too small because there'll be a bunch of people that will get it and realize it's not for them. It'll be a bunch of people that get it and they use it, but they're just not the type of piece of person that would feedback. So we're getting more feedback. So it's just like a really emotional experience for me to hear this kind of happening to me live. But you can keep going.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. That's why I didn't put any of this in the show notes because I wanted to do it live and get your reaction. So my third section, I'm going to ask you for the third time. What is yours called? The main section. Proud. Proud. Okay. So mine is called Moments. So I've taken like what happened today that was memorable or what was the thing I wanted to remember from today? So like, so let me, I'll finish them. Then I'll read my examples. So that moment is kind of like, you know, my picture of the day, like good, you know, expanding on other things. And then my bottom section is called Let's Go. Like, all right, we got to do this. Like this is coming up soon. So it's like, it could be called like hype train or something like that. Like for me, this is the kind of thing I need. So my, my bottom section, like my carried forward section is like, let's go. Like, so stoked, joked moments and let's go. So that's what works for me. So like stoked on Monday was I ordered new buttons for NotCo. So we do like sticker pack ins for our products for when people order. So I'm doing buttons this time. So I was stoked about that. My joke section was the price of enamel pens is stupid. So I'm looking at getting enamel pens for NotCo. And like, I was never happy with like any of the quotes. I got to work on that a little bit more. So that was joked for me. My moments, I won't read like the whole thing, but you know, I filled out like three quarters of the box. And it's like, my friend Jay was in town from the product productivity and tech podcast. He actually did something for us for the show. I'll show you later. So like I talked about like Jay stopping by, we hung out for a couple hours and we talked about those types of things. And then, you know, Mary Beth is working on the NotCo product photography and we're going to have a refresh of the site. So like those were my moments for the day. And then my let's go, this was Monday. So I had big unboxing stream tomorrow on Twitch. So that was, you know, leading into Tuesday. Okay. So that's the journal pages. That's how I decided to set them up. Like I thought I could do it. I wanted to do it, but I wasn't sure. Okay. What are the things that are going to make me do it? Right. So I had to figure out those things and it took time. Like I said, I stared at the website and I scrolled, I read all the examples. I looked at the pictures and I still wasn't sure. And then back and forth and I finally got it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I want people to spend time on it because it's important. But one of the things that I've tried to impress in the instructions and I want to do more of like, just change it if you don't like it. Right. But just begin. And that's why there's like four pages for themes at the front. Not one. Yes. Right. Change your mind. Right. Like I have changed my mind multiple times and will continue to. Like it does. And that's like part of the idea for me, why it isn't printed with any prompts from me. Right. Like create your own reproducible framework that you feel free to amend as your life changes. Because that's how I use this book. That's why it's just boxes. Right. Like make your own. And honestly, like I feel really proud. I've had some incredible examples sent to me so far of like the way that people are using this thing. And it's bananas. And like, so something that I want, I want people to send me examples once they're using it. So I am going to ask you to send me some pictures when you find a day that you're comfortable sharing with everybody.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Probably, probably these first two.

'''Myke Hurley:''' We'll see. I'll reread them. No rush, but just do it. But also like, I'm going to get people to share on Instagram and stuff as well. And I want to create a hashtag that people, so that's all in the works, but like, I'm going to start putting examples on the website. Right. And so, but like, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm really pleased with the fact that you're doing, but like, that is the thing. If you do have one of these and you're not sure about it, like I've had people saying to me, I'm not sure how to start. Just start. Like this notebook is not a precious thing. Right. Like I know we are limited in stock, but we will fix that eventually. But like, just go for it. Like just start writing. You've got 90 days worth of stuff in there. Like you can mess it up. Go for it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. So that's like the keys. Like I can change those headers if it like something's not, not, not jiving how I want it to do. So that's what I think. That's why the daily themes is actually the hardest part for me. Um, because I've never done like habit tracking. Yep. Um, which is this, what this kind of is. So like, I don't have a thing to say drink 32 ounces of water today. And like those things don't work for me.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It can be habit tracking, but it doesn't have to be habit tracking. It can be anything you want it to be. It could be a checklist, right? Like just a general checklist of a project that you're working on. Like you could have, there's a bunch of pages in there. You could set every double page spread as a different project and track it over 15 days or whatever. You know, you know, I understand that this is, this part is one of the parts that is trickiest for people. Um, but it's been working really well for me as an idea of like, you know, for your year, your year of experimentation, what if there were like 10 things that you are trying to work harder on and then you can mark off on days of like, oh, I experimented with a different ink today or whatever, you know, like think of it in that way.