Taking notes

Josh: The Daily Talk Show, everyone. It's episode 60. How are you, TJ?

Tommy: Oh, fuck, I just remembered that moment. It was 60. Congratulations, Josh.

Josh: No, congratulations to you.

Tommy: No, fuck you. Congratulations to you.

Josh: No, go fuck yourself. I'm congratulating you and you're not going to take this moment away from me.

Tommy: For anyone who's new to the podcast, we don't do this every episode.

Josh: We do. Just every 10. Every 10.

Tommy: It feels like yesterday we were in Shepparton. I just dropped the video for the 50th episode celebration on my YouTube channel.

Josh: Any feedback from anyone? Probably not.

Tommy: Well, we went to Shepparton, and in the video you say— what did you say? Like, uh, well, people might want to know what you're doing back here in Shepparton. It's because we're the new breakfast show or something like that.

Josh: Yes.

Tommy: And I actually think people thought we, we are the new breakfast show.

Josh: I was actually watching. So, uh, B-Mac, who was on that episode, yeah, did a bit of gear, not as in drugs, but as in on social media, and said, introducing your new fucking breakfast show. And I thought, haha, funny. But then I watched our video, I'm like, yeah, if people don't fucking click through— for one, I don't think he linked the video.

Tommy: I didn't link to the video.

Josh: First mistake, BMAG, you fucking idiot.

Tommy: I think he knew what he's a man.

Josh: He knew what he was doing.

Tommy: He's a hype man.

Josh: And what did he do? Hype online. And then the other thing too was I had 2 people add me on Facebook.

Tommy: Ah, yes, B-Max from Shepparton.

Josh: But no, then I rewatch the video. I'm like, we actually don't say that we're joking. So people are like, watch till the end. And they're like, you know why we're really here? We're the new The Breakfast Show. And that's a joke.

Tommy: Then we talk at the end about, you know, it's good that we're up here doing the podcast. We're good at podcasts. I think the fact is we're doing a podcast, we're not on radio.

Josh: I was thinking though, I'm like, wouldn't it be fun if maybe we did a week up there?

Tommy: On radio?

Josh: On radio where we said, you know, and we'll fill it with celebrity guests and stuff. We'll use all of our fucking contacts and do like, maybe we could pre-record interviews, but really pump it up, do the best fucking week possible. But I don't know.

Tommy: See, the problem is when you're in radio and you're in a town like Shepparton, and you have a replacement that comes in for a week and is good, like, first of all, you'd be shitting yourself that your job's gone.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: And second of all, there's too much ego in the industry.

Josh: So you're worried about us potentially being too good that we have to go? Scary. Look, we've been chosen.

Tommy: No, thanks, um, for listening if you've been with us all the way. Sean is one of our avid listeners.

Josh: Yeah, bro, he sent an email 12:30 PM. He must have been on his lunch break, uh, or he's a boss entrepreneur that has his own—

Tommy: runs his own ship.

Josh: He wants someone to fucking lunch. Yeah, um, you wouldn't be happy.

Tommy: I very much think lunch break like I'm just fucking eating or doing— I never see it as like I'm stopping right now for a lunch break.

Josh: I think it's, it's good. We can talk about structure later, but I just wanted to read his email. He sends it to hi@thedailytalkshow.com, which is the best way to contact us. He says, "Hey guys, heard episode number 58 and completely agree with everything. Captain Vegans that are hypocrites." Do you remember that? But I can't remember actually calling, but I'm sure we did. "Keyboard warriors that don't bring much value." Fucking oath, Sean. "Facebook friends," in quotation marks, "that show up out of nowhere with hate comments." That's a big one.

Tommy: Yeah, well, you don't even know that you're still friends with them, and all of a sudden some Joe Blow pipes up to give his two cents on some status you just put out.

Josh: Just being a bit of a fucking troll. And he said, everyone just needs to keep focusing on sharing them positive vibes. Looking forward to episode number 60. Keep up the great work, guys. Regards, Sean. Fucking thanks, Sean.

Tommy: Appreciate it.

Josh: And if you send an email, we love getting them. And yeah, Michelle our number one emailer, always good quality content. She actually went to the effort of really sort of painted the picture of her when she listens and stuff like that, which was good fun as well.

Tommy: Today I had a discussion with a vegetarian.

Josh: Okay, I see there's a thing.

Tommy: Well, Sean just made me realise this, and I realised that I'm not in They're— I don't even— I can't even comprehend this sort of their world and being that full-blown vegetarian. It's got nothing to do with animal cruelty. What I was talking about was the things like Facon and restaurants you go to where it's literally you can get chicken, bacon, beef, fish, but it's all not fish, beef, chicken, or bacon, and they're just flavored. So it was quite nice, this one place. I actually— we mistakenly went there because it was It was like a Chinese restaurant or something like that, Thai restaurant in Newtown in Sydney, very hipster joint. And I was like, ah, fuck, look at all this beef, chicken. We got it and it was all just like tofu but tasted like it. And my thought and my conversation with this vegetarian was, I was like, why, why do you— why? What is the interest in wanting to eat things that replicate the thing you don't want to eat. I'm just—

Josh: I think the point is that they're not denying that it isn't tasty.

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: But they have higher morals and ethics and they say, even though this might be tasty, I don't want to eat it because of the impact on the world.

Tommy: But it's not chicken. It's not beef. It's not like— I just don't get that. That it's like there is options. Pumpkin, dal, potatoes.

Josh: Dal's good.

Tommy: Veggie patties. That it's just not, they're not related to the thing that you don't like.

Josh: Yeah, eggplant's delicious.

Tommy: So, I mean, you gotta eat something, right, I guess.

Josh: No, I completely know what you mean because I was just talking to someone the other day about I Quit Sugar, Sarah Wilson, you know Sarah Wilson? That was her book and everything like that, she's closing it down. She's not passing it on to anyone, she's just closing the whole business. —And it's now, "I quit stevia." "I quit sweeteners." No, but she, if you go on to, if you type in like, "I quit sugar" into Pinterest, all of their recipes are shit that should have sugar in them. You know what I mean? It's just like, we're gonna spend all of our time making this as real to normal life as possible. For instance, the thing that upset me the most was I made Chocolate mousse. Can you imagine what the core ingredient was? I can't. Avocado?

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: Yeah, it was avocado. I put like an avocado, fucking cacao powder, maybe a bit of agave. Yeah, some sort of syrup. Agave syrup. And it was horrendous. It was horrendous. It's like someone fucked up. Like I've never eaten a fully fucked avocado, like as in like overripe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what it was like. It was like, what's the point? Like what is this trying to do to me? This is nothing. And so probably the meat type stuff, the fake meat, I'd feel the same way. I don't like, what's the soy one in the squares and shit? What's that called? Tofu. Tofu.

Tommy: So that's what most of them are in the end. Like, a lot of them, they're all soy products and shit. Yeah, so, um, there's a Netflix doco at the moment, um, I can't remember the name because my fucking brother— I said, what's the name? He's, I don't fucking know, mate, it's on Netflix.

Josh: Have you watched it yet? He watched it.

Tommy: Okay, but he really got into me about not knowing the name and really didn't take ownership of that.

Josh: Was it like one of the Cowspiracy type?

Tommy: Uh, no, it's about a company that is creating meat. Yeah. That's not meat in the lab. Well, it's not— so it's not the grown, it's not the legit, okay, animal tissue or legit tissue grown in the lab. It's a company that is using, um, the— there's like a— there's a taste that meat has, and they've been able to work out that it's a certain, um, something. It's like this— it's called something here, he gave it a name, so they can replicate that taste. Yeah, well, he should have told me the fucking name of it. Yeah, but anyway, he's saying he showed me the— it bleeds, it's made from plant-based products, and it looks like meat. You cook it and it's like oozing out. But it will change the game if they get it right. They've spent a lot of money on it so far.

Josh: I, uh, I went to Taco Bell in the US. In the US, yeah, real fucking cheap, like tacos and stuff. It was like meat. It was so good to get like— it's Yeah, my mate Naysan is into it, but I was like, what sort of meat is this?

Tommy: Oh, hang on, they do the Dorito taco shell. Oh, that's— Yeah, it's like Dorito chips flavoured taco shell. Imagine how many fucking chemicals are in that thing.

Josh: Oh, it just was so disgusting. I had this like, it was like a mincemeat, but it was soy products, but they sell it as like it's a meat sort of thing. It's fucking— It's like a meat taco.

Tommy: I did say today to the vegetarian I was talking to, that if you can give me a substitute for meat that tastes like it, like this company's doing, why would I argue? Why would I choose meat? Like, if I was—

Josh: yeah, why would you go down the unethical? Yeah, if there was another option.

Tommy: I, I really like it because if they can do it, there'll be—

Josh: I'm not even that hell-bent on meat. No, me either.

Tommy: That's what I'm saying. I wouldn't—

Josh: it's not going to take much to sway me to fucking Literally, just like if I had a cook, if I had someone who's like, you know what, we're going to give you a cook for the rest of your life. The only deal is it has to be vegetarian dishes. Fucking oath I'll do it. I mean, it's a big ask. I don't know if anyone's going to do that for you, for me specifically. But like, fuck, the bit of eggplant fucking curries and shit. Oh, eggplant curry. Is so fucking good. That place on Bridge Road that was really good.

Tommy: Vegetarian Mexican, awesome. Maybe not your bullshit tacos.

Josh: Nachos, fucking awesome. Uh, sweet potato taco at Fonda. Yummy, yummy, yummy. So 3 other things that you like that are vegetarian. Um, lollies, chocolate cake. They're not vegan though because they've got the—

Tommy: oh, we're not saying vegan chocolate.

Josh: Yeah, yeah, there's a few. There's, I mean, yeah, there's a lot of meals, but there is nothing wrong. I'm sure that we'll eventually get to a point where we are all going vegetarian. Yeah, don't you think?

Tommy: Yeah, nah, nah, not, not, nah. I think there's two. I'm not one of them, but there's definitely people who are like, nah, need your fucking meat, you need it.

Josh: No, I don't, I don't get that. You know what, I actually, Bree and I bought two pieces of meat from Meat Smith on Smith Street. Beautiful. Yeah, really nice. Uh, just no prices, nothing. Just like 2 porterhouse, yeah, I guess 2 porterhouse steaks. 2 porterhouse.

Tommy: I reckon they were like in total $26.80. $31. It's fucked. I hate places that don't have prices on things. Yeah. So you're forced to take it to the front or you're forced to just pick and say, I'll have that one. And you don't want to be a tight ass going, how much do you reckon that will be?

Josh: Yeah, I almost wanted to push back and go, actually, can I have another 4 more? This is like, um, do you do finance options as well? Uh, what's the new pay as you go?

Tommy: Like the weekly install?

Josh: The, um, yeah, so we did that. And, uh, but I don't know what I'm gonna have with it.

Tommy: Um, you, you were there when I told you that I, I told my wife Amy, and then you guys came in. That I'd thrown away some letters. So I was cleaning out my office and I threw away some letters that she'd written me.

Josh: One was for Easter, one was just like nothing recent.

Tommy: No, no, sorry, Easter as in just old. It was an old one of the Easters over the last 4 years or something. Sure. And, uh, birthday, maybe a Christmas one. There was a really lovely letter from my brother from, um, to say thanks for being a groomsman at his wedding. I read it, had a nearly teared up, and then, um, threw them out. But I, but I felt like a bit gross throwing it out. Like, I felt like I was parting with something. I was, oh, I don't want to, but I don't need them. I don't, you know, I was like, this is hard for me, this is the right move. And then I tell Amy, and then you're there, and then it just erupted. And I was the fucking— I was the gremlin. Yeah, I was the Green Goblin that's just killed somebody.

Josh: Well, you're a little bit— you're a little bit tipsy, so you're Tipsy Tommy, where you get a bit funny. Bit like, oh, what do you guys think? Like, you should have probably just shut your mouth in the moment because you and Amy had worked out— like, uh, uh, Bri and I were checking out your new installment. Like, you know, you got a fucking cool little new setup in your office. It sort of has a partition, so all behind it. But you actually brought us in. You could have fucking been fine, but you're like, guys, Amy's getting upset, what do you think?

Tommy: Yeah, I had to because I thought you were going to back me up as the minimalist fucking wanker over here.

Josh: But I'm a minimalist wanker that has Evernote. You can— it's so easy to take a photo.

Tommy: I did think about taking a photo of these, but then I thought I haven't got photos of all the other ones that I've thrown out. Anyway, my point—

Josh: Such a bad, uh, theory though.

Tommy: But what, what, like, I have like 4 to start. I may as well start somewhere. Okay, I could start now, and I probably will start now. But I got home yesterday and I opened up my text messages. For some reason, I wasn't even fucking thinking. I swiped across and deleted Amy and my message history on my phone, and I can't fucking get it back because the last time I backed up my phone was like 2-3 months ago. So I can't resort to a previous backup to get them.

Josh: And then I accidentally changed the locks of the house. Amy can't get in. I've, uh, I've accidentally moved and not told her. So Amy—

Tommy: this is a long roundabout way of having this sort of understanding of why most people aren't minimalists, because it's so, it's so embedded in all of us to want to. So like, for instance, you guys have your own thoughts around what I did, or throwing out letters. Amy has her thing. And so it's like external. So it's, it's internal for everyone else about my internal, or my, my reality here. Yeah. So I found it hard to throw out these things but then it makes it twice as hard when other people get like opposing to what you are feeling.

Josh: Well, there's the saying that Josh from The Minimalists says, which is, uh, you're about to talk about yourself in third person. It wouldn't— don't put it past me. Uh, your memories aren't in your things. Yeah, which can extend to this. I think there's something nice as documentarians and people who create content for a living, I think that there is, we do have a responsibility in some regards to save some of these things for content. For instance, I was watching a video we spoke about last week. One of my videos has gone hashtag semi-viral. It's about to hit 9,000 views. Fuck yeah. Over 249 likes, 6 dislikes, but who's counting?

Tommy: Can you tell me how many times you've checked it?

Josh: Oh, I have it open in a tab maybe once every 2 hours. Is that a lot? Once every 2 hours. Anyway, the guy who made a digital minimalist video, which went viral, which made my video go semi-viral because it was, mine was the suggested videos that came up around his, right? He deletes all of his raw material as a YouTuber, deletes all his raw material, deletes his project files. He only keeps— he uploads a version to YouTube, and then if he needs it, he'll just download it from YouTube. What a fucking animal.

Tommy: That would give me anxiety.

Josh: Yeah, that's so fucking dumb.

Tommy: No, you can't. You like—

Josh: I think hard drives are so cheap. It's just like, to me, it's going in fucking just dumb territory because it's like Mate, how much, how he's shooting on a fucking A7S, right? His whole, if he was filming like heaps all year, it would be less than 8 terabytes, right? Yeah, yeah. That's one fucking external drive. What happened, like what happens when, like it just makes no sense to me. It doesn't take any fucking, like be, I think as a minimalist, What it means is we can just be structured. Just be structured in the sense of have the files in a specific folder structure so you know where things are, and you don't need to be fucking keeping— I don't know, you don't need to keep the props, uh, for a shoot. You don't even need to maybe, you know, keep the notes. But just, mate, like, it makes no sense.

Tommy: But I say, I go to my mum's house What's up, Mum? I know she listens, right? Um, she has a lot of stuff from my childhood and it's just in the fucking cupboards, and there's stuff up in the garage. What's happening with that? Where's that going? That's physical objects, stuff from her childhood. Plates and like— I can play. Oh yeah, I think there's plates. There's a few places, mate. We don't have housing big enough to store generational item collections.

Josh: I mean, we're not talking about some amazing sort of like gold-plated—

Tommy: it's like, no, no, dumb shit. Well, dumb shit to me. They might be nice. They're probably nice. Mum loves them, loves what she's keeping.

Josh: But the, um, I actually have like, uh, my parents did a bit of a handover of all of my old shit, so I've, I've got it in my possession now.

Tommy: So hang in, that mustn't be much because you've got a smallish apartment.

Josh: It's all, uh, in our basement.

Tommy: Oh, in your, in your storage. So the joke's on them because you're going away and it's going to have to go back to their house.

Josh: Well, I don't know what I'll do. Maybe I'll scan it in. It's all school reports, so that'd be pretty funny.

Tommy: Or like, so yeah, my mum would have that shit. What do I—

Josh: yeah, maybe. Why don't— like, I think there's something in digitising stuff, right? Because the thing is, it's like, it's the words on the paper which is fun, and if you scan it in, you have the whole thing. The reason that I've even been thinking about this lately, I've started— I've been raving about the, um the note-taking and stuff, right?

Tommy: He's what? I love you. I love you. You're one day into taking notes and you've been raving about it. And he's right, he actually has mentioned it maybe 3 or 4 times.

Josh: I even went to— I went to Officeworks. You know, everything good starts at Officeworks. Spent $60 on— what was it?

Tommy: Notepads.

Josh: Notepads, but cheap notepads.

Tommy: Yeah, but $60 worth. Yeah, if you're saying cheap notepads for $60, that means you, you've got hundreds of notepads.

Josh: No, because we got cheap notepads, pens. The, uh, the expensive bit was the, um, index cards. You know, the index cards that you'll see on like the Agile Scrum, those, um, Kanban or whatever the fuck it's called, the boards, you know, like Envato and stuff. They've got all those cards everywhere. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I bought a bunch of them and they're not cheap. That was $27.

Tommy: Anyway, okay, there's nearly 50% here, fucking $30.

Josh: And then Bree wanted some stationery too, but I said to her, as long as you're using it for personal, not for Hey Tiger, if you want to be fucking using, like, that's a company expense. Thank you.

Tommy: Definitely don't put on full stack. Working big businesses, they've got so much stationery in their cupboards.

Josh: They're a startup, so they have less. So, but the funny thing was Bree said that one thing she doesn't like about Officeworks, the e-com side of Officeworks, hashtag she was doing a bit of e-com the other day And she'd realised all of these, she had like a mini stapler and all these like mini things. And she'd accidentally got Post-it notes that were like small and then— You write one letter. Someone at work was like, Bray, can you stop buying mini things at Officeworks? 'Cause they're not that handy. And she hadn't done it intentionally, but it just so happens that it's hard to see. Yeah, on the website. So, the reason that I was bringing up the, So if we're tying this all into hoarding shit, yes, but also note-taking, stuff like that, I've been watching the documentary called The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling. Do you know who Garry Shandling is? No. He's a comedian. He was, uh, he, he, he was a, uh, a host of The Tonight Show for a while. Him and Jay Leno used to share the role.

Tommy: He started talking, he's had a real squeaky voice.

Josh: Oh yeah, and he's— he was— I think he might have been in like, uh, I'll show you a photo of him. Anyway, he, um, there's a photo of him. But, uh, old school. No, I don't remember. But, uh, anyway, Judd Apatow, the director, made a great documentary on him, and it's called I think it's called The Zen Diaries of Gary Shandling. And what it made me realise was it's all of the— they've taken all of these, uh, uh, diaries that he's written. So he would fucking do journaling and he would write all— because he was a stand-up comic as well, so he'd write all of these, his jokes in these diaries. And it's fucking great because it's like he's synthesising his thoughts. And some of the things he's saying, Bree's like fuck, you guys are all the same, in the sense of like, because he's a bit fucking bipolar, a bit mental. And she's like, could completely relate to what I am, because he's like writing shit like, be more like Gary on stage, be more like Gary. Or just like, um, stuff like where he's like affirmations, like writing affirmations, like the, uh, when you stop thinking, you be more like Gary. Be like Gary. He's talking about himself. Yeah, so he was, he was constantly sort of— and, uh, um, and just, um, all of those sort of, uh, struggles and shit like that. Anyway, what I found interesting was they had all these diaries, and what it got me thinking was, I have— I remember when I bought, uh, a few hundred books from Amazon. Yeah, yeah. One of the things I bought was a, um, this was going back a few years, but I bought, um, those legal notepads Yellow ones. Yeah, so I bought, I don't know, maybe 50 yellow notepads and a bunch of Bic pens, and I'd been using it as my preferred way of writing shit down. The problem is that the way those— those notepads are fucking great, but they're a bit disposable, right? Yeah. So this is the thing, notepads— I don't think you want fucking Moleskine. If Moleskine skin notepads, it will cost you fucking like $30 a pop.

Tommy: You feel like you can't even rip a page out of the things.

Josh: Yeah, that you become too precious with them, right? You baby them. It's fucking everything needs to be perfect. Handwriting. So I've gone to these exercise notebooks which are like $3 a pop, not the cheapest ones but the sort of nicer, a little bit sort of thicker cover. And so I'm now getting into the habit of just writing. I mean, I'm day 1, day 2, just writing in there. And when I'm having phone calls, doing all that sort of stuff, just being pedantic.

Tommy: Good when you're in the office. Good when you've got it in front of you.

Josh: Good at cafes as well. Good at the— in the morning where it's like— or watching how much— how many times are you watching content, watching YouTube? So for instance, Bree and I have got our travels end of June, and I'm looking at what I'm actually going to fucking bring with me. So I'm trying to work out like economically, like from a space point of view, from a sort of real estate point of view around my bag, how much space do I want to leave for different things, what sort of bags I want and I've been watching all these videos where it's like, buy these fucking woollen socks because you get like more wears out of them, or there's these fucking— these pants are really good, like all of that sort of stuff. So all these recommendations around fucking bags and clothes and different little fucking travel hacks. I would normally just fucking watch it. At the very best, I might open up Evernote and write some notes, but now I just fucking have been using Day 2, keep in mind, day 2, day 2, day 2, uh, just fucking writing down all of these things and just being fucking—

Tommy: but dancing with the notepad. Pen to paper is the difference.

Josh: Pen to paper is fucking—

Tommy: yeah, instead of toe thumb to screen. Exactly.

Josh: You can go so much quicker. You can, um, and also I think it's just, um, it encourages you to— like, so many times I'll have a thought and that would just fall away. Or, um, for me it's about if I have a problem that I want to solve, if I'm trying to work out the future of something, or if I'm— where's my business going, all that sort of thing. Uh, I always do this. I'm always like note-taking on like a yellow legal pad, and then if I can, the very best, I'll take a photo of it and upload it to Evernote for the most part. I'll just like synthesise it into copy which will then go on the website and then I fucking chuck it out. This is a way of like, this is my fucking notepad for April. I'm just gonna fucking—

Tommy: right, good. We're 9 days in and just cheque in at the end of April. It's been a difference. I told you I was writing morning pages.

Josh: You were journaling? Yeah, so I just would get a note—

Tommy: notepad about that size. What's that, half of an A4?

Josh: It's legal, the legal pad. I think it's half of an A4, essentially.

Tommy: And so it's the US—

Josh: it's what the US don't fucking use, A4. This is what the US— yeah, this is like what the printer—

Tommy: like if you got something printed because the size went to the food, they took the size of the paper, we fucked half of this and we'll fucking— well, they just increase the size of food.

Josh: So exactly. Well, they're all fucking whack. Anyway, I'd use that and write 3 pages every morning.

Tommy: Just whatever comes to mind, non-stop, start to finish. What sort of stuff? Oh mate, absolute garbage, like lizard brain fucking thought. Like, um, today I want to write pages and now I want to start doing this. Oh, I thought about going for a surf later. Like psychopathic writing. It started to get a bit more sane.

Josh: Yeah, well, I, I don't like the complete just write whatever because my brain goes into this entertaining state, which is like, think dark thoughts, Josh.

Tommy: You're fucked.

Josh: Where it's like, that's funny. But it's like, it's almost this trigger thing where it's like, you think like my mind thinks it's funny to be like, what's the most fucked up things you could think right now?

Tommy: You don't want those diaries to be found.

Josh: Yeah, so for me, it's normally around an idea. So for instance, if we're just going through some of the things that I've been, writing about— I wouldn't call it journaling, but it's just essentially— so for instance, I did a bit which is like, okay, what are the, what are the types of questions that I'm asking myself around travel? And so it's, how often do I want to be working whilst I'm away? What camera equipment do I want to bring? What relationships do we have? What relationship do we want to have with social media? Uh, how do we structure our time slash days? What questions do we want to answer while we're away? So for instance, the social media one, you know, if we— do I want to be spending my time posting on Instagram? Do I want to make— like, do I want to make— because that could be a thing. A thing could be every single day I post a nice photo from my trip, or maybe the realisation is I just want to fucking disconnect and not do that.

Tommy: Yeah, it's such a funny thing because like this approach to life for me, it seems maybe a bit too structured, but I know there's rewards in it, right? And I think this, like, think your mind and this is great. Whereas like a morning pages, it worked a lot, and I know there was benefit in me when I didn't have as much going on. I think it would probably benefit me now.

Josh: Well, yeah, I think, yeah, for me it's all around specific ideas. So it's like, uh, the daily talk show, the current topics that we've covered so far, so far, nostalgia, business, marketing, relationships, finance, travel, life decisions, happiness, filmmaking, YouTube struggles, big life questions, parenting, social media, topical subjects in the news, radio, creativity, Melbourne, things in your life that didn't make the list that would come under, uh, smart Smart. But so those are the types of things that, um, and so then I'd write down things of like, what do I, uh, what do I want it to be? So it's like, I want it to be a two-way conversation. And so the questions I'm asking is, how do we incorporate our listeners? That's a question that I have. What makes us unique? Uh, you know, asking that stuff. What are the what are the— some of the big questions I have around it. So it's like, okay, do we want to have guests? What's our long-term strategy? Uh, what do we want to do when I'm traveling? Do we want to incorporate video? Um, can they—

Tommy: can they— I'm the only one who's made videos for this show. Appreciate it.

Josh: Yeah. Uh, can they be pre-recorded? So that's a question like, I don't think my assumption is that the daily talk show needs to be done either every day or on the very odd occasion you record two in a day and release one, which we've done twice. Uh, so it's all those questions. But if anyone has any ideas, because I've had everyone who listens who I've had contact with, that's the first question they ask.

Tommy: What are you doing when you go away? Yeah.

Josh: And I don't want to— like, we need to have a solution. One of the things I've been thinking about and which we sort of touched on. Standing Josh. Potentially. No, we could do, um, uh, a reduced schedule of 2 episodes a week. 2 episodes would be easy to do. Plus, when maybe we do 2 episodes a week that are in the daily structure while I'm away, being able to dial in, which would be easy to do. The other option is we could still do 5 where we do 2 of me away, and then we bank— we have a bank of, uh, you know, we work out 3 a week where it's a bank or something.

Tommy: Or the other option is, um, some generous sponsor flies myself to fucking Europe and brings my whole family and also a producer. I would be happy to actually plug the shit out of your show.

Josh: The Deck in Shepparton, if they kick it. They could get around it. But even actually, you know, one of the things I was thinking which would be cool, yeah, an email database of our listeners. So how we can contact people beyond the podcast could be cool. I thought, like, um, uh, I think that we've just been doing— like, we've been really good at just fucking pumping them out, and we didn't go in with a huge amount of strategy. And now we can start to reverse engineer or say, okay, we're 60 in.

Tommy: Yeah, closer to 100.

Josh: Yeah, once we are out, when we get to fucking 100, we can be like, okay, well, maybe we could actually, you know, like I wrote down some guest ideas. Uh, who have I got? Um, you might find this interesting. It was like, uh, Jules Lund, Hamish Blake, um, Sjante, who founded Envato, um, Kai, uh, who does Offscreen magazine. Interesting dude.

Tommy: Just plugging all your rich friends again.

Josh: Yeah, who else do you— who else? We need the little guys on. Name 3. 3 people? Yeah, 3 people that you would like on as guests.

Tommy: Who should we get? Seth Godin, I'm still waiting on him.

Josh: Fucking Seth Godin, I sent him an email, I told you that. Yeah, I haven't fucking heard anything.

Tommy: Hadn't written back.

Josh: I think it was because I didn't put enough value up front. I literally, I got lazy. I literally said, hey Seth, loving the podcast, for his one. Didn't say anything else about it, which I should have probably said, I like this because of this. I'd like Ruslan Kogan.

Tommy: Oh yeah, I think these are attainable people potentially. Rosalind Kogan would be cool.

Josh: Yeah, um, yeah, we can have a pro— we can probably have this off air as well.

Tommy: But if, if you have a guest you'd like to hear, or you have a contact to someone that you think would be cool for the show, yeah, I think that's where it's, you know, we could easily— I think we've got in our connection quite a few good solid profiled people that we could pull in quite easily.

Josh: Yeah. They just have interesting storeys as well.

Tommy: Like, I want— I told you, we talked about this before. I want like a bikie or something. I want someone who's been in jail. I want someone who's private investigator.

Josh: We need to— yeah, that would be good. I'm still, still gonna do that whole spy shit. Fuck, I had a few ideas over the weekend of like, oh, how to fucking spy on you. Yeah, some fucking good ones.

Tommy: Ideas are good. Yeah, action's better. Yeah, I know. The thing, like, looking at you turn the pages of this and talk all this stuff that's in these Go on. In here, if you become a billionaire, there's not much fucking difference, right? They're probably just doing this, and then people actually listen like it's gospel, you know, like you're— yeah, well, I mean, you are saying stuff like, here, so here's what I did. I wrote down in the piece of paper every day, I've got these new you know, notepad and pen, and then it's like people fucking just anchor to that and go, that's it.

Josh: Yeah, well, I think the thing is that it's good to synthesise your thoughts. And no, like, I more than likely won't be a billionaire in my life.

Tommy: However, there are 99% of people—

Josh: 99.9% of people are probably 99.99%. Yeah, uh, but the, uh, fuck, who's, who's the guy? There's a, uh, the big producer who, um, does his like journaling and stuff like that. But I do enjoy— for me as an overthinker, I actually love this because it means that there's studies which say that when you put pen to paper, when you take it out of your head, you're able to close some of those loops. Hashtag close the loop. Yeah. So if it's all just in your head And so many times I've had these ideas and then I fucking forget where I'm going with it. I'm like, fuck, what's that? Literally there was a doco idea that I wanted to implement while Bri and I are away, which was gonna be a big fucking part of our trip. Fucking forgot the idea, remembered it, remembered it and wrote it down. But it took me going through and finding like an Evernote where I just mentioned like a URL of a website from a research point of view where I was able to be like, oh fuck, that's what I'm doing. That's funny, yeah.

Tommy: And you got the trigger. Yeah. Brought it back. I was talking to someone today I mean, there's so many processes. I feel like I'm shit at writing. It's probably a belief. And so like, I'm talking in reference to coming up with scripts for videos. And what I found was I was a bit like, um, you know, like paralysed when I sat down to start writing a script in the moment where you're just writing in paper or you're typing away trying to come up with an exact script. But where I found from doing more of it, and now like one of my goals that I kept on saying in my head— I never really wrote this down or talked about it, but I was like, I want to get better at just talking to camera. And for me, that means being able to articulate what I'm thinking and still have it well presented and make fucking sense. Yeah. And so I found that One of the approaches to writing a script can be actually talking and starting. And for me, it doesn't always work for all videos, but for my videos, I can start talking to the camera now and have an idea, 'cause I constantly am thinking about the idea for the video, but I then can start piecing it together while talking to the camera. And that's one way of doing it, right? Yeah. And so for everything, there's not a specific way that is right. You need to know what's the right one for you, right?

Josh: I think the question is around that, you know, talking it out or whatever it is. How do you talk it out in your head so you can articulate it on paper? So for instance, I think the reason why I'm a good writer, or that people think I'm a good writer, is because as a kid, the thing that I was always writing were speeches or debate. I was in debate class, like, you know, debate club, and I was doing all that stuff for school— captain SRC. And the thing was, when I was right, the most I ever wrote in school were for my speeches. And so the thing about speeches is you're constantly reading out what you're writing. So it's like you say it out loud, see how it sounds, you adjust, all that sort of thing. And so I think that the, the thing that might trip people up with if they're writing a script or whatever it is, is to see this format and say, okay, I need to do this format of a script. It's going to be, you know, 1 minute per page, and it's going to be in Final Draft, and it's going to have character, action, fucking dialogue, all of that sort of thing. And that is writing, yes, but comedians, fucking writers in general, I can guarantee that the final product when they're writing, it doesn't look like that, right? Yeah. And so I think that as a writer, being able to— like, it's going to be a mix. So for you, I would probably encourage you to say, okay, well, if you're writing a a, uh, say if we're taking— like, I think that writing is this fucking magical thing that everyone— no one knows what the fuck it is. And, oh, that person's a writer, what does that mean? I think what it is is it's like saying, okay, it might be bullet points, so it might be questions. So it might be, for instance, say your, uh, uh, your video on your neighbour's fire that happened. You could say, okay, what are the, um What are the storey beats? So what are the things that happen? So discover the fire, tell other neighbour to move car, firies arrive, media contacts me, Amy, you know, Amy asks question, whatever it is. You have the storey beats and then you can say, okay, what are the visual ways of talking about this? What footage do I have? Or what's the dialogue that can go in? So you might have this line which is like, you never expect it to happen, to you, right? Maybe that's a theme. You never expect it to happen to you. What does, what does that come down to? Uh, maybe it's around the fear, like, so extending that theme on to some messages, the message might be the fear of the fire coming to you, people being in the house, uh, asking, you know, uh, all of those types of questions. And so that might look like a mind map it might be on a left side, might be a mind map, on the right it might be the start of dialogue. But to me, that is actually— if you look at writing, and even if you look at this, uh, you know, this doco that I was watching and seeing his notes, it's fucking just like bits of ideas.

Tommy: Yeah, I, I, um, have written scripts for videos, done them to camera, and then edited the script in the, in the actual editing of the footage. So I just drop heaps of my, my, um, my talking, and it's fucking like, holy shit, I didn't need that. And so if I was to go back and look at what I wrote in the page, it's like, didn't need 60% of it.

Josh: But it's a good way, but, and it's a way of filtering your thoughts. Yeah. So what's the other option? So the other option is that, so you could say, okay, I'm really good at talking I don't need a speech, right? That's a fair theory. But what about if you have dot points? So, the thing is that if you're on stage and you're speaking for 20 minutes, yes, you might be really good off the cuff, have some ideas. But what about some level of safety net which just says, okay, these are the non-negotiables. I want to thank people for being here. I want to tell you about this, tell you about that.

Tommy: I'm more of a dot point. Dot point person. When I was on radio, I worked that out pretty quickly. Yeah, I started trying to think about how to script the break, but then I was like, nah, dot points are fine. I can lead it in. And I like just engaging in the story, in the communication of the story, and getting— feeling the, you know, the back and forth.

Josh: And dot points is still writing. Yeah. And so that's what, like, if you look at half the stuff that I've done today is fucking dot points. And then I'll have a little bit of a moment of like, this dot point might— like, say if you're doing a talk or something, this dot point might have a specific quote or something that works, uh, works out well. So for instance, I was doing all of these, you know, uh, what are the— what are the values, you know? For instance, I did this, um, writing down, uh, for Full Stack Films what are the full stack, you know, my business, what are the values, what do I care about and all that sort of thing. And so I wrote down some stuff around— You've got your phone out now. So now I'm using Evernote.

Tommy: So hang on, which fucking one are we on?

Josh: Yeah, so this one, so I— this was over, this was on Saturday.

Tommy: This is 2 days ago before you started.

Josh: This was 3 days ago before—

Tommy: Before he launched into buying $60 worth of notepads. Exactly.

Josh: So for instance, there's all these thoughts around like, okay, what are my values? And it's like, time is our greatest asset, respect the story, elevate the quiet voices in our community, all that sort of shit. And then I came up with a couple of little lines, which is nonfiction storytelling allows you to walk in someone else's shoes, building empathy and empowering positive change. So that came from the values. I don't know where that's gonna sit, but that's just a little line which I liked and thought, okay, that's something cool.

Tommy: Did you do any work today other than writing those? Yeah, man, other than writing those.

Josh: Well, the funny thing is like these are like, you look at it, it's like there's a phone call with a client. You know, like I've been using the index card, which is like, what am I gonna complete today? On one single card, fucking dot points. You can see like just lines through it as I go.

Tommy: And, um, it's a bit like my office. I built it to be a certain way, yeah, and I worked out what actually was getting used, and now I've adapted it to more of what I do and more conducive to what I'll actually use. And this is the same thing. You're 2 days in, 30 days from now, yeah, if you keep doing this, it means that it's very much in line and you're seeing this, you're seeing it, and maybe you are pushing. Maybe we need to do things that make us fucking feel a bit uncomfortable more and more.

Josh: Yeah, well, I think that the thing is, it's, uh, it's about just creating, um, not structure, but, uh, maybe, uh, fucking intention. Being focused on your intention. So for instance, this isn't— nothing in this is new that I've even done. This is just being, it's deliberate, right? It's saying like, I fucking write down stuff all the time. And so if someone said to me, hey, like, and we've done it, how many times have we had a conversation where I'm like, hey, all right, let's work out what the strategy is for what you do. And I'll get out my yellow pad and I'll fucking write out these things. I'm like, this is how to do it. And that yellow piece of paper goes in the bin.

Tommy: But why is the yellow? What's the difference between yellow and white?

Josh: No difference. No, what I'm saying is that this is a, this is a notebook that is— the idea is that it's building on something, that my thoughts that I will then look back on.

Tommy: If you do, I don't know if you will.

Josh: But I think that the difference is with note-taking is what's the point in taking the notes? So at the moment, I use notes to synthesise thoughts in the moment, to structure my ideas, but very rarely do I ever look back at the notes.

Tommy: So then the thing becomes stick to the note-taking because that seems like the thing that you do, but it's like a monthly read-through. You need to dedicate an hour a week or an hour a month. Is that part of your new ratio?

Josh: It's literally the only difference, I think, is that I'm being more deliberate with these— are where I'm having one place for it to store. And so I can say, what is actually— I had this thought the other day where, like, how do we go back?

Tommy: Or Tommy, my fucking problem is when you get 200 pages deep, then what? How do you look back on that shit? Where do you know? How do you know where it is?

Josh: I think it's better than doing nothing. Yes.

Tommy: And it's like the pages is writing nothing or getting stuff out. I— and it went from doing crazy shit, talking about weird things, to actually doing what you're doing, writing out ideas. I definitely think the process of it getting it off, out of your head into the page, you then start talking about what you put on paper more. And so yes, it is the process, but I think it's like whatever you stick to, if that be morning pages or this, yeah, one of them will be good.

Josh: Yeah, no, I think it's a quick one.

Tommy: Yeah, I didn't even mention that I— my— the house next door to me burnt down and I— Amy called the fire brigade and I went down to fucking be a hero and put it out. So the video because we talked about it like everyone would have known. We knew about it. It's true, we did. The house next door to me burnt down while we were watching Netflix. So no one lives in it. Yeah, no one lives in it.

Josh: Watch the YouTube channel. They said on—

Tommy: watch the YouTube video on my YouTube channel.

Josh: I saw on, um, in the news that they said it was a suspicious fire. Yes. Why? What's suspicious?

Tommy: Because they don't know what happened. They think it might have been lit. I don't know. I've said that in my video. That's the name of the the headline in the article.

Josh: Well, because I was asking you and you were like, before I read that line, and you were like, oh yeah. I'm like, oh, do you think— I asked you, do you think it was deliberately lit? And you said, nah, man, the guy's there fucking every day working on it.

Tommy: It's either that. Someone said to me recently, you reckon, because he's a builder, do you reckon he didn't pay some fucking contractors? They've come in and burnt it because y'all could have just jumped the fence. And so that's, that's why, who knows. Yeah, it's, um, juicy. And the video, did you like the video?

Josh: Yeah, it was great. Actually, I remember hearing a storey of that with the tradies. They did all this like wooden frame type stuff for a house, didn't get, uh, paid, just went through one day with an axe, just fucking axed all of it.

Tommy: Yeah, I heard of a guy made like an electrical system that he installed. Yeah, and then he put a bug into it because they didn't pay him. Fuck. Must just fuck. Yeah, fuck. That's so common. Yeah, with tradies. Anyway, that's The Daily Talk Show. I'm gonna go pick up little Bodhi, man.

Josh: Yeah, and I've gotta, um, keep writing in your notes. In fact, I'm writing some notes. It's The Daily Talk Show, everyone. Thanks for listening. Feel free to, uh, send us an email to hi@thedailytalkshow.com, and, uh, reviews appreciated on iTunes and through the podcast app. Bye.