June 13, 2024 • 2hr 9min
#746: Jerry Seinfeld and Maria Popova
The Tim Ferriss Show
Key Takeaways
- Writing is the most difficult thing in the world, but it's essential for survival as a comedian. The key is to systematize the process, set finite writing sessions, and encourage yourself. "Nobody can do it. It's impossible. The greatest people in the world can't do it. So if you're going to do it, you should first be told what you are attempting to do is incredibly difficult." - Jerry Seinfeld (24:50)
- Don't discuss what you wrote that day with anyone for at least 24 hours - preserve that good feeling of accomplishment. When getting creative feedback, be aware it can color your work, so be selective. (20:33)
- Exercise, weight training, and Transcendental Meditation are essential routines for well-being and creativity. Exercise builds resilience of the nervous system. TM is the "ultimate work tool" for energy recovery and concentration. (26:17)
- Survival is the new success in the comedy business. Seeing the immense attrition over decades, if you're still getting paid well to work after age 55-60, you have crushed it. (33:42)
- Brain Pickings is a record of Maria Popova's learning process as she reads and thinks about how to live a meaningful life. What started as a newsletter to 7 coworkers now reaches millions, but she still writes for an audience of one. (41:50)
- Popova reads a wide range of material, choosing works that illuminate some aspect of how to live well, whether it's ancient philosophy or modern psychology. Understanding is a form of pattern recognition of the writer's key themes and ideas. (49:15)
- Popova has a dedicated system for annotating books, both analog and digital, though she finds digital note-taking solutions are lacking for serious readers. She creates an "alternate index" based on key ideas rather than just keywords. (1:07:11)
- Brain Pickings contains no dates on posts to resist the news-fetishizing "culture without nuance." Popova wants to decondition the implicit belief that only what's at the top of the feed or search results is important. (1:37:00)
Introduction
This podcast episode combines segments from two different interviews:
- Jerry Seinfeld, stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and co-creator of the hit sitcom Seinfeld. His latest book is Is This Anything? (6:19)
- Maria Popova, writer of Brain Pickings, a newsletter and website that distills timeless ideas from a wide range of books and other sources. (39:06)
The episode explores topics like the craft of writing, systemizing creativity, filtering out the noise of an audience, building meaningful routines, and pursuing work with a deeper purpose.
Topics Discussed
Writing as a Comedian's Survival Skill (6:46)
Jerry Seinfeld discusses his writing process and how learning to generate his own material was essential for making it in the brutal comedy ecosystem. As he puts it: "You learn to be a writer. It's really the profession of writing. That's what stand-up comedy is."
His writing sessions focus on developing ideas from a seed into full bits through relentless rewriting. The key is to:
- Set a defined period for the writing session with a hard stop
- Allow yourself to be mediocre - no one starts out great
- Encourage yourself for doing the difficult task of writing
- Be your own harsh critic the next day and edit ruthlessly
He compares the process to what he learned from fitness training - it's about putting in the difficult work consistently over time.
Creative Feedback and Preserving the Artist's Experience (15:43)
Seinfeld advises never discussing what you wrote that day with anyone else for at least 24 hours. "You want to preserve that good feeling, because if you let's say you write something and you love it, and then later on that day you're talking to someone...and they don't love it - now that day feels like, I guess that was a wasted effort."
The only feedback that ultimately matters for his stand-up is the audience's reaction. But he cautions any artist to be aware of how seeking opinions can color the work. It's a balance between the desire to be understood and staying true to your inner experience.
Routines for Well-Being and Creativity (20:33)
To manage his struggles with depression and keep his nervous system resilient, Seinfeld relies on:
- Exercise: Resistance training 3 times per week following the "Body for Life" program
- Transcendental Meditation: Twice a day or whenever energy dips. He calls it "the absolutely ultimate work tool" for recovering from the "concentration fatigue" inherent in writing and performing.
These difficult routines help transmute the overwhelming forces of the human condition into something productive. "This ox in the plow - make it do this stuff that it doesn't want to do."
Redefining Success as Survival (33:42)
When asked who comes to mind as a paragon of success, Seinfeld points to the very few comedians from his generation still working lucratively in their late 50s and beyond. Having seen immense attrition in a "toxic ecosystem," his definition is: "In my business, if you're 60-plus and you're getting paid to work, paid well, you have crushed it."
Once you've attained success, you can only lose it. So it comes down to taking care of yourself and managing the forces that will try to break you over decades. He compares the modern comedian's life to a sick experiment in pushing a human to the brink.
Brain Pickings as a Record of Figuring Out How to Live (41:50)
Maria Popova describes her work as "a record of my own becoming as a person — intellectually, creatively, spiritually — and an inquiry into how to live and what it means to lead a good life." By her own estimation, she spends nearly all her waking hours reading and writing.
What started as an email newsletter to seven coworkers is now a website and newsletter reaching millions. Yet she still writes for an "audience of one" - herself. The readership is just a "beautiful byproduct" of a very private act of sense-making.
Her writing schedule is anchored by two principles: 1) Prioritizing sleep to access her full mental capacities, and 2) Uninterrupted creative time to focus deeply on digesting what she reads and synthesizing new connections between ideas.
Choosing Reading Material to Illuminate the Human Experience (49:15)
Popova reads hundreds of pieces of content per day across a wide range of disciplines - art, science, poetry, philosophy, and more. The common denominator is: "Does this illuminate some aspect of that grand question of how to live a good life?"
For her, the act of understanding is about pattern recognition. She looks for the key ideas and themes that underpin a writer's whole body of work, not just the sequential points in a single volume. This type of "reading as a writer" is very different than reading for pleasure alone.
Systems for Annotation and Note-Taking (1:07:11)
Popova employs a dedicated system for marginalia to track those patterns, themes, and connections as she reads. For analog books, she creates an "alternate index" on the last page based on her own shorthand keywords linked to page numbers. She also uses different symbols to mark beautiful language, internal references, or external sources to chase down.
While she uses digital reading tools like the Kindle app, she finds the options for saving and organizing highlights and notes are still woefully lacking for serious readers and researchers. It requires cobbling together an assortment of hacks.
Despite the imperfections, she believes being a "centripetal force" by linking different works and ideas across time is one of the most valuable functions of any writer or artist. "Literature is a Lyft, the original internet...all those references and allusions are hyperlinks."
Resisting the Trendy in Favor of the Timeless (1:37:00)
Popova deliberately leaves dates off posts on Brain Pickings to resist the "newsiness fetishism" of Internet culture. She believes we've been conditioned to implicitly privilege whatever is at the top of the feed or search results, regardless of its inherent timelessness or importance.
By refusing to timestamp her work, she hopes to: 1) Decondition that impulse in herself to chase the trending, and 2) Encourage readers to engage with ideas outside their normal "filter bubble" of the present moment.
To her, this "dialogue with time" is central to the deeper purpose of Brain Pickings. It's less about being a "content creator" and more about participating in an ongoing cultural discourse that spans centuries.
Conclusion
This wide-ranging conversation reveals the practices of two individuals who have achieved mastery in their respective crafts - comedy and curation. But more than that, it points to the deeper currents that animate meaningful creative work:
- Systematizing the process to do the hard work of making something new
- Filtering out the noise of audience expectations in favor of a more authentic inner experience
- Ruthlessly focusing on what's essential for the mind and body to stay resilient
- Redefining success not as "blowing up" but sustaining over the long haul
- Resisting the tyranny of the new in favor of the timeless and timely
Both Seinfeld and Popova exemplify a kind of fierce dedication to their inner compass in the midst of an ever-shifting cultural landscape. By staying true to their own curiosity, instincts, and ideals, they've managed to affect millions while still creating primarily for an audience of one.
Perhaps the deeper theme is about reclaiming creativity as an essentially human birthright, not a monetizable commodity. It's about the dogged pursuit of some greater truth or beauty that exists beyond the self. And in that pursuit, embracing the discipline required to channel those deeper forces - both light and dark - into work that endures.