Writing or Marketing? Which is More Important? | Deep Questions Podcast with Cal Newport

00:00:00.000 | Our first question comes from Ryan.

00:00:02.400 | Ryan says, I'm a university professor and a comic artist.

00:00:07.820 | I'm getting ready to launch my upcoming book on Kickstarter on New Year's day.

00:00:13.220 | All right.

00:00:14.740 | So that's a little bit of a reveal that this question was submitted a little

00:00:17.780 | while ago, because we were recording this in March and he's talking about New Year's

00:00:21.160 | day, um, moving on though, Ryan says in an effort to get the word out, I'm

00:00:27.960 | planning a big online tour in which I'm talking with different, a different

00:00:31.480 | media outlet every day of my month long campaign, my question is, I fear that

00:00:36.700 | I may be devoting too much time to promoting the release rather than

00:00:40.260 | finishing the book, my comic is almost complete, only two more pages to go,

00:00:46.540 | but I'd really like to have it done by the launch.

00:00:48.740 | Any tips for prioritizing that deep cartooning work in the face of trying

00:00:51.760 | to make big noise about my upcoming project?

00:00:55.360 | Well, Ryan, it's a good question because I want you to be very

00:00:58.300 | wary of the publicity marketing.

00:01:01.420 | It is an easy trap, a seductive trap for those that are producing commercial

00:01:09.620 | creative products to allow your energy to be increasingly drawn towards

00:01:15.700 | strategies for getting the word out.

00:01:17.560 | Now, the reason why it's so seductive is because it presents a completely

00:01:21.340 | different type of challenge than actually producing creative output.

00:01:25.680 | It's a challenge that is not trivial, but it's very tractable.

00:01:31.520 | It's what I used to call checklist productivity, where you can go online

00:01:36.840 | and take an internet marketing course and follow some podcast of internet

00:01:40.240 | marketers and figure out a checklist, do this, this, this, and this, and feel

00:01:43.800 | like you have some insider knowledge that the normal person won't do, but

00:01:46.920 | it's also consistently executable steps.

00:01:49.760 | Make these calls, do this with your website, set up a funnel this way.

00:01:53.860 | So it's very fulfilling.

00:01:55.000 | It takes effort and it feels like it's insider information, but you know,

00:01:57.880 | for a fact you can get it done.

00:01:59.200 | Checklist productivity is incredibly seductive because there's never this

00:02:03.040 | moment of I'm just stuck, I'm trying to produce something new.

00:02:06.700 | I don't know if it's good or not.

00:02:08.040 | I could fail.

00:02:08.760 | I could produce something and it's bad.

00:02:10.060 | I couldn't have an idea.

00:02:10.840 | Checklist productivity, you can always get through.

00:02:12.960 | Writers, cartoonists, artists get very seduced by this because man, that's

00:02:19.040 | so much more appealing than actually producing writing or producing

00:02:22.940 | cartoons or producing art because it's tractable, check, check, check.

00:02:28.380 | You check off the check boxes as you go.

00:02:29.960 | So I want you to be careful, Ryan, that you're not allowing your time to

00:02:35.320 | be increasingly consumed by these marketing publicity plans because it's

00:02:38.700 | fun, because it's better, it's easier, more fulfilling in the moment

00:02:45.240 | than actually trying to draw cartoons.

00:02:46.520 | Now it's not to say that stuff doesn't matter, but what I typically talk

00:02:49.660 | about is that when it comes to creative output, the number one thing you

00:02:52.100 | have to do is be so good you can't be ignored, you have to produce stuff

00:02:56.500 | that is of really high quality.

00:02:58.600 | You got to do that.

00:02:59.960 | That's the core.

00:03:00.480 | Without that, with a few exceptions of internet influencer weirdness, you're

00:03:05.160 | never going to get somewhere that far.

00:03:06.680 | That's where your attention has to be.

00:03:08.020 | And then you want some sort of reasonable publicity marketing plan based

00:03:12.780 | on what you have available that helps try to spread the word, but if you

00:03:16.920 | don't have something to spread the word about, it doesn't matter.

00:03:18.520 | So you almost want to confine the marketing publicity to like here

00:03:22.100 | are reasonable, tested things to do.

00:03:23.740 | Here's when I'm going to do this work.

00:03:25.240 | I put it in a box, I'll execute that.

00:03:27.040 | It's a three week period.

00:03:28.120 | But what I really care about is the production.

00:03:30.240 | So in your case, I would say you need some cartoonish equivalent

00:03:36.920 | of the John McPhee method.

00:03:39.500 | And by the John McPhee method, I'm referring to an essay I published on

00:03:44.280 | my blog and newsletter recently, where I talked about on the occasion of

00:03:50.040 | John McPhee's birthday, his method of writing, which is 500 words a day.

00:03:53.520 | That's not a lot of words for a particular day, but as he says, you

00:03:59.140 | keep doing that and over time, you're going to produce quite a bit of work.

00:04:02.940 | And he has 29 books, a Pulitzer, two national book awards nominations.

00:04:07.020 | So you need whatever your equivalent is as a cartoonist is what I'd

00:04:10.440 | recommend of 500 words a day.

00:04:12.100 | And the reason why I'm going for that tractable amount of words is

00:04:15.280 | because you're a university professor.

00:04:16.620 | This is not the only thing you're doing.

00:04:17.940 | And I would do it first thing in the morning.

00:04:19.500 | And I don't know what that's going to take for cartooning.

00:04:22.300 | Is it a panel a day, three panels a day?

00:04:24.500 | I don't know the pacing, but basically like 60 to 90 minutes of work.

00:04:27.860 | And I would just make that an unviolatable core of your day.

00:04:32.620 | You just do that every single day.

00:04:34.560 | The marketing publicity stuff that has to compete with all of your

00:04:38.620 | other university responsibilities.

00:04:40.260 | You're, you know, you try to fit it in where you can, and you have to

00:04:42.580 | use some weekend and evenings, maybe like that has to compete with your

00:04:46.020 | syllabuses and faculty meetings and everything else you're doing.

00:04:49.140 | But the core is my 500 words a day, my creative production at my creative

00:04:53.940 | peak, not a ton every day, but enough that you look back over a month.

00:04:57.780 | Hey, I produced a good amount.

00:04:58.980 | You look back over a year.

00:04:59.940 | You say, I'm very impressed by what I did.

00:05:01.600 | You look back over a career and you say, I've been a pretty productive artist.

00:05:04.740 | So that's what I would recommend.

00:05:07.620 | Go to this core of deep creative work that never, you don't violate.

00:05:11.420 | The publicity marketing stuff, get that done as you can have

00:05:15.740 | a plan, but keep it reasonable.

00:05:17.300 | No one ever made themselves a long-term sustainable career as a

00:05:21.060 | respected creative do solely or primarily to publicity, it's always,

00:05:26.120 | always come down to producing stuff that people can't ignore.

00:05:28.760 | The publicity marketing is all just about a Delta on how long it takes

00:05:33.460 | people to actually discover it.

00:05:34.700 | [MUSIC]

Writing or Marketing? Which is More Important? | Deep Questions Podcast with Cal Newport

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