Latest / The Daily Writer / Fix the Squeaky Door

Transcript

Fix the Squeaky Door · The Daily Writer

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hey my friend, thanks for joining me for today's episode.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Every couple of weeks, I have lunch at a local Chinese restaurant, and I love it because the food is great, the service is really super fast.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: And for an introverted nerd like me, I love going because it's rarely crowded, so I can take a book and I can read in peace and quiet at my table.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: However, there's one thing that really drives me crazy about this place, and that is that they have a swinging door with squeaky hinges between the dining area and the kitchen.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: And every time somebody walks in or out of that door, I hear that squeaky door, and it drives me insane because even if you're there just 30 or 40 minutes, you hear the squeak dozens of times because people are constantly going in and out of that swinging door with food and with orders and so forth.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: And for the life of me, I cannot figure out why the people who own the place don't just grab a can of WD40 and fix that darn squeak.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: It would literally take all of about three or four seconds.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer is maybe they've just gotten so used to it that they don't even hear it anymore, which is true of all of us, right?
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: There are problems that they're so frequent in our lives we just kind of ignore them.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the truth is that it's easy to avoid doing the little things that can get rid of pain points in our lives and in our writing careers.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I call these open loops.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Open loops are small tasks that can take up space in your brain, and it's kind of like a tab on your internet browser that consumes memory until you close it out.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what it's like when you have a browser open on your computer, or if you have 30 or 40 of them open, it's consuming huge quantities of memory and it slows the whole process down of your computer being able to do what it needs to do for you.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I have a quick confession for you along these same lines.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: For the last couple of weeks, I've been intending to call a financial institution to follow up on some questions that I had for them.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: My wife and I are thinking about moving in the next couple of years, and so I wanted to ask them some questions and to follow up on some stuff.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, the last couple of weeks, I kept putting off the call because it would never felt really urgent to me.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: It was always kind of a hassle.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm a person who likes to dig into my work and I really enjoy writing and I love my work and I love my clients.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so sort of life administrative calls like this kind of always seem annoying, even though they're sometimes very important.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: However, this past Monday, I finally bit the bullet and I made the call, and it only took 10 or 15 minutes.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: I gathered all the information that I needed to move forward with our next steps, and I felt really, really good and relieved after I finished that phone call.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now you might ask, what does all this have to do with writing?
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the lesson I'm trying to get across here in this episode is that every open loop consumes a little bit of mental energy.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Every open loop is that squeaky door that just kind of annoys you, and it's taking up mental space, it's creating kind of an annoyance in life until you fix it.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now, one or two open loops or one or two squeaky doors don't really matter that much, perhaps.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: But if you have a dozen of these floating around in your brain, they're going to leave you feeling exhausted before you've even started writing.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: And all of this affects your mental state, your writing, your creativity, and your productivity because everything in your life is connected.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: So, my question for you today is what is one open loop that you've been putting off?
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: If there's something you can think of, take a few minutes and deal with it today.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: You'll get it off your plate, and you'll have more mental real estate for writing, business, and your creative work.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you'll be really surprised at how good you feel when you close that mental loop.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Hope this helps, and I'll see you next time.