Research shows that quality enhances quality, join me in the creative pursuit as I commit to create and publish over the next 30 days.
30 days of podcasts. The benefits of commitment to output, to accountability, and to the creative muse. LFG!
@michaeltrainer for feedback or if you want to join
Welcome to PeakMind. I'm your host, Michael Traynor, and I'm extremely excited to kick off a project I've been thinking about for a long time, a project that I think would serve many of you to implement in your own lives. And that project is over the course of the next 30 days, I am going to release a podcast a day.
And I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I'm super excited for the commitment. And the question is, why am I doing that? You know, I had resistance. I was like, can I continue to commit to the type of quality that I am committed to? Of course, cause I, uh, take that very seriously and really want to serve this audience in this community. And the, the answer to that is with the requisite preparation.
and inspiration, I believe the answer is yes. And two things really inspired me to commit. One is I just finished a podcast with major incredible artist. He's got over a billion streams, has produced for Justin Bieber, is partnered with Martin Garrix, some of the biggest artists in the world, Grammy nominated. And we talked about this idea.
which I think originated with a conversation between Gary Vaynerchuk and Nipsey Hussle. And Gary challenged Nipsey, said what would it be like if you produced a song every day for a year? Now of course, there is something to I think the preciousness and the intentionality of polishing a product, but there's also something to getting out of your head, getting out of your thinking mind and getting into concerted action.
And I think many of us can get caught in mental masturbation. And as a result, um, we don't, uh, commit to action. We don't execute. This podcast is a great example for me, as I've talked about before. I actually started recording the podcast in 2014, but because I thought too much about it, I didn't release it till 2019. Imagine the episodes I could have created.
Michael Trainer (02:23.914)
in those five years, the growth that would have happened, especially those early days of podcasting. Now what is in the past is in the past, but I think that there is something profound in the commitment to creative output. And that to me was reified by James Clear. I just took his masterclass. He is the author of a book called Atomic.
habits and one of the exercises in the book, one of the demonstrations he shares, which was extremely powerful for me, was he talks about a photography professor and I actually used to teach film photography and the photography professor split his class into two parts and one half of the class was graded on whoever could produce the best singular photo.
that one photo would be the entirety of their grade. The other half of the class, so in other words, that half was judged on the quality of one piece. The other half of the class was judged on quantity. In other words, if you shot 100, and this is back during the days of traditional photography, so you had to develop, of course, shoot, develop, and print your photos, but...
If you did 100 during the course of the semester, that was an A. If you did 90, that was a B, et cetera. And what he found was that across the board, the quantity-oriented students always wound up with a better final photograph at the end, because they were spending more time putting the reps in, like you put the reps in at the gym, more time playing with shadow, more time experimenting, more time playing with lights.
instead of just thinking about, okay, how can I create one great photo? And so for me, this is an experiment, but I think that over the course of the next 30 days, I will learn a lot that will lead both podcasts I create beyond that to be better, but I think it will also be a transformative exercise for me in thinking about how can I create consistent quality for you guys? How can I, how can I think through?
Michael Trainer (04:45.735)
insights that I think would be beneficial.
I will do some of the long form episodes. I'm also going to do episodes like this, which are more sort of what I would call nuggets, little insights that I think if you apply could be profoundly beneficial, but that are a little vitamins, if you will, they mind vitamins, they don't take that long to consume. There's something you can consume quite quickly. And so today's episode to kick off the series is about this notion of committing to a daily
Michael Trainer (05:21.71)
And I really recommend for some of you out there that if you don't have an audience, maybe you have a best friend, someone that you could commit to because there's an accountability in the declaration. So because I'm declaring this now, of course I am accountable to you and people will call me out if I don't execute. And I think when we're building habits or we're committing to a creative exercise, there's something really powerful in the day.
declaration of what we're doing. The accountability really helps us see these things through. And so what I want you guys to think about is really how is there a project maybe it's songwriting maybe it's photography is there a creative pursuit you've been thinking about and could you
open up your sketchbook, so to speak. Could you commit to, for a period of time, publishing work?
that will continue to push you in a process where you're riding the edge. You are both creating, but you're also, because it's going to be a published work, doing it in such a fashion that you hope it is of value to the people who view or listen, etc. to that work.
And to bring a full circle, what Gary said is, you know, if an artist produced a song every day for 365 days, now maybe most of those songs are not great. But like that photography teacher, I would venture to guess that there would be one, two, three, maybe 10 songs, even if there's 10%, right? That's 30 songs. Maybe it's 1%. That's three songs that are excellent. And perhaps that excellence
Michael Trainer (07:13.358)
surpasses the excellence of if you had taken all that time just to think about something.
And I think many of us are encumbered by overthinking. I know that I have in much of life been encumbered by overthinking. So I really want you to use this as a catalyst. If you'd like to follow along with me, if you'd like me to be your accountability partner, really think through, it doesn't have to be 30 days, although I would encourage it. Is there something you could do for 21 days? Is there something you could do for seven days that you could declare and have accountability for?
And then at the end of that period really reflect back, which is what I'm going to do on what you learned What feedback did you get right? Like what that's the beauty of publishing something is you actually get feedback which helps you iterate and then create better and better work When we're just in our head when we're just in a vacuum we're not getting feedback and therefore our work I think is encumbered in its evolution and So I really want you guys to think about How can you commit to create the best work possible?
How can you share that work and maybe sharing it maybe with a group a small group? Maybe maybe you're in a men's group or a women's group Maybe you create a group of whatsapp or what have you a Facebook group something like that Where there is that audience that built-in audience. Maybe you already have an audience Maybe that's publishing on Spotify. Maybe that's publishing a podcast Whatever it may look like it's committing to a period of creative publication
Michael Trainer (08:49.508)
on a daily basis for a period in time and Seeing what happens at the end of that period I would love it if you join me in the process I'd love it if you share your results if you do so, please comment below I can be fine found on all social platforms at Michael trainer Instagram is where I'm most active currently. You can also email me Michael at peak mind or
but please guys join me in the journey and I would love your feedback over the course of this process on what you're getting the most value from. I'm going to try a lot of different topics. I have no idea. I haven't planned this out yet. That's part of the beauty. And I'm going to try to add as much value as I can without overthinking it. Now, if you're getting value from this episode, if you've gotten value from the podcast in the past, I'm knocking on the door of a thousand reviews,
top quality guests and add the most value to you possible. So if any of these episodes are valuable, please share them with a friend. Please take a moment to leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts. Very grateful to say that your five star reviews have led to an incredible amount of feedback. And I just today got some commitment from some incredible guests that I can't wait to share with you. So thank you guys for sharing. Thank you for listening.
take your time for granted. And thank you for all of your efforts, your insights. Please join me on this creative path, on this creative journey. It's kind of like Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. Let's do these artist dates and let's do them together. Thanks for listening. I hope you'll join me and I will see you guys tomorrow.