Brian Johnson describes his creative workflow for producing batches of short videos, crediting his operations team and a system inspired by Cal Newport. He explains how he modified an "I Voted" sticker to "I Vote" on his whiteboard, arguing that every daily choice and purchase is a vote for the kind of world you want to live in.
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic plus one. One of my fun creative challenges these days is fully integrating my identities as both a philosopher and a CEO. It's a super dynamic process and I love going all in on one facet of my identity and then the other. When I'm all in on philosopher mode, I like to go all in and read a ton. Creating philosopher's notes to get ahead. I'm currently nearly four months ahead as I type this out and batching these plus ones. I've created over 1300 plus ones at this stage and I almost always write and edit a batch of 30 of them and then film those 31s in two 90 minute sessions in the studio over the span of about three and a half hours. I have my systems pretty dialed in now. When I start the next batch of plus ones, I clean the upper right corner of my whiteboard and then I write a bunch of plus ones. Six rows of five plus ones to be precise. Like this. Plus one, plus one, plus one, plus one. And then six rows of those five plus ones. Then when I write a first draft of a plus one, I make a single line through it. When I've edited that one, it gets another line to make an X, which means I'm ready to film it. When I'm done filming, I erase it all and say, that's like me. And by the way, our team tracks all of this in a super powerful and equally simple online system that Cal Newport talks about as a case study in his book A World Without Email. Shout out to our Director of Operations Patrick and his team, including Calman, Brian, Rosie, Issa, John, who's here in the studio with me now, and Tanya. Seriously, thank you guys. None of this happens without you. Target Swipe. Appreciate someone. But all that isn't quite the point of today's plus one. This is on election day this year I put the I voted sticker on the very upper right hand corner of my whiteboard, which is currently right above my block of plus ones. Only I put a big exclamation point over the D in voted. So my sticker now says I vote. Why? Because we don't just vote on election day every couple years. We vote all day, every day. Every single choice we make and product we buy and thing we do is a vote for either a more virtuous or a more vicious world. Let's vote wisely today.
