Micro Class: Suck to Unsuck

Foreign. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another micro class. This one's on Unsuck. It's inspired by Little Bets by Peter Sims. He tells us that Pixar, their whole approach to creating extraordinary movies is to go from suck to unsuck. They just want to suck the suck out of their films. Now you may have a different idea about Pixar. You may think, wow, Pixar, they're amazing, right? Love Toy Story, Wall E, whatever. They're geniuses that know how to create. But the reality is they have to iterate and iterate and iterate again and again and again in order to create something that doesn't suck. In fact, their entire business, business used to suck. Pixar lost tens of millions of dollars. They were first a hardware company, then they were a software company, then they were a company producing ads, animated ads. Then they finally figured out what business model was going to work, which was full length feature animated films. They went from suck to unsuck in their business model and they do that in their films. So we may have the naive idea that, that someone has an awesome idea bling, right? And that idea comes out of this person's head and then he recruits or she recruits these people to help and they just flawlessly execute it. That's not at all how it works. Peter tells us they make little bets. They iterate again and again and again and again. The way that Pixar does it is in the form of storyboards, right? So you think about a film that produced that gets to this awesome big screen. There we go. There's the film that we all adore. Let's use Wall E as an example. Right? Wally, guess how many storyboards the Pixar team went through, the little storyboards that capture what's going to happen in each scene. How many storyboards do you think they went through? Well, over time they've created more and more storyboards. As they've learned, they need to iterate more and more and more. Wall E was created using 98,173 storyboards, each of which was a rough pass at what they really wanted to see. That one wasn't quite it, so they improved it. Then that one wasn't quite it. And they improved it. They improved it. They improved it. They improved it. 98,173 storyboards. To get Wall E, they went from suck to unsuck. So when we think about our lives, think about something in your life that might suck. Be okay with that. That's how it is. Then think about one little thing you can do to unsuck that just a tiny amount. Not perfectly once and for all, but one of your 98,173 things. You're going to try to unsuck your life and do that one thing and have an awesome day. Isn't it a bit odd that we went from math to science to history, but somehow missed the class on how to live? For some wacky reason, optimal living 101 never made the schedule. Of course, it's too late to go back and change that and you're too busy to read full time to catch up yet. If you're like us, you're all about optimizing your life and actualizing your pot. So imagine this. Imagine having someone read the best books on optimal living and pulling out the big ideas that can truly change your life. You know those sections you asterisk and underline and mark all up? Then imagine that guy me connecting those ideas to other great books and helping you apply them to your life today. Well, that's what I do with something we call Philosopher's Notes where I break down each great book into a simple 6 page PDF, 20 minute MP3 and 10 minute Philosopher's Notes TV episode. Then imagine me taking the absolute best big ideas from those great books and sharing them with you in fun, inspiring, super practical optimal living 101 classes on stuff like purpose 101, confidence 101, business 101 meditation 101, that sort of thing. You've got a personal trainer? I'm kind of like your personal philosopher. Ancient Wisdom plus Modern Science plus Common Sense plus Virtue plus Mastery plus fun. That's what our optimized membership program is all about. We'd love to have you join us. Check us out at BrianJohnson me join.