The Gap of Life-Changing Work
11 Jan 2022 · 6 min
Matt Ragland breaks down Ira Glass's idea that creators face a gap between their current work and what they imagine, and the only bridge is volume. He outlines a 10-rep, 100-rep, 1,000-rep framework: commit to one video a week, focus on the single task in front of you, not the pile ahead. Weekly production eventually let him quit his job.
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Hello everyone, and welcome back to another edition of The Daily Dot, the daily edition of the Connect the Dots podcast. The micro lesson that I want to share with you today comes from Ira Glass, host of This American Life podcast. One of my favorite lessons from Glass is this concept of the gap. Now he's talking about this in an interview, and I'll link to the full text in the show notes below, but he's describing what most of us recognize as the struggle of the creative process, that when you get into doing something creative or productive even, it's because you have good taste. You see what it could be in your mind, or you see what other people have created. And you think to yourself, I can do that. Like there's a part of you that truly believes that. And there's a part of you that has to truly believe that. But making that thing come to life, that thing in your head, that thing in your heart come to life is very challenging. That's where perfectionism kicks in. That's where, oh, this isn't what I want it to be. It's not good enough yet kicks in. What Glass calls this is the gap, the gap between who you currently are and what your talent currently is with what it will become. Now, the way Glass challenges us is by saying the only way to bridge that gap, to traverse it, is through a volume of work. The gap principle is something that has inspired my thinking on the 10-rep rule, the 100-rep rule, the 1,000-rep rule. The idea that through putting in the reps of doing your first 10 videos, your first 100 videos, eventually 1,000 videos, apply that to any other type of effort that you want to make that could very well change your life. One of the things that Jeff Tweedy writes about in his book, How to Write One Song, Jeff Tweedy is the frontman to the band Wilco, is he says that the creative and productive struggle is when I focus on the plural rather than the singular. In essence, I'm talking about writing essays, making videos, recording podcasts, writing songs, reading books, doing workouts. Those are all the plural. What we need to focus on in the moment is the singular. I'm going to write this song. I'm going to do this workout. I'm going to publish this video. Because it is easy to get caught up in the mindset, am I doing this right? Is this as good as it could be? But it can be and often is a huge deterrent for getting started and being consistent. So instead of writing the first few essays or producing the first 1 or 2 videos, we worry about how we're going to come up with 100 video ideas. Trying to solve a problem months in advance kills momentum before it even starts. Because one of the things that you'll realize is it's okay to do a thing almost like halfway through. This is that concept of task versus time. Maybe you can't write 1,000 words today, but you can write for 30 minutes. Maybe you can't do an hour-long workout, but you can go for a 15-minute run, or you can do 20 pushups. This is the tension of any creative work, any life-changing work. The gap between your good taste, the inner critic on its good days, and what you can actually get done on a given day. With the time and the talent that you have. So I want you to think about this, this concept of the gap between who you are now, being comfortable with that, knowing that by putting in a volume of work, you will eventually become the type of person that you want to be. If I would have known 3 years ago that by producing 1 video a week, eventually I was going to be able to quit my job and do YouTube and content creation full-time. That would have felt really exciting, but pretty overwhelming and far-fetched in the moment. And so I just was focusing on, I'm going to publish this video. I'm going to create this podcast. I'm going to write this email newsletter. I'm going to do this outreach. I'm going to create this course. By putting in the work over 3, 4, 5, even 10 years, if you want to go back that far, and I do have an episode about that. By putting in the reps, you will become the type of person that you want to be in this moment. Okay. Thanks so much for listening to this daily edition of the Connect the Dots podcast. Please do me a huge favor and rate and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. I think you can, I think Spotify has enabled those now, but it's a great way for people to discover the show. Share it with your friends, and let me know on Twitter, Instagram, @MattRagland if you're listening and if you're enjoying these short daily episodes. Yesterday I talked about 22 books that I recommend for 2022. That episode has been going over really well. There's also a link to watch it on my YouTube channel. So thanks so much for being engaged and being listeners and fans. It means a lot to me, and I'll look forward to talking to you tomorrow. Thanks so much. Bye.