Illustrated Podnotes - Steven Kotler - A Complete Recipe For Peak Performance
These are some illustrated podnotes to go with the Modern Wisdom Podcast - Steven Kotler - A Complete Recipe For Peak Performance.
Here is the introducti0n that accompanied the podcast:
Steven Kotler is a peak performance expert, entrepreneur and an author.
The mystery of achieving peak performance is what many people are striving toward in life. Steven is a world expert in Flow and through years of cutting edge research, has finally created the recipe.
Expect to learn how to break & build your motivation, the best way to hack your creativity, why Salvador Dali literally WAS drugs, the universal triggers you can use to drop yourself into flow, how to integrate peak performance protocols into your routine and much more...
Flow shows up in all animals.
Motivation gets you into the game
Learning allows you to continue to play
Creativity is how you steer
Flow is how you amplify the results
In flow you have massively heightened pattern recognition.
If you think life happens to you, if you think you’re a victim, it shuts off the brain’s ability to participate in the world.
Almost everything we do as art is a flow delivery mechanism for the user.
Flow: moments of rapt attention, total absorption on what you’re doing that everything else seems to disappear.
Flow is what happens when you learn a bunch of different individual skills and they all come together.
Start the day with ninety minutes on your hardest task. Push it to the edge of your abilities.
The sensation of flow is a mastery alert.
Keep your word to yourself.
Check out the rest of the podcast:
https://modernwisdom.libsyn.com/305-steven-kotler-a-complete-recipe-for-peak-performance
First Person Cartoons - The Eagle
The following two cartoons are a pair.
Pause for a moment on the first picture, before you scroll down to the second.
The first cartoon shows the scene from a first person perspective, the second one from a third person perspective.
Who’s the first person?
And now you can see the scene from the third person point of view.
That might make ideal nest material!
Would you like to draw cartoon dogs?
Simply type “woof!” In the subject line below and I’ll send you details of the ‘Cartooning Canines - How To Draw Cartoon Dogs’ course.
How To Draw Cartoon Siberian Huskies
Huh? What’s this? That isn’t a husky?
Hold onto your horses...or hounds...all will become clear...
Today we’re going to have a look at drawing cartoon Siberian Huskies.
Although Huskies have a very distinctive appearance, you may not have seen one very often, if at all, as they are not that common.
Before we go any further, What do you think are three features of Siberian Huskies?
1.
2.
3.
Siberian Husky Characteristics
Siberian Huskies are medium-sized sled dogs. They were bred to pull light loads over long distances. They have a friendly nature and as born pack animals, get on with other dogs.
Their distinctive almond-shaped eyes can be either blue, brown, or sometimes even one of each.
Not To Be Confused With…The Alaskan Malamute…
Before I started researching this article, I would have assumed that huskies have a curled over tail. However, this is the feature of another sled dog, the Alaskan Malamite and not the Siberian Husky itself. The above illustration shows some of the differences.
Siberian Husky Colours
Siberian Husky coats come in a wide variety of colours. Here are five of the more common ones.
Siberian Husky Poses
Gags For Siberian Husky Cartoons
This mind map will give you a few ideas about situations or poses you could draw. Here are a few questions you could ask yourself.
What unusual object could the dog be pulling?
What unusual winter setting could you put the dog in?
Below is a cartoon I came up with by posing one of the above questions.
Over To You
Why not try picking up a pen and doodling a quick Siberian Husky?
Shapes In Character Design
Hi!
This page is currently under construction.
I often publish pages as soon as I start writing them as a way to force myself to complete the article as soon as possible.
So sorry if you can’t find the information you were looking for right at this moment, but while you’re here Inhope you find something else of interest on the site.
Cheers,
Rob
In this article I’m going to take a look at shapes in character design.
You might get the most out of this article by pausing at the questionsi and prompts, and trying to think of your onw ideas and answers before reading on.
Before we go any further, what do y0u think are the basic shapes in character design?
Caption The Cartoon - The Moose
This cartoon I based on a recent one I drew for a friend’s birthday. What do you think the moose is thinking?
Here’s another take on it. This time what do you think the woman is saying?
Let me know if you’ve got another ideas!
Illustrated Podnotes - Steven Bartlett - Lessons In Creating A Successful Life
These are some illustrated podnotes to go with the Modern Wisdom Podcast - Steven Bartlett - Lessons In Creating A Successful Life.
Here is the introducti0n that accompanied the podcast:
Steven Bartlett is the Founder of Social Chain, an entrepreneur and an author.
Building a business, buying fast cars and becoming a millionaire is the peak of some people's dreams. But does achieving that actually satisfy you and create success? Or does it leave you hollow inside? And is it possible to achieve material success alongside meaningful fulfilment?
Expect to learn why £13 in chicken shop feels more satisfying than Social Chain being listed on a stock exchange, why Steven's billionaire friends are miserable, how to develop the skill of quitting, why Steven left dinner to do a bodyweight workout in his hotel room and much more...
Here are some of the notes I made from the podcast.
So many people are imprisoned by a question that society is trying to make them answer.
You have to let go of one vine before grasping the next.
Quitting and starting go hand-in-hand.
Don’t let your past or labels or anything define you.
The vast majority of people, 99%, don’t live freely - they live confined by words that others have given them.
Constantly question the question.
Normal people get normal results, weird people get weird results.
By bring normal you are by definition aiming for average. You regress to the mean by doing what everyone else.
Drawing ‘No Bottom’
I drew this cartoon as part of a series of images to go with the Modern Wisdom podcast episode - Adam Alter - ‘The Psychology Of Tech And Phone Addiction’.
In this article I’m going to breakdown the steps in drawing the cartoon.
Initial Sketch
To go with the caption on the cartoon at the top of the page, I needed a to show a bottomless pit. Here’s the outline sketch.
Colouring The Pit
I’ve started to apply watercolour washes to the sketch, setting the brush at 20% opacity and slowly building up the depth.
The Pit Is Completed
The pit is now completed. I knew that I wanted to drawn a bottomless pit, however, I wasn’t sure what context I would put it in. So I put the drawing to one side to do a few other illustrations in the set. Soon a fishing theme started to link the pictures together, so I returned to the pit and thought I’d add it to the river and have the water draining into it.
Adding The River
The fisherwoman appeared in a couple of other illustrations, so I thought I’d add her to the cartoon. I’ve now started to colour in the river, this time I’m using a turpentine brush instead of watercolour as I like the flowing water effect I can create with it.
Adding Energy To The Water
The water is now getting a lot more dynamic, gradually laying on the strokes of colour. I’ve also added the second character - the stork.
Colouring The Characters
Almost finished now. I’ve coloured the characters and I just have to add a few touches and the caption.
The Finished Cartoon
And that’s the cartoon completed.
Are you interested in drawing cartoon dogs?
If so, just type “woof!” In the subject line below and send me a message. I’ll send you details of the ‘Cartooning Canines - How To Draw Cartoon Dogs’ Course.
First Person Cartoons - Hoopla
The following two cartoons are a pair.
Pause for a moment on the first picture, before you scroll down to the second.
The first cartoon shows the scene from a first person perspective, the second one from a third person perspective.
Who’s the first person?
And now you can see the scene from the third person point of view.
Would you like to draw cartoon dogs?
Simply type “woof!” In the subject line below and I’ll send you details of the ‘Cartooning Canines - How To Draw Cartoon Dogs’ course.
Illustrated Podnotes - Polina Pompliano - David Goggins And Elon Musk’s Performance Secrets
These are some illustrated podnotes to go with the Modern Wisdom Podcast - Polina Pompliano - David Goggins and Elon Musk’s Performance Secrets
Here is the introducti0n that accompanied the podcast:
Polina Pompliano is a writer, author & founder of The Profile.
Polina spends her time assessing the world's highest performing & most interesting individuals. Today we break down some of the common traits of her favourite subjects.
Expect to learn how David Goggins used post-it notes to change himself, why Elon Musk is able to have truly unique thoughts, what Polina learned from The Rock, how the highest performers on earth spend their time wisely and much more...
A lot of the time we don’t see how far we’ve come. If you were able to plot your consciousness progression on a graph you would have far more faith in yourself than you do.
One of the easiest ways of wrecking tomorrow today, is to use you phone in bed late at night. Better not to keep it in the bedroom at all.
Simplicity puts things into perspective. A lot of the time we all try and. Invite a lot of complexity into our lives, whereas it’s bette to boil things down to the basics.
Ultra-athlete and ex-Navy SEAL David Goggins uses what he calls an accountability mirror. On the mirror are various sticky notes that list the steps he has to take to change the person looking into the mirror. According to Goggins, when you look the mirror the only person you cannot lie to is yourself.
Grant Achatz’s restaurant, Alinea is regarded as one of the finest in the world.
As well as challenging conventions bout how food should be prepared, he also experiments with the experience itself of eating food. He gets inspiration from many sources. A trip to an art gallery got him thinking about why food has to be served off plates, why not something altogether more spectacular?
Every six months, Achatz gets the staff at Alinea to blow up the menu and start again from scratch. He believes that success leads to complacency, and when you’re complacent you can’t be innovative or original.
Elon Musk is constantly upgrading his mind. He’ll pick something and learn it from scratch - you can’t learn a bout rockets until you learn about physics.
He describes his learning process as a tree: you have to start at the roots, before you go to the trunk, the branches, the leaves. You can’t start with the leaves and work your way backwards. The leaves are the minute details about rockets, the roots are the fundamentals of physics.
Further Playing With Number Shapes
After receiving some feedback, I tried a new version of yesterday’s character.
Playing With Number Shapes
Here’s a little character to came up with to illustrate a chapter number.
I’m currently involved in a book project, and part of the brief to to come up with a design of each chapter playing around with the shape of the number.
Illustrated Podnotes - Adam Alter - The Psychology Of Tech And Phone Addiction
These are some illustrated podnotes to go with the Modern Wisdom Podcast - Adam Alter - The Psychology Of Tech And Phone Addiction.
Here is the introducti0n that accompanied the podcast:
Adam Alter is a Professor of Marketing at New York University's Stern School of Business and an author.
Most adults report that they are within an arm's reach of their phone for 24 hours a day. Our devices have slotted themselves into our lives seamlessly, but controlling our screentime is becoming increasingly difficult.
Expect to learn the psychological tricks tech companies are using to keep you hooked, what Adam thinks the best strategies are to control screentime, what our concerns should be with VR technology, why cliffhangers are so powerful and much more...
Below I’ve listed some of my own notes.
What are the hooks that get you?
The knowledge, the understanding of what drives you, of what makes you happy and bring you wellbeing is important knowing what kind of things you can do to short circuit the hooks.
Variable rewards - The phone is like a slot machine that delivers jackpots every now and then - it might be in the form of an email, you post something on social media you get feedback.
But it’s unpredictable - and it’s got to be unpredictable because if it were predictable and you knew when the rewards were coming, they were the same size every time, the same intensity, we’d lose interest. Humans, and basically every other animal as well, are very sensitive to variable rewards, so those are baked in
It’s an unfair fight by a magnitude that you can’t understand. There are thousands of data analysts, some of the most powerful algorithms on the planet and several tens of billions behind every single swipe and press of your thumb.
You think that you’re dancing through the daisy field that is Facebook or Tinder or Tic-Tok, but it’s not - it’s very, very curated.
The endlessness of all these different platforms makes it very difficult for us to resist them, there’s no bottom to the news, to what people are sharing with you, what you can learn online.
Phones do everything they can to dismantle whatever self control resources you have and the only way you can fight back is by having habits and systems that mitigate that help you overcome those many many attempts from tech companies to circumvent those systems.
What are cliffhangers so effective?
As a species we are completionists. The same reason that we keep approaching the goal until we reach the goal.
We want to know the end of a story, we don’t like things half completed - it’s imbedded in us.
If it feels unfulfilled it feels like we’ve wasted time, there’s the sunk cost fallacy - we invested time and energy into it so we want to see it through.
So people will read a bad book and want to finish - ‘it I’m hating this but I should finish because otherwise whatbwas that first half for I’ve wasted all thus time.’
The Blustering Bloodhound
The Blustering Bloodhound…
There’s probably also a few tales about most-wanted criminals and missing persons that were managed to be tracked down as well…
Introducing The Stamina Hound
Introducing the Stamina Hound, the longest running of all dogs in the canine world.
I was having a tidy up today and found a leaf from an old notepad today.
I’m not sure how old the note is, however, as it mentions at the bottom ‘If I had an ipad I could knock this up in minutes’, that dates it at least fours years old, as that’s how long I’ve had my ipad.
This was intended to be the start of a new ‘Lesser-Known Dog Breeds’ story, but for some reason I never went ahead and wrote. I’ll soon put that right!
In case the notes on the above photo are difficult to read, I’ve listed them out below.
Not good at sitting still
Really not good house dogs
They need a yard, preferably one several miles long
One was entered in the Paris To Peking race of 1909. The dog actually won, but was disqualified for not being an automobile.
Favourite Cartoons From February’s Modern Wisdom Illustrated Podnotes
Here are my favourite four cartoons from the episodes of the Modern Wisdom podcast that I illustrated during February.
#279 How To Not Start An Online Business
(Image at top of page)
I liked the dramatic look of the background and sky in this, and the lighthouse main for a very striking focal point.
#282 - Dylan Werner - How To Breathe Like A Yogi
It took me a while to get this one to look right, but I really liked the perspective I ended up getting.
#286 - Dr Zach Bush MD - Why We Shouldn’t Aim For A New Normal
I thought this one worked with both the antenna and Gerald pointing up to the heavens. The white of Gerald also caught the the eye against the darkness of the sky.
#288 - Diane Rehm - Do We Have The Right To Die If We’re Terminally Ill?
Drawing this set was one of the biggest illustration challenges I’ve had for a while as I didn’t feel it was appropriate to use my usual cartoony style.
On The Drawing Board - Jungle Expedition
This week’s On The Drawing Board sees the return of absent-minded zoologist, Lionel Peabody, accompanied of course by the ever loyal Reggie the honey badger.
Lionel won’t actually make too much of an appearance as today is more about setting the scene enabling him to return.
Here’s a previous pic of Lionel.
Background about the background
Recently I’ve been involved with a cartoon background challenge, where we practice drawing a variety of different backgrounds related to different themes such as inside the house, in the city, in the park etc. One theme was jungle or wilderness, which led to me sketching this background.
The seaplane moments before the scene started to hot up.
For some reason I started thinking about Raiders of the Lost Ark and the seaplane that was used by Indy Jones and his assistant at the beginning of the film.
Selecting A Seaplane
The seaplane I ended up choosing was a Supermarine Sea Lion. You may have heard of the Supermaine company, who manufactured the famous World War Two British fighter plane. Supermarine started out by building a series of seaplanes, the Sea Lion was the last one that they made.
To be continued!
Caption The Cartoon - The Squirrels
Can you think of a caption for this cartoon?
Alternatively, can you think of anything to add to the cartoon that would make it more interesting?
Illustrated Podnotes - Rob Henderson - Signaling: Why You Do The Things You Do
These are some illustrated podnotes to go with the Modern Wisdom Podcast - Rob Henderson - Signaling: Why You Do The Things You Do.
Here is the introducti0n that accompanied the podcast:
Rob Henderson is a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge and a US Air Force Veteran.
Signalling is something everyone is doing all of the time. We are constantly leaking information about ourselves and our motives, but most of that information is involuntary.
Expect to learn why signalling and status are intrinsically linked, how a standing next to a Lexus can increase a man's attractiveness, why putting 20 expensive pens on your desk is a smart idea, why young men play loud music out of their car and much more...
Here’s the link to the podcast:
https://modernwisdom.libsyn.com/292-rob-henderson
