tag:ninjasandrobots.com,2014:/sitemapNinjas and Robots2019-10-17T09:31:12-07:00Nathan Kontnyhttps://ninjasandrobots.comnate.kontny@gmail.comSvbtle.comtag:ninjasandrobots.com,2014:Post/i-am-a-failure2019-10-17T09:31:12-07:002019-10-17T09:31:12-07:00I am a failure<p>Recently, (I hope you saw), I launched a thing I’ve been working on like crazy, <a href="http://trylocomotion.com">Locomotion</a>! </p>
<p><a href="http://trylocomotion.com"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/qWp1FpBvLk3VxQFtaKyzDg0xspap_small.jpeg" alt="D_NmZ0MXsAACjsV.jpeg"></a></p>
<p>But… despite a ton of interest, kind words about the product, lots of social media love, folks haven’t purchased Locomotion as much as I had hoped. That’s a result that can easily lead to a feeling of disappointment. </p>
<p>How do you deal with that?</p>
<hr>
<p>A couple years ago I got my wife rainbow-colored roses. </p>
<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/78P6eaUKnHCMzWwV8xb6hJ0xspap.jpg"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/78P6eaUKnHCMzWwV8xb6hJ0xspap_small.jpg" alt="61RRyOxn8-L._SX425_PIbundle-12,TopRight,0,0_SX425SY424SH20_.jpg"></a></p>
<p>I didn’t even know these existed but turned out to be a nice hit with my wife and kid. Naturally, I’ve wanted to buy more of them. Small problem. They’re crazy expensive. $50 for a dozen. I can get 12 white ones for $8 at my local grocery store. </p>
<p>So, can I just make my own?</p>
<p>This also was the perfect chance to teach my daughter a little something about the scientific method. </p>
<p><strong>Step 1: Ask a question. Can we make our own rainbow roses?</strong><br>
<strong>Step 2: Research. We read articles and watched YouTube videos of people making these flowers.</strong> <br>
<strong>Step 3: Create a testable hypothesis. If we repeat the steps in these YouTube videos, we’ll get our own rainbow roses.</strong> <br>
<strong>Step 4: Perform the experiment.</strong><br>
<strong>Step 5: Analyze the data.</strong> <br>
<strong>Step 6: Accept or reject our hypothesis.</strong> </p>
<p>Well, I get to report! After repeating steps we’ve seen from other articles and videos… </p>
<p>Our rainbow roses sucked. </p>
<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/4wqMx5EbQMNLMBsdLc1U2j0xspap.png"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/4wqMx5EbQMNLMBsdLc1U2j0xspap_small.png" alt="sucked.png"></a></p>
<p>Would I consider that a failure?</p>
<p>Of course not. That’s the point about Step 6 of the scientific method. Our only goal in science is to make an observation about the data so that we can reject or accept our hypothesis. If our data doesn’t prove something, we’re supposed to iterate. We’re supposed to use that to guide yet another experiment. </p>
<p>We’re supposed to fail. </p>
<p>Our flower could have been cut shorter to speed up water transport. Maybe 3 colors would have been more successful. Maybe our food coloring wasn’t strong enough. Maybe we should have kept the rose out of the window. Maybe we should try a different type of rose or flower altogether. </p>
<p>And on and on we iterate.</p>
<hr>
<p>Locomotion has always been an experiment. It started with the hypothesis of: can I make software that could speed up what I was trying to do with stop-motion in my own videos. After many experiments that didn’t prove my hypothesis, I finally arrived at one that turned out to support it. But I’m here to keep experimenting. Next hypothesis: other people are going to want to buy this. </p>
<p>So a launch on <a href="https://www.producthunt.com/posts/locomotion">ProductHunt</a> was merely another experiment. And from that, I’ve observed a ton. Maybe one of these other segments of people I wanted to test would be a better customer. Maybe there’s a better method of delivering value. Or maybe as I see from the success of our launch video, my daughter and I should open up our own video agency making launch videos for other people! </p>
<p>What we really can take away from this flower experiment and my Locomotion launch is that a feeling of success shouldn’t come from proving or rejecting a hypothesis in the end. After all, as I’ve heard from many PhDs, their experiments don’t prove their hypotheses anywhere from 50-90% of the time. </p>
<p>So you see, there is no such thing as a failed experiment. Success is getting off our butts to observe and experiment with the world in the first place.</p>
<p><strong>P.S.</strong> You should follow me on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/nathankontny"><strong>YouTube</strong></a> or <a href="http://twitter.com/natekontny"><strong>Twitter</strong></a>.</p>
tag:ninjasandrobots.com,2014:Post/another-hallway2019-10-09T06:08:07-07:002019-10-09T06:08:07-07:00Another Hallway<p>This last summer was my daughter Addison’s first dance recital. </p>
<p>That’s a big deal for a 5 year old and her parents! Tons of practice, both sets of grandparents coming, and one giant crowd of people to perform in front of. </p>
<p>The performance was awesome. But afterwards, I had the responsibility of picking her up from the “green room”. </p>
<p>The green room was just a small gym located near the entrance of where the recital took place. Everyone would drop their kid off, then proceed to walk down a long hallway to enter the auditorium and find their seat. After the performance, the parents were asked to send just one parent to go back down that long hallway from which we came, to pick up our kid. </p>
<p>Now, I don’t know if it was most of us not paying attention to the “single parent” rule, or everyone just having way too much fun chatting in the hallway, but getting back to the green room to pick up a probably exhausted, hungry, impatient kid was a nightmare. Nobody could move.</p>
<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/jzwHWtj6GWV74tkLi7otmZ0xspap.png"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/jzwHWtj6GWV74tkLi7otmZ0xspap_small.png" alt="Image 2019-10-09 at 8.36.48 AM.png"></a></p>
<p>This was turning out to be an awful end to what I was hoping would be pleasant start to her dance career. But I’ll get back to that.</p>
<hr>
<p>Earlier that week, Addison naturally had a dance rehearsal for this recital. </p>
<p>This didn’t go to plan either. </p>
<p>The first thing we bumped into is that we didn’t have “nude” tights. I’m still not entirely sure what “nude” tights are, except they probably need to look a lot closer to your skin color than Addison’s were. We had white tights. </p>
<p>Things got even worse when we arrived at the recital and I realized we don’t have a purple, sequined bow that, again, every other single girl has in their hair. Has it been irrecoverably lost? Probably.</p>
<p>I’m nervous. I’m afraid a parent or a teacher is going to have a talk with me that I need to purchase new tights or I need to find this bow before she can even participate. I’m also dreading the reaction Addison is going to have when someone asks her about these items and starts making a fuss over them. And that’s exactly what happened. Another little girl came over and started enquiring about the missing bow. Here comes a blow up. </p>
<p>But that’s not what happened. </p>
<p>Instead, Addison just calmly replied, “I don’t care. I don’t even wanna wear the bow.” </p>
<p>My daughter felt she had more important things to worry about like dancing well and dealing with the nerves of performing in front of a lot of people. She didn’t want the extra drama about the right colored tights or missing hair bow.</p>
<p>Her ability to ignore what other people thought to focus on things that were truly important to her, was just the grounding I needed. </p>
<hr>
<p>Back to the recital. I found myself in that hallway staring at this crowd of people. But it dawned on me that we’re in a school. Schools have hallways, stairwells, multiple entrances and exits that all lead to the same places. No one’s telling me where I can and can’t go in the school. There’s no off limit hallways. Why am I following this pack of people when I could easily go around. </p>
<p>So that’s just what I did. I turned around. Took the hallway no one else was using to go completely around the auditorium and the crowd. I was worried for a second that someone was going to say something to me, “what are you doing in here.” But I just thought about Addison from the rehearsal the day before. She wouldn’t care if somebody said something. She’d just calmly adjust.</p>
<p>I made a big circle around the back of the auditorium, ended up right at the entrance of the green room where I left her, and we made our quick exit.</p>
<hr>
<p>This morning I woke up to an article about teens vaping and the challenges it poses, especially considering the folks dying from vaping products. Multiple teens are quoted with simply: “doing what everyone else is doing.” </p>
<p>It’s not just teens, it’s all of us. We evolved to be a very social species, who use cues from the crowd to help find things that are interesting like food, or avoid uninteresting things like hungry lions. But it doesn’t always serve us correctly. </p>
<p>My daughter isn’t immune to it either. Starting kindergarten I already hear her mention wanting to dress like everyone else is dressing. So it’s moments of clarity like this recital that I choose to highlight here and refer back to when I’m doing my own decision making. </p>
<p>Is the decision in front of me truly from the universe of possibilities, or am I simply just taking the path everyone else is on?</p>
<p>And surprisingly often, I find there’s another hallway.</p>
<p><strong>P.S.</strong> You should follow me on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/nathankontny"><strong>YouTube</strong></a> or <a href="http://twitter.com/natekontny"><strong>Twitter</strong></a>.</p>
tag:ninjasandrobots.com,2014:Post/a-b-testing-youtube-videos2019-10-02T07:34:45-07:002019-10-02T07:34:45-07:00A/B Testing YouTube Videos<p><a href="https://filmhope.com"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/mpUt9CJdncDZUcSHHvUkaK0xspap_small.png" alt="Image 2019-10-01 at 8.55.09 PM.png"></a></p>
<p>It’s been over a year in the making, but today my family would like to announce our latest adventure: <a href="http://filmhope.com">FilmHope</a>.</p>
<p>Are you the type of person who doesn’t measure anything? Do you buy your clothes without sizing them up? If someone asks says something costs $5, do you just give them whatever wad of cash you have? Do you show up to everything whenever you darn-well-feel-like-it?</p>
<p>Of course not. So why do so few people measure and optimize the performance of their YouTube videos? Because it’s been so difficult. </p>
<p>Until today. </p>
<p>Toady, my family is announcing the launch of FilmHope. FilmHope is the super easy way to test different titles and thumbnails for the YouTube videos you upload. Just upload like you normally do, go on over to FilmHope.com, pick your recent video, and choose a new thumbnail and/or title. </p>
<p><a href="https://filmhope.com"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/iYjcL5F8dZYek45vsVGMm50xspap_small.png" alt="Image 2019-10-01 at 8.48.49 PM.png"></a></p>
<p>Within 24 hours, we’ll email you with a statistically significant result of which title and thumbnail did better. (Or let you know if we couldn’t measure anything in time. We can’t test if there’s almost no traffic to your videos.)</p>
<p>It’s super easy to use and play with. First couple of tests are Free. If it’s handy, sign up for a subscription to help keep the tool running. </p>
<p>Give it a try! Have any questions? Please reach out. Would love to hear from you.</p>
<p>Here’s a video my family put together to explain the launch: </p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWPUzsudSMQ"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/xv6GufrnYK7P2B1U1ptPtC0xspap_small.jpg" alt="filmhopead.jpg"></a></p>
<hr>
<p>Here are a few frequently asked questions I’ve seen so far: </p>
<p><strong>How are we different than other split testing tools out there</strong>? Well, YouTube is a different animal that can’t be tested like a normal website. If you want to get an early blessing of traffic from YouTube, you need to get a great Impressions-to-Clicks ratio as soon as possible. So, it’s important for a split testing tool that wants fast results to test while recognizing that traffic to a video isn’t constant over time. </p>
<p><strong>Doesn’t YouTube have a way to split test already?</strong> No. They’ve hinted that they’re testing something in a small pilot. But YouTube Studio has been in Beta testing for years. I suspect a split-test tool from YouTube will take awhile to come to all of us. If it does though, we’ve got some great ideas we can add to it. </p>
<p><strong>Your family is launching this?</strong> Yep! My wife and I started working on this over a year ago, actually. It sat on a shelf, though, unfortunately because I broke my number one startup rule: get the smallest thing that could possibly work launched and iterate from there. Instead, I went down rabbit hole after rabbit hole and never launched the smallest thing I already found useful. So I took it off the shelf, put the launch polish on it and now my daughter helped me make a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWPUzsudSMQ">launch video for it</a>. </p>
<p>Hope you dig it like we do. </p>
<p>-<strong>Lynette, Addison and Nate</strong></p>
tag:ninjasandrobots.com,2014:Post/locomotion2019-07-10T08:01:59-07:002019-07-10T08:01:59-07:00My New Startup: Locomotion<p>Hey. I know I’ve been radio silent here for awhile. I’m sorry about that. But I’ve needed the focus to get a new product built. If you’re interested, let me quickly tell you about it. </p>
<p>Do you do any stop motion movie making? If you don’t, it’s probably because it’s so darn difficult.</p>
<p>Stop motion is beautiful, but it’s insanely tedious. Move something. Take a picture. Repeat. Over and over and over, until your fingers bleed or you give up.</p>
<p>So… what if I told you, you could remove the whole taking a picture part? Instead, what if you could just record a video of you moving the characters and objects in your scene and a computer did the rest? Is that something you might be interested in? :) </p>
<p>If you could eliminate all the picture taking, you could do this so much faster. You could use cameras that don’t have fancy stop motion software. You could actually make stop motion movies more often. </p>
<p>Sounded like a good idea to me too! But then I actually tried to build it. And I failed. Over and over again I failed. I crafted algorithm after algorithm trying to get it working and it all failed. I wanted to give up constantly. </p>
<p>But then… I finally figured it out. And, it’s called Locomotion. </p>
<h3 id="before_3">Before <a class="head_anchor" href="#before_3">#</a>
</h3>
<p><img src="https://media.giphy.com/media/Q8t3JXQp5uto4ThKyB/giphy.gif" alt=""></p>
<h3 id="after_3">After <a class="head_anchor" href="#after_3">#</a>
</h3>
<p><img src="https://media.giphy.com/media/UWzEgOJWDfGenmvCSE/giphy.gif" alt=""></p>
<p>You can try it out here: *<em><a href="https://trylocomotion.com">https://trylocomotion.com</a> *</em></p>
<p>It’s a Mac-only app (for the moment) that will do the magic of turning a video of you and your stop motion scene prep into the actual stop motion movie. Best way to see it in action is the demo page: </p>
<p><a href="https://www.trylocomotion.com/demo">https://www.trylocomotion.com/demo</a></p>
<p>Or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypRLW1Uq2bk">the videos I’ve been making with it</a>.</p>
<p>Please check it out! Make some movies! Let me know what you’re making. I’d love to help out. And please stay tuned, this is just the start. More platforms and more tools on the way. </p>
<p>And <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpFFjjHOoSs"><strong>here’s a little commercial</strong></a> my daughter and I put together to explain the project :) </p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpFFjjHOoSs"><img src="https://img.youtube.com/vi/jpFFjjHOoSs/0.jpg" alt="Locomotion"></a></p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://www.producthunt.com/posts/locomotion"><strong>It’s on Product Hunt</strong></a>! Have any questions, please join the discussion there.</p>
<h1 id="behind-the-scenes_1">Behind The Scenes <a class="head_anchor" href="#behind-the-scenes_1">#</a>
</h1>
<p>If you’re still here, you might be intersted in some of how it’s made and what it took to get here. </p>
<h2 id="h264mpeg4_2">H.264/MPEG-4 <a class="head_anchor" href="#h264mpeg4_2">#</a>
</h2>
<p>Locomotion processes video. And the most common video compression is something called H.264. So if Locomotion wants to support a ton of video coming out of all the cameras and smartphones out there, it needed to be able to read files using H.264.</p>
<p>The thing with H.264 though is that it’s patented. If you ship code that reads H.264, you need to license the patents. </p>
<p>Now, at first that seems really scary. I immediately went to thinking of workarounds, loopholes, maybe just not supporting this insanely popular file type. </p>
<p>But after a ton of research I realized: it’s not that hard to license H.264. You’ll be surprised how easy it is to work with the legal team at <a href="http://mpegla.com">MPEG LA</a>, who manages licensing the patents. It’s also affordable. If you ship a H.264 decoder, you don’t have to pay a royalty for the first 100,000 downloads each and ever year. And after that, it’s a nominal charge. </p>
<p>Now, that could build up for certain projects. But something like Locomotion, which is failry niche and also is a paid product, can work with those limits. </p>
<p>So if you have a desire to work with H.264 files, don’t get scared off just because of “licensing a patent.”</p>
<h2 id="electron_2">Electron <a class="head_anchor" href="#electron_2">#</a>
</h2>
<p><a href="https://electronjs.org">Electron</a> is the framework powering Locomotion. In super simple terms, it’s essentially a Chrome web browser that’s also running a Node.js webserver. </p>
<p>This had its plusses and minuses however.</p>
<p>A huge plus for Electron is that it provides a way for folks well versed in web development to stay super productive making desktop apps. It’s just Javascript and HTML all the way down. But you have so much power to execute things on the desktop. </p>
<p>Unfortunately a minus is that it has to play some catch-up with changes in things like MacOS land. For example, I had a version of Locomotion ready to ship to the public, and then Apple released a minor release to Mojave (10.14.5), and all of a sudden no one could install Locomotion anymore. It turns out this minor release now had stricter needs for signing and notarizing. And the docs and help to support this in Electron was slow to materialize. Kilian Valkhof <a href="https://kilianvalkhof.com/2019/electron/notarizing-your-electron-application/">did the heavy lifting</a> for all of us in figuring it out. </p>
<p>Another huge minus with Electron is that I feel like I might have just kicked the can on some major things I’d want to use more native tools for. The next version of Locomotion I believe is going to move off of Electron and use native code for the platforms it’s on. I’d still recommend Electron though for many, many projects that don’t need the things I need: fast, sophisticated video processing. </p>
<h2 id="gumroad_2">Gumroad <a class="head_anchor" href="#gumroad_2">#</a>
</h2>
<p>I chose to use <a href="http://gumroad.com">Gumroad</a> as a way to sell Locomotion. Gumroad might not be a software developer’s first choice to sell apps. We aren’t marketed to on their homepage initially: </p>
<p><img src="https://cl.ly/3cd40f0eb164/Image%202019-07-09%20at%208.50.35%20PM.png" alt=""></p>
<p>But Gumroad has some really handy tools to sell software. Like an easy Licensing API you can use programatically in your app. And CRM and email marketing all baked in. Surprised how fitting it was for the project. Check it out.</p>
<hr>
<p>Those are a few of the things I bumped into along the way, and there are plenty more. Stay tuned. </p>
tag:ninjasandrobots.com,2014:Post/wabi-sabi2019-01-18T09:23:54-08:002019-01-18T09:23:54-08:00Wabi-sabi<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/jpFP6npyBCyhyL5jzvv1o70xspap.jpg"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/jpFP6npyBCyhyL5jzvv1o70xspap_small.jpg" alt="andrew-charney-80930-unsplash.jpg"></a></p>
<p>Almost two decades ago, a young filmmaker landed on the Hollywood scene with a movie that became a big deal, winning awards, and making princely sums of money at the box office. But after that debut, as many critics and fans would argue, every movie he made was worse than the one before it. It got to the point, no one would make a movie with him anymore. His career was over. </p>
<p>So where does this creative genius go from here? </p>
<hr>
<p>There’s a “YouTuber” I watch closely. </p>
<p>He builds props from random scraps of wood he’s been hoarding. His movie titles are made of inelegant blasts of spray paint. Instead of using the animation capabilities of his editing software, he uses a vacuum to animate paper cutouts to move across a table he built from previously mentioned scraps of wood covered in old previously mentioned wayward flecks of spray paint. </p>
<p>Sure, at the beginning of his career, he was forced to use the third rate tools, often literally garbage at his disposal, because he was a flat-broke, high-school dropout with a kid, living in Manhattan, paying child support and washing dishes for his real job. </p>
<p>But, today, even after a healthy career of making commercials, films, companies, he still makes movies like this. He has no problem spending millions on real estate. Why not upgrade his movie making?</p>
<p>Every year, a conference gathers in Nantucket, Massachusetts of creative, smart people to figure out how to make the world a little better. There, our YouTuber described his embrace of imperfection to counter the polish everyone else is using to make their movies appear less human. He mentioned the creators who influenced his career: the Sesame Street gang and Mr. Rogers. He pointed out, even if you had a belief in giant birds on Sesame Street, deep down you knew humans were involved in these puppets. That neighborhood of Mr. rogers: no CGI involved. Some human had to spend the hours making that model you see in the intro. </p>
<p>There’s actually a great name for this aesthetic. </p>
<p><a href="https://nobleharbor.com/tea/chado/WhatIsWabi-Sabi.htm">Wabi-sabi</a></p>
<blockquote class="short">
<p>the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in nature, of accepting the natural cycle of growth, decay, and death.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Our YouTuber’s talk was named “Perfection Erases Humanity.” </p>
<hr>
<p>1999 was a huge year for our mystery Hollywood filmmaker. His movie was nominated for awards at all the major award ceremonies, winning a handful. And through 2005 he made more movies that received warm attention. </p>
<p>But nothing was ever like his debut. His Metacritic scores kept sliding. From 2006 through 2013 he went through the longest string of awards for “Worst Director”, “Worst Movie”, “Worst Screenplay” I’ve ever seen. At a talk he gave, someone in the audience stood up and yelled: “Go Back To Film School!” He won Raspberry after Raspberry.</p>
<p>For someone whose received so much early success, I’m sure quite a lot went through this artist’s mind about being a fluke. A one hit wonder. A creative hack who just happened to get lucky on his first try. Maybe he really was a fraud and didn’t belong making the big movies he had dreamt of.</p>
<p>Things got so bad, in a desperate attempt to make his next (and maybe last) film, he mortgaged his home to come up with 5 million dollars for a movie budget - a paltry sum for the movies he’s used to making. </p>
<p>Then he went to show folks an early copy to hopefully get his money back so he could sleep easier. That he hadn’t just lost his home. No one bought it. Remember that Sony email hack? Our filmmaker shows up in there. When one exec asks Amy Pascal, who ran Sony Motion Pictures if she’d make another film with our filmmaker, her reply was simply: “No.” Everyone had given up on him. Even his agents were done. </p>
<p>But our filmmaker had discovered something during this low period of his life and career - the teachings of Epictetus, an ancient Greek Stoic philosopher.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>—Epictetus, Discourses, 2.5.4–5</p>
<p>So with this new found insight that he can’t control the Amy Pascals of the world or even his agents, he proceeded to fixate his focus on only things he truly could control. The movie. </p>
<p>He got back in the editing room and started refining. He realized some folks were confused if his movie was a thriller or not, so he made music and cue changes so the genre more obvious. Edits here. More tension there. </p>
<p>Eventually, with a new found excitement from working on something he could actually control, he decided to show it to a movie producer he had greatly admired. He loved it.</p>
<p>And on Sept. 11, 2015, our Hollywood ex-star released a shaky, “found home video footage” type of movie without any CGI effects, and it became one of the most successful independent movies ever released, pulling in over $98.5 million from that mortgage on his house. </p>
<hr>
<p>Our filmmaker and YouTuber share an embrace of the imperfect. Wabi-sabi. Their aesthetics, careers, and lives, remind us that reality is a lot messier than what you see in our CGI perfected movies. The universe really doesn’t bend to our control, regardless of how it looks like it does in many other peoples work and social media streams. </p>
<p>M. Night Shyamalan and Casey Neistat remind us that there are things we can control. Things we can’t. And we should ignore the ones we can’t. </p>
<p>(For further insight into these two, I highly recommend these: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxU6pBicecM">Casey’s talk</a>, M. Night’s <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2019/01/m-night-shyamalan-in-conversation.html">interview with Vulture</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m55b3OX6pQM">commencement speech</a>.) </p>
<p><strong>P.S.</strong> If you enjoy these topics, you should <a href="https://www.youtube.com/nathankontny?sub_confirmation=1"><strong>follow me on YouTube: youtube.com/nathankontny</strong></a> where I share more about how I run a business, do product design, market myself, and just get through life.</p>
tag:ninjasandrobots.com,2014:Post/the-mere-exposure-effect-how-casey-neistat-makes-pop-songs2019-01-11T12:00:06-08:002019-01-11T12:00:06-08:00The Mere-Exposure Effect: How Casey Neistat Makes Pop-Songs<table class="image">
<tr><td><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/fQgFt7X5isucA8vSUrpD8Z0xspap_retina.jpg"></td></tr>
<tr><td><caption align="bottom"><em>Photo by <a href="https://flickr.com/photos/95021520@N00/33418037021">nrkbeta</a></em></caption></td></tr>
</table>
<p>After watching a Casey Neistat vlog, something peculiar often happens. All day long I’ll find myself humming parts of the music from an episode. He’s created an earworm.</p>
<blockquote class="short">
<p>A catchy song or tune that runs continually through a person’s mind.<br>
<strong>Earworm</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Earworms aren’t peculiar though. They happen all the time. Just listen to a top 10 list on your way to work. You’ll be humming something too probably. What makes this peculiar is that the same song itself from the musicians SoundCloud page isn’t all that earwormy to me. </p>
<p>I mean no offense to the wonderful musicians often found in Casey’s work like Andrew Applepie, Jeff Kaale, and Maxzwell, but there’s something going on when these songs are mixed into Casey’s vlog. </p>
<p>What secret magic is Casey adding to these tunes?</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://csml.som.ohio-state.edu/Huron/">David Huron</a> is a professor in two different departments at Ohio State University. The School of Music AND the Center for Cognitive and Brain Sciences. That makes David an incredibly useful authority on things like earworms. </p>
<p>In 2013, David asked the question: “Suppose a composer wants to create a musical work that listeners find enjoyable, but requires the least amount of work on the part of the composer.”</p>
<p>That sounds like two interesting problems. Is there an algorithm for making “enjoyable” art? And can it be optimized?</p>
<p>So David created a series of strategies based on two psychological concepts: the mere exposure effect and habituation. </p>
<p>The mere exposure effect originally came to us from <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/record/1968-12019-001">Robert B. Zajonc’s experiments</a> showing people nonsense characters that might resemble the Chinese language. When people were asked which character they prefered if given a choice, 92% of the time people chose the character they had seen more often. These experiments have been replicated over and over again. We humans like things we’ve been exposed to before. We like repetition. </p>
<p>Except one problem. </p>
<p>I’m writing this in my house next to an air filter blowing out at its Max setting. It used to bother me when I first turned it on. It doesn’t anymore. I’ve become habituated to it. </p>
<p>Our lives are full of stimuli we’ve become habituated to. They may have at first intrigued you, maybe even startled you, but now, these noises, sights, smells, etc. become “old hat”. And that’s a good thing! If every stimulus around you was as exciting as the first time you encountered it, you could hardly walk across a room without being distracted. You’d operate like a new born baby. Your own shirt would make you nuts.</p>
<p>So habituation is necessary, but it’s also death to creators. If you make something that people habituate to, they stop paying attention and find interest in something else. To create the music David Huron has in mind, we need repetition but we need it in a way where we don’t habituate. </p>
<p>That’s where mice come in. </p>
<hr>
<p>If you play a loud note, an A, for a mouse, it exhibits what’s called the “startle response”. The mouse freezes. </p>
<p>And if you play that note repeatedly, as you’d expect, the mouse habituates and stops freezing. But if you change that note to a very different note, let’s say a B, the mouse freezes once again. But where this really gets interesting is that after the B, if you then returned to playing an A, the mouse will freeze up once again.</p>
<p>By playing a different note you’ve “dishabituated” the mouse. Now, things don’t just return to where they were. If you play A repeatedly again, the mouse will habituate faster this time. And if you think you can get away with just playing ABABAB forever, the mouse will habituate to that too. So if you want this mouse to keep paying attention for as long as possible, you need to strategically dishabituate the animal. </p>
<p>Going back to Huron’s quest to create enjoyable music with as little work as possible. The mouse experiments show us a way. </p>
<p>Repetition of a note, or a segment like A, will cause an exposure effect in our listeners. But if we just played A over and over: AAAAAAAA.</p>
<p>They’d begin to ignore us. Huron would then introduce a B. And the optimal place to use a B is to maximize the amount of repetition of A while still dishabituating people: AAAABAAABAABAB</p>
<p>Now a composer has a minimal way of continuing to elongate that sequence. Introduce a C: </p>
<p>AAAABAAABAABABCAABA</p>
<p>Derek Thompson, the author of the book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01HNJIJ58/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1">Hit Makers</a>, who introduced me to Hudson’s research also noticed something of Hudson’s algorithm. Look at the section: </p>
<p>ABABCA </p>
<p>As Thomsons explains in his book, if A was a verse in a song, and B was the chorus, and C is the bridge:</p>
<p>Verse Chorus Verse Chorus Bridge Verse. </p>
<p>You’d have a pop song. This is the skeleton of almost every pop song on the radio right now. Go on, pull up Spotify or YouTube to find a new song release. You’ll hear it. The repetition of the verse. The repetition of the chorus. When you might be getting sick of the repetition, there’s the bridge. Finally, there’s a verse again. </p>
<p>Repeat, repeat, dishabituate, repeat, dishabituate, ad nauseum. </p>
<p>And that’s what keeps us hooked. </p>
<hr>
<p>Let’s pick an episode of Casey’s vlog from early in his daily vlogging adventure: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzYxEImwbdc">Weekends are for shopping</a>. I picked it based on Social Blade’s “Highest Ranked” videos (ratio of Likes to Dislikes). It’s also a fairly mundane topic, but clearly people have enjoyed it.</p>
<p>It starts with a “pre-intro” clip where Casey sees something unusual, a man riding a very high bike: </p>
<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/syVtV3uTnPidpSx5HTdrWa0xspap.png"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/syVtV3uTnPidpSx5HTdrWa0xspap_small.png" alt="bike.png"></a></p>
<p>Then it goes into an introduction, where we see a time-lapse of buildings in New York City. The intro also gives us a set of intro credits telling us whose video it is (Casey’s of course), when it’s being filmed, and where. </p>
<p>Music drops in. </p>
<p>Then we go to a Casey monologue about weekends in New York, we hear the same intro music playing but very quietly. Next, Casey talks to the camera about what he’s up to. Saturday morning run. What follows is a sequence of: talking to the camera, music montage using the same music, talking to the camera, music montage. </p>
<p>Then, we have a long section of the video where he shows us how he takes a time-lapse of New York on the roof of his building. After the long interlude, we have more monologue + music montage + monologue + music montage using a second song that was introduced. </p>
<p>You see what I see? </p>
<p>If Casey’s music is a verse, and his monologues are the chorus, and his long how-to interludes are the bridge, you see a pattern a lot like: </p>
<p>Verse Chorus Verse Chorus Bridge Verse</p>
<p>ABABCA </p>
<p>Go through Casey’s whole vlog collection. 95% of them show a pattern like this. Music montage + monologue + music montage + monologue + interlude + music montage + monologue, with enough differences (long workshop chats, new music, new location) to dishabituate you.</p>
<p>Casey also has a great instinct for recognizing when people are habituated to his work and style, so he changes his overarching patterns. After days of “vlog” episodes he dishabituates us with a Q&A or a long session of opening mail - interludes made up of something very different than we got the day before. Or he films an attempt at a viral video with snowboarding in the streets of New York during a blizzard, or pretending he’s catching Pokemon during the app craze a couple years ago. These radically different videos from his vlogs, dishabituate us. </p>
<p>Please don’t get me wrong. I don’t think Casey has read David Huron and has formulated the rigid structure I outline. I just think Casey has found a natural rhythm to his work that happens to share a lot of the rhythm and pacing of a pop song. And it’s become natural to him. Also, I don’t think that any single thing I write about Casey’s strategies or tactics are the sole reason he’s catchy, or popular, or viral, etc. There are many qualities to his work that I haven’t even begun to touch on, like his skill at storytelling and long hours of practice. </p>
<p>But I do think his knack for repetition and dishabituation is a skill we can all learn and apply to our own work to see a significant effect. So go out and make some pop-songs. </p>
<p><strong>P.S.</strong> If you enjoy these topics, you should <a href="https://www.youtube.com/nathankontny?sub_confirmation=1"><strong>follow me on YouTube: youtube.com/nathankontny</strong></a> where I share more about how I run a business, do product design, market myself, and just get through life.</p>
tag:ninjasandrobots.com,2014:Post/somersault-a-vlogging-camera-for-your-phone2018-09-06T10:14:28-07:002018-09-06T10:14:28-07:00Somersault - A vlogging camera for your phone. <p>I wanted to show off a preview of what I’ve been working on. It’s a better Camera App for vloggers. I call it Somersault. </p>
<p><img src="https://draftin.com:443/images/62292?token=UuehPmBow163vTanjE0D65hvQkJbjT5xaKy5v8IbyL7kQYGtK7_D9TEx9tPuOQk6WFdVwyB91KylZ-gSf0pP95Q" alt="IMG_4869_iphonexspacegrey_landscape.png"> </p>
<p>I <a href="https://youtube.com/nathankontny"><strong>started a vlog</strong></a> about 2.5 years ago, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the process of sharing stories and lessons. But it’s hard. It’s tough to craft stories on top of making great looking video. Adding music. Keeping the pacing from becoming boring. Avoiding the look of Blair Witch Project outtakes. </p>
<p>Through all that work I’ve learned a ton about making better videos. Lessons about keeping shots short, establishing where you are, talking to the camera vs watching yourself, editing in camera vs the extra work in Post. </p>
<p>And now, I can offer some of those lessons through a Camera App itself. So regardless of if you need Somersault, here are a few of the lessons I’ve learned along the way, and what I hope Somersault can help guide people to do better. </p>
<h1 id="keep-your-shots-short_1">Keep your shots short <a class="head_anchor" href="#keep-your-shots-short_1">#</a>
</h1>
<p>One of the biggest reasons for Snap and Instagram videos success is that they force folks to keep videos short. We just don’t have the attention span to watch videos that drone on and on. If you closely watch most movies, you’ll see the camera switching angles or changing in some way about every 10 seconds or less to keep us interested. So the time constraints on Snap and Instagram automatically make us better filmmakers. </p>
<p>So the biggest advice to new filmmakers: keep those shots short. 10 seconds or less is great. </p>
<p>Somersault does it for you.</p>
<h1 id="break-the-fourth-wall_1">Break the fourth wall <a class="head_anchor" href="#break-the-fourth-wall_1">#</a>
</h1>
<p>Somersault assumes a very popular vlogging style where we are behind the camera and in front of it “breaking the fourth wall”. So Somersault helps to shoot something establishing where you are or what you’re doing, then every 10 seconds, the camera flips from back to front, back to front, to shoot yourself talking to the camera. </p>
<p>If you want to short circuit the 10 seconds, swipe DOWN to change the camera early. </p>
<h1 id="look-at-the-lens_1">Look at the lens <a class="head_anchor" href="#look-at-the-lens_1">#</a>
</h1>
<p>Somersault makes sure to place things that should attract your eye (the timer) close to the lens.</p>
<h1 id="edit-in-camera_1">Edit in camera <a class="head_anchor" href="#edit-in-camera_1">#</a>
</h1>
<p>Controls in the camera are placed in a way you shouldn’t ever need to look at anything other than either what your shooting or the lens when you’re shooting yourself. There’s just a couple gestures to switch the cameras or to pause shooting. But you won’t need to fish around for them causing a lot of off footage you need to cut out in POST. </p>
<h1 id="shoot-in-landscape_1">Shoot in landscape <a class="head_anchor" href="#shoot-in-landscape_1">#</a>
</h1>
<p>This is going to be a bit contentious in our Instagram/Snap worlds where shooting in Portrait is becoming more common. But for vlogging and putting together video you might publish in other channels like YouTube, your website, or even TV down the road, landscape is the preferred mode. So Somersault records in landscape. I may revisit this choice, of course, as I get feedback. </p>
<h1 id="never-miss-a-shot_1">Never miss a shot <a class="head_anchor" href="#never-miss-a-shot_1">#</a>
</h1>
<p>Somersault starts recording as soon as you open the app, and by design has very few features, modes, or controls. </p>
<p>I never want to miss a shot because I was fiddling around trying to find the right button to get the damn thing to record. Also, a big lament about most cameras and camera apps I have is that they do far too many things. And because of that, when you turn your camera on, you can never find the control you need. Or the settings from last time aren’t the settings you want now. I’ve missed more than one shot because my camera was stuck in Photo mode or the camera was flipped the wrong directions while I fiddled to find the flip button. </p>
<hr>
<p>So yet another camera app, but this one is made for vlogging. I hope you can get some use out of it. I’m starting a round of Beta testing now for iPhone users (Android will follow very shortly if there’s enough demand). If you’re interested, drop your email below, and I’ll send you an invite before I officially launch it! Any Beta testers can get the app free for life regardless of what it costs later on. </p>
<p><strong><a href="http://eepurl.com/dGiAYj">Want to Beta test the iPhone app?</a></strong></p>
tag:ninjasandrobots.com,2014:Post/i-don-t-have-enough2017-11-07T09:35:27-08:002017-11-07T09:35:27-08:00I don't have enough<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/6ycs4svgjpmea.jpeg"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/6ycs4svgjpmea_small.jpeg" alt="candle.jpeg"></a></p>
<p>It’s been a rough week. We’ve been migrating our file storage for <a href="https://highrisehq.com/"><strong>Highrise</strong></a> and you can imagine how difficult that is for a product running since 2007 with millions of users. </p>
<p>And it hadn’t gone that well.</p>
<p>Fortunately, we had enough backup procedures in place to handle most problems. But still, on Thursday morning at 3AM I was nervously watching the error queue for more fires. </p>
<p>How’d I get here? </p>
<p>I don’t mean that in a negative sense. This barely raised my blood pressure. I’ve been in this same situation many times before. I and our CTO, Michael Dwan, cooly fixed our problems in the middle of the night. </p>
<p>But, I mean, how on earth did I get to this point where I’m helping successfully troubleshoot this crazy large system of technology and code when… </p>
<p>All I was trained to do was Chemistry?</p>
<p>I remember the panic I had nearing the end of college. I had just spent 4 years and tons of money learning about Chemistry, and I finally realized all I wanted to do was build software and web applications. What a waste. </p>
<p>How was I going to change my entire career around? </p>
<hr>
<p>I asked a friend the other day if they were given two one foot diameter metal rings, a match, a candle and a metal cube, could they connect the rings?</p>
<p>At first they didn’t see the solution. </p>
<p>But once I gave them advice to: break down the resources they had into smaller pieces and re-think the uses of those elements, the answer was clear. </p>
<p>The candle wasn’t just a candle. </p>
<p>If you break it down one level it’s wax AND it’s a wick. Use the wick inside the candle as a string, and use that string to tie the metal rings together. </p>
<p>This was a challenge Dr. Tony McCaffrey, a PhD in cognitive psychology, <a href="https://hbr.org/2015/12/find-innovation-where-you-least-expect-it">gave participants in various studies he’s done</a>. He found, when he taught people to break down the resources they had at their disposal into smaller elements, and then re-question the usefulness of those new smaller pieces, participants’ ability to solve problems grew by over 65%. </p>
<p>The real problem McCaffrey was helping these people solve wasn’t tying two rings together; it was getting over their “functional fixedness”. </p>
<p>In other words, most of us want something more out of life for ourselves or the world, and we see the resources we all have. But most of us feel like we’re stuck with them. We need more. Better. What we have isn’t good enough.</p>
<p>But the greatest creators amongst us, see the same world and have the same resources, but somehow, they’re able to turn those resources into brand new things that solve problems and move the world further ahead. </p>
<hr>
<p>My boss needed help with Excel. </p>
<p>I was at an internship between my Junior and Senior years at a Uranium processing plant. (yes, that Uranium) My boss was building financial models in Excel and wanted help updating them when he obtained new data.</p>
<p>At first the project seemed fairly uninteresting. How was this going to help get me out of chemical plant work like the one I was in and build software for a living? </p>
<p>But I realized something. I could make my boss’s life much easier if I could get Excel presenting him with forms and walking him through the things he needed to update. Excel had “macros” which were bits of VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) code that I could program. </p>
<p>This wasn’t uninteresting. This was an opportunity. I could use this to deepen my exposure to writing code. It wasn’t building a fancy web app, but I needed to start somewhere, anywhere, and this was it. So I squeezed every last bit of time I could had with VBA to get better at software development and help my boss with Excel. </p>
<p>When I got out of college, I ended up taking a job with Andersen Consulting (now Accenture). My thought process was - at least this company does software projects. Maybe, it’ll give me a door to a new field. </p>
<p>However, Accenture put me in their “process” vertical. My day to day job was managing discussions with customers and recording the requirements they had for developers. I wasn’t doing software development. I was writing documents.</p>
<p>A project came up though that wasn’t worth a developer’s time, but someone had to figure it out. Our customer wanted to use a reporting tool to connect with a data warehouse. They needed reports built. </p>
<p>It looked like another uninteresting project of listening to what fields a user wanted in the report, and using the already, easy to use reporting tool’s drag and drop interface to stick the field in a report. </p>
<p>But, then I realized something. There was more to this reporting tool. </p>
<p>The reporting tool could be programmed with Javascript to create forms and build reports dynamically. This was the Excel situation all over again. </p>
<p>I listened carefully to what our customers wanted and figured out more dynamic and flexible ways to get them their reports using forms and programs I built with Javascript right inside the tool. </p>
<p>My boss was happy they over delivered on the reports our customers needed, and I learned a ton more about Javascript and doing more development. </p>
<p>So much more that another opportunity presented itself at Accenture - they promoted me to a software development team since I showed such aptitude and hustle. </p>
<p>All of a sudden I was exactly in the position I wanted to be in. </p>
<hr>
<p>Today, I consider myself to be an above average developer. From publishing some <a href="https://github.com/n8">decent open source projects</a> to starting <a href="https://draftin.com/">software</a> <a href="http://inklingmarkets.com/">companies</a> from scratch.</p>
<p>When I think back on the career I’ve had so far, I realize how much of it was looking around at the tools I’ve been given, but instead of complaining and getting stuck hoping for even better tools, I not only made due, I invented new purposes for them. </p>
<p>Instead of taking Excel and this reporting tool project at face value, I saw they had components that could be repurposed to help the people I worked for and give me the education I needed in software development. </p>
<p>People, too often, look outward at all the things they wish they had to improve their life. When really, if you break down the things you already have, you might just see they’re the exact solutions you were hoping for. </p>
<p><strong>P.S. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/nathankontny">You should subscribe to my YouTube Channel: here</a></strong>.</p>
tag:ninjasandrobots.com,2014:Post/breakthrough2017-10-05T09:21:47-07:002017-10-05T09:21:47-07:00Breakthrough<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/qx3kovcqk6aagg.png"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/qx3kovcqk6aagg_small.png" alt="1-XiC1HOLOcor3-sZCT9ixDA.png"></a></p>
<p>A decade or so ago, a young musician couldn’t get anyone to play his music. He had some raw talent, and just recorded his first album, but all the gatekeepers thought he just sounded too young. Without Disney or Nickelodeon marketing his stuff, he was a dud. </p>
<p>What does he do?</p>
<hr>
<p>I bet you know the names of a few famous impressionist painters. Monet. Manet. Degas. What makes them famous though? Are they really the best? Do you know a bad impressionist painter? </p>
<p>What about Gustave Caillebotte? </p>
<p>Caillebotte was an interesting impressionist. I don’t think anyone would say he’s bad, but he sure isn’t as popular as Monet. </p>
<p>Caillebotte also has a quirky story. Upon his death he requested his art collection be hung in the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris. His art collection was about 70 paintings he had collected from his friends, also impressionists. </p>
<p>They weren’t popular. They were actually the worst paintings of his friends. “Worst” being the ones his friends couldn’t get anyone else to buy. And at the time, people didn’t even like impressionism. Many hated it. </p>
<p>So Caillebotte’s request in his will for the government to take his friends paintings and hang them in a museum was insane. How can someone force a museum to hang a bunch of paintings that no one liked or is even familiar with just because it’s a dead person’s request? It resulted in fierce criticism from the art world and public scrutiny.</p>
<p>But Renoir finally convinced the museum to hang half of the collection 3 years after Caillebotte’s death. When the collection opened to the public, the museum was packed. Everyone wanted to see these paintings because they had generated so much scandal. </p>
<p>Today, impressionism is mostly known for the work of the 7 greatest impressionist painters: Manet, Monet, Cézanne, Degas, Renoir, Pissarro, and Sisley. </p>
<p>The 7 friends in Caillebotte’s collection. </p>
<p>Sure Caillebotte had an eye for talent, and a belief impressionism would be admired at some point in the future. </p>
<p>But what really happened is that the inadvertent exposure that Caillebotte brought to his friends also made people like them more.</p>
<p>At least that’s the argument <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Hit-Makers-Science-Popularity-Distraction-ebook/dp/B01HNJIJ58/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1506126309&sr=8-1&keywords=hit+makers">Derek Thompson makes in his book Hit Makers</a>. Derek mentions James Cutting, a professor of psychology at Cornell University, and Cutting’s work to show how exposure begets likability. </p>
<p>In Cutting’s experiments he had people compare famous paintings to more obscure works. Cutting proved the obvious - people prefered paintings from painters who are famous 6 out of 10 times. </p>
<p>But when Cutting came up with an experiment to expose people to those obscure paintings 4 times more frequently than the famous paintings, people’s preferences switched. Now people preferred the more obscure paintings 8 out of 10 times. </p>
<p>We don’t judge things just based on quality. Exposure changes our mind. The more we see, hear, or read something, the more we like it.</p>
<hr>
<p>That young musician had promise. But he needed to break through somehow. His manager came up with a plan. They were going to get in a van and travel around the country visiting every radio station he could. The kid is charming and has some talent, so it wasn’t as hard to schedule single visits to play an acoustic track from his record live on air. </p>
<p>And this kid performed that track a lot. Eventually the exposure of playing the same song over and over again propelled “One Time” to the top of the charts and this musician is now a household name. This musician’s manager said: </p>
<blockquote class="short">
<p>There’s not a DJ that can say they haven’t met Justin Bieber.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>There’s a lot to unpack from Justin’s rise to the sensation he is today. Not the least of which was the grit of a 14 year old kid who wouldn’t take no for an answer. Or the unwavering optimism he had of putting himself out there on YouTube uploading crappy videos of himself performing. </p>
<p>But one of the most interesting aspects of Justin’s story is that to get through his obstacle, he went out and generated exposure to his work even if it wasn’t the exposure that he originally intended. He thought he could cut a record and get a ton of people listening to it. Instead he had to take the little wins and build from there. </p>
<p>Most of us aren’t going to be the next Justin Beiber, but it’s still a lesson for us to go figure out how to get more exposure even if it isn’t the big splash we imagine we’re capable of. </p>
<p>Want to be a headline speaker, go do talks at all the tiny chambers of commerce in front of 8 people for awhile. Want to get a byline in a famous publication, do hundreds of guest blog posts for whoever will pick you up. </p>
<p>It’s a big reason I’ve generated the audience I have. I’m out there doing podcasts, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/nathankontny"><strong>daily vlog episodes</strong></a>, interviews, and writing articles in a ton of different places. </p>
<p>Sometimes the opportunity is small. I’ll be the person’s first interview they’ve ever done. Doesn’t matter. Sometimes the message feels repetitive. I’ll be asked about the same question I’ve answered a million times. Doesn’t matter. </p>
<p>I remind myself how often someone like a Justin Bieber played to just a handful of people at first or played the same single song over and over again without losing faith or enthusiasm. Or how Monet, no matter how talented he was, still needed the exposure, even if accidentally, a friend generated. Because in this day and age, even people with good products, talented musicians or painters, we all need to be out there generating as much exposure as possible to break through the noise. </p>
<p><strong>P.S. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/nathankontny">You should subscribe to my YouTube Channel: here</a></strong>.</p>
tag:ninjasandrobots.com,2014:Post/lazy-creative2017-09-11T08:14:42-07:002017-09-11T08:14:42-07:00Lazy creative<p><img src="https://draftin.com:443/images/53274?token=2mWflwM8wiSplZIRY1yQSZTTptxXVrPCBMmzN37u4iqh3Y8qhDy5-HrLfBjxzsap-zlVSgaNe0_oxOaaapwHCZ4" alt="james.jpeg"> </p>
<p>James Vanderbeek stars in an episode of Room 104 on HBO. The series is in the middle of its first season, but it’s already done so well that HBO’s renewed it for a second season. </p>
<p>It’s a curious show, as it takes place in a single hotel room every episode. The same hotel room over and over and over again. The room itself is also extremely uninteresting. When the design team went to Mark Duplass, the creator of the show, with tons of ideas on what the room should look like, Mark <a href="http://filmmakermagazine.com/103035-every-so-often-a-train-would-come-rumbling-by-and-the-set-would-shake-dp-doug-emmett-on-shooting-hbos-room-104/">shot them all down</a>. </p>
<p>“No, I want the room to be as bland as possible.”</p>
<p>So how did Mark Duplass create such an interesting and succesful show with this limited pallette?</p>
<hr>
<p>Our brains are lazy. Well, that’s not exactly fair. Our brains are great at conserving energy. </p>
<p>They’ve evolved to reserve the juice necessary to deal with things in our environment that are novel and potentially life altering. Hence why we tend to enjoy and remember the details of a new place we visit, but repeat visits become boring. It starts to blend together into a pattern. Unless something upsets that pattern. </p>
<p>It’s how we come up with ideas too. Thomas Ward, a psychology professor at the University of Alabama, <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010028584710103">gave the model</a> for which we come up with new ideas a name: we follow the path-of-least-resistance. When we generate new ideas, we often start with things, categories, and examples of what we already know because it’s easier.</p>
<p>Page Moreau, Professor of Marketing at the Wisconsin School of Business, however, wanted to know if we could get off that lazy path and become more creative. </p>
<p><a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/abc5/51c8072bf1c464d0868c8f9c749c3c961534.pdf">In one of her studies</a>, she had participants design a children’s toy given a palette of 20 possible objects. The twist was one group of participants could choose 5 of those objects themselves, and the other group had to use 5 objects picked for them. </p>
<p>The group who had the constraint of objects picked for them, were slightly more creative than the people who got to pick themselves. </p>
<p>The groups were then given yet another constraint. Some of the participants were allowed to use as many of the 5 objects they wanted, but other participants were told they had to use all 5. </p>
<p>Now, here’s where it got interesting. The folks who had their objects picked for them AND had to use all 5 of them, were the most creative of all the participants in the study by a lot. </p>
<p>In other words, the more constraints they were given, the more creative they got. The constraints knocked them off of their lazy path to less creative and familiar solutions. </p>
<hr>
<p>I’m having a hard time finding a television show that can keep my interest. Too many all just seem the same. A group of friends in their apartments. Superheroes battling another mega boss. </p>
<p>Yesterday I tuned out of a show when the conflict of the scene was the <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ArbitrarySkepticism">Arbitrary Skepticism trope</a>. “Hero is skeptical of problem and wants to leave. Needs convincing by the other characters.” I was sick of that when Scully from X-files created that conflict dozens and dozens of times during their run. </p>
<p>But Room 104 has captured a lot of attention. Why? It’s constraints. The fact that the whole show is constrained to this one bland room helps get the show’s staff off of their path-of-least-resistance. </p>
<p>And that’s not the only constraint. James Van Der Beek was only in a single episode because in every episode the room stays the same, but everything else changes. New cast. New era. Even a new genre. One episode is horror, another comedy, another heartfelt drama. I can’t even tell you what genre James show was, as it changes wildly during the episode :)</p>
<p>Mark Duplass, whether he realized it or not, tapped into what Page Moreau discovered. By adding these extra constraints to his show, he forced everyone to get off their lazy creative paths to finally create something interesting and original.</p>
<p>So, next time you find yourself struggling against your lack of options. Next time you find yourself wanting to utter something like “I’m stuck with my limited palette”. Just remember that more choice is actually a formula for boring and already done. Embrace your limited choices. Force yourself into more constraints. And you just might knock yourself of your own path of lazy thinking and create something that stands out.</p>
<p><strong>P.S. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkoJLANojCUUCsitmf8a3ug?sub_confirmation=1">You should subscribe to my YouTube Channel: here</a></strong>.</p>