Episode 131: How to get Productive & Generate Monetary Success Even When You're a Creative (w/Didi Medina)

Today on the show we have Didi Medina. Didi is a product design and leadership consultant. He's been in the game for over 10 years in the tech industry, working with companies in New York, San Francisco, here in Israel, and all over the world. He's very much like me, in the way that we both come from the tech world with over 10 years of experience in product design.  He managed to get to a very high income while also being that creative, that guy that starts many projects, just like a lot of us.


Didi is here to talk about that, not specifically the figures, but how do you get productive? How do you manage to start a project? Finish your project. How do you become resilient? How do we not stop in the face of adversity? What is the right mindset to have about these things? Didi has such an amazing, tremendous concept about all these things from his experience and his unique philosophy, which you will see. Guys, enjoy this episode, the Commit First podcast with Didi Medina. Let's begin!

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Timestamps & Gold Gems:

[5:57 - 6:22] Didi Medina ⭐Gold Gem  

You'll think like most artists would define themselves as successful as an artist if it makes over a certain dollar or not. Which kind of brings us to a very simple point. It's like, you have to have the humility to accept that certain things are better than, “I'm making money than others”. And you cannot make certain things become the vehicle to the billion-dollar baby if it's not optimized for that.

Everything that has a bigger reward tends to take longer and requires relatively more pain and adversity to overcome. You're not gonna get through that, to see the other side of your work unless you can keep yourself lonely-headed, and whatever works for you in that process is a blessing. 

Some people find the gym to be a way to keep themselves grounded and patient and calm the process. And other people find affirmations to be, in some people, do a hybrid in both, and some people do yoga. I think whatever it is you choose to do, there's a bunch of different tools. 

I think it's fair to assume that anything you pursue to do that has delayed returns, right? It's like I start work, I break ground today, I'm probably going, gonna see the fruits of my labor in a year plus from now.  In any sort of meaningful way and probably like in a substantial way, like even further down the line.

You're gonna have to stomach a lot of like, patience and there are all these tools are very useful in calling yourself fuck down. Yeah. And just taking it, step by step

There's a whole like psychological paradox that explains that one with the Dunning-Kruger effect. It explains our confidence towards things, right? Like it's on a, it's an inverse belt curve. It's like when you know very little about something, you're very confident about it. As you learn more about it, you get very petrified about it, and as you become an expert and you're very confident and comfortable

The way I usually like to reference it is like, people have to be both methodical and disciplined, right? It's if you're all disciplined, you can work really hard in the wrong direction. If you're all methodical, with no discipline, you can be a complete philosopher, right?

And you need to have enough methodology to put your hard work to good use, which is not given. Working hard does not mean it's being applied in the right way. You can learn really fast and hard in the wrong direction. That is absolutely possible. Yeah. So you need to know how to cycle through that sometimes if you find yourself working really hard, Not getting to the results you want.

Having the humility to step back and being like, maybe it's not about me, not trying hard enough. It's about me applying that effort to the wrong place and really trying to reflect. Other times you can find yourself overthinking it, over-planning something to death, and being like trying to convince yourself, out of every possible risk.

And that's also a good time to just,  shut up and just do learn. And then when you get to the bottom of that curve, like then make the decisions on what is and what isn't, cuz your brain is gonna both for better and for worse, try to make assumptions way too far into the pipe in advance to try to protect you.

The experiential level of your body is going to conflict with what you understand intellectually. And that's where these tools really come in, they police your emotional level, meditating right? A little bit more can help slow down that response of going from, I feel a lot of control to needing to do something about it.

Yeah. So that's yeah. All those tools really help slow down that emotional state to try to keep up, with what you already understand to be true on an intellectual level. And I think like over time as you take on more risk and you tolerate more risk and you get more comfortable with just risk being all around you, your tolerance goes up, you'll find needing these tools less and less for those reasons. 

One thing that I do is, I found it I think from Tim Ferris a long time ago. It's like one of those things that like all the methodologies and ways of doing things. This thing, this one stuck with me was like, Fear-Setting, right? It's the human condition that is programmed to be afraid of loss more than it is programmed to pursue opportunity, right? So if you're trying to understand why you're reacting to something in a certain way, that doesn't make sense to you. 

Write problems that you're trying to solve. Talk to people who've already solved it. That's the hard rule. It's like, don't ask people to help theorize what they think would work if they were in your shoes or whatever.

It's very dangerous. Like you don't need more speculation, right? It's like you wanna solve problem X, find someone who's already solved it, and then go talk to them. You'll get a whole different experience. So that's like number one, right? And then if you can't get mentors, be your own mentor.

https://twitter.com/thatguydidi

Fear-Setting: The Most Valuable Exercise I Do Every Month By Tim Ferris

The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt  & Greg Lukianoff 

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