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Hosted by productivity strategist Mike Vardy, A Productive Conversation offers insightful discussions on how to craft a life that aligns with your intentions. Each episode dives into the art of time devotion, productiveness, and refining your approach to daily living. Mike invites guests who are thinkers, doers, and creators to share their strategies for working smarter and living more intentionally. From practical tips to deep dives on mindset shifts, this podcast will help you reframe your relationship with time and find balance in a busy world.
Subscribe and join the conversation—because a productive life is more than just getting things done.
Without further ado, here is my friend and the guest on A Productive Conversation, Steve Kamb. Steve, thanks for being
Steve Kamb:here What's up, Mike?
Mike Vardy:How's it going?
Steve Kamb:Dude, I'm so happy to be here.
Mike Vardy:So first off, if any of you have questions during the recording today, you wanna chime in, I can definitely add your questions to the mix. Steve will see them pop up here. Just in the in the lower corner, you'll be able to see them. Steve's got the Captain America shield in background. I don't have my green lantern pillow on my chair like I usually do.
Mike Vardy:But Steve Steve and I have had many conversation about comic book nerdery. I'm gonna talk to you about Dungeons and Dragons a little bit during our conversation because that comes up in the book, as well as video games that I have yet to play. Elden Ring, I bought. Suck at it. Baldur's Gate, I bought, suck at it.
Mike Vardy:My son is the gamer and he's trying to get me to do more. But this is the thing, Steve. My son, Colton, is now going on 16 years old. My daughter is in college in Montreal. I just saw her.
Mike Vardy:She's 21.
Steve Kamb:Wow. Yeah. I was I was literally I can remember the moment getting an email. I'm not kidding you. I think it was sixteen years ago, and I was writing my blog.
Steve Kamb:You know? Remember remember blogs? I was writing a blog called Nerd Fitness, and I was like, I got an email from this guy who wants to interview me. And I remember, like, where I set it up at the at this at this kitchen table in my in my house with my two roommates and told them all to be quiet so that I could do this interview. And that was the first interview I ever did with anything relating to the Internet.
Steve Kamb:So, Mike, this is such a cool, like, full circle moment for me. And, my god, what a what a life we have lived in between those sixteen years.
Mike Vardy:Oh my goodness, man. Like, I mean, it's just weird to think that, you know, we've we've gone through so many different things and we've tried so many different things over the years. And the book is called How to Try Again. So this is a perfect way to kind of segue into this. One of the things I noticed right off the top, I'm gonna just kind of scroll through here because first off, I didn't realize that you knew as much about D and D I should have when it comes to warlocks and the things that they make.
Mike Vardy:They make packs. I actually asked my son about this. I'm like, is this is this really good? Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Mike Vardy:Because my son is DMing an entire campaign that he wrote right now. It's been going on for like a year and a half. And so, can you tell me as we get into things, the role of the pact in relation to this book and in relation to kind of where you're at right now, this kind of way that you're living a pact life?
Steve Kamb:Sure. So as I said, you know, I started a website at this point seventeen years ago called Nerd Fitness. And over that time, I've written articles, a thousand articles. We've had tens of thousands tens of thousands of students move through various, you know, workout programs that Nerd Fitness have. We have this coaching program where we've now coached 20,000 people in one on one coaching.
Steve Kamb:And across all of this, over seventeen years, we kept running into like the same or like the the most universal problem. And essentially, it comes down to the fact that like everybody has this all or nothing mindset when it comes to aspects of their life. Mhmm. The problem with all or nothing is that it becomes all then nothing. Right?
Steve Kamb:We have two or three great weeks, and then your kid gets sick or work sucks or something happens and we get too busy. We say, you know what? I'll try again. I'll I'll try later when I'm less busy or when life gets out of the way. So I wanted to write a book, like, specifically for what to do after those three weeks and after you have fallen back into that trap again for the thousandth time.
Steve Kamb:And that's why I came with this idea called the pact. And I wanted it to be something so simple that you could remember. And as your brain starts to send you back into this all or nothing loop, you could say like, hold on. Wait a second. That nerdy Steve guy told me to make a pact.
Steve Kamb:Like, okay, let me do that. Pause, accept, change, try. And I wanted people to you know, and I provide stories for each of these examples. But really, it's making sure you're trying at the right thing or at the same at the at the correct thing for you. It's accepting the limitations of your life.
Steve Kamb:It's changing and doing something different than you did last time so you don't end up with the same challenges that you did previous time. And then trying again with a different mindset. So and as I was putting this together, one of my one of my earlier readers or, you know, friends of mine is like, dude, you came up with packs like warlocks. And I was like, oh, yeah, d and d. Right?
Steve Kamb:Like, like, you know, it was almost like a divine intervention, I suppose from from Cthulhu or, you know, flying spaghetti monster or some demigods somewhere. But I came up with the pact independently, and had just played D and D recently. And then realized like, oh, I'm talking about a nerdy concept here about making a pact. And it all works together. This is this is perfect.
Steve Kamb:I have to run with pact as the framework.
Mike Vardy:So we we mentioned earlier that we've been doing this for a while and the one thing that I think when it comes to the idea of PACT that is the thing I think that people struggle with out of the gate is the pause, is that p, right? I mean, we've we've lived and we'll we'll speak speak specifically in the entrepreneurial space about like the pause is not respected. The pause is not is not is not promoted. Maybe that's a better way to put it. Like it's go go go fast fast fast now and now let's like you said, the all or nothing.
Mike Vardy:We must keep moving forward. There's if we take a break, someone's going to get in front of us. So how do you how does someone when they recognize that they are, you know, kind of when they're moving in a direction they when they realize, oh, something's not working. And you and you mentioned in the book like a bunch of things kind of like dominoes fell for you and you're like, okay. Propensity is to start like putting putting things in place and just moving, doing some kind of motion.
Mike Vardy:And then productivity parlance is what people do. If I just start doing something, then something right is going to happen instead of taking that pause. Why is the pause so important?
Steve Kamb:Yeah. I think, you know, I'm saying this as a recovering believe the term is insecure overachiever. So somebody who has grinded and tried to become more productive in the hopes that I would eventually feel enough or have enough or reach some mythical level of success and productivity nirvana that I have no problems. Shockingly, the faster I tried to get there, the more stressed out I became, the more efficient I was at driving myself crazy. And this is where that pause came in.
Steve Kamb:Actually, ended up firing myself from my own company because I realized I was trying to get more productive at the wrong thing. We'll get to that story in a minute. Think a lot of people, whether it's fitness, being more productive at work, trying to build a business, we chase progress at all costs. And we think if we're not making progress, then we're falling behind. And if we're falling behind, we're failures.
Steve Kamb:There's like a third option that we're not considering here. There's progress moving forward. There's kind of like status quo average staying where we are. And then there's the opposite of progress, which is regress. Like making things worse or throwing our energy at things that are actually not helpful for us and burning ourselves out on something that is not actually making any progress.
Steve Kamb:So it might be using a a a, oh, hey. I I I'm I post every day on Instagram because I saw some influencer tell me that I'm supposed to post every day on Instagram, and that's how they got famous. But I hate Instagram, but I'm gonna do it every day, and I hate it. And weirdly, after a year, I'm burned out. I hate Instagram.
Steve Kamb:I've made no growth, But I'm gonna keep doing it because that's what I'm supposed to do. I think there's a lot of us that do this in a lot of areas of business. Yeah. And pausing and just slowing down and saying, like, is this working for me? Do I enjoy it?
Steve Kamb:Is it am I seeing incremental improvement? Am I trying too hard in certain areas and burning myself out in others? You know, we say this a lot at Nerd Fitness, but I think what feels like a, like, a motivation problem and we're trying to get ourselves to do be more productive or do more things is often a resources problem. Like, we're asking way too much of ourselves. There's too much going on at home.
Steve Kamb:Our bosses are putting too much crap on our plates. Whatever it is, like, we need that pause, that that take a breath and slow down. And and instead of just keep going and trying again repeatedly, pausing and being like, wait a second. Am I actually doing the thing I'm supposed to be doing on the path that feels right for me? Or are there other questions I should be asking right now?
Mike Vardy:Yeah. Yeah. And and what's what's also interesting is that there's such a barrage of noise that the pause is like it's not just a one time thing. You have to like constantly remind yourself that because I mean, good example would be, you mentioned the social media stuff. Right?
Mike Vardy:Like, you if you're told post post regular, post regular, the algorithm, the algorithm, you gotta feed the beast, you gotta feed the beast. And then am I feeding the wrong beast? Because it's not just it's not just I hate doing it, but what if you like I remember a long time ago, and I know you mentioned Ali Abdullah in the book, think at the at the tail end of the book, right? Like Ali. And and I remember when there was a few other productivity people and I did this early on where it was all about the apps.
Mike Vardy:As we post about apps and we post about these apps, then we're gonna get the views. But it and I felt the pull of that. I'm like, I don't want to do that. If I do that, then I'm gonna be chasing Notion and all these different apps. And And all of a sudden, ended up way over here when I didn't wanna go over that.
Mike Vardy:Because that's the other thing too is and that's a form of regression. Right? Because because to me, that's not going in the direction that I intended to go in. Right?
Steve Kamb:Well, not only that, but there's a question we're not asking. And this is the one that I've learned the hardest and had to learn repeatedly over and over and over is we if we're if we pick the wrong goal or we're expecting a certain outcome, we tell ourselves, like, I'm willing to do this thing to reach this thing that I don't like to reach that goal. The question we're not asking is, what if this works? Right? Like, if it actually works, the reward is that you have to keep doing it.
Steve Kamb:And if you don't like Instagram, getting really good at Instagram, the reward is that you have to keep doing Instagram. Sure. People you'd be like, oh, well then I can hire somebody to do the Instagram. It's not gonna be the same. I can hire somebody to answer the comments.
Steve Kamb:I can hire a film crew and whatever. Then all of a sudden, you're still doing the thing that you don't like, but now you have the the weighted the weight of, you know, a a a staff and people, and now all of sudden your schedule is not your own. I think so many people forget to ask, like, not just like, well, what if it doesn't work? Or how how do I get there faster? But, like, what if this works?
Steve Kamb:In the book, I say, like, don't just ask, like, is the juice worth the squeeze? But ask, like, do I even like juice? Right? Like, if you don't like juice, then you don't need to go that path. And I've had to learn this lesson repeatedly.
Steve Kamb:Like I said, I I started Nerd Fitness as a writer. I love writing. It's what probably is how you found me either through maybe, you know, Art of Manliness, another fellow writer and Brett McKay, or somebody shared my essay somewhere and we connected. And over time, like you, you know, maybe I, oh, wait a second. There are these services and things that people are asking of me.
Steve Kamb:Nobody else is doing it. I should probably I can do that. Okay. Fine. Well, I need to hire people for that.
Steve Kamb:Okay. Let's hire people. And eventually, I found myself in charge of a team of forty, forty five, 50 people, somewhere in there. And I started avoiding work. Like, I didn't want to do my job of the company that I built with the job that I hand created for myself.
Steve Kamb:And eventually, realized that I was trying to get better at something that I actually hated. And I was managing people and shaping the trajectory of a business and spending all this time in meetings. And what I wasn't doing anymore was writing. So the only reason this book got written was because I effectively demoted and then fired myself and took huge steps back and said, like, wait a second. I have to pause.
Steve Kamb:I have to accept my reality and who I am, which is that I'm just a nerd that loves to write. And I like, nothing makes me happier than connecting concepts and writing about it in a fun nerdy way. I have to change something, which is firing myself. And then I have to try this new path with that expectation. And here I am three years later, you know, with this book sitting in front of me that I'm so proud of.
Steve Kamb:It's the most Steve thing I've ever done. Mike, I'm sure you can attest to this, but it's just full of, like, really bad jokes and puns and self deprecating humor because, like, that's who I am. But I had to accept that the thing I was trying to do and chase to feel enough wasn't actually what I wanted, and it wasn't in line with my strengths or weaknesses.
Mike Vardy:Yeah. It definitely felt like I was having a conversation with you. But it wasn't just like the nerdy jokes or the puns or whatever, it's the connective tissue that you actually had a conversation in our community book club, Time Crafting Trust Community Book Club about John Inkuff's book soundtracks. And John writes a very much like in a similar way, like he's connecting stories and relatable human kind of stuff, whether it's nerdy or otherwise that people can relate to. And one of the things that I that you brought up in the book and you just talked about acceptance that I found that I've I've not come across in quite this way, whether it's a Steve way or any way, is the of normalcy, like back to normal.
Mike Vardy:And I'm like, you know, no one talks about that enough either. Right? Like we talked about the pause and and and what if this what question am I not asking? This idea of back to normal. I'd love for you to expand on this because this is another thing that we we just kind of fly by or float by and don't really pay attention to.
Steve Kamb:Sure. The the the ex not the excuse. The apology our coaches get more often than any other apology from people that are, you know, getting coached by by us is, hey. I'm sorry I missed my workout this week. But next week, things should get back to normal.
Steve Kamb:Then unsurprisingly, next week, something else happens. And then the week after that, something else happens. And I tell this story that somebody kept apologizing, and one of our coaches, you know, recorded this really kind video to the person and said, like, look, I don't know to put this any more gently, but, like, there is this normal you think that's around the corner. Like, that normal's not coming back. Like, you just became a new dad or you're taking care of your your mom with dementia now.
Steve Kamb:Like, this is the new reality and that normal that you're waiting for to give you the permission to to eventually be perfect again and fill out your perfect routine for the week or be perfectly productive. Like, that normal is not coming back anytime soon. Sure. Maybe years from now. But for the meantime, like, this is the normal that we actually have, warts and all, hiccups, challenges, weaknesses, whatever it may be.
Steve Kamb:So I I think the acceptance for me around this is accepting that, like, whatever our actual day to day is, that's actually normal. You know, we think normal is predictable and safe and routine. And for most people, especially if you have kids, like, that's just not there's no such thing as as normal. And the sooner you can let that burden off of your shoulders of setting the expectation at perfect execution of a normal routine, then we can start to do like the actual messy work of, okay. What can we fit in here?
Steve Kamb:And how can we let ourselves off the hook from this, you know, expectation of, oh, but then things will get back to normal eventually. I actually think about this too. I found myself in Nerd Fitness burning myself out repeatedly because I kept telling myself, well, I'll just push really hard for four months, and then I'll fix it. But then I can go back to a normal thing. But then of course, four months later, something else would happen.
Steve Kamb:Or I would fix it. And surprisingly, it didn't solve all of my problems and make me magically happy. It would be like, well, okay. Then I'll just wait to the next normal thing. And eventually, it came back to this acceptance of, hey, man.
Steve Kamb:Like, here now, today, like, clothes on the floor because you forgot to fold the laundry or picking your kid up early from school because they got sick. Like, whatever it is, like, that's normal. We have to work within those constraints. And that's actually really powerful because then you're finally able to do something about it.
Mike Vardy:Well, we talked about this in the green room beforehand, like, you know, travel and stuff like that that I talked about. Like, that's an a good example. Right? Like, I mean, I can't wait for things to get back to normal. Like, that's part of the mentality.
Mike Vardy:I'm like, well, what? What? No. I mean, post COVID, peep that's one of the things I've noticed, especially in the world of productivity is like, okay, now that we're getting we wanna get things back to the way they were or back to normal. Well, remote works out of the out of the it's it's out there now.
Mike Vardy:In fact, we were doing that before it was even in fashion. Right? Like that was the kind of stuff that well, with nerd fit I mean, remote work, digital nomadism, that stuff was already happening. It just exploded because out of out of necessity rather than necessarily desire. But now it's out there.
Mike Vardy:It's like, well, we're gonna go back to the way nope. It's there's nothing's the same. Once we move forward, like, again, the past is is prologue. Right?
Steve Kamb:Yeah. This is normal. Yeah. Like, doesn't mean predictable. Normal means whatever today like, the average of our messy days, that's the normal part.
Steve Kamb:And the sooner we can accept that, the sooner we can finally say, like, okay. Within these ugly weird constraints, how do I still get the things done that I need to get done? And maybe still have some time to do the things that I want to do and relieve that pressure of I must hold myself to the standard I used to hold back before I had kids, back before COVID, back before, I worked, before I was trying to build a business while working my day job or before I had to work two shifts or whatever it may be. Like, the sooner we can get past that or accept it with with compassion, I think the sooner we can finally get to how to actually be productive with the limited time we do have within that window.
Mike Vardy:Yeah. And I mean, we we're gonna get to the c, which is change because one of the things we've had the Adalore come from the podcast before, talk about tiny experiments and experimentation comes up in the book. One of the things I've been I actually looked at this week was as I was going through my my paper planner, because we use digital tools as well for me and Sarah to communicate and make sure we're working asynchronously. But I found lately that because I theme my days, there are some things that just I can I look at the week? Jesse Isler talked about this too when he talks about word counts as a writer and you mentioned you give several examples in the book about writers and how they each have their own routines and how we live in this world.
Mike Vardy:I mean, there's so much speed. We're on YouTube right now. So many like, I followed Brandon Sanderson's writing routine for a week and this is what happened or I followed I mean, there's there's entire
Steve Kamb:Did they magically become Brandon Sanderson?
Mike Vardy:No. No. They did not make over $1,000,000 on their Kickstarter, no less. No. That's I'm I'm shocked.
Mike Vardy:I don't But I mean, there are some interesting things you can try. Like, like the Hemingway method where he stops mid sentence, like, when his timer goes off. Like, there's certain tricks, but to be wholesale after these things. And so one of the things that I that I've tried to do is what Jesse mentioned this was he instead of trying to write so many words per day, he said, I just wanna write this many words per week. And this just goes to show the nuance of of not only trying but that this idea of changing and experimentation.
Mike Vardy:Can you dive into some of this experimentation stuff because yes, Anne Lohr covered it in her book Tiny Experiments and we all fell in love with that and she's she's super smart and she's definitely got the scientist angle of it down. But I wanna hear it from the nerd Steve aspect of how he how his experimentation works and how it's brought up in the book.
Steve Kamb:Sure. So actually, I I I had I've had a chance to meet with Ann Lard a few times and she was nice enough to provide a blurb for the book. But I literally pulled her aside and I said, like, I loved your book. I haven't read it. Or, like, rather I didn't read it while writing my because I didn't want it I didn't want it to influence my writing.
Steve Kamb:I wanted to you know? And so my angle when I talk about experimentation in my book, I talk about it through the lens of there's a TV show I used to watch as a kid called mister wizard. And it was this show where what I thought was this scientist invites kids to, you know, do these fun experiments. So they're gonna fill up balloons with, you know, various, you know, certain gases or they're going to test launching watermelons or, you know, like, making volcanoes out of, you know, with baking soda and whatever. Like, it's it's like the fun experiments that made science look really fun.
Steve Kamb:So that was my my, introduction to science as a kid. And, I I kind of like mix in the experimentation aspect of, hey. We don't know what's going to work. We're going to treat this like a nonjudgmental experiment. And not only that, but like we can also we can also learn from another profession.
Steve Kamb:The way I look at it is imagine we're detectives. Right? And we're solving like the the case of past us. We get to look at the last time we tried to be productive or whichever strategy we tried to implement. And we put our, you know, our Sherlock Holmes hat and get our giant magnifying glass and be like, oh, clue.
Steve Kamb:Look at this. Like, I figured it out. I was really productive for these three weeks when my when my boss was out of town traveling, and I could be really productive in the office. But as soon as the boss came back, then all of a sudden, they were walking up to my desk repeatedly, or they were pinging me all day on Slack or whatever it may be. Oh, interesting.
Steve Kamb:Okay. I now have a clue. And I could the next time I try my next experiment, maybe this requires a conversation with your boss or a conversation with your spouse or you're gonna try working out of a different location. Like, whatever it may be, like treating it like a nonjudgmental experiments based on past information. That's all knowledge we get to pull from, and we can try something different.
Steve Kamb:Right? Like, the reality is whether it's Hemingway stopping a sentence stopping a sentence halfway through or number of words each week. In the book, I talk about Ian Fleming. You know, he flew to Jamaica every winter. And for fourteen years in a row, he typed on a gold plated typewriter every morning from nine to noon and then went swimming in the ocean and then edited and then crushed cocktails.
Steve Kamb:And he did this at his ocean compound called Goldeneye. So super nerdy. That's where the name Goldeneye, the movie eventually came from was an homage to his compound. Like, that worked for him. I do not have a Jamaican oceanfront compound named Goldeneye.
Steve Kamb:I asked the publisher. They would not give me one, which I think is a little frustrating, but you do what you can.
Mike Vardy:You tried.
Steve Kamb:At the same time, I tried. I did try, and I had to try something different. Right?
Mike Vardy:Yep.
Steve Kamb:You then have Agatha Christie, who wrote 60 plus detective novels, sold, like, over a billion, maybe 2,000,000,000 copies of her books worldwide in so many different languages. She didn't have, like, a a consistent place to write. She would like, oh, I write in bits and spells and bursts, and my friends never see me write. And I like a dog with a bone, I spear it away for thirty minutes at a time. And, like, it's just fun for me.
Steve Kamb:Like, that sounds like the exact opposite of flying to Jamaica and needing to write every day at a specific routine. The thing is both of those strategies work for the right person. So when you're experimenting, it's perfectly acceptable. And I talk about it kind of like you imagine you're like, you're you're walking through this buffet aisle, there's different foods and strategies and things you wanna try. Amazing.
Steve Kamb:Oh, that looks good over here. Like, I'm going to try it and see if it works for me as an experiment. And you set a timeline, hey. I'm gonna try this for a month. And that month is not like, do I become Brandon Sanderson?
Steve Kamb:But rather, it's did this strategy work for me? Do I want to keep doing it? And what did I learn about myself in the process? So the change aspect is like, take all of the knowledge that we have before, like detectives. What worked?
Steve Kamb:What didn't work? And then like scientists, we're going to pick a new strategy, and we're gonna test a different hypothesis. And we can do so by sampling and picking the strategy from the people that we admire, the people that are like us. I think that's really important. We're not just emulating, you know, the the the billionaires.
Steve Kamb:We're not emulating, you know, the people that are running two hour marathons. Like, we're emulating people who we know who seem like they have a pretty good work life balance or they have their act together in a way that we are that we admire. And, hey, we're gonna try to sample that, and we're gonna test it as an experiment to see if it works for us.
Mike Vardy:Three things. Number one, I thought you'd bring up Batman as the detective, to be honest. That was a missed opportunity.
Steve Kamb:I just had my water cup.
Mike Vardy:Man, secondly, we're gonna get into the comedy part soon, which comes in the in part in the in the tea element of try. But I wanna circle to what Dan says first. So first off, as soon as you started dropping mister wizard, this came up from Dan, professor Proton. And but he also brings us up back to the idea of normal, and I do like this. The idea of it's funny, but I think my situation is getting where I can create the normal that works for me.
Mike Vardy:And I think that that's really interesting. Yeah. I think that's a really interesting way to kinda look at it is that it's an embracing the fact that normal is there is no no like normal is now, like you mentioned. This is normal. This is normal.
Mike Vardy:This is normal. It's kind of like now. This is now. This is now. This is now.
Mike Vardy:Like, it's it's never static. It's always dynamic. So I like this idea of what Dan's brought up.
Steve Kamb:Yeah. It's it's redefining normal and removing the baggage and of the expectation that often comes with this hypothetical normal that we think is right around the corner. And it's when there's, like, unicorns and the sun the sun is shining and our our schedule is perfectly clear and everything works out. Like, it's funny. I I can't remember what I was what I was getting done, but some some renovation project.
Steve Kamb:And the guy said, well, if all goes according to plan, this should be done in about two, three weeks. This is a contractor that
Mike Vardy:said this to you. Right?
Steve Kamb:Contractor. Yeah. Yeah. And I said, I've like, has any project ever gone according to plan? And he just started laughing.
Steve Kamb:And sure enough, six weeks later, it was done. But it was not because, you know, we think like, oh, if things go according to plan, we'll get there. Yeah. But we set the expectation that according to plan. But in the history of plans, don't know if any plan has ever gone according to plan.
Mike Vardy:Yeah. And the interesting thing about an accord is an agreement, which, I mean, according to plan is I mean, you're so we're not agreeing, so it's not according. But you bring up the idea of a contractor. And Nate Bargatze has this great comedy bit about contractors. I don't know if you've seen it or not.
Mike Vardy:It's freaking hilarious. I love his stuff. And you bring up comedians in in the the part of packed known as t, the tri part. And that hit home for me, especially because you you know, I used to do sketch and improv and stand up and such. And there's a line where you like comics don't tell a joke because it's funny.
Mike Vardy:They tell a joke until it's funny. And so it's it's what you've done with packed is you've kind of like it's it's it's both layered but also cyclical. And and what I liked about this is that when you get to that tri level, there is experimentation happening but it's the effort. Right? And and and the willingness like comedians, I mean, what's what do they say the the the most people people are most afraid of of all things is public speaking.
Mike Vardy:Right? Comedians aren't just trying to do public speaking. They're trying to make public speaking funny. And so I I mean, you saw Taylor Tomlinson. I mean, it's it's such an interesting Berbiglia brings up something like Berbiglia.
Mike Vardy:I'm dropping names like like people should know who they
Steve Kamb:I love that quote of his. Yeah.
Mike Vardy:It's so good. You have to outthink your audience and then make it seem like you're not outthinking your audience. And then you deliver as if it's this thing you just thought of. That's sort of the magic trick of it. So really quickly, and I'm not trying to toot my own, but when you as soon as you mentioned Sherlock Holmes, and I know you, I'm like, I'm gonna bring up Batman.
Mike Vardy:Like, I'm gonna bring up Batman because that's just the way my mind works. And so you find the perfect and improv works that way. Bring up yes and as well too. So let's can we dive into that idea of where because I love when comedy comes into the mix.
Steve Kamb:Sure. I've never done stand up comedy, but my god, do I it makes me like, to me, it seems like the most vulnerable, purest form of, like, of of art. I live I live here in Nashville, Tennessee, birthplace of of Nate Bargatze, and have got a chance to see him live multiple times. I have seen, you know, shows in Madison Square Garden. I've seen shows at the Cellar in New York City.
Steve Kamb:I've seen shows and just documentaries on comedy. Like, I just I find it so interesting because it's just one person with a microphone, like, sharing, like, some weird aside that they came up with. And with, like, getting crickets as a response, like, just hearing nothing sounds so terrifying to me. And yet, these people do it day after day. They get up and they tell the same joke, but they change it just a little bit based on audience feedback.
Steve Kamb:You know, there's like a slight pivot or there is an additional pause added or there is an aside, they change a word or they change and, like, by the time we see this comedy specials on Netflix, those things have been tested and run through hundreds of times in hundreds of clubs across America. Yeah. I tell the story of a comedian Taylor Tomlinson, who I saw at the Ryman here in Nashville. But the New York Times did this whole article chronic chronicling the joke that she told when I saw her perform it. And she talks about how they like, at one point, she changed the name of her best friend's fiance because, you know, saying Todd was funnier than what the guy's you know, what what his previous name was.
Steve Kamb:So she changed it to Todd and other phrases. And, know, Berbiglia talks about how you have to make it seem like you didn't come up with it or, you just came up with it on the spot, but it is actually unbelievably polished. And and, like, part of the performance art is making it seem like you just came up with it, and you're almost impressed by yourself that it came out of your mouth. Like, or surprised or, you know, befuddled or confused that it came out of you. But, like, that's most of that is is is part of that performance.
Steve Kamb:And I just think that is so so pure. And the way I talk about it in the book is like, that's how we can be thinking about this attempt to try things. If not just like, I'm gonna try and see what happens, but rather, there's probably signals life is giving us. You know, I I share the the stuff about comedy, but I also talk about Pixar and how they have a brain trust. I had test readers to read early versions of my book, which was horrifying and was not good for my ego and made me, sad in lots of ways.
Steve Kamb:But it ultimately made for an infinitely better book because they told me what worked and what didn't and where they got confused and lost. And there were so many signals available to me that if I had the courage to say like, I'm not just trying this, but I'm trying it. And I can I can try it and make adjustments along the way? Like, I that is going to make for a better product. It's gonna make me a better person.
Steve Kamb:It's gonna make the book better. It's going to help me navigate all sorts of things. So I just I love comedy. It's it's woven throughout the book because it's it's something that I'm just such a a fan of and hopefully will continue to be.
Mike Vardy:So as we get close to wrapping up, Steve, I wanna like, once as you go through the book, you obviously go through those four elements, but then there's, you know, okay, how do we use them in our lives? Like how do we use packs in our lives? Like what's the next thing to try? And I don't wanna spend I won't be able to pick up the book. So but I do wanna talk about the idea of the doom loop because I think that was really a fascinating area of where where I think we get stuck.
Mike Vardy:And I think that's where the pause gets messed up. Right? Like, so in other words, when that happens, and as I was reading, I'm like, oh, so this is where the trip up point happens and you've got to get out of it so that you can go back to where you need to to kind of say, okay, let's so can you can you touch on the doom loop and just kinda go into it? As much as I mean, there's there's like definitely I mean, you've dedicated a whole chapter to it and it and we I'm not gonna go into the strategies that will probably work. We'll touch on maybe one of them, but I'd love for you to talk about the doom loop so that people can say, okay.
Mike Vardy:Am I experiencing this? And here's how I can maybe escape it.
Steve Kamb:Yeah. I mean, we we've already talked very briefly about how all or nothing becomes all then nothing. The doom loop is essentially the the the this three to four week loop that everybody finds themselves in. The most like the the first step is feeling less than. And society, social media, our internal psyche, whatever it may be, has no problem telling us why we are less than.
Steve Kamb:We're not fit enough. We're not we don't have enough money. We're not productive enough. We're not good looking enough. We're not what what whatever it is, we don't have enough of it.
Steve Kamb:But then we see the thing. I don't know what that thing is, but in each individual person, there is that thing, and it's the thing that is going to change everything. It's buying the new journal. It's it's trying it's it's buying all the new workout equipment. It's following the diet that The Rock followed to get in shape for whatever.
Steve Kamb:It's following the thing, and we get irrationally excited about it. And we pile as much hope and expectation on it. We we put in our calendars. We tell people on social media. We tell people and how great this thing is that we're going to do.
Steve Kamb:And for two to three weeks, things go great. And as we said before, we go all in, and then life happens. We're waiting for normal. So then we we say, you know what? I have to stop.
Steve Kamb:I'll come back to this later when things are less busy. Right? And we go all the way back to the beginning. We're back to less than, except we now have the extra guilt and shame and sadness that we couldn't follow through once again. The challenge here is people often do this repeatedly, and they keep trying to do the same thing.
Steve Kamb:Right? Like, yes, if you don't succeed, try try again. But also doing the same thing repeatedly expecting different results is the, as they say, the definition of insanity. I know so many people that are trying to run a five k or run a marathon. And every year in January, they train for a marathon.
Steve Kamb:And they make it three weeks in, and life happens. And this happens everywhere. So this doom loop is us moving through this repeatedly, piling more and more shame and sadness and frustration and should onto our shoulders. And the end result is we end up back where we started just with even more of that piled on. So that whole chapter is about essentially the mental I call them escape pods that we can take.
Steve Kamb:Like, when we're going around this loop, hop in one of these mental escape pods, get yourself out of this loop and start doing things differently so we don't fall back into these same old patterns over and over and over.
Mike Vardy:We before we wrap up the 10 strategies, let's talk about which one of those 10? Like, so you've 10 Think listed about the one can you think about the one you used most recently to keep doing Yeah. The
Steve Kamb:So there's a whole chapter with 10 strategies that might work to keep doing the thing that you've picked. My favorite is probably half assed the thing.
Mike Vardy:Which is like the opposite of what Nick Offerman's character in Parks and Rec says, never half ass one thing, half ass two things, whole ass one thing. But you're saying, nah, half ass them.
Steve Kamb:Yes. With apologies to Ron Swanson. Yes. I love Ron Swanson. And I never want to speak ill of the man, and I would never speak against him.
Steve Kamb:What I'm saying is I think this this is the most effective way to treat all or nothing, that all or nothing mentality. And instead of asking, like, do I have time to do this? Do I have time to do this thing? Instead, the question has to be, how much of the thing do I have time for? And it just constantly requires us to change our definition just like we did of normal.
Steve Kamb:It might change our definition of what productive means for today. It might mean changing our definition of what a workout means for today. Like yesterday, my workout was sixty minutes, and it was it was great. Tomorrow, I have to record another podcast and some so, like, tomorrow's workout might be half assed because it's only gonna be thirty minutes. But that's the most that's the most amount of ass that I can give to this workout.
Steve Kamb:So as a result of this, it's perfectly acceptable, and that's, like, still a complete done day. So when you miss a day, when you, don't think you have time for this whole large thing that you've set your expectations at, perfectly fine. Half assed is perfectly acceptable. And I realize that sounds so simple, but we all do it. And if we give ourselves permission to half ass something and accept that that is the amount that we're able to give on that day, like, that's still a win.
Steve Kamb:And it doesn't mean that we're behind. It doesn't mean that we are not making as much progress as we should be making. It means we did what we needed to do that day. Like, damn, that's a huge win.
Mike Vardy:Steve, there's so much more that we could get into, but I wanna be respectful of your time and those that are watching and those that are listening. One thing I will say is that one big takeaway I got from the book is that it basically to me showcases how much agency we have. Like in a world that doesn't seem to wanna give us agency, you're like, hey, listen. And there's a permissiveness to it. There's you just mentioned like that that last tip, it's a hey, it's okay.
Mike Vardy:You can do this. It's there's a permissiveness about even a validation to a degree. And I think that that's the kind of stuff that we need today, especially in a world that has so so many demands on our time, our energy, our our efforts, all of those things. I mean, could have gotten to efficacy and all those things. So you bring up that as well.
Mike Vardy:But what is one thing that someone can do when they pick up the book, which they can as of this recording, they can preorder it. Right? And they can we'll we'll figure out where they can go. We'll we'll let you share that. But what's one big takeaway that you're hoping people get from the book?
Mike Vardy:The
Steve Kamb:chapter that I probably spent the most time on and the one that I personally needed the most, is the chapter on failure. And I think we're all so hard on ourselves. And we set our expectations so high that when things don't work out or we don't follow through on something, we're really, really good at beating ourselves up. And I think the lesson I want people to learn is like, we're not failures when that happens. We're not failures.
Steve Kamb:We're human, and we failed at something. Okay. Here's your hug. This is Steve giving you a virtual hug saying like, welcome to the club. We're all humans.
Steve Kamb:We're all weirdos. We're all figuring it out. And here's what we can do about it. So remember, pause, accept, change, try. Like, you can do something.
Steve Kamb:It's just setting your expectation at what you're capable of doing within the constraints of your weird normal life.
Mike Vardy:Steve, I wanna share this from Roxy too before we wrap up. I'm learning to play the piano. I've been at it three years with slow improvement. I think it's a lifetime hobby. I don't want to be got all the gear, but no idea.
Mike Vardy:I'm progressing slowly.
Steve Kamb:I love that. And I have a piano right behind me. Well, there's a few instruments hanging behind me. I love to play music as well very poorly, and it makes me very happy.
Mike Vardy:So there you go. There you go. Steve, thanks so much for taking the time to join us today. Where can people pick up the book and keep with keep up with what you've got going on?
Steve Kamb:Yeah. It's very simple. Howtotryagain.com. I wrote the or I I obviously wrote the book myself, then I put everything I could into this book. But I also did the audiobook recording myself.
Steve Kamb:So if you enjoyed this, you're like, that Steve guy's a little weird, and I wanna hear him read the book and tell the funny jokes himself. I did the audiobook, and I had so much fun doing it. So I hope this book can help you. I'm also all over the Internet, like, pretty much anywhere. Just Google Steve Kam.
Steve Kamb:It's s t e v e k a m b. Pretty easy to find. I'm on pretty much every platform, and I would be honored, honestly, if you pick this book up. I really think it'll help you. I I poured my heart and soul into it.
Mike Vardy:Thanks for having a productive conversation with me today, Steve.
Steve Kamb:Thanks. It's so great to talk to you.