3090: Outdated Limitations by Colin Wright of Exile Lifestyle on Creativity, Innovation & Technological Constraints

[00:00:00] This is Optimal Living Daily Episode 3090 Outdated Limitations by Colin Wright of Exile Lifestyle.com Amityrator Justin Malik, the guy that reads blogs or articles to you every day of the year covering happiness, personal development, self-help,

[00:00:18] minimalism, mindfulness and a lot more. And with that let's get right to our next post as we optimize your life Outdated Limitations by Colin Wright of Exile Lifestyle.com I love learning about industries outside of my own. They're almost always parallels to be found

[00:00:41] and those parallels can make aspects of my work more clear because of their distance from my immediate concerns It's rumored that the cd can play back 74 minutes of music because when it was developed the president of Sony's favorite symphony was Beethoven's ninth, which was 74 minutes long

[00:00:59] He wanted to deliver a format that would play his favorite symphony in its entirety And that determined the size of the now ubiquitous and outdated cd Consider that this decision has resulted in a generation of music defined by a 74 minute cutoff

[00:01:15] Songs have been scrapped from famous albums left on the cutting room floor because they wouldn't fit within that framework Likewise songs that maybe should have been left on the cutting room floor Have been added to albums to flesh out a collection that otherwise would have seemed too short

[00:01:31] In an age where 74 minutes is synonymous with album duration The history of music is one tale after another of technology guiding sound The advent of 45s changed the amplitude and volume of the music recorded and the rise of cassettes did the same

[00:01:49] Each new technology brought with it different strengths and weaknesses and the music shifted to adjust to these variables Gig bands had to change their sound entirely once they started recording because elements of their music wouldn't sound right once committed to wax

[00:02:04] Today, it's the same whether the medium is magnetic tape laser-etched polycarbonate or ones and zeros Just as music technology has warped and shifted and sanded and pruned the music we listen to So has publishing technology changed the way we perceive and by books essays and other written work

[00:02:24] For a very long time a book was a printed work of a certain length And that length was determined by how many pages it was economical to print using existing technologies Just as CDs were defined by the arbitrary length of a specific symphony

[00:02:38] The length of books were determined by the economics of the physical vehicle Used to deliver the words the paper ink and book binding materials rather than the words themselves

[00:02:50] The state of affairs is changing fast today print on demand technologies have made printing and delivering physical books far less costly And as a result a book can be nearly any length the author desires

[00:03:03] The age of trimming down or fluffing up a book to suit the ideals of the printing process Are behind us in a practical sense

[00:03:10] That doesn't mean we've moved on in perception. However, we're still in a transition stage when it comes to determining what length a book should be Our experiences with books for generations has been the same length same look same texture and weight

[00:03:24] And it'll be some time before we can fully move on to new standards and learn to feel the same nostalgia for a 70 page book As a 250 page book It'll likely be even longer before we can accept a book without weight a book with interactive media

[00:03:39] A book that doesn't feel like a book Eventually these things will become commonplace and new standards will arise that kill our perception of how ebooks should be It's the nature of nostalgia to cling to things that remind us of moments in time

[00:03:54] New technologies and the work produced with them lack such history initially at least Like music though publishing will change Like songs the written word will adjust to fit the confines of its new technological reality

[00:04:08] And like recorded sounds this will be amazing in some ways leading to new innovations and concepts and experiences And in other ways it will kill the magic of what we've come to know It'll be uncomfortable and disconcerting. It'll be a process

[00:04:23] Some will work through while others cling to the familiar at the expense of their exposure to novelty I think there's value to be had in both old and new And I think many people share this feeling you can see this in the analog movement in the music world

[00:04:37] And a similar movement is happening within publishing with a renewed focus placed on handmade and limited edition physical works These throwback methods work best. I think when paired with forward-facing digital editions

[00:04:49] But there will be some who always prefer the old to the exclusion of the new and there's nothing wrong with that There's value in both tradition and innovation One takeaway from this is that there are limitations put on our work that exist only because of tradition

[00:05:05] Not because there are practical angers on our creativity The length of books is a great example Many authors write books of about the same length because that's the length of book we've grown up with

[00:05:16] What if we wrote books that were 3 000 pages long? What if we wrote books that were less than a page long? What would that look like? What kinds of stories could we tell? Consider that you may be operating under similar limitations

[00:05:29] And that you may achieve a breakthrough if you're willing to move past established convention And play in the wilderness Consider that you may be a prisoner of outdated limitations

[00:05:39] And that the only way to know whether you want to continue adhering to them or would prefer to establish new limitations based on different variables Is to step outside the walls and play You just listened to the post titled outdated limitations by calling right of exile lifestyle.com

[00:06:01] And i'll be right back with my commentary Thank you to Colin Really interesting stuff to think about That's kind of the purpose of this podcast and this podcast is an example of what he was talking about

[00:06:13] And he has an update to this post so i'll share that with you now update april 18th 2017 Around the time i wrote this i had recently finished writing my a tale of more series Which was published in a very unusual way and which was a blast to produce

[00:06:28] That project was meant to be an experiment as much as anything else, but i can't imagine having published it in any other way Each book was 80 to 100 pages long and they were published a week apart In two seasons of five books apiece

[00:06:44] I was attempting to replicate something of what binge watching tv shows accomplished And for those who followed along in real time, i think it hit that mark Even now i find people who read that series tend to appreciate the relative brevity of the books

[00:06:57] As each complete work feels episodic rather than isolated I don't think that approach or any approach would work for every book or every series But i love figuring out new variations on the standard approach to things Is challenging but also immensely rewarding

[00:07:14] So again, thanks to Colin for bringing this up. There are so many ways to do what we do Infinite but we often confine ourselves to these boxes just because they were done a certain way since the very beginning

[00:07:26] When often that beginning is completely irrelevant now as he mentioned with the cd example in this post It's helpful to take a step back and look at things with a beginner's mind from time to time To really see if we can do something more efficiently

[00:07:40] Or even just more creatively or in a more fun and engaging way This is going to apply to everything from work to play So something to think about this week

[00:07:50] But with that have a great rest of your day and i'll be back tomorrow where your optimal life awaits