richard gu gu g-u-e richard gu says uh that they find themselves getting so wrapped up in a project
that any distraction makes them frustrated and they lose track of time so that they uh they soon
realize they've been working for far too long how do i manage distraction and knowing when to
take a break well those are two different things um i managed i i i don't like being distracted
when i'm in the middle of a build but that doesn't always work when you're working with other people
um so one of the ways that i have tried to manage distraction is by being really conscious about how
much time i have in front of me uh i would like there is there are many ways in which i loved
life during the lockdown because i could come in here and there was no distraction
for months for months it was glorious but the world doesn't work like that like now that we're
back into it we've got clients we've got you know corporate combinations to do and things to
service and it takes a lot of collaboration and coordination so what i try and do is i try and
work with the team and myself to to get myself uh periods of time when i know i won't be distracted
like okay maybe thursdays or maybe this thursday is a day that i don't have anything else but
but the shop uh monday is usually like a take care of business lots of phone calls day so is
tuesday in general um wednesdays thursdays and fridays it can change but in general i try and
localize any business to one of those three days so at least i get two days a week in the cave
when i'm not traveling when i don't have anything else to think about or any other phone calls um
but there's also the aspect of like getting distracted and getting pissed about the
distraction and that's about setting setting your head up right like you know a distraction
happens there's not much you can do about it this is what's happening now uh knowing when
to take a break is a really good one uh and i've only just started to get better at that
for real in that there will be times that i'll be working on something in here and it's kicking my
ass and i'm like it's like three o'clock there's not really enough time for me to rebuild the thing
by the end of the day and in the old days what i might do is work as hard as i can to finish
it by 5 30 when i want to go home and if i get there i'm usually so wound up from doing that
i go home and there's this long period of letting go of all that stress
so more and more lately rather than trying to get something done by the end of the
day because i get such an endorphin rush from just completing something
if i hit a snag at like three o'clock lately i've just been going home well it's like you know what
i'm just gonna pack it up i'll clean up first thing in the morning tomorrow i'm gonna leave this
and frankly that feels like a very healing decision each time that i've done it done about
four or five times in the last couple months it has felt yeah like an incredibly healing decision
to make rather than saddle myself with the need for this endorphin rush i have get [ __ ] done
itis uh i get a rush just from completing a thing last night we're like thinking about painting our
living room so my wife has some some painting samples stuck to the wall and one of the samples
was like pulling paint off the wall that we were going to repaint and she was like can you can you
get that off so i tried a blow dryer on it it didn't soften it so i went home and got some i
went i came here and i got some bastine uh and i used the bastine to pull the sticker off the wall
i didn't have to do that at 7 30 last night but i knew it would only take me like 10 minutes
and i also knew that once i completed it i'd have like a really nice endorphin rush man i am
always chasing that high uh so it's nice to know that i can let go of that and still like
have a super fulfilling day and frankly the those days in which i've gone home at three
just hung out with my partner and like taken the dog out for a longer afternoon walk or something
the next day has felt a lot more balanced
it's a process man like i love some of these questions imagine seem to imagine sometimes that
i've encountered like every possible permutation of stuff and man it is still such a freaking
process i still get just as salty when something doesn't go my way in here as i did when i was 18
i can become unhinged when it's like ah the last of the last of the things that i had just went
dink and i lost it and now i can i got to rebuild the whole thing from scratch frack um we are all
works in progress uh one more do we have any oh yes we do have some from the um here we go
paul jimenez asks what was your actual first con
um hang on i'm going to tell you i have to look it up
uh
it was let's see here i'm going to find out the actual name of it in a second um
yeah my first con was a lot longer ago than you might imagine and it was way before i was anything
it was way before i was famous um
let's see here uh yeah i can't quite okay look it was a star trek con at the marriott
hotel here in san francisco the one with the huge like 28 story interior with the
elevators the glass elevators that go up um i think that's a hyatt yeah some of you
are yelling at the camera right now trying to tell me which one it is um so it's like 1991-92
maybe as late as 93 but i doubt it star trek next generation was out and you it was the
first year you could buy the you could buy the pin that had the little sound chip behind it
so when you hit it it went and we my friend mark and i wanted those and we heard there was a star
trek convention in town so we went down to the hotel and it was amazing it was like stepping
into star trek because first of all we're in this hotel that itself feels like um a starfleet like
interior because it's 28 stories high with all of this like sort of semi-brutalist
bauhaus architecture um and uh and most of the people walking around are in starfleet uniform
we had no idea how much fun this was gonna be it was great we spent hours
walking around seeing everybody in their costumes um yeah and like i gained
an immediate abiding respect for the whole idea of a con right at that moment that was like
what i realized now was that there's a part of me that understood even then the specific
type of theater a con was but i didn't have the language to really understand that until more
than a decade no almost two decades later because i think my first san diego comic con was 07 08
yeah i think it's something like that and that was followed by dragon con and a bunch of others
but it wasn't until no phase which i think is more like 12 2012. uh no face really helped me
understand wearing my no face on the floor of san diego comic con was the moment i understood
that this was a wholly unique form of theater but i can see my young brain in 1992
grasped that i just didn't have the the language to describe it um i think that is as good a place
to wrap as any thank you guys so much thank you to everybody who's watching who came out to say hi
at a con i really appreciate your stories and your creativity and your gifts my goodness thank you to
everyone who brought something for me whether it was a piece of artwork or a pen or a patch they
all really mean something to me uh and i will see some of you at phanex or in dallas later on
this week uh i'm adam savage here in my cave and i guess i will see you next time be safe