good morning John at VidCon Australia
Ashley Perez gave a talk and we she
talked about the allegory that she read
on the internet that was written by a
guy who was told the allegory by a
teacher it's been around I liked it it
resonated with me I'm gonna call it the
allegory of the perfect pop lottery
teacher divides her class into two
groups for the full semester I don't
know why she does it she's she's why she
does one group you are tasked with
making one pot you have to only make one
pot and it has to be the perfect pot and
the end of the semester we're gonna
enter it into a pot competition and the
other group she says you are tasked with
making as many unique pots as possible I
don't care how good they are he's wild
just semester begins and the first group
they're there start working on planning
and research and design and what is a
perfect pot and the other group is
already like 16 minutes in covered
head-to-toe goop and it all culminates
at the end of the semester when we find
that the the group of people who just
made lots of pots actually made better
pots than the one pot that everybody
worked really hard on forever and it was
just one pot because John it doesn't
matter how good you are at something
your first pots gonna suck and it
doesn't matter how much you suck your
thousandth pot is gonna be pretty good
this is more or less the philosophy I
have created under for the last 11 years
and it has worked pretty well I make a
pot I present it for judgment I receive
feedback I use that feedback to make
another pot which I present and receive
feedback I use that feedback to make
another pot which I then present and
then people give me feedback on the pot
and then I use that feedback to make
another pot and I have made a lot of
videos information security there's a
term called brute force hacking that's
where you just like you hit a system
with so many iterations of various
passwords that eventually you just find
a password that works it's not elegant
it's not planned it's not careful it's
just brute force I am a brute force
creator and the only way I know how to
do it and you can't do that with a book
you can't write a hundred books and
throw away the first 99 will say that
these hundreds of log brothers videos I
have made were a good writing
apprenticeship I wrote a lot of creative
nonfiction and this book in a way is a
nonfiction book written by a fictional
character but nothing prepared me for
the process of sitting for half a decade
with the same lump of clay turning it
into a pot hating it punching it until
it was just a lump of clay again turning
it into a pot being like that's
disappointing punching it then turning
it into a pot and then thinking I did it
look my pot and then I called the
professor in in the form of my agent and
my editor my sensitivity readers and my
friends and my family and they were like
actually let's let's punch this thing a
few more times and then I did this some
more to the pot which is how this is how
you make a pun then at the end I had
what I think and what other people seem
to mostly think it's a pretty good pot
it's very different process that wasn't
just like a hard process for me it felt
raw I even though I had never heard the
allegory of the perfect pot I believed
in it and I have done things that way
for so long that that doing that doing
the thing the very thing that the
allegory says you shouldn't do it seemed
robot I felt like I had to because I
felt like this was the only way that I
was gonna be able to tell this story and
talk about the stuff that I wanted to
talk about and I did it and I'm happy
John I will see you on Monday because we
need to prep for our very weird stage
show slash book tour thing that we're
doing they're very excited about and
then everyone else will see you on
Tuesday the day that my book comes out I
hope you like my pot