The Stand-Up Theologian
James Cary, BBC comedy writer, author and touring stand-up theologian is on a never-ending quest to understand comedy, the Bible, culture and the church.
The Stand-Up Theologian
Should I keep making this podcast? w/ Kenny Primrose
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In this longer episode, I wonder about whether I have productivity addiction, and whether this podcast is part of that. So I talk to fellow productivity addict and podcaster, Kenny Primrose.
This was prompted by a recent Modern Wisdom podcast episode in which Chris Williamson interviews Oliver Burkemann (4000 Weeks)
Then there’s Tim Ferriss talking to Jim Collins.
The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward by Daniel H. Pink
We also mention: Dougald Hine
Want to talk about the podcast and engage with other listeners? Come on over to the Facebook Group.
Find out about my touring show, God the Bible and Everything (in 60 minutes) and get in touch via my website.
If you’re serious about the Bible and church history and like jokes, I’d recommend subscribing to The Wycliffe Papers. It's free. But you can also support the podcast by coming a Paid Subscriber to the Wycliffe Papers, making you a Loyal Lollard. Could you consider that?
Or email me in gmail now you can see how to spell Wycliffe...
Welcome to the Stand Up Theologian Podcast. My name is James Carey, the Stand Up Theologian, and in this podcast episode, I ask.
SPEAKER_01So the question is, the question you texted me, do I do I continue making this podcast? But it's costing me, you know, four hours a week, and if you want to do the sums on it, what are the reasons for keeping going at the moment?
SPEAKER_04That's the question. And would you believe I even admit this? And so therefore I feel entitled to a more successful podcast than the one that I currently have. What's it all about? That's the big question. What do we do with our time? How do we spend it? I thought of Kenny as a person to talk to after I listened to Chris Williamson talk to Oliver Berkman, because he's had Oliver Berkman on his podcast, The Examined Life. For you, for me, is it about productivity? Is that how we justify our existence? It's a longer episode, but probably my most revealing so far. But is it the last? Here we go. Kenny Primrose, welcome to the Stand Up Theologian Podcast.
SPEAKER_01Absolute joy to be here, James, and I am actually standing up right now. So this fits perfectly.
SPEAKER_04Great. We're both standing up as we record this. Uh we are uh at the other ends of England. I'm in the southwest, and Kenny is in the northeast, not quite in his native homeland of Scotland, uh, which is where that accent is from. But Kenny, you are a man who likes to examine life. In fact, your podcast is called The Examined Life. And I'm examining my life and my choices because I assume I can fit everything in if I'm smart enough and fast enough, including this podcast, which takes about three to four hours per episode, setting it up, emails, tech, record, edit, show notes, upload. That's half a day's work. Now I'm a graduate male in his early 50s who is the sole breadwinner for his family. This podcast cost me time and money. I'm around about episode 30. This series has maybe cost me three grand. What on earth am I doing? It's free. You know, what's going on? The question is: do I have productivity addiction? And should I basically stop doing this podcast? Productivity addiction is the title of a recent Modern Wisdom podcast episode in which Chris Williamson interviews Oliver Berkman, who you've had on your podcast, Kenny, which is why I thought of you. And so as I was listening to that very long episode, I was reflecting on how it felt like two middle-aged men trying and failing to get over the fact that they were not in control of their lives and it was driving them crazy, but they were sort of pretending that it's fine, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine. What's your take on that productivity world and the productivity addiction thing? Oliver Berkman's a bit of a breath of fresh air in that, but I think he's as much as an addict as anybody else, isn't he?
SPEAKER_01I mean, Oliver Berkman, to me, very winsome, breath of fresh air, and he's like a recovering productivity addict, right? Or a personal development addict. In fact, he kind of made his name. He cut his teeth by writing a column for The Guardian, did he not? Reviewing kind of self-help books and that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_04Okay, yeah. And then he wrote a book called 4,000 weeks.
SPEAKER_01Love it.
SPEAKER_04Which I have listened to as an audiobook because I tend to listen to productivity books because they're not quite worth reading, if you know what I mean. So I listen to them. Yeah, uh, which is a very helpful way of expressing you've got about 4,000 weeks.
SPEAKER_01I mean, do you listen to them, James, because you're busy being productive with lots of other things and you can't possibly sit down to read and therefore you can multitask.
SPEAKER_04The reason I listen to audiobooks is A, I have an audible subscription and I keep getting credits I don't spend. And they're the kind of books that lend themselves to being heard as opposed to books that need to be read. And I think when I'm out walking, because I tend to walk most days for about 45 minutes or an hour, I don't always want to listen to a podcast. I sometimes I want to listen to one clear line of thought from one person rather than two chances, present company accepted, randomly freewheeling through some topic. So yeah, so it's part of my audio diet, I think. That's why I do I have an audio version rather than maximizing my time, although I do have a bit of that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I mean, what what was the question you asked earlier on in your intro there? Was am I a productivity addict and should I stop doing the podcast? I mean, my my instant response was probably, and no, I don't think so. I think you should keep doing the podcast. Uh uh, but yeah, let's let's go from where you ended there. What do I think of that whole world of productivity and how we deal with it? Was that the question? Yes, I think so.
SPEAKER_04I I think the the thing that struck me was how so if you look at the chapter titles on their YouTube version of that interview, they say the hidden trap of tying your worth to success, making peace with our limited control of life. What control is really costing you, those sorts of things. Um, and so there's one little throwaway comment at the end of the interview, actually, where Oliver Bertman says, it's just about control, really, isn't it? And yeah, go on.
SPEAKER_01Oh no, he's he's very good at that. He's very good at pointing out that uh the pathology is often one of control, and technology does this to us, right? Because uh technology is the way we control the world around us. And I think his observation is that we we we have been deluded into thinking that we control all aspects of life and efficiency and productivity hacks are ultimately going to mean that we can do everything. And so my take on 4,000 weeks is it's it's quite a refreshing guide to realizing that actually we're we're we're very limited and we can't do everything. In fact, we can't do most things. I think the way he put it when when I spoke to him was this realization that our situation is even worse than we thought it was.
SPEAKER_04He's so British, I love it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, which is which is like you know, all the things you think you can do, you can't do them, you can't fit them into your life. And actually, most of the things you think you probably could, if you're just efficient enough, you can't do those either. So, given that you're very limited, what is worthy of your time? What's worthy of your attention? How do you inhabit it so that you're not instrumentalizing the present for some future goal? And yeah, I find that helpful as someone who does suffer from I mean, this is not to say I'm highly productive, but I do suffer from this need to be productive all the time, and it drives my family up the wall, it drives me up the wall. I I struggle to live with myself sometimes, so yeah.
SPEAKER_04I mean, my kids joke that I don't have any hobbies and that work is my hobby and that I don't really have a life. But the problem is, I think if you're a knowledge worker and you're interested in life itself and those sorts of things, and you don't have a clear distinction between your job and your life, so you don't go anywhere to work. So, you know, if you if you work in a quarry, you can't quarry rocks at home, but you can only do it at work in the quarry. If you read stuff and you write stuff and you reflect on stuff, you've got a word processor, you've got the internet, you've got a microphone and a camera. You can sort of do anything. And we are not really good at coping with that level of creative freedom technologically, especially if you're uh I'm just gonna say a type A Enneagram who doesn't like being told what to do and just thinks, oh, I can go off and do a thing, I can make this, I can make that. Um, therefore, I should no, no, no, no. So that's the problem, isn't it? And yeah, I suspect you're similarly afflicted in the fact that the things that you like doing are in one way, on one level, easy to do. They're not technically complicated, and so it's quite hard to stop yourself from doing them. Do you find that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, 100%. And the the fact that, as you say, you've got a word processor, you've got the internet, it kind of leeches into time that shouldn't really be work time. Like it's it's evening or you know, it's early morning or whatever, and this delineation delineation that we used to have between work and home has disappeared with say knowledge work or creative work. So yeah, no, I did I do find it, and I even find it on holiday. Uh, I think I I I mean, I remember you saying some point in the past, Jam, that you don't really get holidays. As in, you don't really it's not that no one gives you a holiday, you can give yourself them, but you don't you you don't understand the concept of a holiday. Is that right?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, kind of, because I I basically what am I having a holiday from? What I want is a nice life of reading and thinking and writing. So there's traveling, but holidaying is is a bit of an alien concept to me, and it is probably the only thing that my wife and I see quite differently, and we're not disharmonious about it, but my wife would like more holidays, and I struggle to prioritize that both time-wise and financially.
SPEAKER_01So, what does what does it look like for you, Jam, when you switch off? When you're not when you're not working, what are you doing?
SPEAKER_04So at Christmas, I tend to find a really difficult puzzle so that I can do a puzzle. But the thing is, even when I'm doing the puzzle, I'm listening to podcasts or I'm listening to a YouTube video. Um, so cricket takes me out of it. I've never really written professionally about cricket and following sport and that sort of thing. I like going for walks in nature, and my Instagram feed is mostly pictures of trees and churches. Here's the other thing though: the divide between your work and your home is a recent division because before the Industrial Revolution, your work and your home were completely interwoven, and your family was your company. Uh, you you would work in the fields or you would have a cottage industry in your cottage, which is why it's called a cottage industry. So I don't want to fall for the sense that our lives are that we should be much more regimented and segmented in our lives. I don't think that historically holds up at all either.
SPEAKER_01I think that's a it's a fair point, though. I think one thing that is yeah, you're right, that the home was the you know the economic engine. But we now have ways of kind of extending our days through you know, that that kind of stuff that you just were part of natural rhythms before. And since we've kind of become disconnected from the rhythms of nature and the rhythms of the day and so on, our life has kind of become about for you, for me, is it about productivity? Is that how we justify our existence?
SPEAKER_04Yes, I think so. And actually, yesterday I tried to I sat on the sofa and read for a while, because it was a Sunday, it was the Lord's Day, and I don't work on a Sunday, and except I was reading an article I'd managed to find, or at least a part, a segment of a chapter of the book by Lewis Mumford, who is quoted by Paul Kings North, and it was mentioned a couple of episodes ago on the Amusing Ourselves to Death episode, in which Mumford is quoted as one of the great inventions of the modern age, is the clock. It's not the printing press and it's not the um you know the the weaving machine or the industrial revolution, it's the concept of time, and so the moment you segment time into a thing of itself, the actual time according to the seasons and the time of day and the darkness and all that kind of stuff becomes less important, and so the clock almost erases the concept of eternity, and we go from being what is it, sort of time watchers to time servers, and suddenly we're trying to cram stuff in based on a number and not based on so previously you you wouldn't you wouldn't go to bed when you were tired, you'd go to bed because it was dark and there was nothing else to do, so we've become completely denatured in that sense, and so yeah, so we're so disconnected. I don't I don't know which way is up, really.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I I mean 100%, and I like that observation. It's really interesting looking at the history of you know the clock and the industrial revolution and the way that we measure out our time, and then we give it kind of often a kind of monetary value.
SPEAKER_04Like I did that at the start of the show. This episode's cost me three grand. So you've worked that out. This series has cost me half a day's work for however many, you know. That's that's my time is money, except maybe it isn't.
SPEAKER_01So yeah. I mean, okay, so that are we getting to the heart of why you're doing this work, this podcast in the first place, if not for money.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I mean, it's sort of not for money, it's sort of a way of me having an opportunity to or an excuse to talk to my friend Kenny, who used to live down the road from me. We used to go to church together and has always been super interested in these sorts of things. I can have these kinds of discussions. And because I'm an idiot, I just assumed that we couldn't just have a conversation on the phone and talk about them in a way that's uh that's unrecorded. What's that? What's wrong with that? I mean, that's but that's not crazy, is it?
SPEAKER_01Because I as you mentioned, I've got a podcast, and I I do find myself having conversations sometimes with people. My my neighbor's anil, a few doors down. We had a great chat the other day, and I was like, this this should have been recorded. That would make it worth something, which is such a perverse way of thinking, yes, isn't it?
SPEAKER_04But yes, but it's also it's it's it's not wrong in that it would be a blessing to other people. So did I listen to Paul Kingsnorth's book rather than read it? I think I listened to it.
SPEAKER_01I listened to it too.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and I immediately thought it's very well read, I thought the reader was. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Not Paul Kingsnorth, someone else, someone good. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And then I thought, oh, my friend uh Aaron, I should talk to him because he he kind of knows a little bit about the terror. And we did a podcast episode about it, and then amusing ourselves to death, I thought, I wonder if Nate has got any thoughts on this. And it turns out he's teaching it to his child, home educating his child, and they're going through the book. And we had that conversation that took me back to Lewis Mumford that meant that yesterday afternoon I was reading about clocks, which speaks into my other blog, Carrie's Almanac, where I write about the liturgies and the times and the seasons. And as with all of these things, you're only really writing for yourself, aren't you? And so I'm thinking, why am I so denatured and so disconnected? It's something to do with the clock.
SPEAKER_01I mean, it's have you come across uh Jacques Elul? Uh no. Same same constellation of thinkers as uh name has been mentioned. I it would have been mentioned, I think, by Paul Kingsworth. So I I mean, I'll maybe do a poor job of paraphrasing him, but very interesting guy, a bit like Marshall McLoon, I think before him, writing about technology and industrial revolution and so on. And he said that society has become governed by what he calls technique, and technique is the the um the uh what do you call it, the operating principle of society, whereby maximum efficiency is the is the core value. Yeah, and he's got he's got beautiful quotes something like we were uh in fact. Let me get the quote. Get the quote he said something like man was made to go six kilometers in an hour and he goes a thousand. He was made to live in a world of life and lives in one of stone. That's not exactly the quote I was looking for, but you you get the point that it has totally changed the way we think, and efficiency has become the main value of society to the exclusion of all the other things that are just inherently valuable for their own sake. Things have become valuable for you know what they can give or what they can produce or whatever. And I think part of Berkman's kind of rage is at this idea that efficiency is what we govern our lives with.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And at the end of your life, you know, I are you going to look back and think, I'm really pleased at how efficient I was.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah. Uh David Brooks wrote a book called Uh The Road to Character, which I must have quoted on various podcasts in the past. And he says, you spend the first half of your life worrying about your CV, and then you spend the back half of your life worrying about your eulogy. If somebody reads out your CV at your funeral, something's gone really, really badly wrong. Okay. You should not be writing someone's eulogy based on a LinkedIn post. I even an IMDB entry into they made this, they did that, they wrote this, they produced that. It's a disaster, isn't it? So, but I think the the word that I that popped at me in that Chris Williamson interview with Oliver Berkman though was the word settling, which strikes me as a word of ingratitude. And the there was a the missing component that had me kind of slightly uh shouting at my phone was I think they're two really interesting people who seem really good, you know, kind, gracious people. So I don't want to throw them under the bus for not being Christians or not having that defined sense of eternity that we like to think we have as Christians, even though we kind of really don't. But the word settling implies disappointment, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_01Is the opposite of settling striving, or what what's the yes?
SPEAKER_04That's that's a helpful way of thinking of it, isn't it? It's settling is realizing you can't do everything and just it it's a better word, a Christian word, would be contentment and gratitude, whereas settling strikes me as begrudgingly admitting that that's about the end of it.
SPEAKER_01I mean it's interesting, Jam, because you you are successful in a career that you know 0.1 of 1% of people are successful in. And so if contentment and settling had been your disposition, you wouldn't be where you are, would you? Yes, true. Yeah, and so there's a balance to be struck, but at the at the same time, at the other end of the spectrum, constantly striving and having something to prove is a recipe for never being contented.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. And I guess it's like who exactly what are you trying to prove to whom? Um, I was thinking about this yesterday as I was finishing off this other podcast episode that I sent you as further homework for this, which lasted at least two hours. Tim Ferris and Jim Collins. I was aware of Jim Collins because he wrote a couple of books, one of which I wrote I read to write a sitcom called Think the Unthinkable. He wrote a book called Good to Great, which is how good companies go to be great companies and built to last as well, companies that last a long time. So I think I had an audio CD version of one of those or something. I think it just happened to be cheap and I just bought it. And interestingly, in that one of those books, he looks at leaders who lead great organizations. He lists all of their characteristics, and when you look at the list, you go, Oh, so Jesus, basically, you know, powerful yet humble, uh, put others' needs first, all that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_01I mean, Jesus is famously all of the Enneagrams, right? He's the one guy who's all the Enneagram types.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Oh, that's interesting. I mean, that that would make sense. I I do use Enneagrams partly for work, partly for diagnostic tools. I think there's there's there's a limit to them.
SPEAKER_01So they discuss them in that podcast, actually.
SPEAKER_04In the Yeah, a little bit, they just give a little glimpse of them. And I think they're useful. And then so I use them for sitcom characters, and then once I once the characters have got names and I can imagine them, sometimes they want to do things that I think now I don't want you that kind of person, I think you're this kind of person. But they they and the reason enneagrams are so powerful is because they they say what you want. This character wants something, and your characters in sitcoms need motivation, and therefore, what is this person trying to do and what are they trying to prove? And it's interesting, Jim Collins, who I'd slightly assumed was a Christian, but when it came down to it, he basically said, I'm just trying to impress my wife.
SPEAKER_01I know it's I mean, he was very sweet talking about his wife Duane. I did actually Google that afterwards. I was like, he's got such a he's got such a moral core to him.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, such a lovely way of and he's American, so there's a above average chance. But yeah, the absence of the Lord from from because it's never been easier to be Christian, Christian adjacent. And so therefore Tim Ferris wouldn't have been, oh weird, you're a Christian. Tell me more about that. He he wouldn't have done that. But it wouldn't have been a huge clanger, which it wouldn't have been embarrassing. But um times have changed. Times have changed, they really have. But with Tim Ferris, I sense a kindred spirit in him, even though Kindred spirit to you? To me, in an in an awful way, but also in a in a in a relatable way. So for the benefit of the listener, Tim Ferris wrote a book called The Four-Hour Work Week, which is ridiculous. I mean, it's a completely ridiculous idea for a book, but what he's essentially saying, which is unhelpful from a Christian point of view, is that work is sort of for suckers. What do you really want? You can set up your life so that you only really need to work four hours a week, and then you can goof off around the world uh for the rest of that time. And he then, and I must have said this even in this series because I do talk about this quite a lot. But what what he really distilled for me listening to that book, reading it, I can't remember, was the answering the question. So, what do you want? If you only had to work four hours a week and you had the rest of the week to do what you want, what would you want to do? Well, I'd want to work. But my work is reading and writing and talking about what I've read and what I've written. That is what I want to do. And so it's interesting, but just to finish off the thought and then and then jump in, I sense the similarity. So why do I write? Is it to prove that I'm a good writer, or is it to prove to myself that I'm a good writer? So I'm normally just competing with myself. So I'm not, if I may say, a particularly vain person. Reviews, positive or negative, don't really matter an awful lot. So when I got completely lambasted by A.A. Gill and the Sunday Times about my show Bluestone 4.2, where he said that everybody involved in that show should be paraded through the streets of uh Wooden Bassett, because it's not the show that he would have written. I just thought, well, you're you're an idiot for thinking that. And I know I understand why you do, because you're you you're very clever and you think that laughing is vulgar. And he he has said said as much. So it's only about my own opinion. And so when I'm sitting in an audience listening to people laughing at jokes that I've written, I find it gratifying, not that I made them laugh, but because I was right about that joke, and I prove to myself that I got that joke. So I like crosswords. When people did wordle, people share how quickly they got wordle. It's like, what's the matter with you? Why are you doing that? I I wouldn't do that. It doesn't, it doesn't mean anything to me. So I think that Tim Ferris is constantly in that same thing where he is trying to prove to himself a whole load of things and understand things because he's pretty sure that he can make his life leaner and smarter and that he can be a better person. The way he talks about himself, I I think I'm oh I can hear myself there.
SPEAKER_01I mean, interesting. Yeah, that's interesting. I've never heard you talk about that, as in the the the reason you write and the fact that you're kind of teflon with with reviews. Amazing if you can be like that. I I think I'm too thin skinned to ever read any reviews if anyone thought to write one. Okay. Back to the four-hour work week, yeah. What would you do with the rest of the time? I think in that interview with Jim Collins, he brings up Seth Godin's question, which is great. It's not what would you do if you knew it couldn't fail, but what would you do even if you knew it could fail? Which gets to kind of intrinsic motivation. I'm inherently so you're inherently motivated to write, to create, and you hope that it works and it functions, yeah, but you're gonna keep on doing it, like regardless of you know external validation. Yeah, is Ferris's quest an existential one?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's a good question, isn't it? Because you do sense that he's never going to be satisfied, and that Tim Ferris and Oliver Berkman and Chris Williamson, they're cranked for this productivity, and until they find rest in the one who says, Come to me, all you who are weary and concerned about productivity, and I will give you rest. And that is why I can rest on a Sunday, and I do really enjoy Sundays because I don't look at email, I find that stressful, I don't look at I don't edit anything, I don't write anything, I don't try to get ahead on anything. It is an existential thing, isn't it? And so I feel I can let things go because my identity isn't in them. An actual fact, I mean, going back to, and I've uh I must have said this uh very occasionally the the trap of tying your worth to success. As a writer, a script writer, a comedy writer, being a Christian has been a massive help because although it may have counted against me here and there, particularly 20 years ago when Christianity was very uncool, and even 10 years ago, frankly, I can take rejection in writing because writing is mostly rejection, and it's mostly unanswered emails or positive meetings about which you then hear nothing, and it is notes and notes and notes on your script, and then eventually the notes stop, but only because we're recording it in two hours and you can't fix it, and thereafter it's too late. Because my identity is in Christ, I don't take that stuff personally, even considering I'm a type 8 who doesn't really care what anybody else thinks. I I I would more care more, and I think you can take rejection more easily. And I do look at unbelieving writers, I just think I don't know how you do it. I don't know how you cope with a level of rejection, and I'm theoretically successful, and rejection is still normal, particularly at the moment. I've not really had much success in the last five years since COVID, partly because situation comedy, which is my main thing, that I'm also good at and better at than than most, because that's just the thing I've picked, and it just turns out I'm quite good at it. I'm not able to exercise that gift or talent because producing a BBC One sitcom is financially beyond. I I can't I can make a podcast, but I can't make a BBC One mainstream studio sitcom, which is the thing I particularly really do want to do. So I have to be at peace with that, and I think having an eternal perspective really, really helps. And so I could just hear the lack of that in those two big long podcasts uh that I listen to.
SPEAKER_01Um yeah, I mean, uh Jim Collins' day sounded extraordinary, right? He's up at four. He says he has kind of two mornings, and he's he's unbelievably productive. And I don't know if he stakes his value, or as you said, he he stakes his value on his wife's approval, which is in some way really lovely. But as you say, it makes you very vulnerable.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Are you ever enough? When when is enough? Yeah, where when are you gonna be validated enough that you can rest in it? Interesting. I had Sir Anthony Selden on the podcast last year, and he's a fascinating, incredibly accomplished guy, and you know, spiritual has a faith, and so on. But he said, and I can't remember if it was in a conversation with me or in something else I listened to, that he's still trying to prove himself to his parents. He's you know, and maybe it was Desert Island Desk, or something, but he's is he maybe even late 70s, 80 MBE, 50 books behind him, headmaster of Wellington College, quite extraordinary. And I guess one question I'd have, Jam, like maybe practically, in terms of practical theology, here is the idea of eternity and security in Christ and so on is wonderful. It sometimes feels abstract, and we're still subject to you know the pathologies that are abroad in society. Yeah, and so does your Sabbath practice help you to ground your identity elsewhere? Is it a prac is it of practical use as well as an enjoyable day on the sofa?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, in a way, it is a the the practice of Sabbath, I think, really is significant, and therefore you're showing what you really believe in if you don't do a thing that you really like doing uh on a particular day. So yeah, I think it does make a practical difference in that sense. But I think interesting that my mind just went to this idea of finitude, which was where kind of you started with Oliver Berkman, which I think is a really helpful way of thinking. I think as a Christian, what we might be in danger of thinking is in eternity, I will have superpowers. So I would love the one thing I can't do, uh, two things I would love to be able to do. One is to read New Testament Greek, and I sort of had a go at that, and there just weren't enough hours in the day, so I dropped it. And the other thing is to be able to play jazz piano, and there's a temptation to think, well, when I die and uh Christ returns and there's a new heavens and a new earth, I will immediately be able to play jazz piano. No, I won't. Why would I think I could do that? What I will have is the capacity to learn and forever to learn it in.
SPEAKER_03Sorry, there's a there's a Michelin web sketch um about football, which I will drop in here in the in the in the spider.
SPEAKER_04We are incarnational beings. We don't suddenly we so in one sense we're eternal because we last for eternity, but we were created, and Adam and Eve in their pre-fallen state could only be in one place at one time, and they had an awful lot to learn. And I don't see how the return of Christ and the new creation means that we suddenly get infinite knowledge. I don't think we do. So I think it's a question of mindset shift about craft and improving and the joy at learning and those sorts of things, rather than the frustration that I don't know this how to do this thing, and I would like to instantly be able to download how to do it. There are there are skills which you wish you could just do, and there are skills that you enjoy learning.
SPEAKER_01Um I think this is an excellent point. Uh, we were talking before you started recording about trying to find more friction in life. Yes. And this kind of frictionless, convenient life that removes you know the skills that you develop, the the sense of reward. And I think you're right, we we can think of eternity as static, but actually growth is so central, it's like constitutes flourishing, I'd say, when when we feel like we're we're we're mastering crafts, etc. One of the things I'd love to ask you about Jam is Oliver Berkman says our finitude is what makes life meaningful, the fact that we are limited, and if we weren't, you know, if if life should stretch on eternally, it would kind of remove the meaning, the urgency, the way we choose to spend our time. And I I I do feel like he's you know, he's got a he's got a point. So how do you think about that?
SPEAKER_04I I do, and I particularly thought about it as you were asking the question because I was thinking finitude means you need to make decisions, and the word decision I believe comes from like I don't do Greek, but I can do Latin, is is to cut, um decide is like homicide or fracturing, you know, side, kill off. You you kill or you you cut or you slice, you stab in that sense, presumably. It was weird how by the age of 15 I knew about 30 Latin words for killing, which demonstrates that the Romans really weren't quite as civilized as we thought they were. In but what you're doing when you're deciding something is you are saying yes to something and no to something else. You are cutting. And how do we make those decisions? We can only make those decisions with wisdom. The reason that wisdom is so great and necessary is because it helps you choose between good things. It's easy to choose between a good thing and a bad thing. So there are things that I could do that would be bad. I may be tempted to do them because they're sinful and they make me feel good and that kind of stuff, but it's not, I know I'm being a fool by committing them. But the problem is I could carry on with this podcast indefinitely and interview people and have these interesting conversations that are listened to by hundreds of people, not thousands of people, hundreds of people.
SPEAKER_01Yet, not thousands yet.
SPEAKER_04I used to have two podcasts which were listened to by thousands of people, but it's now hundreds of people. And it's interesting that Tim Ferris in that podcast was not convincing that his heart was still in podcasting. Because he got in early and he has enjoyed the success. I got in early, enjoyed some success. Both of those successful podcasts, Cooper and Carrie Have Words and sitcom geeks, I stopped and I've started again, and it's a heck of a lot harder starting again, which is interesting. So, do I do that? Do I do YouTubeing? And I've actually just really enjoyed learning how to use Final Cut Pro in order to edit some uh a gig that I did where I had three cameras running continuously and I worked out how to do vision mixing between them and just watch some YouTube videos. And I really enjoyed that. What do I do that? Or do I just spend more time writing books? Should I do the thing that I'm best at? Should I do the thing that I that that makes me happiest? But the things that I like doing are not the things that make money. I don't have limited resources, so to some extent, I need to do the things that actually make money. What I need is wisdom, and wisdom comes from fear of the Lord. That connection between fear of the Lord and wisdom is still slightly mysterious to me, even though I understand it. But I guess the wisdom is in his word, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. And so if we do the things that he commands, then things maybe become clear, but I'm I'm not sure they necessarily do.
SPEAKER_01I mean, yeah, I think I think there's also something about making peace with ambiguity in making decisions that there is not one thing, and often certainly not one clear thing, but also making peace with regret. I had a podcast conversation that I'm gonna release at some point just this morning at it with Catherine Mannix, so palliative care doctor, writes about dying beautifully, and she talks about regret being a safe place, safe place to you know that to think of which are really interesting because I think we we think about it as you know a place of error where we're but no, she she thinks, you know, you you there are going to be roads not travelled. You make your peace with the roads not travelled, um, and part of that is feeling yeah, I suppose feeling regret.
SPEAKER_04Was she saying that the regret is a positive thing, that we're sad that we're letting something go? Because for me, the problem with regret and is bitterness, and bitterness is holding on to a grievance because it feels so good.
SPEAKER_01So I think she'd make a distinction between bitterness, shame, guilt, all those kinds of things, and a kind of settled sense of regret, you know, that that opportunity that you let pass or whatever. A really helpful book that I recommend to most human beings, I think, is Dan Pink's book on regret. He did a massive regret survey, and he said all regrets kind of fit into about four categories. I'll see if I can remember them. Uh, connection regrets, the uh people you let go out of your life and you you you miss them, you regret doing that. Um moral regrets, things you did, actions, and it's the smallest category, but the most searing, I think. Uh boldness regrets, um the things you didn't do, and foundational regrets. I didn't look after my body, I didn't brush my teeth or floss or whatever or finances. So they all fit into this. And he says that every regret reveals a need and yields a lesson, and so we need to tune into them because they are really important information. They're telling us something about our values and when we transgress them in some way.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're just yeah, listening to that sense of yeah, I think we've tried to delete shame from our society, but you think no, no, shame's quite a useful thing in the same way that just pain is useful because it tells you there's a problem or it's information, right?
SPEAKER_01Like where is it coming from? And it might be totally inappropriate shame, but if you don't listen to it, if you kind of suppress it, then it's gonna surface.
SPEAKER_04I think we're trying to still fight the previous war about shame and that people shouldn't feel shame. The society we live in feels pretty shameless to me, and I don't think that's a good thing. Um, so if you're a victim of abuse, you suffer shame that is not your fault. Yeah, but and although abuse is much more common than we dare to admit, there's an awful lot of other things that people should frankly be ashamed of, um, and they're not. But that regret sense I think is helpful because I think you know, no regrets is quite a big way of living, and it seems like just to uh circle back to our um Chris Williams and Oliver Berkman, the settling, does settling help you get more out of life? Which they would say yes, but the word settling implies regret, doesn't it? It implies what I could have had or what what you could have won, what you could have done. And it feels fairly toxic against complacency. And it was interesting how little in the Tim Ferris-Jim Collins podcast, they didn't reflect on big events uh that went against you retrospectively being the best thing that could have happened to you. So Jim Collins's wife was previously uh a world champion uh ultra-marathon triathlete or some sort, and then she suddenly had a career-ending injury, and that was the end of that. And there was no real reflection on the fact that that could have been a very positive thing, that her identity in that. In fact, um, Atomic Habits by James Clear has got a very powerful story at the beginning where his life was set for a very different path. Was it baseball or something related? Um, and he got a very serious hospitalization. And that was the end of his career, and that was a sense that he doesn't really regret that, that he's used it in a positive way.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's it's and I think they they kind of touched on it in that conversation when they spoke about luck. And if you if you get some bad luck, how do you how do you kind of metabolize it in some way? Yeah, yeah, how do you how do you tur turn it into lemonade, I suppose?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. When life gives you lemonade, make lemons. Life will be all like, What?
SPEAKER_04I had a chat on a previous podcast, which has not yet aired as the time of we're caught talking with Matt Searles about mindfulness, something of which I've been sceptical, but the way he I was persuaded by the way he talks about it, and it's interesting that Christians are generally reflective. And I I said this to my kids actually, you know, when I take them to school. Um, I remember the other day just saying, it's interesting, isn't it, that you reflect on your conduct and your behaviour weekly in church and sometimes more often if you go to a Christian meeting and that kind of stuff. Much more than your friends do. Because they don't do those things, they don't have those habits. They may think about them or dwell on them, but there's not really a formal process for doing that. And isn't that interesting that maybe you have more self-awareness than others who seem much more smart and savvy? So that self-reflectiveness and paying attention to moments. I don't know if I've said it on this podcast, and again, this is why I should probably stop doing these because I just keep saying have I told this story? I don't know. When I was fired from one of the best opportunities I've had in my professional career in the last 10 years, the overwhelming response I got from the email saying thanks but no thanks was relief. Even though that email cost me I probably about£25,000, I thought, oh I don't have to do that anymore.
SPEAKER_01So that that is information you're getting there, right?
SPEAKER_04Yeah. So I was expecting kind of like, oh no, that's gone wrong, bitterness, oh, these people don't know how to handle writers and blah blah blah blah blah blah. And but actually I just thought, oh, that's interesting that I've been released from this thing that clearly wasn't working. I didn't think it was working, but I thought I was getting away with it, but they didn't think it was working either. And so that was the end of that. And so I just thought, oh, that's good. I I now know that I don't really want to do that, or at least yeah.
SPEAKER_01I mean, it also it comes back to we were discussing earlier the kind of obsession with controlling things. And if you'd really wanted to control your career narrative and you plotted it out, then when this is kind of taken away from you, that's deeply, deeply frustrating and upsetting. But if you've kind of relinquished control, there's a lot in I suppose trust, right? Yeah, which is really hard in some circumstances, really hard in some circumstances, but that you trust that things are somehow going to make sense, even though you're not in control of them. Yeah, and actually, if you are in control of them, quite often we make the wrong decision. I I don't trust uh myself to you know have the levers of life, to be honest.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah, we want that self-mastery, but wow, you're the last person who should be mastering you. And that's again, with I'm so grateful and thankful that I'm a Christian, is that I can be mastered by Christ and I yearn that I am more mastered by him because I I am not to be trusted. Uh I'm I should barely be trusted with a laptop and a microphone in a way. Well, why not carry on podcasting? You're getting away with it so far, and you've not had any death threats or claims of heresy. So so carry on. But there's you know, I still worry about the time commitment. And I think what I'm annoyed about is that I got good at something ahead of loads of other people, and I did it a lot, and so therefore I feel entitled to a more successful podcast than the one that I currently have. So this podcast gets a fifth of the listeners of Cooper and Carrie have words. And the problem is that had an early advantage because it was early out of the gate, and there weren't that many podcasts, particularly not Christian podcasts, and Christian podcasts with a sense of humour. And so people liked it, and so we had this lovely thing going for which I'm very thankful, and we did 180 episodes. That's probably plenty, and then situations change, and I'm I'm thankful for it. I I don't I'm not bitter that it ended, but I'm just thinking I've now started this new thing and it's not going as well as the last thing. And do I just go, well, I'm gonna make it be? And it's a well to get back up to those podcasting numbers is is years, it's not weeks, and it's certainly not months, it is years. And do I want is that a good idea? And is my motivation, but I'm good at this justification for continuing it despite the fact that it's frankly a bit of a luxury.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so let's think about that. So the question is the question you texted me, um, do I do I continue making this podcast when it's costing me, you know, four hours a week? And if you want to do the sums on it, what are the reasons for yeah, what what are the reasons for keeping going at the moment?
SPEAKER_04The reason is because my Tim Ferris answer is what do I want to do? I want to read, I want to write, and I want to talk about the things that I've read and have written. So this is a conversation that we're having now that just simply wouldn't happen. But also, the conversation we're having now is different because if we were in the pub having a conversation like this, or I was in your house eating poached eggs on toast with marmite, which I now have directly because of you. But I had that as a treat yesterday morning.
SPEAKER_01Ah, but you're not the first. We we've we've sent that abroad all over all over the world, people having pooched eggs and marmite.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, it's uh that's a hard recommend from me. And so I'm I'm not having breakfast in Lent, except on Sundays on the Lord's Day, when you can go for your life. And so yesterday I treated myself to uh poached egg on toast with um uh with Marmite. So I thought about this conversation ahead of time. I listened to four hours worth of podcasting to get my thoughts together, and I've been listening to all this stuff, and then I knew talking to you about it would be interesting, and the fact that we're talking about it in a way that we know is recorded, and therefore we're being careful about what we say, not just to protect ourselves, but because we want to be a blessing to other people and that kind of thing. So that's good, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01I well, I think so. And like Oliver Berkman actually introduced me to a word in perhaps it was 4,000 weeks, at lec activity. So an activity that you're doing for no other reason than itself, like going for a walk, yeah, or or whatever. Now, clearly, like for for my podcast, I'd love I suppose I'd love it to be washing its face a bit more, right? Uh but I'm gonna keep doing it. Yeah, I'm gonna keep doing it because I think the the investment of time I have in in the conversations, in the reading before or whatever, I'm so enriched by it. Yeah, I'm doing it for its own sake, I think. Yeah, and I think that's fine. I think in fact it's more than fine, it is almost subversive to a culture which says only do things that you can instrumentalize for status, for power, for money, or whatever.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Just gonna make a podcast and put it out there because this is this feels inherently enjoyable and enriching.
SPEAKER_04Yes, I think that's right, and therefore, one of the actually one of the most useful so-called self-help books that I listened to in the last year or two was uh Reframe Your Brain by Scott Adams, and he who sadly passed away earlier this year or late last year, and I I used to listen to his podcast literally every single night going to sleep, and he has such a soothing voice, and he did one every single day, every day, including Christmas Day. So if I didn't listen to most of it, I would just listen to the next one, you know, because you can't possibly listen to all of it because of finitude. And his word reframe is a very powerful word, and you hear a lot of people use it now, and I think in a sense that's what it is, isn't it? It is reframing things, which is why isn't this doing the thing? And it's do you like doing it? Yes. What are you expecting? Well, this, why expecting that? Well, because okay, do you still want to keep doing it? I kind of do really. Okay, well, stop expecting the following things to happen and just enjoy it. I don't want to do this podcast on YouTube, which would just make it more complicated. I would like to make YouTube videos, which are for YouTube, because YouTube is a completely different medium, and the medium is the message and the metaphor, and as we've discussed. But I've what I've really enjoyed about this podcast series is the fact that I've had I'm having this conversation with you, which is informed by a conversation I had with Nate Morgan Locke and with Matt Searles. And you're all friends, you know. So I I'm not that interested in getting high-profile guests who everyone will be impressed by. So if people listen to my show, I just kind of want to talk to my really interesting friends who think about things that I do, uh, that I think about. And so, yeah, maybe this is just a hobby, and that's fine. Hobbies are great, it's atylic.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. As opposed to, you know, like T los, the purpose, the end. This is it, it's it's an end in itself.
SPEAKER_04Yes, it is without, it is not so much without purpose as it is the purpose.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the the purpose is let's let's record a conversation, invite other people in to enjoy it, and then who knows what follows. Yeah, but it does, it also feels like when you try and do something for commercial success, and that's your purpose, it it kind of denatures it, it lowers the quality of it, it's often unsuccessful. Doing something as an expression of a desire, something you want to do, often ends up being a lot more successful. Yes, yeah, because there's authenticity, probably.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, yes, that's right. As I was saying, Hollywood, it's all about authenticity. If you can fake that, you've made it. I think that's right, because I do like doing the podcast, and if it got three times more listeners, it wouldn't make any difference, really, would it? Because it's still the same podcast, you know, and occasionally when you edit your podcast, and I do edit podcasts because I hate having my time wasted, and so therefore I don't want to waste my audience's time. So I remove repetition, I remove quite a few ers, and I remove me when I say so like that and get rid of that. So, like I've just done then, I intrinsically say so. I'm trying to stop saying uh, but I've just replaced it with the word so doesn't seem any great improvement, does it? But the thing that I love doing is just saving time, making a polished little 45-minute, 50-minute thing. Because when I listen to another podcast and I listen to loads of podcasts, I think you should have cut that out. I don't know why he left that in. Oh, that was a bit we didn't, you should have. So maybe I should get quicker at editing, maybe I should just work out. I'm just gonna do this podcast, and it's gonna take each episode will take me a total of two hours, and I'm just gonna enjoy it. But otherwise, taking half a day a week out of my working day to do this podcast feels like a bit of a luxury, but maybe I just need to reframe it and just think, no, this is part of your thinking about interesting things and conversations with people. You're really good at this, Kenny, by the way. I'm this is very, very helpful.
SPEAKER_01Oh thank thank you very much, Shab. And I think if you're enjoying it, keep doing it. My seasons are short, and a couple of times I thought if by the end of next season I haven't got like a sponsor or someone backing it or a sufficient number of listens, I'm gonna give up because I can't justify it. That you know, deadline passes, and I'm like, oh no, I haven't got those things. Yeah, but clearly they weren't my main motivation because I still want to make the podcast. Yeah, and so I ended up making another season. And you know, growth is slow, but it's happening, yeah. And that's cute, it's encouraging, but it's probably not the main thing. So I I think this next season, I'm not gonna say that this is the last season if I don't, you know, find some invented level of success that I'm happy with. So I'll I'll you know, probably continue again and toil in obscurity. Yeah, interesting. I remember this pastor, and he had a line that really stayed with me. He said, On my best days, on my most heroic days of being a Christian, I will risk anything for Christ except obscurity. And it was uh it was such a brilliant observation of himself, such so self-aware. It's like, if I'm gonna be a missionary, I've got to go somewhere that everybody knows it's the toughest place in the world.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Working in obscurity is something that uh highly individualistic culture, which is you know leached into us, uh it's it's it's it's hard to settle to use uh Chris Williamson's word or workman's word. But I think there's something to be said for settling into this is this is work that's in me to do, and I'm enjoying it, and I'll put it out there and others will hopefully enjoy it too.
SPEAKER_04It's in me to do. That's good. I like that. I think I'm gonna I think I'm gonna hold on to that. That feels like a a slightly less dramatic version of the Eric Liddell, When I run, I feel God's pleasure. I think this is just in me to do, I think will do, actually.
SPEAKER_01Well, I think here, yeah, that maybe maybe I can paraphrase it with Douglas Hein, he's a lovely writer and podcaster and so on. And I I interviewed him once, and I think his question was something like, What is the work that is yours to do? And I love that. Yeah, uh, I there's something very liberating about it. And this is this is the work that's mine to do because I have a desire, because I you know have a mic or whatever. And that work doesn't need to be justified by a certain amount of money. I mean, yeah, as you say, you if you spend all week doing work that makes you no money and you're soon enough going to the food bank, then there's probably a problem. Yeah. Uh, and you need to have a word with yourself.
SPEAKER_04But yeah, uh, or have a word with Kenny, which is yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And I'll I'll send you some beans.
SPEAKER_04Yes, that's right, which is uh precisely what I've done. So I think we're gonna wrap things up there. Do you want to just give us the uh the short version of why you do the Examine Life podcast? What is it about? What are the questions that you're always really interested in?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I uh interview a range of people about a question that they think we should be asking ourselves. And the driving, the hunger behind that really is I'm interested in what we're missing. And some of these people that I've interviewed, they're they're really good thinkers, or they've spent a long time in a particular field and they can see things that I can't see, and they kind of distill it into a question, and then we explore it, and so the idea is basically wisdom. Like, how do we get a greater sense of what it is we might be missing, and then learn to live in the light of that? So that's the engine behind it.
SPEAKER_04Yes, because the unexamined life is not worth living, so therefore, it is the examined, the examined life. That's great, exactly, brilliant. Well, I shall put a link in the show notes to that, and folks can go and listen to there's a particular episode with Oliver Berkman as well, which might be a place to start or a jumping off point, but there are lots of others as well. You've had Ian McGillchrist on, haven't you?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. I visited him in his house, it was amazing. What a what a guy, what a place though.
SPEAKER_04And it wouldn't have happened if you hadn't had a podcast.
SPEAKER_01Oh no, exactly, exactly. I'm so grateful for the podcast. So yeah, Jam, it's been such a joy to chat to you. So thank you so much for inviting me on.
SPEAKER_04It's been a total pleasure. Thanks very much for listening, and I think I shall probably speak to you next time. Well, that was plenty, wasn't it? And there wasn't even a half time advert because, you know, the podcast is the podcast. It is what it is, it is an end in itself. And so I'm not even gonna plug anything after this, even though I'm up to lots of different things. Maybe I'll talk about that next time. I think there's gonna be a next time. Anyway, is this how it ends? Yup.