April 27, 2020

Having Mentors, How To Take Feedback Like A Pro, The Value of Twitter | Brian Koppelman on The Tim Ferriss Show

Check out The Tim Ferriss Show Episode Page & Show Notes

Key Takeaways

• If you want to expand your world, first improve yourself so you have more to offer to the world
  • “By doing work on myself, by trying to grow, by trying to read more and learn more, I then am prepared to engage when I reach out to somebody I admire” – Brian Koppelman
• “Going to bed at night feeling like you don’t have to hate yourself is the great gift you can give to yourself ”– Brian Koppelman
  • How to not hate yourself: Find ways to help others, be responsible for your own behaviors, and don’t let yourself down on your core values
• When someone gives you feedback, take it professionally  (keep what applies and throw out what doesn’t) rather than emotionally
• Don’t ask for feedback if the project is already finished and nothing can be done to change it
• If someone gives you poor feedback, don’t be a jerk about it
• With Twitter, you can track someone’s creative process and scroll down their timeline to see how they became successful

Intro

• Brian Koppelman (@briankoppelman) is a screenwriter, novelist, director, producer, and host of The Moment podcast
•  Host: Tim Ferriss (@tferriss)

Books Mentioned

• To learn more about morning pages, Tim recommends the book The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
• The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich was Tim’s first book
• The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat Loss, Incredible Sex and Becoming Superhuman was Tim’s second book  
• Brian recommends the book, Sex, Lies, and Videotape Movie Edition Screenplay and Production Notes by Steven Soderbergh, for anyone interested in making movies
  • “That’s a book that’s worth overpaying for…you could only read that book and you’d be in great shape” – Brian Koppelman
• Brian reads this book every year: Making Movies by Sidney Lumet
• If you want to learn about the discipline it takes to become great, Brian recommends reading: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
  • “It’s the most empowering book I know of about trying to live as an artist” – Brian Koppelman
• Tim enjoyed the book, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World: A Novel by Haruki Murakami
• Tim is currently reading Little, Big by John Crowley, and says the prose is beautiful
• Tim and Brian both enjoyed the book Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang

Mentorship & Growth

• If you want to expand your world, first improve yourself so you have more to offer to the world
  • “By doing work on myself, by trying to grow, by trying to read more and learn more, I then am prepared to engage when I reach out to somebody I admire” – Brian Koppelman
    • Tim sees Brian as a mentor, but Brian says he also sees Tim as a mentor
• You almost never want to be stuck in; life, you should have momentum and grow  in one direction or another
  • When you get stuck, reach out to mentors and friends for help
    • When Brian wanted to lose weight, he reached out to several people, including Tim, for advice
• Brian hired a food therapist that he checks-in with every week
  • He learned that for food addicts, sugar and flour tend to be common triggers 
    • Since starting his new diet, Brian has lost a pound a week every week
      • “The power of momentum is great that it stops being hard, in fact, it just starts being the way that you live” – Brian Koppelman
        • “Accountability works, you don’t have to rely purely on some generated willpower which will have moments of frailty” – Tim Ferriss
• “Going to bed at night feeling like you don’t have to hate yourself is the great gift you can give to yourself ”– Brian Koppelman
  • How to not hate yourself: Find ways to help others, be responsible for your behaviors, and don’t compromise your core values 

How To Take Feedback Like A Pro

• When someone gives you feedback, approach it professionally  (keep that applies and throw out what doesn’t) rather than emotionally
  • Tim comments that Brian and Seth Godin both take feedback extremely well because they take it unemotionally
    • “I really find that to be a hallmark of someone who can make a lot of progress in term of their creative endeavors” – Tim Ferriss
• Brian often gets angry or sad after receiving feedback, but he becomes aware of his emotions, and waits till he’s cooled off to decide the feedback’s importance 
• When asking for feedback, make sure you describe the type of feedback you want 
  • Also, don’t ask for feedback if the project is already finished and nothing can be done to change it
    • “Before you ask for feedback, you have to get yourself in a mindset that is open to taking action based on the feedback” – Brian Koppelman
• If someone gives you poor feedback, don’t be a jerk about it
  • “We all have the responsibility, if we can, to protect the feelings of those that we’re interacting with. We can be truthful without being an asshole. We can be constructive and corrective without making someone else feel worse.” – Brian Koppelman

Twitter Is An Amazing Tool

• With Twitter, you can track someone’s creative process and scroll down their timeline to see how they became successful
  • “To me, Twitter is the most amazing creation, it’s the icing on the cake of what the internet could be because it allows us to get right inside of all these different processes” – Brian Koppelman
  • Brian shared his creative process for his TV show Billions on Twitter
    • “If you go through my Twitter feed, you will be able to see how hard it was to get to a place where we were able to make that show and I’m really happy about that”
      • Brian shared both the ups and downs of creating the show on his profile
• There are also a ton of creative people on Twitter–Brian tweets a photo of him drinking coffee every morning and one of his followers said Brian should design a mug and sell it for charity. Another reader saw this and designed the mug for Brian for free.
  • You can get one of his mugs here–all profits go to charity
• When you share ideas on Twitter about things you care about, you’ll find people with the same interests
  • If you’re on Twitter, you should try to gain a following and get a blue-check mark. It gives you an unfair advantage in the world because it will open a lot of doors for you.

Brian & Tim Talk Books

• Brian recommends the book, Sex, Lies, and Videotape Movie Edition Screenplay and Production Notes by Steven Soderbergh, for anyone interested in making movies
  • “That’s a book that’s worth overpaying for…you could only read that book and you’d be in great shape” – Brian Koppelman
• Brian reads Making Movies by Sidney Lumet, every year
• If you want to learn about the discipline it takes to become great, Brian recommends reading: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
  • “It’s the most empowering book I know of about trying to live as an artist” – Brian Koppelman
    • Tim enjoyed the book, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World: A Novel by the same author
• Tim is currently reading Little, Big by John Crowley, and says its prose is beautiful
• Tim and Brian both enjoyed the book Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang–it’s filled with fantastic sci-fi short stories

Additional Notes

• “A lot of growing up is learning to shift the responsibility from the other to the self” – Brian Koppelman
• “It’s never a mistake to tell people to be careful with opioids” – Brian Koppelman
• When editing his draft, Brian doesn’t like to have the same word repeated multiple times unless it’s intentional