Tyler: Time management, how do you do it,
and what's your advice? How do you nudge yourself,
or who nudges you?
Cass: I have a four‑year‑old daughter,
she just turned four, and if I don't deliver
pages to her at night, she goes to bed around
8:30, she's really mad. She says, "Daddy,
what did you write?" This is completely false,
I'm making it up. She doesn't have any need
that I write pages, but I feel every day that
if I haven't written at least something or
had an idea, then I haven't quite done my
job.
Most days I feel that, write something, and
if I have a week or two weeks where I haven't
made a little progress on something that is
potentially an academic article or a book,
I feel pedal to the metal time. You've got
to produce something. I have an internal super
ego or something about writing. I also really
enjoy it, I have no writer's block, but I
will write a lot of stuff that no one will
ever see, because it's too terrible.
Tyler: So we only get the tip of the iceberg?
Cass: My filter is probably not sufficiently
rigorous, so you probably see too much, but
I do have a filter. I write, I try like there
is no try, there's do, but there's also experimenting.
I'm working on a book on liberty, I've been
doing it for a few years, and I have 90,000
words and I don't like what's there. I hope
something will come of it. The advice would
be you are a living practitioner of this,
if you have something to say, write it.
Then think is it worth showing to the world?
To be too critical of your own production
at the early stages at least, is an error.
Be critical, if it's a book or an academic
article, be really hard on yourself late,
but early just assume it's good.
