Framework
Rick Mode vs. Prick Mode: literal hats for creating vs. editing
Drawing on Jerry Seinfeld's 'two minds of a creator', a childlike mind that scribbles freely and a ruthless editor who cuts later, Shaan's team had two hats made. 'Rick Mode' (after Rick Rubin) means free play and no judgment, and 'Prick Mode' means hard-nosed editing. The hat makes it clear which mode the room is in.
“And so we created these 2 hats, literally, like Diego got them made for us, which was like, it says Rick Mode, which is like Rick Rubin. So it's like Rick Mode when it's like, dude, we're just messing around. We're playing. We trust ourselves. And you're Rick Mode. And then we have Prick Mode. And you put on the Prick Mode hat, it goes the other way. It's a different color. And if we were in Prick Mode, then it's like, well, that's who I'm supposed to be right now.”
Steal thisSplit brainstorming and editing into separate sessions, and use a visible signal so everyone knows which one is happening.
Resource
Is This Anything?: Seinfeld's 40 years of daily joke drafts
Jerry Seinfeld's book collects the legal-pad jokes from his daily habit of writing for the first two hours of every morning, which he has kept up for 40 years. The title comes from the question he asks of each half-formed joke: is there anything here?
“So Jerry Seinfeld has this daily writing habit. Every morning, first 2 hours of the day, he sits down with a legal pad and a pencil and a coffee, and he just writes. He just writes jokes. And he's like, writing is the game. And so he's been doing that for 40 years. So what he did was he compiled all of those yellow pages of just half jokes, which— and the book is called Is This Anything? Because most of the jokes don't go anywhere. And he's just asking himself, like, is there something there? Is there anything? Is that— is this something?”
Framework
Irritation is innovation: build the opposite of what annoys you
Shaan notes Rory mines his own irritations for ideas. Jerry Seinfeld did the same with late-night talk shows, building Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee as their opposite and reportedly licensing it to Netflix for around $100 million.
“And it sounds like one thing that I'm picking up is you pay attention to what irritates you, and instead of just complaining about it, that's a great source material. I think Jerry Seinfeld says irritation is innovation.”
Steal thisKeep a running list of what irritates you about a category and design the opposite.