Ashley 0:00

making these choices in a book is a lot like teaching. You have to figure out the sequence of ideas that's gonna work in someone's brain. You're kind of using like backwards design, like you're actually saying, if at the end of the day I want someone to be wearing a suit of armor, first they need a breastplate and then they need the fancy shoes. I don't know what those are called.

Cat 0:18

This makes it sound linear. It ended up, it was using a very non-linear process to get a linear structure,

Ashley 0:25

mm-hmm.

Cat 0:26

anybody who's built something complex might resonate with a little bit. Always holding yourself accountable to that going up a level and looking at that chain of logical choices you've made. Some of the questions that came into us for this episode were about why did you decide a book was the right shape, a book was the right holder for your ideas. You know, a book was the right kind of project to take on. There's so many other ways of putting content out there and I'm really curious to hear what you think about this. Ashley, I think about it like books are this very enduring technology separate from the concerns of the market. You know, humanity loves a book. I mean, they're still around and they've been around for so long and there are book shaped, book length things you have to say sometimes, you know, and so there's like a, a real, a. Density and efficiency to a book that, and it allows you to unpack things and kind of be there with a reader. And you know, I think there's many, many valid ways of creating content, but that was something that was in my mind, like, why write a book? Well, because people like books and I have a book shaped thing to say.

Ashley 1:46

I think you should be sure that what you wanna say is a book length thing, like actually in this, like really nice. Substack by Jeff Shreve, who's an agent at, uh, what was formerly called the Science Factory, but they have since changed their name. Um, it's an agency for nonfiction books. He says in the very first post before even teaching you how to write a book proposal that you need to think long and hard about why it is that your thing is a book and why you want to write a book. Because no one should just stumble into this territory without really thinking through it.'cause it is a lot of work.

Cat 2:21

And I think there are a lot of books you might wanna read that you're not necessarily the person to write and you might even have ideas for books that you're not yet the person who can write I mean, I feel like that and that kind of ability to, you know, imagine this future creative self, that, that's been really important to me.'cause I've had a lot of ideas that I've tried to execute and then kind of come back to. And, you know, a lot of the ideas that are in my book are such a validation. It's such a, like, it's almost like a celebration to me of things that I used to wonder about or talk about or try to articulate when I was younger, but didn't quite have the right angle for. And so it actually surprised me how much the same ideas came up, but they came up in their specific form and I then I had like the skill to actually meet that idea and, and shape it in the way that it needed to be heard. And so that was really cool.

Ashley 3:17

And I think for someone like you who's done so much research, which is in these little pockets. Of questions, right? Like does code review cause anxiety and like how are developers doing at work on all these other metrics, right? Like it's in these pockets. And then writing the book allows you to synthesize all of that in a way that you can't do in a single paper because you're only answering the specific experimental question in one of those papers.

Cat 3:43

Or, you know, you can, like, it's in, in the background of your mind, like if anybody would ever ask you, you have this overarching. Kind of library of theories that are driving your work and how you see the world, but then the sort of output that we have to kind of strip so much of that away and meet the convention of the output, you know? I thought it was super, super fun to have the many degrees of freedom that a more creative project gives you to make choices I can actually talk to you about the emotions, like you read the part of my book where I said I was anxious about studying anxiety, right.

Ashley 4:20

Yeah,

Cat 4:20

know, to say there's like a human journey here too. And I can, it's very valid in a book to say, well let me tell you a little bit about how I was doing this study and it seemed important to me for these reasons, but I also worried about it. And so then you're, you're able to tell this like human side of the story. You're often not able to tell in a paper.

Ashley 4:39

yeah. I love that so much, and I think we need both because obviously papers. Are the way they are, because we have the scientific method and we're trying to ask questions carefully, use methods carefully, interpret the results carefully. Right. But in that process, like, you know, we strip a lot of the human side of it. So I think whether it's like the blog about the paper or the talk about the paper, or the book that contains many papers, like I always find those mediums maybe even more satisfying than the original paper itself because it gives you like what the researcher thought and what they're feeling and like. Yeah. In your case, I, I love the parts of your book where you are clearly the narrator, you know, you have a clear point of view, and I just feel like, I don't know, the human side is the most important thing, and it is the thing that you can bring through when you're writing a book.

Cat 5:36

My friend Dave said, getting a book written and published sounds like one of the most arduous things you can do to yourself. Which, which I think we received that question and we were like, oh gosh. Is it, you know, I don't know. I think sometimes we don't even notice, uh, how much we're signing up to do extra work. But, you know, I am really curious. How would you answer that? Why were you motivated to write a general audience science book? You know, it's a, which is a lot of work.

Ashley 6:05

I think there's three main reasons for me. The first is the reason I am in the field I'm in. The reason I pursued neuroscience to begin with was a book by Steven Johnson that was a public facing science book called Mind Wide Open. That's reason number one. I read that book and I was like, I loved this. It motivated me to get in the field. Reason number two is I think I have things to say.

Cat 6:34

Yeah,

Ashley 6:34

I, I think I have an interesting perspective and I'm really excited to be tackling stuff that people are thinking about right now. Like, so the book's about Mind Over Matter. It's engaging with stuff like mindfulness and placebo effects and how much we can think our way out of getting sick. Like, all of these different topics that I just think are really, really interesting and that I think through a lot more research than is my own research. I, I think I have some things to say. And the third thing is just I enjoy writing actually. Like, and, and honestly think this is like a prerequisite for writing a book, obviously, is like, you have to enjoy the process of writing and sometimes

Cat 7:13

it's not obvious. I mean, everybody wants to say that they enjoy writing

Ashley 7:17

a lot of people don't. And in fact, like a lot of scientists don't, you know, like they don't wanna write papers and grants. It's like the last thing they wanna do.

Cat 7:24

There are many valuable forms of work in the world that you could be doing that aren't just writing. But I do think you have to just figure out what is enjoyable about writing for you. And it's okay to be a person who actually doesn't put your output into books.

Ashley 7:40

I think it's not just even writing, it's also the research that comes before the writing and like the writing as thinking

Cat 7:47

it's the work of writing.

Ashley 7:48

yeah, like I just love a day where I go into some weird ass rabbit hole I did not even know I was gonna end up in, and I find this study that's about people doing reiki on rats and I'm like, oh my God. What did I just find? What is happening? And that is like the best day of my week when something like that happens.

Cat 8:10

True facts. I've seen it up close.

Ashley 8:12

There's two papers actually. It's not even just one.

Cat 8:15

You're now like the reiki on rats, expert because you were so curious about this and if, if I were to describe why I think you were the person to write your book, it is because you have this joy and you're just this absolute bottomless joy. Like Bill Nye the science guy out there with old neuroscience papers and turning them into something fun for

Ashley 8:40

man. Like I got, there's even like, like the image is just this black and white image of two hands, like being held out in front of the rat cage because someone is doing reiki on. I got, I'm probably gonna put the same picture in the book because I just love like old timey science pictures that are like hand drawn. You just can't replace that shit. It's so good.

Cat 9:03

Yeah.

Danilo 9:04

I, I need to ask, does, does the reiki on the rats work?

Ashley 9:06

Thank you, Danilo Voice of God. Yeah. Um, you know, according to this paper, yes it does. Um, gotta say small sample size. So they didn't just like, so they, they, this is a whole separate episode,

Cat 9:22

No, you have, you're in, you have to

Ashley 9:24

I can't believe I, I, here we are, we're in the rabbit hole altogether. Um, we, uh, they, they like measure like changes in the vasculature. So, so they, they don't just like do reiki on rats and ask if they're like less stressed or whatever they actually like, cut them up afterwards and look at their blood vessels

Cat 9:42

you're saying this is rigorous?

Ashley 9:44

uh, no, it is exactly the, it is exactly the example of doing something extremely biological right? Like looking at blood vessels. But this being none the more rigorous than any other study. Just that doesn't make it rigorous.

Cat 10:01

an RCT of a wild idea.

Ashley 10:06

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Um, yeah, I'm actually grappling with how to talk about this study'cause

Cat 10:12

are you saying that there's a positive result but you don't believe it because, uh, it, the, the burden of proof is so high.

Ashley 10:19

Because the burden of proof is so high and it's only like five rats or something. So, you know, it's just

Cat 10:25

Yeah. So this is

Ashley 10:26

like one study. Yeah.

Cat 10:28

this is a good scientist note because it's like, you can say, listen, you have all the form and function of science. You did an RCT, but the, the mechanism, the thing you're trying to show, there's no believable mechanism for it that we know about. And so you have to show it such a strong strength of evidence to get us to believe it.

Ashley 10:48

Yeah. Yeah, totally. I think the other thing you need to know about this study while we're on it, is that. The control condition was people who weren't trained as Reiki practitioners. So like it was just people that they brought in to like wave their hands in front of the rats,

Cat 11:03

You gotta control for your trainer effects, you know?

Ashley 11:07

which, you know, like, okay, they, they did a control like.

Cat 11:11

Okay. You know what's funny is we got a review comment when I was publishing our code review anxiety paper, where we did an intervention and the person, you know, who led the intervention was a clinician. So clinicians have this background training and like doing psychology with people. And so, you know, we said in our, in our limitations section, we were saying, well, it could be that this provides a lift. Like we didn't compare a person who wasn't a clinician giving this same intervention to developers, and we got like these very long review comments back that were like, what do you mean? Like, this was very alarming to them. Can you describe like all of the features you know, of a clinician that you might wanna control for? And so then I had to go on this kind of search to, well what, what are the defining features of a clinician? You know, I don't know he that we could test. Here are a few of them,

Ashley 11:59

Oh, that's so funny.

Cat 12:00

It could be any number of things they've learned to have more empathy, you know, but I mean, there's some large things you might start with, like they, they are skilled, they have more experience at facilitating. There's also an effect where maybe the participants trust them more or something like that.

Ashley 12:14

totally.

Cat 12:15

sorry, that's a distraction, but,

Ashley 12:18

Yeah. No, I mean, I think what people believe about the person helping them is probably just as important. And that's, yeah. Placebo effects are very real.

Cat 12:28

So back to your book,

Ashley 12:30

Hmm.

Cat 12:30

there's a good question that somebody also asked, Dawn asked a number of really great questions and, and one thing was, you know, do you stick to writing the book that you planned in the past or do you react to unfolding or unfolding changes in the ever present is what she said, which was beautiful. Um, a lot of people had questions about having a project that takes place over a long amount of time, especially when things change, like science changes and yeah. How is that for you?'cause you're writing a research backed book where you have an idea and then you go in and you research it, right?

Ashley 13:03

Oh, it has to change. There's, there's no way it's rigid. I mean, it's not science if it's rigid, right? Like you have to update the ideas based on new science that comes out. And so I guarantee up until the very last minute I get any say over the text in my book, I will be editing it based on new stuff that comes out. And it could just be a small thing like, oh, we now know an additional thing. Like, nothing's probably gonna uproot everything in the book. But, um, no, it has to change. And actually the interesting thing about my project, which I think is different than yours, is

Cat 13:39

Mm.

Ashley 13:40

I. Am, you know, obviously a trained neuroscientist, but on a very particular field, I was trained in visual neuroscience or like what we might call systems neuroscience. So a certain level of analysis, understanding like cells and circuits. But I'm talking about a lot of research that's like way outside of that ballpark. And so I have had to also learn a ton in the process of writing. And that means I'm updating my own ideas as I go along and I'm learning things and I'm kind of challenging my own ideas or even like existing ideas in the field as I read new things. So that really feels like a process.

Cat 14:15

How do you know if you're right?

Ashley 14:18

You don't,

Cat 14:21

Well, what is, what are the, what's like the quality control control you bring when you're tackling new science? Like what? What's your process for trying to understand? You're diving into an area you don't know, and you don't have to answer the whole thing, but

Ashley 14:36

No, that's a really good question. And actually one of my goals in this book is not only to find answers to questions that I think are really interesting, but also to illustrate my process in doing so. And so I also talk really explicitly about, you know, if I wanna know if alternate nostril breathing impacts brain function, how am I gonna answer that question? Right? Here's, here's what I'm gonna search, here's the kind of papers I'm gonna look for. Um, so I actually really explicitly like walk readers through this process. And so, yeah, there's some stuff in there that's like, what journals do we trust? We look for meta analyses, we look for preregistered studies, all of that good stuff. But I also talk to a lot of scientists in their respective fields and every chapter is like reviewed by multiple scientists. That are in that same field. So, um, that's been really, really great. So I interview people, I sit down with them about their research. I ask them about other people's research, and they review the chapters that I'm writing.

Cat 15:38

Yeah, I see your journalism side come out of this, you know, because you, you decided to do that, right? I mean, this isn't your editor, giving you people to talk to. This is all you, right?

Ashley 15:48

Yeah, no, I, I love this part of it. Honestly, like in my first book, the thing I think I enjoyed the most was interviewing people. So yeah, there is like a small part of me that feels like I wanted, maybe I want to be a journalist, like I'm sort of trying on like a journalist hat. Um, so yeah. Yeah, definitely.

Cat 16:06

I think about when I think about you writing this book and what I've seen you do, I think about like shows like the, the myth busters. You know, I think about, I mean, I use Bill Nye for a reason. It's like, you're not doing science, you're not setting up a full laboratory to study every one of these things, but you are doing like backyard science. You are doing like, what is the small mini test of this? And I wanna also, like, I think you should share some, some things about how you're doing this just as an end of one, right? Like you're trying out fun things for the book, you're like allowing personal experience to be part of the, you know, content in the book. And I think that that's also really beautiful and speaks to your like, philosophy here.

Ashley 16:51

Yeah, I mean, because so much of the book covers content that's like wellness hacks and things like that. You know, one big question I have in my mind is just like, how. Workable are these for a single, normal, median human being?

Cat 17:08

Uh huh

Ashley 17:09

You know? And so it's like, okay, if I wanna try some breath work technique, like can I even do it or,

Cat 17:14

you know what? You have access to one particular body right here.

Ashley 17:18

Yeah, exactly. And like, you know, I went and worked out at a hypoxic workout studio.'cause I was like, what is this? Like, like is it even a reasonable thing to ask someone to do this? Right.

Cat 17:29

Did it seem

Ashley 17:30

those are important questions. I liked it, but, um, yeah, I think it's definitely not for everybody. Yeah. And, and the, I actually interviewed the owners of that studio too, and they'll tell you the same thing. I mean, um, it's really interesting. Some people have obviously really strong anxiety responses to not being able to breathe

Cat 17:49

Yeah. But like, that was really interesting'cause you went to this gym and then, and then what Ashley's not telling you is that I'm the second rat in this experiment because Ash, Ashley's, Ashley's coming back from doing the oxygen deprivation gym and the alternate nostril breathing and like the cold plunges. And then she's telling me that I should do things. And so

Ashley 18:09

Oh, 100%. I'm like, yeah, but do you believe that

Cat 18:13

you're doing the, the reiki hands on me and I, you're like, Hey. And so what this means in my life practically is Ashley's kind of looking over at me and saying I think you're breathing wrong, which is Just probably true.

Ashley 18:26

Mouth breathing, just genuinely bad for you. Not that you're a mouth breather, but there's, there are things that people should know, and that's why we're writing the book.

Cat 18:36

Look, it's really, really funny. So there's just like constant mad scientist vibes in the house right now as Ashley's writing this book.

Ashley 18:43

Yeah, yeah. Okay. But let's, let's, let's not let you off the hook here, because I live with a social scientist who's, uh, constantly asking about the environmental pressures in my life and, you know, whether.

Cat 18:57

Scale of one to seven and you can give a neutral. Yeah, just likert quizzes all over the place.

Ashley 19:04

How did that make you feel?

Cat 19:06

So I'm also writing a book. I've, I've just turned it in for people who don't know, which is really exciting. And, um, and, and all the, the, while I was plaguing Ashley, as the person who's published a book in our household, plaguing her with questions about the process and whether I was gonna embarrass myself with my editor. But, um, I loved writing a book actually. And so now I'm a huge fan in, in typical me fashion. I want to like publish the hidden curriculum about it, you know, because I think there's a lot of bad. Book writing and book publishing advice. And there's, there's actually many, many kinds of books too, you know, out there and many kinds of publishing you could do too. So it's been really fun to write a nonfiction book on psychology for software teams in a genre space that doesn't really have a, a, you know, a place for that. Um, and going through the process was really fun. So going through it as like a creative process was also super fun for me as a psychologist, because where you're out there going to hypoxic gyms and whatever, I guess I have been doing a lot of small personal experiments for myself to just say, what helps me stay creative and what blocks my creativity and how am I gonna hit these deadlines and how am I gonna write a book while I'm doing like, full-time intellectual work, you know, and, and all of this. One thing I wanted to share was, you know, I really learned to respect the power of what fuels and feeds your creativity, because I would have a lot of moments where I had my initial burst of, oh my gosh, I love writing, I love this book, I love these ideas, and I get it out. And then I would hit my like, burnout moment and I would realize I need to just go consume some piece of story somewhere else that like really feeds me because I think my biggest hangup with writing a nonfiction book was that it, it had to feel creative and meaningful and I really didn't want to get into just writing what I thought other people wanted to hear and trying to like tone match all of these. Business books in the genre, which I think would've diluted and distorted, like the psychology would've made it, you know, it would've been me trying to fit what I had to say into the jargon of like, this other field. So it was really, really important to me as, as weird as it was to be like, watching sci-fi movies and like playing video games. And I, I recognized that I needed to protect my own voice while I was doing this project. And that was just like, I didn't expect that, you know, I kind of went in with my head like, this is a business challenge and I need to complete this task. And then it ended up being a very creative project in a way I didn't expect.

Ashley 21:56

So related to this, someone actually asked if we could describe each other's process from our own point of view. And I think this is really fun because like what you just described of like, okay, you hit a block and you need inspiration, you're gonna go like read other things. And this is exactly what I see from the outside. Because what happens is Cat is like, okay, I'm gonna take a break from writing and pull up, I don't know, usually like an academic paper or maybe a blog post from someone else or something. And then she's like, babe, babe, babe, babe. This paper is so good. They measured X, Y, and Z and like they just this. And you get so excited. And then I know that you're like in the process where you're like getting inspiration and stewing on some new stuff before you're gonna go back to writing.

Cat 22:41

it's constant raving about the sources hours over here. Yeah. I love to find a really good paper where I thought someone took a very big swing at something and a ll of these other really good psychology books came out in the year where I was writing my book and they were very inspirational to me. And I don't know if it's just the age of this cohort of psychologists or what it is, you know, or the moment maybe. I was really inspired by those books. I got a lot out of sharing them. I think about, I read The Power of Us. I read Belonging, I read, the Collective Edge. I read, gosh, what else? Like Whistling Vivaldi, just a bunch of really interesting mainstream psychology books. It was really fun to read work that actually. Was a nonfiction book about studies that I knew really well and that I had read many, many times over. And then to see how each person translated it and made choices that were in their own individual voice and weighted the part of the story that they wanted to tell, um, that I thought was a really beautiful opportunity for me because you usually don't get to like, see the backstage of anybody else's book. You know, you don't get to see the process. They went, of course, I still don't get to fully see the actual process they went through. Oh, 10 to 25, the Science of Young People book, is another good one where I had read a whole bunch of the research coming out from this scientist and then I got to read, his book. And that was so fun for me because I was following a along the journey for many years. And so I don't know that anybody else was, but I guess that's a long ramble to say I would love to also be that kind of person, like when I. Publish this book. I also am very excited to publish the lit review that I did for the book and to tell people like you do, I have a section in the beginning that says, here's how I think about evidence and the criteria that I had in my mind for what papers would go into this project. And so these are the choices that I made. You could make different ones, but you know, it's a lot of decisions strung together. A book is just like many, many, many branching logic decisions and some of those decisions will funnel you towards a very different. Project and sometimes you have to roll back, you know, to an earlier decision. My sense of my book as like a logical project was very interesting. I started to feel like I developed this like spatial awareness. Uh, this is also how I organized it in a kind of very visually spatial tree of decisions, the chains of argument. And, um, I maybe I'm sounding like a, a, you know, not well person right now, but

Ashley 25:27

no.

Cat 25:27

I think you have to get this way. Will I

Ashley 25:30

this is not how I think about, well, no, that's a lie. Actually. I do have like the big picture, one pager diagram of ideas in the book sort of thing. Is that what you mean?

Cat 25:40

Yeah. I had. You know, I had this corkboard that you put up for me in my office and I had post-it notes on it for every chapter and in every chapter I knew I had, this chapter has to certain hit certain beats of psychological evidence, and you can't hit it all. It's a huge field. And so each, each piece of evidence has to earn its place. And for me, how does it earn its place? Well, it's part of this like really coherent story. I'm trying to build this like Voltron suit of armor for somebody reading this to be able to put on to say, I know enough good psychology to make my next job better and make myself feel better and win another argument with my boss or whatever challenges that they have in this realm. So, you know, there are like many, many choices you could have made about what piece of armor to put in.

Ashley 26:33

Hmm.

Cat 26:34

were mine and I felt that there had to be connections between them so that it was not just. Arbitrarily what Cat thinks is really fun and cool. Um, which is another way to write a book, but

Ashley 26:45

I love this so much because it's like. I actually think making these choices in a book is, is a lot like teaching. Like you have to figure out the sequence of ideas that's gonna like work in someone's brain. And it sounds like you're kind of using like backwards design, like you're actually saying, like, if at the end of the day I want someone to be wearing a suit of armor, you know, first they need a breastplate and then they need the fancy shoes. I don't know what those are called. Um

Cat 27:10

And it's very, it was, this makes it sound linear. It ended up, it was using a very non-linear process to get a linear structure,

Ashley 27:18

mm-hmm.

Cat 27:19

anybody who's built something complex might resonate with a little bit. Always holding yourself accountable to that going up a level and looking at that chain of logical choices you've made. An example of this is I end every chapter with a set of questions, and it's such a simple artifact. And this was in a, a piece of advice that Greg Wilson gave me actually, you know, who's written like, I don't know what, probably more than 12 books or something, and said, you know, something really simple that is really useful is you can end every chapter with saying what questions should somebody be asking themselves as they look around their environment to try to recognize the things that you just described in your chapter. And so that felt so hokey. The first time I did it, I was like, this felt, it felt embarrassing, almost like kind of personal and. I loved these questions, and the reviewers loved these questions, and they became a thing that I wrote and a thing that I refined. I'm not a fan of bullet point thinking because it can force you to oversimplify. But, you know, question driven chapter development is I think really good. So I have these five or seven questions at the end, and then I can constantly ask myself, well, did I provide some useful answers, you know, to these questions?

Ashley 28:41

totally. They're the learning objectives.

Cat 28:43

yeah. Yeah. That's your version of it, I think. Yeah, absolutely.

Ashley 28:48

Yeah. I think that's amazing. And I, I think this orientation towards something equipping people is really like, like we both share this with our books like these, these are books designed to equip people with skills to move forward skills and evidence. Right. To move forward in their lives in different ways.

Cat 29:08

I was sometimes wrong about the ideas that other people would find most useful. You know? And sometimes I have this emotional struggle because like anybody who's gotten a PhD in something and spent so long with these ideas, you're like, this is obvious. And it's no longer interesting, you know? And so I went through a lot of moments where I just wrote out every idea that I thought I had, like a general chapter idea, and I said, okay, here's the different research areas that seem really cool and interesting and important to me, and wrote them all out in a big list. And then triaged that list. Like, okay, now I need to not be Cat thinking about this. I need to be the staff engineer who's reading my book, really hoping it'll give them something for tomorrow, I need to be that person out of this topic. What's the one thing that person wants to hear? And then I would think, I've talked to all these junior developers, they send me emails, what would that person be immediately wanting to hear? And so, you know, you can only have your book go out to so many reviewers. But I do feel like I really benefited from the thousands of conversations that I have with engineers.'cause I could remember like, so many things that came up from them. And that was an interesting process because there were ideas I was very fond of. And then I made myself go through this review and I, I chopped them out. I was like, that's, for Cat, that's not for these

Ashley 30:33

Yeah. Like that's just inside baseball or whatever.

Cat 30:37

And I think it's really nifty, but I'm gonna put that in a blog post. You know, not the book.

Ashley 30:42

Yeah, totally. Totally. I think that's such a benefit you have in writing your book, is that you have all of this experience talking to people who are the intended audience members for the book. And I think that that is like an empathy building process where you're like, what do these people care about? Um, that's something I've been trying to do, but it's, it feels hard, I can't go ask people on the street what they think about reiki, you know? But like, I will give these sort of public talks and then I try to pay attention to like, the kinds of questions people ask afterwards. And that's been really helpful. I thought about doing an open mic where I just say I'm a neuroscientist, ask me anything, you know, at the local open mic where sometimes I go play guitar. But yeah, it's extremely risky, which is why I haven't done it. Um, pretty sure a lot of the questions would just be about drugs or something. I'm not sure,

Cat 31:35

Or health. It's either gonna be like ill illegal or immoral for you

Ashley 31:39

Yes. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like I, I don't know how to cure everything, and that's just gonna be disappointing. But anyway, I, I think that's like a, an amazing benefit that you have and, and really a superpower is that you have talked to so many people and that's really driving the content of the book in a, in a really specific way.

Cat 32:00

But I wanna answer like, describing your writing process from my perspective, because I, I think there's an individual way to do this too, and like to have the beginner's mindset that you have, you know, is, is a big part of this. I'm an applied scientist out there doing this engagement with people in the public, but, you can also be like, the journey of this book is you taking someone along your mind, you know? And, and that is like the journalist approach in a lot of ways. You're gonna be really transparent about every step of that journey with people. And also just tell a specific story. Tell an individual specific story. This is an adventure. You know? And you're doing it around all of this teaching and service and all of these like versions of you that are not the you, that is an author.

Ashley 32:48

Hmm.

Cat 32:49

And I think that you also have cared a lot about like, accessing the culture of nonfiction writers and thinking about, you know, what are, how can I understand this community of practice? And that is something that I think is very smart, and that sort of teaches you a lot of practical wisdom.

Ashley 33:09

Hmm.

Cat 33:10

I think about how you love to listen to musicians who are like, I think I said the other day, like musician musicians, you know, like they, they care about like the craft of music and you care about the craft of writing, and paying attention to that and finding people to talk to who have really pulled the curtain back a little bit for these big nonfiction projects. So that's been a serious part of your process is like thinking about, where do I find a platform as a scientist from which I can reach the public and like your TikTok videos, or part of that and protecting your voice there. I think it feeds back into the book because you, you start to get that, sense of like a different way of being than like is just your professor self.

Ashley 33:55

Mm. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's true. I mean, I think what you were saying about reading all these other books, right? Like you listed off multiple books that you've read and, and I've been doing the same a little bit. And I think, yeah, there is like a studying process of like studying the craft of how people write books like this, and I think that's really important. Something I worry about, and I wonder if you worry about this too, is like. Obviously what you put in your brain while you're writing is gonna directly influence like how you write and what you write. And so I worry a little bit about like, okay, if I read a bunch of Mary Roach, like God, I love Mary Roach, would love to be

Cat 34:30

You gotta be

Ashley 34:31

I also don't wanna just, you know, like echo and just be like a puppet. Right?

Cat 34:38

No, I worry about that a lot. I think there's a, there's a pattern matching that your brain does if you're too surrounded by a certain way of writing. There's something that Maggie Stiefvater said that I really liked about writing, which is that at first you have to learn to just imitate things and copy things and for a while, you're just producing copy of other people or like reproductions, you know, and then you start to learn how to actually do your own original creative work. So I completely agree. I notice that I will pick up turns of phrase if I'm reading the same person. I think this is a reason it's really important to not just have the only things that you read be on social media, because social media is very mimetic and you'll get these turns of phrase burned into your mind and it will polish off your like rough edges. I feel like that are very interesting, specific rough edges that say who you are, you know?

Ashley 35:36

I totally agree with that. And I think like, something I think a lot about is how do you inject novelty into your life? This is such a dumb example, but if I go to a hotel room and I know this annoys Cat a little bit, I just put on the TV because I just wanna know, like,'cause,'cause we don't really watch tv, right? So I just wanna know like what's on the tv and I wanna be like just randomly presented with something,

Cat 36:01

This is the sociologist in you.

Ashley 36:03

Yeah. Which like, and I'll do, I'll do this with radio stations sometimes too. Like, just gimme like whatever's randomly on the radio. Like it's a way to inject a little bit of. Randomness. And I think that's really different than so much of, like you said, social media is mimetic, but also you go in, you choose the shows you watch, so you always kind of watch the same sort of television you know, you live in a more narrow pop culture domain than you even realize, probably. So anyway, I, I just think about injecting that, and I think about it in terms of creativity being fueled by that kind of randomness. And we know this from research, we know this from like how other things impact the brain and just kick it into a slightly different state. And I just think that's the precursor in a lot of ways for some creative thinking.

Cat 36:51

Yeah. There's some fun stuff like, do you know the concept of functional fixedness?

Ashley 36:56

Mm. Like that you can, like, if you have a hammer, it's like only a

Cat 37:01

All, all you can ever imagine doing with a hammer is hitting a nail that's functional fixedness. You are, you're fixed about the function that you can see for something so functional fixedness is a blocker to creativity and it, it's natural. Like We benefit from having highly pattern matching brains. Right? But it's really interesting to look at what helps people overcome functional fixedness. And so there's a paper I was just reading with this great title called, Innovation Relies on the Obscure. I, it's, I don't think it's like the most massive generalizable evidence ever. I mean, creativity's really hard to study, but in this paper they talk about how people who are able to notice obscure kind of niche features. In the sort of landscape and then apply those, you know, that's a step toward, it's a pattern you can try to do for innovation. So, notice what has been made obscure and then see if you can find new unexpected uses for it. And you can kind of train people, help give them more practice to do this. They have this technique in this study they called the generic parts technique, which I have to say they abbreviated it as GPT. And I first read it, I was like, what are we talking about? But it's actually a study from 2012 about a different GPT, which is the generic parts technique. So you can train yourself to kind of look at all of the parts of a thing, imagine them as parts, not as the function that you know them as and try to recombine them. And I love that because, I think a lot of technical problem solving gets you to that step, right? You become someone who's used to uncoupling features from their intended function a little bit more. And so it's a fun strategy for creativity. Where did they that even start, why am I talking about this?

Ashley 38:55

because we were talking about, you know, just like staying creative a little bit,

Cat 38:58

Yeah, right? Yeah. I, sorry, I got so into talking about that paper. I just

Ashley 39:03

No, no, no. I think that's really interesting. I mean, can you say more about how people study creativity? Like how do you, how do you even do that?

Cat 39:13

People study it a lot of ways. I looked a little bit into the creativity research before this episode, and honestly it's chaotic. Maybe that's to be expected if you're the kind of person who studies creativity. Um, so some, like some warning labels on the can of creativity. Research might include. There's a lot of publication bias. I mean, people love the idea of creativity and so they love to publish positive results and not negative results about it. They love to say these little games increase your creativity. Um, defining it like what's a good outcome measure of creativity, that's really hard. So, some classics might include something like the unusual uses test. So you give people like a set of little objects and see how many unusual uses they can actually come up with. But that's a very specific kind of creativity that's like divergent thinking, which is. Maybe its own things, not the whole thing. There'll be studies that are like, only with gifted and talented students and things like that. So it's hard to kind of see studies across a wide range of people. Um, yeah. But we know some things like, there's really interesting role that mind wandering might play in creativity. So there's like mind wandering literature, that, you know, we've kind of ignored the function. I, I think a study said, you know, I'm gonna look in my notes actually,'cause this was so interesting. Like, maybe, like half of your thoughts in a given day are mind wandering.

Ashley 40:45

Hmm,

Cat 40:46

So we study like goal directed, highly intentional cognition, but a lot of your cognition is just kind of like floating out there, mind wandering, and it's really understudied. And so some of these papers are, have these really fun arguments that are like, it seems unlikely that this thought plays no role in our lives. It might be really important.

Ashley 41:09

I think this is really interesting because there's a lot of. neuroscience of attention, literature on mind wandering too, actually research that I'm reading for my book, and it's kind of interesting because if you're thinking about the need to pay attention, then mind wandering seems like the enemy in that situation. Right? But I think what this is pointing out is that the thing you need is the balance between the two. You need like the moments where your mind can wander and you can think, and then the moments when you're focused and you need the sort of metacognition to know which state you're even in.

Cat 41:44

Yeah, that's kind of what my read is too. There's a great paper I read for this called Inspired by Distraction.

Ashley 41:51

Hmm.

Cat 41:52

so they did this paradigm that they call an incubation paradigm. They have some people rest,, they have some people engage in what they call an incubation period. So you're doing like a non-demanding task. And so the people who have this incubation period where they basically have like the chance to mind wander, this is what happens you give people like a really boring task to do and they're just mind wandering the whole time. So it's basically a way to create that, um, those people performed better on like this after that incubation period compared to even just rest plain resting. Um, and certainly better than the demanding task condition. So, you know, I don't think it's been super robustly studied, but there's like some really interesting suggestion here that incubation periods do really matter for our performance, which really matches what people say. Right? Like that kind of like, oh, I took a walk and I was doing something else, and then the solution came to me. Many, many people have had that experience. The shower thoughts, you know, I know that happens to me.

Ashley 42:56

No, absolutely. Absolutely. This is something I think about a lot with nature. Like the power of nature to be a stimulus, but a stimulus that is, kind of boring, like, just like a walk through a park or something. It's, it's like some sort of stimulation, but not too much, not too distracting. For me, even just like sitting in a coffee shop, that kind of like low level noise of people are around and I'm staring out the window, like that's my, like mind wandering state, you know? Do you feel like in your writing process you are intentionally taking breaks like that? Like how does that look for you?

Cat 43:36

Yeah. When I'm good, I am, when I'm good about following my own processes and self-regulating, definitely I, you know, I really found it to be true. The thing that people say about, you can't do highly engaged creative work for longer than four hours a day, or something like that.

Ashley 43:55

Yeah.

Cat 43:56

I really found that to be true. I would just notice this degradation in the quality of my thinking and, and then it, it made me very acutely aware of my highest value cognitive hours, and, which for me is the morning. I'm a morning person. I am so awake in the morning, you

Ashley 44:15

true. It's true. Even before coffee, it's kind of amazing.

Cat 44:19

And, and then I was having this realization that, gosh, these would be the best problem solving moments for my book. Like, I better get in there. So there were a lot of interesting choices like that, and some of it conflicted with the previous habits that I'd had for myself. I mean, at least I really value trying to have a good weekend and things like that. But, you know, there's something really magical and wonderful about that open Saturday. You've released the obligations from the week you're ready to write. So you and I have both made choices to say, well, we've gotta like actually prioritize the creative push right now,

Ashley 44:55

And I think that is, that is a key thing. With any big project, some stuff has to go, it has to be a priority above other things if you want it to happen. I don't know, maybe that's just true of big projects in general. Right. But I think

Cat 45:11

I think it's very, very true about a book. Yeah.

Ashley 45:14

Yeah. I mean, what you just described too about like knowing your peak hours, knowing how long you can work for, like, there's a lot of self knowledge that really helps before embarking on a big project like this. And like it changes a little bit. But I do feel like that's super helpful because I, I feel similarly, I wanna do things in the morning. I also really want to have a lot of time blocked off because of wearing so many hats in my life, like I need like an author day, it really doesn't work for me. Like some people have a thing where they just try to write every single day. That hasn't really worked for me because I can't, it, it becomes task switching in a way that is more arduous than is even worth it. Right? So even if I get 30 minutes of writing, it took me 30 minutes to get there. Um, it's really inefficient. And so I find it really easy to just have like, okay, this is author Ashley Day, where I pretend I don't have anybody else needing anything from me for that one day and they are blocked outta the world and like, you know, but I need that space, that bucket to work in.

Cat 46:21

I, I had to like, treat myself like an author. There's kind of this like self-effacing, self-deprecating, I don't know, thing that some people get stuck in that's like, oh, my little project, you know, whatever. And, and, and it's kind of like, no, you have to take up space. You have to say, this is a piece of work and I am an author, and how, at least for me, this helped. Like how would an author behave? You know, nobody is gonna do that. For you. Well, nobody's gonna do that for people of our demographics, let's say, you know, maybe other people get that done for them. We have to take up that space and say, this is really important actually, and, and I deserve this time and space. And that, that just mattered as a motivational push. And then, yeah, I think some of the stuff you only learn as you go through it, because you're gonna think that certain cadences will work for you and find out that they don't. And if anybody is listening to this as they write a book, I mean don't give up. So many people give up. Yeah.

Ashley 47:25

Oh my gosh. Like we have both had days where we're like, why in the world did we decide to write books? Like this was a terrible idea.

Cat 47:34

they're usually not happening on the same day, which is really good. It's been, I think, such a blessing to be able to come out and be like, it's miserable. I can't do this. And have the other person say, you totally can.

Ashley 47:48

Yeah. Remember last week when it was, it felt so good,

Cat 47:53

Now that I've turned it in and I'm like, oh, it's, anybody could write a book. It's, I'm gonna write another book. It's great. It is like you have complete amnesia about how hard it was.

Ashley 48:03

Obviously writing a book has a kind of like, uh, mystique around it or something, but I don't believe the accounts where people say it's easy. I like if there's any of these accounts, I just feel like it's probably easy to write, what am I trying to say? There are certain kinds of books that are easy to write. I feel like the kinds of books we are trying to write are not easy actually. They're a lot of work.

Cat 48:30

There were a lot of times we would look at each other and say, it's hard because you're doing a hard thing.

Ashley 48:36

Yeah.

Cat 48:37

But at the same time, I would also raise this counterpoint of don't believe people who say, oh my God, you could never write. It's so hard. And all the, it's, it's a set of skills and it's like a thing that you're gonna be doing something with your time. You can absolutely achieve an ambitious, complex project. You know? And I think there's a lot of kind of learned helplessness advice that's just a little bit like, makes it a mystique, so that, so that authors can look like there's something different from the rest of humanity or something. And I get really fed up with that.'cause there's a lot of tough love advice that's like, your writing is probably so much worse than you think it is. And that was the opposite of the case for me. Like in a lot of ways I would turn things in and it was so much better than I thought it was. So just, just watch out if you're that kind of person.

Ashley 49:33

Yeah. I, I feel like as with. I don't know anything. You can take what everybody else thinks with a grain of salt. And ultimately, like you have to kind of know yourself and keep in touch with like why you're doing the big project, like writing the book. Because that's the thing, I just continuously find motivating. Like I've actually reread the prologue to my book the most out of any other piece of the book because it is in a nutshell why I am writing it. And I find it immensely helpful to return to that. And so I think like returning to the core of why you're doing it, it feels really important.

Cat 50:12

You are the first reader of your own book. And so you have to be convinced that this is a worthy project. And you write, you write yourself into believing that it has become something that's worth it. And that's why people say ideas are cheap. Because they are cheap. Like anybody can imagine the perfect book and the instant you start writing it, it's imperfect, and you're grappling with actual reality. And then you're picking yourself back up from encountering the real world and getting yourself to believe, yes, this is worth it and at least that's how it's been for me. But then it's kind of like I have this joy in what I did because I know why I did it. And so even if nobody likes it, that's fine. I read it and I liked it. So it had one important reader who was satisfied, and that was me.