Episode 33

[00:00:00] : Well, hello. Hello. It's Rick Lewis with the follow through Formula Podcast. Hey, everybody, this is Episode 33. 33 consecutive podcast days in a row. I'm still loving this because every day I'm kind of leaving myself open to surprises. And this is the idea I had today. This is unprecedented because guess what? You'll never guess what The surprises. I am not alone in my little tiny dark shower stall. I'm standing here with my 11 year old son, Aditya Lewis, and my idea today was to interview him. And you may be wondering why What? I want to interview my 11 year old son. Well, I'll tell you why. Because he is an example off follow through. So a detail What I would like to do, I'm very aware, you being here in the house, you spend time, usually a lot of time, every single day, working on, ah, project that you've got going. And I'm hoping that you'd be willing to just talk first of all, a little bit about what your project is, what it is you do every day. So if you could just just let everyone know what that is to start with, and then I'll ask you the next question. Okay, Um, right now. Okay, so it is a game called Warhammer. I kind of got into that through another game which was so like called Dandy. And, um, it involves building stuff, making boards and building and painting models that come and sets and you build armies and fight them. There's rules and dice. And, um so I build them from scratch and work on boards and then paint models and build models. So what is it you like about this activity so much? What do you like about it? A few things which are comes with a lot of lore. So stories and things that I get Thio read and, uh, play out in the games. It also comes with a lot of military strategy, which is fun because I'm never going to be a military strategist. So I get to do that in a game and then also building stuff. I really have always liked making stuff. I have a big passion for Lego, and I like doing that at the same time as those things. Cool. So what compels you to spend so much time doing this like pretty much any time when you're not needing to do schoolwork, Not you're not in school or not doing the home school work because you're in, you know, Onley in school part time. Now, Um, pretty much whenever you have free time, you disappear, you go downstairs and you start working on your models. You're painting your sculpting with clay. You're building your designing things. And what is it about that activity that makes you naturally just want to follow through with it so often? I've never really thought about that, Um, because it's just fun and I enjoy it. I think, Yeah, it's just really enjoyable for me. I don't think I have pressure from anybody else about it. I feel ah, lot of intrinsic motivation about it rather than you know, getting paid or something. I feel I think I feel like I don't always need to get stuff perfect. So that allows me to follow through with the things I'm not even that excited about when I make them. And then often, when I finished them, I'm actually really, really pleased with them. So I think that just that intrinsic motivation, rather than extrinsic, really helps me. Um, do that right? So who told you about intrinsic and extrinsic school? You learned wondering how you know about S O. You know, the you know, the difference between those teachers. Just, like, use the word extrinsic and intrinsic. And I'm like, OK, extrinsic and intrinsic. Yeah. Yeah. Well, what do you think? The So what is your sense of what the benefit of intrinsic motivation is? Why is that a good thing? Um, I just think that it, um, allows you talking about follow through. It allows. You did kind of have motivation for a much longer amount of time. You're able to do what you love to dio because you love to do it. And if you love to do it, you could do that for a so long as you want. But if somebody else wants you to do it for them, you only have the amount of time that you do that thing, get the reward, and then you're not doing it anymore. But that's something you enjoy. You could do it as long as you want. And I think that has a lot more follow through with it because you can do it for a long as you want. You can. You don't have to stop when you get the reward. How does someone find what they're intrinsically motivated to do? Because some people don't even know really what just they're motivated to do just in and of themselves. Some people are kind of stumped by that question. If you say what do you What do you just really want to do just for yourself? Without anyone else telling you you need to do it? How does someone discover what it is that they're intrinsically motivated to dio? I don't know. I just always liked I always just easily found the stuff that I really liked. And usually it wasn't something that I wasn't excited about really excited about. Um, I think sometimes I just lost interest and stuff. I think you could just really follow. If something looks interesting to you, you could just do that. And if it doesn't end up feeling like what you want to dio with a lot of your life, you could just say okay, whatever. Maybe do it a couple more times, So it sounds like you're saying experiment. Try some stuff. Experiment. Explore that seems like good advice. Ah, lot of people nowadays grow up and fall into patterns where they spend time doing things that aren't particularly productive or creative or healthy because they don't know what to put their attention on. How do you imagine you'll be living your life from here forward? That will help you avoid falling into a trap of being bored or not knowing what to do with yourself or having a kind of a direction or focus for things you really like. Okay, so ah, lot of the places that I learned my stuff the stuff I'm doing with these games is actually from adults on YouTube who do this still, and I think that it's very possible for as an adult to follow what you really enjoyed as a kid. I think you could even, um, this is really funny. But as a Lego designer for the company, you could make money like livable wage money, and I think that it's not a problem for you just to do what you loved whenever for a long as you want to do it. I don't think, um, I think I see myself is just a very trying to be a very playful person and just enjoy stuff rather than thinking about work and college and stuff like that, as serious stuff I have to do every day or, you know, whatever. Um, I don't live because homeless and I do think it's important to do those things. But I just think if you could do the more playfully just as like, I even see you doing this like with your job before the whole virus happened. I think that is a, um it's just a way you could do things that allows you to be more have more fun with things that you just want to dio, right? I really see your design skills taking leaps and bounds and improvement as you just do this a lot. You've been doing so much of it and I'll come down every few days and then I'll see something you're doing in them. Uh, some of the stuff you've done. I thought you actually purchased. I thought it was out of you know something. You got out of the store and it turns out you actually made it yourself out of clay. And you painted it and you came up with the special glue solution you put on the outside of it to create this kind of lacquer effect. And so I I can see you move. I can see your design skills Really improving Is design like that? Something that you feel you're really gravitating towards that that could potentially be something you wanted to do for for work one day? Yes, for sure. I think that, um I think that's something I really have skill in a direction that I have probably the most skill right now. And And I think that would be a really useful other thing to say. Which would be that you don't always have Thio just do what you Exactly what you did is a kid. I know that right now I'm modeling, but I also know some of the other adults who did that. Um, while they still model as a hobby, they are engineers or carpenters or things that involve that, um, love that area of expertise. And I think that I'm also can I'm really interested in pursuing some actual jobs that involve doing right. Do you think it's necessary? Tohave both like a natural talent for something, or even if you don't have a natural talent. Can you make up for that just by practice? I mean, I see both active in your case that you've got You seem to have some natural talent for it. But I honestly can't tell how much talent you started with or how much you're developing just from your sheer amount that you're doing it. The level of follow through that you're applying to this. What do you think is most important having the raw talent or just having the interest in doing it or both. What do you think about that? I started out with no talent at all. I mean, like, of course, there was talent because, you know, Lego stuff like that. But for this particular modeling, Um, and these two games, um, I had no talent. I I couldn't do it. I was trying to make some of the boards out of, um out of yoga mats and was not working. It was not a good idea at all. And I You've tried a lot of Yeah, I did not start out knowing how at all I didn't know how toe. Yeah, it just it didn't turn out well, the first time I tried to make dungeon tiles, I remember what they looked like. And it was fun. Eso I think that, um for me, it was mostly just practice. Just doing it. Ah, lot. And also watching YouTube videos, not thio encourage people toe, you know, much their brains up with those. But I think that that is one of the places, Honestly, that I got a lot of my Yeah. So you're just You're a big advocate of just getting in there and practicing and improving as you go, just by continuing to be persistent in your pursuit of it. Cool. Well, fantastic. Thank you so much for letting me interview you inside our little shower stall designed for one person. That's right. And I'm so pleased to have you as my very first guest. I can't honestly say I see having a lot of other guests in here. I'm trapped against one corner of the wall, but I'm I'm really happy to have you here and thank you for interviewing with me, and I'll let you go back to your your design work. All right, Well, as my guest leaves the studio, um and I am left here. Ha, little, a little bit more breathing room inside my shower stall. So that was interview with my son, Aditi Louis, 11 years old, uh, current designer by choice, and just threw his persistence and follow through to pursue something he loves to do that he is getting remarkably better at day after day. I'm seriously impressed with the stuff I see him creating, and it's so exciting to be around someone who's pursuing something they enjoy and watch them progress and mature and grow in their skills. And that can be all of us. There is not my belief, anyway, is there isn't a single human being among us that isn't capable of engaging that dynamic and experiencing the joy off growing into something that they have in Aditi is words, intrinsic motivation for pursuing. So there you go. Go get yourself some of that intrinsic juice Today with whatever matters most to you. This is Rick Lewis with Episode 33 of the follow through Formula Podcast, and I'll be back tomorrow