#326 - Think Like Leonardo da Vinci (Part 4)

0:00Welcome to day four of DaVinci Week. Today we're talking about how Leonardo used experimentation to bring his ideas to life and how you can use the same approach to finally stop over thinking. Light is beautiful. So once upon a time Leonardo DaVinci is commissioned to create this massive mural on a wall known as the Last Supper. And up until this point everyone's painting style when it comes to painting on walls is done by what's called a fresco. And what that means is basically it's a style where you're painting onto this wet plaster and it sticks to the wall because the plaster in the wall have some chemical reaction and it's fantastic it lasts very long becomes part of the wall. There's only one problem in order to paint a fresco you need to move very quickly and moving quickly is not something that Leonardo DaVinci does.

1:00He sits there he caught the blades he takes up to 10 fucking years of times to paint. He's in a painting the little side note he's been sued many times by people who have commissioned him to do work because it doesn't finish his work can't finish just like Nick. Okay continue your story asshole. Long story short he says you know what I'm just going to try something new I'm going to try my own white's never been done before but let's just see what happens. So he just starts painting directly on the wall and he does the level of detail that he's looking to create in this image and he ends up creating a fucking masterpiece anyone who's seen the last supper knows the level of detail that is in that picture is insane. Yeah and it could have never been captured through a fresco so he was right in that part of his experiment where he was wrong is that this would eventually last long term and still to today that literally right after we painted it started cracking on the wall and to today literally every day they're trying to restore the last supper because it's just constantly falling apart.

2:02So the moral of the story here what are we actually trying to say we're trying to say that this guy just had this experimental mindset he was not afraid to try things and fail yeah and just think like we talked about it in a prior episode he thought outside the box right but this is beyond thinking outside the box it's not being afraid to fail. I think it's more so like going and doing the thing and not being afraid to experiment with something it's like I'm going to see if this works and if it doesn't work then whatever at least I learned something right it's having that is that not having a fear of failure yeah but it's more so having an experimental mindset like today's episode is not about not fearing failure now it's about having an experimental mindset by just going and doing things yeah and yeah yeah which goes back to what we were saying the problem is right we overthink a lot. Exactly right so this he could have sat there and over taught this right but then guess what the last supper would have never been painted exactly the way that we know it today although it is imperfect it is lasted how many years 600 years and it was because he didn't overthink that part of the process yeah this over thinks a lot of shit yeah but that part of it he didn't yeah we'll take the good with the bad Leonardo but the one thing this reminds me of is a story I tell all the time and it's when I was a kid like in college and then I

3:21after college I had this dream after visiting LA for the first time that I wanted to live there and every January February when the cold winter months are absolutely brutal in New York City yeah I would always I wish I lived in LA I'm just I know I'm just going to go move to LA but then you wisely advised me to run an experiment rather than move my entire life to LA or sit there thinking about whether or not I should move to LA literally go rent an Airbnb for like 30 years 30 days in February and see how you actually like it see how it feels to go and do that thing that you are overthinking so much I ended up going there for the month and yes of course feeling sun on your face and 70 degree weather in February was fucking amazing compared to seeing you guys freezer asses off in New York but at the end of the day I realize what was really most important to me was family and being so far away from family really ain't at me inside and help me to make a decision based on that experiment that actually moving to LA was not in the cards for me yeah I love that story because experimentation is about taking action yes and I think the thinking like you would have never been able to come to that conclusion by just sitting down with your notebook and thinking about no like should I move to LA or should I not and most thing most experiments are reversible like you don't want to think in terms of an experiment when it comes to like deciding to do something as crazy as getting married like that's not an experimental mindset that's like a

4:50decision but to to this point of experimenting before making engages kind of like an experiment see I think there's an experiment that you also told me to do before getting engaged that was also wise which was living with my wife or going on vacations like going away together with my future wife like those are all little mini experiments that give you a taste before marriage because it's one thing to date and go on dates and always be having a great time together it's another thing to live in the same house with someone for an extended period of time exactly so that was another form of an experiment to collect data yeah rather than should I marry her should I not marry or go and live with her and see how you feel after three months right it's about action creating information I love that yeah and we talked about this in a prior episode where we interviewed um and what's her name and lore and lore that's her that's not a full name that's what is it in lore la comme and lord la comme she's a super wise lady she wrote a book called tiny experiments all about exactly what you're saying is even these experiments not thinking about them as these grand gestures but tiny experiments like week long or month walks and just getting that information that you're talking about so we'll link that show in the show notes if you want to dive deeper into

6:09the actual philosophy behind that but yeah I think you're absolutely right that information is created by these actions that were taking so what's the call to action here Mike I think the call to action is really simple today it's take one thing that you've been overthinking in your life and instead of asking yourself what's the right decision here ask yourself what's the smallest way I could actually test this right now yeah it's it's very very simple run in experiments to give you the information that you need in order to go and make a better decision because you can sit there and analysis paralysis and let me throw this on you right now on the spot okay what's what's going on in your life that you can apply this to what's the smallest thing you can test right now for something that you're going to I mean I could tell you one thing right off the bat we're about to launch our first product for field bros in a week from today and that to me I'm treating as an experiment it we're launching the world's simplest gratitude journal and it would be one thing for me to look at that as like a winter loose situation a pass fail grade like is this thing going to blow up or is it going to fail and instead I'm just looking at it as

7:18let's see what the people think let's see what the market thinks let's see how we feel by creating this first product and let's gather that information so it's treating that it's like are we going to sell a million units of this journal I don't know that's not a decision I'm ready to mail are we going to commit extra resources to this like no it's about shipping the experiment and then gathering that data so that you can make I think that's a really really great example and it goes even deeper into this experiment their mindset which is causing you not to have these very high expectations that cause you a lot of unhappiness no and that's really what this mindset allows you to do is to consistently be happy because you are in this learning state of mind yeah you're prioritizing progress and not perfection exactly great way to end this episode thanks for hanging out with us love you peace