RMV 9 Steve Almond: You Can Design Your Creative Practice

In the newest Results May Vary episode, we talk to New York Times bestselling author Steve Almond about how you can design your creative practice and make a career out of following your artistic passions. Steve's way of design thinking is intentional and intuitive, and offers incredible insight around:

- Living a more examined life
- Finding a patron to support your creative work (pro tip: your patron is probably you!)
- Fighting depression with candy (or other passions)
- Being honest about your needs so you can create habits and behavior change that will stick.

How can you use this inspiration to design your life and increase your creative confidence? Listen to RMV 9 to find out!

About Steve Almond

A former newspaper reporter and the author of Candyfreak and My Life in Heavy Metal, Steve’s latest book, Against Football: One Fan's Reluctant Manifesto, details why, after forty years as a fan, he can no longer watch the game he loves.

In addition to writing thoughtful and often hilarious commentary for The New York Times Magazine and The Boston Globe, Steve Almond is also the more baritone half of the popular and profound Dear Sugar podcast with Cheryl Strayed.

Show Links

Against Football: One Fan's Reluctant Manifesto is RMV guest Steve Almond's synthesis of the NFL detailing why, after 40 years as a fan, he can no longer watch the game he loves.

You Had Me At Beheading is a collection of Steve's self-deprecating and thoughtful responses to the inevitable hate mail he has received for his position against football and the NFL.

Dear Sugar The universe has good news for the lost, lonely, and heartsick. Dear Sugar — the cult-favorite advice column — is back, but this time speaking directly to your ears. Hosted by the original Sugars, Cheryl Strayed and Steve Almond, the podcast fields all your questions — no matter how deep or dark — and offers radical empathy in return.  *New episodes weekly beginning in January.*

Cheryl Strayed is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling memoir Wild, which was chosen as the 1st selection for Oprah's Book Club 2.0, and turned into an Oscar-nominated movied staring Reese Witherspoon. She has also written New York Times bestsellers Tiny Beautiful Things, Brave Enough, and the novel Torch.

Esalen Writer's Camp In sessions led by authors Cheryl Strayed, Pam Houston, Steve Almond, Samantha Dunn, Alan Heathcock, and Faith Adiele, you'll generate new work and listen to lectures about the art and craft of prose writing. Plus there's amazing mineral fed hot tubs overlooking the Pacific Ocean!

Five Star Bars The ultimate chocolate bars, according to Vogue magazine. Steve gives them an entire chapter in his book Candyfreak. And yes, they are every bit as good as he claims!

John Prine Grammy award-winning folk singer's song, All The Best features the lyrics "Your heart gets bored with your mind."

Naked and Afraid One man, one woman, 21 days with no food, water, shelter, or clothes.

RMV 7 Dr. Kyra Bobinet: You Can Create A Well Designed Life

Today we are proud to introduce you to Dr. Kyra Bobinet, whose specialty is combining two medicines together: behavior change and design thinking. After completing med school at UCSF, she decided to change course in order to dig deeper into the science behind behavior change.

After graduation from Harvard School of Public Health, Dr. Bobinet worked in the healthcare industry, building programs and algorithms to change behaviors at the million-person scale. Today she is the founder and CEO of EngagedIN, a design firm to help people and organizations change behaviors for the better.

Like Chris and I, she believes that every individual is a designer of their own life every day, and that all we need is to recognize and expand this intuition into full-blown life design skills. In her new book, Well Designed Life, she gives you many of those skills, as well as the approachable science behind it all.

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Well Designed Life is Dr. Bobinet's collection of the most helpful, useful concepts from her decades of studying neuroscience and design thinking.  The primary goal of this book is to empower you as the designer of your life.

EngagedIN is a behavior design firm for the health and wellness industry.

BJ Fogg creates systems to change human behavior. He runs the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab, which focuses on methods for creating habits, showing what causes behavior, automating behavior change, and persuading people via mobile phones.

Carol Dweck researches “growth mindset” — the idea that we can grow our brain's capacity to learn and to solve problems. Her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success  explains why it’s not just our abilities and talent that bring us success—but whether we approach them with a fixed or growth mindset.

RMV 5 Andy Weir: You Can Design Life For The Martian

Today, we are BEYOND THRILLED to introduce you to Andy Weir, a computer programmer turned New York Times #1 Bestselling author of The Martian. He joins us to talk about turning his nights-and-weekend hobby into, not just one of the most successful self-published novels of all time, but also a soon-to-be major motion picture directed by Ridley Scott, and starring Matt Damon.

How did he do it? And how exactly does a guy survive life on Mars with only a handful of potatoes and a thumb-drive full of disco? Andy was kind enough to fill us in. (HINT: Science!)

Show Links:

The Martian Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there. Read the book. Then listen to the audiobook. Then, see the movie! Seriously, so gooooood.

The Egg The short story by Andy Weir that first got him noticed online.

Theft of Pride The first novel for Andy Weir (under the pen name Jack Sharp), detailing how Shanex Exxel stole the Pride Diamond, Sephalon's national treasure. It's a Sci-Fi story of theft, scams, racism, culture-clash, and money.

Packing for Mars Author Mary Roach tackles the strange science of space travel, and the psychology, technology, and politics that go into sending a crew into orbit. Why is it impolite for astronauts to float upside down during conversations? Just how smelly does a spacecraft get after a two week mission? This is a book for grownups who still secretly dream of being astronauts.