Well, well, well, it's Saturday, the 19th of July, and this
is episode 300 of 3 0 1.
Permanently moved online, a personal podcast, 301 seconds in length, written,
recorded, and edited by me at the jmo.
I'm flipping switches and tapping dials.
I see landing lights
reflecting in the distance already
as we begin our final approach.
Reflection
is the best word that describes the last few months.
How does one even land
the biggest creative endeavor
of one's life thus far?
90% of all podcasts ever created,
never made it past episode 3,
another 90% quit before episode 20.
Completing this project
places it in a statistical range
of less than 0.1%.
And after eight years,
I have developed some understanding of these statistics.
The most important lesson
may sound obvious:
for any artist
finding and maintaining rhythm
is the challenge that must be faced
week after week,
year after year.
I've stressed this on the show many times.
Committing to and attending to
the creative process
is important,
but re-attending to that commitment is essential.
When you begin,
you imagine that producing
a weekly show would be straightforward.
I certainly did.
Even if I kept the concept simple.
Everything,
sit down,
write,
edit,
record,
edit.
Had to fit inside
a single frantic hour.
Then breakfast
while the file bounced for upload.
After the first 50 episodes,
I was hooked
at 100, exhausted.
So I switched to a longer production period,
a draft on Thursdays,
a redraft on Fridays,
and the recording and posting on a Saturday.
It opened things up,
but over time,
a new pressure emerged.
The edit.
I learned to sculpt sentences,
rearrange paragraphs,
test
the
rhythm
of
a
line
over
time.
Instead of against the ticking of a clock.
But effort crept upward and benefits tailed off.
Quality, is a curve that flattens quickly
and you must learn to spot this pivot point.
Years ago,
I made an episode called the doing
where I divided the creative process into three:
the dream the doing and done.
When I started making the show,
and at the time of writing that episode,
I still preferred
the dreaming and having done.
The doing
the graft, rather than the craft of creating
was the obstacle.
301 has been a relentless bootcamp
in spotting the pivot.
It has taught me that
the real goal of the creative process
is to simply be done, enough.
All long-term artistic endeavors also need a container.
Fixing the length at 301 seconds
inspired by an offhand comment
by Warren Ellis all those years ago
defined the content.
Making it weekly was another constraint.
It wasn't until 2023,
well after
I'd dropped the manic production period
that I realized the Wisdom of Seasons.
And broke production
into 4 blocks of 10.
A huge reduction in both creative and cognitive load.
301 started at the beginning of the second wave of podcasting.
At the time,
I genuinely believed
that more and more short shows would emerge,
things with their own shape and container.
But the opposite happened, and runtimes stretched.
A five minute weekly essay show
was genuinely novel in 2018,
in 2025 with every newsletter platform,
now sprouting a podcast feature,
not so much.
It's also way less effort to turn on Zoom and
record a bro-cast for 2 hours
than writing and recording and editing
a weekly personal essay.
As a complete project,
this show represents
an enormous amount of
effort and discipline.
It's been a serious creative commitment.
Sustaining any single format for 8 years
is achievement enough for me.
Knowing that this iteration
of the show's format
is coming to a close,
I've been experimenting more.
For a while each episode has started life as a voice note.
Its transcription, the zero draft,
then a first pass becomes draft one,
then another
followed by the final edit for word count
before recording.
Recently however,
I've just been recording the second draft in a single take
and editing that raw audio
into the final version.
This year,
three episodes have been skeleton scripts
recorded off the cuff,
and edited.
Dan Carlin records
hardcore history,
just from his notes too,
exposition as jazz.
A notion that's been
rattling around in my head.
Freed from the time box,
I want to chase that energy.
The machinery of the program has evolved
from raw one hour sprints
to more relaxed multi-session drafts
to the recent experiments,
and
each phase has taught lessons for what's coming next.
Keeping the container,
but dropping the speed run
may have improved the work,
but it doubled the effort.
Again,
more work often yields diminishing returns.
Constraints save you
and your process will set its own priorities.
The video version of this show
exists only because it fits neatly into my process.
And despite gathering
a small audience on YouTube,
it has clarified my priorities.
I realize
I have no desire to be a YouTuber.
The flight plan for our next journey
already contains
a long lecture on creativity,
accompanied by an 8,000 word zine
to release alongside it
whilst I work on what's next.
Audio and print
will become the twin pillars
of my creative life.
New issues of start select reset
will appear for sale on my blog
in limited numbers,
and of course in
the hands of paid subscribers.
I've learned so much
about writing
and performance,
rhythm and production,
and above all
about myself
over the last 300 episodes.
So with the landing gear down,
I'll save my thanks and final reflections
for touchdown next week.
I'll speak to you then.