Air Date: 3/8/21

The Upgrade by Lifehacker

How to Be a Beginner, With Journalist Tom Vanderbilt

Alice Hello and welcome to The Upgrade, the podcast from the team at Lifehacker, where
we help you improve your life one week at a time. I'm Alice Bradley, editor in chief of
Lifehacker. And today joining me is Lifehacker staff writer, Sam Blum. Hey, Sam.

Sam Hey Alice.

Alice Jordan is away this week taking some well-deserved time off, but he will be back
very soon. Meanwhile, Sam is filling in to help us tackle this week's topic, which is
something neither of us seem to have tackled in quite a long time.

Sam Yes, this week we're learning how to embrace being a beginner as well as why we
should do so with writer Tom Vanderbilt.

Tom Vanderbilt It's the purest form of the Buddhist concept of the beginner's mind, really
being able to look at the world again with fresh eyes the way a child might. And I just found
that had such a strangely refreshing sort of renewing quality.

Sam Tom is a journalist and contributing editor at Wired UK and Artforum, as well as a
columnist for Slate magazine. He's also the best-selling author of several books, including
You May Also Like: Taste in an Age of Endless Choice, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We
Do (and What It Says About Us), and Survival City: Adventures Among the Ruins of
Atomic America.

Alice Tom's latest book is called Beginners :The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong
Learning, which is what he joined us to talk about this week. And, you know, he's got a lot
of subtitles in all of his books. I just want to, I want to shout out, Sam, what a good job you
did of reading all of those.

Sam Thank you. Yeah, parentheticals are pretty hard for me sometimes, but—.

Alice You did it.

Sam Luckily, luckily, I'm not a beginner at reading, so this was less challenging.

Alice So when was the last time you were a beginner at something?

Sam That's a very good question. And I think that this podcast is a very good
representation of something that I'm brand new at. This my first time ever hosting a
podcast. And I am, I am just thrown into the void here, flying by the seat of my pants for all
of our listeners. So it's going to be sink or swim here. But I think I think I might pull through.

Alice You know, it seems that you seem like a seasoned pro to me.

Sam Ah well thank you, I fake it quite well. You know, imposter syndrome is something I'm
quite good at.

Alice Very good. Isn't imposter syndrome supposed to prevent you from doing a good job?
Not...

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Sam I don't, I don't know, man.

Alice All right, look.

Sam These are just things I say.

Alice I don't know either. We're all just, we're all flying by the seat of our pants when we're
doing this. I never know what's going to happen or what I'm going to say. Sometimes it's...

Sam That's reassuring.

Alice Ridiculous. Yeah.

Sam Seriously, it is reassuring. When was the last time you were a beginner at something,
Alice?

Alice You know, a few years ago, my sister and I decided to take tap dancing lessons, and
talk about something I had never done before and had zero just like muscle memory for. It
was, it was such an entirely new thing. It was like, I don't, I can't even think of an analogy.
Like teaching an elephant how to...To water ballet. I don't know. It was just insane. But it
was so much fun. And I really miss doing that, especially doing it with my sister, which was
really, really fun because she's actually a little bit better than I was, but really, really bad at
it. But there's something so freeing about just being, you know, being really bad at
something and not having any expectations that you're going to be good at it. But being in
kind of a supportive atmosphere where everyone's laughing and it's, you know, it's totally
OK to kind of suck. Yeah, that was kind of the last time I was a beginner at something. And
I and I have to say I kind of miss that experience and want to get back into something,
something like that, if not tap dancing, which would be hard at a time like this, then, you
know...

Sam You, you tap dancing just makes me think that you're going to take that home and
turn everything about living in your house into a rendition of Stomp. You know, your Savion
Glover, whatever his, his name was, you know, like the grand tap dancing master.

Alice I definitely went through a period of, like, when I was doing the of being, like, really
obsessed with it. And just every time, like, Scott would walk into a room I would just be like
"a-rock-a-taaa." I'd be like doing like a...

Sam Yeah, just triplets.

Alice Like "ha-ha-rock-a-ta".

Sam Jazz hands 24/7.

Alice Well listen. Our guest Tom, as you know, took on trying many new things, including
surfing, chess, singing, drawing, jewelry making and juggling, which is the thing I have now
become obsessed with. And I'm excited to hear what he has to say about why we should
take on some new skills, too. So let's get to the interview.

Alice So , Tom, welcome to The Upgrade.

Tom Vanderbilt Great to be here. Thank you.

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Alice So tell us about what inspired the creation of the book Beginners.

Tom Vanderbilt Well, I have to say it was my daughter who's 11 now, but this is going
back a number of years. And she, you know, first of all, I was in the basic parental
headspace of just being surrounded by learning. Something I hadn't really thought about
too much in the last few decades. I mean, because, you know, as a parent, you're
obviously trying to teach your kid to learn all these things, how to ride a bike, how to how
to tie your shoelace. A lot of things they kind of learn on their own, obviously, like walking
and talking, but we give them help there. But anyway, it turned out there were some things
that I actually didn't really know how to do that she then wanted to do. And one of these
was the game of chess, which she saw a board one afternoon and asked if we could play.
And I said, you know, I'd love to, but I actually don't know how. So I tried to quickly figure
out how to play and I sort of got the basic rules. But it's a very complex game. And I just
fell in over my head. So I did what a lot of, you know, sort of tiger parents of the current
generation did and I hired a coach. Not because I thought she was going to be, you know,
some grandmaster, I wanted to put her through some rigorous things. I just thought it
would be the most efficient way for us—well, originally, just her to get better and to learn
this thing. So, you know, I believe in experts. You know, hiring the right person is the right
thing. So anyway, but the coach came over, he started doing the lesson. I suddenly
realized, you know, wait, I would like to learn how to play this. Why don't I join in? So I
found the whole experience so interesting that the two novices of different ages learning
something together. And it also opened this idea in my life that I hadn't really learned very
many new skills at all in decades. I had sort of just been obsessed with work and other
things and just kind of coasting along and afraid to try new things. So that was sort of the
long-winded response to how, how I got started.

Sam I mean, I can relate in the sense that I have not learned a single new skill probably
since I was 15 years old, you know, so it's it's pretty common. I'm like a complete one-trick
pony at this point in my life and that I focus pretty much solely on work. And like there's a
few hobbies that I've taken up years ago that I still dabble in pretty frequently. But that kind
of gets me thinking like, why do adults stop learning new things past a certain age?

Tom Vanderbilt Yeah, it's a good question. I wouldn't be so hard on yourself. I'm sure you
have learned all sorts of things. I mean, I think we can make a distinction here between
what the writer Robert Twigger and he has a little book called Micromastery, which I found
very interesting. And those are the sort of little skills that were sort of always acquiring, you
know, we kind of pick up as we go along, which I think just remind us of being human and
being learning machines, whatever, you know, something like maybe driving a stick shift in
a car or I don't know if you buy some new product that requires kind of a learning curve.
So, you know, we're always learning those sorts of little things. But I was interested in
these, these bigger things, these sort of things that had lifetime learning curves and that
sort of idea that they were very complex is probably what kept me and a lot of other adults
away. Just the idea that I think we've all absorbed this famous Anders Ericsson, as
popularized by Malcolm Gladwell, finding of the 10,000 hours of deliberate practice
required to become expert-level performers. You know, who has ten thousand hours? Who
has 100 hours? I was sort of curious, you know, what you might be able to do in 50 hours
of trying something. And I found, to my delight, that you could actually do quite a bit and
get, you know, starting from zero, you can, you can. I'm not going to say you're going to be
an expert-level performer, but you can really, you know, make progress that that ends up
pleasing you. So I think there's that intimidation factor. There's the fear factor of not
wanting to look bad in front of other adults, competent adults. You know, we like to do the

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things we're good at and there's no surprise there. And then, like you sort of hinted at, you
know, time pressure, maybe you were just busy with work. We get sort of a one-track
mind. And for that reason, hobbies are often you sort of find them in, you know, in
retirement age and people are suddenly scrambling, you know, what can I do now that I'm
retired? And it might be harder at other times to carve out the time. So there's a lot of
things, I think, keeping us away.

Alice Yeah, you mentioned the 10,000 hours and I think that's something that does trip a
lot of people up. But that's for mastery. Right. So what are the benefits for just learning
something for fun? I mean, I know that there are benefits that just having fun should be a
benefit unto itself. But can you talk a little bit about like, why should we try to learn
something totally new? What...how does that benefit us?

Tom Vanderbilt Sure. Yeah. And let's not kid around the fun factor. I mean, that just it just
keeps you...It just keeps you, you know, kind of engaged and moving forward. And these
things are sort of fun, not just party tricks. I mean yeah, juggling even three balls suddenly
makes you the hit of a kid's party because no one else can do it. And the kids are amazed
and they think you're, you know, some professional, you know, entertainer or something.
But, you know, there's all kinds of things. I mean, the changes to the brain that happen
after just a week of trying to learn something like juggling. And that that is just an
undeniable benefit, especially as one gets older to work that continue working that muscle
and to shift that neuroplasticity around and to, you know, sort of tell yourself that you're
you can still get better at things. [00:10:14]And I mean, the great thing about the learning
curve and people, I think, sometimes get the wrong idea about the learning curve. When
they say a steep learning curve, they think, oh, that must be something really hard. But no,
that actually means it's something that you're making a lot of progress right away. [13.1s]
There's that kind of this you're wooshing up. So it's it's very satisfying to go from pretty
much zero, as I did, [00:10:35]for example, when I took a drawing class. This was a
week-long, intensive drawing class. And, you know, the first thing we had to do was draw a
self-portrait. And my portrait in particular, I think was just very horrific. It was looked like a
kid had drawn it, which, as the teacher pointed out, you were probably a kid the last time
you drew. So it's no surprise. So but after a few days, you know, I was able to just think
about what I was doing differently. It's not like I really underwent a huge change in my life.
The way I held a pencil or anything. It was more about looking. You know I was able to turn
in, you know, a pretty decent, quasi artistic looking self-portrait after a few days. So this
wasn't a lifetime of artistic pursuit. And that was just very satisfying, surprising thing that I
think opened a lot of doors of potentiality in my mind. [50.6s]

Alice Hmm.

Sam Yeah. I mean, I'm wondering about that when it comes to learning new skills, such as
drawing or anything that you maybe haven't done since you were a kid. You know, adults
are typically guarded and don't want to look foolish or get embarrassed when they're
dipping their toes in some new water. So how do you navigate, like, the embarrassment
factor when it comes to learning something new?

Tom Vanderbilt Yeah, I think you really—and it's easier said than done, but you really
need to just sort of imagine that you're a child. I mean, a child—children learn in such a
wonderful atmosphere of low pressure, very little expectations, of kind of constant positive
feedback and just an overall joyful atmosphere that just, you know, failure is part of the
process and is often sort of amusing unto itself. So, you know, I think, you know, as far as
how to incorporate that, I'm not sure. I mean, I did find that in taking a lot of beginner

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classes with other beginners that there really wasn't the environment of judgment that I
thought there might be. For the most part, you know, people were in the same boat that I
was. And they and there's something in psychology called the cocktail party effect. Know,
we think that we think that other people are paying more attention to us than they really
are. So when something like a drawing class, I might be sheepish about what I had up on
my page. But when I looked around, you know, people were, I think, just concentrating on
their own. They were grappling with their own issues and not, you know, not worrying
about that so much. So I think just being in that kind of nurturing environment of fellow
beginners, you can also teach you quite a bit when they're at a slightly different stage. But
there's no denying at the end of the day that I still felt moments were of just. Yeah, sheer,
sheer embarrassment and had to be sort of coaxed out of that shell. And I'm not maybe
I've gotten better at it now because I've just gone through the process a few times.

Alice I think that's the trick, is to find a beginner class and not go to like, say, an open-level
belly dancing class, which I did one time, and find myself just surrounded by professionals.
And having the teacher ask me if I had an injury that was somehow preventing my hips
from moving the correct way. So just a little well tip for you there Sam.

Sam Talk about the cocktail party effect. That is one way to get everyone to stare at you in
confusion.

Tom Vanderbilt The brings up a—.

Alice So.

Tom Vanderbilt That brings up a point, though, you know that to not get in over your head
immediately. Don't be surrounded by experts and even to pick the right coach or teacher,
because, you know, some people are just so proficient at what they do, but they're not
actually good teachers. And they, they've lost any sort of connection to how they got where
they are. And they look at you like an alien specimen, like, how could I, how could you
know, not to pick on Lionel Messi, the soccer player, but, you know, he's amazing. Do I
want him coaching me to play soccer? Probably not, because he's just too far from where I
would be. You know, in some ways you need a little bit of a, you know, less talent to be
able to tell that story to beginners. So.

Sam Yeah, having Messi through to the art of the free-kick would probably he probably
would not know how to impart the perfect technique that he just has intrinsically in his, in
his genius brain of soccer tricks. So, yeah, that's a very good point. I mean, I've definitely
like noticed that you can be exceptionally good at something and not be a very good
teacher.

Alice Mm hmm, for sure.

Tom Vanderbilt Yeah, absolutely. And I was lucky in my process to, you know, to find
good teachers that, you know, that were patient, that gave honest, you know, you know,
you don't want them always praising you either. That's really, you know, sort of
counterproductive. You want to be encouraging, but to really point out, you know, what
you're doing wrong and maybe even be a little bit harsh, I think, you know, my daughter's
chess coach, for example, I sometimes overhear the lessons and he has sort of a stern
demeanor. And I would sometimes worry if he was just being too stern and then I thought,
well, you know, it's going to feel a lot worse to lose to someone else and in a competitive
tournament than to have a slightly, you know, authoritarian chess coach. So, you know, it's

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just, again, part of the process. But I was lucky that I found people that could relate these
skills to me I thought pretty effectively.

Alice So now that I've heard that Sam doesn't have any hobbies, I feel really committed to
the idea of getting him—.

Sam I do have hobbies.

Alice No, you have no hobbies. Your life is joyless. And I want to help you expand your
horizons. So how do we help somebody like Sam to come up with a new, with something
new to try out? How do you choose something like that? Do choose something you're
already familiar with or is there an advantage to really being a total beginner?

Tom Vanderbilt Yeah, I mean, I would go the beginner route. [00:16:41]I mean, just for
sheer novelty, because I found that to be incredibly pleasurable and just put me off my
guard that it just...And you sort of have no...You have no alternative but to try and learn. I
mean, it's the purest form of, you know, the Buddhist concept of "beginner's mind," really
being able to look at the world again with with fresh eyes the way a child might. [21.6s]
And I just found that had such a strangely refreshing sort of renewing quality that...you
know, when everything else has been sort of tapped out. You know, I've been writing for
three decades, so, like, I can still try to get better, but the achievements are going to come,
aren't going to come as dramatically because, you know, let's say you're at 85 percent.
Getting to 100 percent is a lot harder. Going from zero to 20 percent of skill, for example, is
is very fast and enjoyable. But, you know, I sort of had this list of things that were in my
head that I always wanted to do. I think I wouldn't necessarily call them passions, but I
thought they were potential passions, just things that intrigued me. And for whatever
reason, I just had lacked the gumption or guts to pursue. So that would be my number one
piece of advice is just make sure it's something that you actually think you're going to like,
because motivation is a huge issue here. And if it's something you enjoy practicing, you're
not going to get better or you're not going to enjoy it as much. And it's sort of a vicious
cycle there that that begins to happen. [00:18:04]And don't be afraid to walk away, on the
other hand, if it's something that turns out you don't really feel a penchant for. There's, you
know, kind of a lot of anti quitting rhetoric, one often hears. But, you know, life is short.
Your free time is, you know, if you if you have control over your leisure time, I mean, this is
the one thing we have control over. So you should be able to do with it exactly what you
want. [22.3s] So, yeah, I would just say follow your instinct and then just start just sign up
for stuff. I mean, I think getting through the door is often the first hurdle for many people
going to that first class, making the appointment with the coach.

Sam Yeah, that that makes a lot of sense, especially when you talk about the motivational
factor and the incentive that learning something new basically has to have in order to get
you to keep coming back and trying again and failing and, you know, learning, learning to
not fail eventually. But it seems like everyone has their own motivational reasons for trying
something. So it's not like it's clear across the board, I'm assuming.

Tom Vanderbilt Yeah. And there's a you know, it's a funny thing. [00:19:10]There's this
relationship between performance and learning. And so, often you're doing something and
you're doing it badly and it just feels very frustrating. But that's when the learning is
happening. [10.2s] You know, that if you juggle three balls and you're doing it wonderfully
and you think, you know, you've stopped learning, it's probably time to try something else.
But, you know, I'm as guilty of anyone as just really preferring the fun stuff. You know, in
chess, I would rather play five minute games of blitz chess than study grandmaster games

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from the nineteenth century. I was playing a lot of Fortnite with my daughter and she, of all
people, was constantly reminding me to go to what's called, "creative mode," and practice
building rather than simply playing endless games of battle royale and trying to get better
by, you know, being killed by people, basically. So I just I always gravitate toward the fun
stuff. And, you know, when you're in that groove, that sort of flow state with singing, for
example, I mean, I really enjoyed the singing practice. To me, it felt almost as pleasurable
as actually just singing. And this is things, you know, like vocal exercises and doing scales.
And it had to be a very kind of therapeutic, meditative quality where I felt, you know, I was
doing these chants almost. And it just it felt really good to me. So it was it was never a
problem to really practice singing. Maybe I could have been practicing a little harder in a
different way that that made it slightly more painful. But, yeah, we shouldn't always think
that pain is a bad thing, is that that's one that that learning is happening.

Alice Yeah. You talked a little bit previously about that deliberate practice, which I think is
what you're talking about now, about when you're just just pushing yourself to that edge.
Can you talk a little bit more about deliberate practice?

Tom Vanderbilt Yeah, I mean, that's the idea that I mean, in chess, for example, you
know, to not just keep endlessly playing game after game and wondering why you lost, but
to actually stop after you lost, sit down for an hour, maybe longer than you actually spent
playing the game and then analyze. You know, these days you can do it with the nice help
of a chess engine online and you figure out what went wrong and to sort of break it down
and that's, you know, that's that process is not quite as fun. It feels a bit like health food or
and it's just it's not quite as it's not the sugar high that you get from actually doing the
thing. But, you know, it might make the next go-round, you might do better in that chess
game and then that you'll feel better for that victory. But that's that's the hard work. And it's
in anything. It's just kind of going back over analyzing mistakes. I did it in singing. I would I
would, you know, endlessly tape things I had done and go back and play them. And the
thing about deliberate practice is, you know, it's definitely, it has benefits for everyone who
wants to get better. But the people are going to take it most seriously, are probably going
to be people who are really on some track to perhaps become professionals. So I wouldn't
want to get in the way of simply allowing oneself the right to have fun and to do something
in a way that they'll get better, perhaps at a slower rate, but they might actually have a
more enjoyable time doing it.

Alice And is that when...I guess what I was wondering is is deliberate practice when you
get into the flow state or is flow state just this, just the state of deep enjoyment?

Tom Vanderbilt It could be both, I guess. Yeah. And if you're doing the practice in the right
way and really paying attention and you know, but sometimes it didn't feel like flow state to
me so much, I felt something a little less flow state. I was very conscious of time passing,
whereas actually doing some activities, you lose track of that. So yeah, I'm not sure, I'm
not really an authority on on flow state. I sort of know it, I know it when I'm in it.

Alice Right.

Tom Vanderbilt As to how to get there I'm not exactly sure.

Alice Right.

Sam It's kind of like being asleep, you know, it's, it's hard to find but you kind of know when
you're asleep, I guess. I don't know. I don't know what I'm saying. Anyway, there was a

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section in the beginning of your book when you were talking primarily about chess, where
you discuss how learning in general and acclimating your brain to new foreign territory
poses benefits for like other aspects of your life. And it can help you be more alert and
more engaged. And it can sort of pose benefits that start to like seep into other aspects of
your life, whether it be like work or your relationships. Can you talk a little bit about how
that works?

Tom Vanderbilt Sure. I mean, you know, exactly have scientific evidence on me
personally for this. This is sort of self-reported data here. But, you know, [00:23:46]I just
found that, like everyone who's, you know, sort of in the modern age, that I've had
moments where I just felt completely distracted by various devices around my house,
finding it hard to be engaged in something like a book to read the entire book. And I was
reading a lot of books about digital distraction from, you know, Nicholas Carr and other
people like that, so very aware of these things. But they're right, you know, and reading
about that really didn't help me get any better at dealing with those things. But the things I
found interesting about working on this book was that engaging in these activities,
something like drawing, I found that it really required the entirety of my attention to just,
there was so much visual information to absorb once you really started looking for it that I
had no time for anything else and that hours would pass and—back to flow state—but I
would look up and go, wow, where did the time just go? And again, it's hard to describe. It
just felt cleansing. And I felt like a more whole person and sort of like I had been to a gym
in some way for my brain. [64.7s] And it just I felt like there was some kind of connectivity,
like revisiting of some frayed neural architecture, which is probably just a, you know, my
imagination. But I did find this and there were all kinds of other benefits, you know, just
number one meeting other people, which is not something I went into the book really
thinking, oh, I need to make friends. But this is something that is a real issue with
especially sort of people in middle age and especially men in middle age. There's a very
interesting book, We Need to Hang Out. Journalists looked at this very issue and he tried
to make a bunch of new friends because he had found this was something like like me with
my skills. He had let sort of lapse and he just wasn't meeting anyone new. Learning skills I
found, you know, it was a great way to meet other beginners who are sort of a
self-selecting group of people that are willing to put themselves out there, look foolish,
have the sort of intellectual humility and are interested in the same stuff that you're
interested in. So it was just a great sort of way to find potential friends, even not that I went
into that with this. [00:25:55]So the great thing about starting to learn something, you
become obsessed with that thing, whatever it is, and and you start delving into it and
something you just find that you're much more engaged with the world. And that
phenomenon comes up, I can't remember what it's called like when you learn a new word
and suddenly you feel like you hear that word everywhere, you know. So I learned to play
chess. And suddenly I felt like there were chess references everywhere that I'd previously
missed. And so it just was another way to engage with the world on another level. And that
just I think especially during the last year, you know, just looking an article in a
psychotherapy journal, of all things, but, you know, talking about learning skills as a way to
keep engaged with the world in this very isolating time. So I think there's a huge element
of, you know, self care here, which I don't think we should view as, you know, narcissistic
or whatever, but is really essential. [54.7s]

Alice Right, and you talked about kind of the benefits of taking a class, and obviously
that's not something we can really do right now, is it? Is, can you reap the same benefits
by taking taking a Zoom class or something like that?

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Tom Vanderbilt Yeah, that's a great question. And I was very skeptical because in the
course of this book, I had been doing all in-person stuff and had really grown to like going
to these places and being around these people. And I thought online drawing course, what
would that even be like? But I ended up taking one with the same institute, the New York
Academy of Art, and there really wasn't as much falloff in the experience as I thought there
would be. And in some ways, there were even these little subtle ways it got better through
technology where, for example, the teacher could take my drawing and use sort of a digital
pen, Apple pen or whatever, and sort of make suggested corrections overlaying on my
actual drawing, but without actually changing the drawing. So, you know, in some ways
there were certain benefits and, you know, you lacked a little bit of the physical immediacy
and all that. But as a way to simply keep moving forward and keep distracted, I found it
pretty effective. And obviously, there's such a huge range of stuff online now. I really think
it's the the golden age of learning on the Internet right now. I mean, there's a class for just
about anything. And in a world where, you know, time and more importantly, money can
often be an issue. You know, often these things are free or, you know, kind of reduced
rates cheaper than New York City rates, let's say. And there's just a huge amount of
opportunity out there. So I think that definitely lowers one barrier and gives people one
less excuse not to pick on anyone in this conversation who has not picked up a hobby
lately.

Alice Like Sam, you mean?

Tom Vanderbilt Exactly.

Alice Like. So, Sam, what's what's your hobby going to be? I mean.

Sam Oh, man. Well, you know, just the the correct the record for our listeners. I have
plenty of hobbies, OK? I just—.

Alice Sam, you told me the other day you have no hobbies, that all you do is work.

Sam Alice is lying. She's lying. My boss is a liar. Well, I haven't like—.

Alice How dare you.

Sam —Picked up, I haven't picked up a new hobby since I was like 19. I mean, I started
playing the drums when I was a kid and I started doing martial arts and I was like 19. So I
still do both of those things. But when it comes to, like, learning new stuff, I have been
incredibly, like fickle. And I struggle so much with the process of, like, learning new things
and kind of retaining the information. But just like dedicating myself and I, I'm not what you
would call middle-aged by any stretch. I'm thirty I'm thirty one. But I, for instance, would
love to start getting into photography. I would love to shoot better pictures. And I've even
been given a lesson by a photographer friend of mine who taught me a bunch of stuff and
it all went out the window within like days. So that's one thing I'd like to learn. I'd also like
to learn how to DJ. A lot of my friends DJ, spin records, which sounds fun because I like
music. But, you know, these are, these are things that I am now motivated more than ever
to pursue. So I suppose thank you to your book?

Tom Vanderbilt But you raise an interesting point with photography, because this is
something I myself have also had. I've had various cameras over the years and I always
thought I was the next camera purchase away from becoming a great photographer. And I
was always blaming the instrument, but I would get these things and then there'd be this

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huge instruction manual written very poorly, very confusing. [00:30:27]And this was
something that, you know, has really dawned on me, it's kind of obvious, but, you know,
just things need to be easy, not necessarily easy to learn, but easy to to get to to easy to to
practice. So I would just say that's that's why I think of all the things I did in this book,
singing was one that really read registered and stuck with me most because it was it's just
there you are the instrument. You don't have to go somewhere special. You don't have to
buy anything extra. You can just do it whenever. And that just makes it easy. And that
removes that potential hurdle that yet another hurdle that might get in the way of us picking
up something new. [35.3s]

Alice Well, Tom, thank you so much. This has really been great.

Sam Yeah. Thank you, Tom. Appreciate your time.

Tom Vanderbilt My pleasure. Thank you.

Alice And now it's time for Upgrade of the Week, where we talk about that one tiny thing
making a big difference in our lives. Tom, what do you have this week?

Tom Vanderbilt Well, I'm probably a little bit late to this, but I've been obsessed for the last
few weeks with the app called Radio Garden, which is, for the uninitiated, is an app that
you basically open the app and you're presented with a map of the world that you can sort
of scroll through. And it's sort of a lovely map and you can just zoom in to some random
location. Any country in the world, Antarctica, anywhere, and a little, there will be a little
icon you press it and that's the radio station that is in that location. You just press that and
you immediately have a stream playing of whatever radio station it is. And it's just
especially during the pandemic, has just been a real tonic, you know, just novelty. The
feeling of sort of traveling without traveling. And I just I love radio. I love music. And I just
love, you know, when I'm on vacation. I love being in a taxi and hearing whatever the taxi
driver is playing that you're just tuning in to the local culture in that way. And this radio
garden just gives you a way to kind of do this from your comfort of your own home.

Alice I love that. Have you discovered any radio stations or any types of music that you
didn't know about before that you became more interested in?

Tom Vanderbilt I mean, I'm still I'm pretty like frenetically, you know, short attention span
right now. So I'm trying to like I think I'm trying to listen to them all before delving into, you
know, one in particular. But, you know.

Alice Right.

Tom Vanderbilt And I'm playing a game with my wife, which is, you know, how quickly can
you guess what country this radio station is coming from, which sometimes sometimes is a
challenge because you'll you'll hear some American top 40 and it's coming from Russia
and it takes a while to sort of figure that out.

Alice Right. Sam, what's your upgrade?

Sam Oh, man. Tom has me beat by a mile. That was—.

Alice It's not a competition.

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Sam That was super cool. But um, this is slightly embarrassing. But, you know, why not
embarrass myself on this podcast for my first—.

Alice There you go.

Sam —First ever hosting stint? My mother-in-law recently gave me this heated blanket
that heats your feet because I suffer from excessively cold feet, like my feet are constantly
freezing. It's only in the summertime that I do not suffer from this horrible affliction. So I put
this in the microwave for three minutes and then I wrap my feet in this blanket and then my
feet warm-up and then I put on some warm socks and, you know, my feet stay warm and
dry for maybe an hour. And then I repeat the process if I really, really want to. But it's it's
helped, you know, it's helped me be a little bit more comfortable as I sit at my desk all day,
every day. So, you know, it's not a revolutionary product, but it definitely helps me feel
better throughout the day physically.

Alice That's amazing. And I feel like I'm personally responsible for keeping you seated for
so long that I've cut off all circulation to your feet. But, you know, I'm glad you, I'm glad you
found a workaround.

Sam It's not even being sedentary. It's like—.

Oh, it's not.

Sam It's yeah. I must have Raynaud's, like, undiagnosed or Raynaud's or something. My
wife likes to joke that it's because I'm too tall and that the blood flow doesn't get to my feet.
So that's our, that's our medieval medical understanding. Of course it's her circulation
works.

Alice Well least it's getting up to your head and not just pooling in your feet. So there's
that.

Sam Let's hope so.

Alice Yeah.

Sam Alice, what's your upgrade? So since the pandemic, I have really got into a bad habit
of just buying things, I think, to sort of like brighten up my day or just, I don't know what it
is, but every time I see anything online, I'm just like, you know, and just relatively low
priced things. Not like I'm buying crazy stuff, but I'm just buying too much. I think it's just
like the lack of anything new coming into my life has just been like, well, at least I'll get an
Amazon package. So I've decided to stop doing that, but it's very hard to stop doing that.
And one thing that I've been using that's really helped me is to create a document where I
just, every time I've got the urge to buy something, I just put a link to it on a document. And
first of all, watching that document pile up full of things makes you realize how much I
almost bought in a given week. And it also makes you realize I didn't need to really buy
those things. You know, the urge passed after a day. I didn't end up buying it. My life
wasn't any worse. Or on the flip side, I did need to buy it. It turns out I really did want to get
that thing and then I just go ahead and get it. But it's one thing out of fifteen. So I highly
recommend creating a "do not buy list.".

Sam That is a hack.

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Tom Vanderbilt It sounds like a cooling off period, which I like.

Alice Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's it's something, some way to like prevent yourself
from doing a thing by doing something else as opposed to just stopping yourself from
doing something which I find never, never works for me.

Sam Yeah. That's like, that's like shelving the angry text you were going to send somebody
for twenty minutes and then looking at it again and being like, I do not want to send that.

Alice Exactly. Exactly.

Tom Vanderbilt Yeah. I mentioned before about, you know, we like to do things that are
easy and there's no more frictionless process I think these days than just simply hitting,
you know, that one-click buy and then something like Wayfair. I always think there's some
kind of strange conversion in currency exchange rate on Wayfair. It doesn't sometimes feel
like real money because your stuff is priced in such a way that is just seems too low. So it
just adds—.

Alice Yeah.

Tom Vanderbilt So. I love that idea.

Alice I know it's so low, you can get everything so quickly, it's just it's. Yeah, I highly
recommend. Well, Tom, thank you again. This has really been great.

Tom Vanderbilt Great. Thank you.

Sam Thank you, Tom.

Alice And that's our show, The Upgrade is produced by Micaela Heck, and mixed by Brad
Fisher.

Sam Please rate us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen and leave us a
review if you'd like. You can also reach us by calling us at three, four, seven, six eight
seven eight one zero nine and leaving a voicemail. Or you can write to us at upgrade at
Lifehacker dot com.

Alice You can also find us on Twitter, at Lifehacker, on Instagram, at Lifehacker dot com,
all one word, and on Facebook, at Facebook dot com slash Lifehacker. Sign up for
Lifehacker's daily newsletter full of tips and tricks and hacks at Lifehacker dot com slash
newsletter. And you can find show notes for this and every episode of the upgrade at
Lifehacker dot com slash the show.

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