Discipline eliminates inspiration as a bottleneck. When you show up daily and work through the material before performing, creativity becomes execution rather than a waiting game.
Podcast: Inside Tech's Water Cooler: Breaking Down the Magic Behind TBPN with John Coogan & Jordi Hays
John Coogan and Jordi Hays host TBPN, a technology show streaming live from 11 - 2 PM every Monday to Friday.
Their secret to the daily show is the rigid routine behind it.
First, they meet at 6:30 AM every morning at the gym to talk broadly about what’s interesting.
Then they do breakfast at 8:00 AM to focus on key topics.
When they arrive at the studio at 9:00 AM, they’ve already spent nearly three hours sharpening their arguments. Now they just need to select specific angles and sources.
By the time the camera rolls, they’ve already "physically spoken the product into existence." Their routine makes the live show look effortless.
The structure creates a safeguard against human variability. Their personal mood or energy level on any given day doesn’t matter. They don’t have the luxury of negotiating with themselves about whether to work. The countdown starts. The show must happen. This is the same as writing like shopkeeper!
Coogan also adds that he’s never had writer’s block when writing their daily newsletter because he’s not generating ideas from scratch. He’s transcribing the discussion they already had that morning. When writing becomes documentation rather than invention, there’s no writer’s block.