Key insights from the conversation

Personal and professional growth

• Pejman reflects on his journey, starting from sharing written content to creating visuals.

• The significance of overcoming hesitation and analysis paralysis.

Creativity practice

• Pejman discusses the importance of embracing imperfection to make content interesting.

• Encourages having a consistent creative practice to overcome barriers like procrastination and imposter syndrome.

• Creativity is not confined to visual arts; it applies to various domains, including teaching and coaching.

Community and connection

• The unexpected yet fulfilling community that emerged from his visual course.

• The importance of genuine human connections, even in the digital world.

• Doing things that do not scale, like sending personalized video messages, to create real impact.

Challenges and personal insights

• The struggle of prioritizing focus and sequencing opportunities.

• Acknowledges the need to say no and manage time effectively to avoid feeling overwhelmed.

• The personal aspiration of maintaining meaningful connections and continuous self-improvement.

Learning and iteration

• The iterative approach to teaching and creating content, emphasizing learning from students' questions.

• The process of refining and improving the visual course over eight cohorts.

• Balance between sticking to established rules and knowing when to break them to enhance creativity.

Balancing family and work

• Talks about finding time for creative work without compromising family presence.

• Strategies like using an iPad for work while being with family and batching tasks for efficient execution.

• The importance of being present and setting boundaries, such as deleting social media apps.

Final thoughts and vision

• The desire to see more genuine connections and fewer automated or surface-level interactions.

• Encourage sharing ideas authentically, even if they are not groundbreaking, because everyone has a unique creative accent.

• The idea of perfecting in public, embracing imperfection, and iterating openly.

Full transcript

Here is the full conversation transcript, edited for clarity and conciseness. Here’s also the link to the conversation on LinkedIn live.

Pejman

Hi, PJ.

Pejman

Hey, what's going on, Roberto? How are you doing?

Roberto

I'm excited about this. Thank you for being here today, Sunday morning, at 10 a.m. your time. I know you're a family guy like me. So we must also thank our family for their generosity in allowing us to have fun without them. Thank you.

Today is the day before the anniversary of our first conversation here. It was the very first conversation I had here, so it's a very special one for me.

I would love to hear your story, how you started doing visuals, a little fast-forward this year, what happened, and what's this highlight of doing visuals and being also a visual teacher, not just doing visuals but also defining yourself as a visual teacher, which is especially exciting for me.

Pejman

Yeah, about a couple of years ago, in March 2022, I decided to post stuff online. And I started initially actually writing. The issue with writing, though, is that initially, you are also nobody. I was just a high school teacher and still am a high school teacher.

But when I started, anytime I wrote something, I was out, throwing a message in a bottle into the ocean with a billion other messages and bottles. So it's like it got easily swallowed up, and, you know, nobody opened it up. I came across some people posting visuals or what looked like these visuals online, and I said, "Oh, these are interesting."

And I thought to myself, huh, OK, you know, I'm a visual teacher. I teach filmmaking and animation. I present metaphors to help my students explain ideas to them all the time, and I wonder, what if I just started posting that kind of stuff, too?

I started sharing some of those, which began gaining traction. Over time, eventually, these visuals became a thing. And some people in the audience might resonate with this, but I needed clarification on whether it would work. It wasn't obvious to me that even I should be posting online.

So, I hesitated for years and years and years. The hesitation was more like procrastinating for years and years and years doing something because I was trying to think of the right thing to do before I started doing it.

I shared the story in my course: I had turned 40 or 42, and I journaled. In my journal, I wrote something like, "OK, man, I'm turning 42. I need to start doing something."

As a visual, creative teacher who teaches creative arts, my students always ask me, "You know, what are you working on?" Because I teach them creativity, they say, "Well, you must be doing this and this and that." So they always ask me, "What are you working on?" And I'm spending all my time just teaching you guys, so I have yet to have the opportunity to do anything for myself.

I'm 42. This was also post-pandemic, so that had a big impact on my thinking at that time. I was like, "I can't, I can't keep dilly-dallying. I need to start doing something." But then I had this deja vu feeling. I was like, "Wait a minute, hold up, hold up." I've said this before.

I have all these other journals, like a bunch of them on the floor everywhere, and I started flipping through some previous journals. I found that I had written the same thing also around my birthday 10 years before that. I thought, OK, if I don't, I either start doing something or stop saying it. I'm 10 years older, I haven't done anything, I haven't taken any leaps, and if I don't do something now, then I might as well stop saying it.

So, that initially pushed me past that state of analysis and paralysis, and I started posting and writing. Then, some visuals were the trigger to help create a package of thinking and ideas I wanted to share. It wasn't obvious that I should keep doing it, but after about a month of creating visuals, I probably had created about 12 in that month, and somewhere, somewhere down the line, I saw that I got tagged on a post that Adam Grant had posted on one of my visuals.

And I was like, wait, what? I had to triple-check that it was the real Adam Grant. I was like, wait, what? Is this real? You see, I have his books on my bookshelf. And I messaged him; he was just the loveliest person and so gracious and kind. It was like using visuals as my medium of communication, which allowed me to step outside of my classroom to share the ideas that I wanted to teach and that I wanted to spread in the world. It connected with people that, you know, I'm listening to podcasts or whose books are on my bookshelf. What a beautiful thing it is to be able to connect with other folks who are also like-minded.

That's a long-winded way of saying that's like how I started, but fast forward to today; I still have that same mindset. It's the thing I usually get most excited about, which is building genuine connections with real people to connect with anytime somebody like an author or someone I've been following the work reaches out; I'm like, wow, that's amazing. You saw my work, and did you resonate with it? That's cool because I resonate with this and this and that or the other and having those conversations. And talking with other teachers who are also, you know, have that same state of mind where it's like, I want to do something, but I need to know how, or I need to know if my ideas are worth sharing. So, those things excite me most today.

Roberto

You say that it's this struggle, remember? It reminds me of something that you shared some time ago. You did a little poll about what keeps you from creating your metaphor, which can be extended to everything. So, it's not just a metaphor but can keep you from sharing. And what did you learn from this feedback? I'm curious.

Pejman

At least six hundred people answered, and for about 60% of those people, the majority was some insecurity with their ability to draw or some fear around that. I resonate with that. I completely understand that hesitation, mainly depending on what kind of work you do and the audience's perception that might be attracted to your work.

So, you may be a surgeon and don't want to create an illustration that may not make you feel like you're being professional, whatever the case. But I generally push back against that. So that's what I learned: there is a strong fear and maybe hesitation to post work because of perceptions of what other people might perceive as the quality of your illustrations or whatnot.

However, one of my core beliefs about creativity is that it's less about creating something perfect and more about being interesting. And you know, I created a visual around this idea. I framed it in the course, like it's less about being accurate in your drawings and more about being attractive, or, you know, said another way, being perfect versus being interesting. And how you're interesting is by being imperfect.

If you're interested in how you draw things and do it imperfectly, like you don't draw a face that's 100% realistic, you draw the face and might decide to embellish this particular compartment or little feature. You extend the body and make it look exaggerated, weird, goofy, and funky, which makes it fun and interesting.

In the world of AI, we need more exciting things and less perfection. So that's my push towards anyone who feels that way as far as, you know, I want to make something that looks good when you use AI. AI is great, and it's going to be a great tool for a lot of people, and I think it's great, but if everyone can do it, then it's all the same.

But if you do something unique and exciting in composing something, that will be your surefire way to stand out.

Roberto

It reminds me that many people also saw Tim Urban's panic monster and instant gratification monkey, which were done with Microsoft Paint.

This is so interesting and also connects with something that you share, which is why it is so important for you to have a creative practice. You believe this very strongly.

Pejman

I do, I do. And I was able to articulate it a few weeks ago. I had articulated this, you know, have a, you know, me and Hannah Wilson and Michael J. Boorman, are wonderful folks. If you haven't followed them already, do it. We talk every day. And I had shared this with them a few several months ago, but I shared this publicly recently that, you know, I was like, OK, I need to come up and how do I articulate all the things I feel about creative practice in just a single phrase? And it was.

I want to encourage people to have a creative practice to make the world more creative. And that sounds cheesy, but that's so much in line with what I do. You know, teaching high school, what I try to do with, you know, encouraging the students who take the thinking and visual metaphors course, and then also in the content that I'm trying to create is that I do believe, look, you don't have to create visuals and, you know, illustrate anything to categorize that as being creative.

Your creative practice can be in many different domains. For example, you just got your coaching certificate; being a coach means trying to develop creative solutions. Even as a teacher, you're creating creative ways to express and frame ideas for your students so you can practice creativity in multiple ways. The trick is to have a regular creative practice so that you and the regularity are important to me because it helps, at least, break down some of the mental barriers that a lot of us have to struggle against, like perfectionism, procrastination, analysis paralysis, imposter syndrome, all these things.

You can drown out all of those by doing something regularly because the habit of it will keep you from having to manage some of the challenges that can infect your mindset.

Roberto

Yeah, I love what you say about creativity, not just drawing or doing illustration because I 100% feel the same. One curious thing is that people who also know me, I also do that, do illustration, of course. And someone says I didn't know you did that. I didn't expect that. It's just, yeah, and it's just a part of who we are. We can be creative and express this creativity in many ways. As you said, you can do it in a job. For example, I code. I do coding. You can be creative when doing coding because you can structure it in a way that you can put it differently, which is yours. Of course, these are best practices, et cetera, but you can do everything your way. It's like giving your taste or your flavor.

And it also connects to one thing that one person shared with me, and she said, I'm doing all these things, but then I see that someone else did it, so I, it's like, I share it? It's not 100% new. And I would like to push back with that because almost everything has been said or invented. You mean, for example, the stoic ideas. We have a lot of stoic ideas. Today, I shared the carousel about stoics; it was thousands of years ago. But then we have our context. We have our experience and can say it slightly differently or from our perspective. And if it's authentic to you, why not?

Again, you mentioned the limitation. I don't do this because I cannot do it, I fear judgment, or because it's not original. Who am I to judge if it's original or not? If it's authentic for you and me, and I put my idea and shape into it, why not? Someone said it one year ago, and if you don't know, is it still yours?

Pejman

Yeah, I'd love to add to that. I try to convey that if you are taking somebody else's work and then more or less changing the color and applying the same labels and wording, it's the same graphic. Still, you took it from Canva; I don't want to encourage that kind of posting or behavior because I don't think that adding anything that is yours is a good idea.

It's not so much like, let's step away from the copyright infringement stuff. That's just a philosophical practice. It needs to tap into your creative potential. So, I don't want to encourage it because we all add our creative spin to these things. It is the term I like to use because we all have creative accents. And you know, have your creative accent; I have a creative accent. And again, how we shape things imperfectly is our creative accent.

And if you are unsure if you want to post something, you're like, I don't want to copy somebody. The actual methodology of doing this is simple. You take one idea, and then you take a different idea, and then you remix those ideas, and the way you remix it is filtered through your creative accent, and then you have something unique, engaging, and different. And it's about something more than thinking something completely new. You are tapping into another perspective in this giant ball; imagine this thing with 50,000 different facets, and you're just turning that little ball with all these different facets, and you're showing us one more.

But if you show us the same facet that somebody else created, I don't necessarily agree that that is the ideal place we want to be for our creative practice. I would also invite and encourage other folks to think about that.

Roberto

I agree with that. Your comment reminds me of another thing you shared: follow the rules, master the rules, and break the rules. I want to share a little bit about that.

Pejman

Yeah, that's my little three-step framework, and I wish I could take credit for it, but that's straight from Bruce Lee, you know, learn the rules, master the rules, break the rules. And it's, I go back to, you know when I first learned how to dance salsa, you know, I met my wife dancing salsa, and she was just like super good before I met, you know, when I met her, she was already like really elegant, you know, doing all kinds of like styling moves and whatnot.

I just attended my first class and was like, OK, OK. How am I leveling up my skillset to step up to this beautiful woman who is so elegant and amazingly dancing? And it was not easy because I was like, everyone else is styling. Everyone else looks like they're doing everything masterfully, but I am just trying to learn the steps.

I would try to do what I saw everyone else doing, and it didn't look good. It looked horrible. So, the thing is that you have to learn the steps, then you have to master the steps, then you know when you can skip a step to style and show what it is that, you know, what it looks like everyone else is doing. And you must complete those. You have to learn the science of something before you can understand its art form.

I found that true for many skill sets, whether visual thinking, writing, or dancing, so I'm 100% behind this process.

Roberto

And yeah, I hear you must be humble initially and curious about what you don't know. So you see how it feels, and then, step by step, when you see that this feels good, I'm going to try again something more, more, more daring.

And I'm curious now that we're talking about this mastery, and it's one year since you started teaching a visual course. I remember the first conversation that we had. You just finished the first cohort and have completed number eight. So, what's the biggest thing I learned in this journey? By the way, it's amazing. Congratulations, PJ, because it's...

Pejman

Yeah, no, it's been great. I recently shared a post that one of the students had posted. She had posted something lovely recently, and I was just like, yeah, man, you know, it's just one of one crazy side effect that I did not expect is the kind of folks, and thank you for that beautiful comment, too. You put a comment with a visual like your vibe attracts your tribe. Still, one interesting side effect is that I'm humbled and pleasantly surprised by the quality, and I hate to say the quality of folks. Still, just the type of like-minded people attracted to a course like this; these are not only very smart, interesting professionals but also kind, thoughtful, and open-minded.

That's been one cool side effect of doing this for eight cohorts. There have been over 300 students, think now, which is fantastic. But I would say the biggest learning has been just applying the same mindset around creating visuals to the course and its content, the spirit of iteration, the spirit of continuous improvement, which has impacted not only how I teach this online course, which is probably the best thing I've ever taught at this point.

I say that confidently because it was like, I've, the iteration speed is so condensed. Creating eight iterations is much faster than how I can iterate in regular courses because it usually is a semester and then another semester. But this is like a very condensed course. And I can, yeah, and I can continue to finesse it. And that part of it is just so fun and exciting to do because I also, it's like, here's an insight I gathered from a question that a student asks that helps me get a deeper understanding of what's happening in the visual relationships, as I sometimes like to call the kind of stuff that we're doing in a visual metaphor is we're creating these relational bridges between what we know and what we don't know, or the familiar and the unfamiliar.

The more I've been able to run this cohort, engage with students, and learn where their struggles are, the more I'm able to express them more efficiently and clearly and clarify my thinking around those things that help with the practice and reinforce the fact that what we do as we try to share these ideas to make them more accessible to more people can be just such a powerful practice. Yeah, it's been a lot of fun.

And yeah, I want to be able to connect with people. I would also add this one last bit: an excellent side effect I had before posting my first thing online: I struggled with getting older and getting into my 40s. One struggle I have had is just the change in friendship dynamics. As you have a family, you start to get internal in how you spend your time, which is not a bad thing, it's just a change.

One aspect that I hungered for was community. And community is different from friendships. Community is like your friendships knowing each other, your friends knowing each other, and then they're friends. And so it's like they're connected, and you're connected to them.

I didn't expect, fast-forwarding two years from when I first posted that and from the first beta of this course, that a community would organically happen by the students because, you know, I have two students who are just amazing that they wanted to start a community inside LinkedIn. So it was like an additional thing for students by students that kept the teaching and the learning going after me. And just seeing some of those things organically happen has just been lovely.

And to fulfill this thing that I had been hungering for two years, maybe even two years—it was far longer than that—that has also been a lovely little side effect.

Roberto

Talking about my son here, he said something. We were playing. It still needs to come in. He will come. I will come. PJ, you said one thing now. I am trying to remember. You were talking about struggles, and I'm curious because thank you for being so open and transparent so that people can also see who you are and your values. And I'm now curious: what are you struggling with, or what is your biggest challenge?

Pejman

I answered the same question a year ago, and it's still the same struggle. The struggle is where to prioritize your focus and in what order to prioritize that—one thing at a time. So, sequencing the right, or maybe not the right, but the most appropriate thing for now is the most challenging thing. Sometimes, it's really easy to lose focus.

For example, I have students who have asked for a second, more advanced, or community-level course to support what I'm doing here. Thoughtful people have approached me to work with them on their ideas and help visualize them. You know, I have a newsletter, a website, my teaching, and my own family, and all these different things are constantly competing for all of these things.

And it's not a unique struggle. How do we prioritize our time? I find it particularly tough because each one of these things sounds fantastic, and you, like, I want to do all of them all the time now. That is not something that goes away. Any level of success makes it worse because you're now faced with more opportunities, and you're like, OK, which one of these should I focus on? And you don't want to take on anything without doing it to the full level of your ability.

I don't want to do 100 things and do them all mediocrely. We are all high-achieving folks who want to do things well. So, that is probably the biggest struggle. And I don't think it'll ever change. That is going to be the biggest struggle.

Roberto

I would like to challenge you a bit because I remember, and I would like your feedback. Once you shared with me and posted one online, you said you're only sometimes trying to be as productive. So where's the lesson in that?

Pejman

No, you're 100% right. The funny thing is these visuals are not meant to be like; this is me. I am a guru, and I have figured all these things out. You all may now know my knowledge and wisdom. No, it's more like this is for me as much as it is for anyone else. And most of these things are aspirational, and you know, it's, it's, and it's almost like by making the visual, I'm hoping to cement that lesson, and there's always gonna be these regressions of whatever it is that we've been able to apply in our lives. That is true; I appreciate that reminder.

And that's the thing, right? It's so tough. It's so tough to manage the reality of how limited we are. Like we have to, not only is it that we can't do everything. Not only is it not about that, but we have to come to acceptance almost daily that our capacity is only so much, and we have to be so much more scrutinizing with how we devote our time.

So, one of the things I respect about you, Roberto, is I've witnessed you say no, and I'm like, slow clap. Because you were like, look, I, and you've never, to your credit, said no to anything I've asked, and I'm always like, man, thank you so much for your time. But I'm also seeing you say no to other folks because of your priorities, which is one of those aspirational things that I need to improve. And it's not easy for sure, but yeah, as you say, like we shouldn't, it's about something other than getting the most done. It's about doing the most meaningful things now. And that's a regular thing that I need to create more visual reminders for myself.

Roberto

Absolutely. Thank you for remembering that. I want to add another thing: We become slightly more vulnerable and accountable when we share something online. Imagine that I share a visual, and I share a lot about listening, asking questions, or having difficult conversations. And then, in my own life, I don't do that...?

So I also do it for myself because if I share something on the need of having the difficult conversation, there's a beautiful metaphor, which is putting the fish on the table, which is from George Kohlrieser, which is, you know, the fish if you get it on the table, it's a difficult conversation.

And if you don't take it out, what happens? It stinks. It gets worse. If you put the fish on the table and clean it, you can eat it and have an amazing dinner. So if I share this, then in my own life, I don't put the fish on the table; I know it. People don't, but I know it.

So it's also a reminder of the kind of person I want to be—more accountable to myself.

Let's check the chat to see if we have any questions from the people connected.

One message to one person. That's interesting. Let's expand on that or one message at a time.

Pejman

Yeah, there's value in that. That's one of my core rules for visual metaphors. It's important to distinguish between a visual metaphor, infographics, and sketching. Because they're all different, it's easy to conflate everything together.

For visual metaphors, I equate it, at least with the way I use visual metaphors; it just depends on how you use it. But the way I like to think about it and the way I use visual metaphors is to teach and to teach an idea. Usually, it's the first time that you've come across this idea. That's how I'm thinking about it. So, an infographic is typically information-dense. So we have all these different pieces of content in one thing. That's a great resource, usually for reminders of something you already know and know well.

But with visual metaphors, one message, one visual, is that we want to be clearer versus dense information. So, information clarity is more important in this context. The single visual creates the constraint of simplifying it, not dumbing it down, but simplifying it so that it can be easily understood by someone coming across this idea for the first time. And you can create a series of visuals to convey a more articulate, nuanced thing. But it would help if you kept it as singular as possible.

One tip I give to students is to try to convey it in a single sentence so that you can determine whether it's clear.

Roberto

That's great. Thank you. And it applies to everything. Can you say that in one sentence, even if we ask a question about doing something? What's the essence of that? What's the importance behind that?

Let's see if we have more questions. Michael is asking which tool you are using if Procreate. You may want to talk a little bit about tools.

Pejman

Yeah, I hesitate to get too far into the weeds of tools; I use Procreate for most of the visuals I post to answer your curiosity. I've been recently playing around with using Figma for more simplified ideas, just for speed, which is something I'm playing with, but Procreate is the tool that I use. Still, I also generally like to keep it tool-agnostic regarding how you approach the thinking around these things. The tool is helpful. Of course, you want things to be aesthetically pleasing. You want things to have a certain feel.

But when you're trying to get past that first hurdle, getting too caught up in the tool can prevent you from actually doing the thing. Even with Figma and I knowing Roberto used Affinity, you probably only use a few available tools. You may only need to learn 1% to start it. And then, as you're learning, as you create each visual and come across a design problem or technical problem, you do a YouTube search or Google search on fixing that or figuring that out. And that can get you just, again, past those first hurdles.

But Procreate is great. It's like, you know, 13 bucks. Procreate if anyone knows anyone at Procreate, I need to have a sponsorship deal with them because I've been calling out Procreate for at least the last two years. But yeah, it's great, 13 bucks. You don't have to spend anything past that. It's not a membership. It's on the iPad. That's the only downside. If you need an iPad, it may prevent you from being able to use it. But yeah, Procreate's great.

Roberto

Yeah, and what you say reminds me of just starting start and then figuring it out and also being curious about different ways of doing things because, from my perspective, for example, it's so easy to find out a way to do whatever and then not even think that maybe there is a more efficient way to do it so. You could do the same here, and then you do a YouTube search and see how I can do X, Y, and Z and say, wow, there's a feature for that. And you don't know.

So, and this also applies to everything because we are stuck in doing things in some way. And what you mentioned about the creativity and the connection, always questioning yourself, is this the better way to do this? Can I do it better? Now, even with AI, I ask questions and see what I can do differently. What can I improve? Keep discovering things. Even if the tool is unimportant, it's how we use it, which questions we ask, and how we try to improve. That's at least how we approach it.

Pejman

Yeah. It's like an extension of your thinking, which can be valuable. So it is; it creates and contributes to the environment that you make. It's just that if you, again, I'm going back to my own experience, to thinking back in the day if you find it becoming frustrating to use a tool because it either is a little bit too advanced or whatnot, then dial back, lower the bar, maybe change the tool, just so that you can get in that creative idea expression out, or remember that it's a process. You'll eventually get to the point where you can use the tool more efficiently, just like asking those questions like you said.

Roberto

Yeah, definitely. Finding something: I always say that I see something that feels good, does not look like a chore, and then say, no, I have to do this. I hate it so much. So it could be better. We cannot do that by just brute force. It has to be fun. If it's not fun, you cannot get the spark and say, OK, I want to do this more. And I also did that. I was one year doing the transparency in one time, one way. I found that I can scale this. How could I do this one year? But it was fun. It was a fun moment. It was not like I hated doing this. And I say, how can I do this better?

This also connects with something you share: doing things on Sunday and being a family guy. How do you choose which day to do things, what time to be creative, what time to be with family, and how to achieve all this balance? Because you have a lot on your plate.

Pejman

Yeah, so that's a different piece of it. You know, sometimes it's just finding the time where you can do it. And sometimes, it's just finding the space to do it. One thing that's been helpful is having an iPad because I can sit in the living room with my family while they're watching TV, and I can still be present but also be working on something. And that's been helpful. But yeah, it's just finding those moments where you can do it and not feeling like you have to do it all at once.

I've learned that it's OK to do it in small chunks. You don't have to do it all at once. You can do a bit occasionally; eventually, it all adds up. It's been helpful for me to remember that it's not about doing it all at once but consistently over time.

Roberto

Yeah, and what you say reminds me of what you shared about consistency versus perfection. And that's a really important distinction because we often think we have to be perfect at something before we can share it or do it. But really, it's about being consistent, showing up, and doing the work over time.

Let's see if we have any questions from the chat. I see one from Venkata asking which time of day you prefer to create content. Would you like to address that?

Pejman

Yeah, mornings are when my brain is most active and creative, but unfortunately, that's not always when I have time to execute. I've started using mornings for thinking and planning, and the actual execution happens in the evenings. That way, I can sit with my family in the living room while they're watching TV or whatever, and I already know what I want to create—I'm just executing the plan I made in the morning.

Before, I didn't have a system—I just did it whenever I could. But I've learned that having some structure, even if it's flexible, helps a lot. The key is finding what works for you and your schedule.

Roberto

You can do this in different ways. Sometimes, I do it early in the morning, and sometimes, during travels when I have no distractions. The important thing is that it feels good, and you're excited about it. I also keep a backlog of ideas so that when I have time, I can pick something I'm excited about and work on that.

Speaking of time and family, I made a significant change recently—I deleted all social media apps from my phone when I went to Switzerland for a course. I committed publicly to being offline and just deleted the apps. After that week, I decided to keep them off my phone and see how it felt.

I discovered that I'm much more present with my family now. The interesting thing is that because I'm more present with them, I can also ask for their understanding when I need focused time for something important—like this conversation with you. I can say, "I'm excited about this talk with PJ, and I promise I'll be 100% present before and after."

So my message for people listening is: First, try deleting social media apps—it's surprising how much of a difference it makes. Second, we can always find time for what matters. Even half an hour of focused work on something that excites you can be productive.

Pejman

As you were saying that, I thought of James Clear's quote, which I constantly repeat to myself: "Reduce the scope to maintain the habit." This applies to everything—exercise, creative work, anything. If you can accept that you won't do perfect reps every day and that you'll probably miss some days because life happens, then whatever you can do—even if it's just a small sketch or a simple exercise—helps maintain the habit.

It's about creating confidence that you'll do what you say you will. If you can live up to that target of who you say you want to be, that's both empowering and motivating to continue. But if you miss a day, it's natural to feel like you've failed. To fight against that before it becomes an issue, just doing something small—30 seconds or 30 minutes—can dramatically impact your long-term ability to maintain any practice.

Roberto

Before wrapping up, I would like to ask you one question, which is to the audience and in general: What would you like to see more and less of in the world?

Pejman

I'll start with less. I would love to see fewer AI comments. And the reason it's not, I don't fault people for doing it because there is an actual mechanism in the algorithm that's embedded in the algorithm that probably rewards the more engagement you can do. And AI does enable you to make more comments. I find that in the spirit of, I guess, what I would like to see more of, it is a block and defeats the purpose of what I want to see more of, and what I want to see more of is more real connections, more genuine people connections.

One thing I generally do, and it limits the scale of which I can do it, is send video notes. I'll send video notes to you, I'll send video notes to people when they send me a message. It does keep me from responding at scale sometimes. Unfortunately, I'm unable to respond to folks promptly, but I like doing things that don't scale because when you can do those things, it's like, wow, you care. You want to engage in a real way, you know?

So, I would love to see fewer things that keep us from making meaningful connections to other people. I love using visual metaphors. They do enable my creative practice. But I hope that they allow us to connect by opening up conversations, by opening up the doorway to say, "Look, I don't have it all figured out."

It's not that I'm creating this stuff to say again, like, I know what I'm doing, and you guys, if you want to follow me, you have to do this too. It's more like, hey, this is an idea. What do you guys think?

And you know, you had recently, you know, I had posted a visual about complexity versus complication. And some people were like, you know, that's completely backward. That's completely wrong. And I'm like, that's cool. I mean, OK. I define these terms for myself, not based on, you know, some philosophical framework that I studied. It's more like, what is complexity to me? What are the complications for me?

And there was a response to that. And it's great. I welcome that kind of response. That's what I want. I want people to engage in that conversation. Now, if it's been towards, you know, me being wrong, I'm like, I mean... I'm not defending the idea. The idea is a visual, the interaction is with the visual, not me. That's how I like to think of it. And it's not to shed responsibility or accountability for what I create.

It is to say my core belief is if I got handicapped, or not handicapped, but if I got too caught up in, like, I have to do this right, or else something's gonna go wrong, then that would prohibit me from continuing to create work that I would share. So, as a general rule, I don't make corrections. I don't defend. I don't attack. Look, this is if you, if that's your interpretation if that's what you believe, I welcome it because it helps me understand it a little bit more. And maybe the semantics of complexity versus complications needed to be corrected. That's fine.

I have no problem making that shift and thinking because now I'm OK. That's an interesting point. I can continue to iterate on these ideas, but the work is meant to engage and interact with folks to start conversations. It's not a finished product. It's not a finished idea.

That's another core facet I encourage folks to do in the course: think of everything you create as a work in progress. We are perfecting in public. We are not perfecting at home, waiting for this one day until it's perfect, and then sharing. Because guess what? When you do share, it'll still be imperfect.

So what I would like to see less of is less of the things that keep us, sometimes it's core beliefs that may prohibit us from, maybe it's a little bit of posturing that we may feel compelled to have online to say, OK, no, you're wrong, I'm right. I would love to see less of that stuff because everyone's trying to figure it out. And I would love to see more real connections, doing less scalable things, doing meaningful things because it's less about status and more about building these relationships. After all, that's all it's about.

Roberto

Thank you. I completely echo that. Thank you so much. I know we are out of time. One more question: You are talking about things you cannot scale. How can people contact you, and what's the best way to contact you? And if you want to share some of your future current projects, whatever, what do you want people to know?

Pejman

Yeah. So, the best way to keep in touch is through my newsletter. I have a visual ideas newsletter. We're at 25,000 plus subscribers, which is fantastic. Two years ago, when I started it, we had eight subscribers. Two of those were former students, and six of them were good friends. The newsletter is probably the best way to stay in touch and keep up with my favorite works I share online.

Yeah, and the course is also a wonderful way to explore what your creativity could lead you to. If you're interested in learning how to do this stuff and exploring what your creativity could lead you to, the course is something I'm proud of now. When I started it, I didn't know that I had the confidence that it would be 100% meaningful for everyone, but at this point, I feel very proud of what I've built, and it's effective.

So it's been wonderful to see that take fruit with all the effort. I had a question from one of the students in the last cohort, and she asked how many visuals I created just for the course. And I was like, gosh, at least 250 plus just for the course. And so it is just building that up to the point where I'm proud. And it's helped many folks and has been meaningful. And the course and my newsletter are the best places to keep in touch.

Roberto

Yeah. This speaks a lot about the care you put into what you do and the intention. So thank you. Thank you, PJ, for your time. Thanks to the people who connected. Thank you so much for being here and doing this for the second time. You're generous, honest, authentic, humble, and creative. It's so inspirational for me. Thank you so much.

Pejman

Thank you so much, Roberto. I appreciate you reaching out and having the opportunity to do this again with you. Yeah, man, I mean, you're someone I look up to with all your systems to be able to do everything that you're doing online. It just blows, and my brain starts to think, how can this guy do as much as he does? So yeah, you're someone I look up to in that respect, and I'm thankful for the opportunity to have this conversation again with you.

Roberto

Yeah. And I know we have more things to discuss. Let's do a third one year from now. Who knows?

Pejman

We got our yearly check-in.

Roberto

OK, thank you to everyone. Have a good evening or morning, depending on where you're connected. Bye-bye.

Pejman

Bye.

Where to find PJ, his work and projects

• Newsletter "Visual I.D.E.A.s"

• Course "Thinking in Visual Metaphors" Use the code "FERRARO10" for a 10% discount 😉