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Setting goals sounds like it should be easy, but if it were, wouldn’t everybody achieve them? In this episode we switch up the show format a little bit, and NLE ninja and master trainer Jeff Greenberg interviews me.
I had ZERO knowledge of Jeff’s questions before he interviewed me for this episode, and we covered a lot of ground. We talk about how I began my career as an editor, my work on Burn Notice and Empire, balancing work and family, living a healthy lifestyle, and goal setting. Jeff definitely kept me on my toes throughout the interview and even helped me find some insight into my own life goals.
Zack Arnold: So I’m here today with returning guest Jeff Greenberg, who is an absolute NLE guru. If you want to listen to our previous episode, I will put a link to it in the show notes where we geek out on NLEs and really it was more about ways to maximize your focus and just be creative. And it was a really really great show. I’ve gotten a lot of great responses from it, and Jeff is back on the show today, so I’m really excited to have you here, Jeff.
Jeff Greenberg: I’m so excited. This is possibly for my sense of well-being my favorite podcast of all time because it just makes me a better human being.
Zack Arnold: Well, that means a great, great deal to me. I really appreciate you saying that. What I want to let the audience know today is that I have absolutely no idea what the show is about, and the reason for that is that the last time that Jeff and I recorded, he threw out this idea. He’s like, you know what? It’d be so cool if we did a show where I interviewed you, and I said, cool. So here we are. So basically, at this point, I’m going to pass over the show to the host Jeff Greenberg, and from here on out, I have no idea what to expect.
Jeff Greenberg: Thank you, Zack. These are big shoes to fill for the day. I just got finished with the editor’s retreat. I’ve been thinking a lot about interviewing you, and I hear you speak a lot about health and fitness, and I definitely want to talk about that. But I think it’s a you’re you’re so humble about some of the work you do. So I want to just spend a little bit of time first focusing about what you do as an editor. But before I do that, because you get up so early in the morning for me for this, let’s just get this out of the way. Tell me about your morning routine. Tell me about what you did this morning to get ready for this because I noticed when we spoke briefly you were under a red light.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, I can definitely factor that in. And the full disclaimer: I don’t get up at this time every single morning. Right now, it’s just before six a.m. Pacific time, which means I’ve been up since about 530 My morning routine will vary depending on my schedule because for me, I prioritize sleep above anything else. That is a lesson that I learned a little less than a year ago. Where I am a self-proclaimed workaholic, had been for the vast majority of my life. I actually wrote a blog post about my experience with burnout a little bit less than a year ago, and I’ll have a link in the show notes to that. But I decided that the number one thing I had to prioritize with sleep, so for me, sleep is this immovable object now, and I work my entire schedule around it. So if I have a really busy schedule and I have to go to bed later than I would hope to, then I just-it’s like an accordion. I’ll just extend the other end of it, and I’ll wake up later in the morning because my magic number is seven hours. A lot of cognitive science has proven that if you get around seven hours of sleep, that’s kind of the magic number for rebuilding the brain, enhancing cognitive function. And if you get less than that, you’re going to decrease cognitive function. And if you get more than that, within you know give or take 30 or 60 minutes, you’re going to decrease cognitive function as well. It’s a very interesting find.
Jeff Greenberg: I’ll go a step further than that. It’s the stuff I’ve been reading and looking at. Says seven to nine hours is that window. Less than that, more than that, leads to weight gain, leads to pre-diabetic states. It’s really kind of a little sad that our industry kind of provides a yardstick. Our our macho ness is well. How long is the longest you’ve gone without sleep is just a terrible, terrible yeah,
Zack Arnold: And it’s it’s not kind of it’s absolutely the way this industry works, and that’s one of the one of the mindsets that I really want to change is this badge of honor of how little you sleep and you still get things done. It’s like, hey, great, I’m gonna die sooner than you. Awesome, it’s like, all right. So so that’s the kind of the the prequel to to what I’m saying about my morning routine is that it’s not the same every morning because I always make sure I get seven hours no matter what. So from there, the very first thing that I do, other than the obvious thing that most people do when they wake up, is I always make sure that I have a drink of cold water, 12 to 16 ounces, and it either has one of two supplements in it that I really really like. One of them is called Nutrients, which is basically just a liquid micronutrient powder that ensures that I get all of the micronutrients that I need for the day. And I have a feeling I’m going to have a lot of links in the show notes because basically from here on Audible to say anything that you hear me talking about, I’m going to link to in the show notes. I’m
Jeff Greenberg: By the way, I’m playing with Nutrients this month. Yeah, it’s great so far.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, it’s it’s really good stuff. So it’s it’s it’s a multivitamin, but it’s a liquid multivitamin, and I go all into the the science of it in one of my previous shows. The other one that I’m using now that I’ve used for a couple of months that I really like is called Athletic Greens. That’s actually one I heard about from Tim Ferriss, and I really really like it and like the effects that it has. So the the water that I had this morning was with a heaping tablespoonful of Athletic Greens, and then depending on what I’m doing that morning, I will usually do about 15 to 20 minutes of meditation, and I use Headspace for meditation. I will do 10 to 15 minutes of trigger point therapy and foam rolling, just because basically stand all day. You’re on a train. All day, like I am in front of a workstation, that you just have a lot of tight spots that you develop in your legs and your hips and your glutes and all these areas. So I’ll usually do some some trigger point therapy and foam rolling, and then if I have the time, if it’s my ideal morning, I’ll do 30 minutes of exercise. My program currently has been P90X3, but again, this is one of those things that I kind of pick and choose based on whatever my current state of my nervous system is, which actually brings me to if you step half a step back, when I’m doing the meditation, I’m measuring something called my heart rate variability, your HRV, and that’s just basically putting on a heart strap, and it measures your the strength of your nervous system and whether or not your nervous system is in good shape and bad shape. If you’re really wired, if you’re stressed out, if you’re calm,
Jeff Greenberg: I have a huge question with that. So I’ve been using Headspace almost from its very beginning. I have never taken an HRV measurement during that. Is are you just running? I assume it’s the that Ben Greenfield app.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, it’s it’s it’s the the Nature Beat app. Yep,
Jeff Greenberg: I’ve used it. I use it kind of regularly when I’m finished working out as a measurement of recovery, and first thing in the morning to kind of just see today’s a day maybe I take off. But what part of the app are you using during meditation to measure your HRV.
Zack Arnold: What I’ll do there there are three options on there. The one that you’re most likely using is called HRV for training, where it just does it for three minutes. But if you go to the one that’s called Monitor Stress, that’s basically doing the same thing but continuously. So I’ll do it for 15 minutes. And the really cool thing that happens is when you do it during meditation, you’re actually watching the changes happening in your sympathetic and your parasympathetic nerve systems, so you can actually see the point at which the meditation starts to slow your system down and relax you, and your parasympathetic nervous system starts to kick in and relax you. So it’s really really cool. But sometimes what I’ve actually found is that when I’m stressed out, my sympathetic nervous system goes crazy when I meditate because I’m trying so hard to relax that it’s actually making me more anxious. So it’s it’s basically taking Headspace to the next level by getting a graph of how your nervous system is reacting to meditation.
Jeff Greenberg: That is huge. I’m going to try that this morning. My for me, my headspace routine is you know, I’m I’m on the button money. I’ve I’ve not missed a day in a while, and I’ve introduced a bunch of friends to it before I ever heard of fitness in post. It’s definitely the easiest way to take 10 minutes out of your life and just give yourself a little little bit of headspace. I also
Zack Arnold: Did an entire blog post about my my crazy morning routine, but once once I’m done exercising, then I’ll do a recovery shake, and then I’ll take 15 minutes and I just kind of go through planning my day. So I have a morning journal that kind of organizes the things in my day, and I also do very quick gratitude practice, making sure I understand and reminding myself about my priority. You know, just priorities in life, priorities for the day, and then kind of breaking down what are the things that I have to do today, and what are the things that I should do, and then if I’m really lucky, and I don’t think I ever get to this list, what are the things that would be nice to do if I have time left over, and I don’t think I’ve ever gotten to that list ever in my life. I barely get through the the must dos because I have a I have a lot of stuff on there and then from there I just you know take a take a shower. By that time my daughter is awake, so I make breakfast. We have breakfast together. We watch a little TV. You know, dress her for school, take her to school, and then I’m off for the day.
Jeff Greenberg: Sure, I’m sitting back and I’m looking here at you know 15 minutes of headspace, 30 minutes P90X, a lot of prep. How long does this morning routine take?
Zack Arnold: If I do everything, it’s usually a little bit less than two hours. So I’ll usually be up around 535 40-five, and then I’ll be up with my daughter around 730 I probably only am able to get through this about 50 to 70-5% of the time, just because I’ll prioritize sleep. So what I’ll do is I’ll just basically I have certain things on there. No matter what, I do them every day. And other things, hey, it would be great if I can get to this. If I get to sleep, if not, like no big deal. Like this morning, I’m doing a podcast, so I’m going to have to remove the majority of it and just kind of keep the ones that are the absolute essentials. So it’s once you have a system, it’s fine to like take pieces and remove them and replace them, and it’s that that’s kind of one of the the tips I give people when they say, “Well, what if I fall off the bandwagon with diet or exercise or whatever it is? I said, “If you have a system, you have all the steps in place. You just start over from step one and build one step over and over again.
Jeff Greenberg: Which brings me to the next natural question about this sort of routine: How long do you feel it takes for somebody just to? And I want to be clear. I just want you to make this statement. If somebody was going to adopt some of these things, they shouldn’t adopt all of these on day
Zack Arnold: One. Oh, for the love of God, no. No, you do one thing at a time until you feel good enough about it. Not until it’s. Absolutely in stone, and it sticks. You don’t need to go that long, but you basically lay out. Here’s the ideal things that I would love to do during my morning routine. Maybe there’s five things, and then you say, “All right, well, what’s the most important one that I want to do every day? And I basically I’ll fill that gap in for you. When you wake up, you have to do the water, even if you don’t want to do nutrients or athletic greens or lemon juice or whatever it is. Doing the water when you wake up is absolutely essential bodily function. You’ve gone hopefully seven to eight hours without any water whatsoever, and your body’s fasting. You need that to rehydrate and just jumpstart your body. So that’s the number one thing. But just do that. Just wake up in the morning and do that before you start your day, and then slowly build more and more things.
Jeff Greenberg: Would you suggest maybe seven days or 14 days before you add something else new?
Zack Arnold: Yeah, I would say probably a good five to seven days. Like just you know, say I’m going to try it on a Monday. Can I make it through to Friday? Great. Okay. Well, now I’m going to spend the weekend figuring out what’s the next step I’m going to implement. Get all the pieces in place to do that, and then just kind of go from there. But yeah, I would say you know within five to seven days that should be fine if you’re doing smaller steps. Obviously, waking up and drinking 16 ounces of water is going to be easier to implement than waking up and doing half an hour of P90X3. So there are certainly more complicated components to it. But I think to really get this down took me about 60 days of really experimenting, changing the order of things. What do I have time to do? What do I have the energy to do? So it took me over 60 days to really get this to the point where it’s stuck, and I still don’t do it every single day, just based on my schedule, just look at it one small step at a time. Because if you say I’m going to do these 10 things in the morning, I guarantee you’re going to fail, and you’re going to say, “Oh, this doesn’t work for me, and you’re not going to go back and try it.
Jeff Greenberg: I think that’s probably the the great insight. There is that little small steps. I think it was said to me once, “Even an elephant can be eaten one bite at a time.
Zack Arnold: Yes, I literally just said that phrase last night in one of my course videos that I recorded. That’s uncanny.
Jeff Greenberg: I was lucky enough to get that beta invite, and I joined during the middle of the editor’s retreat. And today is the first day I’m going to take a look at one of those videos. And to me, even if I didn’t find everything in it wonderful, it was a no-brainer for me to do it. Just to say, hey, Zack, I appreciate all the little things you’ve done that have made me a healthier, better human being in the past year.
Zack Arnold: Well, my goal is to not only have you say, oh, some of this is useful, but I want to impress the master trainer. That’s my goal. So I’m. I brought you in here because I want you to be a barometer for me because you do this stuff a lot more than I do. So I’m excited to hear your thoughts.
Jeff Greenberg: One of those, you know, things in life. If I was living in an LA, I would like to think that I would be as accomplished as you are. I made an operative decision that I could not edit as a full time career because I had to take care of family, and I poured my heart into teaching, which I think, in a lot of ways, is just a different form of editing.
Zack Arnold: I could not agree more. I think that’s a fantastic decision to make for all the right reasons.
Jeff Greenberg: Let’s talk about editing, because we hear so much of kind of what you’re working on, so much about fitness. But I think it’d be important for your audience just to hear a little bit of grounding about the work you do. So, how did you get your start in editing?
Zack Arnold: Yeah, so I started. Well, I mean, my my story literally starts when I was about nine years old with my brother and I running around in circles with a you know video camera and VHS camera that you you know put on your your shoulder, one of those. And we shot this video for a day, and he showed it to me, and I was completely unimpressed, thinking we just spent 12 hours running around making this video, and I hated the process. Which so means by nine, not nine years old, I pretty much knew I didn’t want to work in production. But then a couple weeks later, he brought the video to me, and he had put the score of the good, the bad, and the ugly to it. And I said, “That is the coolest thing I have ever seen. How did you do that? And he kind of explained to me how he did it technically, and just the combination of these two things that didn’t belong together fascinated me. And literally, my editing career, so to speak, started there, where I would shoot my own videos, but I would go VHS to VHS and I would edit them together because I purposely shot them out of order so I could figure out how to put the pieces together, and did that for years, and then ended up doing just video projects for like my high school projects. I would beg my teachers, I don’t want to do a book report, or I don’t want to do this report. Can I make a video version of it instead? And they would indulge me, and I would end up doing video versions of things and edit them together. And then I actually did paid work by the time I was a junior and senior in high school, doing videos for the local community where I worked, doing highlight tapes for sports teams, stuff like that, and then when I went to college, just that that was my my area focus.
Jeff Greenberg: Did you get a broadcasting degree, a film degree?
Zack Arnold: Yes, so I got a degree. At the time, it was called Film and Video Studies from the University. University of Michigan. It’s now called Screen Arts and Cultures, both of which sound very liberal arty, and it was so. It was it was a lot more theory than it was practice. And there’s some practice in some filmmaking, but it’s very different from say a USC degree where you’re very immersed, hands on in the world of production. This was more like I think I walked out with a couple of shorts, but I walked out having written like 15 or 20 papers on the history of film and film theory and just point of view in film. Just a lot of writing and reading and watching old films and sleeping through old films. I think I slept through Potemkin four times. I’ve never actually seen the whole movie because I always fell asleep.
Jeff Greenberg: No, but nobody seen just for the secret. Nobody’s seen the whole movie,
Zack Arnold: Right?
Jeff Greenberg: Never seen is the stairs scene. That’s all.
Zack Arnold: But it literally was assigned in screenings for three of my film courses, and I’ve to this day never seen the whole thing because I’ve never made it through a wake. Why they screen Potemkin at 7o’clock at night on a Tuesday, and expect people to make it through. I don’t know.
Jeff Greenberg: I escaped having not having only seen the parts I needed to of Citizen Kane embarrassingly, and then I watched it about 10 years ago, and it was fantastic. Yeah, I could see why it was such an important film. How did you get your first big break? You’re in L.A. I don’t even care how you got there. How did you? Was it an assistant? Was it however you want to define your first big break into this field? How did you get
Zack Arnold: It? Well, I would say if if we’re really talking about my first big break, I would call that burn notice because I had a lot of little breaks along the way. But really, the one that I that you can define as the giant leap was burn notice, and burn notice. The short version is that I actually got the job from Burn Notice off of Facebook. The way that that worked is I was working on a web series for Sony called The Bannon Way, which was a low-budget web series that was basically it was Ocean’s 11 meets Burn Notice essentially as far as style and substance, and it was very very low pay, but it was very high profile for Sony, and it looked very much like burn notice. And I said, “Hey, I wonder if I have a calling card here. So what I did was I basically went on Facebook and Facebook stalked everybody on burn notice because I really wanted to work in television, and I had no resume in television. I had no contacts in television, and I said, “Well, if I don’t have some contacts, I’m going to make some contacts. So I sent Facebook messages to anybody I could find that worked on burn notice, and one of the editors, Steve Lang, actually responded and said, “Hey, the trailer for this thing. This looks pretty good. Would you like to have lunch with me? So Steve and I ended up having lunch together, and I basically passed him a DVD. And this was before the show was even released. The trailer had just come out, and I just passed him a DVD of the first couple of episodes. And I asked him if he wouldn’t mind watching. And in episodes was like six minutes a piece because it was a web series. So I gave him like 10 minutes worth of content to watch. So it was basically like handing him a demo reel. And then he called me about a week later, and he’s like, “Dude, I watch the show. What the hell is this? This is better than Burn Notice. Like, what is this thing? I said, “It’s just this web series I’ve been working on. And because of that, he and I developed a relationship. And about a month or two later, he called me and he said, “Listen, I’m going to be editing a pilot for Matt Nix, who’s the showrunner and creator of Burn Notice, and he said they’re going to be looking for somebody to fill my spot for one episode. I would love to get you in for an interview just so you can meet them. Like you don’t have the resume to get the job, and I don’t want to get your hopes up. But I think it’d be really great experience for you if you just got to to meet somebody and just kind of get your your foot in the door. And I said yes, that’d be amazing. So I spent the next two weeks watching the entire series twice, and this was after three seasons at the time, which I believe was 40 some episodes. So it’s a lot of content to watch in two weeks, and I just walked into their interview, and they realized that I knew the show better than they did, and because it was only one episode. They were willing to give me the shot, and I got the job for the one episode. And then after they saw the work on the one episode, I ended up doing 25 more for the next four seasons.
Jeff Greenberg: Okay, so that first week you walk in, or that after that first episode, what was your biggest surprise as an editor? What was the biggest shock? I’ll tell you. I’ll give you an example of what I mean. When I first sat down on an Avid, I was hired. I was in LA. I was editing that first, very, very first job. I didn’t know how to block a tape, and I didn’t know how to get the the actual show out of the Avid. I knew how to capture. I knew how to edit. I didn’t know how to black a tape and get it out, and I had to bribe somebody with a case of beer to teach me that. What was your biggest surprise? The biggest thing you didn’t know going in that was eye opening. Do you remember?
Zack Arnold: Well, I actually do. the The funny thing is that I learned how to edit on Avid, but that was in college, and from the time that I moved to. L.A. until my first day on burn notice, I touched Avid a grand total of three days, and this was a period of eight or nine years. So I’d gone about nine years without touching Avid, and of course, in nine years, an NLE is going to change a little bit. Avid maybe a little bit less than most, but still, it would it changed a great deal. But I’ve been on Final Cut exclusively for eight years, but I, of course, said, “Yeah, no, Avi’s not a problem. Like, I’m not worried about it. And I’ll never forget. It was my first week. My the assistant editor that they had assigned me actually had way more TV experience than I did, and was older than I was. And all of a sudden, everybody’s like, “Who is this kid? How did he get the job on the show as editor? He’s never even worked on TV, and I’ll never forget sitting there trying to cut a scene and thinking, “Oh my God, I don’t know how to add an audio keyframe. What in the world am I going to do right now? So I literally went into the assistant with a sheepish look, like this is a really stupid question, but can you show me how to add an audio keyframe? And I guarantee the thought on his face was, “Are you effing kidding me? I am assisting you on this show. You got this job, and you don’t know how to add an audio keyframe. And I didn’t because I couldn’t remember. But that what I really learned from that process is that editing is so independent of the technology. It took me like a week or two to kind of get my bearings again, remember where all the different buttons were, and remember how to do the same things. But because of the theory and the idea and my workflow, none of that changed. It was just where’s the button to do this. Within a week, I was back moving at the speed that I usually am, but that first week I was sweating bullets because I couldn’t do anything.
Jeff Greenberg: I’m sure, I’m sure. What are you working on today? What are you working on now?
Zack Arnold: Well, I just announced that I’ve actually moved on to a different show. I was on Empire for the last two years, and I just moved on to a show that I can’t talk too much about, but it’s going to be a year-long series that I’ll be doing for Netflix.
Jeff Greenberg: Oh wow, wow! Well, we well we won’t ask about that.
Zack Arnold: And I would love to talk about it, trust me. But I literally just signed an NDA, and I can’t say anything other than the word Netflix.
Jeff Greenberg: So I totally understand. I just interviewed Michael Canoe, who’s the editor of Daredevil and Jessica Jones, and when we were interviewing him, we had to be, of course, very careful as they both have seasons twos that are announced. But you know, he’s already been working, and he had to go. No, we can’t talk about this. So don’t don’t feel you have to to do any of that sort of thing. Let’s talk about from moment Empire at very least because I assume moving forward will be similar to what you’re doing now. What’s what’s your current day like now? Cutting how many days do you get to cut something? How many rounds of notes that sort of thing go on for at least Empire?
Zack Arnold: Sure, yeah. So on Empire it is an eight day shoot and used to be a three day editor’s cut until we basically put our foot down and said the show cannot be done in a three-day editor’s cut. So we get four now, and depending on the
Jeff Greenberg: Zack, I’m interrupting you. I love you for that. I have so many friends who are cutting TV, who you know are burning themselves out on that three-day cut, that four, that fourth day. That I’m so proud of you and the other editors for doing that.
Zack Arnold: Well, actually, when we came in season two, we had a different person that was running the department that had never really worked on a music show, and the calendar had a two-day editor’s cut on Empire. And I basically, literally, when I walked in the first morning to introduce myself, she’s like, “Hey, so what do you think of the calendar? I said we’re taking four days. Like it’s never going to happen in a perfect world. We will never do a two-day editor’s cut. If we’re lucky, we’ll do four. And once we start having two and three episodes going at a time, it’s going to take even longer. And that’s the reality of the situation. That’s just the way that it has to work on the show, given the volume of material. Because you’ll have days where you get eight hours of dailies, eight hours. Like you can’t do a two or three day editors cut in a show like that. And there are times that it’s taken me a five day editor’s cut, so it’s taken me 13 days. I I’m not ashamed of that. But the the one thing that I won’t do is work 16 hour days on my own time without overtime just to deliver an editor’s cut because the schedule is ridiculous. So I absolutely put my foot down on that. It it varies based on the the amount of material on the schedule, but a four day editor’s cut was pretty standard, and then it would be four day director’s cut, and then producers cut was on Empire is very very flexible just because the the showrunner is very busy, and you may go a week or two where you just have to kind of hang out and wait for notes, and then you may do a week producer cut, a couple days producer cut. It really just depends on the episode, and then the the last step is just the studio and the network doing their notes, which are usually pretty minor and usually maybe take a day’s worth of work, and then you. Kind of lock. I don’t say lock because in TV there’s really no such thing anymore. But you kind of lock. You say, well, it’s it’s. I guess it’s not not locked. So that that’s kind of the the process.
Jeff Greenberg: So would you say that your day starts at 9o’clock and you’re walking out at 3579, Give us just just boundaries, just generalized boundaries.
Zack Arnold: General, I usually don’t start before 10, just because I take my daughter to school in the morning. So usually around 10 or 1030 and I try to play the traffic game in LA. So sometimes I’ll leave later, just so it doesn’t take me so long, because my commute. I work in Beverly Hills on Empire, and I live in Woodland Hills. And if anybody that’s not in LA looked at a map, they’d say, “Oh, well, that’s not bad. It’s only like 25 miles. Sometimes it takes two and a half hours to get to work, so I will often leave late and stay late just so I can avoid traffic both ways. But a typical day where things aren’t too crazy, I would get in around 10 or 10:30, and I would probably leave probably around seven or 730 to try and get home to put my kids to bed and read to them. But if I’m in dailies and it’s a longer day, then I probably wouldn’t get out until about 10. So, but I never put in more than 12 hours unless there’s absolute insanity and craziness where they have to have me there longer and they’re paying overtime. But I’ve learned my lesson that I can’t constantly put in 16-hour days because it absolutely burns you out, and I’ve I’ve decided that life is too short to live that way.
Jeff Greenberg: Nobody can, and I think it’s a I’m going to use this. It’s going to make me sound like an old man. It’s the folly of youth to assume at 20-five or at 30 that getting by on four hours or six hours of sleep is even remotely possible over the long term.
Zack Arnold: Well, even at 25 it almost killed me. Literally, that’s when the whole fitness and post journey unofficially started. Was I literally got to the point where I was suicidally depressed and I couldn’t function at all, and I was 25 years old. I was only three years out of college, and this job almost killed me because of the hours, so that that’s kind of where all this started. So yes, even if you’re thinking, “Wow, I’m I’m young and I’m in good shape, like I was a black belt in martial arts, practicing yoga four days a week. Like I was in absolutely top physical condition, and literally could not stand up, get out of bed, and make myself breakfast without breaking into tears because I was so burned out.
Jeff Greenberg: Hopefully, the people who listen to this podcast as a whole or this particular episode, if they’re having that moment, that’s your wake-up call. Let’s talk about your assistants. What are your? How many assistants do you have on on Empire? What do they do for you?
Zack Arnold: Yeah, so I we have three assistants total. So it’s a three and three, meaning three editors, three assistants, but when you have your own dedicated assistant, other than hanging out and chatting during lunch and stuff, you really only have one because they’re they’re dedicated to your specific episodes. So I don’t like to use the word assistant. I like to call Natalie my my right hand because really I don’t think assistant even remotely does the word justice, and I’m assuming there are a lot of relationships for other people that are the same, but I’ll use the word assistant because that’s the technical one. So what I will, what she will do, like the the bare minimum for an assistant is they’ll take the dailies when they come in, they’ll break them down, they’ll organize the bins the way that I like them. So essentially, an editor should just be able to come in and they should be able to start cutting. They shouldn’t have to do any real technical work, digging for things. Just open a bin and start editing a scene. So that’s the first step that she’ll do during the editor’s cut. She’s an integral part of making sure that all of the sound quality for the episode is the best that it can be. So building sound backgrounds, adding hard sound effects. She’ll do a lot of transitions. I also actually have her edit a fair amount, just because she wants to take that step up, and I I use that as a way for her to gain more experience. So I’ll say, hey, do you want to cut this scene? Do you want to cut this music number? And then we’ll workshop it together. But if she’s too busy, I know there are editors out there that will just use their assistants as a crutch to say, well, you know what? Here, just cut a bunch of stuff, and there are some assistants that are like, “Well, dude, you’re just passing my work off on me, and that’s not the way that it works for us. It becomes a very workshop type experience, and because of that, she’s actually ended up gotten a co-editor credit and got to edit several scenes and work with producers. So that actually ended up working to her benefit. And then once the first cut goes out, it’s a lot of just shipping out new cuts and sending things to producers and directors. And I’ll we’ll actually split up a lot of the notes, and I’ll have her help me with with some of the notes just to keep up and stay on schedule. And then the really the biggest job for an assistant in TV, in my opinion, is doing turnovers, which is once the show is locked, she has to deliver all of the different elements to all the different crews. So, dialog editors, sound editors, composers, mixers, picture, online, color, like all these different things. It’s it’s this giant process of turnover that she goes through, and we actually go through our entire workflow. Process in a previous episode where we talk about how literally from the first morning until we lock an episode, everything that we do and how we organize it.
Jeff Greenberg: Natalie coming with you to this new show?
Zack Arnold: She is yes.
Jeff Greenberg: Okay, because once you have that relationship, it boy. Oh,
Zack Arnold: I I fought for it. My agent thought I was nuts because when we ended up getting the job, he’s like, “You’re good. I’m like, yeah, but I need to make sure I can bring my assistant. He’s like, what? He’s like, no, I need to make sure I can bring my assistant. I I’m not sure that I would go if I can’t bring my assistant. He’s like, dude, you’re crazy. I’m like, just call and find out, please. And it ended up working out fine. But he’s like, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of an agent saying they have to have their assistant or they won’t take the job. But that’s how important a relationship like that can be to an editor and is to me. So
Jeff Greenberg: I, I totally, I’ve, I’ve met so many editors who’ve had an assistant that’s been with them five years, eight years, 10 years because of that relationship and just the value of it. Which brings me really to a fun question: How does how does Natalie react to all of your fitness toys and stuff in your suite.
Zack Arnold: Oh, she thinks I’m nuts. There’s no question. She definitely thinks I’m a little bit crazy. But she’s she’s a big part of fitness and post as well. She’s literally my right hand with that, and is doing a lot of behind the scenes work to help me make sure that the podcasts get up and the blogs get up. And she’s kind of my editor, so to speak, where I literally won’t release any bonus document or blog post until she’s read it and given me notes because she has a really good eye for writing and for story. So she’ll, you know, I literally will say, “Hey, I can’t put this thing up yet. You haven’t given me your notes. I need your thoughts before it goes up. So she’s very, very integral in it. But there’s no question. Like I’ll bring in a new toy or have a new supplement. She’s like, “Huh, something new again, eh? Like, so it’s she’s she definitely gives me my my share of crap. But she she’s a huge huge part of the the fact that this this stuff gets up and runs and you know is is working while I’m doing my regular day job.
Jeff Greenberg: What’s the if if there was one thing? This is this is a dangerous question. Dangerous question. What’s the one thing that she does for you that you go, “Oh my God, you’re great at what you do, Natalie, but this this is the sort of thing that saves my life on a regular basis. What might that be if there is something like that?
Zack Arnold: It’s funny because I’ve actually had to have this thought in this conversation in my own mind over the course of the last two weeks, thinking if I don’t go to the show with her, what is the thing that’s going to be the most important that I lose? And it’s funny, it was actually the brainstorming sessions. It had nothing to do with well, I you know I didn’t want to teach somebody you know dailies or Trello or whatever it is. Like the thought of having to teach somebody my Trello and my paperless workflow is terrifying, but it can be taught. But it was just-it’s the comfort factor that you develop with a person where you can just totally be yourself, brainstorm crazy ideas, and just have a brainstorming session. Whether it’s about story, whether it’s about some crazy idea that I have for fitness in post, or whatever it is, it was just being able to shoot and do a brainstorming session. That was the thing that I said. That to me is worth its its weight in gold. So maybe not the answer you were looking for, but that’s that to me was the number one thing.
Jeff Greenberg: That actually is a perfect answer that I’m looking for. And Natalie, when I when you hear this, I hope you’re smiling a lot right now because you are exiting this job. But for you as an editor, what do you what do you think is your biggest struggle on the job? What’s what’s the thing that you kind of I don’t want to say the word dread, but the thing that you go oh here it is again sort of feeling.
Zack Arnold: I think for me, and this may get me in trouble, but I kind of don’t care. It’s it’s when you start getting the flurry of notes that are notes for the sake of being notes, as opposed to notes for the sake of making something better. I’ve worked with producers and directors where they will give you 10 pages of notes, and you think, “Holy crap, this is a ton of work. But when I’m done, this is going to be better, and I get excited about it. But then you work with people that give you notes just because they can, and they have no interest in making the show better. They just want to give you notes, and I just want to pull the tiny bit of hair that I have left out. It’s like, for me, it’s all about we all have the same common goal, and that is to make whatever this product is the best that it can be and tell the best story, but there’s so many different politics involved, especially when you get at the level of a show like Empire. But even on small indie films, I’ve dealt with politics like this, where it’s just all about who’s going to get their thumbprint on it, who’s going to make their power play, and get themselves creatively involved. Even though, frankly, they really have no business being creatively involved. That’s the part of the process that just about kills me, and it’s why I left the trailer industry. Because to me, editing the first version of a trailer is probably the funnest thing that I’ve ever done as an editor. But it’s versions two through 30-five that make you want to poke your eyes out. So that that’s the process. Of this job that I disdain the most is the political side of it, where it’s saying doing notes. That’s not accurate because I love doing notes that makes things better. I hate doing notes for the sake of doing notes.
Jeff Greenberg: Okay, flip side of that, what’s your biggest pleasure? What’s the thing that you go and you say, man, today I love my job.
Zack Arnold: For me, it’s during the first cut when you’re doing a scene, doing especially. I get this a lot more when I do music numbers, where you just get totally sucked into the zone, and you just get that surge of adrenaline, and the world disappears. You go in the zone, and you’re just cutting something. You just feel it. You’re in rhythm with it, and then all of a sudden you’re done, and you say, “Oh my God, it’s been three hours! Like that’s still the rush that I go after, and the reason why I do what I do, because there are so many other things that make you wonder why in the world would I even be in this business. But that’s the moment. It’s still the same feeling I had when I was nine years old, and I saw my home movie with score of the good, the bad, and the ugly. I still get that feeling when I’m cutting a scene, and all of a sudden I’ll score it, and I’ll feel something different, or I’ll find some weird edit point that drives what that entire scene becomes, and you find its voice. It’s just like the switch that comes on, and all of a sudden you’re like, “Whoa! I’ve just transported myself to another world, and I get in the zone, and that’s that’s basically the rush that I’m chasing, and the reason why I do what I do the same way that a skydiver skydives, because they just they have this thing that turns on in them that gives them the adrenaline rush, and that I’m always chasing that that creative rush that I get when I’m editing. So that’s why I still do what I do.
Jeff Greenberg: I love that. That’s a great answer. Okay, we’ve got now the editorial side of life. Let’s let’s talk some fitness in post. I’m going to start off with this. Every week, do you sit back with something in mind? Like this week, I’m going to focus a little bit more on my eating. This week, I’m going to focus a little bit more on exercise. Do you do you set some sort of weekly, monthly goal sort of thing, or do you just kind of adopt things as they go.
Zack Arnold: No, I don’t think that you can move towards your goals if you’re just going to kind of do it as you go. I think that’s the trap that a lot of people fall into. Is they’ll say, like for example, the reason why resolutions fail is you say, well, my resolution is to get healthier. Great. What does that actually mean? How do you define that? How do you do it? What are the daily action steps that you take to do it? So I’m very clear and concise about my goals. And the last couple of weeks, I’ve fallen off the the wagon a little bit just because of the job transition and everything that’s going on. But for the most part, I’m very regimented. Like I said, every morning during a morning routine, I’m setting up what I call micro goals. Not something I name, but that’s a process that I’ve learned. Is you have these micro goals. What can I do during the day? But they’re part of a larger picture. And every week or every two weeks, I just do what’s called a weekly review, where I’m going through and scanning all of the major projects that I have listed. And I have a task manager that I use called OmniFocus. So I have hundreds and hundreds of tasks and 60 or 70 different projects, most of which are inactive, but I’m looking at the things that are really important to me and saying, “All right, what’s the what am I defining the next week about? Is next week about I’m going to use this week to you know switch my exercise routine, or is the focus of the this week going to be to get one step closer to building my online course, or is this week just about surviving an editor’s cut. Sometimes that’s what it’ll be. You just put life on hold. You say all these people I need to email, all of these things I want to do for my course, all these blog posts I want to write. I’m going to revisit them in a week because this week is editor’s cut, and that’s my life. Taking my daughter to school, getting to work, doing the cut, going home and sleeping. That might be my whole week.
Jeff Greenberg: I hope your big goal this week is just to see how the new job, you know, rolls out.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, and that that’s certainly a big part of it. Is you you really need to to make sure that you can be present and mindful in whatever important experiences you have, which sometimes means stripping away the noise. So I do a review about every week to two weeks, where I just sit down, look at everything, do a long journal entry, and say, “Here are my main focuses. And then every single day, one of my prompts is take a look at your weekly goals and say, “Are you still on track to achieve this weekly goal based on your micro goals? And that’s how I’m able to to keep track of things. So when people say, “Well, how do you balance fitness and post and editing and family and all these things is because I very clearly in front of me have my priorities written out and I know what they are, so I don’t lose sight of them. Because if you’re, you know, a sailor in the middle of the ocean, you need your true north. You need that north star. Otherwise, you’re just going in circles, which is what a lot of people are doing: is just putting out the latest fire, responding to the latest email or text, and they’re being reactive. And I believe that you have to strip away that noise, set your true north first, and then once you have that momentum, then you can bring all the other distractions back. But I will usually go one to two hours in the morning without doing. Anything connected to the outside world, and that has been a game changer for me.
Jeff Greenberg: Sure. What are your micro goals for today? Let’s let’s hear this all the way down to the ground level. Forget 10,000 feet. Forget getting things done. And Dave Allen, let’s talk today. What are your micro goals?
Zack Arnold: So the way that I have my morning journal set up, and I’ve actually done a fair amount of personal development to try and figure out, and this is a much larger conversation. You could do episodes on this, and I actually plan to do it. But how to formulate a purpose statement and figure out what is my why? Why do I wake up in the morning? Why do I make the choices that I do? What is that filter that I’m using to make my decisions? So I have a purpose statement, and then I have this thing that I call a priority pyramid, which I talk about in my blog post about burnout that just says here are my top three priorities in life, not for the day, but like for me. Priority number one is my health. Number two is my wife and children, and number three is my career and building fitness and posts in an online business. And then I write down three things that I’m grateful for, and then I have daily affirmations, and that’s another one that I could do an entire podcast about. But when it comes to the micro goals, if I’m looking at my micro goals for yesterday, it was I have to pack up the small stuff in my office because I am, as we’re recording this in the process of making the transition, I have to upload and complete my bonus document workflow. So I just released the podcast about sugar addiction, and I had written like a four-page bonus document about how to overcome an addiction to sugar. So I had to upload that, and then I said I have to email pictures of my office setup to Andy at Photo Camp because they wanted to see how I set up my edit suite because they’re building my edit suite at the other job right now. So those are the must-dos. Those are the micro-goal must-dos that I have to do before the end of the day, and I define that as if I don’t do it, is somebody going to be mad? Is am I going to miss a deadline? Like those are things I have to do. Everything else is a should do. So I try to never have more than three things that I have to do during the day, and then the should do’s are I should go through and reconcile my finances every couple of weeks. I just try to go online, download my statements, make sure I’m on budget. Definitely didn’t do that. And then the other thing is, I’m in the process of putting the podcast up on YouTube, just so there’s another way for people to be able to find it. And I have to build a workflow and a template for how to do that for an editor that I’m working with remotely. And I wanted to put that template together. That didn’t happen either, but that’s because they’re should do’s, not must dos. So that’s something that’s going to get transitioned over to today, tomorrow, whenever. And then what I will also do, and this is based off of the framework that I use, is the Go Far framework. So for anybody that’s listened to this, they know about the documentary film that I directed and produced called Go Far. So I actually have these prompts as goals, obstacles, focus, act, and review. So those are my goals, and then I write down what are the obstacles that are going to get in my way today, that are going to stop me from doing these, so I can recognize them and either work around them or just say this isn’t an obstacle. I’m going to push through it. Then I say, what can I do to make sure I focus on these things, and then I prompt myself and say, “Are the actions that you have listed today in your calendar an omni focus, so they can be present and in front of me? Because my belief, and I’ve learned this from from other personal development trainers, that whatever it is that you want to do doesn’t exist until you put it in a calendar, and it could be a mental calendar. But I don’t recommend that. Like if you, oh, I don’t write anything down. Well, that could have something to do with why you’re not actually achieving the things you want to achieve.
Zack Arnold: Make it concrete, get it in a calendar, and plan around it. Because what I learned is that I would make these lists of 10 things that I wanted to do during the day, and then I’d get done with two of them. I’m like, why did I so drastically underestimate the amount of time? It’s because they didn’t put them in the calendar. So now that I have a calendar, I have actual blocks that show me visually this is what my day looks like, and then I say, “Whoa, there’s no way I can do all the stuff that I have on my list, and then I can rearrange the list accordingly. So that’s that’s kind of the process that I’ll go through. And it sounds like a lot. This takes me like five minutes in the morning. It really is not difficult implementing it and making it a habit that takes a little bit longer, but to actually do it, it’s like a five-minute process before I eat breakfast.
Jeff Greenberg: We talked about the micro goals. The other thing you mentioned there is your weekly review. Having met and talked with Dave Allen a couple times, the insight I got from him is where most people fall off the wagon is they miss their weekly review, even more so than the daily, because that weekly helps them keep on goal. When do you do your weekly review, and how long does it take?
Zack Arnold: Yeah, I usually schedule my weekly review for Sundays. I try to do it Sunday morning, but I’m actually trying to rethink that just because I’m having a very hard time keeping up with it and keeping up with family time, because the biggest reason that I do all of this has nothing to do with career. It has to do with how do I balance everything I’m doing, but make sure that I spend the time that I need to with my family. So it’s almost counterproductive to be doing my weekly review during my family time. So I’m I’m actually in the process of trying to fix this, but I for the last. I guess it’s been almost a year that I’ve been doing this process, and I would do it Sundays, like late morning. Usually, actually during my son’s piano lesson, I would sit while he’s doing his piano lesson, and I would do my weekly review then. But like I said, I’m trying to trying to change that, and it depends. I have kind of different variations of a weekly review, where I have like the full on dig in deep and do everything weekly review that takes like two hours. If I’m just gonna do you know like the the good enough to get by and keep me moving for the next week, it’s gonna take me about an hour. But part of my weekly review, which is actually the first step, which is not a David Allen thing, it is that I make sure that I’m at inbox zero before I do my weekly review, because if I don’t, then that means there could be tasks that are in my email that I haven’t taken care of yet that I haven’t brought into my OmniFocus workflow. So that if if I were just talking about what it takes me in OmniFocus to do the review, at the most it’s an hour, but sometimes it’ll take me an additional hour or more just to make sure I get to inbox zero, which I’m also doing during the week. It’s not like I just all of a sudden do this giant purge of email. It’s a process that I have throughout the week. But I will usually spend an hour to get myself back to zero and get those tasks in before I do the review. But if it if it takes any longer than one or two hours, you’re doing something wrong, and you need to change your workflow.
Jeff Greenberg: You said the magic words for me in there, which was family. I’ve got really two pieces here, so let me do piece one about family. You’re doing a lot of changes in your life. You’ve managed to do a lot of changes. Have you had any resistance? And that could be resistance from your wife going, “This is too complex. We can’t have dinner together. Is that what you’re doing, Zack? It could be that your kids don’t understand that you need some sort of time. How do you deal with when family gives you some resistance to trying to work healthier and smarter and the like?
Zack Arnold: Yes. the The short answer to this is there’s definitely resistance through this process. It’s very common when you talk to other people in the personal development field, and they say that if you have a spouse or significant other that doesn’t really understand what you’re doing, they don’t they don’t see the bigger picture, really understand the day to day, and I think that my place specifically where it gets difficult is that I’m just very active, very focused on diet, focused on health, and a lot of other people around me just aren’t as focused. However, because of all the things I’ve done and the changes they’ve seen, a lot of people around me have started making those changes and have made them positively. When it comes to time needed to do a weekly review or whatever it is. I think the biggest the biggest selling point, the reason that I’m able to take the time that I need, is that my wife and I have had conversations, and she has said, “I’ve seen the change in you. I’ve seen that you’re happier when you’re at home. You’re happier with our kids. You’re giving them more quality time. I’m not always distracted or always thinking about work, so even though I may, on the clock, if you were to cumulatively track the amount of time that I spend with my family now versus the time I would have spent with them maybe two years ago, I might actually spend less time with them, and it’s not a lot. It actually it might be more, but let’s say that it is. It doesn’t matter because the quality of that time has become so much greater because it used to be constantly either my mind was on work or I was on email or whatever it was just constantly trying to keep up or I was exhausted all the time, which means that like for example I write about this in one of my blog posts where I would wake up with my kids in the morning and I still do this but literally I would sit them on the couch and I would just fall back asleep right next to them until literally the moment the nanny showed up. And sometimes that would be almost two hours because I was so exhausted, so I had no time with them. And now I will wake up in the morning and I will do all of these things on my routine. But then my daughter’s up, and if she wakes up really early, then sometimes I’ll let her watch TV for a bit while I do some of the the things for my health, but then we’ll make breakfast together. We’ll sit and eat together. We’ll you know I get her dress for school. I’ll do her hair. Like there’s less time, but it’s much higher quality time. And when I’m with my family, I am with my family. The phone is put away. I’m not answering emails, not answering texts. I’m not doing anything. I am with family, so that’s the thing that sells it. Is when I say to my wife, “Well, listen, I need an hour or two on Sunday to you know kind of plan my week. She gets it because she knows the consequences of that are she’s going to have higher quality time with me.
Jeff Greenberg: The reason I ask that specific question is, is because if there’s any great group to either help you or hinder you make life change changes, it’s going to be your family. So I’m always curious about when I talk with my friends about those signs that wait a second their job needs to they need to pay a little attention to their job and a little bit more. Their family, what sort of signs that they look after, and it sounds like that you found a much healthier life balance.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, and it’s listen. This is the holy grail. We’re all searching for this, like to to be running fitness in post and to be working on a show like Empire. Like it’s very difficult finding the balance, and I do the absolute best that I can, but it literally is the elusive holy grail. But when I look at the quality time that I have now versus the lack of quality time I had even a couple of years ago, it’s night and day. I mean, the the relationship that I have with my kids is way better. The relationship with my wife, I mean, it’s the the relationship I have with myself is better. So it’s just finding that balance by really deciding what are my true priorities, what is my true north, and going from there. And it really does make a huge difference. And I actually am faster and more productive as an editor than I have ever been. So it’s not like all of a sudden I’m saying, “Well, it takes me longer to get my work done, and yeah, I have to ask for more time because I’ve made family first. Like I’m, I get more done now than I’ve ever gotten done because I have the energy and the focus to do it. Because they all feed off of each other. Like if if you’re saying my career is my priority and I want to put every ounce of energy I have into my career and my family’s failing, your energy is going to be sapped because things aren’t working with your family, and that’s going to make you less productive. So when you get all of the pieces firing at the same time, that’s when it starts to work. It’s the same idea as well. I’m too busy to take a break and go walk for 15 minutes. But if you look over the course of the day, if you take that walking break for 15 minutes, you’re going to get way more done the rest of the day in less time, so you actually save time by doing some of these things. And family is that ultimate force multiplier, where if that’s clicked into place, everything’s going to get a lot easier.
Jeff Greenberg: I think that that those are some great insights, and you’re dead on. That is the holy grail. Speaking about insights, I want to get to some of your specific insights for yourself. I think we know the the question, the answer to this, but I’ll ask it anyway. What are you particularly proud about in the last year for your health?
Zack Arnold: Ooh, that’s a really good question.
Jeff Greenberg: And my instinct and reason I think that I already know the answer is I think it’s just the operative changes you’re making with your sleep. But it might be your cholesterol is down. It might be you know you finished your 10th Spartan race. You tell me what for you is particularly a badge of honor for you.
Zack Arnold: It’s funny. I don’t think I would have thought of it, but I think you answer the question for me because you said, “You know what? I have no idea. But I think you’re right. I think sleep is it. I think it’s the discovery that sleep is the first thing that’s really going to affect everything else because to me, I had learned all these different strategies for diet, for exercise, for productivity, for stress management, heart rate variability. Like I’ve just been digging so deep into this stuff for years. Like I was all focused on the quality of my sleep, but I fell into that trap of thinking, well, if I get four really good hours, I’m fine as long as the quality is good. I’m fine, and that’s just a bunch of BS. So yes, sleep is by far the number one huge discovery. I think it would also have to do with with diet. Like I have really changed the types of foods that I eat and gotten to the point where it used to be like two three years ago when I started making this transition, I was eating better, but it was really hard, and I needed a tremendous amount of willpower when they would come into my office at noon and say, “Hey, we’re doing pizza today. What would you like to order? Or, “We’re going to get Chinese. Would you like the menu? And as always, this struggle, like, “Oh man, like I know I should eat healthy, but all right, show me the menu, and now it’s gotten to the point where I don’t even want it, and it’s not a struggle. And they’ll come in with the menus. They know I’m good. Thank you. I brought my own lunch. That to me might actually be the biggest change that I made is that I don’t want the bad stuff, and I don’t need any willpower to make that choice anymore.
Jeff Greenberg: Okay, so what, given that, do you think is the biggest mistake you think people make
Zack Arnold: The biggest mistake that people make, or the biggest mistake that I actually I would say that the answer is going to be the same because I’m the number one person to make this mistake, and it’s trying to do too many things at once. This is still my my Achilles’ heel is that I try to do too many things at once. Shocker, it’s it’s thinking that all right, I’m going to change my life tomorrow, so I’m going to start an exercise program, and I’m going to diet, and I’m going to get more sleep, and I’m going to try these productivity secrets, and I’m going to read this one book, and then I’m going to listen to this audio tape, and I’m going to listen to these podcasts, and it just becomes noise, and you can’t filter any of it, or you can’t find a rhythm. So that’s a mistake that I made for a long time. It’s still a battle that I fight every day. Believe it or not, some people have called me intense. Natalie is listening to this, laughing her ass off right now, and that’s it’s a mistake that I see a lot of people make, where they’re just so excited about making all these changes, but they ultimately fail because they’re trying to do too much at once. And it really is about yes, the big. Picture. I want to be healthier. I want to eat better. I want to exercise. I want to be more active. I want to be more productive. I want to get better sleep. But for the love of God, just pick one thing, get that right, and then build from there. It’s like math, right? Like you, you have to learn how to solve for X before you can do advanced trigonometry. So just learn one step at a time and build off of it.
Jeff Greenberg: That’s some great insight. What’s an early sign that you’re doing too much? That you’re on that road to burnout?
Zack Arnold: For me, the the thing that I always notice is not being able to focus and be present, which just means that I’m I’m out of energy and I don’t have the energy to focus, and I just feel really frazzled and I feel anxious. And to me personally, it literally feels like I’ve gained like 30 pounds overnight, where I just feel heavy and I just I can’t prioritize my thoughts. That’s kind of the first step. I think the next step is that it gets extremely hard to get out of bed, where you just dread the thought of waking up, getting out of bed, getting dressed, driving to work. Like if it’s literally, if you just feel like you have 100-pound weighted vest on you, that can be a sign that things are getting really bad, you know. And then from there, it’s either drastic changes in appetite, drastic changes in energy, and then also mood. And I’ve been down this path many, many times where you just start to find you have very, very negative thoughts and negative thought patterns, where all of a sudden it’s like, oh, I’m never gonna find the job that I want, or you know, I just I hate my life, like that. I can’t do anything. Like those negative thought patterns will start to creep up, and I’ve become very, very mindful. Where at this point, as soon as single thoughts come up, I’m like, all right, I got to start changing things. But it takes a long time, and you have to have been down this road to be able to recognize the signs very, very early. Whereas the first time that this happened to me, I was literally to the point where I was almost catatonic before I even realized that something was wrong. It’s like the boiling frog analogy: you throw a frog in boiling water, he jumps out. You take a frog and you put him in lukewarm water, and you slowly boil it. He’s gonna have no idea until he’s cooked, and until you’ve been mindful of what that process feels like, it’s really almost too late by the time you say, “Oh my God, this is really a huge problem, and this isn’t me. So you really have to be very mindful and conscious of those small warning signs as they start to accumulate.
Jeff Greenberg: I know sleep has been a focus. What’s the biggest sleep insight you’ve picked up beyond just sleeping longer? I I want to use the word sleep hack, but I hate that sort of that we you say everything is a life hack. Agreed. I
Zack Arnold: Hate that. I hate that mentality.
Jeff Greenberg: Right. I just but but if there’s for example, I was just listening to a Tim Ferriss podcast where he was talking about a cool pad or a chilly pad, I think it was. Is there something that you, some trick, something you’re you’re doing to help your sleep?
Zack Arnold: Yeah. The again with my my evening routine, and I have a whole blog post about my evening routine as well. But it’s it’s one of those things. It’s like an accordion that expands and contracts based on the amount of time that I have. But no matter what, there are three things that I will do within. I think I guess it would be about 20 or 30 minutes before I hit the pillow. It doesn’t matter if it’s 2o’clock in the morning. Although it’s been a long time since I’ve worked that late, I don’t even think I go to bed past like 1130 anymore. I’m like a grandpa. But no matter what the day has looked like or whatever state of mind I’m in. There’s always this 30-minute window before my head actually hits the pillow where I will take a cold shower, and the and I talk about this in previous episodes. But I take a cold shower because that will lower my core body temperature, which will help you sleep deeper. Which is the exact same thing that the chili pad is doing is it’s lowering your core body temperature so you can sleep deeper. So I’ll take a cold shower, and then I have what’s called a bulletproof sleep induction mat. It’s from the guy that created Bulletproof Coffee and the upgrade itself, and all the other crazy contraptions he has. A lot of which I’m not huge fans of, but this is one that I travel with, and it’s basically an acupuncture mat that you put on a hard surface, and when you lay down on it, it’s a little bit uncomfortable at first. But what it does is because you have these small pain receptors, you’re releasing endorphins, which are going to help relax you and sedate you. And then I’ll, while I’m laying on that, I will be listening to a piece of music that I have chosen that just kind of helps me relax, get into the zone, and then I’ll do a quick visualization about either what am I doing tomorrow or what is one of my giant life goals, and I go through this visualization process of actually picturing myself doing it, which is what professional athletes do. So I’ve the whole idea behind fitness in post is how can I take the knowledge of athletics and professional athletes and blend that with being a film editor, which was a crazy idea years ago, and finally it’s becoming not so insane. It’s still a little bit insane, but I’ll actually do visualization exercises as I’m falling asleep, and I usually will pass out right there on the sleep induction mat on a hardwood floor, and then I’ll just zombie walk and go into bed. Sometimes. Won’t quite get me there, but at this point, I can’t remember one night in the last nine to 12 months where it took me more than about three minutes to completely pass out in bed.
Jeff Greenberg: That’s great. What are you learning right now? What’s the thing you’re doing to you’re doing a lot for your health, a lot for work. What are you doing to expand your mind right now?
Zack Arnold: I always have an audio book that I’m listening to because I commute all the time, so I always have an audio book. And right now, the one that I’m learning about, literally as we speak, it’s a book called Smarter, and it’s all about how you can enhance your cognitive function and raise your IQ. So it’s learning about all these different things, whether it’s age-old techniques like learning an instrument, like for example, I’m taking piano lessons. Just to me, it’s kind of like mental push-ups. So it’s not something that I’m doing, you know, an hour a day or anything because I don’t have the time. But I’m just really trying to learn about the idea of neuroplasticity and the idea that you can actually grow new neurons, create new neural pathways in your brain, and enhance your cognitive function. So it’s a book learning all the different ways to do that, whether it’s crazy new age techniques or it’s you know really really old things that people have been doing for 1000s of years.
Jeff Greenberg: I think smarter in the piano are really they’re what you’re doing right now in this moment. That’ll change next week. It’ll change next month. But I love the idea that you’re doing something for your brain as well as your body,
Zack Arnold: Every day I’m always making sure that I have some task or something that I do that engages the brain because the the brain and the body are not separate things. It’s like if you said, “Well, my heart and my body are two separate things, people say, “Well, that’s crazy. Your heart’s part of your body, but nobody thinks about the brain that way. They think that you have the brain and the body. It’s like the mind body connection, but they’re the same thing. Your brain is your body, so I treat it the same way that I would if I wanted. Ooh, I want to get bigger biceps, or ooh, I want to get rid of this this spare tire. I want to make my brain work better. So it’s to me they’re all interconnected.
Jeff Greenberg: What’s your favorite site to hang out on the on the net?
Zack Arnold: It’s a hard question because I don’t really have one because I don’t really spend time surfing, all I do is spend time actively learning about something specific that I’m either writing about for a blog post or you know just my own personal development. This is one that I’ve mentioned several times before, but really the site that I’ll go to over and over again whenever I have any question is Ben Greenfield Fitness. Like that’s my web MD. It’s like, oh, I want to learn about this. I just go to him first. But outside of that, I don’t surf anymore. There’s no,
Jeff Greenberg: There’s no guilty pleasure website.
Zack Arnold: Honestly, I can’t think of. I really can’t think of anything. I mean, I guess I could. No, I.
Jeff Greenberg: Facebook fits that for a lot of people.
Zack Arnold: Facebook for me, I really don’t scan or just go through and read my news feed. I’m on Facebook probably one to two hours a day, but it’s all about engaging with people in the Fitness Impost Facebook group or engaging in editor groups or like I’m very. I have a couple of like mastermind business groups that I belong to because I’m learning about the process of online business, learning about personal development, learning about how to be a high performance coach. So in that sense, I’m on Facebook for two, three hours a day. But it’s all about actively engaging in something specific. It’s not like a time suck for me, although it used to be. But I don’t, I don’t use Facebook as a distraction. And I’ve actually removed Facebook, Twitter, and email from my phone altogether. So the only thing that I can do if I have my phone in front of me is read an article that I may have gathered about some specific topic. But I’ve I’ve just eradicated all that stuff completely because it’s so easy to get sucked into that.
Jeff Greenberg: All right, so I got my two big wrapper questions coming up. First one, what would be the big piece of advice that you would give yourself as an editor? And I’m talking storytelling editor. If you could reach back to five years ago or 10 years ago to Zack Arnold, what would be the big insight that you would give that storyteller, that young man?
Zack Arnold: Ooh, that’s a really good one. If I went back to myself and I’m picturing myself editing my first indie feature. This would have been about 12 years ago. I would grab myself by the throat and shake myself and say, “For the love of God, your first cut is not the best thing ever. You have a lot of things you need to learn. This cut is going to get so much better when you work with other people and you listen to their notes, because I, like many many young editors, would get notes and the response is always, “I know the material. Like I know that I made the best decision. Why do you think I made this decision? I would have made this decision if it wasn’t the best one. Like I was I was very very overly confident that I knew what I was doing, and I knew I was making the best choices. And I just want to smack that kid and tell him what an idiot he was. Because your work becomes so much better when you collaborate with the right people. If you’re working with people that don’t know what they’re doing, like I mentioned earlier, you just you want to pull your hair out and poke your eyes out because you know that these people really have no business giving you notes. But the creative process after you hand in your editor’s cut is when things start to get really good, and it can be a very enjoyable process. But you have to embrace that process and not fight it, and not constantly be telling people no, that doesn’t work. No, I tried that already. Like just eradicate the word no from your vocabulary, even if in your mind you 100% are sure that what they’re asking for won’t work. Just try it and show it to them and help them understand. But don’t just assume that you know the answers because you’ve been through the material. Okay,
Jeff Greenberg: Other one just like that advice you’d give that version of yourself 10 years ago, 12 years ago to be and stay healthier. What would that real core piece of advice be?
Zack Arnold: I think that the first one, and I’m not even sure this is health advice. It’s just life advice. It’s that there is more to your life than your career, and it’s it’s easy to say that now in hindsight. And I’m sure there are people listening saying, “Well, you know, you work on empire, like you made it. It’s easy to say that when you’re 25 and you’re trying to break in and you’re single, like that’s all you have is you want to get into your career and make connections and build a demo reel. But it’s a mindset that you really need to establish early on. It’s not one of those things that you’re going to say, “Well, I’m going to work really hard for 10 years and then all of a sudden I’m going to change my life and I’m going to become a family man. Like you, you have to see the light at the end of the tunnel very early and start making those choices much earlier in life, and not hit a giant brick wall at 120 miles an hour like I did. You really have to see that long term and say, how can I start slowly making these adjustments so I can ease into the transition of my life? Because when you’re 25 and you’re cutting 16 to 18 hours a day for seven days a week, which I’ve done for months straight. You don’t realize how adversely that will affect you five years down the line when you do meet somebody and you move in with them and you get married and you start a family. Like you need to start that stuff early. And I just wish that I had known that and hadn’t been so gung ho all about career because the transition for me was extremely difficult, and I’m still making it to this day.
Jeff Greenberg: So these are the big insights I got from across this, and there’s a lot of gems throughout this morning, throughout this podcast. But I heard from you to be slow and mindful about adopting new habits because it’s better to be successful than try and run up the mountain all at once. I got watch for burnout and depression, and particularly look for mood changes. Maybe when you get angry at somebody unexpectedly, family is really important, and it’s probably a cornerstone of long-term happiness. And if you’re going to be working in a creative industry, to listen to other creatives, the whole idea is to make the product better. That nobody is a genius in a vacuum, and last, don’t defer life. Your career is is not just this thing we do. We cut your life is so much more than our editing, storytelling tools, and the stories we tell. How do you feel about those? Is there anything I missed there?
Zack Arnold: I literally couldn’t have said it better myself, and I think that I’m just gonna have you write everything for my website from now on because I can’t be that concise. I use too many words. That’s one of my one of my big problems. Is I just I can’t can’t stop can’t stop writing and talking. And I’m just gonna have you do everything from now on because that’s perfect. That’s the essence of everything right there.
Jeff Greenberg: I’m glad I can contribute. Of course, I would only tell you that what I just did was just storytelling, just editing, and listening to a captivating subject. That would be you.
Zack Arnold: Well, I have a very hard time editing myself.
Jeff Greenberg: We all do. We we all do. We all cringe when we’re on camera. We cringe when we hear our own voices, and it’s particularly hard to keep fresh eyes, if you will, on our own lives.
Zack Arnold: Well, this has been an absolute pleasure. I cannot tell you how how much fun this was for me. I hope the the audience enjoyed it as well. And I definitely am going to want to do this again because I liked I liked being grilled and being put on the spot. So this has been awesome.
Jeff Greenberg: Totally my pleasure. I thought of something that I can actually ask of you, and you’re not. This isn’t part of the podcast. You’re gonna. This is something to think of later. I’m really admiring some of your web savvy and some of the business directions you’re headed towards. I have right now two, three products that I’m near to bringing to market. At least one of them in the next eight weeks before NAB, and I would like to be doing that smarter. So I would love a couple friendly nudges and some smart directions. Don’t answer that now. Think about it. Oh yeah, no,
Zack Arnold: This this is a conversation that you and I could have in depth because I’m and I’m glad that you’ve actually kind of seen the the change in direction because it is not something that just happened by accident. I have spent 1000s of dollars learning how to do this from the masters in the industry and have been doing it for almost a year now, like point by point by point. How do I do this the best? How do I do this? How do I build a course? How do I market a course? So it’s not just like I randomly read a blog post and said, “Oh, here’s how to do conversions better. Like it’s this is all very methodical and very systematic, and I have a lot of insights that I could definitely. Give you in a different conversation. So then, before we go, I want to make sure that people know how they can find Jeff Greenberg because if if you want to be an NLE ninja and you want to take editing to the next level, for me, Jeff is a place to go. The way the Ben Greenfield Fitness is the way to go for learning about fitness. You’re you’re the Ben Greenfield of the NLE. So so where are people going to find you?
Jeff Greenberg: You just made me blush in the biggest way. That’s really kind. There are a lot of great people out there. I want to make sure I state that, and a lot of them are my friends. Where you can find me, I’m on Twitter at Film Geek. You can find me at Jay Greenberg Consulting. I’m going to be speaking next at NAB, where I’m doing something on the order of I think it’s 20 or 30 hours of instruction in about five days at NAB, and I absolutely encourage you to come find me at Post Production World at NAB. I’m happy to answer questions and make myself available. And my only my only thing I’m sad about is we didn’t do this first week of January at the end of December, where I could have been telling you about the editor’s retreat, which is absolutely my favorite event to go to. We just did it. We literally just finished Sunday, and it’s such a transformative experience. People cry when they leave.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, I I can’t emphasize that enough as well. And it it broke my heart where it landed this year, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to get out of my responsibilities at Empire because I desperately, desperately wanted to go to this one, especially after having gone for a couple of days last year, and of course walking away with my $6,000 G raid. But that’s a different story.
Jeff Greenberg: Wonder poker. You won a poker. What can I say?
Zack Arnold: Yeah, I did. But yes, it’s an amazing event. So if anybody next year you hear the editors retreat you need to go it is a life changing experience that I’ve heard from multiple people where you ask them well what what was the thing that what was the big change what what got you where you are oh my god was the editors retreat no question going to the editors retreat so yeah it’s it’s a big one
Jeff Greenberg: I want to say Zack total blast interviewing you there were so many more questions I had, but I wanted to keep it to just a little over an hour, and I hit that target.
Zack Arnold: Well, guess what? That just means we’re going to have to do a follow-up.
Jeff Greenberg: Sounds fantastic, my friend.
Zack Arnold: Awesome. Well, thank you, sir.
Jeff Greenberg: Thank you.
This episode was edited by Curtis Fritsch, the show notes were prepared by Natalie Boschan, and this show is executive produced by Kanen Flowers. We are a member of the THAT STUDIO podcast network.
The music in the opening and closing of the show is courtesy of Dorian Cheah from his brilliant album ARA.
Jeff Greenberg is a master trainer that travels worldwide teaching editors how to become NLE ninjas and he drops knowledge bombs like nobody's business. He is an author, educator, consultant, and Zen film geek. If you are not familiar with Jeff's work, you need to get familiar with him if you hope to become a top level post-production professional.
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