Useful Links

• Topo Mat
• Trello
• Dynamic Workstation
• Avid Editor’s of Facebook
• Mental Health in Post Production
• How To Get The Best Sleep Of Your Life
• Melatonin
• Pivot Seat

Transcript

Zack Arnold: So Natalie, yes, we’re here doing another podcast Q and A, and the most important question of the Q and A is, are you thoroughly liquored up and ready for this, because I know last time you were like, I’m just gonna drink some wine before the Q and A, and so I just want to make sure that we have taken care of that before we jump in to answering vitally important questions to people’s health in the world of post production,

Natalie Boschan: I do. I do have a glass of wine now, because that is now my habit that I have fallen into, because every day I come home and have a glass of wine, and so now I come home and have a glass of wine.

Zack Arnold: Well, the good news is it’s going to make this show more entertaining, so I appreciate you going above and beyond for the listeners.

Natalie Boschan: Yes, that’s why I’ve formed this habit, so that when we do this podcast once a month, I will be ready to go.

Zack Arnold: Yes, exactly. And then a year from now, when you go to the doctor, because you’re an alcoholic, you can say, ‘Well, let’s go back to the beginning. What do you think was the first trigger? And you’re going to slowly put your head down and say, ‘Oh, it was the podcast Q and A’s. I never should have done the Q and A.

Natalie Boschan: No, I’m just gonna say it’s working in television.

Zack Arnold: Well, there’s that. So that’s a really good segue to start getting into our questions. Yay! So, as I said in the intro, for anybody listening, if you’re thinking I have a question, just go to Fitness and Post com slash questions and go ahead and submit it, and if we choose it, then we will read your question on the show. I just cannot promise that Natalie will be sober.

Natalie Boschan: Well, everyone’s gonna think I actually am an alcoholic. It’s just one glass, guys,

Zack Arnold: But you weigh like 37 pounds anyway. We’re gonna go to our first question. And full disclaimer, this actually is not a question that was submitted to me. This is a question that was asked in the Avid editors of Facebook, but because it was fitness related, I jumped in and helped answer this question in the thread, and it’s a very, very common question. So, I wanted to bring it onto the show, because I get asked this all the time. So, this is submitted by somebody named Deandra, and again, like I said, this is in the Avid editors of Facebook, and her question was, I have to keep reminding myself like 20 times a day to stand up straight. I have a tendency to lean over the desk into the computer. Does anyone have any tips on how to keep good posture as you stand and work? And the first thing I will say is, good for you that you have taken the initiative to start standing at work. That is a great first step. However, for anybody that listens to the show on a regular basis, you can complete the sentence for me. It’s not the only step. You’re about 5% healthier if you choose to stand all day rather than sit, but if your choices were to sit all day but move throughout the day, or stand and not move, you’re much healthier if you have movement habits and you sit all day long. So, I just want to make sure that that caveat has been put out there, but that having been said, for people that stand most of the day, this is a real problem, and it’s a problem that I faced for a long time. When I decided nine or 10 years to be a stand-up editor, and I had all kinds of lower back issues, shoulder issues, like all of my chronic pain issues just moved, they just migrated because I still didn’t have good posture, even though I was standing, and I know that Natalie, you, of course, are a fellow standing editor for the majority of your day. Yeah, and

Natalie Boschan: I have an answer. I have an answer.

Zack Arnold: All right. Well, then you go ahead and you, you do your answer first, and then I’ll, I’ll jump in and get back on my soapbox.

Natalie Boschan: Yeah, my answer is easy. My answer is Topo Matt. The Topo Matt is great because it lets you move around all day long, because it’s like this little playground for your feet, and pretty much anyone who stands on the topo mat for about three seconds says, “Oh my god, where can I buy this? I’m going to buy this thing right now. So topo mat helps you move around and sort of, and then as you’re moving, you’re kind of like, “Oh, I have to stand up straight, I have to do this because you’re not just going to get stuck in this leading on the desk position, or whatever the position is that you get stuck on. I’m just going to say lean over, because that’s what Deandra said, but you don’t get stuck in this kind of like hunched on the desk, and you get this pressure in your lower back. If you have this little foot playground under you, you’ll move around naturally, and you’ll like moving around, and it’ll be fun, and then you’ll really like standing, and you can also like massage your feet, and when you massage your feet, you feel better all over, and it’s great. So, I say, Topo Matt.

Zack Arnold: Yes, the Topo Matt is by far my number one recommendation for anybody that says I want to stand. If I can only do one thing and make one purchase, one investment, what is it? No question, it is the Topo Matt. So, you essentially stole my answer. And if you’re thinking, what in the hell is a Topo Matt, just go to Fitness and post.com/topo which is T O P O, and all the information will be there. I think I own either three or four of them. I’m not actually sure, I’ve lost track, but the point is, I can’t go anywhere without this mat, and case in point, a couple of weeks ago I was shooting the course for lynda.com where I’m going to be teaching how to use Trello to build your entire post-production workflow end to end, so it’s 100% paperless and 100% email list, which is people don’t even think is possible, but I swear it is, but that’s beside the point, the point is they had me at a. Height adjustable desk, so I stood all weekend, but I didn’t have my mat, and at the end of two eight hour days standing in front of a computer, my legs were killing me, and you think, well, I’ve been standing for eight or nine years now, you’d think my legs would be in shape, but I didn’t have my topo mat, and it made a huge difference. So that is by far the first thing that I would look at, is the topo mat. The second one, which is also overlooked, and most people don’t ever think about it’s having an apple box in front of the mat, or if you don’t have the mat, just having an apple box where you can kind of perch one foot or the other in what’s kind of called the Captain Morgan’s pose. This is something that I talk about in my Move Yourself online course, but that makes a huge difference in alleviating some of the pain on your lower back, because really, what’s happening is subconsciously your brain is saying, my lower back is tired, my legs are tired, I need to alleviate the weight and the stress on my legs, so I’m going to put my weight on my shoulders and lean forwards, and if you instead put one of your feet up on this apple box, that does the same thing, but you can just go back and forth all day long, so I’m switching one foot to the other foot all day long, and I really don’t spend that much time standing straight up on two feet in a balanced position. I usually have one foot or the other up all day long, so that’s a huge one too.

Natalie Boschan: Yeah, it’s like if you at least going on the theme of alcoholism, when I’m a bar, there’s always like the bar right on the bottom, and I always, always, always, if I’m next to the bar, I have to put my leg up, like it’s just instinctual. I just have to do it, and if there’s no bar there, which kind of never happens, but if I can’t find it, I get really, really annoyed, like, where is the bar for my foot, so I can stand on the bar, and that’s what the Apple Box does too. But it also, like, alleviates your hip if you’re standing there and you have hip problems, if your hips get really tight, you put one leg up, and then you get that sort of relief in your hips, and also at the bar.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, there’s a reason that they do that at bars everywhere. It’s because it keeps people there, because if people aren’t comfortable standing at a bar, they will go somewhere else. So, that’s that’s not an accident that those are all bars across the world. It’s very, very strategically designed. The third recommendation that I have is that you shouldn’t be standing all day long, which is probably part of the reason that you’re hunching forwards, but you shouldn’t necessarily be sitting in a desk chair all day long either. And I use middle ground, which is called like a perching chair, and there’s two versions of this: you can either get the Mogo or you can get the pivot, and the pivot is my new desk chair, and pretty much anybody that comes into my office are like, what is that thing? And then I show them, like, oh my god, this thing is awesome, it’s so comfortable, and it’s fun, and I’m moving around, and they say I’m gonna end up getting one. I had somebody a couple of days ago that said, I just bought my pivot chair, I can’t wait to get

Natalie Boschan: It, and

Zack Arnold: That is the other option, you need to be able to perch and lean on something, like if you’re looking at a 30 minute block of time, you really shouldn’t stand for more than 20 minutes, and then you can perch for eight to 10 minutes, and then you can sit for two to five minutes, or get up and walk around. So, if you’re, if you really want to scientifically break down a time block, that would be one really scientific and ergonomic way to do it, but you just need something that you kind of perch and lean on if you don’t want to slump back down into a desk chair, especially if you’re trying to alleviate the chronic lower back pain that comes from being in chairs. And I actually have a much, much more detailed blog post about building a dynamic workstation with these tools, and a bunch more of them as well. It’s at Fitness and Post comm slash dynamic workstation, funny enough. How coincidental. So, that should hopefully give DeAndrea, or anybody else having issues with standing all day long, and the discomfort that comes with it. That should answer most of your questions about how to alleviate it through very simple changes, or through using some simple tools.

Natalie Boschan: And I feel like the theme throughout all of those tools was that things that force you to move without you even knowing you’re going to move, and making it fun, right? So, these are just all things that we would naturally, because we’re humans and we like to play and have fun, and we’re animals like the rest of the animal kingdom, that is what I mean. This is these are all tools that will help you do those things, just move around and make moving fun.

Zack Arnold: Yes, and if you are afraid of the concept of actually moving around, the better term that you could use is fidget. These are all tools that cause you to fidget, so just the act of fidgeting and not even moving and getting up away from your desk, just fidgeting and constantly moving is also going to help engage your creativity and your focus, because a lot of people say, well, I just, I can’t get up, like I can’t move ever, and I have people around me, and I have them behind me, or my boss is watching, like I can’t move, and I’m like, well, then you need to find a way to fidget, because if you have these tools, you’re still going to be moving, it’s just going to be in a, you know, block of two square feet, but even that’s better than just sitting, so that actually is going to segue us, our next question, so do you want to go ahead and read this next

Natalie Boschan: One? Yes. This question was submitted by Hillary, and her question is oftentimes when I have a meeting with someone to discuss an edit on a student film, the person I’m meeting with, director, producer, co-editor, will make me stay at the edit station and micromanage the edit with. Them for several hours complaining if I even leave for a three minute bathroom break every couple of hours. Firstly, is this normal outside of film school? Secondly, if so, how does one maintain frequent movement slash fitness in post under these circumstances?

Zack Arnold: Yes, this is definitely a passion of mine, so first part of the question is this normal outside of film school. Unfortunately, yes, it is very, very, very normal.

Natalie Boschan: Who’s getting if these directors slash producers are also students? My question is, what do they get off doing this to other students? Like, if I, as someone who’s sort of like my age or younger than me, when I was a student, I would be like, yes, I’m going to use the bathroom, and no, you cannot get mad at that, like, sorry, I don’t know, this is not a boss, they are not paying you, not that a boss can pay for your time, but this is where sort of these director producers kind of learn this behavior is in films, well, I did it in film school, and it’s sort of they start to continue to act like that, and that’s, I don’t know, if it’s a student or somebody who they’re working with who’s a director, and so it’s an intimidating force, probably still is an intimidating force if it’s a student, but who these students are, they get off bouncing around other students, you’re all, you’re all there to learn.

Zack Arnold: Well, I happen to know Hillary, and she goes to school at USC, so you can just fill in the blanks on the type of directors she’s perhaps working with that are convinced they are going to be the next Steven Spielberg, so but yes, I agree with everything that you’re saying, and I have a two-part answer, one of which is very tactical and another of which is much more bigger picture and more fundamental, the tactical one you kind of semi-answered it already, and the best weapon against trying to get out of the room is drinking a ton of water, because if you drink a lot of water and you have to pee really, really badly, that sense of, oh, I’m uncomfortable asking if I can take a break, that goes out the window, because in your mind, your decision matrix says, well, I can either feel uncomfortable or I can piss my pants in the edit suite, so which one are you going to choose? And then secondarily you can say to the director, well, I need to take a bathroom break, and like, no, we’re so in the moment, and I have all the.. you just can’t go, you’re like, okay, that’s cool, but just know in about three minutes I’m gonna wet my pants, so then the director gets to go through his own decision matrix, and most likely you’re going to be able to step away for two or three minutes and take a bathroom break, and once you have that break, then you can get out, and you can go into a stairwell, and you can do jumping jacks, or do whatever you need to do to just kind of keep yourself engaged. The next step that I would go to, that would be tactical, is some of the things that I talked about, where you can have these tools that allow you to fidget and still move, but not actually have to get out of your seat, where you’re fidgeting while working. But the next layer to that is, if you set up your workstation in a certain way, if they’re not behind you, they can be in the room with you for 12 or 14 hours straight. If you have the couch in front of your edit suite and you’re kind of in the captain’s chair behind them, you can do whatever you want and still be able to work because they’re not sitting right next to you or behind you, feeling like they can control your actions. So I’m very, very conscious about the way that I organize my edit suite, because I want to be in control of the space and I want the director and the producer to feel like I’m in control of the space, and if they decide they want to sit and monopolize my time for 12 hours, I can still stand up, I can move around, I can stretch all while I’m screening things, and I’m not getting in the way of the creative process.

Natalie Boschan: Yeah, but what’s hard for Hillary, I think, is that, and for any student, is that you’re not, you don’t have your own station, you’re sort of going to different stations that other students are, you know, like we had when we were in school, like you have stations that you go to that you rent out for a day, and they’re set up in a certain way, and that way is sort of the traditional way of just the director, producer behind the editor, and they’re watching, and they’re pointing at the screen, and they want to like take over the keyboard.

Zack Arnold: None of that has ever happened to me ever. I have no idea from a director or a producer.

Natalie Boschan: No, never. I think that saying this at the student level, because students who are directors, who are producers, they need to know this as well, and students who are editors need to know that they have the right to stand up for themselves. And you don’t, standing up for yourself doesn’t mean that you’re a mean person, it doesn’t mean you’re a jerk, it just means that you, that you’re telling this person who’s being abusive, because not being mad about you going to the bathroom, like that’s abusive behavior, that’s that’s manipulative, that’s abusive, and it’s just plain mean that person’s not a good person, maybe they are, but they just don’t work well with you, but like that’s just me, that that in that moment is a mean thing to do to somebody else, just bottom line, and so it’s okay in that instance to just stand up for yourself and say, hey, look, I just, I really have to go to the bathroom, you guys will be fine for a couple minutes, I’ll be right back, and if they’re going to get mad about that, then that’s on them, like that is their problem, that is their own thing that they got going on in their head, it has no reflection on you, and if they’re. To act like that, then maybe you don’t want to work with that person. I brought this up, many of us brought this up in the blue collar post West panel that we did on mental health in post production. I think it was last Saturday at this point when we brought this up, saying, look, there are people out there who will be abusive and take advantage of you, and yes, this will happen after film school, and it will happen, especially right after film school, when you’re 22 to like, I don’t know, it could happen till 28 whenever you sort of figure out that you don’t need to take this anymore, but this will happen, and people know that you’re green, and they’ll take advantage of the fact that you want to do nothing but help, because you’re young, and you want to be there, and you want to do a good job, and there are so many people in this industry that will take advantage of that, and it’s not right, but what you can do to counteract that is to stand up for yourself and just say with confidence and say, this is not right. I am going to go to the bathroom, I am going to take a break, and that’s the end of it. Students probably don’t know this, but there are so many, I mean, as Zach’s talked about this a bunch of times, but there’s so much research on how taking breaks every hour is way more productive than not taking any breaks for like eight hours straight, like you will just crash and burn, like that is what’s going to happen. I mean, with Amazon, the whole controversy about Amazon working its employees too hard, and the culture of work there, and there’s just so much research being done on how people who actually take breaks and enjoy their time, like they do better work when they are working if they take breaks, and so you can also explain this to your director, producer people, there’s so many things that are advantageous to taking breaks and to just working in a nice environment, an environment with people you enjoy, an environment with people who aren’t mean and abusive, but I want to steal this line from one of the panelists, Kira at BCPC, which was the first day you can be picky about your work, be picky about your work, just don’t put up with people like this, because it’ll happen, and it’s not right, and it’s on them, and not you.

Zack Arnold: Yes, I mean, you basically stole the answer that I was gonna give, so that’s all. But the only

Natalie Boschan: Is my soapbox,

Zack Arnold: The only thing that I would add to that, which is gonna kind of wrap that up into a nice neat little bow, and this is one of those things that’s hard for people to accept, but once they do, it can change their life, and it is that people will treat you the way that you allow them to treat you, and if you don’t allow this kind of behavior, it won’t happen, and if you do express yourself, and they’re still pushing back, they’re not the kind of people that you want to build a relationship with, and if you’re young, you’re a student, you’re trying to break in, you’re thinking, oh, but you know, I just, I got to get this on my resume. I got to do the work. You don’t want to build a relationship with people like that, because it’s never going to change, and they’re always going to see you the same way. And if you put your foot down in a nice, respectful way, then people are going to see that, and hopefully have more respect for you. So, just remember that people treat you the way that you allow them to treat you, so that having been said, I feel like we’ve hit that one pretty hard, and I’ll also make sure that we have links in the show notes to both the entire panel for the BC PC Mental Health Summit, which is great, and I think everybody should watch it, and then I’ll also put a link to this article that came out several months ago about how Amazon massively overworks their workers, and they’re just absolutely notorious for treating their workers like robots, and there’s horrible mental health issues and depression, and it’s, it’s not a great place to work. It’s a great place to shop, amazing prices. I love Amazon, and I hate that I love Amazon, because it’s so efficient and so cheap, but they don’t treat their workers well, at least according to a huge amount of research and testimonials that they receive, so I haven’t been there. I don’t know, but it seems pretty evident that the information coming out is true. So, I will make sure that there are links to those in the show notes. But let’s move on to the next question. And this question is submitted by Taylor, and he says, How can you overcome the feeling that you haven’t progressed to a high enough level in your career to match your age or the amount of time that you’ve been doing it. I’ve been working in this field for nine years and I’m now 31 but I feel like I’m not working at the level or the pay rate that I should be or that I would like to be, and this pretty much sums up about five years of my life. I know exactly what this feels like. Where I

Natalie Boschan: Got from the Midwest,

Zack Arnold: Right?

Natalie Boschan: All of his friends are VPs by now.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, I have lived this, where I spent years knowing in my heart, not because I was arrogant or I was overconfident, but I was confident that I had the talent to work on projects that were above the level that I was working on, and I just continued to get all of these things that I felt just didn’t fit with my skill set, but I eventually just kept pushing, kept pushing, I was consistent, I was consistent, and eventually landed the opportunity that was much more in line with the skill set that I had, and actually I fell into. A place where I’m like, oh wait a second, this is a giant leap, and now I actually feel like I’m a little under prepared, and I really need to hustle to catch up to where I am now. And that was the leap that I made to working on Burn Notice, because it’s the first TV that I’d ever done, and went from a point where I felt overqualified to being somewhat underqualified, and really had to prove myself. But, and I know that you’re going to have a lot to answer about this as well, so I won’t go too far, because I think your answer is actually going to be better than mine. But I think the important thing for me is that I never stopped believing that I was capable of doing other things, but I also allowed myself to be patient and know that the current jobs that I was working on were part of the journey and would end up teaching me the skills that I needed in one way or the other, and that’s a mindset that I bring to every single job. Or, like, if we have a bad day or a bad week, what’s one of the things that I’ll always come in and say to you? I say, all right, this is a mess, but what can we learn from this? What can we take from it? So, I’ll just say, all right, well, clearly this job is gonna suck, but what’s the learning experience? How can I use my day to its maximum potential and learn things that I can use in the future? So I started using that mindset when I was working on these small little indie films or these god-awful trailers for horrible clients, and I would think, how can I learn from this experience, knowing that there are skill sets that I can take from it and use them later on, and some of those skill sets didn’t pay off for years, but once they paid off, they paid off big. So that’s kind of the mindset that I will go into when I realize I’m doing something that doesn’t really seem to jive with where I want to be. But I know you’re going to have a lot to say about this as well.

Natalie Boschan: Yeah, mostly because I mean I am also 31 and I’ve been here nine years. I mean, I have felt that I have stalled out many times, but there have definitely been very just apparent times when I think I need to move on, like you know, you learn as much as you can, and at some point you just feel like you’re not being challenged anymore, and I feel like when you get to that point it’s time to start reaching out and figuring out what else do you want to do, and try to, and I think the two-part podcast that you did, episodes 56 and 57 with Norman Holland, he goes on and says that every so often you need to reevaluate your goals, and that was something that really stuck with me when I heard that podcast, because that is what you have to do when you, when you feel like you’re stalled out, like you have to start reevaluating. Okay, what are my long-term goals? How do I get there? Is this job going to get me there now? And what I’m having an issue with right now is I’m trying really hard to sort of make a transition from assistant editor to editor, but that requires being with the right studio and producers, and what, like, I’m with the right editor, I got that, as much as, like, Zack gives me scenes to cut, and, like, tells producers, like, Natalie did this, and all of that, like, does everything that he can to sort of say, hey, Natalie can edit, it’s still on them to actually give me that bump, and so I’m in that part where I’m kind of like, I got to figure out how to get there, and it’s one of those things that you just have to be strategic about and find the right people that are going to do that, and if it’s not going to work out, and if your next job isn’t an opportunity, then it’s time to move on to another job, but I also think that feeling stalled out at 31 is a perception, and what I meant by my joke of saying, if you’re from the Midwest, and all of your friends are VPs with homes and kids right now, and you feel like, hey, I’m over 30, like there’s so many things I should have had by now, like that’s sort of a 1950s mentality, you know, you get your job right out of college, you’re there for 40 years, you move up the ladder, and you have a house and a wife and a kid, and or a husband, and that’s what you do with your life, but the world has changed, and the world now is you hustle, employers are not going to be loyal to you, I mean, some are, but a majority of them are not necessarily going to be loyal to you, so it’s just, it’s a changed world, and that is sort of an old world perception, so if you also sort of just start looking at what you’ve done through a different lens, and not the sort of 1950s lens of I should be, you know, I should, I should be here, I should be, there’s no more should anything, like everyone takes their own path, and everyone does things differently, like there are plenty of people that don’t get to be editors until they’re in their 40s, like for example, Kelly Dixon wasn’t an editor until she was in her 40s, and she was on Breaking Bad and an Emmy-winning editor, and that’s not until she was in her 40s, and so it’s like

Zack Arnold: Everyone takes their own path, and like, she’s an amazing editor, and like, I don’t think she ever wasn’t an amazing editor, she learned along the way, but that’s just when she got her break, that’s just when it happened for her, and it happens for people at different times, especially in this business. So, that’s, you know, so change your lens and start thinking about what your goals are. I think, yeah, and I would add one more very concrete thing, because I think that, like, if you go back to, well, I lean on my desk, and what do I do? Here’s an apple box, great, done. All right, well, you need to change your lens. Yes, okay. It’s a great answer, but I want to get something very, very tactical to go along with that, because I agree with that. But, and I’ve been in this position many times where I’ve been in jobs that I just wanted to get out and leave, and I felt stalled. So, this is not me coming from, you know, some other worldly place where I’m just giving advice. I have lived this for years and years. The key on a day-to-day basis is that you have to consistently be taking actions towards the goals that you want to reach, and what I mean by that is, if you’re just sitting at your job and you’re pouting and you have your arms crossed at your edit bay and you’re like, oh, I just.. I don’t belong here, and this isn’t right for me, you’re not going anywhere, and that’s because you haven’t created any momentum. You need to start taking steps towards whatever the goal is that you want to reach, and understand that some patience is going to be required. So, if you’re saying, and I don’t know what Taylor does for a living, but let’s say the tailor is an assistant editor in reality, very common job, and he’s saying, I am tired of being an assistant editor in reality. If you’re just sitting there and you’re upset about it, that’s going to do nothing. But let’s say that you set out some concrete action steps that can be taken, and you say, I want to become an assistant editor in scripted. So that means that today my two action steps are going to be emailing two people that I met at a networking event and developing a relationship with them, knowing it might take me three months to even get a lunch, but I’m going to consistently take some action that’s going to get me closer to my goals. Once you start to do that, even though those actions might seem small, they start to give you a sense of control and a sense of momentum forwards, where you can think, “All right, I’m here now, but this isn’t going to last forever. But if you just sit there and stew in your own misery, you do feel like you’re going to be there forever, and you can’t escape, and consistently taking action is what’s going to make you feel like you’re going to move forwards, and you’re going to get out.

Natalie Boschan: Yeah, definitely. And I think your podcast with Monica has a lot of great actions to moving into a different career path than what you’re on, and she, because she talks about coming out of Rochelle and having to overcome certain obstacles to sort of spread those seeds, right? Like, you spread lots of seeds and hope that some will grow. So that’s, I mean, that’s all you can do when it comes to networking, is to get out there as much as you can, and like, hopefully one of them grows, you know? Like,

Zack Arnold: Yep, you got you got to be a farmer, and you got to sow those seeds. So the two podcasts that I would recommend, if you haven’t already heard them, and this is a conversation you’re interested in. Number one is the most popular podcast of the entire series, which is episode 48 with Monica Daniel, about transitioning from reality to scripted. There are a ton of ideas in there, and if you really want to drill down much deeper into the process of setting your goals, I highly recommend going to episode number 77 that I did with high performance coach Jeanette Goodrich, who’s actually my own high performance coach that really helped me organize my priorities, my goals, and my day, so I could start taking consistent action and go where I want to go. So that’s a ton of actionable day to day things that you can actually do to build that momentum if you feel stuck.

Natalie Boschan: Yeah, and start going in the Facebook groups, the editing Facebook groups, I have found, and I’m not a big Facebook like advocate, but I have found that I’m starting to meet a lot of people through these Facebook groups that are very nice people, wonderful people, and it’s just a really nice segue, you know? You sort of build this internet relationship with somebody, and then when you meet them in person, it’s not as intimidating, you already have this history, so like it’s been really easy at networking events when I see someone that I know on Facebook to say, “Oh, and you can start talking right away, as opposed to awkwardly going up to someone and say, “Hey, so what do you do? Like, that’s very awkward, but I’ve been very pleasantly surprised by these how easy Facebook groups have made that process,

Zack Arnold: Yeah. And that, as much as I disdain social media, and people always laugh because they’re like, oh my god, fitness post is all over social media, and I see that as necessary evil, because I have a message that I feel is important, that I know is helping people, and I want to share it with them. But on a personal level, I hate social media. However, what I do like about social media is that it has vastly reduced the amount of small talk when you have personal conversations, because you don’t have to be like, hey, so I haven’t seen you forever, what are you up to now, and how are the kids? Like, I know all of that because I’ve seen your Facebook posts, so I don’t need small talk, I can actually talk about real things, because all the small talk is on Facebook.

Natalie Boschan: Yep,

Zack Arnold: That having been said, we can move on before I just jump into a giant black hole about social media, which I don’t want to do, so we’re going to go to a totally different topic entirely. And this is actually another post that I found on the Avid editors of Facebook that I jumped into, because it’s another very, very common answer, and this got a ton of responses, some of them good, some of them really, really, really bad. So I wanted to kind of dispel some of the myths about this question and try and provide healthy options. And this is submitted by somebody I’m probably going to butcher this, but it’s either Mikko or Micho, and the question is, when I work long hours, I become so exhausted, but. My mind is alert, and I can’t sleep. Do you guys have a healthy trick to help me sleep? And this is a huge, huge thing in this industry, and in most industries, and in American culture now, is wearing this badge of honor, saying that I don’t sleep. I am chronically working through nights and not getting enough sleep. So, the first thing I’ll say is, stop it. Just stop wearing the badge of honor sleep is the number one tip that I have. If you want to be productive, you need to

Natalie Boschan: Sleep,

Zack Arnold: But what is often overlooked is people are thinking it’s just about the number of hours, but if you work in a creative industry like we do, you may get to bed at 11 o’clock every night, but you don’t actually fall asleep until 1o’clock or 2o’clock because your mind is racing, because we’re making these creative decisions all day, every day, and we’re doing it in front of screens with a ton of blue light pouring into our eyeballs, that’s stimulating our nervous system, and by being exposed to this blue light all day long and all evening long, what’s happening is you’re down regulating your ability to naturally produce melatonin, which is the hormone that your body needs to produce for restful sleep. So this is not just a problem about I don’t have the hours. This is about the problem of I’m doing all this creative work, my mind races, and I can’t slow it down. Therefore, even if I’m in bed for seven hours, none of it is high quality, and I wake up exhausted. And this is a problem I had myself for years and years, and I just finally said I’m just stopping everything until I nail sleep, and I just become an absolute sleep machine, and I can do it at the drop of a finger every single night, and wake up and feel refreshed. So I spent months and months researching this. I have an entire post about my entire detailed regimen of all the things that I’ve learned for sleep, and it’s a fitness and post comm slash burnout sleep, because it’s all about my experience with burnout and sleep being one of the key factors that led to it, and how I overcame it by learning all these things about how to be a better sleeper. I’ll go through a few of my quick things, like simple easy wins, and then you can go through some of yours as well. The first one, for people in our industry, which I know is very, very difficult, but if you don’t want your mind to race, you have to separate yourself from technology a minimum of 30 minutes before your head hits the pillow, and ideally an hour, and if you just absolutely cannot do that, which you need to do, but if you can’t, the next step is installing a free program on your computer that’s called Flux. It’s F L U X, and what this does is it removes all of the blue spectrum of light from your computer’s monitor once you hit a certain period in the evening, and it’s time-based, so it happens automatically. You don’t need to remember to do it, but by about eight or 830 my screen is completely red, and I have a red lamp antler, so I have one of those stand-up lamps that has two bulbs in it. During the day, I have normal blue light, and in the evening, like when we’re recording, I have nothing but red light, so it looks like I’m having like a 60s drug party in my basement, because everything is red. I have red lamps, I have red monitors, I have Himalayan salt lamps, it’s all it’s all red and orange. I have no blue light coming at me, so I have found that I actually start to naturally become really, really tired around 1030 or 11 o’clock, but if I forget to turn on flux or I’m doing some kind of color work or graphic design where I need to have flux turned off and I’m using the full spectrum, all of a sudden I’ll look at the clock and it’s 1230 in the morning, and I’m like, how did that happen, and it’s because I have the blue light keeping me awake. So, that would be the first thing that I would say. So, the next thing that you can do is you can take a cold shower, and I know this sounds totally counterintuitive, but if you take either a very, very warm shower or a very cold shower, this is going to help to down regulate your body temperature, so if you were to take a very, very warm shower before bed, that’s going to help your muscles relax, and that’s going to help put you to sleep. However, and I don’t really understand the biology behind this, but if you take a really cold shower before bed, it’s not going to wake you up. What it’s going to do is lower your body temperature, and if you really want to get good quality sleep at night, your body needs to be able to cool down. That’s why, if it’s like the summertime and your air conditioning breaks, you can’t friggin go to sleep, because your body is so warm. And the ideal temperature, through extensive scientific research, is that your room should be somewhere between 66 and 68 degrees if you want to get the deepest, highest quality sleep, for a lot of people that’s not really possible, but if you take a nice five minute cold shower before bed, you’re not even going to remember your head hitting the pillow. So that would be my second recommendation. The third quick, easy one is, and I think one of the biggest reasons that somebody’s mind races is they’re thinking about one of two things, they’re either going through everything that happened that day, or more commonly, they’re thinking about all the things that they have to do the next day. So, in my article about sleep, I talk about developing a journaling practice, and I’m not talking about getting out a purple diary that has a heart-shaped locket on it. Just take five minutes, and you could, you could, I. Absolutely, you can. I have no problem with that. I’m just saying it’s not necessary to diary in the purple journal, you know. And you can use, like, a little pink pen with a little feathers on the top, and really going off the rails now. But if you just take five minutes, write down some of the things that you accomplished for the day, or that you need to learn from, and then write down some of the things you need to do tomorrow, your brain is going to say, “All right, I’m good, I can check out now. And then you’re going to fall asleep. So, I, no matter how busy I am, or how stressed my day is, it never takes me more than about three minutes to fall asleep when my head hits the pillow, because I’ve developed these rituals.

Natalie Boschan: Yeah, I have. And these are all I actually really like writing down what you’re going to do the next day. I do that, but when I leave work, and it’s actually really nice, because it just says, okay, I have a plan for tomorrow, and now I go to my home life, I am done with my work life. It’s really good for compartmentalizing and sort of shutting off your brain a little bit. My well, my husband and I had that, we started doing this with ourselves, because we’d come home and be a little bit like, er, like angry at the end of a work day, and you’re stressed out, and you’re tired, and you don’t want to, like, you just kind of are, you know, lethargic, and not really socializing at all with your significant other. And so we were like, you know, there’s a rule, like, when you enter the door, like, this is the home space, like, your home space is your happy space, so, like, you want to make your home happy, and so you want to be happy with in your home, and so that is sort of the system that we developed to kind of like keep work at work, and I think that that’s really helped me in doing that, and not thinking about work when I’m home is sort of putting myself in that mindset of work is at work, home is at home, but other more sort of concrete things that I do is I drink chamomile tea every night because it’s got the melatonin in it, and so it helps you sleep, and I like the warmth of the tea. I also do a lot of stretching, I do like a small kind of five to eight minute yoga routine, just sort of calm me down and like stretch everything out, and so my whole routine is just doing my stretches, I drink my tea, I read a book, and then I always, always, always fall asleep right when I’m reading that book, because I just, I’ve done the tea thing, I’ve done the stretching thing, and then right when I get into my bed, I’m like, oh, now it’s time to go to bed, and so you sort of develop this whole system of going to bed, and so your body starts to get more and more tired earlier and earlier steps, like Pavlov’s dog, which I know you talked about a lot, but just like Pavlov’s dog, the dog starts to salivate, you know, earlier and earlier, like Pavlov has the food and rings the bell during the food, and the dog starts to salivate early and earlier, so that, like, you know, when the person walks into the room and rings the bell, the dog salivates when the person walks into the room, and not just when he gets food, so like I start to get tired when I even start thinking about, oh, it’s time to make tea, I’m like, oh, then I must be tired, so I’ve like trained myself because of this like ritualized thing that I do at night, I sort of train myself to be tired when I do this, which has been great, it’s been really great, because, like, once I have that tea, it’s basically like, shut off my electronics, put everything in airplane mode. I am done for the day. I’m going to bed, like, I am committed to bed. So that’s my routine.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, I

Natalie Boschan: Love it. The

Zack Arnold: Pavlov’s dog thing is a great analogy, and I think that one of the huge breakthroughs that I had in my journey in learning how to live a healthier life is letting go of the fact that I am somehow vastly superior to animals because I’m human is completely not true, and 90% of the functions that happen to keep us alive are unconscious, subconscious, we’re not controlling these actions, so you can basically hack yourself and hack your brain the same way that you can get a dog to salivate by ringing a bell, you can do the same thing to yourself, you just have to be willing to accept that, yes, you are completely and totally, you know, can manipulate your own body and your own psyche, but once you’re like, yeah, I guess I’m cool with that, then you can actually start doing these things, and your life becomes infinitely easier once you release that control, thinking, “Oh, well, it’s just.. it’s different for me, like I’m.. I’ve just always wired, and that’s just the way that I am. It’s like, well, you’re the same as every other 7 billion humans on the planet. We’re all wired basically the same way. You can totally hack your biology, and you don’t need all kinds of crazy chemicals and sleep additives, and that.. that was actually the other thing I wanted to bring up about this post, is there were some awful, awful suggestions, one of them being alcohol. There were a lot of people that said just drink, and so here’s here’s the thing I want to say about alcohol, because people are going to say, well, I pass out when I drink. Alcohol is going to make you really, really tired, however, if you have alcohol in your bloodstream, you cannot get into deeper REM states of sleep, which is why when you drink, even if you don’t drink enough to get drunk or be buzzed, and you just do a couple of drinks to calm yourself down and go to bed, you don’t feel good the next day, and you feel exhausted because you didn’t get deep sleep, so maybe you slept long enough that you don’t re. Member being awake, you’re like, yeah, I guess I slept all night, but your body and your brain does not get into the slow enough wavelengths to actually get restful sleep. So, alcohol is an absolute no-no as a sleep aid. The second one that was mentioned,

Natalie Boschan: This is coming from the person drinking, I agree, coming from the person drinking wine, right?

Zack Arnold: Yeah, but you’re not, you’re not going to bed in half an hour, that’s the

Natalie Boschan: Difference,

Natalie Boschan: Which, which I actually do, because I enjoy wine, is like a thing, so yeah, I really like wine, I like wine because of, you know, I like wine,

Zack Arnold: So another one that was brought up was sleep aids, like Tylenol PM or Ambien, or all these other things, those are going to become habit forming, even if they say they’re not habit forming, those become habit forming, you’re not actually getting better sleep or training yourself to sleep better, you’re just becoming dependent on medications that, again, are really not going to allow you to get deep, restful, restorative sleep. So, unless it’s like you’ve just haven’t slept for days and you have insomnia, and you just need like one night of sleep, stay away from sleep aids on a regular basis. The third one that people said a lot, and this is a good suggestion, and it’s a bad suggestion, and that is melatonin, and I’m going to explain why melatonin fits into both categories. If you’re looking at melatonin as a short-term solution, it is basically just putting a substance in your body that it already creates naturally, and it can help you get a sense of, oh, this is what it feels like to get tired at the right time of day, and get true restful sleep, and it helps you start to reset your circadian rhythms. So, I will use melatonin when I travel to different time zones, because I’m training my body to overcome the jet lag and fall asleep at the right time, and it’s like magic. However, if you use melatonin as a sleep aid, what happens is it doesn’t become you’re not dependent on it, like you would be Ambien or Tylenol PM, or some other sleep pill. However, what it does is it allows your body to no longer regulate the melatonin naturally, so if you don’t take it, it’s not a habit that you need to take it, but your body doesn’t know how to create it at the right times anymore. So then, in that sense, it is almost kind of a dependency. So melatonin is a great solution if you just need a kick start, you want to kind of reset your circadian rhythms, get two or three nights of good sleep under your belt, and say, all right, now I can tackle this a little bit more focused and a little bit more head on, but melatonin is not a long term night by night solution to better sleep, so I just, I wanted to go through some of those, but the alcohol one is like, for the love of God, do not use alcohol to put yourself to sleep every night.

Natalie Boschan: Yeah, and the when I mentioned melatonin and the chamomile tea, that does not have as much melatonin as, like, a melatonin pill.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, yeah,

Natalie Boschan: It is.

Natalie Boschan: Yeah, exactly, as small levels.

Zack Arnold: So, that having been said, there are also a few supplements that I do take in the evening to help me get into a more restful state of sleep, and I go through them in my article about sleep, but I also talk about them in a blog article that I just recently released, that’s all about supplementation. Why I believe that supplements are worth the investment, and some of them are about what I use to get better sleep. So, if you wanted to go through those, you can just go to Fitness and Post comm slash supplements, and all of the ones that I use for better sleep are listed there as well.

Natalie Boschan: I mean, what makes melatonin a different supplement than the rest of the supplements you use? Like, what makes that so much different?

Zack Arnold: Because melatonin is a hormone that your body should know how to create naturally. That’s something that if your body is working the way that it should, you should be creating melatonin more and more as you get closer to sleep, so for example, one thing that affects the way that your body creates melatonin is your exposure to sunlight. So, if you don’t get some form of exposure to sunlight in the morning, your body doesn’t understand what time of day it is, and it’s not going to regulate its creation of melatonin at the proper times of day. However, if you take a supplement like magnesium at night, your body is not upgrading or down regulating its own creation of magnesium. That’s something that you get from other sources, you get that from food. So, if you get an increased amount of magnesium in your bloodstream, that works as a muscle relaxant. You’re not dependent on the magnesium the way that you would be a Tylenol PM, but it helps to relax your muscles, which then allows you to get into deeper sleep, because you’re not as tense. So, that would be an example of how taking magnesium is very different than taking melatonin.

Natalie Boschan: I mean, with these supplements you’re talking about, they’re not necessarily addictive supplements. Do you know what I mean? Like,

Zack Arnold: Oh no, and they’re not even made. No, you don’t need it at all. It just allows me to get into an even deeper state of sleep, so for example, I can get really good sleep without taking any supplements at night, but I can. I feel the difference when I wake up the next morning if I haven’t taken the magnesium and I haven’t taken the fish oil, because those both allow more rest. The fish oil, especially, is going to help reduce inflammation and help repair the brain. There’s this thing called cerebral spinal fluid that basically, when you sleep, it’s like your brain becomes a dishwasher, and if you don’t have the amount of time to clean out all the toxins in your brain with this thing called CSF, or cerebral spinal fluid, that’s why you wake up groggy or tired, or you just have brain fog, you can’t focus, is because you haven’t gotten that rest. Full sleep, and the fish oil helps in the restoration and the reduction of inflammation, and the magnesium helps relax your muscles, but they’re not substances that are per se helping you sleep the way that a sleeping pill does. Those just knock you out, so they’re very, very different in the way that they work.

Natalie Boschan: Okay, okay, cool.

Zack Arnold: But it’s an excellent question. If that confused you, then it would have confused other people. So, I’m glad.

Natalie Boschan: Yeah, I just wanted to know the difference between certain.. because one could say that melatonin is a supplement, one could call alcohol a supplement if you’re putting it in a different context, you know what I mean.

Zack Arnold: Absolutely, they’re also

Natalie Boschan: Called a supplement, right? But it’s not necessarily like what they’re doing to your body is different.

Zack Arnold: Oh, yeah,

Natalie Boschan: Feel the same.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, so there’s a massive difference between taking an Ambien and taking fish oil and magnesium. I mean, well, what it’s doing to your body is totally different. So, just because they’re both quote unquote supplements, I mean, you wouldn’t take creatine before bed, that’s a supplement. I mean, it’s so.. there’s so many different things biologically going on, depending on the supplements that you take, and I make sure that I take ones that are not affecting my ability to sleep well naturally, they’re just like I talked about in the blog post, they’re like plugins, so I’m not changing the foundation of my high quality sleep, I’m just augmenting it a little bit, it’s like you can’t be a great editor until you know the basics of and fundamentals of storytelling and using your NLE of choice, and using whatever editing software you want, you can’t just say, “Well, if I get Boris effects, I’m awesome. Like, it doesn’t work that way, but I have a really, really sound foundation of being able to sleep at a high-quality level. Now we just use these plugins to go another 10 or 15%

Natalie Boschan: Gotcha. Okay,

Zack Arnold: That hopefully that kind of explains it, so that brings me to the last question, which is kind of, is will already be somewhat answered, but this is from Michael, and his question is that you have mentioned Shakeology, nutrients, and Athletic Greens, are they redundant or are they complementary, and all three of these substances are powder supplements, and I talk about all of them in detail again in this blog post that I just released, that is at Fitness and Post comm slash supplements. So, I’ll go through them briefly, but most of the information that you need is going to be in the article. Shakeology has been a staple in my diet for even much longer than the Fitness and Post program, I think maybe four or five years. I’ve really used it on a regular basis, and this is basically a giant salad in powder form that includes protein as well. So it’s a giant meal replacement shake that has tons of fiber, has tons of green super foods. It’s kind of.. it’s like the lazy man’s way of getting as much nutrition as possible in the shortest period of time, and it’s not an excuse to not eat a good diet, because I hate it when people say, well, I, you can’t just live off of supplements and powders, and like, I agree completely, like, you can’t say I’m going to live off of Shakeology and then have pizza and beer for all my other meals and be healthy. It doesn’t work that way. However, again, if you have a sound foundation and you want to take your performance to the next level, these are the things that I recommend, so Shakeology meal replacement, very hearty, couple 100 calories in and of itself, so it’s a full meal replacement.

Natalie Boschan: I use Shakeology as one, as my recovery powder for after really long or hard runs. I always have Shakeology to sort of repair muscles, because of all the.. it’s got at least, at least the bag I have, I have the vanilla. It’s got 16 grams of protein. What I like about Shakeology is that it’s got the 16 grams of protein, and then all of that other stuff you mentioned too. So I’m not just like loading up on protein, I’m getting the protein plus all of the other good stuff that comes in Shakeology, and then after that I eat like a good meal, you know, more eggs or banana and peanut butter, or something like that, like an actual, like good meal to sort of continue that repair with my muscles. So there you go, using it for a good like workout protein shake, or workout shake after workout remedy.

Zack Arnold: I agree with that. Whenever I do high intensity exercise, where I’m training for an event, Shakeology combined with a few other things that I’ll add to it, as well as using coconut water, is an amazing recovery drink, because it gives you all of the macronutrients that you need, as far as your fats, your proteins, and your carbohydrates to help you repair after intense workouts. So that’s that, it’s kind of an all-in-one solution. The second option of the three that Michael was asking about is nutrients. Nutrients is a powder that you put in water to become a liquid multivitamin. So, if you’re thinking multivitamin, you think like a centrum, right? It’s just a pill that you pop and you get all of your vitamins, and you’re taken care of. First of all, most of these multivitamins are complete crap and are just nothing but sawdust and additives, and really offer nothing is listed on the label, but part of the problem with micronutrients and with

Natalie Boschan: How comeography that’s on the label is actually in the vitamin,

Zack Arnold: Because it’s cheaper for them, they just lie. I mean, did you

Natalie Boschan: Really?

Zack Arnold: Oh yeah, just go online, there’s all kinds of supplement scams everywhere where it says it has this percentage of this and this percentage of this, and it’s all complete bs, and it’s been proven that way, like there was an. Entire crackdown by the FDA on tons and tons of supplement companies because they outright lied about the ingredients on the labels, so that is not just me saying, oh, they’re all lying, like they’re actually all lying. I swear to God, like, the all the information is online, and I link to some of the information about the scams in my supplement article. So, most multivitamins are complete and total garbage, but it’s not because multivitamins or vitamin supplementation are bad for you, it’s because the products out there are bad. So, nutrients is a liquid multivitamin, where, and I actually did several podcast interviews with the makers of this supplement, so it’s episodes 33 and 34 with the Carltons, some of my favorite episodes that I’ve ever recorded, but the idea is they did extensive research to find out what micronutrients compete with each other, because if you just shove everything into a pill, a lot of it is rendered useless because of the combinations of them. So they found the right combinations, and they timed them twice over the course of a day with different combos between these two packets, so you get the maximum amount of micronutrient absorption, so this would be a multivitamin that actually works and delivers as promised. So that’s that’s where nutrients is different, where it has no calories, there’s no food, there’s no super foods, there’s no protein, it’s just a liquid form of a multivitamin, and as

Natalie Boschan: A legit multivitamin.

Zack Arnold: Yes, a legit multivitamin, and there are several industry experts that all know are aware of the Coltons, aware of their work, and it’s a very highly regarded nutrient supplement, which is why it’s going to be more expensive than your bargain basement multivitamin that you’re going to get at Costco. If you want a pill that is going to basically have sawdust in it, that’s what you want to get. If you actually want something that’s going to work, then you want to go with something a little bit higher quality, so then now that we’ve talked about Shakeology as the all-in-one meal replacement, and the nutrients as the liquid multivitamin, Athletic Greens is kind of in the middle, where this is a concentrated greens powder that would be like taking every single serving of fruits and vegetables that you need during the day, adding 70 other super food ingredients, putting it into a greens powder, you put a tablespoon of it in water, and you’re covered for the day, but it doesn’t have protein, it doesn’t have fat, it tops out at about 30 calories. So their tagline, which I think it’s just explains it perfectly, it’s called nutritional insurance. So if you can’t make a bunch of giant salads during the day and eat all of your recommended doses of fruits and vegetables, but you have a fairly healthy lifestyle. Then Athletic Greens covers all those bases, and it actually kind of functions as an energy drink too. So it’s kind of like a really healthy version of a Red Bull. So that’s kind of the way that I look at it, is I’ll take it in the morning. I know that 10 minutes after I wake up, all of my basic fruit and vegetable requirements are covered, and I will still eat real fruits and real vegetables as well, so I don’t use it as an excuse, but I also know that I’m going to have an increased amount of energy, and I can always feel the difference within an hour. If I forgot to do it, I’m thinking, man, why? I just don’t feel like I woke up yet. Like, why am I not firing? It’s because I forgot the athletic greens. Like, this stuff is the real deal, and I absolutely love it. And for anybody that wants to learn more, you can just go to Fitness and post.com/greens and I’ve actually developed a relationship with them. And as I had mentioned in the intro of the podcast, I choose a random person from the people that submitted questions. One person a month is going to get a serving of this, but I’ve also talked them into getting us a 50% discount, so if you go to that link, you’re going to get a 50% discount on your first order, which is going to show you how well this stuff works. This is a staple. I travel with it, I do it every morning. I feel drastically different if I don’t use it within 15 minutes of waking up,

Natalie Boschan: But I do feel it sounds like the Shakeology and Athletic greens are a little redundant,

Zack Arnold: They are. Yes, I was actually.. I wanted to answer that part of it. You don’t take all three of these. My belief is you really only need one of them, because they all do the same things. And once your body has hit the level of micronutrients that it requires, now you’re just paying for really expensive pee. So you really only need one. You just have to say which one is going to fit into my diet and my needs the most. For you, you have the Shakeology that’s working with your training regimen. You probably don’t need the other two, so you don’t need to be using all three, because it’s vastly overdoing it, both financially and just from a scientific standpoint. But if you’re somebody that’s like, I really kind of want to do better about making sure I get all my vitamins and minerals, but I hate greens powders, and I don’t like drinking smoothies. Nutrients is perfect, it’s just like having this quick little flavor drink, and you’re done. And then Athletic Greens is like, if you really want to go to that next level of performance and hit all of those levels, but you don’t want something heavy, then Athletic Greens is perfect. So that’s kind of how they all work, but they’re absolutely redundant if you do all of them.

Natalie Boschan: Yeah, that’s what I mean. Well, I mean, maybe now I used to have a multivitamin wet if I didn’t have Shakeology in the morning, but I’m gonna have to reevaluate after learning this information about multivitamins, which makes me very upset, because I’ve been doing, I’ve been. Taking a multivitamin all my life, so,

Zack Arnold: And that’s not necessarily bad. The odds are just better than the 50% that what you’re getting most likely isn’t what’s promised on the label, and you probably don’t even need most of the things that are in it, and because of the micronutrient competition, you’re not absorbing most of the nutrients that are promised in there. So, even if it is in the pill, you’re probably not absorbing it properly.

Natalie Boschan: This was going to require many Google searches and research.

Zack Arnold: Well, you know the place to start.

Natalie Boschan: I do finish a post.com plus supplements.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, there you go, right? Oh, free plug. How about that? Yeah, so as long as we’re talking about this, the supplements article, we’ve gone through all the questions that I want to do, but I do want to mention very quickly, I earned a troll from my post about supplements. There’s always haters out there, and the weirdest thing is that I always get the haters when I talk about nutrition, which is very

Natalie Boschan: Weird.

Zack Arnold: I don’t know what I don’t know what’s up with that, but like the last time I talked about the science of calories in versus calories out, which is not an idea I made up, it’s something that science has proven. People got really, really angry with me, and I’m like, people, I’m just trying to help. But anyway, there was somebody that I would say pretty angrily attacked me in one of the Facebook groups. It’s the Final Cut Pro users group. All of this is public, so I’m not saying anything that anybody can’t find, but there’s a user named Stuart Stu. I’m going to make the assumption that’s probably not his real name, but he was very, very angry at this post and not happy with the things that I said, and thought it was all a scam, and didn’t understand why I was making the comparison between plugins and editing, and thought it was all scam, and I could be doing that if I were doing a blog for auto mechanics, I could be talking about wrenches, and he didn’t, he didn’t really get the point of the piece, and the fact that I’m trying to teach people that there are ways to advance and progress your health, but you need to start with a proper foundation of health first. But the reason I actually wanted,

Natalie Boschan: Right, like if you’re a hairdresser, that’s like a comb,

Zack Arnold: Yeah, another one of the analogies that he used

Natalie Boschan: To me,

Zack Arnold: I want to make it very clear.

Natalie Boschan: Yes,

Zack Arnold: I think it’s very important to make it clear that I have no problem with people disagreeing with my viewpoints and proving me wrong. However, I have a very big problem with people that get angry and attack people without really understanding the reason behind it. He was actually attacking my work and attacking me as a person, and what I decided to do was I wanted to learn a little bit more about Stuart, so I went on to his public Facebook profile, which anybody can do. So, once again, I’m not saying anything that isn’t completely public, and he has a series of posts over and over and over where he has actually posted articles and has attacked them, so this isn’t just somebody that says, “Oh, here’s a post and I’m going to write a mean comment. He actually goes out of his way in his day to post on his own feed about other people’s work and rip it apart, like for example, one of them was about Larry Jordan. Like, really, Larry Jordan is the person that you want to attack, like one of the nicest guys in our industry that just wants to help people and teach them, like that’s the guy you’re going to attack

Natalie Boschan: With lots of exclamations and lots of lots

Zack Arnold: Of caps and exclamation points, like you know. So the reason that I wanted to bring this up, like this is not the platform to me to have an argument with somebody online, because I don’t feel like that gets anybody anywhere. The reason I wanted to bring this up is that if you find that somebody is attacking you like this, and then you see that they’re doing it to a lot of other people as well, this is a pattern that they have developed that most likely they’re not only doing to other people, they’re doing to themselves, and this is something I talk about in past podcasts with Allie Hamilton, where we talk about the idea behind yoga, this kind of saying is that how you do anything is how you do everything. So, most likely, if he’s taking time out of his day to attack people and actually make these posts, this is how he’s treating himself too, and he’s being very hard and very negative on himself. And the only question that I would ask, if you’re Stuart and you’re listening, and I guarantee you’re not listening, because clearly you’re not a fan of the work that I’m doing, but if you’re somebody like Stuart, and you find yourself doing the same thing, how is that working out for you? How is this really helping to work and advance your career and advance where you want to be in your life by taking time to be negative to other people, and I just wanted to bring that up, because we all find ourselves in our own behavior patterns, and if you find yourself in a negative behavior pattern. This might be something that you’re doing to yourself as well as other people, and it’s something you want to re-examine, because most likely it’s not helping you move forward and have the life that you want. So, the last thing that I want to say is that it said, according to Facebook, that Stuart is in Los Angeles. So, if there’s anybody that works and lives in Los Angeles and knows Stuart Stu, for the love of God, give this poor guy a hug, he needs it.

Natalie Boschan: Yeah,

Zack Arnold: Let’s, let’s give Stu a big round of applause. Let’s help him through what he’s working through, and let’s, let’s, let’s help him to find himself and get out of this angry, vicious cycle.

Natalie Boschan: And this goes back to what we’re talking about with Hillary’s question about just having people in the room that are abusive, like you know. That’s their own, that’s what’s happening in their own head, that’s how they treat themselves, that’s what’s going on with them, and they’re just projecting that onto other people, and so it’s just another example of when people have their own issues and they sort of take it out on other people to make other people feel just as bad as they themselves are feeling. Work on, work on yourself, don’t let us don’t bring other other people into the hurricane of hell that you might be going through, like you know, work it out, work it out,

Zack Arnold: And that’s why it’s so important to not engage in angry and negative behavior, which is basically what Facebook has become, and I’m not going to go down that black hole at all. I want to make sure that we end this show on time, but just realize that this is most likely nothing to do with you, and this is all about them and what they’re dealing with. So that’s why I just won’t engage in these arguments. Is there’s just no point. Like, I understand that Stuart has a pattern of behaving this way with many, many people over many years. It has nothing to do with me. All I want to do is be able to help people get out of those cycles, so if you know Stuart, give him a hug.

Episode Credits

This episode was edited by Curtis Fritsch, the show notes were prepared by Jakin Rintelman, 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.