Podcast
Late Nights with Trav and Los
Hosted by Travis Neilson and Carlos Montoya · EN
Best friends, Trav & Los, talk late into the night, exploring new ideas for creative professionals. They argue over concepts, share secrets, and interview their industry heroes.
11episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Do You Feel Safe? — How psychological safety makes us better creators
Jan 1, 202100:58:36Tap to summarizeDo you feel safe here? Google’s PILab identified psychological safety as the biggest differentiator between highly effective and less effective teams. Psychological safety is a general term for team members’ willingness to take interpersonal risk as they work together. Members of psychologically safe teams are more likely to feel included, accepted, respected, and to feel safe to take risks, to admit mistakes and to show vulnerability. What can you do to build psychological safety? Include each team member in social activities, such as lunch or ping pong, especially when he or she is not part of the ‘in crowd’. In meetings, formal or informal, make sure they feel invited to contribute. Accept others for who they are, even when there are things about them that you may not like. Keep in mind that they are people — not just co-workers who are instrumental in getting your job done. Listen to what your team member has to say and make sure you’re on the same page; don’t simply wait for the end of their speech to continue your argument. Recognize the contribution of others - acknowledge their contribution. You’ll discover that sharing the pie of credit with others makes the pie larger. Show vulnerability and admit mistakes — recognizing your own imperfections and mistakes relieves you from the need to project the image of perfection. It also makes room for others to do the same. Make room for conflict — it is okay to strongly disagree. Having said that; focus on the conflicting ideas, not on the people who advocate them.
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New job at Google, gets on bus to Apple...
Jan 1, 202000:16:16Tap to summarizeTravis wants to go back to school so he accepts a job at Google. On his first day he ends up getting on a bus to Apple, not Google. The rest of the story is about how introspection into ones own strengths and weaknesses can lead you to companies like Google. Music produced by Morqix: https://soundcloud.com/morqix/body-symmetry-chakra-collab
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Unconscious Bias — The Importance of Understanding Things As They Are
Jan 1, 202000:34:31Tap to summarizeTrav tells Los about the importance of recognizing your Unconscious Bias, and ways that we can overcome the negative aspects of it.
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The Three Pillars of Creation
Jan 1, 202000:16:46Tap to summarizeThree Pillars of Creation = Experience + Trends + Intuition Experience There really is no substitute for experience. It is a hard-won reference for everything that we do. In fact, every new thing that we learn is born from the womb of our experience. It colors everything we know and do, and there is no way around that. 90% of the email answers I give are to “just make stuff” What we all need is more experience, and the only way to get that is to just do it. Trends Trends are an important ingredient in the recipe of creation. Through being aware of trends we have the ability borrow against the collective knowledge and insight of the rest of the world. If a piece of knowledge is solid enough to make it into the general lexicon, we can cautiously assume that the idea has been tested and tried and remains sound overall. Having said that, be weary of trends. Things are not always popular because they are good ideas. Use your experience and intuition to validate trends. Doing something just because everyone else is, is never a good idea. Have a reason. Always. Intuition As new parents in the hospital, my wife and I franticly asked the nurses and doctors about every little detail of infant care. I was so freaked out by this little pink batch of skin and bone that was now my responsibility. Eventually the response came to be “Listen, calm down. Just trust your instincts, you’ll be alright.” Human intuition is a powerful thing, often when we are creating we make a choice simply because it feels right. I’m sure you’ve had the experience of having to explain a choice that you made because it just made sense. And now that you are using language to explain it, you see how really brilliant you were in making it. Those are fun moments. Conclusion Understanding these pillars – these input sources of creation – will better help us to demystify the act of creation itself. To be a successful creator in the long run we must ever be gathering experience, observing trends, and trusting our intuition.
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Season 3 Trav & Los Premiere: Distractions Become Your Habits
Sep 27, 201900:56:04Tap to summarizeShow Links:https://www.youtube.com/littlemusicboxeshttps://www.losmontoya.comhttps://travandlos.webflow.iohttps://onezero.medium.com/being-indistractable-will-be-the-skill-of-the-future-a07780cf36f4https://www.instagram.com/littlemusicboxes/Intro:Welcome to the Late Nights with Trav and Los Season 3 Premier and Finale!I’m Los, your host tonight and Tav is joining us as the listener proxy.Discussion Points:* Catch Up* Los* Company was acquired via a merger with a company called Twenty* Our goal is to enable and enrich experiences by bringing people together in real life.* Building out Los Montoya Design Co on the side* Trav* Little Music Boxes* Topic* Nir Eyal* Nir Eyal is the bestselling author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, which drew on his years of experience in the video gaming and advertising industries. He has taught courses on applied consumer psychology at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and at Fortune 500 companies. His writing on technology, psychology and business appears in the Harvard Business Review, the Atlantic, TechCrunch and Psychology Today.* I want to more specifically talk about the thesis that “Being Indisctractable will be the skill of the future” around his forthcoming book “Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life.”* This is interesting to me and want to expand on it with you for two reasons:* 1. We’ve talked about focus a bit in the previous seasons and* 2. Out of anyone I know, you continue to demonstrate how “indistractable” you can get and accomplish some pretty rad creative endeavors.* Distractions are the name of the game right now:* Pings* Knocks* Emails* Text Messages* Social Media* in a sense, our devices have “hijacked” our brains and it’s harder to disconnect from work in this interconnected world.* Distractions aren’t your fault, but they are your responsibility. So, how do we equip ourselves to manage these distractions?* So, what’s a distraction?* It’s something that draws us away from what we want to do, whether it’s to accomplish a task at home or work, enjoy time with a loved one, or do something for ourselves.* Distractions can become habits and we may be unable to sustain the focus required for creativity in our professional and personal lives.* We are inundated by digital distractions.* On the opposite side, we have Traction. Which is any action that moves us towards what we want. Actions done with intent. Traction is doing what you say you will do.* So, what prompts us to “traction” or “distraction”?* External triggers* Cues from our environment that tell us what to do* Internal triggers* Cues that come from within* How?* We are going to walk through and discuss these points from the medium post. They are well worded and actionable:1. Master Internal Triggers2. Make time for tractionPICK YOUR VALUES!!!!3. Hack back External Triggers4. Prevent distraction with pactsConclusion:The world is split into two types of people: those who allow their attention and their lives to be manipulated by others, and those who proudly call themselves indistractable.
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The Last Episode
Aug 7, 201800:24:45Tap to summarizeHello, this is Travis. Los has been roaming around in the Utah desert for a few months, And I'm alone in a hotel room in New york, trying to force myself to edit this podcast that I've been putting off for too long. This is a particularly hard episode to make. I'm guessing you've read the title, so you know what I'm talking about. In this episode Los and I agree to end the podcast. It's officially over. In this episode you'll hear me dance around the topic for a while and finally work up the courage to suggest we end. It's kind of funny, it's mostly sad, but also joyful. Los and I are going to talk about some of the standout highlights of making late nights for the past few years, and give short updates about what is going on in our lives. I like it. I think it's a good episode. You know, it kind of reminds me of this thing Los and I would always tell each other when making content like this; we would say "End strong" – just end strong. It's okay if you loose your place or stumble around in the middle, just make sure to end on a high point. — And I think we do that here. I think this is a beautiful expression of what in my mind was always the best thing about this podcast: that Los and I love each other. I think that comes through —strongly.
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How To Not Take Yourself Too Seriously
Nov 15, 201700:19:12Tap to summarizeTrav and Los talk about the value of being able to doubt your assumptions and provide a little test that you can use to determine if your assumptions are based on good values. Ultimately, they conclude that if your assumptions are asking other people to change, they may not be productive assumptions.
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How to make deep connections quickly
Nov 8, 201700:22:02Tap to summarizeTrav and Los talk about meeting new people and making deep connections quickly. Download the questions we used as conversation prompts when we led the first night at Epicurrence this year. See the list of questions here: https://paper.dropbox.com/doc/Speed-meeting-prompts-with-Trav-Los-aFWCavu40GtqXOb6f3kyH
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Los has a new job
Nov 1, 201700:30:16Tap to summarizeLos recently switched employers and Travis wants to know how to make the best impression at a new job. This is actually a good episode, lol.
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Viable Minimum Product
Oct 24, 201700:25:46Tap to summarizeIn this episode we take a look at how the ethos of "Minimum Viable Product" has been lost in translation. We break it down, unpack it, and talk to the spirit of what once was the MVP.
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