D&D and Self-Improvement: How to Improve Your DMing Skills

Tanner Weyland:Hello and welcome to How to be a Better DM. My name is Tanner Wayland and together we're all gonna learn how to make wonderful adventures for our players. I'm here with Justin Lewis. Justin, how you doing?Justin:A little sick, but I'm alive and well, so that's good.
Tanner Weyland:I know, I know. Justin and I were gonna have a barbecue with some friends and that's right around the time that my wife started feeling sick. Justin was like, hey, I'm sick. And then the weather got bad. So, you know, the gods above were like, no, you're not having that barbecue. But we're just happy that you're feeling better.
Justin:Thank you.
Tanner Weyland:Um, so today we're going to actually talk about kind of a general topic and it's something that you could honestly apply elsewhere, but, uh, we're talking about improving as a DM and how you can plan for that. Uh, what do I mean? So if any of you have heard the, uh, the, of the book, seven habits of highly effective people, uh, on the seventh habit, so to speak is, uh, sharpening the saw. At least I believe that's how they phrase it, right?
Justin:Mm-hmm.
Tanner Weyland:And with that habit, it's all about like, hey, you're not going to improve bit by bit if you're not planning for it and setting plans that will make you successful in the end, right? And now we put out a lot of episodes about like, hey, you can get better in this way or this way or how you speak with your players or communicate or plan. All of that is good and it's fine and dandy, but You know, I think some people and I'm included with this sometimes when I'm trying to get better. I I kind of take the marination approach where I'm like, oh i'll just listen i'll read a bunch of books I'll listen to some podcasts things like that and then I don't actually end up I don't know justin if this happens with you, but like I just kind of hope that i'll through Photosynthesis
Justin:Osmosis. Yeah.
Tanner Weyland:osmosis. Yeah, then i'll just get better instead of actually planning. Does that happen with you?
Justin:Yeah, 100%. Especially, and it's kind of hard with this type of thing because it's a hobby for most people. And that's where things, especially for hobbies for me, where I tend to be more reactive with my growth and less decisive and intentional. And for more clarification, I believe the term sharpen your saw for this habit. in the book comes from a famous saying, I don't want to misattribute it, but I think it comes from Abraham Lincoln who said something like, if you give me four hours to chop a tree down, I'll spend the first three sharpening my saw. And it's really that idea that by spending dedicated time improving, it should simplify and streamline the actual activity and task itself. So I think this is a great topic to do today.
Tanner Weyland:Yeah, I absolutely agree. And so we're going to jump right in about how you can kind of set yourself up for success, uh, so that you aren't stagnating as a DM, but every time your players are like, wow, they've improved, you know, which, and once again, improvement isn't a negative thing. All of us could improve, uh, in different ways. And in the end, it's going to mean that you have a more fun time and you're going to be less stressed as a DM just straight up. So, Justin, how about you? How would you recommend people improve?
Justin:So the very first thing I would say to do, and I would probably recommend this to people even outside of Dungeons and Dragons, just as a life skill, practice writing daily. And the reason why I say that is because successful people produce and everyone else consumes. You can spend lots of time reading, but if you spend even a quarter of that writing, you've created something new