Bookworm Transcripts

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I'm nervous about today's book, Mike.

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-Mm. How so?

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-Because there's a comment made at the very beginning of the book

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that I think could potentially nullify the entire book.

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There's a teaser, but we can't go there yet.

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-Nope. We got to talk about workout stuff.

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-That we do.

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So, I guess the big question is, did you work out?

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-Yes, yes I did.

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You want me to go through mine first?

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-I'll go first here. So, I did do workouts, I think, ten times

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since we had our last episode, which is saying something for me.

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I'm normally not that on top of it, but I did, every weekday,

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I've done a workout, and I did one of the bodyweight workouts

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from Nerd Fitness, and I've done that every morning.

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It's been super helpful. I'm a fan of that one. It's been good.

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-Cool, cool. -So, yes, I've been doing it.

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Been doing the thing.

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-All right. Well, while you were going Nerd Fitness,

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I was going full Jaco.

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-[laughs]

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-Jiu Jitsu?

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-No, not Jiu Jitsu, but I had a couple different action items

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from the previous episode, and they were all around

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reconfiguring my workout routine at home.

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-Okay.

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-First one was to start working out in the morning

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as part of my morning routine to do a little bit of a workout,

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quick little things that I could do, and he had a bunch of examples

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and also a bunch of recommended gear.

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So, part of that also was getting up earlier.

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I am trending in the right direction here, still not where I want to be,

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but I think my target wake-up time is going to be 6 a.m.

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I've adjusted my bedtime earlier so that that's definitely feasible.

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The last one was to consider my home gym purchases,

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and this is why I say I went full Jaco.

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This is completely awful otter's fault.

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[laughs]

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-All right.

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-But I have a concept to model D rowing machine in my bedroom now.

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-Nice.

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-Nice work.

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-I started looking at rowing machines, and they are...

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They vary quite a bit in price.

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The cheap ones are a couple hundred bucks,

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and there's lots of those on Amazon, and they've got like three and a half

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star reviews, four star reviews, which tells me they're probably good enough,

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but there's going to be something about them that just isn't what you want.

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-Right.

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-Then the step up from that is the concept to model D,

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which is about 900 bucks, and you actually cannot buy it right now.

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-Oh, interesting.

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Why is that?

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I suppose a lot of people buy in this sort of thing.

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-Yeah, everybody's buying home workout gear, so if you go to the website

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and try to buy it directly, they say join the waiting list,

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and every week they send you an update on your spot in the queue,

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and so I did that when I finally came to grips with the fact that I was going to want to get a decent one

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if this is going to be something I was going to do for a while.

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-Sure.

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-My wife was really excited about it too.

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She had used the rowing machine at the gym, and this is actually the one that they had there,

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so she was looking for something that would help her establish a good workout routine at home too,

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so it's a worthwhile investment since we're both going to be using it consistently.

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Then the list that once I signed up on it, they sent me the update.

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"Okay, your spot in the queue is going to be available to purchase on March 4th."

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-Nice.

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-It's like eight weeks out.

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-Nice.

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-In the meantime, I was looking around on the old website,

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and I could find it somewhere.

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Rogue fitness sells it, but it's always out of stock.

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All the places that would normally have it, you can't get it off of Amazon.

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The listing is there, but you can't get it off of Amazon.

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You go on eBay and they're selling for twice as much as they do retail just because you can't get them anywhere.

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-Sure.

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-You can even buy, people are on that waiting list.

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You can buy the link in order to buy the machine off of eBay for like 40 bucks.

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-But then randomly I checked Rogue fitness and they must have just gotten a big shipment of them in.

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I'm like, "Hey, weird, this is available now."

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I bought one, it came.

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I figured it was going to be one of those things like,

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"When it comes in and when it's available, then we'll ship it to you."

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But it shipped the same day and it came two days later.

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-I don't think I would complain.

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-No, not at all.

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-Thro party celebrate.

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-Well, I really should have dragged my feet a little bit more because a really incredible Bookworm listener offered to give me a rowing machine after I had already received the concept to, which I was blown away by.

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I don't think it would have worked out anyways because I think they thought I was closer to you than I am.

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They offered to deliver it themselves.

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I don't think they realized how far out of a drive that would be, but a phenomenal offer.

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I did not expect anything like that.

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It's blown away by it.

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I do have a rowing machine now and I've been using it a couple times a day.

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Our buddy Josh has one too.

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He texted me.

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I was listening to Bookworm.

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You need to get this one.

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Just don't even look at anything else.

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I'm like, "Well, that's good because it's coming tomorrow."

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-I'm glad you've not changed your mind and said, "Don't ever buy this one."

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He told me, "Don't go hard at the beginning because you're not used to the workouts.

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You will be in really sorry shape the next day if you do it.

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Just stick to five minutes at a time."

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-Sure.

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-That's what I've been doing.

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Five minutes in the morning, part of a morning workout, five minutes in the evening usually.

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It's awesome.

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I love it.

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Never thought I would be a rowing guy, but here I am.

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-I know I've talked to a handful of folks since that episode about rowing.

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People seem to love this thing.

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This thing called rowing.

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I don't understand it, of course.

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You have jumped in head first now.

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I don't get it, but people who are really into it, it seems.

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-It's a pretty phenomenal workout.

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It works a bunch of different muscle groups.

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It burns a ton of calories, and you can put your phone above the little computer sort of

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a thing and watch YouTube videos while you do it.

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Once you build up some endurance anyways, you can get lost in it and it's a really good

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workout in a short amount of time.

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It's also low impact, so it's the opposite of running for me, which is probably a good

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thing.

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Yesterday, I went for a run, and then I came back and I used the rowing machine that just

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about knocked me out for the rest of the day.

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-Nice.

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Do two different types of workouts in the same day, back to back, and pay for it later.

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-Also, while talking to Josh, he convinced me that I should get a kettlebell.

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I have ordered a kettlebell.

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It has not arrived yet, but I know that Jaco is a big fan of the kettlebells.

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In the book, I wasn't sold on it talking to Josh.

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I am.

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There's a 35-pound kettlebell on its way to me.

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I just bought the cheap Amazon Basics one because I'm not sure if I got the right size.

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I'm not sure if I want to get multiples.

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There's some adjustable ones.

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There's lots of different options.

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I was blown away at all the different options that are for kettlebells.

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-There's a ton.

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-It's just a piece of metal with a handle.

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But no, you can get rubberized.

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You can get different coatings.

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Like anything in the fitness world, there have got to be 1200 different versions of every

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hunk of metal that you're going to pick up and throw around.

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-Yep.

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I bought the cheapest one.

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I also bought a pull-up bar.

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So I have this pull-up bar.

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I can put a link to the exact one in the show notes for people who are interested in it.

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It's an iron-age pull-up bar.

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It clips onto the top of a doorframe and then it goes underneath.

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And then there are pads that push into the door at a 90-degree angle.

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So it's not like you're hanging on the top of the doorframe.

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The way that it distributes the force, it's actually pushing against the doorframe itself

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instead of downward you're pushing out if that makes any sense.

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-Sure.

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-So it's kind of crazy.

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It's got a padded bar.

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It's got wide grips.

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You can do a couple different types of pull-ups.

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I have it.

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My office door is closed at the moment because we're recording, but most of the time during

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the day I have that open and I have that bar just hanging there.

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-Sure.

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-It's high enough.

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I'm not going to hit my head on it or anything.

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I'm pretty short.

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But every time I go in and out of my office I do a couple of pull-ups.

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So I don't know what that adds up to.

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10, 20 pull-ups a day.

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-It doesn't matter.

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That's kind of the...

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What is it?

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Bruce Lee used to do that all the time.

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He was always moving, always doing some form of resistance workout almost all day.

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He always had some form of movement that he was doing.

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Obviously did well for him.

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-Yep.

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-I don't think I could argue with that.

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-I'm not Bruce Lee yet anyways.

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-No offense.

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You got some work to do, Mike.

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-It's true.

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-That one will take a while.

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-I'm not sure I ever really aspire to get there.

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-Sure.

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-But I like the adjustments that I've made.

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I feel like this stuff is really going to stick.

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-Sure.

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-Well, let's jump into today's book because I feel like there's a lot of things we could

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say about this.

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So I feel like this is one of those that's going to be at risk of being long.

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So let's dive in.

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So today's book is the organized writer, how to stay on top of all your projects and never

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miss a deadline, Anthony Johnston.

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And the very first thing I have to say about this is he spelled organized wrong.

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-He's British.

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-He's spelled it wrong.

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-He's still spelled it wrong.

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Totally spelled it wrong.

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And then I type it into something.

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It tries to correct it.

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I'm like, "He spelled it wrong."

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Anyway, I digress.

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So yes, this book is one that--

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-I think we need Rosemary Orchard to weigh in on this.

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-For sure.

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I have to say this is not what I expected.

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This is not the book I expected to be reading.

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And I am very conflicted with it at the moment.

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-Really?

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-Yes, I am.

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It's not-- I'll say that so my expectation-- and we'll see how this holds up as we go through

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the recording today-- my expectation that this was going to spend the majority of its

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time talking about how to manage ideas and the documents around writing.

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-So, I mean, this isn't exactly it, but you were thinking more PKM, Zettl Casten, idea

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management as opposed to practical task and calendar stuff.

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-Maybe the thing that I was hoping to get from it is direction on-- if I've got 17 different

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types of written content that I'm working on, what's a good way to keep all of that

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straight?

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And you can extrapolate this into that.

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But it's not point-blank, and I thought it was going to be very point-blank.

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And the whole purpose of the book, it is not.

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I don't think.

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So it is not what I expected.

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I'm curious.

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Did it turn out to be what you expected?

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-Interesting.

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Yeah, it was pretty much exactly what I expected.

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-Okay.

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Interesting.

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-That being said, I disagree with some of the stuff in here.

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-Oh, sure.

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Absolutely.

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Given our background in knowing what's in this book.

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-Yep.

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-Exactly.

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-Absolutely, we're going to disagree.

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-That's kind of thinking.

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He's obviously writing this to a very specific audience.

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Most of the writers I know, I know them because I got connected to them in the productivity

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space.

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So they have the same sort of frame of reference that I do.

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That's kind of how you and I got connected.

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-Yep.

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-But I wonder if the majority of writers, the people that he wrote this for, this is like

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light bulb revelation to them because I found myself, especially in the last part of the

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book when he's talking about the ins and outs of the systems and the different recommendations

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for hardware and software, I'm like, "That is not the best way to do that."

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-Yeah.

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There was a point.

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I was flipping through this book and doing kind of my pre-read process.

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One of the things, I didn't intend to do this.

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I don't normally read this before I read a book, but there's a spot in the back for

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acknowledgments.

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And just by happenstance, my fingers landed on that.

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And the very first full paragraph starts with Merlin Mann and David Allen pave the way

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for, and it doesn't even matter what comes after that.

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I read that and I thought, "Oh no, he's going to do that, isn't he?

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He's going to do that thing where you repeat what other people have said."

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And the fact that he starts with that in his acknowledgments kind of worried me a little

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bit.

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So I came into the book with that concern from the get-go because I had accidentally read

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that at the end.

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It's one of those things I always don't want to do is read the end before you read the

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beginning and I accidentally did it.

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Well, that'll teach you.

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I know.

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I'm avoiding the back of the book from here on out.

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I definitely am.

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So yes, I was a little concerned.

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We'll go through this and I think some of what I'm concerned about will come out.

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But I mentioned as kind of a teaser at the very beginning that there was a comment that

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I think potentially nullifies a lot of things in this book and the comment is on page 5.

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This is in the introduction under a piece for assumptions.

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And one of the assumptions that he makes of the reader of this book is that the reader

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is neurotypical.

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I'm not used to seeing people specifically call that out.

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But I don't think it's a surprise.

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I am not neurotypical.

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What does that even mean?

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It means you're not ADD basically.

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That is a term like I've seen that term all over the place in the world of ADD and it's

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referred to as neurotypicals.

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I think that would be you versus neurodivergence like myself who are now medicated because

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of this.

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But where's the line on the spectrum for neurotypical versus neurodivergent?

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Where's the line?

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Yeah, is it 51% neurodivergent?

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Now you're this?

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I have trouble with that classification.

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I get it.

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Neurotypical basically means like you're the normal person.

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What is normal?

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Correct.

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Not me.

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And it's not really defined anywhere by anybody.

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But I do know if you're really far on one side versus the other, it gets easy if you're

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on one of the ends.

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If you're somewhere close to the middle, I think it can get a little messy.

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But my follow up comment that I wrote in my notebook after that part was, "Well, this

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is off to a good start."

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So I was, "Take what I've just explained."

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I saw the Merlin man David Allen thing at the end, which I love both of them.

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And then I have this neurotypical comment at the very beginning of the book.

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And there are some spots, and I'll probably bring this up as we go through it.

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There's some spots in here where he references how to do certain things from a philosophical

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stance that just would never work for me and for a lot of people, I know.

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So it kind of concerned me in that.

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It's like, okay, yeah, if you can, like if focus and motivation are not an issue for

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you at all, what he's saying is spot on.

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But if those are issues, you need external helps to do the things that he is talking about.

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But they are issues for just about everybody that I know.

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Yeah, it's all, again, it's a spectrum, right?

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So yeah, does that mean that most people that I know are not who he wrote this for?

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Could be.

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I don't know.

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I don't either.

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Yes, I guess I went right over that because it seemed like a ridiculous statement to me

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at the time.

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I'm like, well, let's just see what he has to say.

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Then we'll figure it out.

00:17:15

Yeah, right.

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And that's the way this stuff works too, right?

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Like there are a number of times like you've had things that stand out.

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It's like, you can't say that.

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And I was like, I don't even remember that in there.

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Is that in there?

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Is that in there?

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So yeah, this is where like the whole book thing strikes people very differently, depending

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on where they're at and what's going on.

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Sure.

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Anyway, that one stood out to me.

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It was the only assumption and the only thing in the introduction that I can recall at this

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point just because it was such a big thing to me.

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So yes, the one thing I want to point out here before we jump into the three parts of

00:17:50

a book because him being a writer, of course, he needs to have a three part book because

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that's what all editors want.

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Apparently he does call out in the introduction that he used everything in this book to write

00:18:01

this book.

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And I tend to appreciate whenever authors will say that because then it's not like, here's

00:18:08

the thing you should do, but I didn't do it.

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So it is encouraging that he did follow through on that.

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Do as I say, not as I do.

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Right.

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Right.

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So as not a fan of that.

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Totally.

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You are being disingenuous.

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Yep.

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All right.

00:18:27

So the three parts, part one is get organized.

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It's kind of talking about the concepts, I guess.

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Well, a little bit more than concepts of what the process of getting organized is.

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Part two is write, which I don't have a whole lot for us on the outline from that one because

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it seems fairly straightforward.

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Part three, non-writing stuff.

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This is where things will be interesting.

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Yes.

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The part that I'm not so sure should even be in the book, I think is where we'll end

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up spending a decent amount of time.

00:19:00

Well, yeah.

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So the get organized part, that's kind of where he's talking about the foundations of

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the system.

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Then part two, right, that's really where there's not a whole lot to be said, other

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than to share the steps that he goes through when he's writing.

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And then part three, and he mentions this in part three that this could be grouped with

00:19:30

the first part, but you need to understand the why before you dive into the house.

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So I think that makes a lot of sense, honestly.

00:19:41

Yeah.

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He also recommends that once you get through reading it, you immediately go back and read

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it again, which I did not do.

00:19:51

No, I did not either.

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I do think because of the way it's laid out that that's not necessarily terrible advice,

00:20:00

because those two parts, part one and part three could be grouped together.

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I get why he split him apart, but if you were to follow his advice and go back and reread

00:20:09

it again, you would probably get more strong connections between those parts and why he's

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recommending certain tools and setting things up a certain way when it's right next to part

00:20:22

one, if that makes sense.

00:20:24

Yep.

00:20:25

And it would make sense too, because you can kind of go through the why and the concepts

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here in part one, you get to the end where you're implementing this process and system,

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and then you can go back and it'll make more sense once you have things in place.

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That's a very GTD thing.

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David Allen says that all the time.

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Yeah.

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It's like, read the book, put the system in place, and then read the book again.

00:20:50

Yep.

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Be able to pick out all the stuff that you didn't understand in the process of building

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your system.

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And this is very David Allen-esque in the approach of constructing the system, because

00:21:02

he has very specific things and very specific ways for you to do things.

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He's got a two day process in part three, where you empty out everything from your office

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and you put things back in a specific order to build this system.

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That's totally what I picture David Allen's coaching looking like.

00:21:25

He's just got this checklist in his head and he's done it so many times that he shows up

00:21:29

in somebody's office and he's like, "All right, take everything off.

00:21:32

Okay.

00:21:33

Now put this back and then put this back and then put this back."

00:21:35

And he's walking people through these simple decisions that he's done millions of times

00:21:40

and the fact that he's helping people, holding their hand as they go through it for the first

00:21:44

time, they're just like, "This is amazing."

00:21:47

Yep.

00:21:48

Yep.

00:21:49

So let's jump into part one here, get organized.

00:21:54

And there are, I don't think I have all of them.

00:21:57

Maybe I do have all of them.

00:21:58

I don't have chapter one here.

00:21:59

It's just fasten your seatbelts.

00:22:01

He's just prepping you for what's coming in.

00:22:04

I want to jump in here, Mike, and chapter two.

00:22:06

Real quick though with that fasten your seatbelt, because fasten, that is his system in the

00:22:11

nutshell.

00:22:12

Sure.

00:22:13

So fasten stands for filing, assistance, say no, time, equipment, and notes.

00:22:20

And why he has that at the beginning?

00:22:23

Having read the rest of the book, I'm not really sure.

00:22:25

It makes an appearance back at the end.

00:22:28

But I quickly forgot that that was in there until I went back and looked at my mind node

00:22:33

file.

00:22:34

I even forgot about it until just this moment.

00:22:36

So I was like, "I don't really want to..."

00:22:39

It's just, it's all prep work.

00:22:40

There's nothing really there worth talking about.

00:22:42

Now that you stopped me and explained, "Oh yeah, that is his foundation."

00:22:46

That's his thing.

00:22:48

Like that's his own personal stamp on this stuff.

00:22:51

Otherwise a lot of this is just advice that you've heard before if you are coming from

00:22:56

it through the productivity lens that we are.

00:22:59

And you pick up a couple of specific workflow types of tweaks that you could do based on

00:23:06

his writing experience.

00:23:08

Right.

00:23:09

Right.

00:23:10

Okay, so where I was trying to go, chapter two, clocking in and out, this is kind of

00:23:16

a section where he has some principles on how to operate in a number of areas.

00:23:26

He covers them fairly quickly, which I think is good.

00:23:31

But from a fairly high level, and yet there's some practical stuff in here.

00:23:37

And let me just read some of the sub-headers here, and it'll give you an idea of what

00:23:42

we're talking about.

00:23:43

So a day in the life, use your calendar, multiple projects in one day, get smart with

00:23:50

email, use a task manager, learn to say no, work to a quantity, not time, productive procrastination,

00:23:59

invest the time to set up your system, organize your personal life.

00:24:03

Again, organize a spell wrong.

00:24:05

And in the midst of this, I wrote down a few of these that I want to walk through, but

00:24:12

there's a lot in this little chapter.

00:24:15

I shouldn't say a little chapter.

00:24:16

It's 58 pages in this one chapter.

00:24:19

That's another thing that kind of bugged me about this book is the chapters are crazy

00:24:23

different in terms of length.

00:24:25

They are all over.

00:24:27

What was the chapter one is eight pages.

00:24:33

Chapter two is 58 pages.

00:24:36

So it's all over the place.

00:24:38

Chapter five is 14.

00:24:40

It's just all over.

00:24:42

So there is no real consistency in that.

00:24:44

But I don't know.

00:24:45

That doesn't really bother me a whole lot.

00:24:47

Some people, I'm sure it bugs.

00:24:48

It doesn't really bother me in terms of reading it, but it feels a little bit disjointed.

00:24:54

It's not like I guess when I read, I get into a bit of a rhythm or cadence based on what

00:25:04

the author is doing at the beginning of the book.

00:25:07

And it was impossible for me to land in that.

00:25:11

You know where I don't have, I'm going to read X number of pages today.

00:25:17

I just sit down and read at the end of the day.

00:25:20

And if I'm really digging it, I'll keep reading.

00:25:25

Usually one of the points where I make that decision about whether I'm going to keep reading

00:25:29

is at the end of a chapter.

00:25:31

And so with this one, I'm like, I'm done with the chapter.

00:25:34

Should I keep going?

00:25:35

Well, I better flip ahead because the next chapter might be five pages or it might be

00:25:40

55 pages.

00:25:42

And I don't really like leaving off in the middle of a thought.

00:25:46

I like, and there are different sections in this chapter.

00:25:51

Like you mentioned, task management, calendar management, all that kind of stuff.

00:25:54

So you could cut it off at that point and not lose something when you come back to it the

00:25:59

next day.

00:26:01

But it feels weird doing that when you don't know exactly what is going to be coming.

00:26:06

And I feel like it was impossible to predict with this book.

00:26:10

Yeah, I do that too.

00:26:12

I wait until I get to the end of a section before all, quit reading, and it bugs me if

00:26:16

I have to stop.

00:26:17

And there's a middle of a page or something.

00:26:20

Yeah.

00:26:21

Wait, but that means I'm going to have to reread the last three paragraphs when I come

00:26:24

back to it.

00:26:25

Yeah.

00:26:26

Totally like that.

00:26:27

And if I get interrupted during the day, kids need something.

00:26:31

I'll put my bookmark in the book and I'll close it.

00:26:34

I don't really care.

00:26:35

But when I'm going to go to bed at night, when I'm going from one day to the next, I

00:26:40

want to have a solid endpoint there where I can clearly pick it up and start something

00:26:47

new without having to go back and read those paragraphs because what I'm about to read

00:26:52

is dependent on what they just said.

00:26:54

Right.

00:26:55

The first of these sections that I want to cover is calendaring.

00:26:58

I think that's one of the tenants of his system here.

00:27:03

And this particular little subsection is 15 pages, which is longer than some of his

00:27:10

papers.

00:27:11

And the premise of what he's getting at here is putting it onto your calendar, what writing

00:27:17

project you're working on right now.

00:27:19

And I want to point out getting to this particular point, this book is more geared for long form

00:27:26

writing, like book level writing.

00:27:31

And my sense is the type of writing that you and I do, you can translate what he's talking

00:27:36

about here.

00:27:39

But like in my case, if I'm writing an article, generally it's one day, like I'm going to

00:27:43

outline it that morning, I'm going to write the rough draft sometime in the day and I'm

00:27:47

going to publish it that afternoon.

00:27:49

Like that is my writing process, which does not fit what he's doing here because he has

00:27:56

multiple weeks that he'll block off on his calendar for a given project, which is fine.

00:28:03

If you're writing a long project like he's doing, and my question to you is, are you able

00:28:11

to calendar writing projects like this?

00:28:15

Or do you have to do something much different?

00:28:17

Because I have to do something very different.

00:28:19

I can't do what he's doing.

00:28:21

I'm probably in between you two, to be honest, because the things that I am writing, I do

00:28:28

know weeks ahead of time, this is what I'm going to be writing.

00:28:32

And I will work on it for an extended period of time.

00:28:34

The difference is that that isn't the only thing that I am going to be working on.

00:28:39

In the past week and a half, I worked on and published an update to the best habit tracking

00:28:45

app pick for the suite setup, post on the Streak 6.1 update, which has some really cool

00:28:53

stats widgets and was prepping for and presented a habits webinar.

00:28:57

So I prefer when all of those things are related because I can do research and it can translate

00:29:02

to different places.

00:29:03

But they are not always related to the same topic.

00:29:05

And so I do have to slot these things in in order to make sure that the content schedule

00:29:12

continues to move forward.

00:29:15

But I do think that there is a lot of value in his approach.

00:29:20

Essentially what he's talking about with this is time blocking.

00:29:24

It's just he's blocking off time for one project per day.

00:29:28

And I'm doing it for probably two or three projects per day.

00:29:31

Sure.

00:29:32

Yeah, because he does have the section here, multiple projects in one day.

00:29:36

Yep.

00:29:37

And talks about how that's not a normal thing if you want to be successful and that you

00:29:42

should really be doing just one.

00:29:43

Well, I guess I'm not a successful writer then.

00:29:46

At least not at his scale, no, but I don't see that as something I'm going to pursue just

00:29:55

because the size of projects that we're talking about, both you and I are much, much smaller

00:30:00

than what he's referencing.

00:30:02

Yeah, there is a lot of stuff in this chapter though where he is spot on with how I write.

00:30:10

One of the things you mentioned on page 25 is just because we're not typing doesn't

00:30:14

mean we're not working.

00:30:16

That totally applies to me.

00:30:18

A lot of the stuff that I write, it's not here's a technical breakdown of all of the features

00:30:24

in a specific application.

00:30:27

I prefer to figure out what is the best way to use it and then teach people the workflow

00:30:34

for how to implement that thing or why you should use this specific app because it's

00:30:38

going to create a positive outcome in your life based on what you define as a positive

00:30:43

interaction with your technology, not just default to consuming, but using it for creating

00:30:49

is one random example.

00:30:51

Sure.

00:30:52

And he also says that contextual lists don't always make sense for writers because you

00:30:56

always have your tools with you at your desk.

00:30:58

And I feel like this is kind of hitting on one of my problems with GTD and typical task

00:31:05

management is that the context are kind of worthless.

00:31:11

I think it would make sense if you were working in an office and you were trying to do something

00:31:17

on the side, then maybe you've got like work, studio, home, whatever, like those different

00:31:24

contexts, but the contexts are really for me dependent on my energy levels and really

00:31:34

just what I'm inspired by at the moment, which even sounds really terrible when I describe

00:31:41

it because if you were to wait till you feel inspired to write like you're never going to

00:31:45

write, but basically what I'm excited about, that's the thing that I should be writing

00:31:50

about.

00:31:51

I'm going to pick my projects so they are in line with the thing that I'm excited about

00:31:55

at the moment because that's the easiest way for me to constantly be thinking about these

00:31:59

things when I'm not writing and I'm making these connections and figuring out, well,

00:32:03

what if I did this, trying that stuff out and then sharing what I've learned through

00:32:09

the writing process.

00:32:11

But I don't think he provided a very clear explanation of what I should be doing instead.

00:32:18

Yeah.

00:32:19

So, I guess I'm going to continue to write by deadlines, which is kind of what he mentions

00:32:24

the most writers do, just stay ahead of your deadlines, which is why he's recommending

00:32:28

putting them on your calendar.

00:32:32

But I don't think I'm going to take his approach of time blocking on the calendar for this

00:32:38

is my project that I'm going to be working on this week because I'm not going to devote

00:32:42

an entire week to one specific project.

00:32:45

I can't do that and I'm much better off day to day time blocking my day and saying, "I'm

00:32:50

going to work on the webinar for two hours here tomorrow because I know typically in

00:32:55

the morning that that's when I'm most excited to be doing this stuff.

00:32:59

And so if I can kind of align my motivation and my energy with the test that I've got,

00:33:03

save the admin stuff for the afternoon, that kind of thing, then I'm going to get a lot

00:33:07

further.

00:33:08

It is impossible for me to really do any form of time blocking or calendering of projects

00:33:15

like he's referring to.

00:33:18

This morning is a good example.

00:33:20

Like, one of the concepts we'll talk about in the next part when we get theirs writing

00:33:25

immediately in the morning.

00:33:27

And I had intentions of doing some of that this morning and ended up needing to help

00:33:34

install a TV in a classroom.

00:33:38

And that is not what I expected to be doing.

00:33:40

I came back from that to resume my intention and had to go help someone else with an email

00:33:46

problem.

00:33:47

Then I had a network problem and then the writing never happened.

00:33:52

And that is a fairly common experience for me.

00:33:57

So some of what is predicated with this book is you have full control over your schedule

00:34:08

for the most part.

00:34:09

Even people who have full control over the schedule have meetings with superiors and

00:34:14

such that come up that they can't control.

00:34:17

So that stuff does happen.

00:34:19

Mine is simply significantly higher than what his is.

00:34:25

So that foundation is so different that it's impossible for me to do that sort of thing.

00:34:33

I can do a lot of calendering when it comes to meetings and events.

00:34:37

That one I can do.

00:34:40

But when it comes to blocking time for me to do things, it doesn't really work.

00:34:46

Unless I have somebody else involved with the work that I'm doing, it has the opportunity

00:34:51

of being interrupted by someone else just by the nature of the job that I do.

00:34:57

So saying that, I think if I was in his shoes, if I had a bunch, I shouldn't say a bunch.

00:35:05

If I have one to two, maybe three big projects, writing projects that I was working on, and

00:35:10

that is where my income was derived, this system would probably work really well.

00:35:16

I don't think I would argue with that as far as this calendering piece goes.

00:35:21

But I can't do it.

00:35:23

That's all I'm saying.

00:35:24

I don't know anyone who could, to be honest.

00:35:29

Not the people in the circles that we run in anyways.

00:35:32

There are probably people who can, and maybe he means to write this for that very specific

00:35:40

audience.

00:35:42

But that's not exactly what I anticipated when I saw this book making the rounds and

00:35:47

people talking about it on social media and stuff like that.

00:35:50

The people who were raving about it were in that other category where, kind of like you,

00:35:56

they don't have complete control over their entire day and they're not working on one

00:35:59

thing at a time.

00:36:01

So there is a little bit of a mismatch there, I feel like going into it in terms of the

00:36:05

expectations.

00:36:06

I don't think it's irreconcilable.

00:36:08

I think you can take pieces of it, but you're right that you can't probably just follow

00:36:13

it to the letter like he's telling you to, but it's written like you're supposed to follow

00:36:18

it to the letter like he's telling you to.

00:36:21

I want to read, I want to move on to email, but I want to read the beginning of this section

00:36:28

on email because I'm about to trigger Mike.

00:36:33

All right, here you go.

00:36:35

You ready for this?

00:36:36

An email arrives.

00:36:38

You read it and realize it contains some form of request or instruction that means you

00:36:43

now have one or more new tasks to carry out.

00:36:47

What do you do?

00:36:48

If you're an organized writer, you mark it unread and move on to the next email.

00:36:56

This is how the section on email begins.

00:37:00

And then he then proceeds to explain how you set aside time to deal with these unread

00:37:07

emails and complete these actions and to use your inbox explicitly explains how to use

00:37:14

your inbox as a task list.

00:37:18

Yeah, I remember that part.

00:37:21

I read this and I thought, huh, I bet Mike is going to adopt this 100%.

00:37:27

I am sure he will.

00:37:30

When it comes to being organized, he is terribly disorganized regarding email.

00:37:36

He has three broad categories of email, but there are four things that you can.

00:37:44

Do with it.

00:37:45

You can read an archive.

00:37:47

You can deal with it now.

00:37:48

You can deal with it later or you can ignore and delete.

00:37:51

Also skip ahead to the back of the book and look at his recommended email software applications.

00:37:58

There is one Gmail on the web.

00:38:01

Okay, so.

00:38:02

Isn't the appendix is this?

00:38:03

No, this is chapter.

00:38:05

Oh, that's what you're talking about.

00:38:07

Yeah, I'm with you.

00:38:08

He goes through all the different types of categories.

00:38:11

I wrote down all of the apps that he recommends.

00:38:15

Note takers, he talks about notes, one note, simple note, Google keep, calendar, calendar,

00:38:20

fantastic.

00:38:21

Cal, which he spells wrong.

00:38:22

Busy Cal.

00:38:23

What?

00:38:24

Yeah, he spells it with a capital C. Fantastic.

00:38:28

Cal.

00:38:29

Oh, he totally did.

00:38:32

Yeah.

00:38:33

And then he gets into spreadsheets, local and cloud, backup and archiving.

00:38:39

And most of these recommendations, I can tell there's some that he has used and he's putting

00:38:46

them in here.

00:38:47

And then he's just trying to cover all of his bases.

00:38:49

He grabs a couple windows recommendations from a Google search and throws them on the

00:38:53

list.

00:38:54

I hate these types of lists.

00:38:57

They are worthless.

00:39:00

But look at the email app section.

00:39:03

He's like, there's lots of email apps out there.

00:39:05

I just use Gmail on the web.

00:39:07

Okay.

00:39:08

This is not the person to be listening to when it comes to how to handle an abundance of

00:39:14

email.

00:39:15

I got a kick out of it.

00:39:18

This section on email though, like I am not, I am not good about maintaining in box zero.

00:39:27

The way it's been interpreted.

00:39:28

It's not the way you see it out there.

00:39:31

Even the way he explains it here is not the way Merlin man intended it.

00:39:35

That's a story for another day.

00:39:37

But I don't follow the processing of getting inbox zero.

00:39:43

I tend to leave things there from time to time.

00:39:48

But that's partially because I don't need the email now.

00:39:51

I don't need to act on it right now.

00:39:53

But I will in four days.

00:39:55

And the easiest thing for me to do is just leave it in the inbox and then four days later

00:39:59

when I'm done with it, then I deal with it.

00:40:01

That's, that's what I do.

00:40:02

So I regularly have 30, 40 emails sitting in that inbox.

00:40:06

It's completely fine.

00:40:08

But very rarely are they unread.

00:40:10

Well, that isn't completely fine.

00:40:12

They're not unread.

00:40:14

I don't mark them unread and move on.

00:40:16

I just know that they're there and I go back to them when I need them.

00:40:20

Yeah.

00:40:21

So you're, you're an organized writer then.

00:40:23

Totally.

00:40:24

I'm good at this.

00:40:26

Uh, yeah, I, I think when it comes to inbox zero, there's a lot of misconceptions about

00:40:33

it and if I were to give people one piece of advice when it comes to email, it is do

00:40:38

email on your own terms.

00:40:40

So you don't have to get to zero messages every day.

00:40:45

Uh, and in fact, that is not what I do.

00:40:48

But once a week, I clear everything out and that's going to tick some people off.

00:40:55

I have a request in my email.

00:40:58

Currently, it's not staying in my email.

00:41:02

It's a task inside of Rome at the moment, but there it is.

00:41:07

To present that at a Mac user group.

00:41:11

Okay.

00:41:12

Well, I didn't see that email for a week because it's not coming from a sender that

00:41:15

I had interacted with before.

00:41:17

And I'm sorry, but if you want an instant response to an email like that, then I'm not

00:41:24

sure guy and be okay with that.

00:41:26

You know, that's something I do want to do.

00:41:28

I would love to present to that group.

00:41:32

And I love contributing to the Apple community.

00:41:35

It's been a really cool place for me.

00:41:37

It's given me a lot.

00:41:39

So I feel like I want to give back and I feel like I could do a good job and I could help

00:41:45

out the folks that are a part of that group and whatever topics, you know, they, they

00:41:48

had presented.

00:41:50

But if you're trying to nail it down and get some details from me right away, then I've

00:41:55

got other things that are more important.

00:41:57

And that's one of the things you mentioned here is that you don't owe strangers a reply.

00:42:03

You may want to reply to everybody like that, but ultimately they are still a stranger at

00:42:09

this point, you know, or at least they're not a prioritized individual.

00:42:16

David Sparks and I talked about this on focus not too long ago about the input workflows

00:42:21

and where do all the inputs come from an email is a big one.

00:42:24

And we actually walked through like how we deal with the inputs and all these different

00:42:27

areas.

00:42:28

And there was a common theme when it came to me is like, well, I'm going to be annoying

00:42:32

to people who aren't part of my circle, but I'm going to check it on my terms and I'll

00:42:36

get back to you when I feel like.

00:42:40

And I feel that comes across even in a podcast like this as a little bit people maybe are

00:42:46

offended that, well, Mike can get away with that, but I can't.

00:42:51

But I think everybody can move a little bit more in that direction.

00:42:55

We have this picture in our heads a lot of times of like, I don't want to let anybody

00:42:59

down and I want to be looking for those new opportunities all the time.

00:43:05

And I don't want to miss something.

00:43:09

And so you compulsively go check to see if there is something new there, but there is

00:43:15

a lot of value in just saying no to the things that you don't know are there and focusing

00:43:19

on the thing that you do know you need to do, which is kind of part of his fastened system,

00:43:25

but he doesn't talk a whole lot about that.

00:43:26

Say no part.

00:43:27

You'll probably be upset with me for this, but I do tend to leave my email open all day

00:43:32

anymore.

00:43:34

Some accounts and not others.

00:43:37

So there are probably three different levels of accounts for me.

00:43:41

Some that I check only once a week.

00:43:43

I don't leave those open all day every day.

00:43:45

I have some of my like online based emails that I'll run through maybe once or twice

00:43:51

a day, but my day job work I have open all day.

00:43:57

Now I say that and yet the way that I use my computer, I usually can't see it and I

00:44:02

don't have alerts on.

00:44:04

So if I'm working on something, I have no idea if an email came in.

00:44:08

It's not like I've got it over on the corner of a monitor and can see it at all times.

00:44:12

I even have I've been playing around, I've got a stream deck that I've been using from

00:44:16

Elgato and I have a button on there that I put on that's hide others.

00:44:20

If you're familiar with this, if you go like on a Mac, if you go up and hit whatever the

00:44:24

program is and go down, you can hide others like everything but that program.

00:44:29

I love to do that, especially if I'm writing on something or working on a presentation or

00:44:33

something.

00:44:34

The stuff is still open.

00:44:35

I just can't find it like it's not visible to me.

00:44:38

So I do tend to have it open but it's usually not right in front of me.

00:44:43

But I would easily say I check it 10, 12 times a day.

00:44:47

But that's partially because then I would argue that the hide all isn't working.

00:44:53

Sure, sure.

00:44:54

But keep in mind like I'm moving around so much.

00:44:59

For example this morning, I probably checked it seven or eight times.

00:45:02

But that was because I had a lot of things that were in between.

00:45:05

I'm waiting on some information to be able to finish some stuff I've got to have done

00:45:09

for two days from now.

00:45:10

So I was like, is it here yet?

00:45:13

Can I go do that task yet?

00:45:14

Nope, it's not.

00:45:15

Okay, I'll go on to the next thing.

00:45:17

So like that's a lot of what I have going on if I've got a funeral tomorrow that I'm

00:45:22

running tech for.

00:45:24

Generally I'm waiting on a bank of pictures, lyrics, all sorts of stuff.

00:45:29

I'm waiting for stuff and that all comes in via email from people I don't know.

00:45:33

So that's a lot of why.

00:45:35

But if, for example, if I'm doing editing on a video project, it's not uncommon for me

00:45:42

to be there two and a half, three hours on that and never have anything else open.

00:45:47

Those days I'd probably check it maybe twice.

00:45:50

So it changes.

00:45:52

It depends on the day.

00:45:53

Which is really the problem because the days that are nuts are the days when you're

00:45:59

not finding the time to sit down and write because your brain is already constantly

00:46:05

used to jumping from one emergency to the next.

00:46:10

And as soon as you get done with one, you're like, well, I better go check my email and

00:46:13

see if there's something else.

00:46:14

And at that point it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

00:46:17

Well, what do you know?

00:46:18

There's something else that I should be dealing with right now.

00:46:20

That's the difference.

00:46:21

It's not like I'm not checking it to see if there's something else.

00:46:24

It's if I've got the thing I need to do a different task because I regularly will find

00:46:29

new emails in there that I just don't even bother opening whenever I do that.

00:46:32

So if new emails come, I usually don't pay any attention to them until I need them or

00:46:39

I have time later on.

00:46:40

It's only when I'm waiting on things, but that happens a lot.

00:46:43

But also keep in mind, yes, I'm jumping from fire to fire, but that's my job.

00:46:48

Yep, no, I get that.

00:46:50

And I'm not trying to paint this as like Joe's fault, but this is the human's, the general

00:46:55

humans problem.

00:46:57

Yep.

00:46:58

Is that the crazier things get, the more you are in reactive fight versus flight mode.

00:47:07

So the thing that leads to that is also the thing that you gravitate towards when things

00:47:13

get a little bit nuts.

00:47:15

If you were able to disconnect from your email on those days that you've gone from one emergency

00:47:24

that you got to fix, the next emergency that you got to fix, eventually those emergencies

00:47:28

that you got to fix are going to be done.

00:47:31

And at that point, you might have the time for your writing, but the average person at

00:47:36

that point is like, well, I better go check my email.

00:47:39

And at that point, you see a whole bunch of things that are urgent to other people.

00:47:43

And it's very easy to say, well, I don't want to be the guy that no one can rely on.

00:47:47

So I'll just do this right now.

00:47:50

And then you do that again, and you do it again, and you do it again.

00:47:52

Pretty soon, the entire day is gone.

00:47:54

And you didn't get to your writing.

00:47:56

But here's the other key to, and I'll point this out, because I've done this sort of thing

00:48:00

long enough to know how to handle email, in my opinion, appropriately for me, in that

00:48:08

if it's an emergency, they're not sending me an email.

00:48:13

I've done this long enough that if it's a true emergency, they're not emailing me.

00:48:17

They've called me.

00:48:18

They've come found me.

00:48:19

They have done something because if they email me about an emergency, they know they can't

00:48:25

rely on a quick response for that, because there are days when I get focused on working

00:48:32

on a couple of things.

00:48:34

Maybe I'm doing some writing.

00:48:35

Maybe I'm doing some video work.

00:48:37

Maybe I'm recording with somebody.

00:48:39

And it's going to be the next day before you get a response from me.

00:48:44

So I've told people over and over again, if you need a quick thing from me, call me,

00:48:49

come find me.

00:48:50

Do not email me.

00:48:51

So they know that.

00:48:52

So I know that I don't generally have fires that need to put out in my email.

00:48:57

So I'm never going to be the one who's solving a problem when someone else could, if it's

00:49:01

an email.

00:49:03

But that's not necessarily something that everyone listening to this is going to be

00:49:07

able to have.

00:49:09

Like that's all whole mindset and culture that I've kind of built around how do you

00:49:13

work with Joe and have been working on that for years.

00:49:17

So it's not something that I could just say, you can just do this too.

00:49:20

It takes time to kind of build that up around all the people who work with you.

00:49:26

So it's making sense.

00:49:27

Yep.

00:49:28

And that's a worthwhile discussion if it needs to be had.

00:49:35

Have that talk about this is how you work with me.

00:49:39

But I would argue everyone should think about how they can move that needle in the direction

00:49:45

that they want it to go.

00:49:48

Because it's easy to just default to whatever anybody else is doing.

00:49:55

If you have to go back and forth with somebody about a file that they're sharing with you

00:49:59

for a funeral tomorrow, you can say, because there's going to be some back and forth on

00:50:06

this and you're going to want some immediate feedback, here's my cell number, text me.

00:50:13

That's exactly right.

00:50:14

Yeah.

00:50:15

That's exactly what I do.

00:50:16

Constantly check the email.

00:50:17

I wonder if they send it yet.

00:50:18

I wonder if they send it yet.

00:50:19

I wonder if they send it yet.

00:50:20

And I know that you do that kind of stuff, but most people don't.

00:50:26

Yeah.

00:50:27

Yeah.

00:50:28

If it's multiple days out or like if it's on a deadline, for example, take the funeral

00:50:33

example, which this is kind of morbid to be talking about a funeral.

00:50:37

I probably shouldn't have said it that way.

00:50:39

But it's very common for me to three or four days prior to that moment.

00:50:46

I've gotten an email from the family.

00:50:49

I know what their expectation is of the end result, but they have a lot of questions around

00:50:57

what file formats, what method do I get it to you?

00:51:01

Do I need to drop off a thumb drive?

00:51:02

Can I send you a link?

00:51:03

They have all kinds of questions.

00:51:04

And rightly so.

00:51:05

They've never worked with me in that sense.

00:51:07

So they don't know what to do.

00:51:09

I always just, here's my phone number.

00:51:11

Call me.

00:51:12

We can talk through this whenever it's convenient for you.

00:51:14

Call me whenever it's convenient for you.

00:51:16

And I will do what I can to help you as best I can.

00:51:19

I generally get a phone call within 20 minutes.

00:51:22

And we talk it through.

00:51:24

I tell them, I got to have it sometime morning of or the day before preferably so I can set

00:51:30

it up before the event.

00:51:33

And it's that day or the day before that I'm like, I've checked in with them.

00:51:40

They know they're sending it to me, but I don't have it yet.

00:51:42

And I'm going to be leaving in two hours.

00:51:45

And I need this file so I can go work on it now or I'm going to have to come in early

00:51:48

the next day to do it.

00:51:50

That's the moment that I'm generally checking more often than not.

00:51:55

Sure.

00:51:56

Yeah, that makes sense.

00:51:58

Anyway, email.

00:51:59

Don't trust this guy's email methods.

00:52:03

I don't agree with it.

00:52:04

I mean, there's a lot of things that I do that are what he's talking about that are

00:52:10

bad.

00:52:11

I'm not arguing with that.

00:52:14

But I generally have a lot of background to where mine's a little different than normal,

00:52:22

even different than what he's explaining.

00:52:24

Anyway, anything else you want to say about email?

00:52:26

I'm like, no, let's go on to the next topic, which is maybe just as bad.

00:52:30

That's bad.

00:52:31

That's just bad.

00:52:32

Yes, task management.

00:52:34

And his favorite task manager is things.

00:52:38

He's a things fan.

00:52:40

And it made me hurt a little bit when he said that Omni focus was too much for him.

00:52:45

It is.

00:52:46

It is.

00:52:47

I totally get where he's coming from.

00:52:50

He's absolutely right in the appeal of something like things.

00:52:54

That being said, things is not the task manager that I would just blanket recommend for every

00:52:59

single writer.

00:53:01

That the reasons that he likes it are absolutely spot on and they've done a phenomenal job

00:53:05

of making a beautiful application that doesn't feel complicated with Omni focus, even though

00:53:14

it doesn't have to be complicated, it still feels complicated a lot of times because you

00:53:19

got to understand some of the killer features that it has, like the review thing.

00:53:24

There is no review in things.

00:53:28

Every somebody like Anthony Johnson, that's completely fine.

00:53:32

GTD, Beerus are going to bock at that, but is what it is.

00:53:38

I like his differentiation here between the task manager and the to do list though.

00:53:44

The Sean Blanc described this in all the things course as the brain versus the list.

00:53:49

And I thought this was absolutely genius.

00:53:50

And this is kind of what I've done with keeping everything inside a room and then writing

00:53:54

it out on my notebook every single day when I plan my day the night before is the task

00:54:02

manager.

00:54:03

Basically, that's the piece that's using all the fancy stuff to help you identify.

00:54:10

These are the things that you should be thinking about for tomorrow.

00:54:16

And I would recommend that you do this the night before, not the day of.

00:54:19

I don't think he made that distinction, but that's a really important point.

00:54:22

And then you jot everything down into a list.

00:54:25

And that's basically a short temporary checklist of things that you're going to be doing.

00:54:31

This has been really great for me.

00:54:33

And I know that there are ways to do this inside of a task manager, but separating those

00:54:37

two has kind of been transformational for me in the way that I get stuff done.

00:54:43

Feels a lot better to work this way, in my opinion.

00:54:47

So I think this approach makes a lot of sense and people should think about this.

00:54:51

Yeah, this kind of for a lot of people, this is interpreted into a hybrid system.

00:54:57

I think yours is the same where your to-do list is on paper and the task manager handles

00:55:04

kind of the cold storage of, if you will, of projects.

00:55:08

He does point out that a paper-based system like this is not worth your time because you

00:55:12

have to carry a notebook with you everywhere.

00:55:14

And then he talks about later about how he carries a notebook with him everywhere.

00:55:17

I'm like, what gives?

00:55:18

He specifically calls out bullet journals like don't do that.

00:55:22

He does.

00:55:23

Yeah, I was like, buzz off.

00:55:26

But anyway, so I of course took exception with that.

00:55:31

But I get his point.

00:55:32

I get what he's saying.

00:55:34

It sinks in the cloud.

00:55:35

It always backs up.

00:55:36

It's like all these things.

00:55:38

But I don't have to charge my bullet journal.

00:55:39

I will say.

00:55:40

Anyway, he does talk quite a bit about task management.

00:55:45

I don't know what else to say about it other than he just encourages you to keep track

00:55:50

of things in some form.

00:55:53

Like that's ultimately what he's getting at here, which I think all of us would agree

00:55:58

with, given knowledge-based work in any form.

00:56:02

The work isn't visible in front of you, so trying to keep track of it becomes necessary.

00:56:08

Yeah, I agree.

00:56:10

I do think that this task manager versus to-do list or the brain versus the list, that becomes

00:56:16

even more important when you add additional projects and you're not able to just pick

00:56:20

one thing to work on every day like he recommends.

00:56:24

So I think he doesn't get into a lot of details here because his needs are pretty basic.

00:56:29

But the format that he's talking about here, I think is important as you scale the number

00:56:35

of things that you're trying to get done.

00:56:36

The next section here is work to a quantity, not time.

00:56:42

And this one's very straightforward as far as what he needs.

00:56:45

He's talking about set an amount of writing that you're going to do.

00:56:50

Don't set the amount of time you're going to work on something.

00:56:53

So instead of saying, "I'm going to spend two hours working on this project," say, "I'm

00:56:58

going to write 1500 words on this project."

00:57:01

And I get that.

00:57:03

I do, too much of my time is time-based, of course.

00:57:08

So I don't know how I would do that because it's very different.

00:57:14

Sometimes it's scripting, sometimes it's outline, sometimes it is an article.

00:57:18

And they're very different in the amount of time that it takes to complete the entirety

00:57:22

of the project.

00:57:24

And I know roughly how long that will take me to do.

00:57:29

I don't disagree with him.

00:57:30

If I was writing a novel, I would absolutely do this.

00:57:34

I'm going to put 1500 words on the document every day until it's done.

00:57:41

I would totally do that.

00:57:43

If I had the ability to set my schedule and dictate it like that, I would totally do

00:57:48

it.

00:57:49

But again, in my personal life, I don't think that's going to fit real well.

00:57:54

Well, you may not disagree with him, but I will.

00:57:58

All right, fair enough.

00:58:00

So I agree that this is a good approach.

00:58:03

If you are a professional writer who can charge large sums for your writing, you are

00:58:09

not worried about finances and you are not worried about how long something takes.

00:58:16

Basically, if you have unlimited resources, this is a great approach.

00:58:21

Most people do not have unlimited resources.

00:58:24

And so I think this is dangerous.

00:58:28

My own personal experience, the thing that got me into what I'm doing today, was establishing

00:58:36

a writing habit.

00:58:37

I literally just did a webinar yesterday as we recorded this on habits.

00:58:41

One of the things that I told people when it comes to developing habits and writing may

00:58:46

very well be a habit for somebody who works a nine to five, but they want to write something

00:58:51

on the side, that's a great way to do it.

00:58:54

You establish a writing habit.

00:58:55

The number one tip I would give that person, don't pay attention to how many words you're

00:59:00

writing show up every day.

00:59:03

That's the only thing that matters.

00:59:04

Did you write at all?

00:59:06

That's what matters.

00:59:08

When I was writing my book, I got up early and spent an hour a day before I went into

00:59:15

the office writing and I was not worried about word counts.

00:59:20

Had I been worried about word counts?

00:59:22

Now all of a sudden, each one of those writing sessions, I have either succeeded or I have

00:59:27

failed because I have to stop at a specific time.

00:59:32

I'm agreeing with you that when you have to work within a specific timeframe, this doesn't

00:59:39

work, but I also think that for the majority of people, that's going to be the way to do

00:59:45

it anyways.

00:59:46

Just did you check the box on making an effort to do the thing, not keeping track of your

00:59:52

prolific output?

00:59:54

There is a switch that gets flipped there when this is the sole thing that you do for

01:00:00

a living.

01:00:01

If you're trying to work on one specific project, like a novel and you have all day, every day

01:00:07

to do this, then yeah, I probably would take the approach that he takes.

01:00:13

But even if that was my only job and everything else about my life is the same where I've

01:00:18

got five kids and a wife at home who are here with me, I'm still not going to take this approach.

01:00:23

I'm still going to time block stuff and I'm going to put parameters around how I'm investing

01:00:27

my time because my time is my most valuable resource and I don't want to spend it all

01:00:33

working.

01:00:34

Yeah.

01:00:35

I think it's valid.

01:00:36

I do.

01:00:37

But again, like you and I are in a situation where we have so much time that we can put

01:00:42

towards it.

01:00:43

Like I have a tendency to write over lunch breaks and stuff.

01:00:46

Well, that's a limited time frame.

01:00:48

I've got 30 minutes.

01:00:50

And if I want to kick out a 500 word article, guess what?

01:00:55

The keys continue to press the entire time.

01:00:59

Yeah.

01:01:00

So it's not going to allow me to change the amount of time that I'm using to put those

01:01:07

500 words down.

01:01:09

I am going to get them out is that's really all it is.

01:01:13

So anyway, I think again, I think it's different depending on where you're at in the situation,

01:01:18

for sure.

01:01:19

Yeah.

01:01:20

The next section here, I feel like I understand and yet I don't understand and I do what he

01:01:29

talks about very differently.

01:01:30

But chapter three is taking notes and making lists.

01:01:35

The first piece of this that's of interest to me is the note taking an ideas section.

01:01:40

This is where this whole dare I say nonsense of Zettelkasten and linking of notes and ideas

01:01:49

comes in.

01:01:50

How dare you.

01:01:53

He doesn't call it that.

01:01:55

He doesn't refer to a Zettelkasten.

01:01:57

He does not refer to trying to tie notes together.

01:02:02

He does refer to though is the idea of having some form of ubiquitous capture to use the

01:02:11

term and having it with you at all times and transferring those into some form of a digital

01:02:20

note taker and then spending time developing those ideas when you're doing that transferring.

01:02:26

And that piece, I think I need you to correct me if I'm wrong here, but that piece of spending

01:02:34

time developing notes and ideas in a dedicated note taking system is exactly what I would

01:02:42

expect a writer to tell me.

01:02:45

Is that fair?

01:02:46

A creator, but yeah.

01:02:47

Sure.

01:02:48

Yeah, absolutely.

01:02:49

And I think that's why the Zettelkasten stuff and the PKM stuff is taking off right

01:02:55

now is there is an emphasis on creating one of the people that I follow online because

01:03:03

I like what they are producing around this topic at the moment is Nest Labs.

01:03:11

And she's actually got a course called collector to creator.

01:03:16

And I feel like all of the Zettelkasten type stuff, the PKM type stuff is right now the

01:03:23

all of the backlink type stuff that's coming to craft and notion and every other app that

01:03:28

you can think of, it's designed to get you from just collecting the information, storing

01:03:35

it in a folder somewhere, being able to go back and find it later if you can recall it

01:03:40

to connecting it in a way that is more organic.

01:03:44

You can see things jump between things more easily.

01:03:48

And as a result, that makes a creative process easier.

01:03:52

And I think there's absolutely value to that.

01:03:56

The way that it gets expressed is different.

01:03:59

You know, I have a confession to make.

01:04:00

I am actually playing with Obsidian at the moment.

01:04:03

I like the local storage of things.

01:04:08

I'm also playing around with the hook app.

01:04:11

That's kind of the thing that got me.

01:04:13

That one's cool.

01:04:14

Yeah.

01:04:15

So I have this keyboard maestro macro, which pulls the subject line and the message ID

01:04:22

from Mailmate and puts it into a markdown link that I could use inside a room.

01:04:25

But it's a pain in the butt to build that yourself.

01:04:30

And I'm seeing other places, local apps that I want to have those sorts of connections.

01:04:35

I'm putting it inside a room and I'm clicking on those links and it always opens up a blank

01:04:39

tab before opening the application.

01:04:42

It drives me absolutely insane.

01:04:45

This is a URL to a local thing you should not be opening up a separate Chrome tab just to

01:04:52

open up the mail message.

01:04:55

You know, do that enough and it's just, it's driving me nuts.

01:04:58

So yeah, I think Obsidian is ultimately where I'll be ending up.

01:05:03

I'm also going through a course linking your thinking and their recommended app is Obsidian.

01:05:07

So as I learn more about it, I'm sure my opinion of it is going to change.

01:05:11

I also have mentioned this from the very beginning.

01:05:14

I really don't like the people who make room.

01:05:17

Yeah.

01:05:19

One of the things I stumbled across is that this video, I think it's part of the linking

01:05:25

your thinking guy, that the apps that you use, you don't just influence those apps, those

01:05:31

apps also influence you.

01:05:33

And I think that's absolutely true.

01:05:35

I'm not sure I want Connor in the gang influencing me.

01:05:39

So I've paid for it.

01:05:41

You know, I've got five years, but I am looking for the moment when Obsidian can do all the

01:05:50

things that I need it to do and it makes it easy for me to move away from Rome.

01:05:55

I don't know when or if that day will come, but I'm playing around with it.

01:06:02

So all that to say, you know, Obsidian has a way of doing this.

01:06:05

Rome has a way of doing this.

01:06:06

Hook has a way of doing this.

01:06:08

You don't even have to use those other applications.

01:06:10

Hook has a way of doing this.

01:06:12

The hook is interesting because you can literally just grab a link to anything from anything

01:06:15

and paste it inside of anything.

01:06:17

Yes.

01:06:18

So now all of these applications, which normally would have been siloed, are no longer in a

01:06:27

silo.

01:06:28

And you don't have to rely on OmniFocus being the ones to develop the direct integration

01:06:35

with the email app that you're using because you can just use Hook, grab the link to the

01:06:39

message and drop it inside of your task manager.

01:06:43

And I don't know a whole lot about Hook.

01:06:45

I'm kind of playing around with this too.

01:06:47

But there's all this to say, there are tons of options for this sort of thing.

01:06:51

And this is absolutely valuable.

01:06:53

This is where the productivity space is going.

01:06:56

I'm going to call it right now.

01:06:58

And you can call it a Zetlcast and you don't have to call it a Zetlcast and though I think

01:07:02

there's a lot of stuff that right now people would define is like, Oh, well, that's a Zetlcast

01:07:07

and but it's just going to become ubiquitous with no, that's a productivity app because

01:07:12

it ties with other things and you can use it in different ways.

01:07:15

And it's all around this idea of idea management and not just collecting these dots, but how

01:07:20

do you express them?

01:07:22

I'm not using one of these things.

01:07:25

Because here's the thing.

01:07:27

My view on what becomes content and what are the things that I release has been changing

01:07:35

somewhat?

01:07:36

And if you pay attention to what I've been doing over the last probably six to nine

01:07:41

months, it's become more and more of a here's something that's on my mind.

01:07:48

Let me tell you about it.

01:07:50

Here is something I'm learning how to do right now.

01:07:53

Let me tell you about it.

01:07:55

That's a lot of what I've moved to, which means the concept of trying to gather an idea

01:08:02

and further it to a point to where I'm comfortable sharing it.

01:08:07

I don't do that.

01:08:09

It's pretty much all hot takes.

01:08:11

And to me, there's a lot less stress involved with that.

01:08:16

If I have an idea for something, it gets like a new line item in my bullet journal for when

01:08:26

it could become something, but I don't develop it.

01:08:29

I just think about things.

01:08:33

If it's something that I feel like I've thought about long enough that I'm willing to put together

01:08:36

formal thoughts on, then I sit down and I put it together and release it all in one

01:08:42

day.

01:08:44

That's what I do.

01:08:45

I don't do a lot of this, build it over time and then release it, which is partly why I

01:08:52

have a hard time grasping what people do with Rome and obsidian and gang.

01:09:01

It doesn't resonate with me.

01:09:02

I get how it does.

01:09:04

I'm not telling other people not to do that.

01:09:07

In most cases, there are cases where I tell people don't do that.

01:09:10

But overall, I don't see it as something I'm giving like a blanket statement.

01:09:16

Don't ever do this because I get where there are some.

01:09:19

I just think that the group of people who are doing it is much larger than the group

01:09:24

of people who should be doing it.

01:09:27

That's my opinion.

01:09:28

Take it or leave it.

01:09:30

I'm not sure I have time to take that.

01:09:33

Okay.

01:09:34

Job sheets.

01:09:35

Let's talk about job sheets.

01:09:36

So the next part of this is this thing called a job sheet.

01:09:44

Again, he's a writer.

01:09:45

So he has things like contracts and he has invoices and he's got all sorts of stuff per

01:09:49

writing project.

01:09:51

He regularly has a manila envelope for that project and he has this job sheet of sorts

01:09:59

that he tapes to the front and it has like the title of the thing, who the publisher is,

01:10:04

who's the agent, what is the fee for it?

01:10:06

Is there a contract?

01:10:08

What else is on here?

01:10:09

It has like checks for what part of the process is he in currently and it's like, do I have

01:10:18

the research done?

01:10:19

Do I have my notes taken?

01:10:20

Do I have the plot figured out?

01:10:21

Do I have the breakdown done?

01:10:22

Where am I at in the draft process?

01:10:24

Has it been published?

01:10:25

Has it archived?

01:10:26

Has it been paid?

01:10:27

All these things, all these check boxes.

01:10:28

It's a physical piece of paper.

01:10:29

He prints and puts on this manila envelope and I'm looking at this thinking, hey, that's

01:10:34

really cool.

01:10:35

I'm probably never going to use this.

01:10:37

Are you going to use this?

01:10:39

I don't think I have anything that this would apply to because my projects are also

01:10:42

different.

01:10:43

Yeah.

01:10:44

I'm not a big fan of these job sheets.

01:10:46

I'm a fan of them conceptually.

01:10:48

I'm not a fan of them being printed out and taped onto the file folders.

01:10:55

I do think there's value in having a checklist of things that you go through for a specific

01:10:59

project.

01:11:00

I mean, I have that already, but also I don't have it formally inside of any of my own personal

01:11:08

task stuff.

01:11:09

A lot of the places that that exists is for writing for this suite setup.

01:11:13

We've got a couple of different tools that we use for SEO research.

01:11:18

It's not sleazy.

01:11:20

I'm going to hack the algorithm.

01:11:21

It's just the best habit tracker app, for example.

01:11:24

When I updated that one, I plugged it into this application called usetopic.usetopic.com.

01:11:31

It gives you a rank based on the keywords that are already there.

01:11:36

Then you can look at the other high ranking articles and the keywords that they're using

01:11:41

and it makes recommendations like, "Oh, you should say things this way."

01:11:45

It's stuff that I'm already saying, but it helps me say it a little bit more clearly,

01:11:48

so you're answering the questions that people have when they type in the search box, what

01:11:52

is the best iOS habit tracker.

01:11:57

That's something that's new to my writing process.

01:12:01

Having that in a checklist is helpful.

01:12:03

Do SEO research.

01:12:05

A lot of the other stuff, I just flow from one state to the next.

01:12:11

I'm going to write the text.

01:12:12

I'm going to finish the first draft.

01:12:13

I'm going to edit the first draft.

01:12:15

I'm going to grab the screenshots.

01:12:17

I'm going to make any videos that are needed.

01:12:19

I'm going to upload all this stuff to WordPress and then I'm going to assign it to somebody

01:12:22

else to review it before it goes out.

01:12:28

I don't know.

01:12:29

I'm not going to do this for my personal stuff.

01:12:31

I can see the value of this when you're working with other people because at any point

01:12:35

in the process, you can assign it to somebody else and they can jump in and help you out

01:12:39

with something.

01:12:40

That's really where I feel the value of this is.

01:12:43

I'm not telling people you shouldn't have this kind of checklist inside of things around

01:12:46

your focus or whatever your task manager is, but I also don't necessarily think you need

01:12:51

it either.

01:12:53

It's just a checklist.

01:12:55

Exactly.

01:12:56

It's just a different form of it.

01:12:57

I use a lot of these as well.

01:12:59

I don't want to belabor that.

01:13:00

I just thought it was a cool concept for sure.

01:13:04

Part two, this one we're going to go through fairly quick, I think, is write.

01:13:10

Exclamation point.

01:13:11

It's two chapters in here.

01:13:13

Chapter four is five pages after breakfast.

01:13:17

He goes through this whole thing about a clean mind.

01:13:20

You haven't had a chance to fill it with messy stuff from social media and relationships

01:13:26

and communications throughout the day.

01:13:28

You have a clean mind at that point in the day.

01:13:31

Do your writing right after breakfast.

01:13:33

Five pages is his quantity, not his time.

01:13:36

He goes as far, takes as long as he needs to do a minimum of those five pages after breakfast.

01:13:45

That's pretty much what I got out of that chapter.

01:13:49

My one action item comes from this chapter.

01:13:52

It's not the five pages.

01:13:53

It's not a specific amount of words, but I do want to make sure that my morning time

01:14:00

is my writing time.

01:14:01

I've talked about this sort of thing in the past and probably had an action item sort

01:14:06

of like this in the past, but where I'm at right now, I do notice that I can default

01:14:15

to some of the admin type stuff and I want to kind of protect those early morning hours

01:14:21

specifically for writing.

01:14:24

Even if I don't have a specific article that I am working on with a publication date, I

01:14:30

want to spend a couple of hours just writing every single morning.

01:14:38

My mornings, the schedules are kind of hit or miss based on meetings and things.

01:14:45

I can't do this every single day, but I think most days I probably could, especially as

01:14:51

I'm starting to get up a little bit earlier.

01:14:54

Maybe I can't spend four hours writing every morning, but I can spend at least an hour

01:15:00

writing every morning before I have to jump in and help out with something else that the

01:15:04

team has going on.

01:15:06

I think if I could create that habit, it would alleviate a lot of the stress of writing to

01:15:12

the deadline that he was talking about in the first section.

01:15:16

Fair enough.

01:15:18

Chapter five is from scribbles to script.

01:15:22

I just have one question for you here, Mike.

01:15:25

Did anything in this chapter get you to a point where you thought this would be helpful?

01:15:31

I'll explain what it is here in a second.

01:15:33

No, I literally just jotted down the seven step-study outlines, but I'm not writing scripts.

01:15:41

Yeah, I mean, it just doesn't make sense to me.

01:15:45

I think if I was writing scripts for a TV show and such, which he does, this would make

01:15:52

a lot more sense to me, but I was reading through this.

01:15:55

I don't even understand what some of this is or why you would do it, but I guess there's

01:15:59

a reason, but it's initial notes, initial plot, bullet point outline, treatment and pitch,

01:16:07

breakdown, manuscript, rewriting.

01:16:11

A lot of it felt like just expanding on the previous step to me.

01:16:16

It's just seven steps of tweaking your draft and expanding it.

01:16:21

That's what I saw.

01:16:22

I'm sure it's different than that, but it just felt a lot of the same stuff.

01:16:28

Yeah, so my process here is a little bit different, and this is where the PKM, Zettlecast and

01:16:34

Type stuff add some value.

01:16:36

I think I get an idea for something and I will capture it.

01:16:40

That's the initial notes.

01:16:42

I will then add it to Notion.

01:16:45

If it's going to be a TSS article, for example, we'll put it down the publication calendar.

01:16:52

Before I do any sort of writing, I'm going to go through a couple additional steps.

01:16:57

The first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to create a mind map of the topic and I'm

01:17:02

going to just dump everything that I can think of relating to that particular topic

01:17:07

or idea.

01:17:08

That's where all the back linking stuff really can add some value because, again, it's not

01:17:13

just the technical features and things.

01:17:15

It's like writing habits, journaling, stuff like that, where I want to be able to go back

01:17:20

and look at the quotes that I've collected and the other insights that I've gotten from

01:17:24

the books that we've read on those particular topics and drop those in.

01:17:29

That I think adds a lot of value to the stuff that I write.

01:17:32

Once I have created the mind map, then I might do some SEO research and then I will actually

01:17:39

write the article.

01:17:42

My points from Scribble to Script are looking very different than his.

01:17:47

I follow this process, basically, when I write things.

01:17:52

I think if you haven't ever had a process for your writing, this is a good place to start.

01:17:59

However, you're probably going to change some of the specifics.

01:18:02

Or a lot of it, yeah.

01:18:04

For sure.

01:18:05

Okay, part three, non-writing stuff, the first of the two main chapters in here are money

01:18:15

matters, or it is money matters.

01:18:18

Hire an accountant, how I learn to stop worrying and love the spreadsheet, invoicing, find your

01:18:22

price and stick to it.

01:18:25

The only one I really want to cover here is, like, I get it.

01:18:28

Like if you have the money, hire an accountant.

01:18:29

I don't think anybody would argue with you on that.

01:18:32

Invoicing.

01:18:33

That's a good process.

01:18:34

You got to do it, do it immediately.

01:18:37

Raise your price, stick to it, don't back off of it.

01:18:39

I mean, those are all fairly straightforward things.

01:18:42

You would say to anybody who runs a business of sorts, the spreadsheet one is the one I

01:18:46

just was curious about.

01:18:48

Because I do, like, coming from a data background, like, spreadsheets, I can look at them and

01:18:54

run with them all day long.

01:18:57

And it's not an issue for me to use those.

01:19:00

I actually just shared one on Twitter who was at Matt Cassinelli was asking for a shareable

01:19:07

spreadsheet.

01:19:08

So I dumbed down my business budget spreadsheet and shared it with him.

01:19:13

And it seemed like it was what he was after.

01:19:15

But anyway, I tend to run a fair number of spreadsheets for accounting and finances

01:19:20

and stuff with my business.

01:19:22

It doesn't mean that it runs well, but it at least means I know what's going on.

01:19:27

Do you do anything like this?

01:19:28

Like, my wife and I have a personal budget that we, well, theoretically have up to date.

01:19:34

We're not now.

01:19:35

But we have a spreadsheet that we use for this because I can never find apps that do

01:19:39

the sort of thing that I feel like basic budgeting should do.

01:19:43

But I'm curious, do you do anything with spreadsheets, Mike?

01:19:45

I feel like what you do probably doesn't require that much.

01:19:49

No, any talks about the different categories for the spreadsheets?

01:19:53

I do keep track of my expenses.

01:19:56

I usually just print off the receipt as a PDF, save it to my desktop with EX for expense,

01:20:06

space, the date, and then the company that the receipt is from.

01:20:13

Save it as a PDF, got a Hazel rule then, which takes that and automatically files it in a

01:20:17

Dropbox folder for the year under tax info.

01:20:21

So when we do give everything to the accountant at the end of the year, it's really easy to

01:20:25

just add all that stuff up.

01:20:27

Sure.

01:20:28

I also use FreshBooks.

01:20:31

I've been using it for years for like the one-off stuff that I do.

01:20:35

There's not a whole lot of that anymore, but I do still contribute to the Screencast Online

01:20:39

Monthly Magazine.

01:20:40

So it's just easy to, whenever I need to send somebody an invoice for something that I

01:20:45

did, use FreshBooks.

01:20:47

And then when you get a payment, your market is paid, export their reports at the end of

01:20:51

the year, stuff like that.

01:20:53

Sure.

01:20:54

But that's it, because the rest of the stuff that I get paid for doesn't require me to

01:20:58

send an invoice for it.

01:21:01

Sure.

01:21:02

Like the relay stuff are focused and the ads, I just get payments in PayPal whenever the

01:21:10

companies who took out the ads pay their invoices.

01:21:12

So they handle that stuff and then they send it to me.

01:21:15

And I don't have to worry about managing that.

01:21:19

Yeah.

01:21:20

I don't know what else to say about it, spreadsheets.

01:21:22

I mean, if you want to keep track of things, it's a good way to do it.

01:21:26

The spreadsheet I use for my business lets me just copy paste all of the transactions

01:21:31

from the last month and I can just paste it in and it auto-populates based on a whole

01:21:36

bunch of stuff, because spreadsheet formula, nerdery going on.

01:21:41

So I do a lot of that, but I don't want to spend a lot of time on it, so I automate an

01:21:46

awful lot of it.

01:21:47

So anyway, spreadsheets.

01:21:49

After seven, it's a setup.

01:21:55

Man, is it a setup?

01:21:57

Yeah, it is.

01:21:58

There's six sections in here.

01:21:59

Take a weekend.

01:22:00

He's talking about taking a weekend to set up your system and relax is the next section.

01:22:05

Take a break afterwards.

01:22:08

Hardware, software, taxonomy and gadgets.

01:22:12

The three that I think we would be interested in covering is hardware, software and gadgets.

01:22:18

And I know that we've talked about some of this already.

01:22:21

So I don't want to go too deep in the specifics of what he's recommending.

01:22:25

I'm more curious about what he's doing here, because with hardware, you're talking about

01:22:32

you need a backup drive.

01:22:33

Guess what?

01:22:34

You need a computer.

01:22:35

Guess what?

01:22:36

You need a notebook.

01:22:37

I really didn't understand why it needed to be.

01:22:41

Because you don't have to tell writers they need a computer.

01:22:44

Okay.

01:22:45

I get that.

01:22:46

The software piece I kind of understand, but the hardware one, I just did not.

01:22:50

Why is this even here?

01:22:52

Did I miss something in this?

01:22:53

Well, with the hardware, I don't think the focus is on the computer.

01:22:58

A couple of things he talks about.

01:23:00

Get a good desk and get a good chair.

01:23:02

I think that's pretty great advice.

01:23:05

I finally bought a decent desk chair this year, because I was dealing with a lot of

01:23:11

severe bad things.

01:23:12

Time time.

01:23:13

Yep, exactly.

01:23:15

The chair that I got is this crazy looking chair, kind of built for standing desk.

01:23:21

I actually got it from Foley, the company that makes the, the used to be Jarvis, by Ergo

01:23:27

Depot, I guess is the company that used to be.

01:23:29

Jarvis is still the standing desk.

01:23:30

That's the one that I use.

01:23:32

But they sell these crazy chairs that you can sit in a bunch of different ways that are

01:23:36

kind of made for these desks too.

01:23:37

It does look like a thumb thumb from spy kids.

01:23:43

But I kind of wish that I had followed that advice before this year.

01:23:50

I've heard it before, but I don't think I took it very seriously.

01:23:55

So I don't mind him saying at the very beginning, "Hey, trust me.

01:23:59

You really want a really good chair."

01:24:02

Yeah, the computer advice isn't, isn't that great.

01:24:05

He talks about buying a dozen pens.

01:24:06

Well, check.

01:24:07

Did that.

01:24:08

Although he says, "Get the same ballpoint pen," which I disagree with.

01:24:11

He even calls out those fancy fountain pens that you've had for years and you're never

01:24:16

going to use.

01:24:17

I'm like, "Balledard Ash and Poppycock."

01:24:19

I use them every day.

01:24:21

But they're all in use.

01:24:22

Yep.

01:24:23

Side note, I've got my oldest started on her fountain pen collection.

01:24:26

I saw that.

01:24:27

That's awesome.

01:24:28

And a bullet journal.

01:24:30

Yep.

01:24:31

So she has a Lamy Safari now.

01:24:33

So yeah, pretty fun.

01:24:34

So that's the hardware side.

01:24:36

I do think there's one other thing in this section though before we get to the software

01:24:41

because he talks about the process day one, day two, and very specifically is exactly

01:24:46

what you do over the weekend as you get your system set up.

01:24:48

And then Monday, you just work the system and you feel a lot better because you don't

01:24:53

have all this stress because you have this awesome system.

01:24:55

But at one of those call out boxes that he has throughout the book, there's one on calling

01:25:01

digital notes.

01:25:04

What do you think about this?

01:25:06

It's a pretty common thing for people to collect a whole bunch of stuff that's unnecessary.

01:25:11

As far as like, I would recommend calling files on a regular basis.

01:25:17

I do that like files that are from things that have been uploaded that if I ever need,

01:25:22

I can go download again.

01:25:23

Like that sort of thing I'll get rid of on a regular basis.

01:25:28

But calling notes seems odd to me.

01:25:32

Like if I'm calling notes, I'm calling a potential article that I'm half written, that

01:25:40

I have half written, like that's what I would be calling or deleting a outline for an upcoming

01:25:45

webinar.

01:25:46

That's what I would end up deleting if I was, I wouldn't be upcoming, but it would be from

01:25:50

a webinar that was done six months ago.

01:25:54

But I'm not going to get rid of that because I sometimes reference those for upcoming things.

01:26:00

I don't know.

01:26:01

I feel like that's a bad idea to get rid of those.

01:26:04

All right.

01:26:05

That's the response I thought you were going to have.

01:26:09

Funky Mosquito is talking about Tiago Forte's PARO system.

01:26:13

That's instantly what I thought of when I read this too.

01:26:15

Not PARO specifically, but he talks about different levels of personal knowledge management.

01:26:21

And I don't personally do it Tiago Forte's way, but I think this makes a lot of sense.

01:26:26

You capture text that you want to recall, and then you bold certain things so that they

01:26:30

jump off.

01:26:31

And then as you go through and you review those things, then you highlight them and you

01:26:35

have these different levels of culling that information down to a couple of essential

01:26:40

pieces.

01:26:41

And I think that's very valuable.

01:26:43

I think that's what makes a Zetalcaste and our personal knowledge management system work.

01:26:47

And I feel like just dumping everything in it is a quick way to make it not work.

01:26:53

Yeah.

01:26:55

So I do think that it's a good idea to call your digital notes.

01:27:00

I don't know if I would call them delete certain things, but you do want to distill things

01:27:06

down into the core essence.

01:27:08

And those are the things that you want to link together.

01:27:11

So I just thought it was interesting that he pointed this out because I'm sure that he's

01:27:14

not doing this at all.

01:27:17

Like I interpreted calling your digital notes.

01:27:21

But I also think that he's kind of onto something here, even if it is accidentally.

01:27:25

Yeah, that's fair.

01:27:27

I kind of wondered if the notes he's taking are things like call Susan on Wednesday.

01:27:33

Yeah, could be.

01:27:34

Well, yeah, you would delete that.

01:27:36

I kind of wondered about some things like that, but I don't know.

01:27:39

It just seemed really odd.

01:27:41

The things that are in my notes bank are I would have problems if I deleted any of them.

01:27:47

Sure.

01:27:48

So I don't foresee that.

01:27:49

Yeah.

01:27:50

And I guess the thing that I'm talking about with culling is not deleting them.

01:27:54

But over time, those notes that are in your notes bank, some of them are worthwhile having

01:28:01

at your fingertips to recall.

01:28:03

Some of them are destined for the archive box that he's talking about.

01:28:07

And so what is the system that you have?

01:28:11

Speaking generally here, dear listener, the system that you have, what sort of system

01:28:17

do you have where you can kind of discard the stuff that isn't worth keeping right there

01:28:22

and still being able to reference those things that are relevant at any given point.

01:28:28

I think there's ways that you can do that.

01:28:29

I don't think it happens by default though.

01:28:31

Yeah.

01:28:32

No matter which app or system you use.

01:28:34

Well, I don't know.

01:28:36

Mine kind of happens by default because I don't ever move things out of that folder.

01:28:42

But my tools that I use on top of that notes folder sort by last opened at the top.

01:28:51

Sure.

01:28:52

The ones that I haven't opened in years are at the bottom of that list and I never see

01:28:56

them.

01:28:57

Yep.

01:28:58

If I don't need them, I can search for them.

01:29:00

Exactly.

01:29:01

But they're not going to surface.

01:29:03

Next time you write an article about bullet journal, you're not going to see, oh, I wrote

01:29:08

this thing two years ago that's still relevant and I should link to this from the article

01:29:11

that I am writing now, necessarily.

01:29:14

But I would.

01:29:15

How would you guarantee that that happens?

01:29:18

Because whenever I'm pulling up the article to work on, I search for bullet journal and

01:29:24

it pulls up everything I've ever written that contains the words bullet journal in it.

01:29:28

Sure.

01:29:29

Okay.

01:29:30

So you're doing it manually.

01:29:32

I guess kind of, but that's, I've always operated based on search and I've gotten to

01:29:38

the point where if I'm going to try to find, or if I'm pulling up something to work on

01:29:45

it, I generally pull it up by keyword, which by default shows me all the stuff that is

01:29:52

connected to it just based on that keyword.

01:29:55

So that previous article that you wrote then, how do you know what's the relevant piece from

01:29:59

that, the big takeaway?

01:30:01

I guess that's kind of what I'm viewing as culling is like if you had a way, maybe you

01:30:05

organize your articles with a hierarchy and you've got different level headers for the

01:30:09

different sections that you can quickly glance at.

01:30:12

But you don't want to have to go reread a 2000 word article every time it shows up

01:30:16

in your search results in order to locate the core idea there.

01:30:19

I don't know.

01:30:20

It just kind of works.

01:30:21

That's kind of what I think he's, that's kind of what I think he's getting at with this

01:30:23

whole idea of like culling your digital notes.

01:30:25

Sure.

01:30:26

Is it's making sure that the relevant stuff pops up when you need it, which you can absolutely

01:30:31

do the way that you're doing it.

01:30:33

You know, I'm, I don't think that there's any one right way to collect and manage these

01:30:39

ideas other than to pay attention to how you're doing it.

01:30:43

Yeah.

01:30:44

Because my, my tendency is like whenever I see the titles of these notes, my brain triggers

01:30:50

on what they are.

01:30:53

And I generally know which ones I want if I'm going to reference them elsewhere.

01:30:58

And that is really all I ever need.

01:31:02

Like if it, if it, if it was going to take a lot longer to create or to find it's not

01:31:10

worth linking in that case.

01:31:12

But if I have to create links to things in any form, when I'm making it, I just won't.

01:31:20

It takes too long.

01:31:22

I agree with you.

01:31:23

I move too fast for that.

01:31:24

Yeah.

01:31:25

That's why wiki style linking is never going to work for me.

01:31:27

Yeah.

01:31:28

But back links will.

01:31:29

Yeah.

01:31:30

Sure.

01:31:31

All right.

01:31:32

All right.

01:31:33

We need to talk about software.

01:31:35

We can maybe skip gadgets because he's just telling you to get an external battery.

01:31:40

That was a pretty awful section.

01:31:41

It was pretty awful.

01:31:42

Oh my God.

01:31:43

Just skip this.

01:31:45

But he walks through what his recommended apps are.

01:31:50

And it's pretty straightforward.

01:31:53

He uses calendar on his Mac and iPhone.

01:31:56

He uses things which we've talked about.

01:31:58

Yep.

01:31:59

He uses timers and then he uses time machine.

01:32:03

Does he use a cloud based?

01:32:07

I think he uses backblaze and also he mentions crash plan.

01:32:12

Does he mention backblaze?

01:32:13

I don't see it here.

01:32:15

I thought it was in here.

01:32:17

Carbon copy cloner.

01:32:18

Yep.

01:32:19

And super duper.

01:32:20

He mentions those.

01:32:21

Super duper.

01:32:22

And on the next page.

01:32:23

Oh, Bob, got it.

01:32:24

Got it.

01:32:25

Got it.

01:32:26

Got it.

01:32:27

Yeah.

01:32:28

And drive stuff.

01:32:30

But yeah, he does go into backblaze and crash plan and stuff.

01:32:34

What else has he got in here?

01:32:35

Archiving.

01:32:36

He's a big Scrivener fan for the actual writing.

01:32:40

But then he gets into like what does he use for voice chat?

01:32:43

What does he use for my character finders and tech snippets and stuff?

01:32:48

It's like, OK, great.

01:32:50

These are cool things.

01:32:51

Launchers.

01:32:52

He talks about how he's a quick silver fan.

01:32:54

And I'm like, what?

01:32:55

That is still around.

01:32:56

It is still around.

01:32:58

That's not the one you want to admit that you use.

01:33:00

No.

01:33:01

One password.

01:33:02

What is his PDF thing?

01:33:03

Actually, Otter, he does not listen to MPU.

01:33:07

He makes a bunch of garbage recommendations.

01:33:10

Can I just real quickly point out all the places he's wrong with these?

01:33:13

Sure.

01:33:14

Just real quick.

01:33:15

So he's using, for PDFs, he uses PDF pin.

01:33:17

Which is fine.

01:33:18

Yeah.

01:33:19

He uses view scan for a scanner driver.

01:33:23

No.

01:33:24

He uses PCalc.

01:33:25

He uses the web version of Gmail.

01:33:30

He uses TripIt for traveling.

01:33:32

Yep.

01:33:33

TripIt's a good app.

01:33:34

That's his bank of stuff.

01:33:35

Flight tracker is what he uses for flights and stuff.

01:33:39

My point here is that-- and then I'll let you tell us where he's wrong.

01:33:42

But this is all pretty basic.

01:33:47

And it's going to be outdated very quickly.

01:33:49

Especially the way that he wrote it.

01:33:51

Yeah.

01:33:52

He's concerned to me that this is not designed to be valid in five years.

01:33:57

This is good for maybe a year, maybe two.

01:34:01

But I would even argue, and you're probably about to explain it to us, that a lot of the

01:34:06

software he's talking about here, which is valid for 2020.

01:34:09

He wrote this in 2020.

01:34:12

I think is out of date even for now.

01:34:14

Exactly.

01:34:15

Anytime you make app recommendation, by the time you hit publish, it's out of date.

01:34:20

Yeah.

01:34:21

I know.

01:34:22

This is what I do for a living.

01:34:25

So the one piece of advice that's worth following here is under writing software because he is

01:34:29

a writer and he says, "Don't use word."

01:34:31

I 100% agree with that.

01:34:35

He uses Scrivener.

01:34:37

That's not the one I would recommend people use.

01:34:38

There's lots of good minimal writing apps which don't have all the bells and whistles

01:34:44

so you can focus on the words, which is really what people should be doing.

01:34:47

I think when they are looking for writing software.

01:34:50

I've used Ulysses forever.

01:34:53

Lately, I've been using BBEdit because I like having the text files.

01:34:57

I finally got annoyed with the way Ulysses handles Markdown and with the images specifically,

01:35:04

it's just annoying because I'm updating app picks that are already on the website.

01:35:08

So I'm taking that pure Markdown and I'm pasting it into Ulysses and then I got to clean it

01:35:13

all up because Ulysses doesn't even know what to do with the standard Markdown that I pasted

01:35:17

in there.

01:35:18

It was a pain in the butt.

01:35:20

BBEdit, are you opening up individual files?

01:35:22

Yep.

01:35:23

You need to look at multi-markdown composer.

01:35:26

Possibly.

01:35:27

Because it's what I use for it but it is brilliant with Markdown because it's built for Markdown.

01:35:37

Yep.

01:35:38

Yep.

01:35:39

I'll take a look at that but I'm really happy with BBEdit.

01:35:43

I would...

01:35:44

I just want to mess with your systems.

01:35:46

Yeah, if you need individual files, BBEdit or I-A-writer is a great option for just standard Markdown.

01:35:55

Ulysses is also a very good editor but recognize that it's going to be cloud-based and you're

01:35:59

going to have these sheets and it's not going to be an individual file and you're going

01:36:02

to run into copy paste issues with standard Markdown like I am.

01:36:06

When it comes to note-taking, these recommendations again are old and garbage.

01:36:13

The notes app is okay but it's like number 10 on my list.

01:36:19

I'd recommend.

01:36:21

You also list one note, simple note of Google Keep.

01:36:23

The only thing decent in that list is simple note but even that.

01:36:27

Use EnvyAlt and VUltra or drafts or even something like Bear is honestly better.

01:36:35

The notes app, I don't know.

01:36:38

I guess I'm so used to doing everything Markdown wise but I just feel the notes app is...

01:36:43

pretty limited and I know a lot of people swear by it and it sinks between all your

01:36:49

devices but when it comes to writing really what you want is plain text.

01:36:52

You don't want rich text, PDFs, all that kind of stuff.

01:36:57

Google Keep, you know what?

01:36:58

I'm not that familiar with Google Keep so I can't say anything bad about Google Keep.

01:37:03

Other than my default is not to use Google Apps because I don't want them looking at

01:37:07

everything that I write.

01:37:09

They don't read anything.

01:37:12

That's the only thing I'll say about that.

01:37:16

Calendar, he does list the right calendar apps here in my opinion but he spells Fantastic

01:37:20

Cal wrong.

01:37:22

Out of these that are listed, I use busy Cal and I do that because it's not a $40 per year

01:37:30

subscription and I don't need a bunch of calendar stuff on my iOS device.

01:37:35

Task managers, he mentions things.

01:37:36

He doesn't mention OmniFocus in this section which he should have because that's the other

01:37:40

one for Mac users specifically that I would recommend you look at.

01:37:44

Trello's decent wonder list.

01:37:46

I don't even think that's a thing anymore.

01:37:47

I know it was bought by Microsoft.

01:37:50

I think it would kill it.

01:37:52

To do list is decent.

01:37:53

There's lots of other task managers though that are relevant.

01:37:58

Tick tick is another one that I would probably recommend people look at.

01:38:03

But this is the problem, right?

01:38:04

Yeah.

01:38:05

Exactly.

01:38:06

You shouldn't be putting this in a printed book.

01:38:07

This is a blog post that you reference and then you keep up to date.

01:38:11

That's the problem with this because again, there's so much software he's talking about

01:38:14

here and we can go on all day for all the things he's doing wrong with it.

01:38:19

One other thing that he is absolutely doing wrong though is he's listing typeinator above

01:38:23

text expander.

01:38:24

Absolutely not.

01:38:26

Just use text expander.

01:38:27

If you don't want to pay for something, then use text expansion inside of something like

01:38:31

Alfred.

01:38:32

But no way.

01:38:33

I went down this exact same product path.

01:38:36

I had typeinator first.

01:38:38

Text expander is way better though.

01:38:40

Yeah.

01:38:42

People complain about text expander with its subscription and stuff, but it's a no brainer

01:38:47

to me.

01:38:48

The things I do with text expander just it amazes me what I can pull off with it.

01:38:53

Anyway, hardware, software, the gadgets, I wish he hadn't put this in there.

01:39:03

You know, like they're saying like Mosquito sing in the chat, like it kind of feels like

01:39:06

padding.

01:39:07

I kind of feel like this is one of those situations where he loves this stuff and just

01:39:12

wants to talk about it.

01:39:13

So he decided to write a chapter about it and I wish he hadn't.

01:39:17

Like that's my concern with it.

01:39:20

I actually think I have not talked to Anthony Johnston.

01:39:26

So I don't know if this is true or not, but I think he probably does not want to talk

01:39:33

about this stuff, but he knows that people are going to ask him.

01:39:39

So he wrote it down so he has a place to point people would be my guess.

01:39:45

And he puts it in his book that way.

01:39:46

You have to buy the book to get it.

01:39:48

Yeah.

01:39:49

Anyway, conclusion here at the end of it is like a two pager because he had to do it

01:39:56

and wrap up the book and summarize.

01:39:57

This is the only other place the fasten system comes back.

01:40:00

Yes, yes.

01:40:02

And I totally forgot about it again until now, but yeah, he does go all the way back

01:40:07

to the beginning and mention fastened very, very briefly.

01:40:11

But then he concludes the book.

01:40:13

Anything else you want to say about it?

01:40:15

Then a says go read it again.

01:40:17

Yes.

01:40:18

Yes.

01:40:19

All right.

01:40:20

So action items here, Mike.

01:40:23

I have one.

01:40:24

I have one.

01:40:25

I, and I'm done with it already, actually.

01:40:30

When we were talking about, he was walking through like all the calendaring pieces and

01:40:36

I was looking at that, was looking at the job sheets, was looking at all of the stuff,

01:40:42

like how he manages the checklist and stuff for where a project is in the process.

01:40:48

And it occurred to me is like, yes, but the one thing I really want, he actually never

01:40:52

mentions this in the book, but I really wanted some form of a can van for the product, like

01:40:59

the content projects I have going on, which I keep an omnifocus.

01:41:03

Like, yes, I'm everything in my bullet journal, but like the checklists of what it takes to

01:41:10

write an article and all the places I got to post it and all of the communications that

01:41:13

go out around it, I lose track of all that stuff.

01:41:16

So it's just templated checklist and omnifocus and I use that as kind of a content calendar.

01:41:21

But I put together a system based on some of omnigroup's can ban thing on their omniautimation

01:41:29

site and I tweaked it to run on projects instead of tasks.

01:41:32

Nice.

01:41:33

That's what I do.

01:41:35

So I'm in the process of trying to figure out how to release that, but I've built a can

01:41:40

ban system for managing those projects in omnifocus.

01:41:45

So I'm already done with it.

01:41:47

So I have an action item and I'm done.

01:41:48

So next time.

01:41:49

The only follow up I may have is just here's where you can go get it.

01:41:54

Exactly.

01:41:55

That is your action item for next time.

01:41:56

Make it public.

01:41:57

That's fair.

01:41:58

All right.

01:41:59

What's yours?

01:42:00

All right.

01:42:01

So my action item is to make morning time my writing time.

01:42:05

All right.

01:42:06

I talked about this not time specific or not time specific per day.

01:42:12

Like every single day I'm going to write for two hours before I do anything else.

01:42:16

And also it's going to vary from day to day and also I'm not going to have a specific

01:42:20

writing goal of X number of words like he's talking about.

01:42:23

But the basic principle of writing first thing that's going to be what I'm going to

01:42:28

try to do.

01:42:29

Good luck with that.

01:42:30

I hope it goes well.

01:42:31

Hey, thanks.

01:42:32

All right.

01:42:33

As for style and writing style and writing style and rating.

01:42:36

I have to say like he's a good writer.

01:42:38

Obviously.

01:42:39

Would you say he's an organized writer?

01:42:42

It sounds like he's at least attempted to put systems together.

01:42:45

So in that sense, yes.

01:42:48

I think he is organized for him.

01:42:51

And this is this is an exposition on his system, which I don't argue with.

01:42:59

And this is some of what I do.

01:43:00

Like whenever I share things, I always say this is what I have found that works for me.

01:43:04

In my experience.

01:43:05

Yep.

01:43:06

This is what I have found that works.

01:43:09

And I'm sharing it with you with the caveat that this is my system so that maybe some

01:43:15

of this could be used for your system, knowing that yours likely needs to be very different

01:43:22

than what I have.

01:43:23

But I'm hoping that one or two things and what I'm doing could be helpful to you and

01:43:27

help you to build your system better.

01:43:30

But some assembly required doesn't sell books, Joe.

01:43:33

It doesn't.

01:43:35

And I kind of got the impression from this one that he was trying to come up with a new

01:43:39

GTD of sorts.

01:43:41

And but he never called it that.

01:43:43

But the format and the layout of what he's doing here is very similar to getting things

01:43:48

done.

01:43:49

It does have that feel.

01:43:52

Obviously some form of an homage to David Allen and Merlin Man of sorts.

01:43:56

But I think I struggled with this one a lot.

01:44:00

Probably more than I should have.

01:44:01

I think if you are a long form writer and you are all over the place and you struggle

01:44:08

to keep track of things, this is up your alley.

01:44:10

You want this, I think, because this could be a really good intro to all the things that

01:44:16

you and I live and breathe every day, considering how much is in it.

01:44:21

And if you think about the number of people who are not even aware that they can use something

01:44:27

other than outlook for email.

01:44:30

Like I work with those people.

01:44:31

Like they see my email system.

01:44:33

I use mail mate and like, wait, what is that?

01:44:36

It's like it's mail mate.

01:44:37

It's what I use for my email.

01:44:38

You can use something other than outlook.

01:44:40

Like I get my outlook mail all the time.

01:44:44

There's outlook mail doesn't exist.

01:44:47

Never mind.

01:44:49

So yes, working with folks who come from that side of things, I get why he's making

01:44:55

recommendations like that.

01:44:56

If you have that background, this makes sense.

01:44:59

I think if you have read any and all of the types of books that we read and you are familiar

01:45:05

with the productivity space, I think this is potentially a, I don't want to say harmful,

01:45:10

but it's not worth your time.

01:45:12

I don't, I don't think.

01:45:13

I think it's interesting to have some of the motivation that comes with it.

01:45:16

I mean, anytime you read something like this, it always motivates you to do some new things.

01:45:20

So for that, I'm grateful.

01:45:23

But the one action I had was like from a conglomeration of places from his book.

01:45:29

It wasn't a specific point where I said, yes, that is a thing I want to do.

01:45:33

I didn't have any of those.

01:45:35

So in that sense, I don't know what to do with it.

01:45:41

But again, the style of it, super easy to read.

01:45:44

I think they laid it out fairly well.

01:45:46

The changing size of chapters like we talked about as a little odd.

01:45:50

The call out boxes are kind of helpful.

01:45:52

History calls out a specific point or explains a specific term, gives us the background of

01:45:57

where something came from.

01:45:59

Those are kind of interesting.

01:46:01

As far as how to rate it, knowing that this is trying to fit itself into a productivity

01:46:08

book of sorts and knowing kind of how he intends this to come across, I kind of just disagree

01:46:18

with it from his intentions somewhat.

01:46:23

I get why people love it.

01:46:25

I'm going to put this at a 3.0 because I feel like it needs to be somewhere in the middle

01:46:28

of the road because there are some people this could be good for.

01:46:31

But there are a lot of people I think this could be not helpful to.

01:46:34

I would probably recommend a few other books before I got to this one.

01:46:40

Unless you are specifically either a full-time writer or very close to.

01:46:47

So all of that said, I'm going to go with the three.

01:46:51

All right.

01:46:52

I'm going to join you at 3.0.

01:46:55

I think there's a couple of interesting tidbits in here that I teased out.

01:47:04

But the majority of it is a weak system wrapped in a well-written explanation.

01:47:14

I think GTD for writers is spot on in terms of what he's trying to do here.

01:47:19

I think that you could, if you are a full-time writer, follow this step by step and do pretty

01:47:25

well with it.

01:47:27

But that being said, as I mentioned earlier, I don't think I know anybody who this is tailor-made

01:47:34

for.

01:47:35

I know a lot of people who would consider themselves writers.

01:47:41

The fact that you have to make it your own significantly increases the cognitive effort

01:47:49

you've got to put forth in order to really get something from this.

01:47:52

And I agree with you that all of the individual pieces of this that you would apply, there

01:47:57

are other places to look for the majority of it that will explain it better and make

01:48:04

it easier to implement for people like us.

01:48:07

Sure.

01:48:08

I don't think it's a bad book.

01:48:10

I'm glad that we read it.

01:48:13

But I also disagree with a lot of the recommendations, which makes me not trust all the other stuff

01:48:19

that maybe I would normally agree with.

01:48:23

But because he's saying, "Keep your task in your email application."

01:48:27

And oh, by the way, don't use an email application.

01:48:29

I use Gmail on the web.

01:48:31

Like you're losing credibility right there with me.

01:48:35

So I don't know.

01:48:38

I don't know enough to say, "Don't trust this, but I don't trust this."

01:48:46

That's kind of what it comes down to.

01:48:48

I do think there's a couple of key takeaways from this that are good reminders for me.

01:48:53

Like the morning writing time, for example.

01:48:55

Again, not the first place that I've heard that sort of thing.

01:48:58

If it was the first time that you heard that or get a decent desk chair, stuff like that,

01:49:05

it could be those sorts of things I feel do have the potential to be very influential

01:49:10

in terms of how you get your work done, especially for a knowledge worker.

01:49:15

You don't have to be a writer to benefit from some of that stuff.

01:49:19

And that's where I kind of wish he would have made it a little bit more generic spoken

01:49:22

to a wider audience.

01:49:23

I get that it's called the organized writer.

01:49:26

That's not what he was going for.

01:49:29

But I feel like for the bookworm audience, that sort of approach would have been more

01:49:32

valuable.

01:49:33

Very valid.

01:49:35

All right.

01:49:36

I'll be happy to put this one on the shelf.

01:49:37

What's next time, Mike?

01:49:39

Next time is the great mental models, Volume 1 by Riannon Baoben.

01:49:45

I don't know how to say that name.

01:49:47

In Shane Parrish.

01:49:50

This is a very beautiful book with a kind of like cloth hard cover that it looks really

01:50:00

intriguing and it talks about a lot of concepts that we have come across before.

01:50:05

But I think this will be a fun discussion type book.

01:50:09

The book itself, by the way, Josh showed me his.

01:50:13

It came.

01:50:14

I saw the pages were printed upside down.

01:50:16

I was like, what in the world?

01:50:18

I saw them.

01:50:19

So if you are going to order it off of Amazon, make sure you check your page printing, I

01:50:24

guess.

01:50:25

But this one has been recommended for a while.

01:50:27

And I've wanted to read this for a long time, but I also want the physical books.

01:50:31

And for a long time, you could not buy the physical book for this.

01:50:34

They must have just printed a bunch of new ones and some of them, they printed upside

01:50:38

down.

01:50:39

Mine is not upside down, thankfully.

01:50:40

Mine's not either.

01:50:41

Yeah.

01:50:42

Okay.

01:50:43

Cool.

01:50:44

So yeah, I'm excited to go through this one.

01:50:46

Yeah, I think that'll be a fun one.

01:50:48

Following that is Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke.

01:50:53

This is a book that came up on one of my live streams here recently.

01:51:00

And it was about, it was with Josh as well, about thinking about in percentages of sorts.

01:51:07

Is this 70% that it's true?

01:51:10

Or is it 40% that it's true?

01:51:12

And if it's 40% versus 70%, how do you act on that?

01:51:15

So anyway, I think it'll be kind of an interesting one to go through.

01:51:18

I do not have any gap books, do you?

01:51:21

I don't.

01:51:22

I keep thinking I will, but let's be honest.

01:51:26

So I do not.

01:51:27

Let's be honest.

01:51:28

That said, thank you to everybody who has tuned in to the live stream, joined us in

01:51:35

the chat.

01:51:37

Obviously if you are listening to this, you can kind of see how it impacts what we're

01:51:41

talking about.

01:51:42

But we're also extremely grateful to those of you who are a part of our memberships at

01:51:48

Bookworm.fm/membership and given us five bucks a month to help keep the show on the air

01:51:54

and helping to pay some of those hosting fees and such, pick up our books for us here

01:52:00

and there.

01:52:01

So we are grateful for that.

01:52:04

And when I say that, I should also point out that if you do join that membership program

01:52:09

that it's not just that stuff that you're paying for.

01:52:13

You also get some extras, like some really cool wallpaper that Mike put together.

01:52:20

It's super high res for the Bookworm logo and such.

01:52:24

So there's that.

01:52:25

There's some old gap book episodes that I've recorded.

01:52:28

Mike's mine node files have gone up there.

01:52:31

If that is all of interest to you, again, Bookworm.fm/membership.

01:52:37

And we're super grateful to those of you who do that.

01:52:41

Alright, so thanks everybody for hanging out with us.

01:52:44

If you are reading along, pick up the great mental models, Volume 1.

01:52:50

And we will talk to you in a couple of weeks.