Bookworm Transcripts

00:00:00

So it turns out Joe Buellig that obsidian is actually pretty cool. Who knew?

00:00:04

How did I know that this was potentially gonna be a thing that came up today?

00:00:14

Now I should I should say well by the time this goes live I probably will be completely switched over as of this moment

00:00:23

I am not a hundred percent

00:00:25

Positive that obsidian is gonna do everything that I need it to do. I am 99.5% positive

00:00:31

It will and you helped me overcome two big obstacles in the last week

00:00:36

One of them was figuring out how to recreate my cross-reference library

00:00:41

Which is not the same way because obsidian does not have block references

00:00:46

They have block embeds which means that you cannot go to a block and see everything that's connected to it

00:00:52

You cannot reference the other pages from said block

00:00:55

But you can if you know someone like Joe who has scripting experience break apart all of the Bible verses by

00:01:03

Individual verse and end up with 30,000 text files that will accomplish roughly the same thing

00:01:11

So 31,000 and 90 to be exact

00:01:15

Yes, so thank you very much for your assistance with that now

00:01:20

I have to drop everything in I've done a couple months worth of sermon notes and it seems to be working

00:01:25

I think this is gonna be what I wanted in the first place and then the other thing which you helped me with I

00:01:31

I'm sorry

00:01:32

It took so long but I was trying to figure out a way to back stuff up and I found this obsidian plugin for backing up to GitHub

00:01:39

I know nothing about GitHub. I know nothing about command line terminal

00:01:45

etc, so I naively messaged Joe and said hey do you have a few minutes to help me set this up and

00:01:51

Then we ran into problem after problem after problem and two hours later you had helped me

00:01:57

connect obsidian to a GitHub repo and now obsidian is backing up

00:02:01

automatically and beautifully so I

00:02:05

owe you

00:02:06

lunch coffee

00:02:08

many other things I

00:02:11

Will say whatever you messaged me about the the git thing in

00:02:15

My head I was like okay

00:02:18

There's a couple things. I know he's gonna want he's gonna want it to be in a private repo and I'm

00:02:24

Guaranteeing he doesn't have SSH keys set up. So we're gonna have to go through that process

00:02:28

I know he's got a brand new computer. There's probably gonna be issues with that

00:02:32

There's probably like I knew a lot of this was gonna happen before I ever said yes, so I

00:02:39

Was aware and anytime you're installing something brand new

00:02:43

Via command line you're always opening up the door for

00:02:48

Potential issues and I will stay but I did run this in its entirety on my machine before I ever said yes to you

00:02:57

That's the part that's hilarious to me is that I set it up on my computer and

00:03:02

in my systems

00:03:05

Three minutes I think is what I set it up in and then it took two hours on your computer just because all the stuff wasn't set up on it

00:03:12

but I

00:03:14

Knew that so I'm glad it works. I'm glad you are down the path of heading into

00:03:19

Obsidian I will have to figure out what to do with my bell now

00:03:23

Do I need to get it out just in case maybe we should make up the obsidian Bell now?

00:03:32

Great fun. Well, I'm glad you've made that decision. I'm glad obsidian is

00:03:38

Potentially what you need and I'm glad that we were able to get 31,000 text files made

00:03:44

Yes, yeah, and there's a great there's a bunch more

00:03:48

I mean, that's just just the Bible verses and then I've got three years worth of

00:03:52

Notes that I've got to connect and all of the files that are associated with that

00:03:58

I mean, I'm I'm learning more about how obsidian works and I'm kind of concerned that I'm going to break it

00:04:05

but

00:04:07

so far have not we temporarily broke it when you were sending me the did good finished

00:04:13

Zip files with all the individual text files and throw it at obsidian and then it's loading the cache for two hours

00:04:19

You know, but eventually it caught up. I

00:04:22

did run across a

00:04:26

thread on their forums that

00:04:28

Someone was asking us like what is the max number of notes that it can handle and somebody was talking about throwing a million

00:04:35

Text files at it to see what it would do and it seemed like a define. Well, maybe I'm good

00:04:40

I don't know. I don't know that's that seemed like it was a lot now

00:04:44

They had a use case where they had like some programmatic generation of text files that was gonna happen

00:04:49

So they were generating a thousand plus a day in some form

00:04:53

I don't know what that was but

00:04:55

Mosquito has a good question though. You could make separate vaults. You could but then you can't connect things

00:05:00

So I don't want separate vaults. I've never understood

00:05:05

Why like in Rome you can have separate graphs and I'm like, but these are all my ideas

00:05:11

Why would I want to separate them other than when I was trying to do the bookworm stuff?

00:05:16

And create a separate graph for that you only have the option to share an individual page or share the entire vault

00:05:23

So I'd set up the set the second one and just share the entire vault although

00:05:27

Obsidian publish is very nice. That's gonna be way better

00:05:32

Once I get your setup just give me some time folks to

00:05:37

To get it all over there. I actually am paying for publish already

00:05:41

So we'll have to figure out. I know you can do like custom URL stuff

00:05:45

So we can actually just like tack it on to the bookworm.fm

00:05:49

URL if you wanted to but that's something

00:05:53

That's interesting. That's a discussion for another time

00:05:55

It's true. It's true, but

00:05:59

In the midst of all this I'm grateful you've started the transition to raw files

00:06:05

But that's that's my real

00:06:08

Excitement for you. Yeah, it's like in my case. I had a whole bunch of notes that I was using with Envy Ultra

00:06:13

I'm kind of playing around with making a switch over to obsidian just because Envy Ultra is taking so darn long to

00:06:19

Release and I'm getting tired of

00:06:21

Waiting so I've been trying to find a tool that

00:06:23

Does a lot of what I want it to do and uses a lot of the same hotkeys and stuff and obsidian lets me hack a lot of that stuff

00:06:30

So I've rewritten

00:06:33

The vast majority of the hotkeys that are in it already

00:06:36

So we'll see we'll see what comes of that if I stick with it or not. Who knows?

00:06:40

I dabble with a bunch of stuff. So I've got mine in sublime text Envy alt Envy Ultra

00:06:45

Vim

00:06:47

And obsidian right now. I'm a mess plain text files though. So you can do that

00:06:52

It's true and I can have them all open at the same time

00:06:54

All right enough about obsidian and fancy apps

00:07:00

Oh, actually one more thing I should mention to you because you'll find it humorous

00:07:04

You were helping me with this stuff and I was

00:07:06

Rachel was popping in and out and I was explaining what you were helping me do

00:07:10

and

00:07:12

In the evening, she's like so let me see what this looks like and I showed her like what I could do with connecting the verses using the

00:07:20

the references and the graph view and all that kind of stuff and she's like

00:07:23

blah blah blah nerds

00:07:26

100% yes exactly that is exactly the right response to that

00:07:35

Yeah

00:07:37

That's hilarious

00:07:38

All right, so we got a couple of action items here. I put this one in

00:07:42

I'm not sure if you actually published this or not

00:07:45

I'm not sure if you forgot about this because you actually have completed it already

00:07:50

For yourself, but how is your

00:07:52

Kanban board coming? Yeah, it works well

00:07:56

Uh, this is an omni focus. I've been using it pretty regularly

00:08:00

I publish it on github. I haven't done a write-up on my blog about it and I'm not sure I'm going to

00:08:07

Because I'm not sure that it's a good fit in this case because I've got a lot of omni focused stuff on there

00:08:13

Lately and I'm trying to break that up slightly. So it's on github

00:08:17

I can get you the link to that one specific or you might already have it mic, but

00:08:21

it's pretty straightforward. It takes all of the

00:08:24

scripts that are on the omni focus

00:08:27

plug-in

00:08:30

directory of sorts on the omni automation site and then I just tweaked it to run on projects instead of tasks

00:08:36

Made a custom perspective boom done. That's the way it works. So yeah, it's done. I've been using it pretty regularly

00:08:43

I like it. I'm a fan cool

00:08:45

Well, we can link to that because we got some nerds who listened to bookworm 2 who might be interested in that sort of thing

00:08:50

Um, I do not have access to that yet, but I'll dig it up for the show notes

00:08:55

Oh real quick one more thing on that. Uh, I did a guest episode on the automators

00:09:00

Podcast where we were talking about omni focus automation

00:09:04

And that particular plug-in and such that I had done came up a lot along with a whole bunch of other stuff that I've done

00:09:12

Uh with omni focus. So if you're interested in that and you're listening right now, go check out the automators podcast

00:09:17

Very cool

00:09:19

All right. So my action item was to make morning time my writing time. I have basically been successful in this

00:09:27

uh

00:09:29

been

00:09:31

Intentionally procrastinating for lack of a better term on anything not writing

00:09:35

And this is going pretty well part of this is the new and shiny of checking out obsidian

00:09:43

Which actually I really like as a writing tool

00:09:47

I think maybe all my writing will happen here instead of Ulysses

00:09:52

But i'm not 100 percent

00:09:55

Sold on it yet. I do like the fact that basically it's always auto saving now

00:09:59

it's automatically uploading everything to github every five minutes

00:10:03

and it's got like the character and the word count which is

00:10:07

really the only sort of statistics that I was after anyways

00:10:11

And it's all playing

00:10:14

Markdown. So when i'm done, I can just copy paste into WordPress without

00:10:18

Any of the crazy stuff that Ulysses does to like images and footnotes and all the other stuff

00:10:25

Yeah, I I don't know that I

00:10:28

I again, I haven't committed to it, but the fact that I can just tick up

00:10:34

An icon and it goes from edit mode to preview mode

00:10:37

Makes me like I ran my stream on this past Monday

00:10:42

I normally have an outline with notes and stuff for it that I write in markdown and then I usually pull it up and marked

00:10:49

And I would normally write it in multi markdown composer

00:10:53

Well, this time just to find out I wrote it all in obsidian and then I just tick the box change the view a little bit to hide

00:11:00

all the side bars and stuff and

00:11:03

It seemed to work just fine for me. So

00:11:06

Maybe i'm consolidating three tools into one. I don't know that I like that

00:11:11

Sure, we'll see. Yeah, the preview is pretty nice

00:11:14

And actually if you hold on the command key and you click on the preview you open it in a second pane and then they're linked

00:11:21

So as you're editing in real time

00:11:24

It's making the updates in the preview, which I know marked as something similar, but I believe it's got to be saved

00:11:32

Sure, and I like not having to hit command s in fact

00:11:35

I tried bb edit for a little while forgot to hit command s and lost a whole bunch of writing

00:11:40

Not good because for a while I was just dumping the notes inside of obsidian then you can open in the default app

00:11:47

So bb edit was my default app and I really do like bb edit

00:11:50

Maybe there's a setting in there where it autosaves. I'm not I'm not sure

00:11:54

I don't know. I'm still figuring out what the specifics of this workflow look like but

00:11:59

Obsidian is great for writing and I realized that a lot of my ideas end up being turned into some

00:12:03

Sort of writing anyways, so I like being able to have all that stuff in

00:12:07

Inside of one application makes the workflow a little bit more seamless

00:12:11

Sure, and hook is awesome and integrates with obsidian and I am just scratching the surface with what you can do with that stuff

00:12:18

So yeah, thanks for freeing to hook productivity. Yes, that that's a really cool tool that lets you hook

00:12:26

In spec like get urls and such to link

00:12:29

Documents pictures text files to websites and other like it's it's kind of nuts

00:12:35

Just hit a keyboard shortcut and you can see all the links you've got for whatever it is you're looking at. Yeah, it's it's bonkers

00:12:42

It's an impressive app

00:12:45

But enough about impressive apps. Let's talk about mental models. Shall we?

00:12:51

Sure. All right, so today's book great segue. Well done

00:12:56

Today's book is the great mental models volume one by shane perish and ryanin bowbin

00:13:03

And this is a book that is published in conjunction with the company automatic the people behind wordpress

00:13:10

the basic idea behind this book and the others in the series is that

00:13:15

You have these models that you base your thinking and decision making on and if you understand the models

00:13:22

Maybe you can make better decisions. That's kind of the whole point of this

00:13:26

first section here on acquiring wisdom

00:13:30

And then there are nine different mental models that they get into there are three supporting ideas

00:13:36

which basically happen after each

00:13:39

three chapters or something like that

00:13:42

and I love this approach I

00:13:45

Bought this one and the second one

00:13:49

When I saw them available in hardcover on amazon i've been keeping my eye on this ever since it was recommended

00:13:54

in the bookworm club

00:13:56

Probably two years ago at this point

00:13:59

And the hardcover you could not find you could get the ebook version. I didn't want the ebook version

00:14:04

And so the hardcover I checked a couple months ago. It was available on ebay for like 150 dollars for a acceptable condition

00:14:13

Book and i'm like no way and then out of the blue

00:14:17

They became available again. So I bought them mine is printed right side up. I'm like our buddy josh's

00:14:22

Sorry josh

00:14:24

Just just to point that out josh our friend of the show josh rinj sent us both

00:14:29

This video of him flipping through this book and it was printed upside down and backwards

00:14:35

Okay, well, I guess that's small printing it happens. So I know that he got it swapped out

00:14:43

So it's it's all been fine. That's good. Yeah, that was that's bizarre never

00:14:47

Yeah, I don't know how something like that happens. I know right but that aside

00:14:53

I think this is a really cool concept and this first volume is kind of like the general

00:14:59

Principles and then the second volume gets into like science and math things that i'm not really that interested in

00:15:05

I will tell you though after reading this one and seeing kind of the purpose behind the models that they're presenting

00:15:11

I totally want to read all the other ones

00:15:13

I don't know if we'll cover the second one for bookworm

00:15:17

It's quite a bit longer than this one is but I am definitely going to read it. I love this approach

00:15:22

It's basically condensing stuff that we would probably read whole books about in fact in some of these

00:15:29

We have read a whole books about them and they condense it down. It's very visual. They tell cool stories

00:15:36

I mean

00:15:38

This is my jam right here

00:15:41

Did you just give away your rating maybe?

00:15:44

I think this is interesting

00:15:48

especially this first section when

00:15:51

Because he does a very good job of

00:15:55

laying out the intense

00:15:58

the background the why

00:16:00

for

00:16:02

This book and i'm grateful for that because it has a lot to do with

00:16:07

What is it we're trying to accomplish here and that is ultimately how do I acquire wisdom?

00:16:13

How do I get smarter as a human and how do I think about things?

00:16:17

and

00:16:20

Yes, we're going to go through each of these mental models. We'll see how many

00:16:23

Or how long we spend on each hopefully it's not forever and always but

00:16:28

I do think you know one thing that kind of stood out to me

00:16:31

You know in in

00:16:34

The religious world that you and I come from Mike a lot of times whenever we think of a mental model

00:16:39

We don't call it that we call it a world view

00:16:41

And that was something that struck me fairly early on. It's like i'm not sure there's a direct correlation

00:16:46

Between those but from a

00:16:49

Christian perspective that having a worldview is something that we've talked about pretty regularly

00:16:55

it's a fairly common

00:16:57

discussion point and

00:16:59

I

00:17:00

I approached this kind of with the mindset that these mental models

00:17:05

Could be seen as a way to view the world. However, I don't think that holds up 100

00:17:12

Because again, that was my expectation going into this once he started explaining what our mental models

00:17:19

Especially once we got into the the first one here

00:17:21

It it made me realize like well, no, it's kind of more a way of thinking about a specific

00:17:29

Situation or different methods of thinking about situations or decisions that you're trying to make or understand as opposed to

00:17:37

an all-encompassing set of glasses that you see things through

00:17:41

So I don't think it's a true correlation. I just thought it was kind of an interesting connecting point

00:17:47

And that's that's how I got started in the book is with that point. Yeah, I agree with that. It's not a

00:17:52

worldview per se

00:17:55

it's a

00:17:57

set of

00:17:58

tools that you can use to

00:18:00

think about things in a specific way, but you don't always

00:18:04

view things

00:18:07

Through the lens of a specific model

00:18:10

He let's just jump into this first chapter here on acquiring wisdom because this is where he starts to talk about what mental models really are

00:18:17

So there are representation of how something works and it is a lens

00:18:22

So I guess you could in some way say yeah, it's a it's a worldview

00:18:28

but you collect these lenses

00:18:30

And the more lenses you have the more reality you understand and the more you know

00:18:36

What to do with it, but you can't you have to use the right lens on the right?

00:18:40

situation

00:18:43

and so

00:18:44

What this book is trying to do is give you some tools in your mental toolbox

00:18:49

And then it's up to you to figure out

00:18:52

when to apply

00:18:55

which one

00:18:56

Is that fair you think?

00:18:58

Yeah, I think so

00:18:59

because it's ultimately when do you think about

00:19:02

using one of these

00:19:05

You know later on we're going to talk about Occam's razor

00:19:07

Yep, so well, that's just a a tool that you can use to help make a decision as to which route to take

00:19:14

or which is the most likely

00:19:17

Reason for something that happened and

00:19:21

I will say and i'm not going to spend

00:19:26

much if any time on this we've had some very

00:19:28

tragic recent events in my little town and

00:19:32

it was kind of

00:19:34

interesting to come at some of the conversations and relationships that I have

00:19:38

with some of this in mind

00:19:41

uh as a result of that

00:19:43

um

00:19:44

For those of you interested there was a shooting and bombing in my little town of buffalo. So

00:19:49

That's kind of raw on my mind as we're going into this again. I'm not going to go into

00:19:55

Details with that, but it is just a thing that made me stop and pause like

00:19:59

my original assumptions

00:20:02

Given these mental models were they true?

00:20:04

You know my my initial thoughts with all of that was I correct or not probably not

00:20:11

Here's why

00:20:12

And now I have a kind of a way to define it in terms that I can use to explain it a little bit

00:20:17

Yeah, that's that's kind of the point is that you have something that you can use to explain things and unpack things

00:20:24

Um, it mentions at the end of this chapter

00:20:26

By the way that the more you use these models the more you understand when to use them

00:20:31

Which means there are times to use them and times not to use them

00:20:35

You have to understand the models

00:20:38

And you have to actually apply them in order to get the benefit from them

00:20:41

And the other thing I think that's worth noting here in this first chapter

00:20:45

Is that all of the models are flawed in some way

00:20:49

So you have to use them in the situation

00:20:53

In in order to mitigate the flaws. So if you use something in one situation that flaw doesn't really matter

00:20:59

It's going to provide you the benefit, but if you use it in a different situation

00:21:02

That flaw gets exposed and it's pretty easy to see

00:21:05

Well, that's not helping me see things right in this

00:21:08

Situation so that's the background of the entire book

00:21:12

Let's get into the meat of this book, which is the great thinking concepts

00:21:16

There are nine of these we're gonna go through these I think pretty quickly famous last words

00:21:23

How many times have we said that?

00:21:25

Yeah, we're gonna run through these quick the chapters themselves are pretty

00:21:30

short

00:21:32

And so

00:21:33

There's not a whole lot

00:21:35

in terms of the material in the book

00:21:38

To spend a ton of time talking about but there are

00:21:42

Concepts here that we've come across before that there have been entire books written about that are very lengthy

00:21:48

So the first one is the map is not the territory

00:21:52

basic idea here

00:21:54

is that

00:21:56

the map or the what we think of

00:21:58

in terms of the landscape

00:22:01

is very different than reality and that could be a

00:22:06

Map in like google maps or apple maps and it doesn't have the street on there that you need to turn down

00:22:12

But that's there are many other scenarios where this takes place one example of this

00:22:19

They mentioned is stereotypes stereotypes are a form of a map

00:22:22

and the danger

00:22:25

Here and the reason for this mental model is that we forget that the territory is actually much more complex

00:22:33

Than the map itself. Yeah, I think the the way to see that is that

00:22:39

You have to consider that a map is a simplified version of reality

00:22:45

And if you take the stereotype

00:22:49

Piece that you brought up like yes, that is a map that people use

00:22:54

Generally speaking that map is

00:22:59

There for a reason it exists for a reason

00:23:03

Stereotypes exist for a reason

00:23:06

They're not a hundred percent. That's the point

00:23:10

and

00:23:13

Although if you have to make like if you're forced

00:23:17

to make a snap decision

00:23:19

that map may be

00:23:21

helpful

00:23:23

But if you're not forced to make that snap decision

00:23:27

It's probably the wrong one to

00:23:30

Adopt I guess so following that map isn't necessarily the right answer if you're able to

00:23:37

Stop and see the whole

00:23:40

Of what's actually going the reality side of it. I liked kind of the

00:23:45

You know, he has a lot of quotes in this and there's a lot of those in this

00:23:49

section about reality versus

00:23:53

Expectations, I guess and I really appreciated that

00:23:58

Because it's true like yes, you can use a map like

00:24:01

driving

00:24:04

terrain maps

00:24:06

They're not a hundred percent if they were then you would be seeing the actual

00:24:10

world

00:24:12

at that time

00:24:13

so it's nice that

00:24:15

You can use these to help you navigate things

00:24:18

But you also have to keep in mind like it's saying the map is not the territory. It's not the real

00:24:24

Deal, it's just to help you guide through help guide you through that real

00:24:29

Territory

00:24:31

Yeah, and if you really want to break your brain

00:24:33

He talks about how an ideal map would contain

00:24:37

A map of the map the map of the map of the map, etc

00:24:42

And it would never end it's kind of like turtles all the way down. Yeah, when you open up

00:24:45

Screen sharing inside of an application and then all of a sudden doo doo doo doo doo

00:24:49

You know, you see a million different inception in the matrix versions of your

00:24:54

Yeah

00:24:56

So maps cannot show everything

00:24:59

and

00:25:01

Because they can't show everything you have to take into consideration

00:25:05

some things about the map the

00:25:09

A couple that stood out to me. He mentions reality is the ultimate update

00:25:12

So something may happen in the real world

00:25:16

And obviously the moment that it does the map needs to be updated in order to be accurate

00:25:20

The map may or may not have that thing on there

00:25:23

And maybe because

00:25:25

They have an updated it and maybe because they intentionally chose not to include that thing which is another important thing consider the cartographer

00:25:32

I like that phrase. I never really thought of that before

00:25:37

But it's true that the people who make the maps

00:25:40

Do have an opinion and a bias that they apply to the right way to create that map

00:25:49

Now for something like a traffic map

00:25:51

We can all agree that those opinions and biases are fine. We want to know the roads. We don't care about

00:25:58

all of the

00:26:01

The colors of the houses that you're passing, you know, but

00:26:05

There will be situations when if you were to make the map of the territory you would make it in a very different way

00:26:11

and

00:26:13

I never really questioned

00:26:15

A lot of the maps

00:26:18

In my life before but hearing that phrase

00:26:20

I think i'm going to now and it's not that i'm not going to use them

00:26:25

But I think this is the whole point of this book is this these mental models this

00:26:29

Lattice work on which to hang your ideas

00:26:33

You know when you're presented with a fact even in like a book that we read

00:26:37

Recognize that they are the cartographer in that case and they're creating this knowledge map in a specific way that

00:26:43

Benefits them it may not be exactly what you were

00:26:47

looking for so

00:26:50

Kind of take it with a grain of salt and air on the side of being skeptical. I guess

00:26:55

Uh, or at least question it before just blindly accepting it that yeah, this is this is truth

00:27:01

fucking mosquito has a good

00:27:03

Comment here in the chat. It's like any personality test you ever take

00:27:07

That gives you feedback on what you are like that would fit into like it's the creation of a map of you

00:27:13

And when we were talking like map of a map of a map of a map

00:27:18

The more personality tests you take the more maps you're giving yourself and the more potential views of yourself that you're

00:27:28

Being offered I guess different ways of trying to understand what it is that's

00:27:33

That's happening. So you get these personality tests

00:27:36

And you're able to understand what it is that you are so

00:27:42

again more and more maps mean

00:27:44

More understanding, but keep in mind like you're saying

00:27:48

What is the purpose of that map?

00:27:51

Yep, if I draw a map with the intent of giving you driving directions

00:27:56

That's gonna be very different than if I drew a map for you to give you walking directions

00:28:01

Think of google maps like they have that tick off which mode of transportation are you using and it's going to change which

00:28:08

Method or what type of map it's displaying. It's gonna tweak it so that it's more appropriate for your

00:28:14

purposes same thing if you're just giving a map it's got a bias built into it

00:28:20

Because it has an intention behind it

00:28:23

And if you question the maker and the purpose of it

00:28:26

You can start to understand where it should or shouldn't be used

00:28:30

I think of like the motivation code that we read. Yeah, it told us a lot about ourselves, right?

00:28:36

But it's only good whenever we're talking about what motivates us to act

00:28:41

It does absolutely nothing as far as telling me how to focus on the things i'm doing

00:28:47

But it is really good at explaining how I get started doing those things

00:28:52

Like those are two different areas so I can't use it in one when the other is the intention

00:28:57

exactly

00:28:58

uh

00:28:59

the one that comes to mind

00:29:01

For me is the four tendencies by Gretchen Rubin, which I was not a fan of

00:29:06

And I recognize it's because my mission in taking that assessment did not line up with the cartographers in that particular case

00:29:15

Right and that's completely fine

00:29:17

But that's one instance of me questioning the thing that I was going through just because it didn't quite feel right

00:29:24

But how many times the motivation code for example, do I just

00:29:27

Coast through those things and accept it as this is the right thing for this situation

00:29:34

You know, I want to do a better job of questioning those things that

00:29:37

As i'm going through and which kind of leads into the next one the circle of competence

00:29:42

because

00:29:44

When you're talking about motivation the motivation code by Todd henry that's a great place

00:29:49

To go because he's an expert in that particular area

00:29:53

Right, but you don't want to listen to somebody who's been divorced five times about marriage advice

00:29:59

Yes, and this in this chapter they explain why

00:30:06

you can

00:30:08

Find yourself in a situation where you do feel like you know everything in a particular area

00:30:15

Even when you compare yourself to somebody else and in the marriage example, you know

00:30:19

Uh, when you look at the longevity of somebody who's been married for 50 years

00:30:23

As opposed to somebody who has trouble staying in a relationship for more than a couple of years

00:30:28

Uh from a higher up perspective. It's easy to see while i'm going to trust that person

00:30:33

But when you're in the details, it's easy to think well

00:30:37

I know everything and so that's what this life versus stranger story at the beginning here is all about

00:30:42

They use the analogy of this small town

00:30:44

There's a lifer who lives there. He knows everything about everybody

00:30:48

Where they went to school what their favorite color is what they for breakfast

00:30:53

He knows literally everything and then this stranger shows up

00:30:56

And he gets to meet the mayor and he meets some influential people and he understands some broad concepts about

00:31:02

Where things are inside of the town and he's been there a couple of days and he thinks

00:31:07

Oh, I know everything there is to know about this town

00:31:09

But if you get them to talk to the lifer for more than two minutes, it becomes very clear that you don't know anything

00:31:15

The lifer is the one who has all of the real experience and the real knowledge as it pertains

00:31:22

To this thing and I think it's can be difficult to understand

00:31:26

When you are a lifer when you are a stranger if there's a single takeaway for me from this section

00:31:32

It is to assume that you are the stranger and that you don't know everything and look for the lifers who can help you out with stuff

00:31:38

Yeah for sure

00:31:40

Probably a good example of like the whole life or a stranger story in small town

00:31:45

I grew up in small town, Missouri

00:31:47

And I remember specifically we had kind of our town festivals once a year

00:31:52

in

00:31:54

Septemberish

00:31:56

And I remember

00:31:58

There was a bunch of folks that had come in from out of town

00:32:02

And they wanted to go grab something to eat so they wanted to go to a town that was

00:32:07

Not too far away

00:32:08

So we were going to go together and they immediately is like, oh, we'll just take the main road and you can follow us and we'll we'll meet you over there

00:32:15

It's like no you cannot do that it's been raining a lot lately. I'm betting there's a lot of water over the road over there

00:32:21

Like oh no, it's fine. Like well, tell you what we'll meet you there. We're gonna go a different way

00:32:26

so

00:32:28

Me and my friends went and met them there and of course they show up 20 minutes later

00:32:32

Then us even though our way was longer technically because it had been raining a lot and guess what there's water over the road

00:32:40

so

00:32:41

You don't learn those things

00:32:43

Just from talking to the mayor and coming up and knowing

00:32:46

You know what you've seen in the tour

00:32:49

You always get the high level you get the peaks

00:32:51

Whenever you do the tours, you don't get to see what the depths are down and the valleys and such

00:32:56

And what's going on down in the rivers and such like you don't get that detail

00:32:59

Unless you've been there for a long time. So

00:33:02

Yes, I think there's a lot of value in understanding when you're which

00:33:07

When you are which of those two

00:33:11

Uh, you know if you want to come back to your obsidian

00:33:14

Example it's like mike knew that get was not his

00:33:18

Forte that's true reach out to somebody who knows it like sure that's that's inside my circle of

00:33:25

Competence, but when it comes to putting together a top-notch

00:33:30

um screencast

00:33:33

Like I can do that

00:33:35

It's technically like on the outskirts of my circle of competence

00:33:39

But I know mike is the guy I want to talk to if I wanted some details on that so we like we have our own

00:33:44

Circles that we need to run in but you have to know which white wind are you in each of those

00:33:50

Uh, and I think it's a little bit dangerous when you're not aware

00:33:54

Or not willing to consider

00:33:56

Where you are in the midst of that. I think the warning sign is when you

00:34:03

Think you know

00:34:06

Quite a bit about a topic because he mentions that when you are

00:34:10

Within a circle of competence

00:34:12

You know exactly what you don't know

00:34:15

And that phrase really struck me. It's it's really true. I know that

00:34:23

I am not a designer

00:34:25

Right and right I'm with you on that one

00:34:28

I know nothing about colors and fonts and all that kind of stuff

00:34:32

But I know that I don't know that and so if i'm building a website

00:34:36

I am not going to try to make myself a logo because it's just not kind of work

00:34:41

But I think there are definitely times especially when you get excited about something and you're exploring something where the tendency can be

00:34:49

Okay, well, I guess, you know, I know everything there is to know about this

00:34:52

One example of that although I don't think I ever got to that point

00:34:57

Was with room research because I went into it

00:35:00

Thinking I have no idea how I'm going to use this thing

00:35:03

I'm going to try it this specific way and then I kind of built on that knowledge

00:35:06

I wonder if it can do this. I wonder if it can do that

00:35:08

And I ended up doing a whole bunch of stuff and inside of it

00:35:11

But I still never felt like okay. I have

00:35:15

mastered this application and I can do everything I know everything it can do

00:35:20

I was completely fine saying i'm going to use it in these

00:35:23

Specific ways and the rest of it. I just don't even care about right but I I did that selectively

00:35:30

I wasn't thinking like well. Yeah, this is all the obvious

00:35:33

good uses of the tool

00:35:36

There was always in the back of my mind a belief that somebody out there

00:35:40

In fact when I was on the the Rome FM podcast because they wanted to talk about how I was using it for the sermon notes and the quote book and all that kind of stuff

00:35:47

I was hesitant to go on because I'm like, I don't think I'm using this very well

00:35:52

Yeah, they're like no, no, this is really cool. Trust me. I think that's another indication that you are in a circle of competences

00:35:59

You think something's not that great, but other people are telling you no actually this is this is good

00:36:06

He talks about how there are three practices that are needed in order to build a circle of competency one is a curiosity and it is

00:36:13

Desire to learn that is definitely what I approached that with

00:36:18

But then also monitoring and feedback so you try something and you say you see if it worked

00:36:23

And then you even get outside of your own experience and you get somebody else to look at it and say how would you have done this?

00:36:30

differently

00:36:32

It's easy to just go into something

00:36:36

By yourself develop whatever you are going to use around that thing in a vacuum

00:36:42

and then

00:36:44

And then get to this point I think where you feel you have a circle of competence

00:36:48

But that's just because you haven't expanded your vision beyond your own little circle to see what's really possible

00:36:54

The much safer better version of this is to assume that you're an idiot

00:36:58

Somebody else much smarter knows much more about this look for the experts

00:37:04

This is this is kind of a difficult thing with being a creator online too, right?

00:37:09

We have a tendency to try to make things to share

00:37:14

But we don't always think about what to share until people see something that we've done

00:37:18

I'm like wait, what was that? What did you just do?

00:37:20

Like I've seen this on the live streams

00:37:23

How many times whenever I've done these and I'm showing something on my computer

00:37:26

Like wait, what did you just do you jumped over to that? How did you what what just happened?

00:37:32

I I just typed a text expander snippet. Do you not know text expand or what is this?

00:37:38

Like I don't know what why is that such a thing like I you just don't realize what what it is that you do

00:37:44

That other people could find very valuable and that's because then you start to feel like the whole poser thing

00:37:51

Like if you think that you're someone who

00:37:52

Doesn't know a whole lot about something

00:37:55

um

00:37:57

You could be right

00:37:58

But there's also a decent chance that you know a lot more than you think you do

00:38:02

Yeah, that's an interesting topic. Let's unpack that for a minute because I think the difference

00:38:08

With that is if you're going to share

00:38:12

what you have learned and

00:38:15

Your experiment

00:38:18

publicly

00:38:19

Then that's completely cool

00:38:21

But when you try to synthesize whatever you've just learned as

00:38:26

This is the way things work

00:38:29

Right and I have read this book and I know everything about this topic and these are the three things you need to know

00:38:38

That's when

00:38:41

The red flag goes up in my mind. I've probably been guilty of that from time to time

00:38:45

I have for sure, but I try not to do that. I I try to filter it as

00:38:51

This is what I did. This is what I learned. This is how I applied it

00:38:55

These are the lessons from this

00:38:59

Take it and try it for yourself. I do try to distill it down so people can

00:39:03

can grasp it without having to

00:39:06

Read the whole book themselves

00:39:09

Um, yeah, but I think this is where something like

00:39:13

Roman or obsidian is really valuable because you're collecting these ideas

00:39:18

And you connect them and you let them bounce around and you've got a unique perspective based on your own bank of knowledge

00:39:26

It's easy to know just operate in the vacuum of the last book that you read

00:39:30

But really the truth is that you are the sum of all of your experiences all the dots that you've collected

00:39:36

That's really what's producing the the output. So

00:39:40

Just try not to frame it as

00:39:43

You know, trust me. I got this figured out and just share

00:39:47

The insights from the journey. That's my approach to this

00:39:52

Yep, it's okay to share what you've learned. Just be careful how you share it

00:39:56

Yep. All right. Next one is first principles thinking

00:39:59

This is probably going to be a short one because

00:40:04

essentially what this is saying

00:40:06

Is that there are principles?

00:40:10

That everything else is based off of and constructing your understanding based on these

00:40:17

First principles things that we absolutely know to be true and filling in from there

00:40:23

Can help you understand a lot of the root causes and things. So there's a couple different processes they describing here

00:40:29

One is the Socratic questioning method

00:40:32

I'm not really that interested in this one

00:40:34

The second one which I'd heard before is the five wise

00:40:38

I assume you're familiar with this one joe

00:40:41

Yeah, why why why why why yeah, so that's how I see it

00:40:44

Basically for trying to figure out the core the core motivation for something you just keep asking why and then eventually you're going to

00:40:52

To land at it. I feel like that's a simpler

00:40:55

Implementation of this first principles thinking. I don't know why they put Socratic questioning first

00:41:01

This one's kind of complicated. There's several steps and then there's different questions along with that

00:41:06

Uh, but the basic idea here is that if you understand the principles then you can change

00:41:14

Your approach to them they they say it this way you can change the tactics if you know the principles

00:41:19

And they've got a quote here by a Harrington Emerson's is asked to methods

00:41:23

There may be a million and then some but principles are few the man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods

00:41:28

The man who tries methods ignoring principles is sure to have trouble

00:41:32

And this is the big warning flag from this one. I think there's lots of stuff out there regarding systems now. I love systems. I love systems thinking

00:41:42

Uh, most of the books that we read present a system in some way shape or form

00:41:49

But when you combine this with the other principles like the circle of competence and the map is not the territory

00:41:54

I will admit that whenever I pick up a systems book from now on

00:41:58

I'm going to be asking myself

00:42:00

Are they building this system?

00:42:02

And then trying to shoehorn principles into it

00:42:06

Or do they have an understanding of the principles and they've built a system that works on top of that because I can think right

00:42:12

different different examples that fall into each of those categories

00:42:17

And I would venture to say that the ones that we don't like

00:42:20

Are the ones that are trying to just make a system works so that they can sell a book like that

00:42:26

guessing that's

00:42:29

Part of it first principles thinking is something

00:42:31

I don't know who would have been the one that make it popular, but I know it's big for elon musk

00:42:38

If you're familiar with him, of course with tesla spacex and team

00:42:42

And he

00:42:44

I know adopts kind of this thing. I don't know how which method he comes at

00:42:48

At this from

00:42:51

But I know that he's spent a lot of time trying to figure okay. Well, what are the base

00:42:55

physics when it comes to

00:42:58

battery technology

00:43:00

that

00:43:02

We cannot break or what what are those fundamental pieces

00:43:05

When it comes to battery technology and can we

00:43:11

Alter things without breaking those fundamental physics

00:43:16

Laws like he likes to go all the way down to that level

00:43:20

And then throw out a lot of the assumptions from the general

00:43:24

World of technology that we know the science that we know

00:43:29

He'll throw out a lot of that because he wants to build off of those those elemental pieces

00:43:34

I think that's really cool

00:43:36

Obviously, he's had some success

00:43:39

Doing that

00:43:40

But I think you're right like whenever we approach

00:43:43

Books or we approach a system. We approach a map

00:43:48

It's good to ask the why does this exist

00:43:52

Okay, well why that and why that and why that and why that

00:43:57

And then you eventually get yourself down to the point where this is the foundation that this is built on

00:44:03

And if you agree with that foundation

00:44:05

Awesome, if you don't you have a problem

00:44:08

And if at some point in the chain it's built on air

00:44:12

Then you need to make some adjustments. So I like that

00:44:17

I like the concept, but I don't know how I would come about it other than just be aware of it

00:44:22

The battery example is a great one because also in this section

00:44:27

They say to improve something we need to know why it was successful or not

00:44:30

Which is essentially what you're talking about

00:44:32

They break it down as far as they possibly can and then they figure out the physics reasons for why they can't make it any smaller

00:44:38

Can't cram or better in there yada yada yada

00:44:41

This also leads into one of these supporting ideas which comes right after this chapter on falsifiability

00:44:48

This is just a short like two-page thing that really isn't addendum to this specific chapter in in my mind

00:44:54

Because this falsifiability this is being able to prove that something is wrong

00:45:00

And this is important because if you can't prove something is wrong you really can't prove that it's right either

00:45:07

And they have this falsification definition here, which I liked

00:45:11

This is the opposite of verification by failing to disprove something

00:45:16

You actually make the argument stronger

00:45:19

And again, I don't have a specific application of that principle

00:45:24

But I do like that one and think that it fits very well with this first principles thinking

00:45:29

I like the the way that they

00:45:31

Organized the content in this book where they have the the three

00:45:36

General thinking concepts and they go into that that short little section

00:45:39

The next one is thought experiment

00:45:42

And this is kind of exactly what it sounds like

00:45:46

Thought experiments are simply devices of your imagination

00:45:49

Which are used to investigate the nature of things. He's got different steps that go into a thought experiment

00:45:55

And really this is just trying to imagine an alternate reality

00:46:01

One of the phrases from this section that really stood out to me is that creativity is intelligence having fun

00:46:08

I don't know what to do with that statement

00:46:12

But I like it. I do think that like i've been thinking a lot about idea management and

00:46:20

How we get ideas

00:46:23

How to tie them together how to make the most of them how to tell which ones are good which ones are bad

00:46:29

How to tell the size of an idea? I mean, I don't have specifics for how to do any of this stuff

00:46:34

These are just the questions in my my head

00:46:36

The brain is your biological supercomputer. It's pretty impressive

00:46:41

so

00:46:44

When it comes to creativity, I do think though it is sort of a system is an input

00:46:48

There's a process and then there's output based off of it

00:46:51

And there have got to be levers somewhere that you can pull

00:46:54

To make it easier to ideate to develop one

00:46:58

Obvious one

00:47:00

Is just not constantly being connected giving your brain time to process things like your ideas come when you're in the shower

00:47:07

Why? Because you're not

00:47:09

In the middle of everything else that you got to do during your work day

00:47:13

Um, and I think that when it comes to creating even though it is a system

00:47:21

It's always felt more enjoyable for me

00:47:25

And I think maybe I've kind of written that off is like, well, that's my personality. I identify as a creator

00:47:32

So that's probably why

00:47:36

but then I get into

00:47:37

Still like an artist by Austin kleon and he makes the point that everybody's creative

00:47:43

I heard a story one time which I really liked about how

00:47:47

When you're born you get a box of crayons and you have no problem creating and over time

00:47:54

You people are tell you to conform and they tell you to follow

00:47:57

Processes and think a certain way

00:48:00

And then eventually some people work up the nerve to ask for their crayons back

00:48:05

you know, I feel like

00:48:08

That is true of everybody on some level

00:48:11

so

00:48:13

I don't think creativity is necessarily like a

00:48:15

Genetic thing it's you're not born a certain way you're not creative or not creative

00:48:20

I believe everybody has the ability to be creative. They just express it

00:48:23

in different ways

00:48:24

so

00:48:26

You can apply that here by saying creativity is intelligence while everybody's smart everybody's intelligent in different ways

00:48:32

So when you're creating it's simply activating that intelligence in a specific way that's enjoyable for you

00:48:38

Which kind of throws a whole monkey wrench into the thing of like don't do what you love

00:48:43

Don't follow your passion, but always bring it with you

00:48:46

I don't know. Maybe maybe there's a little bit of truth to that

00:48:52

maybe it is just your perspective though and

00:48:54

you lean into your gift things and your talents and that's you naturally derive some satisfaction from those sorts of things

00:49:04

I think you're diving into the territory of trying to define creativity. Yep, and

00:49:10

I don't think that's a simple thing to do

00:49:15

because it really depends on

00:49:19

How you want to come at it and what we're talking about when it like what is the output from the creativity that matters

00:49:25

Which is why it's such a nebulous hole that you can't really put your finger on

00:49:30

because it's easy to like okay if we're talking about creativity in the realm of

00:49:35

Making videos and putting words to a screen like that's that's one realm

00:49:40

Of creativity and the process of being creative in that space has some pretty well-known

00:49:47

Processes that come with that and I'm guessing that a lot of your thoughts around idea management and using those to come up with new things

00:49:55

are derived around the concept of making things for

00:49:59

digital knowledge based

00:50:02

websites tools products files, etc. Mm-hmm. That that's kind of one area

00:50:09

But there's a number of these like we could be talking about creativity when it comes to fine art whole different game

00:50:16

Yep, the concept of coming up with ideas for fine art

00:50:19

Totally different than what you and I would do to write an article or make a video or make a podcast like

00:50:26

Realms apart from each other. So somebody that comes from the fine art world is going to have a very different perspective on what creativity is than you and I would

00:50:35

so

00:50:37

I think that definition is going to change and I think some of that is because

00:50:43

We've expanded what creativity means

00:50:46

over time

00:50:48

it used to be I if I'm not wrong here, I believe it used to be primarily just art like

00:50:55

paintings drawings

00:50:58

sure clay

00:51:00

Pottery it used to be in that realm and that's what creativity kind of

00:51:04

lint itself towards

00:51:07

But then you start getting like graphic design that takes art and then has a purpose in the world of business and marketing

00:51:14

and now creativity has a whole different life like yes, it's

00:51:17

Creating things that are beautiful still but it has a different purpose other than just being

00:51:24

Fun to look at cool to look at

00:51:28

So I I think it really depends on what you're

00:51:31

trying to

00:51:34

Like how you want to define that creativity as far as where where in this do you do you land but

00:51:40

I don't know there there are a lot of different ways you could come at this for sure

00:51:44

Yeah, so there's a lot of those things that you mentioned

00:51:46

They kind of could be classified as like left brain or right brain and I've heard right brain described as the creative side of your brain

00:51:53

I don't think that's accurate. I think you can be creative with the left side of your brain. I am not a

00:51:59

Artistic

00:52:02

person

00:52:04

but

00:52:06

I can be creative with words

00:52:08

and I think that the left brain is the one that's kind of driving that a lot of the lot of the time

00:52:15

so

00:52:17

These different ways of being creative. I guess the question in my head and I kind of think I know what I think about this

00:52:23

But because creativity can be expressed all these different ways

00:52:26

This thought experiment. What do you see? This is like a left brain or right brain activity

00:52:31

I think this is probably a left brain

00:52:34

activity

00:52:36

In terms of applying mental models. There's kind of a formula

00:52:40

Implied here. It's not just like grabbing something from the stars and bringing it down

00:52:45

Into this this model

00:52:48

At least that wasn't my interpretation of this

00:52:50

So I guess my big question is do you think that these thought experiments can be applied in any arena because I kind of think they can

00:52:59

Yeah, I would say so

00:53:01

um, I don't think

00:53:04

when I when I first came at thought experiment

00:53:06

Creativity and like trying to come up with new things wasn't really on my

00:53:10

radar

00:53:12

the thought experiment

00:53:14

purpose in my mind had more to do with trying to figure out an answer to a problem and

00:53:20

Obviously we could say that could be a creative

00:53:24

process

00:53:26

the example that came to my head was

00:53:29

the process of buying a new house

00:53:31

okay

00:53:33

It's a thought experiment to put yourself through the paces of you found a house

00:53:38

It's in a different area. Of course. It's got a different layout. It has a different all sorts of stuff

00:53:43

You bring kids into the mix. What does life look like?

00:53:47

If you say yes to that house, that's a thought experiment. Let's walk through true if we said yes here

00:53:54

This is how most people buy a house too. We've done this. This is not an unknown process

00:53:59

If you've bought a house, you've gone into it at some point

00:54:02

You've imagined yourself there. You've thought through the process of what does breakfast look like?

00:54:07

How do I get to work? What is my commute like?

00:54:10

How do I get to see family if we can ever go see family again and all these things are

00:54:15

Questions and processes that we work ourselves through

00:54:19

To determine if it's a yes or no

00:54:22

Now that's kind I don't want to say it's a simplified, but it is a simplified type of

00:54:28

thought experiment per I think what he's

00:54:30

intending here

00:54:32

But at the same time, I think there's like yes, that's a very practical way of

00:54:37

Approaching this I think what you're getting at I think is the

00:54:40

in the process of

00:54:43

Take creating content in the process of creating content

00:54:46

How does this apply because if it's a creative process that we're going through in this thought experiment

00:54:50

How does that come out and that?

00:54:55

I think actually is more of

00:54:57

I didn't intend this

00:55:01

It's kind of the Gary V document versus create

00:55:03

If you've followed Gary V, he has this whole thing about

00:55:07

Don't create content document what you're doing

00:55:10

And if you think that through

00:55:14

In what he's intending with that and if you think about what it is that we do whenever we create things for the internet

00:55:21

a lot of it has to do with

00:55:25

Showing you what we've learned or what we're doing

00:55:27

Yes, you can make things

00:55:31

about new things

00:55:33

Idea courses and such like you could do that

00:55:35

But ultimately that's because you've been thinking about it

00:55:39

You know, you were talking earlier about you've been

00:55:41

Thinking a lot about idea management and how we come up with ideas

00:55:45

My guess is you have a lot of ideas around

00:55:48

How do people manage knowledge for themselves and interconnect those thoughts

00:55:54

Externalized I'm getting there because

00:55:57

You've been thinking about this for a long time. That's the process. I think we're talking about you know

00:56:02

That's the thought experiment if I'm thinking through this what comes out of it

00:56:06

Yeah, which totally sounds like a left brain activity

00:56:09

And then they make this statement that creativity is intelligence having fun and it completely destroys the mental model that I had going into this

00:56:16

But you should also know like I I don't know how far they are down the path

00:56:21

But I think they're slowly abandoning the whole left right brain thing

00:56:25

Yep

00:56:26

Because they're seeing how much it floats from side to side and doesn't actually stick to one side

00:56:30

So I don't know it's just an easy way to

00:56:33

Explain it. I think left and right. Yeah, no, it makes sense

00:56:37

And I like the Gary V analogy that you mentioned

00:56:40

document versus

00:56:43

Create because you look at somebody who does like a daily vlog

00:56:47

I've watched those before and I always felt like there's no way I could do that

00:56:52

But for somebody who is just documenting their life

00:56:55

It probably seems very logical how they build one of those, you know, so yeah

00:57:01

Right interesting. All right. Let's move on to the next one, which is second order thinking

00:57:07

This is thinking farther ahead and thinking more holistically

00:57:12

about things kind of the effects of the effects

00:57:17

One of the quotes that they have in this section, which I loved is that stupidity is the same as evil if you judge it by the results

00:57:25

I think that's that's a great explanation of kind of the second order thinking or the absence of it

00:57:33

Because a lot of times we do things and we don't think far enough ahead and we don't realize

00:57:38

The real consequences of some of these actions and make the point that a genie never goes back in the bottle

00:57:44

And they have a couple examples here the one that really stood out to me

00:57:47

was this story about antibiotics being used in

00:57:52

meat because

00:57:54

Initially the antibiotics

00:57:57

Were producing bulkier healthier cows and so they were bringing in

00:58:02

More money for farmers, which is a good thing

00:58:06

but the second order effect of this is that

00:58:09

You have all of these antibiotics and so the bacteria that actually

00:58:14

Survived this is now resistant to the antibiotics

00:58:18

and that is definitely a bad thing so

00:58:23

Should the farmers have known that that was going to happen that there was that second order effect

00:58:30

That was laying out there. I don't know

00:58:35

I this kind of gets into an area which I think is a little bit gray

00:58:39

Because I think you should be thinking about this sort of stuff, but how do you ascribe?

00:58:44

Any sort of responsibility for these second order effects because

00:58:49

You can't really know the future and I guess the big takeaway then if you

00:58:54

Accept that is just hopefully everybody does this

00:58:58

I think the the antibiotic thing is an interesting one

00:59:03

to bring up. I don't know if you did that because of my farm background, but the

00:59:07

the thing that's interesting to me is that

00:59:10

in that particular scenario

00:59:13

Farmers are not thinking about

00:59:15

What's down the line right all they know is that if I

00:59:20

Put antibiotics in the feed for my cattle

00:59:24

if I put hormone supplements in

00:59:27

the feed for my cattle

00:59:30

inject them sometimes

00:59:32

it means that

00:59:33

the cattle can grow

00:59:35

and put on their muscle mass quicker

00:59:38

with less health issues

00:59:42

Which means I can make more money for my family

00:59:45

and continue to live exactly and I completely that is the sum total I completely understand that and you can easily

00:59:53

Dismiss the second order effect thinking in that scenario, which kind of has me thinking like well

01:00:00

Where do you draw the line?

01:00:02

Because you can also take the approach of like well

01:00:04

In certain situations they should have known better than to do this sort of a thing right?

01:00:10

Right. I don't know where that line is though

01:00:12

Yes, yes. I mean it's it's messy right. I mean there's not a clean line there and

01:00:20

ascribing things to stupidity in that case

01:00:24

is absolutely

01:00:26

100% correct because

01:00:29

And in in a lot of cases, it's not even stupidity

01:00:31

It's just I'm allowed to do this if people don't want to eat the results of what I'm doing

01:00:36

Tell them to stop buying it like that's a lot of like farmers a lot of times will have that mindset as well

01:00:42

We can get on to them all you want

01:00:44

but

01:00:45

Stop buying the products of what is being produced from it and then they'll change it like until the money doesn't show up

01:00:52

They're not going to do anything

01:00:54

So anyway, that's all another thing you're stepping on my toes with that one

01:00:58

So like I'll set that one sorry

01:01:00

It's okay. It's okay. The the thing that I think is interesting is we don't often think about

01:01:06

You know think about it from somebody else's perspective somebody makes a decision

01:01:11

and it impacts you and

01:01:14

You're not happy about the decision that they made because it impacted you and now I'm upset at them because of that decision

01:01:21

And they've created a lot of pain for me

01:01:25

So obviously they are the culprit here. They are obviously the one who

01:01:29

Should be at fault here because of so much trouble that they've

01:01:33

They've given to me

01:01:36

The more likely answer is that they weren't even thinking about you. Yeah, you're getting into another mental model here

01:01:42

I know we're diving into it like we're starting to like they start to step on each other's toes to some degree

01:01:49

But it's the same concept right when you have second and third order thinking

01:01:54

like the results of my decision

01:01:56

Have to be understood

01:01:59

In their entirety before you can actually say

01:02:01

Is this the right thing or not? Like this is the this is the problem and the conversation that has to happen a lot when the the

01:02:08

ethics conversation around self-driving cars comes up

01:02:12

Because what happens if that car like how do you program that how is that computer program or supposed to

01:02:18

write

01:02:21

the conditional statements that go into that car

01:02:24

That decide do I continue driving straight

01:02:28

Knowing that i'm going to be in an accident and if I continue driving straight

01:02:34

I'm going to hit a vehicle and it's going to kill one person

01:02:38

or

01:02:39

Well say say if I keep going straight it would kill five people or

01:02:43

Do I intentionally deviate and kill one person

01:02:46

Or do I leave it on its course to kill five?

01:02:50

Yeah, what do you do? This is the trolley car sidebar they had in in this particular chapter

01:02:55

So they spell it out in a different way, but i'm just using the self-driving thing because it's more fun for me

01:03:00

but the that's the question mark right like

01:03:04

which of those

01:03:07

decisions are

01:03:09

better

01:03:10

because now you're choosing between lives

01:03:12

And if the car intentionally chooses to kill the one as opposed to just staying the course

01:03:19

What do you what do you do like what are the results of that?

01:03:24

Now now we have to go back to a thought experiment and work through it like this is this is going to get messy

01:03:30

And it's going to get messy fast. There are no good options and on the other side of this

01:03:34

I think

01:03:36

The other thing here that really stood out to me is they mentioned you have to be careful to avoid

01:03:41

The wedge argument or the slippery slope argument because i've been on the side where well

01:03:45

I don't want to make a wrong choice when you're presented with multiple wrong choices like you were just describing

01:03:50

You don't want to make a choice

01:03:54

So you don't do anything and that's what they're speaking against is like you can't just sit there and wait till you have all the facts in order to make

01:04:02

the

01:04:02

Perfect decision because sometimes there isn't a perfect decision to be made

01:04:06

I've definitely been guilty of that before

01:04:09

analysis paralysis

01:04:12

It's true. The next one here is probabilistic thinking

01:04:17

and

01:04:18

This we have read books about thinking fast and slow by daniel conneman is the one that comes to mind

01:04:25

Probabilistic thinking is basically you're trying to estimate using tools of math and logic

01:04:30

The likelihood of a specific outcome coming to pass

01:04:34

This is kind of getting into

01:04:36

The next book that we're going to be reading which i've started to think this is going to be really interesting

01:04:41

um

01:04:42

The future is unpredictable. We don't know all the variables the best we can do is estimate

01:04:49

and

01:04:51

There are certain things that we can use in this mental model to help us estimate better

01:04:57

Again, I don't want to get into a whole bunch of detail here because we could be having the whole thinking fast and slow discussion again

01:05:04

But they talk about a couple key concepts

01:05:07

The ones that stand out to me are the fat tailed curves because everybody has seen like those bell curves

01:05:12

And with the bell curve they trail off

01:05:15

On the ends, but with a fat tailed curve basically what they're saying is that unlike a bell curve

01:05:21

There is no cap on these extreme events

01:05:25

So when you think of things in terms of a bell curve

01:05:28

Something like median height for example

01:05:31

There is a maximum for how tall a person can be

01:05:37

You know above eight feet probably

01:05:40

You're not running into anybody at that end of the bell curve right but a fat tail curve is something like median income

01:05:48

Because there can be a whole bunch of people that are in like the the

01:05:52

Tall section of that curve but way way on the right side

01:05:57

There are people who have tons and tons and tons and tons of

01:06:00

income

01:06:03

And it completely destroys a bell curve model in in that scenario

01:06:07

So figuring out, you know when to use a bell curve versus a fat tail curve

01:06:13

I think is is interesting

01:06:15

And this is also where the concept of anti fragility comes up

01:06:19

which is

01:06:21

And I don't again I had to I got I don't know how to apply this

01:06:24

But this is fascinating to me, but the anti fragility is basically being able to benefit

01:06:30

from those fat tail scenarios that you can't realistically predict

01:06:35

So

01:06:38

What does that mean? Well, the example they they share is basically never taking your risk that will do you win

01:06:43

Completely and the concept of being anti fragiles that even if you select wrong

01:06:48

you still kind of

01:06:50

come out ahead

01:06:52

But I don't know how you apply this personally this when we read that

01:06:59

Nicholas

01:07:01

I forget how to say his name to lab to lab. Yeah, we read that that book

01:07:05

I came across him like well, this is interesting information, but how in the world do I right apply it? I kind of had the same like

01:07:13

Lost over approach after reading this chapter like yeah, this all makes sense. You're absolutely right

01:07:20

I don't know what to do with this

01:07:22

right

01:07:24

Yeah, I mean the seem to lab anti fragile is what we're referring to and

01:07:29

it's it's the concept of

01:07:31

as you are stressed you are stronger

01:07:33

it

01:07:36

Protects itself from breaking as it's exposed to things that could break it

01:07:40

I think that's a very crude way of explaining it, but that's the concept here

01:07:46

but

01:07:48

I I don't know the the piece here

01:07:51

Probabilistic thinking like that concept

01:07:56

that model I suppose I should use his terms

01:07:58

that mental model

01:08:01

he he dives into

01:08:03

some of this anti fragile

01:08:05

piece

01:08:07

partially because I think

01:08:09

As you're thinking about what is the amount of risk involved with making a decision

01:08:15

If that risk is going to completely ruin you

01:08:19

Like you were saying it's probably not the one you want to take

01:08:24

but if it's one that

01:08:26

You could benefit from either in the short term or in the long term thus the anti fragile piece

01:08:31

If it's one that could benefit you then it's a decision to make. Yes

01:08:35

so

01:08:38

that premise of

01:08:40

Let me think about what is the probability that something is going to happen in a certain way

01:08:46

And then making that choice

01:08:49

depending on if you're willing to

01:08:52

Take it on or not like if there's an 80% chance

01:08:54

You have pretty good chances jump in if it's 20%

01:08:58

You might want to stop and reconsider and figure out how to help your chances increase

01:09:05

As opposed to just like I don't know it seems right and jumping in those of you who do that with the

01:09:10

Stock market know that you don't get very far doing that the hard part with that though

01:09:15

comes from the supporting idea

01:09:18

Where you're trying to calculate the percent chances

01:09:22

Because they talk about necessity and sufficiency

01:09:25

Where having some necessary conditions

01:09:28

Doesn't mean that you have all the sufficient conditions for a desired event to occur

01:09:33

The example they use is making it to the fortune 500

01:09:36

Capital is necessary but not sufficient if you have capital you're not necessarily going to make it to fortune 500

01:09:43

Hard work is necessary but not sufficient intelligence is necessary but not sufficient

01:09:49

And it can be difficult to know what's necessary and what's sufficient for the outcome that you're trying to get to

01:09:54

So this when I read this probabilistic thinking section i'm like, okay

01:09:59

Yep, want to be anti fragile want to make right decisions that are gonna

01:10:03

Move me in the right direction make me stronger anyways in order to do that. I got to figure out

01:10:07

What's necessary? What's sufficient? I forget it

01:10:10

Yeah, it just feels like too much of a mental burden at that point

01:10:14

Right, which is why it probably only ever comes up but really really big

01:10:19

Decisions, I suppose yeah, because like i'm not gonna. Me. I'm not gonna go through all of that to figure out

01:10:25

Should I upgrade my lighting? Yep, i'm just not I might go through it in the process of buying a house

01:10:34

But even that i'm not sure is worth

01:10:37

All of that like you're gonna do a lot of that intuitively anyway

01:10:41

So probably not even gonna do it then which is back to the beginning point of

01:10:47

You got to figure out when to use these mental models, but this one right in particular

01:10:51

I just had a hard time figuring out when I would use this correct

01:10:53

Yep, i'm with you

01:10:56

Which is where maybe next book would potentially help us with that and figuring out ways to do it at smaller scale

01:11:02

So yeah, we're gonna play some poker

01:11:05

All right, i'm game all right the uh the next one here is inversion

01:11:11

And this is basically about thinking about things backwards

01:11:16

you

01:11:17

Identify and remove obstacles by

01:11:20

Coming at it from a different direction

01:11:23

This is interesting because they they made a comment here that I really liked

01:11:29

Avoiding stupidity is easier than seeking brilliance

01:11:32

So if you are stuck for what is the right thing to do in order to get you where you want to go start

01:11:39

with that and start with the end in mind

01:11:42

you know, steven covey and work your way backwards that's an example of

01:11:46

inversion

01:11:47

uh

01:11:48

And they mentioned that sure a lot of homes was an excellent observer and also a master of inversion

01:11:53

uh

01:11:54

He was able to think about you know what he wanted to

01:11:57

to have proven and then

01:12:00

Set up scenarios which would reveal the facts that he needed in order to make those

01:12:04

conclusions, which I think is

01:12:07

really

01:12:09

Brilliant

01:12:10

But again, i'm not really sure when I would use this they do say at the end kind of a single line takeaway when you're stuck

01:12:16

trying inversion

01:12:18

But I don't have anything specifically where I would want to use this

01:12:22

I guess I just file it away in the the toolbox and next time I am stuck, you know, I I

01:12:27

Pull this out. Yeah, I think there's there's two ways that I I see myself putting this one into practice in the world of programming

01:12:35

This can happen

01:12:37

Like I have a problem that i'm trying to solve there's a chain of things that has happened up to the point where I have a problem

01:12:43

And it's very easy for me to look at the most

01:12:45

Like the one closest to my error

01:12:48

The one at the very end it's easy for me to look there whereas sometimes it's better to start back at the beginning

01:12:54

Like flip it backwards and walk it from the beginning up to where you're at

01:12:58

It's like that one I could see

01:12:59

Doing that the other is

01:13:01

They're mentioning chess in the chat. I could see that too

01:13:05

Another one it's maybe a little bit

01:13:08

A little bit off from what they intend here

01:13:13

is that

01:13:15

You can sometimes take this approach when it comes to

01:13:18

Defending or supporting your opinions sure and what I mean by that is like if I have an opinion

01:13:27

Fountain pens are better than ballpoints. That's not opinion. That's fact

01:13:31

If I want to make the argument

01:13:35

in favor of fountain pens

01:13:38

sometimes

01:13:40

It's better for me to invert that

01:13:42

And try to make the argument against fountain pens or rather in favor of ballpoints

01:13:48

Sure

01:13:50

And if I if I do that

01:13:52

I can start to get a better understanding of my own

01:13:55

Opinion there and possibly be able to defend it better now

01:13:59

I'm probably not going to go through that process with something like pens

01:14:02

Though you would probably argue with me that the value is there, but

01:14:06

If it's something much larger

01:14:10

gun control

01:14:12

Sometimes it's easier to take the other person's

01:14:15

Viewpoint and try to defend what they think

01:14:18

It's either going to help you improve your own opinion or it may make you question it you may change your opinion

01:14:25

That's a that's a good example. I hadn't thought of that

01:14:28

I guess I kind of got stuck in

01:14:31

Their model here, which is where you identify the problem and you define your objective

01:14:36

And then you kind of identify the forces that support and impede that

01:14:40

but I like the idea of taking the other side and trying to

01:14:45

falsify basically

01:14:48

You know there those arguments in order to strengthen your own I can definitely see how that

01:14:52

That could be a complementary mental model to inversion for sure

01:14:56

All right, next one is aacam's razor

01:14:59

We probably mentioned this one a bunch of times on on this podcast because I love this

01:15:05

The version that I'm familiar with and I say all the time is that the simplest solution is the best solution

01:15:11

They stated here as simpler solutions are more likely to be right than complicated ones

01:15:17

And they make the point that we all jump to overly complex explanations

01:15:22

If your significant other

01:15:26

Is it home when they say they're going to be you jump to a worst case scenario?

01:15:32

That's an example of

01:15:34

Occam's razor when really they probably just got stuck in traffic

01:15:38

Forgot to call whatever

01:15:41

Uh the phrase that they mentioned here the the quote, which I really liked when you hear hoofbeats think horses not zebras

01:15:48

I think uh that illustrates to me

01:15:52

my own propensity towards this

01:15:54

and

01:15:57

I

01:15:58

I guess I need to keep a mind Occam's razor more often in terms of like where my mind jumps to and

01:16:04

for conclusions

01:16:05

and try to push back against that

01:16:08

So a different application than I had applied this

01:16:12

Before which was simply you know, you're figuring out a system with an objective in mind

01:16:17

And you try to make it as simple as possible eliminate all the unnecessary steps

01:16:20

But they're talking about this more in terms of

01:16:24

You uh have an unexpected event occurring you're trying to figure out why that that happened

01:16:31

Or why this this there's this gap and the information that you're you're trying to to plug

01:16:36

And don't let your mind basically control your mind when it tries to think of all those

01:16:42

Horrible scenarios, which I can totally see value in

01:16:47

in that from a mental health perspective let alone a

01:16:51

Productivity perspective

01:16:54

This is one that I've seen very recently with like recent tragic events

01:16:59

Like there are a lot of folks whenever big tragic events happen. They have some of these elaborate

01:17:04

explanations for why it happened

01:17:08

When really if you look at it, it's actually quite simple

01:17:13

like there's really a very basic

01:17:15

straightforward reason for it and

01:17:20

In most cases the simple explanation is much easier to stomach than the big complicated

01:17:27

Mess that you've dreamed up. Yeah, think about conspiracy theorists like how many conspiracy theories do you know that are simple

01:17:34

There's a reason it's a theory and usually it's a conspiracy because it has this big long drawn out thing that you have to follow in

01:17:41

Order to be able to say that it's true like that's

01:17:44

By definition it ends up being complicated it seems so

01:17:49

Thus they're generally false so

01:17:53

the simplest path is

01:17:56

In most cases the right answer

01:17:59

But we don't always like to think that way. I like the whole hoof

01:18:03

Horse zebra thing like it makes a lot of sense because it's easy to like

01:18:07

Wow, this could be like this. Oh, it could have meant that we didn't go to the moon

01:18:12

It could have meant that we like all this stuff like well the simplest answer is it is exactly the way you think it happened

01:18:19

the basic way

01:18:21

I like the

01:18:24

conspiracy theory angle that you brought to this because if I'm honest with myself if you're in the situation where

01:18:30

Your significant other hasn't contacted you they're not home when they're supposed to be and your brain goes and creates all these worst case scenarios

01:18:38

That is a form of conspiracy theory. It is it is

01:18:42

It's not on the same level as we typically think of when we say conspiracy theory

01:18:48

We're trying to hide something. It's on a national level yada yada yada

01:18:54

But yeah, just don't go there

01:18:56

It's true and that kind of gets into the last one here hamlins razor

01:19:01

This is my favorite. I think out of these

01:19:03

Hamlins razor says that we should not attribute to malice that which is more easily explained by stupidity

01:19:11

And that's a little crass maybe in how it's stated, but it's 100 true

01:19:19

We judge other people by their actions, but we judge ourselves by our intentions

01:19:26

and

01:19:28

Really, we should be giving people the benefit of the doubt. We shouldn't assume that bad results are

01:19:34

Necessarily the fault of a bad actor the example they use in this chapter is someone cuts you off in traffic

01:19:42

What do you do? Do you automatically think well? They probably just didn't see me

01:19:48

Or do you instantly fly into a rage and leave those jerks? They totally did that on purpose

01:19:53

Even if you don't physically react that way if you're honest with yourself, there's a little bit of that

01:20:00

maybe you're able to control it, but

01:20:02

it just

01:20:04

It's fascinating and scary to me at the same time that our bodies our brains naturally go there

01:20:11

yeah, I've tried to

01:20:13

I've tried for years to

01:20:17

Think about things from somebody else's perspective

01:20:20

and this this struck me

01:20:23

This has been years ago now, but I had to have

01:20:26

An intestinal surgery which meant that I couldn't lift

01:20:30

Heavy things so I couldn't pick up my kids. They were in car seats at the time which meant my wife had to do it all the time

01:20:36

and it was

01:20:39

very common

01:20:40

We would be walking back to a vehicle from say going to the farmer's market

01:20:45

and we would get to the door and

01:20:47

I would stop and let my wife put

01:20:50

Kids in the car and there were a few times when people would see me do that

01:20:55

And I was thinking at the time like I'm not a jerk

01:20:58

Like I just I can't pick up my kids because of like you but you don't know this like how do I want to explain it to people

01:21:05

I feel bad because I'm I'm putting something on my wife and I don't feel that I should be

01:21:12

Ever since that time I've been trying and I'm still bad at it

01:21:16

Trying to see things from somebody else's perspective

01:21:20

Yes

01:21:22

There may be somebody who cut you off in traffic. Yes, there may be somebody who's doing something that seems to cause a lot of problems for other people or

01:21:31

Seems to be rude

01:21:33

Why is that?

01:21:35

You don't necessarily know the full

01:21:39

Story take the mask thing somebody's not wearing a mask in a store

01:21:43

That's the whole political mess we've got now people shaming because someone else isn't wearing

01:21:48

A mask I have a couple friends that will faint if they put a mask on for more than about five minutes because the oxygen is so like

01:21:56

They're so sensitive to that they will actually faint so

01:21:59

If you see them in a store

01:22:02

They look fine

01:22:04

If you critique them for not wearing a mask

01:22:07

Sure, they'll put it on but you're gonna have to pick them up off the floor here shortly and then you got an even bigger problem on your hands

01:22:12

So you don't know that whole story

01:22:15

so my judging of that other person

01:22:18

Is often unfounded?

01:22:22

Because they're they're not trying to be malicious in many of these cases

01:22:26

A lot of cases is just we don't understand. We don't know what's going on. So

01:22:32

Anyway, that's probably a little bit of a distortion of what they intend by Hanlon's razor, but

01:22:37

That's the way I took it

01:22:39

I think it's I think it's accurate though

01:22:41

I mean really the point they make at the very end is that there are fewer true villains than you suppose

01:22:47

And the big takeaway for me is that when we assume someone's out to get us we take action to defend ourselves

01:22:53

We don't always want to be playing defense. We don't always want to be responding to perceived threats that aren't really threats

01:22:59

Right because that can have dire consequences. In fact, they tell a story from

01:23:06

1962

01:23:08

when

01:23:09

the us and the Soviet Union were in the middle of the

01:23:13

the cold war

01:23:15

That the Americans had informed the Soviets that they were going to drop these charges and these international waters in order to force

01:23:22

Soviet submarines to surface

01:23:25

However, the Soviet headquarters did not pass that information along to the nuclear submarines that were in those waters

01:23:33

So there was a nuclear sub that heard this charge go off and they assume that there's a battle going on

01:23:41

and

01:23:42

Everybody on the sub wants to fire the nuclear warheads except for one guy now fortunately they had to

01:23:49

all be in agreement or they couldn't fire the

01:23:51

the the missile, but this guy vesele

01:23:55

Archipov

01:23:58

He was

01:24:00

Abroad this sub when the charge went off he wouldn't sign off on the on firing the nuclear torpedo

01:24:05

And they credit him with single-handedly stopping nuclear war

01:24:09

But no one

01:24:11

Credited him as a hero until the documents were declassified 40 years later or whatever it was

01:24:16

I thought that was fascinating and it instantly I put myself in that situation like how would I have responded

01:24:25

I hope that I would have passed the test and not destroyed human civilization

01:24:30

But I can't honestly say that

01:24:33

It's true, but we jump to conclusions so fast we do yeah, and that's kind of the ancillary point here is the causation versus correlation

01:24:44

Don't need to spend a ton of time here. This is pretty straightforward

01:24:47

I think just because two things happen and they're correlated does not mean that one caused the other but again

01:24:53

Our brain wants to fill in the blanks and connect all the dots even if it's in an incorrect way. I like it

01:24:59

Is that it that all of them that's the whole book we covered it in a record time

01:25:06

Good job mike. Do you have any action items from this think more? I yeah, maybe I

01:25:14

This is one of those that's it

01:25:19

How many books have we had where it's like this is really good

01:25:22

This is super helpful, but I don't know what to technically practically do

01:25:29

With this like this is a lot of how you think and the way you perceive things

01:25:35

So I don't know what to

01:25:38

Like what do I write on this outline to act on? I don't know. So no I don't

01:25:43

Did you figure this out? I don't have any either and I think that's okay

01:25:48

They were pretty upfront at the beginning when they said that these are some mental models that can help you make

01:25:55

Better decisions see things right

01:25:57

Think about things more completely, but it's up to you to figure out when to use them and where I really appreciated that

01:26:03

And I think that sets the tone for the book itself

01:26:08

And it's very very different than a lot of the books that we read which I mean in the productivity space specifically

01:26:16

There's a lot of emphasis on like action items and doing something with the information that you've read

01:26:21

And there's reason for that because an idea is kind of worthless until you act on it

01:26:27

but

01:26:29

The that's very contradictory to the whole objective of this book

01:26:33

So I don't think it's really set up for any sort of action items

01:26:37

Sure, I suppose you could have one if there is one of these mental models that you're just like totally blown away by

01:26:45

Because it's the first time you've heard it and you're like, I'm gonna apply that in this situation

01:26:50

I don't have any of those situations that come to mind like oh, I need to

01:26:53

Apply this socratic thinking process in this particular scenario

01:26:58

This is all kind of just like nice no information that I can apply when I need it

01:27:02

But that's why they wrote the book in the first place. So I don't feel bad doing that

01:27:06

Right

01:27:07

That's kind of what I was thinking is like if you had a big decision you were trying to make or a big problem you're trying to solve

01:27:13

I could see you taking an action of I'm going to apply

01:27:16

X mental model

01:27:19

To this situation to try to understand it better so I can have a better answer on the other end

01:27:24

Like I could see that yep, but that's really the only place I think an action item would come

01:27:29

Otherwise, it's just kind of reference and that's completely within the author's original intent in my opinion going back to how to read a book by mortimer abler

01:27:38

Yep

01:27:38

So style and rating I mentioned at the beginning. I love the style of this book

01:27:44

I cannot wait to read the rest of them

01:27:47

And that's because it's really just

01:27:51

presenting some information on a lot of concepts that I had known already as I get into the other volumes and the science and the math

01:27:58

I guarantee I'm going to run into stuff that I don't know anything about or I learned it

01:28:02

maybe when in high school or college, but completely forgot about it and

01:28:07

What I like about this is that they present these models and they present them in a way where it's like, okay

01:28:12

so here's the principle and

01:28:14

You can probably figure out how to use this in a lot of different arenas

01:28:18

So like the science and the math ones in volume two for example

01:28:21

You're not just going to be using those models and science and math and that's really where the value of the models comes from I think

01:28:27

Is figuring out new arenas to use these in in an accurate way?

01:28:33

Now you may try something and it's not the right model for the right situation and so you recognize

01:28:37

Well, that wasn't the very great very great decision and I'm not going to use that one that way in the future

01:28:43

But this is kind of like a ongoing journey of figuring out when and where to use these

01:28:50

But that being said like these models themselves are awesome

01:28:56

They start the whole models section by talking about charlie mungar or worn buffets

01:29:01

buddy who

01:29:03

Really is talking about the value of these things and how it helps him make right decisions

01:29:07

And when you think about some of those really really smart people where you're like, how do they make those decisions?

01:29:13

How do they do what they do?

01:29:15

And maybe they're oversimplifying it in this book, but they're basically saying well

01:29:19

They've got these these awesome models to make these decisions by I

01:29:23

I can see that and I believe that and so I I kind of view in terms of

01:29:28

mental ammunition

01:29:32

For lack of a better term things that you can use to improve your situation

01:29:37

There is so much value to be had from this book and the way that they present it is really really great

01:29:43

The stories I think are are really good. It's a very interesting

01:29:47

book in terms of

01:29:50

the visual presentation

01:29:52

lots of

01:29:53

color photos lots of like pictures of historical and

01:29:58

artifacts and things like they tell a lot of

01:30:01

Stories about how these things have been applied historically and then like the visuals kind of make it more real

01:30:08

It's not overly done, but it's done really well

01:30:12

And it's a very easy read I feel the book itself is absolutely beautiful

01:30:18

It's got this cloth cover. It's kind of like the discipline equals freedom book by jocko willink that we read

01:30:23

As long as it's not printed upside down and backwards

01:30:28

But I would recommend this I would recommend this to anybody that the thing about this is that they give you enough

01:30:34

I think for these mental models for you to understand them and start applying them right away

01:30:38

Without having to go into all of the details like I already mentioned daniel conneman thinking fast and slow probabilistic thinking

01:30:46

If you really want to dive into that particular model

01:30:49

There's 400 something pages in that book to scratch that itch for you

01:30:54

But I don't really care for all that that detail. I want to know like how it works the 80 20

01:31:00

Maybe that's another mental model for another book. I don't know

01:31:03

But I feel like they do a really good job of delivering just that

01:31:06

So I think this book is a five star book

01:31:11

Maybe you go through this and you're like I already know all this stuff already

01:31:16

but

01:31:18

If anybody was going to do that I feel like you and I are pretty good candidates for falling into that category because we've read

01:31:24

So many books that have spoken to these specific topics and yet I didn't find myself

01:31:27

Thinking at any point. Oh, I already know this

01:31:30

They present the information in a way where it feels fresh

01:31:35

It feels easy to understand. It doesn't feel overly academic like over your head

01:31:41

But it also doesn't feel dumb down and stupefied. I mean you're thinking about ways that you think this is a kind of complex topic

01:31:49

But they do it in a way where it's very very approachable and I think there's value for anybody who would want to read this book

01:31:55

So well done five stars can't wait to read the next one

01:32:00

nice

01:32:02

Well, I will echo some of your thoughts like the book is just top notch as far as style of

01:32:08

printing as long as it's printed correctly

01:32:11

And like they have these little red card type

01:32:16

dividers for each of the new chapters, which makes it very easy to find

01:32:21

The next one, which is really kind of cool. I don't think I've run across a book that has a different size page

01:32:27

That's a more of a card stock inside of it. That's not meant to be torn out

01:32:32

That's just kind of a unique thing. So I love the printing on it

01:32:35

I get that it was originally an ebook and that's kind of the way that most people would have access to it

01:32:42

I like that they went ahead and did the reprinting of the hardback though. Definitely a fan of having the printed version of that

01:32:48

um

01:32:50

I will say that going through this list of

01:32:54

mental models

01:32:56

Like I'm familiar with circle of competence. I've heard that one before friends first principles thinking actually studied that one to some degree thought

01:33:03

Experiments second order thinking probabilistic thinking aakam's razor hand lens razor. Those are all ones that I have

01:33:11

explored

01:33:12

used been aware of

01:33:14

before the inversion principle and the map is not the territory those two were

01:33:20

I wouldn't say they were groundbreaking to me, but they were

01:33:24

Definitely refreshing to have added to this list. It's kind of cool to see this whole list

01:33:29

And work through it like you were saying we've read how many books about things around this now

01:33:36

that you would think

01:33:38

that even though like i've

01:33:41

gone through seven of the nine here and

01:33:44

yet this was

01:33:47

As if I was learning about it the first time like it was very the way it's written and the way it's explained is very unique

01:33:54

Even if you understand what aakam's razor is you're still going to pick up a lot from

01:33:59

From reading this if you're very familiar with how first principles thinking works

01:34:04

You're still going to get some value from

01:34:08

From going through this and it's written again very well like you were saying it's easy to read

01:34:12

So I I appreciate that I didn't feel like I was

01:34:15

dredging along

01:34:18

Through this one trying to get through it and just hoping to be done

01:34:21

No, it was it was an easy read it was an entertaining read too because of the stories involved

01:34:26

Uh and the explanations of those i'll join you at five oh

01:34:29

I think it it fits that

01:34:32

Even though we don't have an action items from them and I know that that's a thing that we generally would require

01:34:38

When we get up in the four fives and five ohs like that's generally something like it has to impact us enough to make us want to do something

01:34:44

I get that it doesn't really fit that but at the same time

01:34:48

I know for a fact that this is going to change the way that I

01:34:54

view so many things already has so

01:34:57

Very grateful for having read this highly recommend it. I don't know when i'm going to read the next ones

01:35:04

But I need to at some point because this was this was top notch

01:35:08

So very grateful for having gone through this so good choice mic

01:35:12

Good choice martin mcgowan who originally recommended this in the bookworm club many moons ago when the hardcover was not available

01:35:21

Sure

01:35:23

Good job. So all right. So we'll put great mental models on the shelf

01:35:27

What's next?

01:35:29

We're going to dive into one of these mental models a little more. I think

01:35:34

By going through thinking and bets by annie duke

01:35:37

I know that she has a follow up on this if I understand things correctly that follow up is more of a workbook type

01:35:45

scenario it's similar to

01:35:48

Willinks

01:35:50

Discipline equals freedom where it's more of a handbook a manual of sorts to implement

01:35:54

So it's if I understand it right that's what the newest one is that recently came out

01:35:59

So I kind of want to go through this one

01:36:02

Have some thoughts on what we maybe could do with the next one, but I've not had a chance to talk through that with mic

01:36:07

So i'm not going to say anything. So

01:36:09

Thinking in bets by annie duke, that's the one that we're going to cover next time

01:36:13

All right

01:36:15

And then and when we went through the organized writer

01:36:19

We kind of glossed over the whole email section

01:36:22

You made a comment though about

01:36:25

making tasks out of emails

01:36:30

And I feel like now is the perfect time to revisit the topic because our

01:36:37

Our buddy cal newport has a new book out. I say buddy because he's an aspirational buddy

01:36:44

I would love to we've done everything. Yes written except one

01:36:47

I think big fan of cal newport, but he's got a book coming out a world without email

01:36:51

Which is being released as we record this it's going to be released march 2nd amazon says

01:36:56

So that will give us a little bit of time before we have to record it

01:36:59

But uh, I have been looking forward to this book

01:37:03

I know some people who got advanced copies of the book of this book and they said it's very good

01:37:06

I'm approaching this one as a skeptic. Yeah, I figured you might be

01:37:11

If there's one book where joe's going to disagree with cal newport it may be this one this might be it

01:37:18

It's true

01:37:21

So true

01:37:23

Generally, I love his stuff. So I've been very hesitant on this one

01:37:26

From the day I heard about it. It's like oh no, he went there

01:37:30

Yep, which you knew he was going to after digital minimal is that some point? Yeah, it's true

01:37:36

All right thinking abets a world without email

01:37:39

You doing anything in the meantime? I am not how about you? I am not either

01:37:45

All right life it happens. It does happen

01:37:51

I have a sabbatical coming up. So maybe I will crank through a book during sabbatical and i'll share that next time

01:37:58

But no promises. I may just be recreating text files inside of obsidian instead

01:38:03

Sure, all right. So thank you everybody for listening

01:38:10

Thank you specifically to our paying bookworm club premium members

01:38:14

If you want to support the show you can do that by tapping on little icon inside of overcast or by going

01:38:21

to

01:38:22

club.bookworm.fm/membership

01:38:25

Or just bookworm.fm/membership

01:38:27

There are a couple perks that you get if you decide to support the show, but really

01:38:31

It just means a lot to joe and myself. It helps us keep the lights on

01:38:35

Pay for the hosting things like that. So thank you to everybody who was willing to

01:38:39

Throw some money our way in order to keep the show going means a lot to us

01:38:44

Huge thanks to you you folks

01:38:46

We certainly couldn't do this

01:38:49

Without all the support that you guys give us so super grateful for everyone who's chosen to to join that membership

01:38:56

so

01:38:57

For those of you who are

01:38:58

Watching us live. Thank you for doing that if you're interested in doing that in the future bookworm.fm/live

01:39:04

We'll take you where you need to be

01:39:06

And uh, if you're reading along with us thinking in bets by any duke

01:39:10

And we'll review that one in a couple weeks