Bookworm Transcripts

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There's a very important question that you and I need to answer, Mike.

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What's that?

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Do you tilt your keyboard?

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Do I tilt my keyboard?

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You can tilt it up, right?

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Or you can lay it flat.

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Or some of the new new ones, you can do negative tilt.

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And I don't have one of those.

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Absolutely not.

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Get decent keycaps, then you don't need to tilt your keyboard.

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Okay, I'll jump right on that.

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No, I don't, but the keycap profiles, I guess, kind of, that I use, kind of

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accomplish the same sort of thing.

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I've got the MDA in front of me and it definitely is sculpted up in the back.

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So it's kind of like tipping it up.

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And I think the essay is what I have on the other one.

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And that one is fairly sculpted too, if I'm remembering correctly.

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I don't use that one every day.

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But interesting.

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How about you?

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Do you tip your keyboard?

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I don't.

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I lay it flat.

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I kind of thought you did tilt yours, which is why I was asking the question.

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That was my original thought.

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And I know that a lot of people in the mechanical keyboard world do tip it.

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Like the back is up higher than the front.

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And in my head, that's a bad thing to do.

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That sounds painful.

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Yeah.

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I've got a wrist rest in front of my keycron.

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So I don't have to do that.

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Right.

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Right.

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And, you know, I don't have a wrist rest on mine, but where it's sitting, it's like right at the edge of the desk.

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So there's like nothing there.

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So I tend to hold my hands up.

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So it is what it is.

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But I have been playing and I don't have one because I don't think keycron makes it

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where you could have the negative tilt.

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I'm very curious about that.

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And it's primarily because I've been thinking about like the way that we hold our hands, right?

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It's easy for us to like tip our fingers down when we have them on the keyboard, as opposed to holding them up.

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Sure.

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It's very weird to hold your hands up.

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So I've been I've been playing around with that idea.

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No idea if I'll ever actually do anything with it.

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It's just a fun idea.

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You could just get it chained and tie it to the corners and put it over your neck and then just walk around because it's Bluetooth.

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Never have to lift your hands up at all.

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Yeah, there you go.

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I got it on my chest.

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It'll work out well.

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Oh, too fun.

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Well, that has absolutely nothing to do with.

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Bookworm or today, but it was what was on my mind.

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That's for sure.

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So that said, we should do some follow up.

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And my first question for you is, have you done anything with Kanban boards?

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Because that was like one of the huge takeaways from Cal Newport's book.

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It seems like everybody who has read it is now exploring and playing around with Kanban.

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So here we are.

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How's yours going?

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Yeah, well, I'm still looking for the perfect Kanban app, to be honest.

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I've got stuff in to do this.

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And I think that's probably fine.

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I've also been messing around.

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I've got an obsidian theme called spectrum, which has a CSS class.

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So you can create in an outline format, a Kanban board, but you can't drag the blocks around, which kind of breaks it for me.

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But I know some other people don't really have that issue.

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So maybe I need to get over it.

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Maybe I just need to find the right, the right app to do this with though.

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Sure.

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I messed around with a, I found a free app on the iOS app store and the Mac app store called Avocado Kanban, which is just a super minimal, super clean Kanban app.

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And it's got an interesting pricing model.

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You can basically set up one board for free.

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And then if you need additional boards, different projects, it's a $2 in app purchase

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for each one.

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Sure.

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And it, it looks decent, but I dug into the developer and they have like 30 other apps on the app store, including it looks like older versions of this sort of thing that they've abandoned.

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So I don't feel a real great recommending that.

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Right.

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Right.

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Yeah, that's, that's the trouble with those things, right?

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Yeah.

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I have all of these examples and all of these ideas bouncing around.

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I'm like, what's the best way to do this?

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And the bottom line is that I haven't landed on it yet, but I have been experimenting.

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Here's a seat.

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Are you still an omni focus at this, this week?

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Not really.

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Well, I haven't opened it.

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It's working.

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Here's, here's what I'm getting at.

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There's a whole Kanban by project level that I've been using.

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And okay, you have a stream deck too, right?

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I do.

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One of the smaller ones.

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Yeah.

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It's right here.

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I can control my lights.

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It's, it's possible I found out to program the keys to run the automation plugins.

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All right.

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And the way I've been doing that is I've been setting up some really random obscure hot

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key for going to the menu and selecting it from the menu and the Mac keyboard input

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settings.

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And then you can program that hot key to a button on the stream deck.

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And I set it up to where the buttons move it between the columns, essentially,

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and move it from category to category, which is pretty slick.

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But that is pretty cool.

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It just means you select the project you want, hit it on the stream deck and boom, it goes.

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Like that's it.

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So.

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Well, as you know, I'm all for having you create things for me.

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So.

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If you're willing to walk me through it, I'd love to give it a shot.

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I tried the, the, the Kanban automation previously and I could never get it to work.

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I don't know what I was doing wrong, but it really worked for me.

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Well, they had, let's see.

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What was it?

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They had it set up.

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Like, did you just download the one straight from the Omni automation site?

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I downloaded that one.

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I downloaded yours.

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I tried every version of it that I could find basically.

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Sure.

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And I could get the buttons to show up in the toolbar, but they never did anything.

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Sure.

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So I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but it wasn't working.

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Yeah.

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I know the one that's on the Omni automation site works on a task level.

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So then you set up tasks, you select the task you want, and then you run the

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automation and it moves it by tagging it and such.

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And that I didn't care for because I was operating with projects of like their

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template projects, right?

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Like there's one for today's episode.

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They just had I've gone through probably 40 items on it already, just because it's

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like, okay, set up this window, set up that window, restart your Mac, turn on the

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Linux box.

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Like there's all these things that I have to do before we can ever connect and hit

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record.

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So that's all the thing I've done, but that whole project needs to move through

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the Kanban setup, right?

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So sure.

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It does the whole tagging thing for me by running those automations and such, but

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you just select the project and for me, it's hit the button, hit the hotkey, hit

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it from the menu, one of those two, three, four, whatever that is.

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I really want that board view though.

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Uh, and that's the thing I don't think I can get with Omni focus.

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I know I can get separate windows and line them all up.

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Not what I want.

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Yeah.

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I didn't, that's the one side of it I don't care for.

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Like with mine, it's not, they're not columns.

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They're like rows, like rows that grow.

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Um, so I'll, I'll have like a to do in progress, waiting, done.

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Those will be different subsets, but they're all in a list form.

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They're not columns.

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I could get it set up for the different windows and column views.

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And I suppose if you did that and use the whole stream deck thing, it would make

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it super simple to switch them from column to column without having to do much, but

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it just seems kind of clunky to set up to me to get the view that you want.

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Exactly.

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But I will say right now, I promise, Ken case, if you are listening, add

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combo boards to Omni focus and I'll be back tomorrow.

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Well, that's sure.

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It's such a, it's such a solid app.

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I just don't like the visualization of the, the tasks currently.

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Sure.

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And I feel like this is something that's being added to task managers all the

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time now.

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So I actually believe it's only a matter of time before it ends up in Omni focus and

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it ends up in things like there's a Kanban view and to do this, you can switch

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back and forth between a list and a Kanban style view.

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And you can also do the same sort of thing in tick tick now.

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So I think it's just going to become more popular.

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Makes sense.

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It does.

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I think there's a lot of benefits to it, of course.

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I'm not one that's using it probably in the entire way that people intend it to be, but

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I'm not a huge, like use Kanban for all the things type of person.

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Sure.

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I don't know.

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Hey, if it works for you, go for it.

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So that was a long piece of follow up for one of yours.

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Yes.

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Uh, the other one here is to make my list of things to delegate.

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And boy, do I have a list of things to delegate?

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Let me tell you.

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Am I on the receiving end of this?

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Do I need to ask this question?

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No, I don't think so.

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Uh, so I'll just run through some of this stuff.

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And this is an incomplete list.

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By the way, in addition to me just thinking about the things that maybe I could

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delegate, again, this is not like the how to delegate them, just the things that

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could be delegated.

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I've also talked to my wife about this and we are prioritizing in our budget, uh,

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a line item so we can pay for a virtual assistant that we can both use.

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Sure.

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We don't know exactly how much work we would have to delegate yet, which is why

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like this is part of the, the project.

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She's keeping track of a list of things too that like,

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I don't really need to be doing this.

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And if I didn't have to do it, I would be a lot less stressed sort of a thing.

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Sure.

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So I think this is going to happen.

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I just don't know exactly how or when yet.

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Well, I suppose I've got a couple of them here.

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The first of which is create protocols for how support comes to me.

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And now me and my support assistant.

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And we've started in on that.

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I've had some failures in that already, but it's in progress.

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Uh, we, we essentially we tried, we tried at one point to like just email support

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at domain.com and it will go to all the places it needs to go.

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And then we could manage the ticket and stuff and people continue to just ignore

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that.

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And I get it, you know, again, to church, you have to do things slightly different.

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So we've just gotten to where we have kind of a, a bank of things that we're

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asking.

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It's like, okay, when does this need done?

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What is it?

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Who's in charge?

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What's the password?

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Like all these things that we just ask.

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And then we keep that template actually in basecamp for what we need to ask.

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That way, if my assistant or myself realizes there's another question that needs

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to be asked in that process, we can add it.

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And then we both realize, oh, yeah, that's a good question or we can change the wording

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on it and such.

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So that's kind of what we've come to and then answering those questions.

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We put them in as a ticket and then run it from there.

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So that's what we're working with right now, trying to force people to send an email

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with a template.

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It doesn't work.

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Don't try that.

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And we'll, we'll, we'll keep going.

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The other follow up that I had, remember I talked about this shortcut for time

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bound email access.

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I remember this.

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It actually worked for a period.

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It worked really, really well, actually in telling me when I shouldn't be on email.

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And then we started to list our house and all that went out the window because documents

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to sign and now we're like setting up showings and stuff.

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So I've got like emails and texts that are coming constantly.

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So if I ever pause here, it's because I got to confirm a showing date and such.

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So like these are all the things that come with that.

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I expect to go back to using this at some point, but I've had to just kind of throw it out for now.

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But I suppose I should probably explain what it is.

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So the idea was to set up a shortcut that whenever you tap on it, if I'm within working hours,

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it would let me have access to my email app.

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And if I was outside working hours, it would say, no, stay off your email.

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And it worked well to get me off of it until I needed to be on it.

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Quite a lot because of other people and things being extremely time sensitive.

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All the things.

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I wonder if you could set something up like that using screen time instead of shortcuts.

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Oh, the where you couldn't spend too much time on.

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Oh, like the time.

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It would just shut off access to your email based on certain times.

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Sure.

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Maybe.

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I don't know.

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I've never really messed with screen time in my head.

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It's a thing for kids, but.

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I'll look into it.

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It sounds interesting.

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Don't tell gray to use it a lot.

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Oh, yeah.

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I haven't been able to keep up with cortex lately.

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Yeah.

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They just did their yearly screen crimes episode.

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Ah, got it.

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I'll look into it.

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So they got a lot of gripes, a lot of gripes with the system.

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And I understand that, but I think kind of for something basic, like you were doing.

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Maybe that's an easier version for people who like the idea of your action item,

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but don't want to create a shortcut from scratch.

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Right.

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Right.

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Yeah, I don't know.

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I'll look into that.

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That might work.

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I'm sure there's because I know there's like some time bound stuff in there,

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but that has never occurred to me because I don't have a mess with screen time.

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Yeah, you would just have to be able to do it on an app level.

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And I'm not sure, you know, if it's a global setting or if you can do individual app settings.

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Sure.

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No, that makes sense.

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Well, let's let's jump into today's book.

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The art of Woody banter by Patrick King.

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And the tagline on this is be clever.

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Quick and magnetic.

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And in my head, I thought I was getting into a book about basically how to do like the quick

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quips, like when people have like a quick response and stuff to like a quick phrase.

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It comes back after you've told a story or made a comment and such.

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It's like, I always wish I was better at that.

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And I thought this was going to teach me how to do that.

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But I was not expecting was a book that taught me how conversation works.

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And I'm now fascinated by both.

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So this has turned out to be a lot more than I expected.

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And I'm glad to have read it, but there's a lot here that I wasn't expecting.

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I guess is what I'm getting at.

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Did you even look into this one beforehand to see what you expected?

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I know you just kind of buy them and start reading them and don't even look at them whenever I pick these.

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So that is basically what I do.

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I will say that I'm going to talk a lot about my Toastmasters experience in this episode.

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Sure.

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So sorry, everybody who's sick of that, but it's going to happen.

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And because of my Toastmasters experience, I saw this book, I got it in the mail.

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I opened it up.

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I looked at the cover, looked at the back cover and I immediately thought this is going to be kind

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of like the quick and dirty version.

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I don't need to sign up for that club and put in the work.

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All you need to know is like three quick tips, three quick life hacks for conversation.

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Right.

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And on that level, I was not very disappointed.

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Was kind of what I anticipated.

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Sure.

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Sure.

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This will be fascinating then because I have zero.

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Well, I shouldn't say zero, I have like one Iota of experience with Toastmasters.

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And that is in that I went to a Toastmasters gathering because there was a special

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speaker that was in to tell a story about how to tell stories.

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Yeah.

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And I was fascinated by that.

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So I went to that.

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That is the one and only time I've ever been to a Toastmasters gathering of any kind.

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And it was not a normal Toastmasters gathering at all, which means I know like nothing

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about how these things actually operate.

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So sure.

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Having zero background on it and having had.

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Zero true training in, I guess, conversation and speaking.

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And you having a lot of this through Toastmasters and such, I think this will be a fascinating.

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Well, let me just set the stage here real quickly because Toastmasters is basically, you

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join this group and it's something like 50, 60 bucks for every six months.

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And then if you go through all of the curriculum, it's the equivalent of basically

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like a master's in communication.

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So if you apply yourself and you do the work, it's a much better deal than going to

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school for becoming like a professional speaker.

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Whether you're trying to make money as like a professional motivational speaker,

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people book you for stuff or not, it's kind of irrelevant.

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Most of the people that are in it are in it because they want to improve their

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communication skills for some other aspect of their professional life.

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They manage people at their, their work and they want to hold better meetings or

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something like that.

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So it's not all people who are like trying to get their name out there and they want

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to become famous.

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That being said, you join and you get this curriculum and it is a self-paced

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curriculum.

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You have to sign up for the speaking slots.

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You have to sign up for the evaluator slots and you do these assignments and then

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you get credit for them.

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You do enough of them.

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You get the different levels of the, the awards and they changed that over a

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couple of years ago and they kind of redid it.

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So I don't know exactly what all the new ones are.

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But when I was going through it the first time, there was this basic curriculum.

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You get through these, you give 10 speeches basically and then you get your

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competent communicator award.

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And I did that.

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Uh, and I did that in like 10 months.

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So it was one speech a month.

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I was basically giving one every other meeting.

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And what I realized from a lot of people who joined Toastmasters is they come and

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they attend and they don't really ever sign up to give speeches.

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And you can learn something from being in the room, but the real value is when you

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actually create the speech, you deliver it, you get the feedback.

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That's when the light bulb goes on.

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You're like, Oh, I should have done it this way instead until you are standing in

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front of people when it matters and delivering the speech, you're not going to

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get nearly as much out of it.

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Um, but the other, so I noticed that like I cranked through this, which really

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wasn't that strenuous, but I'd got my competent communicator in, in 10 months

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and other people who had been there for five years, we're still trying to finish

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their first, first 10 speeches.

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Sure.

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So if you want to drag your feet, you know, there will be the opportunity to do that.

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It's not like they are forcing you, Hey, come on, let's go.

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You have to kind of be self motivated if you really want to get as much out of

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it as you can.

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I don't tend to do anything halfway.

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So I'm like, all right.

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Yeah, let's do it.

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Uh, and then I started going, I will achieve it tomorrow.

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Yeah.

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Um, I started entering the, the contests.

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Um, I first entered the, the, the big contest.

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I forget exactly what they call it, but that's kind of like the inspirational one.

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And there's different levels.

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There is like the division in the area.

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And then there's another one I forget.

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And then there's like the district.

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And then from there, if you keep going with like the typical path, they have like

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the national one and even an international one.

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So I signed up for that one, got up and forgot my speech halfway through,

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just was like frozen on the stage and was kind of beating myself up about it.

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So I'm like, all right, that's it.

00:21:05

Next contest I'm going to sign up again just to prove to myself that that's not

00:21:09

going to happen again.

00:21:09

Sure.

00:21:10

So the next one was a humorous speech contest.

00:21:12

And this is a story I know that I've told before, but it's kind of important

00:21:15

for like my perspective with all the Toastmasters stuff as we're going to juxtapose

00:21:18

it against this book.

00:21:19

I kept doing, I kept winning the different contests for that one.

00:21:25

I wanted to just give, give one basically and there I'm done.

00:21:28

I don't consider myself a funny guy, but I kept winning.

00:21:32

And then I went to the district level and I lost there, but that's, that's kind

00:21:36

of like the finals for the humorous speech contest.

00:21:37

The, the, our district is the entire state of Wisconsin in the upper peninsula.

00:21:42

And I lost to a professional comedian.

00:21:45

But while I was there at the district conference, they had a speaker come in.

00:21:50

His name is Aaron Beverly.

00:21:51

At the time he had been the runner up for the international speech contest.

00:21:57

And he was selling coaching and I'm like, this guy is really sharp.

00:22:01

So I signed up for some coaching with him, did some one on one coaching with him.

00:22:05

Uh, I have not competed in any contests since then, but since I have been working

00:22:11

with him, he has also gone on to win the international speech competition.

00:22:17

I forget which year it is, but he's really, really good.

00:22:20

Uh, and it was cool because that's a connection I never would have made.

00:22:24

Had I not been involved with Toastmasters.

00:22:26

So the TLDR is Toastmasters is great, but you're the value that you get out of it.

00:22:32

It's totally going to depend on what you put into it.

00:22:34

And if you go into it thinking, I want to put in some reps and I want to learn

00:22:38

from making my own mistakes.

00:22:39

It's the perfect environment to do that.

00:22:41

Everybody is there because they're terrified of speaking in public and they

00:22:44

want to get better at that.

00:22:45

And then the other thing that you can really glean from it is some really cool

00:22:49

connections like I got hooked up with the guy who won the international speech

00:22:52

contest.

00:22:53

There's a lot there.

00:22:54

So these 10 speeches that you're talking about, how, how long is this speech?

00:23:01

Like when you're talking about winning these competitions and such, are these

00:23:05

like three minute deals?

00:23:07

Are they 30 minute deals?

00:23:08

Like what are they?

00:23:09

It depends.

00:23:10

And now with when they revamp things, they have different tracks that you can go

00:23:13

through.

00:23:13

And so there's like different types of speeches, which are different lengths.

00:23:16

But the core curriculum that I went through before the competent communicator,

00:23:19

your icebreaker is the first one and that you just get up and you talk about

00:23:22

yourself.

00:23:22

So it's super easy.

00:23:24

You already know the subject.

00:23:25

That one's four to six.

00:23:26

And basically every speech after that is five to seven and you're timed.

00:23:30

So at five minutes, someone will hold up a green card.

00:23:33

It means you've qualified.

00:23:34

People can vote for you.

00:23:36

A yellow means you're halfway through.

00:23:38

So it's six minutes, for example, you see the yellow and at red or at seven,

00:23:42

you get the red card and you have basically 30 seconds before or after that to qualify.

00:23:48

So if you give this big speech, you know, you're five to seven minutes speech and

00:23:53

you talk for nine minutes, you're not, you're disqualified from the voting at the

00:23:58

end of the meeting for like the best speech.

00:24:00

Yeah, yeah, sure.

00:24:01

If you're in a contest, you'll be disqualified completely if you go over, if you go

00:24:05

on a date, but these are, these are short.

00:24:07

They're not like a, I'm, I'm thinking about, I've been teaching some classes of

00:24:13

sorts at our church and that's a quote unquote speech or a talk, I guess.

00:24:20

Yep.

00:24:21

But they're 40 minutes and then I set them up to be about 30.

00:24:26

So, so that I've got time for like questions and stuff afterwards because they're

00:24:30

usually somewhat tech related.

00:24:32

And I get a lot of questions, thus the 10 minute time period there.

00:24:36

Sometimes I think I should be giving it like 20, but I'm setting that up as a 30

00:24:42

minute talk, which sounds like it's way different than what you're referring to.

00:24:47

Cause that would be significantly longer than most of those.

00:24:51

Not necessarily.

00:24:52

I mean, there are, I've, I've not done a whole lot of work in the new curriculum.

00:24:57

Most of the speeches that I've given have still been in that five to seven minute

00:25:00

window.

00:25:01

Sure.

00:25:01

But I've seen people who have given speeches and their, their speech is to deliver like

00:25:08

a presentation at a work meeting.

00:25:09

And so they've got a PowerPoint that they're sharing and it is 20 minutes.

00:25:14

Yeah.

00:25:14

You know, so the meeting agenda is adopted based on who is signing up for the

00:25:19

different roles and what project they happen to be working on.

00:25:23

Sure.

00:25:24

Yeah.

00:25:24

Now that makes sense.

00:25:26

Okay.

00:25:26

Toastmasters in the background.

00:25:30

Joe with nothing in the background.

00:25:32

Let's, let's start talking about this book.

00:25:35

Yeah.

00:25:35

So Patrick King here, let me explain now my, my impression of this book is basically

00:25:43

for Joe, people like you who have no experience.

00:25:48

They look at Toastmasters and like 10 speeches.

00:25:50

That's a lot of work or $60.

00:25:54

I don't want to spend that much.

00:25:56

Right.

00:25:56

So well, is there like a light?

00:25:59

Like, yeah, you're not taking the time for that.

00:26:01

It's a lot.

00:26:02

Right.

00:26:03

Right.

00:26:04

So, and on the topic of time, by the way, most clubs can have their own schedules,

00:26:10

but ours are every other week.

00:26:12

So second and fourth Tuesday night and the meeting is typically an hour.

00:26:18

And because their whole thing is pay attention to the time and finish on time.

00:26:22

Like you're not there for two hours.

00:26:23

Right.

00:26:24

Right.

00:26:24

And that's fine, but still it's an hour.

00:26:27

Like that's exactly.

00:26:28

That's an hour.

00:26:28

I'm not because the time I get there and get back, it's at least an hour and a half,

00:26:32

maybe two hours, depending on where it's at.

00:26:33

So like I'm not, I'm not in a place where I can do that.

00:26:38

Like that's a significant commitment for me.

00:26:41

And like this is where like I appreciate, you know, the way Patrick King does this,

00:26:47

like if you don't have or don't want to put that time and dollars into Toastmasters,

00:26:53

I'm going to be curious to see what your comparison is like between the book versus

00:26:56

Toastmasters and such.

00:26:58

I'm looking at it through the lens of somebody who practices this sort of thing

00:27:03

public.

00:27:03

And I learn in public as we do this.

00:27:07

So thus the streams that I run, we're doing this podcast live.

00:27:11

We, you know, I do the webinars and such like those, the classes.

00:27:15

When I do those things, those are the times when I'm critiquing and learning

00:27:22

myself through this process.

00:27:25

Yep.

00:27:26

I'm going to make a lot more mistakes in the real scenario, quote unquote,

00:27:31

then I would if I were to go through Toastmasters, learn all the formal stuff and

00:27:35

such.

00:27:36

But if I can pay attention to what I've screwed up and try to improve on that live,

00:27:42

I get like the double edged thing, right?

00:27:45

So I can produce something and I can learn from it at the same time.

00:27:48

It's not the same.

00:27:49

It's not at all, right?

00:27:51

It's not.

00:27:52

You're immediately going to tell me that the coaching and such and the, the

00:27:55

third party feedback is going to be the piece that's missing from that.

00:28:00

Totally.

00:28:01

And I won't disagree with you.

00:28:02

But again, like you, you either have to commit time or dollars and be willing to

00:28:09

put off.

00:28:10

I shouldn't say put off, like make it more of a, maybe it's financial.

00:28:17

Maybe it's career improvement.

00:28:19

Like there's some driving factor behind trying to improve.

00:28:25

At that level, but I don't think this book is designed to do that.

00:28:31

And I don't think it's designed to replace that.

00:28:33

So that's going to be the caution I'll give you here.

00:28:36

It seems to me like it is positioned as the light version or the

00:28:43

blinkest version.

00:28:44

You don't have to read the whole thing.

00:28:47

You don't have to go to the meetings to really understand.

00:28:49

All you really need to know is flow like a river.

00:28:53

The conversation is play and I don't think it's, I don't think you can, you can condense it

00:28:59

down like that.

00:29:00

So I don't think he's trying to, like he's not positioning this as a replacement to

00:29:05

Toastmasters.

00:29:06

Like that's something, I want to point that out.

00:29:07

That's something that you brought up.

00:29:09

Correct.

00:29:09

That is my bias.

00:29:10

He is not saying that this is a replacement for like a formal humor teaching class

00:29:17

consultant.

00:29:18

He's not saying this is a replacement for that.

00:29:20

This is kind of like setting a foundation to show you how some of the basics work so

00:29:25

that you could then go into something beyond that.

00:29:28

Sure.

00:29:28

I just think you can't learn this stuff without doing it.

00:29:32

That's all.

00:29:34

Well, right.

00:29:34

And if you don't even know how to start, how could you start doing it?

00:29:39

And I think that's where this comes in.

00:29:40

Like this can give you the very basic fundamental components that can help you get

00:29:45

started.

00:29:46

And then once you start to get a taste for it, then maybe Toastmasters is the right

00:29:50

answer, maybe hiring a consultant or a coach is the right answer.

00:29:53

But if you have no idea where to start, this would at least give you some basics

00:29:58

to begin with.

00:29:59

Is that fair?

00:29:59

Maybe you don't like this at all.

00:30:02

I don't know.

00:30:03

I mean, I agree that that's what he's trying to do.

00:30:05

Um, I just don't think it's effective to be honest.

00:30:08

Like he's giving you specific advice about like, well, let's get into the book here.

00:30:13

Yeah.

00:30:14

Um, sure.

00:30:15

Cause he talks about, um, when you're in a conversation with somebody, like do this.

00:30:22

And some of the stuff that he talks about, there's no way I would ever try that

00:30:25

with any relationship that I am serious about.

00:30:28

You have an example of that.

00:30:31

Like what you're referring to, because there's, there's a lot of things he points

00:30:35

out and I'm just not sure which ones you're talking about.

00:30:37

Let's see.

00:30:38

I guess it would be starting with chapter three.

00:30:40

So maybe let's put a pin in that.

00:30:43

But like you're kind of, some of the stuff he tells you to do is like borderline

00:30:49

picking on people and I just think it's really, really dangerous to some of the

00:30:58

advice that he gives first of all.

00:30:59

And then he tries to temper it and say, well, you got to be careful.

00:31:02

You know, this can come off, come across as rude.

00:31:05

But if there's even the possibility that's going to come across as rude, unless

00:31:09

this is like somebody that I spend an insane amount of time with, I'm not

00:31:16

trying any of this stuff.

00:31:17

Sure.

00:31:18

Interesting.

00:31:20

So because there's a lot of those pieces.

00:31:23

And again, we'll get to that.

00:31:24

There's a lot of those pieces that I do and have done for years that I think

00:31:30

you're referring to that you would never do with strangers, but I do them

00:31:32

with strangers all the time.

00:31:34

So it's, it's, yeah, this is the hard part.

00:31:36

Like, I'm curious here now. I'm the guy who likes conflict, right?

00:31:40

But I'm not going to do some of the social that he's telling us to do in this book.

00:31:45

So this is interesting.

00:31:47

OK, let's, let's step into chapter one here.

00:31:49

And chapter one is flow like a river.

00:31:52

I want to read some of the subheadings here in this because I think it'll help.

00:31:57

It helps set the stage of what he means by this.

00:32:00

OK, so chapter one, flow like a river.

00:32:04

And I should point out the the lettering on this is quite large.

00:32:09

So this is a fairly quick quick read.

00:32:12

Just going to point that out.

00:32:13

I wonder how many words are actually in this book because I got it and it's like

00:32:17

200 something pages, right?

00:32:18

You're like, oh, this is a legit book.

00:32:21

And then you start it.

00:32:22

You're like, this is totally the guy who put one and a half inch margins on his

00:32:26

school papers to make him look totally totally double spaced.

00:32:30

Added the extra filler words.

00:32:32

Anyway, here's the subtitles underneath the flow like a river.

00:32:35

Never speak an absolutes, which is hilarious because he just did.

00:32:40

Think before you react, practice free association, use double explanations,

00:32:48

more effective compliments.

00:32:50

And what he's getting at with all of these and like these little subsections

00:32:55

here in flow like a river is he's showing you the components

00:33:02

of general conversation and how to help that conversation continue to have flow,

00:33:11

like Mahali flow, but this is in conversation and how you can have the back

00:33:17

and forth.

00:33:17

And I think that's important because throughout the rest of the book,

00:33:20

if you don't have that, none of it matters, right?

00:33:23

So you can't have the back and forth.

00:33:25

If you don't understand how general non witty banter conversations,

00:33:32

happen.

00:33:33

There you go.

00:33:34

Yeah.

00:33:35

And the first thing he does is he shares a awkward story of him trying to be

00:33:41

funny with a coworker and it falling flat and he'd be like, there,

00:33:44

he won't avoid situations like that, which right away shows me that his goal

00:33:51

with conversation is very different than my goal with conversation.

00:33:57

So take the rest of my opinions for the remainder of this episode.

00:34:02

With a grain of salt because from page one, he and I don't see it.

00:34:05

Interesting.

00:34:08

This chapter though, I felt like this one reminded me a lot of what I have

00:34:16

heard from people who have practiced improv comedy.

00:34:19

I don't know if that is his background or if that's just me recalling

00:34:27

the conversations I've had with Mike Vardy, I know has an improv comedy background.

00:34:32

So he's kind of talked to me about this same sort of thing and the value of

00:34:38

like the yes and and keeping things open ended so that you can go back and forth.

00:34:43

But improv comedy, again, like the goal is just to give the other person

00:34:48

something to riff off of.

00:34:49

So you can go back and forth, whereas I'm approaching a conversation and like,

00:34:54

let's just limit the back and forth.

00:34:57

And cut straight to the quick, which is why when I go out to eat with a group

00:35:02

of people that I don't know, I'll ask that super deep awkward question that

00:35:06

makes people think puts them on the spot.

00:35:08

You know, like, I want to know I am that guy.

00:35:14

I am that guy.

00:35:14

So I recognize though that like because I am that guy, there are probably,

00:35:20

there's probably, you probably can't even cut it into like two groups.

00:35:25

People like me and then people weren't like me and split it down the middle 50/50.

00:35:28

I'm probably in the vast minority with this.

00:35:31

I get that for a lot of people.

00:35:33

The worst thing that could happen to them is they have a conversation like the

00:35:37

one that he outlines at the very beginning.

00:35:39

So I understand that, but I also think not for me.

00:35:43

OK.

00:35:45

See, this is this is where I think we differ because.

00:35:48

And I don't know if this is just my corporate background or what this is,

00:35:53

but I feel like I've been in several situations where.

00:35:58

I need to make a connection with someone else.

00:36:03

Or I'm going to lose some form of a business deal or a potential to get

00:36:10

access to something that I need.

00:36:12

So I have to hit it off with someone.

00:36:15

And, you know, a good example.

00:36:19

We're in the middle of listing our house at prelisted this morning.

00:36:22

As of like four hours ago.

00:36:24

A whole mess, right?

00:36:26

Well, in that process, you, of course, have to potentially meet a new real estate agent.

00:36:33

In our case, I needed to go meet somebody new who owned a storage unit facility

00:36:40

so that I could get a storage unit.

00:36:41

Yep.

00:36:42

And the thing that I have found just over the years, that's always helpful is

00:36:49

I can hit it off with whoever that person is behind the counter or that's I'm trying to, you know,

00:36:56

I'm on the receiving end of a service or I'm requesting something from someone.

00:37:00

Everything is better if I can hit it off with them, right?

00:37:04

Like everybody knows this, but.

00:37:06

Doing that is not simple.

00:37:10

And I have a tendency to like try to find things that are either in their workspace or.

00:37:19

Something they say or make a comment, try to inject humor into something somehow very minorly.

00:37:27

Just to try to get some form of.

00:37:31

Conversation going because whenever I can get the conversation going, it seems like.

00:37:36

Sometimes people will knock off discount, like they'll put a discount on things like.

00:37:40

This is purely self beneficial for me to learn how to do all this.

00:37:44

That sort of thing is what a lot of this I feel like helps with.

00:37:49

Like I didn't translate this to something like Toastmasters really at all.

00:37:54

To me, this was more about just day to day conversation.

00:37:58

I have new people come in to the church building all the time with.

00:38:02

Funerals, weddings, special events and stuff.

00:38:06

So I have to meet new people constantly, it seems like, and being able to have the quick.

00:38:12

You know, quips and such can be helpful to.

00:38:16

You know, ease the tensions that are there, especially if there's something like a funeral going on.

00:38:21

Because as weird as that sounds, injecting humor into things whenever you're.

00:38:25

Dealing with something like a funeral.

00:38:26

Actually helps everything go much smoother.

00:38:30

So that's a lot of what I was after.

00:38:33

And this particular section, things like never use absolutes because they shut

00:38:37

conversation down.

00:38:38

It doesn't really offer the other person something to.

00:38:42

I guess respond to like that sort of thing is super helpful.

00:38:46

To me, and that's the sort of thing that I was trying to get from this.

00:38:48

So it's interesting to me, Mike, that in your case, you're trying to.

00:38:52

I feel like you're translating it into talks and speeches, but then like there's

00:38:56

the social gathering thing where you don't really want to do that.

00:38:59

And that's the exact thing I wanted to do.

00:39:01

So this is like, I feel like we're coming at this from two completely opposite sides,

00:39:05

which is totally fine.

00:39:07

You hit on one of my major issues with this first chapter when you.

00:39:13

When you first started that, that explanation is I need to use this stuff in order

00:39:18

to get something from someone else.

00:39:21

It feels totally manipulative to me.

00:39:24

And I get that there are a bunch of people who that's what they want.

00:39:27

And I'm not actually projecting that on you specifically, but that's kind of the

00:39:31

danger, I think of something like this is you will totally get the people who are

00:39:35

like, how can I extract?

00:39:36

Yes.

00:39:37

Just a little bit more from somebody like Mike next time I run into them.

00:39:42

And now my shields are up and I'm going into our conversations a little bit more

00:39:47

guarded, a little bit more reserved, a little bit more, I'm not sure I trust that guy.

00:39:51

Yeah.

00:39:51

Yeah.

00:39:52

And I, I don't know.

00:39:56

I don't know.

00:39:57

I don't know how to reconcile that.

00:39:58

I don't know that I need to reconcile that.

00:39:59

But the whole be clever, quick and magnetic, right?

00:40:04

That's the subtitle.

00:40:06

Why?

00:40:06

What are you trying to get out of being clever, quick and magnetic?

00:40:10

You're trying to get something from someone, whether it is a discount or a better deal,

00:40:16

or maybe it's just you want them to, to like you more.

00:40:20

That's fine, but not appealing to me in the least.

00:40:25

I don't care if you like me or not.

00:40:28

I'm going to go do my thing.

00:40:29

In my case, like to defend that because I do this, right?

00:40:33

And

00:40:33

it's not because

00:40:37

like I mentioned like counter workers, service workers and such, like I mentioned

00:40:42

that just because it was the first thing that came to mind, but I try to just do

00:40:47

that sort of thing all the time.

00:40:48

And like I was doing it with a coworker this morning.

00:40:52

Known her for years.

00:40:54

She's in our small group.

00:40:55

We've been in a small group for nine years, eight years together, something.

00:41:01

And we did had the whole banter thing this morning.

00:41:03

They do that sort of thing a lot.

00:41:06

You know, I'm not, it's not only in those situations.

00:41:09

I think that's the difference here is that if people are doing that only when

00:41:14

they need something or want something versus they're just like that all the time.

00:41:21

I think those are two very different things.

00:41:24

Again, I, I'm probably doing it a bit more in certain scenarios than than others.

00:41:32

And I think that's fine.

00:41:34

But I, I wouldn't say that I get upset if something doesn't work out the way I want either.

00:41:41

Sure.

00:41:42

Like this is just a, I know that this helps both of us feel more comfortable.

00:41:46

Sometimes they're willing to offer something in return, but generally speaking, you know, to use

00:41:54

your thing, like be clever, quick and magnetic wise, like, well, it makes the whole

00:41:58

interchange just easier and more comfortable for both of us.

00:42:01

That's why it doesn't have to be, you're going to give me a discount or I'm fake or it doesn't

00:42:09

have to be that.

00:42:09

It just makes both of us more comfortable in the situation.

00:42:12

I agree with you completely, but I also think that's not the tone that he projects here.

00:42:17

I mean, just look at the section on more effective compliments.

00:42:20

I have a couple of things jotted down in my mind node file and I jot these down in order

00:42:25

that they're presented.

00:42:26

First thing I wrote down, don't over compliment, make your compliments mean something.

00:42:32

Why do you have to say that at the beginning unless you are automatically thinking, oh,

00:42:37

people are going to take what I'm saying and use it for personal gain and the people that

00:42:43

they're talking to are going to feel manipulated?

00:42:45

Maybe that's not what he's thinking.

00:42:47

Okay.

00:42:47

But that's how I read that.

00:42:50

Interesting.

00:42:51

Cause I took it the opposite in that don't overdo this because then it won't have the effect.

00:42:57

Like it, it does the opposite of what you intend.

00:43:01

Sure.

00:43:01

Well, that was, that was all I was thinking of.

00:43:03

But he's laying that groundwork first.

00:43:05

That way you keep that in your mind that you can't just compliment, compliment, compliment, compliment

00:43:11

until somebody's completely exhausted with you.

00:43:15

Cause then it no longer is a compliment, right?

00:43:18

So you've, you've sidestepped your own attempts.

00:43:23

Like that was all I heard out of that.

00:43:26

So maybe this is a case of the curse of knowledge, right?

00:43:30

Where you've been doing something for a while and you forget what it's like at the beginning.

00:43:34

When I got to this section on compliments, I immediately thought of the gratitude practice.

00:43:40

My wife and I have this as part of our weekly meeting every single date night.

00:43:45

We express gratitude to each other when at the end of the actual meeting part where we're talking

00:43:49

about like, what do we want to change?

00:43:52

What do you want to start, stop and keep doing?

00:43:55

We talk over any specific things that we had to make decisions on, you know,

00:43:58

before we just chill and enjoy each other's company.

00:44:01

And if you have expressed gratitude more than once, you don't need to be told to focus on the

00:44:09

things that will have the greatest impact, the things that people have control over,

00:44:13

the things that people have made specific choices about.

00:44:15

It's like, have you never complimented your wife before?

00:44:19

Well, here are some things you should know before you start.

00:44:23

There are people like that.

00:44:24

Yeah, I understand that.

00:44:27

So that's why I say like, they're painful.

00:44:30

But for me, it's like, I read this and I'm like, what? Really?

00:44:38

Right.

00:44:40

Very.

00:44:41

But I think this is, again, this is, this is kind of what I expected when you started

00:44:48

talking about Toastmasters because I didn't connect that world to this at all.

00:44:54

I connected like the small talk world to it.

00:44:57

Sure.

00:44:57

Not like the, like, for example, like dinner date, you do a double date with another couple, right?

00:45:04

If the world ever decides to open up again, you double date with another couple.

00:45:08

And this happens, right?

00:45:12

The wives know each other, so they set up the double date, but the husbands don't know each other at all.

00:45:17

Or vice versa, right? That stuff happens.

00:45:19

And I've been in those scenarios and it can be kind of difficult sometimes.

00:45:27

Sure.

00:45:29

I feel like this sort of thing can help with that.

00:45:31

How do you kick conversations off?

00:45:34

Like the compliments, like, again, you're not trying to get something from the other person,

00:45:38

other than just learn more about them, build a relationship.

00:45:43

You know, maybe you can hit it off and go golfing together afterwards.

00:45:47

Like, I don't know what that is.

00:45:48

Sure.

00:45:49

But having some of this base, and this is where this first chapter comes in, I think,

00:45:55

setting up the flow, like, how does the back and forth work?

00:45:58

And some of that, like what he's talking about in here is just showing the emotion that the other

00:46:05

person expects was in here.

00:46:08

And I thought that was interesting too, because a lot of times people will make a comment

00:46:13

or they'll say something and sometimes they're looking for you to feel sorry for them,

00:46:21

to be upset with them and such.

00:46:23

Yeah.

00:46:24

And if you want to continue down that path, like, if it's a path you want to go down,

00:46:30

you can emit that same emotion.

00:46:33

I think there are a lot of cases where I deliberately choose not to,

00:46:38

because I think the path the person is going down the emotion that they're wanting to

00:46:43

elicit for me is not the one I want to give them.

00:46:47

Like, and I, like, my tendency is to try to show the opposite just because, like, no, don't do that.

00:46:54

Like, you think Samsung's amazing?

00:46:56

Forget you.

00:46:57

Like, no, go away.

00:46:58

So you are Patrick King's ideal customer then.

00:47:01

Yeah.

00:47:01

So I don't know.

00:47:04

Like, there's a lot that he has here that kind of shows just how that back and forth

00:47:10

can work and how do you help each other feel comfortable in the conversation.

00:47:13

I think we've all had those dialogues with people who really don't get out much

00:47:21

and really have a hard time in conversation socially.

00:47:28

And some of what he's referring to here, I feel like I've had a chance to learn

00:47:35

in the real world of back and forth, like, oh, don't ever say that because people don't

00:47:40

get it.

00:47:40

There's some stuff like that just completely fell on its face.

00:47:44

I did that one all wrong.

00:47:45

Like, I do that and realize that sort of thing.

00:47:49

I feel like this can save you a little bit of heartache from those situations.

00:47:52

So I'm glad you brought up mirroring because that phrase stood out to me too.

00:47:57

Do you remember the last place we heard that?

00:48:00

Not off the top of my head.

00:48:02

Never split the difference by Chris Voss, a book on negotiating with terrorists.

00:48:09

Well, it was negotiations.

00:48:11

He did like, he comes from negotiating with terrorists, but that wasn't the point of the book.

00:48:16

Misdirect it there.

00:48:18

Fair enough.

00:48:19

Fair enough.

00:48:19

Yeah.

00:48:19

But I remember having the same sort of feeling with that book of, okay, so the whole purpose

00:48:27

of the negotiation here is to get what I want.

00:48:29

That doesn't feel right to me.

00:48:34

Can't even put my finger on specifically why.

00:48:36

I just know I don't want to be in those conversations.

00:48:40

So here's a question for you then.

00:48:42

This type of thing.

00:48:44

So that's a good point.

00:48:46

If we've had books that talk about how to converse with other people,

00:48:50

and there's the potential to interpret that as seeking gain in some form,

00:48:57

right?

00:48:57

Sure.

00:48:58

Every time the conversation can be potentially manipulated, right?

00:49:02

You're showing kind of angst against that.

00:49:05

If that's the case, does that mean that we shouldn't try to better a relationship with

00:49:12

quote unquote tactics or methods?

00:49:16

Is that the issue you're actually fighting against?

00:49:20

And if that's the case, then should we not try to make a conversation comfortable?

00:49:27

Like what's your take on that?

00:49:29

Sure.

00:49:31

Well, I think it's fine to make it appear more comfortable.

00:49:34

I think for whatever reason, it kind of gets stuck in my head of this,

00:49:41

with Patrick King's book, he paints a picture just like the negotiation book of this is a successful

00:49:48

conversation versus an unsuccessful one.

00:49:53

And I feel like making a qualitative judgment about the interaction into one of those categories

00:50:01

is what I don't feel comfortable with.

00:50:05

So if I'm going to be at a dinner party, like the scenario he talks about at the very beginning,

00:50:11

and I'm talking to somebody, we don't hit it off, I'm not thinking to myself,

00:50:15

oh, what are the tactics that I can employ to make this conversation work?

00:50:19

I'm going to talk to somebody else.

00:50:22

Maybe that's just my bias.

00:50:25

I know that you mentioned like the double date sort of thing.

00:50:27

You're trapped in a scenario where you have to interact with these people.

00:50:31

I'm willing to concede that maybe this book could be very applicable in that scenario.

00:50:36

But again, that sounds miserable to me, and I'm going to do everything that I can to avoid that.

00:50:41

And I really think that with communication in general, that's really what we're talking about

00:50:48

here. I don't really like, although I know you can break it down into like the different types

00:50:53

of communication. But ultimately, that's what I think of when I think of Toastmasters is this is

00:50:59

a group that will help you communicate better. And if you improve your communication,

00:51:04

literally everything in your life gets better. That is not an overstatement, by the way.

00:51:12

I know that is very general. I 100% believe that though, if you can communicate better,

00:51:17

not negotiate better, not have the right story, or evoke the right emotion, or mirror what

00:51:23

your partner is saying, but if you can communicate better, then every relationship where you have

00:51:29

to communicate is going to be better. But sometimes it doesn't fit into a formula.

00:51:37

You're talking about like the people who come in and you're organizing a funeral,

00:51:42

and at certain points, humor can be helpful in those scenarios. But I imagine it totally depends

00:51:49

on the individual. You're not going to try a joke and have it fall flat with somebody who is coming

00:51:56

in because they lost someone close to them and they're grieving at the moment. Like, you're going

00:52:03

to be really, really careful with that relationship. And I feel like with this book, it's only focusing

00:52:11

on the one side. That's fine. You can focus on just one side, but it's presented very generally.

00:52:16

And I feel like I'm not going to use this 95% of the time.

00:52:21

[chuckles]

00:52:22

So if somebody's difficult to talk to, you just ruled them out of your life?

00:52:26

Good question. I don't think so.

00:52:28

[chuckles]

00:52:29

Because here's what I'm getting at. There are sometimes people that we have in our lives that

00:52:36

maybe they're family, maybe they're friends of friends. You see them fairly regularly.

00:52:42

But maybe they don't have the social skills to have a conversation like what you and I do here.

00:52:49

And you have to kind of hand hold them through a conversation to help them in that situation.

00:52:59

This will sound bad when I start, but it'll get better, I promise.

00:53:03

[chuckles]

00:53:04

We had a funeral and I'm bringing up funerals because it's a period of time when people are

00:53:09

in a really bad emotional state, typically. I had a situation where it was a mom and dad,

00:53:20

the deceased was a seven-year-old girl, which was difficult for me because at the time,

00:53:24

I had a seven-year-old girl. So that was difficult. They come in before the funeral.

00:53:31

And you know how most funerals they do, like that pre-service, they'll have the looping

00:53:36

slideshow of memories of the deceased and such. That's a pretty common thing.

00:53:40

And I'm always the one who sets that stuff up. And that's a big part of what I always do last

00:53:46

minute because it takes a lot of work for the family to put it together.

00:53:50

Mom and dad came in, I think it was a day before the funeral. And obviously,

00:53:59

and this was an unexpected death. I'm not going to go into that, but unexpected,

00:54:04

mom and dad are in really bad shape. And when they first walked in,

00:54:10

I made some comment about, let's make sure I get the flaster I've in and right side up the first time.

00:54:16

Very innocent, very non-assuming. It's more of a joke on me than it is

00:54:24

anything and it's super, super minor, right? That one comment,

00:54:29

dad spoke up, apparently he's a techie. I didn't know this. He's a techie and that started the

00:54:38

conversation off. And then we were able to have a tech conversation in the next probably 20 minutes.

00:54:44

And I had to kind of work with him quite a bit to get that conversation going. And when we were

00:54:52

done and we got all the stuff working, I was of course doing things while we were having this

00:54:57

conversation. He told me afterwards that that was the first conversation he had had that didn't

00:55:04

involve his daughter since the day she died. And he thanked me for being willing to take him out of

00:55:10

that for just a few moments because it was able to get him started in the process of healing and

00:55:17

starting the process moving on past that. But I had to use and at the time I hadn't read this,

00:55:22

right? But I used a lot of the things that are in this book unknowingly to help hand hold him

00:55:28

through that conversation. I was just trying to have a conversation while I'm working on things.

00:55:33

Like it's awkward for him to just sit there and watch me while I'm doing things on a computer and

00:55:37

he can't do anything. So I always try to have that conversation something during that time.

00:55:45

But if I were to just say the stuff in this book is unnecessary and these tactics and these methods

00:55:53

are purely manipulative, I probably would have just let it be silent and he wouldn't have had that

00:56:01

moment. Do you get where I'm going with this?

00:56:05

- I do, but I also think that that exact scenario doesn't fit with this content that's in this book

00:56:11

at all. - Why doesn't it? To me it feels like it fits perfectly.

00:56:14

- You made a joke, but the joke, you had no idea that he was techy. So that really wasn't, in my

00:56:24

opinion, giving him an invitation to engage in the back and forth witty banter. If that had been

00:56:30

your goal, you probably wouldn't have said it at all because you don't know whether he's going to

00:56:34

engage and you're thinking, "Just lost a seven year old daughter. I don't want to force him to do

00:56:39

something uncomfortable." So you're making fun of yourself. And then that opened up a side door

00:56:47

which had nothing to do with the joke itself. You weren't cracking jokes now about, "Oh, well,

00:56:54

my flash drive is bigger than your flash drive." That's kind of where Patrick King would take that

00:56:58

conversation. - At the very end of this, yes. But in this particular piece with the flow like a

00:57:03

river, the tactics piece around keeping conversation going, absolutely 100%. Yes, this is exactly the

00:57:09

stuff I was using. - Okay, gotcha. Yeah, that's fair. - So yes, your in-game, like when we get to

00:57:15

chapters three and four, that was completely inappropriate in that particular situation. But

00:57:22

what I'm getting at is with his conversation methods that he's referring to, don't use absolutes,

00:57:29

invite someone into the mirroring pieces. Those are all super important in that type of situation.

00:57:36

- But those are the same things that we were just talking about with the negotiation book

00:57:39

that you told me you didn't want to do. - Yeah, okay. So I can get on board with you

00:57:44

in chapter one is okay. But starting with chapter two, it immediately starts to go off the rails.

00:57:51

- Okay. - Because the first thing he's talking about is break the fourth wall.

00:57:55

And let's just use your example here. Okay, well, you're talking to this guy who just

00:58:01

lost his seven-year-old daughter, the fourth wall. This is when a character steps out of their role

00:58:05

and addresses the audience directly. Okay. And so a version of this would be you now switching

00:58:13

to the third person and be like, "Man, I sure hope Joe puts the flash drive in the right side up."

00:58:18

That's not gonna work. - Actually, that one would have.

00:58:25

I just did this a minute ago with you. Whenever we were talking about the books, we kind of stepped

00:58:28

back, right? And said, "When we're talking about the negotiation book and this book, like we stepped

00:58:35

back." And I said, "Okay, you've now referenced these two books that are about that sort of thing

00:58:42

is what he's referring to breaking the fourth wall." So in those cases, in that scenario,

00:58:51

and we don't need to keep talking about the same one, but in that particular scenario,

00:58:55

it would have been, I think, depending on how you deliver that, I probably could have said,

00:59:00

now that I'm behind the computer, like, "Joe, you darn well better get this right." Like,

00:59:05

I probably could have made that comment. - Sure.

00:59:08

- But I probably won't do that if he has already engaged in the conversation. Like,

00:59:14

that's kind of a continuation of the first joke, right? Hoping that, you know, let's continue the

00:59:20

funny here for another second. Mostly, I'm just trying to fill air so it's not awkward. So that's...

00:59:26

I feel like I'm trying to shut you down on everything today. I don't know why.

00:59:31

- Even that doesn't fit real well with how he describes breaking the fourth wall, though,

00:59:34

because he says there's two places to use it. When you point out with both people are thinking,

00:59:38

but not saying, and at that point, he's not thinking, "Oh, this guy seems like a real tool.

00:59:43

I hope he puts them. I'm driving the right side." - Right, right.

00:59:46

- You point out your opinion about what is happening in the moment. I guess maybe you could classify

00:59:52

it as that. I just have a real hard time thinking about how from this point on how any of this stuff

00:59:57

gets applied in a scenario where I'd be comfortable using it outside of improv comedy.

01:00:02

- Sure. - And maybe that's the whole goal from the very beginning is improv comedy or situations

01:00:10

like that where a whole goal is to have this hilarious back and forth with somebody.

01:00:16

That's fine. If that's the goal of the book, then this book just isn't for me.

01:00:20

But I feel like it's a communications book. I feel like witty banter. That's very broad in general,

01:00:27

and you could apply that a lot of different ways. But he seems to get stuck in using it this way.

01:00:33

Now, it's not all bad stuff, though, either, which is kind of why I say the thing at the beginning

01:00:38

about how to me, this is like a watered down cheaters version, quick sheet of what Toastmasters

01:00:45

would give you. You can look at some of the stuff he says and look at some of the stuff that Toastmasters

01:00:50

would teach and say, "Oh, yeah, I know that already. Do you?" There's a difference between

01:00:55

information and application or revelation, right? The things that you really know are the things

01:01:01

that you actually do, in my opinion. So he mentions in chapter two, for example, of the fallback

01:01:07

stories. This is something I picked up from Aaron Beverly, and I've mentioned it before in this

01:01:13

podcast as an action item. It's another action item, again, is to develop that story file,

01:01:18

which is simply just a collection of stories with the different points. And you want to present

01:01:23

it in a way, kind of like an outline, where you can pick and choose the different details that you

01:01:29

include in the stories based on how much time you're trying to fill when telling it. If you just

01:01:35

want something to get the gist of it, you've got like a three or four sentence version.

01:01:38

If you're given a speech and you really want someone to feel the emotion, then you've got a

01:01:44

longer version of that. And so some of this stuff is actually good advice, but it feels like the

01:01:52

perspective that he has when he explains how to do this sort of thing. He presents it in a way

01:01:58

from a frame of reference that makes me just not want to receive it. And I get that's totally my

01:02:04

own bias and I probably have to just get over that. But that's my reaction.

01:02:09

All right, first section here, flow like a river, conversation is play. And essentially what he's

01:02:16

getting because we got to get going through this. But conversation is play is essentially a section

01:02:20

where we're talking about the different things that make conversation, I don't want to say light

01:02:28

and funny, but more enjoyable, I guess. And probably the example that I would have here going into

01:02:35

the third chapter, which is a touch of witty banter is that there's a man in our small group

01:02:42

who I consider to be quite witty in that he is really good with the quick one liners, like

01:02:49

explanations, like they get into the witty banter pieces here of like redefining ways of saying

01:02:56

things like if you're talking about the weather, here's a different way to say it's raining outside

01:03:00

instead of just saying it's raining outside. Like there's a guy in our small group that's

01:03:05

phenomenal at this. And I love having conversations with him, known him again for eight years or so.

01:03:13

And I love having conversations with him because he'll interject these one liners,

01:03:21

not often, but the way that he'll describe things just keeps it more, I guess, an enjoyable back

01:03:29

and forth, even if we're just talking about how to change the brakes on a car. Like it doesn't

01:03:34

really matter what the topic is, but putting those into it makes it more fun to have a conversation

01:03:41

with them. Thus, I have a tendency to seek him out whenever I see him just because I know the

01:03:45

conversation is going to be fun. It doesn't really matter what we talk about. I don't care. I'll throw

01:03:49

a one-liner at him to begin with and see where it goes. That's how that works. But it just makes

01:03:55

for a fun conversation. I feel like that's similar to what the purpose here is. You're talking about

01:04:01

the purpose behind this, right? And the argument that I would give you that's kind of conflicting

01:04:09

in my brain is that Toastmasters is the same way in that you're going through Toastmasters

01:04:17

to learn how to give a talk or a speech for a purpose, which is the exact same thing.

01:04:22

You're learning to do things, use these methods, learn how to not say, "um,

01:04:27

all the things so that you can get better at something for a reason." What is the reason? Well,

01:04:32

if you're trying to give a better talk or presentation at work, it's financial gain. You're trying to

01:04:38

get promoted. You're trying to be better at your job, right? So this could be similar,

01:04:42

just used in different ways. So I struggle with some of what you're

01:04:47

arguing with because I feel like you're using one set of foundations over here and you're changing

01:04:52

it over there. But it's really kind of the same deal. Sure. Well, I feel like Toastmasters is very

01:05:02

general in you to find your own objective when you join. And it even changes depending on the project.

01:05:08

But overall, it is very holistic. Like one of the things that you're talking about,

01:05:14

"Witty banter," the one liners, the way Toastmasters helps you with that is they have what are called

01:05:19

table topics. And you speak extemporaneously for two to three minutes on a topic, but you don't

01:05:25

know what the topic is until right before you start. They give you the topic, "okay go." Now,

01:05:31

talk about that thing for two to three minutes, which is the most terrifying part of Toastmasters

01:05:35

for me. Sure. But it's also been one of the things that has helped me the most.

01:05:39

I can say when I joined Toastmasters, it was because I think we had just started Bookworm

01:05:45

and I wanted to get better at podcasting and I was starting to do more webinars, so I wanted to be a

01:05:51

better presenter. And after a couple of sessions, a couple of talks that I had given, I immediately

01:06:01

saw that I was not only getting better in communicating in those mediums, but this was affecting every

01:06:09

area of my life. I don't think that is fair to say, I don't think it's fair to compare this book to

01:06:19

Toastmasters in that regard and be like, "well, this isn't changing how I communicate in every

01:06:24

scenario." I'm fine with that. But I also think that the scenario that it's describing here is just

01:06:31

not a sandbox I want to play in. Like the last thing in chapter two, he talks about instant role

01:06:36

play where you make a judgment statement about someone, you give them a label based on the statement

01:06:40

that you made and you start playing the roles. "I'm never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever going to do that."

01:06:45

And then in chapter three, he talks about the art of misconstruing where you're

01:06:53

misinterpreting in an intentional manner to bring about a comical situation. The only place I would

01:06:59

ever do that is with my kids. #dadjokes. That's the only place that they're going to come out.

01:07:05

And I don't need any help with that. I got that one down.

01:07:09

Sure. I think a lot of what you're talking about is personality.

01:07:17

Completely fair. Yes. He is explaining how to be the personality of clever, quick, and magnetic.

01:07:28

And I think what you're telling me is that is not you. It's not me. And then even if it was me,

01:07:35

the reading it in a book is not an effective way to learn those skills. And I get like you

01:07:42

mentioned, "Well, I don't really have any experiences. It's helpful to me because now I

01:07:45

at least have somewhat of a picture of what this looks like." I don't know. I don't think I would

01:07:50

ever pick up a book like this. And this is not the first book that I have read like this, by the way.

01:07:57

I've read several books. Many of them have been recommended to me by somebody that we both know

01:08:01

about how to speak better. I do not learn that way, which is weird to me because look at all these

01:08:07

books behind me. This is how I learn by reading. But when it comes to communicating, it just is like

01:08:14

two totally different worlds. And I cannot reconcile in my own head how anyone can effectively learn

01:08:25

how to speak through a written medium. Because all you have with the book, maybe this is like

01:08:33

where an audio book actually helps because you can hear the voice inflections of the author and

01:08:37

stuff like that. But all you have is what is actually being said when you are reading this book.

01:08:44

And what he's actually sharing via what he's saying, including all of the examples, like the

01:08:51

jokes that he tells about himself. Yeah, this Ralph Lauren Polo, that's actually a real horse.

01:08:55

Again, self-deprecating. But I'm just like, I don't think I like you. That's not funny.

01:09:03

Yeah, I mean, these are all like some of the things you're talking about is from the section on

01:09:09

a touch of witty banter, which is like the comebacks and stuff we've been referring to.

01:09:16

The next chapter there is funny on command, where they get into the vivid imagery that I was talking

01:09:21

about with this guy, with the small group. He does that sort of thing quite a bit. And then he talks

01:09:27

about the comic triple, the listing of three things, two positives and a negative that can then make

01:09:32

it super funny. Those are all, again, tactics, right? And then sarcasm and irony, but be really

01:09:40

careful. Yeah, but I think what you're getting at is that, and it's one of the big complaints I have

01:09:46

with this particular book, I've been poking fun at you this whole time, right? But this...

01:09:50

It's a calico. This is the difficulty with it, right? In that take a number of the examples we've

01:09:58

shared here is like the way you deliver these words and your body language when you deliver these

01:10:04

words says so much in this process. The one example that comes to mind out of the book is

01:10:12

there was a question posed to Jennifer Lawrence on the Ellen DeGeneres show of, are you tired of

01:10:21

all the fame and celebrity? This was right after her role in the first Hunger Games. And

01:10:27

she says yes, but she says it in a way and with a smirk that would tell you it was sarcastic, right?

01:10:37

And it took him the better part of two paragraphs to explain that in a way that you could realize

01:10:46

that, oh, she actually means no, but if you had seen the video of that or been there,

01:10:53

it would have taken you exactly one second to know all of the things that it took us 30 seconds

01:11:00

to read or whatever it was. So like, that's the difficulty here, right? Because the way you deliver

01:11:07

the words in this book can drastically change the result from those, which is why I think what

01:11:15

you're saying in some cases are like, I would never say that. Well, there are cases when I would say

01:11:21

that, but the way I say that would be like what I just did. I would throw my voice. I would, you

01:11:27

know, you throw my mouth in a weird way so that it looks weird, like cross my eyes like those are

01:11:33

things that I would do. If you hang out in my house for very long, give yourself 30 minutes,

01:11:40

you will probably hear my wife use four or five different voices because she does this constantly.

01:11:45

This is a thing that just happens in our house or she will burst out into song. Like, it just happens

01:11:52

frequently. You don't even like, I live with her, so I see it constantly and it just seems like

01:11:57

it's normal. But I realize that's not normal. But my point is that it's really, really difficult

01:12:05

to get that sort of thing across in a book. So like these four chapters here, "Flow like a river,

01:12:11

conversation is play, a touch of woody banter, funny on command." Like, the funny on command thing is

01:12:17

difficult, I think, if you're trying to be funny, but I think it's one of those things you can practice,

01:12:26

right, if you want to do that. But again, it depends on what you're trying to do. Are you trying to

01:12:31

be the personality? Are you just trying to lighten up one conversation? What are you trying to do?

01:12:36

I think that's maybe where you're getting hung up. Is that true?

01:12:40

Maybe. This funny on command one specifically, this is the chapter I had the biggest issue with

01:12:47

because a big part of this is misdirection and he talks about sarcasm and irony.

01:12:54

And if you're doing improv comedy, great. Everybody knows exactly which rules you're playing by and

01:13:01

no one's taking it personally. Any other scenario that I can imagine where I would find myself,

01:13:08

I'm not going there. Yeah, sure. And I don't know, I'm trying to understand

01:13:19

where this is good advice. I just think like, if I were writing this, I would maybe

01:13:27

misdirection, that's fine, where you break a sentence into two parts. The second part of it is

01:13:32

what people react to. The first part is to set up and sarcasm is the most common way we use

01:13:37

misdirection and yada, yada, yada. I don't think I'm getting any more specific than that because

01:13:43

I don't want to tell you how to use this and then you think that you are just developing your

01:13:48

communication skills and you totally offend somebody. I think that if you don't have the

01:13:56

predefined rules agreed upon, then this is where you can very easily burn bridges. And maybe some

01:14:08

people aren't really worried about that. I kind of am. This is not the same thing in my head as

01:14:18

wanting people to like me. This is more so me valuing the other person and not wanting to

01:14:33

cause them harm or make them stumble. I think the biggest place this plays out for me is in the

01:14:39

church context. I don't want to cause anybody in our church to be offended at me and therefore

01:14:46

leadership because I am an elder. Likewise, if we're doing an outreach or something,

01:14:51

I don't want to offend one of the people that we are trying to outreach to and have them think

01:14:57

negatively of our church. But even outside of the church context, I don't want people to think

01:15:07

negatively of the businesses I represent. I don't want people to think negatively of my family.

01:15:11

I mean, I just don't want to create opportunities for there to be offense and division. There's

01:15:18

enough of that in the world already. And this is, you're coming from this misdirection piece.

01:15:23

Is that what you're talking about? Yeah, because underneath the misdirection,

01:15:26

he doesn't clearly define this, but how I group them is misdirection. And then he talks about

01:15:31

sarcasm and irony for a good portion of this chapter. But I believe those are like sub bullets

01:15:38

underneath the misdirection of plenty. He calls it. Yeah. I think I took this completely different

01:15:44

than you did. And here's an example. When I was going to set up the storage unit, the guy who owns

01:15:50

the place and was showing me all the things around it was saying, you know, if you come in with a

01:15:56

trailer, you're going to want to do this and that way you don't hit the posts. And I just,

01:16:01

this is a misdirection, right? I told him, like, I grew up on a farm driving semis all the time.

01:16:07

So you're pretty much guaranteed I'm going to run into everything. That's misdirection, right?

01:16:12

So most farm people I know are extremely particular about how trailers carry around corners and stuff,

01:16:20

like you can hug things very tight when you know how they work. Like pretty much everybody I know

01:16:24

from a farm is very good with trailers. And this guy, I knew just from earlier conversation that

01:16:31

he had been around a farm. So I knew that already. That was a misdirection. And he knew exactly what

01:16:37

I was referring to whenever I said that. And then he stopped explaining trailers to me after that

01:16:42

because he realized, and then at that point he'd had my license, which is a class ACL. So like,

01:16:49

he knew, like, I've driven big rigs, like a 15 foot trailer is easy. So that whole conversation

01:16:57

went very differently after that, which two things, it shortened the conversation. I was kind of in a

01:17:02

hurry. And two, it showed, you don't have to worry about me, you can trust me in this particular

01:17:08

situation. So I was trying to help him see that he could trust me in that particular scenario. And

01:17:13

that was a way that I could do that. But I used misdirection in that case. I'd already read this

01:17:18

section by that point. So I kind of knew what I was doing whenever I did that one.

01:17:21

Well done. But that's the sort of thing that I took from this. I didn't take it as a

01:17:26

misdirecting on, I guess, more serious, deeper topics to me that would be out of line. But I

01:17:33

think this is again, the difficulty with the book is like, when are these scenarios? When should I

01:17:38

use those? Because yeah, that's going to be the piece that's going to rely on. I don't want to say

01:17:46

like social experience, but it's just being aware of what the other person is expecting at the time.

01:17:53

That's some of the just noticing how the other person is responding from a body language stance,

01:17:59

right? So that sort of thing would be out of line if I was in the middle of a church meeting,

01:18:05

trying to decide whether or not we should take out a big loan or not. Like that would be

01:18:11

inappropriate. But when I'm trying to buy a storage unit, it's totally fine.

01:18:15

Yeah, that's a great example. You hit that 100%. That's exactly the scenario he's describing

01:18:25

in this sort of thing. And I understand that maybe the better title for a book like this is,

01:18:34

the art of useless small talk.

01:18:38

What is small talk? Which is something I feel like I struggle with, but I feel like this is maybe

01:18:43

that's why I was drawn to it. I don't know. Yeah. And that's the thing for me is like,

01:18:48

I don't really care about the small talk aspect of it. I don't really have time for that, to be

01:18:55

honest. I prefer to just jump right in. And I guess what I'm saying is I understand that like,

01:19:04

the there is usefulness to this type of stuff, it's just really, really hard for me to figure out

01:19:10

any way in my life that I am ever going to use it. That's fair. Maybe next time I open up a storage

01:19:17

unit, I'll try to use some some sarcasm. Sure. I feel like I'm just around a lot of people I don't

01:19:23

know. Yeah. And maybe that's why this is like, I, my day to day puts me in scenarios where I have

01:19:31

to small talk a lot. And personally, I hate small talk. I'm with you on that. Like, can we just

01:19:38

talk about the value of books in your life and get past the Vikings game? Like, come on.

01:19:44

I'm a Chiefs fan. We don't need to talk about the Vikings. Like, come on. So that's, that's me,

01:19:50

but I, you know, I have no idea what's going on in sports is what's the best book you've read

01:19:55

in the last three months. That's my conversation sort of thing is, you know, that, that kind of

01:20:00

forces people down deeper a bit. So it gets past all the small talk, but I feel like I struggle

01:20:05

with the small talk piece, right? So maybe that's why I'm seeing the positives on this, which brings

01:20:11

me to the last chapter here, captivating stories. And the, the part about this that I guess a bit

01:20:19

of a challenge, like he goes through a handful of methods for telling stories. I shouldn't say

01:20:27

that. There's a couple methods here. And then there are ways to request a story. There are ways to

01:20:33

refer to other conversation points you've had leading up to that, thus an inside story or joke.

01:20:42

And all of these come back to how do you set up a story, how, and how you go through the whole

01:20:52

process of the story, keeping in mind the amount of time allotted for the story. You were kind of

01:20:56

eluding to that earlier, but he has like one sentence stories. And I feel like that's something

01:21:04

that I don't really do. My tendency is to go way too long on a story, which is probably why you

01:21:09

need to cut some of my stories up with these recordings sometimes. So like that is something

01:21:17

that I'm aware of and I'm not good at. Sure. Is how do I gauge the amount of time I should put into

01:21:23

a story? Because sometimes I feel like I've got to give a ton of detail on it when I really shouldn't.

01:21:28

That's a piece that I feel like I need to struggle through. But telling good stories is one that

01:21:35

is valuable whenever you're trying to have an engaging conversation.

01:21:39

I 100% agree. And this chapter just doesn't make sense in this book to me. This is the one that

01:21:44

I'm excited about. I would love to read a book on how to tell better stories.

01:21:51

But this like the story spine that he talked about, this is an eight sentence thing. The one one

01:21:58

method that he talks about that I can get on board with that fits in with this back and forth banter.

01:22:05

That he's promoting in the rest of the book. But the story spine and like, oh, I could see myself

01:22:11

using that for like making up stories when I put my kids to bed at night. Wait a minute. That's not

01:22:16

witty banter. That's really what I thought of there. So again, like some of the stuff that's in here

01:22:23

is really good. And he talks on the back cover about how he works with people. He's basically like

01:22:29

a speaking coach. And I'm sure he is very, very good at that when you sit down with him and you talk

01:22:34

to him, but reading the book, I kind of feel like this is sort of all over the place. It's not real

01:22:40

clear. I'm like, here specifically when to use this is a lot of general principles and oh, be

01:22:44

careful using this one because if you use it in the wrong place, people are really going to hate you.

01:22:48

Like, you're really got to be careful with this. You're playing with relational dynamite.

01:22:57

Yes, if delivered incorrectly and at the wrong time. Yes.

01:23:01

Again, that's the piece that's impossible here is like timing. I don't even think

01:23:09

the whole concept of comedic timing, right? Like that's a known thing. I don't remember that

01:23:17

coming up at all in this. Because how would you teach that with a book? Yeah. Like, do you wait 500

01:23:25

milliseconds or 200? Like everybody's meeting at their own speed. So it loses all effectiveness.

01:23:34

So yeah, I mean, there's a whole aspect to this, right? I don't know what the percentages are,

01:23:40

but it's something like 1% of communication is the words you're using. 5% is the way that they're

01:23:46

shared and what is it? 94 or 90% whatever it is, is everything else, which is why like texting

01:23:53

conversations are so bad because you're only using like 1% of the communication process.

01:23:59

Exactly. And he's teaching you like text messaging email. You can't use sarcasm, right? It's going to

01:24:04

be misconstrued. He's teaching you how to use sarcasm with written text. This is the aspect

01:24:11

of this whole thing I will certainly give you. It is most certainly a problem with this book.

01:24:17

But if you find a book on how to tell a good story, I'll read it with you. Because that's

01:24:23

one I would definitely jump on board with. So there you are. All right. Put it out to the club.

01:24:29

We need some recommendations. Find us one on telling good stories. All right. That all said,

01:24:35

what else do you want to say about this in Mike before we do the whole action item,

01:24:38

style, and rating stuff? I think that's all I got. I think that the

01:24:45

the my note file that I ended up with for this is kind of a cool like cliff notes version. I want

01:24:52

to go back and review some basic concepts on things. But I feel like the book itself,

01:24:59

unfortunately, I didn't get into the stuff that I wanted to learn about very deeply. And

01:25:05

the other stuff I either had no interest in or thought was dangerous. Very valid, I suppose.

01:25:11

I don't have any action items either. But that's partially because this is not a book that

01:25:15

lends itself to that, I don't think. I do have two action items. Oh, you do. Really? What are this?

01:25:21

So the first one comes from chapter two. He mentions the fallback stories. And I mentioned,

01:25:30

I need to do some more work on my story file. It's going to be an obsidian now. So I need to

01:25:36

put some thought into how I want to set that up. The cool thing about obsidian is that you can

01:25:41

fold, unfold, bullets and things. So I think there's opportunity there for me to kind of build those

01:25:46

stories in a new way rather than just like big blocks of text. But it is something that I've had

01:25:51

in some way, shape or form previously in multiple places. So I need to get that into obsidian. I

01:25:57

have one more action item from chapter four when he's talking about the vivid imagery.

01:26:02

Yes. I don't really want to get ridiculous in my descriptions of things. But I do want to

01:26:09

develop my vocabulary a bit more. Sure. Which is another thing Toastmasters helps with, by the way,

01:26:15

the more you understand about communication, the more genius those meeting formats actually are.

01:26:22

One of the things, one of the roles is a grammarian. And they typically, the clubs I've been involved

01:26:30

with that is doubled with the A counter. So the grammarian A counter is one role in my experience.

01:26:37

And their job is to count the number of filler words that people use and which words they tend

01:26:42

to be. So just knowing that stuff is helpful. And recognizing that actually, like, this is kind

01:26:49

of getting back to at the beginning, we were talking about like, how can you learn this stuff?

01:26:52

It's not enough just to know about this stuff. You actually have to do it. Like, we all know

01:26:57

that we should not use as umbs. But I still struggled with that mightily up until my very first speech.

01:27:08

And then I forget exactly what the feedback was, but they said you tend to use um, and you tend to

01:27:14

use it in this way. And pretty much overnight, like from that moment on, the light bulb went on.

01:27:20

And I almost never use that filler word anymore. I can't, I wish I had a better recollection of

01:27:28

this is the exact revelation that I got. But it was just the difference in my opinion of like,

01:27:33

actually doing it versus reading about it. So I want to develop my vocabulary and the

01:27:41

the A counter and get back to the story of the grammarian. What they do is in addition to counting

01:27:46

the filler words, they pick a word of the day. And then if someone uses the word of the day,

01:27:51

because it's the first time you're hearing it at the beginning of the meeting, everybody like

01:27:55

wraps on the table, you know, it does as as a indication that, aha, we see that you used it

01:28:01

well done, sort of a thing, even if it's in the middle of their, their prepared speech. So

01:28:07

I want to do that more on my own. I would develop my vocabulary and not necessarily use bigger words.

01:28:15

I feel like I use big words already and I need to actually simplify some things, but have some

01:28:20

different ways to describe things. Makes sense. I feel like I've been trying to do

01:28:23

something along those lines for a while just by like paying attention to the words that certain

01:28:28

authors use. And if there's one that is in a book that I don't know or understand, I generally

01:28:34

check the dictionary on it, just to like, I could probably discern what it means. But looking it up

01:28:44

makes me get a better sense of it. So I've been doing that for years. So I think that's where

01:28:49

some of it comes from. But you could always be better at that, I think. I've always appreciated

01:28:54

people that use clever wording in situations. And usually that requires a pretty large vocabulary

01:29:02

to do that. Sure. Yeah. Well, unlike you, I don't have any action items. I feel like I should,

01:29:07

but I don't. But you're already implementing it. I suppose I've just been doing stuff,

01:29:15

like trying, playing around, experimenting, doing all the things Mike won't do. That's what I'm doing.

01:29:20

So living my life. Yes. So I don't have any action items, which I suppose brings us to

01:29:29

style and rating. One thing I will note is that the style on this is not real conducive, I feel like,

01:29:38

to just sit and run through it. Did you feel that like I felt kind of choppy to me? Like the

01:29:46

it probably took me to chapter two before I realized that there are like a handful of

01:29:51

steps that you would go through to get his point across, but they seemed kind of disconnected to me.

01:29:58

I don't know if that was just the way I was reading it or what that was.

01:30:01

Maybe it was just me, but it seems strange when I was reading it now, granted all the stories and

01:30:10

all of the overarching connecting points made a lot of sense to me. But like we were saying

01:30:17

earlier, it's big words, like font size is big, large margins. I think this is like a

01:30:27

if I had to guess probably like a 20,000 word book, most or what 35 to 40. Yeah,

01:30:34

somewhere in there. So it's probably half a book expanded via formatting to make it larger.

01:30:41

So it makes it a quick read just because of it not being as big of a book. But that all said,

01:30:49

the content of it, I think not coming at this from a stance of what am I to gain out of this.

01:30:59

Like that was not on my mind at all. And I didn't have formal speaking in any form on my mind either.

01:31:08

When I picked the book, I was intentionally trying to

01:31:14

pick something that would help me in some of these like transitional conversations.

01:31:20

Right. So that that was my intention with the book. I probably should have said that

01:31:25

earlier early on, but that was some of my desires from the book is helping with some of those

01:31:34

situations. And I feel like it does help significantly with that, at least for me.

01:31:40

Like, I think my personality is one that can benefit from some of some of these quote,

01:31:46

unquote tactics and methods, I guess, the understanding of the frameworks behind some of these things.

01:31:52

So those are all pieces that I greatly appreciated having read. If that is something that you find

01:32:00

that you do a lot, I would recommend it to people. I've already recommended it to a couple folks.

01:32:05

And I do know I've got a at least four or five friends that are like really, really good at this

01:32:13

already and don't need the book at all. Like they just do this naturally. And I've always appreciated

01:32:22

my conversations with them. And again, they're people that I tend to seek out. I'm not one that

01:32:28

really wants to change who I am. But being someone that is easy to talk to is something I've always

01:32:35

wanted to make sure that I'm improving on. And I feel like this is something that does help in that

01:32:40

process. So it's one that I'm grateful for having gone through. That said, like, there's some pretty

01:32:48

major loopholes in the way that this is delivered. I don't know that a book is the right way to do

01:32:53

this like we've talked about. There are probably other ways to do it. But at the same time, I feel

01:33:01

like this is probably a good way to kickstart that. Like this is one very, very, very small step to

01:33:08

get you on the road, I think. So I don't think this is a it's not even designed to be a replacement

01:33:15

for to a full blown coaching system. I don't think that's its intention at all. I think it's just

01:33:19

purely to get people started. And for that, I'm grateful to it. Now again, I'm coming from the

01:33:24

stance of I have no background in any formal training and speaking at all. So keep that in mind. But

01:33:33

I don't think this is the best choice if you're trying to teach this to people. There are a lot

01:33:40

better ways to do it. Okay, so that all said, I have found a lot of benefit from it. I have some

01:33:46

qualms with it. I think I'm going to put it at 3.5 for a rating just because and I know I've been

01:33:52

defending it like this whole time, but I do have some qualms with it, right? So I from a content

01:33:59

stance, like it's pretty good, but I think it lacks a lot as far as like we were talking the

01:34:04

comedic timing, the how you deliver things, the body language side of it is completely missing here.

01:34:10

So there are some pretty major components of how this works that are not there,

01:34:16

which is why I'm saying this is a starting point. It's not the solution to learning art, the witty

01:34:23

banter piece by any means, but it'll at least get you on the road, I think. So final answer, 3.5.

01:34:30

All right. I've made my opinions about this book known throughout this episode. I don't really

01:34:37

like it. I'm trying to figure out exactly why I don't like it as much as I do. I'm trying to

01:34:46

reconcile why I have such a strong negative reaction to it. When like you mentioned, you got a lot

01:34:53

out of it and you've already recommended it to a couple of people. I think maybe what it comes down

01:34:59

to is that even though the chapters are labeled and they speak to different things, kind of the

01:35:06

underlying tone underneath all of this is about being funny and about being humorous. And that's

01:35:14

like a major linchpin to the whole idea of witty banter that he seems to be describing here.

01:35:21

It comes up in every single chapter. And that's the part that for me, I guess I just am not

01:35:30

that excited about. Now, I also share this story about how I participated in the

01:35:35

humorous speech contest. So maybe part of this is like, I learned this by doing. And that's

01:35:43

tainting my perspective of no one can learn this through a book, sort of a thing to. I don't know.

01:35:51

I will say that I do think Patrick King is probably a very learned individual and probably knows

01:36:04

what they are talking about when it comes to this sort of thing, where you to sit down with them

01:36:09

and have them actually coach you through how to use this stuff effectively. I'm sure they would

01:36:15

do a phenomenal job. I don't think I would recommend anybody who is looking to improve

01:36:21

communication in any way, shape or form though, pick up a book like this. I would say, come join

01:36:28

me at my next Toastmasters meeting. Guests are welcome. You don't even have to join. You can

01:36:36

literally just club hop and go to different meetings and see different people. I know people

01:36:40

who do that because I've been involved in several clubs around here locally. And I've seen people

01:36:45

go from this one to that one to that one. It just makes the circuit. So I feel like that's kind of

01:36:51

the ideal medium for learning this sort of stuff. I 100% agree that there is value in learning how

01:36:58

to communicate better. And I am willing to admit that the situations where this stuff that he talks

01:37:05

about being helpful is just not something that I really deal with on a day to day basis.

01:37:11

That all being said, like this is my rating. Right. So I don't know how to

01:37:21

disassociate completely my opinion of the book from just like the facts that he teaches.

01:37:29

It's not very long. It's not very detailed in my opinion. I do wish that he would have gotten

01:37:38

into a lot more detail with the story stuff. I feel like there's a lot of gold to be mined there.

01:37:43

I think, you know, I've talked about the sarcasm and the irony and how that's really dangerous if

01:37:49

you're just going to read about it in a book and then try to start applying it.

01:37:54

I don't know. I think I'm going to put it at 2.5. I'm trying to decide 2.5 or 3. I think I'm going

01:38:04

to go 2.5 just because I think there's way better ways to improve this. Ultimately,

01:38:13

you know, why are we reading these books? It's because we want to get better. We want to collect

01:38:18

new ideas. We want that to change our day to day life. It's not so we can say there. I have read

01:38:24

100 books this year. I don't know. Maybe you do want to read 100 books this year just so you can,

01:38:31

you know, check it off on your list. That's fine. No judgment if you do. But whenever I get done,

01:38:36

I'm like, well, what was the point of me going through that? This book just kind of feels like,

01:38:41

well, I went through it because Joe picked it. Yeah, which is fine. You don't know me.

01:38:48

You know, and vice versa. Like we pick books that we know sometimes the other person is just not

01:38:55

going to be, isn't in their wheelhouse and we just bring them along for the ride. So I think maybe

01:39:01

that is my approach to this and maybe that's unfair to the book. But it's hard for me to disassociate

01:39:08

that from this. So take that for what you will. I'm going to rate it at 2.5.

01:39:15

All right. I think it's worth more than that, but that's okay. I will say it was a fun read though,

01:39:20

and I will say it was a fun conversation. Makes for a good podcast, I guess. So yeah, you are.

01:39:28

Feels like a lot of fluff to me though. Oh, that's fair. But it, you know, it's all about being

01:39:34

funny, right? Which depending on who you are is all fluff anyway. So very true. Yep.

01:39:41

It fits the form. There you go. All right. Let's shelf it. What's next, Mike?

01:39:45

Next is a recommendation, I think initially from awful water in the chat, which is think again by

01:39:53

Adam Grant. This is going to be a fun one. I don't think we've covered an Adam Grant book yet,

01:39:59

have we? We haven't. Nope. This is our first. Yeah. So we need to fix that and we're going to,

01:40:04

we're going to do it next time with think again. Sounds fun. And then while you were

01:40:09

bemoning the art of Woody banter, I was running through recommendations and such

01:40:15

on the Bookworm Club and ran across one that I feel like I have seen come up quite a bit,

01:40:23

but we've never covered and I have never read. And it came out in 2011. So it's 10 years old at

01:40:32

this point. So it might given some of the books that we've read over the last probably year.

01:40:38

I feel like we might be informed to argue with it a little bit. So we'll see. But this is Work the

01:40:45

System by Sam Carpenter, the simple mechanics of making more and working less. So we'll see.

01:40:51

We'll see. I'm curious to see because you've read this before, right? I've read it multiple times.

01:40:56

Okay. And I remember absolutely loving this book, but I also recently have had that same thought

01:41:03

because it's on my bookshelf. Yeah. I wonder if I would react the same way now.

01:41:08

Right. Right. So I'm curious. We have a pretty large bank of systems based books in our background.

01:41:17

So I'm curious to see how this plays out. So Work the System, Sam Carpenter. Two episodes from now.

01:41:26

There you go. Awesome. Got any gap books with house stuff? There's not a chance. I barely got

01:41:34

this one done and I'm going to barely get the next one done. Well, I am ashamed to admit I

01:41:41

still have not finished the road less stupid. So I'm going to continue to crack on that one.

01:41:46

Although I think I'm going to pick up, think again first because that looks like a pretty big one.

01:41:51

And I want to give it the space that I think it probably needs. Yeah. That's fair. Probably a good

01:41:58

idea. Well, big kudos to those of you who are Bookworm members. If you would be interested in

01:42:05

joining our membership system, go to bookworm.fm/membership. And that will take you through the process

01:42:15

once you get there. But essentially what that is, is it's a way for you to donate to us to help us

01:42:20

keep the lights on, keep producing the show, help us get the books that we're reviewing here on the

01:42:28

show. But you also get some perks. Like I've got some old gap book episodes back when I had time.

01:42:33

I would do those. And then there's also a fancy wallpaper that Mike put together for your computer.

01:42:40

Mike's Mind Node files are there. If you're interested in that bookworm.fm/membership,

01:42:46

we'd love to have you on board. Awesome. And if you are reading along with us,

01:42:50

pick up Think Again by Adam Grant. And we will talk to you all in a couple of weeks.