Bookworm Transcripts

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Have you ever gotten into time tracking, Joe?

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I tried it multiple times and it seems like every time I try it, bad things happen and Joe stops.

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So you just avoid it now so you don't cause something else bad to happen.

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I do.

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I do.

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Correct.

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Yeah.

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Usually I end up, oh, how's this work?

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Assuming you're talking about tracking where your time goes in the past, not like time blocking.

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For the future, right?

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Correct.

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So time blocking or time tracking.

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The data nerd in me cannot handle it if that data is not perfect and captured very cleanly.

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And my experiences with time tracking are that the lines between activities are so fuzzy that it's really hard to get good data and I get mad with the data.

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And then I just like, fine, I'm not collecting this anymore.

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That's my experience with time tracking.

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Are you going to tell me I'm wrong?

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No, that's completely fair.

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I don't have the connection to bad events happening because I've tracked my time, but also it's left a bad taste in my mouth because I've tried to do it manually in the past and it hasn't worked.

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Sure.

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But I have to admit that I have been using timing to automatically track my time for quite a while on my Mac.

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So I've always had that running as like a backup.

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And the last six months, I've really gotten into manual time tracking with Timerie for iOS.

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I've actually got two screens on my iPhone, one, which has a couple of widgets and the intentional apps.

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I want to see when I first open it.

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And then the other screen is all Timerie widgets.

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It shows me the time on task, the time spent by Dave sort of by project.

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And then time spent for the week sorted by tag and then a bunch of save timers, which has been really cool.

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I selfishly bring this up because as we record this, I made a thing.

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Which is a combination of both the time tracking and the time blocking.

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So the time blocking course we launched a while back.

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I made a complimentary like bookend type course for time tracking for people like past me who had a negative reaction to it.

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Didn't really know where to start.

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And I think it's it's helpful if you understand a few key concepts before you go into it.

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I think a lot of people make it more complicated than it needs to be.

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And maybe, you know, I thought maybe that was your reaction with it.

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It sounds like maybe there's something deeper.

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Yeah, in my case, it's time tracking.

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It's got a role.

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Yeah.

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So I I understand.

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Like if you don't have my aversion to unclean data is probably the way to say that.

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If you don't have that aversion and you're OK with like the lines being somewhat fuzzy and it not being like down to the minute.

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Correct.

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Like if you're OK with that.

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I feel like it's probably fine and it can be extremely helpful.

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I've listened to like on cortex gray and Mike talk about once a year about their time tracking adventures and I always listen to those and think, oh, that's really cool.

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I'm going to do and I set up what kind of like what you're talking about.

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Pull up timer.

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Let me set up all the things on the widgets.

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Let me get all these on here.

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It was going to be really nice, really cool.

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I'm going to get to see where all my time goes and like a weekend.

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I'm mad at it because it's not correct.

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So.

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So yes, if you're OK with it, I think it's great.

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Timery is the thing that really made it work for me.

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It's changed a lot and I think the widgets with iOS 14, like that's kind of a game changer in terms of the tools that are available.

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You know, it just makes it so much simpler and yeah, you're not going to get like perfect data.

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I don't really want the data to be perfect.

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I guess I don't really care if it's perfect.

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Ideally, it would be perfect.

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But what I want to know is did I spend five hours firefighting this week?

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And if so, like what system was it that was broken that caused that?

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And what can I do to fix it?

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Or Otter talks about tracking deep work time.

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I think that's kind of jokingly, but I do do that sort of thing.

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Like I check my writing time, my screen casting time.

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It's not specifically deep work, but if I'm not getting, you know, 20 hours of writing time in a week, I'm not happy with that.

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And I'm thinking about what can I do schedule wise to carve out more time to do that sort of stuff.

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I don't know, the continuation of like all the stuff bouncing around in my brain with obsidian and ideas and stuff like that.

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It isn't real simple for me where like, oh, I get inspired and then I write something.

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I'm recognizing that there is a process and really it is an equation.

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And if I put in more time into the process, like I get more and better output from it.

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And time tracking helps me intentionally start and stop those things.

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So I will not try to convince you to track your time again.

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I'm going to be a tough sell.

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I really am, but I will.

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I will try to convince everybody else that I can.

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I feel like the effort that you put into it is worth it.

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And if you're interested in the course that we put together, it's simplified time management,

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or simple time management is the name and it's those two courses and it's available at the sweet setup.com/time.

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And it is discounted during launch week, which may or may not be over by the time this would get published.

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So live listeners are getting the hookup.

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But yeah, I'm really happy with how it came out.

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I've been working on this for a while.

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So just want to tell everybody about it.

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Good job.

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Thank you.

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Time tracking.

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Go for it.

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I won't follow you.

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I will encourage people to try it 100%.

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I totally get it.

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I get mad at it.

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So I know that about myself, so I'm better off trying to schedule it ahead of time instead of keeping track of it in post.

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There's probably, I view it as like time budgeting.

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So like time blocking is the plan.

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That's the budget for I'm going to make my dollars go this far for this month.

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And then if you never look at what you actually spend, it's easy to go over that stuff, right?

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So the time tracking is how well did you stick to the plan?

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And then from that, you can gain some insights to make better plans for next time.

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But yeah, I think like Mosquito says in the chat, like I think this makes

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and maybe what he's saying is what I'm struggling with as well is like how much benefit is there to time tracking in the details?

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Like high level, it makes sense.

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But when you get down to the details, it tends to be difficult.

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And every time I've tried to go down this road, I always feel like I need to

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make it possible to take the data and do a whole bunch of stuff with it when that's the problem.

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But trying to do just great big blocks and trying to do the blanket, general area type

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time tracking to me doesn't seem to be worth it when that's probably the point that actually is worth it.

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So this is the conundrum of Joe's data brain.

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That's what this is.

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So yes, I think you should think again about time tracking Joe Bealig.

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Okay, but before we think again, we need to do a couple items of follow up here.

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Too easy.

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Too easy.

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So I had two things from last time and I failed on these.

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I have to say the first one was my story file.

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I do want to do this and I have the folder set up in Obsidian, but that's all the work I've put into it.

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Like I said, I was launching a course.

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So I didn't really have a whole lot of extra time.

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Sure.

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And I just completely dropped this one.

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The vocabulary thing, this is something I think that's going to be ongoing.

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And I've been looking for like new ways to say things.

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I've been trying to pay attention to my speech as I am talking about things.

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I noticed there are a couple phrases that I use over and over again that are descriptive,

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but I want to expand that.

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So like, I guess step one is recognizing my limited vocabulary.

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And I've kind of done that.

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Like one thing I say specifically when I get, when I try to illustrate that I feel very strongly

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about something is I'll say something along the lines of with the, I hate it with the intensity

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of a thousand sons.

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I need to find a different way to say that.

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Nice.

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So again, that one's ongoing.

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And I will try not to say that specific phrase the rest of this episode, but we will see.

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Do you ever have a phrase that you want to adopt, but it feels a little odd coming out of your mouth?

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Most of them to be honest.

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Most of them.

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Which has been my struggle with this.

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When he was finished eating, this is almost every meal.

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And I have said it, I think once, but it always feels weird coming out of my mouth.

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When I have listened to him say it, you know, when I heard him say it a lot.

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But whenever he was finished eating, if someone asked him if he wanted something else,

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like you want some more chicken, he would always say,

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no thanks. I've had a delicate sufficiency. If I had another bite, I'd be sure to bust.

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He said it all the time.

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And I've always thought, I love that. I want to adopt that.

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I've said it. I think once or maybe twice and it always, it just feels weird.

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It's a bit too long to say I'm full.

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So yes, phrases.

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Oh, all right. Shall we think again?

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Sure.

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This one's the title on this one's just too easy for that.

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I know.

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This is a great title.

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Well played, Adam Grant. This is think again by the aforementioned Adam Grant.

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We have heard of Adam Grant previously in many books.

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I think I first came upon him when he was mentioned maybe in deep work by Cal Newport

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based off of his work from his previous book, which was Originals, which we have not read.

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But this one was recommended by awful otter in the chat.

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So thank you for the recommendation.

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And I picked this one partly because I thought the topic was pretty fascinating.

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Partly because I couldn't believe we hadn't read anything by Adam Grant when he keeps coming

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up over and over again. Probably Mihaly is the other one that happens a little bit more,

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but Adam Grant is like right up there, him and Cal and probably a handful of others.

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So yeah, this is the newest book by Adam Grant and it is split into really four different parts,

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three main ones, and then a conclusion.

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Part one is individual rethinking. Part two is interpersonal rethinking. Part three is collective

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rethinking. And I did not know really what to expect with Adam Grant's style going into this.

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I want to ask you before I share mine, what was your impression of this book as you started it?

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It's a little odd. I thought it first. He has it. How do I say this? It has a little bit of different

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way of telling stories, I guess, in a good way. I wasn't expecting it, but he has kind of a way of

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telling a story and trying to get the point across within the story, like trying to do the

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dialogue about it within it at the same time. I don't know if you picked up on this, but he tries

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to weave those two things into one cohesive bank of paragraphs. And I appreciate that, but I wasn't

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expecting it. And at least it took me a little bit to adjust to that partially because it's so

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standard for people to tell a story and then unpack it. That whenever somebody starts unpacking

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it mid-story, it just seemed a little different. I kind of like it. I wish more people would do that.

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But it wasn't what I expected. Yeah. So you brought up the thing that I thought was kind of odd

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about this book because he feels like a decent storyteller, but towards the end of the book,

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I realized that at the beginning of the chapters, normally the stories I capture every single one

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of those from my Mind Node file, and there were several chapters in a row where I'm like, well,

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that really wasn't substantial enough to put in the Mind Node file because I don't want to just

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capture everything he says. And I was like, huh, that's weird because I was just thinking about how

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stories are so important. And I don't have anything really to nitpick with the way that he's telling

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these stories, but they're not landing like a lot of the books that we have read. And I think the way

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you articulate it where he's kind of unpacking it as he's telling it, that is probably exactly

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what's going on here. He just jumps right into the meat of what he's trying to communicate in these

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chapters. And I will say, I think he is an excellent communicator. You could argue, I guess, about

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whether his approach is better than just like tell the story and then talk about what's in it.

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But his approach does feel more researched, I guess, like it takes greater skill to just

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leave off in the middle of those stories and flow into the content without it feeling jarring.

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And we're kind of used to that because there's distinctions between like, here's where the story

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ends and here's where the concepts start. And you really don't have that with this particular book,

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but I actually found it kind of refreshing. Yeah, I mean, it's a thing people do

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pretty common. We do it here on the show too, right? We're going to tell a story. I'll tell you a

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story about something my grandfather used to say, right? And when I'm done, then I debrief it, right?

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So then I'm taking you through like what my thoughts are on it, how it applies to what we're

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talking about. That's a very regular cadence in normal conversation. People do it when they're

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giving talks all the time. I have a talk at our church this Sunday, two days, I should probably

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finish writing it. And whenever I give those, it's pretty common for me to do the same thing, right?

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You have something you're going to share that is the story. And then you pick it apart and show the

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different pieces of it and how it applies to whatever your topic is. The thing with that is though,

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when you tell stories like that and then you unpack them, you can pretty much pick out any

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detail you want and get the ideas or the concepts or the points that you're wanting to get across.

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You can pretty much pull whatever you want from a story. Like if you really try, you can get just

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about any idea from just about any story. I mean, it's just the way it works, right? To do what Adam

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Grant did here, like you're saying, is a little more polished and it's not as simple, which means

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this book is not one that someone could sit down and write over the period of two or three months,

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I don't think. Some of the books that we've read are, they're ones that people have,

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you know, they've collected ideas in obsidian for the last four years and they're just going to

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grab all the things out of it and bust a book out in two or three months, right? That's a thing that

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people do pretty regularly. And I would probably argue that most of the books we read are like that,

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where someone's been thinking about something for a long time and they're just going to write

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the book very quickly. This isn't like that, I don't think. Just the way it's structured and the way

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he puts things together, like the ideas within the stories and then weaves it all together.

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That is not a simple thing to do. Like if I'm trying to tell a story and tell you what it means

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at the same time, you have to maintain like two to three different ideas in your brain as you're

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telling it in order to do that. That's a difficult skill to pick up. And like when you hear people

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do that, they're more engaging stories, right? But not many people can do that. It's not an easy

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thing to pick up. Yeah, cool. So I'm not alone then in recognizing that. I think, let's just

00:16:11

have been to the content here because there's some really great stuff in here and this could be a

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a long episode. I've broken it down in the outline into three different parts and I think

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we'll just try to tackle those as opposed to going chapter by chapter, although there's

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a really clear idea, I feel like in each one of these chapters that you could unpack. I want to

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talk about the first one. Chapter one is, actually part one is individual rethinking. So this is

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about training yourself to think differently about things. And chapter one is a preacher,

00:16:50

a prosecutor, a politician, and a scientist walk into your mind. This is kind of setting the tone

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right at the beginning that this isn't really what I thought it was going to be. I knew Adam Grant

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was a researcher and expected a very academic book. And so to basically lead into it with a joke,

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it's very whimsical, kind of fun. Very witty. Yeah, you could use that term. No banter here,

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though. The other thing though is it's not just to mix things up or get your attention. It's a

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really solid point that he's making in this chapter. So just to define these real quickly,

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as we think and talk, we often slip into the mindset of these three groups,

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preachers, prosecutors, and politicians. Preachers, that's when we tend to defend our sacred beliefs,

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prosecutors, when we try to poke holes in others, beliefs, and politicians, when we want to win

00:17:49

over an audience. Those three things, I think that maps perfectly with the previous book on the art

00:17:57

of Woody banter. And maybe the thing he defines next is a much better way of articulating

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why I didn't really like it, because he's basically saying, "Those are all the wrong way to do this.

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Really what you want to do is you want to think like a scientist, and a scientist is not trying

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to get their way. They're not trying to influence someone and change their mind about someone.

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They are trying to change their own mind and make sure that they are understanding the truth,

00:18:26

the way things really are." So that's what scientists do, he says, is they try to find the truth,

00:18:32

they run experiments, they test hypotheses, and he makes the argument that these belong in our

00:18:37

lives as much as in the lab. Yeah, I think one of the fears with this is that if you have a scientist

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who has a preconceived bias and is looking for proof for it, which then can put you into,

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say, the prosecutor's stance or the politician's stance, it can put you in those with the name

00:19:01

of science behind it. That's the fear, right? But I like this. I like these different ways that

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we come at things. So if I have a belief and I'm solid on it, but I am not willing to

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second guess it or rethink it, it puts you in the preacher category. And there's a belief that I

00:19:26

hold, which there are these that we all have to some degree or another. But if you have that belief

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and you're not willing to at least consider it as potentially false, or that something can

00:19:41

contradict it, that's when you're in that category. But I think you can move into that

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scientist role if you're willing to objectively step back from that belief.

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And reevaluate it, right? This is, as Christians, we see this sort of thing a lot probably. So

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I think that there's a lot of people that I've had some pretty deep religious conversations with.

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And I'm okay with someone challenging my beliefs. I've studied enough of the science behind

00:20:13

what I believe that I feel like I have a pretty good grasp. And I haven't run across

00:20:18

anyone that can disprove it. So here we are, right? But you have to be willing to objectively

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look at it that way, I think. And that's what he's getting at here.

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Yeah. This is the definition we would all like to apply to ourselves, right? Is that we're open

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minded and we're willing to change our minds. I think you can locate yourself based on your

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actions with this kind of thing. I was talking to Chris Bailey the other day, and he said that

00:20:45

when he presents at these events, he'll watch the other speakers as they're watching him,

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or watching like he'll be in the room watching somebody else present and he'll look at the

00:20:58

other speakers who are presenting and they've fallen to two groups. There's the people in the

00:21:02

back of the room who are like arms crossed, pointing out as the person is speaking, like all the ways

00:21:09

that they disagree with them and all the reasons why they're wrong. And then there are the people

00:21:12

who are in the front row and they're like eyes are wide open and they're just like jotting

00:21:16

everything down that they can. Those are the people who really want to learn. Those are the

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scientists. I guess the people in the back, if I had to pick one of these, they would be prosecutors.

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Yeah. And I don't want to be a prosecutor. I think there are times for all of these different

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roles going back to like the art of Woody Bantar and why it's not necessarily bad.

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But my default mode of operation, I definitely want to be the scientist. I want to look at things

00:21:52

and understand things for the way that they are. And he talks about this rethinking cycle versus the

00:21:57

overconfident cycle. This was really helpful. I feel like when you fall into one or two or one of

00:22:03

these two, then it's easy to just stay there. Like there's some momentum that keeps you going in that

00:22:08

direction. The rethinking cycle, you start from a place of humility believing that you don't know

00:22:14

it all. And you start to doubt the things that you do know, you become curious. And so you seek

00:22:19

out the other opinions, the other perspectives. That's really what we're doing when we read all

00:22:22

these books that we don't explicitly say this every time. But I think it's true that we go into

00:22:29

these books open minded enough to at least entertain the possibility that what we had previously known

00:22:36

about whatever topic this book is talking about. That could be wrong. Now maybe we fall into a bias

00:22:42

where we try to pick books. This could be, and I don't think we do this consciously, but you could

00:22:46

make the argument that subconsciously we tend to pick the books that we know are going to agree

00:22:50

with our perspective. But I feel like we've read enough books at this point that we've got a pretty

00:22:55

broad spectrum of ideas and people who have written these and where they're coming from.

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And then the result of that curiosity is ultimately discovery, which then you've gotten something good

00:23:10

out of this cycle. So it keeps going. The overconfident cycle though assumes that you know the truth

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and you don't you're threatened by everything that comes against it. So you've got pride at which

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leads to conviction. And you're going to that's when you're going to poke holes to try to change

00:23:25

people's minds. Confirmation and desirability biases. We learned about these.

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Which one was this the art of thinking clearly, I think is where we first heard about all those

00:23:33

different biases. So yeah, essentially what this is is confirmation bias. You have an idea and you're

00:23:40

looking for all the ways that it's right. And you were talking about the day nerd in you. This is

00:23:45

probably one of the reasons why you don't like the data because you know how easy this is to do.

00:23:51

Easy to manipulate. Yeah. And then the desirability bias. This is you're seeing what you want to see.

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And then you use that as validation of something that isn't right there.

00:24:01

Awful water is saying Mike is saying he needs to read a man of Palmer's book again. No, I am not.

00:24:06

Although if you go back and look at the ratings, I gave it a higher I remember we did episode 100.

00:24:12

You were surprised at the rating that I had given it because we talking about it and I bashed it a

00:24:16

lot because I have I have disagreed with that book. And I'm moving on to the next contrary opinion.

00:24:22

Thank you, Otter. But I feel like I did do a decent job. Probably not a perfect job,

00:24:29

but a decent job of trying to get something good out of that book.

00:24:33

Trying. Yes. Trying. There are a lot of biases that go into how we pick these books, right? But

00:24:40

at the same time, this is why we alternate you and me. Like picking these books. I tend to be a

00:24:46

little more adventurous, I think. And Mike is forced into like whenever I ask Mike,

00:24:52

what did you think about this before you started reading? He's like, I don't know. I didn't.

00:24:55

It's your book. I just figure I have to deal with it and get through it. Like that's how.

00:24:59

And like sometimes Mike picks a book and why are we reading this? Like I don't understand.

00:25:05

And it's something I argue with the whole time through, but then you love it. Like this,

00:25:10

the stuff goes back and forth, right? This is some of. It does happen. Yep.

00:25:14

The nice part of the way that this works because it forces both of us to be

00:25:18

pushed outside of kind of our normal, what we would choose. And then you get a little bit

00:25:25

different perspective on our own beliefs and it forces you to have the conversation at least about

00:25:34

why you believe what you do, why you think the way you do. And then you kind of have to defend it,

00:25:40

right? Like whenever we have our back and forth here on Bookworm, we kind of, we have to defend

00:25:47

what we think of it, right? That's how we end up having these conversations. And when you do that,

00:25:53

it's kind of like a live think again scenario, right? So I have to evaluate my own viewpoints and

00:26:02

justify them to you or argue with the author or support the author, right? Like these are what

00:26:11

we do as we go through this, which is the nice part. Like that means we have practice at doing

00:26:16

this, right? So maybe we're better at this than some. I don't know. I can hope.

00:26:19

I think probably if you were to engage in a conversation like this about ideas,

00:26:29

I think it kind of gnat on a regular basis. That's naturally going to refine the way that you think

00:26:34

about things. And if you went into it every single time with the perspective of, I'm just going to

00:26:39

defend what I currently believe, this would not be fun at all. This would be really stressful.

00:26:45

Because you're just being attacked the whole time, not just one episode, like last episode.

00:26:53

I'd never attacked you. Just kidding. Never. I would never attack you. Right. Multiple times.

00:26:58

It's also interesting to me how you can slip in and out of these things.

00:27:04

So the very first story he told is Mike Lazaritis. I don't know if I said that right. The guy who

00:27:10

invented the Blackberry, they had nearly half the smartphone market in 2009, but it had dropped

00:27:18

to less than 1% by 2014. When Adam told his story, basically he was saying he was thinking like a

00:27:28

scientist, and then they had some success. And then he started clinging to those beliefs that they

00:27:34

had about all people want a keyboard. And you don't want to do web on mobile. You just want email.

00:27:39

And obviously we know how that turned out. And that was kind of interesting because we've heard

00:27:44

that story before. Specifically about the iPhone launch and how it completely turned everything

00:27:50

on its head in terms of the mobile phone and how people used them and Blackberries demise because

00:27:57

they were unwilling to change or they tried to change too late. I think it was first heard about

00:28:04

that in Innovators dilemma or something similar. And then we applied that example there for sure.

00:28:12

Steve Jobs comes up all the time. Apple comes up all the time. But that was kind of interesting.

00:28:18

It made it more personal because I've heard that story before and you can view it through the

00:28:21

lens of like, I know what happened to Blackberry, the company. But when you view it as like this

00:28:25

person who had this great idea because they were challenging the status quo and the norms

00:28:31

about different ideas, and then they got comfortable with their own idea. It just kind of shows that

00:28:39

it can happen to anybody. Yeah, and it's a factor of scale too, right? So there's,

00:28:44

you have your idea. It is successful. The idea was successful because you challenged the way

00:28:51

things were working as it was. But then that thing had to be scaled in order to fulfill the needs of

00:29:01

the market. And by doing so, they kind of fall into a rut of delivering to that one small piece

00:29:09

of the market. And the market keeps moving. They're kind of fixed on that one point in time,

00:29:13

but the market keeps moving on them. And that's fine. But as they've grown to get to a point where

00:29:21

they can scale and fit that need, fill that need, they lose their agility and their ability to

00:29:28

maneuver and pay attention to the nuances in the market and continue to adapt.

00:29:34

And the next thing you know, Apple comes around with the iPhone and destroys Blackberry's whole

00:29:38

market. So yeah, whoops. Yeah. And I don't think it has to be like a big company. Obviously,

00:29:47

that's the whole framing of this section is that this is individual rethinking. But it does kind of

00:29:55

show you how high the stakes can be, you know, how rethinking can completely change your world for

00:30:02

the positive and also failing to rethink can change it for the negative. Right. Let's go to the next

00:30:10

chapter, the armchair quarterback and the imposter. I like these two. The imposter syndrome, that is

00:30:18

something I have dealt with in the past. And I never really had a clear formula for this before.

00:30:25

But Adam Grant helped me out a lot. He says that imposter syndrome is when your competence

00:30:33

is higher than your confidence. And the armchair quarterback syndrome is the opposite. It is when

00:30:39

your confidence is greater than your competence. So armchair quarterback, this is like the guy who

00:30:47

played football in high school thinking that they could be a better quarterback than Tom Brady,

00:30:53

because he missed the guy that was open and he happened to see it on TV. Right. And the imposter

00:31:00

syndrome, I feel like this is something that anybody who does anything publicly deals with at some

00:31:06

point. And I guess the way to boost this, the way to fix this is to develop more confidence.

00:31:16

And as I read this, kind of what stands out to me is that the way to develop more confidence,

00:31:21

put in more reps going back to the practice by Seth Godin, like ship every day. If you do that

00:31:28

enough times, you'll feel confident in your competence. And so this will kind of even out.

00:31:36

I feel like this is kind of what has happened with me in podcasting. I was terrified of podcasting

00:31:41

when I started. In fact, I joined Toastmasters because we had just started Bookworm and I was

00:31:46

unhappy with the way I sounded in the recordings. And I would edit the heck out of them and I

00:31:51

couldn't get it to sound any better. So many a's, so many um, so many rambling thoughts. I still do

00:31:58

that sometimes. I know it's not perfect. But if you go back and listen to those early episodes,

00:32:02

man, I can't do it. I'm just so bad. They are. And then, you know, the productivity show back

00:32:09

when I was doing that and focused. And I feel like now I've got enough reps where sitting down

00:32:14

to record a podcast does not make it hard for me to breathe anymore. Like it's still,

00:32:21

I still feel a little bit of the pressure is not the right word, stress isn't the right word. But

00:32:28

like, you never really lose that feeling in the pit of your stomach when you are going to like

00:32:34

get up and give up a speech. You just learn that it's really not that big a deal and you'll be able

00:32:39

to get through it. So it doesn't cause all the alarm bells to go off in your head when you

00:32:44

you feel that sort of thing. And so several hundred reps in, you know, I feel like I, I kind of

00:32:50

have smoothed that out a little bit. It seems like whenever you start

00:32:54

podcasting or giving talks in person or anything that involves you speaking words to other people,

00:33:02

it seems like there's a period that you have to go through at the beginning where

00:33:07

you get super nervous ahead of time because you feel like you have to say all the right words

00:33:12

in the right order and tell the right stories in the right way. You need to be so on to get it

00:33:18

dialed in. And then over time, you figure out the tricks and the steps to cover when you did

00:33:28

something wrong or to fill things when you're not quite sure what to say or your story didn't

00:33:34

quite go where you thought it was going to go. Like you figure out how to handle those,

00:33:38

which means that whenever you hit the record button and you're ready to start talking and

00:33:45

you're going to be talking for two hours or more. In some cases, it's not as big a deal. I don't

00:33:52

want to seem like each episode of Bookworm isn't a big deal because it is. But at the same time,

00:33:58

you learn how to navigate all those things very quickly on your feet. And the only way to really

00:34:05

do that is through putting in the reps as you're calling it, getting the experience. I don't know

00:34:11

how many episodes of podcasts I've recorded, you've of course recorded significantly more than I have.

00:34:17

But you build it up over time, right? And you figure out how to handle the nuances of talking

00:34:24

and rambling like we do sometimes. It's cool. Michael fix it in post.

00:34:31

Yeah, it's true. I ramble and figure Michael. Michael fix it.

00:34:35

Most of the time I cut my stuff. But actually, the more we do it, that's kind of the thing that

00:34:42

opened my eyes to it is that we get done in our recording time is like an hour and 48 minutes.

00:34:50

And we think like, well, we'll cut that down. It'll probably be closer to an hour and a half.

00:34:55

That's our target. But as I'm going through and I'm doing the edit, I'm not trying to hit

00:35:01

an hour 30 exactly. So over time, like the amount of stuff that I've cut has gotten

00:35:05

significantly less. And so it really only ends up being a couple of minutes that gets shaved.

00:35:10

Because the conversation is decent. That's a point I want to get to in a little bit here. But

00:35:18

before we move on from the armchair quarterback and the imposter syndrome, I feel like the imposter

00:35:23

syndrome specifically can be seen in this graph of Mount stupid that he has, which is pretty great.

00:35:29

So Mount stupid is basically like you get to the top of this little, little dip and you feel like,

00:35:35

I have it, I'm at the top of the mountain and I can see everything and I know everything.

00:35:39

And that is the point where you realize if you have the open mind open enough to

00:35:45

understand everything that you don't know. And so you go up in terms of your willingness to

00:35:53

talk about this topic and then it goes way, way down because you're like, okay, I guess I don't have

00:35:58

nearly as much expertise in this area as I thought and people should go listen to this other guy

00:36:02

instead. And then over time, eventually that goes, that ends up trending upwards again and you get,

00:36:10

you know, obviously a lot further in terms of your ability to speak about your expertise in that

00:36:17

particular topic. But getting to the top and realizing that you don't know everything that I feel like

00:36:27

that's enough to knock some people on their butt and they don't ever recover from it.

00:36:30

It's like you put in the work to become a quote unquote expert and then you realize you're not

00:36:39

an expert and then you have an identity crisis and you never really recover from it. You just

00:36:44

walk away from it and try to do something else. It's kind of where growth versus fixed mindset

00:36:48

comes in, in my opinion. The more I learn, the less I know that whole thing, it's like the,

00:36:56

as you're going up the mountain, right? So you get to the peak and you're like, oh, I know almost

00:37:02

everything about this. Like you can see the peak right in front of you and you, I know all the

00:37:05

things about this. And then you realize that that peak isn't actually the peak. There's just a little

00:37:10

dip on the other side and then it continues going up after that. It's like, oh, I thought I almost

00:37:15

knew everything there was to know about this. And I know a tenth of it, maybe.

00:37:22

This is why goals suck because the goal is the top of Mount Stupid. And you get there and you're

00:37:27

like, yes, I have arrived. Oh, never mind. The finish line just moved on you.

00:37:34

The other cool thing, well, real quickly, chapter three is talking about the joy of being wrong

00:37:41

and talking about detaching the present from the past and the opinions from the identity. I think

00:37:46

that's really important. And I feel like we do a pretty good job of that. This is another form of

00:37:52

this, I guess, would be like, I have experienced working with family. And I have learned to be

00:37:58

very careful because I can separate work from family. And when we're working, put on the work hat.

00:38:05

And when we're done working, put on the family hat. But I know not everybody can do that.

00:38:12

So I've got to be really careful to protect the relationships there. But the one that I really

00:38:18

want to talk about here, because you mentioned the discourse that we have in the back and forth

00:38:23

and the differing opinions is chapter four, the good fight club. Bookworm is the good fight club.

00:38:28

We're basically the right brothers, especially whenever I just decide to pick on Mike for no

00:38:35

real reason other than it just seemed fun that day. Like, yeah.

00:38:40

He still tolerates me, I think, and still loves me somewhat. But

00:38:45

no, it's all good. The right brothers specifically, like everybody knows the story of the right

00:38:53

brothers inventing the airplane probably Kitty Hawk, right? But this makes it way more personal

00:38:58

because he talks about how the right brothers typically would fight. Like, they'd be shouting

00:39:05

at each other to defend like their ideas for the propeller and things like that. But what was

00:39:09

really interesting about this is that as vehemently as they would defend their beliefs, they'd go

00:39:14

home, they'd sleep on it, they'd come to work the next day without any resentment, without any

00:39:21

offense, they're able to put what happened yesterday behind them and frequently they would come back

00:39:26

and they'd be like, no, your idea was better. No, your idea was better. Like they had changed their

00:39:31

minds both and now they're like fighting again just on opposite sides of the

00:39:37

I think that's the ideal version of this. What's that saying? Like strong convictions

00:39:45

lightly held something like that strong opinions lightly held like be willing to defend your

00:39:51

opinions. Yeah, have the discourse about it. You got to go into that though with the underlying

00:39:57

assumption that we're going to be debating and judging the ideas, not the person. If I

00:40:04

went into these podcast recordings like, Oh, I hope Joe doesn't say anything negative about any

00:40:11

of my ideas because if he does, I'm going to take that as an attack on my personal character,

00:40:16

then we're probably not doing this podcast very long and vice versa. You have to be able to separate

00:40:24

those those two. If you really want to think again, learn from what you don't know and be curious,

00:40:32

which the more I studied this topic as we read this book and just cements like my desire to be a

00:40:39

lifelong learner, the growth mindset, we're talking about mindset at Carol Duck, one of my

00:40:43

favorite books. I like I get it that some people aren't there yet, but the more that I understand

00:40:51

about this, the more I realize if you're going to live like that fixed mindset lifestyle,

00:40:56

what a miserable existence. Yeah, I don't want to be there.

00:41:02

And with you, I think there's a lot to be said for constructive conflict, but it's not everyone

00:41:10

that you can have that with, right? Yep, that's true. And I have, I don't think I would call them

00:41:18

fights, but strong debates here on bookworm occasionally. It's true. More often lately than

00:41:24

normal. That might be my fault. And it seems like whenever we do that,

00:41:31

you know, it's pretty common after we do things like that that Mike or I will text the other one

00:41:37

say, I was kind of rough on you. You okay? Like, we do that, right? Yeah. So it seems like if you

00:41:45

have someone that you can do that with, and you both know that the ideas can change

00:41:52

and that the ideas don't dictate who they are necessarily, like they might be a part of who you

00:42:00

are, but it can morph over time, right? If you know that and you don't take things personal,

00:42:06

like if you don't like my idea, you don't like me, no, that's not the case at all.

00:42:10

It's okay that I don't like your idea and that we disagree on something. We can still

00:42:16

be friends, right? So take it, go down the politics route, right? In today's culture,

00:42:24

if you're blue or red, you can't like blue or red, like you can't like the other side. For whatever

00:42:31

reason, we've decided that you can't have cordial conversations with somebody on the other side of

00:42:36

the aisle. I have no idea why that is. It doesn't make sense to me because I don't think that it's

00:42:40

possible for us to truly dislike every little tiny detail about someone purely because of a

00:42:50

political stance on like which party they ascribe to because I don't, the people I've talked to,

00:42:59

it doesn't seem like anyone loves absolutely every aspect of the party they support, right?

00:43:06

Which means everything is up for conversation and I would like to understand where you're coming from

00:43:11

if we don't agree, that's fine. We can still be friends, but not a lot of people are willing to

00:43:17

do that today, as they say in the chat, this is why I'm purple. But this is something that I

00:43:24

feel like could be helpful given the political climate that we're in, right? If you could

00:43:31

find ways to have these fights, quote unquote, fights in a good way and be willing to

00:43:39

think again on your own opinions, that's okay. And everybody's better time it's all said and done.

00:43:48

Yeah. All right, that's it. We got to read leaders eat last. Someone needs to go vote for that

00:43:55

on the bookworm club. Everyone listening live, go do it right now. So we have a justification

00:44:00

to pick it because it's an older book, but it speaks to this exact thing. It's come up over and

00:44:04

over and over again. It's true. Yeah. I won't revisit, in my opinion on that, which is largely

00:44:10

shaped by that book, but you're absolutely right. I will respond to the thing about picking on each

00:44:17

other. I agree, the place where I feel the worst about it, because I feel like with bookworm, we kind

00:44:23

of, we signed up for it, right? Yes. But when I show up in your live streams, start challenging

00:44:30

stuff. That's where I was like, did I go too far? No, good luck going too far on that one.

00:44:36

So yeah, those are fun. It's one of these things that I enjoy. Like if someone's willing to engage

00:44:45

me on something like you have an opinion, let's take, you know, one of the fun ones I thought was

00:44:52

whenever we were having this back and forth about whether or not you should be using terms like

00:44:56

PKM versus just a notes database, right? Yep. You know, opinions can change on that over time,

00:45:03

but I had a fairly strong opinion on it. Yes, you did. Mike had a fairly strong opinion on it on

00:45:08

the opposite side, right? Yep. And the thing that I find is very fun is like if someone's willing to

00:45:15

form ideas and form an argument that directly contradicts what I'm, what I have a viewpoint on,

00:45:24

but I can formulate my side of it as well. And we're willing to have this back and forth.

00:45:29

To me, those are fun. But I know that Mike is fine if I razz him and I know that we're going to be

00:45:40

fine when that's over with. Like we've done this long enough that we know each other well enough to

00:45:44

know I can give Mike a hard time. He can give me a hard time. We can argue till the sun sets.

00:45:53

And we'll be fine on the other side of the fight. But I think those are fun. So I don't think

00:45:59

that you go too far. You're fine. Okay, cool. That kind of is a good spot to go into the next part.

00:46:06

Part two is interpersonal rethinking. And this is interpersonal. So this is involving other people.

00:46:13

And the first chapter in this section, chapter five is called dances with foes,

00:46:22

which is kind of a weird chapter title. But the main point here is that a good debate is more

00:46:30

like a dance than a war. That sounds kind of weird to say it. But in a war, Adam Grant says,

00:46:40

you are trying to gain ground, but in a negotiation, you are disarming your opponent by agreeing with

00:46:51

them. So you're not trying to steamroll them and take something. And that's why

00:46:56

like there's a give and take here. I think this is the chapter where the person was debating the

00:47:03

computer and kind of disarmed it because he kept agreeing with the spirit of the point that the

00:47:13

computer was making. And then eventually the computer couldn't do that sort of thing too.

00:47:18

And so he won over the audience to to his side. But I think the most of us,

00:47:25

I'll just speak for myself. I can learn from this because I have definitely fallen into the

00:47:32

category of what he describes as a logic bully, which is someone who overwhelms with rational

00:47:39

arguments. And the problem with this is that people's minds are not changed by the presentation of

00:47:47

facts. This does not cause them to change their minds. It actually causes them to dig in their

00:47:52

heels, even though they don't have the ability or the facts to argue back. And I never really thought

00:48:00

of it that way. And I would like to think that, you know, I've come a long way in this over the

00:48:06

the last couple of years, but I do think I need to take this a step further.

00:48:10

I want to go back to your point about a dance versus a war, because think about, at least in the US,

00:48:19

political debates, whenever they're arguing, because it's total full on argument, right?

00:48:25

Of one side versus the other, we cut each other off, we're rude to each other, we're all sorts of

00:48:33

stuff whenever he's like the people who are doing these debates, like that's what they do,

00:48:37

slandering each other constantly. You're not debating the topic.

00:48:42

Yeah, my 11 year old was watching the last presidential debate. And at one point,

00:48:46

we watched it for like two minutes. And he's just like staring at the TV like, yeah, these are adults.

00:48:52

And then eventually he's like, girls, girls, you're both pretty and he walks away.

00:48:56

I love it. But that's true, right? Even our kids pick up on it.

00:49:06

We don't, if you want to have a cordial debates and you want to influence someone,

00:49:14

if you're trying to, I don't want to say put my opinion on someone else, but share an opinion

00:49:20

with the hope that someone else will adopt said opinion. If I'm trying to do that,

00:49:25

slandering that person and cutting them off and interrupting repeatedly is not the way to do that.

00:49:33

Thus the dance. So you're, you're able to have the back and forth. Listen to what the other person

00:49:39

saying. Maybe you're agreeing with them. Maybe you're not. But if you are agreeing with them,

00:49:43

at least the spirit of what they're saying, I may not believe in a certain law, but I love the

00:49:49

spirit of the law. And that's fine. I just think the way that they're going about trying to do that

00:49:54

thing is wrong. That happens a lot. And that's fine. But trying to have those debates in a cordial way

00:50:03

is very challenging today. Yeah. You know, the, the political debates is kind of an interesting

00:50:09

thing because you're not trying to reach a consensus and really it's a performance for the people who

00:50:17

aren't even in the room, right? You're trying to sway the opinion of all the people who haven't

00:50:21

made up their minds about who they're going to vote for. I wonder if that's at the heart of some of

00:50:27

this is kind of to your earlier point. We don't view the other person as a human. They're just

00:50:35

an obstacle in the way to me showing strength and wisdom, the fact that I have mastered all these

00:50:43

issues and I can lead the country in a specified direction. And it's easy to see how we got there.

00:50:54

And it's easy to see why that is the way people, the default mode of operation now. And you can

00:51:02

argue that a recent presidential candidate made it worse. But it's always as long as I can remember,

00:51:09

like, I've never wanted to watch those debates because all they're doing is yelling at each other

00:51:13

and criticizing each other. And you get so many people saying, Oh, you did this, no, I didn't,

00:51:18

that you walk out of there and you're just kind of like dumbfounded. Like you don't really don't know.

00:51:24

What was true? What wasn't? You got to go back and fact check the entire thing in order to

00:51:28

understand like what really really happened. So what do you do? You just kind of go with your gut,

00:51:34

like, whose personality did I resonate with more? Right? So it's easy to say like, well,

00:51:41

what if we just view the other person as a human and treated them the way that we wanted

00:51:47

them to be treated? But what would it take for someone in the political arena to start doing that?

00:51:53

You know, is the system so established that no one would be willing to try that? Or would you not

00:52:02

even rise to that level where you would get a big enough audience in order for that to be displayed

00:52:10

on like a large scale? I don't know. I kind of am wondering like, if you got to play the game and

00:52:16

then you get so used to playing the game that like it's not even an option? Or is it just as

00:52:20

simple as someone being like, hey, you know what? You're right. We've kind of turned into us versus

00:52:26

them and I'm not going to do that anymore. I don't know that like if you think of human psychology,

00:52:33

we're drawn to negative things versus positive things. So we're wired for watching out for danger.

00:52:45

So we notice when things are negative immediately, whereas if it's positive, it has to build over

00:52:53

time. Like you could show me a new story of something extremely positive, but it's not going to have

00:53:00

near the impact of something much less dramatic, but it's negative. So we're drawn to this negative

00:53:05

side. And in the world of politics, they need more people drawn to them. Thus, they can get the votes,

00:53:14

get their paychecks, keep their jobs. And what that means is in today's climate, because of

00:53:22

the media being something that's easy to get to a lot of people very quickly, if it's something

00:53:28

negative, they get more attention. I mean, look at everything Trump did a lot of what

00:53:33

he had for his campaign, he played games to make things negative. And that actually drew a lot

00:53:43

of people to him. And as time has gone on, we've done that more and more.

00:53:50

Your question around, if someone tried to step away from that, what would happen,

00:53:57

I don't know. I feel like it wouldn't be successful. I feel like maybe there are people doing this. We

00:54:05

just don't know about it because they're not going to get the attention. They're not going to get

00:54:09

the airtime. And if they happened to be on the stage, say for a presidential debate,

00:54:16

and they were able to call out the slander and stuff and try to have a cordial debate

00:54:27

to do a dance instead of the war, probably not going to get very far would be my guess,

00:54:34

just because we're not drawn to that. And although the intellectuals will applaud them and people who

00:54:41

want to have a little more cordialness between the two sides of the aisle might be all on board,

00:54:52

but I just don't see how that could take off. It would take a lot of people, I think, to

00:54:59

have that same mindset shift all at the same time. No, I think you're right. And the reason I ask

00:55:06

that is that I read an article yesterday about Joe Manchin, the Democratic governor or Democratic

00:55:17

senator from West Virginia. The Senate in the US is evenly divided 50/50, but there's a Democratic

00:55:25

president, Democratic vice president. So vice president cast the tie-breaking vote in

00:55:30

whenever there's a tie. So essentially Democrats control the House, the Senate, and the presidency,

00:55:40

which that's always a political party's dream, right? We own all three of these. We can pass

00:55:45

whatever the heck we want. But Joe Manchin is on record as saying the insurrection that happened

00:55:51

on January 6th. He's like, that really changed me. And he's the one who provides the majority,

00:55:58

right? And he's saying, well, actually, we all have to work together. So you can't just count

00:56:04

on my vote. Everybody's kind of freaking out about it. So I think this is really interesting,

00:56:11

because there is one person who is standing up and saying, hey, we got to work together.

00:56:17

And I think that's the first step to humanizing the other side. And it'll be interesting to see

00:56:23

if more people follow suit or if he's gone in six months and somebody else takes his place,

00:56:28

and its business as usual. Right. I think there's a lot to be said for,

00:56:34

and we don't need to keep belaboring politics here, but there's a lot to be said for situations

00:56:44

where you are forced to spend time with people who disagree with you.

00:56:51

There's a lot of value in that. It helps you to build empathy for folks who disagree with you.

00:57:00

And it can oftentimes lead to compromise whenever you hit a roadblock. And currently,

00:57:11

the way our political system is set up, the people who are in the house and Senate and doing the

00:57:19

voting don't have to live near the people that they're arguing against. Yep. Leaders eat last.

00:57:25

So if it wasn't possible for them to always leave and they had to do the school functions with

00:57:36

everyone in DC if they had to do all the events together at all times and they had to do all

00:57:43

the social stuff together, not just retreat home when they're not voting. Yep. Exactly.

00:57:50

I feel like they could change a lot of things, but I don't remember who I've talked to somebody

00:57:55

about this pretty regularly. I can't place who it was, but anyway. No, the conversations are

00:58:00

the critical part. And not just the conversations like the debate trying to convince somebody,

00:58:05

but trying to understand somebody. Let's move on from politics and talk about something

00:58:11

less dangerous like racism, shall we? Sure. It's really less dangerous.

00:58:17

Because he tells the story here. I think it was chapter six, but there was a jazz musician,

00:58:24

if I'm remembering the story correctly. And it wasn't a big deal when I was reading the book,

00:58:29

but as we're talking about this, this is what comes to mind. An African American musician

00:58:35

who was performing and one of the, I don't remember the titles, I avoid everything,

00:58:42

everything KKK, but the head honcho basically of the local KKK was there at the bar,

00:58:48

watching him play and walks up to him afterwards and he's all confused and basically says like,

00:58:55

I have never known a black man like you. And then they have a conversation about it.

00:59:01

And they continue the conversation and they basically become friends and this guy convinces the

00:59:06

white guy to leave the KKK and basically everywhere that he goes, he has these conversations with

00:59:13

people because that that KKK guy goes and tells his buddies of the KKK and like, there's a ripple

00:59:19

effect with this and a whole bunch of people end up walking away from the KKK because of this

00:59:24

black musician who is willing to engage in the conversation and say, well, like, this is,

00:59:30

no, I'm no different than you are. Like, what was your perspective about me and then what would it

00:59:36

take to change your mind? And then as they talk about things, they realize that we've got a lot

00:59:42

more in common than we thought. And so that causes them to rethink their stereotypes and all of their

00:59:48

beliefs about everything and make the decision that, oh, I really shouldn't have been involved in this

00:59:55

white nationalist terrorist group to begin with. But it's hard to see that, right? If you,

01:00:02

yeah, how does that work? If there's a group of people that you don't know much about,

01:00:09

you have a tendency to shy away from them. Yeah. And that doesn't have to be the way I said that

01:00:15

it was very racist implied, right? But it doesn't have to be race. Yep. I have a tendency to,

01:00:23

you're probably the same way. If there's a group of tech nerds gathered around talking about a

01:00:29

bunch of Microsoft computers, I have a tendency to shy away from them. Yep. Totally. That's what

01:00:34

I was thinking too. It's because like, I know a decent amount about PCs. I just,

01:00:40

I don't care for like, I have my other preferences. I'm comfortable on Apple computers. Like,

01:00:46

that's where I live. That's an uncomfortable area for me. I'm not just going to walk up and

01:00:53

try to break the ice and try to understand what they're doing and such. Like, that's not

01:00:59

I'm going to stand my echo chamber. Correct. It's more comfortable in my echo chamber.

01:01:04

That applies in so many ways. It's just blown up in the race world, probably for good reason.

01:01:13

Just knowing having acquaintances who are very racist, it's the- Very emotionally charged.

01:01:20

Yes, it is. And I don't want to say that it's unfounded because I don't think it's unfounded.

01:01:29

I just wonder about the mechanics and methods that people go about trying to solve the problem.

01:01:35

Yeah. It doesn't make sense to me to be racist in an attempt to solve racism.

01:01:40

My brain doesn't work that way. But that seems to be a lot of what happens at the same time.

01:01:47

Like, this is a weird spot for me to talk about this because most of the time, whenever I'm going

01:01:52

to have a race conversation, I want to have that with someone who's not of the same race I am.

01:01:56

Because it forces the conversation to be a little more understanding like you and I talking about

01:02:03

it probably isn't. That's not doing a whole lot of good. Yeah. Anyway.

01:02:08

But the big takeaway from this for me is that it gives me hope because I realize the potential

01:02:18

that can come from a single conversation. This one guy was willing to engage and he changed

01:02:27

the minds of multiple people who were involved in this organization that who knows how many

01:02:32

other people they would have impacted. So it's like a domino effect, but it's an exponential

01:02:37

domino effect where first you knocked on one, then two, then four. And so you can kind of think

01:02:46

like if you are paying attention to the stuff that's going on in the world today, well, I'm just

01:02:49

one person. Like, what difference can I make? You can make quite a bit of difference. You just

01:02:55

don't realize it yet simply by your willingness to engage in the conversation in the appropriate way.

01:03:01

So that's the big thing for me, not just about race, but about everything here is

01:03:05

be willing to engage. You don't know what you don't know, right? That's kind of the whole point

01:03:12

of this whole book. And you are never going to find out what you don't know until you start talking

01:03:17

to some people that are different. Yes. But you have to be willing to do that. And yeah,

01:03:23

which is not comfortable, special. Correct. And it has to be people on both sides of the fence have

01:03:28

to be willing to have the conversation. If I walk up to someone and I want to have a conversation

01:03:35

about the school referendum that passed in our area a couple years ago, I was very much against

01:03:40

it. A lot of people were for it. I felt like the school was making bad choices. My opinion is they

01:03:47

didn't seem to care if the school made good or bad choices. Like, this is the way this worked,

01:03:51

right? But so many people I couldn't even have a conversation with without it. Like, I would ask

01:03:57

a question and I would instantly get yelling back in my face. That doesn't help anybody

01:04:03

in this situation at all. It's like, I feel like you've been hurt. So now I feel like I'm trying to

01:04:10

like, what has happened in your past that's kind of led you to this point? Like, now I feel like I'm

01:04:16

trying to do some form of a ministry to help because like, I don't know where this anger came from.

01:04:19

So like, that's the difficult thing with this, these whole difficult conversations. Like, how do you

01:04:27

have them and how do you disarm them when not everyone's willing to have them in a cordial way?

01:04:34

Yeah. Volume is not going to win anybody.

01:04:37

Right. Right. That was something you talked about earlier. It was like the whole confidence

01:04:42

thing, right? It's like my, oh, what was the, there was a little cartoon. It's like,

01:04:47

what was it? Hold your expertise and listen to my confidence. Like, it was something like that.

01:04:54

It's like, my confidence can overwhelm the science behind it, as long as I am saying it

01:05:00

forcefully, it will get across and be the thing that takes hold.

01:05:03

Yep. Shall we move on to the next section? Sure. So part three is collective rethinking.

01:05:09

And there are a couple chapters here. Chapter eight charge conversations,

01:05:15

which is kind of what we were talking about having these difficult conversations. And

01:05:20

really collective rethinking, though, is not a person to person. This is like as a group,

01:05:24

how do we change our minds about things? And then chapter nine, rewriting the textbook,

01:05:29

chapter 10, that's not the way we've always done it. I don't know exactly what I want to cover

01:05:34

here. I feel like this could go a bunch of different ways. I guess let's start with the charge

01:05:42

conversation section and let's talk about idea cults. Because idea cults are groups that stir up a

01:05:48

batch of oversimplified intellectual cool aid and recruit followers to serve it widely.

01:05:54

And as I read that, I could not help but think of the hashtag Rome cult.

01:06:01

Yep. We talked a little bit about that on one of your live streams.

01:06:06

And I do think there is a little bit of room for interpretation of the word cult, but I do

01:06:17

also agree that it is generally negative. What people think of is the cool aid drinking,

01:06:23

you know, and that's not necessarily what it means, but it almost doesn't matter because

01:06:29

in people's minds, that's what it means. And the hashtag Rome cult always rubbed me the wrong way

01:06:38

when I was a part of the, when I was using Rome research, I was part of the, what do they call it,

01:06:46

true believers, like I paid the big sum and had the five year license and attended the calls and

01:06:52

they were good. Like the community is cool and they're nice, but it is a big hurdle to get over

01:06:59

and it would always kind of like rub me the wrong way. Not to the point, obviously, where like I

01:07:04

completely walked away from it because of the branding, but I recognize it like it did. It

01:07:11

didn't leave it like a negative taste in my mouth. And having read this, I realize that while

01:07:19

hashtag Rome cult may not be the dictionary definition of a cult, they are definitely an

01:07:28

idea cult. I could say that as a former member. I think they're not the only one. You mentioned

01:07:39

like PCs versus Apple users, that would be another more palatable version for a lot of people.

01:07:46

But same sort of thing, I think, where you just say, well, this is the right way to do things.

01:07:53

And you're not considering or open to any of the other options. I think the big takeaway from this,

01:08:02

for me, is to constantly be questioning these things. And if I recognize one of these

01:08:09

idea cults, I really want to start to distance myself from that. That doesn't mean like I'm not

01:08:18

listening to Mac power users or whatever, but it means I'm going to have my eyes open when I engage

01:08:24

with this. I think if you go into an idea cult thinking you're going to change people's minds,

01:08:30

you're wasting your time. So you can go observe, but just know what you're getting into.

01:08:37

It seems like there are a lot of these out there. If you, like when you say that you're going to try

01:08:45

to avoid them, the question is going to be at what point is it an idea cult in it? What point is it

01:08:51

a strong opinion? Yeah, that's fair. Right. So there are going to be people who share your

01:08:57

opinion. Is that an idea cult? Like where does that start and end? Probably up for debate.

01:09:03

There are a number of folks now that I've been hearing from that like this app agnostic concept

01:09:11

that I've talked about for a few months now, maybe longer than that. Going back to plain text files

01:09:18

and staying away from the special formats and such or the systems that lock you into it, you can't

01:09:25

even get at the data. Rome research. Like these are things that I tend to promote and push.

01:09:32

Is that an idea cult? Because I've got a lot of people starting to follow that.

01:09:36

And is that something I need to be cautious on? Right? So where's the line here? Do you get what

01:09:43

I'm and I'm not saying is wrong. I'm just trying to work through that in my own brain.

01:09:48

Well, what Adam Grant would say is that if you find yourself saying blank is always good or

01:09:55

blank is never bad, then you may be a member of an idea cult. I would say the former, probably not

01:10:01

the latter. Okay. Then yeah, there are times when I would say using plain file formats that I have

01:10:08

control over is always good. Like I would probably say that. So does that qualify? I would qualify

01:10:14

then. Yeah, it's probably not as strong as some other idea cults out there. But yeah.

01:10:20

And I think this is why there's like nuance to this, but really I want to recognize

01:10:27

when I am in those echo chambers, basically. Because I do that too. I mean, with the work that I do

01:10:36

at the suite setup, I'm kind of paid to say this is the one that is always good. This is my job to

01:10:44

tell you, don't use anything else use this one. But even that has evolved over the years. If you've

01:10:51

read any of my reviews in the last couple of years, it's kind of like this is the one we recommend

01:10:57

for most people because of X, Y and Z. But if you want something that does this, then you need

01:11:04

then check out this one. Right. Almost every review I've written over the last

01:11:09

couple of years has been in that format where it hasn't just been a single recommendation.

01:11:13

There is a recommendation for like most people recognizing who most people that come to

01:11:19

the suite setup are and what they're looking for. Generally, they are creative people. They

01:11:24

want to write or something like that and they want to become more productive. They want to have more

01:11:29

better output, whatever that means to them, whether it's blog posts, book, whatever.

01:11:34

So I can go into it from that frame of reference and recognize that this is probably for that

01:11:41

person what I would recommend. But there's always nuance to it. And the idea cult thing that always

01:11:48

good or never bad, that's kind of like the binary bias, I think is how he frames it.

01:11:57

Where like it's either good or it's bad, there is no gray area, there's nothing in between and

01:12:01

nothing is really that simple. And you make the point that binary bias can be with your emotions

01:12:06

as well as with issues. And I'm probably going to be very bad at this, but my goal is any ways to

01:12:13

recognize the spectrum with all this stuff. And to try to understand the perspectives of the other

01:12:19

people who have different opinions of the different points on the spectrum.

01:12:23

That's fair. I think it's just something to be aware of it. I would struggle to say

01:12:29

I don't want to do this at all, because I do have some points that I think

01:12:34

are important enough that I'll ascribe to them or promote them, create them maybe potentially.

01:12:42

I don't know if this whole epic, nausic thing is something I created. I don't think it is, but

01:12:46

that concept is probably one I would stand on and say, yeah, sure, to use his definition,

01:12:53

yeah, it's an idea, Colt. I just know that I've been burnt by doing other things.

01:12:57

So I'm going to stand on it for now. But if someone can make a strong argument

01:13:04

against that, I'm all ears. And there are places where

01:13:10

I violate my own rules with that as well. I have special file formats that I use regularly for

01:13:22

video editing and such. So there's a lot of stuff that I do that does require things outside of that.

01:13:30

And yet I still promote plain files. I'll get off that high horse.

01:13:36

Which is completely fine, I think. You do want to attract your people. I mean,

01:13:42

Funky Mosquito in the chat mentions that this is tribalism. Well, Seth Godin wrote a book called

01:13:49

Tribes, which is all about attracting and serving your tribes. So it's not all bad, I think.

01:13:55

Right. Right. At least from who are you going to help perspective because PC users probably

01:14:03

don't care what I have to say. But I think if we really want to land on the truth, then

01:14:11

all we can really do is change ourselves in our perspective and be willing to see the other side.

01:14:17

And I think the moment that you enter into these idea cults and don't recognize

01:14:23

what you're walking into, you potentially slam the door on that sort of stuff. You got to tread

01:14:30

carefully with that, I think. Right. Right. And then also, when it comes to these issues and things,

01:14:37

complexity isn't necessarily a bad thing. We don't have to just make something

01:14:43

stupid, simple, right or wrong. We can admit that there are different levels of nuance

01:14:52

with this issue, which I guess, looking back at the approach I've taken to the

01:14:56

sweet setup reviews recently, that's kind of what I've done is saying, oh, it's not as simple.

01:15:02

Just pick the best task management app or pick the best email up. That's kind of why we came

01:15:07

out with those quizzes because there's different criteria. And I just got sick of people asking me

01:15:11

like, okay, so which task manager should I use? And I have to ask the questions, well, like,

01:15:15

do you want due dates and start dates? Where do you want to access it from? That sort of thing.

01:15:21

Right. And then it took my mental flowchart and turned it into quiz.

01:15:27

And I want to point out, whenever you have things that you're recommending,

01:15:35

I had a person, this is within the last two weeks, had a person ask me an opinion on

01:15:41

a computer that they wanted to upgrade to. And they've been a fairly long time Mac user,

01:15:50

Apple user, they were laying out kind of like what you're saying, like, what is your situation?

01:15:56

My default is you've been a long time Mac user, obviously, by a new Mac, like, that's

01:16:02

easy answer in my head. But I was like, okay, well, let's take what are you trying to do with it?

01:16:08

And they laid out the things they're doing for work, the things that they're

01:16:12

in the process of getting into it. It's like, well, based on what you're telling me,

01:16:16

you probably need a PC. Like, I don't want to be someone who takes someone who's an Apple user

01:16:22

and puts you on a PC. But what you're telling me, if everything you just explained is 100% true

01:16:29

when you're going to follow through on all of that, this is what I would recommend. And it's

01:16:33

against what I would normally want someone to do. But you have to be willing to put everything

01:16:38

in context, right? So it's okay. I like that you're willing to, like, take people down

01:16:44

a decision tree. It's something that I've, I have struggled with in the past, like, don't tell me

01:16:51

the one thing that beats all the others. Like, walk me through what works best for

01:16:57

my situation. We had this in, I just did a bank of, did office hours this past Wednesday with

01:17:04

Team Analog on Analog Joe. And one of the gentlemen who was there had some very pointed

01:17:12

questions about a specific app that he was looking for. It's like, it really depends. And

01:17:19

I can't tell you what the answer is because I'm not getting enough information to point you in the

01:17:25

right direction. So yes, context is important. That's the most frustrating thing.

01:17:32

Yes, if I can't get all the data, I can't make a recommendation. You have to let me know

01:17:38

what the way that you work. And then I can recommend something. Right. Right. Yeah. Until then,

01:17:43

I'm going to tell you grab a notebook. So here's my default answer until you give me more information

01:17:50

to tell me otherwise. And a fancy fountain pen. Totally. This kind of reminds me of something

01:17:56

in chapter nine, the, the dumbstruck effect where they, or where Adam talks about the sage on the

01:18:05

stage and the lecture format, which is typically what people gravitate to, but is actually really

01:18:11

bad for actually learning. So I don't want to be that, that person, which is a little bit tricky,

01:18:21

because at the same time, like Toastmasters and speaking competitions and things like that,

01:18:27

in some sense, I'm sort of working towards that. But I don't think just because you are a speaker

01:18:36

doing like a professional, you get a professional speaking gig, whatever you're presenting on a topic

01:18:42

that you have to default into this format. There are ways, I think, that you can overcome this.

01:18:49

Michael Port does a great job of talking about this in the heroic public speaking class, because

01:18:56

the last, the last session in the, the self-paced one is a speech that he gave. It's a keynote

01:19:03

speech. It's like an hour long. And he incorporates not just like his story and the elements of giving

01:19:08

a good speech, but there's a huge section where the audience is mingling, like there's audience

01:19:14

participation and then they come back together at the end. So I think it's easy to kind of click

01:19:19

into like, well, this is the default format, but start looking for new and more interesting ways to,

01:19:26

to mix things up, which kind of leads into the last chapter in this section. Like that's not the

01:19:31

way we've always done it as it pertains to lectures, presenting from slides, standing up in front of

01:19:36

people. That's the way that we've always done it. But it doesn't mean that that's the way that we

01:19:42

have to do it. Right, right. Like whenever I give talks at our church, two things kind of

01:19:49

talking about the sage on the stage thing, it's pretty common for people to see me. I'm the IT

01:19:53

director of the church. I'm talking at the church about tech in some way. So it's very easy for

01:19:59

people to project. I'm the expert onto me. And I try to make sure I'm not necessarily like,

01:20:08

I know a lot and I'm probably an expert in a few very small areas, but not all of them. Like,

01:20:14

I am very far from being an expert on everything technology that doesn't exist. So I'm very careful

01:20:20

to point that out. Like, if I get a question, like, I'm going to lay that, that foundation there's

01:20:26

like, that's not always, not always the case. So yes. But at the same time,

01:20:32

talking about the conventions, like when we get talks and stuff, like people get up talk,

01:20:37

you have your slides. That's what I do. But, and I think you're the same way. Like, if I'm

01:20:42

going to put something on the screen, it's because there's a specific image I want in your brain.

01:20:47

Or I'm trying to show you how something works. It's really hard to explain in words. For example,

01:20:54

like one of the last talks I gave, I was telling the story of a new technology that had come out

01:21:00

that people hated and really wanted to not become a big deal. It was the automobile. But I told the

01:21:06

whole story without telling you what the technology was. And then the moment that I revealed what it

01:21:13

was, I put the old Model T up on the screen. It was black leading up to that. But I put a Model T

01:21:19

up because that was the one that was kind of the talking point that we were going through.

01:21:24

I didn't want people looking at a Corvette, like a brand new C8. I didn't want that on screen.

01:21:29

I wanted the one that was from back in the time, right? So I'm picking and choosing those very

01:21:34

specifically because there's an image that I want to put into your brain. Another piece of that

01:21:40

talk was talking about London taxi drivers. Like we've talked about this, right? The spatial piece

01:21:45

of how London taxi drivers develop their brain, right? Yeah. I told that story. But to do that,

01:21:52

I brought up a couple images of the most difficult intersections in London so that people could

01:21:58

understand how difficult it is to drive in London because most of us have not been there, right?

01:22:03

So anyway, conventions like, yes, you can do things in the same way. But I like to tweak what

01:22:10

the norm is. I'm not putting words on a slide and just going to read it to you. I despise that. I

01:22:15

please stop if you do that. But these are all any color you want as long as it's black.

01:22:20

Good job, Michael. All of these things are things that you can tweak and use to your

01:22:27

benefits. But at the same time, traditional ways of doing some of those things are not always great.

01:22:33

Yep. Let's see. Anything else from this section? I mean, there's lots of other stuff we could talk

01:22:39

about. I guess the other thing I want to hit on here would be the judging yourself versus judging

01:22:48

your work. There's a whole flowchart with this. And I think this hits on something we talked about

01:22:58

with the practice by Seth Godin. And I have had to learn over the years to separate myself from the

01:23:07

thing that I have made. When you end up shipping something, you have essentially taken a snapshot

01:23:18

of your thoughts on a particular topic at that moment in time. And it is difficult to disassociate

01:23:28

your identity from the way that you used to think. But it is also very important, especially for

01:23:34

creatives, especially if you are constantly rethinking things, be willing to say, "Well,

01:23:39

that's what I used to think," but it has changed. And then the other thing related to that is in

01:23:47

chapter 10, we hear disagree but commit again, which is from the Jeff Bezos thing. Essentially,

01:23:54

what that is saying is, "Are you willing to gamble with me on this?" And if you are willing to do that,

01:24:03

is an indication of the culture of the company or the organization that you are a part of.

01:24:09

He talks in this chapter, which I thought was kind of cool, that the teams that are psychologically

01:24:15

safe, they actually report more errors, which kind of seems contradictory because if you're

01:24:22

psychologically safe, then you're willing to admit your mistakes and get them fixed. The Toyota way,

01:24:30

eventually you're going to iron all those things out. He makes the point, though, that they probably

01:24:37

make much less because when you are in a psychologically safe environment, you are willing to share your

01:24:45

errors when you aren't in that environment, you just sweep them under the rug. So you really

01:24:49

don't know how many errors are being made, which I thought was a very profound insight there.

01:24:56

It is interesting that if you feel comfortable in your job and such, and you feel secure,

01:25:02

you're more willing to point out the mistakes you made or that your group is making.

01:25:06

But if we're not comfortable there, I'm not going to point this out because I don't know that this

01:25:12

is going to go over real well. It's an interesting phenomenon, I think. But it seems like, I would say

01:25:21

probably you and I are very comfortable in our positions and as such that we could do that

01:25:26

very comfortably. So it would be an easy thing for us to do. I would concur.

01:25:31

Real briefly, I'll talk about the last part here, which is part four, the conclusion. Chapter 11 is

01:25:38

escaping tunnel vision. And then there is just like the little epilogue at the very end. But chapter

01:25:44

11, there's some interesting stuff in here. So it makes the point that the average person is

01:25:50

12 different jobs throughout their life. And he talks about identity foreclosure, which is

01:25:56

attaching to a single identity or a fixed mindset. This reminded me a lot of the conversation about

01:26:05

how to be everything. I can't find the specific point about when and how you make a shift. He does

01:26:18

talk quite a bit in here about the reviews or the checkups. And I feel like when you do a career

01:26:25

checkup, that's the point when you realize, well, I'm on this track, but I should actually be over

01:26:30

here on this track. And that reminded me of Emily Wopniks, where you're going this way and then

01:26:34

you get over here and then you go up this way. And then you go way back over here. But you're

01:26:38

not going backwards necessarily, you're still going up, you're just moving laterally to a different

01:26:45

line, different parallel. And I feel like this conversation in this chapter kind of helped

01:26:51

solidify that for me. So I feel even more strongly that, yes, you should be everything.

01:26:57

Be willing to sidestep and keep going forward. Yep, exactly. He also talks in this section

01:27:06

about how our lives and identities are open systems. He defines open and closed systems. I don't really

01:27:12

want to talk a whole lot about that because we're going to talk lots about systems in the next book.

01:27:18

So it's easier for the next episode. Yep. You know, we'll discuss how systems work.

01:27:23

Maybe a little. Anything else? I don't think so. I feel like we've covered all the high points on

01:27:30

it. There's of course a lot between those points that we've, like we're catching all the peaks as we

01:27:36

drive by, right? Typical Instagram feed. So, you know, we're catching all the high points as we're

01:27:42

going across this one. There's a lot, again, like we were talking about earlier, as he tells these

01:27:46

stories, there's a lot of little tidbits as he tells the story. So yes, we're sharing

01:27:53

these high points, but there's a lot more to it. So yes, there's a lot in it. We could go on and on

01:28:01

on about this one. All right. Do you have any action items from this book? I plan to think again.

01:28:07

The cheater ones. No, I don't. This one was hard for me. I felt like I was, I actually tried to

01:28:15

figure out what to do with this. And what I discovered is that I'm neck deep in selling and buying

01:28:25

our house, like moving from one to the other. And I've been using a lot of this in that process.

01:28:34

Okay. Let me think about things from a technical scientific stance and try to get my emotions out

01:28:41

of the mix, which is not an easy thing to do when you're talking about your house. No, right? So,

01:28:46

I've been doing that quite a bit and using some of this material in the midst of conversations with

01:28:55

my wife, with agents, with all the people involved in selling and buying houses. Like,

01:29:01

there's a lot to that, right? So I've been using a lot of this and there's been a number of times

01:29:06

where my wife and I are discussing something and I can tell she's a little more emotional about it

01:29:13

than I am and just like, okay, hold on, hold on back. Think about it this way. Like, this is just

01:29:18

a pure science stance. So I have used things in those ways. And I've found that that's very

01:29:24

helpful. But I don't know how to tell you what that action item is. Like, I haven't figured out

01:29:30

how to articulate what that is. Does that make sense? Like, it's just hard to, what do I do with it?

01:29:36

Sometimes these books like, yeah, start doing this, stop saying this. Do that. Like, sometimes

01:29:42

it's very clear. This is telling you ways to think. So how does that materialize in the physical realm?

01:29:52

I don't know. That's what I'm getting at. Well, I've got two specific ones which aren't like,

01:29:57

do this, but more keep this in your repertoire for specific situations. So I mentioned the

01:30:06

separation of identities working with family. That's the easy example. But there are other places

01:30:12

where you need to protect the relationship, but you also need to have this debate in order to get

01:30:20

any sort of resolution. So he mentions in chapter four, the tactic of using the phrase,

01:30:28

can we debate? Which I think is pretty genius. Because if you're just talking to somebody,

01:30:33

there isn't a real clear distinction that like, oh, we've left the talking as friends to

01:30:39

talking as people with differing views and we're trying to solve a problem at church, work,

01:30:44

whatever. And I feel like that is a very clear distinction. Like, we are transferring from

01:30:50

this mode to this other mode and hopefully will protect the feelings and the relationship better.

01:30:58

So I do want to keep that in my back pocket, I guess, and use that at some point. The other

01:31:06

thing I want to do is, and this is from chapter 10, that's not the way we've always done it.

01:31:14

I want to ask myself and others when appropriate, how do you know? Because I feel that question is not

01:31:22

very pointed, like that is not very threatening in a lot of the situations where I could envision

01:31:29

using that. But also it forces the other person to articulate why we're just defaulting to a

01:31:38

certain way of doing something. And again, I don't have a specific place that I want to use that in

01:31:44

the next two weeks. But I feel like those two are great ways. Back to my action item, expanding

01:31:50

my vocabulary. This is more like my vocabulary for debate and disagreement.

01:31:56

How to start them, how to maintain them. Sure. I applaud you for that. I'm not usually one that

01:32:04

wants to change my vocabulary. I just become aware of it, I guess. It's something I

01:32:08

am pointed out, tends to just be in the back of my mind anyway. I don't know. I'm weird.

01:32:14

That's fair. Let's go to style and rating. I guess my book I go first.

01:32:19

Yep, good luck. Well, we talked a little bit about my epiphany of the stories not being as

01:32:27

awesome as I thought they would be. I'm okay with that. I think the book itself is pretty awesome.

01:32:35

I really like Adam Grant's style. It's entertaining. It's not a slog to get through, which a lot of

01:32:45

like people in his position who write books like this can definitely feel that way. There was someone

01:32:51

in the chat who had mentioned earlier that Daniel Kahneman, right, thinking fast and slow,

01:32:56

that is one of those big ideas that comes up over and over and over again, but we don't really

01:33:01

mention it. The reason we don't really mention it, I think, is because neither of us were really

01:33:05

excited about reading that book. That tempered the takeaways from the book. Not that you have to

01:33:13

really sell a really powerful idea. I get that a lot for a lot of these people, just the act of

01:33:18

writing it and communicating it. That is their contribution to the world. I think a lot of people,

01:33:25

though, in books that have been written since that one, that have taken that concept and packaged

01:33:32

it a little bit differently, those are the ones that have resonated with us. I'm thinking about

01:33:36

the "Never Split the Difference" by Chris Voss. They talk about thinking fast and slow at

01:33:44

different points in there. Thinking fast and slow is never the one though that comes to our minds.

01:33:48

I feel like, again, could be one of those. I feel like the way that Adam Grant communicates

01:33:55

is really well done and makes me... It's like you had a good meal and you think about that even

01:34:04

after you step away from the table, you think back to like, "Oh, that was a really great dinner.

01:34:10

The food was great. The conversation was great. Good company," whatever. You have fond memories

01:34:13

of that experience. That's what I'm left with with this book. I also don't think I have any spots

01:34:21

where I quoted Adam Grant because I have these different emojis that I use in my Mind Node files.

01:34:27

I have one for the quotes that I want to remember. There wasn't anything like one liner-ish

01:34:36

that totally encapsulated it outside of context that I wanted to put into my quote book, which

01:34:42

was, again, a little bit alarming to me, but also I think that's not necessarily a bad thing.

01:34:47

That's probably a good thing because it means everything is tied together very cohesively

01:34:51

because I didn't ever stumble upon one thing that I felt like, "Oh, I want to cherry pick that thing

01:34:56

out of here." I do think that there are more profound, more impactful books that we have read,

01:35:04

which is the only reason why I'm not going to write this five stars, but it's really, really good.

01:35:10

I'm really, really glad that we read it. I do think I would recommend this to just about anybody

01:35:16

who listens to this podcast. I'm going to rate it at 4.5. Again, just because it doesn't feel like

01:35:25

completely life-changing walking away from it, but I have nothing negative to say about it.

01:35:34

I wish it would have been longer, to be honest, even though it is 250 pages and it took me the

01:35:39

entire two weeks to get through. I got done and I had that disappointed feeling like, "Ah, now I've

01:35:44

got to find another book to read, but I want to keep reading this one."

01:35:48

I'm with you. It's an interesting book to go through. It took me about the third chapter to

01:35:56

figure out what was going on with the stories, which was why the very beginning of it feels very

01:36:01

fuzzy to me. I couldn't quite put my finger on what was going on, but I knew it was different

01:36:07

and I knew there was something strange about it. I couldn't quite tell if I liked it or not

01:36:12

because it didn't fit my normal. Once I discovered what he was doing,

01:36:19

it was fine. I didn't struggle with that at all, but because it doesn't follow...

01:36:26

we were talking about earlier, it doesn't follow the normal way of storytelling and then debrief

01:36:32

after, which means that you have to approach it somewhat differently, mentally. That's fine.

01:36:42

That's not a bad thing. It just means that from a readability stance, I felt like I had to focus

01:36:48

on it a little bit more than normal. Again, not bad, just a thing to be aware of. As someone who

01:36:56

is prone to distraction, this one I found I did better if I was reading it in the morning. A lot

01:37:03

of time books I can read at night, but this one I found that I did better if I was reading it in

01:37:09

the mornings because I was more focused at that time. I don't really understand why

01:37:17

all those pieces came together in that way, but it was a thing that I just want to call out.

01:37:22

I don't want to say it was a difficult book to read because it's not.

01:37:28

I guess what I'm saying is it's not as easy as a lot of the others that we've

01:37:35

covered. If you want something that's a little more difficult, just from a readability stance,

01:37:41

I feel like this is solid. As far as the material that he's covering, I really loved it. There's a

01:37:48

lot of great topics here. I think you're right in that we've covered a lot of things that maybe

01:37:54

revolve around some of these concepts independently. They've not all been put together in this form,

01:38:04

in the sense of be careful what you hold as foundational thoughts in your brain.

01:38:09

We haven't had anybody tell you, "Please don't do that." That's a lot of what you come away with

01:38:15

this from. Come away from this with. That I appreciate. I struggle to put it at the five.

01:38:25

I feel like I want to put it at the five, but I shouldn't. I'll join you at 4.5 on this one.

01:38:32

Again, I will recommend this to folks. I can't say I've done that at this point, but if someone

01:38:40

wants to have a discussion around the idea of trying to maybe challenge your own beliefs

01:38:48

or challenge the beliefs of a collective group, this is a solid one to go to. Just be ready for

01:38:55

things to be a little bit different as far as style goes. That's, I think, the point I'm trying to

01:39:00

get across. Anyway, 4.5. Awesome. Let's put this one on the shelf. What's next, Jobyleg?

01:39:08

Work the system. Sam Carpenter, this one has come up a number of times by you. I feel like

01:39:14

you've brought this one up a handful of times over a number of episodes. I'm not going to be

01:39:20

able to place how many and such, but I feel like we need to cover this one for the number of times

01:39:26

that we've talked about systems and the number of times that we've belabored systems and argued

01:39:33

against them and told them, "That won't work." How many times have we done this? I feel like we need

01:39:39

to read a system book about the system. Here we go. 118. It'll be work the system. Sam Carpenter.

01:39:48

Then what are we doing after that, Mike? Another new book, which is actually not out yet as we

01:39:54

record this, but we both really enjoyed essentialism by Greg McKeown, and he has a new book coming out

01:40:03

April 27th, Amazon says, called Effortless. I think this is going to be a fun one. I preordered

01:40:14

this and he and his wife co-presented in an Effortless webinar, which I watched the other day.

01:40:23

I feel like this one could go one of two directions. This could either be a vast departure

01:40:33

from essentialism, which I don't really anticipate, but it could feel a bait and switch because

01:40:41

essentialism is so focused on pick the right things. Now we're going to be focusing on it. I think

01:40:48

the efficiency aspect of that, but I expect it to be done in a way where it actually doubles down

01:40:55

on the essentialism message, which that I'm not quite sure what that ends up being. I've

01:41:03

kind of seen these as two polar opposites in the productivity world for a very long time. I'm really

01:41:10

looking forward to reading this one. I think it'll be a fun one. Mosquitos saying that he downloaded

01:41:16

work the system from their website and has been spammed. Pretty much all of those will operate

01:41:21

that way, but yeah, it doesn't surprise me. Probably a ding against it to begin with though.

01:41:27

Yeah, that is a good point though. We should call that out. If people do want to read this,

01:41:32

you can download the entire book for free from the website in a PDF form. In the show notes,

01:41:39

I always include the Amazon links because I prefer the physical books and I have bought

01:41:43

work the system. It is on my bookshelf back here. That one will be in the show notes,

01:41:48

but if you want to download it for free from the website, you can do that too at workthesystem.com.

01:41:52

Just know you're going to get pitched. What happens with free stuff?

01:41:56

You got any gap books? I don't because selling a house takes time, Mike. I barely got through this

01:42:04

one. That it does. I haven't started work the system yet. I'll be honest. I think it's going to

01:42:12

be tight for me to get that one done in two weeks. I'm not even going to attempt it this time around.

01:42:18

All right. You? I don't have one on here, but I do have to take the walk of shame and

01:42:27

admit that I still have not finished the road less stupid. I do have a sabbatical coming up,

01:42:34

and I will try to finish that one along with work the system. I think I will be able to do that.

01:42:41

I'm not picking a gap book until I get through that one.

01:42:43

Good call. Good call. All right. Thanks, everyone, for listening. Thank you to the people who have

01:42:52

joined us live. Thank you specifically to the Bookworm Premium Club members who are willing to

01:42:58

support the show financially. Help us keep the lights on. If you go to bookworm.fm/membership,

01:43:07

you can sign up for $5 a month and you will get access to all of my mind node files from the books

01:43:15

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01:43:21

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01:43:28

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01:43:36

at bookworm.fm/membership. And we'd love to have you there. So if you're reading along with us,

01:43:43

pick up work the system by Sam Carpenter. Read through that. We'll discuss it in a couple weeks.