Bookworm Transcripts

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I made a big purchase, Mike, at least in my world.

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It's exciting.

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It's a big deal.

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- What'd you buy?

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- I bought a pen.

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- I think I saw something about that.

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(laughs)

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- So for the pen addicts out there,

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I recently picked up, and I've wanted one of these for

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darn near a year, maybe?

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Maybe not quite that long.

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So I'm a fountain pen enthusiast for the listeners

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of Bookworm.

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They follow me everywhere else.

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It's pretty obvious.

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But I picked up a Twisbee Diamond 580,

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which sounds really cool, and I like it,

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but if you're not a fountain pen person,

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it makes zero cents whatsoever.

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(laughs)

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- Yeah, it makes no sense to me.

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It's all Greek to me.

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- I actually took Greek in college.

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You know that?

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- I didn't have. - It's four semesters now.

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It's not modern Greek, but it was coin-aid Greek.

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So like the historical, like that's what,

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well, I guess it wasn't as far back as like Aristotle,

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but yeah, it's old, old, old, old Greek.

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But yeah, I took it.

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It's fun.

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So when people say, yeah, it's Greek to me.

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It's like, I can't use that phrase.

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'Cause I do understand it, at least somewhat still.

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So there you go.

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- So with the email course, so that's out now, is it?

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Have you gone public with that?

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Like, do I need to not put this in?

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- No, it is public.

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So as a recording date, so definitely by the time this is

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published, actually by the time this is published,

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it's probably gonna be closed, but yeah, it is open

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to the public at the moment, and response to the course

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has been pretty amazing.

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- Well, actually, response has been in one of two camps,

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either $1,000, that's ridiculous,

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or $1,000 is what a bargain.

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(laughing)

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- That's usually the way it goes.

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- Yeah.

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- So yeah, it's been cool because the people

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who have actually gone through it are getting results

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in there all saying, this has changed my life.

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This is amazing.

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But then of course, there are other people who are just

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kind of dabbling, they're not really committed to that,

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and that's fine.

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If you're in that camp and email is not a huge problem

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for you, then that course definitely is not for you.

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There's lots of other things you can buy

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in the free to $20 price range, which will give you

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just a little bit of info and just scratch the surface,

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and that maybe is more appropriate.

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But for the people who, this is a significant problem,

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this is eating up their entire day, it's soul sucking.

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You know, then those are the people that are

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getting the results, so it's been pretty cool to see.

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So.

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- Cool.

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- No, I run into that quite a bit with any of the courses,

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or pretty much anything I do, I get some people that are,

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it's crazy expensive, why would you charge that much for it?

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And then on the other side of the spectrum,

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you have people who are like, wow, you're giving that away,

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really?

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- Okay.

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- And it doesn't seem to matter if you charge $1,000,

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or if you charge $17, it's always the spectrum it seems.

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- It's always too expensive for somebody,

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which is why the App Store has had a consistent race

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towards the bottom since it came into existence.

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It's, if you listen to the majority of people,

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it's always too expensive because it's not free.

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- Right, right, that's the general public's view,

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which is impossible to survive on, obviously.

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But I don't understand when people throw a fit

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when something costs money, it just doesn't make sense to me.

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- And maybe that's just because I'm a developer

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and I understand people in that world quite well.

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I don't know if it's partly that,

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or maybe I'm just more able to put myself

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in someone else's position.

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I don't know which one of those two it is, but for me,

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I just know that if I'm looking at a product,

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and we had a big to do over this with a tech expander,

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whenever they up their rates quite a bit.

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And we run into these scenarios where developers

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can develop my companies, either up rates

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or they change the model in such a way

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to where they make more money.

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Well, usually that's because their current model

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doesn't work and it doesn't pan out.

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So if you have somebody that's making a thing

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that you're going to consume,

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if it's gonna be a quality thing, to me,

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it's gotta be something that's paid.

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It can't be something that's completely free,

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at least all the time.

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There has to be a way for them to make

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at least some money, otherwise it's not substantial

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and it doesn't work and no one will continue to do it.

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- Right, and what people have to understand

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is the value of what you're getting.

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And if there's no synergy there, then that's okay.

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Like that's what people don't understand,

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is they think that whatever you make, it's gotta fit everybody.

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That's not really the case.

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I had this conversation with my wife

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as a wedding photographer, and she used to charge

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like a thousand dollars for a wedding.

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And those people were so demanding

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and they were nitpicking everything

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and they were contacting her every five minutes

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and saying, when's our album gonna be done?

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And once she raised her prices, she got clients

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who are like, oh, you did such a great job,

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we know you're busy, take your time on the album, no rush.

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Like they understand the value of what they are getting.

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And that's the difference between

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like a professional photographer,

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'cause she's actually part of the professional

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photographer's association.

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And most people don't understand,

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like I've got a digital camera,

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I'm a professional photographer, no, you're not.

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There's a lot of techniques and knowledge

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that you do not understand.

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So you get what you pay for.

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And that's the thing, like with the email course,

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and I guess this can kind of lead into my follow up item here,

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which is continuing with what is the why behind

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all the things, like this course is kind of cemented to me

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that I don't wanna try to be all things to all people.

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There's gotta be authenticity in what you're doing

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and you can't try to please other people in emails.

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Like one of the ways that manifests itself

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because email is ultimately to do this

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that other people can write on.

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It's how they think that you should spend your time.

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And if you are gonna try and please people all the time,

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you're gonna agree to do all of these things via email

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that you don't really want to be doing.

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And what I've discovered with the email course

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is not that I don't care about the people

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who don't wanna invest, okay?

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But they're not at that point yet and that's fine,

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but the people who are really going to value what we have

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are the people who are willing to invest heavily in it.

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And those are the people who are gonna get the results.

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And like we talked about last time,

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it's getting those people, those results,

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that really gets me going.

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So why would I spend so much effort, so much time

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doing this thing that isn't sustainable

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that I may think is valuable,

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but other people are not saying that it's valuable

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and I'm trying to please them no matter what I do,

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they're not gonna think it's valuable.

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Right.

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There's gotta be an alignment there.

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And when you find that alignment,

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when you find that sweet spot,

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that's when you really can know that,

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yes, this is a thing that I'm doing.

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So the process continues in my own life,

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every single thing falling under the microscope.

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And I don't think that this is ever gonna be quote unquote done.

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But I do think that a couple of books ago

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when I started doing this and we started talking about

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start with why that kind of started me down a journey,

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which is leading me to constant refinement

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and ultimately compound progress,

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I guess is the best way to put it,

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where I'm cutting out the things that aren't supposed to be

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there, the things that aren't in alignment,

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and not even like the good things that are slightly off,

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but the things that are really hitting the mark,

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those are the ones that I am doubling down on,

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that I am really investing in,

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and I don't really have a definition of done for this,

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but there is progress being made here,

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I guess is the short version.

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- Okay, all right, I'll trust you on that.

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'Cause this is what we do to each other,

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we sit here and try to figure out,

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okay, so how do I hold you accountable to that?

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I don't know how to do that with this one,

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but I will continue to put,

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what is why behind all the things on--

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- Actually, if you really wanna hold me accountable to this,

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just ask my wife, 'cause she'll tell you.

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She'll tell you if I'm doing things that I really shouldn't

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be doing, because usually when I'm doing things

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that I shouldn't be doing, I get frustrated,

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and then she sees it.

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- Of course, I tell this to people all the time,

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I can't be upset, I can't be stressed,

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I can't be sleep deprived or anxious

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without my wife knowing immediately.

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It's impossible for me to keep that from her,

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it's just not a thing I can do.

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- She's gonna window into your soul.

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- Yeah, maybe I should never be a poker player most likely,

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but just the way it is.

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So I had a regression on my scheduling deal

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for Deep Work Sessions.

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- Oh.

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- I had gone into the digital side of things

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with scheduling those sessions,

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and it failed, it doesn't work.

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(laughs)

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I spent, I think, three days I had these sessions scheduled,

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I had them in place, and then I completely missed them.

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And you would think with the alarms

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and everything going off, I wouldn't,

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but I had been keeping the rest of my day on paper,

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and that didn't, it didn't meld well.

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So because I had them in two different places,

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it didn't work out.

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So now I'm back to 100% paper again, Mike,

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which I need to be okay with.

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I just need to stop with the computer

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and just be okay with paper.

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- Yep, I agree, and that's okay.

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(laughs)

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I don't think I could do it, but that's okay.

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You just need to figure out

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what is really going to work for you.

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Sounds like paper is a thing plus,

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if you use paper, you get to use your brand new fountain pen more.

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- I know, I know, and that's, see, I think part of,

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this might be why, because I now use the new pen

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whenever I'm writing out my daily schedule,

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so that means that it's kind of the new and shiny thing,

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so I like using it and it makes it easier

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for me to stick to my daily schedule,

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and it makes it better for me to do my journaling at night.

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So it seems natural to me that I just want,

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I want to go use the pen and paper

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instead of putting it on my digital calendar.

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But I like, see, this is the dissonance of my mind.

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I love writing with pen and paper,

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but I love writing on the computer.

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And I like doing things on the computer,

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but I like doing them on pen and paper as well.

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So I'm in this constant mental fight between the two

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and trying to create a hybrid system

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that works between the two.

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Good luck getting me off of OmniFocus.

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That one is really well-submitted,

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but when it comes to journaling and creating a daily list,

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I still maintain what I call a dashboard in OmniFocus,

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it has my daily list.

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I still maintain that, but I'm kind of reviewing it

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and then putting it on paper

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is what the way it ends up working out.

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But anyway, long story short,

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I'm creating kind of this hybrid system

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because I can't seem to pick one or the other.

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And when I want one to work,

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it seems like I end up on the other.

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(laughs)

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Complicated, I know.

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- Do you see the bullet journal method

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when you transfer stuff over?

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- I don't, I've seen, I don't remember where I saw this.

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Someone mentioned that they were using bullet journal

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alongside OmniFocus,

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and to me that makes zero sense.

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- I don't understand that.

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To me those seem like they're doing the same thing.

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That sounds counterintuitive to me, but.

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- Well, I think you could use OmniFocus

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for all the planning stuff.

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And then when you're writing out your list for the day,

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you could write it in the bullet journal format

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and then just gonna check things off as you go.

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- That would make sense.

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- But I'm not really familiar

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with the bullet journal format.

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Like I've seen the website for it,

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I've not used it myself.

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So I can't tell you how effective that is.

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- Well, we'll talk about some of this later I think,

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but I do some of the paper stuff.

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Like we'll talk about the rule of three later,

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but that particular piece of this book

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that we just went through,

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I've been incorporating that into,

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like I write out my daily list

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and then I incorporate that rule of three

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for the day in there.

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But that those tend to be summaries

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of what's on my technical task list.

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It's weird, Mike.

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(laughs)

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- I've had a number of people ask me to explain this

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and I always struggle with it,

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but the way it generally works out,

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okay, I'm gonna do my best here.

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The way it generally works out is I have my list

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of the hours in the day from five in the morning

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till 10 at night.

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And I spell out what I'm gonna be doing

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at each point in the day.

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That's not anything new from what we've talked about

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in the past.

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Then we've adapted this rule of three

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from the book that we're getting ready to talk about.

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I've adapted that to spell out,

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here are the three big things I wanna accomplish today.

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Then I usually draw a line underneath that.

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And then if there's any extra things

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that would be kinda nice to get,

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I'll put those underneath there.

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And then I'm just gonna work through my day

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and I check them off.

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But those three big things are the ones

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that I shoot for first.

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And that's what I use to plan out the rest of the day.

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And usually what those are, like,

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take, I've got a website I'm in the middle of right now.

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And I've got a lot of, like,

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put together the front page of the site.

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Like that'll be an end list in that top three.

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But then within that, I'll have like 10 or 12 different

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little tasks that I'm using OmniFocus

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to help me work through.

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Does that make sense?

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So I've got the bigger one

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and then I've got the littler, littler,

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the smaller broken out bits within OmniFocus.

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And that's where I maintain those.

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Gotcha.

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Okay, I'm through that.

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Okay, so now that I've started in on the book,

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you should tell us what we read and introduce it.

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Yeah, you did tease it enough.

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I know, right?

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All right, so the book that we read this time

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is The Productivity Project by Chris Bailey.

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And this is one that I picked.

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And honestly, I picked this one.

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Well, first of all, I've heard a lot of really good things

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about it.

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Chris has been on the Productivity Show,

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the Asian Efficiency Podcast.

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Just seems like a really interesting guy.

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And also this was a book that we did in the dojo.

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So I'd kind of double dipped on this one,

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but this book is a little bit different format

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than pretty much anything else that we have read

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because it's broken down into,

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I don't have the physical book in front of me.

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I think it's like 25 shorter chapters.

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Is that correct?

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I'm pulling it up right now.

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I think it was seven parts.

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Yep, but all of the chapters are very short

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and they reference basically a single experiment that he did.

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26.

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26, I was pretty close.

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And there's an afterward where he does

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like a one year later thing.

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Yep, yeah.

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And each of the chapters are very short.

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They focus on one specific experiment that he did.

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And they have the amount of time that it's gonna take

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to read the chapter at the front of every chapter.

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I loved it.

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Yeah, I saw you put that on the outline here.

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So I figured that you really liked that.

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Was it for you?

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Was that accurate?

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No, it took me a lot less time to do that,

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but I also didn't do it the way that he,

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I think intended people to go through the book,

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which honestly there's no way you could get through it

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in a two week period if you did it that way.

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What's what author's doing that?

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I see that a lot anymore.

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So many action items.

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I know.

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But like the one I'm looking at right now,

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it's like 16 minutes, 54 seconds

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for the estimated reading time.

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And for me, I know that that usually meant

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I could get through it in roughly 10 minutes.

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But that doesn't include,

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that doesn't include like the stuff at the end though,

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does it?

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I'm not sure.

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I did not go through all of the exercises

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because a lot of the exercises honestly that he puts

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as the action items at the end of the chapters.

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I have done in some shape or form

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over the last several years.

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But this book is kind of written towards somebody

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who in my opinion is not that familiar

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or not that entrenched in productivity

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whereas I work full time for Asian efficiency

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and I'm around this stuff all day every day.

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So like a lot of this stuff I'm familiar with

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but for somebody who is just getting going

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with this sort of thing,

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this book could be really, really valuable

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'cause if it's the first time that you've done

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some of these exercises,

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I'm sure that some of them will blow your mind.

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Some of them are really gonna work for you

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and you're gonna see some substantial results.

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They're probably not all going to work for you

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but that's okay.

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I mean, that's kind of the point.

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He talks about his experiences with all of these

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and he shares a lot of statistics

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and a lot of studies and things like that

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but really it's focused on his experience.

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Like I did this and this is what I noticed.

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So he talks about like just one random example.

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He tried working 20 hours a week

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and he tried working 90 hours a week.

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You know and he determined

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that there really wasn't that much difference

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in terms of what he could actually get done.

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But so he just kind of shares his findings

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from implementing this stuff himself.

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And your mileage is probably gonna vary a little bit

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'cause everybody's a little bit different

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but there's definitely some solid principles in here

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that you can grab onto.

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And right away at the beginning,

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one of the things I really liked is that

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he talks about how productivity is not about doing more things.

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It's about doing the right things.

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I think the way that he puts it is that

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not all tasks are created equal.

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And I really like that.

00:18:18

And we're kind of rethinking some things

00:18:21

with Asian efficiency.

00:18:22

The tagline for the podcast is do more and be better.

00:18:24

And when we did that, when we created that tagline,

00:18:28

we really meant that you could do more things

00:18:30

and take more action, become better,

00:18:32

take more action on your goals.

00:18:34

But with the whole culture around productivity

00:18:38

and time management and essentialism and deep work

00:18:41

and all of that, they've really highlighted

00:18:43

and articulated a specific pain point there

00:18:46

where it's almost a fad right now to say like,

00:18:49

"No, you need to do less."

00:18:51

And that's kind of, that's in the spirit

00:18:53

of what we have been saying and teaching

00:18:55

but it doesn't come across that way, I guess.

00:18:58

Like productivity is not just squeezing in one more thing.

00:19:01

Productivity is consciously choosing the things

00:19:04

that you say no to so that you have the margin

00:19:08

to say yes to the things that are really important.

00:19:13

- He says that productivity is about what you accomplish,

00:19:16

not what you get done.

00:19:18

- Yes.

00:19:18

- If you can see the difference in those two terms

00:19:20

because I see this a lot and he talks about this

00:19:24

quite a bit, we could sit and do email all day long.

00:19:27

For me, I have a number of forums that I participate in

00:19:30

and I get enough email and I get enough phone calls,

00:19:34

I get enough of that stuff that I could literally

00:19:37

spend my whole day on it.

00:19:39

And I'd get absolutely nowhere.

00:19:41

I would technically accomplish nothing.

00:19:44

I would simply be busy the whole day.

00:19:46

We've talked about this before, the busy verses.

00:19:49

Actually accomplishing real stuff, the difference there.

00:19:52

And he does redefine productivity in that sense.

00:19:56

To me, it was fascinating that he took a year

00:19:59

to just experiment.

00:20:01

To me, that's really cool.

00:20:02

And that's why, I didn't catch if you mentioned it or not

00:20:06

but that was the premise of this book

00:20:07

is he went through this whole year of being productive

00:20:12

and doing these experiments on himself

00:20:15

after he got out of college.

00:20:17

Even though he had two job offers,

00:20:19

he turned down too good, too well paying job offers.

00:20:22

He turned them down so that he could spend

00:20:24

a year experimenting on himself, which is kind of fun.

00:20:28

But he does this and then learns through that process

00:20:32

that productivity isn't about being efficient,

00:20:35

even though he uses that word a couple times

00:20:37

despite his own hatred for the word.

00:20:40

It's not necessarily about just being efficient.

00:20:42

It's about being efficient on the right thing.

00:20:45

And like you're saying, we've talked about this in the past

00:20:48

with like essentialism and some of these other books,

00:20:51

even the war of art.

00:20:53

Some of those we've talked about this concept

00:20:56

of making sure you're focused on the right thing.

00:20:58

And I think with what he talks about,

00:21:02

with a lot of these experiments that he goes through,

00:21:04

and we'll talk about a few of them here,

00:21:05

but he goes through all of these to show,

00:21:09

here's how you can go through the process

00:21:11

of learning about yourself

00:21:13

and just explaining the awareness and being intentional.

00:21:17

I think if you've summarized all of the results

00:21:20

that he gets off of this,

00:21:22

he spells it out a little bit too of being intentional

00:21:25

and being deliberate with what you're doing.

00:21:27

And so many of the experiments and the tactics

00:21:30

and the little tips and tricks, they're designed around

00:21:33

being deliberate with what you're doing

00:21:35

and making a specific choice

00:21:37

and not just letting things haphazardly happen.

00:21:39

- Yes, I'm going to get on a soapbox for a moment here

00:21:44

because we're talking about how productivity

00:21:47

is doing the right things.

00:21:48

And he talks-- - Set him off.

00:21:50

- Sorry folks.

00:21:51

- This is kind of out of order,

00:21:53

but he does talk in the book about email.

00:21:56

And email is something that is near and dear to my heart

00:22:00

and very timely as we're recording this two days ago

00:22:05

did two, two hour webinars on email

00:22:09

and the real cost of email and things like that.

00:22:12

But email is, in my opinion,

00:22:15

the number one way to get derailed

00:22:18

and end up doing things that really aren't the tasks

00:22:24

that you should be doing.

00:22:26

And man, it just pains me to see

00:22:29

how big of a problem this is for people.

00:22:32

Not that I've mastered it.

00:22:33

I mean, I'm just as susceptible to it as anybody else.

00:22:37

So though recognizing what's going on helps a lot

00:22:41

and then creating the constructs

00:22:42

where if you can manage expectations

00:22:46

where everybody who you deal with the email knows

00:22:49

that I only check email once a day.

00:22:51

So if I don't get back to you in 24 hours,

00:22:55

that's to be expected.

00:22:56

That comes with the territory when you email me.

00:22:59

But so many people think that they have to respond right away.

00:23:02

And so many people think that when they respond,

00:23:05

the answer has to be a yes

00:23:07

because they don't want to let people down.

00:23:09

They want to make people happy.

00:23:14

They also, it makes them feel good

00:23:16

when they say yes to things.

00:23:18

And then also, a lot of times people think it's easier

00:23:23

for them to just say yes to something

00:23:25

than even if they know that they aren't supposed

00:23:28

to be the person who should be doing this.

00:23:30

They think it's easier if they just say yes

00:23:31

and they deal with it rather than reroute it

00:23:34

and delegate it to the person

00:23:36

that should really be doing the task.

00:23:39

- And so with the course and all the interviews

00:23:42

and stuff you did, that was a thing

00:23:44

where people felt like when you got an email,

00:23:46

you had to say yes, 'cause I feel like it's the opposite.

00:23:48

At least for me, maybe I'm weird.

00:23:50

To me, it's easier to say no in an email

00:23:51

than it is in person, but--

00:23:53

- Well, it is, but how many more requests

00:23:55

you get via email versus in person every day,

00:23:59

especially for someone like you and myself,

00:24:03

like we don't work in an office environment,

00:24:06

so all of the requests come via email.

00:24:09

And so we get in a habit of saying no,

00:24:13

but when somebody emails you and you know you're gonna see

00:24:15

them at the board meeting in a couple hours

00:24:17

and you don't wanna disappoint them,

00:24:20

the tendency is gonna be to say yes.

00:24:22

And a lot of times with that dynamic

00:24:25

and organizational dynamic,

00:24:26

the people who are making the request,

00:24:28

they may know that you aren't the right person

00:24:31

for this job, but if you are a good worker

00:24:34

and if you will follow through with things,

00:24:36

you will often, at least my experience,

00:24:37

you will often get asked to do things

00:24:39

because they know that you'll take care of it

00:24:41

and they don't have to worry about it anymore.

00:24:44

And so it's really, really easy when you're looking

00:24:47

at it via email to commit to all these things.

00:24:51

And then pretty soon at the end of the day,

00:24:53

you look at your to-do list and it's a million items long

00:24:56

and none of them are the things that you would consider

00:24:59

really important.

00:25:01

Comes back to adhesion efficiency,

00:25:03

we teach that Eisenhower matrix all the time

00:25:06

where you have the things in the upper left corner

00:25:08

that are urgent and important,

00:25:10

things in the upper right that are important

00:25:12

but are not urgent, things in the lower left

00:25:14

that are urgent but not important

00:25:15

and then things in the lower right

00:25:17

which are neither important nor urgent.

00:25:19

And the default, if you live your life out of your inbox,

00:25:23

is to live off of the left side of that quadrant

00:25:25

dealing with everything that is urgent.

00:25:27

Yeah, you'll get some important things done

00:25:29

but a lot of email is gonna fall into that urgent

00:25:32

but not important box.

00:25:34

And when it comes through, it may even look important

00:25:37

because it's somebody else's priorities.

00:25:41

So they're not gonna look,

00:25:42

they're not gonna hold the same value set

00:25:46

when they're looking at how you should spend your time

00:25:48

when they make those requests.

00:25:49

So you really have to know what is important to you

00:25:53

and you really have to stick to your guns

00:25:54

and you really do have to say no.

00:25:56

Chris Bailey says in the book,

00:25:57

the most productive word in your vocabulary is no.

00:26:02

And I just think that way, way, way too often

00:26:06

people say yes because they don't really realize

00:26:10

how big the things are that they're saying yes to

00:26:13

and then those things add up and they compound

00:26:16

and then pretty soon you're completely overwhelmed

00:26:18

and you've got 10,000 unread messages in your inbox

00:26:21

and you're not getting home till eight o'clock at night

00:26:24

and even though you're meant to go to the gym

00:26:26

every single day during the week,

00:26:28

you've only been there twice.

00:26:29

You know, it's a pattern.

00:26:31

- And I can completely understand it

00:26:34

'cause I am a recovering people pleaser.

00:26:37

It's something that I think a lot of people struggle with.

00:26:41

It's difficult to say no to people

00:26:44

when you want to, you know, I'm a problem solver.

00:26:47

I like to do things that people don't really think

00:26:51

are possible.

00:26:52

So I'm doing that, for example,

00:26:53

with this current website I'm building

00:26:54

because there's, for example, I guess on top of that

00:26:59

is a lot of us use Libson for podcasting

00:27:02

and in this case, my client has a podcast

00:27:04

that they're using, but they've been publishing the feed

00:27:07

in Libson and not actually running it through,

00:27:10

in this case, a WordPress site.

00:27:11

Well, they want to pull that feed into the WordPress site

00:27:15

without having to double post if you can see

00:27:18

the rationale there.

00:27:19

It's like, well, that's fine.

00:27:20

I just wrote a parser that pulls the feed in

00:27:23

and then just grabs the top item from that feed

00:27:26

and then just displays all the information,

00:27:28

uses an HTML5 audio player, boom, you're done.

00:27:31

So if you publish something new to Libson,

00:27:32

boom, it automatically shows up on your website.

00:27:35

So it's like, okay, that's awesome.

00:27:37

I did that.

00:27:38

In this case, my client had no idea

00:27:40

that was even an option.

00:27:41

It wasn't even something to discuss

00:27:44

because it was so far beyond their thinking

00:27:47

that it didn't even seem like it was something

00:27:49

that was doable.

00:27:50

So I love doing that.

00:27:51

I love, let's work some magic here

00:27:54

and do something they don't even think is possible.

00:27:56

I love to do that, but at the same time,

00:28:00

saying no to requests and learning how to decline,

00:28:05

for me has been one, an extremely painful process

00:28:09

and two has been a very long journey

00:28:12

because it wasn't until, well, it was probably

00:28:15

at least four years ago that I started to realize

00:28:19

I'm just saying yes to everything

00:28:21

and this is overloading me and I can't do this anymore

00:28:25

and I've got to find ways to decline things

00:28:27

and start focusing in.

00:28:29

And to this day, whenever I get an email or request saying

00:28:32

something's wrong with a script I wrote

00:28:34

or there's a bug and something,

00:28:35

my first gut reaction is, oh, let me jump in

00:28:38

and fix it, like right now, that's what I wanna do.

00:28:41

But I've had to take your email example here.

00:28:44

I was like, I've had to focus on doing that

00:28:47

at a very specific time or just a minimal times

00:28:50

and Chris talks about this in his book.

00:28:52

It's focusing when you're doing these things

00:28:54

so that you're not just constantly doing it.

00:28:56

What was it, like 50 times a day

00:28:58

is what the average worker checks email in a day.

00:29:01

- Yeah, it's what?

00:29:03

(laughs)

00:29:04

- Pretty crazy.

00:29:05

We did some research for the presentations that we did

00:29:09

and in the financial services industry,

00:29:12

the interruptions that are associated with email

00:29:15

account for you losing about 3.9 total workdays a week.

00:29:20

- Wow.

00:29:21

- Just dealing with email.

00:29:22

And one of the things that I put on here,

00:29:25

it's a little bit further down,

00:29:26

but it really ties back to email

00:29:28

is how much is an hour of your time worth?

00:29:31

Because the average US worker,

00:29:33

according to the Huffington Post,

00:29:34

spends 6.3 hours per day dealing with email.

00:29:39

So if you make even $25 an hour,

00:29:42

that's $150 worth of your time.

00:29:46

And people don't realize the real cost with that.

00:29:51

And there's additional costs too with the wellness

00:29:54

because there's a lot of research that shows that

00:29:58

handling email creates more stress.

00:30:00

It basically decreases your life expectancy.

00:30:02

It makes you dumber, lowers your IQ.

00:30:04

It does all of this stuff.

00:30:05

So there's all these other effects too,

00:30:06

but just leave that out of the equation for now.

00:30:09

It's like just talk about the money value.

00:30:11

If I could give you somebody who could handle

00:30:14

all of your email for $150 a day, would you do it?

00:30:19

Most people would say $150 a day just to handle my email.

00:30:23

That's ridiculous, okay?

00:30:25

But they don't realize that they are spending

00:30:27

more than $150 worth of their time

00:30:30

that they will never get back,

00:30:31

time that they could be using and investing

00:30:34

in something else that would provide much more benefit,

00:30:38

and they could take much more action on their goals,

00:30:41

not to mention the improved wellness and all of that.

00:30:45

But that's really the decision that needs to be made there

00:30:48

when you're talking about things like email,

00:30:52

is what is this really costing me?

00:30:55

And understanding the true cost of email

00:30:58

then allows you to make more educated

00:31:01

and accurate decisions about what systems

00:31:06

and what actions, sometimes drastic actions,

00:31:09

like hiring a virtual assistant for example,

00:31:11

are you going to take in order to alleviate these problems?

00:31:15

And I think that's kind of what Chris was getting at

00:31:17

with this whole experiment,

00:31:18

kind of speaking for him I guess,

00:31:21

but he was trying to identify in my opinion,

00:31:24

the pattern that I saw is he wants to identify

00:31:26

the best use of his time.

00:31:29

When does he work best?

00:31:31

I know that's one of the things he wrote down,

00:31:32

the biological prime times.

00:31:33

How does he work best?

00:31:35

What does he need to eat and drink in order to work

00:31:38

more efficiently when he does work?

00:31:41

You know, people took the time to figure that stuff out,

00:31:45

then they wouldn't feel completely drained

00:31:48

at the end of the day,

00:31:49

it could feel like they hadn't gotten anything done

00:31:52

because in reality they haven't,

00:31:53

they've been dealing with email all day.

00:31:55

You'd be able to focus a lot easier

00:31:57

if you just took a little bit of time to step back

00:32:00

and get like a big picture,

00:32:02

get slightly outside and above the situation,

00:32:05

I think is how Sam Carpenter would put it

00:32:07

and work the system,

00:32:08

'cause when you can get outside of the day-to-day minutiae

00:32:12

of what's going on,

00:32:13

you can see a lot more clearly where things are broken

00:32:16

and then you can take correct actions and fix them.

00:32:19

- And so much of it is just knowing when to say yes and no.

00:32:23

And that's what we were talking about just a second,

00:32:25

I was saying no,

00:32:26

but when you have to say yes to something,

00:32:30

we get a lot of email,

00:32:31

we have to say yes to it because it's our contact

00:32:35

with a lot of the people we work with.

00:32:37

So it's not like I can just say,

00:32:38

nope, not gonna do email,

00:32:39

like it just doesn't work in our world.

00:32:42

So if I have to say yes to it

00:32:44

and it's a low return task,

00:32:46

but it still has to get done,

00:32:48

that's where you can start to say yes to say a VA

00:32:52

or someone else to do that for you

00:32:54

or at least vet it enough to where it's limited on you.

00:32:57

And kind of going back to the yes/no thing

00:33:00

with your, and you brought up the biological primetimes,

00:33:03

that's something that I've been doing for a while now,

00:33:06

probably a good year of just not saying yes

00:33:10

to anything in the morning.

00:33:12

I said that kind of weird.

00:33:13

I always say no to things when it's in the morning.

00:33:15

And that's primarily because I know that,

00:33:19

I get up at five and even though Chris

00:33:23

is not an early person at all,

00:33:24

he was very much against that,

00:33:26

but I'm an early person.

00:33:27

So I get up at five and I know that between

00:33:30

five AM and noon,

00:33:32

I'm usually at pretty good energy levels.

00:33:34

I'm pretty good that whole period.

00:33:37

Early afternoon, not really that great.

00:33:39

Late afternoon, I start to come back a little bit,

00:33:41

which is why we typically record it about this time,

00:33:43

I think, 'cause I think yours tends to work out about the same.

00:33:46

And it dips off again in the evening and then it's bedtime.

00:33:50

So for me, those biological primetimes,

00:33:53

which Chris, I don't know if he coined that term

00:33:57

or if he got it from someone else,

00:33:58

but essentially it's the point in the day

00:34:00

when your energy levels are the highest,

00:34:02

just naturally based on your rhythms for the day.

00:34:05

And that's something that I know

00:34:09

I've been aware of for quite some time.

00:34:10

We typically hear people say,

00:34:12

when's the best time in your day?

00:34:14

Well, if you know when that best time of your day is

00:34:17

and your highest focus and your highest energy levels are,

00:34:22

if you can pick those out,

00:34:23

that's when you wanna put your highest return task.

00:34:27

Like for me, that would be a lot of writing,

00:34:30

the recording, writing code.

00:34:33

Those are easily my most valuable tasks.

00:34:36

Doing email, getting me to do that at 9.30 in the morning,

00:34:39

good luck. (laughs)

00:34:41

Like every once in a while I do

00:34:42

because I'm waiting on something

00:34:44

and it's important to what I'm doing at that moment,

00:34:46

but very rarely while I ever step into that.

00:34:49

And it's a thing that when you become aware of it

00:34:53

and you know when to say yes and no to it,

00:34:55

then that's where you can really maximize your time

00:34:58

and you can step into what we talk about with essentialism.

00:35:01

You can develop the purpose behind the things

00:35:04

that you're doing, but that's where those times in the day

00:35:07

are points when you really need to say,

00:35:10

I'm gonna defend this as much as I possibly can

00:35:13

because this is a very valuable time in the day for me.

00:35:16

- Yes, exactly, not just email,

00:35:19

but also meetings, I would say.

00:35:21

That was one of the things that I wrote down

00:35:24

as one of my action items, I believe.

00:35:26

I don't know if I put it on here,

00:35:27

but I put it in my notes to Chris mentions the idea

00:35:32

of limiting the amount of time

00:35:34

that you spend each week in meetings.

00:35:36

And that's not just at work meetings.

00:35:40

That could be limiting the number of slots

00:35:44

that you have available to meet somebody for coffee

00:35:46

or the number of times that you're gonna meet somebody

00:35:48

for lunch.

00:35:50

And I tend to say yes to those things

00:35:53

because I like to maintain those relationships

00:35:55

with people that I'm close to.

00:35:57

But one of the things that I wanna do,

00:36:00

and I've started doing this already with,

00:36:03

I haven't done it using an online scheduler,

00:36:06

but I've basically identified on my calendar,

00:36:09

these are the times where I am available

00:36:12

for meeting for coffee.

00:36:14

And these are the times that I am available

00:36:15

for meeting for lunch.

00:36:16

So for example, my meeting for coffee day

00:36:20

might be Friday mornings.

00:36:22

And so if somebody says, hey, wanna meet for coffee?

00:36:24

I can send them a scheduler link and say,

00:36:26

yeah sure, just book a time.

00:36:28

And they're gonna see only the times that I have available.

00:36:31

I've set aside where I can be interrupted

00:36:34

or my day to day can be interrupted

00:36:37

and they can book a meeting with me that way.

00:36:40

And okay, here's my question for you

00:36:42

'cause you use one of these things and I don't.

00:36:45

Do those feel, to the people you send them to,

00:36:47

are they impersonal?

00:36:49

Like, do they feel like that's a way of you shirking

00:36:54

and not being relational to them?

00:36:57

Do people ever get that feeling?

00:36:58

'Cause that's part of my angst with using something,

00:37:01

like something like that is okay.

00:37:03

The human factor is taken out of it

00:37:05

and it feels cold to the other person.

00:37:08

- That's a good point.

00:37:09

I guess most of the people that I,

00:37:13

that would request my time,

00:37:17

know what I do for a living.

00:37:21

And so they know that that kind of comes

00:37:23

with the territory, like Mike's gonna do some,

00:37:26

he's gonna have some crazy systems

00:37:28

to do things more efficiently.

00:37:29

So I don't know, I haven't noticed any negative pushback

00:37:36

on it, but I also, to a certain degree,

00:37:40

kind of haven't cared because it's like,

00:37:44

this is how it's gotta be if you wanna carve out the time.

00:37:48

- That's fair.

00:37:49

- I wanna meet with you, but this is the way it's gotta happen

00:37:52

if it's gonna work.

00:37:54

And yeah, I haven't noticed it, but I could see,

00:37:58

for the average Joe, no pun intended.

00:38:02

- Never heard it before.

00:38:06

- That could come across as impersonal,

00:38:09

so you do have to frame it correctly.

00:38:11

I think when Zach has been using that with the podcast,

00:38:15

he always in an email format, for example,

00:38:18

as part of the template that he uses,

00:38:19

he'll say, "I hope you're okay using my scheduler.

00:38:23

This is just way more efficient,

00:38:25

and it also makes sure that I don't make a mistake

00:38:27

and double book."

00:38:28

So I think if you frame it like that,

00:38:30

that people aren't gonna really have an issue with it.

00:38:33

- See that I could see, and that I might be able to get behind,

00:38:36

but I run into a lot of people that,

00:38:39

I've either never met their new potential new clients,

00:38:43

or there's someone that wants to just talk

00:38:45

about a potential business deal.

00:38:47

They're people I've never seen face to face,

00:38:49

and we're going to, or we're gonna jump on the phone.

00:38:52

They don't know, and part of this is 'cause I do

00:38:54

the business building thing.

00:38:56

When I'm meeting with people in that,

00:38:58

they actually don't know that I work in productivity at all.

00:39:01

So if I come in guns ablazing

00:39:05

with these highly efficient productivity tools,

00:39:07

what on earth is this?

00:39:09

Where'd this guy come from?

00:39:10

- I could get that.

00:39:11

I remember listening to an episode of Mac Power users

00:39:14

before David Sparks went independent,

00:39:17

and he was talking about how he uses doodle.com

00:39:22

to schedule meetings,

00:39:25

and he was talking to a judge and another lawyer,

00:39:29

and they were trying to nail down a time,

00:39:30

and he just, he didn't even think about it.

00:39:32

He just said, "Well, I'll send you a doodle."

00:39:34

And they were both like, "What?"

00:39:35

(laughs)

00:39:37

So yeah, I could see that.

00:39:40

- See, I don't, but I don't know if it's a good or bad thing.

00:39:43

That's my, I guess my qualms with it is,

00:39:46

okay, this could be helpful.

00:39:48

This could cut back, you know,

00:39:50

kind of bringing this background to the book.

00:39:51

This could cut back on some of the tasks

00:39:53

that are low return, or, you know, they need done,

00:39:56

but it's not a high value task.

00:39:59

You know, having those types of things

00:40:02

that just need done and having a tool like that,

00:40:05

I can see the value there.

00:40:07

I'm just afraid there's a little bit of a major downside

00:40:11

that I'm unaware of or gonna create.

00:40:15

Anyway, I don't know that there's necessarily

00:40:17

a major downside because at least in my situation,

00:40:21

my schedule is pretty busy.

00:40:23

So if I don't use something like this,

00:40:26

the chances are that this meeting that we want to have happen

00:40:30

is not going to happen.

00:40:31

And I've seen that scenario take place

00:40:34

where we've been talking about getting together for months,

00:40:36

but it never happens, okay?

00:40:38

So using a scheduler link,

00:40:42

there is a much greater chance that meeting actually does

00:40:46

happen in that face-to-face meeting.

00:40:48

That's where the value is added

00:40:50

to the relationship anyways.

00:40:51

So in my opinion, the positive outcome of using this

00:40:56

far outweighs any potential negative outcome,

00:40:58

but I'm also not dealing with potential clients, so.

00:41:03

Yeah, I may try one, just 'cause.

00:41:07

Just to see how it works out.

00:41:10

- Well, if you do use one, the doodle,

00:41:12

I think it's doodle.com, I should have looked it up.

00:41:15

It might be doodle.me, but they also have an update

00:41:17

to their iOS app where you can actually use it

00:41:20

inside the Messages app.

00:41:22

So imagine a scenario, like you've had a group text

00:41:25

and everybody's trying to decide on the date and time

00:41:28

for the next whatever meeting, you could create a poll

00:41:32

in doodle and send it out to everybody

00:41:34

and then they can within the Messages app,

00:41:36

just vote for the times that they are available

00:41:38

or not available, and then you've taken out

00:41:42

all of the back and forth.

00:41:43

- Huh, it's doodle.com, I looked it up.

00:41:48

- Okay.

00:41:49

- Hmm, okay.

00:41:51

I might be buying into this mic,

00:41:56

but I'm gonna stay leery for now.

00:42:00

- Skeptical Joe is skeptical.

00:42:03

- Yeah, I'll put this to, I've got a list of tasks.

00:42:07

And this, man, we're good at jumping back and forth.

00:42:09

So Chris Bailey talks about the importance

00:42:12

of a maintenance day, but I use,

00:42:15

so just to define that maintenance day,

00:42:17

he batches all of his, I guess, household,

00:42:22

keep it up to neutral, if you will, tasks.

00:42:27

So, you know, empty the dishwasher.

00:42:30

I think he had like trim beard and shave

00:42:32

or something once a week,

00:42:34

but he's got Sunday morning is his time

00:42:36

to go through and do a lot of these

00:42:37

maintenance tasks.

00:42:40

And I understand the idea here.

00:42:44

I've been using what I call a neutralize perspective

00:42:48

and Omni Focus that does something similar to this.

00:42:51

It has some things like take out the trash

00:42:53

and water the plants, refill business cards.

00:42:55

Like I have that type of thing in that perspective.

00:42:59

I'm trying to remember where I got the name.

00:43:00

It might have been Kuroshini that I got the name of that from.

00:43:03

But it's just a, I've got, it's a project in Omni Focus

00:43:07

that maintains all those.

00:43:08

And if I get something that's a one off, like check out Doodle,

00:43:12

like I'll take something like that and throw it in there

00:43:15

just temporarily, just so I can like, okay,

00:43:17

these are just some things I need to research

00:43:19

just to kind of bring myself up to neutral.

00:43:21

And I know Asian efficiency talks about this

00:43:24

clear to neutral concept.

00:43:26

And that's a lot of what this is,

00:43:27

is just bringing myself up to where I'm not behind.

00:43:31

And I think Chris has some good points

00:43:33

and batch all this together and do it all at once.

00:43:37

I know for me, I don't necessarily like to batch

00:43:41

all in one day, but I work through my daily task list.

00:43:46

And if and when I get through that whole list,

00:43:48

then I move on to this neutralize perspective

00:43:50

and then that clears everything out

00:43:52

and I'm good to go from there.

00:43:53

But I try to get through that at least once every couple days.

00:43:56

Otherwise I have plants that die, Mike,

00:43:57

and that's not a good thing.

00:43:59

- Right, yeah, the watering your plants

00:44:02

would not be a good idea for a maintenance day,

00:44:05

but there's a lot of things that,

00:44:07

I think the maintenance day makes a lot of sense.

00:44:09

And in my experience, there's a lot of things that,

00:44:13

if I just put them on a list and trust that

00:44:17

in the margin of my day, I'm gonna get to those things,

00:44:21

it's not going to happen.

00:44:23

Even if I were to put defer dates or even due dates

00:44:27

on them inside of OmniFocus.

00:44:29

And so this was one of my takeaways is

00:44:32

I wanna actually try this.

00:44:33

I wanna actually implement a maintenance day ritual.

00:44:37

And I don't think it necessarily needs to be every week,

00:44:41

but I wanna take all of the things

00:44:44

that I know I'm supposed to do

00:44:46

and get those scheduled where they all fall

00:44:49

on one of those days because I think that being able

00:44:52

to completely shift from I gotta get this project done

00:44:57

or at least move this project forward

00:44:59

to just having the, being in the mindset that,

00:45:03

okay, we're just gonna make sure that everything is working,

00:45:07

everything is functional.

00:45:09

That makes a lot of sense to me.

00:45:11

Once you're in that mindset, it's a lot easier to think of

00:45:15

the other things that maybe need to be in that,

00:45:19

that are part of that same project,

00:45:22

things that you would be doing in the same mindset.

00:45:24

So one of the things for example would be like

00:45:27

changing the batteries on the smoke detectors.

00:45:30

Like that, in my opinion, would fall into a,

00:45:33

that's a perfect type of task for a maintenance day type ritual,

00:45:37

whether it's every other week or every month or whatever.

00:45:40

And I haven't actually identified all the tasks

00:45:45

that need to fall into this,

00:45:47

but that's one of the things that I have done

00:45:50

for my action items is to do that.

00:45:52

Because in my experience,

00:45:55

I would typically put these things into OmniFocus.

00:45:58

And then if there's like those bi-yearly tasks,

00:46:03

like schedule done as appointment, for example,

00:46:05

and I know a lot of times like that schedule it,

00:46:07

your next visit ahead of time,

00:46:08

but that type of activity where,

00:46:12

if I see that come up as like,

00:46:14

okay, now it's time to do this,

00:46:15

my tendency is to say, oh, I don't need to do that right now.

00:46:19

It just means that I should be doing that soon

00:46:21

and I'll kick the can down the road.

00:46:23

No, defer it till next week or whatever.

00:46:25

And then next week I'll defer it again and again and again.

00:46:27

So I think if I actually had a space on my calendar

00:46:32

where that stuff,

00:46:33

it like that's the place where that stuff's gonna get done,

00:46:36

then there's a much greater chance

00:46:37

that I follow through on that.

00:46:38

I think it was Patrick Roan who,

00:46:41

I think maybe it was on Mike Vardy's podcast,

00:46:45

talks about how everything that you need to get done

00:46:48

happens within the context of time.

00:46:50

And those maintenance type tasks,

00:46:52

those are the things that if I don't create the time

00:46:54

to do them, they never get done.

00:46:56

- Yeah, I can see that.

00:46:58

And I know that for me I have time,

00:47:02

usually towards the end of my day,

00:47:03

like every work day there's about an hour of

00:47:07

what I would call fluff time,

00:47:08

but it's not really fluff 'cause we do,

00:47:11

I do like the shutdown ritual that we picked up from,

00:47:15

I think it was the powerful engagement

00:47:17

where I got that one.

00:47:18

See, now we've got these action items

00:47:19

and now I'm forgetting which books that came from.

00:47:22

And, but I do that shutdown ritual

00:47:25

and part of that entails just going through

00:47:27

and neutralizing some things,

00:47:28

spending some time reading, planning for tomorrow.

00:47:32

I do some of those things during that point,

00:47:34

but I think having that time every day

00:47:37

seems to work out pretty well for me.

00:47:40

I think if I try to do them all at once,

00:47:42

it might be too much.

00:47:44

In one, having kids, it's kind of hard to do that.

00:47:46

I'll say that 'cause I've tried to do something similar to that

00:47:49

and it just doesn't work out well with the girls.

00:47:51

So if it works for you, kudos to you with the little ones,

00:47:54

but I know for me it's a bit of a challenge.

00:47:56

And speaking of maintenance tasks, you're up north,

00:47:59

it's getting to where you gotta turn off

00:48:01

all the water outside so things don't freeze.

00:48:04

- True.

00:48:05

- Don't forget that one.

00:48:06

That's a bad one.

00:48:07

I had that problem the first winter we were in our house.

00:48:10

That did not pipe burst in the basement

00:48:14

and I've since redone our guest room because of that.

00:48:19

- Yeah, I've made that mistake myself,

00:48:23

although it hasn't forced us to replace anything.

00:48:28

Most of the houses that we've been in

00:48:30

haven't had a finished basement.

00:48:32

So not a huge deal, but yes.

00:48:36

That is a great example of a maintenance day task

00:48:41

and that's definitely gonna be going on my list.

00:48:43

(laughs)

00:48:45

One thing that Chris talks about in the book

00:48:49

and he picks up, I think the book is Getting Results

00:48:52

the Agile Way by J.D. Meyer.

00:48:55

This is a very interesting book.

00:48:57

I've not read it, but I've heard a lot of people talk about it

00:49:00

and he pulls some things from that.

00:49:02

But something he brought up is J.D. talks about

00:49:05

what he calls hot spots.

00:49:07

If you translate that over to getting things done,

00:49:10

we'd call it areas of responsibility or areas of life.

00:49:12

I think they would technically be the same thing.

00:49:15

But something that was interesting to me is that

00:49:18

the way I typically have thought about these areas

00:49:20

of responsibility, these areas that I'm in charge of,

00:49:25

I think about taking care of myself.

00:49:27

I'm a husband, I'm a father, I do some work at our church,

00:49:30

I have work life, I've got all these different areas

00:49:33

that I'm responsible for.

00:49:34

But with Getting Results the Agile Way,

00:49:39

he pulls in J.D. Meyer's Hot Spots,

00:49:42

which in this case are Mind, Body, Emotions, Career,

00:49:46

Finances, Relationships and Fun.

00:49:48

And for some reason, when I read that list,

00:49:53

it clicked a lot more than what I've run with in the past.

00:49:56

And this is a bit of a problem because I just got done

00:49:58

doing the whole Omni Focus course,

00:50:00

which is very dependent on my current areas

00:50:02

of responsibility.

00:50:03

And if I change those, I've got like 20 videos

00:50:06

that I have to remake.

00:50:07

So I've got quite a bit of resistance to changing these.

00:50:11

But there's, to me there's a lot of value in seeing

00:50:16

and looking at these hot spots in that way.

00:50:18

And what, for the listeners here,

00:50:20

what Chris gets at, Chris Bailey gets at here is that

00:50:24

if you put together all of your tasks and projects,

00:50:27

according to these hot spots,

00:50:29

and then have a way to look at your projects

00:50:31

within those hot spots, it becomes a way for you

00:50:34

to evaluate each of these areas of your life.

00:50:37

And then make decisions on whether or not you need

00:50:41

to do something about it,

00:50:42

or whether or not you need to make adjustments to it.

00:50:44

Which is, I can say very helpful because I've been doing

00:50:47

that for about two years with my areas of responsibility,

00:50:50

which are basically the same in my opinion.

00:50:53

I've been doing that for a long time.

00:50:54

I would just look and see,

00:50:56

I don't have any projects applied to this area.

00:50:58

I should probably do something about that.

00:51:00

It's very eye-opening to see,

00:51:03

I'm making a commitment to doing this with my finances,

00:51:07

but I have no projects pertaining to my finances.

00:51:11

So it's very eye-opening to look at things that way.

00:51:15

Have you ever done something like this, Mike?

00:51:18

- I've not done anything like that officially,

00:51:21

like within my task manager or anything like that.

00:51:24

I am curious though, do you have a list of all

00:51:29

the different hot spots that you have?

00:51:31

'Cause I think that how you label these is kind of important.

00:51:33

Would you mind if you have them available sharing

00:51:37

like what you've defined as your hot spots

00:51:39

or your areas of responsibility?

00:51:41

- Yes, so pulling it up so I can read it to you.

00:51:46

I have spiritual, then I call it Joe Buleg,

00:51:53

so take care of myself.

00:51:55

Husband, father, friend, son or brother,

00:51:59

'cause that's kind of one role there.

00:52:01

Our church, taking care of the house or the car,

00:52:04

woodworking, which is a hobby that I find very important

00:52:08

to me and then work.

00:52:10

So those are, I think there's nine there, 10, 10 of them.

00:52:14

- Right, and I'm glad that you shared those

00:52:16

'cause I think that the tendency can be for people

00:52:19

to put down all of their commitments as their hot spots,

00:52:23

but that's not necessarily a good indication

00:52:26

of a hot spot in my opinion.

00:52:30

I am at the moment, my wife and I are going through

00:52:32

the focus course by Sean Blunk together.

00:52:35

- Oh yeah.

00:52:35

- And part of that, he takes day by day,

00:52:38

like what are your relational goals?

00:52:42

What are your physical goals?

00:52:44

What are your spiritual goals?

00:52:45

What are your financial goals?

00:52:46

What are your vocational goals?

00:52:47

There's like seven different areas.

00:52:50

And I think that those are the things

00:52:51

that are really important.

00:52:53

And those are the things that you basically articulated.

00:52:55

So if you're gonna implement the hot spots,

00:52:57

I guess my advice is to not just look at it

00:53:02

through the lens of what,

00:53:05

but really going back to the Simon Scenic book,

00:53:08

the why, what are the different areas

00:53:10

that I wanna make sure that I account for,

00:53:13

not what are the specific jobs that I want to get done.

00:53:17

- That makes sense.

00:53:19

And frankly, whenever I look through that list,

00:53:21

you can translate them to those hot spots.

00:53:24

Pretty easy.

00:53:25

I mean, it's pretty easy to see those.

00:53:27

And I do try to make sure that I've got plans

00:53:31

for each of those.

00:53:32

Again, I tend to, I keep in an omni-focus,

00:53:34

and those are my folders in omni-focus.

00:53:37

So I'm directly applying projects within those.

00:53:39

So it's pretty easy for me to just,

00:53:41

let's open up all these folders.

00:53:42

And if there's any folder that's empty, huh,

00:53:46

that's a problem.

00:53:47

So that's how I do it.

00:53:49

And it's very, very easy to see graphically

00:53:53

as I'm looking at the screen to see those.

00:53:57

- Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

00:53:59

Can we go back and talk about procrastination a little bit?

00:54:05

We kind of skipped over this one.

00:54:06

I don't know exactly how to lead into this.

00:54:08

We've been procrastinating,

00:54:09

talking about procrastination.

00:54:11

- I didn't wanna talk about it.

00:54:13

And I've been jumping around, poor Mike,

00:54:16

I've been jumping all over this outline.

00:54:18

It's terrible.

00:54:20

- It's true, that's okay though.

00:54:22

But this was one of the things

00:54:23

that I really liked how he put this.

00:54:26

I think this is something that is really, really easy

00:54:29

for people to grab onto.

00:54:31

And it really provided, for me personally,

00:54:33

but I think that just about anybody

00:54:35

could get a lot of insight

00:54:36

when he talks about the six triggers of procrastination.

00:54:40

Okay, so he talks about procrastination

00:54:42

as a scope of the problem.

00:54:44

He talks about how the average student procrastinates

00:54:46

one third of their waking hours, stuff like that.

00:54:49

But then he has these six triggers of procrastination,

00:54:51

which are really the reasons

00:54:52

why we would procrastinate on something.

00:54:55

So the first one is if something is boring.

00:54:58

The second one is if something is frustrating.

00:55:02

The third one is that if something is difficult,

00:55:05

the fourth is that if it is unstructured or ambiguous,

00:55:09

the fifth is if it is lacking in personal meaning.

00:55:12

And the sixth is that if it is lacking in intrinsic reward.

00:55:16

And basically the more of these triggers

00:55:18

that something has, the more likely you are

00:55:21

to procrastinate on it.

00:55:23

And just looking at this list,

00:55:26

a couple key takeaways here,

00:55:29

you may not be able to help the fact

00:55:30

that something on your list is boring,

00:55:33

frustrating or difficult.

00:55:35

Okay, but you can control the fact

00:55:38

that it is unstructured or ambiguous.

00:55:40

You can write that task in such a way

00:55:43

that you know exactly what you're supposed to do there.

00:55:46

Okay, we do that at agent efficiency.

00:55:48

We have a standard operating procedure

00:55:49

on how we write stories,

00:55:51

'cause we use the Scrum model

00:55:52

and we use JIRA for managing all of our projects.

00:55:56

And we've got the definition of done.

00:55:57

It's very, very clear to anybody

00:55:59

who opens up any of these tasks,

00:56:00

what needs to be done with this specific task.

00:56:03

So it's not ambiguous.

00:56:05

If it is ambiguous, if we haven't written the story well,

00:56:07

those are the tasks that get rolled over

00:56:09

from sprint to sprint because nobody did anything with it

00:56:12

'cause I wasn't sure what to do here.

00:56:14

The other one, lacking in personal meaning,

00:56:18

this comes back to the whole start with why discussion.

00:56:22

If you can't articulate why you wanna do something,

00:56:25

why something is on your task list in the first place,

00:56:28

then it really, in my opinion,

00:56:31

shouldn't even be on your task list.

00:56:33

And again, the way we get back to this

00:56:35

is the way we write our stories.

00:56:37

So for every task that we have at agent efficiency,

00:56:42

the story goes something like this.

00:56:45

As the business, we want to fill in the blank

00:56:48

so that fill in the benefit.

00:56:51

Or as the customer, I want fill in the blank

00:56:55

so that I can fill in the benefit.

00:56:58

And either format that you decide to use

00:57:00

when you're writing the story,

00:57:01

it is really, really easy to articulate the why

00:57:05

behind what we're gonna be doing there.

00:57:07

And so applying this to yourself instead of a company,

00:57:10

that's the lacking in personal meaning.

00:57:12

And then the other one, the lacking in intrinsic reward,

00:57:16

I do think that it's really, really important

00:57:18

that you celebrate your successes

00:57:20

when you have a successful launch,

00:57:22

celebrate, get yourself something, whatever.

00:57:24

But just like you don't want to do that all the time,

00:57:26

but you do want to give yourself a reward

00:57:28

when you complete something.

00:57:29

When you do a good job,

00:57:31

there's a lot of benefit that comes from,

00:57:33

even if it's something very small,

00:57:34

even if it's just, I'm gonna go out to eat or whatever,

00:57:38

those things can create a lot of momentum

00:57:41

that can carry you through a lot of the

00:57:43

treasury of the day-to-day stuff.

00:57:45

- Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense.

00:57:47

And for me, I know that I just have a lot of instances

00:57:52

where I've got a task on my list,

00:57:57

and to be frank, I just don't want to do it.

00:58:00

They're things I hate.

00:58:02

They're painful.

00:58:03

I just don't want to deal with them.

00:58:05

And my question, and it's been interesting to see how

00:58:09

knowing these triggers for procrastination

00:58:11

and understanding them somewhat has allowed

00:58:16

the ability to just think through it whenever it happens.

00:58:19

So I've got something coming up, I don't want to do it.

00:58:22

And I've gotten to a point where I can start to ask myself

00:58:25

that question of why am I resisting this?

00:58:28

Why am I so against this right now?

00:58:30

What's my deal?

00:58:31

Why is this so difficult?

00:58:34

Why is this such a challenge?

00:58:36

So I don't know that I have all of that figured out,

00:58:41

but it's at least interesting to understand them well enough

00:58:44

to start to notice it.

00:58:45

And this was something he talks about quite a bit in the book,

00:58:47

is if you have something that you're doing

00:58:49

and you don't always understand it, pause.

00:58:52

Take a second to stop and think about it.

00:58:53

Again, be intentional about it

00:58:55

and try to be deliberate with your decisions

00:58:59

as opposed to just letting things haphazardly go by.

00:59:02

He talks about that over and over and over again.

00:59:04

You'd think we'd get the point.

00:59:05

- Do you remember Emmett's Law?

00:59:07

- Emmett's Law.

00:59:09

- Yeah, he talks about Emmett's Law, which is--

00:59:11

- Maybe.

00:59:12

- The dread of doing a task uses up more time and energy

00:59:15

than doing the task itself.

00:59:17

(laughing)

00:59:18

- Yeah, figures.

00:59:19

Probably very true for me.

00:59:21

Absolutely.

00:59:22

Yup, I get it, I get it.

00:59:28

Something I wanna try to do, and I've got the time for this.

00:59:33

I'm kinda moving into a period

00:59:38

where I just need to be a little more creative

00:59:40

than I normally have been.

00:59:42

And he talks a lot about the value of taking breaks

00:59:47

and being willing to, I guess, let your mind wander.

00:59:53

This is something I talk about quite a bit

00:59:55

in the ideas course that I made,

00:59:58

is being willing to take some time off of focus

01:00:02

so that your mind can wander and be creative.

01:00:05

And I do this somewhat, but I don't do a ton,

01:00:08

and it's something that I wanna do a lot more of.

01:00:11

So what I'm trying to do, Mike,

01:00:13

is find some time every single day,

01:00:16

which is a challenge, I know.

01:00:19

And trying to find the time every day

01:00:23

and allow myself the freedom to go for a walk, I guess,

01:00:28

and just do something that doesn't require a lot of focus.

01:00:33

And if I do that, in theory,

01:00:36

it gives me the ability to come up with some new ideas.

01:00:41

So I'm trying to find a way to build in this ability

01:00:44

to be a little more creative,

01:00:47

and hopefully that'll allow some bigger gains in the future.

01:00:52

But I'm trying to be more intentional with taking breaks,

01:00:54

and hopefully that process of taking breaks

01:00:57

can yield some better creative content in the future.

01:01:02

That's my hope.

01:01:04

I believe it will, and I think that a lot of times

01:01:08

it's hard to take a break because we can't focus

01:01:13

on what we intended to get done for any length of time.

01:01:17

He talks a lot in the book about interruptions.

01:01:21

And one of the things that he talked about,

01:01:24

which I think is a great idea,

01:01:26

is to keep interruptions at least 20 seconds away

01:01:30

from yourself, and like,

01:01:31

if you set up your office, make sure that,

01:01:34

you know, if you're working on your writing or whatever,

01:01:38

and you know that you have a tendency

01:01:40

to check your text messages, keep your phone 20 seconds away,

01:01:43

'cause then you're less likely to go actually check it.

01:01:46

And it comes back to the whole idea of multitasking,

01:01:51

which he talks a lot about.

01:01:53

And he mentions that specifically,

01:01:55

people who fall prey to multitasking

01:02:00

don't believe that it really affects them.

01:02:04

And I think that really, you know,

01:02:05

tying this all together, the place that you really see

01:02:07

it affecting you is when you do take the breaks,

01:02:10

when you do go for a walk,

01:02:12

and you realize that your brain is all over the place.

01:02:14

Like, you just can't control it at all.

01:02:16

It's because it's so used to jumping from one thing

01:02:20

to the next, it's so ingrained that you can't just be,

01:02:25

you can't meditate for more than 10 seconds.

01:02:30

He mentions that the limbic system

01:02:33

tells you that multitasking works.

01:02:37

You don't realize, as you're switching from one thing

01:02:40

to the next, that it really isn't effective.

01:02:44

If you are doing that, and you were to have somebody

01:02:48

follow you around and document how effective you actually are,

01:02:50

like they could, they could see it,

01:02:52

but in the moment, as you're doing it,

01:02:55

you don't recognize it, you think, oh, I've got this,

01:02:57

but then when you look at the results

01:02:59

at the end of the day, you realize that you really didn't make

01:03:02

a whole lot of progress.

01:03:04

And there's a real cost to this.

01:03:07

He put that it costs $650 billion

01:03:12

in lost productivity every year.

01:03:15

Interruptions of recovery time consume 28%

01:03:18

of an individual's workday.

01:03:20

And another statistic he shared was that it takes 25 minutes

01:03:23

when you're interrupted to get back into the tasks

01:03:26

that you left.

01:03:27

If you were really cranking on that task,

01:03:30

if you were in the zone, I've seen additional research

01:03:32

that shows that it takes an additional 15 minutes

01:03:34

to get back into, I guess you could call it the state of flow.

01:03:39

So the number one way to get more done

01:03:44

is to stop multitasking.

01:03:47

And then I would couple that with,

01:03:49

if you really want to be effective,

01:03:51

go ahead down in the task, single task for a while,

01:03:53

and then intentionally take that break.

01:03:56

Don't just wait 'til you're interrupted

01:03:58

or there's a notification because you got an email

01:04:00

that came in because you left your email client open

01:04:02

in the background.

01:04:03

- Oh, I hate that.

01:04:04

I absolutely hate that.

01:04:05

I don't know how many times I'll meet with a client

01:04:07

and they've got their iPad open

01:04:09

or they've got their Mac open or something or a PC.

01:04:14

Or they'll have one of these things open

01:04:16

and it's sitting there in like every 30 seconds

01:04:18

or every minute and a half, something is dinging

01:04:20

or flashing or it's like, come on, turn all this stuff off.

01:04:24

I don't know how you guys live like this.

01:04:26

This is where you get to where you're into this

01:04:29

for a significant amount of time

01:04:30

and then you're looking at it like, whoa,

01:04:33

what just happened?

01:04:34

Why are you doing that?

01:04:36

That's a terrible idea.

01:04:38

So I--

01:04:39

(laughs)

01:04:40

- Timing notifications is so important

01:04:43

and people don't realize the real effect

01:04:45

that it has on you at a physiological level.

01:04:48

There's been a lot of research done

01:04:51

that shows that those notifications,

01:04:54

they go back to the any benefit approach.

01:04:58

So when you get a notification, when an email comes in,

01:05:01

there is a chance that it might be something good.

01:05:04

So that's really what is causing you to have to check it.

01:05:08

You know, when you hear that notification,

01:05:09

it's hard to resist switching over to your email client

01:05:12

and seeing what just came in

01:05:13

and that's because it's that variable reward.

01:05:16

But because there is a reward associated with it sometimes,

01:05:21

what it does is those notifications,

01:05:23

it's almost like a Pavlovian dog response.

01:05:25

It triggers a dopamine hit in your brain,

01:05:28

which is the pleasure chemical.

01:05:29

It is the exact same chemical reaction

01:05:31

that occurs when an alcoholic takes a drink

01:05:34

or a drug addict takes a hit.

01:05:36

And I talk about this in the email presentation that we do.

01:05:39

You know, I'm not equating email

01:05:40

with those two substance abuse problems,

01:05:42

but you do have to recognize what is happening

01:05:44

at a physiological level.

01:05:45

And then sometimes you have to take drastic actions

01:05:47

to fix it.

01:05:49

So we always recommend, if possible,

01:05:51

that you just turn off your notifications altogether.

01:05:54

No sounds, no banners, no nothing, no red, unread badges.

01:05:59

Just when you're going into your email,

01:06:01

that's when you deal with email.

01:06:02

And then you never think about it other than that.

01:06:06

- That's a lot easier said than done.

01:06:07

- It is, it is.

01:06:08

But when pain is sufficient, change will come.

01:06:11

- You know, that's true.

01:06:12

That's true.

01:06:13

Chris talks about how a lot of like foods and drinks

01:06:19

make a big impact on your productivity.

01:06:21

You know, if you eat a lot of sugary stuff,

01:06:22

it'll give you a boost,

01:06:23

but you're potentially going to have a crash afterwards.

01:06:26

And he talks about this quite a bit with caffeine and alcohol.

01:06:30

He dedicated, what was that?

01:06:32

Was it just one whole chapter that he dedicated?

01:06:35

I think it was a whole chapter he dedicated to it.

01:06:37

And he's talking about alcohol

01:06:39

and how it borrows from tomorrow

01:06:41

and how coffee borrows from today.

01:06:43

And the whole time I'm reading this article,

01:06:45

I'm sitting here sipping on a cup of coffee

01:06:47

or this chapter and I'm sitting there

01:06:50

and every time he'd say something about cutting back on coffee,

01:06:53

I would take a drink.

01:06:54

(laughing)

01:06:56

Like, no, you can't have my coffee.

01:06:59

Like I'm keeping my coffee.

01:07:00

So that was one thing.

01:07:02

Like, I know, I understand there are a lot of downsides

01:07:05

to from a productivity standpoint, an energy standpoint,

01:07:09

a sleep standpoint, I understand, no.

01:07:12

You told me to say no, no.

01:07:14

(laughing)

01:07:16

Yeah, I think I'm with you there.

01:07:18

Although once a year at the beginning of the year,

01:07:21

I do a, it's a form of a fast

01:07:26

where we basically just do fruits and vegetables

01:07:28

and kind of reset our bodies.

01:07:31

There you go.

01:07:32

And during those 21 days,

01:07:34

I will not drink coffee just to show my body basically,

01:07:38

who's the boss?

01:07:39

(laughing)

01:07:40

But at the same time, like the rest of the year,

01:07:43

I do like my coffee and it's not

01:07:45

because I'm reliant on the caffeine.

01:07:47

I can say that because every January,

01:07:49

I can go through that and I don't get the caffeine headaches

01:07:52

that some people do.

01:07:54

Right.

01:07:55

But yeah, I'm with you there

01:07:57

where it's just something that I really enjoy

01:07:59

that the taste of it.

01:07:59

And I think ultimately what productivity comes down to

01:08:02

is like, you do the things that are important to you.

01:08:06

You incorporate the things that you like, that you want

01:08:10

and you don't have to do everything.

01:08:12

You don't have to maximize every second of every day.

01:08:14

It's okay to have, in this case,

01:08:17

I'll just use the term loosely, but some vices like coffee.

01:08:21

Oh, right.

01:08:22

I think everybody's got to have something like that

01:08:25

where they take some pleasure in cheating a little bit

01:08:28

once in a while.

01:08:29

One thing that I didn't put on this list,

01:08:33

but I'm gonna bring it up anyways,

01:08:34

this rule of three that I was talking about earlier.

01:08:36

This is a thing he borrowed from,

01:08:39

I think it was J.D. Meyer in getting results the edge all way.

01:08:43

Essentially what the rule of three is,

01:08:47

and he takes it very simply to,

01:08:50

what are your three goals for the week

01:08:51

and what are your three things you're gonna do today?

01:08:54

And when you have just those three things,

01:08:57

because the question is, why not more than that?

01:08:59

Why not fewer?

01:09:00

Well, if you go more than that,

01:09:02

you have so many that you can't recall them.

01:09:04

You can't just say, okay, here are all of them.

01:09:06

Maybe you can.

01:09:07

Maybe you're good at doing five,

01:09:09

but three is a more universal number that you can fall into.

01:09:14

And if you go less than that, you can,

01:09:17

but now you're going to few

01:09:19

and you're probably not pushing yourself hard enough.

01:09:21

So he falls into this rule of three.

01:09:23

And this is something that I can say is extremely helpful.

01:09:26

I've been doing this on a weekly basis

01:09:28

for a good nine months ahead of this.

01:09:30

This works out really well.

01:09:31

There's a lot of these tips I've been doing for a long time.

01:09:34

But I've not really been doing it on a daily basis.

01:09:37

I even like people call them MIT's most important tasks.

01:09:41

But to me, it's a little different than that.

01:09:44

It's not an exact task as much as it is,

01:09:46

a group of tasks or a goal for that day.

01:09:51

So for me, I know that this rule of three

01:09:53

is something that applies to my week

01:09:56

and then also to the day.

01:09:58

And this is something that I've been doing,

01:09:59

like I said, on a weekly basis for a long time,

01:10:02

but I want to start doing it on a daily basis.

01:10:04

And I have been the last couple of days,

01:10:06

but I want to continue that.

01:10:07

So I'm taking that as one of my action items.

01:10:10

But this rule of three is one that

01:10:12

I think has a lot of power if you let it.

01:10:15

I mean, you'd have to be willing to put in the time

01:10:18

to figure them out and determine them.

01:10:20

But if you're willing to do that,

01:10:22

I mean, you can start to move forward pretty well with it.

01:10:24

I think you've got this one down for you too.

01:10:26

Am I reading that right?

01:10:27

- Yep.

01:10:28

Yeah, so what I want to do is I want to actually implement

01:10:30

that into my journaling template.

01:10:33

So that's really, as far as I want to take that one,

01:10:38

there's really no definition of done other than,

01:10:41

you know, in the five minutes it takes me to update my

01:10:43

launch center pro action that I use for creating

01:10:46

the day one entry at the end of the day every day.

01:10:49

- Of course you're digital.

01:10:51

- Yep.

01:10:52

Actually, I'm not sure if I ever showed that to you,

01:10:54

but I have a launch center pro action,

01:10:56

which gives me a series of prompts

01:10:58

and then it turns it into a markdown table inside of day one.

01:11:01

- Why?

01:11:02

- It's pretty slick.

01:11:03

- Sounds awesome.

01:11:04

(laughs)

01:11:05

- I can actually find it, maybe let me update it,

01:11:08

and then I'll be happy to share that we can put it

01:11:10

in the show notes.

01:11:12

- Okay, there you go.

01:11:13

- But yeah, that's one of the cool things about this book

01:11:16

is that there are a lot of little things that are actionable.

01:11:19

So I actually have four different action items here,

01:11:21

but that's because they're all pretty simple.

01:11:24

Like that one is not going to take me very long.

01:11:26

I just got to update my journaling template.

01:11:28

- Right.

01:11:29

- Another one I wrote down is I want to structure my downtime

01:11:32

and weekends.

01:11:33

So I've been planning and putting on my digital calendar

01:11:37

every hour of every day during the week,

01:11:40

but I've left Saturdays and Sundays open.

01:11:43

And I think that there's a lot of value

01:11:46

to scheduling the time to play

01:11:49

and actually take that downtime,

01:11:51

extending that same approach to every hour of my life,

01:11:56

so to speak.

01:11:58

I think if I'm more intentional about it that way,

01:12:00

then there's also a better chance that I'll follow through

01:12:02

with some of the family things that we want to do,

01:12:05

like going to the Apple orchard and stuff like that,

01:12:07

which is kind of a Midwestern thing to do in the fall.

01:12:10

- Oh yeah, we've been there a couple times already.

01:12:12

- Right.

01:12:14

Another thing I wrote down is the maintenance day ritual

01:12:16

which we talked about,

01:12:17

and then also limiting the amount of time

01:12:19

that I spend each week in meetings.

01:12:20

Again, not just work meetings,

01:12:22

but just identifying that if I want to meet people

01:12:25

for coffee, whatever, actually carving out the time

01:12:29

every week for that to happen,

01:12:31

and then having a scheduler set up

01:12:33

where people can actually do that.

01:12:35

And that actually leads into one other point

01:12:38

I wanted to talk about here.

01:12:40

We don't have to really go deep into this,

01:12:41

but this was one of the big things I got here

01:12:44

out of the book is that people are the reason for productivity.

01:12:48

And so that scheduler,

01:12:50

if you are running into negative pushback by using it,

01:12:54

then I would in that instance, stop using it

01:12:57

because it is more important that you have an impact

01:13:01

on the people in your life,

01:13:02

that you don't destroy the platforms

01:13:04

that maybe worked really hard to build

01:13:07

by trying to force them to use a digital tool

01:13:09

which may be a little bit more efficient for you,

01:13:12

but causes a lot of friction for them.

01:13:14

Ultimately, the reason that you want to be productive

01:13:18

is that you want to have more time to spend with the people

01:13:21

that you carry the most about.

01:13:23

So for me, specifically, that's my family.

01:13:26

That's the reason that I want to be productive.

01:13:28

That's what got me going down this whole productivity journey,

01:13:32

which led to me getting a job at Asian efficiency

01:13:35

is I was looking at my schedule.

01:13:38

I was looking at my commitments.

01:13:40

I was looking at my day-to-day and saying,

01:13:43

I don't want to be here the rest of my life.

01:13:46

I want to be able to take a day off whenever I want to

01:13:49

and go to the museum with my kids

01:13:50

because we homeschool them

01:13:52

and just not feel bad about it, not worry about it.

01:13:56

And so, I've been blessed, I'm unfortunate.

01:13:59

I'm in a situation now where that can happen,

01:14:02

but if I wouldn't have prioritized that, then it wouldn't have.

01:14:07

And so I think that it's really, really important

01:14:09

to recognize that the why, ultimately,

01:14:13

for all the things, all the productivity is people.

01:14:18

- Yeah, I think that's invaluable

01:14:22

in that the things that we do, all these tips and tricks,

01:14:27

and I have this conversation with my wife on occasion

01:14:30

because I'll pull out my phone

01:14:31

and I'll be typing something into drafts

01:14:33

so that I don't forget it.

01:14:34

And she gets on to me once in a while

01:14:36

for using my phone too much.

01:14:38

And the thing is that usually,

01:14:41

and I'm saying usually, very intentionally there

01:14:43

'cause I'm human, but usually when I'm pulling out my phone

01:14:47

like that, it's because I'm writing something down

01:14:49

and I'm typing it in so I don't lose it.

01:14:51

And we've had this conversation a number of times

01:14:54

is I'm using that so that I can focus here

01:14:58

because I have a racecar brain.

01:14:59

So if I don't write down the solution

01:15:02

that I just thought of for the website that I'm dealing with,

01:15:05

I've got a problem with the code

01:15:07

and I've been thinking through PHP

01:15:09

and now I've got the issue,

01:15:10

I just figured out something major that might be wrong.

01:15:13

I'm gonna write that down 'cause I'm not gonna,

01:15:16

I don't wanna lose that.

01:15:18

Well, if I don't write it down,

01:15:21

my mind goes through this cyclical process

01:15:25

of trying to remember it and trying not to forget it.

01:15:27

So I continually keep thinking,

01:15:29

like I just keep thinking about it and I won't let it go.

01:15:31

And I've had that conversation with her.

01:15:33

I was like, I'm pulling my phone out

01:15:34

so that I can write this thing down

01:15:36

so that I can focus here

01:15:38

so that I'm not often law land in my mind

01:15:41

thinking these things through over and over and over again.

01:15:44

You know, this is the GTD capture process.

01:15:46

And I know that for me,

01:15:50

that's what allows me to focus

01:15:51

on those relationships right in front of me.

01:15:53

And that's the point behind a lot of what we do

01:15:55

is to allow us to do that.

01:15:58

And some of that has to do with the ability

01:16:01

to focus on those relationships.

01:16:03

This is something that's come up yet again, meditation.

01:16:06

He talks about it, has a whole chapter on it.

01:16:09

I'm gonna try this again, Mike.

01:16:11

So this is an action item for me.

01:16:15

I talked about the rule of three that I'm doing daily.

01:16:18

I talked about taking longer,

01:16:20

I think I talked about taking longer lunch breaks.

01:16:22

Anyway, I'm taking a break.

01:16:24

I wanna do a daily walk for the creativity thing.

01:16:26

And then I wanna start meditating again.

01:16:28

And I think there's some value there.

01:16:32

I've tried it in the past.

01:16:33

It doesn't work in the past, but I think I'm not,

01:16:35

I'm not doing it right, I don't think.

01:16:38

And I'm willing to try it,

01:16:42

but I'm gonna say that I'm gonna do this for two weeks

01:16:44

before I evaluate it at all.

01:16:45

So I'll probably talk about it on the next episode,

01:16:49

depending on when we're recorded, if it's two weeks, perfect.

01:16:52

But I'm gonna do this for two weeks

01:16:54

before I even consider if it's good or bad,

01:16:56

just so I can try to see it.

01:16:58

But that brings me to one thing that I was reading this book

01:17:03

and he starts off talking about meditation.

01:17:08

Then he has a whole chapter about it later on.

01:17:10

And he talks about taking walks in nature.

01:17:13

Then he talks about how you should exercise

01:17:16

because that's helpful for your energy levels.

01:17:20

He talks about eating mindfully,

01:17:22

like cooking meals very specifically and enjoying them.

01:17:24

He talks about getting a full night of sleep.

01:17:26

He talks about all of these things

01:17:28

that require a decent amount of time to do them.

01:17:31

And I was left with the question,

01:17:33

when does this guy get his work done?

01:17:35

When does he actually sit down?

01:17:37

Like all these things are designed around high energy,

01:17:40

extreme focus.

01:17:42

And I was like, okay, when does he get all his work done?

01:17:44

There's no way he has kids.

01:17:46

He never talked about having kids.

01:17:48

So there's so much of this that,

01:17:50

at least for me, I feel like I'm cramming

01:17:53

into tight spaces already because like mindful eating,

01:17:58

good luck.

01:17:58

That's just not gonna happen in our house.

01:18:01

The fact that we can get sat down

01:18:04

and enjoy a meal together, period, that's a success.

01:18:09

Being able to sit and focus on what I'm eating,

01:18:11

not gonna happen.

01:18:12

So there's just some things like that

01:18:14

that there's no way you're gonna do

01:18:16

some of these things if you have kids.

01:18:18

So for me though, some glossing over,

01:18:21

but I just kept asking this question, okay,

01:18:24

when does he schedule his actual work

01:18:28

as opposed to all the things that help him get his work done?

01:18:31

- Yeah, well, I think this was his work

01:18:33

for a whole year.

01:18:35

I mean, this was, this started off as a year of productivity.

01:18:38

And I think it's since transitioned

01:18:39

to a life of productivity.

01:18:41

But yeah, when he did it, he did it

01:18:44

because he was in a spot where he could take a whole year

01:18:46

and devote it to this.

01:18:48

And right away, I had a little bit of a moment

01:18:53

where he's talking about how like,

01:18:54

I was able to do this, this and this and I was like,

01:18:56

"Oh man, that would be really nice."

01:18:58

(laughing)

01:18:59

But you just gotta get the 80/20 basically

01:19:02

'cause no matter where you're at,

01:19:04

you're not gonna be able to apply 100%

01:19:06

of this stuff effectively.

01:19:07

Like everybody's situation is gonna be

01:19:09

a little bit different.

01:19:10

And some of the stuff that didn't work for him

01:19:12

maybe would work for you or me.

01:19:14

- True.

01:19:15

- But yeah, there's definitely a lot of value here,

01:19:18

I think in him just sharing his experiences.

01:19:21

One thing I did wish he would have shared

01:19:23

is that he talked about in the section

01:19:26

where he did the experiment about how long he worked.

01:19:30

He mentioned that when he worked 20 hours a week,

01:19:32

he was almost as effective as 90 hours a week.

01:19:35

I wish he would have quantified that.

01:19:37

I wish there would have been actual numbers there.

01:19:39

So I could look at how effective he really was

01:19:42

with 20 hours a week, like how close was it really?

01:19:44

That's the one question I had after reading it.

01:19:49

- Yeah, I saw that and I thought the same thing.

01:19:51

I haven't looked, but I'm willing to bet

01:19:55

he's got it somewhere on his website

01:19:57

'cause I'm sure that was a lot of what he was talking about

01:19:59

with a year of productivity.

01:20:02

So I'll do a quick search.

01:20:04

And if I can find it, I'll put it in the show notes.

01:20:05

If not, I'll skip it.

01:20:08

(laughs)

01:20:10

You can tell that he's written a lot

01:20:12

just from the way he writes.

01:20:13

He's very relatable.

01:20:15

It's very easy to read, I think,

01:20:17

because one, chapters are short.

01:20:20

I put down, it's a quick read and full of pointers.

01:20:23

We've talked about, this is a pretty dense book.

01:20:25

There's a lot that you can pick up here.

01:20:27

One thing that I kinda got bothered by

01:20:29

is he's very politically correct.

01:20:30

Maybe that's a good thing, I don't know.

01:20:33

But there was some things like,

01:20:35

he would talk about tackle two birds at one time.

01:20:39

I'm like, no, that's not the phrase.

01:20:40

The phrase is kill two birds at one time, one stone.

01:20:43

It's like, you don't tackle birds with stones.

01:20:46

That's the whole point.

01:20:47

This is a hunting analogy.

01:20:49

This is not, anyway, there were a number of those

01:20:52

that I had picked up.

01:20:53

Really?

01:20:54

You're gonna destroy that?

01:20:56

Okay.

01:20:57

- Yeah, I didn't actually catch that specific example,

01:21:04

but I think that you're probably correct

01:21:06

in that he would be classified as very politically correct.

01:21:11

I liked his writing style.

01:21:14

I thought it was really, really engaging and approachable.

01:21:18

There were a couple times where I wish

01:21:20

he would have dove a little bit deeper

01:21:22

into some of the actual outcomes.

01:21:26

As opposed to, like we mentioned

01:21:27

the how long he worked example.

01:21:28

There were a couple other instances where I wish,

01:21:31

like he would have dove into the results of the research

01:21:35

that he quoted and stuff like that.

01:21:37

A little bit more.

01:21:38

He does cite it all, but again,

01:21:40

I'm too lazy to go read it all for myself.

01:21:44

- True.

01:21:44

It was a fresh of a breath of fresh air

01:21:47

after reading Innovators to LEMO.

01:21:49

- Yes.

01:21:50

- I'll give it that.

01:21:51

- Yes, definitely.

01:21:52

Yeah, I read this one pretty quickly.

01:21:55

Again, because I didn't do all of the different experiments

01:21:58

and action items that he gives you at the end of every chapter.

01:22:01

But if you're just getting into productivity,

01:22:04

I think those would be really, really valuable.

01:22:06

So I think that the way he wrote it is great.

01:22:10

And no matter where you are in your productivity journey,

01:22:13

there's a lot that you can get out of it.

01:22:15

But for complete newbies,

01:22:16

who a lot of this stuff is brand new,

01:22:18

then you're really gonna get a lot out of this book.

01:22:22

And in that particular instance,

01:22:23

I would say make sure that you do actually go through

01:22:25

and do all of those exercises

01:22:27

because a couple of them at least

01:22:30

are gonna be the aha moments

01:22:32

that make the light bulbs go on

01:22:33

that are really gonna impact you.

01:22:35

And are really gonna make a difference

01:22:38

in how productive you are,

01:22:40

how efficient you are and ultimately how effective you are.

01:22:44

- So ratings for me,

01:22:46

I know that I went through this

01:22:48

and there was a lot that I could pick up.

01:22:49

There was a lot that I already knew

01:22:51

or that I've done or been doing for quite a while.

01:22:55

To me that was, it's a good thing,

01:22:58

but at the same time,

01:22:59

it's like, okay, well,

01:23:00

I'm not getting much out of this particular piece,

01:23:02

but that's simply because I work in this space.

01:23:04

I've read a lot about it.

01:23:05

I've done a lot of this.

01:23:06

I didn't do a lot of the experiences

01:23:08

that your experiments that you're talking about as well,

01:23:11

just because I've either done them already

01:23:13

or I know the result that I'll get from it

01:23:17

just because I've got some of that awareness.

01:23:19

So some of that and some of my own just opinions

01:23:24

on how things were written,

01:23:25

I gave this a 4.5 because I think this is an excellent book,

01:23:29

but it just doesn't feel like a full on five quite,

01:23:32

it doesn't quite get that far for me.

01:23:34

So I put it at 4.5,

01:23:35

but I think it's an excellent book

01:23:37

and if it's for,

01:23:38

like if I run across someone who's wanting

01:23:41

an introduction to productivity,

01:23:43

I think this could be a great book

01:23:44

to at least help people get jump-started with it.

01:23:47

- Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head.

01:23:49

I'm also gonna give it a 4.5

01:23:50

because I guess you could classify me

01:23:54

as a productivity expert.

01:23:55

I don't really feel like an expert,

01:23:56

I just feel like I have some experience,

01:23:58

but I was still able to get a lot out of this book.

01:24:02

And I think for the right person,

01:24:04

this is absolutely without a doubt five stars.

01:24:07

Definitely read it.

01:24:08

And I would say it's worth a read no matter

01:24:11

where you are, how experienced you are

01:24:13

in the productivity space.

01:24:14

Like I said, I got a lot out of it.

01:24:16

So I think that pretty much every single one

01:24:19

of our listeners who would pick up the book

01:24:21

is gonna find something in there.

01:24:23

You may have to jump around to the appropriate sections.

01:24:26

You may decide to completely skip the chapter

01:24:29

on meditation if you're like Joe and decide that.

01:24:31

(laughing)

01:24:32

- But I'm gonna try it, I'm gonna give it another round.

01:24:36

- Right, right.

01:24:37

But yeah, I agree, 4.5.

01:24:39

- For upcoming books, the next one, okay.

01:24:44

So I picked this one, "Managing One Self" by Peter Drucker.

01:24:47

This is for those of you who have been wanting

01:24:51

to read along with this, but these books are too long.

01:24:54

So this is a short one.

01:24:55

I will likely read it the day before,

01:24:58

'cause it's, I got it right here.

01:25:01

It's 70 some pages, but the pages are about a third,

01:25:04

the length is what these other books are.

01:25:06

So as far as actual pages, I'd say it's probably around 25,

01:25:11

25, 30 pages of actual, like a full on book size.

01:25:15

So I think this is a quick read for me,

01:25:18

but if you are wanting to read along

01:25:21

but these things have just been too much,

01:25:23

this would be a good one to jump in on.

01:25:24

So if you wanna get the experience of reading it before,

01:25:27

you listen to it, this is where you can jump in.

01:25:29

So "Managing One Self" by Peter Drucker,

01:25:32

that's the one we'll be doing next.

01:25:33

And then Mike, you'd picked what?

01:25:37

- I picked the 12-week year.

01:25:39

I forget, I don't have it in front of me,

01:25:41

so I forget exactly who it's by.

01:25:43

I apologize, 12-week year people.

01:25:46

But I did wanna point out, by the way,

01:25:48

this "Managing One Self."

01:25:49

We talked about the innovators dilemma

01:25:51

and how it was such a business book

01:25:52

and it was published by Harvard Business--

01:25:55

- I know, I saw that.

01:25:56

- So "Managing One Self" on the Amazon listings

01:25:58

is a Harvard Business Review classics.

01:26:01

So I'm not sure what to think about this one, Joe.

01:26:05

I haven't got it yet, it's coming tomorrow,

01:26:07

but I'm a little bit skeptical.

01:26:10

- Well-- - Fortunately, it's 72 pages,

01:26:13

so even if he goes, "Whole hog on, this drives again,"

01:26:18

it's only 72 pages.

01:26:19

(laughing)

01:26:21

- Well, I'm flipping through it, it's right in front of me.

01:26:23

As I flip through it, what I'm reading is nothing

01:26:26

like the innovators dilemma.

01:26:28

- Okay, okay, good.

01:26:29

(laughing)

01:26:30

- Does that make you feel better?

01:26:31

So "Managing One Self" by Peter Drucker is up next,

01:26:34

then Mike picked the 12-week year.

01:26:36

If you have a book that you want us to go through,

01:26:40

and I've been getting a few of these,

01:26:42

you can make a recommendation.

01:26:43

We've talked about this numerous times in the past,

01:26:45

but you can make a recommendation

01:26:47

through our website, bookworm.fm.

01:26:49

You can also see the list of books

01:26:50

that have been recommended in the ones

01:26:52

that we've already read out there as well,

01:26:53

but all that can be found out at bookworm.fm,

01:26:56

just in the sidebar there.

01:26:57

- And we will start doing some of the recommendations

01:27:00

pretty soon.

01:27:00

- Yeah, actually, I think once we get through

01:27:03

the 12-week year, we jump into one brain chains,

01:27:06

I think that's the one that comes after that.

01:27:07

That one's been recommended, I think three times.

01:27:09

So yeah, we're gonna jump into that one,

01:27:12

and that's a long one.

01:27:14

(laughs)

01:27:15

- Yep.

01:27:16

And then also, if you are enjoying the show,

01:27:19

we would really appreciate it

01:27:21

if you would go over to iTunes

01:27:23

and leave us a review,

01:27:25

because that will help other people find the show.

01:27:29

iTunes has an algorithm that is a little bit funky

01:27:32

on how they feature podcasts,

01:27:34

but one of the things that they look at

01:27:36

is the number of reviews and also how recent they are.

01:27:40

So if you are enjoying the show,

01:27:43

that would help us out a lot if you would go let us know.

01:27:46

And if there's something you don't like,

01:27:48

let us know that as well.

01:27:49

We'll try to do better. (laughs)

01:27:51

- Awesome.

01:27:52

So if you're wanting to jump in

01:27:53

and you haven't had a chance to do so in the past,

01:27:55

this is your chance to do it with managing oneself

01:27:57

by Peter Drucker.

01:27:58

I'll drop a link to that in the show notes,

01:28:00

so it's easy to pick up.

01:28:01

And we look forward to talking through that with you

01:28:03

in a couple of weeks.