Bookworm Transcripts

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I need to stop making life hard on myself, Mike.

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-What'd you do this time, Joe Buelegg?

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-I don't even know.

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We've got some form of weird tech thing going on.

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If you are watching this and you see Mike stuttering a bit,

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it's because Joe did something and I can't figure out what it is.

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Here we are.

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Life happens.

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That's what I'm going to chalk it up to.

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-If you're listening to the artisanal handcrafted

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audio version, it should be fine.

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-It's true.

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-It is true.

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Between that and I've also been playing around --

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we haven't talked about podcast gear in a while,

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but I picked up a Roadcaster Pro this week.

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-I saw that.

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-I'm running everything through it right now.

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I'm still learning a lot about it.

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If I screw something up and it sounds bad this time around,

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it's Joe's fault, not Mike's.

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I'm just going to say that.

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I'll give you an out this time, Mike.

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-Thank you.

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-There's that.

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-Thank you.

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Well, I tend to dial in my system and then never touch it.

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I think I shared a picture with you of my desk setup,

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which looks ridiculous, but it is all set up specifically

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so that I can come down here and not touch anything

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and just start recording.

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I have my DSLR, the one I use to not only as a webcam

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for the live recording right now,

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but when we shoot video for the suite setup,

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that's the camera angle,

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that's the settings, all of the aperture and the ISO.

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It's all dialed in perfectly, so I can come down,

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I can hit record and I can record video

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knowing that I didn't screw anything up,

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and I don't have to redo it again.

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-Yes, I hear you.

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-I hear you.

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-I hate touching anything on this rig.

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-I would love to be in that spot,

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but part of the reason I made the move is just because

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I've struggled to get clean audio off of my other setup.

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I'm pretty sure it's the preamp in that little soundboard

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that I've got, and although that works,

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I'm constantly trying to clean things up.

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I'm sure you deal with that too,

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off the audio you get off of me,

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but I'm regularly trying to get it cleaned up.

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So I'm hoping the preamp on this is a little nicer,

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and I can get a better output from it,

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but I'm also learning that some of the issues I deal with

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is the fact that whenever we record,

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like I've got my computer sitting here,

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and the fans are running at 100% the whole time,

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and I can never find a way to make that not happen.

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Create problems and then try to work your way around them,

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and then it's just impossible.

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So until Joe buys a desktop computer

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that he can bury somewhere else

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to get the fans away from the mic,

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this is where we'll be.

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You just need an M1.

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Get one of those new fancy iMacs.

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They look nice.

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Do you like them?

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I like the style of them.

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Well, I have an M1 Mac Mini,

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which I actually love,

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except that it causes a few weird issues,

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which I don't know how to solve.

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I'm sure they are solvable.

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I don't think it's completely the M1 architecture's fault,

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but my way around this is just make sure

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I restart my computer before I do anything important.

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Yeah, sure.

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I have heard from a lot of folks that have the M1s

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that are doing AV work that struggle with them.

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Okay.

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And I can't tell if it's because of

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the software not being caught up,

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the chat's telling me to get a Mac Pro.

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But the thing I don't know is

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with all of the Blackmagic software

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and stuff that I use for the video switching stuff at church and such,

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I don't know how well that stuff's going to play with an M1.

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So outside of doing a $1,000 experiment,

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I am not ready to go there.

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So I need to wait a little bit before we jump in.

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Well, for whatever it's worth,

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I do have an ATEM Mini sitting right here.

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But my cameras aren't good enough to really take advantage of it.

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Well, for this sort of thing anyways,

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because I wanted to use it for webinar presentation

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and then switch between my iPad and iPhone screens

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and have those different inputs,

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put my video on the corner,

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transition between stuff.

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Sure.

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It's great for that.

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But my... I have two cameras.

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I have a Canon EOS 70D, which is an older one.

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That's the one I'm using as the webcam

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and I'm using Cascable for that.

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That works perfectly fine.

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Except it doesn't have clean HDMI out,

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which is the ATEM Mini.

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So...

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Sure.

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It's a weird aspect ratio if I'm going to use that one.

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And then the other one I have is the 5D Mark 3.

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Okay.

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It's an older 5D.

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And that one was built in like 2012, 2013.

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And they hard-coded an automatic shut-off after 30 minutes

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or 29 minutes 59 seconds.

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So that it wasn't classified as a camcorder for European taxes.

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Yes.

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Yes.

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Which is completely ridiculous,

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but so that one just shuts off after a while.

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Well, I use a GoPro.

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Which seems to do okay.

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But outside of that,

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I do a lot more with the audio gear, but I don't know.

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Gear.

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It's one of those things you can spend

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infinite amount of money on and never be happy with it.

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That's what I think.

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But...

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Hey, speaking of audio gear,

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I got something new this week which you may appreciate as a church sound guy.

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Okay.

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Are you familiar with the Line 6 Helix line?

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Line 6 Helix line.

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No.

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Any of the guitar players that your church use that?

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Okay.

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So Line 6 is a guitar company essentially.

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They make effects and amps and stuff.

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Yeah.

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Long time ago, they made this thing called the pod,

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which was that red kidney bean shaped thing.

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Yeah.

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And then they updated all of their stuff

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and they came up with this Line 6 Helix stuff a couple of years ago.

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And that's kind of like the super high end,

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really nice sounding effects.

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And floorboard alone is like 2 grand.

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There's a rack mounted unit you can get really, really high end stuff.

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Well, they updated the pod line last year.

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So they made a Line 6 pod go, it's called.

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Okay.

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And it takes all of the like the good sounding Helix effects,

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but strips out a lot of the fidgety stuff that you don't really need.

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Okay.

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Sure.

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And so like as an example, you know,

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the Helix you can have like two separate signal chains in the board.

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So you can send like a chorus and tremolo to the right speakers

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and an overdrive and a compressor to the left speakers.

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Okay.

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And I don't need that.

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I just need some nice sounding effects.

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Because I can't have an amp on stage.

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So I got the cheap one.

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Nice work.

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It sounds really good.

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And it's really perfect for what I do.

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It's got like a little briefcase carrying case thing that it comes with.

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So it's like this padded case that's made just for this thing.

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And so it's easy to carry it back and forth from church along with my guitar.

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And I love this thing.

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And it's got all of the like different amp simulations.

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So you can say I want like this type of amp simulation

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I want to running through these speakers.

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And I want this type of mic and I want it placed three feet away.

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Yeah.

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And then you put in all your guitar effects

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and you can get some pretty crazy sounds out of it.

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But some people generally like it because it's one connection,

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you know, going straight into the board.

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Yes.

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That's what I was just thinking.

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It's like, you know, as far as how to hook this thing up,

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like it sounds like I got just one cable, which my life way easy.

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Yeah.

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Happy, happy Joe in that scenario.

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Yeah.

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So take a look at it and try to convince your guitar players to get one.

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Sure.

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Or sometimes we just buy that stuff and let them use it while they're here.

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Like that's kind of what we end up doing in a lot of cases.

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Like this will make my life easier.

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So I will buy it.

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You use it while you're here.

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Like sure.

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We do that a lot.

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So anyway, we didn't join today to talk about audio gear,

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but I'm giving people excuses for why audio might not sound good this week.

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And the video won't be good this week.

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So here we are.

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That's the way this stuff goes.

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All that to say, let's jump into follow up.

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I've got a couple of them here.

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And then we also need to talk about an episode we did outside of bookworm.

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But the first of these that I want to point out is like this whole upper and

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lower bounds of creation.

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Like we talked about this where you set the minimum amount of time and

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work you're going to spend on a task, but you also set the upper limit.

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Like you can't go over a certain amount.

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And I did this and had some success with doing some writing and doing some video editing.

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One of the results of that is an article I published on

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using a stream deck with OmniFocus, which is kind of interesting.

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So there's that kind of an interesting article.

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I've had a couple of folks already email me saying, what?

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I didn't even think about doing this.

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Like, yep, pretty much it's kind of been my experience with the stream deck.

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It's like, I didn't know you could do most of this stuff, but here we are.

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And it's fun.

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Yeah, you created more work for yourself because people are asking you questions about

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the stuff that you show there, but don't explain.

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Yes, yes, but it's been fun at the same time.

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So, yes.

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So anyway, that's what I've been doing.

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I couldn't find.

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Did you have any follow up from last time when I was putting the outline together?

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It wasn't in the outline from last time around.

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I don't think I did.

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Maybe I just missed it.

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I know I made sure that I wrote down yours when I was editing the episode because

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I'd forgotten to save them in the actual file while we were recording.

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Yeah, I don't think I did other than the aforementioned special episode where you and

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David ganged up on me and made me read a fiction book.

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Yes, which was very fun.

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So, Mike, you should introduce this.

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Sure.

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This is your territory.

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Well, this is a special episode for the Relay FM, the members there.

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So, if you were to listen to Focus, for example, you can support Focus directly,

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five bucks a month, just like you do for Bookworm, and then you get access to the

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deep focus feed where you get the longer episodes with additional content.

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And then you also get access when you join a Relay FM show like that to the,

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you get access to the crossover feed, which is where once a year every show publishes a

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special episode.

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And this is where like Gray and Mike typically have done like those text adventures with Jason

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Snell as the Snellatron computer sort of a thing.

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And so, David had suggested to me, hey, you should read a fiction book for the Focus special

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episode.

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And I was immediately like, no, not going to do that.

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He actually said that in the episode.

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That is 100% true.

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My response immediately was like, no, no, that's too much work.

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I can't squeeze that in right now.

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And then Joshua asked me, my son asked me about Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

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And he was looking for books to read over the summer.

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And I went on Amazon, I bought this series, and he wanted to talk to me about the book

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as he was reading it.

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So I'm like, okay, fine, I'll read it so we can talk about it.

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And then I got back to him and like, okay, fine, I've come around on this fiction book thing.

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You want to do this?

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And he's like, yeah.

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And I'm okay, well, I got to bring Joe in because he's been bugging me about this for years.

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Yes.

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And if I talked about a fiction book without him, he'd probably kill me.

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I would make my way to Wisconsin.

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We would have a chat with you pinned to the wall, maybe.

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Yeah.

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So we recorded, it's about a 40-minute mini bookworm about Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

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by Douglas Adams, and it turned out about exactly how I was hoping it would.

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I went back and listened to it after it published it.

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I was really happy with how it turned out.

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I will say that I mentioned this in episode two.

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I was terrified as I was reading this because I felt the mental tick to go take notes on what

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I was reading, but there was nothing to take notes on.

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It was just a story.

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So I walked into it and I'm like, oh boy, I don't know how this is going to go.

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But it went really well.

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Yeah.

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If you are a really FM member, you should have access to it.

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You just got to log into your membership section.

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You can get the crossover feed and then it'll show up.

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And what's cool about this is that it goes out to all of the members of all of the relay

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shows, not just the focused audience.

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So hopefully a few people find out about bookworm from it, but I appreciate you taking

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the time to go do that. And it was a lot of fun.

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Yeah, that was super interesting.

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Okay.

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Well, I talk about fiction books with my wife and kids and some friends fairly regularly.

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And so I was familiar with like, how do people talk about fiction books as compared to nonfiction,

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which we'll get into here's, but I know that you don't have that background.

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So I wasn't sure how you were going to handle it.

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I thought you did well. You did good.

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Proud of you, Mike.

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Thank you.

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I was terrified. It was fun though.

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The question that everybody wants to know now though, has your view on fiction changed?

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I don't know. I think my view on fiction has changed.

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Am I going to read more fiction? Maybe not.

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I don't know.

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Sure.

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I think I will occasionally.

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David has already followed through on his threat to send me another fiction book.

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Yep.

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So I have at least one more to read, but I don't know. I still prefer the nonfiction books,

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even the ones that I have to wrestle to get through.

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I just see value in those and that excites me more than a good story does.

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But sure, that's just how I'm wired, I guess.

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I was hoping. Sorry, team. We tried. We tried to get him on board,

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but I don't think he's going to be a fiction addict anytime soon.

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Maybe next round.

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You may see a fiction book pop up in the gap book section here and there.

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We'll see. We'll see.

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I want to see you actually pull it off first.

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When you have a gap book episode that is a fiction book,

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I will call it out. But until then, I'm not going to hold my breath, that's for sure.

00:14:52

All right. That's probably a smart idea.

00:14:56

All right. This all said, as Mike decides to procrastinate on the continuation of his fiction

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reading habit, let's talk about procrastination in today's book, The Now Habit by Neil Fjor.

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And this one, I picked partially because it has the word habit in the title.

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And also because so much of what we do and what we talk about has the process of delaying action

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or storing things for later. So much of it was like, how do you plan what you're going to do

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in a week? How do you know what it is you need to do later in the day?

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Those are all things for later. And this is called The Now Habit, which in my head meant

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we're going to reel that in and do things right now instead of putting things off and waiting

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until later. And now that I've read the book, I'm kind of confused.

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So you were expecting kind of GTD Junior or what?

00:15:55

I'm not sure what I expected in my head. This was going to encourage me to find ways to act

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on things when they show up, as opposed to storing it to work on it later.

00:16:09

Yeah, it's not what you got. That is not what I got at all.

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Either I didn't do enough research on this book before I selected it or this is just marketed very

00:16:23

badly to help people understand what's actually in it. Now that all put out there.

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The Now Habit by Neil Fjord, the tagline on it is a strategic program for overcoming procrastination

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and enjoying guilt-free play. And I feel like that is probably what I should have focused

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more time on as opposed to the actual title. Because I don't feel like the two go together.

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Maybe I'm just too dense and can't see it, but that's my perspective on it.

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Did you get what you expected out of this? Did you have any expectations? I know when I pick a book

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you don't always have expectations of what you're going to get.

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I had heard of this book previously, but I had not read it and I was not familiar with the topic.

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So I was just going at it from the title just like you were. And I will say that it is not what I

00:17:21

expected. I think it's better than I expected. Not because, oh boy, Joe's picking another goofball

00:17:29

book. But just like looking at the reviews on Amazon, it seemed like there were some people who were

00:17:37

very strong negative reactions to this one. Which you see sometimes in those systems types

00:17:48

type books because people try to apply that specific system and then it doesn't work for them.

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I think GTD was kind of the thing that came to mind as the same sort of thing. Like maybe for

00:18:00

the right person, this is really powerful, but also going into it a little bit wary because

00:18:07

obviously it's not working for some people. Do you know when this book was actually published,

00:18:12

the first version? Yes, it was in 1989. Okay, so it's a bit older and I think that shows

00:18:23

through, but it's also written by a doctor. And I think there's a lot of lists and a lot of

00:18:32

these five pieces, these six steps, whatever. I felt like those lists that he explained in here,

00:18:41

those were all a lot more clear and made a lot more sense than I was anticipating.

00:18:47

Sure. You know, the first time you see those bullets or these are the different steps in the

00:18:52

system. My shields go up. But I found myself like going through the first and being like,

00:19:00

"Oh, that wasn't so bad." Actually, there's a lot of good stuff here. I'm kind of wondering

00:19:05

because it was written in 1989. I don't know. I mean, we've read some of the older business,

00:19:11

self-help productivity type books, the seven habits, how to win friends and influence people,

00:19:18

stuff like that. I kind of wonder if this was one of those landmark books about procrastination

00:19:26

back in the day. It kind of feels like it might have been, but it also kind of feels like if I were

00:19:33

to come at this now in 2021 as opposed to 1989. I think you got to kind of recognize that it was,

00:19:43

there's a little bit of history here. Otherwise, if you take it just at face value,

00:19:48

you will miss out on the good stuff, I think. Sure. Yeah. No, that's a valid point because I

00:19:53

think that's spot on. If you try to put this in a context of the time, digital natives didn't exist,

00:20:01

and the online world, I mean, it existed, but was far from where we are today.

00:20:08

It's just a whole different perspective, right? I'm with you. It makes sense what you're saying.

00:20:14

It's a different perspective, and what that means is that if you just take the content of what he's

00:20:21

saying, it's not valid anymore because everything is bigger, stronger, whatever. His advice for

00:20:28

blocking out distractions was when you had a TV that you had six channels on, and you didn't

00:20:35

have the internet in your pocket. But you can take the concepts and you can extrapolate those out,

00:20:40

and that's where I don't necessarily think he's wrong, although there is a scenario where you look

00:20:45

at it and you say he's wrong because of the specifics of what he's telling you.

00:20:50

Correct. Yeah. I think this is one where you kind of have to look at the

00:20:54

intense and the broad picture of what he's saying and not get too hung up on the details,

00:21:00

because if you pay attention to details, you're like, what? And I said, what? A lot in this book.

00:21:07

We'll get into this. Let's start at the beginning. This is not a three-part book. There are no parts

00:21:15

to this. It's just chapters, which is, I guess, a breath of fresh air on that. I don't know why we've

00:21:20

kind of gotten hung up on three-part books, but it seems like they're everywhere, and this is not one.

00:21:25

So there's that. Maybe it was pre-three-part book days. But chapter one here is why we procrastinate.

00:21:35

If you haven't caught onto this at this point, the entire book is about procrastination.

00:21:39

And step one on that is trying to figure out why we procrastinate. And this is where I had my first

00:21:50

but you forgot one points, because he has a number of, and I don't have it in front of me,

00:21:57

like of the specifics for why the different reasons people give for procrastinating, but a lot of it

00:22:05

has to do with anxiety and overwhelm and anxiety in the sense of trying to be perfect and knowing

00:22:15

that you cannot be perfect and the overwhelm of having too many things to do or not knowing

00:22:23

what to do, having a low self-esteem. These are all things that are some of the reasons for why

00:22:31

we procrastinate. And it was curious, Mike, do you feel like he covered all of those,

00:22:37

or did you feel like it was incomplete? It probably is incomplete, although he's got these six

00:22:43

warning signs, which are in my mind node file. So I wrote these down. These are all question-based.

00:22:49

Does life feel like a long series of obligations that cannot be met? Are you unrealistic about time?

00:22:56

Are you vague about your goals and values? Are you unfulfilled, frustrated, and depressed?

00:23:00

Are you indecisive and afraid of being criticized for making a mistake? Are low self-esteem and lack

00:23:05

of assertiveness holding you back from becoming productive? And those questions, they do a very

00:23:11

effective job of painting a picture of, yeah, yeah, that's he's talking about me. Maybe not all of

00:23:20

them, but you can definitely see yourself if you ask yourself those questions.

00:23:24

Yeah, oh sure. And then he talks about the ways that we procrastinate as an indirect way of

00:23:29

resisting pressure from authorities as a way of lessening fear of failure by providing an excuse

00:23:33

for disappointing less than perfect performance and as a defense against fear of success by keeping

00:23:38

us from doing our best. And again, I'm like, yeah, yeah, he's right with that. And then he talks about

00:23:45

the pattern here where you start with the perfectionistic demands that leads to fear of failure,

00:23:51

that leads to procrastination, which leads to a loss of confidence, which leads to greater

00:23:55

fear of failure, which leads to stronger need to procrastinate as a temporary escape. And again,

00:23:59

at this point, I feel like he's reading my mail. Yes. Yes. Okay. Okay. You win. I'll listen.

00:24:08

Yep. So I feel like this first chapter is very effective in setting the tone that

00:24:11

he listened up. I have something to share with you. Yeah, he's very good at that.

00:24:15

Because I'm with you when I finished this first chapter is like, oh, somebody just put a wire

00:24:22

tap on my brain and figured out all the details I do wrong. And yet, whenever I talked through

00:24:31

some of this stuff with my wife, who is far from a procrastinator, she's very on top of things and

00:24:37

rarely puts things off. She mentioned a couple scenarios where she procrastinates and explain that,

00:24:45

yeah, there is no overwhelm. There's no anxiety. There is no any of that with those. She's like,

00:24:51

I just don't like it. And I occurred to me, he's like, he never talks about that. It was a whole

00:24:57

book. He never talks about just not liking a task. He usually refers to those in the sense of like,

00:25:03

you're overwhelmed that you have to do it. But what if you're not actually overwhelmed? You just

00:25:07

don't like it, right? So I wasn't too sure what to do with that one. I think he kind of indirectly

00:25:14

speaks to that, where you have resentment that you have to do this thing. And he talks about how

00:25:19

you're rebelling. You use procrastination as like your way of getting back at the person who has

00:25:25

asked you to do this sort of thing. And I feel like what you're talking about, where you just

00:25:29

don't want to do something. Sometimes that's somebody asking you to do something. And so,

00:25:33

yeah, you don't want to do it. So you're pushing back against it by procrastinating.

00:25:37

Sometimes it's the person asking you to do it is you. And so that doesn't fit perfectly.

00:25:42

But I think it's the same approach. Past Mike has told current Mike that he needs to do this

00:25:49

thing at this time. And current Mike doesn't want to do it. So what is he going to do? He's

00:25:54

going to stick it to past Mike and future Mike and put it off. Right. Right. So if you think about it

00:26:01

as different personalities that way, which I have have done not because I have a split personality,

00:26:06

but just I've found that a useful exercise before it makes sense in my brain. Sure. Sure.

00:26:13

I suppose I could see that. You could see how you get there. It was just a piece that stood out

00:26:18

to me. And my wife and I, of course, talked about it. I don't know how this fits in. So,

00:26:24

thanks for, thanks for taking me through that. So I'm going to move through this because I feel

00:26:27

like there's quite a few places we could get hung up as we get into this later. So why we

00:26:33

procrastinate? I took my takeaway on that was anxiety and overwhelm. Those are the two big ones

00:26:39

and those show themselves in a lot of different ways. But then the next chapter here is how we

00:26:45

procrastinate. And in this particular piece, it's like, okay, how do we actually go about doing this?

00:26:53

And in most cases, you know, of course, it's just inaction. Well, if I don't get back to my boss,

00:26:59

I don't have to deal with the ramifications of acting on his decision. If I don't respond to that

00:27:07

email, then I don't have to show my work about where I'm at on this progress. And then there's

00:27:14

nothing for people to judge me on, right? So like, how do we actually go about doing those

00:27:20

individual pieces? And again, I feel like as I was going through this, like you're saying,

00:27:24

the wiretap, wiretap on the brain was definitely here. It's like, dang it, how do you know this?

00:27:29

Like, this is exactly me. Stop it. This is weird. So yes, the procrastination and the anxiety working

00:27:37

in five different stages in the second chapter, I thought was pretty interesting. Number one,

00:27:42

you give a task or a goal, the power to determine your worth and happiness. Then you use perfectionism

00:27:47

to raise the task 100 feet above the ground. That was a really powerful picture, I thought,

00:27:53

because he talks about how, okay, now just walking a straight line for 100 feet easy, right? Now,

00:27:58

imagine that that straight line is between two buildings and it's 20 feet off the ground.

00:28:04

Now it's not easy and you're, you're terrified of doing it. So step three, you find yourself

00:28:10

frozen with anxiety, use procrastination to escape your dilemma. And then eventually you use a real

00:28:15

threat, like the building behind you being on fire to release you from your perfectionism.

00:28:21

And at that point, it doesn't matter. You're going to get across the line as however you can.

00:28:25

You have to crawl across it. You're going to do that. And again, you know, that describes me,

00:28:31

perfectionist Mike, where I tend to just put things off and put things off because I want

00:28:35

them to be perfect. And if there's one big takeaway from this whole book for me, it is just to take

00:28:41

the consistent action and not worry about the perfection. Don't get a real clear picture of

00:28:47

what you want this thing to look like. Just show up and start. He talks about that later on,

00:28:52

you know, the power of starting versus focusing on finishing. And in this specific chapter,

00:28:57

he talks about keeping a procrastination log where you're jotting down the times and the places that

00:29:03

you tend to procrastinate. I think that's valuable. I'm in that's one of my actions. I'm going to

00:29:10

start doing that. I'm not going to be real specific about it, but I am going to in my notebook,

00:29:16

just try to jot down like, why am I resisting writing this article, making this video,

00:29:22

whatever? Is it because I have a picture in my mind that I want this thing to be super, super

00:29:27

awesome and cover every single detail? Probably. Do I need to do that? No, you know, going back to

00:29:32

the effort list we talked about last time with the recording the course lecture. I'm guilty of that

00:29:37

in my own circles a lot of times. And the only person that's judging that output is me. So I

00:29:43

got to get over that inner critic and just start taking action. Do you think that the whole procrastination

00:29:50

log piece is potentially difficult to create? This was this was something I spent a decent amount

00:29:58

of time trying to process because the times when I procrastinate, I don't think I even

00:30:07

realize that's what I'm doing. Yeah. It's not something that I think I can be aware of,

00:30:12

especially not in the moment, because if I was aware of it in the moment, I would just not do it.

00:30:17

At least that's whenever I become aware that I'm procrastinating on something in the moment,

00:30:22

I usually course correct. But there are a lot of times that I'm not actively doing it. It's

00:30:29

secondhand, so it's not an immediate issue. So for me to try to keep a procrastination log

00:30:39

minute by minute, it wouldn't be minute by minute, but it would definitely have to be something that

00:30:45

is done upon review of the day. I don't think I could do it as it happens.

00:30:51

Well, I think it works for me because this is my plan for the day. And just as using today as an

00:30:59

example, I've got the zero to obsidian content that I'm working on, a note making article that

00:31:06

I'm working on playing with the slated plug-in in obsidian and recording bookworm. So anything

00:31:11

that's not on that list that I find myself doing is procrastination. And that happens all the time

00:31:18

to be honest. I come down here because I do this the day before, I come down and I'm ready to work,

00:31:25

and I look at this list sometimes and I'm like, I just don't feel like doing that quite yet.

00:31:30

What else could I know? I'll go into notion and see if there's something I can do in there.

00:31:35

And that's procrastination. So I want to recognize those times and jot them down. And I'm not going

00:31:41

to catch everyone, I'm sure of that. But I think even if I catch a handful of them,

00:31:46

then that's going to be valuable for me. And I can look at, okay, so I identified this is the

00:31:51

most important thing for me to do when I come down to work the next day. Why do I feel resistance

00:31:56

or friction to doing that thing? Is it because in my mind, I've already defined this as like a

00:32:02

6000 word article? It doesn't need to be that. And so maybe I need to just reframe these things

00:32:09

a little bit more when I jot them on my list of like, this is kind of the small thing I'm

00:32:14

going to work on. And if I decide to go past that, great. But this is the easy thing for me to do in

00:32:20

the morning when it's time to sit down and go to work.

00:32:22

I think Martin has a solid point here in the chat. Did you catch this? Can't help but think

00:32:27

if you complete a procrastination log, you are a very poor procrastinator. So as I've been sitting

00:32:34

here processing that thought, which I think makes a lot of sense, if I'm able to complete a procrastination

00:32:41

log, it would mean a couple things. One, at least based on the examples he has here in the book,

00:32:49

there aren't that many items on that list in a day. So you're not actually procrastinating very many

00:32:57

things. Whereas there are days I know I've spent the entire day in procrastination mode. So that

00:33:04

list would be like 30 or 40 items long to get it all written down. And it's not because I didn't

00:33:11

get anything productive done. It just was none of the stuff I ended intended to do that day,

00:33:17

because I did a lot like I set up overlays on a different setup for the church or I fixed a

00:33:24

code issue that I decided to go try to find because I wanted to find a code issue. So those

00:33:32

are the types of things that I will do. They end up being productive, but it's on the wrong

00:33:36

thing, which would mean that log would be quite long time it was all done. So the two or three

00:33:43

things, the four or five things like that, I don't think would be sure. That's not what mine would be

00:33:49

many, many days. Well, let me let me push back on that a little bit because I think productive,

00:33:56

the definition of productive is where that establishes the usefulness of this or not.

00:34:04

So what you're saying is there are a bunch of things that I need to do. And if I get some of

00:34:09

them done, then I have been productive. And so even if I say these are the ones that I intend to do

00:34:15

today and I don't do those by do something else instead, then that can still be a productive day.

00:34:19

I would disagree and say that is not a productive day for me just because I didn't follow through on

00:34:24

my intentions. And you can, I mean, that's just my personal preference on that. But I also think

00:34:30

this is one of the sections that doesn't translate well to 2021, because I think the baseline assumption

00:34:37

here is that you are mindful enough to recognize when you are not following through on your intention.

00:34:43

Yes. Yes. That is not the case anymore, because people will just go grab their phone, not even

00:34:49

realize that they're doing it and spend the next hour scrolling through social media and completely

00:34:55

miss the opportunity that he's describing here to recognize that you are procrastinating on

00:35:01

something that you have intended to do previously. So that's the situation I foresee with this.

00:35:07

I don't necessarily think that what he's saying here is is wrong. I just think it's harder to apply

00:35:13

with the vast amount of information and the ease of access that we have to it today.

00:35:18

Sure. Yeah, no, it's valid. I get what you're saying about the productive day versus non-productive day,

00:35:25

like that that makes sense. But at the same time, I should probably just say that it's one of those

00:35:30

where it feels productive. That's the problem, right? Yeah. Because you feel like you're getting a lot

00:35:36

done. And if somebody were to ask you, "Oh, yeah, I got a ton done today." And if you said that,

00:35:40

people assume you did all the right things and you're a really great person and I would love to

00:35:46

be like you. And sure, people might love the stuff that comes out of that, but it wasn't what I intended.

00:35:53

That's an entire day of procrastination, log entries. Yeah, that's the thing. Getting a whole bunch

00:36:01

of things done. And Martin's talking about this in the chat. Anything that isn't taking a task

00:36:06

is done, is tweaking. You could say that, but then if you're checking the boxes, does that mean

00:36:11

that you're being productive? I would argue not necessarily. And people will define that differently,

00:36:19

and that is fine. But I completely am in line with the idea that anything that's not following

00:36:30

through on your intention is not productive. And I don't know how to say this nicely.

00:36:38

Because I really do feel like this is one of those things that you're not going to

00:36:47

get the value of it until you just commit to it and then you go all in with it, like my time

00:36:52

blocked schedule. And I'm not saying that my time blocked schedule specifically is what everybody

00:36:57

needs to do. And I recognize that there are office environments where you don't know what your task

00:37:01

list is going to be until you get into the office and your boss can rewrite it at any given moment.

00:37:06

And I kind of met a loss for like what to do in those scenarios, other than avoid them completely,

00:37:12

which is what I'm going to do with every fiber of my being. Sure, sure. Because this feels really

00:37:18

good. And getting a whole bunch of things checked off in a day, that might actually be very

00:37:23

unproductive because it means that I'm going to be exhausted the next day and the day after that

00:37:29

I'm never going to recover. I kind of had a day like that this week. On Monday, I had my

00:37:35

Monday is usually one of my most productive days anyways, because I know exactly what I want to

00:37:45

be working on at the beginning of the week. We haven't any meetings yet, nothing to distract me.

00:37:49

So I'm cranking through stuff middle of the day, we've got our weekly stand up for

00:37:53

Blunk Media. And then I find out, you know, whatever anybody else might need help with.

00:37:56

And then this particular Monday, I recorded an impromptu Mac voices with Chuck Joyner on Obsidian,

00:38:03

which is published. So I'll put the links to those in the show notes that people want to

00:38:07

see me convince Chuck to try Obsidian. And then I presented for the Silicon Valley Mac user group

00:38:14

at 7pm Pacific time. So 9pm my time. You're crazy. And that was a 14, 15 hour day. And I was like,

00:38:23

oh, it's just one day. You know, I could take a little bit easy the next day, no big deal. No,

00:38:28

it knocked me on my butt. It was really, really hard Tuesday, Wednesday, and even Thursday.

00:38:33

Like I was sleeping nine, 10 hours a night and I'm like, what is wrong with me? The only thing I

00:38:37

can pin it on because I feel fine is that Monday just took so much out of me. So basing it off of

00:38:45

the output is not the right method, I would argue. And you, like I said, you can come back that

00:38:53

and say, well, my situation, yadda, yadda, yadda, I get that ideally, though, you don't want to be

00:38:57

doing that. A better measure is, did I follow through on what I intended to do, regardless of

00:39:04

what category stuff falls into? Yeah, I mean, he's got a whole, that's a good point, because

00:39:10

he does get into like this ABC prioritization thing. And whenever I saw that, I was like,

00:39:17

what, why would anybody like, we know that that doesn't work. And we know that it's

00:39:22

a bad way to do this because that was the friendly, covey, yeah. Correct. That was the time frame.

00:39:29

And that's what everybody did. And it was the thing that everybody wanted you to do. And it makes

00:39:35

sense, given the timeframe, we've just kind of, you know, come beyond that. And, you know, to

00:39:42

transition this here, you know, there are a lot of ways that you can come at this, right?

00:39:48

Should I be keeping logs? How do I even know if I'm procrastinating or not? What is defined

00:39:56

as procrastination? And he has a definition. I don't even remember what it was, because it

00:40:01

didn't really strike a chord with me. Really, it was just you're not doing what you think you should.

00:40:05

Pretty much what it came down to, which is fine. But at the same time, there's,

00:40:12

this next section here is how to talk to yourself, which I thought was needed in this book. But also,

00:40:20

I don't want to say overdone, but because of the number of books that we've read at this point,

00:40:25

this is something that has come up quite a bit self talk and how you refer to yourself within your

00:40:32

own brain. And he points out a lot of potential causes for the way that you think about yourself

00:40:41

and the way you lower your own self worth through what you tell yourself, right? And there are a

00:40:48

lot of things that come out in this, like the should's like, I should be doing X, Y, and Z,

00:40:53

or I have to get that report done today, or this is something they need from me. And every time you

00:41:00

do that, the, the underlying assumption behind it is that there's a negative that's going to happen

00:41:08

to me if I don't do that, that's the problem. So when you're focused on the negative for not

00:41:15

doing something, we tend to resist it, right? Because we're trying to resist that negative,

00:41:20

thus the procrastination process. But a lot of this comes down to how we tell ourselves what,

00:41:25

what we need to do, and why we think we should do it, or in this case, not do it.

00:41:31

Yeah, they talk about the self talk, reinforcing feelings of victimhood, burden, and resistance

00:41:39

to authority. And then it also talks about that have to messaging that you were talking about,

00:41:44

creating a no win situation where you don't want to do something because someone is making you

00:41:49

against your will. And that's the point where I realize that sometimes past you is the one that's

00:41:53

making you do something against your will. They committed to something that you don't want to

00:41:58

follow through on in the moment, but you don't want to go back on your word. So what do you do?

00:42:03

You either do it and have a bad attitude about it, or in the moment, maybe you procrastinate on it

00:42:09

as a form of rebellion. He says that saying no is a sign of self respect. And I think that's,

00:42:17

that's really true. The big takeaway from this particular section for me, though, is to change

00:42:22

that have to into a choice. And this is a fascinating concept for me because I fall into this have to

00:42:31

trap a lot. I feel like I put a lot of pressure on myself when I commit to something to follow

00:42:41

through, even if the other person that I committed to is like, Oh yeah, you got a lot going on.

00:42:45

Don't worry about it. You know, I'm like, no, I'm not going to go back on this. I said I was

00:42:49

going to do this and I'm going to follow through and do it, dang it. So reframing that, I think is

00:42:57

important. And it's also coupled with that saying no, because you get to the point where you just

00:43:00

have too much to do. But the when you have a lot of things that you have to do and you don't want

00:43:06

to do them and you feel that resentment, it's effective, I think, to change the terminology.

00:43:13

And instead of saying I have to do this, saying I get to do this, or I choose to do this.

00:43:19

Which is really true because all of those things that I have committed to, I have chosen to engage

00:43:25

with. I think work is the one that specifically, if I'm not paying attention and I don't have the

00:43:31

right perspective, I can resent the fact that I have all of these things that I have to do.

00:43:35

But also when I take a step back and think about it, I am pretty darn lucky to have the

00:43:42

type of career that I have and get to do the things that I do. Recording bookworm, recording focused,

00:43:49

making these videos and writing these articles for this sweet setup. This is sort of like my dream

00:43:54

job and I have to check myself every once in a while. Like, you know, this stuff that you

00:44:00

like a few years ago, you were dreaming of the day when maybe you could do this for a living,

00:44:07

like what changed? How did you get to the point now where you resent the fact that you have to

00:44:11

show up and do this stuff? And a lot of times, there's absolutely nothing that has changed other

00:44:17

than my approach to the work. And simply reminding myself of just what a great situation I have,

00:44:25

a lot of times is enough for me to completely change my attitude about engaging with what I

00:44:31

need to do. It amazes me how much the way we approach something with our brains changes the way we act

00:44:37

about it. You ever realize that? Like, whenever we think that something is dangerous, we will

00:44:45

completely alter our lifestyles to avoid it. Even if we learn that it's actually not dangerous

00:44:54

later on, we will still act as if it is. And that happens in so many scenarios. Like, there,

00:45:01

here's an example for you. I grew up in Missouri. Missouri has a fair number of snakes. And the

00:45:09

snakes that I grew up around are water moccasins, copperheads, timber rattlesnakes. Like, these are

00:45:16

all poisonous snakes. And one of those, the water moccasins will actually chase you if you're

00:45:22

around their nests. So I'm not a fan of snakes. That's what I'm saying. And to this day, I live

00:45:30

in Minnesota now, right? The only snakes we really have are garden snakes, black snakes,

00:45:35

and none of them really care about you. They won't, in a lot of cases, even try to bite you if you

00:45:41

pick them up. Like, they're not poisonous. They're nothing. But if I see a snake in my yard,

00:45:46

guess what Joe does? He jumps back and borderline runs away because I thought it was a copperhead.

00:45:54

Becky comes out with the the ho and chops the head off.

00:45:57

I usually end up taking care of it. She's almost worse than I am. But the thing is, like,

00:46:04

my gut reaction is still to this day to run away from it. Because of the thinking that I have,

00:46:10

that this is something that could kill me, even though it won't. So things can change the way

00:46:17

and the places and the things you're around can change. But it's okay. And I think this whole,

00:46:22

how you talk to yourself, section he does have, like what you were saying, the replacing I have to

00:46:28

with I choose to. He has a handful of these phrases through here. Like, you need to replace,

00:46:36

I must finish with when can I start? You can replace. This is a big project and super important

00:46:43

with I can take one small step. What's the other one here? I must be perfect. Replace that with,

00:46:49

I can be perfectly human. I don't have time to play. I must have time to play. I must make time to play.

00:46:55

Like, these are all things that it changes the way you come at it. Now, you might not believe

00:47:02

yourself at first rate. And that's okay. But doing this repeatedly is the point, I think, in this whole

00:47:09

whole section here. Yep, I completely agree that whole concept of play, by the way, that

00:47:15

leads into the next section. That really fascinates me. There are a couple books on the concept of

00:47:24

the play. I'm going to be picking one of these shortly. So I think of preferences about one

00:47:29

bookworm club. Go vote for it now. Yeah, get it on the recommended list. That said,

00:47:35

let's go into the next one here, because the next chapter is guilt free play and quality work.

00:47:40

And this, I don't have a lot to say about this other than his point is to schedule time to play,

00:47:48

schedule that first, and then fill in around it with quality work. That's really what he's

00:47:55

recommending here. And I get what he's saying, it just feels so backwards to me. It just feels weird.

00:48:05

Again, that's fine. But his whole thing is that if you have play, if you schedule your breaks and

00:48:14

schedule your rest and you put in these play times and making sure that you have many much of them

00:48:21

through the week, it frees up your brain and it cuts back on the time you have to get the things

00:48:30

done that you need to do. And it can force you to have the rest and have the mental clarity to go to

00:48:37

work when you have the gaps between the play. I don't know that I'm going to do this, but

00:48:43

it's interesting nonetheless. I was wondering what your reaction to this was going to be because

00:48:49

of the situation, your work situation. And I feel like he's writing this from a certain

00:48:54

perspective that is maybe hard for people to relate to, especially if you've got a nine to five.

00:48:59

On page 41, he kind of plants the seed for this back in chapter two. It says,

00:49:04

don't expect to find eight hours of quality work a day. Much of your legitimate activity in life is

00:49:09

not directly related to productivity. Well, that's fine for you to say that. And I may 100%

00:49:15

believe that. But if my boss doesn't believe that, then how does that help me? Right? Correct.

00:49:21

100%. Yes. If I were to schedule all the play things I want to do ahead of time and then tell

00:49:29

my boss what I was going to do. He's like, what is wrong with you? No, I need you here on

00:49:32

Tuesday morning. Yes. But that doesn't mean that he's wrong. Correct. Yes. So how do you reconcile

00:49:41

this if you're in that situation? And my covert advice, don't share this part with your boss,

00:49:47

would be if you work from home, find ways to do this. And don't tell anybody.

00:49:55

Yes. It doesn't need to take two hours out of your day either. But I think we're kind of in this

00:50:03

unique situation with COVID where everybody is working from home. And it's assumed that you have

00:50:10

other things going on. And we are transitioning back to the way things were and what is normal.

00:50:16

So this is absolutely the time where you should push back a little bit and just say, like, no,

00:50:22

I can't do that. And just see what happens if people are going to ask you, like, well, why?

00:50:27

Like, what do you got going on? Then maybe, you know, you don't have as much wiggle room here as

00:50:32

you thought. But maybe they're just like, oh, okay, well, when can you do it half hour later than that?

00:50:38

Okay, well, now you've just created 30 minutes in the middle of your day where you can go play.

00:50:43

Yep. And it doesn't have to be like, I'm going to go for a 20 mile bike ride. If you can do that,

00:50:50

that's great. You know, I do that not 20 miles, but I build that into my schedule. But it could

00:50:55

just be I'm going to go, we've got a basketball hoop in our backyard. I'm going to go shoot hoops

00:50:59

for 10 minutes, you know, and just finding the little pockets of time that you have to do that

00:51:05

kind of stuff. I feel like there's a lot of value to be gained from that. And ultimately,

00:51:11

if you are being measured by what you create or what your output is, this is arguably to

00:51:21

Dr. Fjord's point, the most productive thing you can do if you're being paid by the hours that

00:51:28

you put in, you know, that's that's one thing. But if the real thing that the company values is what

00:51:34

you are producing, then they're not going to think twice about this. They're not going to ask any

00:51:39

questions. They're just going to see your output go up. And they're going to be like,

00:51:42

whatever Joe's doing, that's cool. I don't know how to do this, to be honest with you. Like this is,

00:51:47

this is one of these that I would love to have this as an action item. I don't know how to do that,

00:51:55

because I'm not working from home. I'm in the office every day, eight to four. I am able to shut

00:52:04

that door. But as you heard, it may or may not actually help. Doesn't necessarily mean anything.

00:52:11

Yeah. Nope. And it's not uncommon. I had it just a minute ago. Thankfully, I was muted,

00:52:17

but somebody opened the door to see if there was anything going on in here. I have no idea why

00:52:21

people do that. So these are things that a big red hue light you can put outside. Right, right.

00:52:28

But these are folks that don't go to our church. And this is the first time they're in their

00:52:33

building in this building. So sure. I don't know how to communicate these things to everybody

00:52:40

without being a complete jerk. Right. So I can only do so much if and when we get a house bought

00:52:47

and I'm able to move my studio back to my home office, I will gladly do so because I can control

00:52:54

it a little bit more. But as it is, trying to schedule playtime would mean leaving the building

00:53:03

regularly. And it would be very obvious what was going on. So there is no hiding that. There's

00:53:10

the option for like normally on Friday afternoons, our building is completely closed up and there's

00:53:16

nobody here. There's a wedding this weekend, which is why this is a bit strange. So normally,

00:53:22

I have the building myself and we can do this all in a controlled environment. But

00:53:27

again, like I have the spots where I know I can do things like this, but it just doesn't allow

00:53:33

it doesn't allow for things like, I'm gonna go for a run at 10 a.m. Like, no, you're not. So

00:53:41

I don't know how to play play that card. I don't know how this is expected to work for someone who's

00:53:48

working in an office every day of the week. I just don't know how to make that work.

00:53:52

I completely agree with you. I sympathize or empathize with your situation. I don't think

00:54:00

it's impossible though. Maybe you can't do it according to the now habit system where it's an hour

00:54:07

every day. Maybe it's an hour once a week. And I also think how you define play, maybe there's

00:54:13

some flexibility there. So like, if I was talking to somebody in your situation,

00:54:19

what I would advise them would be pick a day of the week where maybe you can take an extended

00:54:27

lunchtime. And then what you do with that extended lunchtime is up to you. But if you were to say,

00:54:34

I'm going out to lunch, maybe no one's gonna raise a flag with that. Well, Joe's at lunch.

00:54:41

He already told me that. And at that point, maybe you go for a walk or you walk the dog or you play

00:54:46

disc golf or maybe you just take an extended lunch. Maybe you meet a friend and you have lunch with

00:54:52

somebody that actually has an introvert. That's the hard one for me because he talks about later on

00:54:59

with the unscheduled prioritizing the socialization. And that's just not me. But I know I have to

00:55:08

push myself a little bit to do that because friends are valuable and you don't have friends if you

00:55:16

are not friendly. Yes. But one other thing on this section though, page 80, I think this is the part

00:55:24

that really rings home with me is both Workaholics and Chronic Procrastinators are either working

00:55:29

or feeling guilty about not working. That is true. So that is really what you're fighting back against

00:55:35

when you are trying to prioritize play is what can I do for even a short period of time,

00:55:42

ideally every day that is going to force me to break free from feeling guilty about not working.

00:55:48

Sure. But the I mean, what you're talking about is like one day. Let's let's go on to the next

00:55:53

chapter here. So overcoming blocks to action. There's one piece of this that I want to call out

00:55:59

because there are three different tools that he gives you here. The first of which is the one I

00:56:05

want to talk about, which is three dimensional thinking and the reverse calendar. The second

00:56:11

tool is the work of worrying and the third one is persistent starting. And the first one of those

00:56:17

three 3D thinking and the reverse calendar, the reverse calendar I think is what we're talking

00:56:22

about here when we're talking about scheduling in the play. Right. Yeah, he talks about the

00:56:27

unscheduled later. Yep. Yeah. I mean, it's these three chapters kind of all fit together. Like,

00:56:34

it should be a part. If you realize this, there's actually three parts. He just didn't break him off.

00:56:38

Like he talks about procrastination in the first three, then he gets into how it works. And then he

00:56:43

goes into once you're past it. He was ahead of his time. Yeah, there's there's a three part

00:56:49

breakup here. He just didn't do it. And this 3D thinking and the reverse calendar, the reverse

00:56:54

calendar is what we're talking about. Like you schedule in your play and then you have your spots

00:56:59

in between that for your work. Did you understand three dimensional thinking? Did you get your head

00:57:06

around this? Because he he tells a story that somebody is doing two dimensional thinking. And then

00:57:15

I didn't connect all the dots. And then he's talking about how once he started using this three

00:57:21

dimensional thinking mindset, everything was solved. Well, what is it? And I don't think he ever explained

00:57:27

it. Did I just miss this? You know, I thought I understood it. Now I'm looking at my notes and

00:57:33

you're asking the question, I don't have anything for that. Okay. So my interpretation of it, I think,

00:57:41

is with two dimensions, you're not seeing the whole picture. There's a bunch of stuff behind that,

00:57:48

the third dimension that you're not seeing when you have a 2D view. So I think what he's saying

00:57:53

with this is that with your calendar, maybe you're putting all your work stuff on a calendar. That's

00:57:59

a two dimensional view of your life. And your life is more than just your work. So that's how I

00:58:06

interpret this is that the three dimensional thinking that's looking at the the total area of the

00:58:13

entire person. And then the calendar reversing that, you know, prioritizing the personal stuff and

00:58:18

then letting work happen inside of the gaps. I have issues with that specific approach, but that's

00:58:23

what he talks about in the the the unscheduled. So I think that's what he's getting at here. I

00:58:28

actually like the the number two, the work of worrying piece. Yeah, because I tend to worry quite a bit.

00:58:34

And he's basically saying like, well, you could either work on the thing, or you could work by

00:58:43

worrying about the thing and not actually getting anything done. And that that's totally, totally

00:58:48

true. I can spend a whole bunch of mental effort worrying about something, or I could just, you know,

00:58:52

do it myself and get it over with, which is kind of really to do his third point, you know, just

00:58:56

focus on starting. Don't waste your your resources worrying about the stuff. Just start working on it.

00:59:04

Yeah, I'm I feel like I I used to be really bad at the worrying thing, but I've gotten to where now

00:59:11

I think working in IT kind of breaks you of this, because here's an example. I freaked some people

00:59:18

out over this one, and I was fine. We had a Sunday morning where the main computer that runs all

00:59:23

the slides and all the lyrics and everything froze. Five minutes before the service started.

00:59:29

I went in and I was like, oh, and I immediately went up hit restart. And everybody was like,

00:59:36

it doesn't have time to do that. Like we can't we're not going to get it all back up in time.

00:59:41

It's like, it doesn't matter if it's frozen. So it'll be started a little late. I mean,

00:59:46

what are you going to do about it? So that's that's my perspective. But everybody around me,

00:59:51

there was like four or five people that were there. This has been three years ago or so. And

00:59:55

they just freaked. What are we going to do? So like, hey, you know, it's fine. It's totally fine.

01:00:03

Not going to worry about it. Don't freak out. It's okay. That's a great example, because in that

01:00:09

moment, like what what are you going to do? I mean, right, you're not going to solve it without

01:00:13

restarting it. So why not just restart it takes as long as it takes if you don't have slides at

01:00:19

the beginning of service, you don't have slide at the beginning of service, but at least you've

01:00:22

done what you could. Hopefully it comes back. And one other thing I thought was pretty fascinating

01:00:27

in this section, in the work of worrying is basically describing the Tim Ferriss fear setting

01:00:35

exercise. Have you seen that that Ted talk? No, what is that? It's pretty good. Tim Ferriss gave

01:00:42

a Ted talk about fear setting, which is kind of based in stoicism where like things just are,

01:00:47

right? And he's got this whole process with these worksheets where you let your mind go and you

01:00:55

think about the absolute worst case scenario and you paint this picture in very vivid detail.

01:01:01

And then at the end, you're like, okay, so if that happened, what would I do? And then you're

01:01:07

like, well, it's probably not going to be as bad as that. So why worry about it? Because you've

01:01:12

already got a plan in place now if that were to have happened. That's kind of what you were talking

01:01:17

about with the computer freezing right before service. Worst case scenario, the computer freezes

01:01:24

right before service. Well, the computer froze right before service. So what am I going to do at

01:01:28

this point? It is what it is. So I'll just work with what I've got.

01:01:33

There are so many, again, working in tech, I have stuff like this all the time,

01:01:38

where stuff breaks. Like even when this computer just froze, right? I mean, it's really easy for me

01:01:44

to kind of freak like, oh, no, what's going on? And what was my reaction? Like, oh, really? Come on.

01:01:51

Like that's just completely different than what it used to be for me. Because I used to be like

01:01:58

that where I would just completely freak out over little things that happen like that. And I can't

01:02:03

do anything about it. It's like, well, what do you do? You just do what you can move on. Which,

01:02:09

I guess brings us to the unscheduled, which I feel like we've talked about. And it wasn't in,

01:02:16

I mean, it's at this point where he puts all the pieces together, right? So he's talking about

01:02:20

guilt free play. He's talking about how to overcome these blocks to action. And then he gets into

01:02:28

this unscheduled, is trying to find the actual pictures he has here. But basically what it is is,

01:02:32

you schedule in all of your playtime, all your meals, all your sleep, all of these things,

01:02:39

you get all of that scheduled in there. And then you have the blanks between those. And that is

01:02:47

where your work comes in, right? So that is the time when you can, that's the time you can devote

01:02:54

to your work, right? So this is what I think would be really cool to do. But again, I can't figure

01:03:02

out how this applies. If somebody figures this out on how you would apply this to an office IT

01:03:06

worker, I'm all ears. Well, I think the way to do this is to leave those 40 hours on your schedule,

01:03:18

just to real quickly walk through his process, which has actually 11 different steps. And I feel

01:03:23

like a bunch of them are unnecessary. So I'm going to try and condense this. Okay, you schedule

01:03:29

everything but work, like you would normally would. And then all of the blank spaces in your

01:03:35

calendar, that's where you can do work. But you only put work on your calendar when you have

01:03:42

focused on your work without distraction for at least 30 minutes. So if you have 40 hours of

01:03:51

blank space in your calendar during the week, that's your 40 hours that you're putting on your

01:03:58

time sheet. But he would say you're not really doing 40 hours of work anyways. So instead of

01:04:04

putting that on your calendar, what you're doing is you're using those blank spots in your calendar

01:04:09

as the work times. And by not having work on your calendar, but the fun stuff on your calendar,

01:04:14

you're looking forward to the next break that you get to take. And only after you stop working,

01:04:19

do you put those things on your calendar and you get credit for them, if you have followed through

01:04:25

with the intention and focused on the thing that you were going to going to focus on,

01:04:30

which I think is interesting. And it could show you exactly how much quality work you're able to do

01:04:36

in a week. If you were to walk up to your boss and say, Hey, good news, I had 20 hours of quality

01:04:43

work this week. And they're paying you for 40 hours of work. Their reaction is probably like,

01:04:47

uh, well, what were you doing the rest of the time? But that's, that's kind of an organizational.

01:04:53

Yeah. And that's for me, like, that's a sign that I'm not in the right place. Like, I want to be

01:04:59

in an organization that recognizes that I am not going to be going all out for 40 hours a week.

01:05:06

And if I kind of go with the ebbs and flows, and I really like hit it hard when I'm in that

01:05:12

flow state, then you will get more out of me than if I was just punching a clock and putting in

01:05:19

the 40 hours. And ultimately that's a win-win for everybody involved. But I also recognize that

01:05:26

not everybody is in that situation. So what are you going to do with that? I think my approach,

01:05:30

like I said, would just be to leave X number of hours open. But then if you really want to optimize

01:05:36

your own performance, you can take this approach and only give yourself credit for the stuff that

01:05:40

you actually actually do. I don't think this unscheduled thing in this section, though, like I had, I had

01:05:46

issues with this. I think, I think he's, there's some gold in what he's telling us to do.

01:05:53

But these hard and fast rules I don't like talks about don't work more than 20 hours on a project

01:06:00

in a week, don't work more than five hours on a project in a day. You must exercise play or

01:06:04

dance for at least an hour per day. You must take at least one day a week off from work.

01:06:09

And then you're aiming for just those 30 minute blocks. If you go over that because you're in a

01:06:12

flow state, great. I feel like those could be helpful. I also feel like you said that it's not

01:06:21

going to be a accurate representation of the modern knowledge workers world, however.

01:06:28

So I do think that there's value in putting the fun stuff on your calendar. And I would

01:06:35

prioritize that stuff, but maybe not to the level that he's telling you to do it. And then I would

01:06:41

put work on my calendar. I do put work on my time block plan, not just after the fact, so I get

01:06:46

credit for it. But also I recognize I'm dealing with some procrastination stuff. So maybe I should

01:06:51

follow his advice. I don't know. Sure. Yeah, that's, that's the kicker here, right? Like, you can't

01:06:57

really diss on this unless, unless you've tried it. If you're a procrastinator, which

01:07:05

I think in today's world, almost everybody would say they are in some form. The question is, what

01:07:11

do you, what do you do about it? Trying to record when I've worked on things for 30 minutes,

01:07:16

solid. I have no idea how that would work because I have so many things that pop up in the day that

01:07:24

there are many days in a week and across a month where one 30 minute block doesn't exist.

01:07:34

Because if I get 20 minutes to work on something, like here, here's an example. So the article I

01:07:39

released this morning about the stream deck and omni focus and such. And I was talking about how

01:07:43

I use this upper and lower bounds thing to, to do that. I had to have a timer on my phone

01:07:50

that I could start and stop to tell me if I had gotten 30 minutes working on writing each day.

01:07:59

Because I was regularly getting 10 minutes in, somebody would come over, hey, Joe, I've got

01:08:06

sure, great, we go fix that, come back, start in again, 12 minutes later. Hey, Joe, I've got,

01:08:13

so trying to get 30 minutes in one block is difficult. Now, I could go somewhere else and hide.

01:08:20

But then your phone's going off your, I could leave my phone behind, but then you got people

01:08:26

walking around trying to find you because they know you're in the building. Like it's just not,

01:08:30

it's not a thing that works. So I'm better off, have a timer, start and stop it. And that's how I

01:08:37

worked my way towards releasing that article just because you do not know what you're going to run

01:08:45

into each day. So trying to record 30 minute blocks, like I could record maybe five minute blocks,

01:08:50

but that's a bit absurd. So yeah, anyway, my point is, I don't know how, I mean, the type of work

01:08:59

that was being done at the time, I don't think fits into like what you're saying, the modern

01:09:04

knowledge workers scenario. I don't know how to translate it in this particular case. So there's

01:09:11

that. Yeah, even for somebody like me, this is not appealing because I don't want to only take credit

01:09:20

for the time that I spend after the fact, like I get the value in that, but it completely breaks

01:09:29

my time tracking. Yeah, sure. Because if I was doing that, you know, I'm not starting the timer

01:09:34

when I switch the task, which that's the low maintenance version of this for me is like,

01:09:41

okay, I'm going to be working on this thing now. So I'm going to start a timer. The good enough

01:09:45

version of this for me is I look at the hours that are in my my timer report at the end of the week.

01:09:51

And I say really, I wrote for 20 hours doesn't feel like I wrote for 20 hours. Let's see what I

01:09:56

actually published. And then I'm either either feel good about those hours, or I feel like, oh,

01:10:01

I must have not been focused. I better put up some more controls to block out the distractions.

01:10:07

Sure. And I sit down to write or clearly define the things that I'm going to be working on so

01:10:12

that I don't feel that resistance when I sit down at the keyboard in the morning.

01:10:16

That's good enough for me. Maybe you could say that this approach is better. I don't know. Maybe

01:10:23

you could say this approach really only works for executives. Again, I don't know. But I think the

01:10:30

real value to be had here is in figuring out how to apply these principles for yourself. Sure.

01:10:35

Because you're right, the system that he defines here. I don't see this really working for anybody

01:10:41

at this point. Yeah, I don't know who this would apply to. It's a challenge. Well, I shouldn't say

01:10:48

that the people that it could apply to are folks like you. But I'm not sure that that's the right

01:10:54

move either. Now, that said, this next section though, working in the flow state, like that's one that

01:11:02

I think everybody would say is a good thing to do. But this is going to put me right back in the

01:11:08

same solo. When do I do this? Yep. But working in the flow state, of course, he brings up our friend

01:11:14

Mahali. And it occurred to me when he did that, that Mahali's work has been around for a very

01:11:22

long time. Yes, it has. This is not necessarily a new thing. So unless this was added in a later

01:11:29

revision, going back to 1989 with Mahali, Chief Sentmihali's flow work is, I guess, somewhat impressive.

01:11:39

But I was kind of caught off guard as far as where he went with this because he's essentially

01:11:47

talking about how to put yourself into this flow state, right? Yeah, yeah. And what I got was a

01:11:56

plea to start meditating. Which can you say that that is wrong? I don't think I can say it's

01:12:04

wrong is exactly off of what I was expecting. Exactly. That is this book in a nutshell.

01:12:09

He was like, not what I was expecting. But I don't know how to argue with this. Let's go here. Oh,

01:12:15

and I'm going to take you. Yeah, so this chapter starts with him explaining the flow state and how

01:12:21

you got to turn off that critical, logical part of your brain. And then he takes you through a

01:12:26

two minute mindfulness meditation exercise. Yeah. Now that I understand for people who don't

01:12:33

meditate, and I include myself in that camp, by the way, that you feel like, well, I don't need to

01:12:41

follow that. I can get into a flow state without mindfulness meditation. And you're probably right.

01:12:49

But I also have read or listened to Chris Bailey has an audible original called How to Train Your

01:12:56

Brain. It's a fascinating short audible book on the productivity benefits of mindfulness meditation.

01:13:04

And that specific perspective with that book, I say book, it's an audio program that I think is

01:13:13

very appealing to people. And when it was number two on audible for a very long time behind like

01:13:18

Obama's book and the Matthew McConaughey one green lights or something like that for a very long

01:13:24

time. Sure. Having gone through that book, Chris did a bunch of research because he's Chris.

01:13:29

And he found a statistic that said something like for every minute of mindfulness meditation,

01:13:37

you practice in a day, you gain back something like seven minutes of productive work up until

01:13:44

about 15 minutes per day, at that at which point you still are gaining benefit from it. But there's

01:13:50

diminishing returns. Sure. I can't argue with that. I think that's kind of what he's talking about

01:13:57

right here in this chapter. Yeah. Just Chris Bailey did it a lot, a lot better. This is actually

01:14:02

one of my action items because I've gone through that audible original. And David talks about this

01:14:09

all the time on the Focus podcast and I talked to Chris about it periodically. I have so many

01:14:16

people in my life who are extolling the virtues of mindfulness meditation. Every single time I hear

01:14:23

him talk about him, like, yeah, you're probably right. I need to give this an honest shot. It's not

01:14:27

that I haven't given it an honest shot, but reading this, I'm going to give it a shot again.

01:14:33

Yeah. Hopefully it sticks this time. I'm paying for 10% happier. I just need to follow through and

01:14:40

do it. Yeah. You're on 10% now? I thought you were still in what headspace? When did you switch?

01:14:47

I think I was working with 10% happier because I liked the widget a little bit better. Oh, that's

01:14:52

great. Headspace one, headspace one just shows you or it adapts dynamically. So it's given me

01:14:57

like a sleep story at the end of the day if I haven't meditated. That's not what I want. You

01:15:02

know, I want today's meditation. And I'm not going to promise to stick with this again. I'm just

01:15:07

going to try it one more time. Maybe this one more time. Well, see, that's the thing with all

01:15:14

these books that we read, Mortimer Adler writes in topical reading, they all come together and

01:15:20

I'm believing at some point this is going to click for me. And maybe this is the point where I realize

01:15:25

that this mindfulness meditation, this is actually related to quieting my logical brain so I can

01:15:32

focus on just starting the creative process. Maybe this is the thing. If I do this right before I

01:15:39

start work, that makes it easier for me to enter into that flow state and crank out the words in

01:15:44

the morning. If I did that, I would get a lot of value out of this. So maybe, you know, maybe

01:15:49

that's what makes it stick this time. I'm not sure. I'm going to try it though. Two minutes. It's

01:15:53

all you're allowed. We'll see. Two minutes, mindfulness meditation, pay attention to why

01:15:59

you're procrastinating in those two minutes and it will magically put you in a flow state 100% of

01:16:04

the time. I don't think it's going to work that way. I do think one of the reasons that Chris did

01:16:10

the audible version of the book and not actually wrote the book was there are pieces of it where

01:16:16

he takes you through a guided mindfulness meditation, it's just a couple minutes. So I feel like the

01:16:21

ones that he takes you through as he's explaining the process is very similar to what Dr. Fiori is

01:16:27

talking about in this book. So I don't think he's wrong in this process. I totally get your

01:16:34

snarky response to this. Like, all you need to do is this two minute thing though, because it does

01:16:39

feel very prescriptive. Like, just do this and the heavens will open and everything becomes easy.

01:16:46

But again, I'm not sure that that's wrong. I don't think it's as easy as he paints it to be like,

01:16:54

just do this. Like the actual focusing on your breath is what makes meditation so hard. Your

01:17:00

brain is so hyperactive. You got to train it to slow down and focus on something. But I do think

01:17:06

that if you're able to do that, there probably is quite a bit of benefit to be gleaned there.

01:17:11

Yeah, I mean, there could be. I mean, I'm not saying it's a bad thing and I'm not saying,

01:17:16

but I'm also not going to tell you that this two minute meditation thing is going to be a

01:17:19

magic bullet to put you in flow state. Yes, no matter what I do. That I agree with. That I agree

01:17:24

with that transition from doing the mindfulness piece to doing the work. Like, I'm 80D right?

01:17:31

Transitions are my nemesis and trying to move from one over to the other is always going to be

01:17:38

an entertaining process. So I'm very skeptical. Yeah, and just to clarify, I'm not saying that

01:17:46

if I do this, it is going to produce the magical effect that he promises, but I do think maybe it

01:17:52

will make it easier. Sure. So on a scale of zero to kneel, it's somewhere in the middle.

01:17:57

Yes, I'm with you. I'm not going to say it doesn't. I would have to set up everything I'm

01:18:03

going to work on after I'm done with that. Sit in my, I'd have to stay here at my desk

01:18:08

and do it right here so that whenever I come out of that, I could go straight into it.

01:18:14

Maybe that would help, but if I were to go somewhere else where I could sit in peace and do this and

01:18:21

then come over here, the process from over there to here, I'll get lost every time.

01:18:26

Sure. Every time.

01:18:29

Anyway, we don't need to keep going on that fine tuning your progress is the next piece here.

01:18:34

And the only real thing that I got out of this was pay attention to your desires to

01:18:41

procrastinate and continue to change your systems. I hated this chapter.

01:18:46

Week and iterate. I was like, okay, this is all it is, pay attention, change it, fix it, if it

01:18:53

doesn't work. Yeah. That's what this is. This is the cop-out caveat disclaimer chapter saying,

01:18:58

hey, if it doesn't work, change it. That's what this is.

01:19:00

Yeah. He talks about setting effective goals in this chapter.

01:19:03

You know how I feel about goals. Oh, I knew you were going to bring this up. This is why I

01:19:07

didn't even mention it. I knew you would bring it up. And the other thing that he talks about

01:19:11

is resilience and the planned setbacks. I feel like this is kind of an interesting idea where

01:19:17

you plan these setbacks ahead of time so that you can learn from them and figure out where you

01:19:24

tend to freak out about things so you can create new systems where you don't freak out about things.

01:19:28

I don't know anybody who is going to take this approach. Why things are hard enough.

01:19:34

Why would you plan these setbacks just to observe yourself like a lab rat? That makes no sense.

01:19:41

And the resilience thing, absolutely resilience, that makes a ton of sense.

01:19:47

But you're not going to get anything out of what he tells you about resilience in this particular

01:19:51

chapter. You need to go read Grit by Angela Duckworth instead.

01:19:54

Sure. Yeah.

01:19:56

So he talks very high level about a couple different things in this chapter, which I feel

01:20:01

don't give you any real tangible, like, this is what you can do with this. He talks about the

01:20:07

five types of distractions. And I guess he gives you a few pointers and setting effective goals.

01:20:13

But of all the chapters and the way that they're written, I feel like this one is the one that

01:20:19

has the least in terms of now I can apply this in some way, shape, or form.

01:20:26

Yeah. There's not really anything in this that you're going to come away from and say,

01:20:29

"That is my action item." This is just a fluffy motivational talk, I guess, is what this is.

01:20:38

So this is to fill out the non-existent third section.

01:20:41

Possibly. Yeah. So fine tuning your progress. And then he wraps up the book with the procrastinator

01:20:48

in your life. Basically, what do you do if you have someone in your life who is a procrastinator?

01:20:54

In which case, he kind of reiterates some of the self-talk pieces, but it's not self-talk,

01:21:01

of course, it's talking to that person. Focus on the positive. What's the little amount you can give

01:21:07

me here instead of saying, "You have to do this. Could you choose to XYZ?" These are the things that

01:21:15

he's recommending there. Basically, all you're doing is taking the same tactics and just

01:21:20

turning it towards somebody else instead of yourself. I like this chapter. I think this is a

01:21:25

great way to end it because, number one, he's basically summarizing a lot of what he's told you

01:21:29

in the book, but he does add a couple really specific things that I think are really helpful.

01:21:33

Like, one of the ways that he phrases it, and maybe I just missed this in the first part, but I feel

01:21:38

like when you're talking about working with somebody else, this makes it more clear, don't demand

01:21:45

compliance, but invite commitment and function as a consultant, not a director. Can you apply that

01:21:52

personally? Yeah, but if I am a manager working with somebody else and I'm trying to get the best

01:21:59

work out of them, and I want to do this in a fair and not manipulative way, this is absolutely

01:22:06

great advice. Then there's a whole bunch of specific things, kind of like a list of things to keep

01:22:12

in mind when you're working with somebody. Then he ends it with a story about a husband and wife,

01:22:17

which is the scenario in the back of my mind is I'm going through this, it's like, "Well,

01:22:21

that's great. If I'm a manager and I'm a boss over somebody and I can tell them what to do,

01:22:26

but what if I don't always get my way? How do I use this then?" He sort of addresses that with

01:22:33

that story. There isn't really a specific point by point, this is what you do, which is good because

01:22:38

I wouldn't have liked it if he had done that. Essentially, what you have to do is you have to

01:22:42

compromise. You have to be okay with not getting your way all the time, and you're going to apply

01:22:49

these things, and you're going to invite the person to make these discoveries and figure things out

01:22:53

on their own, which is what you have to do. You can't just say, "My way or the highway," you're not

01:22:58

going to have a relationship for very long if you do it that way. So true. Absolutely right.

01:23:05

I mean, it's relationship building is what that is. I think the part about that that really stood

01:23:13

out to me is that the type of conversation that you're talking about is very, very similar to the

01:23:19

one that I've had with my wife that's been ongoing about ADD. These are very similar

01:23:24

conversations. Here's what I'm struggling with. I didn't intend to insult you. I didn't intend

01:23:31

to leave you hanging. I just completely didn't realize what was going on. I just completely spaced.

01:23:37

That type of conversation is what he's encouraging here, or that needs to come out of having read this.

01:23:46

Yes. Relationship building. Be honest. Be open. Talk about things.

01:23:51

That's how he ends the book. It's just over. There is no conclusion wrapping it all up with a

01:23:56

nice little bow, which I actually appreciated. Chapter nine functions that way already.

01:24:02

It didn't need to be any longer than it was. I am thankful that he chose to end it there.

01:24:09

All right. Any action items, sir? I've got a couple.

01:24:15

I mentioned the procrastination log. I'm not going to do this the way that he describes it,

01:24:23

but I am going to commit to if I recognize myself procrastinating, jotting it down in my boudgeau.

01:24:29

I don't know how you're going to hold me accountable to this because I don't want

01:24:33

to go for a target number of log entries, and I don't care what they look like. I just want to

01:24:41

notice them. I don't know what the next step is going to be once I notice them,

01:24:47

but I know that they're there. I'm going to try the act of writing them down. I'm going to see

01:24:52

what that triggers, basically, if that makes any sense. Then I am going to commit to playing

01:25:01

every day. I feel like I'm doing this already. He in the book talked about an hour of exercise,

01:25:09

play, or dance every day. I'm not dancing. Sorry. Nobody wants to see me dance for an hour. I do.

01:25:17

I want to see that live stream that. I'll watch it. I bet I could get a lot of people to watch

01:25:24

that one. I'm doing this already. It's a cheating action item with the exercise, but

01:25:33

basically with this action, I want to just be a little bit more intentional about making sure

01:25:37

that stuff gets on the calendar first. Then the other one that I've got is to try meditating again.

01:25:43

Again, I have no idea if this is actually going to stick this time. I've done this enough times

01:25:49

that at this point I'm going into it skeptical. We'll see. I think positioning it at the beginning

01:25:56

of my day as a primer for work maybe is the thing that will make it stick for me. We'll see.

01:26:05

For action items, I have two, one of which is a distortion of what's recommended in the book.

01:26:12

I'm going to call it a procrastination review. This is kind of morphing a lot of things

01:26:22

that's recommended here. A lot of what he talks about is paying attention to when you procrastinate

01:26:27

and why, asking yourself questions about why it happened, keeping the log, all of these things,

01:26:35

the unscheduled and such. If I take all of those because I don't think I'm going to be able to be

01:26:40

a smart enough person to log things when they happen, I don't think I'm going to be able to do that.

01:26:45

But I would be able to see it at the end of the day. What I want to do is I want to take the next

01:26:52

two weeks and do a procrastination review at the end of every day. I think that'll be real

01:26:59

simple for me to do because I'm already doing things like logging things in my bullet journal,

01:27:05

which is a real one, not a fake one like yours. I want to do that procrastination review on a

01:27:11

daily basis just to help me see when those things happen because I think that would help me then

01:27:17

see when it's happening in the moment because I don't think I'm going to see it unless I do that.

01:27:21

I want to try, you mentioned the play every day thing, I want to take that on, but I think mine's

01:27:32

going to be a little bit different in that it's probably got to be off of the eight to four

01:27:36

timeframe or it's got to be like you were saying earlier, maybe a somewhat extended lunch.

01:27:42

So maybe if I shorten my overall workday and do a longer lunch, you know, sometimes I can do,

01:27:48

well, a lot of times I could do extended lunches here without deviating from day to day stuff. I

01:27:55

would just keep my plate with me so people think and see that I'm still at lunch. There you go.

01:28:01

But I would like to try. Work the system. That's what you got to do.

01:28:03

Right. I got to figure something out here. This is a great time for me to be doing so because

01:28:10

we're now living in an apartment. So I don't have a lot of like house commitment type stuff that

01:28:15

keeps me busy when I'm off of work. So doing things after hours is actually quite simple as well.

01:28:19

And I could easily incorporate my kids into it too. So I want to try to figure that out. This is a

01:28:26

good time to do that. So no idea what the results of that will be, but it'll be an experiment in

01:28:31

the less. So that's what I'd like to do there. All right. Great fun.

01:28:35

Style and rating. I suppose this is my book. So as far as style goes, we've talked about this on

01:28:43

and off through this in that it's a little disjointed to follow things. You really have to look at the

01:28:52

high level of what he's saying. You can't nitpick him. Like you can't follow the word for word because

01:28:57

that doesn't matter in this one. You cannot follow the details here because you'll get lost. Like I

01:29:04

did in a number of cases where it's like you didn't define three dimensional thinking. I thought you

01:29:11

would like I was trying to find it and reread a couple sections because like did I miss this?

01:29:16

I appreciate you explaining because I got a better view of it now than what I did reading the book.

01:29:20

So that's a thing. So my point is this book doesn't seem to have, I don't feel has the flow of a lot

01:29:29

of other books. I feel like it's written quite quickly. Maybe it didn't have the editing pass on

01:29:35

it that it should have from an overarching level. Maybe that's why it's not a three part book. I don't

01:29:41

know. But these are things that I it made it kind of difficult for me to read. I don't know if you had

01:29:47

the same. Hopefully you'll tell me. But this didn't this wasn't one that I could just sit down and go.

01:29:52

I had to kind of work at reading this one. It wasn't something I could just sit and you know go into a

01:29:59

flow state and read it. Maybe it's because I didn't meditate before I read it. So that is something

01:30:04

that I struggled with. As far as how to rate it, there's a lot of stuff here that I just don't see

01:30:10

how it fits. And some of that of course is a factor of when it was written. The age of the book is

01:30:17

showing through on this one. So maybe this book has a lifespan. You know some books are like that

01:30:23

where they're written for a time period. And once you've moved on beyond that time period,

01:30:27

they'll just fall off. And they're not a thing you should read anymore because they just don't apply.

01:30:32

Maybe this is one of those and we're reaching the end of its life span. Don't know. It's very

01:30:39

possible. But I think I'm going to put this at a 3.30. I am because there's so much of this that I

01:30:47

struggled with. There's so much of it that I cannot apply. Again, he's reading our mail at the beginning.

01:30:53

And then after like chapter two or three, it's like, okay, you lost me. Like this is just I don't

01:31:00

know how to do anything with anything you're saying. And yet I have a couple action items. So

01:31:04

maybe I'll change my mind. And this will be one that I'll re-rate at a five later on. But right now,

01:31:10

it's kind of a pain to me. So I'm going to put it at 3.0.

01:31:14

All right. So let me ask you a question. So with getting things done, for example,

01:31:21

David Allen updated it because the original version was talking about different apps and things that

01:31:29

were not relevant anymore. How would you feel about this book being updated? Would you want to read

01:31:41

one that is updated and expanded for the information age or not? I think I would. I would love to see

01:31:51

how it translates from someone who wrote this and is into this system. I would love to know how he

01:31:58

would translate it into today's modern workforce. Sure. I agree that that translation needs to be

01:32:04

done. I would rather do it myself than have him do it for me. Sure. Yeah. So I, it is older.

01:32:14

It's almost as old as I am. And as I read that, you know, when in 1989, when it was written,

01:32:23

you know, I was seven years old. And I'd try to picture back when I was seven, the world that I

01:32:32

lived in and my parents worked in, how would they have interpreted this book at that point?

01:32:39

And I feel like it's probably pretty good. The unscheduled specifically, like we talked to

01:32:46

a lot of specific things in there that I didn't necessarily agree with. I wouldn't do it that way.

01:32:52

But I feel like the general idea of the unscheduled is really good. We have trouble translating the

01:33:00

specifics of it now. But I think the core concept is good. And I don't know how I would have reacted

01:33:08

to that idea in 1989. Also, I feel like that putting the play stuff in first and then letting

01:33:18

work happen around it. You know, it's another way of saying that the big rocks by Stephen Covey,

01:33:23

time blocking, hyper scheduling, however you want to define it. You know, these are all

01:33:30

iterations of this idea. Would we be talking about time blocking if Dr. Fior had not talked

01:33:38

about the unscheduled in 1989? I don't know. I feel like these things build on each other.

01:33:44

So I'm trying to view this as like its historical role in relation to all the other books that we

01:33:51

had have read. As I mentioned at the beginning, it's not what I expected. I'm actually thankful

01:33:56

for that. It's a book about procrastination. And there wasn't a single mention of the Pomodoro method.

01:34:02

So if you're coming at it from a recent historian's perspective of the productivity space,

01:34:12

I mean, that really tells you all you need to know about this because immediately we associate

01:34:16

procrastination with Pomodoro method. It's not that at all. You do have to kind of translate it

01:34:23

for someone who has a history reading the types of books that we read. I feel like there is some

01:34:28

good stuff in here as evidenced by the action items that we have. I did not expect to read a

01:34:37

30 plus year old productivity book and walk away with the action items that I did. So I feel like

01:34:45

that is evidence of a pretty solid message. In terms of this style, I didn't really care for the

01:34:51

style. It tells a lot of stories about people that he's worked with. For the right person,

01:34:57

those stories are very effective. I wanted to skip most of them to be honest though.

01:35:01

Yes. So I don't know. Maybe I'm just getting a little bit more cynical about stories when I

01:35:10

read them in books, period. I think that that is a possibility because I understand the role

01:35:17

immediately when I start one of those stories, unless it's framed like Adam Grant did and think

01:35:22

again. Or Ryan Holiday is another person who I like their stories. But the stereotypical,

01:35:29

I'm going to tell you a story now in the middle of a productivity book. I know exactly what's

01:35:34

coming and I feel like I can skip that and not miss anything for the most part.

01:35:38

I am struggling a little bit with where to rate this. I think it's a little bit better than

01:35:46

the 3.0 that you picked. I'm trying to decide if it's a 4.0 or not.

01:35:55

I don't know. I guess there isn't a whole lot new here for me based on the stuff that we've already

01:36:01

read. And it's not the type of book that I would recommend on a top 5, top 10 list. It is dated.

01:36:09

You do have to translate stuff. So there's a lot going against it. I did enjoy it. I'm going to

01:36:16

rate it, I think, at 3.5 and David Sparks is going to yell at me because he hates those 0.5 ratings,

01:36:21

which to defend that for a second. To defend that for a second, these 5 star ratings,

01:36:29

this is totally based off of the star ratings on Amazon. So you look at a book on Amazon and you

01:36:36

have like 4.5 stars. Just the little icons, not like the numbers, but you look at it and you're like,

01:36:43

oh, that's not quite 4, not a little bit more than 3. That's the whole purpose.

01:36:48

I understand why people maybe don't like those, but I'm going to say 3.5.

01:36:52

They want you to do 3.175. Not going to happen. Nope, 3.5.

01:36:56

All right. Well, we can put this one on the shelf. What's next, Mike?

01:37:02

Next is Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek. This is one of those books that I have referenced

01:37:09

over the years because I have listened to the audible version before I realized that I should

01:37:15

be reading physical books all the time. So this will be the first time that I have actually read

01:37:20

read this book, but the second time that I have gone through it, and it really impacted me when I

01:37:26

listened to it the first time. So I think there's a lot to talk about in this one. Hopefully it's

01:37:34

as good as I remember. I'm going to have to buy it again. I found out because I have this book

01:37:41

somewhere, but we moved and it's in a box somewhere. I have no clue where it's at.

01:37:49

I went digging through book boxes in our storage unit. It's like, I've got no clue. No clue.

01:37:54

So I'm going to buy it again. So anyway, I'll buy Leaders Eat Last again, but then after that,

01:38:01

we're going to go through digital body language. This is by Erica Dewan. This was written and just

01:38:06

released here about a week and a half ago. The tagline on it is how to build trust and connection

01:38:12

no matter the distance. And given how much we've had to do with remote relationships over the last

01:38:19

year, year and a half, I feel like this could be good for us to talk about. It was like, how do you

01:38:23

manage relationships from a distance? I feel like that could be a good conversation.

01:38:29

Absolutely.

01:38:30

So there you go. Digital body language. We'll see what comes of that. I don't have an additional

01:38:38

gap book this time around. I have not picked up the second book of Hitchhikers this time around,

01:38:44

but do you have a gap book, Mike?

01:38:46

I do and it's not a fiction book, sorry. But I have to read what we've been starting to do

01:38:54

some strategy stuff for Blanca Media. We've got a team retreat coming up. And so a while back,

01:39:01

we all attended a workshop by Donald Miller. And he has a book that goes along with that,

01:39:07

which we are going to be talking about when I have to go to Kansas City, not too far in the future.

01:39:11

So I'm going to be going through business made simple by Donald Miller.

01:39:18

And I've gone through some of Donald Miller's other stuff and it's good. I think I've shared

01:39:25

on this podcast about how I saw him actually at entry leadership a while back.

01:39:29

And he's sharing the stage with Seth Godin and Alan Mulally and Dan Kathy.

01:39:37

And he's definitely, the Sesame Street thing, one of these things is not like the other.

01:39:43

Yep. He's definitely a different style than a lot of those people.

01:39:50

But I do think his message is actually pretty good. Storybrand was really good, I thought.

01:39:55

So we'll see if this one is good. Sure. It sounds interesting. Well, I hope that's a good one for you.

01:40:02

That all said, thanks to everybody who's stuck with us through our fun tech adventure today.

01:40:09

I am going to be doing some work next week on this because this has to be better.

01:40:15

I'm not going to deal with what we've got here today. So thanks to you who have joined us live

01:40:20

today on the YouTube channel. Super grateful to have folks. We don't always get a chance to

01:40:25

respond to everybody there, but we do keep up with what's going on in the chat and reference

01:40:29

occasionally. But thank you to you who have joined us. Also, if you haven't already, check us out

01:40:37

on our Bookworm Club. If you want to check that out, go to bookworm.fm/membership.

01:40:43

And it's a simple $5 a month. And for that, you get access to a private area in the forums at

01:40:49

club.bookworm.fm. You get some special wallpaper, some old gat book episodes, all of Mike's mine

01:40:56

node files. There's a lot going on in that whole system. So check that out if you haven't already.

01:41:03

We're super appreciative to those of you who do that because you do help us keep the lights on.

01:41:06

So huge thanks to those of you who are Bookworm Club members.

01:41:11

All right. So if you're reading along with us, which you should be, pick up LeaderZ Last by Simon

01:41:17

Sinek. And we will talk to you in a couple of weeks.