Bookworm Transcripts

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I love that as soon as we hit record, people start talking in the background.

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It's true.

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So for those who are listening, welcome to Bookworm, and Joe had VBS at church this week.

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And since I record at church now, there's potentially background noise.

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My apologies if Mike isn't able to get it out of editing, but there's that.

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Life goes on.

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Sometimes you have to deal with things, right?

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So my apologies.

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I'll work my magic.

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Anyway, this has nothing to do with Bookworm.

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We have a few things to follow up on here, one of which I didn't put in the outline and

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I did not warn you about.

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So my apologies on this, but I was looking through some of what the sweet setup has been

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up to lately, and been trying to keep up with some of the obsidian course stuff.

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Is it a course?

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I didn't look into it too close.

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What is it, Mike?

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It's a course.

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Okay.

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But the thing that you're probably referring to at the moment is the workshop.

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Okay.

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All right.

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So the two obsidian is the workshop that I did, which breaking news here for Bookworm listeners,

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we're going to be doing it again because I shared, I think, last time how it was very

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successful, a lot of positive feedback on it.

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So we're going to run it back.

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Nice.

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Nice.

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Well, I saw that and I know about course stuff and I was hoping because I'm trying to process

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this stuff.

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How does this compare to what Nick is doing over it linking your thinking?

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What's the difference between the two?

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Why would I pick one over the other?

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Just out of, for my own curiosity.

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Well, the correct answer is see all of the above.

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Fair enough.

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Fair enough.

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So I learned a lot from Nick's linking your thinking course and I 100% recommend that

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that works.

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It's a cohort based class.

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So it's like six weeks of live sessions and then some self-paced stuff and you have to

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like do the work along with everybody else.

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It's a different approach.

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That's kind of like you can use whatever tool you want.

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And here's the key concepts for like working with your ideas.

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He talks about the idea emergent stuff, like how to set it up so you can find your things

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from top to bottom or bottom to top or even like side to side.

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And he talks a lot about PKM in general, like the different aspects of it.

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Basically if you follow his YouTube channel at all, it's like that, but better.

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And the obsidian course that we're working on is going to cover some basic elements of

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PKM, but it's not going to be like here's everything you need to know.

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Now piece it together yourself like Nick does.

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Sure.

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Put in the work if you're going to get the most value out of Nick's course.

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That's just the way that it's designed.

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It's higher level.

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Whereas like the zero tube city and workshop, the whole goal there was like people are,

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they've heard of PKM, but primarily they're just apple nerds, you know, and they like

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playing with the shiny new apps.

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So how do I get started with PKM in two hours?

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And so like we're going to walk you through the very basic elements of it, help you identify

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like one problem you're going to solve, build a solution to that, and then you can use that

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going forward and you can bolt things onto that as you see fit.

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A lot of like specific stuff on here's how you do this kind of thing in obsidian.

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There'll be videos in there like how I do my book notes.

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Rose is making one I think on like how you would run a Dungeons and Dragons game.

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Oh sure.

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Sure.

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Using like one of the dice roller plugins and things like that.

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So lots of different like workflow examples for if you want to do this sort of thing, here's

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how you do it.

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But linking your thinking, the cool thing about that is everybody walks out of that with like

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their own version of their system and it's always very different.

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You showcase your capstone project, they call it as you go.

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And so you get ideas from how other people are doing things and you kind of cobble together

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something that's uniquely your own.

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Whereas people who come to the suite set up typically are like, I want to know how to

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do this thing.

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Yeah.

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You know, how can you help me take action as quickly as possible.

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So different approach really.

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Okay.

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That helps.

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Thanks for that.

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Other follow up, I have one that I had on my list for from last time.

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That was very simply lead my people.

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And that has actually gone pretty well.

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And I think some of what we're going to talk about today is going to play into that very

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heavily.

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But the process that I've been going through is just making sure that whenever I am talking

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to people and I'm working with the folks who do a lot of stuff with me and for me, I'm

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making sure that that process is when it's very easy for them and that I'm involved in

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their day today because of my role and such and just making sure that I'm not making things

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difficult for them.

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And so far that seems to be going well.

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I've had a couple of folks thank me already for being willing to step in and do some stuff

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with them.

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I don't know, seems like it's going well, but it's forever a task to be done, not one that's

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going to be done in two weeks.

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If it were, everybody would be a leader, I'm sure.

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But alas, here we are.

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That's what I got.

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What do you have, Mike?

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I've got two.

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One that I did complete is think bigger.

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And as I am sitting here recording this to you, I just got back from the Blanc Media

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team retreat, which is why I ended up flying this week for the first time in about 18

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months, which was an experience.

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Join the live if you want to hear all the details.

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But that was all about like where do we want to be in 10 years, three years, big picture,

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vision type stuff.

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So there was lots of thinking bigger on this retreat.

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So that one I will consider complete.

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The Gear Procrastination Log, nope, didn't do it.

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But that will be remedied with our next book hopefully.

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Okay.

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Fair enough.

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Fair enough.

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I knew when I was putting the show notes together, I knew that this was something that

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you had said you'd procrastinated on.

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It's like, okay, so I guess it has to go back on there so now I need to go again.

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So what you're telling me?

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Yes.

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The next book is my pick and it's going to be procrastinated on purpose by Rory Vadon.

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And I don't know a lot about this, but procrastinate.

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So it kind of is built into the system that he is going to be trying to convince us to

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use.

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And I've been thinking about that.

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And I'm assuming a lot of this is like, I just don't want to do this right now.

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So I'm going to kick it out till a future point and that's probably going to require

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some sort of do slash defer date.

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We recently interviewed Ken Case for the Focus podcast.

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And so I am playing around with OmniFocus again.

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Mike.

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Well, there's reasons for this.

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Okay.

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You talked to Ken, that's why.

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Well, first of all, if you sign up for Deep Focus, we talked about Ken's custom perspectives.

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And it was really interesting because I always felt bad about how uncomplicated my OmniFocus

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setup was.

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And he basically validated me because his isn't very complicated either.

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He does some cool things with it, but basically it doesn't need to be super complex.

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So go listen to that episode.

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If you want more details about how Ken uses it and how he runs the Omni Group and transfers

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things from OmniFocus to their OmniBugs zapper program.

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But then also shortcuts is on the Mac.

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And I have seen the shortcuts people have for like creating OmniFocus projects and things

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and always thought to myself, well, that looks cool, but it's only on my iPhone or my iPad.

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And that's not where I want to manage my tasks.

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However, that coming to the Mac, I definitely need to play with this.

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Yes.

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So yeah, I'm on the beta for version four.

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And I am going to be giving this another go.

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Nice.

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Yeah, I saw some of the stuff around beta four.

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I feel like I should get involved with that.

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But when all you do is like templated projects, pretty much all systems will let you do that

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to some degree.

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And this is going to sound like I'm jumping on a bandwagon.

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But the last couple of them that I've run, I just dumped them into obsidian and just tick

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the boxes off and put it alongside the notes I have for the stream or the webinar or whatever

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it is I'm doing.

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It's just easy.

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I know.

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So yes, running all the dates and stuff in OmniFocus is great, but I wasn't using any

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of it.

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Yeah, it's sure that's great.

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But I'm still like floating that line between the two of them.

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So I haven't really decided what I'm landing on with that.

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But if I had a full-blown digital task management system, I could totally see going all in on

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it.

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But as we sit here, this trusty notebook has served me way better than any digital task

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management system I have tried for many, many, many, many years now.

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So I just am going to have a hard time letting that one go at this point.

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So that's what I land.

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Yeah.

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Well, as you know, my fancy notebook is not a true bullet journal.

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So I need someplace for these things.

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No, it's a fake.

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It's a total fake.

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And Obsidian probably could handle it, but that just isn't quite clicking for me.

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There's lots of things you can do with queries.

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And I've played around with some of the tasks plugins.

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You can do like repeating tasks with them and you can even add start dates with some

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of them.

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It's pretty crazy.

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And I'm sure, you know, as new plugins come out that eventually someone will have like

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the exact one that I'm looking for and I'll be able to combine it with my Kanban and it

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it'll be great.

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But at the moment, it's just not quite there.

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Right.

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And so OmniFocus is great.

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I'm not going to get, you know, $200 a year of value out of wrangling those tasks, but as

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a basic reminders, sort of a thing which I already have access to because I've already

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paid, you know, to support it.

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I don't know.

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I'm going to give it another shot.

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Most of the stuff that I need reminders for, I just put it in do the do.

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See, I've been doing that too, but I've done that for a couple of years now too.

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So yeah.

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So I've got things in do and I've got things in Obsidian and I've already, I'm already

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using two different systems at that point and I could just continue to use the nagging

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reminders and do or I could just, is that those nagging reminders?

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They're good in theory.

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In reality, they just annoy me.

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Sure.

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Which is kind of the point, but usually what ends up happening is like, I get one like

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yesterday, you know, 5 p.m.

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Hey, it's time to time block your day.

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Well, I'm not in a place to do that.

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So just go away, you know, and I snooze it and then it pops up again.

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Oh, well, now I'm in the car with my wife who picked me up from the airport.

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I'm not going to do this right now.

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So I snooze it again.

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And at that point, like I keep getting these alerts, these notifications.

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I'm like, this is pointless.

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I don't want to think about this right now.

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And I just keep kicking the can on the road and it keeps annoying me.

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So yep.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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I hear you.

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I think I use it for things that are different than you.

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I don't use it for things like time block your day.

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I use it for make bread or take your Adderall.

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So that's what I do with it.

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So for me, I have one that goes off every morning at 7 AM.

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It just says take Adderall has a really cute pill emoji next to it because it makes me

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feel better.

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And I have that go off every morning.

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Well, that one's kind of important.

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Like it needs to nag me until it's done.

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Otherwise if I wait till 8.39 o'clock and I take it then, Joe's not going to sleep well

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that night.

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So we got to get it done.

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So I use it for those reminders where this is actually time bound.

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It's not a nice to have.

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It's not a self-inflicted deadline.

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It's a this has to happen at this point.

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That's all I use it for.

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And anything that's a nice to have would like to do it today.

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That's in the bullet journal.

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I feel like that is 99% of my tasks.

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It's like the nice to have sure.

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Yeah.

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If I don't get to something, I'm realizing that the world does not end the type of stuff

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that I would keep in my task manager.

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Sure.

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So I don't know.

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I have no idea how this is going to look like again.

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I reinvented everything last spring and it worked for a while.

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And I feel like now that things are kind of getting back to a little bit more normal,

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it's just not quite working for me.

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I need stuff that's going to notify me when it's the right place to do it.

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Like a lot of the stuff that I do with church kind of getting into today's book, I need

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to follow up with people and get answers to things.

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And I don't want to think about it when I am laying in bed at night.

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Oh, I forgot to ask.

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I need to do it when I'm there.

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Yes.

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So using something like a context-based reminder is perfect.

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You know, do's not going to give me that.

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I feel like it would.

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But that's because I've learned that for me, contexts are more time sensitive than they

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are location sensitive, even with so much of the stuff that I do being in a building

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and being requiring me to be in a physical place.

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Well, if I have similar schedules, I know the time that things need to happen and I

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generally know when I'm going to meet with people.

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So sure.

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That's how it works for me.

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But I feel like I'm an oddball in that.

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And maybe I'm just too simplistic.

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The whole context-based thing, I tried it for years, tried all sorts of different things

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with it.

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And it just never stuck.

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I always found myself trying to find, like, if I could get my context right, for whatever

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reason, that would mean that my tasks would get themselves done and I wouldn't have to

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work too hard at it.

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That's also why I found myself switching task management tools.

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It's like, okay, well, if I go to text files, I'll get stuff done.

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The tasks will get done because I wasn't getting them done in OmniFocus.

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Well, okay, it wasn't getting done in either of those.

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Let's try bullet journaling.

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Well, guess what?

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Sometimes they still don't get done.

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And I've just finally learned it's not the tool.

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It's this dumb monkey brain can't get it done and won't sit down to start things.

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Like, that's the actual problem, not the tool.

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So I need to stop trying to make context your tools do the work.

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Like, well, it's not going to work that way unless I go to work.

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So here we are.

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We've diagnosed the problem and it's somewhere between the chair and the computer.

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Yeah, but between these two sets, like this headphone and this headphone is where like

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somewhere between those two is the problem.

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So.

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Yes, yes, yes.

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Well, that all said, let's jump into today's book because I feel like there are a lot of

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places we could go with this.

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We've kind of alluded to it a couple of times unknowingly here as well.

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But if we jump into today's, this is digital body language by Erica Dolan, I think is how

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you say it.

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And I'm pretty stoked about this.

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This is really, I think, outside what we would normally do, but yet fits, I think, a lot of

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what bookworm, like what we talk about here, primarily because this is about communication.

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And we've talked about communication a number of times.

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Have we done a book on communication before?

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I was trying to place this.

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I didn't look at the book list.

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I probably should have.

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Yes.

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But I don't.

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Yes.

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With an asterisk.

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We did the Patrick King book.

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That's true.

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That's true.

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We did do that.

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without having it. I had a lot of fun in the process as well. So my apologies, but this isn't

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on the right. -Sorry, not sorry, that's what I'm hearing.

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-He's totally sorry not sorry. It's like, I'm sorry because it wasn't fun for you, but it was very fun

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for me so I'm not actually sorry.

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-I know someone who would never-- someone would complain about something like that instead of saying

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they were sorry they'd be like, "Aww, that's unfortunate."

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-I should do that. That would be really frustrating for people. This is one that I

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feel like is very applicable given the last year, year and a half of what has been inflicted on,

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not inflicted on, but what the international world has gone through with COVID and everybody being

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stuck at home and being forced to communicate digitally solely as a result of that. I feel like

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being able to communicate well in a digital context is a skill that not many people have even

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considered, let alone the detail with which you should consider it as proposed by Erica here in

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digital body language. And having gone through this, I really appreciated her being willing to tackle

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this topic. That was my original interest in this is I just don't think I've seen anyone try to

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tackle this topic of how do you text someone, when do you text someone versus an email, when should

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you call, how do you write the subject line on an email such that it's not going to scare your

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employees to death into thinking that they're going to get fired unknowingly? Those are the

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things that just, I feel like I haven't seen anything about that. Maybe you have. I just don't think

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I've seen a book or a course or anybody really talk about this, at least not at this level, if that

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makes sense. So, I don't know what your initial thoughts might. Had this been out in March of 2020,

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it should have been required reading for every sea level employee in the world. Absolutely. 100%.

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Yes. I remember talking to some people who are part of the stuff that we were doing with the focus

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course. And they were really frustrated because they were having to do everything virtually,

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primarily via Zoom. And they were saying like their managers all want to have these meetings all the

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time. And what ends up happening is they're spending eight hours a day in meetings and the

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managers feel like, great, this totally allows us to get all of our work done. Only problem is for

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the employees, they didn't have any time to get their actual work done. And they were still expected

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to do the same amount of work. So, they were at home trying to balance school and everything else

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with all their families, everybody's working from the same place trying to figure out

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internet situations and what devices are people going to use. And they're in meetings all day and

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no time to do the actual work. So, I feel like there's a lot of lessons that we've learned the

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hard way in the last 18 months ish. And there's a lot of great tips in, I don't want to say tips

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and tricks necessarily because really this is just like best practices for communicating digitally.

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And it's not just Zoom calls, it's text messages, it's Slack, email, a lot of different things in

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here that just about any organization could benefit from understanding some of this stuff a little

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bit better. Yeah, that's a really good way to put this because like you're saying, it's not necessarily

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just how to do a video call. It's like, well, when should you do a video call? And what is the

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difference between choosing to do a video call and sending an email? And you know what, that's not as

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simple as like, these are the parameters around that either because she gets around, she gets that in

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part three, like generational differences and cultural differences. And you really got to be

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able to read the room and know who you're dealing with before you can select the proper medium.

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Yes, yeah, which is fascinating too. So part three is one that's very interesting, there's three

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different areas like differences in body language across these three different areas, which we'll get

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to. But before we do that, I want to start with chapter one, which is in part one, which is digital

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elements of style. And there's one chapter here that is what is digital body language. And I don't

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know that there's a specific point at which I want to read anything from this that dictates

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like what she means by digital body language. But there are some different examples of what

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traditional body language would involve as compared to digital body language. Let me just read one of

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these just so that you can kind of see what the difference is between these two. So in traditional

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body language, let's let's take the example of smiling. Okay, so traditional body language

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is kind of like smiling. It's contagious. As she says, our smile lights up the areas of the brain

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linked to happiness, which is why people, why the people we smile at tend to smile back and

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or feel a stronger sense of connection with us. Okay, now translate that to digital body language

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because yes, I can smile at Mike right now, but it's not the same as if we were in the same

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room together. And there's always going to be a really small amount of lag between the time that

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he sees me smile the time he can respond to that. But if we translate this to digital body language,

00:21:45

as she says, this involves using exclamation points and emojis. Well, within reason, as she says,

00:21:52

adding a simple have a great weekend to the end of an email laughing during a video meeting. These

00:21:58

are the translations of smiling, but how many times do you actually think that through and act on it?

00:22:04

Like whenever you're trying to convey something or convey acknowledgement of something that someone

00:22:11

else is doing, we don't really think about how to convey that in a digital communication system.

00:22:19

We tend to just like, oh, okay, got it. Thanks. But we don't actually write that in an email back.

00:22:25

It's just, okay, I got the information, create archive, move on, don't reply, no need for it.

00:22:31

But the other person's like, did you ever get that? I have no idea that you got it in and even

00:22:36

acknowledge that it existed. So a lot of those implicit feelings that we have have to become

00:22:43

explicit. What she says here is what is implicit in body language now has to be explicit in

00:22:49

our digital body language, which is what I'm just saying. You have to get it out of yourself in some

00:22:54

form. Yeah, well, it's interesting. She compares the regular body language versus the digital body

00:23:01

language. And you kind of made the point that they are not the same. And I have experienced that

00:23:11

over the last however many months. I mentioned, I just went and traveled for the first time since

00:23:18

everything got locked down. So I was in Kansas City for the Blonde Media Team Retreat. And

00:23:23

they all work together in Kansas City. I flew in and I have been basically working virtually

00:23:32

for the last however many months. And I always thought, it's fine. And I realized once I got there,

00:23:42

you 100% cannot replace face to face. There's so much more that happens when you're in the same place.

00:23:50

So essentially what we're trying to do with the digital body language is make the best of a

00:23:58

less than ideal situation, in my opinion. And I do like how she gives some examples here in this

00:24:05

first section. So there's a list that I jotted down, examples of digital body language, liking a

00:24:11

text, making detailed comments, using exclamation points and emoji like you had talked about responding

00:24:16

promptly. And then she kind of introduces the four laws which we're going to get into in the next

00:24:22

section. But really this first chapter does a lot of like articulating why this is important and

00:24:28

highlighting how much time we spend communicating digitally. She said about 70% of team communication

00:24:35

is virtual. And I don't know if that stat came from the beginning of the book, which was before

00:24:39

COVID or the end of the book, which is after, because she mentioned she finished writing it

00:24:44

while everything was shut down. She mentions that there are 306 billion emails sent every day.

00:24:50

That kind of blew my mind when I saw that number. Jeez, that's a lot. Like I think I get a lot of

00:24:56

email, but yeah. And then get this the average person sends 30 and receives 96. So that's a lot.

00:25:03

And she said 50% of the time our tone is misinterpreted. So we send a ton of email and we're really bad

00:25:13

at it. This doesn't sound like a great start to effective work, effective collaboration.

00:25:23

No, there's a lot you could go into here. You know, I've got a few points here for this first

00:25:32

part for us to cover and and we can jump around here too. But one of them I wanted to point out

00:25:37

is that she does mention emoji, which I know you and I whenever we text tend to use them fairly

00:25:45

liberally. And I found that I tend to do that with a lot of people. When I read this, I realized why

00:25:52

it's because it just conveys so much more than what I can actually type out. Now, if I were to just

00:25:59

send some emoji and not actually have any text with it, I don't think it would get my point across.

00:26:05

But it's very easy for me to write something back. It's like sure, sounds great. And then just

00:26:10

have no punctuation with it. Well, then that's going to get misinterpreted like every single time,

00:26:15

just because I'm not telling you, am I excited about it? Or am I just like sure, sounds great.

00:26:21

Like you can misinterpret that tone so many ways. But if I were to throw some of those on there,

00:26:28

you can see like, am I frustrated with you? Am I actually excited? Am I just neutral? Like you can

00:26:35

start to, I guess, tweak your words a little bit to where it's a little easier to get the full meaning

00:26:40

across. Yeah. So Blake says that's a lot of people who need to read a world without email 100%

00:26:45

agree. Yes. And then Carol mentions, and Carol mentions that shows you is a period in her digital

00:26:53

communications that she never thought she was conveying anything more than a complete sentence.

00:26:58

Erica talks about that in the back of this book, two and part three, how the generational differences

00:27:04

between texts, how a lot of people will, older people specifically will think they're communicating

00:27:10

in incomplete sentences. And a lot of younger people will think, Oh, they're really mad at me.

00:27:14

That really caught me off guard because I write in full sentences. I think I'm probably somewhere

00:27:20

in the middle. Sure. When I go read my tweets, go to Twitter and read through all of my tweets.

00:27:28

Generally speaking, I write them in full complete grammatically correct sentences. I don't like

00:27:34

to shorten things. I've tried there are a few recently that I've been trying to break this habit

00:27:39

because like, okay, I don't do this. Like this is me writing technically. And in my mind, like,

00:27:48

I am conveying that I like to write in a way that is very accurate, not open for interpretation.

00:27:56

And I'm realizing that that may be conveying something that I'm not intending to convey.

00:28:03

So I think I'm with Carol. This doesn't necessarily have to be generational. I don't think so.

00:28:07

It can be cultural too, talking about needing to learn how to use emojis.

00:28:12

They, Erica talks in this section about some of the ways that emojis are interpreted differently.

00:28:21

For example, the thumbs up emoji in the US means got it or you like something,

00:28:28

but thumbs up in some Middle Eastern cultures basically means, in her words,

00:28:34

sit on it and is very offensive. Sure. So really, what this book highlighted for me is that I have

00:28:42

my own norms that I have established over my experience of communicating both in person and

00:28:50

digitally. And I tend to project those onto the people that I am communicating with.

00:28:56

But I can't do that. I need to understand how to speak somebody else's language if I'm going to

00:29:01

communicate effectively and ultimately getting back to the last book, leaders eat last, if I'm

00:29:05

going to be a good leader. And so this book has a lot of like tips and tricks. Again, I hate that

00:29:11

term, but a lot of like tactics, little things that you can do that will help with this sort of thing.

00:29:18

But the realization I got is whether you are communicating with somebody who's older or

00:29:23

younger than you or communicating with somebody in a different part of the world than you

00:29:26

or just communicating with somebody who uses a different style than you, you need to learn how

00:29:34

to speak their language. And that's not easy. It's almost like learning a foreign language.

00:29:42

But it's worthwhile, especially when everything is happening, quote unquote, virtually. The other

00:29:50

thing with this is that she mentions in the first chapter that technology helps people create masks.

00:29:56

And I can totally see this how people will create this persona and they'll say things a certain way

00:30:03

that they wouldn't in real life, not just the people who are going to say really offensive

00:30:10

things because they can hide behind their screen. But just you can pretend to be somebody that

00:30:16

you're not a lot easier online than you can in real life. And so I think all of this stuff that

00:30:24

she shares in this book helps you communicate effectively so you can get past the mask and

00:30:30

understand who you're really communicating with. And also dismantle some of your own masks maybe.

00:30:38

But you have to get past those masks if you are going to communicate effectively.

00:30:45

There's something that happened in the chat that I don't think was intentional or always

00:30:49

partially intentional that just exemplifies what we're talking about. So this is from Blake.

00:30:56

It is funny how a period has become an indication of anger and he ends that in a period. Follow

00:31:01

that with Carol's comment, true Blake with a period. I now intentionally go back and delete them

00:31:07

with no period there. So it's like, okay, I see this. I could see Carol what you mean,

00:31:14

but not having the period there does make it look quite a bit different. And I could see how

00:31:20

having the period there maybe I don't think I would jump to anger. But again, this is me coming

00:31:25

from the that's grammatically correct stance. So I don't know. Maybe that's a thing. Maybe I

00:31:34

should get rid of the period button on my keyboard. And to make this more complicated in chapter

00:31:40

two, it talks about the trust and power matrix where you have the four quadrants as you do with

00:31:47

productivity graphs. They always do. And on the Y access, you have the amount of power. So higher

00:31:55

up you go the more power you have. And then the bottom two that you have low, you have less power

00:32:00

than the person you are communicating to. And then how much you trust each other, whether you're

00:32:05

far apart or whether you're pretty close. And that even indicates how you would communicate

00:32:12

to someone. This is really tricky. You know, if you if I'm working with Joe, as one of the people

00:32:19

who's underneath you on your tech team, I have to communicate with you differently when we are

00:32:26

at work than I do in this podcast. One more friends. Yes. So it's not as simple as like apply this

00:32:34

style to Joe. Yeah, it's very different. And I I've seen this a couple times with folks that

00:32:41

work under me at church that I go help with things like moving from house to house.

00:32:48

Because what happens is when they're here, they tend to morph into my communication

00:32:56

needs. But whenever I'm helping them, it's backwards. I have to change and communicate with them in

00:33:03

their method. And it's like this whole weird like, okay, everything has to be different.

00:33:09

Just because it went from you listening to me and now me listening to you, the person in power

00:33:17

alters. So the whole communication method in style just completely flips. And that is weird.

00:33:23

Yeah. In a in a recent episode of focused, which has yet to be released as we record this one,

00:33:31

David and I talked about communication. And I asked him, do you think that podcasting kind of

00:33:39

trains you to communicate less effectively? Because a lot of communication is simply

00:33:47

you waiting to respond to something someone said instead of actually listening.

00:33:52

When you are actually listening, you're not formulating what you're going to say while the

00:34:01

other person is talking. You know, there's a those are essentially wait to talkers, not actually

00:34:08

listeners. What do you think? Do you think that this kind of nudges us in the wrong direction?

00:34:15

That's that's very possible. Because what happens is, okay, okay, stop and think about the medium of

00:34:23

podcasting. And I for those of you listening to this, I want you to think about the amount of time

00:34:30

that you will tolerate between the moment that one person stops speaking and the moment when the

00:34:37

next person starts speaking. And just as an example, if you pay attention to when Mike and I are back

00:34:43

and forth, there's very little time between the moment when Mike stops and I start or vice versa.

00:34:49

But if I were to pause, yeah, that's true. So he's going to cut it down even more later. But if I

00:34:55

were to stop and let that hang, that was only two seconds, right? Maybe not even an overcast is

00:35:02

going to automatically remove that for you. It will. But that feels awkward whenever you're

00:35:08

listening to a podcast. So what happens is, podcasters who get good at this, we we generally,

00:35:15

I'm thinking about what I need to say the moment that Mike stops speaking, like instantly,

00:35:22

because I don't want there to be that dead space. And I know you're the same way, Mike. And whenever

00:35:27

you listen to podcasters, especially if you were to catch Mike and I say at max stock,

00:35:33

and you were to see us talk, if you ever notice this, we do this whenever we're in person too.

00:35:37

We tend to just talk that way. And it's just because this is the way that we generally speak

00:35:44

with each other, even if we're on the phone, it's just the way we work. It probably makes us

00:35:47

bad listeners. I'm sure it does, just because we're always trying to figure out what comes next.

00:35:52

I've noticed myself doing this with people that we're not on a podcast. I'm just in

00:35:57

conversation with them. So I have noticed myself doing that now. I don't know if that's my

00:36:01

introverted, I don't like dead space thing coming in, or if that's just the podcasting thing. I'm

00:36:08

sure there's a lot going on there. But I'm with you. That's a long pre and post-amble to what you're

00:36:15

saying. But yes, I agree. I think part of it is it's a reinforcement of a negative tendency,

00:36:22

but that doesn't mean that it has to impact your communication. And I even think, depending on the

00:36:29

podcast, you will get different versions of this. I think a lot of interview podcasts, the

00:36:38

interviewer will walk into the interview having done all of the research and having all of their

00:36:44

questions prepped ahead of time. And they won't even listen to what the other person is saying.

00:36:49

They'll just ask their questions and collect the answers. One of the best pieces of advice that I

00:36:54

got on that, by the way, was to ask two questions and then make a summary statement of what you

00:37:03

have heard adding your own slant to it because you're reinforcing then that you are listening

00:37:09

to the responses and you are contributing to the conversation. But as the interviewer, it's not

00:37:15

really about you. It's about the other person. If I'm interviewing James Clear, no one wants to

00:37:19

hear what I have to say. No, not at all. They're not there for you. So I'm guiding the conversation

00:37:26

via the questions that I'm asking. And I tend to not be the type of person who walks in with a

00:37:31

bunch of canned questions. I will have a couple usually because I want to be able to start

00:37:39

somewhere. But then I like to go off the script and sometimes that makes the people I'm interviewing

00:37:44

a little bit nervous. I always try to give them an out, couch it is like, so this maybe is a little

00:37:52

outside your comfort zone or maybe this is not, you're not comfortable answering this, but then I'll

00:37:57

ask the question, giving them an opportunity to take it in a different direction if they want to.

00:38:02

But I also think that if you were to listen to a lot of news podcasts specifically where you're

00:38:10

just rambling in response to current events, there's a lot more tendency to do this sort of thing.

00:38:16

I'm remembering something I saw. I think it was an Instagram video of like three minutes,

00:38:23

the whole clip was three minutes worth of video of this person just using like standard podcaster

00:38:30

space filler phrases. And not actually saying anything.

00:38:35

Sure, sure. I feel like we don't do that a whole lot. And every once in a while, I'll hear it in

00:38:41

the edit and I'll try to tighten it up a little bit. But for the most part, we have a specific

00:38:46

direction that we're going with the conversation because we have these books as the guide posts.

00:38:50

Yeah, I mean, we can normally, when we've got our outline, we know what we know what comes next,

00:38:58

which at the moment is timing for your response because we need to keep going. But I don't know

00:39:04

how emoji got on us on all of that. But this is one that is really important and

00:39:10

this may come up a little bit later. But I'm very curious about your thoughts on this mic because

00:39:17

I know that you're not an email person. And she talks about timing when you should send responses

00:39:25

to things here. And although she does give us some outs later on as far as like just making

00:39:32

other people aware of what to expect as far as a response from you. And knowing that that's

00:39:38

something that you can couch ahead of time can be super helpful. But one of the things that she

00:39:43

mentions in this section around timing is that it's generally considered acceptable etiquette

00:39:49

to wait up to 24 hours before responding to an email. Meaning you've got one day to get a response

00:39:56

back before people start to wonder, did they get it? Are they going to respond? Are they upset with me

00:40:02

that I say that wrong? Maybe I put that in a wrong, put it in a wrong way and they don't really

00:40:08

understand what's going on. So maybe I should follow up with them. But that seems like I'd be

00:40:12

doing it too soon. Like they're just completely thrown off. You get that point. What was your

00:40:17

response to this? Because I know that you don't normally respond within 24 hours on an email. It's

00:40:23

normally what? Once a week? Is that your time frame somewhere there? I don't email you. I text

00:40:28

you because email is not a thing I want to give you. So this is where the syntopical reading of all

00:40:36

of the books comes in because I read that and I immediately thought this is making assumptions

00:40:45

about the rules of engagement around email that Cal Newport has encouraged us to rebel against.

00:40:52

And I'm going to side with Cal on this one. Sure. Yeah. No, that makes sense. I do think that if you

00:40:58

are in an organization where that is the norm, you maybe need to have a conversation before you

00:41:04

would just stop responding to emails. But I don't have that. I guess I'm fortunate in that regard.

00:41:14

So everybody who assumes those rules apply, that doesn't mean I have to play by those rules. And I

00:41:21

won't just look at all of the requests that we get via email to review fiction books for bookworm.

00:41:29

I don't reply to any of those. I don't feel like I owe any of those people a reply.

00:41:34

I don't deserve it. And I'm sorry if you're one of those people who listens to the podcast,

00:41:39

but my job is to make stuff, not reply to requests. And so I will go in there whenever

00:41:51

I feel like I have some bandwidth to deal with that stuff. And usually I'm apologetic. If there

00:41:57

is something important in there, be like, Hey, sorry, you know, I'm just now getting around to this.

00:42:02

And pick it up from from there. So it bugs me when I get those requests like,

00:42:09

will you review my book? It's like, did you even read the description of what bookworm is?

00:42:14

Like it just points out in the description. You can't take five minutes to figure out

00:42:20

what we are. And you're asking me to invest 10 hours or more. No, that's not a fair trade.

00:42:28

It's not going to happen. No, you can fire off that email in less than 30 seconds. Have you ever

00:42:33

noticed that some of them get caught? You probably don't see this, but on the admin side, there are

00:42:37

some of them that get caught because it triggers that they set up a new account. They immediately

00:42:45

sent a private message to us and they typed the message way too fast to be able to actually type

00:42:51

it, which means that they paste it in. So it's a form letter type thing. So they just found places

00:42:57

that they could potentially get the book in front of and just said, here you go. Will you do this?

00:43:01

Will you take all this time and make my life easy? Like, no, because you didn't. So anyway,

00:43:08

that's us getting on our high horse. And that is the problem with email is these addresses are

00:43:17

available. You can find them fairly easily and you don't have any sort of trust established

00:43:24

with this person. And then you've opened up a door to a bunch of requests, which if all you did was

00:43:31

make every single person requested something of you via email happy, you would do nothing else the

00:43:36

rest of your life. So kind of going back to that trust power matrix, I'm assuming that if you're

00:43:42

reaching out to me via email, we don't have any sort of trust in our relationship. If we do,

00:43:48

you're going to ascend the ladder. It's probably going to be Twitter first. And then because I'm

00:43:57

going to have to follow you in order for you to DM me. And then from their text messages. And

00:44:03

those I will get back to. But email not so much. Yeah, I leave my DMS open, which is

00:44:09

good or bad. I don't know. I get some responses from folks. Let's talk about your digital persona.

00:44:17

And then we'll go on to part two. Do we have to? We do because this is important because I

00:44:22

search for people all the time. And I feel like this is important. And do you do this? Do you search

00:44:27

for people online? Just do a quick search for somebody's name. So do you ever do this?

00:44:32

No, but I know that I have a problem with this. So I am Mike Schmitz. Mike Schmitz is always

00:44:39

taken. So my digital persona is Bobblehead Joe. Yep, which makes no sense. It was an inside

00:44:47

joke from the office that I signed up for a long, long, long, long, long, long time ago.

00:44:51

And I can not get any sort of version of Mike Schmitz that I would be happy to embrace.

00:44:58

To replace it. I checked yesterday to see if there was anything else available. There is not.

00:45:04

So that is problem number one. Mike Schmitz is always taken. Problem number two, there is a

00:45:10

younger Catholic priest who is very involved on YouTube. Father Mike Schmitz, not me.

00:45:16

I get repeatable saying all the time, Hey, are you father Mike Schmitz? No, no, I am not.

00:45:22

I'm a dear Mike Schmitz who happens to have a Bible college degree who is not a father

00:45:29

that's hard to explain. So I know I have tons of area to improve.

00:45:36

You have some baggage on your digital persona. Okay. Well, the four aspects that go into a

00:45:42

digital persona, and she recommends that you keep these top notch, your name, your email address,

00:45:48

your avatar or profile picture, and then pay attention to what shows up on your search results,

00:45:53

namely what shows up on your LinkedIn profile, etc, etc. And I am one of these people, unlike Mike,

00:46:01

who can pretty much get my name whenever and wherever I want. So if you want to know,

00:46:06

if you want to find my account on pretty much any major social media network,

00:46:12

Joe Buellig will get you directly to me. So it's pretty straightforward. At the same time,

00:46:21

I don't spend much time trying to figure out what search results show for my name,

00:46:27

but I search other people's names constantly. And I don't know if that's just because we have a

00:46:32

lot of people that come into the church that were just a little bit like, what is going on with you?

00:46:37

Who are you? Should I trust you in the kids department? Probably not until we can figure out what

00:46:43

your past is. So we end up searching for a lot of folks just trying to figure out, are they trustworthy

00:46:50

or not? Who are they? Where are they from? Do they have kids? And you can learn an awful lot

00:46:55

about people just from from that. So keep this up to date, pay attention to it, I guess is what

00:47:03

I'm saying. But I brought it up because I knew, Mike, that you have this bobblehead Joe thing going on.

00:47:08

I have no idea what you could do about it. Give me a better option. I will change it on air.

00:47:15

Oh, you would. I know you would. But I don't know what to tell you. I really don't. I know that

00:47:21

people figure this out. There are folks that have run-offs on their name. They use acronyms

00:47:27

instead of their name. And it works well. Like, Mark has Brownlee, the MKBHD acronym seems to work

00:47:34

well for him. So stuff like that, I could see. But I tried FVP, Mike, faith-based productivity.

00:47:41

Not available. I'm sorry. I don't know what to tell you. I'll put it out to the chat. You got

00:47:48

something. Let me know. Okay. This is the call for all bookworm listeners. Mike needs a new

00:47:55

online handle. Yes. We'll start with Twitter. What is it? Bobblehead, Mike,

00:48:00

is a recommendation here. Yeah, no, I'm not going to happen. Because I think the issue is

00:48:05

actually the bobblehead part of this. Oh, wait. Okay. We'll leave that for the bookworm listeners.

00:48:09

They're going to solve your problem for you. How do we do this? Tweet at bookworm. Send us a tweet

00:48:15

at bookworm FM or to Mike who is currently bobblehead Joe on Twitter.

00:48:20

Until I get a good suggestion. User name should be. I'm totally on board with this

00:48:26

project. I like this. We need to follow up with this one next time. Okay. Part two,

00:48:31

the four laws of digital body language. Although these are probably the meets of the book, I feel

00:48:36

like they're fairly straightforward. I don't know how much time we'll spend on this. The first one of

00:48:40

these four laws is to value visibly. Process that for a second. Value visibly. Think about what I

00:48:49

was talking about earlier whenever you smile. You can't convey a smile over a text message easily.

00:48:55

You have to actually be explicit with what you're trying to get across. This is something I know

00:49:03

a lot of digital only companies get very into is whenever they want to praise someone or say

00:49:10

something positive to someone, they do it publicly. You've heard this before. Praise in public.

00:49:16

This is similar to that. Value visibly. Show someone the value to them in some form of a written

00:49:23

method or a video or an audio file or something. Make it very well known to them

00:49:31

that you're valuing the work that they're doing. Otherwise, if you appreciate the work they're

00:49:35

doing, but you never put it into documentation of any kind and there is no face to face happening,

00:49:42

guess what? They have no idea if they did a good job or bad and likely will interpret it as they

00:49:48

did a bad job simply because they got no feedback on it. I did this all the time in corporate. I

00:49:54

assumed everything I did was complete trash because no one ever said anything good or bad about it.

00:49:59

I found out much later that they really appreciated it. It got promoted for

00:50:03

stuff that I thought was trash and didn't really know what to do with it. There's that.

00:50:07

Tell people that they're doing a good job if you think they're doing a good job. Make it very visible.

00:50:12

Yes, agreed. One of the things that we do with the

00:50:17

Blanc Media Team, which is pretty cool. It's a built-in system for this kind of thing.

00:50:25

Ideally, you're giving positive feedback and you're saying good job every time someone

00:50:29

is presenting their work project. If that doesn't happen, an easy way to implement something like this

00:50:35

is expressing gratitude at the end. We express gratitude to a single person for something that

00:50:42

they did that really we wanted to call out and say, "Thank you for." I do the same thing with my

00:50:47

discipleship group at church. There's something about expressing gratitude that makes the rest of

00:50:55

your communication with that individual better. Not just the work aspect of they feel good

00:51:01

because they did the right thing and you're giving them live feedback on what they're doing.

00:51:06

But a lot of the work that we have to do, we have to do together, which even for people like us

00:51:15

who do a lot of our creating individually, we have to remember that. The average person,

00:51:23

I think they said, has to work with 10 people or more daily, which is a large number. Now,

00:51:31

just imagine that those relationships are not good and every time you need something from someone,

00:51:38

their initial reaction is to draw back because they don't like you.

00:51:42

Well, that makes everything really, really hard, doesn't it? It's worthwhile investing in

00:51:48

the people before you try to do the work. Yeah, it was trying to count when you said the 10.

00:51:53

It's like, how many people do I work with on a daily basis? I think it's somewhere between

00:51:58

8 and 11, 8 and 12, somewhere in there. So it's probably close to 10. I didn't realize that.

00:52:03

Is yours close to 10? No, I mean, there's the people who are full-time with

00:52:09

block media and then there's a bunch of the contributors that we work with with the suite setup.

00:52:13

So if I counted all of those people, then yeah, probably. But not really working directly with

00:52:20

everyone every single day. Sure, sure. However, I do need to do a better job of

00:52:26

not just going into monk mode and making my stuff and showing up at the end.

00:52:30

Why is that, Mike? I don't want to talk to anybody until this is all done and ready to

00:52:37

be released. And then you can tell me that it's really good, right? But don't give me feedback

00:52:40

before then. Yeah, well, it's not even feedback. Feedback assumes that the goal of the interaction is

00:52:49

to collaborate on the work itself. For me, I need to do a better job of prioritizing

00:52:58

the people before the work. Going back to Chris Bailey and the productivity project,

00:53:02

you know, people are the reason for productivity. Working with people, maintaining relationships,

00:53:07

not efficient, but one of the most important things that you can do with your life.

00:53:13

Very true. Very true. I'm with you on that. So value visibly is the first of these four laws of

00:53:22

digital body language. The second is communicate carefully. I feel like this is one of those places

00:53:30

where most people fall down. Like value visibly. Yes, I get that. People could learn from that. It

00:53:38

could be super helpful. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. To communicate carefully, this is where the

00:53:45

period thing really comes in, right? And should you use emoji? When do you choose what method

00:53:51

to use? And there is a checklist here. And she calls this the think before you type checklist.

00:54:02

And I really appreciated that she did this. There's another thing she did that I'll get to at the

00:54:05

very end here that I thought was super helpful. But this checklist goes like this. Who needs to

00:54:11

be included on the message? What do I want the receiver to do after they read this message?

00:54:17

What context or information do they need? What is the appropriate tone, which I think would be

00:54:23

helpful, right? Should I be super serious and formal? Should I be very informal? That would be

00:54:28

helpful. When is the best time to send this message? I worked for, you know, I directly reported to a

00:54:36

CEO at a previous job. And she was excellent at timing the messages that she sent to be going to

00:54:45

the person at the best time for the other person to receive them. Always thought that was genius.

00:54:50

What is the best channel to convey this message? So is it text, slack, email, phone call,

00:54:57

hop on a plane and go say hi. What is that? And then how comfortable would I be if this message is

00:55:03

screen-shotted, forwarded, or otherwise shared? What can I do to change it? Or should I save this

00:55:09

for a phone call or face-to-face meeting? That one probably gets overlooked by most people,

00:55:15

including myself. Like that one just doesn't really cross my mind in my head. If I send it to

00:55:20

my superiors, it's not going to be in front of anyone other than my superiors. So who cares how

00:55:26

intentional I am with my wording? And when I thought about that one and just considered some

00:55:31

of the emails I've sent thought, I will take a little more time with some of my emails moving

00:55:37

forward because that was not always appropriate. So I learned a lot from that one. Anyway,

00:55:44

appreciate the checklist. Yeah, she's got a lot of those checklists. And I tried to capture most of

00:55:50

them in my my node file. So if you want those checklists club.bookworm.fm/membership,

00:55:59

five bucks a month. There you go. The communicate clearly section here. She mentions three factors

00:56:08

for choosing the right channel, which I think are important to the length, the complexity,

00:56:13

and the familiarity. And these are kind of guidelines, just like everything else in here.

00:56:18

We mentioned at the beginning, you can't just make blanket rules with this stuff.

00:56:21

But the longer the message, then you're going to want to choose something like email as opposed

00:56:30

to text complexity. You know, if it's highly complex, recommends articles, blogs, or video calls.

00:56:37

If it's got medium complexity and email, phone call, or conference call and low complexity,

00:56:41

text, instant message, or a group chat. And I have been on the receiving end of these,

00:56:47

which are very complex and arrive via text. And then I'm like, okay, so is this what you want?

00:56:52

So very frustrating. But also that's part of the value of this book. She mentions at the beginning,

00:57:03

this will help you whether you are the leader of the organization or the team, and you need to

00:57:09

communicate effectively to everybody underneath you, or you happen to be the recipient of a lot of

00:57:14

this stuff in the person above you, you think isn't quite doing it right. You know, you can

00:57:19

mode shift, you can context shift, you can take a complex text message, for example, and reply

00:57:27

via email and choose a different, more appropriate channel. And I think that is a very important

00:57:33

takeaway from this book is that you don't have to be at the top in order to benefit from the

00:57:40

knowledge that you would find here. You might have that assumption going into it. You may feel like

00:57:48

you're in this situation and something you can do because your boss just keeps doing this stuff

00:57:51

that's really annoying and really inefficient. But I would challenge everyone who's going to pick

00:57:56

up this book to ask themselves, you know, I may not be the root cause of this, but I'm going to

00:58:02

take responsibility for fixing it. And what can I do to move things in a positive direction? And

00:58:07

you will find something always. Yeah. This is this is so important, I think, you know, if you're

00:58:14

going to become somebody who's known as communicating really well, if you find someone who or you want

00:58:24

to be someone who's able to make sure that what you're wanting to get across actually gets across

00:58:31

as opposed to, hey, can we meet in 10 minutes? Like even even if I had this just yesterday,

00:58:39

my boss in passing said, Hey, what are you doing this afternoon? Like, I'm around if you need to,

00:58:45

if we need to do something, it's like, when you get a moment, stop by my office for 10 minutes.

00:58:50

Okay, so like, but go grab lunch first. Okay, like this is face to face in person. And all sorts

00:58:59

of things went through my head. Like, did I forget to do something like he doesn't normally do this?

00:59:05

Like, did I get all the computer stuff set up for our new pastor? Did I get like, I had so many

00:59:11

things go through my head, like, what did I mess up with? And then so I'm kind of fretting over

00:59:19

lunch. And then I go sit down and have a chat with him and his office like, do I need to shut

00:59:24

the door for the door for the say, Oh, no, it's fine. Like, okay, he's like, okay, so the rundown

00:59:28

for this Sunday, like, this has nothing to do with anything I've done in the past. It has nothing

00:59:36

to do with anything I messed up. He just wants to make sure that what I have for this Sunday,

00:59:40

because it's a little bit of a different Sunday, you want us to make sure that we've got all the

00:59:44

pieces and all the elements of the service ready to go, because it's a fairly tech heavy service

00:59:48

that's a little different than normal. That was it. And I was kind of freaking out of it. Now,

00:59:54

if he had sent me that in a text, it had been way worse. Like, I would have been

01:00:01

what just happened. I especially if you put a period on it, right, Blake? So like, that would

01:00:07

have made it terrible. Communicate clearly. And I told him, I thought you were going to get

01:00:13

upset with me. I was like, Oh, no, I should have told you it was a good thing. So it's like,

01:00:17

I'll do that next time. So I was at least able to have that conversation with him. But

01:00:21

all that to say, communicating clearly is something that we could all learn a few more tips on. So

01:00:29

I appreciate a lot of what she spells out here. Anything else you want to say on that before I

01:00:34

move on? No, I think the other thing with this, if I were to pick one more thing would be when you

01:00:42

assign tasks via email, use the three W's, who, what, and when just trying to communicate clearly about

01:00:48

what is going to be done from the information that you share email specifically is is tricky.

01:00:57

Because some culture she talks about, they will say yes to a task, which means that they understand

01:01:03

it, not that they are going to actually do it. So I thought that checklist was was helpful.

01:01:10

Lots of that type of stuff in here. Lots of lists. Yeah, lots of like colored call out boxes,

01:01:17

especially in these couple of sections, but nothing we really need to unpack in detail,

01:01:22

I think from here. All right. So third law here then, versus value visibly, communicate carefully,

01:01:29

and then collaborate confidently. And this one, the three of them really have to all work together.

01:01:36

These first three all have to work together, kind of in a circle as she has a diagram later on,

01:01:42

but collaborate confidently is just that if you're going to work with someone else,

01:01:47

be confident in your ability to communicate with them digitally, and also be confident in your

01:01:53

ability to do the task. Yep. And if you can do those two things, you're going to be much better off

01:01:58

the two of you working together. But if you're kind of like, eh, I don't know, what do you think?

01:02:06

Like if you're doing that sort of thing back and forth, it's just going to be rough. It just is.

01:02:12

So be very confident in what you're saying and what you're doing. Yeah, this one I liked a lot,

01:02:18

because she talks about how when you are collaborating confidently, you are stating your needs clearly,

01:02:24

including when and why you need something, the big takeaway from me from this, leave no room for

01:02:30

misinterpretation, fear or anxiety. I like that. Use jargon free language. It's easily translated

01:02:37

between different departments. And then she has a couple of things that you can do to build confidence

01:02:42

through consistency. And I don't think I'm real great at these, but I think it's easy to project

01:02:53

while there's somebody else above me who is worse at this. And I don't want to do that kind of my

01:02:59

takeaway from this is like, just check these boxes as often as I can. So fight thoughtless

01:03:06

deadlines. That's the first one. I got to be really careful when I ask someone for something

01:03:12

to try and give them as much time as possible to get the thing done and be clear about when

01:03:16

exactly I need it. Not just say, Hey, it'd be great if you could get it done by end of day today.

01:03:23

Eliminate chronic cancellations. This one I am pretty good at. If I say I'm going to be somewhere,

01:03:29

I'm going to be somewhere. Nothing is going to change that. In fact, today, I was kind of freaking

01:03:35

out earlier because I had scheduled a lunch with a friend in town because we haven't connected in a

01:03:43

while before I left for my trip and I came back and I'm like, Oh man, I really just don't have time

01:03:48

to go do this. But I said I was going to be there. So I'm going to be there. And then he texted and

01:03:54

canceled because his dad came into town. He's like, I'm really sorry about this. And I was like,

01:03:58

actually, that helps a lot. So thank you.

01:04:01

You would not have liked my afternoon then because we had some VBS wrapped up today, right?

01:04:09

The final program, which I ran sound for ended at 1215. Okay, I had to set up some stuff on the

01:04:16

computer in there because we've got again, this big tech heavy thing going on this afternoon.

01:04:21

Or this, this Sunday, which is us doing worship in the park. So I've got a full sound gear system. I

01:04:29

got to have in a new location this Sunday, which means I got to get the key to the band shell so

01:04:34

that I can get in on Sunday. So at one o'clock, I needed to leave to go get that key. But I forgot

01:04:44

when we scheduled bookworm that I had a hair appointment at 130. And I was like, well,

01:04:51

how am I going to do this? Thankfully, she's usually pretty quick. And it's only a few minutes

01:04:55

from the church. It's like, fine. So before one o'clock, I set up all the gear here and left it

01:05:01

running. And then I went to get the key. And then I showed up about 10 minutes earlier to my

01:05:06

hair appointment. And she said, Oh, I'm so glad you're here because I accidentally scheduled somebody

01:05:11

at 145. I was like, that's good. Because I got to think at two o'clock and I kind of got to go.

01:05:14

She seems like perfect. So she kind of did fairly quick. So that's my hair was cut right before we

01:05:21

hopped on here. And so she finished up at 20 till two. I drove back here and had 15 minutes or so

01:05:29

before we started. But I totally messed up all the schedules. It worked. But I was kind of freaking

01:05:36

out before we started. So anyway, you would not appreciate it. All it's to say, collaborate

01:05:42

confidently whenever you're working together, make things very clear. And then if you can do

01:05:47

the value visibly communicate carefully and collaborate confidently on page 157, she has this

01:05:54

diagram of those three in a circle. And then in the center of that circle is trust totally. And

01:06:01

my takeaway from that particular, this particular law here, this chapter, is that whenever you're

01:06:08

able to do those other three, when you value visibly communicate carefully and collaborate

01:06:13

confidently, it means that when other people communicate to you from within that culture,

01:06:19

you tend to just trust that they're looking out for you. And they're not trying to manipulate or

01:06:25

be cryptic in their messages and what they're saying and such like you can trust that they

01:06:30

have your best interest in mind as well. So you don't have to constantly be watching your back

01:06:35

in that particular culture. And I think that's a very valuable culture to be in. And I don't

01:06:42

think very many people probably fit inside of that and it doesn't exist in as many places as it should.

01:06:48

But the thing I know is that there are more and more companies trying to incorporate things that

01:06:53

would allow this. The more times I've seen companies that are implementing new schedules and rules

01:07:01

and cultures that enable this seems to be growing, which is a positive thing. So anyway, trust totally.

01:07:08

Yeah, she mentions that trust totally happens when the other three pillars are functioning. So kind

01:07:14

of you have the picture of a stool being supported by collaborating confidently, communicating carefully

01:07:22

and valuing visibly. There's not a whole lot in this specifically because it's really the

01:07:30

manifestation of the other three when they are happening. But one thing she does say in this

01:07:37

section, which I liked is that details develop trust, especially with me. But that also ties

01:07:47

back to something from Collaborate confidently, which I think is worth calling out here that less

01:07:52

haste equals more speed. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. If you

01:08:02

want to go far together, you need to communicate effectively. If you're going to communicate

01:08:07

effectively, you need to slow things down and make sure that you are articulating your message

01:08:12

in the correct way on the correct channel. I think this is the one that just drives me nuts

01:08:20

more than anything else is people who are thinking that they're going to delegate something quickly,

01:08:27

and they just shoot off a quick text without any details. And they essentially just dump it on

01:08:32

people's laps to figure it out and get it done. I'm happy to help you do this, but I need more

01:08:39

information. And I'm probably guilty of this myself. So I am reading all of this stuff and

01:08:49

creating my own action items based off of the things that I see here, which are all specific to me.

01:08:55

You know, I can help move the needle in that specific area by responding, not immediately,

01:09:02

which enforces this back and forth, but carefully considering how I want to respond and how I'm going

01:09:09

to ask the questions in order to get the response that I need, which kind of ties back to our initial

01:09:15

conversation about the context based reminders. If I know that I need to respond to this thing,

01:09:22

I can put it in the right context, I can then think about how I am going to do that, because

01:09:25

that's what I'm going to do anyways. My brain is going to just be thinking about this over and

01:09:30

over and over again. And then when I am in the right place to communicate face to face instead

01:09:36

of via text message, then I can ask the question and I can get the answer that I need, because

01:09:42

replying via text is just not going to work. Maybe, it depends on who we're talking about, right?

01:09:47

Well, for me, I know there is enough of a track record here where I will text back and I won't

01:09:54

get a response for several hours. And then I'll get that response and I'll have an additional

01:10:00

question. So I'll reply and I will be sitting there waiting for a response for another several

01:10:05

hours or several days sometimes. So this is, now I can get upset about that and be like, well,

01:10:10

they're the ones who need this thing done. They should tell me what I need to know.

01:10:15

That doesn't help me. So I'm going to just do what I can to move this in the right direction.

01:10:25

And I am going to take ownership of it in context switch when it's appropriate and face to face,

01:10:31

essentially corner the person and say, okay, so this is what I need to know.

01:10:36

Yes. And get my answer that way. And should I have to do that? Maybe not, but it's not worth

01:10:44

getting upset about it's just the way it is. And it's really not that big a deal.

01:10:48

I can create a system on my own end that will help me just disconnect from this thing in the

01:10:56

moment until it's appropriate to re-engage with it and get the information that I need so that we

01:11:00

can ultimately work together. Because that is the truth. We're on the same team here. This is not

01:11:06

my enemy trying to harm me. They want to help me. I just need to take ownership of it and be like,

01:11:12

okay, so I'm going to ask you in a way where I'm going to get the answers that I need so that we

01:11:16

can move forward together. This is a good jumping off point. So part three digital body language

01:11:21

across difference. And what you're saying is exactly that, right? So my whole house buying

01:11:29

process. This is a very good example of this because my real estate agent is one who morphs

01:11:36

to his client's communication methods. He has people who we want who want to call him every single

01:11:41

time. He has people who are perfectly fine texting all the things, which is me. So he texts me

01:11:48

constantly with whatever it is he needs or things that are coming up. But I know that he will call

01:11:53

people with the exact same information because that's their preference in communication methods.

01:11:59

And when we get into these differences, that one is a generational difference, I think. So we'll

01:12:06

let me pin that one for a second. The first difference though that she talks about is masculine

01:12:11

versus feminine digital body language. And she has these two lists here that I think

01:12:19

explain this much better than anyway I could. So what do you use her words instead of mine that

01:12:24

way I don't come across as a man's planer here. So which she does talk about here, I don't think

01:12:29

we're going to talk about it, but it does exist in this book. So from a masculine digital body

01:12:35

language stance, here's some I guess they would be stereotypes would be the way to put this. This

01:12:40

is just kind of these are what are typical, right? People don't like the word stereotype,

01:12:44

but they exist for a reason, I suppose. But there's that so masculine, confidently transfers

01:12:51

conversate conversations between mediums. I totally do this. I'll be texting with somebody and then

01:12:56

I'll see them in person like, Hey, when we were talking about, I do this all the time,

01:13:00

refrains from using emojis or excessive punctuation. Yes, to the latter, not the former ensures

01:13:07

messaging is short, well organized into the points uses bullet points and clear subject lines and

01:13:13

emails, often CC's superiors on emails, even when unnecessary with the goal of receiving praise,

01:13:19

definitely seen that one, uses boosters to make their messages more assertive and definite,

01:13:24

things like always definitely obviously those words and has quick response times. Okay,

01:13:31

that is the masculine digital body language. Again, this is generalized. The feminine digital

01:13:37

body language, okay, prefers face to face meetings over digital mediums, uses niceties and politeness

01:13:44

as tools along with hedging language examples would be perhaps might, I think maybe those types of

01:13:51

things uses intensive adverbs, non standard spelling and punctuation to reveal emotion.

01:13:59

So some examples would be so with three O's question mark exclamation point back and forth

01:14:06

ridiculously no way with way too many O's and A's. They always proofread messages, which is kind

01:14:13

of odd to me that those two don't line up to me and it has slower response times. So you start to

01:14:20

compare those, it's like, okay, how on earth do we ever get together and get married at all?

01:14:26

What does this happen? Because these are so drastically different. But that's what she's

01:14:32

talking about. There are very big differences in a lot of these cases and you just have to be aware

01:14:37

of that whenever you're communicating to someone of the opposite gender.

01:14:39

Yeah, so this whole section, it kind of builds up to the digital man's explaining that you were

01:14:48

talking about and she defines it, which is the patronizing way men try to explain things to

01:14:55

women who actually may know more. And the reason that that happens is that many women are conditioned

01:15:03

to build a consensus and many men are not. And I think I probably have fallen into this,

01:15:11

which is really why one of the things I talked about at the very beginning, my big takeaway is

01:15:17

from this book is that you may have your own natural digital body language. That's fine.

01:15:25

But that's not good enough for communicating effectively in the age that we live. I need to do

01:15:34

a better job of understanding who I am communicating with. And gender is just one piece of that

01:15:42

generation, generationally, culturally, even just individually, there are, if you pay attention,

01:15:51

you can understand people's preferences. And I could just default to, well, this is how I

01:15:57

communicate and stick with my preferences, which is a very selfish way to communicate.

01:16:01

Or the selfless way would be the if you're going to be an effective leader, I would argue you have

01:16:07

to do it this way. You have to understand who you are trying to communicate to, and then adapt to

01:16:14

speak their language. Put the message, if it's important, into a format that they are able to

01:16:21

understand, which requires you to be able to mode shift and do things a little bit differently,

01:16:29

end your sentences with periods occasionally, and use emojis at other times.

01:16:34

Or forget the period occasionally, in some cases.

01:16:38

Or add a bunch of exclamation points or question marks, which she has a couple of

01:16:42

graphics in the previous section about what the number of those actually means, which is so

01:16:48

fascinating to me. Kind of hilarious and very, very educational for me.

01:16:53

How many exclamation points do I have to put on to indicate anger instead of excitement? That's

01:16:57

pretty much what it comes across as. We've talked about this one multiple times, but the next

01:17:05

chapter here is generational differences. And she has a section about embracing the emoji.

01:17:12

Which I had to put an emoji in the show notes, not that you can see that, but I just had to.

01:17:15

It's like, I can't put embrace the emoji there without putting an emoji.

01:17:19

But when you have generational differences, you have to be willing to change your medium and

01:17:24

your methods in the way that you type things. And, you know, again, with the house buying thing,

01:17:30

obviously, I've got the things with the agent, but I've also had, we have to have a septic put in

01:17:35

in the place. The installer, the designer, second installer, who is actually our neighbor,

01:17:41

soon to be neighbor, they all have different methods that they use to communicate. One of them

01:17:49

is a texture. One of them is an email person. And one of them says that all of the digital

01:17:54

communication is done by his wife. So phone call is the only way to get ahold of him.

01:17:59

And I have all three of those. Well, me going through this book and having learned all this,

01:18:06

like I'd morph to whatever it is that they need. But I also become aware of other people who know

01:18:12

this and they morph to me at the same time. So when I notice that someone is morphing to me,

01:18:19

I generally would just say, if you would rather call call me, like I'm fine with that,

01:18:23

instead of texting me, because sometimes it's quicker. And they will, in a lot of cases, like,

01:18:29

I don't want to text you, but you're a texture. So I'll text you. And I'm like, that's fine. If

01:18:33

you want to call me, call me. It's fine. If you have my number, you have the right to call me.

01:18:37

If I don't want you calling me, you probably won't get my number in any way. Or you'll get a Google

01:18:42

voice number and I can block you very easy. So there is that. So it's just a good thing to know.

01:18:49

Everybody's generation has all these different generations. We have our tendencies. We have the

01:18:53

ones that we grew up with that we're familiar with and comfortable with. I know that my kids

01:18:58

are probably not going to be comfortable making phone calls because they just don't need to.

01:19:03

I'm not even super comfortable making phone calls, but I know that my parents and grandparents'

01:19:09

phone calls were what they did. So my grandmother would spend hours on the phone calling relatives

01:19:15

on Sunday afternoons. It's just what she did every week. That just, I have no interest in that at all.

01:19:21

But that's what she did. Anyway, generational differences.

01:19:24

So you are a digital native. I suppose, I think as the term has been going around,

01:19:29

I'm pretty sure I'm a geriatric millennial is the term that I've heard and used. So I think

01:19:34

that's where I fit in on things, but having grown up in the Midwest, it throws this weird flavor and

01:19:40

I'm just strange. That's what I am. Yeah, it's true. Well, in this chapter, she talks about

01:19:47

digital natives versus digital adapters and gives several characteristics of each. And I think

01:19:53

I'm probably somewhere in the middle, but the big difference is that digital natives don't like the

01:19:59

the real time face to face of a phone call. They would prefer to text and they even say,

01:20:06

"You are probably a digital native if you text first to ask if you can call, whereas a digital

01:20:12

adapter is just going to default to the call." I do that. Hey, do you want to call? Do you have

01:20:19

time for a call? I'll text and ask that question. I do that sometimes. And when I read that, I was

01:20:25

like, "I'm just going to start calling." Yeah, most of the time it's fine. Yeah. I should probably

01:20:33

do that. There are times whenever I call people, I think of it as a cold call when I haven't set

01:20:39

it up ahead of time. I know that a cold call is like, "We've never met. This is the first time

01:20:44

we've ever communicated. That's a cold call." But in my head, a cold call is when we didn't plan it.

01:20:50

Sure. Even if it's you calling you without me telling you, I'm going to call you feels like a

01:20:57

cold call. And I wouldn't really do this. Like, "Hey, do you have time for a call? I will always text

01:21:01

you first. It's kind of how I work." The last difference here that she mentions in this part

01:21:08

is cultural differences. I wish I had read this when I was running my primarily web development

01:21:19

business because I worked with so many different cultures. And there were a lot of times I would

01:21:24

email my point of contact at the company and just never hear back from them. And I never knew

01:21:30

that I see something wrong, that I type it wrong, and I could follow up with them and never hear

01:21:35

from them. And having read this, there are probably some things I did or said in the process that

01:21:42

possibly either offended them or they realized like, "Oh, he doesn't actually know what he's talking

01:21:47

about." Like, even though I do... Was it a high-context culture? I think so. In most of those cases,

01:21:53

I think it was. Yeah. So that is one that I'm aware of now and wish I had known at the time,

01:22:00

but alas, here we are. But yes, cultural differences play a big part in choosing, again, the medium

01:22:07

and the way that you communicate. Yep. The big differentiation here is high-context cultures,

01:22:14

which prefer face-to-face communications and low-context cultures like the US that prefer

01:22:18

email and text. So I think you're right. There is an opportunity there for Septuavimius

01:22:25

misinterpreted because you default to, "Well, I'm in the US." It was the way we communicate. So

01:22:30

as of what I'm going to do, whereas with email, you could make a request to somebody in a high-context

01:22:35

culture, for example. And she uses, I think, India as the example where someone had made a request of

01:22:42

somebody via email on their boss got really, really upset because in their culture, it was normal that

01:22:48

you talk to their superior first before you make any sort of request. And they basically viewed it

01:22:54

as stealing their employees' time. So many things to consider here that I think if you don't,

01:23:03

there's a very good chance you're going to step on somebody's toes. The big takeaway from this,

01:23:09

for me, is that when you make a mistake, make sure that you apologize. Yes. Because she basically

01:23:15

talks about how you're going to make these mistakes. There's no way you can know all of the different

01:23:20

nuances with all of the different cultures. But you should definitely do a little bit of preliminary

01:23:26

research and see if there's anything that emoji, for example, make sure you don't send a thumbs up

01:23:33

emoji to somebody in those cultures where it's completely offensive. And then err on the side of

01:23:40

formality. So with the email, for example, even if you have a relationship with a person, you can

01:23:47

still cover a lot of that stuff if you are extremely formal in your interaction,

01:23:54

as opposed to more informal, which I think I tend to do this a lot, like a lot of

01:24:02

formal emails will start with "hi" or "hello" and kind of the informal millennial version of that is "hey,

01:24:09

almost every single email I write is like, 'hey, so and so, so I need to be careful when I'm

01:24:14

communicating to somebody different culture, you know, I'm gonna make sure that I'm writing complete

01:24:18

sentences, I'm using "hi" or "hello", I'm signing off appropriately, I'm using bulleted lists to

01:24:24

summarize what I'm asking for, all that kind of stuff. Yes, please do. There's a lot, I think,

01:24:32

in this particular piece. So as we step into the last piece of this whole book, which is the

01:24:37

conclusion, which is basically a couple pages of wrap-up is really all she's doing. But this is

01:24:44

probably the first time I caught myself scanning and spending time with the appendix.

01:24:51

Did you do this? I did not. Usually when I have an appendix in a book, I'll glance at them to see

01:24:58

what they are, just so I have a reference in my brain for the future if I ever wanted to go back

01:25:03

to it. This one kind of caught me because this is an actual guide book that she puts in the appendix,

01:25:11

which I think is really interesting. It's, if you were to boil down the rest of the book

01:25:18

to the point where you could get a, like you were saying earlier, the tips and tricks, the whole

01:25:24

book has tons of stories in it. But this has an actual step-by-step for a lot of things to help

01:25:31

you choose what it is that you're going to do. Like if you're going to text, what's a good way to

01:25:37

do it in what situation? What's the audience? How fast did you respond? Like she has some answers

01:25:42

for those questions. So it really is kind of like a handbook that you could hold on to and like,

01:25:47

okay, someone just texted me, they're higher up than me. And how do I, like what is the time

01:25:54

frame? How do I respond? What's a good way to respond? And then you could go to this and it could

01:25:58

help you figure that out. I kind of appreciate that. That's super helpful. But again, this is the

01:26:04

first time I found myself like spending decent amount of time with the appendix of a book.

01:26:08

So kudos to Erica on, on that one, because I can't say I've done that before.

01:26:14

Yeah, I think this is a valuable summary of the things that she talks about in the book. And I

01:26:18

could see using it as a reference, but I did not spend a whole lot of time with it prior to

01:26:25

recording. I could be wrong, but that's, that was my interpretation of it as looking at it.

01:26:31

Is it looked like a collection of all of those call out boxes with all of the

01:26:37

tactics from the book itself? So you could reference them easily broken down by different

01:26:42

sections and things. Yeah. I think that if you're going to include a whole bunch of stuff like

01:26:47

she does in this in this book, this is a very valuable addition. For sure. Yeah. All right, so

01:26:56

action items. I suppose I get to go first on this one, Tony. I have two. We didn't talk about these,

01:27:02

but the two that I have, one that's easier than the other, is to pick up the phone more.

01:27:09

Have this thing in my pocket all the time. Why do I not just tap somebody's name in the phone app

01:27:17

instead of the messages app? And if I were to do that with at least certain people more often,

01:27:25

I feel like the relationships that I have with them would be quite a bit better. So that is

01:27:30

something that I want to attempt to get better at. And I know a couple of folks that I'm planning

01:27:35

to call over the weekend just because not any particular reason. Just I want to try that just

01:27:41

to see how that changes some things. The other one that I have is complement in public. This goes

01:27:46

all the way back to the first chapter in part two, value visibly. I don't, and this kind of plays

01:27:53

into that whole lead my team thing from last episode. Leaders eat last. It kind of plays into

01:28:00

that, but trying to make sure that whenever I see my team members doing something that I really

01:28:05

like, I want to make sure that they know it and that the people around them see that I like it.

01:28:10

So making sure that it's very visible, that I'm seeing the value that they're bringing to the table.

01:28:16

So that is what I want to do. Those two things. That's what I'm going to work on this next two

01:28:21

weeks. All right. You. I got a bunch of little ones here. The first one is to eliminate. I know

01:28:28

you're really busy. Yeah. Which is my default intro line whenever I am following up with something

01:28:36

to someone who said they were going to get something to me and they haven't by the time frame that I

01:28:41

expect it back. I never really realized that that could be offensive, but I get why it might be.

01:28:50

So I'm just going to try to be a little bit more direct and try to

01:28:54

temper the message a little bit in different ways. I also want to figure out the norms for

01:29:01

communication with all of the different teams and organizations that I'm involved with. And I want

01:29:08

to codify these probably in obsidian. I want to have a reference of these and I'm not sure I'll be

01:29:14

able to 100% figure these out for all of the different areas, but that's the goal. I also want

01:29:22

to ban the mute button in all of my video stuff. I like that. That was from somewhere in the first

01:29:30

section. I think it was under value visibly where when you have a mute button and you turn it on,

01:29:39

you kind of know that like something's happening around the person. You just can't hear it. So

01:29:44

you just move forward with the conversation, but you kind of assume that they're not really

01:29:50

paying attention. And so that's kind of a way to show not intentionally, but I don't really value

01:29:59

the conversation that's happening. So I want to institute that rule wherever I can. There's a quiz

01:30:07

that goes along with this. At the end of each of the four sections, there's a lot of like

01:30:13

fill in the blanks where you think your organization is, but there's an online quiz at I think it's

01:30:20

Erica de one.com slash digital body language that I want to take. I don't know if I am in a position

01:30:27

where like it would be applicable to me. Maybe it's like for your entire organization. I'm not

01:30:34

the person who would take that, but I want to I want to check it out. And then the last one is I

01:30:40

want to be mindful of whose voices I amplify. And this kind of comes back to the whole third part

01:30:47

about body language across differences. I think in the text space specifically, there's a lot of

01:30:54

historically white dudes, which is not great if you want to get a diversity of opinions. And then

01:31:03

you combine that with the fact that like the masculine versus feminine digital body language.

01:31:10

And we're kind of wired just to communicate a certain way, get our stuff out there, take center

01:31:17

stage. And I recognize that that is a stereotype first of all, but also probably I default that

01:31:25

way. And so I don't want to just continue to amplify voices that are exactly like mine. I want to

01:31:33

when I retweet someone, not just retweet the people who look and sound exactly like me. And I

01:31:43

don't know exactly what that's going to look like. I don't have any sort of criteria for this,

01:31:48

but I know there's lots of interesting people doing lots of interesting things online. And that's a

01:31:53

very small thing I can do to help make the internet a little bit more pleasant and a little bit more

01:31:59

diverse. So you're saying the internet is unpleasant? Can be. I don't see the vitriol that a lot of

01:32:05

other people see, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. So I'm not trying to downplay that Twitter

01:32:12

is primarily positive for me, probably because of all of the filters that I've set up. Yeah,

01:32:17

that's that's definitely what it is on my side. I mute so many things that

01:32:22

it's really kind of a nice place to be for the most part, because all the bad stuff doesn't exist.

01:32:29

Yeah. Fun times. So I suppose that brings us to style and rating, unless you have more action

01:32:35

items. You want to pile on? That's it. I'm good. All right. So style and rating. Let's let's just

01:32:41

say that Erica is good at storytelling. And sometimes I wonder if we say that on every single book,

01:32:48

I wonder if people have just gotten a lot better at storytelling, or we're just picking books that

01:32:53

have good storytellers in them. I don't know what that is, but it seems like we've picked a lot of

01:32:58

books with good storytellers. Erica is no exception to that. And she does a good job of keeping me in

01:33:06

a spot where I really want to see what's going to happen next. And again, this is a topic that was

01:33:12

very interesting to me. So I had a very hard time putting this one down. Again, I don't know if that's

01:33:17

so much her writing style as much as my extreme interest in her topic, but combined it all. And

01:33:25

this was a book I really, really enjoyed going through. I don't think there's any,

01:33:31

I don't think as we've gone through this, I don't think there've been any points where I felt like

01:33:35

we were arguing with her saying she was absolutely wrong or that there are things that she needs to

01:33:44

expand on or shrink, like we really didn't find any of that here. The only real exception might be

01:33:53

the point at which she was saying the one day turnaround on emails. But even that, she tells

01:33:59

a story later on of a cult, I think it was in the culture. No, it wasn't cultures. There's a

01:34:04

section later on where there's a CEO or somebody that only responds and sends emails on the weekends.

01:34:11

And his team knew that. So they wouldn't worry about emails that he would send and they would

01:34:18

only reply to him on Mondays and that was expected and completely normal. And that was made known

01:34:24

by him. So that sort of thing can be done and she does give us that out from that. But anyway,

01:34:31

what I'm getting at is I don't really think there was much to argue with her on this one.

01:34:35

There's a lot of this that I totally agree with. I wish I had read this sooner. As far as like how

01:34:42

to rate it though, I don't think this is a five just because I don't think it fits the territory

01:34:49

of what we normally see in a five. Just, I don't know if that's maybe topic or the way it comes

01:34:56

across. I don't know that even if you just absolutely nailed this, I don't know that we would put it

01:35:01

at a five just because the subject material that we're talking about doesn't really put it in that

01:35:05

territory, I don't think. But as far as like how she got the how she conveyed the message of

01:35:13

let's learn how our body language is translated into a digital communication

01:35:17

method and how do you choose that and how do you become better at that. I feel like she did a

01:35:24

really good job and I'm very grateful for her putting this book together and having a chance

01:35:28

to read it. So that all said, I'll put it at 4.5. Again, I don't think it goes all the way to the

01:35:34

five but I really, really like this and I know I've got a number of folks that I'm going to

01:35:38

recommend this to. I've already had a couple of our youth leaders ask me about it because they saw

01:35:44

a couple of the pictures I posted about it and they're like, please tell me if that's worth reading

01:35:49

because I can never communicate with the kids in my group correctly and now I know it's probably

01:35:55

because they're using periods. So it could be. All right, that's why I land 4.5.

01:36:03

All right, I'm going to join you at 4.5. I think it's really good. I think there's lots of

01:36:07

practical stuff in here. I think she speaks to this topic better than anybody else I have ever heard.

01:36:13

I don't think it's a completely life changing book.

01:36:18

I know communication is a big deal. I know a lot of it happens digitally. I just prefer to do it

01:36:28

in person whenever possible. So that's like the only thing I can say against this.

01:36:33

Is like you can apply everything in this book and there is a possibility that you think there I

01:36:40

have mastered communication, but really you are avoiding the way that it should happen

01:36:45

in certain situations. And she has, I'm sure other books that speak directly to that.

01:36:53

This book could not be written at a better time. I guess, you know, it could have been released

01:36:59

right when everything was shutting down, but it is very applicable for the world that we find

01:37:06

ourselves in. A lot of companies are doing this hybrid thing. Some people are coming back to the

01:37:10

office. Some people continuing to work remotely or they're working remotely a bunch of the time

01:37:15

and they come to the office for a day or two a week. So I think a lot of businesses would benefit

01:37:22

by making this mandatory reading for all of their executives and all of their employees.

01:37:28

It's really, really good. I got a lot out of it. Even though if you would ask me before we started,

01:37:35

do I think that I have a better understanding of effective digital communication than a lot of

01:37:44

other people that I associate with, I would have said yes. And then I read this and I'm like,

01:37:51

actually, there's a lot here that I'm doing wrong. Not in a condemning way, like I'm the problem for

01:37:57

all this stuff, although that's the approach I choose to take because I don't want to just

01:38:02

play the victim and assume that everyone else is going to have to figure this out before

01:38:06

my life gets better. I want to do what I can. And that's the cool thing about this is like,

01:38:10

unlike a lot of the other books that we read, which they, a lot, I feel like a lot of our authors

01:38:16

try to couch it as, well, this book is for everybody and you can apply this from the bottom up. You

01:38:22

really can't. This one, I think there's a clear path to doing that, even if it's just in like one

01:38:27

specific relationship that you have in your life, there are things that you can do to make that

01:38:32

interaction a little bit more positive. So I would recommend this to absolutely everybody.

01:38:37

Like I said, if you would ask me before this, do I need to read this? I would have probably told

01:38:42

you no, but I'm really glad that I did and I did learn a lot. So I think there's a lot of people

01:38:47

like me who can understand some things a little bit better, even just understanding that there

01:38:53

are differences between the different cultures, the different genders, the different generations,

01:38:58

without her explicitly calling out every single little thing would still be helpful. But she does

01:39:03

call out all those little things. And as she's going through those, I could totally picture people

01:39:09

in my life who like, ah, yeah, they're older than me. And that's why they respond very directly

01:39:14

with a period. And it seems like they're mad. They're not as just they're older. That's the way

01:39:20

they have learned to communicate. So taking that into consideration, you know, I'm not going to

01:39:24

freak out when I get those text messages anymore. I think there's a ton of value to be had from this.

01:39:29

When you were talking about this, it just occurred to me is like, whenever I'm around my father-in-law,

01:39:34

he's a texture now because he knows that other people text, but he doesn't like texting,

01:39:43

so he does it with voice. And if you've ever received a voice generated text from somebody,

01:39:50

you know, like there is no punctuation unless they call it out. And it's usually a handful of

01:39:55

run-on sentences. Nothing is capitalized. Like that's just how it kicks out, right? That's how these

01:39:59

voice to text systems work right now. I mean, they're getting better. But that's how they come

01:40:06

across. Well, if you get one of those texts, it just seems weird. Like, is he mad with me?

01:40:13

Is he? Yeah. I don't even know what he like, what does he want? Like, that's just kind of how

01:40:17

it comes across. And I've told him this, like, it's just, it's kind of strange. So it works for him.

01:40:23

It's the way it goes. Anyway, we can be done, done with this. Mike, what is next? Next book is yours.

01:40:29

What did you pick? Procrastinate on purpose by Rory Vaden. We're going to procrastinate, baby.

01:40:34

Are you still going to put off your procrastination, long? If I'm going to do that action item,

01:40:39

this is when it's going to happen. So all right. Fair enough. Fair enough. The book I'm choosing for

01:40:47

after that is "Leminal Thinking" by Dave Gray. The tagline on this one is "Create the change you

01:40:54

want by changing the way you think." And I've had this one recommended to me a couple times,

01:40:59

one from a friend just this morning. So I feel like this one's popped up on my radar a handful of

01:41:06

times recently. So while it's on my mind, I would like to cover it with you because I think this would

01:41:12

be a good one for us. All right. That's what I'm thinking. So anyway, "Leminal Thinking." That's

01:41:18

what we'll do after procrastinate on purpose. I'm in the middle of buying a house, Mike. So

01:41:24

time to read continues to evade me. I almost didn't get this one done, our actual bookworm book.

01:41:30

So there is no way there's a gap book happening this time or next time. So do you have one? Can you

01:41:37

redeem bookworm and say you're going to have a gap book this time around? I can say I'll have a

01:41:43

gap book. I can't say what it's going to be. I will be on sabbatical next week as we record this.

01:41:49

So I will be reading something, but I don't know what it is yet. That's fair. That's fair. All right.

01:41:56

Well, big thanks to everybody who has been able to join us live. I know there have been a number of

01:42:00

folks in and out with the chat and such. I know we don't always respond to the chat while we're

01:42:04

recording, but it's still cool to see some of the conversations that happen there. And it does

01:42:08

influence some of what we say. So thank you to those of you who join us live and also a huge thank

01:42:15

you to those of you who are on our bookworm club membership program as well. So thank you

01:42:21

to you guys that if you haven't joined that and you want to go to bookworm.fm/membership

01:42:29

and that will get you to the pages and all the things that you need in order to

01:42:33

to join that. And that's where you can get like Mike was saying earlier, the my node files that

01:42:38

he puts together for this as well as a few other things on the site as well. So we'd love to have

01:42:43

you on board helps us buy our books and keep the sites and the podcasts and stuff all up and running.

01:42:48

So thank you for that. All right. So if you're reading along with us, which you totally should,

01:42:53

then buy procrastinate on purpose by Rory Vaden or get it from your local library.

01:42:59

And we will talk to you in a couple of weeks.